#but fdb understands that it's who llh is

[qpjianghu]

Mysterious Lotus Casebook ~ ep. 31

All these years, he's always been alone. You are the only friend I've ever seen him with.

[acequinz]

You know what I think I really really love about difanghua with a focus on Fang Doubing is that while DiHua clearly see each other it's Fang Duobing who tries to understands them.

And no this isn't a- Fang Duobing knows them better than they know each other or know themselves. It's that he sees them do something and he thinks about it and understands their feelings.

Cause there's a knowledge that both Di Feisheng and Li Lianhua have of each other that lets them know how the other thinks and what they will do next but it doesn't always mean there's an understanding there.

Di Feisheng knows that Li Lianhua is running but he doesn't understand why he's running, this isn't to say he's not sympathetic or doesn't care but he doesn't always understand the motivation for his actions. He knows them.

Similarly Li Lianhua knows Di Feisheng well enough to know his drive, to know his habits and knows his nature to recognise him even in disguise. But even he doesn't understand the motivation of Di Feisheng he knows it's there and so we see him stumble a few times when Di Feisheng switches gears.

Fang Duobing doesn't know everything, he is missing big chunks of story almost all the time, he missed a few many cues as well but he understands.

He understands Li Xiangyi and his burdens, he understands the pain Li Lianhua feels, he understands that Di Feisheng isn't just what he portrays himself to be, he understands his drive and motivation comes from a place of care and when he doesn't understand, he sure as fuck tries to. He doesn't just ask for explicit details to solve the mystery, he is just trying to understand them.

He needs to know the people under his protection!

So he understands them.

To conclude:- Fang Duobing is an Empath.

[qilingxiong]

I need you all to know that Li Lianhua, Fang Duobing, and Di Feisheng had official Weibo accounts posting while MLC was airing, and there's too much to post it all here but some of these interactions are wonderful:

Li Lianhua: Today I wanted to go to the kitchen to cook, but it turns out Fang Xiaobao locked the kitchen doors?!

Di Feisheng: I've never eaten such unpalatable dishes in my life, @ Fang Duobing how did you survive before?

Fang Duobing (reply to DFS): Finally someone understands me

Li Lianhua (reply to FDB and DFS): I'm driving Lianhualou away, you two can sleep in the open tonight

Li Lianhua: I got woken up early this morning by Zhan Yunfei's sword practice, then dozed off again until now. Business is closed again today

Di Feisheng (reply to LLH): Who? Another person wants to duel with you? Make him line up behind me!

Li Lianhua: Let's celebrate tonight, I'll give the other two two extra dishes

Fang Duobing: Some people in the comments are saying Di Feisheng has been locked up by some Niuma Gang. What kind of gang is this and how have I not heard of it? How could Di Feisheng be so easily captured by a small gang?

Di Feisheng (reply to FDB): I can still hold out a little longer, come quickly you brat

If you want to scroll through these yourself, here's Li Lianhua's account, Fang Duobing's, and Di Feisheng's (it's not a great one but if you have the app, Weibo does have a translate function for posts which should give you the gist of some messages)

[lianhuajing]

this college au isn't getting out of my head so here y'all go, some headcanons

despite being the first in the world at age 15 LXY still ended up with crippling self-worth issues and imposter syndrome.. makes me think he'd be a burnt out fgli (first-generation low-income) student at a rich school.. university au (this has nothing to do at all with my experiences as a fgli student at an ivy league school lmaoo)

of course FDB is a shoo in legacy student and at first LLH is is incredibly annoyed bc FDB is clearly a rich kid who got in with his parents money

the name i picked for FDB is 择信 ("zéxìn" or "to choose faith"). his dad's name is 则仕 ("zéshì" literally "officer" the author is laugh at us so that zé didn't work, i picked another one to better fit my intention. same sound though.)

he's still called duobing as a nickname bc he was a sickly child, but fang zexin is what appears on official documents and his student id. of course his mom and his aunt still call him "xiaobao" and later on so does LLH

FDB abuses his "xiaohua" priviledges and when he extra wants something he'll pull out "xiaohua'er"

just them warming up to each other to deal with school stress. think of all the shenanigans!! i feel like 3am on a school campus is when you feel like you can do anything super well, even make empanadas when you've never made empanadas before (did i do this freshman year? yes.)

bonus: LXY has a phd in bio-med and is a famous researcher, but he's getting a herbology? nursing? (still deciding tbh) degree as LLH and passing it off as his first undergrad. he made a small fortune from his first go around so he can afford it, but i feel like he donated most of it and/or gave it to QMS + QP + SGD

yes i made LXY a genius progidy med student who got into college at 15 and wrangled a phd + patent at age 18. he's literally every asian parent's golden child wet dream. no wonder he disappeared and changed his name and only resurfaced 10 years later.

FDB is of course an engineering and business student (dual degree, our xiaobao is a champ) and he buys all the school swag cuz he has the spirit

bonus bonus: fdb is a professional college fencer lmaoo. do they have professional college martial arts?

bonus bonus li'er is a part of the family staff but the fang/he family pays handsomely so she's kinda uppity. she doesn't understand why her young master is hanging out with someone 1) obviously older and 2) obviously poorer

FDB of course falls in love at first sight bc LLH happens to be the most drop dead gorgeous person he's ever seen and reminds him vaguely of the researcher that helped with the cure to his childhood illness. surely there's no connection right..

FDB is 20 when he starts college bc he took a two year break to do an internship at his mother's company. it looks great on his resume and conveniently works well so i can line up canon ages

FDB finds out LLH is living in a van and immediately tries to move him into his dorm (freshman year). of course that doesn't work out, but i think around sophmore year, once they've started dating, he would've whittled down LLH enough for him to agree to live together in a house off-campus. LLH tries several times to convince the 20yo that he can do better than some old man who's just starting his undergrad at age 28 (my man breathes lies). FDB is literally signing their lease as he speaks.

bonus bonus bonus (and my fave): LLH makes those terrible tiktok recipes that never work but he keeps trying and the first couple of times FDB actually tries pretending that LLH's cooking is fantastic

bonus x4: DFS went to trade school and owns a handyman service (he makes bank doing it) and the jinyuan alliance is his crew of fixers. FDB is convinced DFS is a mob boss because LLH is always calling him Di 老大 (lǎo dà) when he comes around to fix LLH's rundown van. DFS gives LLH the i'm in love with u family discount but he'll never admit to it. the two of them have known each other since grade school.

bonus x5: DFS and LXY both did the same martial arts extracircular and were known rivals (affectionate) in those circles. they were constantly swapping between placing 1st and 2nd in tournaments.

bonus x5 extra bonus just for me: at one point LXY did call DFS "gege" before he grew out of it / they drifted a part. obvs they reconcillated bc LLH needed a van guy and DFS under all those scowls does care for LXY a lot.

