#i have trouble writing wen *not* killing anyone it's like her go-to

[shivunin]

Lock and Key

(Arianwen Tabris/Zevran | 2,298 Words | Hurt/Comfort | CW: Blood, brief references to torture and broken bones)

The torture, Zevran thought cynically, truly left something to be desired. 

Rather, he seemed to recall—when he’d been a young Crow, there’d been racks, burning oil, things hammered between one’s toes…But this? Breaking his fingers? Slapping him around?

It lacked  forethought.

It lacked…panache.

“I do not mean to complain,” Zevran told his torturer, spitting out a mouthful of blood, “But have you done this before?”

“What?” the hooded figure snarled, only their mouth and jaw visible beyond the hood and fabric they were swathed in. 

“Mmm,” Zevran said, peering up at them through one swollen eye, “It is only that you are…how shall I say it? Trying too hard, you understand? Most torturers—they adopt a certain style, a way of getting things done, and you seem—”

The figure reared back and kicked him in the chest. His lungs struggled to inflate for a moment, and when they did Zevran coughed convulsively. 

“Like that,” he wheezed, while the torturer stomped over to a small table of metal implements, “There is no sense of precision. You might have just stopped my heart, friend, and then where would you be? Luckily for you, I am made of sterner stuff than that.”

“Do you ever stop talking?” 

The voice came not from the figure to his left, but from above. It echoed against the far ceiling and the stone walls, spreading until it was almost impossible to tell where it had come from. 

Zevran, beaten and breathless, stretched his bloodied mouth into a crooked smile. 

“Ah,” he told the hooded figure, “I am terribly sorry for what is about to happen to you.”

The torturer, alarmed, snatched a blade from the table and hurled it into the darkness above the rafters. There was no sound; not the thud of the blade in flesh or wood, nor the sound of metal clattering to the ground. Half a second later, the blade whistled back down, thudding into the flesh of the cloaked figure’s arm. 

“Your aim is lacking,” the voice from above said.

“I said precisely the same thing, mi vida,” Zevran said, at long last allowing his head to fall back against the wooden back of the chair he was tied to, “I am sorry to say it, but there is a certain lack of professionalism at play here.”

“You shut up,” she said, and Zevran smiled, “I mean it. The smile, too. Flames, I could kill you.”

“It would not take much doing at the moment,” he told her. 

As they spoke, the torturer ripped the blade from their shoulder with a grunt of pain (a bad idea, that; anyone could have told them that it was wiser to leave the thing in place until a healer could take a look at it). 

“Show yourself, coward,” the torturer snarled, taking several more blades from the table and staring up at the ceiling. They turned slowly, as if trying to spot the shape of their assailant against the darkness of the ceiling.

If he’d been in a more charitable mood, Zevran might have told them it was pointless. 

Indeed, as he thought so, a low laugh came from above, and there was a clatter in the far corner, almost directly behind the torturer. The torturer spun, already throwing a blade toward the source of the noise. As soon as they turned, a cloaked figure dropped from the rafters soundlessly, thrust a dagger into the place where the torturer’s kidney ought to be, and vaulted back up into the ceiling again. 

“You know,” she said above him, “I think it’s more cowardly to beat a bound man. But that’s just me.”

A ring of keys fell from the ceiling and into Zevran’s lap. Of course; that was why she hadn’t killed his tormentor outright. She meant for him to do it instead. Balance, retribution; in her way, his Arianwen was all about balance. If he’d had the energy, Zevran would have thanked her for the effort and explained why he wouldn’t be doing that. It was hard to turn a key, after all, when most of one’s fingers were broken. 

He didn’t hear her move; he supposed the torturer didn’t, either, because Wen swung down, kicked the large human into the table, and vanished again before the fallen figure could get their bearings again. 

Something soft touched his wrist, bound behind him, and Zevran felt a quiet, shuddering breath at his back. She was going to be very cross with him as soon as she took care of their present company; Zevran winced at the thought, then hissed between his teeth when the motion reopened the slice over his eyebrow. 

This time, when Arianwen moved away from him, Zevran could hear her; that could only be on purpose. The torturer heard it too, and turned to face her as she cast off the deep blue cloak, variegated with grey and black around the hem. Arianwen stood before him revealed at last, her long braid hanging down her back, her armor blue and silver and gleaming in the light of the brazier. Zevran smiled; it was a fool’s smile, punch-drunk and high from his own relief, but…well. It was just so good to see her. It’d been too long. Too many days without feeling her at in his arms, too many days fighting himself to keep from returning to her side. 

“I was going to let him have you,” she said, “Or, if he allowed it, I was going to take my time. Fortunately for you, you’ve made me very, very angry. This’ll be quick.”

The torturer didn’t answer; they bent their head and ran, aiming right for her. Wen didn’t move for a long time—almost too long—and stepped aside at the last moment, exerting precisely as much effort as she needed to get out of the way. It looked, Zevran thought, turning his head as best he could to watch, like she simply floated away from him, like a feather in the breeze. The torturer rammed their injured shoulder into a column and let out a strangled shout. 

“Don’t worry,” Wen said to Zevran as she passed, “The building’s empty.”

“There were at least thirty—” he began, and interrupted himself with a cough. 

“As I said,” the Warden answered, casually lifting an iron from the fire and striding past, “The building is empty. Don’t worry. I’ll be quick.”

There were sounds that followed her statement, but he could not see their source. He didn’t need to know what she was doing, and he had the sense that not every time he closed his eyes lasted as long as a blink. Likely, that was not a good sign

“Zevran. Look at me, you fool.”

His eye fluttered open—the other seemed stuck shut—and Wen bent before him, her face beatific in its joy. Blood dripped from her ears and clumped in her hair, but she’d wiped her face clean, if the smears along her jaw were any clue. Zevran tried to smile up at her and was mostly successful. 

“I knew you would come.”

“You’re an idiot. I don’t know why I put up with you. That letter was—” she wound up the sentence with a sharp click of the teeth instead of any descriptors, but after a moment the blissful look crept back into her eyes. 

“Take your health potion like a good boy, hm? And I’ll haul you back to the safe house.”

Zevran might have made a crack about her wording, but as soon as he opened his mouth she pressed the cold glass rim of a vial in between his teeth and tipped it upside-down. The liquid was bitter and cold. Though there was a faint aftertaste of elfroot it was most certainly not a health potion.

“Wen—?” he gasped, and the room faded to black. 

|

Arianwen had been angry very often in her life. She enjoyed it, actually. There was a clarity of purpose to rage that most of the rest of life really seemed to lack. It was like…like crossing rooftops on a wire. Rage gave one a single clear path, and if one had the means to follow it things usually turned out alright in the end. 

But now—now her old friend turned on her, hounded her steps. 

Killing so many had been good enough in the moment, of course, but Zevran had needed to be unconscious for what came next, and she hadn’t wanted to give him the chance to talk her out of it. Now, all she could do was wait; there was nobody left to kill, and Zevran was not awake to argue with. As she paced the room, rage paced with her, shadowing her steps and clouding her concentration.

