#get someone who would look at you the way lao wen looks at his a-xu

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls Extra 1

- ao3 -

Lan Xichen spent a lot of time learning his family’s rules.

They were important to his uncle, who raised him, and that meant that they were important to him. They were his heritage and his birthright, and anyway he loved his uncle and it made him happy which was good enough for Lan Xichen, but that didn’t make learning them easy or anything. Each rule had to be learned both by itself and in context with others; it wasn’t as simple as memorizing a list and calling it done. You had to learn them and know them and then live up to them to the best of your ability, and that was the work of a lifetime – which Lan Xichen, now six years old, had been informed was an awful long time.

Moreover, though his uncle had never said so, Lan Xichen had heard from the other people in the sect that learning the rules was important because following the rules would make sure he didn’t turn out like his father, who had let down so many people in their sect. Many of the elders said things like that when his uncle wasn’t around, though his uncle never did – his uncle spoke well of their father, although in abstract tones, but sometimes he looked sad about it, too, and therefore Lan Xichen was determined to listen and learn the rules well so that he would never disappoint his uncle the way his father had.

Of course, there were other advantages to learning the rules.

The commentary, for instance.

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1

Talking behind other people's backs is prohibited.

“Unless it’s really funny,” Lan Yueheng said, and – as always – seemed not to notice the way Lan Xichen’s uncle glared at him. “Oooh, actually, let me give you an example, I just heard the best story –”

-

“If you don’t understand those around you, you will be at their mercy, rather than they at yours,” Wen Ruohan said, perfectly poised and with a sharp smirk, just the way he always was unless he happened to be talking to Lan Xichen’s uncle. “How better to learn to understand people than to know what others say about them when they are not around?” His smirk widened. “Look at what people say about me.”

-

“What are you supposed to do if you don’t?” Lao Nie asked, grinning wickedly. “Say mean things about them in front of their faces instead? I can do that!”

-

“I mean, if it’s news, it’s not gossip, right?” Cangse Sanren said, tapping her cheek while pretending to be thoughtful as if it would hide her great big smile. “I’m sure that’s how I learned it, and I was a very good student – no, no, don’t listen to what your uncle says!”

-

“Well, I wish my mother would do less of it,” Wen Xu said, rolling his eyes. He’d come along to visit with his father again the way he always did – he was always tagging along with his father, really, and his father indulged him more often than he probably should, according to both sects’ elders. Not that Wen Ruohan listened to anyone but Lan Xichen’s uncle. “Sometimes I think that’s all she does! It’s boring!”

-

“If you mean what you say and say what you mean, then your friends will never doubt you whether you are in front of them or not,” Nie Mingjue said, then frowned. “I mean, I think?”

-

“Listen to A-Jue,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said when Lan Xichen reported on the discussions, throwing up his hands in disgust. “He’s the only one of the lot of them worth anything.”

“It’s his mother’s contribution,” Lao Nie opined.

“It’s certainly not yours,” Wen Ruohan said. “Anyway, what was wrong with A-Xu’s answer? It was accurate.”

“It has nothing to do with the rule!”

“That’s because I’ve already mastered it years ago,” Wen Xu said cheerfully. Surprisingly cheerfully, given that Nie Mingjue was sitting on him again; maybe he’d gotten used to Nie Mingjue always winning.

Lan Xichen’s uncle rubbed his forehead. “A-Xu, if you really want to go copy the rules on humility a few more times, you don’t have to wait for me to instruct you to do so –”

“He’s right, though,” Cangse Sanren cackled from her husband’s lap. “Madame Wen is an amazing source of gossip, but it does get a bit boring sometimes. You can’t punish him for being right!”

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2

Do not succumb to rage.

“Unless there’s a very good reason,” Lao Nie said, picking Lan Xichen up in one arm as if he weighed as little as a feather, and Nie Mingjue in the other just as easily, even though he was much bigger. “In the world there are many injustices, and it is your duty to fight against them with everything that you have – if you are wholly above the feeling of rage, then you have forgotten your empathy, and soon will follow the crooked path into indifference.”

-

“The issue is succumbing to rage,” Wen Ruohan said. “You can be angry, or even furious, but you should always maintain your self-control. Once you’ve mastered yourself, you can master others.”

-

“He means get revenge,” Wen Xu said knowledgably. “You get angry, then you get even.”

-

“Oh, rage?” Cangse Sanren asked, rolling up her sleeves. “Well, as it happens, I’m going to go have a chat with your mother, I’ll give you a good demonstration of –”

“You are doing no such thing,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said, exasperated. “Get back here.”

-

“It’s a waste of time,” Lan Yueheng said. “Getting angry takes time and energy. Why not be happy instead?” He thought about it. “Well, I mean, sometimes cursing a little bit when something goes wrong is nice. Even the calmest concoction needs to blow off steam sometimes to retain its equilibrium!”

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3

Do not disrespect your elders.

“And I,” Wen Ruohan said, looking positively gleeful, “am the eldest.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said at once. “Xichen, you hear me? Don’t listen to him.”

-

“There’s a difference between disrespect and disobedience,” Cangse Sanren said. “Being old doesn’t mean being right, it means that there’s a greater probability that they’ve encountered something in their lifetime that will give them an insight you lack. You should honor and respect their insight, but always make your own decisions in the end.”

-

“I mean, you could always listen to me, instead,” Lao Nie said. “I’m your elder too, aren’t I?”

-

“Don’t listen to either Uncle Wen or my father,” Nie Mingjue said, looking long-suffering. “They both like to play tricks.”

-

“Wait,” Lan Yueheng said. “I’m an elder? Since when? That’s a terrible idea!”

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4

Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others.

“Don’t listen to Wen Ruohan,” Cangse Sanren said.

-

“Don’t listen to Sect Leader Wen,” Lan Yueheng said.

-

“Definitely do not listen to Hanhan,” Lao Nie said. “At all. In any way.”

-

“Probably best not to listen to A-Xu’s dad,” Nie Mingjue said, and glanced over apologetically.

“No, no, you’re right,” Wen Xu said, nodding furiously. “He’s kind of awful about these sorts of things.”

-

“They’re all being absolutely ridiculous,” Wen Ruohan said. “I’m perfectly reliable on such matters. After all, what’s the point of working so hard to obtain and maintain power if you don’t oppress those that deserve it? If you don’t take advantage, who will?”

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5

Do not make assumptions about others.

“I used to assume that Cangse Sanren was  a normal human being,” Lan Yueheng said. “Goes to show what I know, right?”

-

“I used to assume that Wen Ruohan was a perfectly normal self-absorbed murderer that would keep his greedy hands to his own people,” Cangse Sanren said, sounding irritable. “And not have perfectly ordinary rogue cultivators followed around by complete weirdos because he’s secretly worried about them like a mother hen!”

-

“I used to assume that people would be grateful when someone rescued them and their husband from near certain death,” Wen Ruohan said.

-

“I used to assume that the funniest thing in the world was watching Hanhan argue with your uncle,” Lao Nie said, chin on his hands. “Little did I know that adding Cangse Sanren to the mix made it even funnier.”

-

“Grown-ups are stupid sometimes,” Wen Xu said. “That’s why you have to verify everything they say for yourself.”

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6

Embrace the entirety of the world.

“By being righteous,” Nie Mingjue said.

-

“By taking it all over, as far as I can tell from my father,” Wen Xu said.

-

“Depends on what you define as the world, doesn’t it?” Lao Nie said.

-

“Be ambitious,” Wen Ruohan said. “Define it broadly.”

-

“I mean, I don’t think your arms are quite long enough yet, the world’s pretty big,” Lan Yueheng said. “But I pick you up and swing you around, maybe they’ll stretch a little. Want to try?”

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7

Do not associate with evil.

“I mean, it’s true, but you have to think carefully about what you categorize as evil,” Lao Nie said. “Just being a man-eating nation-destroying inhuman amoral nine-tailed fox isn’t automatically enough to qualify, right?”

-

“That’s, uh, a really weirdly specific example,” Lan Yueheng said. “I feel like at least three of the things on that list probably rise to the level of evil? Or have I missed something?”

-

“Lao Nie said – oh no, not again,” Wen Ruohan said, and patted Lan Xichen on the head before he stalked out the door. “I’m the only evil you should associate with, you hear me?”

-

“I bet she’s got teeth in interesting places,” Cangse Sanren said. “I’ve got to meet her…hmm? Evil? Does that really matter? It’s going to be funny.”

-

“She’s not evil,” Nie Mingjue said. “She’s pretty nice, actually. She calls me ‘meatball’ and ‘pork bun’ and says I’m so cute that she wants to eat me right up.”

-

“I’m pretty sure she means it literally,” Wen Xu said. “Gear up, Xichen! We’ve got to go save Mingjue!”

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8

Do not tell lies.

“People don’t believe the truth, so why not tell it?” Cangse Sanren said.

-

“Using the truth makes your misdirections more believable and your critiques more devastating,” Wen Ruohan said.

-

“Why would you even want to lie?” Nie Mingjue asked, puzzled.

-

“There’s a difference between not telling lies and not having the slightest bit of tact,” Lao Nie said, rubbing his face. “Maybe you can help A-Jue figure that out.”

-

“Silence is always a good alternative when you don’t want to admit to stuff you’ve done that maybe, just maybe, might annoy some people,” Lan Yueheng said, looking over his collapsed laboratory with a wince. “Not that I’d know anything about that, of course.”

-

“Telling a lie will only get you into more trouble later when they figure it out,” Wen Xu said. “Because then they’re angry at you for what you did and for lying about it. It’s just not worth it!”

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9

Do not disregard the rules.

“Unless they’re really stupid,” Lao Nie said.

-

“I mean,” Nie Mingjue said, wrinkling his nose. “As a general rule, yes. But it’s different if following the rules would permit injustice to happen, that’s for sure.”

-

“It’s a matter of picking what rule is the relevant one,” Wen Ruohan said. “Be thoughtful, and you can have the moral high ground in any situation…your uncle is irritatingly good at that.”

-

“You’ve got to know what the rule is before you break it,” Wen Xu said. “That way you can decide if it’s worth the cost of breaking it or not.”

-

“If there’s any you think are wrong, you should say something,” Lan Yueheng said. “The rules are a gift handed down from our ancestors and ought to be respected, but each of us has a duty to put in our own thoughts as well – our contribution to the next generation down. Anyway, your uncle will probably be able to put together a reasonable argument as to why changing the rule is appropriate and truer to our sect’s principles than the version carved on the wall. He’s good at that!”

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10

“I want the rules to be a foundation under your feet,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said. “They should give you confidence in your actions and pride in your family and sect; they should not feel like they are binding you. If they are, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Maybe if it was just Lan Xichen and his uncle, the two of them and maybe also little baby Lan Wangji and the rather unreliable Lan Yueheng and the even more unreliable Lao Nie, Lan Xichen would immediately and unhesitatingly agree, and then never say anything anyway no matter what he felt. He loved his uncle so much, and every one in a while his uncle seemed so sad; he couldn’t bear to be the one to add more pain and burden to his uncle’s shoulders, already weighed down with the expectations of the sect that should have been his father’s responsibility and would one day be Lan Xichen’s.

But it wasn’t just them, and Lan Xichen frowned a little, really thinking about it. “Maybe,” he said after a while. “Or maybe I’d tell Uncle Wen about it, and then he’d find a way to fix it, or to tell you about it in a way that didn’t make you sad. Does that work, too?”

His uncle looked amused.

“Yes,” he said. “That works. Just remember –”

“Don’t listen to him about ‘oppressing others’?”

“Exactly.”

[randomingoftherandomness]

Prompt! WKX is an omega who's been suppressing his heats for years with the help of Aunt Luo. When he leaves the Ghost Valley, his heat comes unexpectedly because of prolonged suppressant use. Alpha!ZZS helps. Smut or not, up to you.

A/N: I see Omega WKX and just like that it’s on like donkey kong 😝 No smut for this one though I may revisit this. I had to take a pause in writing the Smut Dialogue Prompts because I had to work for my Taobao WoH merch money. But keep sending them in!

I place this fic as taking place somewhere on the journey to the Longyue Cabinet.

This fic is longer than I had anticipated...

—

It hits him that he’s out of tea three days into the constant discomfort of aches on the base of his spine, the almost debilitating need to scent Chengling as if he was his young, and the embarrassing urge to bare his neck to the Old Toad Monster whenever they argue. But above all that, the most mortifying thing of all is the distracting awareness of where his Ah Xu was at every given moment and the insanity that rages through him to kneel and submit to him even when the man still looks at him with nothing but a suspicion that makes him want to keen and whine.

Wen Kexing is supposed to be above all this, not just as the Lord of the Ghost Valley, but as someone who is trying to prove to this Alpha that he was the right--

He perishes the thought before it can even finish.

The nondescript brocade pouch is empty save for a few remnant leaves that would barely be enough to tide him through even the first hour of what’s coming next. It’s fine, he tries to reason through the rising panic in his mind that this was missing the mark of ‘fine’ and hitting the bullseye of ‘you’re completely fucked’. This blend is unique to Aunt Luo’s stores and if Ah Xiang was still by his side, she would have a backup pouch for him. As a Beta, she would have no need for it herself.

Unbidden, the memories of the scant few times he had let his Heats run their course comes flooding through him; the pain and ache of being untouched, unfulfilled, the taste of blood and sweat as he rides through the terror of his heart burning through the fever, the fear of that lone door being broken down by some crazed Alpha and being mated against his will. He remembers the rawness of his throat for weeks after, screaming and crying for that boy who balanced a cricket on his head and promised him good food when he could come home with him.

Wen Kexing swallows tightly around the knot of emotions drumming thick in his throat. It’s an old fear and it is the nightmare that he has survived and lived through by the grace of Aunt Luo’s protection. He’d presented early; far too early by the sounds of Aunt Luo’s recollections and the theory was that the trauma of his parent’s deaths coupled with the Mengpo Soup being administered to someone so young, was the cause of things.

“Lao Wen?”

“Hm?” He quickly plasters on a smile, blinking up at his Ah Xu before darting his gaze somewhere over his shoulder instead. This is dangerous. 

He’s sweating through his inner robes and it won’t be long now before his scent draws every Alpha in the 15 mile radius from where they are in the forest. He finds himself simultaneously surprised and disappointed that Ah Xu has barely reacted to his scent when the Old Toad Monster had taken a sniff at him this morning and declared that he was taking Chengling along with that strange child-man off their hands for a few days. 

It’s ridiculous and he reminds himself that he has nothing to fear when Ah Xu has been nothing but courteous this entire time even when knowing from the beginning that he was an Omega with a bloodlust that could fill entire oceans. 

“Lao Wen, are you alright?” Ah Xu asks. Wen Kexing looks at him then; meets his gaze and decides it is all or nothing at this point. Should Ah Xu say no, he won’t press, he won’t push and he won’t beg. His heart will break but that wouldn’t be anything new. 

He has survived worse things than a broken heart.

“I’m going into Heat,” He admits, eyes fixed on Ah Xu, gaze strong and unwavering. “It’s going to be bad because I’ve been on suppressants and I need you to know this.”

Ah Xu remains impassive, quiet and still, before he asks gently, “So what are your plans?”

The words twinge something awful in his chest and he forces himself to keep smiling. “Find an Alpha. Pay for one if I must. The last Heat I went through was horrible and I nearly died. I’m not keen to repeat the experience,” He inhales and finds himself stuttering on the sour scent of... Anger? Jealousy?

Ah Xu’s tells are still things he is learning but even with this shallow pool of knowledge, Wen Kexing can tell that he is displeased. 

His immediate instinct is to go on his knees, wrap his arms around that slender waist and rub his cheek to his belly until that cold, unhappy scent sweetens into something warm again. But he restrains himself, tries to stand his ground even when he can feel the quickening of his heart demanding that he submit, he surrender, he give himself over to his Alpha; to just reach out and touch and kiss and love and be loved--

“Am I not enough?”

The slow enunciation of the syllables breaks through the cacophony in his mind. Wen Kexing thinks he must be dreaming and half convinces himself that this is some Heat wrought dream, and that there is no way that Zhou Zishu would ever--

Careful hands hold him by the cheeks, wrists placed close to the corners of his lips and he can almost taste the way he can be owned and marked and belong to this Alpha. This same Alpha who is looking at him with eyes of liquid gold and is saying, “Lao Wen, please let me share your Heat with you.”

“But you...” He trails off.

“Me?”

“You haven't even reacted to me,” Wen Kexing says a little dumbly, body swaying into the promise of an embrace.

On that, Ah Xu smiles a little wryly. His hands move, trailing fingers southwards to rest right against Wen Kexing’s nape. The heat of his palm, right over where a Bond Mark should be shouldn’t be this thrilling, but the promise that is etched in the heady weight of his gaze is enough to steal a soft whine from the cages of his ribs. 

“It’s the Nails. I’m slowly losing my senses. I can’t smell much anymore,” Ah Xu admits with a gentle press of his fingers to sweat slick skin for the briefest of a moment, before pulling away, huffing with fondness. “Was that what worried you? That I wasn’t reacting to you? I thought I’d held your hands enough times and touched you more than was appropriate. Even Senior Ye could tell.” 

The gentle whining that comes from within him builds into something needy that bellies the spreading damp on his inner clothes. 

“I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to,” Ah Xu says, leaning in to press their cheeks together. When he speaks again, his words come on heated breath that has Wen Kexing spreading his legs, letting him occupy the space between them. “But I can say this. If you spend your Heat with me, I won’t hurt you, I’ll make it so good for you. I promise you won’t remember all the Alphas you’ve shared them with before.”

Wen Kexing bites down on his lip and ducks his eyes. Ah Xu has never been so forward and yet, with just these few sentences, he has turned his entire world axis on its head. “There weren’t ever any other Alphas,” He confesses in a quiet rush. “I...”

“You’ve never...?” Ah Xu’s eyes widen.

“Never. I’ve never trusted anyone enough.”

Ah Xu seems to ponder on this. “And now?”

Wen Kexing closes his eyes, surrendering to the need to press his brow to Ah Xu’s strong shoulder. The need prickles deep in his groin and he knows Ah Xu can feel it even through the folds of his robes. There is no mistaking where this will go and Wen Kexing finds that there is no fear in this desire.

Here was his Alpha, the one who will catch him when he falls. Here is the one he had chosen as a child when the world was bright. Here he is for him to love, to hold, to cherish. 

Beyond any measure of rhyme and reason, Wen Kexing knows that even if this is the only Heat he ever gets to share with him, it will be enough. “You’re it for me,” He says softly, pouring every bit of sincerity and honesty into those words. Even if Ah Xu still suspects him, even if he never loves him the way Wen Kexing has loved him for a lifetime, he has been Zhou Zishu’s Omega from the very beginning.

Whatever Ah Xu finds on his face must be enough, because their lips meet, at first, in an inelegant kiss that was too much teeth that clacked and bump, and then again, in a kiss that was half-laughter and many parts delight.

“Then, let me take care of you,” Ah Xu says, thumb tracking the curve of his jaw, pressing his body close.

Wen Kexing shudders, hands moving to hold him by the waist. 

“Alright.”

[shijiujun]

Lonely Dream | 孤梦

Summary: And when all is done and dusted, sometimes Lao Wen still gets those headaches of his, and the spots where Ah Xu had the nails driven in stil throb in pain on a cold, rainy day.

Some slice of life and domesticity for WenZhou as they enjoy more years than they expected to have initially, together.

Notes: OKAY so there are too many theories going out there for special ep ending, and nah not going there! So the concept of this is SOMEHOW Zhou Zishu saves Wen Kexing at the end of Ep 36, and they need to head into icy mountain cave for a WHILE but not forever. They head back down to Four Seasons Manor once Wen Kexing recovers.

Basically SHL ver. WenZhou, but with TYK ending (where WenZhou fight in the icy mountains for a bit after Wu Xi cures him and then head back down into the world of the living). No immortal lifespan, but hey, they get the rest of their normal lives together! So yeah, they can still eat normally, no snow and ice diet please.

Word Count: 4,500+ 

✨✨ Link on AO3 ✨✨

******

They visit Ah Xiang and Cao Weining’s graves once Wen Kexing’s year-long recovery in the frigid cold of the mountains is complete.

Zhou Zishu says that it is for Lao Wen’s recuperation, but he suspects Wen Kexing, the heartless bastard, knows that he has taken this year too, to finally stop hurting, to stop going through the bone-deep, heart-wrenching terror at the prospect of losing him.

Opening his eyes in the armoury a year ago, his five senses were returned to him, but at what price? Feeling Lao Wen’s cold hands against his, his stark, blinding white hair a horrifying contrast against his beautiful face, and the man almost leaving him.

Leaving him, once again.

Horror turned into anger, the words stuck in his throat, his chest so tight and heart slamming against the bones caging it, Zhou Zishu had regained all that he had lost-

-and then lost the most important thing, person, to him.

Someone he values above his own life, who had lied to him, who had so stupidly, stupidly gave himself up for him.

Zhou Zishu does not want to remember how he survived that day, how he spent minutes, hours, and days after, making sure Lao Wen continued to hang on to his very last breath.

In the past year, the cold he was constantly plagued with had nothing to do with the wintry landscape.

He knows he is pushing it a little — his eyes have rarely left Wen Kexing since they were moved to the mountains at Wu Xi and Senior Ye’s suggestions. Initially, Lao Wen slept and Zhou Zishu had no idea if he would ever wake up.

Before he would even open his eyes, the panic typically set in just like that, gripping him by the throat the moment he woke. Zhou Zishu would have to reach out for Lao Wen across him on the bed, the fear receding only when he heard and felt Lao Wen’s breaths under his fingertips.

For a long time, Zhou Zishu thought that he would be with Lao Wen in this state for the rest of his life. It was not all bad — as long as Lao Wen was alive, who cared if he spent the rest of his years guarding a sleeping Wen Kexing?

Who’s the lazy one now, Lao Wen, he thought plenty of times in the months after, his hands caressing at Wen Kexing’s cheek bones and pale face, which was of the same colour as his white hair.

Fortunately, fortunately… he managed to keep the person he wanted in the end.

They have been so focused on recuperating, stuck in the mountains and in that isolated environment, it was easy to distance themselves from everything that had and was happening outside.

Even though Wen Kexing did not mention a thing, Zhou Zishu knows that he spends some nights awake, looking out into a sky full of stars, quiet and pensive. He knows it, because he does the same.