bonus x6: LLH and JLQ absolutely know they are cousins (just bc it's hilarious for me if they do). they don't talk about it but JLQ hates him for "stealing" DFS's attention since their naptime days. he's her cousin timmy. LLH doesn't even know that he's seduced the love of her life, he's just vibing. DFS tries to explain to her that he's gay and has never been interested in women, but she doesn't believe in homosexuals exactly like in canon lmaoo

bonus x7: SGD and LXY were both in an orphanage before they got adopted by qi mushan and qin po. SGD protected LXY like an older brother, but got more bitter and jealous as LXY clearly displayed genius level academic excellence and as a by product got more attention (more care into selecting schools, more time dedicated to LXY's extracirculars, more time spent driving LXY to conferences and stuff as his research gained more traction)

can you imagine the pressure little xiangyi would've been put under to excel, and to excel bc he got this chance when all the other kids at the orphanage didn't? qi mushan and qin po weren't exacty rich, i imagine he must've felt so stressed being bombarded with scholarships and whatnot while his brother steadily closed himself off from xiangyi

nothing just imposter syndrome going off the charts when rumors started going around that a mistake in LXY's research cost someone their life. that no one should've trusted a teenager to be that smart. that some orphan kid just wanted attention and should've never been given a chance. it breaks him.

unintential pressure from qi mushan, qin po and SGD. why was he protected / saved / chosen if not to make their lives easier and to make them proud with his achivements. he's carrying his made-up expectations of their expectations and SGD's expectations

something something my dad was drunk one night and came on campus and told me i was the hope of our entire family bc i was the first to get into a good school and i could make something of myself. i was 18 at the time, same age as when LXY during his famous battle, and i just. feel some type of way. like. the man was carrying the expectations of the entire jianghu on his back. how was he not gonna be overwhelmed and break down?

bc this is a modern au i can make LXY go to therapy :) it takes a few years for him to be convinced to go (he is asian after all LOL), but he does go eventually and it helps him get the will to start again. FDB knows and actively encourages and praises LLH for taking care of himself.

LLH still carries the same self-hatred he has for his younger self bc he thinks his arrogance caused a mistake in his research and ended up causing ppl to die. he's working on it, okay, it's gonna take time

i'll end this with some crack: FDB accidentally hears DFS call LLH "xiangyi" and proceeds to give him an entire speech abt deadnames and such. it's bc he's seen LLH react to being called "xiangyi" before (come on, this guy was a prodigy and he's back at uni, some of the professors are bound to recognize him) and it's never pretty. he ends by saying "it's not like lianhua is running away from the law, he's not doing anything wrong" yes he thinks LLH is trans lmaoo. the entire time, DFS is giving him an incredious look. LXY was in fact running away from the law (or at least the press lmaoo). LLH is just standing there with an amused look on his face like "my xiaobao is a little confused, but he's got the spirit"

[kingsandbastardz]

here u go, ask for trying times: give me your pitch for shipping wudi, i've got maybe one foot on that ship but i'm curious on your thoughts (gl on the all-nighter!!)

I survived it, sorta. The deadlines keep trucking om 😭 So here's my thoughts:

It's really unfortunate that we don't see enough of Wuyan but I do think we have enough of a framework to draw some interesting conclusions about them both relationship-wise. So here's to me heavily analyzing the 5 minutes Wuyan is on screen! LMAO:

Service as show of devotion - Chooses to act like and appear as a lower rank personal servant to dfs even though he clearly has a lot of power to draw from to get things done and dfs tells him he sees his rank as being much higher

Of everyone that focuses their attention on dfs, he's the only one that doesn't want to own or control him (master di - slave, jlq - wife, llh - 主人, fdb - wants to be in charge)

Despite knowing he was massively outclassed, still put himself in lxy's path at donghai

Shared experience: both survived the Donghai battle together and both have matching chest scars courtesy of lxy. They also worked side by side for years to accomplish the same goals

Llh is presented as knowing dfs the best - but imo, that means wuyan knows even more. Wuyan knows all the why's that llh doesn't know

We don't see much general conversation but considering how relaxed dfs is around him and willing to winge about personal things - he seems like he's actually capable of communicating well with dfs lmao

Pure headcanon here, but I want to say he and dfs learned or figured out how to hide their chi at a high level together. DFS uses it all the time and seems to be undetectable even to llh - wuyan seems to be undetectable to the world - I mean i think his name means something like "without presence"? He comes pre-labelled. So I think it's something martial-skill related that would give additional meat to dfs' respect for him

Guards dfs' secrets - how dfs truly feels about all the mengzhu stuff and rankings etc. Don't know if he knows anything about Di Fortress, but anything he does know about dfs' background it's not going to be a topic of conversation

He pays attention to dfs' preferences and knows how to deliver them in the form he prefers (see jlq who doesn't know his preferences and hates that dfs doesn't like what she prepared for him)

As a personal guard, in the early days when dfs was weaker, he likely went with dfs to any secret meetings with llh, hid his chi to keep guard, and was privy to what went on between them. Likely is the only one that would know this information - which is also why he fully understands why dfs is obsessed with llh and supports him. And listened to him mourn him for however many years (I assume he's the one providing clean clothes and food during seclusion so that's 10 years of crying he's been privy to)

Is willing to extend his top level standard of service to the ppl dfs cares about

He acts like he's a nobody, and he's not a pretty face, but everything points to him actually being a very, very competent and high-level guy in his area of expertise? So a good match to dfs. His martial skill isn't comparable, so he can't fight him like lxy, but he can do all the things dfs doesn't like to do - like the organizational stuff, dealing with and managing ppl, etc.

Headcanon again: i can really see them having an experimental phase in their youth together. Like something where dfs and him kinda decide to test things out and then maybe deciding the timing was bad or they weren't into each other like that at that time or whatever. But deciding to remain friends instead. And continuing to build jinyuan alliance together and everything else. It's like best bro + work spouse rolled into one -- with the wild result that they come out even stronger at the end of it. Think lxy + zhan yunfei but they see each other and work together every day. Successfully. With some extra headcanon and a small stretch you can probably position him and dfs as foils to lxy and shan gudao? (Sadly not enough info about the formation of daily workings of JA back then)

headcanon continued: They have to have good communication because they negotiated or figured out how to navigate their Situation and have clearly been at it for awhile - with one being a 'servant' and with the other one having ptsd issues with servitude/slavery. In the waterfall scene we get to see dfs mildly checking in and essentially being all, "Uh, you still good there? Remember you can change things up any time you want. My opinion of you is still A++ fyi" and Wuyan essentially signalling he's fine by continuing on as always.

Wuyan is the last person alive that remembers who dfs was before Jinyuan Alliance and the development of the Di Mengzhu persona. He helped craft that persona.

Basically if you are into themes like fealty and devotion and the sort of comfort you can get from a long time friendship where they've seen each other at their worst. Where they've figured out how to communicate and operate/exist together seamlessly while making allowances for each others' needs and interests. This is it!

They could be queer platonic, they could be sexual, they can be any permutations of anything and it still doesn't change the basis of their relationship which is years of trust, communication, hard work and shared experiences.

Like imagine teenagers - one holding the other guy's hair up while he vomits blood and bile into an alley. Where they patch each others' wounds in the shadow of someone's doorway after getting their asses kicked but somehow also saving each other from getting killed that day. They're the ones that figure out how to kill together. How to hide together. They figure out how to teach others to kill and hide together. They build power with their joined hands and with it they gain the money and prestige that allows them a comfortable place to sleep and full bellies. They give this same thing to others. They build it up so well people can afford to do normal ppl shit like fall in love and get married.

