#he is actually trying to make JGY leave his clan

[a-yaos-little-murder-beans]

Brain worms won‘t shut up about WRHxJGS and JGY being their accidental dual cultivation baby.

That‘s all my WIPs are currently about.

[drama--universe]

Needed help

Requested by anonymous: Hi how are you?! I admire your work and thank you for caring about your fans! Can I leave a request for JGY here? The reader (female, but can also be GN, I'll leave it up to you and your mood) suffers from Hematemesis (which is vomiting blood). Once, she and her leader go over to visit Lanling Jin for a meeting. Everything is going well, but the reader suddenly apologizes that she has to go outside. She then vomits blood outside and passes out due to bad breathing. The reader's leader is worried about where the reader has been for so long. JGS prompts JGY to look after the reader. After a while, he manages to find the reader and thinks that she was murdered when there was blood everywhere, but when he doesn't find any wound, he realizes what happened. So he decides to take care of the reader, as it starts to rain…

Pairing: Jin Guangyao x gn!reader

Word Count: 1.3k words

Jin Guangshan was an enigma, that much was certain. The meeting was boring enough as it was, but him trying to entertain others made it ten times worse. The drinks in front of you were untouched, much like the ones in front of Lan Xichen and Lan Zhan, and Guangshan had brought up toasting every few seconds. Yet you never raised your glass, your clan was against drinking alcohol no matter what and you were going to follow those rules no matter what.

It was halfway through the meeting that you felt an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach. It almost felt like your stomach was getting bloated, pushing against your ribs while your heart started to race ten times as fast. The feeling remained there for an hour, then it started creeping upwards to your throat. You coughed, covering your mouth with your sleeve. The red dots on the fabric made you instantly straighten up before turning your head.

"Zhongzhu, excuse me." You spoke to your sect leader before getting up after a short nod of acknowledgement, making your way out of the hall while still covering your mouth. Once out of reach, the coughing got worse as you reached the bottom of the stairs. You crouched down, holding your stomach with one hand while your other hand was still in front of your face as you tried to stop the stream of blood that was pouring from your mouth. Your robes were fully covered in blood at this point and your head was pounding immensely to the point that you felt like dying. Then again, guessing by the amount of blood pouring from your body, you might actually die today.

With another loud cough, you continued your way to hopefully reach your room and get your medication to press down your symptoms. You'd take time to heal later on, after the meeting of course. One problem, you never reached your room.

Not even close.

Guangyao made his way out of the room with a bow and a slight annoyance. The meeting was not finished, yet he was practically forced to leave. Now, he had nothing against you at all, but he was not keen on leaving the meeting while it still continued. He, like your clan leader, had noticed your long absence after your leave and he couldn't help but wonder why you were gone in the first place.

Thus he made his way through the halls, not really knowing where he was going. You could be anywhere and the Lanling building wasn't exactly small, so where on earth could you be. He just assumed that you were near your rooms, so he headed out there and hoped to find you somewhere in that area.

Well, after half an hour he did and it was quite a shock. You were laid on the ground, on your side, and blood surrounding you. If he didn't know any better, it would be a murder scene. Luckily, it wasn't one as he did not find any wounds to indicate so and poison would not work this quickly without any sign of suffocation or marks of poison. He crouched down, making sure that his robes didn't land in the blood as he checked your vitals.

Weak, but there nonetheless.

With a slight grimace, he lifted you up in his arms and sighed at the blood that now stained his sleeves. He opted to go to your room, he'd call a doctor in a second since he was not fit enough to carry you to the other side of the building. So with you on your bed, he started to search for any kind of wounds once more. Founding nothing once again, he wanted to call for a doctor but was stopped when he heard a cough. Your eyes were slowly opening before closing again as your hand raised to your throat, coughing softly again before going into a coughing fit. Guangyao as quickly by your side, helping you sit up before freezing as he noticed blood pouring from your mouth again.

"Did you get poisoned or something?" "No, no, no..." You coughed again before turning your head and grabbing a bottle from your bedside table, downing two pills that were in there.

"It's a condition I have, unfortunately." You confessed as you tried to sit up properly to start treating yourself just slightly. "My body keeps breaking, which causes these stupid bleedings... They don't happen frequently, but it still happens." You continue before letting your eyes close once again, focusing on your internal wounds while letting your energy circulate through your body. Once you spot where your wound was, you stopped and turned to Guangyao.

"Could you call the doctor? I really can't heal this one myself, too low on spiritual energy." You said with a soft chuckle before suddenly bowing your head, introducing yourself to him with a smile.

"I'll get you a do-" Guangyao was interrupted by a loud thunder, followed by loud rain crashing down. You turned your head, flinching at the next thunder strike that hit one of the many trees and setting it aflame just seconds later.

"I don't think it's wise to leave now..." "I have to agree." Guangyao said before turning to you again as you coughed a few times again. He stood up, sitting behind you before softly putting his hands on your shoulders. Now, once again, Guangyao wasn't the best fighter nor did he have a lot of energy stored in his body, but anything that could help you was worth it at this point. So when he released his energy from his hands and into your body, which made you sigh softly before you started circulating his along with your own energy. The discomfort in your body started to lessen with every minute, the internal wound was slowly healing and then the pain just stopped. With a heavy sigh, you leaned forward on your knees before sniffing as you looked back at Guangyao.

"Thanks... I feel a lot better now." You gave him a tired smile before turning around, leaning against the wall and staring at the other for a few seconds. It was then that you fully recognized him, he usually was the smartest in the room when meetings were happening. Unfortunately, you also knew that he was often underestimated due to his technical status as a bastard and thus hardly taken serious. You were glad that his father stood up for most of the good ideas that came from Guangyao, which in turn then got more accepted.

"Sorry that you're missing the meeting... I'm sure you prefer being there than here." You spoke, but he just returned it with a soft smile and shook his head.

"I can ask Xichen-gongzi about the rest of the meeting later, so do not worry. Right now you are a priority." He spoke gently and you couldn't help but blush at his statement, even when you knew that he meant nothing by it.

The room remained quiet as neither of you spoke, only the soft patter of rain outside to remind you that time hadn't frozen. Your eyes never faltered, remaining on Guangyao with slight fascination as you wondered what he was thinking of. Before you could, however, he stood up and walked to the doorway. The rain was almost finished, so he could leave without any problem.

"I'll send a doctor your way." Guangyao bows his head at you with a soft smile and you returned it with a smile of your own before watching him leave.

You hoped that the two of you would meet again someday.

[tbgkaru-woh]

Heyyyy I read through your chengxuan comic "Pride of Jin" and I loved it!! Just wondering if you have any thoughts as to what happens after chapter 10 when wwx is resurrected?

hey, glad you liked it! I always have thoughts, many thoughts! I actually wanted to do an epilogue comics but didn't find the time/energy for that specific thing. Whether it's fair, good or bad, the endings for all characters got changed majorly: JGY gets to leave with his mom's ashes and SMS (Su Minshan) accompanies him on his travels to somewhere where JGY won't be recognized and can start a new life LXC learned about NMJ and JGY in a less stressful situation, in a situation where JGY was no longer in the picture to twist the knife that true stabbed in him, but instead of brooding solitute, he reverts to less healthy coping mechanism - feeling so guilty for not trusting NMJ regarding JGY, he wishes for nothing more than to be able to fix this mistake. goal that aligns with NHS's, who shares that WWX "owes him" bringing NMJ back. WWX doesn't want anything to do with that life again, but NHS finds a big appeal in it and WWX basically teaches NHS ways around demonic cultivation, just so NHS can get his brother back. NMJ gets "brought back" but isn't as controllable as he should be, NHS keeps NMJ in chains but keeps him close, dressed up with his hair styled again, always by his side as he leads the Nie clan in a way where it's less him being part of any events and more in the "don't fuck with Nies, we literally have feral fierce corpses". WWX, JC and LXC are the only ones allowed inside the walls, LXC visits often to play soothing music to NMJ and talks to him, trying to bring the "human" part of him back. WWX and LWJ still get together but it doesn't leave LXC alone, jgy dead and yi city boys destroyed so i call that a win. didn't have many thoughts on their endgame though. and Yi City, i couldn't decide if i'd give xue yang the ability to have both song lan and xiao xingchen by his side as fierce corpses, OR if i'd still have him try and bring XXC back as SL is loyaly by his side as a fierce corpse without wangxian ever interrupting, OR if i'd have Song Lan never find XY and XXC and they'd continue living in their bliss (and i don't want to think of the tragedy i'd throw Song Lan's way to make that be the case :') ) JC and JZX still each have their sect but they have a publicly acknowledged bond/allyship where they may as well work as a unit. JZX finally rules the proud Jins in a respectable way and the Jiangs are stronger than ever under JC's leadership, to the point where Yunmeng becomes the prefered location for new disciples to enlist. JC gets the validation he deserves without being in WWX's shadow and JZX finally turns anew leaf on Jin's-not-so-great track record. And the Juniors, i'd love to explore their together times during studies, not unlike the main characters in their Gusu days, until eventually, i will do a timeskip with them all grown up, causing both mayhem but also being the heroes no one asked for but we all deserve, this DND adventuring group

[lansplaining]

While we’re putting these characters in theoretical situation jars and gently shaking them:

What if another cultivator who wasn’t that hot on the clans and their power jockeying say one who wanders with a husband and a donkey and eventually their own kid meets Meng Shi either while she’s pregnant or while JGY is very small, and convinces her to try the Baoshan Sanren route for her son instead or waiting for the impossible aka waiting for Jin Guangshan to not be The Absolute Worst ™?

If/when Meng Yao decides to come down off the mountain like his now sect brother XXC - raised under different creeds/expectations - we now have an actual connection between him and Mr. Protagonist himself WWX via Cangse Sanren/Baoshan Sanren, can skip the Unclean Realm awfulness RIP Nie Huaisang you have no one to help you get out of saber practice now, etc etc.

Real danger is the young Lan sect leader considering running off and being a wandering cultivator after meeting Meng Yao when he flees Cloud Recesses after the Wens rock up, tho 😉

sorry i got distracted watching my faves walk around in their jar together. meng yao tried to gently teach xiao xingchen to be better at telling stories and it didn't work at all :')

i think if meng shi had the personality to do something like that, her and JGY's lives would have gone very differently, frankly. for whatever sad and (from the outside) kinda crazy reason, her belief in jin guangshan was sincere. it has to have been. she's smart, she's literate, and most importantly she is a professional sex worker, she knows how this usually goes. if she'd let herself get pregnant to manipulate jin guangshan like anxin suggests, then she would have played that scenario totally differently than in canon. meng shi is as incapable of letting go of her belief in jin guangshan and her son's birthright as jin guangyao himself ultimately is, and i don't think even he really knows why.

but yeah, let's say that meng shi and meng yao have to run away from yunping for some reason, or meng shi knows that she is dying and has some reason to be afraid that meng yao won't be able to make it to lanling-- maybe he's much younger than in canon, as you say.

i just.......... can't help but feel like yao sanren would be waiting until he could go down the mountain to find his father.

but okay, he's like an actual baby and he never gets to know meng shi and never knows who his father is or what she wants from him-- he's raised completely in baoshan sanren's principles. bloodlines are bullshit, stay on the mountain or otherwise do good in the world.

...i'm really struggling, because I don't know who meng yao is if he doesn't want the things he wants. it's very writing 101 but if a character is their desires then... he's just a different person. he's a maybe slightly more grounded xiao xingchen, someone who wants to help people but this time has been raised in the belief that it's possible. all signs show that if JGY had been properly trained he'd be very talented, so he's probably a formidable cultivator. he doesn't have to be afraid. who is he then?

and of course, we can't forget the other aspect of being a disciple of baoshan sanren.

maybe the tragedy that befalls him is that he does learn who his father is. he learns that, no matter how respected and mystical his master, his mother is still seen as filthy-- but his father is a golden god in a tower. that's where good flows from in this world. he's a xiao xingchen who starts to understand why his mother thought she had to run away from the world. he's one who begins to learn to compromise, and then compromise more, and then compromise again, and most damningly of all to want to be part of the world-- not just by leaving the mountain, but by climbing the tower, to be accepted there, for his blood, which isn't supposed to matter.