She crossed the room to open the window now, for the room was more or less empty of personality and furniture save an end table, a bed, and a chair. Zevran slept in the bed, his chest rising and falling easily. Few of his wounds would scar, not that he’d care about such things. He’d gained tattoos since she’d last seen him some…oh, had it been five months already? It felt like years. 

This waiting. 

Wen braced her hands on the windowsill, her fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm, and then she turned back to the bed. 

Maker damn him, she loved the man. She’d kill a dozen times as many for him with pleasure, but seeing him hurt like this was—it was—

“Mi vida,” he murmured to her left, and Wen spun on her heel to look at him, “And here I had thought you were some sort of dream.”

She crossed to the side of the bed, her heart in her throat. She ought to say…she ought to tell him what an idiot he was. She ought to tell him off; she’d certainly thought of doing so enough times. But words escaped her now, and when he lifted his hand from the bed it was to wipe the moisture from her cheek. 

“Ah,” he said, wincing when he lifted himself onto one elbow, “No, my Arianwen, no; do not cry for me. I cannot—”

“Why are you trying to get yourself killed?” she asked, and rage took her hand again, gave her the focus to keep talking. 

“I am not—” he began, frowning, but she interrupted him. 

“When will it be enough, Zev? Do you want to lead the Crows? Kill everyone who hurt you, who bought other kids like you? Do you want to be the King of Antiva? What? Because I can’t keep—can’t keep seeing you like this. If you need help, I will help; if you want me out of your life, then tell me to leave. But I can’t—”

She was crying again—so stupid. She hadn’t cried in years, and certainly never over him. He was staring at her with a sort of stunned horror that she might, if she’d had any sort of composure, have recognized better. It was the same face she was making, after all. 

Don’t leave me, she wanted to tell him; as she wanted to tell him every time he disappeared onto a boat. But she’d been too proud to force him into a cage when he wanted the sky, so she’d always turned away instead.

“What do you think I should do?” he asked. 

The hand wet with her tears fell away to the sheets of the bed. 

For one dizzy, breathless moment, she wished he’d stayed asleep a little longer, given her more time to find the right words. But she…she….

“I want you to marry me,” she said, and it was already too late to take back. His mouth fell open, lips moving as if to speak, but nothing came out. 

“Marry me,” she said again, grasping his hand in both of hers, “Tell me you want to live, and you want to live with me. Travel if you have to, but come home again. Live with me; be mine and let me be yours. I want a life, Zevran. I want a life for both of us.”

She searched his face, her heart racing harder than it had killing an entire house full of Crows on her way to her captured lover. Zevran stared at her, and slowly, slowly, a smile wrinkled the space on either side of his eyes. 

“Yes.”

Wen blinked and squeezed his hand. 

“Yes? You mean that? You’re not just—you aren’t going to take it back?”

“Maker’s pierced navel,” he said, struggling into a sitting position, “You do not believe me? And you were so persuasive, too.”

“No, I—” She clamped her mouth shut again and shook her head, “Yes, Zev?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes, of course, you beautiful murderess.” 

She didn’t mean to lunge for him; would’ve thought better of it if she’d had the wherewithal. But all at once she was in his arms, her own wrapped tight around his neck, and both of them rocked back with the force of it. 

“I love you,” she said into the salty skin of his neck, and kissed him there for good measure, “I love you. I love you.”

“I love you,” he murmured back, and inhaled sharply, “Ah—I should have known you would say something first.”

“I knew you wouldn’t want to force me,” she told him, but without any heat behind it. Her anger had faded away between one step and the next, gone in a breath and only a memory now. 

“If you’d died,” she told him, eyes squeezed shut, breathing him in, “I would’ve killed you.”

His laugh was uneven, a little breathless, and likely that meant she’d need to let go of him soon. But when his words came, they were certain. 

“Yes, I know,” Zevran said, “I love you for that, too.”

(For @14daysdalovers day 10: Captured)

[mejomonster]

A dream of splendor ep 2

I Love that she's trying to escape, wise, and he throws a poison dart at her so she'll have to save him. It's in character for both: she'd leave him to die if she didn't need him to live, but now that she does need him she's determined enough she'll be able to save them. He knows he needs to make her life and death tied to his or she'll leave him, and knows she's a determined individual and he's better off wirh her than alone.

Again. These are two very strong personalities and while they're not compatible yet lol, they're interesting to see clash in scenes. They're also interesting so far (thankfully) for rhe writing to continue picking the Brave and Better writing choice of writing according to their personalities, rather than writing them wrong to "make a trope work." In many other shows, she'd save him out of some mercy or kindness or naivety, or he'd plead with her but not poison her. But she left that lord and his family to die, she's not the Person who'd save an injured man with a baggage of trouble. He's calculating and cruel to everyone and does The Most to accomplish his ends, he wouldn't leave his life to the Chance of her help - he'd threaten her so she has no choice but the outcome he wants. I love that the writing so far is going this direction.

Also again. Love the commitment to killing this noble family, to the fight that was cool but also Our Main Guy as Living Devil as he is? Still was struggling to win let alone survive. It shows he's human, no one is super human in this, and he's in danger as much as anyone else in this world. His strength/talent is not So Great as to be so fantastical I don't have to even care if there's action. There's actual risk to each dangerous thing he does. I like this. While it's okay to have Super Fantastical characters (like wen kexing in word of honor rarely Actually has to worry about losing or being in danger unless he's literally fighting Everyone at once), I like when historical dramas I feel the Stakes. I ALSO love that this means we got an action scene in ep 1 and 2!!! You know me. I love action. If the show keeps including it I'll definitely keep watching!!

I love how the thing the main leads have in common? It's intelligence of the Real World dangers, and determination. Of course in a life and death situation like this they could cooperate-its the only area we know of so far where they're likely to take similar actions. This will be fun to watch

[fincalinde]

☕ Nie Mingjue appreciated Meng Yao's competence, but even when their relationship was good, it was never a personal relationships

In a shocking turn of events, I agree with you. And though my response is monstrously late (over a year?), I have taken the time to go through their relationship from start to finish to back us both up. I wouldn't consider this comprehensive, but it's an overview that makes a reasonable starting point and if anyone wants me to write an entire thesis they'll need to pay me.

Stage I

NMJ notices JGY's competence as the lowliest of recruits tasked with cleaning up the battlefield. I actually think this is a great moment because we really see that at this stage of the war NMJ is still capable of recognising his own worst impulses and mitigating them somewhat, as he does when he terrifies the commoner woman and her child. Anyway, the first thing he appreciates about JGY is unequivocally his competence.