These are things they likely wouldn't have thought of when they were engaged in a battle royale in the street. It's them, their circle of friends, against everyone else in the world. And even when all their friends are now dead - they're still alive. They're still together. They'll see it through.

Maybe one day they'll find their way into each other's beds - the future is ever changing. But whether they do or not doesn't matter - they already have each other. They've survived this much together. Anything else is just icing.

[peridot-tears]

WIP Wednesday: Cowboy!FDB, Chiropractor!LLH, Fighter!DFS

“This entire town feels like a fever dream,” Di Feisheng finds himself saying. “K-pop aesthetics next to Old West buildings like we just walked into an old American film. Now our traditional Chinese medicine in a covered wagon.”

He gestures at the anatomical poster on the wall, which charts out every meridian point in the human body. A matching bust sits on a shelf next to it.

“When in Rome,” Li Lianhua says, pulling up a chair at the small table and gesturing for Di Feisheng to do the same. “Tea?”

“No thank you,” Di Feisheng says, but Li Lianhua is already on his feet again, pouring from a kettle into a teapot. That wasn’t a question, then.

“May I ask,” Di Feisheng says when Li Lianhua has rejoined him, “how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” Li Lianhua responds, pouring out cups for them both.

So he’s only two years younger than Di Feisheng, and not just an older gentleman with the best skincare routine known to man. Interesting.

“Thank you.” Di Feisheng takes a sip. He can’t taste anything, but the bouquet tells him it’s jasmine.

Li Lianhua asks, “I assume you’re a brawler?”

Di Feisheng, baffled by the buffalo, the wagon, and the man, almost forgot why he’s here.

Almost. “I am,” he says, “and I need to work the knots out of my back.”

“Not just knots,” Li Lianhua says. “You’re clearly a grappler, so I take it that your shoulder has hit the ground more times than is healthy. It should be seizing up any day now. The thin fabric on your robe tells me that you know it’s easy to choke a man if his collar or lapels are thick enough. You’ve trained for it, so you know how it feels, but still, it’s a miracle you haven’t gotten a neck cramp yet. You’re lucky to have found me—I can crack you and massage you. Whenever you’re ready, you can get on the table and we can start now.”

Yes. Di Feisheng loves a man who understands him. He didn’t even know you could get neck cramps from too much choking. He nods vigorously, following Li Lianhua’s instructions to shuck off his clothes down to his neiyi, lying on his front so Li Lianhua can probe his back.

Li Lianhua tuts as he trails cool fingers across the landscape of knots and muscles. “Di-xiansheng, you’ve done a number on your opponents, but you’ve also done a number on yourself. We call that ‘equivalent exchange.’”

[fastwingfox]

More xxxholic au thoughts, very incomplete at the moment

LLH's traveling shop is something of an urban legend. When it appears in an area, something definitely happens. Only someone that has need of it can access the shop, the stories say. Good or bad events happen when it's seen, depending on the person who finds the shop. When FDB joins LLH's travels, he tries to help everyone he can, but LLH has to remind him often that some things are inevitable.

DFS's ability to fight spirits even though he can't sense them is definitely something he doesn't quite understand. Maybe it's something inherited, or maybe it's something he was taught.

FDB being spirit catnip is completely his dad's fault, maybe something he did to push the consequences of his meddling with something he shouldn't on FDB instead of himself.

[gingersnapwolves]

Final thoughts on Mysterious Lotus Casebook~

Things I loved:

The main characters! Fang Xiaobao for character of all time. Who’s doing it like him? That ponytail should win an award for best supporting actor. Li Lianhua is obviously incredible but I’m going to hold a grudge against him for making Xiaobao sad. Di Feisheng was unexpectedly hilarious. Man comes out of a ten year recovery period and his first words are ‘I need a rematch’.

The minor characters! Princess Xiaoling was amazing. Yang Yunchun constantly simping for Shi from Baichuan court was hilarious. Shoutout to Murong Yao for being super hot. Qiao Wanmian for queen of everything. 

The villains (mostly)! Shan Gudao and Xiao Zijin being parallels because nobody was comparing you to Li Xiangyi except you (but it’s still so understandable that they would be so envious even as it doesn’t excuse their actions)! Shan Gudao not actually being secret royalty! Local man needs to just get a grip (but won’t)!

The themes! Dealing with grief and loss! Finding closure! Learning to live after a tragedy! Great job everyone, hit the showers.

The hurt/comfort! Enough said.

The wonderful trope I will choose every time: you don’t have to go along with your biological family when they’re toxic as fuck! I kept waiting for Xiaobao to be like ‘but he’s my real father, I have to do what he wants!’ but every single time Xiaobao was just like ‘wow fuck that guy, I’ve got parents who raised me and who love me and that dude fuckin’ sucks’. 1000000/10, no notes.

Things I did not love as much:

Although I don’t think JLQ is supposed to be particularly relatable, her whole motivation was like. Lady. He’s just not into you. Get a grip. Got very annoying by the end.

Most mystery shows, I like to try to solve things as clues are revealed and that was just not possible in this show. It felt like every single case ended with LLH giving a five minute monologue on stuff that there was no possible way the audience could have known, but he personally had figured out. I could barely track it even while he explained it. I’m still not sure who murdered Jin Mantang. Don’t get me wrong, the cases were fun and interesting, but Agatha Christie, they weren’t. Especially egregious towards the end, what with Li ‘I’ve deduced the entire imperial line is illegitimate based on two seconds looking at this mural which the audience hasn’t even seen’ Lianhua.

The ending didn’t thrill me. Like, it’s sad but you see it coming so you can kind of make peace with it. I even get why LLH wouldn’t let FDB even try to save him, because he didn’t want FDB to feel like he failed. But in that case, why the ambiguity? Couldn’t he have gone to his master’s grave and let them find his body or something? Just feels very rude lol.

tl;dr solid show and a lot of fun, definitely enjoyed it but don’t feel it rewiring my brain lol

[rinbylin]

"#their rs is only as equal as he decides it to be" hits the nail on the HEAD for me THANK you. llh and fdb are friends the way parents and children can be friends. fdb makes a very commendable effort at being equals with llh and llh can allow and enjoy it to an extent but there IS a gap. fdb not having access to llh's past puts him in a unique position to understand llh in a way that nobody else does and that IS good for llh, like fresh eyes on such a worn out painful story. but there's also an element of responsibility that llh has for fdb that he doesn't have for dfs. dfs is his equal and can make his own life choices. he only escaped dfs at the end because of dfs's own choice to trust him with the flower, not anything llh could have done. but he can still escape fdb on his own power just fine. ANYWAY EVERY RELATIONSHIP IN THIS SHOW IS KILLING ME IN UNIQUE AND SPECIFIC WAYS thank u for understanding

(for context)

NO THANK YOU for understanding!!!! I didn't even think anyone was going to read [inserts opinion that I think could get me into a situation surrounded by knives] as you can tell I hid it deep in the tags of reblogs of my own non-maintagged post hbhjbhjbhjbj - and even much less agree with something of it

hell yeah. to me their relationship is entirely premised on that gap between them, for better and for worse. that's how fdb can be unique to him but at the same time also puts him out of fdb's reach forever (that's why ep 30 hits hard). it's very likely llh wouldn't have continued with their relationship - at least with the degree of investment he did - if not for finding out his connection to sgd. so the familial element in it is virtually inseparable from the manner they ended up to be with each other. (like also, on top of how how lxy was literally a formative "adult" figure to bb fdb.)