[llycaons]

ep24 (pt 1): jgs stopppp for real stoppp

the first 1/3rd of this episode dragged a bit but the rest had such juicy character conversations between wwx and important people to him that it was a really good time

see! he can be tactful! he's very polite in addressing this overstep, and he doesn't even give jgs an answer. he just says 'we should leave it up to my sister, who's actually the one getting married'

*sprays water on him* YOU'RE NOTHING

why did jc look at wwx while saying this. it was deliberate. I've never noticed before. wtf

this was kind of funny. jgy says some vague pleasantries about how all the clans are struggling and everyone's like 'oh fuck...this guy is on to something' and lxc is looking all pleased

jgy looks so intense all the time it freaks me out. also. HIS GRANDMA?? jgs's mom??!!! damn I don't remember this

they love this angle

ohhh wwx remembering jfm teaching him to shoot arrows so kindly...he breaks in a big smile immediately after this. it all hurts

this is jc, destroying the herald of the wens above the door of lotus pier's entrance hall. it might be the first time we see him use zidian, and he is SEETHING in anger. that means something!

it's so pretty in there and there is so much space! I have this sense of it as very minimalist but it's really not, it's just restrained and reserved, like it's inhabitant. and very spacious

lwj's first stab at defiance. he doesn't want to copy the rules, he wants to help wwx. but lqr seems to see him as a lost cause, or near enough to be dangerous to lwj. lxc is sent instead, the more objective one, the politician

to his credit, I can see this speech inspiring people who lose a lot to the wens. wwx is looking a little dead-eyed to me, but jyl is proud!

ohh background jumpscare

I like how his turmoil is expressed here. and his dark brown eyes are so beautiful

I've seen posts like 'it's not the lan clan rules' fault that the sects are corrupt' but I think it's disingenuous to act like they don't play ANY role in lwj's decisions or his mistakes. they're clearly source of internal conflict for him, and a significant amount of his character growth rests on elevating himself to a state in which he can make his own moral decisions based on his own judgement rather than obeying authority without question

okay I know he's doing his best to lead and improve his men but look at his face in the first expression. SO angry and contemptuous

he's stressed and alone, and jyl clearly is trying to pick up his slack, and it's not fair this happened to him, but. dude. you gotta be nicer to your guys. I can't believe more people didn't quit after this treatment

in fairness wwx did say he'd help and then left to go drinking without explaining why he's so tired and unmotivated and unable to help, and that obviously doesn't look very good to jc, but jc also handles it really immaturely too

while jyl extends compassion and understanding for the difficulties wwx is having, jc rejects any attempt to sympathize with wwx. when asked to consider his feelings, he instead insists that his are the priority. he's such a strict thinker, no flexibility or tolerance for nuance at all. he sees wwx as a spoiled kid who slacks off and leaves jc with all the work, which is pretty incredible (in a bad way) when you think about how dedicated wwx was to jyl and jc after the massacre and the war. it's a little more forgivable pre-sunshot when wwx goofed off a lot, but post sunshot? after ALL that? he may be struggling with a lot of responsibility, but like, dude

but yeah, SUCH a selfless character 🙄

edit: oh jgs and jgy had a really annoying conversation earlier on that I didn't screencap but it SUCKED. that's where the title comes from

[darkfalcon-z]

the sword thing IS fairly inconsequential (morally meaningless) - it's social status thing only as important as people make it to be. There are cultivators who don't use swords like NMJ - he uses the sabre.

In the book it's never confirmed that Ghostly Path have any sort of tangible effect on the practitioner, and if so it's never clarified what kind of effect it is an how it occurs. WWX's mental health doesn't get progressively worse, it's CQL's invention. It doesn't seem as if WWX was at any serious remiss of his duties in Lotus Pier until he left to rescue the Wens and it's hard to say whether or not he drunk more than prior to the war. From what we've seen WWX's first steps on the Ghostly Path may have harmed him especially given the circumstances in which he had to develop it (although "harm" is relative here given that it let him survive and leave the Burial Mounds, it's an equivalent of firefighter breaking an arm of a victim of an accident in order to take them out of a crushed, burning car). Additionally, excessive use of the Ghostly Path may wear WWX down, but it certainly doesn't corrupt or consume him. He's forced by the circumstances to balance energies on the Burial Mounds for over a year, especially considering multiple other stress factors.

The only other Ghostly Path practitioner we've seen is XY. We know that the Jin's hired some, but they all had poor results (we don't actually know how involved MXY was with actual practice of the Ghostly Path, only cultivation thing he did in the story was casting an array that predate WWX by centuries). We don't have a representative sample.

He killed JZX because he was so emotionally dysregulated he for a moment stopped paying attention to where he directed his attacks and JZX was unlucky to stand too close. The whole situation happens because he was cornered, at the mercy of human malice, and betrayed precisely when he was in a hope spot, after a long period of living in very stressful conditions and never getting time to rest and heal his earlier traumas.

He lost control over the corpses accidentally injured JYL ironically because he was so afraid something may go wrong he lost confidence in his ability to control the corpses (yeah, he's ability is directly conditioned on his his iron clad confidence in said ability).

Out of great sect heirs apparent/young sect leaders of this generation NMJ and JZX had been shown to actually care about justice even if doing the right thing is difficult and unpopular. Of course NMJ can't actually see what is just from behind his own prejudices and JZX doesn't show the best practical judgment ability - his principles are good and he'd implement them if he'd actually correctly identified what is going on around him. On the other hand JC and LXC don't really care that much (JGY starts from a very different positions than the others, so I won't address him here). JC in particularly doesn't get why would anyone go out their way to pursue justice when it doesn't earn them acclamation from the people in the position of authority (especially his dad). And it's not even a conscious thing, a matter of chosen articulated values - it's on a deeper level of moral orientation. That's why it's completely beyond him why would WWX do things he does when it would bring him scorn (JFM is dead why do things he would regard highly?). That's why he accuses WWX of trying to be a hero, from his perspective acting morally and pursuing justice has only instrumental value.

LWJ would still follow his principles even if he was in the position of Clan Leader, because that what means to have principles (I'm beginning to think the concept is alien to this fandom). On the contrary JC being a sect leader is more empowers to make meaningful decisions, what is holding him back is poor judgment but also lack of political competence. The lack of political competence would be LWJ's problem also if he was in this situation.

"why is the representative of Lan sect DEFENDING the guy who killed their elder??" - does a term procedural justice ring a bell. Wouldn't a reasonable person want someone, who offended against them to have a fair trial? Or like, ensured that they actually got the right guy?

(And we need to take into account that LWJ actually fought his own elders for WWX and didn't care who would see him helping him).

WWX dies as a result of the backlash from destroying Yin Tiger Tally. However, JC was the one who led the offensive during the Second Siege - he went there in order to kill WWX. WWX explicitly stated that JC had the most merit in that battle out of all the sect leaders.

JC thinks to himself how he have been about kidnapping and "using every possible way to make them talk" individuals he suspected of being WWX. Additionally, we've been presented credible testimony (second hand, but detailed and referencing the actual source) that JC tortured at least one for simply being named Wen way after WWX's death. (edit: I've made a mistake in this one and conflated two cases related by the same informant into one, I apologise for that, the eyewitness of the related event didn't actually witness a torture of some named Wen, but just of someone JC caught by mistake, this is chapter 92, note that second hand accounts are different from hearsay, if you read an article in paper written by a journalist who interview and eyewitness that's a second hand account, if a scientist reference an experiment they've read on in another paper that's a second hand account, if your mother tells you about something that happened to your grandma when she was a little girl that's second hand account)

During a war soldiers are not innocent (edit: I've made a typo and wrote 'was' instead of 'war' meaning: soldiers may be proven innocent of any wrongdoing after hostilities cease, but they can't be treated as innocent when they are part of an invading army). They may be innocent once they are taken as prisoners or after the war, but not they are a part of active military units engaging in hostile actions. War in itself is unjust but when your home is attacked it's not fighting back is permitting even greater injustice. If someone tries to kill you it's not unreasonable to take every possible measure to prevent them for doing so without thinking whether or not they are a bad person.

The retribution WWX takes about WC, WLJ and WZL is is gruesome but not disproportionate. In the circumstances he was in he's probably not acting unfairly or at least he's not overshooting by much. Given what we know how WWX powers work the soldiers he killed in early days of his involvement in the war really earned it - essentially he let the ghost with the grudges have their way with the soldiers. Now we know that according to his standards a ghost a vicious ghost kills once in seven days, we additionally know that resentful dead are more likely to attack people who wronged them. What did those people, an army of cultivators, had to do to be taken out by ghost in span of single night, especially given they should be able to take care of this type of danger.

You don't massacre armies engaging in hostilities ("A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenceless").

The situations in which JC tells WWX "hey don't do that, it's a bad idea" fall into two categories:

Inconsequential teenage shenanigans JC often participates in anyway (this is a result of JC being a victim of emotional abuse from his mother, but still pretty toxic)

the situation in which decisions WWX makes are necessary and they'd be fucked over worse as a result if he didn't (but it's usually the first).

WWX has much better understanding of action and inaction than other boys his age given that he's far more often exposed to those consequences. JC is particularly short-sighted as a result of his refusal to consider wellbeing of people he doesn't share a significant relation with. WWX is the bigger picture guy, but the problem is JC's perspective is so incredibly truncated he's not able to recognise it.

Moreover, WWX doesn't really have self-sacrifacial tendencies lol. He merely understands that taking risk and making sacrifices are necessary when it comes to surviving and ensure the safety of others. He doesn't push other people to make sacrifices, but he also doesn't have means to ensure others do their part. He's a very proficient moral decision maker and as such he's able to take responsibility and act (as an ethicist I'm positively floored with him).

JC knows relatively well WWX but his knowledge is merely surface level. He'd be able to anticipate how WWX would act, but he couldn't be able to comprehend why. He cares so much for WWX, he wants to protect him, WWX is his, but he does not respect him.

Meanwhile, the foundation of relationship between WWX and LWJ is that they are moral equals. LWJ wouldn't necessarily ba able to predict how WWX would act, but unlike JC he would know where WWX is coming from.

"Imo JC had like 90% justifiable actions;

He tried to get WWX to be low-key and a non-threat so the sects would leave him alone

Visited him and discussed with WWX a deal where WWX gets to remain in Yiling without issue or question from the greater sects

He's the only person who properly, explicitly spoke FOR the Wens

Still kept in touch with him after the defection, took JYL to see him, likely was involved in making JZX invite WWX to Jin Ling's one-month celebration"

Hardly so:

That's a terrible idea that would put WWX and Jiang as long as WWX was associated with them in more danger. The problem was that WWX wasn't seen as enough treat to leave him alone. They already knew WWX has something they want, being seen as at threat is one of the very few things that give him at least a partial protection without active use of violence.

he literally proclaimed WWX the enemy of the Cultivation World. Being seen as a potential treat is good, being seen as an enemy not so much. Politically, cutting WWX was explicitly a mistake brought by his own insecurities. He weakened his own position by doing that.

He shut up on the fist signs of opposition. LQY brought up concerns of procedural justice and he completely failed to even acknowledge that.

He cares for WWX so much, yet he won't do right be him.

That to say their falling apart was long time coming and their difference irreconcilable.

Sure JC is the product of the system, the product of abuse, but LWJ and WWX aren't any less subjected to the system, differentiates them from him and most other characters in the story, is that they are able to go beyond that.

Any time JC antis start coming for him and his reaction to what WWX did, I always want to ask them to do the "Lan Clan Test". Basically, replace the Jiang family deaths with Lan family deaths. Instead of Jin Zixuan dying by Wen Ning's hand, say it's Lan Qiren. At Nightless City, imagine it's Lan Xichen who's mourning his uncle that's searching for Lan Wangji, and WWX accidentally kills LXC.

Like really picture Lan Xichen dying in Lan Wangji's arms, telling him heartfelt words assured of his death and Lan Wangji's like "Hey please fix this, please stop this" to Wei Wuxian and WWX is like "wait wait I can fix this I swear I swear!".

Okay how would you expect Lan Wangji to react to that? Ngl if he still somehow thinks of Wei Wuxian as entirely blameless and holds zero resentment towards WWX after that, I would lose my respect for LWJ and I don't think LWJ would react like that anyways. The person you love whom you warned against taking this path has chosen to disregard anything you say(pr even his closest people like Jiang Cheng say) and has now lost all control and has killed all that's left of your family. Who WOULDN'T lose it at least a little? Who wouldn't hold resentment or anger or frustration?

Jiang Cheng made mistakes but he's not uniquely evil. He was right to have felt anger towards Wei Wuxian because bro in his eyes, Wei Wuxian COULD control that. Only we as audience know the extent of loss of control. And even if JC realized WWX can't control it, he begged WWX time and time again to stop Demonic Cultivation. Trying to flatten this situation into a "he's wrong, he's right, case closed" is the worst thing you can do in MDZS.

[robininthelabyrinth]

3. I have no idea if this time line would work, but MYX and XY get attached to each other, so when the time comes that MYX and XY need to leave Koi Tower, JGY helps them get married in secret and run away to Dongu. Anyways, a few years latter, JGY has a kid that needs to go and people in a removed location that owe him favors! Isn’t that a wonderful combination! A Jin(?) Rusong raised by Uncles Mo and Xue, or whatever they go by these days, would be very chaotic. Bonus: they start a relatively safe demonic cultivation sect, maybe with some guidance from the Nie (has NMJ never been killed by the Jin in this Au?), or more specifically, Huaisang. SL and XXC who got a happy ending decide to check out this no blood line sect (it looks slightly dubious, but surely can’t be to bad! Right?) A-Qing at least is enjoying her new friend -🟪🦋

Should Have Been Listening - ao3

“Let go of me.”

