Journey to Shizun‘s Bed
Summary: In which Shang Qinghua tries his hands at adapting catchy opening songs and Shen Qingqiu is. not. amused.
A spiritual aura sweeps through Cang Qiong Mountain
Within the Qing Jing Peak’s disciples,
I, The Handsome Junshang with Earth-shaking shattering power, am the most beloved
Even the Xuan Su Sword and the Bai Zhan War God have to let me play freely!
If I want to show off on Earth, I'll win the Immortal Alliance Conference.
If I want to become an emperor, I'll grace the Southern Demon Palace with my presence.
If I were to admit that I was wrong, my heart would still be arrogant.
Around the Cang Qiong Mountain, the favorite of Qing Jing Peak,
Sauntering around with a light slash of Xin Mo, I have explored all of the Demon and Mortal Realm,
Using just a drop of my blood to alter my destiny.
Fearless in the face of countless challenge, even from the Endless Abyss
But what I really fear the most is Shizun disappearing on me!
To properly court Shizun, we can't afford to relax at any step,
To properly court Shizun, we will be impulsive together.
To properly court Shizun, we have to cooperate for Shizun.
Gradually achieving spousehood,
Where our names will be praised for ten thousand generations,
Luo Binghe!
- Journey to Shizun’s bed, song adapted by Shang Qinghua
Shen Qingqiu, back when he used to be called Shen Yuan, had been a Millenial. A male chinese one at that. He grew up in the heyday of Hongkongese TV shows, back when each fighting scenes were authentic pieces of art and special effects were kept at a minimum. So of course he was very familiar with all the classics, okay? Especially Journey to the West.
He used to fawn over the strength, intelligence and arrogance of Sun Wukong, cheering every time the Monkey King would win a fight or outwit an enemy. He used to grimace every time Zhu Bajie was in the general vicinity of any female characters. He used to throw insult at the TV screen every time Tang Sanzang refused to believe his disciple about this or that character being a demon in disguise (even though he fucking knew Sun Wukong had the ability to see through any kind of subterfuges and disguises)... that and getting basically kidnapped and/or nearly eaten every freaking episodes! So. Damn. Infuriating!
Shen Qingqiu wanted to throw something just by thinking about it!
But anyway, back to the matter on hand. Shen Qingqiu knew his classics.
So, of course, he’d immediately recognize it when he overheard Shang Qinghua absently humming the opening song of the Journey to the West, the 1996 one of course (because any other adaption didn’t deserve any recognition - fight him!).
Well, “overhead” might be too big of a word.
Shen Qingqiu had agreed to help Shang Qinghua go through his massive mountain of disorderly paperwork, in exchange for the location of a pair of mythical beasts that had only been mentioned once in Proud Immortal Demon Way, but didn’t appear in any books that Shen Qingqiu had read so far. And after a while Shang Qinghua had just forgotten that his fellow transmigrator was still in the room, hence the humming which had now evolved into full-fledged singing.
Now, usually, that would have been the point prompting Shen Qingqiu to snap at him to freaking work in silence, because Shang Qinhua’s taste in music was on par with his literature one’s - that is to say absolutely cringy and of the vulgar variety. And he tended to sing in loops. Absolutely maddening!
But suddenly overcome with a rare sense of nostalgia, Shen Qingqiu decided not to interrupt and actually listen. He was actually impressed that Shang Qinghua remembered the cantonese lyrics, what’s with his usual shitty memory and language proficiency.
So, when it looped back to the beginning of the song, he started to properly pay attention to the lyrics.
A spiritual aura sweeps through Cang Qiong Mountain
Within the Qing Jing Peak’s disciples,
I, The Handsome Junshang with Earth-shaking shattering power, am the most beloved
Even the Xuan Su Sword and the Bai Zhan War God have to let me play freely!
Shen Qingqiu frowned. Wait. That wasn’t right! What’s with those lyrics?!
If I want to show off on Earth, I'll win the Immortal Alliance Conference.
If I want to become an emperor, I'll grace the Southern Demon Palace with my presence.
If I were to admit that I was wrong, my heart would still be arrogant.
He snorted. So Shang Qinghua had actually adapted the original opening lyrics to make them about Luo Binghe, instead.
