#Chinese ghost city

[littlepawz]

Gouqi island is located in the Shengsi archipelago of about 400 islands. Jane Qing captured the stunning images of this city of seemingly endless buildings, which were a part of a fishing village years ago. The region has a history of doing well, even today, in the fishing industry. Yet, this particular island seems to have been forgotten.

Each discovery of abandoned cityscapes is captivating, but one covered in beautiful ivy and greenery surely enchants in its own way.

~Shengsi Islands - Gouqi Island / Jane Qing Photography~

[travalerray]

was reading my first ever MDZS fic and pfft.

[ryin-silverfish]

A Guide to the Chinese Underworld (and what it isn't)

As many FSYY and fox posts as there were on my blog, I am actually a huge fan of the Chinese Underworld mythos. Mostly because I was once a morbid little kid that loved reading about the excavations of ancient tombs, and found the statues depicting hellish torture in the Haw Par Villa "super cool".

Apart from the aesthetics, the history of its evolution is also fascinating. Most of us, Chinese or not, only know the most popular version of the Underworld——the "Ten Kings" system, yet that isn't always the case. So today, I'll start off with a short summary of that.

In pre-Qin era, there was already this generic idea of a "Realm of the Dead" called the Yellow Spring, Youdu, or Youming, but we know very little about it.

Then, in the Han dynasty, two ideas start to emerge: 1) the Underworld is a bureaucracy, 2) the God of Mt. Tai ruled over the dead.

This early bureaucracy might not function as an agent of punishment; the main focus was on keeping the dead segregated from the living so they wouldn't bring diseases and misfortune to the latter, as well as using those ghosts to enforce collective punishments upon people for their lineage's wrongdoings while they were still alive.

Post-Han, after Buddhism entered China and took root, its idea of karmic punishments and reincarnation and the figure of King Yama was merged with folk and Daoist ideas of the Underworld bureaucracy, and, came Tang dynasty, resulted in the "Ten Kings" system that first appeared in Dunhuang manuscripts.

It was very rudimentary and far from well-established, as seen in Tang legends, with some adopting the Ten Kings system, some sticking to the Lord of Mt. Tai and some favoring King Yama, and overall little agreements on who's in charge of the Underworld.

But the "Ten Kings" system would become the mainstream version from then onwards, used in Ming vernacular novels and made even more popular by folk religion scrolls like the Jade Records (Yuli Baochao).

As such, most points in the following sections will be based on the fully matured "Ten Kings" system of the Underworld, as seen in the Jade Records and JTTW.

What happens when you die?

(This is a fictionalized walkthrough of the posthumous fate of souls under the "Ten Kings" system. I try to stick to the very broad progression outlined in the Jade Records, but many creative liberties are taken on the details.)

Let's say there's a guy named Xiao Ming, and he had just died of a heart attack. Bummers. What now?

Well, the first thing he saw would be the ghost cops.

There isn't really an unanimous agreement on who these ghost cops are: they may be a pair of ghosts in white and black robes, wearing tall hats (Heibai Wuchang), they may have the heads of farm animals (Ox-Head and Horse-Face), or they can just be generic ghost bureaucrats. For convenience's sake, let's say it was the first scenario.

"Who are you guys and where are you taking me?"

"Glad you asked!" The taller ghost cop, being the cheerful one of the pair, replied. It wasn't very reassuring, considering that his tongue was dangling out of his mouth way further than it should. "I'm the White Impermanence, my sour-looking colleague here is the Black Impermanence, and we are taking you to the City God's office."

This City God, a.k.a. Chenghuang, is just like how it sounds: the divine guardian of a city, who also pulls double duty as the head of the local Dead People Customs Office. They are usually virtuous officials deified posthumously, and in JTTW, they fall under the category of "Ghostly immortals", together with the Earth Gods a.k.a. Tudi.

So Xiao Ming went with the two ghost cops——not like he had much of a choice, made his way through the long queue at the City God's office, and was now standing in front of a gruff old magistrate in traditional robes.

"Name?"

"Wang Xiao Ming."

"Age and birth dates?"

"21, April 16 2003��"

After he was done asking questions, the City God flipped through his ledger, then picked up a brush, ticked off Xiao Ming's name, and told him to go get his pass in the next room. More waiting in a queue. Wonderful.

"I never heard anything about needing a pass to get to the Underworld," the girl in front of Xiao Ming asked the ghost cops, who were standing guard nearby. "Is this a new policy or something?"

"Yeah. In the old days, we'd just drag y'all straight to the Ghost Gate." The ghost cop in black said, then muttered to himself, "Fuckin' paperworks and overpopulation, man…"

(This "Dead People Passport" thing was popularized in the middle-to-late Ming dynasty, as shown by the discovery of such documents inside tombs in southern China. )

(It might have evolved from similar passes to the Western Pure Land in lay Buddhism that recorded their acts of merits. Which, in turn, might be traced back to the "Dead People Belongings List" of Han dynasty, to be shown to Underworld bureaucrats so that no one would take away the dead's private property down there or something.)

Anyways, after he received his pass, Xiao Ming departed together with the rest of the bunch, to be led to the Ghost Gate. It was like the world's most depressing tourist group, where instead of tour guides, you got two ghost cops in funny hats, and the only scenery in sight was the desolation of the Yellow Spring Road.

They weren't the only travellers on the road, though. Xiao Ming noticed other groups moving in the far distance, behind the fog and the flickering ghostfire, led by similar figures in black and white.

It made a lot of sense; realistically, there was no way two ghost cops could fetch hundreds of thousands of dead people all by themselves.

(SEA Tang-ki mediums believed there were multiple Tua Di Ya Peks——Hokkien name for the Black and White Impermanences, working for different Underworld Courts.)

At last, the Ghost Gate stood in front of Xiao Ming, guarded by two towering figures. Normally, they'd be Ox-Head and Horse-Face, like what you see at Haw Par Villa's Underworld entrance.

However, older Han dynasty works like Wang Chong's 论衡·订鬼 also mentioned two gods, Shenshu and Yulei, as guardians of the Ghost Gate, who would use reed ropes to capture malicious ghosts and feed them to tigers, making them possibly the earliest incarnation of "Gate Gods".

So here, they were what Xiao Ming sees, standing side by side like proper doormen, silently watching herds of ghosts being funneled through the entrance.

The place was more crowded than a train station during the CNY Spring Rush; the ghost cops had already said their quick goodbye and left to fetch the next group of dead people, leaving the resident officials of the Underworld proper to maintain order and quell any would-be riots.

Now you started seeing the Ox-Head and Horse-Face guys, poking at unruly ghosts with their pitchforks and dragging away the violent ones in chains. Among their ranks were other monstrous beings, blue-faced yakshas and imps, but also regular dead humans who look 100% done with their jobs, like the lady who stamped Xiao Ming's pass when it was finally his turn.

After this point, Xiao Ming had entered the Underworld proper, and his next destination would be the First Court, led by King Qin'guang. Here, his fate should be decided by what is revealed in the King's magical mirror.

If Xiao Ming was a good guy, or someone who had done an equal amount of good and bad things in life, he'd be sent straight to the Tenth Court for reincarnation. However, if the mirror, while replaying his life events, had displayed more evil deeds than good ones, he'd be sent to one of the 2nd-9th Courts for judgment and then punished inside the Eighteen Hells.

Each of the Ten Kings was also assisted by ghostly judges. Many of them were righteous and just officials in life who had been recruited into the Ten Courts posthumously——Cui Jue from JTTW is one such example, while others were living people working part-time for the Underworld, like how Wei Zheng, Taizong's minister, works part-time for the Celestial Bureaucracy in JTTW.

We decide to be nice to Xiao Ming, so, after reliving some embarrassing childhood incidents and cringy teenage phases in front of a bunch of dead bureaucrats, he was found innocent and sent to the Tenth Court.

The queue here was almost as long as the First Court's, stretching on and on alongside of the banks of the Nai River. King of the Turning Wheel made his judgment without even lifting his head when it was Xiao Ming's turn:

"Path of Humans, male, healthy in body and mind, ordinary family. Next!"

Exiting the Tenth Court building, Xiao Ming saw the Terrace of Forgetfulness, standing tall before six bridges, made of gold, silver, jade, stone, wood, and…some unidentified material. Before he could get a good look at them and the little dots moving across those bridges, he was hurried into the Terrace by the ghostly officials.

Now, both JTTW and the Jade Records mention multiple bridges across the Nai River. In the former, there is 3, and the latter, 6. The bridges made of precious materials are for people who will reincarnate into better lives, as the wealthy, the fortunate, and the divine, while the Naihe Bridge is either the common option or the terribad shitty option.

However, the Naihe Bridge proved to be so iconic, it became THE bridge you walk across to reincarnate in popular legends.

Anyways, back to Xiao Ming. He found himself standing in a giant soup kitchen of sorts, with an old lady at the counter, scooping soup out of her steaming pot and into one cup after another.

This is Mengpo, the amnesia soup granny; according to the Jade Records, she was born in the Western Han era, and a pious cultivator who thought of neither the past nor the future, only knowing that her surname was Meng.

Made into an Underworld god by the Jade Emperor, she cooks a soup of five flavors that will wipe the memory of the dead, making sure they do not remember any of their past lives once they reincarnate.

It tastes awful. Like what you get after pouring corn syrup, coffee, chilli sauce, lemon juice and seawater into the same cup.

Such was Xiao Ming's last thought, as he gulped down the soup, and then he knew no more.

Things you should know about the Chinese Underworld:

1. It's not the Christian Hell.

Rather, the Chinese Underworld functions somewhat like the Purgatory, in that there are a lot of torment, but the torment's not eternal, however long the duration may be. Once you finish your sentence, you get reincarnated as something else, though that "something else" is not a guaranteed good birth.

Other people can also speed up the process via transferring of merits: hiring a priest/monk to chant sutras and perform rituals, for example, or performing good deeds in life in dedication to the dead, or they can pray to a Daoist/Buddhist deity to save their loved ones from a dreadful fate.

Interestingly enough, a thesis paper I read mentions that, whereas Buddhist salvation from the Hells was based on transference of merits——you give monks offerings and pay them to chant sutras, so they can cancel out the sinners' bad karma with good ones, Daoist ideas of salvation tend to involve the priest going down there, sorting it out with the Underworld officials, and taking the dead out of the Hells themselves.

(The paper also stops at the Northern-Southern and Tang dynasties, so the above is likely period-specific.)

2. Nor is it run by evil demons.

Underworld officials are not nice guys and look pretty monstrous and torture the sinful dead, but they are not the embodiment of evil. Rather, the faction as a whole is what I'd call Lawful Neutral, who function on this "An Eye for An Eye" logic, where every harm the sinner caused in life must be returned to them, in order for their karmic debts to be cleansed and move on to their next life.

They can absolutely be corrupt and incompetent and take bribes——Tang dynasty Zhiguai tales and Qing folklore compendiums featured plenty of such cases, but that's a very mundane and human kind of evil, not a cosmic/innate one.

This is just my personal opinion, but if you want to do an "evil" Chinese Underworld? It should be a very bureaucratic evil, whose leaders are bootlickers to the higher-ups, slavedrivers to their rank-and-file workers, and bullies who abuse their power over regular dead people.

Not, y'know, Satan and his infernal legions or conspiring Cthulu cultists.

3. The Ten Kings are not Hades.

Make no mistake, they still have a lot of power over your average dead mortal. But in the grand scheme of things? They are the backwater department of the pantheon, who only show up in JTTW to get pushed around and revive the occasional dead people.

When Taizong made his trip to the Underworld, the Ten Kings greeted him as equals——kings of ghosts to the king of the living. If they see themselves as equal in status to a mortal emperor, then, like any mortal emperors, they are subordinate to the Celestial Host, and the balance of power is not even remotely equal or in their favor.

Also, it isn't said outright, but under the Zhong-Lv classification of immortals JTTW is using, Underworld officials will likely be considered Ghostly immortals, the lowest and weakest of the five types, much like Tudis and Chenghuangs.

Essentially: they are ghosts that are powerful enough to not reincarnate and linger on and on, spirits of pure Yin as opposed to true immortals, who are beings of pure Yang.

It's pretty much the shittiest form of immortality, the result you get when you try to speedrun cultivation (the Zhong-Lv text also made a dig at Buddhist meditation here), and if they don't reincarnate or regain a physical body, there is no chance of progressing any further.

Oh, and fun fact? In the Song dynasty, commoners and literati elites alike believed that virtuous officials in life would get appointed as ghostly officials in death.

However, the latter viewed it as a punishment. Which was strange, considering how they still held the same position and the same amount of authority, just over dead people instead of living ones, so there should be no big losses, right?

Well...it was precisely the "dead people" part that made it a punishment. See, a lot of the power and prestige they had as officials came from the benefits they could bring to their families and kins and native places, as well as the potential wealth and reputation bonuses for themselves.

A job in the Dead People Supreme Court would give them the same workload, but with none of those benefits. Since all the dead people had to reincarnate eventually, they couldn't have a fixed group as their power base, or keep their old familial ties and connections. At most, they could help out an occasional dead relative or two.

Like, working for the Underworld Courts was the kind of deadend (no pun intended) job not even living officials wanted for themselves in the afterlife. That's how hilariously sad and pathetic they are.

4. In JTTW at least, they aren't even the highest authorities of the Underworld.

That would be Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, who is technically their boss, though he seems to be more of a spiritual leader than someone who is actually involved in running the bureaucracy.

Which makes sense, since he has sworn an oath to not attain Buddhahood until all Hells are empty, and his role is to offer relief and salvation to the suffering souls, not judging and punishing them.

Now, historically...even though Ksitigarbha in early Tang legends was still the savior of the dead, he seemed to be unable to interfere with the judicial process of the Underworld, merely showing up to take people away before they were judged by King Yama.

However, in the mid-Tang apocryphal "Sutra of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha" (地藏菩萨经), he had evolved into the equal of King Yama, with the power of supervision over his judgements. By the time the Scripture on the Ten Kings came out, in artistic depictions, the Ten Kings had become fully subservient to him.

5. Diyu usually refers to the prison-torture chamber part, not the courthouse, nor is it the entirety of the Underworld.

And for the majority of souls that haven't committed crimes, they'll only see the courthouse part before they are sent to reincarnation. That's why I personally don't like, or use the name Diyu for the Chinese Underworld: I prefer the term Difu ("Earth Mansions"), which encompasses the whole realm better.

Also: even though historical sources like the Scripture on the Ten Kings and Jade Records seem to suggest that the dead were just funneled through this Courthouse-Prison-Reincarnation pipeline with no breaks in between, in practice, that isn't the case.

According to popular folk beliefs, after the dead were done with their trials/sentences, they stayed in the Underworld for a period of time and led regular lives, while functioning as ancestor spirits and receiving offerings.

Which would imply that the Underworld had a civilian district of sorts, populated by regular ghosts, making the whole realm even less of a direct Hell/Purgatory equivalent.

6. It is located in a different realm, but still part of the Six Paths and doesn't exist outside of reality.

In Buddhist cosmology, like the Celestial Realm, the Underworld is part of the Realm of Desires and thus subject to all the woes of samsara.

The pain and misery of the Path of Hell may be the worst and most obvious, but becoming a celestial being isn't the goal of serious Buddhists either: despite all the pleasures and near-infinite lifespan they enjoy, they are not free from samsara and will eventually have to reincarnate.

So if, say, the world is being destroyed at the end of a kalpa, all beings of the Six Paths will perish alongside it, leaving behind a clean slate for the cycle to start anew. The dead won't all end up in the Underworld and face eternal damnation.

7. The Black and White Impermanences would not appear in the Underworld pantheon formally until the Qing dynasty.

The concept that when you die, you get fetched to the Underworld by petty ghost bureaucrats is already well-established in Tang legends, but these were just generic ghost bureaucrats in all sorts of colorful official robes, with yellow being the most common color.

The idea of there being two specific psychopomps in black and white would only become popular in the Qing dynasty. Mengpo is kinda similar: although she existed before the Ming-Qing era as a goddess of wind, venerated by boatmen, her "amnesia soup granny" incarnation came from the Jade Records.

[rememberwren]

A Complete Set (Whatever That Means) || 1

This is a direct sequel to Skin Deep which can be read here. From now on I'm splitting up any one shot that is longer than 10k. So here is part one of this sequel. 6k.

Johnny pierces fem!reader’s nipples.

About this: at least five nipples in this one, an altogether questionable use for a sequel, nipple play, graphic depiction of nipple piercings, alcohol, jealous!soap, spoilers in the 'about this' section, iffy writing. Reader has enough hair to “hold back” and height difference necessitates that she “looks up” to speak to Simon.

-

Thirty minutes waiting for Green Jade Chinese takeout when you’re only a block from the restaurant is a crime. It’s even more of a crime when it’s thirty minutes spent away from Ghost—whose name you have learned is Simon. Laying on the sofa in Skin Deep, your stomach gives another shameful growl. You glance at the clock on your phone, hoping he hasn’t run into trouble…though you’re not sure there’s much in the way of trouble that Simon couldn’t handle. 

The bell over the door rings, and you sit up, smile blooming in anticipation. 

“Hey youuu–fuck!” you nearly shriek. 

Standing in the doorway is a man who is decidedly not Simon, though there are similarities. They are both tall (though Simon must stand a hand taller), and broad (this bloke’s biceps are threatening the sleeves of his t-shirt as he crosses his arms across his chest), but that is where the similarities end. Where Simon is pale and blond, this man is tan and brunet, his hair a cropped mohawk that looks soft to brush one's fingers through. 

Looking over his shoulder is a beautiful woman with braids that drip down to her shoulder blades. 

“I tend to have that effect on women,” he says, glancing back at her. 