“I won’t,” Mo Xuanyu said, clutching Xue Yang’s arm. “I won’t, I won’t! You’re my only friend here!”

Xue Yang looked down at him in what he thought was mostly exasperation, but might have also been a little fondness – after all, if it’d been anyone else who’d grabbed him, he’d have stabbed them.

He still didn’t know why he didn’t stab Mo Xuanyu, too, but in all honesty, he wasn’t that interested in exploring it. He did what he wanted, and right now, he didn’t want to murder Mo Xuanyu.

Irritating as he sometimes was.

“Little brat,” he said. “I have important business to go do.”

“It’s not something that he ordered, though!”

“So what?” Xue Yang bristled. “I don’t just do what hetells me!”

“But that means he won’t cover for you, and that means you’ll get in trouble!” Mo Xuanyu argued. “How can I let you go all alone to get in trouble? You have to take me with you! What will you do without me? Who’ll keep you entertained and sneak sweets for you if not for me?”

Xue Yang’s lips twitched. Okay, maybe there was a reason he kept the brat around.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “This is something I’ve got to do – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’m going to kill a lot of people and get into a lot of trouble, more trouble than ever before. I’ll probably lose my life. How can I possibly take you with me?”

Mo Xuanyu scowled up at him. It was a very weak scowl – barely more than a pout. “You think that’s going to make me not want to come with you?”

Xue Yang’s eyebrows went up. “You cry at the sight of blood!”

“I cry at a lot of things!”

Xue Yang wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It was true, Mo Xuanyu cried at a lot of things.

“Maybe if I come with you, it won’t be so bad!”

Yeeeeah, Xue Yang wasn’t going to count on that.

“Or maybe you don’t have to go…?”

“I have to go,” he explained. “If I don’t go, I can’t get revenge, and I have to have revenge.”

Mo Xuanyu blinked up at him.

“I don’t really understand, but okay,” he said, and tugged on his arm. “Let’s go together, then. I promise I won’t cry!”

-

He cried.

He cried a lot.

-

“Stop fucking crying.”

-

“Just – ugh. Listen. You’re ruining the mood.”

-

“If you can’t stop crying, go away. Now. Or I’ll stab you!”

-

“Okay, see, look, I just killed the leaders, see? Just the old men. Everyone else is just locked in their rooms. Once the sect leader comes back, I’ll kill him too, and that’ll be all. Okay? Everyone else lives. I promise. Now stop crying, okay?”

-

“I don’t want to know,” Jin Guangyao said when they got back. “I don’t want to know at all.”

“Good,” Xue Yang grumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Enough people heard about the reason for what you did that opinions are mixed as to whether your actions were the Chang clan’s just rewards for their former misdeeds or if they were actually wrong,” Jin Guangyao said. He looked irritated. “But you still killed high-ranking members of a sect, and you left enough alive that they’re demanding your head on a platter. You’re going to need to run away.”

Mo Xuanyu hesitantly gestured as if he wished to speak.

“Yes, you can go with him. Now that my father is dead, no one cares where you are.”

Mo Xuanyu beamed.

“You’re just going to let us go?” Xue Yang asked suspiciously. “That seems unlike you. What’s in it for you?”

“Oh, I’m not just going to let you go. I’m going to give you money, too,” Jin Guangyao said. “And all you need to do for me is one little tiny favor –”

Pity that that was when Xue Yang stopped listening, too busy staring at Mo Xuanyu’s delighted face and counting all the way he was in for it now.

-

“I’ve always wanted to take care of a baby,” Mo Xuanyu said happily.

“Good for you,” Xue Yang said darkly as he stalked through the streets.

He would rather that Jin Guangyao had needed a body buried and a death covered up or something – and judging by the baby’s perturbed expression, it probably agreed with him. Fuck, maybe Jin Guangyao had meant for them to murder the baby once they got it far enough out of the way. It was just as plausible as Mo Xuanyu's assumption that they were supposed to take care of it.

Damnit, maybe he should have been listening.

“Listen, neither of us are equipped to handle a baby. Go find a woman to help us – someone poor and helpless who doesn’t have any other choice.”

“Okay!”

-

Xue Yang shut his eyes. “What exactly,” he said slowly, “did you think I asked you to get us a woman for, exactly?”

“To…watch the baby?” Mo Xuanyu guessed. “When we’re busy or sleeping? Anyway, what’s wrong with A-Qing, anyway? She’s nice!”

“I’m not nice,” A-Qing said. The damn brat was smirking – and for once it wasn’t his damn brat, but some blind brat with a cocky expression. “I stole your wallet and you burst into tears and it was really embarrassing.”

“He does that,” Xue Yang said wearily. At least he’d noticed the theft this time – all of his lessons in ‘how not to be a sucker and get constantly taken advantage of’ were maybe having something of an impact. Maybe. “For some reason I’m apparently into it.”

He couldn’t explain it any other way.

“…loser.”

“I will stab you,” Xue Yang threatened. “I don’t care if you’re blind.”

“Won’t someone tell me why A-Qing isn’t a perfectly good babysitter?” Mo Xuanyu demanded. He was holding the baby in his arms again – the baby liked him more than it did Xue Yang, which meant that between Mo Xuanyu and the baby, the baby had better self-preservation instincts – and he was trying his best stern scowl which was of course barely more than a pout and a so-called ‘fierce’ expression that made Xue Yang want to laugh.

Not even Mo Xuanyu’s horrific make-up skills could make thatface intimidating. Or maybe it was just that the person behind the face was just so completely unthreatening that there was no help for it?

“Well? Tell me!”

Xue Yan opened his mouth, then shrugged and shut it again.

A-Qing patted Mo Xuanyu on the shoulder. “I’m too young. No milk.”

“…milk?”

“You know. The thing babies eat?”

“…milk,” Mo Xuanyu repeated, only now he looked absolutely heartbroken at having failed the mission that Xue Yang had assigned him almost entirely just to get him out of the way while Xue Yang collected some spare cash and threatened their way onto a ride out of this piece of shit town.

“It’s fine,” Xue Yang said hastily. “We’ll just get a goat or something, I don’t know.”

“Okay, I actually only came here to laugh at you,” A-Qing said. “But now I’m legitimately worried about this baby. Don’t you two know anything? How’d you even get a baby, anyway?”

-

“Stop laughing. It’s not that funny.”

-

“Seriously. Stop laughing, or I stab you.”

“Don’t worry, A-Qing,” Mo Xuanyu said. “He doesn’t mean it! Threats are just how he expresses affection!”

“It most certainly is not.”

“That is absolutely amazing,” A-Qing said, wiping her eyes. “Best thing I’ve ever heard., if by best I mean worse-but-hilarious. I mean. If that’s what he considers affection, what must his flirting be like?”

“No one is flirting with anyone!”

-

“Are you going to leave at some point?”

“Obviously not,” A-Qing said. She’d caught the same ride as them, using Xue Yang’s cash no less – Mo Xuanyu had insisted that it was the least they could do after the whole milk misunderstanding, which was stupid, she ought to be paying them for wasting their time. Xue Yang couldn’t wait to get rid of her, although he had to admit that she’d been pretty useful in terms of putting on the ‘poor sad blind girl and her two brothers all alone in the world’ act to get them a room at the inn at prices even Xue Yang felt comfortable paying. “Are you joking? This is so much funnier than walking by myself. Anyway, I enjoy watching people crash and burn.”

“Aren’t you too young to be such a bitch?” Xue Yang hissed. “And, I don’t know, blind?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t care what you –”

The sound of crying came from the other room.

It was quickly followed by a second set of crying.

Xue Yang felt the onset of a headache.

“…truce?” A-Qing suggested sweetly, as if she knew exactly how much it pissed him off and thought it was the funniest thing ever, which was…probably accurate, actually. “I’ll get the baby to stop crying if you do the same with Mo Xuanyu.”

Yeah, that was definitely a headache. The sort of headache called why do I like that brat.

Mo Xuanyu owed him so much candy for putting up with this shit.

“Fine,” Xue Yang said begrudgingly. “Truce. Temporarily. And then you leave!”

-

“So we live here now, huh?” A-Qing said, looking around the house they’d claimed. “That’s neat.”

“Why do you live with us again?” Xue Yang asked her, though by now he barely even meant it. A-Qing was clearly another one in the same mold as Mo Xuanyu: you just couldn’t say no to her…or, rather, you could, at length and top volume and with threats, only it just didn’t stick. “I definitely did not recall asking you to stay.”

Though it was nice to have someone else around that wasn’t going to get immediately ripped off by literally anyone who came their way. Mo Xuanyu’d started getting conned by the literal infant that they were taking care of – he was completely hopeless.

Also, questionably blind or not, at least A-Qing had no hesitation about beating people with her stick if they struck her the wrong way, which was a life approach Xue Yang agreed with wholeheartedly.

“She’s going to learn to cultivate!” Mo Xuanyu chirped from where he was applying his make-up. “Demonic cultivation, too! We had a whole discussion about it while you were out getting groceries!”

That made a certain amount of sense, Xue Yang supposed. You didn’t need talent to be a demonic cultivator – technically speaking, given his bloodline, Mo Xuanyu was more naturally gifted in cultivation than Xue Yang, which was just wrong on all sorts of levels – and it was certainly more effective a defense mechanism than A-Qing’s stick. If there were two of them, they could protect Mo Xuanyu and the baby more effectively, taking shifts when needed, and Mo Xuanyu, who was also going to learn demonic cultivation no matter how many times Xue Yang had to hammer it into his head, could be the last line of defense, largely since no one would ever expect him to be able to do…anything…and they’d be right, too.

So it wasn’t the craziest idea in the world, only…

“…who is she going to be learning from, exactly!?”

-

“Have you ever considered charging for your skill in teaching cultivation lessons instead of your skill in stabbing people?” A-Qing asked one day. They were lying on the ground and having the corpses they’d raised fan them to try to reduce the temperature – it was that sort of day. Also, Mo Xuanyu, who might’ve objected, wasn’t around. “You’re not actually that bad at this. Might be more profitable, and less work. Just a thought.”

“Shut up. I’m great at stabbing people.”

“Yeah, but then after a while we have to move because people get annoyed at that, and it’s getting a little annoying to have to pack up all the time.”

“We’d have to move anyway. We’re wanted criminals, remember?”

“We could be wanted criminals with a house. Besides, wouldn’t you like to be called Teacher Xue?”

“What? No. Gross.”

-

“So you see, it turns out that they were teaching demonic cultivation in a safe and organized fashion,” Xiao Xingchen explained enthusiastically. “They’d even gathered up their own little sect! And of course everyone heard what the Chang clan did, so there’s no need to worry about them going around and murdering people at random – it was a targeted revenge scheme.”

“We’re working on teaching them regular cultivation,” Song Lan agreed, nodding. “To help mitigate the negative effects of demonic cultivation…well, we started out by just teaching them.”

“It turned out that they’d been secretly teaching all of the local delinquents, too, or at least Mo-gongzi had been teaching a few and Mistress Qing was teaching a few others, and even Sect Leader Xue had a few disciples,” Xiao Xingchen said, politely omitting or possibly having not noticed the fact that Mo Xuanyu had been teaching his ‘friends’ (read: scammers trying to take advantage of him), while A-Qing and Xue Yang had each been trying to form competing gangs and/or obtain lackeys. Xue Yang didn’t mind the oversight, largely on account of the fact that A-Qing had been winning, damn her – he’d kept getting distracted by inventing new things. “And a few of them had real talent – and you know that Zichen and I have always wanted to start a sect of our own, with no bloodline ties –”

“We’re joining their sect,” Song Lan said. “We’ll be leading the orthodox side, while they lead the demonic cultivation aspect – safely, of course.”

“I guess it’s better than them being crazy,” Jiang Cheng said. He sounded dubious. “I don’t like it, but at least all the demonic cultivators can be in one spot, you know?”

He made it sound like they’d be dropping off new ones there in the future.

Like they’d opened up some sort of pet rescue and were taking in unwanted puppies or something.

“Agreed,” Nie Mingjue said. “To the extent that they aren’t causing active harm, containment seems an appropriate remedy here. Who seconds the motion?”

“I do,” Lan Xichen said, and smiled at the newly agreed-upon sect. “Welcome back to the cultivation world, Sect Leader Xue.”

-

“I don’t want to know,” Jin Guangyao said, glaring.

“Don’t worry,” Xue Yang told him. “This comes as much of a shock to me as to you.”

