Silly idea of the day: Shen Qingqiu grills the System for answers about how to avoid the whole Abyss scenario and save his little cabbage favorite disciple until the System very reluctantly offers up the option to transfer the protagonist halo - and all the trials that come with it - to someone else if he pays literally all his points. It's a risky endeavor, but he doesn't see any other way to save Binghe from his suffering/blackening, so he decides to take the risk. After some deliberation he decides to transfer the protagonist halo to Mobei-jun. Based on his memories of PIDW, Mobei-jun isn't the type to be interested in world domination and Shen Qingqiu figures if any kind of wild plot is going to happen to the ice demon, it will be limited to the demon world + maybe Huan Hua Palace and that's it.
The System checks in with Shang Qinghua about what kind of story he would have written for Mobei-jun if he had the choice (SQH is vary of the System and answers 'found family and slowburn romance, maybe with a touch of a coming of age plot' because there's no way the System can make something horrible from that, right?) and accepts Mobei-jun as an alternative.
The protagonist halo is transferred with the click of a button; Luo Binghe loses that special spark that designated him for greatness, but at the same time, he is free of the weight of his fate as well. He's destined to live a life as ordinary as a half-demon cultivator's ever gets.
However, Shen Qingqiu is not required for the new story and keeping a 'troublesome' transmigrator around is too risky for the System, so it decides to swap Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu back. There is a high chance of Shen Jiu dying of qi deviation when he's shoved unceremoniously back into his body (his soul has been fragmented and damaged when the System replaced him with Shen Yuan) which would be the best outcome, as far as the System is concerned, because it would be a natural-looking death that nobody would bother to investigate. It's pure luck that Liu Qingge is lurking around, looking for a chance to thank Shen Qingqiu for saving his life in the caves, and can step in and stabilize Shen Jiu.
At the same time Mobei-jun, in the first hour of being the new protagonist, stumbles into a patch of very specific magic weeds and passes out.
Shen Jiu now knows of the System and has some vague awareness of the person who, as far as he can tell from the incoherent hints the System gave him, was kidnapped against their will and showed into his body and fate for the sake of raising some prophecised emperor of the three realms to power, a plan that was foiled by Shen Jiu's return. He doesn't know why this person acted so strange while in Shen Qingqiu's role (coddling those brats, especially that brat?! What was the stranger thinking??), but the System's remarks make something clear: the stranger knows something about the prophecy and did his best to avoid it, much to the System's displeasure.
So clearly the best course of action is to get them back and question them, somehow. But first Shen Qingqiu is going to Yue Qingyuan and shakes him until he confesses why he left Shen Jiu behind, because if he has to deal with a demon (?) or being that can erase him from existence at a whim, then he wants to know the reason. He's facing almost certain death here, it's the least he's owed!!
While Shen Qingqiu is grilling his soon-to-be-beloved-again brother and trying to come up with a way to keep being a decent teacher despite himself, just in case, on Qian Cao a young, amnesiac rogue cultivator wakes up. He was found in the borderlands, almost ripped to shreds by a herd of man-eating boars. He doesn't remember his name or his past or even his cultivation, but Mu Qingfang estimates him to be in his twenties. He has a very well-developed fire root and a sunny complexion, but he is haunted by dreams of ice, so they decide to call him Beilun (悖论 - paradox) for the time being. When Beilun recovers he asks to stay in the sect so he can learn proper cultivation again and after some rigorous testing - a balanced nature between physical and spiritual cultivation, not much of a head for arts, but excellent instincts for politics, trade and strategy - Yue Qingyuan snatches him up as a personal, soon-to-be head disciple (also maybe brand new adopted little brother, because Yue Qi can't help himself). Shen Qingqiu is initially unhappy about having to share Yue Qingyuan's brotherly affection with someone new, but soon warms up to Beilun himself when he realizes how ruthless the young man can be. Second big brother acquired!
Time passes. Shang Qinghua privately mourns for Mobei-jun when word gets back to Cang Qiong that the Northern prince has been missing so long that they wrote him off. His mourning is tinted by guilt, because he keeps getting distracted by the handsome new Qiong Ding head disciple. Yue Beilun is tall and suntanned and scarred, even years later still not fully recovered from whatever befall him on the edge of the demon realm, but every time he smiles at Shang Qinghua it feels like the world comes to a standstill.
So for one there's the glacially slow falling in love between Shang Qinghua and definitely-not-Mobei-jun. There's the forming adopted family with the two disasters in charge + still-absolutely-not-Mobei-jun. There are Shen Qingqiu's persistent attempts at being a good teacher and a better martial brother (with inconsistent degrees of success, but Liu Qingge is discovering a lot of new things about himself as the primary audience of Shen Qingqiu's self-improvement). There's the long search for ways to get Shen Yuan back from the System, which leads to a whole, wacky side-adventure when they learn the truth about Tianlang-jun and set him free while they are there to get the mushrooms.