“I can imagine,” she says, no small hint of flirtation in her voice.

“Um. Sorry, but there aren’t any walk-ins,” you remind them. The sign had been right bloody there. Could they not read? A more important question: were they murderers looking for their next victim? In the city, one could never know if a person was malevolent or just stupid. 

“Where’s the big guy?” the man asks. He holds up a hand a few inches above his head. “Tall. Devastatingly handsome. Monosyllabic.” 

“He should be back any minute.” That’s what you’re supposed to say, right? You always let the murderers know that time is not on their side; no inconvenient prey here. Try again elsewhere. “Maybe you two could wait outside.” 

The man does a neat little trick with his tongue, flashing a silver barbell piercing at you like a calling card. “I’m the piercer, lass. I own forty-nine percent of the business. Let Ghost know I’m back with a client, alright? Nice meetin’ you.” 

The two of them disappear together behind the curtain at the back of the shop, leaving you hoping that a small hole will open up directly beneath your coordinates and swallow you whole. Hopefully it will leave the shop intact. Maybe you had the time to let Simon know not to look for your body—

The bell rings again, and this time it is Simon, his mask still pulled up over his nose and mouth, one paper bag of fragrant Chinese food tucked under his arm. He takes in the sight of you with your head in your hands, elbows on your knees and approaches with caution. 

“What’s this?” he wonders out loud. He sets down the bag and tears it open: egg drop soup, pork fried rice, crab rangoon. All your favorite goodies. A feminine giggle is heard from the back of the shop and he sighs, eyes rolling toward the ceiling.“Soap. What’d he say to you?” 

“Nothing. I just put my foot in my mouth.” 

“Yer a flexible one, aren’t you.”

“Just in that one, very specific way, trust me,” you say, accepting the disposable chopsticks he hands you. You break them apart and go looking amongst the packages of food for your rice. “I mistook him for a client and asked him to wait outside.” 

Simon sucks on his teeth, a sure-fire sign that he is trying not to laugh. 

You launch a chopstick at him, scoffing when he catches it nimbly out of the air and offers it back to you. 

“Careful with that,” he says solemnly. “Could have taken my fuckin’ eye out.” 

In the back, a scream rings out. You jerk, nearly upending the rice in your lap. Under his breath, Simon mutters: “Always Soap with the screamers.” 

-

That night, the two of you fuck at his flat. He puts you on top of him, where you can control how deep the penetration is, and it gives you a chance to explore the angles that you never really had a chance to explore with other partners. With others, it had been a race: rushing toward some blissful edge, hurrying to get them (and if you were lucky, yourself) off as quickly as possible. With Simon, you were just discovering that sex could be fun; sex could be slow; sex could end with no one orgasming and it could still change your life. 

He is an excellent sport while you ride him, his eyes quiet and soft in a way they aren’t when you’re outside of his flat together, when the mask is on and pulled up into place. If he weren’t so fucking put together, you might say that he were pussy drunk. As it is, he stays still, hands kneading your thighs until you nearly get a cramp in your hip and then he sits up, guiding you off of him and back into the bedsheets, laying face to face to fuck you in a way that is so painfully intimate it makes you want to shut your eyes. 

Afterwards, you curl up against his side and find yourself playing with his nipple piercing. He’s got cute nipples: small and pink as his mouth. The barbell is black, a nice contrast to his skin tone. He watches you sometimes, other times letting his eyes fall shut. 

“Did this hurt?” you ask him, tugging on the barbell a little. 

“Yes,” he says in that dry way that lets you know your question has amused him. 

“You know what I mean. You’ve gotten tattoos and had your ears pierced. What’s the worst pain?” 

 He shifts to touch a spot on his inner arm where a black and white skull rests. The skin is delightfully soft and thin. “This part nearly had me in tears. Barely felt the nipple, in comparison.” 

Your mouth says it before your brain comprehends it: “Maybe I should get mine done.” 

He stares at you, eyes briefly falling to your breasts. He reaches down and skims his fingers along the curve of one, his fingertips calloused but his touch so very soft. He says: “Soap did this, didn’t he?” 

“What do you mean?”

“You’re alone with Soap for sixty seconds and now you want your tits pierced. Are you saying that’s a coincidence?” 

You frown. “I don’t know. I mean, maybe he influenced me, subconsciously?”

“He didn’t ask you?” 

“No! He had a client with him.” 

Simon hums. His face is closed off, expression unreadable. You can sense there is more that he holds back the same way you can sense a body of water is deep, but he doesn’t share and you don’t push him, not sure if you’re ready to take that plunge yourself. 

“It was a silly idea,” you backpedal. “Forget I said anything.” 

“It’s your body,” Simon says, ignoring your words. “You should do whatever you want with it.”

“Yeah? You’d be surprised how rarely anybody ever says that to a woman.”

“Most people are cunts.” 

“True.” You reach out and thumb at his nipple again, just to satisfy the urge in your own tiny, one track brain. He takes a measured breath—for Simon, that’s as good as a moan. Your eyes flicker down, but his cock is hidden somewhere beneath the sheets. “Want to go again?”

He guides your hand down to wrap around his cock which is like hard steel wrapped in smooth velvet. 

You roll on top of him. The cramp in your thigh has faded by now. Reaching up, you palm your breasts, briefly playing with your nipples. You’ve never considered yourself to be particularly sexy, but the way he looks at you makes you feel powerful, like the sun lives just underneath your skin.

“I think I do want them done,” you say, watching the hungry way he watches your fingers. He sits up, tugging you onto your knees so he can take one nipple into his mouth and tease it with the sharp line of his teeth. 

You figure that’s as good a blessing as any. 

-

Simon tends to spring things on you. Texts are usually last minute and painfully succinct: dinner? or my place? He is prone to just showing up out of the blue, unafraid (and unoffended) to take no for an answer when you’re busy. 

One sunny fall afternoon, the thing he springs on you is Soap. Simon brings you to the shop, telling you that he needs to meet with a client. You’ve never tagged along to something like this before, but you’re beginning to think that there are few places Simon could go where you wouldn’t want to follow. Convinced you will be hiding in the back of the shop without a word to alert either of them to your presence, you agree easily enough. 

But when you arrive, that client is Soap, and instead of letting you hide in the back, Simon picks up a chair with one hand, hauling it across the room so that you both sit flanking Soap on either side while he’s in the tattoo chair getting some fancy, winged symbol just over his pec. 

“We’ve got a spectator? A voyeur?” Soap asks, rubbing his hands together. “Oh you know all my seedy kinks, Ghost.” 

“I can leave, really,” you offer, already moving to stand.

“Sit,” Simon says. 

You sit. Johnny sheds his shirt with obvious relish, and you find the artwork on the wall just over his shoulder to be incredibly interesting all of the sudden. 

Soap extends a hand to you. “The big guy still hasn’t introduced us. Some call me Soap, but beautiful women are allowed to call me Johnny.” 

You shake his warm hand to be friendly and make the mistake of meeting his eyes. They are very blue, framed by dark lashes and expressive eyebrows. He flashes his tongue piercing at you again and you jerk your hand back like you’ve been burned. He laughs. 

“You’re playing a dangerous game, MacTavish,” Simon murmurs, putting a gloved hand flat on his chest to force him back against the chair. You see then that Johnny has both his nipples pierced: little golden rings that compliment his tanned skin. 

He’s fit, unfortunately.

You look back at the picture on the wall while Simon grabs the razor to shave Johnny’s pec. You learn that there’s no such thing as silence when Johnny is in the room. He keeps up a consistent chatter of conversation while Simon preps his body and lays the stencil, and it goes a long way to putting you at ease. 

“Would you hold my hand, lass?” Johnny asks, eyes big and guileless. “I’m scared of needles.”

Simon rolls his eyes, tugs his mask into place, and starts the gun without waiting for your response. The buzzing causes a visceral reaction in you, reminding you of your own tattoo that you had received from Simon only weeks ago. A craving rises up in you, tangible in your throat (and between your legs). You shift on the chair Simon brought over for you, eyes drawn to his hands to watch him work. 

Johnny wiggles his fingers at you, palm up. 

Your chair legs screech against the floor as you scoot in bursts towards him and take his hand. You haven’t even held hands with Simon yet, and here you are holding hands with his best friend. Suddenly regret has you wishing you could draw your hand back and wipe the touch away on your leggings. Unaware of your turmoil, Johnny heaves a sigh, giving you a smile that is painfully handsome. “There. Now I feel safe.” 

“You shouldn’t,” Simon reminds him. 

“Ready to tell me where your newfound generosity has come from?” Johnny asks, straining his neck to glance down at Simon’s work. “What happened to never tattooing friends for free?”

“I want you to owe me,” Simon says, voice quiet and distracted as he traces the line work. 

“You need a favor,” Johnny guesses.

“Something like that.”

“Well don’t leave me in suspense.”

“She wants her nipples done.” 

Simon lifts the gun away from his skin just in time for Johnny to jerk in the chair, head swiveling to look at you. Your own head has swiveled to look at Simon, who holds both hands up innocuously, looking not at all apologetic or regretful. 

“You want me to cop a feel of your girlfriend’s tits?”

“Don’t say it like that!” you squawk. 

“It’s true. We get very close and personal during a piercing, lass—“

“There’s a fundamental difference between copping a feel and touching my breast—“ You realize that you are still holding Johnny’s hand and you practically toss it away. 

“I’m not laying a finger on her,” Johnny says firmly, speaking only to Simon now (likely considering you a lost cause). “Period. Out of the question.” 

“I’m not letting her go to a stranger,” says Simon, brows drawn down low on his forehead. “So get over your own bullshit and pierce her, Johnny. It’s fine.” 

Johnny’s mouth shuts with such force that his teeth click together. He turns his eyes on you and stares. You feel like you’ve already taken your top off even though you’ve done no such thing. Shyly, you cross your arms in front of your breasts, giving him your best glare. It has the opposite of intended effect; Johnny’s gaze softens a little, turns pitying. 

“Alright,” he says. “Consider my bullshit over with.” 

Simon inclines his head in gratitude. He picks back up the tattoo gun.

-

“What’s the story with you and Johnny anyway?” you ask Simon over dinner. He rarely takes you out, more content to spend time alone in private rather than in public. His eyes can’t stop scanning the few people in the restaurant. Sometimes his hand reaches for his mask, instinct urging him to draw it back over his mouth and nose, but he doesn’t. 

“We met in the SAS, been friends ever since,” he says succinctly. 

“How’d you two go into business together?” 

“I was doing stick ‘n pokes for anyone who would sit still. He was piercing soldier’s ears in exchange for cigarettes. We both decided we’d rather live to see thirty, so when our time was up, we didn’t re-enlist, pooled our money, bought a location and never looked back.” 

You frown. “I didn’t know you were in the military.” 

He nods, sipping at a water (he’d refused your offer to share a pint together). You’re aware suddenly of how much there is about Simon that you don’t know. 

“Was Johnny the one to pierce your nipple?”

Simon stills for a moment, considering the question. At length he sets his glass down and says slowly: “Yes.”

“Why do I sense there’s a story there?”

“Because there is. I’m sure Soap will be thrilled to tell it with as many details as possible.” 

“Shouldn’t you tell me first, to control the narrative?”

Simon’s mouth twitches, lips quirking upwards at the edges. Coaxing one of his rare smiles from him never failed to make you feel like you were walking on clouds. He says: “You’re clever.”

“High praise.” 

“Does that do something for you?”

“What?”

“Being praised.”

You sputter a little, flustered. But then it occurs to you: “Are you changing the subject?” 

This time he grins, full and beautiful. You think about Soap calling him ‘devastatingly handsome’, and while there was a part of you that was sure the masses would not agree with your assessment of him, you couldn’t help but find Simon striking. Looking at his smile makes you smile, an unconscious mimicry. 

He catches the waitress as she comes by and asks for the check. 

-

“You look frightened,” Johnny says when he spots you as you come into Skin Deep. He’s seated on the couch where you and Simon had sex, texting on his phone. How he knows you look frightened, you couldn’t say; he hasn’t even looked up to greet you. 

“What gave me away?” you ask, feeling queasy. You’d spent half the night awake watching videos on reddit of people getting their nipples pierced feeling increasingly panicked. It looked brutal. It made no sense to stick a needle through one of the most sensitive parts of your body. But it hadn’t made sense to be stabbed a hundred thousand times by microneedles either—and you’d done that. Eagerly, even. 

“That look on your face that says you’re about to be sick,” Simon says from behind you. 

You turn and give him a tepid glare. It’s all you can muster.

Johnny leads you back through the curtain, which you cross with a muted giddiness (your first time in the back of the shop!). It leads to a narrow hallway with a few frosted doors. One is clearly marked as a bathroom. One isn’t marked at all. The last has the light on inside, turning the frosted glass a golden yellow. The writing on the glass says SOAP’S ARTISAN PIERCINGS. He opens the door and ushers you both in. 

The room is small, with a chair similar to Simon’s except for performing piercings. One wall is dominated by cabinets and drawers and mirrors, a small porcelain sink. A table holds a photobook which you make the mistake of skimming through—it’s full of clits, labias, penises, and nipples, all with a variety of gruesome appearing jewelry. 

“Ow,” you mutter, shutting the book.

“Getting ideas for your next piercing?” Johnny asks over his shoulder, washing his hands at the sink. He soaps himself up to the elbows, like a surgeon preparing to root around in your open chest. 

“No,” you say. “Definitely not.” 

Simon has seated himself in one of the chairs in the corner, his legs looking obscenely long with the way they are folded. He leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees, watching you closely. You pull a face at him just to watch the way his eyes roll. 

“Everything off from the waist up,” Soap says, tugging gloves into place. “Any allergies? Latex, dyes?”

He is much more abrupt today than he had been yesterday. You’re almost moved enough to ask him if he’s upset, but perhaps this is just his professionalism. Regardless, you miss the easy-going nature that had gone so far to put you at ease yesterday. 

“No,” you say, shrugging out of your shirt. It is warm in the room but goosebumps still bloom along your arms and chest. God, are you really doing this? Are you really exposing yourself to Simon’s best friend? You glance back over your shoulder, but Simon’s face gives no indication of what you should do. The message is clear: you have to choose. Taking a deep breath, you slide the straps of your bra down your arms and reach around back to undo the clasp, folding everything nice and neatly into a pile on the chair beside you. Your nipples immediately pucker, whether from nerves or some unwilling arousal, you couldn’t say. 

Johnny isn’t even looking at you. He’s opening up packages of frightening looking tools: scissors with clamps on the end, needles, toothpicks? “Had any caffeine today?”

“No. Wait, yes. A tea.”

“Goddamnit, Ghost. You and yer bloody teas.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, not really,” Johnny says. “I’d prefer if you hadn’t drunk it, but what’s done is done. Makes the blood thinner though, you know.”

“Didn’t know that. I thought that was just alcohol.”

“Alcohol is worse,” he agrees. He glances over his shoulder, but towards Simon whose dark figure is haunting the corner of the room. His expression is sly. “Ghost knows all about that, aye?”

You latch on to this news eagerly. “Are you talking about when you pierced his nipple?”

Johnny’s brows lift in obvious surprise. “He told you about that?”

You hear the creak of the chair behind you as Simon shifts but you don’t turn to look at him. “He told me some of it?” you say, voice pitching upward at the end in question. 

“Which parts, exactly?”

“Just that you were the one who had done it.” 

“Left out all the tastiest bits,” Johnny says. “I bet he does that a lot when talking about his days with the 1-4-1.”

Your stomach dips. 

“That’ll do,” Simon says sternly from the corner. 

Johnny scoffs a little, muttering something under his breath as he arranges the tools to his liking. The silence that lingers is thick and awkward. Eager to break it, he turns to you and your tits. “Alright then. Let’s see what we’re working with.” 

You want to cross your arms more than you want to take your next breath, but you don’t. You don’t breathe either, really. Johnny stares at your breasts and then asks you to stand and come closer. Knees knocking together, you do, until you are close enough to smell his cologne or aftershave—whichever you aren’t sure. 

“Biggest question here,” he says, glancing back toward your eyes. “Are we doing one today or both?”

“Uh—both?”

“Let me bring this to your consideration,” Johnny says. “If you can’t go without playing with them, I recommend just doing one at a time. Because once I pierce it, it’s hands off for six months. No touching, no twiddling, no teasing, no twisting, definitely no tasting, I’m talking to you, Ghost—“

“Fuck off.”

“—so if that’s a dealbreaker, I recommend leaving one to play with. Stagger them. Mitigates the loss a little.”

You glance back at Ghost. On the one hand, nipple play is a favorite of yours. On the other hand, if you don’t do both today, you might chicken out and never come back. In the end, you decide: “Let’s start with one and see how I do.” 

“Yer the boss, hen,” Johnny says solemnly. He tears open a tiny package, the bitter scent of antiseptic stinging at your nose. “Any preference on left or right? Do yeh have a favorite?”

“A favorite?” 

He snorts. “Alright—which side do you sleep on?”

You say your left, so he takes the antiseptic wipe to the right breast and warns you with a brief, It’s chilly, before swiping it across your nipple. You hate every moment of it, mostly because the stimulation feels good in a distant, muted way. Teeth gritting, you wait for him to be done, even though he is a consummate professional and going as fast as he can. 

Next he takes one of the toothpicks, dips it in ink, and marks a spot on either side of your nipple where the needle will pierce. It’s more on the areola itself; you can’t decide if that makes it more or less tolerable.

“Go check the placement in the mirror, let me know if you’re level,” says Johnny, tossing away the toothpick. 

You turn to Ghost instead. “Will you be my mirror?” you whisper. 

