Chapter Text
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Peak Lord in possession of an expensive mountain must be in want of a side hustle.
And this was especially apparent when Great Master Shen Qingqiu, Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak of the illustrious Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, realized one devastating truth: cultivating did not pay.
This was, to put it mildly, absurd. As a high-ranking member of the most prestigious cultivation sect in the realm, he expected at least some sort of respectable financial package to sweeten the deal. In his world, someone with a level of training, discipline, and razor-sharp aesthetic sense rivalling his would have been paid enough to live comfortably if they were unlucky, and handsomely if they were not. Now, he was lucky if the sect managed to procure stationery without having to beg An Ding for days.
To Shen Qingqiu’s modern mind, the economics of cultivation were an absolute scam. Unlike video games, demonic hordes didn’t drop loot. To make matters worse, Airplane Bro had also somehow glossed over the fact that sect stipends were pitiful (Shen Qingqiu instead suspected that Shang Qinghua had simply not cared enough to elaborate on financial matters when he could write about Luo Binghe’s 300th wife instead). Perhaps it was Luo Binghe’s golden halo that kept the Sect running, but Shen Qingqiu realised that if he did not take matters into his own hands soon, the money-eating abyss that was Qing Jing Peak would consume itself.
The result of days of pained, elegant brooding bore fruit, causing Shen Qingqiu himself to be rather amazed with his utterly brilliant idea. If cultivation wouldn’t pay the bills, then literature would. After all, he’d spent his entire transmigrated life critiquing Airplane’s atrocious webnovel, so how hard could it be to do better? If Airplane bro could churn out a “classic,” then surely he, Shen Qingqiu, divine scholar, could ascend to literary greatness.
But Shen Qingqiu, brought up with Gen Z sensibilities, also knew that his true motto in life was: why work harder when you can work smarter ? And here, finally, was where the real brilliance of his idea revealed itself. None of the authors from his world existed in that Proud Immortal Demon Way. Which meant he had all the knowledge, all the spoilers, and absolutely none of the copyright lawyers breathing down his neck. (Shen Qingqiu was somewhat jealous of the folks in this novel honestly, as they would never know the fear of being faced with copyright lawyers. Arguably, they were much scarier than any number of demon hordes, as demons could be reasoned with, albeit at sword-point. Try pulling a sword out on a copyright lawyer on the other hand, you’d end up far worse off than when you started).
It was here that Shen Qingqiu, genius entrepreneur, decided to embark on a new career path: literary plagiarism as a side hustle. Or, as he preferred to call it, “Qing Jing Peak Monetization Plan™”.
Shen Qingqu’s much awaited debut novel was written as The Boy With the Lightning Scar. The tale outlined the harrowing experiences of an orphan boy as discovers he’s descended from a long line of cultivators. The boy gets induced into a prestigious cultivation sect with the help of a wandering monk, where he makes lifelong friends, battles a snake-faced villain, and participates in an oddly dangerous sport involving flying swords and glowing pieces of jade.
At some point, Shen Qingqiu realized that even genius required distribution and promotion. He wasn’t going to make bank while his works sold in measly numbers and sat untouched on shelves, despite how undoubtedly fabulous they were. Thus, he paid a visit to Liu Mingyan of Xian Shu Peak. She, after all, was well known (under her pseudonym) for her own forays into the literary world.
When he got ahold of her, Shen Qingqiu began with the air of a man about to launch into a Very Serious Artistic Proposal, “I, too, know the struggles of a writer’s heart. I merely seek a platform to express myself.” He cringed inwardly at this blatant lie.
Liu Mingyan, however, had endured her share of snide comments and unhelpful publishers regarding her “trashy” romance novels. Moved by empathy for a fellow creator in a sect that valued meaty blockheads who could simply break things and had no vision for art (read: her brother), she agreed quite willingly to help him. To her, it didn’t matter that Shen Qingqiu was a lofty peak lord or a famously strict teacher. In that moment, he was simply a kindred soul who felt the tug of words, and who wanted to carve out a voice in a world that rarely looked kindly upon such things.
For a long moment, Shen Qingqiu (clearly not a devotee of words in the way she was) nearly forgot to keep his expression suitably dignified. He settled on a discreet cough. Inwardly, however, he was startled to find himself touched by her helpfulness, though the feeling was immediately followed by mortification. After all, he was a fraud.
Within a month, Shen Qingqiu had sold thousands of copies. High on success, he began churning the stories out in earnest. Over the next two years, Shen Qingqiu managed to carve out a name for himself, and added numerous cultivation AU novels under his literary belt.
There was The Faction Trials , set in an alternate universe society where all disciples were sorted into Peaks according to their personality (brave = Bai Zhan, wise = Qing Jing, peaceful = An Ding, and so forth). The heroine was blessed in being suited to every peak, and had to fight the evil peak lords to free her fellow disciples from demonic mind control. Her only weakness were her fears that stuck like visions from Meng Mo the dream demon.
His third novel was The Heavenly Hunger Tournament , an epic where disciples were forced to duel for the entertainment of an overbearing mega-sect that had the rest of the cultivation world under its thumb. The heroine wielded a bow crafted from heavenly bamboo and was adored by audiences. Shen Qingqiu admitted he had spent far too long writing in detail about each of the sect’s outfits when the players were revealed. Shen Qingqiu claimed the novel was a “biting satire of corrupt sect politics.” Readers called it “riveting, and violent”. Mingyan asked if Shen Qingqiu had based the main character off her (he had).
The Moon Chronicles gained somewhat of a cult following, and it marked the first novel in which he took more of a romance heavy turn. A mortal girl in a small mountain town falls in love with a pale cultivator who glowed with power and insisted that he was too dangerous for her. Shen Qingqiu was upset at having to let vampires go, but he doubted that a blood sucking demon romance would sell well (he was mistaken here). The cultivator however still managed to brood fetchingly in the moonlight, and watched over the girl as she slept. It would not have been complete without a rival suitor who turned into a wolf demon at awkward moments, which readers agreed was both unnecessary and strangely popular.
As he settled down to draft his newest epic (about a band of cultivators journeying to destroy a jade ring steeped in demonic qi), Shen Qingqiu decided, with no small amount of satisfaction, that the writer’s life might truly be his calling. To his own surprise, he had begun to enjoy the process. And though he would never admit it aloud, a small part of him was pleased, not with the money or the praise, but with the thought that he had somehow managed to make this ridiculous world a little better.