For Jiu Xiao, for Han Ying, for Qing Luan.

For a young woman who called him Zishu-ge and Sickly Ghost, who threatened to fight him if he left Wen Kexing all alone. A beautiful young woman who should have gotten her happy ending on that tragic afternoon.

For a young man, who had a smile that could light up even the darkest of corners in a place like the Ghost Valley, who would have protected his to-be wife with everything he had.

The pain and grief that comes with losing Ah Xiang and Cao Weining is no easier to bear a year on.

===

Wen Kexing recalls the way she looked that day, all beautiful in her green and red bridal robes, finally able to live a life basking under the sunshine without anything holding her back. That was what he always wanted for her.

What a huge mistake that wedding was.

His whole life, aside from Ah Xu, has been a cycle of repeated mistakes, over and over again. If he had just put his foot down and insisted on not letting Mo Huaiyi in, if he had not just walked away in anger and instead stayed there, they would have stopped Xiao Cao’s death, and Ah Xiang’s after.

Why had he walked off? How did beautiful Ah Xiang, an Ah Xiang he was ready to give away, end up taking her last breath in his arms?

A sting on his right ear pulls him violently out of his depressed reverie, and he yells, “Ow- Ow, ow, ow, Ah Xu!”

“Don’t think that I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Zhou Zishu says, pulling Wen Kexing’s face close to him by the ear. “There is no point dwelling in the past. Life and death… when the time comes, no one can escape from it.”

Wen Kexing’s eyes sober a little, bitterness flashing across his face. Remnants of his hatred and resentment from more than a year ago, before he met Ah Xu.

“If I had just kept her with me-“

“We all make our choices,” Zhou Zishu says, his voice gentling as he lets Wen Kexing go, but the man does not move away.

“If she had to choose again, she would probably have chosen the same.”

In the cold, their hands find their way to each other, clasping warmly under their thick sleeves, the rims lined with fur.

They stare at the graves for a little longer. And while Wen Kexing has never believed in some higher power up there or the heavens-

-this time, with every ounce of his being, he prays and wishes that Ah Xiang and that pig will find their ways back to each other in the next life, no matter what.

Zhou Zishu’s hand squeezes around his, and Wen Kexing turns to see his Ah Xu’s warm smile and gaze.

“Shall we go home?”

Home. The place where they can live out the rest of their natural lives together.

“Let’s go home,” Wen Kexing agrees.

===

“Ah Xu, that is not the way you-“

Hearing Wen Kexing nag for the thousandth time, Zhou Zishu has finally had enough. Slamming the broad vegetable knife onto the wooden chopping board loudly, he turns and looks at the man next to him.

“I’m not the one who begged me to do this,” Zhou Zishu says, turning to walk away, “You make dinner. I told you it was a waste of time-“

Before he can finish his sentence, warmth engulfs his back, and something sharp snuggles into his shoulder bone. A familiar scent — jasmine, from the incense that Wen Kexing likes to use — wraps around him, hands trapping him in between the counter and the limpet attached to him.

Wen Kexing’s palms close over his hands, then guides them to pick up the knife again. Zhou Zishu stiffens, but does not move away. He lets Wen Kexing curl his own fingers properly over the cabbage, and chop at it neatly, over and over.

They have not yet spoken about this between them, despite laying in the same bed right next to each other night after night. The cave was hardly a luxurious abode and to save effort and space, Zhou Zishu fell asleep next to a comatose Wen Kexing for several months, wanting to ascertain that he was alive and breathing at any given moment.

After Wen Kexing woke, Zhou Zishu continued to sleep next to him, and Lao Wen never once brought it up in conversation.

Coming back to Four Seasons Manor, Wen Kexing naturally turned up in his room instead of the one he was staying at before, already asleep when Zhou Zishu returned to turn in.

This man is his soulmate, the person he would give everything up for no matter what it was. His lost shidi, but even before that, this man was someone who was willing to do everything he could for him. Who cared for him like no one else ever would again.

Beyond that? Zhou Zishu knows of his feelings, and is rather certain of Wen Kexing’s. He supposes that after pledging to save each other’s lives at the expense of their own repeatedly, some things just do not have to be articulated.

Zhou Zishu leans into the hold, relaxing entirely.

At this, it is Wen Kexing’s turn to be stunned at the reciprocation where he was expecting none before, but the man recovers quickly. He snuggles in even closer, the side of his face pressed right up against Zhou Zishu’s. 

His Ah Xu remains still, as if unbothered, and Wen Kexing decides to try his luck.

“Ah Xu,” he angles his head slightly, his mouth brushing lightly over Zhou Zishu’s cheek as he murmurs straight into his ear.

Ah, there it is. Zhou Zishu freezes against him, now making to move his ear out of Wen Kexing’s reach.

“What?”

Wen Kexing smiles, amused and so, so fond.

His voice still low and sultry, he continues, “I think you’re right, you should let me cook instead. You’re murdering the cabbage.”

Zhou Zishu pauses for a good two seconds before turning to glare at Wen Kexing. Wen Kexing recognizes that look, and the warmth on Zhou Zishu’s back vanishes instantly just as he starts waving the knife at him.

“Wen Kexing, don’t you think you’re being ridiculous and childish-“

Laughter fills the kitchen, a sound that is incredibly melodious, immediately soothing all the uneasiness Zhou Zishu feels.

Outside, all twenty disciples try not to peek and look at their shifu and shishu being strange again. One of the younger ones, Xiao Man, cannot help but angle his head in the direction of the kitchen, and then says, “Da-shixiong, shifu is going after shishu with a knife! Is he going to be okay?”

Zhang Chengling sighs inwardly, then smiles and pats the boy on the head.

“That’s shifu’s way of showing how much he cares about shishu.”

Back in the kitchen, having heard that tiny quip from their youngest disciple, Wen Kexing finally stops in his tracks, turning around mid-escape to grab Zhou Zishu around the waist with a hand, and the other going to the hand that is holding onto the knife and stopping his Ah Xu from possibly murdering him.

He sets the knife aside, but his other hand does not move.

“What are you doing,” grumbles Zhou Zishu, looking away, his expression a little stern, as if telling Wen Kexing not to be such a nuisance.

This close, however, Wen Kexing can certainly see the light flush on Ah Xu’s cheekbones. 

If Wen Kexing had to rank all the beautiful bones that Ah Xu has, it would probably be scapulas first, followed by his cheekbones.

Wen Kexing’s eyes dip a little lower.

He thinks collarbones may rank third.

“Ah Xu.”

“What?” sighs Zhou Zishu. “Let me go, the disciples need to finish the last set of practice-“

He is cut off when Wen Kexing swoops downwards, and catches his lips in his.

Zhou Zishu’s eyes go wide, but before he can do anything like move away and out of Wen Kexing’s firm hold, the man circles his waist with both arms, effectively trapping him and bringing him closer.

Wen Kexing’s body temperature tends to run on the colder side these days, a side effect of him having been brought back from the brink of death.

Right now, however, Zhou Zishu can feel nothing else but the scalding heat. His hands move up, intending to push Wen Kexing away, but they end up clutching tight around the man’s broad shoulders.

He does not stop the kiss, letting Wen Kexing’s lips roam as they like.

Outside, an unfortunate Chengling who sees this finds his eyes going wide.

“Erm,” he clears his throat quite loudly, gaining all the disciples’ attention. “Let’s head outside to finish our practice.”

He ushers everyone out, while wondering how the hell he hadn’t seen this coming.

Everything makes so much sense now.

===

Four Seasons Manor grows, and Zhang Chengling along with Bi Xingming end up taking over some classes and teaching of their own.

Wen Kexing does not want to admit it, but it seems that when he asked Ah Xu if he was a servant here, the man actually meant it. His little Chengling, who is not so little anymore, still comes to him to ask for tips or begs him to give some pointers to the other disciples, but most of the time, Wen Kexing is cooking.

He makes breakfast, is involved in lunch, and definitely ends up cooking a feast every dinner. Thankfully, Bi Xingming is unlike his da-shixiong and shifu as he actually has some kitchen sense, but Wen Kexing has truly been demoted to servant in this manor.

A servant that ends up in his master’s bed every night, Wen Kexing thinks then, and feels better about it immediately.

“Shishu, let me help you bring these out,” Bi Xingming says, stepping into the kitchen just as he’s done with the last dish.

“Mnn,” Wen Kexing hums in assent without looking up from his soup, tasting it one last time.

At the very least, these days, Zhou Zishu is able to actually, actually taste the food he lovingly cooks.

“Perfect,” he nods. “Is your shifu not up yet? It’s almost lunch time.”

“Ah…” Bi Xingming blinks, “You said not to disturb him until he wakes up, and he hasn’t left the room since morning.”

Wen Kexing frowns slightly. Sure, he worked Ah Xu over thoroughly last night, but not to the extent that he would need to sleep in for this long. Worry niggling at him, he gets Bi Xingming to start lunch with the other disciples first without waiting for them, and heads in the direction of their room.

The last time Zhou Zishu slept in so late, it was the night he confessed his past to Wen Kexing, of how he caused the deaths of everyone in Four Seasons Manor. He was deathly ill then and emotionally wrung out — things that Wen Kexing loathes to see on Zhou Zishu.

“Ah Xu?” Wen Kexing calls, sliding the door open gently.

The lump under the covers is the same as when he left it this morning. Wen Kexing takes quick strides and goes over, sitting down on the bed next to Ah Xu.

“Ah Xu?” he calls again, his voice soft as he reaches out for Zhou Zishu’s face.

His lips are pale, eyebrows furrowed and perspiring at the forehead.

“Ah Xu, are you ill? What’s wrong?”

Zhou Zishu’s skin is of normal temperature, much to Wen Kexing’s relief. His brain runs through a a million scenarios, none of them good and just as he’s about to yell for Chengling, something clicks in his head.

He does yell for their Chengling in the end, but for a hot bath instead with a pack of herbs and medicine from the stash Wu Xi gave them before he headed back home with Jing Beiyuan.

“Is shifu okay?” he asks, worried.

“He will be,” Wen Kexing says, lifting Zhou Zishu out from under the covers and heading for the bath. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch him. You continue training with the other disciples, otherwise when Ah Xu wakes up he’s going to scold all of you again.”

As Zhou Zishu soaks in the steaming medicinal bath, Wen Kexing sits right next to him, pillowing his head on his arms, which are sitting on the rim of the wooden tub and stares at him.

A few years have passed since the days when Wen Kexing despaired at Zhou Zishu dying in a short few years and the peace they have now makes it easy to not think about the past. He forgets sometimes that despite being healed, despite him giving his life force to Ah Xu, the man’s body has been to hell and back with the nails.

And forcing them out of his body forcefully while he mistakenly believed that Wen Kexing was dead, wanting to take revenge for him-

For the rest of their time together, Wen Kexing knows he will forever be guilt-ridden at this. If only he had just told Ah Xu, if only he didn’t make another stupid decision, there would have been no need for the armoury. No need for self-sacrificial plays, no need for lost time.

That Zhou Zishu would love him still and be with him, that is nothing short of a miracle.

On days like these, when the weather turns just the slightest bit wet and cold, his body starts to hurt, especially the points where he kept the nails in. All seven of them, the stupid man.

Wen Kexing inches forward and presses a kiss to the man’s temple.

For this life and every life after this one, Wen Kexing swears he will always be good to Zhou Zishu.

===

He loves and hates Wen Kexing’s hair, even after several years have passed. They are nearing the ten-year mark since leaving the mountains, and Zhou Zishu has slept next to this man every single day after, but whenever Wen Kexing shows up, Zhou Zishu has to admit that his breath is always taken away.

Wen Kexing looks ethereally gorgeous with those white strands, his features standing out even more clearly, not that Zhou Zishu would ever tell him that lest it goes to his head. However, it is a reminder that his silly, stupid shidi and now husband would dare to sacrifice his own life for his without telling him.

It is a constant reminder that he lost him, even if momentarily.

“Ah Xu, why are you are staring at me like that? You’re going to make me shy. Did you miss me? I was only gone for two days,” Wen Kexing says unabashedly during dinner.

At once, coughs and chokes go around the table, and the clanking of dropped chopsticks on the table echo through the dining hall.

Zhou Zishu takes a deep breath to compose himself and resists the urge to fight with the man over dinner. It would be a waste of food, not to mention a futile argument seeing that Wen Kexing has not changed at all since the first time they met. As long as he does not break out into poetry-

“Ah Xu, I missed you too. It is so fortunate that your heart is akin to mine-“

At that, everyone immediately stands from the table and excuses themselves, stumbling over one another as they parrot that they are full and do not want to have anymore.

It is an open secret that they are together — not because they are hiding it, but simply because they find no need to verbalize what they are to others — and if it was another couple that was stuck in this situation, he would possibly find it amusing, but Wen Kexing is incorrigible and has been for years. 

Zhou Zishu finds that while he loves the man and is utterly devoted to him, is willing to die for him, at times like these maybe they should have both just stayed dead.

“Wen Kexing, have you had enough?”

He reaches out, intending to pinch at Wen Kexing as a lesson, but the man catches his hand within his deft fingers and brings it upwards so his hand is cupping one side of his face. Wen Kexing turns his head a little to press his lips to the open palm, a soft smile tugging at his lips.

“I missed you,” Wen Kexing repeats. “It’s strange how it has only been two days, but I miss you like I’ve never missed anything else before.”

The impending reprimand dies on his lips.

Fine, just this once.

Zhou Zishu sighs and pinches at Wen Kexing’s cheek instead.

“Ow, ow! Ah Xu, Ah Xu, this face is a work of the heavens, how can you trample on it like this?!”

Zhou Zishu’s eyes are once again drawn to Wen Kexing’s white locks, and he unconsciously reaches out.

As if knowing what Zhou Zishu is thinking about, Wen Kexing grabs for the hand again, interlacing their fingers together.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before I faked my death, and then not telling you at the end, before I….” Wen Kexing says, swallowing with difficulty. “Ah Xu, if I could change it, I would. But at the end, if I was given the same choice, I would have chosen the same.”

It hurts to think about that morning, seeing Wen Kexing’s hair all white and almost lifeless, his hands dropping from his.

“I know,” Zhou Zishu breathes, hiding his face in Wen Kexing’s shoulder. “I know.”

===

Zhou Zishu hears of the supposed ambush on Four Seasons Manor while he  has half a day’s journey left before he gets home.

The unrest in jianghu truly never ends; their fight with the Scorpions, with Tian Chuang, with Prince Jin and Zhao Jing was rewarded with peace for a few years, but people never say contented for long. Old sects are wiped out and new ones emerge. Most of them know not to mess with Four Seasons Manor as his and Wen Kexing’s reputations indeed precede themselves, but it is unavoidable, perhaps, for some newer and ambitious ones to mistakenly think they can take both of them on.

Well, they must have made sure Zhou Zishu was not in the manor before striking, as if Wen Kexing could not take all of them on himself.

He arrives in the nick of time in the heat of battle, although a quick glance shows that Four Seasons Manor is still holding up pretty well, with Zhang Chengling and Bi Xingming leading the rest of the disciples.

And there he is, Wen Kexing, all regal in his red embroidered robes, and his white hair pinned up neatly. Every movement from his sharp and deadly fan strikes true. His eyebrows are furrowed slightly, his eyes revealing a thirst for blood that Zhou Zishu hasn’t seen in a while.

He shivers at the want that hits him, even though it is not the time and place for it.

Zhou Zishu lands opportunely behind Wen Kexing and parries a blow that was coming straight for Wen Kexing back.

The both of them exchange a glance, and wordlessly, delve right back into the fight.

When the dust settles a few hours later, Zhou Zishu makes sure injured disciples are looked at while others clean up the mess. His attention finally freed up so he can focus solely on Wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu turns, only to see his husband a distance away from him, supporting himself against a wall.

He recognizes the signs of Wen Kexing’s brain-splitting headaches immediately, and rushes over.

“Lao Wen!”

“Shishu!”

Zhou Zishu catches Wen Kexing just as he collapses, his legs giving out under him. His fingers immediately search for Wen Kexing’s pulse.

This is an all-too familiar scene, but Zhou Zishu cannot remember when this last happened. His body growing cold at the implications, all the fears are now suddenly dredged up from the trenches of trauma sustained at a point in time long ago.

“Go get Physician Yao,” Zhou Zishu snaps at whichever disciple is standing closest to them, before picking Wen Kexing up.

Zhang Chengling turns up in their room before the physician does, and whatever fear he is experiencing right now abates slightly.

Before the manor started to grow, there was only the three of them. If anyone understands what he is feeling right now, it would be Chengling.

“Shifu…” he says, trailing off as he kneels down next to the bed and looks at Wen Kexing. “Shishu hasn’t had this in years, what happened?”

“Maybe… I don’t know,” Zhou Zishu exhales heavily. “He could be just.. too tired.”

They watch over him until the physician arrives. Zhou Zishu refuses to be chased out, and the tightness in his chest only disappears once she rolls her eyes at him after testing Wen Kexing’s pulse.

“The both of you are not young anymore,” Physician Yao almost scoffs. “And the injuries and illnesses that the both of you share combined can fill up a list a mile long. He hasn’t exerted himself like this in a long while, suddenly letting it all out in a fight like that, of course there are bound to be side effects. Stop looking at him as if he’s about to die.”

Zhou Zishu is about to thank her, when a weak rasp comes from the bed, “… been there, done that.”

Relief floods him at the sound of Wen Kexing’s voice, and immediately after, anger burns hot through him as the man’s words sink in, “Wen Kexing!”

Physician Yao retreats, knowing by now not to give instructions to them both when they get like this. Instead, speaking to any of their disciples would be much more reliable.

===

Later, after all has quietened down for certain, the stench of blood fading somewhat, Wen Kexing blinks languidly, not wanting to move at all, or do anything.

If he was to die in this position right now, he would have zero complaints.

Zhou Zishu pats at the back of his head gently as Wen Kexing lies almost half on him, his ear pressed over Zhou Zishu’s heart, comforted by the strong beat. Years later, the both of them approaching the big five-o, and Wen Kexing is still like a child sometimes.

Well, he’s making up for lost time.

He is greedy for more years with Ah Xu, in this life and every single life after. A hundred, a thousand years and more. Every little bit, he wants to spend with Ah Xu.

“Ah Xu,” he murmurs, and feels the vibration of the man’s response through his chest, “Before, I could not have what I wanted. I could not play when I wanted to, there was no one to teach me martial arts when I wanted to learn and the things I wanted I could not afford.”

“The person I wanted to keep, I was too late.”

This conversation seems so far away now, but is as clear to the both of them as if it happened just yesterday. That rainy, storming night.

A night of despair and hopelessness.

Zhou Zishu huffs in amusement.

“And now?” he asks.

Wen Kexing looks up, and cheekily responds, “Well, the martial arts part aside, Ah Xu, you pay for everything now, so I can afford everything! And in terms of play… you would know best how well I play now with-“

He’s cut off with a warning look from Zhou Zishu, although the man does not attempt to jostle him, still worried about his earlier headache and injuries sustained from the fight.

Wen Kexing loves this man, to the depths of hell and back.

“And… the person I want to keep, is right here with me.”

Zhou Zishu’s answering smile lights up every fibre of being.

They have forever to look forward to.

***

[sixteenthshen]

post-finale stuff

Possible spoilers. Beware

Last night, I happened to check the scriptwriter's Weibo and saw that she had liked this fan's post. It's the only non-work related Weibo post that she had liked, so of course, I went to read it. 

The fact that this is the only fan post she's given her approval to must mean that it is on point and she agrees with the characterisation. I thought it's pretty good, so I've gone ahead to translate it here. I own 0 rights to this. I just thought it's a good perspective that may help others like me who struggled with the ending. 

I think I've mostly made my peace with it now, and to sum it up:

Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all that they are. 

A-Xu never once blamed Lao Wen for how things turned out because he understood that. And he’s clearly a better person than I am (lol).

Let me be clear about my stand - the real victim of how the drama unfolded in the last six episodes is WKX. When we feel our hearts ache for ZZS, it's because the show let down WKX (the character). If your heart is only hurting for WKX during episodes 33-34, you should try to ship WKX with someone else, ok? If you think the last six episodes were great and that WKX was very romantic (and only romantic), then I honestly don't know what to say. 

I ship wenzhou. That means I like both Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu. I want them to love each other, be good to each other and live happily ever after. And I want them not to be OOC. 

The rest behind the cut. Spoilers for the whole drama. 

------- 

First, the source. Here is a link to that Weibo post, by 爱吐槽的栗小姐. I will delete this if requested by the OP - because this is really in a grey area imo. But I think the intention of a public post is for it to be shared? (especially something like this, which argues a point) 

Secondly, the poster does try to be fair in her post, but as the problem here is WKX's ruined characterisation, ZZS's character is analysed primarily concerning this issue only. There's quite a bit left to ZZS's character and backstory that isn't relevant. I believe that's why the post doesn't elaborate on it, or so I hope.

-------

Ever since WKX faked his death, I received three to four waves of fellow sister fans' mournful wails: "Lao Wen actually faked his death; does he have a heart?" "They were supposed to be of the same heart and treat each other with honesty. How did they regress?" "What happened to their innate soulmate-ness?" "Why does A-Xu always say to face things together, yet Lao Wen always keeps his plans from him?" "A-Xu loves Lao Wen, yet Lao Wen only loves himself"…….

Wait. What have you guys misunderstood about the meaning of soulmates? 

Soulmates are about values, but a person's behaviour… that's methodology FFS! 

(Do they no longer teach this in political affairs class in high school anymore?) 

Wenzhou, these soulmates, are incomparably compatible and mesh well in terms of values. According to the scriptwriter, the entire jianghu wants and tries to get the pieces of Glazed Armour, save the two of them. Not only do they not care for the peerless martial arts, immense power, nor the massive wealth that the Glazed Armour represents, they don't even care for the power they hold in their hands –Ghost Valley and the Window of Heaven. Both of them willing to give it up without a second thought. 

Before they met each other, they were so tired of (ZZS) and so angry at (WKX) this earthly world that they didn't even want to live on anymore. 

After they met each other, they gradually began to feel the warmth in this world again. How nice it would be if they could live in seclusion, hand in hand and just bask in the sun. 

In this world, where everyone else is fighting for power or wealth, they are true soulmates. To intelligent people like them, whether or not they're honest about their identities or secrets is merely a matter of formality. They had already determined their attraction to the other's soul early on and have never doubted it. 