The corners of his eyes crinkle behind his mask. He beckons you closer with two fingers, and you walk to him on unsteady legs. His hand cups your breast, careful not to touch any part that Johnny has sanitized as he looks you over thoroughly. 

“Perfect,” he mutters, almost like a curse. 

“Hey! No touching!” Johnny calls, crumpling a piece of trash noisily in his fist. He sounds irritated. “Don’t you make me sanitize her again!”

When you and Simon have finished, Johnny adjusts the chair until it is laying flat and helps you up onto it. 

“Normally I freehand most piercings,” he says. “But since this is your first, I’m going to use a hemostat clamp. Looks like this—“ He shows you the device which looks like scissors but with clamps instead of blades, holes strategically placed for the needle to be pushed through. “—and I’ve been told it hurts more than the piercing itself, so be warned.”

“I’m warned,” you whisper weakly. 

“Arm up, over your head lass.” 

He scoots his chair beside you and then gently touches your breast, the latex warm from his body heat. He adjusts the clamp and then grips down tightly, ensuring that the marked spots of ink are within the holes. It does hurt, but not as badly as you imagined. You let out a breath. You can do this. 

“Ready for the needle?”

Yeah, you can’t do this. Your other hand reaches out blindly towards Simon. After a moment, you feel his touch: hand warm and solid where he laces your fingers together awkwardly. Neither of you have had much practice in the way of hand holding—and none at all with each other—but you feel his touch all the way in your toes, and you think that’s a pretty good sign. 

“Make all the sound you want,” Johnny mutters, breath fanning across your outstretched arm. “It helps, trust me. On three. One—“

He pierces you. You suck in a breath through your teeth. “You bastard, that hurt way more than the clamp!”

“Yeah,” says Johnny, guiding the jewelry through your nipple. He looks down at you with a sad, strange smile. “I’m a liar.” 

-

You shower together that night. The shower is small for a man of Simon’s stature. Add you into the mix and it’s positively tiny, but that just means you both have to stand close together, bodies brushing against each other with each movement. He puts his hands on your shoulders and turns you to the spray to let the water run across your sore breast, thumbs kneading at the tense muscles of your shoulder blades. 

You relax back against him, feeling his hard cock against the small of your back. He doesn’t do anything about it, so you don’t either. 

“What’s the verdict?” you ask him. “Do you like it?” 

“Is it important to you that I like it?” he asks, voice rumbling against your back. 

You think. 

“Yes,” you say. 

His hand comes down to ghost over your unpierced breast, cupping it in his huge palm. Your hard nipple rasps against the calluses on his hand making you shiver even in the heat of the shower. He squeezes softly, pulling a sound from the back of your throat that is lost thanks to the roar of the water against the tiles. 

His mouth brushes against your ear, lips damp: “I like it.” 

You twist in his arms, his cock dragging against your slick body, and look up at him. His hair is plastered to his forehead, a shade darker than usual. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

You guide his hand to your hair. “Hold this for me.” 

You slip down onto your knees.

-

How’s the piercing healing? Simon messages you one afternoon. Soap won’t shut up asking me about it. 

Give him my number, you suggest. 

After a lengthy silence, Simon texts: He says he doesn’t want it.

And just what the fuck is that supposed to mean? Maybe it was some weird piercer/client boundary he didn’t want to cross, but Ghost had come across more stringent (in just about every aspect of life) and he had had no problem crossing the tattoo artist/client boundary to text you mock ups of your tattoo. Something in your gut goes sour. Something sows itself in the soil of your heart, something thorny and unpleasant, and you don’t like it one bit. 

It’s fine, you tell him. I’m taking care of it. 

Okay, he says. And that is the end of that. 

-

The next time you see Johnny, it is Simon’s birthday. True to form, he does not make a big fuss of it, though it’s clear that this is the first birthday he has shared with a romantic partner perhaps ever. 

He genuinely seems to appreciate the Bluetooth stencil printer you bought him as a gift (he’d looked at the wrapped present like he didn’t know what to do with it, unwrapped it with the same enthusiasm as a man walking to the gallows, but when he’d seen it, he’d given one of those slow, rare grins; the crooked ones thanks to the scar across his mouth), and you silently congratulated yourself on getting him something practical over something sentimental. 

“The boys want to get together,” he says that afternoon. “I want you to come, too.” 

How could you say no to that? 

So you doll yourself up, wearing your nicest pair of skinny jeans and a sweater to keep away the autumn chill. You are giddy at the thought of meeting Simon’s other friends, so much so that you cleanly overlook Johnny’s hot and cold act. At least there will be others there to act as buffers between the two of you. 

The pub itself is more crowded than Simon would like. He won’t even take his mask off, keeping his back against the wall and eyes on the door. Not for the first time, you wonder if he doesn’t have some sort of PTSD, something leftover from his time in the service. It would make a lot of things make a lot more sense. 

You meet Kyle, who clasps your hand with both of his own, grinning so fetchingly. “Nice to meet you,” he shouts over the sounds of the pub. “Simon’s never brought a woman around before. You must be special.” 

“That means be on your best behavior, Garrick,” Simon says dryly, shifting his mask to sip at a beer—the first you’ve ever seen him drink.

“Yes, sir.” 

John arrives next. He’s older than the others, though there’s not yet any hint of silver in his facial hair. He smiles, eyes twinkling, and shares Kyle’s sentiments. It shouldn’t make you feel as special as it does, knowing that Simon hasn’t brought a woman to meet his friends before. But it does. It means something. The two of you still haven’t discussed exactly what your relationship is, but it seems clear in the eyes of everyone around you, which makes you feel a little more like you’re standing on solid ground. 

Johnny arrives last. His easy grin falters at the sight of you. He slips into the other side of the circular booth beside John and barely greets you, barely even meets your eyes. You don’t shrink, necessarily—you’re aware that you belong here, celebrating Simon, just as much as Johnny does—but you do grow quiet, your arms crossed in your lap, leaning into the warm comfort that Simon’s body beside you provides. 

The group together are downright boisterous. Even Simon comes out of his shell some as the drinks come and go, eventually tugging the mask down to rest beneath his chin. They tell stories that make you laugh, make you tear up, make you cringe, make you groan. It eases some anxious part of your heart to hear these uncensored stories, to learn more about Simon’s past straight from the sources.

It’s clear that their time spent serving together has made a brotherhood of them, and while a small part of you feels estranged as the outsider amongst this group, the larger part thinks it’s beautiful to see. 

Simon deserves this, you think, as the group gets up: some to go to the bathroom, others to the bar, others to smoke. He deserves to be surrounded by people that love him. 

You realize right there in that cracked leather booth of the bar that you are included in that.

 You’re in love with him. 

“Oh God,” you mutter, pressing your hands to your cheeks. Suddenly your head is spinning from the few shots you had shared with the others. Air. You need air. 

Not spying Simon anywhere near the bar, you take your chances of running into him outside and step out of the pub onto the cool street. There is a bitter wind blowing that has you wrapping your arms around your middle, wishing you had worn a jacket over your sweater. Resting your back against the brick wall, you stare up at the moon and think. Nothing has changed between now and five minutes ago, except that now you are a little wiser to your own feelings. A little more aware of how invested you are in this undefined relationship. You don’t need to freak out.

You just need to talk to him and figure out where you both stand with each other. It is the only—

“You followin’ me?” You jerk, startled. Johnny stands there, having come around out of the alley, crushing the remnants of a cigarette beneath his boot. His cheeks are red from the cold, hands jammed deep into his pockets. 

“What? Of course not!” 

“Alright,” he says, his agreement sounding a lot like skepticism. He moves past you toward the pub doors. 

You know that you shouldn’t. You know that for some inexplicable reason, Johnny doesn’t like you, and that you should take this at face value and leave well enough alone. But instead it makes something inside you feel needy and desperate, desperate for this closest friend of Simon’s to like you, desperate to fit it to Simon’s old life. 

“Hey,” you say, catching his wrist. “We should plan my next piercing while you’re here.” 

He visibly shakes off your touch. His eyes look back toward the pub longingly. “Yeah. Look, not much to plan, really, is there? Just let Simon know when you’re ready and he’ll text me.” 

He opens the door. For a moment, the sounds and smells of the pub spill out onto the sidewalk, but then the door shuts and it is quiet and you are alone. 

-

“Johnny doesn’t like me much,” you say to Simon on the way home. You’re driving—three beers in total had managed to make him tipsier than you thought possible for a man of his stature.

He snorts. “Soap loves everybody, and everybody loves Soap.” 

You take your eyes off the road briefly. Simon’s figure is illuminated by a passing streetlamp, turning his silhouette into something gilded where he is slumped over in the passenger seat resting his temple against the cool glass of the window. “I don’t love him,” you say, hoping you don’t overemphasize any certain word. 

Simon looks to you. You can feel his eyes on the side of your face. Not even being drunk affects the intensity of his gaze, the way it penetrates you, turns you see-through. Whatever he sees in your face must not be enough, because his head thuds as it hits the window again. 

“It wouldn’t be the first time that a girl who was supposed to be mine ended up being for Soap.” 

You suck in a breath, heart clenching painfully. Taking one hand off the wheel, you search for his thigh—find his knee and settle for it, stroking softly with your thumb. 

“I’m not Soap’s, baby,” you say. 

“No?” 

You shake your head. 

“Whose are you?” 

“Come on, Simon,” you mutter, face hot. “You already know.” 

“Are you mine?” 

You nod.

“Don’t say it.” 

You blink, glancing over to him. He’s watching you, eyes heavy-lidded and pitch-black in the darkness of the cab. “Why not?” 

“Because I’ll make have to you pull over.” 

-

Instead he makes you wait until he’s inside you, still feeling the rasp of his stubble against your thighs from where he had eaten you out. Then, his hands shaking, he asks you again, Whose are you? just to hear the way you chant over and over again: Yours, Yours, Yours. 

[sapphicteadragon]

TGCF Revised Edition Translation

Greetings, friends! I figure it's about time for this.

For the last 6 months I've been working on a full translation of the newest 2024 revised edition of TGCF, since it has so thoroughly taken over my life and well, since nobody has done a full translation of the revised edition yet, I thought I'd start one.

Since Chinese isn't my native language, translating takes me a long time, and I have to fit it around other life commitments. But, rest assured, I do not use MTL for any of my work! As of writing this I've translated up to the end of the Ghost City arc, but most of it still needs editing, so I'm starting by uploading just the first few chapters.

I hope you guys enjoy the new added scenes as much as I have been, because damn there's so much more to love, even in just the first few arcs.

Happy reading!

天官赐福，百无禁忌！

[cumikering]

Neighbour Ghost x reader 8 (end)

1.6k | fluff The stray and his forever home (part 1)

“Bone apple tea.” You placed the cup of camomile in front of Simon.

“What?”

You pointed at your skull-printed shirt, the apple pie patch on his hoodie and the tea on the table. “Bone. Apple. Tea.”

He’d missed that brilliant smile too much. It was impossible to not want to kiss you. He chuckled as he pulled you to stand between his thighs.

That Sunday with your help, despite the pounding of his head, he packed the rest of his stuff and managed to move out. In the last few days he had before he left, he spent any possible moment with you, mainly eating his favourite Chinese takeout or cuddling on the couch.

Two months later when Simon came back, things crawled to how they were, with him visiting for dinner and leaving before midnight. Eventually, he stayed more and more nights a week, leaving more than a few of his shirts behind.

The divorce was finalised and his childhood home was sold. The city of Manchester didn’t mean gripping the straps of his backpack after school as he walked up the dreaded front steps anymore, nor sleeping restlessly lest someone barged in the door with another bizarre creature. The house was gone, along with the memories that breathed within the walls. He didn’t miss them.

His mum got a flat near Tommy’s and a job at a flower shop in the neighbourhood. ‘Not as nice as working with Ben’, she said. She had to buy her own bread, and none she’d found in the area tasted remotely close to how grand his were. She still cooked too much, but Tommy didn’t mind the extra whenever she dropped by. Little Joe always loved seeing his nana anyway.

Back from his next deployment, Simon held you at the door as he inhaled the warmth he’d missed terribly. After his shower, you showed him his shirts in their own drawer, not jammed between yours anymore. He smiled, pulling you in for a kiss.

In spring, he came with to visit your dad, insisting on wearing one of his dress shirts, even when you assured it was a regular lunch. He stood rigid on the porch, the neck of the wine bottle about to snap in his grip.

Your dad was taking too long. Was he arming himself before opening the door? Should he tackle and disarm him or take the shot like a man? He should have worn a tac vest.

“Si, relax.” You rubbed his back. “You’re already too tall. You’re going to scare my dad.”

Is that not a good thing?

Your dad (obviously unarmed) tried making small talk with him at lunch, but he sucked at it as much as Simon did, leaving you to do almost all the talking among the pauses. You only received short answers from the men who avoided each other’s gazes.

Also, who the bloody hell put the coriander in the chicken stir-fry?!

“Your dad hates me,” Simon declared as he drove home, the phantom taste of soap persisted on his palate despite the hours between.

“He doesn’t, I promise. He doesn’t even really like Chinese, but picked the place because I told him how much you love it. He really tried, but just doesn’t talk much with new people.” You stifled a laugh. “You should have cracked a few jokes.”

He gave you a deadpan look. “When we get home, I’m going to tickle you until you pass out.”

Home.

You’d made your flat Simon’s home too. You cleared another drawer for him, and another, and another, even when he didn’t have so many possessions. But you let him expand and take up the space he needed. He reordered a set of his ID discs for you to keep on your nightstand.

Things were… easy. Simple, like getting out of bed a little later on weekends. With his nose buried in your hair, arm around your waist pulling you flush to his chest, he held you in silence from dawn until you woke. Listening to your quiet breathing filled his chest heavy with warmth.

You’d asked multiple times if it bored him to be doing nothing, as if he didn’t lay prone behind rifle scopes for hours on end for a living. It didn’t, because being in your presence wasn’t nothing. You were real, and you were his.

You woke with a stir, a smile gracing your lips when you realised he was with you before your eyes opened.

“Good morning, my love.” He slipped the strap of your tank top off before peppering kisses on the nape of your neck down your exposed shoulder.

“Morning, Si.” You reached back to scratch his scalp.

He rolled you onto your back before crawling on top of you, kissing the column on your neck making you giggle with his weekend scruff. He pulled away to admire your eyes, always striking in the warm sun.

“Love looking at you.” You cupped his cheek, tracing the healed cut with your thumb. “You’re so beautiful, Si.”

He leaned in, and you stayed in bed a little longer.

In his shirt, you placed more toasts on the table.

“Two goldfish are in a tank…”

He handed you a buttered toast. “Don’t steal my jokes, luv.”

“It’s too lame to forget.”

“Yeah? ‘Cause I remember you howling at Tesco when I told it.”

“It was your first ever.” You smiled. “My favourite.”

“Why didn’t you tell me I was scary, luv?”

“I’m not sure they teach you to tell the scary bloke he’s scary in self-defence class.” You took a bite of the toast.

“Fair enough.” He shrugged. “Are you out of jam?”

“Forgot to grab some yesterday, but I didn’t forget your limes.”

Simon became a bit of a pie connoisseur. He figured baking was better than sparring with the intention of beating someone up to a pulp. He tried different fruits (even declared himself a pro at peeling) and techniques, and eventually other varieties. That late Saturday morning, it was key lime pie.

“Why’s the cat so small?” you asked as you tied your kitty apron around his waist.

“Why?”

“Because it drank condensed milk.”

He liked that you were becoming more like him. “You too, it seems.”

You mock gasped. “Rude! You know I can take you, Si.”

“Not in a fight.”

You slapped his chest playfully earning a hearty laugh from him.

Volunteering at the soup kitchen became a regular occurrence too, along with his sergeants. Sam ended up dating one of the volunteers’ daughters, the one he was introduced to. Unfortunately, his two other sergeants hadn’t had as much luck on their side. ‘Does your birdie have sisters or friends, sir?’ Eric joked, but it barely masked his hopefulness. You assured you’d ask around if they promised to keep each other safe while deployed.

It got hard at times, when things went sideways and the missions lasted longer, or when he had no way to contact you or wipe the tears off your face.

Somewhere along the way, Simon listed you as his emergency contact. You weren’t supposed to find out this way. Not this soon, not from his captain calling you about how he was unconscious, dying from blood loss from getting his leg slashed.

The first thing he did when he astonishingly woke was to call you. He could ignore the sear on his thigh, or the fact that his eyelids weighed like lead, but not the guilt that sank into the pits of him when you were in a mess of tears.

“I’m so sorry, luv,” he croaked out of his throat that felt like sandpaper. “I mean it. I’ll leave this all behind if that’s what it takes to keep you. You just have to say the word.”

“Si, you don’t... always have to bend yourself backwards for others. I chose you for who you are, and I will keep choosing you, as long as you don’t give up on this. On us.” You sniffled. “Please come home soon. I need you with me.”

Simon was glad you stood by his decision to stay, because that afternoon a year after, as the major pinned on the new insignia onto his uniform, he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face when the mass erupted in applause.

Captain Simon Riley.

Among the crowd, next to Tommy and Beth, her belly carrying his niece, you had your arm around his mum, Joe’s hand in yours. From across the room, your sincere eyes made him feel like a hero, the most desirable man. He knew he wasn’t, but you looked at him like he was sunshine, and maybe, he was to you a little bit.

Nothing changed. Simon was still fatherless, still missed out on the memories a child deserved to have, but was never granted. Still bound to a past that wouldn’t go, but he was more than that.

He thought his dad was the only thing standing in the way of happiness, whatever it meant. He knew now. It wasn’t what he thought he wanted, wasn’t what he imagined, but it was perfect. This was what it was supposed to be like all along.

“For you,” he mouthed.

