Chapter Text
Shen Yuan powered through the crowd of servants - all too busy staring upwards, too godsmacked and stunned to notice the Empress storming down - shoving and hip-checking through all the demons in a manner that would earn him an A+ at a Karen Academy.
“Woah woah, slow down bro!” Airplane squealed. Shen Yuan paid the stupid author no mind and continued frogmarching the culprit to the front of the crowded… foyer? Front gardens? Whatever. Shen Yuan didn’t care to know what this section of the palace was called. Whatever it was, it was fancy - which was absurd coming from someone of his background! - with its towering red columns and arched marble ceilings that opened into a garden that wouldn’t be out of place with that fancy French Palace - what was it called again… it started with a “v” didn’t it…
Shen Yuan shook his head and shoved the tangential thought into a bucket labeled ‘old life don’t bother’. That stuff didn’t matter more; the more important stuff was in front of him.
He dragged Shang Qinghua into one of the shadows cast by a column and shook the hamster’s collar with a huff. No one was looking in this direction anyhow, so he didn’t bother maintaining any sort of “Shen Qingqiu” type of demeanor. “What the fuck is this!”
Said hamster gave him an accusatory look at him in response. “Should I be asking you that? What the fuck did you do this time, bro!”
Shen Yuan narrowed his eyes further and hissed. “You hack of an author! You know what you did! Look!” With his fan, he pointed at the sky - the same direction that all the palace servants and visitors staring in.
Shang Qinghua didn’t answer, eyes fixated at the spaceship hovering just above the treeline.
“Why the fuck has this world now shifted into science fiction?!” Shen Yuan demanded. He turned to look at the crowd of unwanted armored visitors before deciding, nope, he didn’t want to see that.
Shen Yuan turned around and smacked Shang Qinghua with the fan again, pointedly ignoring the large crowd of Mandalorians - a group of five? seven? a dozen? beings covered from head to toe in dark menacing armor counted as a ‘large crowd’ in Shen Yuan’s books - that swooped through the air on jetpacks and pelleting his husband with… bolts of energy coming out of some gun-like machinery. His husband easily deflected all the attacks with Xin Mo, the sword glowing an eerie black under the noon sun.
In addition to the original goods’ spiritual cultivation, Shen Yuan would like to think that he had mastered the art of “out of sight, out of mind” cultivation technique. But this time, it’s to no avail. He could hear, in the background, the sound of sizzling meat and decapitated limbs falling onto the ground.
All these years, Shen Yuan studiously ignored the suspicious shape of Luo Binghe’s sword. There were plenty of good reasons why Xin Mo was so out of place - it was Xin Mo, the legendary one of a kind sword. Of course it wasn’t going to fit in with the rest of the cultivation setting - it was a demonic sword for demon wielders! Of course it was going to be sentient and drive people crazy when it was a sword that only the protagonist could wield! And-
And-
And with Airplane’s dedication to skipping out on more worldbuilding for useless papapa scenes, it was only natural that the stupid webnovel didn’t contain any descriptions of the sword itself!
But now, with the very obvious presence of Mandalorians screaming about some “Darksaber”, “Mand'alor”, and “Vizsla”, Shen Yuan couldn’t play dumb anymore.
The fucking sentient sword that was usually only a hilt - to not get in the way of papapa scenes because rolling around in bed with an entire ass sword in it wasn't terribly sexy unless the actual blade could disappear... like a plasma sword - with its long bloody history…
It was the fucking Darksaber. Fucking Airplane-
“This was one of the drafts!” Shang Qinghua sweats. “Luo Binghe got too OP for everything on this planet… so it was time to start pulling out the aliens, to keep this story going, okay!”
Shen Yuan stared, deadeye, into Shang Qinghua’s dimwitted face. He wasn’t dumb to Shang Qinghua’s attempt at obfuscation. “You were planning on my protagonist getting himself a Jedi wife, weren’t you?”
Shang Qinghua wisely shut his mouth and didn’t say anything.
Of all the halfwitted, moronic plot points and ideas to even consider-
No, he shouldn’t go there. It would be more accurate to say that, from everything he had personally seen - from everything he had personally experienced, from the wife plots to the system’s stupid missions - most of Shang Qinghua’s writing decisions had very little thought involved. So really, why would he even be so surprised that Airplane, a sellout of the highest order despite his novel being ranked top 5 most read Zhongdian webnovel of the year like it contained something good, would dare try to go head to head with Disney?
“Wait, what-”
“Yeah that’s right. Disney bought Star Wars.” Which Shen Yuan still couldn’t fucking believe.
Shang Qinghua choked. “Since when!”
Shen Yuan stared at him flatly. The acquisition was all over the news. Only an idiot under a rock or glued to weeb shit wouldn’t have heard - oh right. Shang Qinghua’s dimly lit office, with its massive piles of paperwork, contracts, and intelligence reports looming around like origami trees and piles of shelled sunflower seeds scattered on the floor, was already a good indication of how Shang Qinghua would have lived his previous life. It was already heaven-defying that such a person managed to get hitched to Mobei Jun, although that spoke more towards Mobei Jun’s taste in men than Airplane’s… everything.
“I hate you.” Shen Qingqiu proclaimed. He looked up at the ceiling in askance, hoping that he could just pretend that this was all a nightmare. Only in a nightmare could Shen Yuan be friends with such a disaster. Only in a nightmare could Luo Binghe be winning single handedly against Mandalorian mercenaries and cementing his ownership of the Darksaber, and by proxy the leadership position in one fell swoop.
But it was no use. He could practically hear Luo Binghe brain whirling away in frantic joy at the fact that he could plan another wedding - an interstellar wedding just to proclaim to all the Star Wars people that the two were married. It was only a matter of time before Luo Binghe would find out about all the other planets’ wedding cultures - even Mandalore had to include a large number of different wedding practices with its long history of conquering planets - and Shen Yuan would find himself wrapped into an eternity of wedding preparations.
Damnit.