There may be some here who would criticise loudly at this point, "Then can't you be more considerate for your soulmate (the actual phrased used is "spiritual companion")? A-Xu has said many times, let's face everything together, I'll bet that you will be honest with me. If you really love him, then why can't you care for his feelings?" 

----- You guys, you've never been married. 

If two souls meeting can naturally resolve all behavioural conflicts and disagreements, then the theory of "breaking in" * would not exist. 

Let us take a look at what kind of a person WKX and ZZS each are.

Wen Kexing, he's a lone wolf. 

After his parents' death and his entering the Ghost Valley, his smooth sailing life suddenly fell off a cliff. Ever since then, the only person he could rely on was himself. That deep-seated hatred is carved into his bones, yet he can't speak of it to anyone else. He isn't the same type of person as the rest of the ghosts in the Ghost Valley; he isn't the same type of person as A-Xiang, who he raised. If we talk about the world and everyone who lives in it, he doesn't have any fetters or feels any (positive) emotions. 

His supposed craziness is a form of indifference. He's indifferent to others' lives, nor his own, because he just doesn't care. (T/N: I think he does care for his own life, but only for revenge, after that, he's indifferent. Indifferent isn't suicidal. I don't know why some fans seem to be confusing the two. Although he didn't plan to, if he somehow manages to stay alive after getting his revenge, WKX will continue to live on, even if it's only to keep A-Xiang happy because he is indifferent.)

Growing up like this, being solitary became his style. He's used to doing everything alone, used to making his own decisions, used to digesting all his emotions himself. 

Every time he argues with A-Xu, he digests his emotions himself. The next day, he faces A-Xu with a smile again. 

This is how he loves, to take it upon himself to face danger, difficulty and pain alone. It's how he had supported A-Xiang all these years in the Ghost Valley and what he's used to. 

While Zhou Zishu, he's a lead horse (of a herd). ** 

Since a very young age, he's taught to take responsibility. He's used to bearing everything on his shoulders, be it the responsibility of his family or the responsibility for the Four Seasons Manor, even the responsibility for saving commoners from disasters. 

Unlike the lone wolf, the lead horse is ultimately a social animal. 

Regardless of his identity as the Manor Lord of the Four Seasons Manor or the Leader of the Window of Heaven, he's always the one to lead the herd and rarely fights alone. So, A-Xu not only has leadership ability but more than that, he also knows how to be tolerant and accepting of the differences of his team members. You can see the various ways he managed to influence Lao Wen along the road; he's firm when he needs to be and soft the other times. It's absolutely textbook in managing your lover workplace management. 

Zhou Zishu believes in communication whenever there's a problem, that they should be open and honest. So, teamwork is what he's used to. 

Does it mean that when a horse and lone wolf fall in love, that there won't be a breaking in period? 

Obviously not. 

I guess this is where some may say again, "isn't this part of a character's arc/development? The two of them quarrel time and time again. Did WKX not grow at all from it?" 

Of course, after meeting each other, they both grew and saved each other.

When he first left Window of Heaven, A-Xu was lonely with regret. Unlike the lone wolf who's used to doing everything alone, a lead horse without the last of his herd has no way to bear the bone-deep loneliness and merciless self-recrimination.

ZZS wandered around this world aimlessly until Lao Wen started pestering him, until he picked up Zhang Chengling, right up until he felt he hadn't singlehandedly destroyed the Four Seasons Manor. This lead horse finally regained a goal in life. He gained a partner and a lover. Lao Wen sticks to him, Chengling relies on him, and the abandoned Four Seasons Manor became like-new in his hands. He finally reconciles with himself. 

When he first came out of the valley, Lao Wen carried a rage strong enough to burn the world down. But when he met A-Xu, he also met the beauty of the world. 

When the Four Sages of Anji died, WKX understood how he caused innocent suffering. When Gao Chong walked to his death knowingly, he understood that although some may desire power, they could still be righteous and upstanding people. When he learned of everything Long Que sacrificed to protect his family***, he finally relaxed his guard. 

There were so many types of good people and things that he saw along this journey that he hadn't seen in the Ghost Valley. When A-Xu told him he was a good person as they basked in the sun, he genuinely wanted to return to the human (vs ghost) realm and be a good man. 

Along their journey, A-Xu made up for the morals and values that WKX lost in the Ghost Valley and showed him a new world outlook. He appeased Lao Wen's anger, tempered his extremism. The process wasn't easy, but not that difficult either, because, in the end, Lao Wen is kind at heart. 

But in the end, being a lone wolf is how he survived and succeeded in a place like the Ghost Valley. When A-Xu was so heavily injured and needed a lot of rest (for Wu Xi) to save his life, Lao Wen suddenly recalled his enemies and how such an excellent opportunity to take revenge just fell into his lap. Everything was in place, and all he needed to do was hide it from A-Xu; he could leave for a short while and have it settled quickly. Upon returning, he could then live happily ever after with his wife. To a crazy lone wolf, why would he not take a gamble? 

What he couldn't predict was the news would've been leaked (to A-Xu), and he didn't know that by doing so, he would've forever lost his love. 

Both of them were using their own methods to love the other person. Zhou Zishu is more forgiving and accepting because being forgiving is in his blood. While what WKX learned in his years in the Ghost Valley is -- love needs to be protected, like how he has A-Xiang, who he considers a sister, call himself master (to protect her). 

Only when faced with painful consequences can a person's deep-rooted habits and approach to things change. So I don't think faking his death ruined the characterisation of Wen Kexing, but I regret that the last two episodes did not have a scene to show us Lao Wen's heartbreak when he learns the truth. 

Until I know what it feels like to have lost you, I will only love you in my own way. 

T/N: 

*I can't think of the correct phrase for this as I don't read all that much about relationships >< please let me know if you know of it. Here, I'm referring to the process of wearing something new (like shoes) that will hurt at the start until it becomes soft and comfortable. 

** I did some side-reading, and omg, A-Xu is TOTALLY the lead mare. Although he's not the stallion and weak/dying for most of the show, he's the head of their little family, and he expects "to be obeyed", aka, I'm not going to learn how to cook. Call me for dinner. Kthxbye. 

From Rutgers' website: A herd of wild horses consists of one or two stallions, a group of mares, and their foals. The leader of the herd is usually an older mare (the "alpha mare"), even though one stallion owns the herd. She maintains her dominant role even though she may be physically weaker than the others. The older mare has had more experiences, more close encounters, and survived more threats than any other horse in the herd. The requirement of the lead horse is not strength or size; if this were so, then humans could never dominate a horse. Dominance is established not only through aggression but also through attitudes that let the other horses know she expects to be obeyed.

***I think this is important here because WKX wasn't crying for his loss. I think a big part of him was realising not everyone in the world was callous and turned their backs on his parents, that he could've gone his whole life without ever discovering what sacrifices some people have made. Good people suffer quietly and in silence. It's a big moment to realise he was wrong about many things that he had let hatred blind himself to the world. Because although he was sad about the Four Sages and somewhat shocked by Gao Chong's death, he hadn't truly faced up to his actions until now. 

(screenshot of the scriptwriter liking the above post) 

------

To add: 

I'm not sure how many of you read my "opinion" posts, but I've been struggling to find a way to accept the last six episodes of Word of Honor.  I first tried looking at open forum postings, comments, and Tumblr posts. None of it worked because it was just arguing and emotions and no one made points good enough for me to accept things. 

So I gave up and went back to reading Chinese sites. I found many posts discussing the plot. Some I liked, some I didn't, but none satisfied my need for a reasonable explanation. I felt they had biases (both ways), or else it lacked logic. After a time, I realised that I should be looking for WKX-stans (or pro-WKX fans) because they would be more motivated to explain his side, but also because well-written posts by wenzhou-fans & ZZS-stans made me super sad.

I'm sorry, but those who keep trying to explain why the ending was good completely missed that episodes 32-34 are the real problem to those who don't like it and only focused on 36. I can understand if people don't think those episodes are a problem, but no one could provide an articulate and sensible reason. There are just too few well-reasoned plot-focused posts in English (sorry). I've seen too many examples of WKX-fans arguing with people who are upset about the ending, backed by nothing more than "look how much WKX suffers, woe is him. And how romantic is this????" *dies* 

Lastly, if you spot anything inaccurate, let me know & I will correct it.

[nancywheelxr]

Word of Honor prompt where yby is wkx and zzs’s mailman. he and wkx have a feud (god only knows how it started, but neither of them want to back down first), so yby always leaves packages in the most inconvenient places. wkx tries repeatedly to report him to the mailman board or whatever, but they’re always like yby? no one named yby works here. this is unbelievably irritating to wkx because he knows yby has to work there. how tf else would he have their mail??? well turns out there was a mix up with the addresses and wkx and zzs’s mail has been being sent to yby for years. when yby went to drop off their mail the first time wkx assumed he was the mailman. this pissed yby off, so he decided to retaliate by putting their package next to the wheel of wkx’s car in hopes he’d run it over. and thus, the feud started

another galaxy brain idea, i would expect nothing less 😌

*

“Please,” Zhou Zishu says without looking up from the newspaper, “don’t throw your phone at the wall.”

There’s an angry noise, followed by the loud thud of something being slammed on the table. Better than the wall, he figures. ���I wasn’t going to.”

He hums in agreement, adding pleasantly,  “of course not.” 

Is it mean not to engage like this? Maybe, but in his defense, Zhou Zishu has been forced to listen to increasingly angry phone calls for the past weeks on a daily basis, the same answer drifting from the speakers time and time again, so maybe he’s entitled to some bitchiness. 

Also, the way Wen Kexing’s face scrunches up a little, eyebrows furrowing, lips in a pout– he’s cute when he’s annoyed, so what’s Zhou Zishu suppose to do? Not antagonize him?

Case in point: a hand tugs his newspaper down and Wen Kexing comes into view, pouting in a terribly endearing way that Zhou Zishu has never been able to refuse, “A-Xu! Can’t you see I’m in distress? I’m distressed and you’re just sitting here, how heartless!”

“Is that so?” He raises an eyebrow, “I apologize for not coming to save you from the mean lady at the front desk, then. Did her answer change this time? Did someone named Ye Baiyi suddenly appear in their records?”

“No,” Wen Kexing sighs, dropping down on the couch beside him like a puppet with no strings, and Zhou Zishu goes through the motions of huffing exasperatedly, pointedly folding his newspaper, and leaving it on the coffee table. Then, he nudges him closer, a tug at his sleeves and Wen Kexing leans happily into him, face tucked neatly into Zhou Zishu’s shoulder. “I’m going to murder him,” he says.

“No felonies. Have you tried apologizing?”

“Pah,” Wen Kexing tries to sit up in outrage, but Zhou Zishu pulls him down again, hand carding through his hair, “apologize for what? He’s the one not doing his job! A-Xu, it was on the roof this time! On the roof!”

Ah, so they’re not ready for that yet, alright. “Hm. I think both of you need better hobbies.”

“A-Xu, you’re not listening, he’s my arch-nemesis!”

He opens his mouth to remind him it’s the 21st century and people don’t have arch-nemesis, but then, he remembers this is the guy who wakes up at god knows what time to leave their packages in increasingly ridiculous places. “I can’t believe you found the one person who might actually agree with you on this, what the hell.”

“What if we set out traps in the yard?” Wen Kexing muses and Zhou Zishu has a terrible feeling about this– he can foresee trips to the ER in the future and a litany of actually broken packages. 

Also: “Have you seen our children? They’ll get caught in them before Ye-qianbei does.”

“A-Xiang wouldn’t,” he says, but he doesn’t sound so sure anymore, so Zhou Zishu counts as it as a win.

“Maybe, but her boyfriend would and you promised her to stop scaring him off.”

The truth is this: a month ago they ordered a new coffee maker. It would take two days to arrive, great price, good quality. Zhou Zishu had even been looking forward to it! In hindsight, that might have been foolish, when has the universe ever made anything easy for him? No, the two days had come and gone, and on the third day, instead of enjoying as many expressos as his heart desired, he had been forced to witness the start of a trainwreck that’s been dragging ever since– Wen Kexing had been outside, gardening in a very broad sense of the word, when a man had approached their house, a package in his hands.

He had squinted at the yellow chrysanthemums Wen Kexing had been drowning with the hose. “That’s the ugliest flower I’ve ever seen.” 

“Excuse me?” Wen Kexing had smiled. It had been a terrible smile, full of teeth and no real friendliness, and Zhou Zishu had watched from the window and known with a deep-seated certainty that that would escalate out of proportion. 

The mad had scoffed. “Are you deaf besides incompetent? Whatever, just take this so I can stop looking at those flowers.”

“Incompetent?” Wen Kexing’s fingers had tightened around the hose as if he had been calculating the merits of hitting the man with the water spray, “ha! The mailman is late for his delivery and he wants to lecture me on my garden! A-Xu, come listen to this!”

“Mailman,” the man had repeated, face going blank, “the mailman.”

“A-Xu, come tell him my chrysanthemums look just fine!”

Then, he had exploded. “You brat! Who do you think you are? Have you no respect for your elders? Useless child–”

“Elder? Have you taken a look at the mirror? Get off my lawn! Out, out, out! No Old Monsters allowed!”

The man– Ye Baiyi, Zhou Zishu would learn later, after Wen Kexing had gone into his stalking spree trying to find his information to report to his alleged boss– had left. With their coffeemaker. Only to return at some point while they were inside to leave the package just behind the wheel of their car.

One month later and Zhou Zishu is yet to get his goddamn coffeemaker.

“Wen Kexing, you no-good insolent brat!” 

The yelling startles him back to the present, followed quickly by the sound of paper being ripped. At his side, Wen Kexing snickers. “I think he found the sign.”

“Sign? Is that what you and Chengling were doing in the garage last night?” 

“No Old Monsters permitted,” he recites, smug as a cat in the sun, and presses a kiss to his neck, “wasn’t it a good idea? A-Xu, I’m encouraging our son to improve his artistic skills.”

“Quit distracting me,” Zhou Zishu tugs his hair a little, “Lao Wen, you owe me so many cups of coffee.”

Wen Kexing grins, impossibly bright, ridiculously beautiful. “A-Xu ah, what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, so how can there be a debt? Don’t be stingy!”

“Hm. Lao Wen is very wise, no debt between us, so he won’t mind making dinner tonight again.”

“A-Xu!” The whine comes out half laughter, and Zhou Zishu loves the sound of it, could never get tired of it, so really, he has no choice but to draw his husband closer and kiss the complaints before they even fall from his lips. 

[lillotte17]

Tomorrow

Got hooked watching Word of Honor and Zhou Zishu's Sad Face Journeys in episodes 33-34 came for my life, so I wrote a little scene set after the whole Heroes Conference Thing. ...And then Wen KeXing showed up and just...*gestures vaguely* I don't know what happened here. XD

~

Zhou Zishu sits quietly beside the bed, watching Wen KeXing's sleeping face with an ache in his chest that has nothing to do with his failing body, and everything to do with the fact that he is about to die.

When his shidi had made a miraculous reappearance at the Heroes Conference, his first reaction was gut-wrenching surprise. It felt as though the ground had suddenly dissolved beneath his feet. His heart leaping so high in his throat that he forgot how to breathe. Dizzy with the overwhelming rush of joy and confusion. Uncertain whether to laugh or cry.

But once the shock had subsided, the anger had been hot on its heels. And he wanted to be mad about it. Wanted to take Wen KeXing by the shoulders and shake him so hard that his teeth rattled around in his skull. Wanted to scream and sob and rail against the now inevitably fast-burning candle of his fate. At the unfairness of losing his life just as he had found something worth living for again. Someoneworth living for. For a few moments, the fury had burned so brightly in him he thought it might be enough to kill him then and there. That the fire between his lungs would simply burst his chest open and engulf everything around them in a sea of red.

But when they had caught each other’s gaze, he had seen the apology roiling in Wen KeXing’s dark eyes, raw and miserable, even without a word being said. The apology, and the fear. That same fear Zishu had seen flicker across his face every time he had tried to coax him into confessing that he was from Ghost Valley. The same fear he had seen in him the night Wen KeXing had snuck out of the Four Seasons Manor to intercept Ye BaiYi and tried to prevent him from reveling his identity. And yet again, when Han Ying had died, and he had nearly killed himself in a blind panic trying to fix it somehow. The fear whispered that death was preferable to his hatred. That his blade would be kinder than his revulsion. That Wen KeXing would sacrifice anything to avoid being abandoned once again.

Zhou Zishu was helpless in the face of it; as he always seems to be. The look that passed between them had been fast and fleeting, there and gone again with barely a blink, but it was enough to douse the flames of his anger with a tide of chilling and fathomless grief. The rest of the Heroes Conference passed before him in a daze. Vengeance, and justice, and pride. Wen KeXing blazing in the brightest and truest version of himself for all to see. Dazzling and mesmerizing and impossible to look away from. He does not know if he has ever loved him more, even as he felt his heart slowly sinking down into the pit of his stomach. The numbness of acceptance settling into his bones.

There will be no escape from death, this time.

He had been quiet on the way back to Jing BeiYuan’s Manor. Quiet enough to worry both Wen KeXing and ChengLing, who always seems to see more than he understands. He had listened to their reasons and excuses, and he had done his best to reassure them afterwards, but his own words sound hollow in his ears. The best he could do was to get Lao Wen hopelessly drunk, and pray that it made him less intuitive. The suffusion of elation and hope in the air had nearly been enough to choke him, though. He did not want to rob them of it, but he found he could take part in it either, no matter how much he wanted to. He could not bring himself to celebrate a future he can no longer share with them.

Zhou Zishu understands Wen KeXing. He understands that he is just as abysmal at properly conveying affection as he is himself, if not more so. The man only knows how to protect people he cares for by either sending them away from him or drowning them both in blood. It is how he had managed to survive all those years surrounded by madness and chaos and death. Zishu had done much the same, while he was working in the capital. Hiding all of their softer places far away from where the light could reach them. Playful banter has always passed easily between them, but tenderness is heavier, and vulnerabilities almost impossible to speak aloud. They are both trying to do better, struggling to pull their own humanity back into their hands where it can be shared freely, but Wen KeXing’s hurts are older and deeper. His path back to the world of the living inevitably more winding and complex. He still has not mastered the art of articulating his fears and concerns.

Zhou Zishu’s health was tenuous even before he had been kidnapped and tortured. As much as he hated to admit it, he had been in no fit state to fight an angry mob. Wen KeXing hid the truth from him because he knew that he would chafe at being told to stay out of harm’s way; that they would have argued about it until he was either allowed to participate in the scheme or he was spitting blood and passing out on the floor. Zishu cannot even say that this assessment of his character was a bad one, but it still stung to be kept in the dark, and the hurt was lingering. And yet, however deep the barb of this secret may have landed, however misplaced the caution may or may not have been, he knows without a shred of doubt that Wen KeXing’s deception was born of love, and he can hardly hold that against him.

Especially not now.

Wen KeXing turns his head slightly, mumbling something that sounds suspiciously like an extremely slurred version of his name. His expression is smooth and peaceful, his hair a dark fan across the bed behind him. The rosy glow of happiness and alcohol still pinking the apples of his cheeks.

Zishu smiles despite himself. It is much easier to find traces of the little boy his master had planned to take for his second disciple when he looks like this; safe and sleeping and completely at ease for the first time in who knows how long. He wishes he could recall those few precious days they had spent together as children with more clarity, but the memory of it is like a silk brocade left to sit too long in the sunshine, its delicate patterns fading as the colors wash away in a flood of light. Zhou Zishu had been too young to fully comprehend the weight of death when his master had returned from his trip to collect the Wen family without his shidi or his parents in tow. That his master had been sad about it was enough to impact him, but in the grand scheme of things, the wounds to his own heart had been minimal.

What would have happened if they had kept looking for Zhen Yan, he wonders. If he and Wen KeXing had grown up together as best friends and martial brothers and soulmates? Would their master have found a way to soothe Zhen Yan’s rage before it consumed him? Would Zhou Zishu have made the same mistakes with the Window of Heaven if Wen KeXing had been at his side? Perhaps they could have saved each other before things had reached the place they were now. Or perhaps Wen KeXing would have died under Zhou Zishu’s leadership with the rest of their sect, and his failures would have tasted that much more bitter.

He sighs quietly. There is no sense dwelling on things he cannot change. He had been a child, and just as powerless to save Wen KeXing from his fate as the boy himself had been. Feeling guilty about it was meaningless at this point. It was enough to have him here and now. Enough that they had had any time together at all. Enough that Wen KeXing had fallen off of that cliff and somehow still managed to walk back to him.

It has to be enough, because it is all they have. All they can have. Even if he wants more.

“Ah Xu?”

The voice is thick with sleep, but marginally less inebriated than before.

“Mn,” Zhou Zishu hums in acknowledgement, his gaze shifting slightly to watch Wen KeXing blink himself back into wakefulness.

“You didn’t go to bed?” he asks, bleary and swaying slightly as he attempts to sit up.

“There is someone in my bed.” Zishu points out archly.

Wen KeXing looks murderous for a few seconds until he realizes that the person in question is, in fact, himself. When the clouds break, his expression immediately shifts to one of insufferable satisfaction. He leans precariously off the side of the bed, robes and hair both hopelessly askew.

“I am always willing to share everything I have with Ah Xu,” he declares with feigned sweetness.

“How kind of Philanthropist Wen to make a present of what he stole from me,” Zhou Zishu snorts, “Your generosity knows no bounds.”

“Ah Xu!” Wen KeXing objects. “How is it stealing when you gave it to me freely? You think I would come to your bedroom with the intention of sleeping?”

“I’m sure I don’t know anything about your intentions.” The reply is given with a smirk, but his eyes dart away from him. “You asked me to drink with you, but the jar you brought was empty. Besides, I am thinking about giving it up. I have been told that it is bad for my health.”

“Aiya, first Ah Xu accuses me of being a thief, and now he tells me such scandalous falsehoods!” Wen KeXing shakes his head, attempting to seem wounded despite the grin on his face. “I already accepted your punishment earlier, there is no reason to be cruel.”

“Who is a liar here?” Zhou Zishu inquires laughingly, gesturing back and forth between them. “Which one of us is the most scandalous?”