Simon Riley never wanted to be an oil painting admired by many, but he was, and always had been, a love note sealed with a kiss.

Line art from part 4

Masterlist

Thank you so much for sticking around until the end :) I greatly appreciate the support and kind words this little story has received. Take care!

@tiredmetalenthusiast @shadofireshinobi @keegansshark @two-gh0sts @eve-lie

@luvecarson @jaguarthecat @knight4xmas @unwrittenletter

@cmbghost @mxtokko @reaperxxxxzz @footyandformula

@opalesquegirl @audisive @sparrowgalaxy @fanficreblogs

@strawberrystargal @damalseer @onlineoutcast @vxnilla-hxrddrugs

@astraluminaaa @mehjustalasshere @corruptowlette @youllgetafuneral

@lyenera @kcmizzz @s-rinaldi-18

[lolottes]

Wes quickly guesses the situation and starts rambling again being totally ignored by the rest of the town.

The phamtom gang quickly understood the situation and instead of doing anything to resolve things, they informed the ghosts. An exceptional truce is proposed. Even Skulker subscribes to it. EVERY ghost likes to see watchers (and Plasmus) lose their shit to these humans who are way too used to ghosting (thanks to them) to take them seriously. Lunch lady distributes popcorn.

The observers get punched repeatedly by the Fenton parents for not taking them seriously.

Everyone has fun with them (and Plasmus again)

I'm a huge fan of Danny getting stuck as the ghost king, and I'm hesitant to give him a break... but wouldn't it be funny if it wasn't an especially complicated process to win the title?

Let's just pare it down to 'defeat the current king'.

It probably starts with Dash. An unfortunately regular encounter in the hallway ends with him getting a crown. (Thank goodness for magically floating crowns, otherwise his head would get too big to wear it). He probably doesn't quite know why he has it yet.

Cue Mr. Lancer attempting to encourage friendly academic competition. Dash looses the crown to the top student.

This goes on. And on. And on.

It starts out as something fun and everyone wants in. They gradually feel out the rules and get them roughly right. Right enough to be able to steal the crown and ride the high of having a literal floating crown follow them for a while.

Then the Observants arrive. As much as they hate Danny, at least he was partially dead.

It becomes a game of hot potato, with the citizens of Amity shoving off the title and crown as fast as they can. They only have a vague idea of the rules of the game they're playing, but they do not want to lose.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

Du Wen at Her, the bar she started last year, in Shanghai. “I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women,” she said.

Her is a self-described feminist bar in Shanghai where women gather to talk about their place in society

Tang Shuang at her bookstore, Paper Moon, in Shanghai

Wang Xia, left, and her Xin Chao Bookstore space in the Shanghai Book City in Shanghai

The female bookstore, Paper Moon, in Shanghai

In bars tucked away in alleys and at salons and bookstores around Shanghai, women are debating their place in a country where men make the laws.

Some wore wedding gowns to take public vows of commitment to themselves. Others gathered to watch films made by women about women. The bookish flocked to female bookshops to read titles like “The Woman Destroyed” and “Living a Feminist Life.”

Women in Shanghai, and some of China’s other biggest cities, are negotiating the fragile terms of public expression at a politically precarious moment. China’s ruling Communist Party has identified feminism as a threat to its authority. Female rights activists have been jailed. Concerns about harassment and violence against women are ignored or outright silenced.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has diminished the role of women at work and in public office. There are no female members of Mr. Xi’s inner circle or the Politburo, the executive policymaking body. He has invoked more traditional roles for women, as caretakers and mothers, in planning a new “childbearing culture” to address a shrinking population.

But groups of women around China are quietly reclaiming their own identities. Many are from a generation that grew up with more freedom than their mothers. Women in Shanghai, profoundly shaken by a two-month Covid lockdown in 2022, are being driven by a need to build community.

“I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women,” said Du Wen, the founder of Her, a bar that hosts salon discussions.

Frustrated by the increasingly narrow understanding of women by the public, Nong He, a film and theater student, held a screening of three documentaries about women by female Chinese directors.

“I think we should have a broader space for women to create,” Ms. He said. “We hope to organize such an event to let people know what our life is like, what the life of other women is like, and with that understanding, we can connect and provide some help to each other.”

At quietly advertised events, women question misogynistic tropes in Chinese culture. “Why are lonely ghosts always female?” one woman recently asked, referring to Chinese literature’s depiction of homeless women after death. They share tips for beginners to feminism. Start with history, said Tang Shuang, the owner of Paper Moon, which sells books by female authors. “This is like the basement of the structure.”

There are few reliable statistics about gender violence and sexual harassment in China, but incidents of violence against women have occurred with greater frequency, according to researchers and social workers. Stories have circulated widely online of women being physically maimed or brutally murdered for trying to leave their husbands, or savagely beaten for resisting unwanted attention from men. The discovery of a woman who was chained inside a doorless shack in the eastern province of Jiangsu became one of the most debated topics online in years.

With each case, the reactions have been highly divisive. Many people denounced the attackers and called out sexism in society. Many others blamed the victims.

The way these discussions polarize society unnerved Ms. Tang, an entrepreneur and former deputy editor of Vogue China. Events in her own life unsettled her, too. As female friends shared feelings of shame and worthlessness for not getting married, Ms. Tang searched for a framework to articulate what she was feeling.

“Then I found out, you know, even myself, I don’t have very clear thoughts about these things,” she said. “People are eager to talk, but they don’t know what they are talking about.” Ms. Tang decided to open Paper Moon, a store for intellectually curious readers like herself.

The bookstore is divided into an academic section that features feminist history and social studies, as well as literature and poetry. There is an area for biographies. “You need to have some real stories to encourage women,” Ms. Tang said.

Anxiety about attracting the wrong kind of attention is always present.

When Ms. Tang opened her store, she placed a sign in the door describing it as a feminist bookstore that welcomed all genders, as well as pets. “But my friend warned me to take it out because, you know, I could cause trouble by using the word feminism.”

Wang Xia, the owner of Xin Chao Bookstore, has chosen to stay away from the “F” word altogether. Instead she described her bookstore as “woman-themed.” When she opened it in 2020, the store was a sprawling space with nooks to foster private conversations and six study rooms named after famous female authors like Simone de Beauvoir.

Xin Chao Bookstore served more than 50,000 people through events, workshops and online lectures, Ms. Wang said. It had more than 20,000 books about art, literature and self-improvement — books about women and books for women. The store became so prominent that state-owned media wrote about it and the Shanghai government posted the article on its website.

Still, Ms. Wang was careful to steer clear of making a political statement. “My ambition is not to develop feminism,” she said.

For Ms. Du, the Her founder, empowering women is at the heart of her motivation. She was jolted into action by the isolation of the pandemic: Shanghai ordered its residents to stay in their apartments under lockdown for two months, and her world narrowed to the walls of her apartment.

For years she dreamed of opening a place where she could elevate the voices of women, and now it seemed more urgent than ever. After the lockdown, she opened Her, a place where women could strike friendships and debate the social expectations that society had placed on them.

On International Women’s Day in March, Her held an event it called Marry Me, in which women took vows to themselves. The bar has also hosted a salon where women acted out the roles of mothers and daughters. Many younger women described a reluctance to be treated the way their mothers were treated and said they did not know how to talk to them, Ms. Du said.

The authorities have met with Ms. Du and indicated that as long as the events at Her didn’t become too popular, there was a place for it in Shanghai, she said.

But in China, there is always the possibility that officials will crack down. “They never tell you clearly what is forbidden,” Ms. Tang of Paper Moon said.

Ms. Wang recently moved Xin Chao Bookstore into Shanghai Book City, a famous store with large atriums and long columns of bookcases. A four-volume collection of Mr. Xi’s writings are prominently displayed in several languages.

Book City is huge. The space for Xin Chao Bookstore is not, Ms. Wang said, with several shelves inside and around a small room that may eventually hold about only 3,000 books.

“It’s a small cell of the city, a cultural cell,” Ms. Wang said.

Still, it stands out in China.

“Not every city has a woman’s bookstore,” she said. “There are many cities that do not have such cultural soil.””

[mikaela-the-slut-expert]

Maple Robes and Lace Veils

Hua Cheng x M!Reader x Xie Lian

this is the second part of my first story, "The First Glance". Again it's technically about my OC since no one's asking for anything. I just have it written to where it can be for a reader. 😋

Switching pov's

Also guys I am not Chinese but I try to find words and translations that are important to my OC's story.

Dúshé means poison laced tongue in simplified Chinese (I think)

Mûguô means bitch, or whore in simplified Chinese (I think)

Míngqín means song bird it's Y/n's nickname

Previous part: First Glance

_____________________________________________

Once the morning has officially started, San Lang goes back to his wood pile. You stand by Xie Lian while San Lang somehow manages to build a whole door for the shrine. Xie Lian seems to love it, it's obvious with how he's become fascinated by opening and closing it repeatedly.

"I thought a door would be easier to stick talismans on than a curtain" San Lang explains. You smile and give a small clap. "It's a very well made door, San Lang, good job" you giggle at Xie Lian's excitement.

At the mention of talismans Xie Lian seems to remember something. He claps his hands together, "Oh Míngqín I forgot to tell you what happened at Mount Yunjin! I'm so sorry, so much happened yesterday"

You wave a hand, "it's nothing to worry about. How important could it be? I was there for most of it." You smile but Xie Lian's face is very serious so really nothing's funny at all.

"Well actually," Xie Lian laughs nervously, scratching his temple. "I talked with the heavenly officials and I found out that I met a calamity yesterday." Your face morphs into shock but Xie Lian quickly settles you down. "Not him." The words are met with silence. Of course it wasn't the white calamity. What were you thinking? ,"They called him Crimson Rain Sought Flower, his name is Hua Cheng" Xie Lian smiles. At this ghost's mention San Lang starts to pay attention to the conversation. "He walked me through the forest yesterday and I mistook him to be the ghost groom but he isn't. He isn't hard to be mistaken after seeing his silver butterflies ."

You're in shock. Because you got caught up in a swarm of silver butterflies yesterday. "I... Just don't understand. Why would a calamity be hanging around Mount Yunjin? Crimson Rain Sought Flower is known to stay in his den." You sigh.

You easily worry about Xie Lian and panic once more. "He didn't hurt you did he?" You move closer to Xie Lian and hold his face, looking for marks or bruises. "Why didn't you call for me, I would've been there right away." You frown and move back once you're satisfied with your search.

"There was no need to call, he didn't hurt me... He led me through the forest and safely delivered me to the temple." Xie Lian smiles but you sigh.

Xie Lian didn't get hurt, but a well known calamity shows up and helps Xie Lian? Coincidence. The same calamity helping you? Intention.

"...I suppose it's okay. As long as you didn't get hurt A-Lian. Just be careful." You look to the ground, but Xie Lian pats your head. "I am careful, ah you really should've seen the butterflies though Míngqín They were very beautiful"

You arch a brow then shake your head. "I actually did see them but, Wèizhī might eat them" Wèizhī is your two birds - Oriental Magpie- , they're not here right now though. They're probably bathing in water somewhere. Hm a bath doesn't sound so bad actually-, "Y/n?" You're brought back into focus when San Lang gains your attention. "Sorry I tend to lose my train of thought" you hum.

"What about you y/n?" You cock your head to the side at San Lang's question. "What have you heard about Crimson Rain" San Lang smiles mischievously.

"Why would I know anything about anybody?" You shrug. Of course you've heard and seen plenty about Hua Cheng, you're a ghost. You're... Residence happens to be near Ghost City.

Xie Lian nods in agreement though, he could use the info. You sigh, "Who knows? He stays in his den, and although close I've never seen him in my city." You shrug again.

All of you eventually go back inside. You end up staring at the painting again. You would have eventually painted something for Xie Lian but you've been busy working on the actual build of the shrine. You've always been good at the arts. Drawing, dancing, and singing. That is why you're the God of Song after all.

"San Lang's skills are very beautiful" You say, looking over at him. "Who taught you?"

San Lang shakes his head. "I had a good teacher a while back, I paint mostly for fun now." You nod at his explanation and smile back at the painting. You really do like it. It shows Xie Lian in what once used to be all his glory.

"Do you really like it so much, Míngqín?" Xie Lian stares at you and you've forgotten you don't have a veil on. They can see your expressions and you aren't just invisible anymore. You blush, and instinctively cover your mouth with your sleeve.

"O-oh, well yes I like it. It's very well done and it captures the prince of XianLe very beautifully." You stutter and look away.

The moment is interrupted when the three of you hear a scream and a man running towards the shrine. "Save Me! Save me please!" The panicked man grabs Xie Lian's wrist very harshly. It's in your nature, you can't help it. You are quick to push the man away, and to protect Xie Lian. He pats your arm however, in a 'It's okay' motion. Xie Lian sits the man down and asks for an explanation from him.

You and San Lang glare at him. Both of you don't trust him and both of you share a glance when the man explains he's from Banyue pass. Which has since turned into a dry land of sands. The man was running away from what killed his other group members.

"You ran all the way from Banyue pass to here?" San Lang asks with crossed arms. Your form is the same. The man seems to sweat at this, but Xie Lian in all his kindness offers the man a drink. Xie Lian is kind but he's probably just testing if the man is a mortal or not.

"No need to be polite you can drink" The man -for all his supposed running- hesitates to take the water Xie Lian so generously offered. When he does drink it, the water going into his body sounds hollow. You and Xie Lian both know it. "You can stop drinking now." Xie Lian says and takes the water from the man's hands. His disguise is ruined and everyone knows now. The man rises up quickly though and pulls a sword from his sleeve, moving to attack Xie Lian.

Before you or San Lang can act, Xie Lian is quick enough to flick the sword away. Sometimes you forget Xie Lian is just hiding his strength. The man tries to run and Xie Lian moves to use Rou'ye but the man drops and a sad looking skin bag(?) is left behind... A chopstick is what caused the damage. You and Xie Lian both whip your heads around to San Lang. Xie Lian goes to investigate the corpse but you still stare at San Lang.

"A chopstick?" You ask with an arched brow. "A chopstick" San Lang only smiles and you sigh. You both go to Xie Lian. When you get closer you can see that Xie Lian is using the array, so you do too. The only thing you can really hear is people being joyful about merits, and ignoring Xie Lian. Officials disgust you.

"Are the lot of you deaf? Did you not hear his highness? He asked a question." Your voice rings through the array and the officials who were once joyful before quiet down. Instead of answering, the cowards leave the array.

You're not a popular force in the heavens. Especially since your personality has always been cold and distant. You were actually loved once before, for your unnatural beauty and voice people revered you. That was until they found out you were a ghost and before they trashed Xie Lian's name. You would cause trouble for the other gods and challenge them often, causing fear to most officials. You always defended Xie Lian's name and when given the chance for promotion, you refused and chose to stay with Xie Lian instead.

This loyalty of yours to a scrap god however causes other officials to look down on you, they also just don't like your attitude. You have other unofficial titles that the heavenly officials made and of course those names spread. There's one title that used to be used quite often but you actually haven't heard any officials call you that in a long time. That title is "mûguô". Someone caught word of your past and decided to spread the name to upset you, but it faded out very quickly. That official -who you never even knew the name of- disappeared shortly after, with their temples burnt and no trace of them.

You're stuck in your thoughts until you hear Ling Wen answer Xie Lian's question about Banyue Pass. You leave the array, Xie Lian will tell you what's going on. When you look over at San Lang he's giving you a cheeky smile. "What?" You tilt your head but he just shakes his head.

You run your hands over your new braid while Xie Lian talks to Ling Wen. You mess with the red ribbon San Lang tied your hair with. It's definitely a pop out color compared to all the white you wear.

"San Lang, I'm afraid me and y/n will have to go far away soon" Xie Lian pipes up and stands from the... Thing on the ground. San Lang furrows a brow at the news and then gives a smug grin. "Why doesn't gege and y/n take me with them? I know a lot about Banyue Pass."

Xie Lian looks confused but he nods anyways. You wouldn't mind if San Lang came along either. "Oh? What do you know about Banyue Pass San Lang, you're far too young to know those things" you tease with a smile, while the three of you head inside the shrine.

San Lang chuckles and goes to speak before a knock on the door makes you all silent. You all look at each other in a moment of silence before Xie Lian opens the door.

When Xie Lian opens the door it reveals Mu Qing and Feng Xin who are in disguise... They are in a shocked silence not having seen you in a long time and to see your face after so long. You all sit in silence.

After you get over your shock you let out a panicked yelp and cover your face. They saw your face! Your cursed, cursed face! You shove your face into your hands. You didn't want Mu Qing to see it. He'd use it against you and you already hate him enough already. Feng Xin saw your face! He'll surely be disgusted with you now.

You start to groan into your sleeves, trying to move away from their eyes. You try to find your veil through the slits of your fingers. You can hear your name tumble from Feng Xin's lips but the door slams and someone whisks you away into their arms. They forcibly move your hands away from your face and now you can see that your face to face with red robes .

San Lang holds your wrists, and that stops you from hiding your face. "San Lang, my veil? Where's my veil?" You don't have a clue where he put it. Another pair of hands come into view and puts your veil over your eyes. You know it's Xie Lian.

Now that you can actually tell what your surroundings are you find that you're in San Lang's arms. You blush and step back. You hadn't meant to grip onto him so tightly.

__________________________________________________

Xie Lian sighs in relief when they find y/n's veil. Xie Lian is actually sad to see his face hidden again. He hasn't seen your face in so long and he missed it. Xie Lian supposes he doesn't mind though. If anyone deserves to see your beauty it's him and he actually doesn't want Feng Xin or Mu Qing to look. Xie Lian shakes his head to remove such thoughts. As if he could describe your face like it was a secret to keep between the three of you.