while fdb thinks this is a friendship the whole time, llh actually treats fdb like a younger family member 小辈, with the front of being friends bc he was a Liar hiding his identity. and then post-identity reveal was bc he's just a Liar who doesn't feel the need to load his own problems on a younger member as an elder. (I do think this mismatched perceptions of their relationship is delicious)

also that's such a good add-on regarding dihua's relationship - particularly about the element of trust between them, which is a basis to why I can consider them friends in some dimension even back when they were more of rivals, unlike fdb with llh. like llh/fdb, they contain a paradox: being the ones who understand each other better than anyone else can but also bc they're so up close on each other that they fail to really see each other too. they're equals premised on the circumstance of them being from the same generation with a shared past (that is also part of their tragedy), but also, in a very curious space of it not being entirely mutual - simply due to llh being the person he is with the kind of conflict he's facing. (once again, all the relationships llh have are embedded with a degree of them being unrequited and it's <333 </333)

THEY REALLY ARE KILLING ME TOO IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE YEAH

[joyouslee]

MLC fic ramble - 《只今》 by

应该没人认出来

ok, since lofter has locked down all posts to people with accounts, I can't do full recs for anything on lofter anymore (i.e., I can't re-read so I can't give specific warnings), so instead I'm just going to ramble about the fics I love and if you are able to access lofter read at your own risk since this is just rambling based on my memory. Keep in mind my general warnings.

The author's summary of the fic is: a fic about what's more painful, losing the person you love or losing their love.

FDB goes back in time and becomes the young master of Wanshengdao in order to save LLH.

Here's the link to the first chapter, but now it just redirects to the login unless you have an account. (*weeps*) Go read if you can!

My spoilery ramblings under the read more:

This fic is AGONIZING. Oh the angst in this! The premise is all knives and the execution was sharp. In the original timeline LLH and FDB were lovers then LLH gives up the Wangchuan flower and leaves as in the drama. LLH dies and FDB buried him. FDB dies (later it's revealed how and it's heartbreaking) and wakes up back at Wanshengdao and this time he knows that LLH isn't going to eat the Wangchuan flower. SO he tells SGD he'll help him in exchange for the flower, and he ends up giving SGD the mother bug, and LLH is aware of the betrayal. He ends up imprisoning LLH so that he can cure him, but Qin Po dies in the process.

LLH escapes. (I can't remember the exact details but it was something like FDB marries LLH - I think SGD intends for it to be a humiliation for LLH - and lets him escape during the ceremony preparations.)

By the time LLH leads a rebellion back it's a couple of years later. He finds FDB blind and imprisoned in the Ji Le tower, dying from having the mother bug implanted in him.

The rest of the story deals with LLH's anger at FDB for what he did in order to save him (and from LLH's pov he doesn't understand why FDB would go to such extremes, since he doesn't know FDB has already experienced his death and knows he won't eat the flower), and LLH's gradual uncovering of the things that FDB did in order to try to save as many people as possible from SGD.

It also deals with FDB's guilt - his decision lead to Qin Po's death, and he also ends up killing government officials (I forget the details but it was later revealed to have been set up by SGD) as part of SGD's coup. So after his rescue he's tormented by his guilt and is very submissive to LLH. FDB thinks LLH hates him and thinks he deserves the hate (from LLH and from all the people he knows - people are calling for his head because he's SGD's son). LLH's angry about FDB's abasement and the way he's subsumed by his guilt and atonement, and is very conflicted because he loves him but also hates what he did.

Finally it deals with the inequality of their position and how that affects their relationship (e.g., FDB's reliance on LLH for his life/ protection, his inability to draw any boundaries because he feels he deserves punishment as well as because he thinks his own judgment is bad).

I love this because it's ultimately about atonement and forgiveness, and about how to live again after something so devastating. The amount of guilt FDB carries and how he works to atone for it - he is a good person who made an awful mistake, and he is trying so hard to make up for it. I loved seeing him slowly understand that sometimes there's no way to pay it back to the person hurt so he can only live and pay back the universe.

There's also a bit of political plotting and FDB gets to break XZJ's sword (yay!). This is huafang but DFS has a strong role as friend to both of them (and has comments about the dogfood he suffers through). So it's not just all angst.

A few warnings for the things I remember: there's an attempted rape (not explicit/ not between huafang), and power dynamics issues because of the imprisoning (both of LLH in the beginning and later FDB) and my recollection was that they were having sex through those time periods so no one was at his best. There also is some issues about dressing up as the wife in the weddings (i.e., SGD intended to humiliate LLH by it, and then later FDB reluctantly wears a woman's outfit when he marries LLH). Again, read at your own risk since this is just the stuff I remember.

[hualianisms]

Pairing: Li Lianhua/Fang Duobing

Rating: T

Word Count: 4,119

Summary:

“Fang Xiaobao ah, Fang Xiaobao,” he said with a smile. “Do you know? The Xiaobao I know and care for is someone who, whether frail and sickly in a wheelchair or a strong young martial hero, is kind even to ants, even to corpses, even to enemies. Who has a heart large enough to cherish the world and all its creatures. That is the zhiji who knows and understands me best in this world. That is the man I treasure. And that would never change, no matter your physical state.”

For a moment, Fang Duobing just gazed at him, raw emotion welling in those lovely eyes that were always too expressive, and were at that moment suspiciously shiny.

“Li Xiaohua…” Fang Duobing gave a watery chuckle. “You really know how to make a guy's heart race, huh?”

(For Cdrama Gotcha for Gaza @cdrama-action)

Tags: Post-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, HuaFang, Established Relationship, Fluffy Ending, vulnerable fdb + llh protecting & caring for him, AU: bicha poison totally cured, Prompt Fill

[acequinz]

Does anyone remember the idea i pitched about the DFS as an emperor, LLH as his concubine and FDB as the new empress being forced into a marriage.

Switching things around for that. LLH is the real emperor but switched positions with DFS for safety reasons and cause he's not supposed to be overworking himself.

This causes a massive confusion for FDB who had the ceremony with DFS but enters the marriage chambers to find LLH lounging on the bed.

"why are you here?" Fang Duobing asks, standing at the edge of the bed. There was no anger in his tone just a bone deep exhaustion from the ceremony and the need to crawl into the bed regardless of the new man being present was strong.

"to keep my betrothed company." Li Lianhua smiles coyly, trying to take a peek under the veil to see his bride's face.

Fang Duobing nodded as the understanding came to him, "ah- great, then you can entertain him. Is there a different room for me? I wanna sleep." He muttered, looking around for an exit that wouldn't give him away.

Li Lianhua chuckled grabbing Fang Duobing's wrist and pulling him to the bed so he could look at him properly, right at that time the door opened and Di Feisheng stepped in closing the door behind him and securing it.

"I see you started already," Di Feisheng said, carefully keeping his voice neutral.

"Aiyah I need to see my bride's face at least, there's nothing inappropriate going on," Li Lianhua waved his hand at the emperor while Fang Duobing struggled to free his wrist.