“It’s me, it’s me,” Wen KeXing acknowledges, his head bobbing up and down in agreement, “But Ah Xu, you cannot expect me to ever believe that you would willingly give up drinking good wine with me? And as for not understanding my intentions, well…I believe that even less.”

“Was your intention to make sure I could not get any sleep?”

Wen KeXing only smiles at him widely.

“…I regret asking such a question,” Zhou Zishu chuckles, reaching out to lightly slap the side of Wen KeXing’s face in both fondness and chastisement. “Ask a shameless man a question and you are sure to get a shameless reply.”

Wen KeXing grabs hold of his hand before he can pull it away, leaning into it with a sigh.

“What is so shameless about it at this point?” he wonders, something soft and shining igniting within his gaze. “Living together. Dying together. Watching as our hair turns gray with old age. We’ve already promised to share these things, haven’t we? Why give me your bed when we could share that, too?”

Zhou Zishu takes a long look at him. At the dark hair spilling across his shoulder in disarray. The front of his robes just rumpled enough to expose the elegant line of his throat as well as part of his collar bones. The flush of his cheeks and the promise burning in his eyes.

He cannot deny that he wants it. Even knowing it might make things more painful later on. He wants to be selfish. He wants to be greedy while he still can. While he can still hear Lao Wen calling for him and feel his skin beneath his hands. His sense of taste and smell have gone already, but can still see him, and that could be enough. More than enough.

But will it be enough for Wen KeXing?

This is the last thing they have to give each other. The last pieces of themselves they have been holding back. Mostly because there simply had not been time for it amidst the chaos swirling around them. It always seemed as though either their lives were in danger or one of them was injured. Up until now, even Zishu had been optimistic enough to assume they would have time for it later, though. Time to use physical intimacy as an almost second meeting. To learn how they need each other in the quiet and the dark. To learn the ways they can be gentle, and the ways they can be fierce. To burn each other up in desperation and desire.

It seems too heartless to have it be a farewell instead.

Zhou Zishu lets out a long breath.

“…Not when you are drunk,” he says quietly.

Wen KeXing blinks at him in astonishment, eyes blown wide and round as saucers, clearly expecting a flat-out rejection.

A moment later, the blankets have been hastily flung aside, and he is staggering off of the bed has fast as he can. Which, as it turns out, is not very fast at all. Zhou Zishu easily catches him with one arm, lightly pushing him back into a seated position.

“Lao Wen, where do you think you are going?” he laughs.

“I need to sober up,” Wen KeXing explains, looking so serious about it that Zhou Zishu cannot help but reach out and pinch his cheek. Lao Wen slaps his hand away, his expression mulish.

“Don’t pout,” Zishu scolds, still chuckling, “It is too late to be staggering around someone else’s house. With my luck, you would drown yourself in the fish pond, and then BeiYuan and Wu Xi would be terribly put out.”

“But Ah Xu, if you won’t let me leave, and you won’t share the bed, just what do you want me to do?” Lao Wen complains. “Even if you don’t want to have sex, you should at least lay down and rest properly. I want you to get well as soon as possible.”

Zhou Zishu’s mouth stiffens slightly.

“I know.”

Wen KeXing’s brow furrows in concern. He reaches out a hand, long fingers hovering just above his heart, when Zhou Zishu catches them tightly in his own. He is not certain if Lao Wen could glean the truth about his condition from his pulse while still tipsy, but he is not about to run that risk tonight.

“Are the nails bothering you again?” Wen KeXing asks, doleful this time.

“No.”

It is not a lie.

“Then come to bed,” Lao Wen cajoles, using their joined hands to tug him closer, “I promise not to molest you unless you ask me to.”

Zhou Zishu makes a sound of grumbling disbelief, but still allows himself to be pulled down next to Wen KeXing. The bed is big enough for two, but only just. Lao Wen retrieves the formerly discarded blankets from whatever corner he had toss them and bundles them up together like two caterpillars in a single cocoon. His face is close beside him on the pillow, warm breath fanning the side of his neck. An arm drapes loosely about Zishu’s waist, and he turns his head slightly, intending to shoot a warning glare in the other man’s direction.

This is a mistake.

Wen KeXing’s eyes are dark and intense in the moonlight, half closed with either sleep or desire, it is hard to say. His lips part slightly as Zhou Zishu turns to him, and the hand draped around his waist clutches faintly at his robes as if on instinct. Both of them seem to have forgotten how to breathe.

“…Ah Xu, you can kiss me, if you like,” Lao Wen whispers finally, so soft it almost seems like a dream.

“What makes you think I want to kiss you?” he means it to sound teasing, but it comes out in almost a sigh.

“Because I want to kiss you,” Lao Wen replies matter-of-factly.

“I never thought of you as a pillar of self-restraint,” Zhou Zishu huffs.

“I promised to be a gentleman.”

Zishu closes his eyes and lets out a deep, soul-rattling sigh. He is almost glad he cannot smell the oils Wen KeXing uses in his hair or the trace of alcohol on his lips. The proximity is staggering enough all on its own.

“…It would not stop with a kiss,” he admits aloud to both of them.

He does not open his eyes again, but he can feel Wen KeXing’s body tremble slightly as he laughs, and that is almost as bad.

“Ah Xu, I would hardly complain,” he replies, testing his luck by shifting close enough so that their foreheads are lightly touching. “But you want to rest, and I want you rested, so it is no great loss, either way. You will still be here with me tomorrow, after all. There is no need to rush these things. Sometimes, a slow spring is sweeter.”

“Yes,” Zhou Zishu manages to reply around the lump lodged in his throat, “I will still be here tomorrow.”

[chalkrevelations]

OK, Word of Honor, Episode 9, and I know last time I got deep in the weeds about symbolism, but this week, I’m getting back to basics and rambling on (and on) about what this show is really about: Zhou Zishou and Wen Kexing and their relationship.

First, though, the usual warning: SPOILERS. Not just for this episode, but potentially for the entire show, so drive past and circle back around later if you want to watch all 36.5 eps unspoiled.

Bear with me on this one, because this ep spends a LOT of time on ZZS and WKX, and I think a lot of that time is ZZS making some Monumental Life Decisions, including how he’s going to proceed in this relationship and how he’s going to approach his life moving forward. But I’m finding myself needing to work through it chronologically, and it’s. A Lot. Also, let’s face it, ZZS has been my ride-or-die at least since he dropped to his knees and started disrobing in the middle of the throne room in Ep 1, so a chance to wallow in his emotional journey is a chance I’m gonna take.

So, we do have a brief opener when we find out Dead Guy who the Yueyang disciple was shrieking about at the end of the last ep is Fang Buzhi, AKA the Nine Clawed Fox, the guy who lifted WKX’s (Danyang) Glazed Armor (along with some replicas). He got got by mysterious somebodies in the previous episode, and we find out now that he has three tiny needles in his neck, which ZZS recognizes as a Tian Chuang technique. This leads ZZS to 1) assume it must have been Han Ying who did it, so the (Danyang) Glazed Armor is now in the hands of Tian Chuang, and 2) realize that maybe this is not the best place for the former leader of Tian Chuang to be hanging out right now, so he makes their excuses, because he knows that Gao Chong must be VERY BUSY now that he’s got this corpse on his hands, so they’ll just BE GOING, thanks so much. Gao Chong hopes to see them at the Hero’s Conference, and WKX responds in a Significant Tone that of course he’ll be at the Hero’s Conference, and now ZZS has his Thinky Face on again, because WKX is not nearly as subtle as he seems to think he is when he’s making Pronouncements.

The ZZS/WKX Show really starts kicking into gear that night, at the Getting Lucky Good Luck Inn, where we open on ZZS wandering contemplatively around his room, looking beautiful in the soft light of evening (your FACE, Zhang Zhehan) and ruminating on Prince Jin’s motives for wanting the Glazed Armor, like he’s never met this power-hungry asshole before. Also, he thinks to himself, wtf was that, with Gao Chong keeping anybody from seeing Chengling in the last ep? There’s a knock on the door, which momentarily confuses him - understandably, because as we’ll see, WKX doesn’t generally get the concept of announcing yourself and waiting to be invited in by knocking first, preferring to dramatically bust open doors (at least to ZZS’s bedroom) and grace you with his presence, whatever your thoughts on the matter are. He’s accompanied by waiters and dinner, and ZZS realizes his senses are going, presumably because he can’t smell this spread that WKX has procured in an attempt to prove what a good provider he is (what did I say about food and bonding? ZZS fed him in the market, and now it’s his turn to feed ZZS). WKX tells us that life is just three hots and a cot - which gives away more about your life than you would likely be comfortable with us knowing, Lao Wen, given how close to the vest you’re holding your cards – and that everything else can wait if you can have a meal with someone you like. :coff: (Also, remember this, it will come around again.)

Cut to dinner by flickering candlelight, the better for soft lighting to caress ZZH’s exquisite face, but ZZS isn’t into it at all, staring into space instead of eating WKX’s proffered Courtship Delicacies. This earns what’s possibly WKX’s most hypocritical and amusing comment yet, which is to ask ZZS, “What is it that you can’t tell me?” ZZS - apparently - is still feeling soft about WKX’s help against Tian Chuang’s Chengling-kidnapping attempt - or maybe he’s thinking that a little bit of opening up on his part will soften up WKX - because he hardly has to have a spoon dug into his ribs at all to admit that he’s wondering if it was a mistake to bring Chengling to Five Lakes Alliance. My dude, just steal him back, then. WKX laughs at him and tells him he’s got such a handsome face (true) along with a kind and innocent heart (false, he’s a former government spook and assassin, a part-time ill-tempered gremlin, and a whole-ass troll), and therefore girls will clearly go crazy for him (true, just ask me). ANYWAY, A-Xu, (WKX continues) now that the requisite random no-homo boilerplate is out of the way, are you really thinking of taking on Chengling as a disciple, because now is apparently not too soon to have the adoption conversation about Our Son. I almost expect him to pull out the adoption papers then and there. Instead, he pulls out a story - which is awkwardly placed and kind of clunky, actually, despite being thematically important - of a dog he had once, given to him by Someone Very Important, although of course he’s not going to say who that was (:facepalm:), and his mother warning him that he’d have to take care of it for life, and then he betrayed it.

So, there’s a lot going on here. We’ll eventually find out that ZZS gave Zhen Yan a puppy, so will this story of a gift dog jog ZZS’s memory into realizing that WKX is Zhen Yan without WKX actually telling him, so that WKX can tell his Bundle of Neuroses that it’s not reeeaaallly WKX’s fault ZZS figured it out? Also, WKX sees ZZS being like this about Chengling, and in the Chengling = Zhen Yan equation we’ve already established, is it possible this will prime ZZS to remember another disciple/young boy he took responsibility for, at one point? Of course, on ZZS’s side of things, it’s possible that hearing about this dog that WKX failed is likely to remind him of the way he failed his own responsibility to all the other disciples of Siji Manor, so, excellent way to take a stab at his heart, WKX! However, ZZS breaks the miserable tone we’ve become mired in by smacking WKX, chiding him for comparing their son to a dog, and getting them drinking. See, here, Chengling is the dog. Earlier, the two sisters A-Xiang rescued were the dog. Later, A-Xiang will be the dog. Unfortunately, WKX is going to have a blind spot and never quite realize that, in the Ghost Valley schema he’s set up, the Department of the Unfaithful is also the dog, but we’ll get to that in later eps. For now, cut to later that night: After dinner and a washup, ZZS sits on his bed, and we get some special effects to indicate that his hearing is also giving him problems, so he deploys his special Nightly Nails Torment meditation pose, and then we get the second instance of WKX playing the xiao to help him meditate and rest. (Junjun, your hands on that xiao …) ANYWAY, we get a gorgeous little bit of physical acting from ZZH here that could easily have been overplayed but is nicely restrained and subtle, with just the slightest smile when ZZS realizes WKX is playing, and then his whole body visibly relaxing as he allows himself to sink into WKX’s now-familiar musical embrace the meditation. It is :chef’s kiss:

Cut to next AM, when ZZS is now a very cranky boy, and I get this, because I also am exceedingly irritated when people bust into the room where I’m sleeping with an abundance of cheerfulness and try to get me to interact and do things without at least half an hour to creep my way out of bed, two cups of coffee, and an hour of silence before any attempts to converse like a reasonable human being (I’m looking at YOU, mom), and I don’t even have the excuse of seven Nails pinning me. Also, when WKX whips off the blankets, we learn that ZZH dresses to the right. :hands: I’m just making an observation. So, WKX wants to go to Yuefan Tower like some kind of wide-eyed tourist, and despite some smacking and scowling and death threats, we then smash-cut to the Tower, where ZZS has apparently come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with the ADHD gremlin crawling into his bed is to humor him about this daytrip. I think you could have come up with some more creative ideas that didn’t involve leaving bed, but I guess you’re not the fast one in this relationship, Zhou-ge. Srsly, though, I’m sure WKX would have been happy to do all the work, my dude. (I don’t always have strong top-bottom preferences, but you probably aren’t going to have much luck convincing me that ZZS is not a pillow princess who wants to just lay back and be spoiled. “Aren’t you a very capable man?” indeed. WKX has to do ALL THE WORK, god. I don’t know if I’m swimming against the current here – god knows I was in Inception fandom, where I felt the same way about Eames - but here we are.) Also, I can’t believe WKX didn’t just sit in the bedroom and creep on A-Xu’s beautiful sleeping profile for at least the amount of time it would have taken to drink a pot of tea, another viable option if it was me in this scenario. Tch. What kind of stalker are you, Lao Wen?

ANYWAY, at Yuefang Tower, ZZS tells us about the Four Sages of Anji, a senior-citizen polycule of soulmates who are, conveniently, at this very moment, on a boat in the lake beside the tower, playing music and sword-dancing. This is the first time they’ve been seen in 10+ years, after they put down their various swords and ran off together to live like hippies off-the-grid in the woods, probably skipping around naked, drinking “tea,” and having lots of sex. ZZS sighs wistfully while recounting this tale and calls them “a breath of fresh air.” There’s some discussion and poetry quoting and literary references to soulmates, and somewhere in here we get a shot of ZZS and WKX from behind which makes it super-obvious how hard they’re working the costumes to make Gong Jun look as broad as possible. He’s got the power shoulders on this set of robes, compared to Laopo ZZS’s soft, unstructured, flowing robes, and with those shoulders tapering down to the belted waist, they’ve got Junjun seriously working the Chris Evans Dorito silhouette. Meanwhile, focus back on their conversation: ZZS thinks that “the world is not important, finding a soulmate is,” giving some MAJOR FORESHADOWING for the end of the show (which we are accepting as “Ep” 37 because WE ARE), when we get that icy separation from the rest of the world but they have each other. WKX gives him a yearning look. ZZS looks back … there’s really no other way to put this … coyly, not meeting WKX’s gaze directly. This offers WKX and us a chance to admire his profile once again, thank you, Laopo. ZZS waits until WKX looks back out at the lake before looking at him directly, and his face journey, y’all. He’s thinking that it might not be bad to spend his remaining time with this soulmate, I think he’s starting to re-think the slow suicide, and he’s also thisclose to just letting WKX have him. Y’all, he seriously wants WKX so bad, here. It may be the first time we’ve seen this level of interest from him - it may be the first time, in all that we’ve seen of him, that he allows himself to even have that kind of interest. I think this is the next big step from Ep 6, when he allowed himself to enjoy being desired - now he’s allowing himself to desire, to want something again, other than a chance to drink himself to death in the gutter. This, right here, is a crucial point when he makes the decision to spend whatever time he’s got left living rather than just dying, and I’m flailing on the couch. This is the face of a man who’s ready to Make Some Declarations while getting railed within an inch of his life. SOMEONE IS GETTING SOME TONIGHT. Or he would if he wasn’t going to turn out to be such a fuckup. FFS, WKX.

But first, we cut to a scene of them back at the marketplace, wandering through as WKX mocks various sects in town for the conference – including the Mount Hua boys, who apparently look like virgins make their first trip to a brothel – and ZZS supplies background info on them. WKX asks if ZZS can tell what sect WKX is from, and ZZS calls him a messy bitch before asking if WKX can please stop making him play guessing games about everything and just tell him what WKX so clearly wants ZZS to know. (I know, right? But no, because then WKX might get what he wants, and he’s way too terrified for that, so you have to guess. That way, it’s not his fault when you figure out who he is and reject him, as anyone clearly will do because he’s unlovable and unforgiveable and not even really human, A-Xu.) WKX immediately changes the subject to ramble about the Hero’s Conference and how laughable all the sects are for wanting to be seen as heroes, blah blah blah, rinse and repeat. ZZS comments that only inexperienced people want to be heroes, that experienced people know “every character of the word hero is written in blood,” and yes, the character they’re using for hero, “ying,” is still the same character used in Han Ying’s name (which is not, by the way, the “ying” used in Wei Ying’s name, to cross streams for a moment). ZZS says he’s too old to be a hero (I and my knees feel you, my dude), now he’s just a wanderer, and he asks if WKX wants to be a hero or a wanderer, and WKX says that as a wanderer, all he needs is ZZS, and I’m telling you, someone absolutely would be getting some tonight if only he wasn’t such a fuckup, Lao Wen.

I’m’a try to wrap this up soon, because it’s gotten v. long, but we then cut to that night at the Getting Lucky Inn, ZZS drinking in his room, WKX busting in with his usual dramatic flair, with wine, inviting ZZS up to the roof to drink and look at the moon. He clearly has ulterior motives, but unfortunately for everyone, we’re going to discover they’re not the ulterior motives ZZS is expecting. As they lean back on the roof together, hands almost-but-not-quite touching, a romantic tune playing, WKX tells ZZS that he’s like, really happy! Just super happy! So happy! Ask me why I’m so happy, A-Xu! Spoiler alert: It is, unfortunately, not because he’s getting ready to get some from his laopo. This is particularly unfortunate, because ZZS chooses this moment to take another big step in this relationship, telling WKX that he’s not going to ask about things WKX doesn’t want to tell him, that he’ll wait for whatever WKX wants to tell him. On the surface, this comes off a little bit like, I’m done with asking when you’re not going to answer anyway, but in context – particularly on the back of the earlier scene when ZZS watched WKX turn on a dime and immediately change the subject to avoid exposing anything when ZZS asked WKX to stop making him guess everything – this is as good as a declaration of going all-in. ZZS is committing to this relationship on faith, without having all – or even most – of the answers about WKX, and his approach is going to be to wait until WKX is ready to reveal whatever information he feels safe and comfortable revealing. In practice, he’s going to end up being better or worse at this, depending on the day, but what it reminds me of, already, is that moment in the 20s (Ep 21? 22?) when A-Xiang and Cao Weining are arguing about her killing the beggar guy, he approaches her, she yells at him and points to the ground to indicate exactly how close he’s allowed to get to her, and his respect of that boundary she lays down is instantaneous and absolute. That’s what ZZS is saying he’s going to at least try to do, here. It also reminds me of the way he’s going to respect WKX’s decision on whether or not WKX is going to claim his place as a disciple of Siji Manor, without it affecting their relationship, so we really are starting as ZZS means to go on, here.

Unfortunately, we then find out that what WKX is actually so happy about is that his plan to burn down the jianghu is starting its next big step, and their romantic evening is interrupted by a bunch of dudes fighting and killing each other over a bunch of fake Glazed Armor. WKX mentions that he’s so happy the show’s started; he’s alternately amused, satisfied, and smug as they watch various fights; he seems to be expecting ZZS to also be amused; and I feel like the implication is that this was his real motive for inviting ZZS out onto the roof, to be able to watch this show with him. ZZS – who’s spent enough time standing ankle-deep in blood for six lifetimes and was working hard just a few weeks ago at drinking himself to death to try to forget what that feels like - is displeased and horrified, rather than very proud of what WKX has accomplished; he pushes WKX away from him when WKX approaches him to ask if he doesn’t think it’s all so very amusing; and he calls WKX crazy, then turns his back on him and walks away. To make things worse, the next morning, after WKX brings breakfast to ZZS’s room and actually knocks, only to find that ZZS has left in the middle of the night, WKX will witness an angry mob gathered outside the house in the woods where the Four Sages of Anji are staying for the Hero’s Conference, demanding a piece of the Glazed Armor the Sages are supposedly holding for Gao Chong, and eventually leading to the deaths of all four of these peaceful aging hippies whose commune in the woods was ZZS’s ultimate dream, leaving WKX horrified by the fact that his actions have consequences, including some that are going to make his boyfriend even more pissed off at him.

SO. All that happened. There were some other people in the episode, too:

We see A-Xiang and Cao Weining having lunch. She asks him why he’s not eating, calls him fat and cute, then proceeds to tell him about Ghoul, who likes to eat the faces of pretty boys. Her conversation skills could still use some work. Cao Weining vows to kill the ghosts of Ghost Valley who would do such awful things. A-Xiang actually ignores this slander about the evil of the residents of the Ghost Valley in a way that she doesn’t usually – usually she looks kind of unhappy when the Evilness of the Evil Inhabitants of the Evil Ghost Valley comes up, going all the way back to ZZS’s comments in Ep 2. Right now, she’s too busy pumping Pooh Bear for information, asking about why the Ghost Valley would have left a pile of heads on Yueyang’s doorstep if the Five Lakes Alliance is so great, so what is Five Lakes going to maybe, perhaps, do about this? Cao-dage is suspicious … that A-Xiang might be scared, but don’t worry, he’ll protect her. Oh, sweetheart. I could eat you up with a spoon, right along with Ghoul. Also, it finally registers that A-Xiang called him cute, but she has to step away for a quick confab with a henchwoman.

We also have to watch Chengling get bullied some more by a Yueyang shixiong who I think is Gao Shan, who we’ll later see bullying some prisoners in the Yueyang dungeon as he admits that he’s doing it to relieve his own frustrations and make himself feel better -  fantastic disciples you’ve got there, Gao Chong, I’m super-impressed by the morality and ethics you’re instilling as a sect. Once again, I have to consider WKX’s position on the jianghu as a hive of scum and villainy. Anyway, once Bullying Hour is over, Chengling runs into A-Xiang, and he can’t manage to prevent the waterworks as he confesses that he thought he’d never see any of them again and that ZZS didn’t want him. UGH. Zhou Zishu, come and get your child back. He’s at least somewhat mollified by Xiang-jie telling him she’s been sent to take care of him, and god knows she’s managed to keep WKX fed and clothed this long, so she has some experience as a minder, as counterintuitive as that seems.

