#also cang ji is still growing

[lucaonthropy]

This scene makes me laugh

[shijiujun]

Hello! Any warnings for nan chan?, I’m a iffy about their relationship since i feel like ling song jun raised him

heya! ermm actually not really tbh, but feel free to pose more questions or avoid this novel if you’re not convinced!

so linsong-jun isn’t really present for any raising? he’s pretty much asleep, stuffs demonic carp into his sleeve silently without interacting with it, most of the time! and then when carp becomes kid cang ji, he’s a kid for like... a week, and his brain like fast forwards into an adult like in the span of a day - and while he’s in kid form, jing lin... abandons him XD and then proceeds to fall asleep after feeding the kid blood - that happens like over the span of a few days/weeks. there’s no raising XD 

it’s just those few days or a week when cang ji is first a kid, he’s still trying to like figure out his limbs and speech patterns, which he does real quickly, and when he does, jing lin abandons him, and cang ji finds his way back - he’s crying like a kid yes, but it’s out of like desperation to be near his favourite, delicious deity-turned-food (he hasn’t figured out just why he has an instinctive need to be near jing lin yet), and when he gets back, jing lin is already asleep!!! jing lin wakes up for a moment, they talk a bit, and then he’s asleep again, and then enemies come and discover them, and then cang ji has to drink his blood and grows up into a teenager, enough to get them both off the mountain they’ve lived at for years. at this point cang ji has literally been in human form for a few days? as a demon as well, cang ji as demonic carp also has one goal, which is literally to devour jing lin to amass greater power/cultivation.

even as a kid, the first thing jing lin says is to warn him that if he wants to eat him he should do it now while he’s weak and groggy/asleep, because he ain’t gonna get another chance. i don’t see how any of this interaction constitutes any sort of loving/nurturing sort of raising! they’re well aware of what kind of ‘creature’ the other is. jing lin doesn’t think that this carp is something or someone he’s even taking care of, and demonic carp/cang ji never once thinks that jing lin is his keep/caregiver/parent etc. 

cang ji at jing lin - “yummy food, hungry, if i eat him up we’ll be together forever”

jing lin at cang ji - “a carp that may try to eat me up when he materializes in his human form, but for now it’s a carp, he may stay, but i’m sleeping all the time anyway, i hate person to person interaction, let me just die in this place”

jing lin is literally either asleep, injured, or daring cang ji to kill him, and then once cang ji feeds on his blood twice he’s a young teenager already and physically taking care of jing lin - basically cang ji figures it out on his own, i’d say he’s a house plant that fortunately didn’t die while jing lin was asleep for 80% of the time in 500 years, and the other 20% jing ling was silently feeding him and making sure he’s not too hungry BEFORE gg back to sleep

i guess as an ancient dragon that regresses into a demonic carp as well, it’s natural for his brain to just turn adult-mode on despite being stuck in a kid/teen/young dude’s body for a few weeks/months. as a demon - i don’t think the age thing kind of works either because he’s pretty much ancient. 

also while i’m on the topic of warnings as well, jing lin isn’t exactly suicidal i.e. he doesn’t actively seek death, he just doesn’t care if he lives or dies at any point, so doesn’t go out of his way to die or stay alive at least in the beginning, his soul is pretty much injured, hence the perpetual sleeping!

[vierran45]

Such longing! And I love how Cang Ji is growing more complex as he grows. He has already come quite a way from the simple hungry carp that just wanted to devour Jing Lin’s power.

Jing Lin loosened his fingers and disengaged his hand from Cang Ji’s palm. He turned around and waded ashore. Behind him, Cang Ji looked at the nape of his neck and recalled how he had been covered with wounds in his youth. He also recalled the scars on his back now. Each of them had a story he had never known. They were all inextricably linked to Jing Lin. Across hundreds of years, they had witnessed how Jing Lin had changed from a person who still had warmth into someone without.

But Cang Ji knew nothing about him.

For the first time in his life, he understood that even if he ate Jing Lin, they would not become one, not to mention never to part from each other. Jing Lin had tempted him, but those desires were still a stranger to him. Such subliminal seduction gave Cang Ji no outlet for the intensity of his emotions. He could not fathom it, nor could he figure it out.

Cang Ji’s palm gradually turned cold. He stood a long time in the water. His gaze was apathetic as his eyes followed Jing Lin’s back.

But he was not wrong.

It was not wrong of him to desire Jing Lin.