The Untold Tale
is a The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong fanfic written by PhoenixTakaramono on Archive of Our Own.
Let it not be said that Shen Yuan didn’t know how to be an accomplished—arguably better—writer than Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky! A middle-aged author in his hubris, he’d unknowingly triggered his fate and had his consciousness whisked away into an unfathomable mystical world that he would later learn to be based on Proud Immortal Demon Way and his very own work-in-progress. When given the opportunity to customize his character’s stats and to design his one remaining Customizable Skill Slot, as a veteran reader of transmigration stories and their tropes, Shen Yuan demanded, “Grant me the protagonist’s halo of course!”
Only to learn that he was going to share said unique skill with one Luo Binghe — the same sadistic “Bing gē” from the released Extra short story. It was also too bad that Shen Yuan, in his mortal form, resembled Shen Qingqiu by a good thirty-to-forty percent.
Contains the following tropes
- Adaptational Nice Guy: This iteration of the System is much more helpful and not as sadistic as the canon one.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Meng Mo gets extremely nervous around Celestials, warning Binghe to tread on eggshells when he's dealing with Shen Yuan.
- Awful Truth: Several of these for Binghe.
- First and foremost, his entire existence has been puppetered by a faceless, godlike entity on a whim.
- How exactly the Old Palace Master interfered with his life by hurting his birth parents.
- Badass Bookworm: Shen Yuan is a fortuneteller and historian with a passion for war stories and tactical strategies — one of his jobs actually is Warlord.
- Benevolent Boss: Shen Yuan treats his servants as sweet little kids and worries about Luo Binghe hurting them.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: Several of Shen Yuan's attendants, to fit with his lunar motifs. He internally squees over them and muses that his younger sister would adore them.
- Cosmic Motifs: The Moon for Shen Yuan — he's an albino with several Moon Rabbit servants.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- Exploited by Shen Yuan when he picks fortunetelling as one of his class jobs. In a superstitious xianxia setting, any prophet worth their salt is highly esteemed and often becomes The Man Behind the Man instead of being derided as a quack.
- He also briefly muses that the educational system is completely in shambles, relying on apprenticeships instead of a standardized curriculum.
- Luo Binghe is tremendously excited when Shen Yuan (a powerful celestial being) declares his intent to help the half-demon to become the Sacred Ruler. From his viewpoint, he just obtained the Mandate of Heaven — a true Chinese Emperor being unable to rule without the Heavens' blessing.
- Divorce is not a possibility in Imperial China, unless the woman has behaved in a shameful manner and needs to be thoroughly humiliated.
- Entertainingly Wrong:
- Shen Yuan believes he's fated to become Luo Binghe's sworn brother. Oy vey...
- Luo Binghe decided the Heavens disapproved one of them being destined to fall in love with a lowly demon so they tried to make Binghe hate his fated match through Shen Qingqiu's abuse, courtesy of the human being an Identical Stranger to the celestial.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Luo Binghe is very much horrified and infuriated when he learns the whole extent of the Old Palace Master's manipulations.
- Falling into His Arms: How Binghe meets Shen Yuan. Bonus points for mournfully wondering if he would ever get to find a nice shizun of his own right before.
- Fantastic Racism: Neither humans nor celestials are open to like the demons.
- Foreshadowing: A whole sequence is actually named "Loading Chekhov's Gun".
- The resurrection lilies.
- The Heavenly Officials disapproving of Shen Yuan's support for Luo Binghe.
- Luo Binghe's main wives being potentially hostile towards Shen Yuan.
- Identical Stranger: Shen Yuan rather looks like Shen Qingqiu. It's hinted it will give him trouble with some of Luo Binghe's wives.
- Jerkass Gods: Because of his system's filter, Shen Yuan presents Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky as one, and it rather fits — he is the one who created the setting and forced his protagonist to suffer unending trials and misery, just because he wanted to write something exciting without considering Luo Binghe's feelings on the matter.
- Mama Bear: Su Xiyan won't let death stop her to beg for Shen Yuan to rescue her son from the self-destructing path he's currently engaged on.
- Misery Builds Character: Discussed when Luo Binghe gets furious at Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky for inflicting him a crappy life, with Shen Yuan explaining Binghe wouldn't have been driven to achieve greatness if he had been satisfied with the current society. Binghe stays pissed off.
- Mystical White Hair: Shen Yuan's celestial appearance is an albino one.
- Oblivious to Love: Shen Yuan wouldn't be Shen Yuan without his brain-breaking denseness regarding his love life. He knows Binghe is bisexual, he knows he just transmigrated within a Boys' Love story, his system is giving him hints and he still doesn't register Binghe's thirst for him.
- Older and Wiser: This iteration of Shen Yuan is around forty years old, so he had time to study and become a serious novelist instead of being a floundering twenty-something.
- Opposites Attract: Heavenly Demon-Human hybrid Luo Binghe and Celestial Shen Yuan. Even their physical appearances contrast, as Luo Binghe dresses in black while Shen Yuan is an albino.
- Pretty in Mink:
- Shen Yuan's day robes are trimmed with white fur on the collar, and Luo Binghe is immediately stunned on their meeting.
- Luo Binghe appears in the dream realm only wearing a divine tiger's pelt, which is noted to confer him a barbarian allure.
- Purple Prose: Luo Binghe's narrative is just as flowery and dramatic as befits an epic xianxia protagonist.
- Rage Against the Heavens: Luo Binghe is rather mightily upset to learn his entire life was engineered by an otherworldly being for amusement purposes and would have words with said entity. It's this instead of Rage Against the Author as the System's filter gave him the information in a form he would easily relate to.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In-Universe, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky rewriting Proud Immortal Demon Way to be more in line with Scumbag System made his readers much more empathetic towards Shen Qingqiu. This is also what Shen Yuan plans to do with the original Luo Binghe.
- Revenge Before Reason: Shen Yuan is aghast when he receives a premonition of four women killing him for looking like Shen Qingqiu — not only Luo Binghe would go berserk from losing someone under his protection to his own wives' treachery, the Heavens themselves wouldn't take kindly to one of their residents' murder.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- The vision of the dragon and the phoenix, on two levels. The first meaning is that Shen Yuan's support will help Luo Binghe to ascend as the Sacred Ruler of Three Realms, just as the phoenix is intended to herald a new Emperor's rule. The second meaning is from the romantic bent, as phoenix and dragon imagery often features in weddings.
- As his wandering in the dream realm takes him to a spider lily field, Shen Yuan remembers the flower is associated with death, the underworld and resurrection.
- Screw Destiny: After being informed of his original fate of dying alone and despised in the original novel, Luo Binghe swears to ruin his creator's plans for him.
- Seers: Shen Yuan took "Fortuneteller" as a class job. He used palmistry on Luo Binghe, but also received visions in the dream realm.
- Shipper on Deck: The System is rooting for their Esteemed Host's romantic success with Luo Binghe!
- Star-Crossed Lovers:
- After meeting Shen Yuan, Luo Binghe quickly decides the other man is his fated match but never was allowed to meet him by virtue of their different species.
- Su Xiyan and Tianlang-jun played the trope fully straight. Their son is rather anguished to learn this little fact.
- You Can't Go Home Again: As the System explains their Esteemed Host he just transmigrated into his own novel, Shen Yuan realizes he's dead in his original world and asks if there's no way for him to return. There's not.