The glare intensified, but that was fine. Jin Guangyao’s facial expressions, however minor and generally overlooked, had been the only thing getting him through that awful, awful meeting just now where people kept trying to salute him and make him salute back and if he didn’t then he was letting down Mo Xuanyu (who would send him a sad look) and A-Qing (who would hear about it from Mo Xuanyu later and then find a way to step on his foot right when he was concentrating on something).

Not to mention their two new resident lovebirds, who looked so righteous and proper from the outside but who also may or may not have accidentally full-on actually resurrected some dead asshole cultivator more or less the first time they’d joined Xue Yang in his demonic cultivation laboratory – which would have been fine, you know, that happened in demonic cultivation though not normally to quite such a wow-is-he-actually-alive extent, except that the guy’s intermittent moments of clarity suggested that his two new sect members might have just brought back the Yiling Patriarch himself, which was going to make all of them wanted criminal again the second anyone found out about it.

Ugh.

Being called sect leader was completely not worth this shit.

Xue Yang comforted himself with the reminder that later today he was planning on publicly introducing Jin Guangyao to the Xue sect’s head junior disciple “Xue Song” and announcing loudly that the brat needed some lessons in manners, that he’d heard that that was Lianfeng-zun’s specialty, and nominating him to take care of the kid while they were visiting.

See how the fucker liked that.

“I always knew Xue-gege could do great things!” Mo Xuanyu said, clapping his hands as A-Qing rolled her (by now, Xue Yang was almost definitely sure not actually blind) eyes behind his back. “As long as I went with him!”

[silverflame2724]

Accidental Martial God WWX

That was exacty what I meant actually but I do have a few more povs if you want.

LQRs reaction to a demonic cultivator ascending, JGS and JGY reaction to the Yin Tiger Tally moving completely out of reach, WQ pondering the true requirements for ascension given WWX doesn't have a golden core yet ascended, WWX musing on Godhood and on his new followers both the good and the more disturbing worshipers.

Maybe LWJ protects the Wen Remnants because WWX asked him to in a dream and after he succeeds (13 years later) he ascends and is finally reunited with WWX.

Lan Qiren did not know what to think. Wei Wuxian, his most troublesome student, a demonic cultivator, had ascended. He’d ascended. How was that even possible? Were the Heavens blind? Why would they allow someone like Wei Wuxian to ascend?

From what Lan Qiren had thought, only those who are righteous and followed the correct path in life like the Lan clan’s founder, Lan An, would be worthy of ascending.

Either the qualifications for ascension were lower than he thought or Lan Qiren had been horribly mistaken about Wei Wuxian’s personality and motivations for using demonic cultivation. That last thought made Lan Qiren feel very uncomfortable.

He’d always been harsh on the boy and disregarded him, even - he ashamedly admitted - punishing him harsher and more frequently than others.

He’d thought he was in the right because of how Wei Wuxian was but…..

But if he was wrong then Lan Qiren owed him an apology.

………………….

Jin Guangshan wanted to scream out in frustration seeing Wei Wuxian ascend. That brat had the Stygian Tiger Seal on him - according to his spies - and now that he ascended, the Seal went with him.

He had had so many plans on bribing Wei Wuxian to his side or killing him when he refused - as well as stealing the Seal - and then taking over the cultivation world, lording over it as he was always meant to be.

Now those plans are ruined. He sighed. Hopefully that bastard son of his can finally prove his usefulness and give him countermeasures or he might retract his favor from him.

……………………

Jin Guangyao’s first thought upon seeing Wei Wuxian ascend was: Oh shit. I have to go make up new plans to help Father.

He knew his father wanted Wei Wuxian and the Seal and didn’t really care how he obtained both or either, just as long as no one traced it back to him. He sighed. This was going to be a big headache. But at least the plans on putting his father as Chief Cultivator were going smoothly. He could only imagine what his father would do to him if even this failed.

..............................

Wen Qing had still been in Yiling, making plans to relocate her family, when the news that Wei Wuxian had ascended had reached her.

Her first reaction was, That’s impossible.

Because it was, right? Wen Qing should know. She cut out his core, after all. But to think he was still able to ascend while he was a demonic cultivator made her wonder what the requirements were for ascending. Perhaps it’s an honest heart? Self-sacrificing tendencies? Or is it a sacrifice of some sorts? She paused. What if.....it was a trial? To test a person’s will? What Wei Wuxian had suffered was.....horrible. Could it have all been just a test from the Heavens?

If that was so, the Heavens really are cru--- 

“A’ Jie, we have to go! Some Jin were spotted nearby!”

Wen Qing gritted her teeth. Members of the branch families of Qishan, regardless of whether they were innocent or not, were captured and subsequently tortured to death by the Jin and sometimes the Nie. Because her family was all in Yiling, they were safe.......but only for now. They had to hurry and escape.

Wen Qing sent a quick prayer to Wei Wuxian, hoping for her family’s safety, and tucked the rest of her belongings in her qiankun pouch, remembering to wrap her arms in bandages to hide the needles she might need to paralyze any Jin that came close.

....................................

Wei Wuxian’s first thought when he landed in the Heavens was, What the fuck.

Then he looked around and looked taken aback and wary at the unfamiliar faces around him. Where the fuck am I?

“Hello.” A rather stoic-faced man greeted.

“Hello.” Wei Wuxian parroted back. The person in front of him didn’t seem to be a threat so he felt a little tension loosen from his shoulders. “Um, Xiansheng? I’m afraid I don’t know where I am?”

“You have just ascended.” The man replied, throwing Wei Wuxian aback.

“Are you pulling my leg?” Wei Wuxian asked. “How is that even possible! I don’t even have---” He swallowed. I don’t even have a core.

“I do not lie. Come, we are wasting time. We must get you washed up and dressed for the induction ceremony.” Seeing Wei Wuxian still frozen, the man sighed, signalled for some people to pick Wei Wuxian up and dragged the struggling man to some quarters.

After absentmindedly washing, drying and changing himself, Wei Wuxian noticed some differences in his body. He wasn’t....cold or hurting anymore. And - he touched his back - he could feel his back! After having his muscles and nerves shredded by Zidian, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to sense touch on his back or even move without pain! But now he can!

He heard the urging of some people and grumbled.

“You will become a god of demonic cultivation.” Was the first thing he heard when he stepped out of the room.

Wei Wuxian choked. “Excuse me?!”

“I said what I said. Now then, if you would please concentrate, you should be able to hear the prayers of the people below.”

Wei Wuxian felt like everything was moving a little too fast for him, but nevertheless complied. Immediately after, a flood of prayers hit him at full force.

“Wei Wuxian!” That was Jiang Cheng! “….Have some fun up there.”

“A’ Xian, do be well. Shijie isn’t there to take care of you so do be well.” Wei Wuxian refused to cry.

“Wei-Xiong! I hope there’s someone up there to supply you with you know what *winks*”

How does someone even wink in their prayers? Wei Wuxian thought amusedly.

“Wei Ying.” That was Lan Zhan. “Wei Ying, I will—be well.”

Ah, Lan Zhan. Always concise even in your thoughts.

Wei Wuxian was a little teary. As much as he was glad to not be a part of the cultivation world considering all the rumors, he did regret leaving behind those that cared for him.

That thought was much more cemented upon hearing…….

“Ah, Lord Wei, the pinnacle of evil, the role model of all demonic cultivators!” Wei Wuxian’s eye twitched. “Please hear my plea for more power! I need it, I need it to destroy everyone who harmed me!”

“Wei Wuxian, I wish to gain power over resentful energy so that I may tear my enemies limb by limb!

“Give me money! You’re a god, aren’t you? Be useful for once and give me some gold!”

“Tch. If I’m going to pray for anything, then it’ll have to be the Seal. You’re a god, now, right? So you have no need for the Seal. Just give it up.”

No matter the good or bad, Wei Wuxian heard the wishes and prayers of the people down below and while some were innocent enough, there were those that wished for death, destruction, tools for torture, power, money, women…….you name it.

It made Wei Wuxian feel a little disgusted with humanity. He cut off his focus from the bad and focused on the prayer he received from his friends and family.

“Wei Wuxian, I heard you became a god.” It was Wen Qing. He hadn’t heard her voice in a long time. “I know this might seem shameless of me after all I did to you, but please. Please guarantee the safety of my family. We’re being hunted down and—”

Her prayer was abruptly cut off, before coming back in full force with notes of desperation. Her family had been captured and taken to Qiongqi Path! Wei Wuxian panicked. He didn’t know how to escape from this place and try to go help her.

The…..person who was watching over him evidently knew what he was thinking about and merely stated that gods cannot interfere with the mortal realm. So he was stuck.

But that didn’t mean he was out of options.

It took a few days, but he managed to wheedle out how to help: via dreams. He merely needed to get into the mind of one of his followers and tell them to help. Much like those prophetic dreams Wei Wuxian had read about as a kid.

So he buckled down, thinking of the best candidate to help him.

……………………………

Lan Wangji looked at the landscape around him and concluded that he was dreaming. Though, it was a little odd that he was aware that he was dreaming. Not that he hasn’t realized he was dreaming before - especially in those many fantasies he had of Wei Ying - but to be aware that this is a dream and to see nothing but a flat landscape was pretty out of the ordinary. 

Anyway, he digressed. What was going on?

“Uhh, Lan Zhan? Can you hear me?”

“W-Wei Ying?!” Lan Wangji couldn’t be blamed for stuttering. He wasn’t expecting this!

“Phew. Oh good, you can hear me. Anyway, Lan Zhan, I gotta be quick about this because I’m kinda sorta bending the rules here, but do you think you can go to Qiongqi Path and rescue Wen Qing and her family?”

“Okay.”

“Huh? Just like that? Not even going to ask me for a reason, er-gege?”

Lan Wangji’s ears flushed red at the address. “If Wei Ying wants to save them, you must have a good reason. That’s enough for me.”

“Ah, Hanguang-Jun.” The title was spoken fondly. “Always so good. I’ll tell you anyway. Wen Qing and her family sheltered Jiang Cheng and I after Lotus Pier fell and even brought back Jiang-shushu and Yu-furen’s bodies! That’s a debt I cannot repay.”

“I understand. I will help.”

He couldn’t see Wei Ying, but could practically feel the amusement from him.

“Wei Ying.”

“Yes?”

“Are......Are you well?”

“Of course I am. I’m actually feeling so much better than before.” Wei Ying grumbled, “I’m not even in pain anymore.”

“You were in pain?” Lan Wangji asked worriedly. “Wei Ying, why didn’t you say anything.”

“Lan Zhan, there was nothing you or anyone else could do to alleviate my pain. It doesn’t matter now. I’m okay.”

Lan Wangji was still worried and wanted to speak to him more, but---

“Ah! Looks like my time’s up!” Wei Ying exclaimed cheerfully as the dreamscape wavered. “See you, Lan Zhan!”

Lan Wangji nodded. “See you, Wei Ying.” I’ll catch up to you soon.

.

.

.

And 13 years later, Lan Wangji kept his promise.

___________________

I didn’t edit this so I’m hoping there’s not too many grammatical errors lol. 

[plan-d-to-i]

Hi!! about this

"Going into history, Lan Yi was a female clan leader in the Gusu Lan Clan, but also was a ruthless person who used the chord assassination technique to kill political dissidents. BSSR left society entirely to run her sect." Do you know if it's true? I don't remember much about Lan Yi, which chapter says it?

Thanks for being a reliable source! Much appreciated!

(link)

Hm, We hear about Lan Yi in the the Xuanwu cave:

“Lan WangJi retrieved the chord. The bowstring broke with a sharp cry through the air.

Wei WuXian, “Chord Assassination?”

Chord Assassination was one of the techniques unique to the GusuLan Sect. It was created by and passed down from the granddaughter of the sect’s founder, Lan An—the third sect leader, Lan Yi. Lan Yi was also the only female sect leader of the Lan Sect, cultivating with the guqin. Her guqin had seven strings that could be joined and dismantled within moments. The seven strings were arranged from the most slender to the thickest. One moment she’d be playing noble melodies over them with her soft, fair fingers, and one moment later they’d be able to cut through flesh and bone as though cutting through mud, transformed into lethal weapons within her hands. Lan Yi created Chord Assassination originally to assassinate dissidents, which was why she was often criticized. The GusuLan Sect was also quite ambivalent on its comments of such a sect leader. Undeniably, though, Chord Assassination was one of the most powerful, most versatile fighting techniques of the GusuLan Sect.” (Chapter 55)

And then WWX mentions her again when he’s trying to give jiang cheng the ill fated Two Prides pep talk: 

Wei WuXian, “So what if there’s the motto?! Do you have to follow it just because it’s a motto? Look at the rules of the GusuLan Sect—there are over three thousand. If people followed every single one of them, would they even be alive at this point?”