"I'm going to open the door now y/n" he pats your hand. He waits for your nod before opening the door again. He smiles nervously at the two officials outside. Of course Xie Lian knows who they really are but for now he'll pretend. "Ah why are you two here?"

Mu Qing and Feng Xin have crossed arms "Are you going to Banyue Pass? We're going with you" they say at the same time and then glare at each other. Xie Lian laughs but opens the door to let them inside. He looks at y/n keeping an eye on him. Xie Lian knows his temper.

When Feng Xin and Mu Qing see San Lang they're alarmed. Holding up their lighting, and fire. "Who's he?" Mu Qing nods his head at San Lang. Xie Lian sighs, "This is San Lang"

Feng Xin's eye twitches, "where did he come from? Where's his family? Do you usually invite people you don't know into your home?"

Xie Lian laughs nervously but he's glad that the attention isn't on y/n anymore.

Not until Mu Qing attempts to throw lightning at San Lang. It would have most definitely hit the wall and caused a big hole but y/n dispersed it. Sending a shot of ice towards Mu Qing. His face hides behind his veil but Xie Lian knows you're angry. "No fighting in the shrine. If you damage the shrine I promise to return the damage double to your god's palace" he spits with venom, threatening Mu Qing's palace.

It's evident y/n doesn't try to hide who he is. Sure he's in his avatar and he looks simple. However he doesn't do a good job at keeping his abilities at bay.

Xie Lian doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. The tension in the room is very high. Mu Qing looks ready to argue back but San Lang steps in front of y/n and stands by Xie Lian's side. "Are these two servants, gege?" He hums with a smug smirk.

"uhm something like that but not exactly-" Xie Lian gets interrupted when San Lang throws a broom into Mu Qing's hands. "Start helping then" San Lang smiles. His face resembles a mischievous fox. Y/n cackles.

Xie Lian waves his hands trying to calm a cursing Feng Xin and Mu Qing down. "Please for my sake leave him alone" he laughs nervously. He doesn't need his shrine to get destroyed not that y/n would let that happen.

Talking about y/n, ah. He's glaring at Mu Qing under the veil. He'll have to make sure they don't break out into a fight either. San Lang leans on y/n's shoulder and the stiffness seems to leave y/n's body. Xie Lian isn't too worried about anyone fighting. He thinks San Lang will keep a careful eye on y/n.

Xie Lian rubs his temple. "Maybe Feng Xin should make a pathway so that we can get to Banyue Pass quickly?"

Feng Xin does just that. Leaving Mu Qing standing alone in front of the three of them. "Is he coming with us?" Mu Qing points to San Lang with furrowed brows. Xie Lian sighs and goes to answer but y/n answers for him

"Of course, since when was it a servant's job to worry about his highness's friends?" Xie Lian drops his head when he realizes that Y/n has joined San Lang in his smart remarks.

Not only does he have to worry about one silver tongue but two. "Yes San Lang is coming with us. He knows a lot about Crescent Moon Pass and that's sure to help me" Xie Lian explains with a nervous smile.

Mu Qing is interrupted when Feng Xin cuts him off, "The pathway is finished". Mu Qing, ever the prideful looks at the pathway and shrugs, "I've seen better". Which leads to Feng Xin and Mu Qing bantering again.

Y/n interrupts them by activating the pathway. "Stop bickering like an old married couple let's go" San Lang snickers softly, "I never thought of that, they do bicker like an old married couple don't they" The two officials glare at San Lang and y/n. They smile back. Xie Lian only knows y/n is smiling because of his crow feet.

They all go through the portal. Xie Lian lets out a laugh, knowing that he's going to have to deal with all of the four's antics on their journey. Xie Lian is happy with his circus though.

__________________________________________________

Tell me if it's good guys I don't have an editor 😭 so sometimes I'm not aware if my story is actually well written. Yeah, anyways if you wanna request something or see more lemme know 🥰 also y'all I'm pulling the timeline out of my ass. I have no clue if I'm doing it right or not 🙏😭

Should I continue the series? Yes or no?

Oh also if y'all actually wanna see my OC lemme know! I didn't draw it don't hate on me 🫵😐

If anyone reads this plz plz plz plz PLEASE tell me if my submission box is working! I know I'm not getting anything but I want to know if it works!

[alwaysshallow]

serial killer ghost x detective reader.

he's probably the biggest case in your entire career—and you just know you can't fuck it up. not when you're new in the crew, not when they trust you with solving the case that they feel miserable in. you got the transfer from another unit to get a chance. you don’t want to lose it, like you lost the previous one.

four months. four months and the madness of killing innocent women doesn’t stop. it’s nowhere close to stopping, considering you have only scraps—he kills women at night, women that are single, between mid twenties and thirties. successful women, or more likely what society would find successful in women. those clues are nothing but lame, but you’re in no position to complain. at least it’s something.

it’s your full month in the city, when you sense something is wrong. you can’t quite put what exactly, but something is. you automatically put your hand around your weapon, checking the surroundings on your way back to your apartment, chinese in your left hand. a mundane walk for food turns into crazy assumptions that the murderer could be looking for you too. or, he already found you.

yet, you can’t find anything, so you just go back. 

except, the feeling doesn’t pass. you feel it on your way to work, home, and even if you’re safe in theory, you don’t feel particularly safe. it’s gotten to the point where your boss sees it and asks if you need help. talks with you, how he can transfer you back, or set you up with another case. “anything, but losing your health,” he says to you, and you hate it. hate the absolute politeness in his voice, his sad, father-like smile, like he knows what he’s talking about. 

he doesn’t.

so, one day, you check again all of your doors, windows, and possible spots for hidden cameras. it takes you another hour, and you feel you could go crazy soon. there’s nothing, the murderer didn’t strike in over a month, and your paranoia might cost you your job.

“it’s not worth it,” you sigh, before opening the door. there’s a guy with a pizza hat and a pizza in his hand. delivery guy. you pay him without even thinking of it, a smile on his face when you say goodbye, a smile on yours. 

smile that fades quickly, when you open the box, just to see the message inside, written with a black marker, probably.

“thought you got rid of me that easily?”

[faeriekit]

TODAYBORDAY IS LABOR DAY

Brought to you by your local children's librarian! 😊

The library today is, obviously, closed. Thank goodness. However, we were open earlier this weekend, and I was grateful to have been given a chance to make a labor day display in the children's department!

And Y'ALL. Pickings were SLIM. Believe it or not, but society at large does NOT like teaching children about worker's rights, unionizing, and negotiations! 😭 Never fear, however, because I, under an extreme time crunch (3pm on a friday right before labor day) came up with a short list on kids' books that might help get thoughts flowing on what Labor Day means to us as a country. Good ol' 'Merica or whatever we're saying these days.

Behold: a kid's labor day reading list! ⬇

The candy conspiracy : a tale of sweet victory is classic "boss gets a dollar, I get a dime" story about the power of labor and bargaining. With candy! 🍫🍭🍬 Quick, sweet, and good enough to eat.

Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type is a great story about negotiating for better working conditions. That's right, the barnyard goes on strike for electric blankets and a diving board in the duck pond! A silly, quick read, told largely by the typewritten letters from the cows themselves. Click Clack, Moo!

Hey, remember when children used to have to work countless hours for pennies a day if that just to possibly die or be permanently disfigured on the job? The traveling camera : Lewis Hine and the fight to end child labor is the story of one man's quest to document child labor all across the country in hopes of finally ending it for good— through the work of the National Child Labor Committee. Remember to thank labor laws for the good they've done in your life!

Every student in the country ought to learn about exactly how many people died unnecessary deaths in the industries before workplace safety laws were implemented nationwide. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire : core events of an industrial disaster is a nonfiction title about the how and whys of this horrific event. The most famous of its kind, we should not forget the people lost due to casual workplace cruelty and the demands of overwork.

Teach children to respect blue collar and working class heroes in Real Superheroes: a celebration of essential workers! From the people who keep our towns and cities free of debris and contaminants to healthcare professionals to emergency services, every down and dirty job is held by someone who keeps our towns up and running. Thanks, everyone! (I also recommend Night Job for the same reasons; very sweet, very good at portraying what a school janitor does as their work.)

I was going to add a book on the Mine Wars in West Virginia, since one recently published for a younger age group, but it was more teen than kid friendly unfortunately so I ended up cutting it. I was able to find another book on a different circumstance, however:

The real history of the transcontinental railroad covers a bevvy of relevant topics from the displacement of Native people in the west, the exploitation of Chinese immigrants, worker's rights, and the lingering ghost of Manifest Destiny that haunts this country to this day. Not every kid is ready for intersectional thinking on racism, xenophobia, and colonization, but at the very least, kids are very good at recognizing when a situation is "fair" or "unfair". Let them chew on this for a little bit and see what conversations come out of it.

Happy Labor Day, everyone! Be safe, be strong, and work in groups!

[plasticfangtastic]

Dairy Girl-- Part 3

A Homelander x F!Reader fic

A/N: 1more part to go, I've be going on a 4 day trip on wed so I should post the final part next wk, thanks everybody for reading here is part 2 (there's a link for part 1 there)

Synopsis: In order to provide a constant supply of fresh breastmilk for Vought’s number one hero, Vought has had to get quite nifty in order to prevent this secret desire out the press and the public– you have unfortunately discovered the truth.

tags: child death mention, depressive, dark, kidnapping, stocklhom syndrome, HL tw.

word count: 4.4K

Part 3-- Fields

Months.

You’ve been here for months.

You aren’t quite certain of the timeframe but you kept track of the full moon, how often things faded and re-emerged, you’re sure half a year of your life has vanished slower than ever before, for weeks you find yourself holding on, now you aren’t sure why? This body of yours grows heavier around his arms as you sat there in that massive corner booth listening, as he squeezed your jacket as if to remind you he had a hold on you�� or to make sure you were okay, you hoped.

Several months have passed and you can’t help but wonder how you ended up in this Chinese restaurant having dinner with your captor.

Homelander’s visitation continued to be more sporadic, your time seems of less importance these days, you find yourself painfully alone, no matter how pretty the tapestry, how interesting the films have become, how delicious the food is or how the forced expansion of your music taste as they feed you an eclectic collection from japanese city pop to medieval folk rock albums changed the fact that you were alone. It had been endless weeks since you last saw a human being beside Homelander.

You stared at that steel door, its presence tempting you, mocking you, insulting you.

You pressed aimlessly at the panel hoping it would break or force somebody to emerge to tell you off– just the sound of a live human would be enough to fill this emptiness inside you even if it was for a short burst. The library elevator had been locked and no amount of pulling would get it to break, your voice, your sole company, birds would come and sing ‘hello’ but as pretty as they were they flew away at the sight of you.

Everything was perpetually quiet.

At least when the sun still lingered.

At night you couldn’t even sleep this awfulness off, your brain trapped you in a different nightmare.

The only time when this house wasn’t submerged in silence was in your slumber.

Ghost lived here you’ve come to accept.

“Every night I have the same nightmares” you spoke to a squirrel one morning

Cries of a baby you can never find, as you wake up, dazed and exhausted you hear the faintest cry and all your mind has tried to do these past few weeks and months have been to move on but ghostly cries forever remind you of the emptiness left in your arms, ghost hoping to crush everything within you, but when the sun is out you tell yourself that your baby boy is gone, you accept it. 

Every night before bed you recite a fresh mantra ‘you’re okay now, that in the future perhaps you could finally become a mother, that the embers still burn inside you, your love is there but is not wrong to move on’ but your nightmares won’t let you move on from a pain you couldn’t forget.

You pray to whatever god you believed, or used to believe for dreamless slumber, each night the thought of sleep frightens you, making you wish for death for it was kinder.

The only peaceful slumber comes with a blond catch.

In your arms he’s both small and larger than life, light and heavy, his lips pursed on your sensitive skin, his quiet moans and mewls send shivers down your spine yet bring you an animalistic primal comfort that tap in a primitive part of your motherly brain, his scent fades and returns the next time reeking of oatmeal and chamomile, as your nose sinks on his hair and he wraps his naked hand around your waist itching to crawl higher, to hold your breast much like a real baby would you forget he is grown, picking his fingers and letting them hang on your own, in this times were you drift away from boredom– you sleep peacefully. Wondering if there was safety in this? The world’s most powerful man held against your bosom, nothing could hurt you here– not even the nightmares. Afraid of him you supposed.

Homelander looks up with glassed eyes, licking his lips as he pops your nipple out his mouth, blissed out, so happy it colors you with envy– that’s the only smile you know it's 100% genuine, you seen all his earlier movies it certainly been refined but his smile is disturbingly faux… convincingly sold, nevertheless as he nuzzles you and giggles softly into your chest that you learn what his truly looked like.

When was the last time you smiled like that? You wondered.

You hand caressed his face cleaning a loose drop off his chin.

“You want me to stay tonite?”

It’s been almost 2 weeks since he stayed more than a couple hours, you don’t know what to say, he still fills you with fear but as the afternoon glow colors the tapestry and the night creeps closer and closer you want that safety… just one night without nightmares.

“Please stay…”

Homelander smiles and squeezes your sides, forcing you into a hug, he begins talking and is not a conversation you can follow or wished to but is music nowadays– the sound of another person, it's the sweetest music you’d ever listened to, searing banalities into your eardrums, but its sweet… something to make you forget that by morning he’d be gone and you be left alone with nothing but ghosts and thoughts.

“Can we switch positions?” Your arm has grown numb under him.

He grumbles pouting like a child, but he’s happy to oblige, the TV plays quietly in the background you’re unsure how much longer the tape has, but he stares at you as he sits straight waiting for further instruction, while you fix the pillows.

“I just want to be the little spoon…”

Homelander eyes light up–literally. It doesn’t last long and his lips curl dropping on the bed with eager eyes, your grimace is internal but you crawl into padded arms.

“Promise me you won’t leave in the middle of the night…” you say so quietly, he stares at those pretty eyes of yours and those thick dark circles under your eyes allowing himself to caress your cheek– until morning…”

“Ryan is off on a camping trip with one of his buddies… I can stay the whole weekend.”

“Weekend?”

“It’s friday, Y/N.” He says as if that was obvious.

Your eyes open so wide it hurts your face, but you nod furiously, a part of you dies, whatever self-respect you had is fading as the only thought consuming you is that for at least 2 days you’ll have company.

“I’m surprised you let him go”

“I have a few men watching him from a distance, and I can fly and check up on him at any point” he says through gritted teeth.

“It’s nice that you trust him. Must make him feel like a big kid… My parents never let me do such things…”

“Why not?” He asks, watching you with genuine surprise as your body loses resistance, sinking into him.

“They worried too much… always sheltering me… watching over me…” You missed them, you missed a world of people, now those obnoxious actions of the past warm your heart but you don’t let it be seen– He’s lucky to have you.”

You stayed in his arms until the credits finished rolling.

“Kill the feed!” Homelander shouts startlingly you stiff, he waits in silence grinding his teeth, jumping out of the bed almsot throwing you off the mattress, once his cape unfastened he turns back to you– what? you think i'm gonna lay down all night in this?”

You just watched him as he moved around your room entering your closet as you shook off the scare, and procuring an oversized t-shirt grumbling to himself about ordering some loungewear, you watched him undress with your heart creeping up your throat, squeezing the duvet as your worst nightmares tease an entrance to reality, with each thud of his suit and clanking of gold your heart rate doubled in speed, he who had very much avoided touching most of you, could very much do so and you’d be powerless to stop him, he turns around throwing you a look of disbelief making you wonder if ‘mind-reading’ was a unpublicized skill of his.

Without his suit… he seemed more human than he had any right to be, his bright orange undies peeking under the old t-shirt with a pulled neck allowing you to see a handful of chest hairs creeping up, Homelander left you in the room heading out, his eyes examining that all cameras were in fact turn off and so were the microphones, stopping by a tacky painting of kittens in the hallway, tapping on the thick frame carefully.

“I was thinking I should have this place redecorated” He said loudly, his hand stroking the frame– bring it into the 21st century… What do you like– farmhouse chic… art deco? Altho your house was a mix-match of things.”

You jumped off the bed and followed him keeping distance as you tried to suppress your trembling hands.

“You’ve been to my house?”

“I was curious about you… you’ve been here 5 months and the doctors are surprised you haven’t… lost your mind.” He turns to you– altho you’ve been playing the music twice as loud as before”

“Is lonely in here…” You look away trying to figure out the best words you ought to say– you haven’t visited me in weeks”

“I told you. I’m busy– I have a movie… we are doing some re-shoots… the studio feels like they need a new direction and we needed a new post-credit scene so it ties up with The Deep’s next film and–” he bites his tongue– I should call… I’ll have a phone installed… but what can I do to make your stay here less lonesome.``

“Keep me company… at least downstairs I could see the other girls…” You look down– are they okay?”

“That whole thing has been shut down. No need for it to continue if I have you.” 

He didn’t expect to see that beam of light in your eyes, but then those lips of yours straightened for something sinister came into your mind.

“What happened to them?” Faces that were still fresh in your mind spoil– are they okay?”

“Who knows…” he shrugs with genuine indifference– oh don’t make that look! I didn’t make the order, I simply told them to close shop… I can find out if you want.”

Staring into his eyes for what could’ve been an eternity but you never answered, which seemed to please him, he stretched his hand asking for yours and in that darkened hallway he seemed to be its only shadow, you obeyed afraid of displeasing him punished with abandonment for another endless loop, his fingers are always so warm and soft around yours. 

“You don’t sleep very much do you? I used to sleep a lot when they left me alone… which wasn’t often” He squeezes your hand pulling you closer– you can talk to me, Y/N. I want to know…”

“You’ve been to my home… you should know why I don’t sleep much…” 

“I can’t… imagine what you’ve been thru… If I lost Ryan–”

“I accepted it. I think it just wasn’t my time or his time…” You cut him off– I don’t know ‘bout God’s plan or nuthin but I just accepted that maybe one day it be for me but not yet.”