Of course this New Plot can't happen without some drama. Beilun is accompanying the masters to the Immortal Alliance conference when the Endless Abyss opens up. Luo Binghe almost succumbs to a sever qi deviation when his seal breaks and Beilun rushes in to fight off the monsters attacking the disciples and falls into the Abyss - which is just the thing needed to break the curse on him...
So Cang Qiong is in mourning over the loss of Yue Beilun who many of them assumed will be the next sect leader based on Yue Qingyuan's strong attachment. Luo Binghe is confined to Qian Cao, half under treatment and half under house arrest on account of being half-demon until they can figure out what to do with him. At least the System has relinquished Shen Yuan, now that the mushroom body is grown enough, and after learning how young he is, he becomes the new replacement little brother of the sect leader and the (ex) scum villain, which is weird and confusing, but not in a bad way.
Meanwhile in the demon realm Mobei-jun makes his return (as far as people know he was training all these years in the Endless Abyss and he is monstrously stronger for it), takes over as Northern King and starts solidifying his power base with Tianlang-jun's help (rumors have it that he was the one who broke the Junshang out of his prison, a feat everyone thought impossible). After all, only a fool goes courting when their court is in disarray and now that he remembers all the things Qinghua has done for him, he has eyes for nobody else.
All the while the Old Palace Master watches the shifts in the demon realm and plots a new war against the demons. With such a cold and ruthless rising Northern King looming on the horizon, not to mention the vengeful Tianlang-jun, it shouldn't be difficult to whip the cultivators up into preparing for conflict...
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Nip this in the bud (2)
Okay, I think I finally figured out what Rick Prime was hoping to accomplish with this:
Because I was all "WTF" during that scene.
First things first:
It's clear that Rick Prime has been monitoring Rick C-137 during this whole time. Maybe not continually monitoring him, but monitoring him often enough that he knows:
Rick lived in the Prime Dimension
Rick is hanging out with Morty Prime
Rick has two Beths now (LOL) "echoes" of Prime's daughter since C-137 Beth never grew up
Likewise, he knew Rick C-137 was accompanied by Morty Prime, and could tell (without actually checking nor monitoring this, because then he wouldn't have fallen for Evil Morty's trick) that one of the Mortys Rick C-137 showed up with was Morty Prime, his original grandson.
In a similar vein, it's theoretically possible that he has some inkling of Evil Morty's identity. I mean, otherwise why tell him "you're like an evil Morty, a clever one". Um, excuse me? Evil Morty didn't do a single "evil" thing during the Prime fight. Why the heck call him "evil"? Just because he's wearing an eyepatch? WEAK. Call him clever, sure. But evil? Nope.
UNLESS... Rick Prime has also sporadically been monitoring the happenings in the Citadel of Ricks. News of Evil Rick's killing spree might have reached him, he might have read witness accounts and known that Evil Rick was accompanied by an eye-patched Morty who disappeared (although I seriously doubt anyone would bother to write more than a single sentence on Evil Morty in any report). Or he may have noticed (you know, after he was teleported in the Prime dimension right after Evil Morty contaminated EVERYONE'S portal travel) that the Citadel blew up, that there was a breach in the Central Finite Curve, and he might have investigated the ruins out of curiosity. He might have found out Stuff.
(Edit: nah, the name "Evil Morty" was mentioned a couple of times in the box, so Rick Prime using it only means that he was paying attention to what was happening in the Box)
In any case, even if all that isn't true, even if Rick Prime had originally no clue that there ever was any animosity between Rick C-137 and Evil Morty, and him calling Evil Morty "Evil" was just a lucky guess, Prick Prime was definitely able to tell that was no love between Evil Morty and Rick C-137 during this scene:
...in which he uses Evil Morty as a literal human shield and Rick C-137 shoots without hesitation (on a different note, I'd like to say how sad is that when strangled Evil Morty doesn't have the presence of mind to try and use any of his implants; he's just a 14 year old boy against an grown-up man at that moment. Forget shooting him with plasma guns; you can literally just strangle him).
And so we come to this scene:
Okay, Rick Prime could already tell that Evil Morty and Rick C-137 weren't family, but the suggestion of "nip this in the bud" was still absurd!
(I've written a similar post in the past while venting, but this one is actually getting somewhere, so please bear with me)
Because Evil Morty and Rick C-137 were, at worst, temporary allies. Rick C-137 owned to Evil Morty:
his freaking life (Evil Morty revived him)
his revenge (Evil Morty let him kill Rick Prime)
and (depending on to what degree Rick Prime was monitoring his clones and the killing box) he might have also known that Evil Morty helped Rick C-137 track Rick Prime down and helped him to escape the box.