He hopped off the fence, “And, who said that being a sect leader means that you have to go along with the style of the sect? There have been so many sect leaders in the YunmengJiang Sect, I don’t believe at all that everyone was the same. Even the GusuLan Sect had an outlier like Lan Yi, but who would deny her position and her abilities? When talking about the famous cultivators of the Lan Sect, who could skip over her? Who could skip over her Chord Assassination technique?”

but idk quite where op was going w this-

Bc it's understood from that previous passage about Lan Yi that whilst the Lan Clan appreciated how her technique was powerful, they weren't particularly thrilled w the way she implemented it bc it wasn't exactly in line w their teachings... (not bc she was a woMan). Meaning being ruthless actually worked against her rep it wasn't some savvy diplomatic choice... Also It's bad to expect YanLi to be anything more than ~soup & I want to get married girl~, but it's apparently also bad she wasn't expected to be more than ~soup and I want to get married girl~? She should've been forced to learn to fight like NHS? Madam Yu isn't an asshole because she has to be an asshole to be taken seriously, she's an asshole bc she's an asshole... And she's spoken of "pretty badly" because she's known to be an asshole. And BSSR withdrew bc it sounds like she didn't vibe w shift from sect to clan /merit to blood ties and didn't want to deal w the disputes of the world

"All remotely famous cultivators began to establish their own clans, except the distinguished Baoshan Sanren, who chose to return to her native mountains and enter seclusion. "/"She told her disciples, ‘If you are going to leave the mountain, then there’s no need for you to come back. Don’t bring the disputes of the outside world into the mountain.’

LXC is a Clan Leader and nice guy because he's a nice guy lol. jiang cheng is a Clan Leader and an asshole. WRH was a cruel megalomaniac. JGY has to ruthlessly backstab his way to power. Not every single life choice the female characters make is because the evil patriarchy. There are other powerful forces at play like social status, wealth, cultivation ability and character. So that thread is just all over the place again trying to establish number 1 victim status for someone... bc apparently that's the goal always.

[xiyao-feels]

"I tend to think that MXY did indeed harass him, incidentally, for a few different reasons." OH could you elaborate? ♡

Of course!! I want to be clear I don't think this is the only possible interpretation, or anything, but I do think it's a reasonable and evidenced interpretation.

So, there's a few points. The first is just that, as has often been raised, if JGY were going to invent a story to smear MXY, why the hell would he pick an incest story? Yes, it's very effective at removing him as a threat, but there are other stories he could come up with that don't put the thought of JGY + incest in people's minds, and frankly he is pretty horrified by the situation he is already in and I don't think he wants to think of himself in that context any more than he absolutely has to.

Secondly: why would JGY get rid of him, if it weren't true? I talked about removing him as a threat above, but while it would certainly be a bad idea to remove him from the Jin without neutralizing him as a possible future threat, why would JGY need him removed from the Jin in the first place? For one thing, he was at least coming across as very loyal to JGY—Jin Ling remembers him as thinking of JGY like a god and always agreeing with him (ch 47):

After he spoke, [Jin Ling] suddenly remembered that the past Mo XuanYu had always regarded Jin GuangYao as a deity. He definitely wouldn’t have disagreed with Jin GuangYao in any way.

And while the MXY timeline is as you might say rather foggy, I don't think it makes sense for MXY to have been pushed out at the time of JGS' death, which would be the natural point for a power struggle. JGS died eleven years ago (ch 85); JL is fifteen years old in the present timeline (ch 22); if MXY was kicked out then, JL would have been around four when MXY left. Yet not only does JL have clear memory of MXY's attitude towards JGY, as above, he recognizes him instantly and at a glance (ch 7):

The boy took a look at him, a look of shock to suddenly appear on his face.

After a second, the shock turned into disdain. His mouth twitched, “So, it’s you.”

The tone was made of twenty percent surprise and eighty percent disgust, making Wei WuXian blink. The boy spoke again, “Did you lose your marbles after you were thrown back to your village? How could they let you outside when you looked as freaky as this?”

Even if we figure that before leaving the Jin MXY was wearing makeup as WWX is now, and I feel like JL's phrasing rather suggests he wasn't, this really doesn't read to me like JL recognizing someone he last saw when he was four. It's too immediate. Combined, again, with his clear memory of how MXY acted towards JGY, I think it must have been at least a few years after JGS' death that MXY was removed from the Jin.

And while JGY certainly has to work at getting the watchtowers up and running, and he's not resting on his laurels, I could be wrong but I don't think we hear anything about an internal Jin power struggle after he becomes clan leader and xiandu. If I wanted to make this work I might try linking it to that clan killing Rusong and emphasize the power struggle aspects, or something, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence for or suggestion of this link in the text.

I think the usual explanation for this is that MXY had discovered a secret of JGY's and JGY needed to destroy him? But there doesn't seem to be any actual evidence for this anywhere, as always please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thirdly, I think it's worth noting that the story of MXY we get at the beginning, though incomplete, comes from MXY himself.

Quoting Taming Wangxian instead of Exiled Rebels for chapter two again, but the whole story is something WWX puts together from reading MXY's papers, and is introduced and repeatedly framed in that light:

These fragments likely contained rantings written by the owner of this body. The scribbles were incomprehensible, and the illegible handwriting reflected his internal turmoil. Wei Wuxian patiently went through each of the scraps. The more he read, the more he felt that something was amiss.

He had managed to piece together a few clues. Firstly, the owner of this body was Mo Xuanyu, and he was currently from the Mo Estate.

[...]

At this juncture, Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows twitched.

Not only was he a homosexual, Mo Xuanyu was also a raving lunatic. It was no wonder that he had such hideous makeup on, and no one had thought it strange that there was such a large bloody array in the room. In fact, no one would raise an eyebrow even if he doused the entire house in blood, as people knew that he was a madman!

[...]

Wei Wuxian’s eyes strained from reading the small and dense scribbles, his thoughts laced with profanity. It was no wonder Mo Xuanyu would want to voluntarily give himself up to get an evil spirit to seek revenge.

This is all stuff he's getting from reading MXY's own writings! Including the idea that MXY harassed someone:

It wasn’t a pretty sight; he was driven back home in shame. This was because Mo Xuanyu was homosexual. He brazenly harassed his peers, and the matter had been exposed. Coupled with the fact that he did not have much potential, and made little progress in his cultivation, there was no reason to keep him within the clan.

That was not all. Perhaps due to some trauma, Mo Xuanyu became mentally unstable after his return. His mood was labile; he would be fine occasionally, but often he appeared to be on the verge of a breakdown.

At this juncture, Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows twitched.

Not only was he a homosexual, Mo Xuanyu was also a raving lunatic. It was no wonder that he had such hideous makeup on, and no one had thought it strange that there was such a large bloody array in the room. In fact, no one would raise an eyebrow even if he doused the entire house in blood, as people knew that he was a madman!

There doesn't seem to be any suggestion in these papers that he was wrongly accused, or that he wanted any kind of vengeance on JGY. Indeed, given he's performing a sacrifice summons for the YLLZ in order to achieve his vengeance, if he did want vengeance on JGY this would seem like a natural opportunity, but instead he's looking for vengeance on the Mo and their servant.

Nor does WWX—who is the one who reads all these papers, and whose summary and conclusions the narrative gives us—ever seem to actually doubt that MXY did actually harass someone. He's certainly willing to believe JGY did awful things, yet when he finds out JGY was the person MXY harassed, he doesn't for a moment think that JGY might have invented it (ch 47, back to ER):

Jin Chan, “He shamelessly harassed LianFang-Zun, and you’re still talking in favor of him?”

Wei WuXian felt as though he had been struck with thunder.

He harassed whom? LianFang-Zun? Who was LianFang-Zun again? Jin GuangYao?

He couldn’t believe it—the person Mo XuanYu had been harassing was LianFang-Zun, Jin GuangYao!

Later, even, when he's wondering why QS is reacting the way she is, he actually briefly considers, not whether JGY made up the accusations about MXY, but whether JGY had an affair with MXY:

She was probably also throwing up when she was inside. Just what in the world is written in the letter? Jin GuangYao killed someone and dismembered them? But everyone knew that Jin GuangYao killed countless people during the Sunshot Campaign. There were quite a few lives in her father’s hands, as well. Maybe it was the thing with Mo XuanYu? No, it was impossible that Jin GuangYao had anything for Mo XuanYu. It was likely that Mo XuanYu being kicked out of Carp Tower was precisely his doing.

I gather from some things I've seen that some people think "It was likely that Mo XuanYu being kicked out of Carp Tower was precisely his doing" means that JGY made up the accusations. I think that's a pretty clear misreading, especially in the context of WWX's belief elsewhere that MXY did harass him. The obvious reading is that JGY is the one who got MXY removed from Carp Tower /in response to his harassment of JGY/, instead of returning his interest and carrying on an affair with him! Not that JGY got MXY removed from Carp Tower by inventing accusations. Come on, now.

So basically: I don't think JGY had any motive to expel MXY from the Jin if MXY didn't actually harass him; I do think that if JGY had to make up a reason to expel MXY from the Jin he'd pick a different story; and I think it's significant that we get the information that MXY harassed someone directly from MXY's own notes, and that WWX, who read them, never doubted that he actually had. This doesn't mean that I think a version of events where JGY invented the accusations is impossible, or irreconcilable with the text—these issues can be addressed—but I feel like the evidence we have, while hardly conclusive proof, comes down on the side of MXY did actually harass him.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 26 part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes! 

I’m Coming Up So You Better Get This Party Started

The Lans arrive just in time to see Cousin Jin Zixun hassling Su She, and they wonder how he has the fucking nerve to come to a party that they are also invited to. 

Su she was invited by his new best friend Jin Guangyao, who deploys a full-on charm attack, wrapping Su She permanently around his little finger. 

Smoother than the Lanling weather that’s how he holds himself together Watch out, he’ll charm you 

Jin Guangyao grew up with women who earned their living by being charming, pleasant, and hiding their true thoughts from their clients, and he appears to have mastered this useful skill set. With Su She, he exudes confidence and authority, allowing the lesser man to bask in his attention.

With Zewu Jun he deploys helplessness and embarrassment, effectively controlling a man with much greater power than his own.

Lan Xichen confronts him about Su She's presence, and Jin Guangyao pretends he didn't know that Su She was ex-Lan. This seems super unlikely, given that JGY is good at collecting information that he can use to fuck with people, and also that he sheltered Lan Xichen from the Wens directly after Su She betrayed him.

Lan Xichen seems like he doesn't believe what JGY is telling him but then he decides to drop it, passive-aggressively saying that since JGY is uninformed, he's not guilty. Lan Xichen is actually assuming a lot here about his right to tell Jin Guangyao who to invite and who to shun, but JGY doesn't push back. Lying is so much simpler.

(more behind the cut!)

Su She wins for most unintentionally sarcastic-seeming toasting expression.

Jiang Cheng, Party Animal

Jiang Cheng arrives at the party, bringing his Jiang retinue and his bad temper. He super obviously casts around to try to find Wei Wuxian, who already told him he probably wasn't coming to the party.

Jiang Cheng is that guy who only comes to a party because the girl he likes said she was thinking about going, and then he spends the whole party saying "hey have you seen Mei Lin? She said she was going to be here but I don't see her."

Jin Guangyao formally congratulates Jiang Cheng on the Jiang clan's success in the hunt, and Jin Guangshan toasts him. As always, Jiang Cheng reacts to praise from authority figures like it's rain in the desert, smiling from ear to ear. He says that the Jiang Clan will donate the prey from the hunt to the other gentry clans. ...what?

Are we seriously saying that when these dudes go night hunting it's not just to remove dangerous bad stuff, it's for profit? 

Like, do they eat monsters? Wear their fur? Make leather from their skin? Carve jewelry from their claws? Is Jiang Cheng wearing a purple monster's skin right now? (There will be an art prompt at the end of this post)

Meanwhile, check out the way Nie Huaisang is looking at Jiang Cheng, wow.

Forecast: Hazing

Having gotten the single pleasant part of the banquet over with, it's time for the Jins to pick on the Lans. Cousin Jin Zixun goads Lan Xichen into taking a drink with him, knowing that this is (mostly) against Lan rules. Jin Guangyao tries to stop him by saying, hilariously, that it's bad to drink and fly on a sword, but CJZX waves this away and keeps pushing, saying that if Lan Xichen won't drink, it's an insult to him.

A random cultivator who is definitely on the Jin payroll backs him up, saying that teetotaling is for losers, and Captain Blowhard boisterously agrees. Loudly agreeing with powerful people is the Yao clan's signature martial arts skill.

Jin Guangyao looks embarrassed and helpless, which is, as mentioned before, his own signature skill. But he's just playing his own part in this piece of theater; everything happening at this party (so far) is happening for the benefit of the Jin Clan. Cousin Jin Zixun is an ass, but he's not actually a loose cannon, and Jin Guangshan is clearly enjoying the Lans' discomfort.