Then NMJ overhears the cruel cave gossip. Because he already has his eye on JGY and because he's outraged by the behaviour of his cultivators, he elevates JGY on the spot. His intentions are very good here because he wants to reward JGY's performance and teach the other cultivators a lesson. But the trouble is that JGY's promotion is then explicitly tied to their own humiliation in the mind of those cultivators. So poor JGY is off to a bad start, and the text notes that he is painfully aware of this while NMJ is oblivious. This scene is unequivocally an interaction between a social superior and a subordinate.

Despite the lack of finesse in the execution, JGY is deeply grateful and reiterates his awareness of his debt to NMJ more than once thereafter. But chronologically the next time we see JGY and NMJ interact is when LXC arrives at Hejian. We're told that due to the war the boundaries between duties are somewhat blurred and thus even though JGY is NMJ's deputy he serves the tea. That's also consistent with JGY's pattern of making himself indispensible to those around him. Nothing in this scene indicates anything other than the relationship between a clan leader and a trusted and competent subordinate. I won't get into the teacups moment because NMJ is just generally oblivious to the trials those around him must endure, and I don't think it's specific to JGY even if JGY is most severely affected. (Then again, if NMJ did notice he would probably mishandle it a la the cave incident.)

Next is NMJ eavesdropping on Xiyao and interrupting them. As is typical of him at this point, his intentions are good. And, helpfully, he explains his own motives. He doesn't say anything about friendship. He says that JGY's conduct/character is to his liking. In other words, he doesn't like JGY so much as he approves of him. This is very much the attitude of a superior to their subordinate. And JGY responds with the appropriate respect and gratitude of a subordinate, too. The fact that the three of them then sit and converse pleasantly is in large part due to the presence of LXC, who is friends with both and is bridging the gap. And I am sure that NMJ and JGY have had pleasant conversations without LXC around, but to me it seems clear their relationship is very firmly situated in their respective roles.

Stage II

NMJ comes across JGY killing the Jin commander at Langya in a way that makes it clear he is intending to frame the Wen for it. NMJ is enraged. He listens to JGY's explanation but doesn't consider it sufficient, and very much acts as though he still has a right to command JGY. I actually think it's fair enough that if anyone sees someone ostensibly committing a murder it's pretty natural to tell them to turn themselves in, and even in this particularly violent and dangerous society JGY's actions are towards the extreme end (though hardly unique!). But NMJ doesn't listen to JGY pointing out that his life with the Jin is intolerable and his father will be glad to have an excuse to dispose of him if he turns himself in.

This is not a conversation between two friends misunderstanding each other. This is a former subordinate pleading with his former master who still holds very real power over him. NMJ's disappointment in JGY is described very much in terms of being angry and it's reasonable to read this as being hurt (in his own way) that someone he approved of doesn't meet his personal standards after all. I could spend a long time unpicking this scene because I have thoughts and a half on it, but I'll just note again that this entire incident is firmly situated in superior/subordinate territory, particularly in regard to NMJ's feelings about JGY not acting like a proper subordinate.

After this incident we are again told very clearly exactly how NMJ feels about the matter (EXR, Ch. 48):

Nie Mingjue was never close to people. He rarely opened up to anyone. Though he finally managed to obtain a competent, trustworthy subordinate, whose character and capabilities he approved, he found that the subordinate's true colors were nothing like what he had thought they were. It was only natural that his reaction was so extreme.

Subordinate. Subordinate, subordinate, subordinate. Yes NMJ has been close to JGY and opened up to him, as one must by necessity open up to a trusted aide. But he thinks of JGY as a subordinate and yet again we have that key word: approve. He doesn't like JGY. He approves of him. And once that approval is gone, an even deeper and more implacable disapproval takes its place.

We aren't directly told JGY's feelings on the matter but I think those can be summed up with one observation: he saves NMJ's life in Qishan. And he knows NMJ. He knows it would be of vast personal benefit to himself to let NMJ die. But JGY remembers when he owes people, and he owes NMJ big time for giving him that chance originally. Again, remember that JGY always frames his gratitude towards NMJ as a subordinate who was given a chance by a superior. There is never any mention that this develops into a friendship.

Stage III

NMJ doesn't kill JGY in Qishan partly because LXC intervenes and partly because he decides to give JGY another chance to prove himself. Let me harp on this again: he grants JGY a reprieve as a superior giving a wayward subordinate another chance, and JGY throws himself on NMJ's mercy in a similar vein. This is JGY—if there had been a former friendship to invoke in an attempt to save his own life, he would certainly have done so.

This is all consistent with NMJ's reason for entering into the sworn brotherhood. He wants to be able to tell JGY what to do, and because by the rules of their society he can no longer do that as a superior, he is trying to game his way in via becoming JGY's elder brother. Of course NMJ consistently fails to accept that actually by all the conventions of their society JGY is accountable to JGS and not to him, but the point is not reality. The point is his motive. NMJ isn't looking to recapture a friendship or keep a former friend accountable, because JGY was never his friend. Yes, JGY is now his brother. But he doesn't treat JGY as his brother; the brotherhood is just the means by which he can treat JGY as a subordinate again. And JGY is trying to balance this as best he can, but the difference between his ongoing fear of NMJ and his affection for LXC is stark.

Stage IV

I'm going to touch on the stair kick and Cleansing/Turmoil mostly in order to emphasise that this is not a disintegrating friendship. JGY is once again appealing to NMJ as a subordinate in an impossible position, and NMJ is continuing to bull in a china shop his way through the conversation by refusing to take JGY's difficult situation into account and making things even worse by trying to directly countermand orders JGY has had from his own father. NMJ says the worst thing anyone could ever say to JGY when he both denigrates his mother and proves definitively that his claims to only care about JGY's actions not his background were just hypocrisy. And what is it that pushes NMJ over the edge so that he says what he really thinks?

It's the fact that JGY asserts himself as NMJ's equal.

Yes NMJ points out the terrible things JGY has done. But when all is said and done, when he kicks JGY down the stairs he doesn't bring up JGY's actions. He brings up his parentage.

Because NMJ does think he is better than JGY, not just through his actions but due to his birth. And JGY fundamentally does not agree with that. This is the point at which JGY accepts that he's going to have to do as his father wants and kill NMJ, and the point at which I think he loses all hope of ever regaining NMJ's approval. Not only does JGY no longer need NMJ's approval, but NMJ has violated the terms of the oath they swore to form their brotherhood and he has negated the debt JGY owes him from when he was first elevated.

The last time we see NMJ and JGY in the same place while they're both alive, NMJ is once again eavesdropping (very honourable, Chifeng-zun). I do think it's telling that NMJ is so deeply outraged that JGY is having actually a fairly mild vent at LXC (an LXC who is gently pushing back on said venting in point of fact); once again, NMJ does not think that JGY has a right to be dissatisfied with his lot or to express his unhappiness with the situation in private. If he were actually paying attention it would be very clear that LXC is not nodding along and being brainwashed, but is trying to encourage JGY to be optimistic and keep trying. 