We get a quick shot of Han Ying (My Beloved) with two identical pieces of Glazed Armor, apparently realizing that there are fakes out there.

Deng Kuan shows up, beaten and stumbling, and nearly gets turned away at the front gates of his own sect as a beggar – have I mentioned how unimpressed I am by the Yueyang disciples? Deng Kuan appears to be the only one of them worth anything – before they realize who he is. He is put to bed and tenderly nursed by Gao Xiaolian, who cries over him as he won’t wake up.

Finally, Gao Chong, Shen Shen and Zhao Jing (uh-huh) are horrified to discover that there’s fake Glazed Armor fk’n everywhere in town, making Five Lakes Alliance look ridiculous, which is just fabulous as the Hero’s Conference is coming up, guys. Shen Shen, because everything is a nail, vows to kill anyone who makes problems. Later, Hei Zi, who plays Gao Chong, has an utterly fantastic moment after the deaths of the Four Sages (wow, I did not remember that we wrapped up their entire storyline within a single ep), when he’s haranguing Beggar Gang Chief and is literally all, “You want the Glazed Armor? :pulls a piece out of his robe: HERE. You want some more? :pulls another piece out of his robe: TAKE IT.” It’s a great acting moment, his delivery is perfection.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

A Figure, A Mouth (Ao3)

[Wenzhou one-shot - WoH missing scene set around episode 25 - a bit NSFW]

--

“Come back to bed.”

Wen Kexing’s voice is low, soft in the dead of night. Zhou Zishu ignores him in favor of taking another sip of the wine he can barely taste anymore, though he knows that Wen Kexing splurged to buy him something nice the last time they were down in town. The gesture, at least, is appreciated even if the taste is beyond him now.

“Ah-Xu,” Wen Kexing tries again. Zhou Zishu at least tips his head in his direction, a silent invitation to keep trying even though his eyes never leave the moon overhead. Wen Kexing’s footsteps are nearly silent as he approaches, so quiet that Zhou Zishu automatically tracks his approach by listening to the soft rustling of his robe and noting the sensation of the air his movement displaces more so than by any sound of his footsteps. It used to make him uncomfortable to have someone at his back, especially someone as secretly dangerous as Wen Kexing, but now he finds it oddly comforting. Wen Kexing is always too upset by the reminders of Zhou Zishu’s rapidly diminishing lifespan for him to worry that the man is going to kill him, and if anyone is going to sneak up on them together it’s best to have a dangerous man he can trust at his back.

“The moon looks beautiful tonight,” Wen Kexing murmurs, voice somehow even quieter now that he’s directly behind his shoulder. “You can admire it just as well from our room. We can move the bed beneath the window.

“You’ll catch a chill,” Zhou Zishu protests around the mouth of the jar. The next sip is cool as it slips down his throat.

“You will before I do, drinking cold wine out here by yourself. Come back to bed and let me warm you, at least.”

They’re silent for a long time as Zhou Zishu finishes the wine sip by careful sip, his eyes never leaving the glittering stars.

“Lao Wen.”

“Hm?”

Zhou Zishu smiles ever so slightly, just a twitch at one corner of his lips that he knows won’t be visible to Wen Kexing. It feels like a lifetime ago when they had first spent an afternoon enjoying the sun and a drink together, when things were (relatively) simpler and the most important thing that was happening in his life was that Wen Kexing was calling for him, that he was saying Zhou Zishu was all he needed to be happy in this world.

“Lao Wen,” he calls again, low as the hum of the night insects in the grass and out in the orchards beyond the manor walls.

“Mm.” This time Wen Kexing’s answering hum is full of understanding and somehow Zhou Zishu can hear that he’s smiling. An arm slides around his waist the moment he’s ready for it, his shoulders relaxing in preparation to lean into his partner’s chest in the same breath as Wen Kexing gathers him close, precisely where he wants to be. His zhiji indeed.

“Lao Wen.”

Clever fingers trail up his back to curl around the front edge of his hair for the purpose of drawing it back behind his shoulder, and then there are warm lips pressed to the newly-exposed shell of his ear and Zhou Zishu closes his eyes against the sight of the night sky overhead to better focus on the sound of his lover’s voice as he answers.

“Ah-Xu.”

Wen Kexing punctuates it with a kiss and Zhou Zishu tips his head slightly, his hair falling properly out of the way with the movement. Wen Kexing drops his hand then to wrap that arm around him as well, one hand splayed wide on his chest - though he manages not to touch any of the nails - and the other curled possessively around his hip.

“Ah-Xu..”

Another tender kiss to his ear, this time paired with a nip and a soft exhale that both make him shiver as much as the sound of Wen Kexing’s voice, suddenly lower and slightly breathless as he says for a third time, “Ah-Xu.”

“Such a light touch,” Zhou Zishu can’t quite resist teasing as Wen Kexing crowds up tighter against his back and reaches down to take the wine jar from his slack fingers. He shakes it quickly to make sure it’s empty before he just tosses it aside into the grass - they’ll find it later. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after.

“Only for you. Come back to bed, Ah-Xu.”

“Hm? What for? Just what do you think we’ll do when we get there? Philanthropist Wen, so eager to take advantage of me.”

“I’m allowed to take what’s mine.”

Zhou Zishu sighs deeply in an attempt not to shiver in response to both the words and the tone they’re said in, though in the end he really doesn’t try all that hard to stop it and so he can tell the moment Wen Kexing feels it.

“And just what would you ask me to do if we hadn’t made Chengling find another room to sleep in?” he teases just to stall, just to frustrate. It’s a game they’ve played often, but it’s one that Zhou Zishu doesn’t think either of them will ever really tire of. “Would you take what’s yours right here out in the open instead?”

“Maybe. That’s for me to decide, isn’t it? I’ve had you out in the open often enough, and in much less private locations - are you not the master of this house? The grounds are yours to do with as you please. I could have you right here.”

“You’re so sure I would even agree to being taken on the cold hard ground.”

“Ah-Xu, let me take you to bed,” Wen Kexing sighs as he drops his head a bit to mouth at his jaw. “We have a proper bed now, and oil to ease the way, and the rest of the night together. The morning as well, if you want it. Don’t be difficult tonight.”

“Hm. Didn’t you just say I’m the master of this house? If anyone’s taking anyone to bed I am taking you, since everything in this house is mine - occupants included.”

Zhou Zishu can’t quite resist smirking as Wen Kexing groans theatrically and plunks his head down onto his shoulder, squeezing him tighter in his arms and swaying back and forth with him a bit.

“Ah-Xu,” he whines, dragging it out. “Fine,” he adds in a huff. “Take me to bed, then, and I’ll even let you pretend we’re not going to end up as we always do with you spread out beneath me begging for more.”

Zhou Zishu breaks out of his hold then with an offended hiss. He stretches his arms and turns his head to look at his partner over his shoulder, a brow raised in admonishment even as his lips curve into a playful smirk.

“Of the two of us I don’t think you have any room to tease me about begging, Lao Wen. Who’s pleading with me to come to bed in the first place?”

“You shouldn’t be out here dressed in so little when it’s getting cold,” Wen Kexing prods and Zhou Zishu graciously allows him to blame his begging on simple worry for his health. He lets Wen Kexing reach out for his hand to reel him in and tuck him back into his arms, bundling him up against his chest where Zhou Zishu lays his head down on his zhiji’s shoulder and closes his eyes. He’s not normally so easy to catch, nor so complacent so quickly, and he can tell the instant Wen Kexing notices the same as he curls around him a little more tightly and ducks his head enough to press their cheeks together. “Ah-Xu?”

“I’m alright,” he reassures gently. “I’ve just spent too many hours deep in thought lately, I think. You haven’t been around enough to distract me.”

Wen Kexing huffs a resigned sigh and drops his head down further to press his face into the side of his neck. “I’ve been busy tidying your manner, Ah-Xu. I’m here now, am I not? Are you not distracted enough by me trying to coax such a lovely beauty as you into my bed?”

“Hmm...Whose bed?” Zhou Zishu asks just to be difficult, which Wen Kexing instantly rewards him for with a light swat to his backside.

“Our bed, your bed, whatever. The point stands that you can’t complain I haven’t been around enough to distract you while you’re also preventing me from whisking you away back to our room for a lovely evening.”

“I’ll come back to bed on one condition.”

“Hm?”

Zhou Zishu makes the mistake of leaning back a bit to look up at Wen Kexing and nearly loses his resolve to make any sort of demand when he meets those wide, dark eyes, so disarmingly innocent for such a dangerous man - doubly so as they shine in the cool moonlight. There’s just something about his Lao Wen that makes him want to give in in a way he never has for anyone else, but he’s determined to finally ask Wen Kexing for answers.

Or at least he is right up until Wen Kexing pairs those wide, curious eyes with a slight uptick of his eyebrows right in the middle and he’s so unfairly handsome that Zhou Zishu heaves a sigh as the last of his resolve slips out of his grasp.

“Take a bath with me afterwards,” he mutters and he can tell by the crooked tilt of his zhiji’s smirk that Wen Kexing instantly understands he’s won a battle of wills he hadn’t even known was taking place until the moment of victory.

“Of course, anything to keep my Ah-Xu happy,” he concedes with a laugh and a sweeping gesture of his arm back in the direction of the main section of the manor.

Zhou Zishu allows himself to be herded inside and back into their bed where Wen Kexing lays him down and takes his sweet time with him.

After a while of warming each other up Wen Kexing urges him back up to push the bed under the window just as he’d said he would. Zhou Zishu takes the opportunity to blow out the candles before he rejoins Wen Kexing in their bed, the sudden darkness leaving them free to admire each other clothed in nothing but broad swathes of cool, sweet blue light bisected by deep black lattices of shadow from the trees out in the yard, the shadows from the contours of the wall and decorations around the window blocking and revealing them in turns. Lao Wen is, of course, as beautiful like this as he has been in every way Zhou Zishu has ever seen him, and he takes the time to savor it, to indulge in the decadence that Wen Kexing presents for each of his remaining senses.

He’s a feast for the eyes, all hard muscle and skin glistening with glittering diamonds of sweat along his shoulders and the soft curve of his cheek.

He’s a symphony for the ears, breathless desire and tender calls of his name that Zhou Zishu never lets go unanswered when they’re like this.

By now Wen Kexing is an expert at drawing pleasure from him in every unlikely way there is to make sure that the effects of the nails don’t keep him from reaching his peak at least once, occasionally more in spite of his fading sense of touch.

If there’s any lingering savor of their evening wine on his lips Zhou Zishu can’t taste it, but that doesn’t stop him from appreciating the hunger with which Wen Kexing kisses him, the way his teeth are sharp on his lips and his tongue demanding every single time Zhou Zishu parts his lips enough to allow him to lick his way behind his teeth.

His sense of smell is too far gone to be of much use for anything, but here, like this, his memory supplies him with the ghosts of the flowers out in the orchards and the crisp of the oncoming winter carried on the night breeze, and he likes to think that it clings in Wen Kexing’s hair falling around them in dark curtains. A sign that he’s just as much of the manor as Zhou Zishu himself is.

“You’re going easy on me lately,” Zhou Zishu remarks breathlessly when they’ve finished for the time being, after the moon has dipped low enough that they’re no longer awash in the light of it but rather lying together in their overheated blankets panting softly in the darkest part of the night, nothing but vague shapes that are better explored with wandering hands or lazy mouths than with the eye.

“Hm? Complaining already, Ah-Xu?” Wen Kexing teases, his perpetual smile in his voice. “At least finish catching your breath before you use it to critique my performance.”

“Not a criticism, just an observation,” Zhou Zishu retorts with a blind flick in the general vicinity of Wen Kexing’s ear. “I’m not going to break, Lao Wen. You don’t have to be so gentle.”

“I know. Maybe I just think you deserve to be treated gently sometimes.”

Zhou Zishu takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly, relaxing as Wen Kexing leans in to start kissing and nipping at his ear, his mouth lazy and sloppy in just the way Zhou Zishu likes to tease him for (but that he also happens to like best). “You’re getting sentimental,” he mutters.

“An interesting accusation from the man who spends his nights drinking sweet wine and gazing at the moon before he comes in to me full of desire and begging to be made to feel good.”

“Hey.”

“Mm, don’t hit me just because I’m right, Ah-Xu. I’m finding that sentiment doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing.”

“Be rough with me next time anyway,” Zhou Zishu murmurs against the too-warm curve of Wen Kexing’s cheek.

“Alright, Ah-Xu.” Wen Kexing’s voice is full of such warmth and affection for such a simple reply that Zhou Zishu has to close his eyes and just bask in it for a moment, this impossible man who, for some reason, loves him like this. “Do you still want to take a bath tonight?”

“Hm?” Zhou Zishu frowns in confusion for a moment before he remembers his contrived condition for coming back to bed and he sighs gustily with a little shake of his head. “Just stay, I don’t want to get up. We’ll draw one in the morning.”

“You give up on your own conditions so easily,” Wen Kexing teases with a nip to his earlobe, sharp enough for him to feel it properly, that makes him chuckle sleepily. “I see what it really is - you just want me to spend all my time taking care of you, hm? Cooking for you, drawing you a bath, bringing you in out of the cold, making you feel good..”

Zhou Zishu runs a hand slowly over Wen Kexing’s hair fanned out over his back, his skin beneath it slightly cool in the night air now that his sweat has dried. “Quite possibly,” he hums with a little smile. “You should have pretended to be as incompetent as our silly disciple if you didn’t want to spend your time taking care of me, you shouldn’t have shown off so much when you were trying to get my attention.”

Wen Kexing laughs at that and drags his lips down the line of his jaw and up from his chin to capture his mouth in a kiss that quickly has him shivering and going pliant under the renewed press of Wen Kexing’s broader frame.

“You shouldn’t have been so perfect as to deserve my attention in the first place,” Wen Kexing says into his lips with a smirk, his voice low and dark.

Perhaps one day soon Zhou Zishu will finally manage to confront his lover about the suspicions that are only growing stronger in his heart that Wen Kexing has something to do with Ghost Valley. The evidence is stacking up quicker than he can explain it away, and he can’t help but draw particular conclusions.

But for now Wen Kexing is biting him just right to get them both ready for another round of pleasure - rougher this time, as per his request - and Zhou Zishu selfishly wants to ignore the rest of the world for as long as they reasonably can. He just wants his zhiji for a little longer, before whatever danger he can feel looming on the horizon threatens to engulf them, or his own mortality fails him.

Is that really too much to ask?

[thegreymoon]

Word of Honor

Wait... what is this drug they are taking?

An antidote for what? And why do they need it so badly??

***

Of course that’s your plan 🙄🙄

I DON’T TRUST YOU FOR A SECOND. 

***

Who the hell is Lao Bi?

I just double-checked the number of the episode I’m watching. Why do I feel like I have chunks of information missing? First with the antidote, now with this. 

***

AND THE GHOST KING HAS LANDED!!

WEARING FULL RED AND NOT FUCKING AROUND!!

***

LMAOOOO, look at his stupid face 🤣🤣

You are so fucked, asshole 💀💀

***

OH MY GOD. HE SUMMONED THE GHOST ARMY!

THEY ARE STILL OBEYING HIM? AND AUNT LUO IS THERE?? 

HOW? WHEN??

SERIOUSLY, DID I MISS A FUCKING EPISODE AGAIN?

***

I AM SOBBING 😭😭

Also, this scene is positively biblical 😅😅

***

LMAO 😂😂

How (and when??) did you get away from the Scorpion, you disaster?

***

I had to go google these two elves to figure out who they are 😐

Frankly, I don’t understand how it was expected of me to deduce their link to Prince Jin and Zhou Zishu. Would it have killed them to give us a few flashbacks for them too?

***

THE HAIRPIN SCENE!!

BABIES ARE NOW MARRIED AND HAVE A SECT TO RUN!

I still don’t know how we got from where we were in the last episode to all this, but I’m not complaining!! 🤗🤗

***

You and me both, brother 😅

This entire episode has me feeling like I’ve somehow landed in a completely different show! 

***

Again. 

What secret medicine and since when??

The one thing that keeps coming to mind is WKX’s mother and the poison she used on Zhao Jing, but. How did Zhao Jing weasel his way out of that? And if it is the same poison, how is the Scorpion using it on the Ghosts now? Where did he get the recipe and the antidote?

***

Ah, so Scorpion’s second assassin is still alive!

Good to know! I was wondering what happened to her!

***

Anyway, I have all kinds of feelings about this 😶

***

Well, this is a whole new heartbreak 😢

***

But, Aunt Luo, why? 😢

Yes, he wants to kill everyone, the humans and ghosts alike, but he has been trying to save her department since the beginning! I never fully realized it until now, but it always bugged me a little when her maids would come crying to him and he wouldn’t take them back under his wing, sending them back out into the world instead. He’s been rejecting them, pushing them out, giving them money to start a new life because he wants to save them. 

***

I love the elves even if they feel like they wandered in from another story! 😆

I love this black one and his dedication to curing A-Xu’s alcoholism 👇

But the white one is a riot 😂😂

When he went, “I remember someone asked me to find to find him a girl with a great figure. I found a lot, but he...” and then drifts off into pointed silence 😂😂

***

Okay, truthfully, I am really not a fan of these last two episodes 😕 I’ve been informed that they apparently had to cut a whole nine episodes because they lost their funding and I feel for everyone involved, I really do, but it’s such a pity the story had to devolve into so much mess so close to the end. Nothing makes sense anymore, it feels like they are rushing to tie up storylines that don’t really fit together because they didn’t have the chance to grow organically. It feels like the entire story is taking place off screen and I’m just sitting here frustrated and confused. For example, this:

Didn’t we see the Scorpion King and WKX colluding, like, minutes ago? Why is he back with Zhao Jing, fighting against WKX now? I mean, it’s probably a scheme of theirs, but at this point, do we really need that ‘reveal’ when we are two minutes away from the finale? And if it isn’t a scheme and they are really fighting against each other, where is the fallout? We didn’t get to see anything that led to this, we didn’t get to see Scorpion returning to Zhao Jing. We are just ‘told’, oh, the Ghost King is surrounded and they are about to kill him 😕

I really hope they pull themselves together for the last four episodes because this lack of coherence and logical progression is really nuking all my emotional investment here. 

***

Wen Kexing in killer mode is always a treat, though 😋

I love his fight scenes so much! 

***

Zhou Zishu is here and all this is supposed to be very emotional but I feel like the story has folded in upon itself and I’m just... bored? I don’t believe any of them on anything right now and am just waiting for something to happen to draw me back in. 

***

OMG, yes, please stop talking and start fighting again!

Since the plot is apparently dead and buried, at least give us the blood! 

*** 

Oh, hi, Ye Baiyi! 🖤

My grumpy hundred-year-old baby, I missed you!! 

***

Yeah, Chengling can fuck all the way off now. I have zero patience for this. 

***

This alone makes it obvious that this is some scheme. 

I feel so sad for Zhou Zishu, though. Whatever it is they are doing, they should have told him. 

***

There is always the danger of a show going one twist and turn too far and that has definitely happened for me here. I have no idea what to do with all this, but he remains a work of art.

***

Very appreciative of your service here, sir 😋

***

Well, this looks ominous 😆

I feel like all three are plotting his demise. 

***

So many tragic gays on this show 🙄

Also, by this point they were not even trying to be subtle. He was clearly sharing a life with this man, loving him and grieving for him. He even refers to Rong Xuan as ‘their child’.

***

Is there even any doubt at this point?

*deepest sigh*

[robininthelabyrinth]

genderbent wens, like the siblings and the head family?

ao3

“- and in one generation, they were all women, every single one of them!” Lao Nie laughed so hard he was very nearly hiccupping, but Lan Qiren supposed that was understandable on account of the other sect leader having consumed a truly unbearable amount of wine. Some of which was on his behalf – Lao Nie had been in a strange mood during the conference, especially excited, and had boisterously interjected himself into Jin Guangshan’s regular attempts to get Lan Qiren drunk by volunteering to take all his toasts for him – so Lan Qiren felt obligated to stay and keep him from making a nuisance of himself. “So be careful what you wish for, Jin-xiong!”

“Let go of me!” Jin Guangshan yelped, and really, getting squashed like that by Lao Nie tipping over onto him was exactly what he deserved. Only Jiang Fengmian was nice enough to try to help him, and all that accomplished was to get him pulled, laughing, into the drinking as well.

Possibly that had been his goal.

“That seems remarkably unlikely,” Wen Ruohan remarked. He, at least, was sitting properly, and had for once restrained himself during the festivities – he was friends of a sort with Jin Guangshan, which never seemed to go well for anyone else, but Lao Nie’s rowdiness had apparently severed that for the night. He looked sidelong at Lan Qiren. “Don’t you think, Sect Leader Lan?”

Lan Qiren could never figure out if Wen Ruohan meant for that term of address to be an insult or a compliment, and he was tired of trying.

“What is so unlikely?” he asked, having been paying more attention to Lao Nie’s stability than his words.

“An entire generation born as women,” Wen Ruohan said. He was playing with the cup of wine in his hands rather than drinking it. “Statistically possible, but highly improbable, given the size of the Nie sect.”

“Well, I assume he’s accounting for the misaligned,” Lan Qiren said, because Wen Ruohan wasn’t wrong – the Nie sect might be smaller than others, but it was still a Great Sect; it was very far from being small. “That would affect the numbers.”

“Misaligned?” Wen Ruohan echoed.

“A tradition among the Nie,” Lan Qiren explained, because it wasrather unusual. “They believe that the reincarnation cycle occasionally errs, with the soul of a woman ending up in a male body or a man in a woman – or I suppose neither and both, I’m not entirely certain about that one. At any rate, it’s not terribly common, but neither is it especially uncommon, so I suppose it’s possible –”

“Isn’t it a punishment?” Wen Ruohan interrupted.

Lan Qiren blinked at him, not understanding.

Wen Ruohan was looking down at his cup, which he had started to hold rather tightly – his knuckles were white, and it was only his especially good control over his cultivation that was keeping the cup from shattering. “The misalignment,” he clarified. “It’s said that those who commit sins in one life will be condemned in their next: reborn as an ant, or a chicken raised for slaughter. To be reborn into a body that does not fit you would surely seem to be along the same lines.”