Why? This entire party, the hunt, everything he's done since the end of the Sunshot campaign, has been designed to increase and consolidate his power. His main goal is to get the Yin Tiger seal, but reducing the status of the Lans is also a good move for him. The Lans have been the strongest opponents to the use of resentful energy, and worked the hardest to conceal and contain the Yin iron in the past. If he wants to use resentful energy as part of his own cultivation, he needs them to chill. 

So this is a bit of a test; will they comply with the will of the larger group in order to avoid conflict, or will they refuse, which will allow him to label them as iconoclastic weirdos?. 

Lan Xichen takes a long look at his brother, who is expressing all sorts of emotions while keeping his face very very still. 

At a guess, he is thinking that this entire party is bullshit, that his brother's willingness to play along with these assholes is bullshit, that being viciously beaten for having a single drink in his life was bullshit, that Wei Wuxian not being here right now is bullshit.

Lan Xichen picks the "go along, get along" path, having his drink and using his magic skill of anti-intoxication to neutralize it, as he'd done previously when drinking with Wei Wuxian. 

Cousin Jin Zixun picks on Lan Wangji next, and since he cannot magically or even non-magically tolerate alcohol, there is a real risk to his reputation if he drinks. But Lan Wangji breaks rules when he feels like it, not when people tell him to. He pointedly ignores the offered drink while Lan Xichen looks worried. 

The rest of the party guests have a wide variety of reactions, none of them helpful, to these shenanigans. Jin Guanshan's son and heir watches with calm interest as the power dynamics play out.

All of this is actually not great strategy for the Jins. The Lans don't play little social games to gain power, because all that time they spend not drinking, not gossiping, and not doing other stuff? Is spent cultivating and practicing sword and musical battle forms. The Lan Bros are overwhelmingly powerful as individuals, and embarrassing them won't change that.

It's moot, ultimately, because Wei Wuxian chooses this moment to arrive.

Darkness Visible

Wei Wuxian actually made a big impressive stair-climbing entrance to Jinlintai a few minutes ago, with camera work echoing Lan Wangji's stair climb at the Wen Indoctrination Bureau from several episodes back. 

But nobody was around to see that, other than us, and when he appears at the party it's in stealth mode; he steps into the frame from out of nowhere, and drinks Lan Wangji's unwanted drink.

Lan Wangji responds by looking at him like this for the next several minutes.

Wei Wuxian doesn't have time for their usual sport of Extreme Gazing, though; he came for a reason, which is to find and rescue Wen Ning. He gets right to it, asking Cousin Jin Zixun where he's keeping him.

Jiang Cheng, who is the king of worrying about the wrong fucking thing, jumps up to try to stop Wei Wuxian from talking. Like, seriously, he's ok with the Jins trying to take his clan's special extreme weapon, but he's not ok with his head disciple being rude in order to fulfill a whopper of a life debt--Jiang Cheng's life debt, in particular--or being rude in order to preserve the clan's independence.

Jin Guangshan decides this is a good moment to bring up the Yin tiger amulet. Wei Wuxian pushes back, hard, pointing out exactly what Jin Guangshan is doing. He says he's setting himself up to be a new Wen Ruohan. 

Lan Wangji pays close attention to Wei Wuxian's reasoning here, and so does Nie Mingjue, unless he’s just trying to mask his confusion. 

Jiang Cheng is too busy being horrified to listen, apparently. Or he just doesn’t agree, preferring to be reduced to a secondary authority, rather than defy a primary authority.

Wei Wuxian is, of course, all about independence; he was literally born to be a rogue cultivator, despite being dubbed “patriarch” himself, not long after this. 

Let’s Go Crazy Let’s Get Nuts

Wei Wuxian gets tired of the scene and decides to lose his temper. He makes a show of being enraged, and he genuinely is angry, but I don't think he's out of control, this time.  

He acts like he's out of control in order to scare everyone, but he makes his points very clearly, reminding everyone that he has power they don't have, that he's good at killing, that he's not patient, and that his teeth are nicer than everybody else’s. 

Everybody in the room freaks out to one degree or another--except Jin Guangshan, who is apparently too pissed off to be scared.

It's hilarious that Jin Guangshan thought he was going to get Wei Wuxian to hand the Yin Tiger amulet over by creating a complex system of social pressure against him. Wei Wuxian's favorite way of responding to social pressure is to escalate it into violence, regardless of the consequences; he's been doing that at least since Gusu Summer School and probably a lot longer. Jin Guangshan should know this, given how many beatings his son has taken from Wei Wuxian over the years.

Wei Wuxian does a fantastically sexy scary, theatrical countdown, and Cousin Jin Zixun caves in and gives him the information he wants. It's worth noticing that even under threat of death, CJZX doesn't comply until he visually checks in with his clan leader. He’s genuinely a bad person, yes, but he’s a loyal soldier, which is what most of these clans value most. 

As soon as he gets what he wants, Wei Wuxian is perfectly, smugly, in control of himself again. Everyone in the room is still stunned and afraid, so Jin Guangshan has achieved that much, at least; nobody likes Wei Wuxian having the Yin tiger seal now, including Jiang Cheng. 

As he leaves, Wei Wuxian has one of those conversations with Lan Wangji in which everything is said in glances in the course of a couple of seconds. 

WWX: I love you, I have to leave you; I've got some shit to take care of and I won't be coming back to all of this. 

LWJ: I love you; I'm probably going to have to fight you; your funeral is going to be so upsetting

Wei Wuxian turns away from everyone, and you can see the weight settling on his shoulders, as he contemplates the choices he just made and the choices that are still ahead of him. 

Jin Guangshan, for the first and only time, loses his temper in front of everybody, literally flipping a table because he's so mad about what just happened. 

Art prompt: Jiang Cheng wearing an outfit made of a Chinese mythical creature. Bonus points if it’s a qilin. Bonus bonus points if Zhang Qiling (from DMBJ/Lost Tomb franchise) is standing next to him looking grumpy while Jiang Cheng wears an outfit made from a qilin. 

Soundtrack: Get This Party Started by Pink, Charm Attack by Leona Naess, Let’s Go Crazy by Prince. 

[righteousinadversity]

I read your post about the right thing not being easy and I concur. It got me thinking though. What do you think about LXC's response to the revelations at Guanyin?

Seclusion: Imo LXC going into seclusion felt more like he went into hiding from the fallout. It felt like self-pity leaving others to handle the consequences for his mistakes. However, I do make allowances for the sheer self-doubt and shock as well as seclusion being the Lan Go-To.

Self-pity: from what I've seen so far, LXC is entirely focused on the fact JGY lied to him and he doesn't know who to trust. This line of thinking, to me, seems to avoid the crux of the issue - his action and inaction. Yes, he was lied to. That's no on him. What is on him is his casual elitism and the assumptions that drive it. He doesn't evaluate core concepts like what it means to have authority, what is morality/righteousness/justice. And without going into these things, he cannot hope to change.

Let me know what you think!

About LXC, I have a lot of thoughts. First, I'd like to express, that I do not talk about the way he talked to WWX in the Guanyin Temple scene here. It's sort of a sore spot for me and is something that makes me very very angry about him. I'll probably rant about it soon, but I want to evaluate his actions on the general populace, especially the innocents.

Here's what we do know about his reaction after the events:

He attends the sealing ceremony of JGY and NMJ, though he seems very weary.

He subsequently goes into seclusion

LWJ wants to tell LXC about why JGY saved SiSi, in an attempt to assure LXC that while JGY was a terrible person, there were parts of him that weren't horrible (this is for LXC's benefit. Not in defence of JGY. I'll explain below.)

He is observed by WWX to be frail, and absent-minded while reporting the clan activities during the banquet.

Lan Wangji goes to talk with him, as LXC did during his own seclusion.

Well, there isn't a lot we can know from this about how Lan Xichen went on to act, what his motivations and thoughts were, or if he rectified himself. So most of this is speculation based on what we see of him.

First of all, the Lans and the Nies are far less culpable than the Jiangs or the Jins in the horrors we see. This is true for the Siege, and for everything after. However, their failure remains in the fact that they allowed such horror to happen while in significant positions of power.

NMJ accuses WQ of her inaction, but she was in absolutely no position to revolt. She was an orphan, who was brought up by WRH and held her position due to his favour. She was under the rule of a tyrant, and in no position to go against him when even the great sects only got their heads out of the sand when an entire sect was murdered. But both NMJ and LXC are in powerful positions, and they fought in a war to ensure that WRH's tyranny won't last. As people who have apparently strong codes of justice and morality, their actions and inactions are contemptible, especially so because they do not seem to see evil for what it is. Them allowing JGS to follow in WRH's footsteps makes one wonder: was the SunShot Campaign really about 'righteousness', or just revenge?

Lan Xichen is not a contemptible villain by any means. He is someone who will try to help others, as he does defend WQ in the beginning, and repays debts and expresses gratitude, as shown by him affording JGY the benefit of the doubt. Lan Xichen never actually hurt or schemed on others for his own gain. He separates grudges and gratitudes properly in his life. He never bears jealousy nor drowns in resentment. And of course, he never coveted others' power for his own benefit. Hence, he is already better than many of the assholes in the cultivation society.

However, as you have said, he has his flaws and faults. He, like the entire Lan Clan, really, hypocritically preach 'righteousness' but does not take any actual action to ensure that they 'shoulder the weight of morality'. The entire cultivation world fucked up with the Wens, and I have expressed my horror at that before. LXC as I have mentioned is slightly less culpable, but he does not go out of his way to do anything because he cares more about his relationship with NMJ than protecting the Wens. He is also not present at the siege, though undoubtedly as sect leader he would have been aware and also needed to give permission.

However, a similar situation again happens when he takes no action when another entire sect (Tingshan He, I believe?) is slaughtered down to the children by the Jins. Yes, this was almost a few months after WWX's death and LXC was probably taking care of LWJ, but again, he is in a position of power. What the hell was the point of the SunShot Campaign if they were just going to let things like that happen again? He and even NMJ, as leaders, do not investigate this. Especially as the leader of the sect that preaches righteousness... you can see how this does not seem good.

About casual elitism, yes, he, much like NMJ often display the same beliefs. They do not perceive from the eye of those that society tramples upon and hold onto the naive belief that if such people adhere to strong principles society will bend. Society never bends. They stand at the top of the pyramid and believes easily that it mustn't be so bad at the bottom. This is why he says WWX has changed. Because WWX, as a person, will adhere to society only as long as it is just; when it comes to societal niceties and moral righteousness, WWX will always always choose moral righteousness. The problem, of course, is that both LXC and NMJ often confuse the two, and think they go hand in hand. They are not terrible people for it; just sheltered and a little naive and never had to struggle for things.

However, this belief shapes his reaction to WWX, and believes him a threat enough to allow for a siege to be led on a group of innocents. I don't believe he didn't know. Maybe he thought cultivators were in the Burial Mounds as well, but, he knew there were civilians too. LWJ saw A-Yuan, saw uncle four, saw the Wens. He must have said something, but even LWJ realises in the Burial Mounds that no one will stand for the Wens.

But here's the thing: Inaction isn't as culpable as the crime perhaps, but when you're in a position of power, your inaction could mean the death of thousands. LXC either is naive enough to not know this or is willfully ignorant. His inactions allowed for a siege to be led on a village of innocents, and for thousands to be experimented on by JGS and JGY, and that fact cannot be changed.

But, this is also why I do believe guilt plays as much part in his seclusion as self-pity. I think he was finally confronted with his own decisions and the consequences of his actions and inactions. He is confronted with being lied to; but more importantly, he is confronted with the realisation that his judgement is compromised. His trust in JGY was betrayed, yes, but his trust in himself moreso. (This is why LWJ wants to tell him about SiSi; it is an attempt to assure him that while JGY was a ruthless murderer, the side of him that LXC saw and believed in wasn't non-existent.) He suddenly came face to face with every crime JGY committed, everything he in his bias to JGY turned blind eye to. That he, in his support of JGY, was even complicit in.

Again, we don't have much information on what he is contemplating in his seclusion. There is self-pity without a doubt, but I also believe there is self-condemnation. You see, LWJ and LXC were raised by a very rigid set of rules, with punishments for breaking them. LXC, much like LWJ, is confronted with the reality that the rules created by mortals can often lead to folly, that it might end up harming the innocents. That he and his clan failed to follow many of those rules, and even with the rules they followed, they failed to understand their true meaning and did nothing to prevent the massacre of innocents.

But! I think LXC, of all the characters, have the greatest potential to grow and understand, to repent and redeem himself. I have not much hope for even LQR, even as I write fics where LQR is more a tsundere-uncle than the hypocritical-stagnant man he often shows himself to be. But LXC as a person does try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I like to believe that he understands his own hypocrisy, and would want to do better. I think, that while his self-pity may cloud his mind, eventually, his good parts will win out because as I have said, he is no contemptible villain. I believe him worthy, and able of redemption, and while it would require introspection on his part, I don't believe it impossible.