I don't think there's a real need to dig too much into this because these are NMJ's last moments and at this point he's so consumed by the sabre spirit that he's ruled by all his worst impulses. Though he could sometimes do so in the past, he is now no longer able to rein in his worst impulses: the listening in on others, the snap judgements and hypocritical moral inflexibility, the hair-trigger temper. It's just the final, hyperviolent expression of his groundless belief he is the final authority over JGY.

Stage V

I'll keep this one short and sweet. Yes NMJ's body breaks out of its tomb, and in hunting down JGY he forces JGY to resort to dismemberment in order to survive. I could be whimsical and say that even in death NMJ thinks JGY is accountable to him! But again, all this fits the pattern of NMJ as the entitled former superior and JGY as the subordinate refusing to stay in the role he has been allocated. There were absolutely warm feelings of a kind between them once: NMJ approved of JGY and JGY was grateful to NMJ. But even when it was at its best, I would not call their relationship a friendship.

(Nor, for the record, a romance.)

[wangxianslillotus]

Au where Wei WuXian doesn't go to Nightless city after Wen Qing, Wen Ning and the remaining Wens. Instead he runs away with A-Yuan and the granny. They stay hidden for years in a humble house in between a forest and a river at the border of Qinghe Nie and LanLing, away from Yiling.

Wei Ying tries to stay away from the towns after hearing about the burial mounds being attacked, of course that there would be those who search for the stigean seal, "That Yiling laozu, he disappeared in the night! Who knows when he's going to appear again to cause more trouble!!" He hears, "He's preparing to take revenge, he hasn't learned from the last time!!" . But he doesn't want revenge, he just wants to raise A-Yuan. After that, he knows that he has to hide, and ends up avoiding all contact and interactions with the world, but he remains doing his research in demonic cultivation, enough to train and develope new things that they will need for protection, but never enough for it to attract any attention.

Granny passes away after taking care of her boys, and when they find themselves in the winter out of provisions such as food and others, Wei WuXian makes his trip to the market for the first time in almost seven years. He wears a disguise, but he can never be completely sure that they are safe. Of course, he takes his son along, because he can't leave him alone. He's never sure.

A-Yuan has come with granny before, he knows the people in town, and they pretty much adore him just as the people loved Wei WuXian at the old pier market. Wei WuXian watches him and lets him lead the little trip to town with a bright smile. They buy the necessary things for a couple of cold months, and go back home at night. But as they are leaving, they catch a glimpse of gold robes in one of the streets. Wei WuXian drags A-Yuan to a dark alley to hide, until the cultivators of LanLing pass by without noticing them. After that, they don't go to the town anymore for a while.

A-Yuan doesn't ask, he never does, he respects that his father has a very mysterious past that he wants to hide, to forget if possible, and that if something happens, he will have to run away with the stigean seal. He knows that, but being aware of the pain that crosses his father's eyes is hard. But he doesn't ask even when Wei WuXian starts to train him to be a cultivator, not just for fun anymore.

He developed a golden core very young, but never used it for anything more than some night hunts at the near forest and protection. Now, they are preparing just in case those golden robed people got closer, he knows that much.

He practices archery, calligraphy too ("A-Yuan, even if dad can't write like he draws, you should do it properly. Maybe I can't make it look good, but I know how it should look.") and his father lends him his sword from time to time, for him to learn how to transfer energy on the blade, how to fly, and how to retrieve it if he sent it flying for attack. Suibian accepts him, almost knowing that he's his owner's son. Wei WuXian teaches him everything he knows about cultivation, that is not little knowledge, on the contrary, Wei Yuan ends up learning so many things, even about different sects. His father teaches him about the Lan Sect and Jiang Sect more than any others, he hears about a big library where he used to copy 3000 rules from the Lan Sect, watched closely by the most gracious man that his father has ever seen. Wei Yuan learns that his father often thinks about this Lan man, when the moon rises fully in the night sky, drinking some alcohol if they can allow it.

He learns enough demonic cultivation too, enough to prevent accidents from happening, enough not to panic, and enough to suppress the stigean seal if needed. Of course, he can't do that alone, it's only to help his father. "Never use it, A-Yuan, you know how if feels now, so you can identify it, but never use it. You can think of better ways."

He learns about talismans, more than any other Sect may even know that exist, his father is proud of that. And he is too. His father knows so many things that A-Yuan is enchanted with everything he learns. He is a good boy.

......

When A-yuan is close to become 13, Wei WuXian goes back to the town and orders a sword for him, one similar to suibian in terms of speed and weight, but black. It was going to be ready in a month and a half, the shopkeeper said. And it was going to be expensive. But it was worth it, Wei Ying knew, anything for his little boy. Besides, winter didn't had many hunting opportunities, it was a good timing.

When the time passed, Wei WuXian took A-Yuan with him to the town. They sold some talismans during the day, bought food and some warmer clothes that would be useful since there was starting to snow already in the forest, and then, they stopped by the smithy. Wei WuXian gave his son an excited smile.

When A-Yuan received the sword, he was more than happy. He was jumping like he was five again, hugging his father like he would never let go, so happy that he cried a little. Wei WuXian laughed at him for that, but he was equally happy just by watching his son. He knew it was worth it.

On the following days, Wei WuXian trained him with his sword. He couldn't use Suibian properly since he couldn't transfer it any energy, and using resentful energy didn't work at all on the blade (he had tried, it didn't went well.) But he could use it as a normal sword, and he was good at it. Better than the good ones. They sparred until his father said it was good enough to go for a nighthunt in the following days.

Little did they know that they would split, running from a Yao that had really long claws, just as large as Suibian, and creept at fast speed. It was a dangerous one, climbing the trees and jumping at them from above. The beast followed A-Yuan at first, be could hear it growling right behind him. The boy ran away at his father's order, and the beast got distracted after a while thanks to his father's music. A-Yuan ran until stopping at the entrance of a cave, listening attentively to the dizi in the distance, just in case he heard another order from Wei WuXian.

The snow was freezing his feets, and he was already wet to the knee, some of his back too because he had rolled over avoiding the Yao's claws. The dizi went silent abruptly, but it wasn't always a bad thing. It probably meant his father had killed the beast using resentful energy. He waited for about ten minutes before deciding he would go back, but as he was about to go the way he came from, he heard steps behind.

Too close to avoid to be seen, too close to run away successfully. A-Yuan turned around, ready for a fight when he saw a boy his age, dressed in white, with a headband matching the could embroidery of his robes. A Lan. It was a Lan. They couldn't find his father.

Turns out, it was a friendly Lan, that gave him a look and then proceeded to explain that he was lost. "We were nighthunting, but I got lost following the tracks of a Yao." He had said. "Honestly, I fell into a pit when I was running away, and when I got out, it was gone. Have you seen it, perhaps?" But A-Yuan lied, said that he hadn't. That he was fighting a ghost. The ones that didn't let traces behind. At this, the Lan shivered, murmuring something about hating ghosts, and A-Yuan couldn't help it, he laughed hard. He was absolutely stressed from running, ten minutes more would probably help his limbs, he thought.