"who said I am your wife? Let go!" Fang Duobing whined, tugging harder. "You! You help me! I don't care what sort of business you have with your consort! I don't want to be a part of your silly perverted games! I am a man from a proper upstanding family. How dare you treat me this way?" He yelled at Di Feisheng, his surprise at being overpowered as obvious as the moon shining in the sky.

Di Feisheng rolled his eyes before striding over and pulling Fang Duobing's arm free but he did not let his escape, rather he picked him up and deposited the new bride in the waiting arms of his consort who seemed very pleased holding the mouth gaping wife.

"yes, i know. It's very stimulating isn't it? How easy he picks you up like you weigh nothing? When he did that to me the first time I was so red I had to visit the physician to make sure I wouldn't burst," Li Lianhua teased, boping the nose of the youngest in the room.

"Xiangyi~" Di Feisheng interrupted, his voice rough.

"okay okay, I was just teasing. I will explain everything to our new bride."

[blobofcolour]

Finally finished watching Mysterious Lotus Casebook.

It's a good wuxia drama in itself and as someone who has read the novel, the drama also managed to bring out the spirit of the novel who is the man himself Li Lian Hua and his long goodbye to jianghu. Because he once shone so brightly and proudly, it was incomprehensible to those that love and hate him that he would be content with not having it all, even to the point of death.

I really feel for LLH because those around him - from friends to enemies! - insist on seeing him as Li Xiang Yi and continues to put their expectations of LXY on him. LLH keeps repeating himself over and over, but ultimately it seemed that only Zhan Yunfei truly understood and accepted Li Lian Hua.

有些人弃剑如遗 有些人终身不负 人的信念终是有不同的

LLH's tragedy is not in his death, but in those around him refusing to understand that we have different paths in life and choosing one over the other at different points in your life is perfectly fine.

If ZYF represented acceptance of LLH's choices, then Fang Duo Bing is the ultimate manifestation of rejection of LLH's wishes. I was SO frustrated with him throughout the drama arggg. While I can't recall how FDB was exactly like in the novel, he was definitely not like the drama and I have no idea what possessed the scriptwriter to turn him into this sulky, needy young girlfriend to LLH. Couldn't they have just gone for the master/student dynamic minus the neediness? I want to tear my hair out every time FDB professes to be LLH's 知己 zhi ji … hold up, I don't think you know the meaning of the words you are saying. Student yes, friend maybe, but zhi ji you are most definitely not. I find FDB constantly demanding LLH behave a certain way because a) FDB determines it's the 'correct' way b) LLH should reciprocate the friendship the way FDB wants.

Heck, even FDB's mom has a better understanding of LLH as evidenced by what she told him before LLH left for the palace. I mean, I get it, FDB is much younger and sees the world in a black and white manner. But still, even to the last freaking episode after everything that he has seen LLH gone through, he was like noooo, you stay here, I will find the antidote, I will cure you blah blah blah. Sure it's human nature to want your loved ones to not-die, but if FDB had even bothered really to hear LLH out and try to accept LLH's choices, I would have been less annoyed with him.

Like what kind of reasoning is this??? 拜托不要再情勒！ Why does LLH owe FDB or anyone for that matter to stay alive? Look, LLH is not actively looking to off himself but he has made peace with himself/his impending demise over the last 10 years. The world wouldn't let go of LXY and let LLH have his peace.

[kingsandbastardz]

Writing Patterns

Thank you to @mx-myth!

This is supposed to be first sentence of my last 10 AO3 works.

But I'm modifying like... everything lol - I play with format with my writing and one thing I definitely do a lot is quote lines from the canon, so I'm going to be putting first few sentences/paragraph/sequence to work past those and for consistency. And like @mx-myth I'll also be adding a few last sentences for the few published works I have, just for fun. I'm including wips because I don't have a large body work. For WIP it'll be first sentence only. lmao is this the same tag challenge at all?

01. SAMSARA ( wip - Mysterious Lotus Casebook: FangDi - with past DiHuaDi - transmigration rebirth modern AU with a deeply traumatized actor Di Feisheng trying to both rescue this world's version of LLH while also running away from him and FDB with all his might.)

Imagine this: you live, you kill, you lick dirt from the shoes of your masters. You fail to die so many times you begin to wonder if you're immortal.

02. everything looks small - we gave up on those happy endings (wip MLC - This is the story I've been torturing myself with the past 2 months: Trio + Wuyan and a random Hulijing)

"Do you not remember me at all? Does the name Di Feisheng mean anything to you?" Li Lianhua smiles as he gathers his winnings. "Of course I remember you. You're my kind and rich friend." But that can't be right, Fang Duobing thinks as Li Lianhua tells him about his recently made acquaintance over dinner, his sightless eyes shining with a familiar brightness - just for a moment. That can't be right, because Di Feisheng has been missing for months.

03. 囍 Marriage (wip MLC - There are a lot of dead brides and ruined marriages in this series so I'm continuing the tradition. fanghua with possible difanghua and difanghuajlq. Sorta.)

He wakes choking, clawing free from the ropes binding his wrists to press trembling fingers to agonized lips that are sewn shut with some kind of fine thread. There is a golden ingot trapped behind his teeth, stretching his jaw open against strained stitching. He chokes as he struggles to breathe through his nose and the lump of metal presses against the back of his tongue to slip further against his throat. He's terrified the blackness means he's also been blinded.

04. flight is something done willfully (wip MLC - fangdi, immediately post-canon - something something about having to finally deal with fdb's trauma surrounding loss and abandonment and dfs having a fuckton of patience in dealing with fdb's prolonged panic attack that mobilizes a small militias, the Minister of the Treasury, and sigu sect leadership)

You made the mistake of thinking words would finally be acceptable. After all, you are now free. A potential cure for poison has been handed over. All is well.   You can relax and open your mouth and actually let real words come out. But the thing is, your tacit understanding only lasts as long as neither of you try to actually communicate.

05. The Universe of Us : When you lose a person, a whole universe goes along with them (wip MLC - timeloop and a battle between opposing spirits)

When Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng meet again, it is at the same time, on the same beach where they find nothing but the ocean, a pile of fermenting seaweed and their own memories. They are like strangers absorbed in their own grief. It's no matter. To Di Feisheng, they met because of Li Lianhua, so it’s fitting that they are both strangers now without him.

06. 羽化成蝶 Metamorphosis (DFS' core is untouchable - idk where I'm going with this but the main concept is internal vs external form)

A familiar dao thumps onto the table as a handsomely dressed giantess seats herself across from Li Xiangyi. "I have the list," she says with no introduction. Her voice is low and fuzzy, like someone who's spent a lifetime with a pipe in hand and smoke in her lungs - it wasn't unpleasant. "Di-mengzhu," Li Xiangyi greets politely as he pours her tea. A faint wildness in his eyes is his only acknowledgement that he is facing something unexpected.

07. Pear Blossoms In Spring ( wip - Mysterious Lotus Casebook: FangDi - meant to be a silly romance but turned into a comedy about a shaoye who keeps comparing the love of his life to his favorite dead horse)

“Ah, this is the Iron Head Slave. Remember?” says Li Lianhua the Lying Liar gesturing to the tall, leggy beauty blocking their path. “His name is a-Fei.”