Homelander gave you a half moon, glad to see how strong you’ve been, glad to know you could withstand his abuse… you continued to be a challenge.

That night you both laid in bed, cradling him in your arms watching him mumble loudly in his sleep, his eyes shifting wildly, you watch him fight in his nightmare as you thought of your own… of those women and the bottles, how your signatured had doomed them, you bit your lips and watched him until exhaustion ate you up.

Waking up with a kiss from the sun without ever experiencing a single nightmare, not even their faces haunt your sleep.

It made you ill to be so relieved.

He kept you company, watching movies and eating popcorn, lounging around forcing you to read books to him, you thought that this would all you two would do-- just lounge around and pretend you weren’t growing bored.

“Wanna go out for dinner?” 

Your ears perked up.

“I’ll go and tell them to get us some clothes, and we can go have dinner.”

“You mean outside?”

“Of course silly… you’ve been good, I think you deserve it.” He jumps off the couch, heading towards the metal door dragging his feet– you like chinese. I saw you had lots of take-out menus.”

“I would love to” You ran after him, hugging him– can we get Ice-cream too… afterwards?”

“I could always go for a milkshake.” He kissed your cheek– be a good girl and go get ready would ya?”

He faded into the other side, hearing those metal doors slide open filled you with joy, you had your chance, you were good, you did all that Homelander wanted of you, you listened to his endless ramblings and you gave him what he stole you for without complaint, and now he rewarded you, the gods had finally heard you.

This was your chance.

You would run to the cops, you would hide in the sewers, you would run until your feet were stumps if you had to but you would get out of here, away from him, away from his dollhouse.

You were so focused you didn't even register his sudden kiss until you started to undress in the bathroom, you touched your cheek wondering about why he'd done so.

You did as you were told and as your hair dried he came back bearing clothes from this century entering the bedroom as you stood covered with nothing but a towel, he came in an orange t-shirt and a navy jacket his sight on your face as if he had manners. It took you a few seconds to realize these were your clothes, washed and ironed, he threw them in the bed lingering for a few seconds before returning you some privacy.

“You look good” You smile feeling weird in your own clothes, nothing but a band t-shirt and your best jeans, he handed you a jacket that was definitely not yours but a matching one to his own– they told me there’s this bar you liked quite a bit”

“The Loose End?” you smiled, they knew you there, the bartender knew you by name, the regular waitress Liz knew you too, if he took you there you could find a way out– they’re cheap and the nachos are great… and they have live music every weekend.”

“It’s a date then.” 

For the first time you crossed those steel doors, those wall held a boring room, a set of desk littered here and there alongside filing cabinets, a young man in a lab coat handed Homelander something while you looked around everywhere this whole setup was nothing but a repurposed kitchen, a storage close, and the entry hall, two large windows let the light in allowing you to see the driveway, and more evergreen forest, there were no houses just road and bushes indeed this location was as desolated as initially suspected. Leaving through the front door you spotted a pair of bikes parked on the side, while the garage was closed. A random man dragged a trolley filled with peonies, your feet were trembling as you stepped on that welcome mat, the air was so chilly against your skin, so refreshing on cracking lips.

Grass… trees… clouds… nowhere to run, you looked at the bikes but never did you look for their keys five seconds ago.

“Are we getting an Uber?” You looked at him.

He took you by the waist, not giving you an answer before jumping straight into the heavens, there was a town to the east, a highway near it, before your words could leave your body, he pressed your face against his shoulder, it's a whistling sound singing in your ear as an insanely heavy weighted blanket slammed against you, this song kept playing cut abruptly by honking, your feet hit the ground and you could’ve sworn you’ve died he lets go of your head messin with your hair as you parted from this tight embrace, looking bemused.

“Am I alive?”

“There’s not a safer vehicle in the world than me.” He chuckles– you’re fine.”

Blinking hard you looked around and immediately recognized the street peeking from the end of the alleyway, your old apartment was 20 minutes from this place, you started moving without him.

Your neck snapped back as he took your arm, forcing you still.

“The restaurant is that way.”

He held your arm so tight your fingers tingle from numbness, interlocking elbows as he forced you into the street, to passerbys you were just another nameless couple, nobody gave you guys a second look, the afternoon light was beginning to fade behind tall buildings, you look at strangers pleading for them to notice something was off only to meet discomfort and indifference, people minded their business and in the busy street you two failed to stand out, you knew every street and in your silence you hoped to see familiar faces but nothing but strangers surrounded you both.

Both stopping at the entrance of a chinese restaurant, you’re sure you’d ordered from here before, the place is loud and there’s a TV set on the sports channel, it smells of fried rice and oil and you can hear the cook shouting in cantonese, he never lets you speak and the waitress is too busy talking to her coworker to care just telling you to sit anywhere you like.

He sits you in a booth on the corner away from the window almost hidden but able to see a good chunk of the people, the tv plays in the back but you can’t see it, your face is obscured by a beam, the more you look at the decour it strikes you as cheap and busy, lights dim and there wasn’t many people inside no doubt he picked this place for a reason.

“I feel like egg rolls and sweet and sour pork… you want noodles or rice?”

“Rice… with chicken… and…” You glance at the menu– scallion pancakes…”

Time moves like a dream, you count the exits, the number of waitresses, you hear the phone used for take-out orders but from your spot you can’t see the phone, you see the paper sign saying ‘toilet’ which could lead to an unseen exit, maybe into the kitchen, but as the entree arrived you knew you couldn’t run to your old home, you could run to the nearest metro station take the train anywhere, the direction made no difference you just had to find a cop… anything to save you.

As you force yourself to chew it dawns on you how Homelander has not spoken, turning to see him and he has a dry smile in his lips, his sight focused on the table on the furthest end of the room, the party grew louder you assumed they caught his attention annoyed by their presence or something in that vein.

Dishware clank and people spoke and baseball played but his attention was on them alone, you swore you could’ve run and he wouldn’t notice.

“Are you okay?” You spoke with the meekest tone you could muster– is there something wrong with the food?”

He scoots in his seat moving closer to the edge of table, this boot could’ve sat a party of five with ease so he left you with a lot of space and for a moment you felt as if he was about to just walk out but instead he looked at the empty spot then jerked his head towards the direction of the party.

“Is there a friend of yours there…?” You try to remain bubbly, finding his demeanor uneasy.

Following him you take his former spot but he doesn’t leave the boot, and then you see it.

The big thing he was staring at.

She was so thin that it looked bigger than it should, she was a tiny frail thing and the bump protruded out of her stomach violently. She sat back down, her grin so big and her laugh so chirpy as she rejoined the group.

The group too engrossed in each other to notice… to notice the crying woman on the other side of the dimly lit restaurant.

He seemed the same, his hair was the same, his beard was the same, his shirt was the one you bought him last christmas and he looked… happy… happy as he kissed this woman you’ve never seen, holding her hand, caressing her stomach, she didn’t need a name for you to despise what she meant, there it was your ex-husband who shouted at you about not being ready to be a father, your ex who showed up late to the funeral and didn’t stick around to comfort you, who never made it to the hospital visits more than twice, here he was happy.

Looking at a young thing carrying the baby he did want.

Just like he never looked at you.

“Am so happy you’re having a little girl!” The older woman who sat across from him said– after everything that happened I'm just elated for you Eric.”

You heard your mother’s voice with so much clarity.

“After Y/N I never thought I would find somebody but I think she would’ve been happy for us. I’m just glad you guys are doing okay after everything…”

“It’s hard but you are still family and we can be happy for you and your sweet little girl”

You watched him comfort your mother, the way he talked about you as if he meant it.

When did he ever mean it? Did he find remorse in his heart after you were gone or was it to brush away the accusations.

‘Who would you run to?’ that voice in your head asked, your family was right there, your dad, your mom, a mutual friend of you both, your ex– they were all there but they didn’t see you, the more you focused on their words, the way they mentioned your name as if it made them feel icky.

“I was thinking of naming her after Y/N, I know she meant a lot to Eric and had we not met at that support group–

You ran off the booth, rushing to the bathroom, you’re sure somebody looked at you as the plates rattled, Homelander gave you a glance but didn’t follow you.

Slamming the door behind you, in that ugly cramped bathroom you screamed into your knees, every fiber of your body recoiled, tightening around your chest, you stayed there until your own sobs hurt your throat and your eyes itched from salt.

Staring at your swollen eyes and red nose you washed away what you could, nausea still lingered robbing you off your appetite.

The door opened and there was no red, white and blue suited supe, just a hall with faded pictures and a storage closet, walking not knowing what to find, not wanting to be seen.

He was still in the booth, happily waiting on you with a bag of leftovers propped on the table.

“Let’s go home…” You whispered, your throat hoarse.

“Home? Where is that?” he grins

“Home… take me home… please…”

He stares at the party who are now sharing their final drinks and readying to leave.

You sit on the edge pushing him into the booth, forcing him to pay attention to you and not those behind, maybe it was because he was Homelander that you kissed him, that you had the attention of a more enviable man than Eric ever was that you kissed him in front of him  and your family, maybe it was because it felt good, his thin lips soft and delicate against yours, it was  quick thing, his shock was palpable in the nervousness of his kiss was cute, but it felt good… for once something felt good again.

“Let’s go Homelander… I don’t wanna be here anymore…”

His lips pressed against your cheek before lifting himself, making sure to cover your sight as you both left the building turning away from the window as the party began to gather their things, he stopped for a second after walking for a few minutes.

“I just need to text Ashley something before I forget… work stuff” You didn’t care.

He typed slowly with his index instead of his thumbs which made you cringe a little.

“All good. You sure you don’t wanna go watch a gig, we don’t have to go back home.” He said softly.

“My tits hurt.” His eyes light up at the lie– unless you wanna have a sippy in the toilets before the show stars to help me out here”

“... I… I do…” 

If he blushed any harder he’d be a stop light, you smiled unable to stop chuckling at his stupid face.

“Didn’t peg you for the kind of guy to get freaky in the bathroom of a dingy bar… guess America’s son does have a real kinky side to him.”

“You have no idea darling… do you have a kinky side perhaps?”

“Fuck me.” Her stomach popped into your head, his hand caressing her bulge played on loop, his disgusting smile, all of him played all around you, memories of his touch burnt your skin, everybody had his disgusting mug on their faces– and find out.”

He took your hand and started walking faster, throwing away the bag of takeout into the lap of the first homeless person he’d seen.

The woman looked at Eric as he said goodbye to your parents, her phone buzzed, turning around to hide her screen, a text message from with a receipt for 25,000 dollars deposited on her account, as well as a doctor’s appointment booking.

She signed with relief.

“Understood.” she texted back.

[demonic0angel]

(Prompt: Clockwork gave Danny, Jazz and Jason a mission: Capture the Four Perils and bring them back to Ghost Zone)

"Hundun, Qiongqi, Taowu, and Taotie," Jazz said as she, Danny and Jason were looking at the cave. "the Four Perils. These creatures were said to be the ghosts of the four ancient criminals namely Huandou, Gun, Gonggong, and Sanmiao. You may knows Sanmiao is identified with Chiyou, a bull warrior that rebels against the Jade Emperor."

"There was a guy named Gun?" Danny asked.

"Yes, but his name is just means big fish in Chinese..." Jazz explained.

"So what're these creatures actually looked like?" Jason asked.

"Hundun is a yellow winged creature of chaos with six legs and no face, Qiongqi is monstrous tiger with wings that eats people, Taowu a reckless and stubborn tiger-like creature with boar teeth and human-like face, and Taotie is gluttonous... sheep and boar hybrid?" Jazz replied. "That's all the informations Clockwork gave to me."

"Ok, so now we've to those catch these guys, right?"

(An odd choice of capture targets but aight lmao)

“Yep,” Danny said. “Easy peezy.”

“You’re going to jinx us,” Jazz scolded, and Danny obliged her worries by knocking on the cave wall in place of wood.

But it was too late.

They hadn’t even needed to look for the Qiongqi. The moment the three of them had stepped out of the cave with intentions to go into the city to continue their search, the tiger-like monster immediately swooped in and tried to eat their faces off.

“Oh! I forgot that it bites off the noses of noble and righteous people!” Jazz recalled, and Jason immediately grabbed her and pulled her down as the beast lunged at them.

“Thanks for the info, Princess, but we’re in the middle of something?! Stop getting distracted and catch the damn thing!”

So while Jazz and Jason were fighting off the Qiongqi, Danny ran off to capture the Taowu, which was trying in vain to fight the cars in the middle of a street, blocking an intersection with its body as people screamed and ran away from it. Seeming to think that the screams were cheers, the Taowu preened and was even more enthusiastic in trying to kill the cars as Danny dodged its chaotic moves to try and catch it.

The Taotie was slightly more difficult to find after the three of them struggled to capture the first two. It had been found inside of a restaurant, hiding within the freezer and eating everything in sight, even the metal walls. It took a few days before anyone found it and reported it.

Finally, the three of them only needed to find the Hundun. It took a long, long time, almost a week before they found the faceless creature helping the Joker in a new plan to torment everyone in Gotham. It was quickly solved with some ghostly technology, but by the end, Jason’s eye was twitching and Danny looked like he was about to wring the necks of anyone who was about to approach him.

Clockwork watched them with a small smile on his face as they all trudged up the steps to his lair.

“You found them?” He asked, his form shifting.

“If you weren’t Jazz and Danny’s grandpa, I’d tell you to fuck yourself,” Jason hissed as he tossed the special container that held all Four Perils to Clockwork. Clockwork caught it and chuckled.

“But you got to spend time with Jazz, right? It’s not all bad.”

Danny growled, crossing his arms, “It was bad for me. You’re on thin ice, old man.”

“Maybe next time, I’ll send you on a mission with—”

“SHUT!!”

[big-tiddy-bi]

This is part 2 of the Danny yelling at the justice league fic. It was going to be a one shot but @phoenixdemonqueen called one of the lines I wrote cool, and I started squealing, flapping my arms and jumping around my kitchen so I had to write more <3 also hydrate or  diedrate

Tw for body horror, idk if it counts but better safe than sorry <3

——————

Greek mythology has many myths on of which is Theseus and Pirithous. Pirithous full of hubris decided, with the help of Theseus to kidnap the goddess Kore and try to forcefully marry her. Before they can enact this honestly genius plan, that was sarcasm by the way, her husband traps them in chairs with snakes and leaves them there for the furies to torture.

Most stories have a lesson And the lesson of this one is very important. Don’t Be Stupid, Stupid. 

Currently John Constantine was trying and failing to tell the justice league. “Are you fucking stupid” and deadman told them “to fight someone from the infinite realms is suicidal”.

After Danny’s stunt most of the non-magical justice league wanted to hunt him down to “set the record straight”, when they said that John and deadman left the room.

On the day the justice league stated in the email, they stood at a sign stating “welcome to Amity, the most haunted place in America”.

One of the most loved groups of people, the justice league walked through the city like ghosts. They were used to stairs and whispers, but usually of worship and maybe small insults but not like this. Could feel the distain in the air, like the city itself was trying to strangle them.

A tall blonde teen in a varsity jacket screamed at them to leave, that they weren’t wanted, but with much more explicit language.

Flash tried to make a joke, and the resulting glare from the rest of the league could have killed him on the spot, and several of the residents through things at him after they heard him.

They walked up to the building that held mayor’s office. Batman’s face was unreadable, unlike Superman’s whose expression told all his feelings of worry.

In the building they heard several voices, on of which matched phantom, ridiculing the mayor. Who just kept sighing in utter annoyance.

Wonder Woman opened the door to the office to be met with a comedic scene. Phantom floating in one corner of the room flipping of the mayor, who was also flipping him off in return. A goth girl with vine tattoos trailing from her wrist up her arms was slipping some papers onto the table, with the title mandatory vegan in bold letters while the mayor was distracted. two boys one with a tattoo around his eye similar to the eye of Ra, the other had on a shirt that said “I know all your secret identities, don’t test me” both sitting on beanbags playing a video game that was projected on of the walls of the office. one girl with beautiful curly hair was coming through the window arms filled with take out bags, a couple from a Chinese restaurant and the others a fast food place. A woman with red hair was helping her in, holding a tray full of drinks.

All of them turned their heads in unison, phantom and the two tattooed individuals eyes glowing green. the mayor and the redheaded woman’s glowed green.

The window person finished coming through, and set the bags down on the mayor’s desk next to the drinks. The pulled a toxic green knife from behind her back, the redhead woman got into a defensive position her cheeks torn open so she could her hundreds of teeth, razor sharp. The mayor leaned forward in his chair, placing a hand on his desk, mouth turned up in a grin, showing of his sharp canines.

The red headed boy quickly moved to the back of the room, while his video game partner stood up, holes appearing on his body, one of his eyes rolling back into his head leaving another hole, all dripping with sand. The goth woman slowly grew liken and moss in her shoulders, it slowly crawled up one side of her face, she opened her mouth and vines sprung from it, wrapping around her head ripping her skin a flower came out replacing her face.

Phantom was the worst, he grew into a vaguely human shape thousands of mouths opened up on his body, some in other places around the room.

Phantom asked in a distorted voice “ were our warnings not enough for you?”

Batman spoke up “we came here to” but he was interrupted.

The sand being spoke this time. Angerly “ to gravel at our feet for forgiveness, to beg in a futile attempt to win back fame?”

Batman responded again “no, we are here” but he was interrupted again this time by the flower woman

“Without our permission, without the permission of the public, you governed by none.” The flower petals began to pulse “ you who could be saving people, come here to plead like dogs praying for table scraps” she yelled.