The Lan got flustered at his laugh, not used to such displays of emotions from others, but he ended up laughing too. They talked for an hour or so, until A-Yuan realized that his father must have been searching him like a madman. He apologized to the Lan boy, grabbed his sword, and run away in a hurry, leaving a very confused cultivator behind. When he arrived his home, it was almost sunrise already. Wei WuXian was waiting for him in front of the door. When he saw him appear, he run towards him and hugged him hard.

Again, A-Yuan didn't ask. He knew his father's pain without need of explanation. He hugged back, letting the bad feelings go at once. They slept side by side that night, like when A-Yuan was a toddler, holding all their memories together. Keeping them warm.

.......

A couple of months later, the spring came back, and A-Yuan was more than happy to help his father with the orchard. They played in the river too, hunted some pheasants and rabbits that started to reappear from their hibernation, and Wei WuXian allowed A-Yuan to go alone to the town. He knew it was a big thing, because his father thought of his petition for about a week before answering. He had to be careful, "there are really bad people out there, my radish." But if he could nighthunt, he could take some walks around the market and enjoy tasteful food once in a while, he thought.

In one of his expeditions to the town, he met that Lan boy again. "This one is called Lan JingYi, since you ran away last time I couldn't tell you that, but we spoke about good food, and you mentioned this inn." He said. And A-Yuan smiled. He didn't say his name, but it was enough that the owner of the inn saw him, invited them both to take a seat and eat, calling him "A-Yuan". He had to be aware from his last name.

Nonetheless, he shared with Lan JingYi a good meal, happy when his new friend complimented his good taste with food.

It was not the last time they met. Lan JingYi usually appeared at the town from time to time after sending him a letter to that inn, that the owner gave him when he arrived the town. He was happy to have a friend, so Wei WuXian allowed it. It was good that his son had a dependable friend. Even if it was dangerous, he thought that some meals and sporadic letters couldn't do any harm to anyone. As long as A-Yuan was happy, he would comply. He wanted his son to have everything.

Time passed by quickly, they knew. They sold more talismans at the market, nighthunted anything and everything that they could, shared stories about their days when they were apart, ate delicious foods at the inn sometimes, and trained. They trained a lot.

In was when they turned 15 that Lan JingYi gave A-Yuan an invitation to study at Cloud recesses.

And Wei WuXian had to decide new plans.

[simply-zhouye]

Zhou Ye: The Wonderful Ideas of Lotte Girls // Esquire Fine photoshoot & interview ~ a really wonderful interview with Yezi!

Read rough translation of interview below: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lY3oBM51ytlua7S8ZRdmlw

The lively character is like jumping candy, and the crisp voice is like summer honeydew. It can be a cute angel or a rebellious girl. Who wouldn't like a beautiful and free girl? We met Zhou Ye at a claw machine shop, and she caught the one she wanted five times!

Zhou Ye didn't laugh when shooting the magazine blockbuster, but she liked to laugh privately.

In the eyes of the people around, she is a simple and lively little girl, born optimistic, loves to joke, and loves to share all the fun and delicious. After catching up with the good-looking drama, she will also be ambitious to everyone, even if she encounters any troubles, she It will be resolved soon. She denied the title of "Girl's Heart"-when she was not working, she liked to lie at home and chase dramas, and science fiction and fantasy were her dishes. She enthusiastically gave an example. There is an American drama called "Stranger Things". It is about a little boy who disappeared in a small town in the United States. Everyone went to find him and found that there was an entrance to another world, exactly the same as this world. , But there is no one in that world. Such a story attracts her even more.

A few days ago, she took a four-day holiday, "very satisfied!" During the holiday, she made appointments with a few good friends for dinner, went to the playground, and watched dramas. If the vacation is longer, she would prefer to go home and stay with her family. Playing with mom and dad, playing with grandpa and grandmother, the family finds a beautiful place to go camping, and if you don’t go out, you can play mahjong with the whole family. She can stay away from looking at her mobile phone for a day.

Asked this girl who is not so girly what she wants, she said, "Now I want to accomplish everything in the moment, and every day will be better than the day before!"

Therefore, Zhou Ye, who hopes to be more progressive, raised his face and chatted with us about serious matters.

Before, people often said to me, "I like your performance of "Youth", but now everyone talks more about "Shanhe Ling". Let’s start the conversation with "The Order of Mountains and Rivers".

Gu Xiang in the play is a girl who is cold on the outside and warm on the inside. She helped Cao Weining, Zhang Chengling, and the singing sisters, but it didn't mean that she trusted them. She just felt that these people were very pitiful. Because Gu Xiang was picked up by her master when she was a child, she felt sorry for them and wanted to protect them.

She is defensive to everyone, and she will not trust anyone easily. In terms of character, Gu Xiang and I are a bit like. Both are more lively. What we don't quite resemble is our life experience and living environment.

When I first finished reading the script of "The Order of Mountains and Rivers", I loved Gu Xiang from the bottom of my heart. Gu Xiang grew up in Guigu where she was killed and beaten everywhere. Although she was lucky enough to meet Wen Kexing, the master who protected her, the rivers and lakes were sinister and Gu Xiang never really relaxed. Therefore, she can only protect herself by fierce methods. She looks acrimonious, slurs and curses, and she has to fight or kill at every turn. She looks very fierce and cruel, but her heart is really innocent and special. Kindness. When encountering people like Cao Weining, Zhang Chengling, and the singing sister Hua, Gu Xiang will rescue them and help them beat the gangsters. 

Many audience friends felt that the ending of Gu Xiang and Cao Weining was too miserable when they watched "The Order of Mountains and Rivers". Gu Xiang originally didn't know what the outside world was like. After she came to the world, she met Big Brother Cao, and the two people who loved each other were about to be happy. Unexpectedly, on the day of the wedding, Gu Xiang lost her lover so much that she would fight herself Life. I am also uncomfortable with this ending. It is not easy for them to get to this day. Why can't they live well? If I were to write an ending, it would definitely be two people living together happily forever.

For me, playing Gu Xiang should be more difficult than playing. This is my first time shooting a costume drama, and also my first time shooting a martial arts drama. "Shanhe Ling" really has a lot of martial arts, because it tells the story of the rivers and lakes, so I joined the group some time before I started, and learned some moves from the martial arts masters. 

In retrospect, the scene of the wedding was the most memorable. I had been shooting for three days in a row. I had been beating, killing, and hanging off Wia, and I would beat off some hair accessories from my hair. I didn't dare to hang on Wia at first, and the costume was so thick that I could easily trip on my feet. But I can’t take care of this when I shoot. This is Gu Xiang’s most emotional scene. I feel the same for Gu Xiang and can’t help crying. Until the end of my cry, I can’t tell whether my face is tears or saliva. , I hope that through this scene, everyone can feel Gu Xiang’s pain.