That's a huge debt. And I know that Evil Morty helped Rick C-137 to save his own skin from getting Omega-ed if/when Rick C-137 failed to win, and to get the weapon plans, but he wasn't at all obligated to save Rick C-137's life nor to hand him his nemesis on a plate.
Arguably, Evil Morty did this precisely so that he'd have an Omega-enslaved and morally indebted Rick to come to his aid in a hypothetical future hour of need. However, the truth is that Evil Morty and Rick C-137 worked well with each other since the beginning of the episode, before any Omega Device threat (nor carrot!) dangled in front of Evil Morty to influence his decisions (he had just wanted to... talk) and Rick had trusted him enough to leave Morty Prime alone with him.
Like, under normal circumstances, Evil Morty honoring their alliance during the Prime Fight could have been the beginning of a friendship (or at least a more honest and permanent alliance) between Rick C-137 and Evil Morty. Evil Morty is insecure and traumatized enough to need the failsafe of the Omega Device backing him up, but Rick C-137 was game...!
Rick Prime instead puts in Rick C-137's head the idea that Evil Morty might kill him in a tantrum. Not because their interests might clash in the future. Not because Evil Morty may get power-hungry when he grows up. But because he's young and emotional. (Mind you, this is about a boy whose whole characterization revolves around being extremely cautious and calculating; not someone who'd kill another person in a fit of fury.)
Of course, the first idea that pops up in our minds (at least... it was in mine) is that Rick Prime said this hoping that Rick C-137 will drop everything to go stop Evil Morty, and so Rick Prime would get a chance to escape.
...But that doesn't make any sense, either!
Rick C-137 isn't so stupid as to give Rick Prime that chance of survival. Even if he took Rick Prime's warning seriously, he'd hurriedly shoot him in the face before running out to deal with Evil Morty. Rick Prime was toast, and he knew that. This wasn't about his own survival.
Rick C-137 wasn't about to take his worst enemy's advice to turn against his temporary ally. Like, what the heck? Since when Rick Prime fancied himself trustworthy? He could have easily lied, made this up. Rick C-137 couldn't have actually known if Evil Morty really had the weapon plans at that moment, and he'd have to take Rick Prime's word for it. No way he'd drop everything at his worst enemy's word.
Rick Prime saw that Evil Morty downloaded the weapon plans straight on his person. There was no external device that you can just snatch away (like the cone thing Evil Morty used when scanning Rick C-137's brain). So Rick Prime knew that the only way to "nip this in the bud" would be for Rick C-137 to run outside, confront Evil Morty, find out that there was no external device to forcefully take from him, and promptly attack him with lethal intent. But, come on, Rick C-137 was not going to do that, because of the aforementioned debt. Even Rick C-137 isn't so ruthless as to have his own life saved one minute, and him returning the favor with a murder attempt. This was never going to work.
Even if Rick C-137 took Rick Prime's warning seriously, even he trusted his advice, even if he was willing to murder a version of his grandson (to whom his owned his life) in cold blood, I doubt he could do it. He was a mess physically, while Evil Morty was perfectly fine. If they did clash at that moment, I think Evil Morty could have escaped easily with a portal. So this was never going to work.
And don't even get me started on what a joke it is for the Rick who wanted to murder Rick C-137's whole family, one by one, to express Rick-to-Rick camaraderie. As if...!
So what was all this for? This would never work, Rick C-137 would not try to kill Evil Morty at that moment...
...but he can do it in the future.
Any seeds of trust or appreciation that were planted that day were promptly poisoned by Rick Prime's "well-meaning" warning.
Evil Morty himself did trample said seeds further by warning Rick C-137 he could kill him any time he wanted as of now, but he also said that "using a weapon like this doesn't get you. Left. Alone." His whole speech would have hit very differently without Rick Prime's warning. We would have trusted him, we would have trusted that he did all this with the single goal of being left alone and that this is going to be the end of it. Worse case scenario, we would have thought Evil Morty might demand Rick C-137's support for A Thing (like a slave) if he had no other choice, but we still wouldn't have thought Evil Morty would murder him in a flight of rage during a disagreement. Now, the idea that Evil Morty might become unhinged in the future has been planted in our heads, by Rick Prime!
We fans were discussing on how the narrative seems to be setting Evil Morty as the final villain, but it's not the narrative, not really! It's Rick Prime manipulating Rick C-137, hoping he'll attack Evil Morty sometime in the future, so they can kill each other.
He fueled Rick C-137' paranoia on purpose, so as to get delayed revenge on the Rick who dared to think himself better than him... and on the one person who actually bested him.
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