“We are here to talk” Batman finally got to say.

The redheaded boy responded this time. “ Bruce Wayne, these actions are unbecoming of you”

The entire justice league was taken aback. “Don’t be surprised” the redheaded woman said “you and your kin’s bodies may be living, but you belong to death the same as us”

“Let’s hear them out” the mayor said “after that you can end them in anyway you wish” he was bluffing of course, none of the heroes on team phantom would ever kill someone, but the justice league didn’t need to know that.

The curly haired woman spoke “ so, if you want to talk then talk”

Superman answered this time “ we never got your messages, we only found them while cleaning out the servers”

What sounded like every voice ever heard replied “what do you mean” the voice, voices? Sounded surprised.

“Exactly that” Wonder Woman answered.

“Someone hacked into our system and deliberately hid all communications from amity” the flash continued

Phantom appeared behind Batman. Intangible hand going into his throat and wrapping around his trachea “if you are lying, I will destroy each of your families”

Phantom floated through Batman to get back in front. In the blink of an eye everyone was back to normal.

��Tell us about this breach” the mayor said crossing his arms. “ so we can take care of it”

————————-

Tell me what you think <3 this is my first part two

@skulld3mort-1fan @mynameisnotlaura @justwannabecat @jotaroslooseeyebrowhair @thegatorsgoose @yjfk @learning-to-fly-on-my-own @iglowinggemma28 @bleuyellow93 @aconitewolfsbane @fox-sama97 @catmeowbored @stargirl1331





[lotusflowerbreakingthesurface]

PingXie Moments Compilation

𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝟖𝟏𝟕 𝐃𝐚𝐨𝐦𝐢 𝐅𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥!! 🎉

On this special day, let's reminisce about PingXie moments in the book∼ Fanfictions are indeed tasty, but the canon moments are also delicious, right? (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

Truthfully, I planned to compile all of them in one post, but I realized that there are too many PingXie moments, I'm afraid if I post them all, I will become a PingXie Bot, thus I picked some moments (and some jokes) that I thought were quite memorable and interesting. It's only 40 moments, it doesn't follow the timeline, perhaps only 80% of them.

Warning: Spoilers! Very long post! CP-oriented post! It's a compilation of PingXie moments in the book, naturally, there are spoilers. I added a little notes/meta/comments/related interviews as supplementary files. And I'm not an expert in the Chinese language (as you already know, I use mtl) so I put the source below, just in case you want to check the Chinese raw or other translations yourself. I apologize in advance if there is any mistake m(_ _)m

(Since there is a limit to insert images, I went with quoting them.)

Sources: Chinese Raw | MereBear's Translation | 瓶邪bot | Original Image by 刘巴布 | Divider by @anitalenia

1. Daomu Biji Vol. 1: Seven Star Lu Palace Chapter 2

As I was talking, I saw a young man walking out of the front door with a long thing on his back that was tightly wrapped in cloth. I knew at first glance that it was an ancient weapon. This thing was indeed very valuable, and if it sold well, the price could go for more than ten times its worth.

Note: In the book, it was their first meeting. But in an old Daomu Biji mobile game, NPSS added this line (it seems that he forgot about it later though):

“The first meeting with Zhang Qiling was not downstairs of Uncle Three's house, but at Wu Xie's full-month celebration, but they both forgot it.” ☆

2. Daomu Biji Vol. 4: Snake Marsh Ghost City (Part II) Chapter 18 | Chapter 47 (MereBear)

He continued, "I am a person without a past and a future. All I do is to find find my connection with this world. Where did I come from and why am I here?" He looked at his hands and said calmly, "Can you imagine that if someone like me disappears from this world, no one will find out, as if I have never existed in this world, without leaving any trace? Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I often doubt whether I really exist or am just a phantom of a person."

I was speechless and thought for a while before saying, "It's not as exaggerated as you say. If you disappear, at least I will find out."

3. Daomu Biji Vol. 6: Ancient Building Under the Dark Mountain Chapter 39

Pangzi gestured for me to ask Men You Ping. I looked at him and heard him say, "About five hours ago, you appeared where you are now, in a deep coma, barely conscious. We gave you a simple first aid, and then five hours later, you woke up."

I waited for Men You Ping to continue speaking, but he shut up.

"That’s it?" I asked in surprise.

"That’s it." He said in a muffled voice.

[....]

Pangzi nodded and said, "Xiaoge and I have been in another cave, which is relatively dry, but I will come here to get water every once in a while. When I found that there was suddenly another person in the cave, I was scared to death, but I recognized you immediately, called Xiaoge, and rescued you together. You were already dead, so if you really need to find someone to save your life, I, Pangye, was still qualified to make a guest appearance. Later, we were afraid that you might have broken bones, so we didn't dare to move and just waited here for you to wake up."

Note: Xiaoge gives Wu Xie mouth-to-mouth resuscitation here. Someone analyzed it and NPSS confirmed it. Here is the analysis:

“If you want to perform CPR on a person who is not breathing without moving the body, the most basic and important thing is artificial respiration. Judging from Pangzi's tone, the whole rescue process was completed by him and Men You Ping. But there is a key word here: "guest appearance". Pangzi did not play the main role in the rescue process. So who played this main role? I think everyone should understand.” ☆

4. Daomu Biji Vol. 6: Ancient Building Under the Dark Mountain Chapter 49

He leaned against the stone wall behind him and said calmly: "He and I can't leave."

"What nonsense are you talking about?" I cursed.

He suddenly smiled at me and said: "Fortunately, I didn't kill you..."

I was stunned. He spat out a mouthful of blood.

"You--" My head buzzed.

He still smiled at me, his head slowly lowered, and sat there, as if he was just taking a rest. However, the surroundings were completely silent.

Note: There once was a typo in the first draft, but it was edited later.

Edited version: “还好，我没有害死你……”

Unedited version: “一汀烟雨杏花寒好， 还好， 我没有害死你......”

“一汀烟雨杏花寒” comes from an ancient poem “戴叔伦：燕子不归春事晚，一汀烟雨杏花寒”, it describes the scenery of late spring and expresses the feelings of melancholy and separation. ☆

5. Daomu Biji Vol. 7: Stone Shadow in Qiong Cave Chapter 18

Men You Ping did not answer her. Instead, he turned to me and said, "Take me home." Then he walked out without looking back.

6. Daomu Biji Vol 8: The Finale Book 2 Chapter 3 | Part 2 Chapter 54 (MereBear)

I was stunned for a moment, and then froze. At that moment, my mind became blank.

I couldn’t describe the emptiness in my heart. I suddenly didn’t know what I should do.

Dead? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Is he really dead? Hey, what kind of international joke is this?

"Wake up. Let's go home." I patted his face, suddenly finding it all very funny. I turned to Pangzi and laughed. "Look at Xiaoge."

"I know." Pangzi said on the side, his voice was very low.

Then, my hands began to tremble uncontrollably. I looked at my hands and found that there was no sadness in my heart. My consciousness did not react, but my body instinctively felt despair.

I thought to myself, he’s really fucking sitting there, he’s really fucking dead. Men You Ping is really fucking dead!

There were actually such things in this world, and Men You Ping could actually die.

[....]

My instincts were collapsing under the pressure, but all kinds of uncomfortable feelings were still leaking out of the "pressure cooker" of emotions. I felt that I couldn't let my emotions run wild, because if I got sad, I might die here. I feel very strange in my heart, not just sad. I don’t know if others can understand my complicated feelings. First there was despair, then more of a distrust of what I saw. My mind went blank for a long time before all the emotions in my heart came to the surface.

I have always wondered how I would feel if Men You Ping died. I thought that maybe I was extremely sad, or maybe I had thought about it too much and done too much mental preparation, so I became numb and felt that I could totally bear it. Now that it has really happened, it has turned into a strange mood that I can’t even deal with.

After that, I was in a dilemma, not knowing whether I should be sad or pretend to be calm and endure the pain. In the end, the former gradually prevailed. I did nothing beside his body, just stared blankly.

But just when I felt that tears were about to fall, I suddenly saw Men You Ping's hand move and scratch the floor!

Comment: I feel like "Wake up. Let's go home." is the answer to Xiaoge's "Take me home." in the previous moment, don't you think so? And here is the description of Wu Xie's feelings when he thought that Xiaoge died. It's quite long and depressing... T_T

7. Daomu Biji Vol. 8: The Finale Book 2 Chapter 25 | Part 2 Chapter 76 (MereBear)

"I came to say goodbye to you." He said, "It's all over. I thought about my connection with this world, and it seems that the only one I can find now is you."

Comment: Is this the kind of connection that Xiaoge was looking for in Daomu Biji Vol. 4?

Note: In the Live Broadcast Interview on June 11, 2021, there was a question about what "嫩牛五方" Nenniu Wufang (Iron Triangle + HeiHua) think of Wu Xie, and this is Xiaoge's part:

NPSS: For Zhang Qiling, Wu Xie is his only connection with the human world. He can live without any connection with the human world. After so many years, Wu Xie was the opportunity that made him willing to connect with the human world, which was also something that required courage for him, because connecting with Wu Xie means connecting with other people. At the beginning, Wu Xie was just one of the many people he had saved, but Wu Xie reached a state of transcendence through his own qualities. He was able to attract another person who was not a mortal. There is such a person, when you look him in the eye, you will have this feeling-

Host: This is that person, this is the person I am looking for.

NPSS: Yes. ☆

8. Daomu Biji Vol. 8: The Finale Book 2 Chapter 27 | Part 2 Chapter 78 (MereBear)

That night, we found a relatively dry place and lit a fire. Sitting in front of the fire, he silently looked at me for the first time.

I also stared at him for a long time. Since he kept looking at me like this, I began to wonder whether the focus of his gaze was actually on me. When I found that he was really looking at me, however, I felt very strange. I said, "Is something wrong with me? Is there a monster behind me?" I asked him several times, but he didn't respond. I thought this person was not very normal at ordinary times. Now in this situation, I definitely couldn't understand and didn't need to understand. But after a while, he suddenly asked me for a cigarette.

9. Daomu Biji Vol. 8: The Finale Book 2 Chapter 28 | Part 2 Chapter 79 (MereBear)

I screamed as I rolled all the way down the hillside. I knew it was a very steep cliff with a drop of at least thirty meters, so even if there was snow below, I would never be safe.

[....]

Just when I was about to despair, I suddenly heard a movement outside. Then, my flailing hands were grabbed by someone, and I was pulled out of the snow pit. I gasped for breath, and saw Men You Ping grabbed the back of my collar and pulled me out of the snow with force.

My eyes still saw a pink color, which was quite blurry. I looked at him, and I was so angry that I asked him: "Why did you come back again?"

He looked at me, then at the cliff above his head, and said to me, "I heard your cry for help."

Note: This is one of the famous PingXie moments, which later someone brought up this scene again in the comment section of the online version of Sand Sea 3 Chapter 5 (Chapter 116 on MereBear's site: Like a Red Bean in the Exquisite Dice, My Love for You is Deep in My Bones) in 2014. Here is the famous comment that is still circulating around in the DMBJ fandom:

“The moment I fell, holding my neck, I thought I couldn't speak anymore. The sky of Motuo was still empty, just like the Changbai Mountain. But this time, no one would jump down thirty meters to pull me up. I asked him why he came, and he said he heard my voice.” ☆

However, people still doubt where this quote actually comes from. As someone said, what I've mentioned before is the most likely source since it is the earliest one that can be found. The site was closed down, so I can't check it myself.

10. Daomu Biji Vol. 8: The Finale Book 2 Chapter 28 | Part 2 Chapter 79 (MereBear)

"That’s fine, do whatever you want. If you really knock me out, I have nothing to say, but I hope you know that if you need someone to accompany you to the end, I won’t refuse." I said, "I want to accompany you. This is my own decision, so don't worry about it."

Top comment: One is a confession that travels thousands of miles away, and the other is a stumbling pursuit. ☆

11. Daomu Biji Vol. 8: The Finale Book 2 Chapter 29 | Part 2 Chapter 80 (MereBear)

Men You Ping nodded, and I asked him: "If this is not the case, according to the promise, who should be the next in line for the Old Nine Gates?"

"You." Men You Ping said.

Me? I was stunned for a moment: "You mean, I was supposed to stay behind this bronze door for ten years?"

Men You Ping nodded, and just as I was about to ask him to clarify, Men You Ping suddenly reached out and pressed the back of my neck, and I lost consciousness."

12. Excerpt from 《与邪共予起灵书》 or see more here

I saw Menyouping standing in the dazzling light of the bronze door, as if waiting for me. It turns out that not everyone has left me. He is right here, behind this mysterious bronze door, looking forward to meeting me again just like me. Ten years, it sounds like a long time that cannot be passed, but when that moment comes, we will definitely feel the brevity of time. Its brevity may just be because you are looking forward to a reunion. You use your ten years to exchange my lifelong innocence, then I will use the next ten years and more ten years to exchange your ten years.

The passage above is related to the famous quote “用我一生换你十年的天真无邪” (I'll give you my whole life in exchange for your ten years of innocence).

According to this post, this sentence first appeared in a forum interview in 2010. When NPSS talked with readers about the final ending of the characters in the main story (Daomu Biji Vol. 1-8), he used the sentence "用自己的一生，再换你十年的天真无邪" (I'll give you my whole life in exchange for another ten years of your innocence) to summarize the ending of Zhang Qiling and Wu Xie in the main story.

NPSS's interview with Nangong Ling, the owner of PingXie Bar on Baidu Post Bar or Tieba (a popular Chinese forum) at that time: The Long-Delayed New Year Interview on March 11, 2010 ☆

Q: Is Wu Xie the most miserable person in the whole book? Is it true that one of him and Pingzi (Xiaoge) will die in the end?

A: Wu Xie is the most miserable, his life is a doomed tragedy, but Lao Zhang is not easy either.

Q: Then?

A: It delayed the occurrence of the whole tragedy.

Q: Then they suffered a tragedy together?

A: I use my life to exchange for your ten years of innocence.

And there is a follow-up. On November 1, 2011, NPSS participated in a symposium at Shenzhen University and interpreted the meaning of this sentence. ☆

Q: How do you understand "用我一生换你十年天真无邪" (I will give you my whole life for your ten years of innocence)?

A: On a very quiet night, I was sitting in front of my computer, chatting with an online friend who was my reader. She asked me if I could describe the whole story in one sentence. Then I thought about it and realized that the story could be described in one sentence: "用我一生换你十年的天真无邪" (I will give you my whole life for your ten years of innocence). It is not a very equal exchange. It is an infinite sacrifice of one person for another in exchange for a limited benefit.

13. Tibetan Sea Flower Part 1 Chapter 39

I said, "I don't know. I always feel that it's safer to be around Xiaoge. If he's not around, at least having his statue is better than having no statue at all."

14. Sand Sea 2 Chapter 53 | Chapter 92 (MereBear)

"Are you really willing to bear it?"

"I have no choice."

"You have a choice, you just can't see it."

"That means there is no choice."

Sigh

"Then will you tell him all this?"

"No."

"Then what will you tell him?"

"I will tell him that he is just a patient, and from now on, he can rest."

"They won't let you say these words."

"I won't allow them to stop me."

15. Sand Sea Part 3 Chapter 5 | Chapter 116 (MereBear)

玲珑骰子安红豆，入骨相思知不知

A dainty die with red beans engraved in it, don't you know, is a love yearning that penetrates to the bone?

(—Rediscovering Wen Tingyun by Mou, Huaichuan)

Note: As we know, this candy is only a title, but it has a deep meaning. “玲珑骰子安红豆，入骨相思知不知” is a passage from a poem by Tang Dynasty poet, Wen Tingyun (温庭筠), it's the second poem of two love poems in his collection of poems 《新添声杨柳枝词二首》/《南歌子词二首》.

井底点灯深烛伊，共郎长行莫围棋

玲珑骰子安红豆，入骨相思知不知

The poem is written in the voice of a woman, expressing her attachment to her lover, in the first line, it means she earnestly asked her husband not to miss the return date when he travelled far away. It is the woman's deep longing for her husband and the strong love she has for him that is hard to let go. The second line means the lovesickness that goes deep into the bones, revealing -once again- the woman's strong love that is hard to let go. And the words "Don’t you know?" (知不知) vividly expresses the woman's long separation, the difficulty of reunion, the deep pain of missing him, and even the fact that she wants to talk to no one. It can be said that the ending is natural and the aftertaste is endless. What the readers feel is the sincere and passionate love in the woman's heart —Baidu Encyclopedia

Since there is no way for me, a complete novice, to explain it through semantic and syntactic analysis, please visit here or here for more explanation.

In WeChat interview on August 6, 2013, NPSS said the reason why he chose that title:

Q: Sanshu, I would like to ask you, in Sand Sea series, when Wu Xie was slashed in the throat by the man in white, why was the chapter titled "玲珑骰子安红豆，入骨相思知不知"?

A: I chose that chapter title because that was the emotion I felt at the time. ☆

16. 2014 Chinese New Year Special "Fantasy" Chapter 27 (Epilogue) | Chapter 2.31 (MereBear)

When the sun absorbed the fog and dispersed it, the black fog completely dissipated. I turned my head to see where Men You Ping was, but saw the sunset shining in from the window next to me.

It was over, I was stunned for a moment and realized.

I was back in the small power station.

My hands and feet slowly revived, and the severe pain in my nasal cavity began to attack. The throat was full of the smell of blood, and all the blood turned into a paste in my throat.

In all the moments of coming back, I always felt a very sad emotion in my heart, which would make me silent for a moment.

Don't make the illusion too beautiful because it will eventually disappear. You think you have obtained and grasped it, but in fact there is nothing. This kind of memory is no different from my real memory. People themselves cannot really own anything.