For me at this stage, whether it is a role that is more similar to myself or a completely different role, I am willing to give it a try. If the character of a character is very pleasing, I will have a sense of substitution when I read the script, I will like it, and I will really want to play it. 

In fact, my interest in acting began after I was in college. When I was a child, I learned piano, and I was not very sensible at that time. I thought it would be fine to play the piano every day after growing up and collect tickets. After being admitted to the Beijing Film Academy, we often watch movies. When the directors see their favorite movies, they will think "I can make such a great movie in the future". I am in the acting department, so I hope I can do it in the future. Acting in a particularly powerful movie may be the influence of the school atmosphere. I still remember that I watched some old movies when I was in school. I really liked "Scent of a Woman" and Marlon Brando. He played "The Godfather" very well.

In the film school, we had a lot of opportunities to meet the director and the crew. We tried again and again, and slowly met scenes that were willing to use our young actors, and started the road to filming. I will definitely read the script several times before filming. In addition to my own role, I have to read the whole story, write a short biography of the character, and talk to everyone at the script reading meeting. For example, when shooting "Ah Cradle", I often consulted sister Haiqing and the director. In the filming of "Youth in Youth", I would also ask the director: The girl I played has such a good family, why does she bully her classmates? The director told me that because her parents had very strict education for her, she was required to be particularly good since she was a child. She was under tremendous pressure and kept suppressing it, so she vented the pressure by bullying her classmates.

When taking the play, I don't worry about people comparing my previous works or achievements, as long as my requirements for myself will not change. My request is to do my best to shape each role. Every time I finish filming a film, I will have a certain evaluation of myself, and I will also look at other people's evaluations of me, as well as the opinions given to me by my predecessors, to integrate these. Every time, I hope I can do better next time. 

Up to now, I have been shooting for a few years, and I feel that I am not a talented actor, and I have to be a model worker. However, the sisters who brought me to the management team said that my biggest change and improvement is that I am more independent than before. When I first started filming, I would hide in the room and cry by myself every time I joined the group, especially wanting to go home.

Now I am more comfortable with the life of the crew than before. When I first joined the group, I still felt a little homesick. I hope to finish the filming soon, and become familiar with everyone. After work, I will play with the actors in the same group. When I was resting, I was playing with werewolf killing or something, so happy, I didn't want to kill it. I didn't want to be successful when I was filming "Shanhe Ling", and the same was true when filming "Ah Cradle". As actors, it seems that we can go to different places every time we film. In fact, there is not much time to spend in the local area, but we can eat a lot of local delicacies.

As I said just now, I want to do everything right now, and the current week is the best week.

 Do you often dream? Please share a dream that is more imaginative.

Zhou Ye:

I sometimes dream. Once, I dreamed that I received an acceptance letter from an owl, took the Hogwarts Express train to the magic school to learn magical magic, visited Hogsmeade Village, and met so many new friends. .

What is your dream day like? How to spend it?

Zhou Ye:

At this stage, my dream day is to sleep in late, and after waking up, I will lie in bed and watch a drama or hang out with my friends or watch a drama.

How to arrange the dream holiday? Stay at home or go out to play?

Zhou Ye:

Of course, it is best to have two days, so you can stay at home one day and go out to play one day!

What about the journey of your dreams? With whom, where to go, and how to play?

Zhou Ye:

With your family, you can go to the beach or play paragliding.

What is your dream job announcement?

Zhou Ye:

Go to Universal Studios to shoot hahahaha, I really want to go!

What kind of "dream skills" do you want to have?

Zhou Ye:

Teleport!

Which era is the dream era? why?

Zhou Ye:

Now, now is the best time. Grasp the moment.

[veliseraptor]

having trouble unsticking my brain from being glitchy as hell so...150 words meme time I guess! sometimes you just Gotta.

pretty much all yi city this time, sorry folks. send me up to three numbers and I’ll write 150 words for each number I get, on your mark get set

1. “You tell me, Xingchen. Seems to me people just make up their own rules and it depends on if they’re powerful enough to back it up.”

“Maybe sometimes,” Xiao Xingchen said after a moment. “But that doesn’t make it right.” 

Xue Yang shrugged. “I’m not saying it does,” he said. “I’m just saying it doesn’t matter.” 

“Of course it matters!” Xiao Xingchen’s voice rose. “It always matters. Whatever others do–” 

“There’s your problem, though,” Xue Yang said. “That’s what fucked you over, isn’t it? What others do. You did what you thought was right and good and what did it get you, huh? What the fuck did it get you?” 

Silence. Xue Yang fell back again, forcing his breathing to even out. Xiao Xingchen was very still, almost frozen. 

“I can’t help their actions. Only my own.” His voice was quiet, though, and Xue Yang could hear the thread of uncertainty. 

“And that turned out so well,” Xue Yang said. (the backyard is full of bones)

2. She was having a hard time looking away from the man in black - the corpse, standing there, staring. She tried to pretend he was a statue. Or a normal person just standing very still. Just Xiao-ge’s friend.

“You don’t need to be scared,” Xue Yang said abruptly. “He’s not going to do anything to you. It’s safe. Watch–” and he walked over to the man in black, reached up, and flicked his nose. A-Qing flinched, but the man didn’t. Xue Yang turned to stare in her direction. “See? Harmless.”

“I’m not scared,” a-Qing said. 

“Liar,” Xue Yang said, but he sort of smiled at her, too. A-Qing didn’t smile back and it sort of stuttered and fell off his face. (the people are gone and the place is empty)

3. He heard a groan and immediately turned toward it, quickening his pace. “My friend?” he called, to no immediate answer. 

“Aw, fuck,” he heard, after a few moments, blurry and pained. He adjusted course slightly and closed what he thought was the last of the distance before crouching down and reaching out. It was a little further than he thought, and his fingertips barely brushed fabric before it vanished. “Don’t touch me,” said the stranger, a sudden and unfamiliar edge in his voice, not quite a snarl. 

He drew his hands back, holding them with his palms up. “It’s only me,” he said. “Xiao Xingchen. Do you remember me?” 

“Yeah, I remember you,” said the stranger, but it sounded angry, hostile, and Xiao Xingchen drew back further, something tickling at the edge of his mind like a memory just out of reach. (Bedrest)

4. “So,” he said, and then realized he didn’t really know what to say next. Xue Yang watched him with a look of wide-eyed innocence that said he knew Xiao Xingchen was struggling and wasn’t going to help him. A spark of annoyance had Xiao Xingchen pressing his lips together.

“So what do you do when you’re not…”

“Getting scraped off the road by nice boys?” Xue Yang said with a crooked smile, and Xiao Xingchen’s face heated up a little.

“I assume that’s not how you spend most of your time.”

“Not usually, no,” Xue Yang said. “Maybe I should try it more often, though.” (Redux)

5. Xue Yang laid out his sleeping mat and stretched out on the floor. He pulled out Xiao Xingchen’s soul, cupping it in his hands, then rolled to his back and put it on his chest.