[fakeikemen]

After seeing this gifset of Mo Xuanyu something has awoken in me and now I must rant about it. 

Here's what I think: Jin Guangyao lied about Mo Xuanyu harassing him.

Not really gonna comment on whether he was actually queer or not because that is completely up in the air. And the things in the story that do point to mxy being queer (all in a negative light) can be disproved. This is speculative yes, but in the same way we speculate about jgy killing Jin Rusong. Jgy kept this entire incident hidden from Lan Xichen. And that’s a little weird because making himself look like a burdened suffering soul in front of lxc was one of his priorities. I don’t see why he wouldn’t weaponize this. Not saying that he has to tell everyone about how he was sexually harassed or that he is obligated to tell it to the people close to him. But lxc was a frequent guest at Lanling. And everyone and their mother at Lanling knows about the fiasco and they don’t try to hide their knowledge of it. Word had spread far enough for rogue cultivators to know. So its a little weird that Lan Xichen has no idea who Mo Xuanyu even is. 

Following further in the vein of even lxc not even catching a whiff of mxy; jgy possibly isolated him from the others. Assuming that mxy was in Lanling for a year atleast and that he was brought there to make him the primary choice for succeeding Jin Guangshan it becomes just much more weirder that lxc doesn’t know him. If he had been someone who was indeed flaunting his attraction to men, (like many believe) he’d have been known.

But mxy was 14 when he was called to Lanling. He had to leave his home and go to a completely foreign place where he would be definitely looked down upon. The Mo family already had a bad public opinion. Mxy’s mother was the daughter of a servant of the Mo family. His social status might have been a bit better than jgy but not by much. I am pretty sure that mxy felt like he was walking on eggshells the whole time. It would have been way too easy for jgy to win over his trust and to isolate him from the others as someone who had a nice and reassuring presence and was also from the lower strata of society and wasn’t looking down at him. Lanling’s hostile environment would’ve definitely helped jgy with this. 

And after cutting off mxy from all the other people, how easy would it have been for jgy to turn around and lie about mxy to everyone else? Jgy may not have been highly regarded by his “family” but he was keeping everything working and talking and making "connections" with other people for years now. Other people noticed and appreciated him (including Wei Wuxian in his first life time.). Jgy can also put on a good show. People would listen to him and believe him. We also know that jgy was already wary of jgs bringing in other illegitimate sons to prevent him from becoming the heir. Jgy would have definitely planned to drive mxy away since the moment he set foot in Carp tower. Mxy probably never stood a chance.

And mxy would have no one to support him or to clear his name. Because he would have only been around jgy (more reason for people to believe that he was into jgy). There was no way for people to believe that mxy was innocent.

But going back to the speculations about mxy being open/loud about being into men being the factor that makes people believe jgy; it's not possible.

The society in MDZS is homophobic. Let’s leave aside historical accuracy because MXTX clearly mentioned in the author’s note that MDZS wasn’t supposed to be historically accurate. Even Wangxian, who seem to be completely unbothered by the homophobia around them, elope and get married. As one does when their marriage is likely forbidden. Not to mention that they are both powerful individuals with immense popularity and are revered or feared by so many and no one would dare oppose them, except close family. (No but fr imagine walking up to the inventor of modao and being “eww u like guys??” and thinking that you can survive that given the reputation that the Yiling Lazhou has. And I think its pretty self explanatory by the way that no one questions Lan Wangji when he drags “mxy” around that no one dares to bring it up.) And later they are shown being apprehensive about the acceptance of their marriage. The banquet extra shows that their marriage is accepted by Gusu Lan because Wei Wuxian sits beside Lan Wangji in it, but before that lwj was called in by Lan Qiren and most probably given another earful along with the grudging acceptance and neither do the other people at the banquet look very happy about wwx’s presence there. Yes, there is also the possibility that all of this was because wwx is the “big bad” who invented modao (and this definitely contributed to the Lan clan being against the marriage as well) but if it was only that, then the prime objective should have been clearing wwx’s name and making people believe that he’s changed for the better, or something idk. But the way wangxian deal with the unacceptance of their relationship seems like the more dominant issue is homophobia.

We also have wwx using the cover of being gay to act up based on the misguided opinions that other people have about queer people (queer people being pervy predators, etc) to make others feel disgusted and make them stay away from him so that he can avoid suspicion. And it works! Because the people are homophobic.

Anyway, that leaves no room for someone from mxy’s hierarchy to walk around freely proclaiming that he likes men without being shunned. It would cut his ticket to the throne real quick as well. Whatever he was doing at Lanling, he wasn’t doing that. (Sidenote: no one in Mo village calls mxy slurs or talks about him being a predator they all seem to be preoccupied with his lunacy and not his sexuality. Which is certainly interesting to note.)

 (Also there is a very neat irony in jgy lying about his half brother harassing him while he’s the one who is married to his own half sister. So yeah.)

[cqlfeels]

Hi! I really like your blog and your takes, they're so good!!! I've been wondering, why do you think jc didn't marry? Like I have some theories regarding his character and all, but mostly, it doesn't seem to make sense in a political way? Like... He's the last one of his clan, which is one of the major clans, and which also had to be rebuild from its ashes, like shouldn't one of his first priorities be to leave a clear heir from his lineage? And maybe even to ensure another alliance with another clan besides the Jin? Like with Zewu Jun I can at least say that sizhui could be the lan heir, but jc is in his thirties and has a dangerous job. Can't wait to hear your thoughts :)

First of all, you're super nice and I hope you're having a great day 🥺

Okay so my gut feeling is to go "MXTX didn't want to write that." Which I know is an evasive answer! But the thing is.... That's not just a JC problem. Nobody seems to care about heirs in this story, istg. LXC does everything for his sect except get married and get an heir (LWJ is his heir, but he's a bad option for lots of reasons.) NMJ knows he's going to die and still doesn't try and get a kid. NHS doesn't have a heir at all, I don't think, not even like a cousin or whatever? JGY is leaving the sect to his nephew, which we the audience know the true reasons for, but the other characters don't seem to find it weird. JC can't leave his sect to JL so why isn't he trying to get married?? It's just. Nobody wants heirs istg. MXTX didn't want to create characters who'd add nothing to the story besides being someone's wife, I think. Plus, this being danmei, even het males are frequently Hot And Single™️ because genre tropes.

Barring this Doylist reasoning, what can we do in the way of a Watsonian explanation?

In general, I try to read into a text what the text tells me to read into it. So even if my gut feeling is "Wth, this is super weird!!" given how widespread this seems to be and how the characters all seem to act like that's normal, I'm gonna guess that for whatever reason, that's not that big of a deal in this universe. Maybe although MDZS cultivators aren't immortal they do live longer and so it's become a trend in the Sunshot generation to settle down later than usual because they want to focus on politics for a while? That's not usually how wars work in the real world, but this isn't real life, so it might be possible.

Now as far as JC goes, I don't think he's going to marry for love - he's going to marry to advance his sect's interests. Perhaps he feels this is a card he wants up his sleeve for as long as he can keep it, so that he plays it at a time when it's actually crucial instead of a wasted move?

And there is also JL to consider - once he has a child of his own, he cannot afford to give JL the same attention he does now. I mean. He can. But I doubt he wants JL to be the WWX to his kid's JC - "No son I don't like A-Ling better, it's just that he reminds me of someone I've lost, and also because he's not my heir I can spoil him in a way I can't spoil you"........ is not a conversation I think JC wants to have. Nor does he want to neglect JL in favor of his kid, I think, so that's a situation that'd require some finesse JC probably doesn't wanna bother with right now.

I also don't think JC likes the idea of marriage in general, but I'm pretty sure he'd put aside his preferences for the good of the sect, so again: I just don't think there's been a marriage of convenience with enough perks for it to justify him going for it, you know? What would be perks good enough for him? I honestly have no idea. I enjoy reading about politics but I don't have a good head for this kind of thing lol

I do think he's most certainly going to get married in the future, though. He's very dutiful to his family, and part of traditional Chinese filial piety is to have sons to carry your own father's legacy, and I don't think JC would be too comfortable ignoring that, even if he technically has the possibility of naming a disciple his heir.

[lancabbage]

Yes, he most certainly did!

Stop making it out the Jiang sect was some feeble sect. By the time WWX liberated the Wen remnants the sect was absolutely thriving!! It's in the text, READ it. The fact the Jiang sect was considered one of the four great sects is proof enough.

On top of that JC had an opportunity to tell everyone that HE owed the Wens WWX had saved a life debt. LXC was defending the Wens prior to JC not taking the opportunity to speak up - so he had an ally just waiting to be on his side. Neither of the other two sects would argue with JC admitting that this faction of the sect actually saved his life and brought his parents remains back for him. He was honor bound and that would have been tolerated at the very least. Especially by NMJ who would see such a thing as JCs duty.

The three zun were just two sect leaders and a Jin lackey, JGY had no clout in the sect at all until JZX died and his father was sick. So any bs about the three sects being tight and leaving JC out is just incorrect. Prior to JGY taking over, JC even ensured a tie between his sect and the Jin sect by encouraging JYL and JZX to get together having noticed JZXs pursuit. So this pitiful image of a sect on the bones of its arse without any room to argue and defend is completely fabricated by JC stans unwilling to read and actually acknowledge the text.

Also, I think everyone forgets that prior to JC giving WWX an unfair ultimatum, the Jiang sect were actually the most powerful thanks to WWX and his limitless army of the dead. Not to mention the tiger seal which everyone was equally parts petrified and envious of. If the Jiang sect had justified WWX's actions, that would have been it.

If JC had said, the Wens he had saved are the old, weak and young. Alongside LXCs comments around them not being involved that would have been it. He could have invited them to see! To bring LXC with him as a mutual observer to vouch for everything. Or even LQR! This was very much an option, JC just let resentment, hatred and his jealousy and insecurity around WWX get the better of him.

Btw your math is off... It's been years since the Wens attacked Lotus Pier, JC is not a teenager lmfao. He's 20/21. You're aware in ancient China (at some point) and the MDZS universe, 15 was the age of a boy becoming a man? Hence the fact they can get married... Have kids... receive a courtesy name... But either way, the Jiang sect wasn't being run by a teenager at the time in question. Please get your facts right. Also, the Lan sect was led by a teenager as well, at the same time JC took over his sect.

The clans weren't actively pushing them towards conflict, only the Jin sect was. LXC was ready to take his side, already trying to defend them without any support. NMJ literally offered JC the opportunity to explain the situation, but JC did not take it.

JC wasn't helping WWX in any way by abandoning him and taking away any protection the sect could have offered. He threw him and the Wens to the wolves in an act of utter betrayal. The stabbing? That wasn't agreed you know? JC just did that because he wanted to do so, to take his frustration out on WWX.

Lmfao "ease the pressure off WWX" - fine job he did of that!!! Oh please, you're making my sides hurt. Declaring WWX as the enemy of the whole cultivation world eased any pressure? Don't be so ridiculous! Lol!

I love how you have said JC was trying to keep his clan out of the other sects control when no one cared other than the Jins and the dude actively tried to create a tie with them!!!! Hahaha! He was marrying his sister off to them lol!

Oh... I can't anymore, this the original post above is just ludicrous, unfound and immature ramblings of someone who simply cannot read.

does jiang cheng have a choice?

antis hate Jiang Cheng for ‘abandoning’ Wei Wuxian, but did he realistically have any other options available? 

for my money, the non-negotiable goals for Jiang Cheng in this situation are

keep Wei Wuxian alive and not in the custody of another clan

ease the pressure from the other clans to take responsibility for/act against Wei Wuxian 

maintain the Jiang clan’s autonomy and standing amongst the clans

and the non-negotiable goals for Wei Wuxian in this situation are

keep Jiang Cheng and the Jiang clan safe, alive, and out of the direct control of other clans (especially the Jin) 

undermine Jiang Cheng’s authority as clan leader as little as possible 

keep the Wen safe, alive, and free (ish– at least as free as they are now) 

continue trying to save Wen Ning/keep him ‘alive’ once he’s revived 

do not reveal to anyone that he has lost his golden core 

do not give anyone the Yin Tiger Tally 

Wei Wuxian returning to the Jiang is off the table because he won’t leave the Wen. Wei Wuxian AND the Wen somehow coming into the custody of the Jiang isn’t possible because Jiang Cheng doesn’t have that much clout, and it’s hard to believe that Wei Wuxian would accept a situation that would necessarily have to look a lot like imprisonment for the Wen if the other clans were going to accept it. so already, the only way for Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian to both achieve some of their key goals is for Wei Wuxian to stay in the Burial Mounds with the Wen somehow– which means the only goals remaining to both of them are ensuring that the Jiang clan doesn’t get punished for that, or placed in a situation where they’re forced to act violently against Wei Wuxian/the Burial Mounds/the Wen (and yes, obviously it comes to that eventually anyway, but a lot changes first). and canon is explicitly clear that the other clans are absolutely not about to let the Jiang off the hook for what Wei Wuxian is doing. they want and need him to turn on Wei Wuxian, and if he won’t, they don’t really care about dragging this decimated, teenager-led clan down with Wei Wuxian. 

the Jiang clan has nothing at this point, barely even a home. even if the other clans were open to reaching a compromise in terms of the Wei Wuxian situation, who on earth is going to believe him if he says, I’ve got the Wei Wuxian situation handled, I’m going to leave him in the Burial Mounds and keep an eye on him, he’s my problem not yours? 

and that’s the final, essential element– Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are not in a fair fight. the other clans are actively pushing them towards conflict, and won’t accept any outcome besides a complete break, or a complete capitulation by Wei Wuxian. 

maybe I’m just not feeling creative today, but I genuinely can’t come up with a single other solution beyond the one that the two of them find and implement in canon– a fake schism and staged fight. 

