Shen Tang’s dilemma over returning to her original world

Shen Tang’s dilemma over returning to her original world defines the conflict between a life she inherited through transmigration and the home that formed her before it. Her decision is not a simple choice between staying and leaving. The book presents both worlds as emotionally real: the novel’s world gives her relationships, security, and love, while the original world retains the authority of memory, origin, and belonging. Because Shen Tang does not know whether she can return, or whether leaving would mean losing the people she has come to value, her ordinary life becomes suspended between two possible futures.

Origins of the Conflict

Shen Tang’s uncertainty is intensified by the absence of a stable family history in the novel’s world. She remembers that Dean Mum once said she had been found with a bag embroidered with the Shen character when she was taken in, which may explain why she was named Shen. Even that account cannot establish whether she was deliberately abandoned or merely lost. No one had searched for her over the years, and no missing-person notice had appeared. Her identity therefore begins with an unresolved question of origin: she has a name, but not a confirmed home to which that name leads.

At one stage, Shen Tang insists that the uncertainty does not matter because she is already past the age of needing parents. The revelation surrounding Shen Lan nevertheless makes her anxious about the possibility that her own parents might also have been cruel or morally compromised. Her reaction is not a renewed longing for any parents whatsoever; it is a recognition that biological return would not automatically mean emotional refuge. The original world is the place where she grew up, but the meaning of family remains complicated rather than secure.

Two Worlds, Neither Easily Abandoned

The novel’s world gradually acquires the texture of a lived community. Shen Tang has money and friends there, and her relationship with Gu Huaian gives staying a deeply personal stake. She admits that she likes Gu Huaian, yet liking him does not resolve the larger question. She worries that remaining for his sake could become a decision she would later regret, especially if return were possible and she had surrendered that chance. Love thus functions as both an anchor and a source of pressure: it makes the present more valuable while making the cost of choosing it harder to measure.

The sense of dislocation is also exposed through small failures of cultural recognition. When Gu Huaian does not understand one of Shen Tang’s jokes, she realizes that this is the book’s world rather than reality, and that the joke does not exist there. The moment leaves her suddenly dejected. The difference between worlds is not limited to geography or metaphysics; it appears in language, shared references, and the invisible background of everyday understanding. Shen Tang can live in the new world, but she cannot erase the fact that its common sense was not originally hers.

Uncertainty and Social Attachments

Shen Tang’s relationships keep returning her to the question of what “home” means. Miao Miao invites her to play King of Glory after Shen Tang has not played for several days, and Shen Tang logs in to join her. Their gaming connection is a concrete form of companionship: Miao Miao waits for her to finish, pulls her into a room, and introduces another player whose ID is “Cool Tyrannosaurus Rex.” The episode shows Shen Tang being drawn into a social world through repeated, informal contact rather than through formal belonging.

Yet the same game space also exposes the instability of social acceptance. In one match, Shen Tang is left alone in the bottom lane while the opposing ADC and support repeatedly harass her and the enemy mid and jungler gank her. Miao Miao helps a few times, but the other two teammates never come to the lane. Seeing the score at 0–3, Shen Tang asks the jungler to gank; Hao responds by insulting her deaths and using a sexualized accusation to explain her rank. The contrast is significant. Online play can create friendship, but it can also reproduce hostility, gendered contempt, and the fragility of one’s position among strangers. Neither the original world nor the new one offers uncomplicated security.

Gu Huaian’s presence makes the dilemma more intimate. When Shen Tang returns to gaming, she discovers that Gu Huaian is online and has already reached the King rank, though she does not know whether he achieved it himself or had someone boost the account. Before she creates a room, he pulls her into his. The game becomes a meeting place between them, linking affection to the same digital medium through which Shen Tang forms other relationships. Later, she plays with Gu Huaian again and is matched with two girls who specialize in mage and support roles and a boy who has three jungler heroes available; his immediate scolding identifies him as a boy in Shen Tang’s eyes. These details preserve the social texture of gaming while showing how even casual play becomes part of her emotional map of the new world.

The Pressure of Choice

Shen Tang’s hesitation is not merely abstract. She does not know whether the dream she experienced was real or imagined, and she does not know whether another opportunity to leave still exists. The possibility of return remains speculative, but its uncertainty is powerful enough to govern her conduct. Every delay may be harmless if departure is impossible, yet disastrous if the chance is temporary. The dilemma therefore produces a form of suspended agency: Shen Tang must decide without possessing the information that would make the decision rationally secure.

Her fear is also shaped by the prospect of future regret. She is not simply afraid of losing Gu Huaian; she is afraid of choosing him under conditions that she cannot fully understand. The question is whether a decision made from affection can still be authentic when the alternative world, the possibility of return, and the boundaries of her own existence remain unknown. Her emotional attachment pulls her toward staying, but her caution prevents that inclination from becoming an immediate commitment.

Consolation, Not Resolution

Qi Yue becomes an important emotional counterweight to Shen Tang’s isolation. In messages, she asks what would happen if Shen Tang could not return home, wonders whether they could continue seeing each other often if Shen Tang left, and admits that she does not want Shen Tang to go. Shen Tang is already leaning toward staying, and Qi Yue’s words act as reassurance. The friendship demonstrates that her ties in the novel’s world are reciprocal: she is not the only person who would experience the loss.

Qi Yue also emphasizes Gu Huaian’s exceptional desirability, reminding Shen Tang that he is the man most girls in the country want to marry. This encouragement does not settle the metaphysical uncertainty, but it reinforces the emotional logic of remaining. Shen Tang is being asked, in effect, to recognize the value of a present that has become populated by people who care about her. The pressure is affectionate rather than coercive, yet it still makes departure harder because leaving would separate her from a community, not merely from a location.

Gu Huaian responds more cautiously. After sensing her hesitation, he tells her not to feel pressured and to follow her heart, adding that he will not blame her regardless of what she chooses. His response matters because it removes the most obvious form of romantic coercion. He does not demand that Shen Tang stay to prove her love. Instead, he acknowledges that her decision belongs to her, even though the result may wound him. That permission gives Shen Tang space to choose, but it does not relieve the grief built into either option.

The dilemma consequently remains a defining state rather than a problem solved by a single revelation. Shen Tang is attached to the life she has built in the book’s world, yet she remains conscious that the original world is where her experience began. Her uncertain orphan history, her memories of another reality, her friendships formed through gaming, and her growing affection for Gu Huaian all converge on the same question: whether home is determined by origin, by memory, or by the people among whom a person has learned to live. The narrative gives weight to all three answers, leaving Shen Tang’s eventual decision charged precisely because no available world can be dismissed as unreal or emotionally empty.