“What would you say if you were here?” he asked. “You’d probably talk about how sad it was, or something. You’d want to try to lay everything to rest. Fix the whole Burial Mounds all by yourself. That sound about right, Daozhang?” He toyed with one of the tassels, listening to the wind outside.

“We could do that, if you came back,” Xue Yang said. “I mean, I don’t really want to and I don’t think there’d be any point but if you said you wanted to I’d be fine with giving it a go.” 

Nothing. The wind howled through the dead trees and Xue Yang caught, just at the edge of hearing, the sound of someone screaming. He cocked his head to listen better, but there were no words in it. It sounded like pain, though. The nasty kind that made you stop thinking about anything but wanting it to stop.

It melted away. (a symphony for the departed)

6. “Lianfang-zun doesn’t get rid of useful things, and I guess he thinks you’ll be useful. Makes sense to me. You’re supposed to be the best doctor in the world, right? Other than Baoshan Sanren, I guess, and who knows if the stories about her are true.” 

“How am I supposed to be useful?” Wen Qing asked.

“Beats me. If I were you I’d think of something, though. What do you know about what Yiling Laozu did to your brother?” 

Wen Qing’s heart stuttered. A-Ning, she almost said, what do you know about what’s happened to a-Ning, tell me-

She said nothing. Xue Yang’s mouth twisted a little.

“You’re not very chatty, are you,” he said, sounding genuinely disappointed. (fall apart, destroy, release)

7. “Go rest,” she said quietly. “You clearly need it. But I expect to see you in four days to report on your recovery.” Xue Yang started to make a face, and she added, “there might be something sweet for you.”

Xue Yang brightened, smile firming up briefly before it vanished in yet another yawn. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Whatever you say, jiejie.” He blinked sleepily, and then said abruptly, “I’d miss you too. If anyone did anything to you I’d string them up with their own guts.”

It was probably a bad sign that she was touched rather than unnerved. (this world is gonna break your heart)

8. Xiao Xingchen didn’t eat dinner. 

He didn’t even open his eyes to look at it. Ignored it, and Xue Yang, like he wasn’t there at all and it itched at him, sent his temper sour, and very briefly he almost said I guess I should’ve just let you die then but it didn’t make it as far as his throat before he choked on it. 

No. Things might be bad right now but dead was...if Xiao Xingchen’d killed himself it would’ve been really hard to bring him back, it’d take forever and there was always a chance it wouldn’t work. It probably would’ve, because Xue Yang was a fucking genius but still wasn’t worth the risk. 

It was so quiet. Xiao Xingchen wasn’t talking and Xue Yang wasn’t talking to him either because he’d just get pissed off again if he did, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d gotten used to the dumb brat’s noise until it wasn’t there anymore. (xxc survives and it isn’t fine)

9. I am not a dead thing, Song Lan said tightly, though questions were boiling up more quickly than he could ask them. Xue Yang glanced at him, brief and scathing.

“Yeah, you are,” he said. “Did you forget that part where you’re dead, Zichen? Cause I can think of a few ways to remind you if you need it.” 

I’m not a thing, Song Lan amended. Xue Yang snorted.

“Sure,” he said. “If you want. But a corpse is just a piece of meat in the end. You’re just smarter than most.” 

Song Lan’s left hand tightened around Fuxue’s scabbard. He wished it was around Xue Yang’s throat. (Walking Far From Home)

[robininthelabyrinth]

Complications (aka trans!Jiang Cheng with a kid) - ao3 or part 1, part 2, part 3

-

A-Lian was as good a name as any for the brat, Jiang Cheng supposed. 

He’d been spitefully thinking of additional names ever since Nie Huaisang, that busybody, had decided on the name he liked best, but unfortunately Jiang Lian had a better ring to it than any of the others he’d come up with so far and he wasn’t quite petty enough to condemn his son to a disharmonious name just out of spite.

Assuming A-Lian stayed a son, anyway. Jiang Cheng was still curious as to how the Nie sect had managed to get cursed with an entire generation of women – Nie Huaisang had let slip a few hints that it might’ve had to do with a very fat celestial bird that hadn’t appreciated a comment that had, truly, been meant as a compliment, and anyway they would have made for excellent drumsticks, and honestly the more Jiang Cheng heard about this story the more he wondered if marrying Nie Huaisang just to hear the full version might possibly be worth it – and obviously he wasn’t about to let the Lotus Pier continue to ignore the issue of misaligned reincarnations any longer.

Something he’d have to start enforcing once he was back on the war front, he supposed – which was going to be very soon, if he had his way about it; he was sick and tired of the (nearly completed!) post-pregnancy isolation period.

He couldn’t wait for the relative peace and quiet of an active battlefield.

Of course, the second he thought that, A-Lian started making ominous grumbling sounds, because babies were apparently psychic. Why had no one ever mentioned that?

“You can’t be hungry again, brat,” Jiang Cheng told A-Lian firmly. “I literally just fed you.”

He probably just wanted to burp again, so Jiang Cheng picked him up and started patting him with one hand, using the other to fish out Nie Mingjue’s most recent letter. The other sect leader was quite possibly the most relaxing person he’d ever corresponded with: his letters were practical and to the point, with no extraneous fluff that Jiang Cheng would feel obliged to respond to. 

More importantly, it gave him an update on how his sect was doing, which was all for the best – Nie Mingjue had kept recruitment open for him, which he hadn’t needed to do, and that meant that each letter now contained not only battle strategy and requests for final decisions but also lists of the talent (or lack thereof) of new recruits so that he could make a decision on their admittance as tentative nominal disciples. Final admittance would have to wait until he returned, of course…

He hadn’t gotten a letter from Nie Huaisang yet.

That was to be expected, he supposed. Nie Huaisang had insisted on sticking around for nearly two weeks following the birth to make sure Jiang Cheng didn’t mysteriously expire from complications – the doctors had rolled their eyes a little, but Nie Huaisang’s mother had died from an infection that hadn’t been spotted in time and Jiang Cheng understood his paranoia – and he’d only reluctantly agreed to go, which meant he was probably dragging his feet.

Anyway, just because Nie Huaisang had agreed to tell Wei Wuxian about A-Lian didn’t mean that he could necessarily find Wei Wuxian. His shixiong could be anywhere, after all; contributing to the campaign, of course, but not necessarily in the Jiang sect’s camp…

Ah, yes. Just what Jiang Cheng’s day was missing: the stabbing sense of inadequacy and failure, with a nice slice of the sinking suspicion that his leadership was so bad that he couldn’t even convince his own shixiong to follow him and therefore everyone who was following him was simply humoring him.

“At least you seem to like me well enough,” he muttered to A-Lian, who gurgled happily at him now that the unfortunate burping incident was behind them. “You keep that up, you hear me? You may be a brat, and little more than a blob with arms and legs, but you still have to like me best.”