Around the Cang Qiong Mountain, the favorite of Qing Jing Peak,
Sauntering around with a light slash of Xin Mo, I have explored all of the Demon and Mortal Realm,
Using just a drop of my blood to alter my destiny.
Shen Qingqiu was actually impressed? This hack author had only made some minor changes (the locations and powers) but the gist and intent of the original song still remained the same. He’d never noticed how the original could fit so well with this OP protagonist of his. Had Luo Binghe personality been inspired by Sun Wukong? Maybe he would ask Shang Qinghua for a written version of the lyrics... just because he was curious about it, okay! ... and certainly not because he actually started to like this version better than the original!
Fearless in the face of countless challenge, even from the Endless Abyss
But what I really fear the most is Shizun disappearing on me!
Shen Qingqiu winced. Yeah, even that part was similar. What’s with the countless number of wife plots he had been subject to in the past few years. Wait... Did that make him Tang Sanzang?! No way! Nope! He refused!
“To properly court Shizun, we can't afford to relax at any step,
To properly court Shizun, we - ACK! Cucumber-bro! W-what, stop hitting me! OUCH!”
Before Shang Qinghua could even finish the verse, Shen Qingqiu had promptly leapt from his seat and lunged at him, with all the ferocity of an indignant swan. He punctuated each of his word with a violent hit of his fan.
“You! Hack! Author! How! Dare! You!”
“W-wait! Wait! I’m sorry! ACK! I’m really sorry! Stop hitting me, please!”
But Shen Qingqiu wasn’t done.
“You! If it weren’t bad enough that you made me into a Tang Sanzang proxy, you actually dared to make me, the Holy Sutras?! How blasphemous can you actually get?!”
Shang Qinghua laughed nervously at that, scratching his cheek, “Well, you have to admit, Cucumber-bro, it does fit surprisingly well with the narra- ACK! Okay! Shutting up, right now! I’ll repent properly for all the wrong I’ve done!”
Shen Qingqiu huffed, “You’d better. And hand over the written lyrics, I’m confiscated it, just to make it won’t get into the wrong hands!”
There was a knowing glint in his eyes as Shang Qinghua went to fetch said lyrics and gave them to him. “Yeah sure, cucumber-bro.”
Just for that Shen Qingqiu hit him, once more.
.
.
.
The thing was... The song was catchy, okay! (And the lyrics were surprisingly good if you ignore the last verse.)
So was it really surprising that Shen Qingqiu found himself singing it without meaning to?
At first, he would be too thin-faced to actually reach the end of the song and would stop right before the last verse. But after singing it countless times, he actually stopped paying attention to the meaning of the words, which happened often enough when you sing in a language that wasn’t your native language, and instintively went through the whole song.
So naturally, his sticky, sticky disciple who should learn not to move so silently, was bound to hear it at some point.
His last remains of hope that Luo Binghe wouldn’t understand the lyrics promptly shattered when he saw him grinning from ear to ear, begging his Shizun to sing it one more time.
(He remembered too late that Airplane had handwaved the language barrier between a Cantonese speaking wife and Mandarin speaking Luo Binghe by stating that apparently everyone in PIDW could understand and speak both, which was utter bullshits that Shen Yuan had ranted about in at least three separate comments.What was the point of making a distinction between the two if everyone and their mothers could speak it?!)
Face beat red from utter shame, Shen QIngqiu stubbornly refused to sing it again, no matter how many time he was coaxed.
It fucking figured though that Luo Binghe would manage to memorize the song after only hearing it once.
The next following days, found that cheeky disciple of his happily singing it as swept the floor of the Bamboo Hut.
.
.
Naturally, at some point, both Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan also heard of it ( which for some reason meant that Sha Hualing also knew about it?) .
... Naturally, the song became the most known song in the Three Realm within a week.
Shen Qingqiu was going to eviscerate Shang Qinghua!!
(About a year later, a book co-written by Lian Su Mian Hua and an unknown author pennamed Sword Shooting Towards the Sky, became widly circulated. It told the epic tale of a peerless cultivator who travelled through the several Realms, with his three rambunctious but powerful disciples, on the head of a giant snake to search for some holy artifacts.