“I suppose I see the argument,” Lan Qiren said, relieved that for once Wen Ruohan was in the mood for a theoretical discussion rather than causing trouble just to show that he had the power to do so without consequence. “I believe the Nie would argue in turn that being born as a thinking being capable of expressing oneself is sufficient basis to assume error rather than retribution – we’re all cultivators fighting the dictates of fate, after all. If one can seek immortality against all heavenly restrictions, then seeking to be recognized in the manner of your soul rather than your body would appear to be a much smaller issue.”

He shrugged and took a sip of his tea, rolling it in his mouth first to confirm it hadn’t been spiked with anything alcoholic.

“My assumption entirely,” he added. “I’m not actually that familiar with the Nie sect doctrine on this matter. Lao Nie is not the most academic, and if anything seems more bemused by our lack of understanding on the matter.”

Wen Ruohan was frowning into his cup, but at least he wasn’t gripping it so tightly.

“Fighting the dictates of fate,” he murmured. “Yes, I can see that. If you decide you are something, who dares say that you cannot be that, even the Heavens themselves?”

Such a Wen sect way of thinking, Lan Qiren thought to himself, shaking his head. Arrogant, defiant and proud – always raising their heads up high. Admirable in small doses, irritating in large!

“What would you do?” Wen Ruohan asked him, and Lan Qiren looked at him, surprised. “If there was – something like that, but in your sect? The Lan is the most orthodox of the sects; you do not even permit intermingling between men and women.”

“We don’t – men and women live separately; it’s not the same thing as not permitting intermingling,” Lan Qiren protested, but he supposed he could see the value in the question. “If one of my sect disciples informed me that they believed themselves to be a misalignment, I would – accept it, I suppose. Perhaps after a period of supervision, to ensure that they were serious and understood the consequences of their actions, that they would live and be perceived socially in the manner their soul for the rest of their lives; that would help ensure no one would engage in such a thing lightly or as a prank.”

He thought about it a little more.

“Yes, I think that’s right,” he concluded. “There are many rules that touch on the subject of being true to oneself, and none requiring adherence to the gender of one’s body; therefore, it is more in accordance to the rules to permit it. In such an event, I might also send them to the Unclean Realm for a time to further their understanding of the concept, to allow them time to reflect on the proposed change and to ensure they have access to a place where they can feel safe in exploring –”

“What if it were you yourself? Given your position?”

“Me?” Lan Qiren blinked. “I’ve always been comfortable being a man, so it isn’t an issue. But if it was, I would imagine that the same would apply to me as to anyone else in my sect. After all, we have precedent of a woman taking the role of Sect Leader, so that isn’t a consideration.”

“I suppose you do,” Wen Ruohan said. He seemed thoughtful. “What do you think the other sects would think of it?”

“Well, I can hardly say. Of the Great Sects? The Jiang sect would probably approve of it; their sect motto is ‘attempt the impossible’, and their emphasis has always been on freedom and finding your own way – I can’t imagine them objecting in a way that wouldn’t make them come across as complete hypocrites. The Nie would of course accept it. The Jin…”

The Jin sect, under Jin Guangshan, would reject it utterly. Perhaps it might be different under a different sect leader, but Jin Guangshan was even more wedded to the idea of people being in what he considered their ‘proper’ place than most. He hated the newly rich, the self-made upstart, even the poor young men who fought their way up from nothing – in his view, immortality was best reached by nothing ever changing. It was, perhaps, an understandable viewpoint from a man who felt as though he already had everything, but still rather disgusting given how despite all of that Jin Guangshan still grappled and sought after even more power and wealth than he already had – as if he were the only one allowed to rise, and everyone else had to stay where they were so he could more easily step on them on his way up.

“Oh, the Jin. Leave Jin Guangshan to me,” Wen Ruohan said with that dangerous smile of his, the one that promised blood on the ground.

Lan Qiren nodded agreeably, then frowned. Since when had they been discussing how to convince Jin Guangshan to be more open to an admittedly idiosyncratic Nie sect custom?

He was about to ask, but then Lao Nie started singing – with Jiang Fengmian providing the harmony, insofar as ‘harmony’ could be used to describe something that sounded not unlike a duet for elephants in heat or possibly someone using a brick to bludgeon people mid-opera – and they all got distracted in the unified effort of trying to get them to stop.

Lan Qiren then forgot about the entire conversation for approximately two months, and abruptly recalled it when Wen Ruohan issued an announcement that the Wen sect now permitted female sect leaders, that, furthermore, shewas the first one, and, finally, that if anyone objected on any basis whatsoever they were welcome to fight her personally.

Which –

Well, in all, Lan Qiren wished his fellow sect leader the best and started resigning himself to having to suffer from even more of Lao Nie’s flirting at the next discussion conference. That man had never yet met a man or woman who could kill him that he wouldn’t try to sleep with, and he generally preferred women…

-

“It’s nice to have the company of another girl,” Jiang Yanli said with a smile.

Wen Xu snorted. “I agree, even if I wish it were under different circumstances.”

Jiang Yanli managed to maintain her expression of peace and tranquility for exactly four breaths before she burst out into giggles, an incredibly infectious sound that finally made Wen Xu start laughing as well.

“It’s mean,” Jiang Yanli said, only laughing harder. “I should – I’m glad they’re happy! Really!”

“We can be glad that they’re happy and also think that our parents are insane,” Wen Xu said. “I can’t believe – your parents are already married! To each other!”

“They weren’t very happy, though,” Jiang Yanli said. “I honestly think Sect Leader Wen has been very good for them. Even if I don’t want to think too hard about it.”

Wen Xu nodded. They were both twelve, which was exactly the age at which you tried very hard not to think things like I’m pretty sure my mom’s railing your dad while your mom provides commentary with his face in her lap right this very instant and yet you did think it because the adults were very not subtle sometimes and then at that point there was nothing to do but laugh.

“I heard that lots of people thought she was going to get together with Sect Leader Nie at first,” Jiang Yanli said. “You know, because they flirt so much?”

“My mom says that Sect Leader Nie flirts with anyone who can kill him,” Wen Xu said, and still marveled a little at being able to say things or think things like mom. Before, she’d only ever been allowed to refer to his father through the most formal terms, with any attempt to use a more intimate sobriquet being viciously punished – she’d often thought that her father would rather she called him Sect Leader Wen instead, and maybe she’d been right.

Her mother was a lot more easy-going about that sort of thing now, though. Wen Xu still wasn’t sure whether it was because she preferred ‘a-niang’ over ‘a-die’ or if it was just that, having blown up the entire cultivation world through her gender choices, her mother felt a lot freer in ignoring the rest of the expectations that had burdened her, too.

“So he’s not serious about her?”

“I mean, maybe he is, I don’t know,” Wen Xu said. “But apparently the whole thing with my mom deciding to announce that she was a woman happened right around the time he was getting back together with his second wife so I guess he was taken?”

“Wait, he got back together with – wasn’t she dead?”

“Apparently not? I really don’t know what happens in the Unclean Realm.”

“Probably for the best,” Jiang Yanli said. “I mean – I don’t – uh, that is –”

“If you’re talking about the fact that my mom still wants to take over the entire cultivation world and declare herself an immortal Empress, trust me, I know.”

“Oh, good,” Jiang Yanli said. “I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”

Wen Xu shrugged. She mostly just hoped that her mom’s current relationship with the other sect leaders was such that she didn’t actually murder them all in her inevitable effort to take over – it had always been something of a concern, and greater now that she actually knew Jiang Yanli was pretty cool.

“I also thought…” Jiang Yanli hesitated. “You yourself…?”

“Oh, no, I’m different. My birth mother made me pretend to be a boy,” Wen Xu said. “So that I could be the heir and she could keep her place as my father’s main wife, though of course in the end it didn’t really work out that well for her…I think A-Chao’s like mom, though. She wants to be a princess.”

“So she’s like your mom in the – ambitious sense?”

Wen Xu snickered. “Yes, that too. Actually, it’s a little funny. The whole thing started because my mom overheard Lao Nie talking about how a whole generation of Nie sect got cursed to be girls one time, and now I think mysect’s current generation is all girls.”

“Oh! Are they really?”

“Well, not really, but almost?” Wen Xu said. “There’s really just my mom, A-Chao, and me in the main branch, though we have some cousins that got sort of pulled into the main branch after their parents died – A-Qing and A-Ning. They were both born as girls, but recently A-Qing’s been saying that he thinks he might be happier as a man…it’s interesting. He’s not unhappybeing a woman the way I’m pretty sure my mom hated being a man, but he really likesbeing a man, and according to the Nie sect that’s the same thing, just a different expression of it? I don’t know.”

“How old are they?” Jiang Yanli asked.

“A-Qing’s about our age, and A-Ning is your brothers’ ages. You can meet them the next time there’s a conference in Qishan…”

-

“Can I bring Jiaojiao?” Wen Chao asked, and quailed under Wen Qing’s glare.

Wen Ning was just happy to remain underfoot and out of attention range. Her brother had a wicked way with needles when he wanted, and she wanted no part in any of that.

“Are you serious right now?” Wen Qing demanded. “You want to take your whore with you when we run away from home?”

“I’m not leaving Jiaojiao behind!” Wen Chao insisted. “And she’s not a whore! She doesn’t sleep with anyone but me.”

Hasn’t doesn’t mean wouldn’t, Wen Ning thought, then promptly felt bad for thinking it. It was a very catty thought and she was ashamed of it, even if Wang Lingjiao did strike her as rather…mercenary.

“Also I don’t understand why we have to run away anyway,” Wen Chao said, pouting. “So what if Mom started a war? We’re going to win, and then I’ll be a princess.”

“You’re an idiot,” Wen Qing said. “We’re not going to win.”

“But we control half the cultivation world!”

“Yes, and maybe if your mom was as ruthless as she used to be, she would’ve done the things necessary to win the war,” Wen Qing said. “Like take out Lao Nie early on, maybe. Now that the Nie sect’s got both him andNie Mingjue, any of our cultivators that go to the Unclean Realm are going to be slaughtered.”

Wen Chao winced, acknowledging the point.

“And ever since Lao Nie and Lan Qiren started their thing, it’s not like the Nie sect won’t also go defend the Lan sect, right?”

“…right.”

“And of course there’s the Jiang sect, which we probably couldraze to the ground if we really wanted to. But we’re not going to, and you know why?”

“Because Mom is fucking their sect leaders.”

“Because your mom is fucking their sect leaders,” Wen Qing agreed. “And that is why we declared war first on the Jin sect, because no one likes them.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that the Jin sect makes no sense at all as a target! If we take over the entire stretch of territory between Lanling and Qishan, Qinghe gets completely cut off from Gusu and Yunmeng and there’s no way they’re going to let that happen, which means that they’re going to declare war on us. And that is why we are running away from home, because we do not want to be here when the Nie sect shows up.”

Wen Ning’s brother was awesome and everyone should listen to him.

“Maybe your mom will rethink her actions once she’s seen that we’ve run away,” Wen Ning told Wen Chao in a low voice, since she was still scowling. “And I think it’s fine if you bring Jiaojiao. She’s your girlfriend, right?”

Wen Chao frowned. “I mean…she’s someone I’m sleeping with. For now. That’s all – she’s just a maid.”

Wen Ning would normally refrain from commenting, but… “If she’s just a maid, then why do you care about her potentially dying when the Nie sect invades?”

Wen Chao’s face did something. “I – maybe I just want to have her around to keep sleeping with her!”

Wen Qing looked on the verge of saying something, but Wen Ning stepped on her foot.

“Maybe you should think about it,” she said. “I don’t think we can let a servant to come with us – same reason we can’t take Wen Zhuilu, since he’d just report the whole thing to your mom – but if she was your girlfriend and you trusted her…”

She trailed off and shrugged.

Wen Chao’s face was doing weird colors.

“A-Ning, stop trying to teach A-Chao to have mature emotional reactions, it’s a hopeless case,” Wen Qing said. “Keep packing instead. If I was smart, I’d let A-Chao stay here with her Jiaojiao and her dreams of being a princess.”

“No!” Wen Chao exclaimed, then flushed red.

“No? Then pack.”

-

“How about we just assume girl until otherwise proven?” Wen Xu suggested, patting the baby’s back to try to keep calm. Whether the person to be calmed was the baby or Wen Xu herself was unknown. “She doesn’t need to have gender imposed so early.”

“Deciding that she’s a girl is imposing a gender,” Wen Chao said. Her head was in Wang Lingjiao’s lap, and she was pouting. “I can’t believe we have to take care of a baby.”

“She’s family,” Wen Qing said.

“Her parents aren’t!”

“Mom’s rules are that anyone who has the Wen surname and blood who doesn’t have parents gets adopted into the main family.”

“Do Sect Leader Wen’s rules even matter any more?” Wen Ning asked, wringing her hands. “With her being under house arrest…”

“It’s temporary. Once she vows not to wage offensive war without approval of the other Great Sect leaders, she’ll be released and things will go back to normal. Mostly. Possibly with slightly less war?”

“Yes, but in the meantime, why do we have to be in charge?”

“Uh, because you’re the heirs?”

“I’m not the heir,” Wen Chao sniffed. “A-Xu is.”

“This is so stupid,” Wen Xu said. “I can’t believe our mother’s military campaign and inevitable tragic defeat was derailed by the giant man-eating tortoise A-Chao found.”

“Anyone could’ve stumbled over that cave!”

“We weren’t even supposed to be heading in that direction! If you hadn’t stolen the map and insisted on being the navigator –”

“It all turned out for the best,” Wen Qing interrupted. “No blood feuds – or at least, not any we can’t afford to pay off – and that awful Jin Guangshan isn’t around anymore, which the other sect leaders are pretending to mind but really don’t. Mom will be back in charge of the sect soon enough, and with luck will forget all about trying to take over the world and will instead go back to fucking her two lovers that swooped in and saved her life instead defeating her because she’s incredibly touched by that even if she’s pretending she’s not. It’s like a scene out of a bad play.”

“Can we get back to the bit where we got a baby?” Wen Xu said. “I don’t want to deal with a baby.”

“I already explained –”

“I’ll take A-Yuan,” Wen Ning volunteered. “She seems sweet.”

“Girls usually are.”

“We are not saying everyone is a girl until otherwise determined!”

“Why not?” Wen Xu wanted to know. “Worked out pretty good so far.”

“I – that is – I mean…” Wen Qing floundered, then scowled. “Okay, listen. Not even the Nie sect does that, and I refuse for the Wen sect to be weirder than the Nie. All right?”

Everyone considered that, and agreed.

They might be weird – but they weren’t that weird.

Right?

[satan-chillin]

Here, in this moment

Grand gestures of endearment, touches, and honeyed words in public are Wen Kexing's forte, though it doesn't mean Zhou Zishu doesn't have his moments.

(Or, coincidentally, the times Zhou Zishu discovers a couple of ways to shut Wen Kexing up.)

Also available in Ao3

i

Despite the growing population within the Four Seasons Manor, it was a known tradition of a sort for the Manor Lord to leave from time to time with his Second Disciple in tow. As far as the disciples knew, Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing had been on the road for too long before rebuilding the sect and had met under fated circumstances that brought them together—the younger students were wont to sigh in the inherent romanticism of it all—and might not have fully adjusted yet to the life with a stable abode.

If Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing were asked, they’d simply say that it was a continuation of their earlier promise of tasting all the wine while they lived, and, really, they had to escape the manor from time to time to get a breather. They couldn’t afford to leave the sect for a long span of time, not while it was still young and the Head Disciple a child still. It was the closest they would get to having several children, they supposed, and the experience could wear anyone down.

A stroll around the town was the best way to stretch their legs, so to speak, and for a moment, Zhou Zishu was taken to earlier days where Wen Kexing would follow him and appear wherever he went with what little time he initially had. Zhou Zishu was prone to deliberation these days, he realized, and often it was to match Wen Kexing’s pace in all the aspects of their lives. He was a little better in indulging him too, he thought, mildly giving his input here and there which tassel Wen Kexing should pick as gifts for two of their disciples who would have been with them for a year in a couple of days. He had been told that there was someone else about to have their birthday next week as well, and Zhou Zishu couldn’t help the slight smile at the thoughtfulness as he listened.

“Ah, how about this, A-Xu?” Wen Kexing picked up a fan from the stall next to the one Zhou Zishu dragged him from. “Do you think the color will suit—”

“They’ll like whatever you choose,” Zhou Zishu interrupted. It was true anyway. If Zhou Zishu was the strict and formidable master, Wen Kexing, while no less capable, was known more as the fond and doting one. Zhou Zishu wasn’t completely unaware of how Wen Kexing was called the mother—would that make him the father then? “Let me,” he said, taking half of the packages from Wen Kexing to free one of his hands.

“Eh. I can carry them all,” Wen Kexing protested half-heartedly but relented. He grinned, nudging Zhou Zishu’s side mischievously. “You just want my hand free so you can hold it, A-Xu.”

Zhou Zishu leveled him with a flat stare. “Yes, actually.” Reaching for Wen Kexing’s hand with his left, he laced their fingers that fit together seamlessly. He ignored the look of surprise he received in return. “Chengling said the newest recruit doesn’t have shoes that fit him.”

“Ah,” Wen Kexing murmured distractedly without looking away from their joined hands. “He might have mentioned that.”

Zhou Zishu squeezed his hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Thinking about it, there shouldn’t be anything complicated in holding Wen Kexing’s hand in the first place, though perhaps he should have done it a long time ago. He was determined not to let chances slide in his second time, however.

Fondly, Zhou Zishu led him away. “Let’s go then.”

ii

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Zhou Zishu had been drinking less than his usual. It wasn’t the alcohol itself, fine quality as it was and not the watered-down kind. Mainly, he attributed it to wanting to soak in the pleasant mood and the overall levity of the atmosphere; it had been years since the halls of Four Seasons Manor were filled with joyous chatter and laughs after all.

To his side was Wen Kexing regaling the enraptured junior disciples with tales of his escapades, and the lack of stumble and slur in his words made Zhou Zishu mistakenly thought he was unaffected by the alcohol even if he was drinking for just as long as him, if not in quicker successions.

As if feeling eyes on him, Zhou Zishu was met with a slight tilt of the head and a raised eyebrow. He noted the all too bright eyes—not entirely unaffected then. Absently, Zhou Zishu inched closer to him. “Don’t drink anymore if you can’t handle it,” he reminded, reaching for a pitcher of water instead and filling Wen Kexing’s cup. “You don’t want to be embarrassed in front of your disciples.”

“Lord Zhou should be heeding his own advice,” Wen Kexing tutted and drank. He frowned. “This isn’t wine.”

“It’s water. See, you didn’t even notice.”

Wen Kexing blankly stared at the empty cup in his hand. “Huh.”

Amusedly, Zhou Zishu pried the cup away. “You’ve had enough, I think.”

“A-Xu, why are you being stingy now? You never said no to overindulging, and what better time than in the New Year?”

“You forget that we better learn moderation from now on to set a good example.” Zhou Zishu remained unimpressed at the pout directed his way. “Think of the headache tomorrow,” he said. “Besides, aren’t you exhausted already after preparing all these mostly by yourself?”

That earned him a sigh and a weary smile. “Worth it.” He gestured at the lively company.

“It is,” Zhou Zishu agreed easily.

He wasn’t sure if Wen Kexing was aware of himself leaning towards him. He must be, though his heavy eyes and the sleepy grunt said otherwise.

“Want to sleep,” Wen Kexing mumbled. “Will A-Xu carry me?”

Zhou Zishu snorted but, inured to embarrassment at this point, allowed Wen Kexing to fall on his shoulder and was practically against his chest. Gingerly, Zhou Zishu encircled his arm around his waist, and, after some adjusting, pulled him by the underside of his knees. Wen Kexing barely registered the fact that he was being carried.

It wasn’t until the evening breeze met them outdoors did Wen Kexing shifted with a mild jolt and stared at Zhou Zishu blearily. “Did A-Xu just carry me from the hall?” he slurred. “In front of your disciples?”

Zhou Zishu valiantly ignored the dopey grin forming on Wen Kexing’s face. Truly, his drunken state was merely his less eloquent default. “Did you already forget that you asked me to?”

Wen Kexing blinked slowly, gaze dropping down by Zhou Zishu’s throat. In a lower voice, he spoke, “I remember.” Slumping further against Zhou Zishu, his chin hooked by his shoulder as he tightened his arms around his neck.

Wen Kexing was light in his arms and, oddly enough, quiet without completely falling asleep. Zhou Zishu was certain he could make this into a habit if only to silence him when needed.

“Lao Wen,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

Carrying Wen Kexing this way seemed like an inadequate form of recompense when all was said and done, especially not when Zhou Zishu was treated in return to the exquisite sight of a tender, affectionate smile.

iii

With the kitchen up and running with extra hands, it was common for a pleasant smell to waft over the courtyard from the start of the morning through the evening. Coming from his early meditation, Zhou Zishu followed a unique fragrance and wasn’t a bit surprised to find Wen Kexing at the source.

The first eleven additions of disciples were capable helpers, a fact which Wen Kexing was grateful for since their number grew. And while he still handled food preparation, it had been much easier with the assistance of three to five people. Zhou Zishu observed him putter around the kitchen, intermittently giving instructions to one of the disciples taking inventory of their supplies.

Though careful to move about, Zhou Zishu made enough noise that had Wen Kexing’s sudden attention on him with his arms crossed. He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Lord Zhou should wait in the dining hall for breakfast.”

It was a wonder how his demeanor would turn strict when it came to cooking but was otherwise lax in far serious affairs. Huffing, Zhou Zishu ambled towards the cook, glancing at the cauldron with rice. He reached for a spoon. “That smells good.”

Wen Kexing batted his hand away. “It’s not ready,” he chided. “It smells good because of the saffron, but the flavor won’t be settling in for another quarter of an hour.”

Zhou Zishu watched his long fingers sprinkle a pinch of salt and pepper, almost enraptured at the way Wen Kexing was in his own element. Catching his gaze, Wen Kexing’s eyes softened imperceptibly. “A-Xu gets the first serving, of course.”

Zhou Zishu hummed. In a stroke of inspiration, he flitted behind Wen Kexing and hovered by his shoulder before reaching a hand around his waist, palm splaying over his abdomen. With Wen Kexing startled at the gesture, Zhou Zishu took advantage and swooped in with his spoon.