17. Ten Years Chapter 31

This was written for me, he knew I would fulfill my promise. He hid the clue in Chen Pi Ah Si's nose, which really gave me face.

I clenched my fists, and a sense of security that I hadn't felt for many years suddenly rose from the bottom of my heart.

Note: The bolded sentence is an additional sentence in the physical book of Ten Years.

18. Ten Years Chapter 36

In the past ten years, I have had many dreams. I dreamed of him when he was young and I met him when I was young.

19. Ten Years Physical Book

"Not only that, if you can truly believe that you can do this, you can do anything." The voice in my heart answered me, "But, believing in yourself may be the most difficult thing in the world."

"What's so difficult about believing in yourself?" I asked.

"Just like you can't believe that you can walk on the water, only a very few people can truly believe in themselves." The voice in my heart answered me, "You can't even believe that you really entered here and heard these words."

A vast pool of water suddenly appeared in front of me, and the water surface was as calm as a mirror.

I looked at the surface of the pool and touched it with my feet. It was cold water. The waves spread and quickly disappeared at the end of the visible range. I saw a figure appearing very, very far away.

It was a familiar back, it was Xiaoge.

I stepped on it and fell into the water.

Then, I woke up. I looked up at the bronze door.

It was a dream, the door was still closed tightly.

I looked at my hand, and the wound was not cracked.

Comment: I really like the implication here, Wu Xie trusts Xiaoge more than himself...

20. Ten Years Chapter 41

"The people in that village make a dessert from glutinous rice and brown sugar. Since there’s plenty of rain in the village, a special weed called Yuzai ginseng grows there. The petals of this weed are put into the dessert, and are said to help with memory. Of course, it’s only a local legend."

I kept yawning as I spoke. My consciousness began to blur, but I didn’t stop talking.

I don’t know how long I stayed up, but in my hazy state, I suddenly felt someone slowly sit down beside me.

I hesitated for a moment, turned my head to look, and the other person also turned his head to look at me.

Pangzi slowly woke up and looked at us.I saw a familiar face, indifferent eyes, reflecting the light of the campfire.

People say that when you forget someone, the first thing you forget is their voice. But when he spoke, it wasn’t unfamiliar at all.

"You are old." He said

The music was still flowing, in this place closest to hell.

Pangzi came up, hooked his arm around Men You Ping's shoulder, and caused him to stumble: "How can we compare with you, Xiaoge? And you were willing to come out!!"

Men You Ping swayed from all the jostling.I pulled down my sleeve, covered the scars on my arm, and stood up.

He smiled at me and I lifted my bag: 'Let’s go."We just…haven’t seen you for a long time.

....

I live at the North Sea and you at the South Sea,

I asked the wild goose to pass a letter but was told they could not.

Each of us held a cup of wine and talked amid spring wind with peach and plum blossom,

For ten years we missed each other before lamps during night rain outside.

Note: About the poem, MereBear has already explained here. This is the Chinese version:

我居北海君南海，寄雁传书谢不能；

桃李春风一杯酒，江湖夜雨十年灯。

In short, it's about friendship, a happy gathering and how deeply they missed each other after they parted.

There is an interesting meta about Xiaoge's "you're old", read here.

Top comment: So when Xiaoge explained the amnesia brought by the heavenly gift in Sea of Lights, he looked into Wu Xie's eyes and said "there will be a little left", which means that Xiaoge faced endless darkness in the door, lost his perception of time, and had to use his remaining memory to try to recall Wu Xie's appearance. The words "you are old" in the past ten years contains Xiaoge's deep and heavy longing for Wu Xie.

21. Daomu Biji Extra: 2019 Mid-Autumn Festival

If Men You Ping said something, then it was fine, but he wouldn’t say anything. Instead, Zhang Haike kept telling me that as an outsider follower of Zhang Qiling, I should take care of these things. Fuck that shit, I thought to myself. I’m a guardian, not an outsider follower. He said that if I did well, I could start the special procedures that would give me the surname Zhang. I could be called Zhang Xie or Zhang Wu Xie in the future. Of course, I could also follow my master and be called Zhang Qixie.

I was so angry that day that I thought my liver was going to burst.

22. Daomu Biji Extra: The Other Shore | The Other Shore (MereBear)

It was too cold here, so after I died, I wouldn't be degraded. I would exist here for thousands and millions of years. I could sit here and let the wind and snow freeze me. According to my experience, hundreds of years later, Men You Ping would see the moment he was seeing now.

I seemed to be seriously ill and chose this ending myself. I was surprisingly calm and had no regrets. Although I could not be truly eternal like him, I found a way to coexist in the same time and space as him.

[....]

I didn't expect it to be so romantic. In this world, there was no other person who could use death as a romantic condiment so naturally.

Note: I think almost the whole short story is candy with a knife, but I can't possibly put it all here. There is a good PV about this short story, you can see it here or here.

Top comment:

”When we first begin to truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the person we love no longer loves us. What we should be afraid of is that even though they are dead, we still can’t stop loving them.”

23. A joke that is written by NPSS and posted on the official blog on Weibo

I hope this letter finds you well, I have heard that Wu Xie is well-informed, has a strong memory, is wise in all things, knows everything about the world like a little snow falls on a red stove and melts immediately, and often stays by the side of the patriarch as the two musical instruments strike the same note. I will come on the moon to meet you.

I looked at the letter, and Pangzi also looked at it, looking at me with an awkward look. I touched my nose and said, "What is this, Chu Liuxiang?"

Note: This joke was about the Zhang family sending a letter to Xiaoge and Wu Xie. “笙磬同音” (the two musical instruments strike the same note) is a metaphor for harmonious relationship as a family, but is often used in wedding congratulations. ☆☆

24. Thousand Faces Part 1-001 | Part 1-Introduction 2 (MereBear)

She looked at me and said, "Wu Xie, what is the secret in your heart? Is there anything you will never let anyone know until you die?"

I looked up at him, and a thought moved in my heart. She tilted her head and caught it: "Ah, you have it in your heart."

I smiled awkwardly. Yes, my thoughts moved just now.

I did have one.

I asked Ah Tuo: "Isn't this embarrassing?"

"That's something only you know." Ah Tou looked at some group photos I had hanging in my study room. "If I tell you a secret that I think is the most incredible. You have to tell me the thought you just had."

[....]

She looked at me, "Let me guess first, do you want... to live forever?"

[....]

"I do, but this is not my secret." I said to Ah Tou, "If there is no afterlife, then I want to live forever. I still have a lot of things I want to do with my friends, but I am not afraid of death. The richness of my life is second to none. I have enough. However, I agree to your conditions."

Note: In the second line, "我抬眼看着他" (I looked up at him), if it was referring to Ah Tou, "他" should be "她". I don't know whether it's a typo or not, some say it's not, and I check the Chinese raw, it still hasn't changed. If it's not a typo, "him" in "I looked up at him" can actually refer to Xiaoge, someone explained it on MereBear's site. Nevertheless, it doesn't change the meaning of "if there is no afterlife, then I want to live forever". Later, in Notes in Rain Village: Courtyard Chapter 12 or Notes in Rain Village: Part 2 Chapter 17, it was emphasized again:

Maybe I don’t believe in the afterlife.

Moreover, the afterlife is meaningless to me. I will not have a more thrilling life than this one.

On the ancient road, I met the ancient soul.

25. Restart Part 1-Not a Chapter | Restart Part 1 Chapter 112,5 (MereBear)

I drank to my heart's content that night. In the past ten or twenty years, I spent my days alone imagining things, panicking and being cowardly. At this moment, I understood the meaning of all of this.

I said to Bai Haotian, "I always hope not to disappoint others. Although it is difficult, I have finally reached the point in my life where I will be satisfied if I can just not disappoint one person."

[....]

I dreamed of the Tibetan Lama Temple, the floating ribbons in my dream, and I dreamed of everything, where I belonged, where my life belonged to, but I dared not touch, emphasize, or solidify it. I was afraid that I was not worthy of those memories, those times. Even though I had done so many things and controlled so many other people, I still did not dare to say any beautiful words.

26. Restart Part 1 Chapter 141 | Part 1 Chapter 141 (MereBear)

What was so important about me? I was a person who would have to say goodbye to Men You Ping one day in his life. I was a person who delayed Pangzi for getting rich and getting married. I made Xiaohua bankrupt, separated Xiuxiu from her closest relatives, and made my parents live in fear that I would follow Uncle Three’s path. I was far from worthy of the name "innocent (无邪)" my grandfather had given me. But in my confused first half of life, I lived an incredibly wonderful life. I had seen countless wonders in the world. I had the most amazing partner with the most stories in the world. We sang loudly on the cliffs, chanted the sutras on the snow-capped mountains, drank wine in the Gobi Desert, and watched the moon on the sea.

I've had enough in this life.

In Sina Weibo micro interview on August 03, 2018, NPSS talked about the bolded sentence:

Q: In the past ten years, Wu Xie's inner demon was Xiaoge. Ten years later, is Wu Xie's inner demon the life span? In the Reboot, he mentioned it many times. I feel depressed when I think of "I am a person who will have to say goodbye to Men You Ping one day in his life".

A: Most people in life will eventually say goodbye. For the one who leaves first, everything will return to peace. The one who leaves later will feel a little painful. It's not that scary. It's just unwilling to accept it.

27. Restart Part 1 Chapter 204 & Chapter 208

"...You have to understand what love is. Love is like a ghost. You can't see it when it comes, and it makes no sound when it leaves. Even if it's there, it's moving around. This thing doesn't make sense, it's fucking haunted. When you see it, it'll just pat its butt and leave. You ask it if it wants to leave or not. If it doesn’t go, you’ll have to light three pillars of incense. If it goes away, you can't find it back even if you burn down the house..."

[....]

"I just want to know what's behind the bronze door. If I'm about to die, can you please whisper something in my ear?" I said in the direction of Men You Ping.

There was no response from the other end, so I said, "If I am about to die, just say something in my ear, and then I will leave with peace of mind. Otherwise, you can't send me away even with three pillars of incense.

28. Restart Part 2 Chapter 12 | Chapter 12 (MereBear)

...But when I saw the look in Men You Ping's eyes when he looked at the rain, I didn't know what year or century he was thinking about.

It was so annoying to partner with a god.

29. Notes in Rain Village Chapter 5

Men You Ping looked at the snow. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction, and the snowflakes kept drifting in. His hair quickly turned white.

I wonder what he would look like with white hair.

30. Notes in Rain Village Chapter 15

"If I were your child*, would you not allow me to smoke?"

"Ah, I don't know, but you fell into a crack in the ground in the middle of the night. I don't have a daughter with night blindness." I glanced at Men You Ping, who was leaning against the door and looking at the two of us. His expression seemed to say, "You two both fell into a crack in the ground, what's there to discuss?"

Note: "If I were your child" is “如果我是你生的” in Chinese raw. There is a comment saying:

“The sentence "if I was born by you (如果我是你生的)" is very interesting. Children usually only use the word "birth (生)" to their mothers, and should say "if I were your child (如果我是你的孩子)" to their fathers. Xu Lei (NPSS) used the word "birth (生)" to Wu Xie through the girl's mouth, and I dare not think about it too much.” ☆

Comment: It's not the first time NPSS used the "birth" joke to Wu Xie, and I still remember how Wu Xie's word in Restart "我他妈能生四个" (I can give birth to four) is like a well-known joke in the fandom. So, I can only blame NPSS for how normal I feel about PingXie Mpreg fics and how many there are.. (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

31. Notes in Rain Village Chapter 17

Men You Ping walked towards us, one step, two steps, three steps, six or seven steps.

He walked to our side, and I looked back at where he was just now, and he was no longer there.

Don't worry about it, I thought to myself, we couldn’t go up, so he walked down.

32. Notes in Rain Village Chapter 23

The two dismantled caissons were finally put up with a simple scaffolding. Men You Ping was so damn cool, I had no idea how he dismantled it. Apart from the movements, I found his extreme concentration and skill really enviable.

33. Notes in Rain Village Chapter 24

I felt a little dizzy after drinking and had a very long dream that night. I dreamed of snow-capped mountains and my own ending.

It was the first time I had this kind of dream, but I knew that I would often dream about this moment from now on.

In this world, everyone was a circle and Men You Ping was the only eternal straight line. We were strung on this straight line like Buddhist prayer beads, heading for the other side that Buddha could see. It was just that the other side was an infinite time and space.

34. Notes in Rain Village: Courtyard Chapter 4 | Chapter 9 (MereBear)

At about 9 o'clock, I was looking at the yard from the window and saw Men You Ping tidying up the moss in the yard alone. I leaned on the windowsill, he sorted it out for more than two hours, and I watched him for more than two hours.

I didn't know if he liked my plan or not, but I thought if Pangzi liked it very much, he might like it a little.

35. Notes in Rain Village: Travel Chapter (Physical Book Version)

That night I had a dream. I dreamed that all the happiness here turned into little elves, flying around people. There was also one behind Deren. His face was constantly changing, but the elf was still shining.

"Don't worry, it's okay." In the dream, Men You Ping said to me. The elf behind him hid in his hair and looked at me shyly.

36. Notes in Rain Village 3: Travel Chapter 43

It just happened to be the last moment of sunset, and the sunset glow on the sea turned colorful. We parked the car and unloaded the poultry and livestock. Pangzi went in to prepare dinner with his friends, and Men You Ping and I sat on the embankment by the sea.

Source: Here

37. Notes in Rain Village 4: Pastoral Chapter 8

Then I saw a very magical place: there was a place far away in the starry sky, where the stars were very dense, and those stars were like waterfalls sliding down from the sky, rushing all the way to the clouds below the train.

"The stars are falling," I said to Men You Ping, sounding like a nonsensical child. "Falling, falling down."

38. Notes in Rain Village 4: Pastoral Chapter 33

When I was halfway up, even though I was wearing a raincoat, I was completely soaked and looked very miserable. I knew I would not give up, but I still felt a little desperate. As if I had sensed something, I suddenly stopped and looked back.

Men You Ping was standing behind me.

I didn't know when he came, but it was just like ten thousand times before.

39. Looking for the Dead in the Sea of Lights Chapter 24

As soon as I walked out of the circle of light from the bonfire, Men You Ping rushed out from the darkness on the other side of the camp, in the opposite direction from me. He jumped on his horse, leaped over the bonfire, rushed behind me, and lifted me onto the horse with one hand. Then, two men and one horse rushed towards Pangzi.

40. Queen Mother's Ghost Banquet Chapter 82

"I, I, I..." I tried to describe it, but I couldn't see clearly with my eyes squinting. I murmured, "I need Xiaoge. I really need him this time."

That's it. Obviously, it's not all of them, but I'm spent haha. People in the Chinese fandom often said that PingXie is a Chinese-style cp and pure love “纯爱” type of ship, which I think it's indeed true. Their heartfelt moments are often hidden between allusions and metaphors, and the strong bond between them mostly relies on the emotional attachment rather than just physical touches or skinships. To me, it makes them so unique and interesting. What's more the taste of pure love that people often associate with this cp/ship is actually pretty rare itself. In the end, they did care for each other regardless of what people used to define their relationship (⁠人⁠*⁠´⁠∀⁠｀⁠)⁠｡⁠*+♡

𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝟖𝟏𝟕!ヾ⁠(⁠･⁠ω⁠･⁠*⁠)⁠ﾉ

[whencyclopedia]

Ghosts in Ancient China

Ghost stories were the earliest form of literature in ancient China. They were almost certainly part of a very old oral tradition before writing developed during the Shang Dynasty (1600 - 1046 BCE) and they continue to be popular in China today. Ghosts were taken very seriously by the ancient Chinese.

In modern-day China, ghosts only have power to harm if one believes in them, but in ancient China, they were a reality whether one believed in them or laughed them off. When a person died their soul journeyed across a bridge to the afterlife. They were judged as worthy or unworthy on this crossing; if they had lived a good life, they continued on, or if they had done evil, they fell from the bridge into hell.

If they reached the other side, they were either reincarnated or went on to live with the gods depending on one's beliefs. Buddhists, for example, believed that people were more often reincarnated while Confucians believed that the ancestors dwelt with the gods and could be prayed to for assistance or protection. The first step in this journey after death was one's burial and funeral service, and if this was not done right, the soul of the deceased would return to earth to haunt the living.

The Importance of Proper Burial

In China, the ground under the earth was considered the property of the gods. Cemeteries were located outside of towns and cities in rural areas and there were earth spirits there known as Tudi Gong as there were anywhere else. One could not just go and dig a grave without first honoring the gods and local spirits and purchasing the land from them.

The relatives of the deceased would choose a spot and then write up a legal contract purchasing that plot from the gods and spirits. This contract cited "the dead person's name, titles, and date of death; the exact dimensions of the plot, the price paid for the land...and signatures of witnesses" (Benn, 271). They placed the document in the grave and then honored it by paying a certain amount of cash. Since physical currency was of no use in the afterlife, people would purchase sheets of paper, cut out a certain amount of "bills" from it, write denominations on them, and burn them at the grave. Once all this was accomplished and signs were received that it was acceptable, the person could be buried.

Since it was hoped the dead person's soul would pass over the bridge to the land of the gods, grave goods were included in the burial, which consisted of favorite objects and food. The dead then had to be mourned for an appropriate amount of time. For parents and grandparents the minimum was three years during which one had to wear special mourning clothing, could not attend parties, listen to or play music, and, in the case of government positions, go to work. Government officials had to resign for three years when a parent or grandparent died, and failure to report a death to the authorities carried a penalty of exile or hard labor. These rules and many others applied to royalty as well as to the peasant class and if any of these steps was not done properly, or was ignored, the soul of the deceased would return to earth.

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