The first disciple was a half-heavenly demon who was propably singlehandedly the most powerful being in all Three Realms and the only person he was known to bow down to was his Shizun.
The second one was a very powerful cultivator who owed his Shizun his life, he would have been known for both his fighting prowess and his beauty - if he hadn’t been beaten every single time by his Shixiong!
The last disciple, was the one who had known Shizun the longest despite being the last one accepted as a disciple. The reason was that even though he was rumoured to be powerful to the point of even having his Da-shixiong being wary of him, he had been forbbiden from drawing his sword out.
Now the most interesting part of the tale though is that the Shizun was probably the only one really focused on the goal. The three disciples (and the snake?!) actually spent the integrality of the journey trying to get into their master’s bed fighting each other and protecting their masters’s virtue from the dozen other contenders, though the master remained utterly obvious the whole way - under the firm belief that the beings (humans, gods, demons) that kept kidnapping him right, left and center wanted to eat him... which you know, yes, but not that way.
The furious scream from the usually peacefully Qing Jing Peak could be heard all the way to An Ding, Shang Qinghua elected right there to flee have a prolonged stay at his King residence.)
THE END.
.
.
Extra:
Sun Wukong & LBH: I have no fear.
Tang Sanzang & SQQ, exists and keeps getting kidnapped or dying.
Sun Wukong & LBH: I have one (1) fear.
The JTTW (1996) opening used this meme nearly two decades before it was invented and I think it’s freaking hilarious!
---------------------------------------------------------
Author’s note:
1) Okay so, I used to watch a lot of Chinese TV shows when I was a kid - I watched them in Vietnamese dub though. Recently, I randomly wanted to watch Journey To the West again, and realized after one episode and a half that I wasn’t nearly as proficient in Vietnamese as I used to be when I was 10.... (which, WTF?!)... or maybe back then, it didn’t bothered me as much not to understand everything as long as I got the gist of the story.
Well whatever the reason I promptly switched to the original version with English subtitles. And the team subbing the episodes actually went through the effort of translating all the songs as well, which meant I understood the lyrics of the opening for the first time ever (they were kept in Cantonese, even in the dub) and I was like...
So after my initial amazement of how the opening embodied so well Sun Wukong, I was like “Wait... for some reasons it reminds me of LBH as well.”
And because I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, I actually started writing it!
2) Mandarin vs Cantonese....
So one of my HCs is that Shen Yuan is proficient in a lot of language:
- Mandarin, which is his native language.
- Cantonese, by watching those Hongkongese TV shows as a kid and learning by sheer osmosis... which means he actually knows the outdated way of speaking in Cantonese
- English, through school
- Japanese
- a little bit of Korean
As for SQH, well to be honest, I needed a reason to explain how he knew Cantonese enough to adapt the lyrics, so for the sake of the story his father is from Macau (Cantonese), while his mother is from Shanghai (Mandarin), which is why he naturally understands and speaks both.
3) I was shocked to learn that “Marriagehood” wasn’t a word, it sounds so much better than “Spousehood”
4) Here is the original lyrics, if you’re interested
(Credits to the swkfansubs team for the translation!)
A spiritual aura sweeps through Flower Fruit Mountain
Within the Water Curtain Cave,
I, The Handsome Monkey King Earth-shaking shattering power, am the master
Even the Jade Emperor and the Dragon King have to let me play freely!
If I want to play on Earth, I'll create a sensation.
If I want to become an emperor, I'll grace the Dragon Palace with my presence.
If I were to admit that I was wrong, my heart would still be arrogant.
Around the Golden Flower Fruit Mountain, the King of Water Curtain Cave,
Somersaulting around with light flips, I have explored all of East and West,
Using just half a strand of my hair to alter my destiny.
Fearless in the face of countless challenge, even from Wind and Fire
But what I really fear the most is my master going missing!
To retrieve the Holy Sutras, we can't afford to relax at any step,
To retrieve the Holy Sutras, we will be impulsive together
To retrieve the Holy Sutras, we have to cooperate for the Sutras.
Gradually achieving Buddhahood,
When our names will be praised for ten thousand generations,
Sun Wukong !
5) I need a real JTTW AU like, right now! Someone please make it happens!
13 notes
·
View notes