[tanoraqui]

tanoraqui

Still thinking about an au in which for some reason WWX and the Wens are left to just live peacefully on the creepy death mountain - some detente wherein they don’t leave the mountain ever and in exchange no one tries to visit ever. Borders patrolled by corpses and sect disciples. So A-Yuan grows up raised kind of collectively but mostly by WWX and Wen Qing (the one most likely to tell WWX that he’s doing it wrong), and learns healing-focused spiritual cultivation AND demonic cultivation, and then at some point starts sneaking out to be the terrifying force of righteous kindness he was always going to be

tanoraqui

Righteous kindness but also, like, having picked up WWX’s cavalier confidence (or at least some of the ability to fake it) and Wen Qing’s general attitude of Do No Harm But Take No Shit

Like IMAGINE

tanoraqui

In this au, despite the strict border-by-mutual-agreement that’s the only reason somehow no ones tried to attack, LWJ sneaks in like one a year so he and WWX can make eyes at one another but not actually say anything ever, and Wen Qing and LXC are both EXHAUSTED bc both their dumb little brothers (WWX is a sibling by adoption now don’t @ me) mope for like a week after EVERY SINGLE TIME THIS HAPPENS, and it’s been /over ten years/.

tanoraqui

Meanwhile Jiang YanLi and JZX are FINE, and JYL somehow keeps up some sort of correspondence with WWX - or at least, he’s faithfully managed to send a birthday present for Jin Ling every single year, and every time, JYL makes her son write a thank-you note and bribes some series of people to get it smuggled back to Yiling

tanoraqui

...which means, honestly, that Jin Ling is probably wildly curious about his uncle the evil demonic cultivator kept trapped within the terrible ghost mountain by the forces of Good and Right, and WILL sneak out one day to try to visit. Optimally, obviously, at the same time Wen Yuan is sneaking out to see the non-mountain world

tanoraqui

The optimal plot is that Wen Yuan ropes Jin Ling into helping him set up WWX and LWJ, because he, too, is exasperated at this point, and Jin Ling ropes Wen Yuan into arranging like a parent trap reunion for the Jiang siblings, and obviously there are monsters and undead to complicate it all

tanoraqui

They kind of acquire Lan Jingyi somewhere, somehow. He’s having a blast

There is a 100% chance that the first Adult(TM) to find them is Wen Ning and they just kind of rope him into whatever the hell is going on at the time

...you know what, I think this is just a good au where JGY fucking died at some point

tanoraqui

Maybe someone threw him down the stairs again and he just broke his fucking neck. WWX is still vilified but between Jiang Cheng not really wanting to attack and Jiang (Jin?) Yanli being AGGRESSIVELY against it, and dragging JZX along with her, they’re left in peace.

tanoraqui

Oh man and Jin Ling has YOUNGER SIBLINGS in this...

Hey for u: Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing can accidentally happen while the Teens are trying to get everyone else to meet

Today at 8:42 AM

@professorsparklepants

I love this it's so goddamn wacky

tanoraqui

I just want teenager-based shenanigans ft. surprisingly competent teenagers and all the adults running around like chickens with their heads chopped off

professorsparklepants

Jingyi: why are you two more calm about this than the literal adults

Wen Yuan: have you met my dad?

tanoraqui

Also to be clear it is not at all hard to convince Wen Ning to join Team: Teenage Shenanigans, bc literally ANYONE in the Burial Mountain village would probably be down if you were like, “we’re engaged in a conspiracy to make Wei Wuxian fucking admit that he’s in love with that Lan guy who visits a couple times a year”

professorsparklepants

"This is my father, and this is his sugar daddy."

tanoraqui

I kinda wanna say he goes by “Wen Yuan” more often bc he’s 100% the baby of the entire remaining Wen clan there, but his adult name or w/e it’s called IS Wen Sizhui, because WWX asked LWJ if he had any suggestions and LWJ said this while maintaining eye contact

professorsparklepants

OH MY GOOOOOOD

tanoraqui

They meet LXC and he figures out what’s going on in like 4 minutes, despite the teens’ best attempts at obfuscation, and instead of calling anyone’s parents is like, “okay, I’m in”

professorsparklepants

#1 wingman...

tanoraqui

Jin Ling and Wen Yuan are definitely both traveling under false names, too? Wen Yuan obviously can’t admit to being a Wen and Jin Ling is making a privileged but slightly helicoptered teen’s rebellious bid for freedom

professorsparklepants

His dad is panicking at home and Yanli is like "boys need their freedom :)"

I saw a post forever ago about how Yanli would be the most hands off parent & Zixuan is an only child who would panic every time his kid fell down

tanoraqui

With a side order of “my mother is the only one who’ll say nice things about the Yiling Patriarch and she always looks sad when she does so I’m going to sneak into the Burial Mountain and either drag him out to see her or force my parents to come get me”

professorsparklepants

"I'm gonna beat up the Yiling Patriarch" "why" "he made my mom sad" "okay proceed"

tanoraqui

^ actual real conversation with WenYuan

professorsparklepants

A-Yuan then repeats the same thing to Wen Qing and she has the exact same answer, verbatim

tanoraqui

Side note: Wen Yuan has never been scared of the undead in his entire life, and probably this will lead to getting into severely life-threatening situations when he doesn’t have more backup than 2 other teenagers

professorsparklepants

Oh absolutely

professorsparklepants

He's so used to tuning out the sound of sentry corpses that one jumps on him and almost punches his lungs out

tanoraqui

Also what if he took WWX’s sword, so he looks like a proper normal cultivator - honestly, what if WWX gave him the sword when he turned 12, or whenever one customarily gives a child a sword in this world. He also has a flute stashed in his robe somewhere but he does know how to use both

tanoraqui

But also, while obviously it’s very important that this is the sword he inherited from his father, it’s never OCCURRED to him to, like, strongly associate it with WWX, in terms of “this would be a recognizable weapon”? Chenqing the flute, obviously, but WWX just left the sword on a shelf all the time

professorsparklepants

He's very good at fooling people into thinking he's a normal rogue cultivator until he busts out the flute

LOL YES

tanoraqui

So the first time someone looks at him and is like, “That is WWX’s sword” he achieves, like, “Who’s Morales? [NOT THAT DUMB]” levels of blank-brained

professorsparklepants

It like, doesn't even occur to him that this stick named whatever will be recognizable to people until it actually happens

"this is the Yiling Patriarch's sword!" "... I've never heard of him"

tanoraqui

“What sword?”

professorsparklepants

KDJAKSNJS

tanoraqui

���Oh, THIS sword? I...found it. In a stream.”

tanoraqui

Also...at some point...once the teens have admitted their identities to one another...and possibly gotten into a couple other increasingly public shenanigans...they run into a bunch of concerned people searching from the Jin or even Jiang sect - JC being there would be PERFECT - and Jin Ling is like, “aaahh, no, I don’t want to be dragged home... kidnap me.”

WY: what?

JL: pull out the flute, summon a couple corpses, shout that you’re the dread son of the Yiling Patriarch, and pretend to kidnap me

WY: ...yeah okay

AND THEN THEY DO THAT

professorsparklepants

The dumbass energy...... off the CHARTS

tanoraqui

They’re 15 and neither of them has ever faced consequences but in...actually not too different ways

They’re 15 and neither of them as ever faced consequences nor most of the real world

Oh my god is Lan Jingyi the most sensible person here

They’re going to DIE

professorsparklepants

JXHAKAJAKKQHSJA

JC and Yanli immediately see through this probably

"dumbass kid just doesn't want to go home. I'll break his legs."

tanoraqui

I think Yanli does but I have minimal faith in JC’s ability to think logically at any time

He’s still angry at WWX for leaving

professorsparklepants

Stomps to Yiling to demand his nephew back & wwx's like "lol, A-Yuan left two months ago"

Okay my shift is starting later

tanoraqui

/snort

Though, bold of you to assume that WWX isn’t also running around anxiously somewhere like “oh god, oh no, my son is missing; I must find him”

professorsparklepants

Sizhui is a responsible boy, I don't think he would leave without telling at least ONE person where he was going

tanoraqui

Ok but it was Wen Qing who thinks it’s good for WWX’s health to stop brooding and go run around like a headless chicken instead, optimally if he runs into his totally-not-a-boyfriend-Hahahaha-why-would-you-say-that

Alternately it was, like, Granny, which, ditto

No one on this mountain is going to stop WWX from going out to cause trouble and hopefully get laid, is my point

tanoraqui

Also, the cultivation world has been basically at peace for 13 years and the reason is that this is an ideal AU where JGY is dead and whenever trouble starts to stir politically, NHS and JYL meet eyes across the room and mentally Rock Paper Scissors over who has to manipulate everyone into calming the fuck down

Neither of them actually wants this job; they’re just good at it and recognize both those aspects in each other

professorsparklepants

LOLOLOL

That is.... so goddamn in character

tanoraqui

concept: JYL and NHS are friends and no one else understands it, or attributes it to JYL just being that nice, bc NHS still generally acts useless

professorsparklepants

Nhs actively wants to be useless and life is conspiring to make sure he can't

tanoraqui

a little less dramatically useless, but why ruin a good thing when you're having fun and it's useful

professorsparklepants

Lol

tanoraqui

but JYL fucking identified him as Actually Competent one time when he couldn't hide it, so now sometimes they get tea together and bitch about politics and stupid people

professorsparklepants

He's the only person who can correctly identify when she's talking shit about people, because it's VERY subtle and her brothers & husband are too busy thinking she hung the moon to notice

tanoraqui

JYL striding into Nie sect HQ (whatever it's called) and tossing her coat over a chair. "You would not BELIEVE what my brothers are doing now."

NHS: *probably knows, because he's found that the minor investment of effort in maintaining a very good spy network pays major dividends in helping him avoid greater work* *immediately sits up and pours her a cup of very expensive tea* Oh, girl, dish.

professorsparklepants

Question: are they also friends with lwj...

tanoraqui

yes but he's obviously not invited to hte political gossip sessions

professorsparklepants

I'm trying to imagine lwj making eye contact with them at some meeting his brother dragged him to and both of them struggling not to break into hysterics

tanoraqui

but they both know that he sneaks into Yiling to visit WWX a few times a year, and every single time, JYL sits him down within a couple weeks and aggressively debriefs him as to her brother's condition

professorsparklepants

I'm sure she tried to get him to take treats in

tanoraqui

for sure

it's hopeless, though, bc there's no really predicting WHEN he'll go? It's basically just "every 4-6 months when LWJ's resolve breaks"

professorsparklepants

Too bad she's not a stress quilter instead of a stress baker

tanoraqui

she gets him to go at an actual arranged time, bearing pork soup, like once, for WWX's 30th birthday or something

professorsparklepants

:)

tanoraqui

omg lit brain: LWJ of course is hte WORST for getting gossip, but JYL has pieced together a reasonable amount about the people her idiot baby brother (#2) is now living with. And she's mildly despairing as to idiot baby brother #1's ongoing refusal to get married and have an heir or three. So she, if not actively connives, then certainly siezes the first available opportunity to set Jiang Cheng up with Wen Qing

tanoraqui

basically, this au is PEAK romcom

tanoraqui

...also, for max happiness, i'd like to think that WWX made some strategic raids to rescue additional Wen refugees and bring them back, so there's a properly populated village and they didn't all just die

professorsparklepants

!!!

Good... Good thoughts

Good because 1. more people die and 2. The Yiling Patriarch will attack your village and steal your people away!

tanoraqui

(romcom being exclusively adults-focussed; the teens initiate it all but Jin Ling and Wen Yuan are both so delighted to have an Additional (But Cooler) Family Member that they comfortably cousinzone each other instantly)

professorsparklepants

*nice*

tanoraqui

...i feel like i keep characterizing Jin Ling as an only child, when really he ought to have a small horde of siblings

maybe they just...couldn't conceive more. shit happens. pregnancy is hard.

professorsparklepants

That happens sometimes