Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Bonus Story: Pocket Dimension

[china_shop]

Hi, and welcome to the last installment of the Guardian novel readalong!

Here is last week's post about the Shen San extra, and you can find all previous discussions in the schedule posts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5), or via the !readalong tag.

In this week's extra, Pocket Dimension: Zhao Yunlan shows Shen Wei how to send red envelopes from his new phone, and Shen Wei sends bonuses to the SID team until he runs out of money. Everyone wants to work for the SID under Kunlun-jun, so Shen Wei has devised personalised applications. Mysteriously, more than twice as many applications have been returned as were sent out. Zhu Hong's Fourth Uncle disappears while visiting the South Sea Water Tribe, and Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei go to investigate. They get caught in a vortex full of bubble AUs, each with a connection point to the real world. Zhao Yunlan escapes from eighty-one pocket dimensions and reunites with Shen Wei, who seems traumatised. Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei take a seaside vacation. Shen Wei thinks swimming trunks are inelegant.

Excerpts:

1) Shen Wei is possibly even worse at managing money than Zhao Yunlan is

At the day-to-day level, Comrade Shen Wei showed every sign that he really knew how to enjoy life. Having turned his attention from manipulating the Three Realms to eating, dressing, and living well, he was more than prepared for the task.

Looking at the bigger picture, however, it was clear that Shen Wei had never truly engaged with the world. In tumultuous times, he’d hole up somewhere on a mountain. In times of peace, he’d rent some random place and live there for a while. Despite all his years wandering around the Mortal Realm, he had no savings or assets, never mind real estate or housing. To this day, other than his salary card, he didn’t have a single penny to his name.

As for all the famous mountains and rivers of the world, well, the government ran all of that now, and he certainly didn’t get a cut of the tourism money.



2) Shen Wei gives away all his money as SID bonuses

Zhao Yunlan put down his phone and walked over. “Hey, by the way, what kind of secret code is ‘Thank you, Shen-laoshi’? Why is everyone saying that when they come in?”

“Uh…” said Shen Wei.

“For the red envelopes he just sent us, of course,” Chu Shuzhi said. “Our bonus for the Dragon Boat Festival, right?”

Zhao Yunlan grabbed Shen Wei’s phone to find that, in the time he’d been wrapped up on a call, Shen Wei-tongxue had mastered the technique of mobile payments and diligently done some after-class practice. He’d been going down his contacts list and sending each person in the Special Investigations Bureau a red envelope.

It wasn’t the kind where you sent it into the group chat for everyone to fight over—Zhao-laoshi hadn’t reached that lesson yet. No, Shen Wei had sent each one individually, and had only made it halfway through his contacts before running out of money.

His Shen-laoshi viewed cash the same way he viewed in-game currency—and not even the kind you had to buy, but the kind the game gave you for free to start.



3) Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan become trapped in bubbles

In an instant, it became shockingly apparent that something was deeply wrong—he and Zhao Yunlan weren’t actually touching, despite how close together they were. Shen Wei whipped his head around in shock. There was some sort of clear film in between them.

Zhao Yunlan said something, but the sound didn’t penetrate the invisible barrier. Shen Wei read the words off Zhao Yunlan’s lips. “This bubble is…”

Bubble?

Shen Wei looked around. Fourth Uncle’s lamp of life was reflected everywhere, revealing what might’ve been infinite layers of clear film, like soap bubbles clustered together. Vague mirages flickered across the surfaces of the bubbles, reflecting both Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan an endless number of times. It was a frightening sight.



4) What are the bubbles?

The bubble that had separated him and Shen Wei just now was the same as that eleven-year cycle. Every bubble was a world set to repeat over and over for a certain span of time.

Some were simple and crude, repeating every ten minutes; some might seem incredibly real and complex, repeating only after thousands of years.

So this wasn’t some kind of artifact. It was simply all the remains of the sages’ attempts to create the Reincarnation Cycle. The waste from their experiments had been sealed in the South Sea all this time until the seal had first been disturbed by the King of the Gui and then accidentally smashed open by a great yao, leaving it exposed to the Mortal Realm.



5) Zhao Yunlan enjoys some virtual reality alernate lives with his boo

Not every dimension came straight from his memories. Some seemed like memories from a past life, but with subtle differences. Some were of bizarre worlds with just a few familiar segments flashing through them.

Zhao Yunlan rather liked the latter sort because in the course of the five thousand years he’d spent in the Reincarnation Cycle, he had very few memories of Shen Wei. When Zhao Yunlan occasionally managed to catch him, it was inevitably only a brief glimpse before Shen Wei disappeared again.

But in the fake worlds, Shen Wei was always right there at his side, playing different roles in his life. In those worlds, they spent a whole lifetime together until they both found their own connection items and broke out of the cycle…



Questions:
Did you enjoy this extra? What's your favourite thing about it? Do you have questions about what's happened in the six years between the epilogue and now? On a scale of one to ten, how terrible is Zhao Yunlan's dad? When Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan portal to the South Sea, who does the portalling: Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, or both separately? We know Fourth Uncle is still alive, but what happened to him? Do you think the question of the duplicate applications was satisfactorily answered? How do you feel about the bubble AUs?

(As usual, these are all just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like! You don't have to be keeping up with the readalong!)

Finally, I just want to thank everyone who's been part of this readalong, either by hosting, commenting, or reading along! It's been such a pleasure sharing this with you all for the last nearly-ten months. And super special extra thanks to trobadora for being an awesome co-mod! <3 <3 <3

Comments

[facethestrange]

"And there's no mention at the end of them re-sealing it, so they must have defeated all the bubbles I guess."

I could see them fixing the whole thing simply by being gods who got trapped in the bubbles and escaped - I'm assuming they're the first ones ever. :) Which makes me think that the primordial gods could have probably fixed it themselves by going in and taking the bubbles apart from the inside, but why do all that work when they could just shove it underwater instead, for someone else to deal with later. :P

"Gardening and loafing around? ;-p"

Very good reasons to expand the organization this widely, lol. :D :D

"That's still Watsonian, isn't it? An in-story explanation vs a meta one?"

Yep, I think you're totally right, just from the author's POV and not the reader's. :)

"Requisition one from the SID in payment for all SW's work on the applications?"

Lol, honestly this should happen, it's only fair if they at least give SW a phone. :D

"This is such an interesting question! I'm trying to think of counter-examples, but we don't really see enough of modern-day gods being godly..."

Yeah, I was wondering about that too, and I can only think of them doing godly stuff with plants in many different circumstances, and then there's the teleporting and flying and walking through walls (which is already what we knew the Emissary could do). No tech that I can think of, but I may be forgetting something? I assume their powers are likely to work with tech too, but if they don't, maybe that's why Shen Wei has never liked it. xD

[china_shop]

I could see them fixing the whole thing simply by being gods who got trapped in the bubbles and escaped - I'm assuming they're the first ones ever. :)

I wonder if that means it's no longer a forbidden area, but just normal sea. Or whether Shennong's toxic waste is still there, but ZYL and SW dealt with the effects of it (for now).

Which makes me think that the primordial gods could have probably fixed it themselves by going in and taking the bubbles apart from the inside, but why do all that work when they could just shove it underwater instead, for someone else to deal with later. :P

In their defence, they might not have known it would cause problems. And it might have been a completely unpopulated area at the point at which they left their waste there, too.

I assume their powers are likely to work with tech too, but if they don't, maybe that's why Shen Wei has never liked it. xD

It could well be, yeah.