08. the moon is as bright as it was before (my first finished and posted fic in many years and it's an experimental thought piece for Mysterious Lotus Casebook)

the existence of a torture chamber beside the wedding bedroom and its contents shouldn’t be a surprise at this point. and yet… it’s the redundancy you find offensive. she has a multi-chamber dungeon. she has a water chamber in her own quarters. why must it extend here as well?

under the moon’s blessing, you smile back and for the first time in your life, you hope for the future.

09. I, Augustus (Tour Of the Merrimack - gay space roman that can't decide whether he wants to kill or fuck an american and which is worse? who knows)

It was sound that went first. Eardrums deadened, he careened off the bridge, chest so full of metal he'd lost count how many times he'd been shot. He could see the flash-bang of incendiary rounds as they were fired from both his fellow 300 and the advancing Americans, the light momentarily coloring roiling black smoke with flashes of pink and yellow.

He dreams instead of possibility, of new worlds and unmappable futures, their patterns varied and far reaching as the ever expanding universe.

10. An Affair to Remember: The Commissar and His Snake (Warhammer 40k fandom - A Guant's Ghosts story in the style of Ciaphas Cain)

opening

INQUISITORIAL DOSSIER: IIIX:4SE:A3ASF3S:XXX COMPILED BY INTERROGATOR ANTONIUS WONG CHAU-SANG UNDER THE AUSPICES OF INQUISITOR MABODABU, ORDO XENOS INQUISITORIAL DATA-LIBRARY DATE: 999.M41 FILE START// Editorial note: I am sure that most who read this are already familiar with the work of the esteemed Inquisitor Amberley Vail who compiled her eye-opening series based upon the famed Commissar Cain's private memoirs.

ending

“Come along then,” I said as I began to walk. I lengthened my stride. My legs are, after all, longer.43 I felt Elim follow, his dark presence hesitating only a moment before he was half a step behind me, where he should be, sure and certain as any shadow. 43 I can only assume Colonel-Commissar Gaunt deliberately lengthened his stride to make it more difficult for the Major to keep up. This would be an ongoing theme in their relationship for many years to come.

Patterns:

For openings, whether it's with concept or actions/visual, I tend to drop the reader straight into the middle of a situation as a hook and then dial it backwards.

I favor punchy openings.

also like I said earlier, I like to quote or recreate a scene from the canon to quickly establish tone and position in the story

of the 3 endings I have here, all of them tend to be like the ending of a jdrama where it fades off toward a "and life goes on" vibe, rather than something stronger like "and then this happened". I don't forsee this changing much in the future. I tend to fade away by the time i reach an ending so either it's super abrupt or the wheel of life continues turning~~~

Tagging all writers and anyone else who wants to do this!

@the-wintry-mizzenmast @momosandlemonsoda @thesilversun @randomingoftherandomness @eirenical @difeisheng @busarewski @bbcphile

[angryteapott]

Okay, someone else posted so it got me thinking but one of the reasons I hate the reveal that li lianhua is ~secretly royalty~ and more importantly that shan gudao was a regular guy is because of happy's death. To sum up:

Happy is actually the reason i got so into the show, because without him the first few arcs would feel very flat. There's a bunch of little moments that show happy's interiority, and a bunch of little moments that show fang duobing blithely not getting it. My favorite of these moments is when fang duobing snatches a letter with happy's fathers handwriting as evidence. He'd intended to burn it at his mother's grave.

This is an interesting writing choice! It sets up our hyper privileged protagonist not really caring about non privileged people. It works nicely with Li Xiangyi's past being that he was a beggar. We also get a bit of that sort of backstory with di feisheng, but it doesn't really have a regular people vibe so it doesn't fit into this theme of this inherent conflict of who's important and who isn't.

And for the first few cases this is very important! Happy's death makes Fang Duobing seek vengeance for him, and he seeks justice for the guards as well while learning it was really the rich who vented their anger about their own selfish mistreatment of a loved one. Very much dual themes of who is justice for (fang duobing's arc) and people who were treated badly by the people who were supposed to love them. Yeah they got justice for the guards by... killing their enslaved colleagues... but fight scenes are a must I guess. This also is interesting in the context of Li Xiangyi founding Baichuan Court, a mechanism for justice (it's a cop show, I know, I know). This is the moment I think Li Lianhua first really notices Fang Duobing.

Then they never. Mention. Happy. Again.

Sputteringly, the themes are continued! Qiao Wanmian intentionally lets go of people related to the jinyuan alliance instead of assuming they're guilty by association. The lotus mansion arc's first victim is a redeemed courtesan with few choices and the girls of girl manor are treated sympathetically. Zijin is shown as evil both because he's jealous but also because he's shallow and obsessed with power instead of justice. There's a throwaway line that Sigu Sect should search for a merchant the same way as they do for Li Xiangyi. An important moment revealing that Fang Duobing sees Li Xiangyi as more than just his status is him understanding that the Sigu Sect should be about justice, combining neatly with Xiangyi's previous status as a beggar that people say he should be so embarrassed of he would kill Shan Gudao about it. But never is there a case with the same justice is for everyone thrust. The villains become determined by their ethnicity with a few one off 'greedy' characters. What is the point of the king of hell arc, other than to be background as LLH and FDB divorce? By the time we see Li-er again, Happy's erstwhile friend, the show is wrapped up enough in the main plot that it doesn't really notice that Fang Duobing tried to send Li-er for a blanket when the mansion is under attack in place of his mother when he says out loud he never thought his mother was in any real danger. The villains were people with birth defects mad about being treated as disposable who killed women to (reads notes) detoxify poison that actual emerald would work for that they never figured out how to identify from a local after ten years.

Then the main plot is revealed- Shan Gudao! Thematically, Shan Gudao is a villain because he was always jealous of Li Xiangyi, but he clings to shallow things like bloodline making him matter in the face of his trauma.

By this time in my least favorite way of upping the stakes not even Li Lianhua cares about the little people anymore, only about the "peace of the world" maintained by an emperor who was going to build an expensive pagoda for fertility issues, presumably at the expense of the people. Before we even get to the horrible no good reveal it's shown that Shan Gudao was treated as less than by his adults because his parents didn't have a relationship with them. He's evil because he was mad about it, not because his anger was misdirected. Then they reveal that all along good guy Li Xiangyi was the royal bloodline and the emperor and Shan Gudao are not.

Do you see. How far we've come. From a theme of you shouldn't ignore the lives of those of the lower class. Our fascinating justice seeking protagonist is secretly royalty, oooh. I guess it could be a play that these things are shallow and arbitrary, but it's a) actually important to the plot that he is for his literal actual blood and b) so far removed from the nuance of the first few cases it feels baffling to rewatch them. I hate it! I hate it so much! Instead of learning the explicitly stated lesson of the first few cases that things shouldn't be about shallow markers of power it should be about justice for everyone it turns into Fang Duobing learning Tianji Manor servants sure are useful as cannon fodder, no need to learn any of their names, oh my boyfriend is the most important interesting man on earth. Literally the end of the Fang Duobing Happy dichotomy is oh we forgot we did that. It's not even that they said the theme i liked was wrong it's that they said forget about that theme it's too complicated and low stakes really people just get too jealous of special people and the "world" is at risk ie the emperor and not anyone else. Which if they set that up as how things are or interrogate it and end up there I'll argue with it, but I won't call the writing just based on that. Here...