Some bits of the sticky rice were clumped but the hints of spice were already present. Without extricating himself from his position, Zhou Zishu added half a spoon of chili and tasted. He let out a small noise of approval, and if it happened to be right next to Wen Kexing’s ear and caused a vague shiver, well. “Delicious,” he muttered lowly.

From the far side of the room, someone stifled a cough and the moment was broken as quickly as it began. Zhou Zishu was already at an arm’s length when Wen Kexing rounded on him. Laughing, he dodged a smack to his side. “A-Xu! You—”

Zhou Zishu escaped before he could be properly thrown out of the kitchen, though not without reveling at Wen Kexing’s red ears.

iv

Zhou Zishu was not completely unaware of the appreciative stare that followed him upon entering the establishment. He could pinpoint the exact direction it was coming from: two tables to his right situated at the corner where a woman—highborn, based from her posture and rich robes—was dining with an elderly gentleman in equally luxurious attire who vaguely resembled her.

Pretending not to notice, he went on to hail the server for wine and food. Wen Kexing was taking his sweet time fetching a bag of his precious walnuts that Zhou Zishu couldn’t understand why he liked so much. Once he was served, Zhou Zishu started on the alcohol while he waited.

What he wasn’t expecting, though, was the abrupt presence of the same woman now at the empty seat across him. Zhou Zishu politely inclined his head in confusion and belatedly took note of the absence of her companion. “Guniang.”

“Gongzi.” She smiled handsomely in greeting, smelling faintly of lavender and jasmine. Judging from her features, she looked a year or so younger than him. Pretty, with practiced manners and grace, undeniably someone who could turn heads. “Pardon this one’s forwardness, but I noticed that gongzi is missing a company… and so am I after my father left me for the meantime. Might this one invite you to share mine perhaps?”

Zhou Zishu doubted that she had not heard him asking for a serving for two people and was obviously waiting for someone. Forward, that was for sure. Definitely a woman who had never been refused once she knew what she wanted. Zhou Zishu smiled amiably when he answered, “Thank you for the invitation, guniang, but I’m waiting for my companion.”

A flash of a frown crossed her delicate features before they smoothed over when she opened her pink lips to speak further of her insistence. Then, as if summoned, Zhou Zishu spotted Wen Kexing approaching from behind. Hearing what basically amounted to thundering steps, Zhou Zishu hid a grin behind his cup.

“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing called, tone deceptively beatific with an underlying sharpness that only Zhou Zishu was cognizant of. “I didn’t know we’ll be having a guest.”

“Guniang thought I’m eating alone, and she’s generous to offer her company,” Zhou Zishu supplied happily. Staring up at Wen Kexing, he added, innocuous, “What do you say, niang zi?”

Wen Kexing’s head snapped towards him incredulously, coincidental with the woman repeating the endearment under her breath in disbelief.

“What?” Zhou Zishu said in mock indignation. “Am I not allowed to call you that anymore after I protested with you calling me xiang gong? That was one time. Doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”

Wen Kexing hardly shifted on his feet even as the woman excused herself with all her ounce of dignity once the two ignored everything else but each other. Feeling satisfied, Zhou Zishu stood, grasped Wen Kexing’s shoulders, and pulled him down to the now free seat.

“Food’s getting cold,” was all Zhou Zishu said before digging in.

Halfway, Zhou Zishu discovered that red complementing Wen Kexing nicely wasn’t exclusive to his choice of garb alone.

v

Senior Ye had more white on his hair than the last time Zhou Zishu saw him.

“Old demon, you have more white hair,” Wen Kexing boldly said because, unlike Zhou Zishu, he did not possess a brain-to-mouth filter; that, and he wouldn’t pass up any chance to antagonize Senior Ye.

“And you have more wrinkles,” Senior Ye snarked back, giving as good as he got without putting down his meal. He smirked. “Having trouble handling the sect, I see.”

“We get by,” Zhou Zishu replied, interrupting Wen Kexing’s stewing annoyance. “We have yet to complete the numbers, but managing the household with more than three people can be difficult for one person. He’s been alright so far.”

“‘Alright’?” Wen Kexing scoffed. “I’m doing great.”

“Humble, are you?” Senior Ye snorted, popping a slice of cubed pork. “You’re not built for that kind of task, of course you fare barely.”

“Are you sure you want to tell that to the face of the person who made your food?” Wen Kexing sneered. “Freeloader!”

“I’m an honored guest. I deserve to be honored,” Senior Ye declared, and, fine, Zhou Zishu might have told him that. Shaking his head, Senior Ye turned to Zhou Zishu. “You’re a manor lord and unmarried. Why don’t you find a proper wife to manage your household affairs and serve as a positive influence to your disciples? Don’t let this brat run your sect to the ground.”

If Wen Kexing wasn’t angry before, he was positively fuming now. Zhou Zishu placed himself as a stopgap to a boiling pot and addressed the immortal, “Senior Ye is right. Fortunately, I can forgo the arduous process of searching for one, seeing as someone made a promise of marriage to me some time ago.”

Calmly, Zhou Zishu poured tea and drank before mentally counting down in that brief period of silence.

“Master is promised to someone?” Chengling asked with uncertainty. He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to be happy at the news or be concerned, given the way he was subtly glancing at Wen Kexing who happened to be staring at his master woodenly. Zhou Zishu honestly felt rather bad that he almost forgot that the boy was also sharing their table and was witnessing this exchange firsthand.

Senior Ye, meanwhile, slowed his chewing and was eyeing Zhou Zishu curiously.

In a snap, Wen Kexing demanded, “A-Xu, who? Who has the gall to—”

It was a battle for Zhou Zishu to keep a straight face as he frowned at Wen Kexing bemusedly. “Didn’t you?” He pointed at the hairpin atop his head. At Wen Kexing’s dumbfounded look, Zhou Zishu made a doleful sigh. “Ah. I must have misunderstood your intention.”

“... A-Xu?”

Zhou Zishu straightened his back, twisting to get a proper look on Wen Kexing. It took all of his strength to not snicker in relish at Chengling’s bated breath and Senior Ye’s show of interest, try as he might hide it.

He was about to rectify a blatant mistake here.

Zhou Zishu tsked affectionately, and in a much softer approach, said, “Lao Wen.” He heard Wen Kexing’s breath hitching before he went in for the attack. “Let’s get married then.”

Someone could have dropped a pin at the hush that ensued; or, someone could have made the loudest of sound and Zhou Zishu wouldn’t have paid it any attention at all, not when he was wholly captivated by Wen Kexing whose stare was akin to memorizing Zhou Zishu’s face and committing it to memory, damn everything else.

“Yes,” he breathed, his voice almost inaudible and yet to Zhou Zishu it was loud and clear as the day, as bright as the blinding smile that bloomed on his face. To think that Zhou Zishu used to believe the beginning of spring around the Four Seasons Manor was the most breath-taking display he had ever seen. “A-Xu, let’s get married.”

If Zhou Zishu was completely lost in his own little world with Wen Kexing in the middle of lunch, amidst Chenling’s triumphant cheer and Senior Ye’s rude grumbling of the manor now having two shameless people living under it, no one could have blamed him.

+i

By fortnight, Zhou Zishu was a wedded man.

And just to be certain that the overwhelming feeling of warmth and happiness that threatened to burst out of his chest wasn’t from a fever-induced dream where he would wake with his heavily-crippled body, drunk and alone, he dipped Wen Kexing, his husband, by his waist and kissed him deeply for good measure.

There was no dream to be woken out of.

[sixteenthshen]

i need help

I read a post on Zhihu last night - “How to evaluate the finale of Word of Honor?” The top commenter’s writing just killed me.

Heavy spoilers for episode 33/34. There’re no spoilers for the episodes after that, but I can’t guarantee this if there are replies.

The rest hidden behind a cut. 

I don’t need help explaining the finale or the happy ending, bad ending whatever it is, I’ve found my own way to come to terms with it. But I can’t accept what happened in 33/34 and the lack of follow up on the core of the issue, and that’s blocking me from enjoying the “HE”. To be fair, I think I may be a bit hormonal? Because this is really making me feel like crap. 

-----

This is a comment made by a Chinese user on Zhihu: 

I only want to say; the show might as well have ended when A-Xu jumped down the cliff after WKX. Even though it's a bit lame, at least the soulmate feelings were still there.

The grand finale basically destroyed the soulmate bond built up over 20+ episodes. The essence of it is gone; all of the "candy" and "knives" feel like they've been stripped away.

I've written so much about WKX & ZZS and how they were both falling for each other, saving each other. And now it all looks like a big joke.

It turns out ZZS's soulmate is ZZH, not WKX. The mountains and rivers in the world can't compare to meeting my soulmate. Since my soulmate is gone, I might as well die. (Play on the quote from the drama, instead of why should I live, it becomes I should just die)

(The poster starts talking to ZZS directly - referring to him as you) You're really a mistreated (tortured?) concubine, aren't you? Once you decide to give your whole heart, whole person away, you somehow always end up meeting some fake evil bastard (reference to Farewell my Concubine, basically that ZZS always ends up being suckered)

When you first fell into Prince Jin's trap, it's because you were young and not yet wise to the ways of the world, and believed in the grand words of your cousin and got conned into the world of politics. Sinking into the dirtiest, muddiest of marshes.

You plotted tirelessly for 18 months, suffered through 18 months of pain from the 7 nails, and finally exchanged it for 3 years of freedom. But when you met WKX, you fell right back in again.

Heraclitus said, "You cannot step into the same river twice" <<(I think this person mixed up the meaning of this quote, cause it doesn't fit, but basically intends to say people shouldn't make the same mistake twice)

The first time you stepped into the river, you got away with only half your life. The next time you stepped into the river, you nearly lost your life 4x (under YBY's sword, when you jumped off the cliff to your death for love, pulling out your nails, exploding the mountain to cause an avalanche + suicide), in the end you became a living dead person on Changming mountain.

I don't know if I should call you a living dead man, anyway, in my heart, once you pulled out the nails from your body, cutting off any other alternative you had just to help WKX take revenge… while WKX came back from the dead, and worked with everyone present at the scene to give the performance of a lifetime, you were already dead.

What a mockery, a farce.

You gave up everything but in the end, you were nothing more than a spectator.

He wanted you to give him face, to let him go home to explain things. You quietly stepped aside and gave him the stage. He wanted your baiyi sword to demonstrate his family's sword technique, to prove his identity. You gave it to him without a second word. He cut Zhao Jing's arms and legs tendons, crippled his martial arts, finally took revenge. You were happy for him despite everything.

When Mo Huaiyang accused him of being the Ghost Valley Master, he openly admitted to it and said the entire first part was just an act. You stood in front of him, to protect him. Said he is your shidi, and stood with him without any reservations.

But he had secretly already reached an agreement with Ye Baiyi. He knew YBY wouldn't hurt him, but you didn't know and yet you still shielded him. So terribly afraid that YBY would hurt him because of his identity. 

Everyone knew this was part of the scheme he laid out, everyone participated in his scheme. Only you didn't know. Only you foolishly believed that he wouldn't be alright without you, that he needed you to help him take revenge. That he had his difficulties so he couldn't confess the truth to you, as long as he did, then you would be the first to know everything. That he was your soulmate. This word "soulmate", if said enough times, it would even be real. In this life, right up until the end, we can't even fully understand ourselves, how do we talk about others?

----- 

the source is the top voted answer here. I like this poster a lot, she shared some great things throughout the course of the drama, 3 of which were the base of poems-related posts I’ve made here. I was doing fine before, but in the course of translating this answer for a friend, I made myself feel worse.

She later forced herself to look at it from WKX’s perspective and wrote a piece on it as well, but it... was very forced and I’m not too sure she even believed it herself. She ended that part with - “this made her feel very keenly that no matter how similar two souls may be, in the end, they are still two souls. He isn’t you and he will never be you. You can work endlessly and tirelessly to be closer, but your souls can never meet.”

I... I’m too sad to translate the WKX part in order to be fair to WKX in this post (if I feel better about it, i will later? but it didn’t make me feel better at all tbh) 

Can someone who can articulate well and believe that what WKX did was right, please help to make me understand episodes 32-34 from his perspective?

My main issues are:

We never got a proper 1-to-1 discussion between WKX and ZZS over the issue. At first, they were celebrating as a group, I can accept it. There wasn’t a time or place.

But when ZZS went back to his room early and sober, when everyone else was still drinking and having fun, I felt so bad for him.

When WKX came into his room, looking for ZZS when drunk, I know it isn’t supposed to be like this - but I can’t help but feel he didn’t dare to talk to A-Xu 1-to-1. Instead he went when he was drunk to spill his heart. It can be thought of as sweet, because the first person he thinks of when he’s drunk is A-Xu... but I can’t help but find it very selfish, because it leaves A-Xu with no way to talk about things. If you’ve ever talked to a drunk while sober, you would understand what I mean, it’s a one-way conversation, you can’t get anything through.

But that conversation left A-Xu with enough guilt that he can’t come clean to WKX about what he did. How can he tell WKX that he pulled out his nails, and is about to die. To take away WKX’s happiness, when Lao Wen just told him about how happy he was to have him in his life?

Lao Wen had 0 intention to be cruel, but it ended up being more cruel. And this lack of a proper discussion between the two of them, makes me call into question the whole thing about soulmates. I believe Lao Wen loves A-Xu the best he can (with his somewhat emotionally stunted self), but he’s not putting himself in the other person’s shoes to care for them. 

Love =/= care. And by not caring enough in this matter, I feel it’s thrown him into OOC. Where is the WKX who cared so much for ZZS at the start? Where is the tenderness? 

The drama never properly addressed why WKX faked his death and not tell A-Xu. The only reason they gave was that A-Xu was heavily injured (through Wu Xi). WKX just admitted he was wrong (and should drink). That’s all.

Thankssss. 

Please don’t preach to me about the happy ending or talk about the finale. I personally can’t resolve 32-34, I have found a way to accept the ending as long as I can accept these 3 episodes.

I may not be able to immediately accept your POV but I will force myself to try to find something that fits. I want to keep shipping wenzhou :( 

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls Extra 2

- ao3 -

“Jingyi?” Lan Qiren repeated, looking down at the child tucked into his arms. “A good name.”

“Isn’t it?” Lan Yueheng said, beaming. “A-Xin thought of it!”

“You don’t say,” Lan Qiren said dryly. “Just the way your wife named all the last six?”

Lan Yueheng grinned bashfully. “She’s better at it!”

Lan Qiren shook his head, amused, and tried to offer the child back to his father.

“No, no, you should hold him longer. Babies are calming, and you’ve been having bad dreams recently, right?”

“Babies are not calming,” Lan Qiren said. There was a limit to how many times someone could play the same joke on him, and yes, he was mentally glaring at Wen Ruohan, Lao Nie, and Cangse Sanren as well while he thought that. “You’ve had six already, you should know that. Can we at least agree that this is the last one?”

Lan Yueheng and Zhang Xin had put off having children to help Lan Qiren raise Lan Xichen and then Lan Wangji, once he’d come around, no matter how much Lan Qiren had argued with them to the contrary. They’d laughed him off, saying it was nothing, but he’d been terribly afraid that they’d miss the window for it and end up childless, with no one to sweep their graves on Qingming except his nephews, and that in the end they’d blame him for it.

Naturally, despite his fears, it turned out in the end that they hadn’t had any trouble at all. Their first had been born when Lan Wangji had been three and Lan Xichen six, and they’d had six more after that, one after another like a bunch of maniacs – a girl, two boys, another girl, and then the twins a few years later, at the very end, just when everyone had thought they were already done. Lan Wangji had already been nearly fifteen, then.

Of course, the whole bit about ‘just when everyone had thought they were already done’ being about the twins was rather outdated: that was before the arrival of little Jingyi.

Nearly ten years after all the rest, even the twins; a belated and extremely unexpected child, as if Zhang Xin and Lan Yueheng and the heavens had all conspired to make fun of Lan Qiren for his previous worries. Zhang Xin had already been in her forties, yet she’d gotten through the entire process with a smile and no apparent discomfort, puttering around in her garden and managing her storehouses and scolding her children without any disruption. Not even the pain of labor would bring her down, even if she did have a tendency to mangle Lan Qiren’s hand and shout his ears to deafness in the process.

Lan Qiren’s ears and hand, because he’d helped oversee the births of his nephews – Han Kexin had resolutely refused the aid of any competent doctor, male or female, mockingly reminding him that she was supposed to be in seclusion, so he’d learned up on the basics himself while retaining the option to call in a proper doctor if something went wrong – and since he’d managed it well enough, naturally Zhang Xin wanted the same, impertinent brat that she was. And of course, she wasn’t going to hurt her husband’s precious hands in the process, never mind that he’d been the one to cause it in the first place.

At least they’d all been more or less easy births.

Little Lan Jingyi had been the easiest of the whole lot. Zhang Xin had barely made herself comfortable before he was coming, and before Lan Qiren had even really accepted that he was coming, he was already here.

Look at the rush to get going, as if he’s afraid to miss out on all the fun if he’s not here! Zhang Xin had laughed. He’s going to want to be part of part of everything!

“Last one, I swear!” Lan Yueheng promised cheerfully. “Anyway, we needed one around that age – that way he can be friends with Wangji’s boy! You know, the one he’s raising with Wei Wuxian, the one who used to be Wen sect.”

Lan Qiren snorted. As if he didn’t know the one in question. Wen Ruohan had been altogether too pleased to offer up some of his own blood to join the Lan sect when it turned out that Wei Wuxian had gotten attached to the orphan child of Wen Ruohan’s kinsman – eager as he ever was, really, to entangle himself irrevocably into Lan Qiren’s life, as if he still thought there was a chance, however remote, that Lan Qiren would find some reason to reject him or cut him out of his life once again. And never mind that it’d been years and years since anything like that had even come closer to happening!

“Yueheng-xiong,” he said patiently. “Mathematics are one of your favorite subjects, so I know you know that that means that your son will be friends with my grandnephew.”

Lan Yueheng scratched his nose. “Not your grandnephew yet,” he said, grinning; he didn’t look even remotely ashamed of it. “Wei Wuxian’s the one that adopted him, and Wangji’s not married him yet!”

“He’s working on it.”

Wen Ruohan’s “help” – in the sense of agreeing to let the Lan sect adopt little A-Yuan and not allowing Wei Wuxian to do it on his own – was probably doing more to impede it than anything else.

Lan Yueheng sniggered. “Should I offer to help?”

“Most certainly not. Save your fireworks and flares for the actual marriage.” Lan Qiren rubbed his forehead. “Cangse Sanren is being deliberately obnoxious about negotiations over it, I swear.”

“Cangse Sanren is always obnoxious, Qiren-xiong,” Lan Yueheng reminded him. “Always – and it’s only gotten worse since she had her doom stolen away by Lao Nie.”

“Don’t remind me,” Lan Qiren grumbled. He didn’t even want to know how the two of them had managed to swap fates, or what the consequences of it would be in the end. For some reason, Wen Ruohan seemed oddly insistent about blaming Lao Nie’s second wife, despite her having been perfectly nice as far as Lan Qiren could tell, if somewhat strangely obsessed with food. Possibly he was just annoyed that poor Wen Zhulio had saved Cangse Sanren’s life a dozen times over so far and yet Lao Nie was getting the credit.

At any rate, neither of them had died so far, which was all to the good.

“I’m getting to the point that I think looking for her master and asking her for permission might be the easier course,” he added irritably. “The boys want to get married! What’s the point of tormenting them over the details?”

“Please don’t go out looking for an immortal mountain, Qiren-xiong,” Lan Yueheng said, laughing, and finally condescended to pluck little Lan Jingyi out of his arms. “I’m going to put him to bed. You should rest, too. No more work today! And only good dreams!”

Lan Qiren shook his head and watched him walk away.

For a moment, the image was replaced with another, a remnant from the terrible dream he had been having the past few nights, the one that still lingered: Lan Yueheng, still laughing but walking with a limp, his right foot gone from beneath the knee – the one he’d lost when the Cloud Recesses had burned, and because of the mess that had ensued it hadn’t been treated for far too long, becoming infected; every year thereafter he had gotten sick from a recurrent and worsening illness, driving Lan Qiren and Zhang Xin both crazy with worry.

Lan Qiren’s chest hurt just thinking about it, his own injuries aching, the remnants of the vicious wounds from the terrible beating Wen Xu had ordered with his eyes curved in a mean smile as he watched them try to break Lan Qiren’s meridians out of sheer spite; one day, in that horrible future foretold by the dream, Zhang Xin would worry too much and fail to pay attention, walking on something she shouldn’t and poisoning her blood, and when she went Lan Yueheng would follow her away, the two of them going side-by-side into the next world as they had gone through this one, leaving Lan Qiren to raise their youngest child the rest of the way himself. No matter how tired he was, he wouldn’t put that burden on their other children, all of them abruptly orphaned, the final belated victims of the desperate war against the Wen sect to stop their tyrannical conquest…

Lan Qiren shook his head abruptly, clearing it.

What am I thinking, he wondered. There’s no war against the Wen sect – if da-ge ever got something like a war of conquest into his head, I’d scold him until my face turned blue. Anyway, even if he did do something like that, A-Xu would never dream of ordering someone to beat me! Didn’t I half-raise him and his little brother both, taught them swordsmanship and music and ethics even as Wen Ruohan taught Xichen and Wangji arrays and talismans and how to understand people?

Anyway, A-Xu’s a sweet boy, underneath his superficial arrogance; he knows better than to put on a face like that in front of me…nor is there anything wrong with Lan Yueheng’s foot, or Zhang Xin’s blood, for that matter. Lan Jingyi’s going to grow up in a large family, loud and screeching and thoroughly inappropriate, and unlike my dream his parents will be at the head of the table to oversee the whole thing.

It was just a bad dream.

Lan Qiren shook his head once again.

Maybe Lan Yueheng was right, he reflect. He ought to get some rest – and not just today. After all, he was already half-retired, with Lan Xichen taking over more and more of the tasks of sect leader and excelling in them; Lan Qiren already spent one month out of every three out of the Cloud Recesses, whether wandering around the cultivation world playing his music or visiting with friends and acquaintances, pretending all the while to ignore the Wen sect and Lan sect and Nie sect guards being too busy socializing with each other to remember that they were supposed to be hidden guards.

He could go again now, even. Wen Ruohan had said something about Lao Nie visiting the Nightless City, the grin on his face leaving little question as to how he planned to spend the time with him; by now they should have worn each other out and were probably capable of something resembling human speech.