I really do love the characters and their relationships, but in terms of themes they dropped the ball so badly I'm having issues with the characterization

[bbcphile]

@nutcasewithaknife, your tags are AMAZING!

#THIS IS MAKING ME INSANE BECAUSE YEAH YESSS#i adore this because this bluffing is INTEGRAL to how they get around to trusting each other again i think?#like#after the 10 years dfs is unsure of who lxy has become and llh still sees dfs as the one who betrayed him#and the ensuing bluffing and threats of violence feels like they're poking at the edge of their trust for each other#and every time a promise of violence turns out to be a bluff they know each other a little better#honestly? i think the amnesia arc becomes a turning point because it makes llh realise that dfs ultimately just wants him to live#after all these bluffs any action that dfs has taken is towards that end alone#And by the time they toast to their 10 yr stabbiversary i think dfs is relieved because he too has realised that llh understands his goal#and will trust him and even maybe rely on him henceforth#That's the real tragedy of the final episode isn't it? dfs has complete trudt they're on the same page#that li lianhua understands his goal. that they will not betray each other's trust this time over.#but dfs hasn't realised that llh would decide that his goal was merely holding him back and set him 'free' instead of meeting him halfway#anyways. that was a bit of a tangent but THEY MAKE ME INSANEEE (@nutcasewithaknife)

I agree so much about the way other bluffs and the amnesia arc help them recalibrate their understanding of each other and brings them closer! What breaks my heart about the final episode and the scene where DFS gives LLH the wangchuan flower is that I feel like the initial bluffing about the yin leaves comes back to bite DFS again, given the look of hurt wariness on LLH's face when he says "I thought we were friends now." It feels like he still associates the flower with that initial threat (and possibly never realized it was a bluff), and also thinks that DFS just wants his fight and for him to be LXY not LLH--not understanding that fighting as equals is a love language and communication style for DFS and that the fight was supposed to be a celebration of having survived and overcome their obstacles and their past and finally being together--and so it feels like a lot of the progress they made during the amnesia arc and the newly wed room was erased. And I completely agree that some of it is because LLH wants to set DFS "free," and I also think some of it is that LLH kind of wants to reset things to the way things were when they didn't understand each other as well, because it's easier for him to let go and leave DFS behind to die if he can convince himself that DFS just wants a fight and won't mourn him too much because FDB can replace him. 😭

The Yin Leaves Threat Is a Bluff (MLC Meta)

Mysterious Lotus Casebook fans: Are we ready to talk about how the yin leaves threat was a bluff?

So many people seem to be taking Di Feisheng at his word that he wanted to make Li Xiangyi eat the yin leaves of the Wangchuan flower to regain his martial arts for one last glorious fight and that he was fine with Li Xiangyi dying very painfully from their poison after. And I see why: after all, LLH took him at his word, too, and LLH is famously smart and a good detective.

However, LLH has a history of jumping to false conclusions about DFS and, like the rest of the jianghu, assuming the worst of him: in fact, his mistaken belief that DFS broke the peace treaty and had his shixiong killed is the central misunderstanding that nearly destroyed both their respective sects and each other. So, since LLH is canonically very bad at telling who actually wants him dead and who loves him, it’s worth investigating this further. And looking at DFS’ history of bluffing is a good place to start.

DFS and Bluffing

Di Feisheng has a history of bluffing and/or threatening to kill or torture people when he doesn’t mean it. Here are some of his most notable examples (but click here for a much longer list of things he’s lied about or withheld info about):

Threatening to kill Qiao Wanmian to convince LLH to let him find a cure for Bicha (he doesn’t kill women)

Threatening to torture Gao Qian for information (he searches rooms instead)

Threatening to kill FDB when LLH says he’s trouble (the smirk after shows he was joking)

Threatening to kill Xiao Zijin at the wedding if LLH doesn’t help him get into 188 prisons (LLH walks him into a trap and yet DFS doesn’t even try to hurt XZJ in the fight)

Lying about poisoning and curing QWM to protect LLH’s identity and pretending to kidnap her

In all of those examples, DFS is trying to help or protect LLH, albeit in a very dysfunctional way. In the first example, he’s trying to blackmail LLH into living; the second example is to solve the case to find Shi Hun to expel the Asura Grass so he can find a cure for Bicha; the third is a joke, but also one designed to make LLH admit he does care about FDB because LLH is pretending he doesn’t care about anything as a prelude to giving up once he finds SGD’s body; the fourth is to get evidence that someone framed the Jinyuanmeng so LLH will trust him again and want to live to figure out who really killed his shixiong; and the last is to protect LLH’s identity (even though he only agreed to protect it until the Asura Grass was expelled. He’s trying to prove to LLH that LLH can trust him and he wants to help him, not harm him.)

All that to say: DFS has a history of bluffing about threatening to kill people if he thinks it will help Xiangyi live, and will take on the role of the villain—role the jianghu regularly casts him in—if he thinks it will help. And as some of those examples show, he also doesn’t share his plans with LLH until after the plan has been completed. And just look at all the things DFS withheld from LXY at their first donghai battle if you need more examples: he doesn’t mention that he knows it’s a frame job or why he stole SGD’s body. In all these examples, it’s not just that DFS has control issues and doesn’t want to share theories until he has proof: it seems likely that he knows/assumes LXY wouldn’t have believed him, because LLH already proved he didn’t trust him when he fell for the frame job, broke the peace treaty, and attacked the Jinyuanmeng. DFS assumes that there’s no point in presenting information to someone who won’t listen to it; he’d think it’s a waste of time and energy that could be better spent actively solving the problem.

But Why Bluff About the Yin Leaves?

Yao Mo’s Questionable Loyalty:

When DFS says he just needs LLH to live long enough to compete with him, he’s not talking to LLH himself: he’s talking to Yao Mo. In fact, the entire yin leaves plan was Yao Mo’s idea. And that changes everything.

Why? Well, for starters, Yao Mo is the one who invented the Bicha poison and gave it to JLQ to use on LXY (without DFS’ knowledge or permission). That alone is reason enough for DFS to not know if he can trust him, and this lack of trust explains why DFS never told Yao Mo that the mystery patient was LXY/LLH or that he was poisoned by Bicha. Since JLQ poisoned LXY because DFS paid so much attention to him and to fighting with him, it makes sense that DFS would try to protect LLH by hiding his identity and not drawing attention to him. 

But of course, as soon as Yao Mo figures out the mystery patient was poisoned with Bicha, that secret is blown. The pained face (and Throat Bob of Emotion) DFS makes while Yao Mo is having this realization shows not only how upset he is that they don’t yet have a cure, but also how worried he is that Yao Mo now knows it’s LLH, which makes everything more complicated.

DFS was right that Yao Mo would figure it out, since the first thing Yao Mo does after this realization is tell DFS he’s thought of a way “to heal him so he can compete with you.” DFS had pointedly NOT mentioned competing with him in front of Yao Mo yet (to hide LLH’s identity), so this is definitive proof that his cover is blown and that DFS needs to find a new way to keep LLH safe. 

This new plan is to downplay how much LLH means to him, and that motive explains so much about this scene. We know from watching him grieve and tear up while mourning LLH at his personal waterfall after his enthronement ceremony that DFS is miserable because of LXY’s supposed death and that he doesn’t see the point in fighting anymore without him, so we know that one last fight with LXY wouldn’t fix that: he’d still be dead and DFS would still be devastated. 

(Here are some screenshots of him mourning at the waterfall.)

But this isn’t common knowledge. In fact, it seems to be a closely guarded secret; he’s mourning in private, with only Wuyan as a witness. In public and to the rest of his subordinates, he’s trying to project the attitude of the unemotional, unflappable, heartless demon of the jianghu because his reputation is part of his armor that keeps him safe. It lets him seem like he doesn’t have any weaknesses (since “a swordsman shouldn’t have weaknesses”), and it keeps people from knowing that his primary weakness (other than the mind control bug) is LXY/LLH. 

(NOTE: He’s not even comfortable with anyone other than Wuyan and the three kings knowing he cares more about reaching the pinnacle of martial arts than he does about the Jinyuanmeng itself, and it’s not clear if any of them know that he mainly wants to increase his strength and power to free himself from the mind control bug. That’s how closely he guards his vulnerabilities.) 

With that in mind, if he wants to keep Yao Mo (and therefore JLQ) from knowing how important LXY is to him, there’s only one possible answer to Yao Mo’s question about whether he’d mind if LLH dies from the yin leaves after the fight: pretending he wouldn’t object. If he said he’d give up a fight rather than let LLH die from the yin leaves, then Yao Mo would know LLH matters to him more than fighting, which would be revealing a weakness. If DFS said he would give the entire Wangchuan flower to LLH to cure him and would therefore be sacrificing his chance of getting stronger, it would be painting an even larger target on LLH’s back and showing Yao Mo that endangering LLH would be the key to controlling him. The only safe option for both LLH and DFS is for DFS to claim he doesn’t care if LLH dies after they fight and to give orders to find the flower.

Here’s a gif of his command about the Wangchuan flower:

Notice his furrowed brow, the tightness around his eyes and mouth, the way he’s almost wincing as he gives the order? He is miserable about having to play this game and his incredible poker face is barely up to the task.

Here’s a still image of right after the pronouncement; you can still see the barely suppressed wince.

After this command, he dismisses Yao Mo from the cave immediately so he doesn’t have to keep pretending he’s going to sacrifice LLH. The entire time Yao Mo is present, even while he’s walking away, DFS holds himself completely motionless, staying in character from the bluff and desperately waiting to be alone with LLH. The instant Yao Mo is gone, DFS slumps in relief, or at least, does his version of a slump: he bows/droops his head as though the weight of what just happened was too much to shoulder. 

Here’s a close-up of his reaction:

DFS’s relief at being alone with LLH shows that he believed LLH knew him well enough to know when he was bluffing.

He was wrong. 

LLH: Believing the Worst of DFS (again)

LLH’s belief that DFS wants to kill him for a duel makes sense, since at this point, he still thinks DFS did in fact have SGD killed and broke the peace treaty, and he’s pissed off, feeling betrayed, and also in pain (from the medicine and the Beifeng Baiyang transfer that made him cough up blood, and from all the snake bites–he’s primed to read those as exclusively aggressive and cruel attempts to heal him at all costs for the fight, and not to realize that DFS would absolutely do all these things to himself to heal his own martial arts without batting an eye. And he’s in too much pain to see the horrified look on DFS’s face when LLH coughs up blood and DFS realized he almost killed LLH while trying to cure him.) 

But that doesn’t mean LLH is right. 

DFS, upon seeing that LLH has again cast him as the heartless villain, doesn’t try to dispute it. In the same way that he didn’t explain about why he took SGD’s body at the donghai battle, he doesn’t explain himself about the flower, possibly because he thinks he doesn’t have time to waste arguing. His goal is to get LLH to live–he grieved him for a decade, after all, and doesn’t want to have to do it again–and he is painfully aware that he is running out of time. LLH hasn’t exactly been subtle about only staying alive to find and bury SGD’s body, and now that they’ve accomplished that, he wants to make sure LLH doesn’t give up. Growing up in Di Fortress, DFS probably learned how to recognize what it looks like when people give up on life, and seeing those signs in LLH would explain some of the desperation behind his actions.

So, what does he do instead of trying to convince LLH the threat was a bluff? Here’s a gif of his response:

He swallows his disappointment at being thought a heartless killer–bowing his head again and shaking it, then looking up at the cave roof in exasperation–and takes a long, long inhale to collect himself and to quickly brainstorm a new plan. Once he’s figured it out, he says LXY’s name and launches into stage 2 of his plan to convince LLH to live: correcting the initial misunderstanding that first led LLH to not trust him anymore. 

DFS tries to convince LLH that someone conspired against both of them a decade ago–the truth he thought LXY wouldn’t believe him about on the ship–because if that worked, then it would solve two problems: 1.  LLH might believe him that he doesn’t want to kill him for the rematch if he knew he hadn’t had SGD killed, and 2. LLH would choose to stay alive to find SGD’s real killer and get revenge. 

And when LLH doesn’t believe his initial attempt, he gives what is possibly his longest speech in the entire show detailing the evidence supporting his claim that they were both set up and offers to help him find the truth in exchange for their rematch. While he definitely does want a rematch, DFS mentions it here in part because LLH thinks it’s all he cares about; if he were to offer to help without requiring the fight, LLH would be less likely to believe him and even more suspicious of his claims, especially since LLH currently thinks DFS would kill him for said rematch.

But unfortunately, his plan for them to team up fails as he thought it would all those years ago, so he decides to play along with being the heartless villain LLH thinks he is, and it’s only then that he threatens to kill FDB (revealing FDB’s parentage in the process), because he knows that LLH would stay alive to protect FDB. 

I have another 2000+ words worth of thoughts about his talk and fight with FDB–the way he tries to “kidnap” him first instead of fighting him, the way he looks miserable during the fight instead of enjoying it the way he did during the fight at QWM and XZJ’s wedding–but it will have to wait for another meta because this is already way too long as it is. The point, though, is that he’s not fighting FDB because he wants to or is enjoying hurting him: he actually hates every second of it and of performing the role of jianghu villain LLH has once again cast him in. But he’s doing it because he thinks it’s the only way to keep LLH alive. 

These aren’t the actions of someone who just wants to sacrifice his old rival for a fight; they’re the actions of someone trying everything he can think of to keep the person he loves alive. It’s an incredibly convoluted way to show his care, but given that he’s desperate, out of time, and can’t get LLH to trust or believe him, it makes sense that he’d fall back on a reliable skillset that’s kept himself alive despite all the odds: bluffing, keeping his true goals a secret, adopting the mantle of villain, and letting himself be hated for things he hasn’t done.

With both the fight with FDB and with the yin leaves threat, DFS plays the villain to try to force LLH to live, because he’d rather LLH hate him and live than love him and die. 

Because Di Feisheng has never wanted Li Xiangyi–or Li Lianhua–dead.