Yes, he should go visit them, he thought, and realized once again that he was happy – truly happy, not just content. He would go visit them, and complain about the prospect of yet another of Lan Yueheng’s brood running rampage through his classrooms for however long it took to educate them.

It seemed like each one was louder than the next, but at least little Lan Jingyi, whether in a rush or otherwise, and even in conjunction with Wei Wuxian’s little A-Yuan or Jin Zixuan’s little A-Ling, couldn’t possibly be more disruptive than the twins.

That was simply impossible.

Right?

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 23 - ao3 -

Lan Qiren woke with a start at the sound of something slamming to the point of cracking – a door thrown too hard, perhaps, or the shattering of a piece of furniture under the strength of a powerful cultivator.

Dazed at having been woken so abruptly at such a late hour, he at first thought that the sound was an aberration of some sort, someone making too much noise by mistake, even some cultivation maniac doing exercises in the middle of the night that had briefly lost control, but then the sounds continued, crashing and slamming and even indistinct shouting.

Indistinct, and unfamiliar, but still recognizable – that was Wen Ruohan’s voice.

Lan Qiren had never heard him shout before.

He stood up, instinctively checking over his clothing and fixing his forehead ribbon, and padded out towards the door to the hallway. The array used to create enough silence to let him sleep was glowing faintly, doing its work against overwhelming odds, but Lan Qiren didn’t hesitate to dismiss it and pull open the door, poking his head out to see what was going on.

“ – what use are you?” Wen Ruohan was shouting, some distance down the hall. “Good-for-nothing bitch! What do you think I got you for in the first place?”

He was standing outside his wife’s door.

Lan Qiren had not seen Madame Wen on this visit, other than in passing. He’d been relieved to discover that he had heard accurately and that she had not suffered on account of what she had done, except perhaps as a result of her husband making clear that he would give her exactly what he had promised her out of their marriage and nothing more. Despite that, every time she saw him, she generally had an expression that resembled smelling something bad, and he didn’t especially want to deal with her irrational jealousy. 

(Lan Qiren could understand and even appreciate the truth that she had shown him, but it didn’t mean he appreciated the reasoning behind her actions - just as Wen Ruohan might appreciate the cunning and ambition demonstrated by her actions, and begrudgingly acknowledge that the real fault for their divide was his own actions, but not feel any more inclined to her as a result.)

Lan Qiren thought he might have to deal with her more, particularly on the few times he had visited little Wen Xu, who was already a size or two larger than he’d started out – it was simply shocking in terms of how much time had passed since he’d had his argument with Wen Ruohan – but he found that the child was largely being watched by servants, not the Madame, who was busy ruling the social scene of the Nightless City. Whether that was true or merely an excuse, by now it was clear that they were in mutual agreement that they did not want to spend any time in each other’s presence.

She was also, very clearly, refusing to let Wen Ruohan into her bedroom.

Lan Qiren couldn’t blame her: he’d never seen Wen Ruohan in a state like this. His clothing was mussed up, his hands clenched, his face red, his aura frighteningly strong and overwhelming, his monstrously powerful qi roiling the air in the hallway into an incipient storm – and even from the distance he was standing, Lan Qiren could smell the distinct odor of strong liquor, suggesting that Wen Ruohan had overindulged in alcohol at some point after Lan Qiren had gone to sleep. Based on casual mentions in prior conversation, Lan Qiren knew that Wen Ruohan’s cultivation level was so high as to render him largely unaffected even by significant drinking, but the fact that he had bothered to try to seek solace in the wine jar suggested that there was something incredibly wrong with his mental state. 

It wasn’t a qi deviation - the violent emanations were unsettled, but not distorted - but it wasn’t good, either.

Wisdom would counsel that Lan Qiren keep back and not get in Wen Ruohan’s way.

Righteousness, on the other hand…

Anyway, Wen Ruohan was his sworn brother. What sort of brother would Lan Qiren be if he took only the good and not the bad?

“Da-ge?” he called, stepping out into the hallway. “Da-ge, come away from there.”

Wen Ruohan turned to him, and his expression was frightening. “Fine. You’ll do,” he growled, and it was only because Lan Qiren had grown wiser and stronger that he realized what was about to happen and dodged before Wen Ruohan could grab him, darting back into his room.

Wen Ruohan followed him in.

“What happened?” Lan Qiren asked, still backing away. “You were fine at dinner – what happened since then?”

For some reason, that set Wen Ruohan off again, turning his attention away from Lan Qiren, and he grabbed the table and threw it into the wall, smashing it all to pieces. 

“That fucker,” he snarled, his eyes blank and distant. He wasn’t angry at Lan Qiren, that much was clear, but he was filled with ceaseless rage, and he was taking it out on everything around him. “That fucker got married! He’s got a son!”

Lan Qiren blinked. “…what?”

Smash went the cabinet, and all the various things on it. At least Wen Ruohan hadn’t started in on the paintings, which were the only aspect of the room Lan Qiren actually cared or worried about.

“Who got married and had a son?” Lan Qiren asked, even though he knew it would only inflame Wen Ruohan further. At this point, it was clear that Wen Ruohan’s had gotten stuck in his chest, like black blood that needed to be coughed; he needed to vent his anger or else it would curdle within him and he would suffer. “Normally that’s a good thing, a cause for celebration. Why is it bad here?”

“Because it’s Lao Nie!” Wen Ruohan burst out, and Lan Qiren rocked back on his heels in shock.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t known that Lao Nie had been unusually distracted these past few months, even most of a year – the way he’d ignored or disregarded Lan Qiren’s letters about the situation with He Kexin, the breezy and almost manic tone of his replies to Lan Qiren’s brother, which Lan Qiren had seen, it all spoke of distraction and carelessness, all typical of Lao Nie, albeit of far greater severity than usual.

Nor was it truly a surprise that none of them had been informed: the Qinghe Nie had always been idiosyncratic about their personal details, unusually secretive and fiercely proud of it. They did not share their birth date or even year, other than for arranging a marriage. If Lan Qiren had thought about it, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out that Lao Nie would have married and had a child all without having shared any information on the subject until afterwards.

Only…

“But aren’t you – with him?” he asked, and knew immediately that he had asked the wrong question.

Wen Ruohan roared and smashed yet another thing, sending a palm strike through a dresser and denting the stone wall with the power of it. “He’s mine,” he spat. His eyes were even redder than usual, the sclera becoming red alongside the iris; it made him look almost possessed, almost as if he really were having some sort of qi deviation. “He’s mine, damn it! Who is he to give himself to another? And he didn’t even tell me…!”

They were definitely in a relationship, Lan Qiren confirmed to himself. His guess had been right. There could be no doubt about it. And yet, despite it all, Lao Nie had –

No, he couldn’t even express surprise. Lan Qiren knew Lao Nie, knew what he valued and how he valued it: Lao Nie had always been passionate and powerful, strong and superior, friendly and often kind, and yet at his core he was ruthless, careless, and selfish, just like Wen Ruohan was so often selfish. He did not concern himself overmuch with questions of righteousness, other than to the degree necessary to win glory to his sect as one on the righteous path. After his sect, which he valued most of all, he was an indolent pleasure-seeker, with terrible taste in partners, the more dangerous the better; Lan Qiren had seen him flirting with people left and right long after he’d concluded that he’d entered into a relationship with Wen Ruohan.

In the past, Wen Ruohan hadn’t seemed to mind. If anything, he’d even encouraged him, looking smug and amused by the flirtations, taking the other man’s victories as his own; during one incident that Lan Qiren could recall, he’d all but applauded when Lao Nie had successfully wooed some rogue cultivator and taken her back to his bed, turning instead to his own separate amusements after.

Then again, that wasn’t a marriage.

(Of course, Wen Ruohan himself had also gotten married…)

“How dare he,” Wen Ruohan said, panting a little from his own exertion, clearly more moved by the feelings raging within him than any type of physical exhaustion. “How dare he – does he think I’m desperate? Pathetic? Does he think I’d run after him, begging and humiliating myself..? I don’t need him at all!”

He turned once more, and this time his gaze focused on Lan Qiren.

“I have something of my own already,” he murmured, and this time Lan Qiren wasn’t fast enough to stop him as he caught him up in his arms, slamming his back against the wall.

Lan Qiren tensed, suddenly for a moment back in his rooms in the Cloud Recesses, looking up at a different brother who wanted to hurt him – but no, Wen Ruohan wasn’t the same, Wen Ruohan liked him. He was acting out of fury, not malice; there was no He Kexin here to goad him on, nothing like that.

Even the force of being pushed against the wall hadn’t actually hurt – Wen Ruohan had been careful even in his mindless rage, making sure that any impact was cushioned by his own arms rather than Lan Qiren’s back; Lan Qiren hadn’t even had the breath knocked out of him.

“Da-ge…!”

Wen Ruohan didn’t want to hear him. He put his hand on Lan Qiren’s mouth and pressed down, cutting off speech at once. They were pressed together so closely that the movement inadvertently dragged his sleeve onto Lan Qiren’s throat, almost making him gag, and he instinctively tried futilely to kick his way out – it didn’t work, of course.

Wen Ruohan pressed up against him, the front of his body burning like flame against Lan Qiren.

“You’re mine,” he said, reaching in to nuzzle the side of Lan Qiren’s head with his cheek. “My blood brother, bound by oath and blood; my shining pearl, untouched by the world. All good things should belong to me.”

Lan Qiren reached up to try to push away the hand at this mouth, wanting to speak even though he did not know what he would say, and at first he thought he’d done it. But then suddenly he was in motion, his back landing hard on the bed he’d been given, the impact softened by the blanket Wen Ruohan had wrapped around him when he’d brought him back to the Nightless City from the Cloud Recesses. Shocked by the unexpectedness of the abrupt movement, he gasped, a wordless inhale rather than any coherent words.

Less than a heartbeat, and Wen Ruohan was on top of him, pressing him down. His body seemed even hotter than usual, as if his whole spirit were aflame, his qi boiling in the air around them until Lan Qiren had the impression as though he ought to be able to see steam; his hands were hot where they pressed down on Lan Qiren’s shoulders, his lips burning as they pressed against his collarbone, and between his legs there was something hot pressing against him, too.

And still, Lan Qiren – was not afraid.

He wasn’t sure why. He’d been terrified when it had been his brother who had stood against him, disgusted when it had been He Kexin pawing at him in ways he did not and had never wanted, but Wen Ruohan, who was bound to him through nothing but a tricked oath…

“Da-ge,” he whispered. “Please stop.”

Wen Ruohan stilled. He didn’t get up or pull away, but he didn’t make any further movements.

“Please let me go.”

Wen Ruohan’s breathing was harsh in his ear. “You, too, little Lan?” he asked. “Just like him, making me think – don’t you like me?”

“I do,” Lan Qiren admitted. He might be stupid when it came to social interactions, might be slow and miss things that were obvious, but even he could figure out what Wen Ruohan meant, with his confession of how Lan Qiren lingered in his thoughts and in pressing him down on the bed like this while mourning the loss of Lao Nie, his lover. And maybe sometimes he needed Cangse Sanren to point things out to him, but most of the time he knew himself. This past week had made clear enough that he enjoyed Wen Ruohan’s endless indulgences in a spirit that was more than just pure brotherhood. “I do like you. But I don’t like – this.”

Wen Ruohan was silent for a long moment.

“Not this, with me,” he finally said. “Or not – at all?”

“At all,” Lan Qiren said. He had thought when he was younger that he might change, but he was increasingly sure that he wouldn’t, that this was just what he was like. “I was never like the others my age. Even Yueheng-xiong, who I would’ve thought loved nothing but mathematics and explosions, has found himself distracted by the shape of the one he likes. But not me. I don’t yearn the way they do. I can love a person’s spirit, but I never much cared for the flesh.”

“Love,” Wen Ruohan echoed, his voice oddly uneven. “You speak of - love?”

“…isn’t that what we’re talking about?”

Wen Ruohan laughed, a jagged and choked up thing, and then he pulled away, letting Lan Qiren go, sitting up on the bed and burying his face in his hands. The qi around him was still too-hot, overwhelming, pulsing with his feelings, even as his shoulders shook and he stared blankly at the wall; any other man, and Lan Qiren might think he was crying, but he could see Wen Ruohan’s face through his fingers, and there were no tears there.

Perhaps he’d forgotten how.

Lan Qiren slowly sat up himself.

He could still feel the mild stiffness of old healing injuries, but he ignored them and got up off the bed, going to the one side table that had yet to be destroyed – the one where he’d laid his guqin to rest. It turned out that Wen Ruohan had only destroyed the things he himself had put into the room; he hadn’t touched anything of Lan Qiren’s.

Lan Qiren settled in front of his guqin and began to play.

Out of all the compositions he had created, his favorite was the one he had first created at the Nightless City, that strange hypnotic melody that brought to mind spilled pearls, but unlike some of the others he’d worked on, it had never felt fully completed. The music wrapped itself around the listener, at first intimate and then oppressive, a heavy stone in their chest and pressure on their skull, growing darker and darker, just as he’d written it – but now he played onwards, elaborating on the theme in ways he hadn’t planned or expected, letting the solemn notes brighten, the overwhelming pressure turning from suffocating into safe as it became clear that it would cause no harm, the storm passing by overhead and leaving things clean and clear and better, the lingering euphoria of finding oneself supported, rather than alone.

When his fingers finally stilled, Lan Qiren looked up and saw Wen Ruohan sitting there with his back straight again, hands resting gently in his lap, eyes closed as if in meditation and face calm once more. His qi no longer coiled around him, lashing out; it had settled once more.

“You will,” Wen Ruohan said without opening his eyes, “be an excellent traveling musician, little Lan. People will fight for the right to hear you, and you will never go without an audience.”

Lan Qiren hesitated, not sure what to make of such a compliment, or what Wen Ruohan meant by it. He’d only intended to play something to help him settle his qi and soothe his rage, which he’d clearly accomplished. He hadn’t even meant to play that particular song, other than in the way that he tended to default to it when he had nothing else specific in mind. It had always been unsatisfying, like an itch, but now it finally felt complete.

“Da-ge –” he started to say, not knowing what he would say next, but at any rate he never had the chance to continue.

“When you do finally go to fulfill your dreams, leaving the dust of the world behind you, I hope that you visit the Nightless City often,” Wen Ruohan said. His tone was still calm, settled, but not, Lan Qiren observed, peaceful: there were all sorts of seething emotions underneath it. “But for the moment, I think it is better if you return to the Cloud Recesses.”

Lan Qiren hesitated once again, this time feeling a little hurt. “You don’t want me here?”

“I do,” Wen Ruohan said, and his lips curved into something that was not a smile; it seemed almost painful a shape to contort into, and his eyes reflected no humor at all when he opened them. “Very much. Ah, little Lan, if only you knew…despite that, I would still have you go. Having made my views on you clear to your brother, it should be safe, and I do not want you to see what beast I make of myself when I am denied.”

Lan Qiren bowed his head a little. “About Lao Nie…”

“I know what he’s like,” Wen Ruohan said. “I’ve always known, from the start. If you had asked me a few days ago, I would have said that I did not have any illusions…”

He smiled bitterly.

“It seems that I misjudged myself.”

“I’ll go,” Lan Qiren said. He didn’t especially want to, but Wen Ruohan wasn’t in a rage, nor lashing out unthinkingly. To refuse him would be to deny him, to treat him as if he could not make his own decisions, and that, he thought, would be worse. “If you want me to, I’ll go, and later, I’ll return.”

Wen Ruohan said nothing, but he watched as Lan Qiren pulled on some more clothing, not caring which one it was, and did his hair back up in the simplest style, favoring speed over substance; he packed away his guqin and his sword and one of the paintings that he had liked best, but took nothing else – after all, it wasn’t as if he were going away for good.

He made it to the door before hesitating, then turned back to look at Wen Ruohan, who was still watching him.

“Is there anything…?” he asked haltingly. “Something I can get you…?”

“Send one of the maids to me,” Wen Ruohan said. “Any of them, it doesn’t matter which. If they’re still hanging around in the family quarters after an eruption like that, it can be seen that their ambition has overcome their good sense, making them a perfect match for me. It would be a shame to deny them the fruits of their victory.”

Lan Qiren didn’t quite understand, but he knew enough to get the gist; he felt his cheeks and ears go hot. Still, he had offered, and it wasn’t something he was willing to do himself, so there was really no basis for refusing to pass along the request. He nodded and slipped out – as Wen Ruohan predicted, there was one of the maids lingering at the far corner, looking around in blatant curiosity. She was pretty enough, Lan Qiren supposed, with an upturned nose and a slightly arrogant air, her clothing carefully arranged to be just a little mussed in a way that Lan Qiren understood most men to find attractive.

“Your sect leader is in my room,” he told her, and she blinked at him. “If you go to him now, he’d probably accept. Up to you, though.”

She stared at him for a moment, then nodded. He left, his head held high; when he glanced back anyway, he saw her going into his room, hair patted down and clothing even more carefully arranged – Wen Ruohan hadn’t been wrong when he speculated as to her ambitions. The life of a powerful sect leader, Lan Qiren supposed: desired but never known, as distant from those around him as Lan Qiren but as a consequence of his position rather than his inclination.  

He would definitely return, Lan Qiren decided. Perhaps he would even make the Nightless City the first destination on his travels. After all, why should he not? Was Wen Ruohan not his sworn brother, too?

Yes, Lan Qiren thought. That was right.

Wen Ruohan deserved to have someone possess him as he longed to possess others.

[randomingoftherandomness]

If you're still writing for wenzhou could you please do more pregnant wkx??? I love all the ones that you've done so far and I could never get enough!!

I love all your mpreg wkx fics. So, what about another one? Whump? When ZZS got captured back by prince Jin, WKX went to save him with the disciples but without his ghosts. He did managed to kill everyone and save ZZS, but got hurt in the process. Because of that he realized that he’s pregnant, and he almost lost his child. ZZS panicked, thankfully Wu Xi was there to save the day.

I’m gonna combine these two prompts together :) Sorry my fics have been slow this weekend... I think my eye is bleeding? Hahah... Does anyone know if using ice would work to get it better? ;-;

--

The Great Shaman of Nanjiang is not someone Wen Kexing would have ever expected; he looked too young, for one, and yet he had this aura about him like he was someone who would kill you in a million and ten ways and not hesitate while doing it.

He quite likes the quiet man. After spending time with him and the man who calls himself Lord Seventh, he even respects him for holding the office he has and handling a man like his husband.

As such, when Wu Xi narrows his eyes upon taking his pulse while he lays on the bed, lips pursing a little, head tilting a little in consideration, Lao Wen has to wonder what the man would say next and what would be perplexing him so.

After a moment longer where the Shaman’s brows begin to creep into a frown, Lao Wen has to ask, “Am I dying or something?”

This seems to stir the man out of his ponderings and he retracts his hand after smoothing down Lao Wen’s sleeve. His fathomless eyes study him from his brow to his belly and his gaze lingers for a beat. “Master Wen, I have to ask,” He says, slow and measured. “Did you know you’re pregnant?”

Wen Kexing has to hold back his immediate reaction to scoff. Him? Pregnant? How could that be? In his moments together with his Ah Xu, he was the one--

Oh.

His mind is immediately assaulted by the memories of their first time before New Year. And then that other time in the inn by that lake on the way to the Four Seasons Manor. Then the time before that...

Lao Wen flushes, clearing his throat.

Wu Xi sees it and smiles, rummaging in his lapels for a small jade bottle. “The child is fine. I’ll need to do a thorough examination of you but it doesn’t seem like your injuries have caused them any harm, but I would recommend that you avoid anything strenuous or life-threatening. You’ll need to take extra care. Male pregnancies are far more delicate than women’s...”

The Shaman’s voice fades into the background, lulled into the gentle sounds of the Manor in the evening. From the privacy of his and Ah Xu’s room, he can hear the sounds of Han Ying reminding the disciples to light the lanterns, the voices of Ah Xiang and Chengling bringing out food from the kitchen. The Manor bustles with activity and life, and Wen Kexing is pregnant.

Pregnant with a baby that he didn’t even know was there when he had rushed headlong into battle to save his Ah Xu. Pregnant, when he had gotten himself injured in the midst of fighting people who would not hesitate to kill his beloved. He rests a hand over his lower abdomen, feeling the give of his muscles. 

He’s carrying Ah Xu’s child.

They hadn’t thought much in the way of prevention, what with the Nails still pressing down on Ah Xu’s meridians and how Lao Wen was very sure he had been sterile after all those years in the Ghost Valley.

He laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. It comes out in a half-sob. There’s so much that hangs above their heads; threats and enemies that have not been deterred from seeking out trouble with them. How could they bring an innocent child into such a world?

“Master Wen.”

Wu Xi’s eyes are dark and depthless, but when Lao Wen holds his gaze, there is a tinge of warmth there that sparks a sort of youthfulness in that ageless bearing. “Master Wen, don’t worry about what may or may not come.”

“Great Shaman, are you a fortune teller or something?” Lao Wen huffs, hiding his face for a moment before turning back, folding away damp sleeves.

“No, but I know one who is a little wily about it,” He smiles, pushing the jade bottle over to him. “If anything, you should be worried about how Zishu is going to take it.”

Sitting up, Lao Wen eyes the shadows at the door. “He’s probably listening in as we speak and should just come right in.”

Taking that as a cue, Zishu rushes into the room, eyes big and awed as he comes right to his side, holding his hand tight between his. “Lao Wen...”

“Hush,” He huffs, smiling slightly when the Great Shaman rises and leaves them be; surely to seek out the side of his Jing Beiyuan. As much as he feels a small level of annoyance whenever Beiyuan and his Ah Xu trod down their memory lane, he can’t deny that it brings him joy to see Ah Xu smile and be relaxed around someone who has known him for a long time.

“Lao Wen, may I?” Ah Xu asks quietly beside him. He follows his gaze and has to bite back the amused chuckle on his lips. 

Taking his hand, he brings it gently rest over where, if he isn’t imagining it, is the soft swell where their child is growing, protected and so very much loved. This child, though unplanned, is already a thought and a notion that has taken root in his heart.

Looking over to his Ah Xu, he leans in, bumping their shoulders together. “Ah Xu,” He hums teasingly. “You got me this way. How are you going to take responsibility for it?”

The incredulous laugh he gets out of it, was well worth the ache of his wound being jostled.