Nie Huaisang insisted that A-Lian was a gorgeous baby, but Jiang Cheng was having some trouble seeing it. Obviously A-Lian was a baby superior to all other babies, undoubtedly through sheer dumb luck (maybe it skipped a generation?), but he kept worrying that he’d done something wrong, either during the pregnancy or the birth or the care he’d been giving him, and that he’d end up damaging A-Lian for life.

It was easier if he thought of A-Lian as a very resistant blob that would always resume its original shape.

…he really wished Nie Huaisang would write to him and tell him what’d happened when he told Wei Wuxian.

He knew that Wei Wuxian would take it personally, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. Would Wei Wuxian be angry with him? Disappointed, that Jiang Cheng hadn’t just lost his core to the Wens, but his chastity as well? Disdainful that Jiang Cheng had been so desperate for family that he’d decided to carry the child to term, even knowing that its father was their parents’ murderer - that he himself had helped murder the father in turn? Upset, because Wei Wuxian had done so much to rescue him and care for him and even help him get his golden core back, and in return Jiang Cheng did nothing but create another burden that would fall on his shoulders?

Or worse – would Wei Wuxian feel like a failure, too, the way Jiang Cheng always did, and all because he hadn’t been able to save Jiang Cheng from the obvious consequences of his own stupidity?

(It wasn’t that Jiang Cheng hadn’t known when he’d allowed himself to be captured that he’d be tortured and most probably killed, and yet somehow it had never occurred to him that they would do what they did to him – he’d been a man so long that he’d forgotten, just like everyone else in the Lotus Pier, that he’d ever been regarded as anything else. He still didn’t regret the choice he’d made; he’d known that Wei Wuxian would do a better job of avenging his parents than he would and he was right about it, too, wasn’t he?)

Jiang Cheng was so immersed in dark thoughts that he almost – almost – failed to notice when A-Lian started reaching for the ink. Well, flailing around in the general vicinity of the ink, anyway.

“Don’t you even dare think about it, brat. Do you remember bathtime? You don’t like bathtime, and if you get yourself covered in ink, there’s going to be even more bathtime…”

“Jiang-xiong! Jiang-xiong! Are you and A-Lian awake in there?”

It was Nie Huaisang.

He’d returned in person instead of writing a letter; was that a good sign or a bad sign?

“Even if we weren’t, we would be after your yelling,” he shouted back. “What are you, an elephant?”

“A bull!”

“You’re too prissy to be a bull, except for the bullshit you always keep spouting!”

Jiang Cheng waited for Nie Huaisang’s response, which would inevitably be dripping with innuendo, and blinked when there wasn’t anything. That was strange; it wasn’t as if there was anyone here that Nie Huaisang would be embarrassed to –

Oh no.

“Can we come in?” Nie Huaisang asked from outside his door.

Jiang Cheng’s suspicions were confirmed at once when he heard that dreadful ‘we’. Nie Huaisang had returned not with news but with company – company Jiang Cheng still wasn’t sure he was ready to see.

“…fine,” he still said, because there was no point in holding it off any further. He braced himself for Wei Wuxian to sweep into the room like a hurricane.

He was not expecting Jiang Yanli to walk in instead.

“Jiejie!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, and – damn him – felt his eyes start filling up with tears at once. He’d wanted so badly to have her with him during this excruciating process, and she’d even offered, writing him a letter full of concern about the ‘complications’ he was apparently struggling with. But she’d been safe in the Jin sect and he wouldn’t have been able to bear the guilt if something had happened to her on the way to see him.

And that meant he couldn’t say anything, not even in letters that were safe, not even in code, because if he’d so much as breathed a word about what was actually happening, she would have insisted on coming no matter what.

“A-Cheng!” she exclaimed, and rushed over. “Oh, A-Cheng, why didn’t you tell me…”

“I wanted to you to stay safe,” he sniffed. “Travel is so dangerous, and if something happened because of me –”

“Oh, A-Cheng…” She wrapped her arms around him. “I just wish I’d been here for you. You must have been so scared!”

“I have nightmares that say he was mostly just really angry,” Nie Huaisang put in, unhelpful as always; Jiang Cheng didn’t even bother to spare him a glance.

“You were here,” he assured her. “You sent me soup every week; I ate that when I couldn’t keep anything else down –”

A particularly vicious surge of late-onset morning sickness. It’d been a bad ten days.

“You still should’ve told us,” and that was Wei Wuxian, standing in the door next to Nie Huaisang with his shoulders up by his ears defensively, but Jiang Cheng was curled up in his sister’s arms so even if Wei Wuxian was horribly disappointed in him he would be able to handle it.

With Jiang Yanli there, he could handle anything.

“Probably should have,” he agreed, because Wei Wuxian was right. Opting to carry A-Lian at all was a stupid risk to have taken in the first place, given the likelihood of dying in childbirth and leaving the Jiang sect without a leader during their time of need, but – well, that’d been a risk he’d accepted the first time around when he’d given himself up to save Wei Wuxian. It hadn’t seemed so bad the second time, even though he knew he risked wasting all of Wei Wuxian’s hard work in rescuing and getting his core back. “Didn’t, though. You want to hold the brat?”

“Of course I want to hold the brat!” And when Jiang Cheng looked over, Wei Wuxian was smiling. Smiling. “I have to hold him! He’s my shizi!”

“What are you naming him?” Jiang Yanli asked as Wei Wuxian reached over to pick A-Lian up.

“…Jiang Lian,” Jiang Cheng finally admitted, and any embarrassing comments Nie Huaisang might have had to say about it – Jiang Cheng expected whooping in triumph, to be perfectly honest – were drowned out by A-Lian abruptly howling in indignation that this strange person had dared pick him up.

“Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng! The baby’s crying!” Wei Wuxian wailed. He sounded like a baby himself.

“Oh for the – give him here!” The second A-Lian returned to Jiang Cheng’s arms, the crying stop and the baby settled back down. He looked a little smug, even.

“It seems A-Lian likes A-Cheng the best,” Jiang Yanli said, covering her mouth with a smile. “Can I try?”

There were still tears, though not quite as many.

“He’ll get used to you eventually,” Jiang Cheng said, as if he wasn’t preening at his son’s excellent taste. “If you stick around, that is.”

“As if you’ll be able to get rid of us,” Wei Wuxian huffed, and that made something warm and happy and glowing appear in Jiang Cheng’s chest. “You know, it’s really unfair, Jiang Cheng! I put in all this work and effort into developing demonic cultivation and inventing all sorts of new things, and in a mere ten months you managed to make something even better.”

Jiang Cheng couldn’t help the laugh that broke free, his heart singing happily – Wei Wuxian didn’t hate him, wasn’t disappointed in him, was happy for him. “It wasn’t really something I was actively working on.”

“Rude. No need to rub it in.”

And just because Jiang Cheng was Jiang Cheng, he had to affirmatively check: “You’re not upset, are you?”

“Only that you robbed us of the opportunity to spoil you rotten,” Wei Wuxian said. “Oh, and for having Nie Huaisang tell me about it – I only found out because he and his brother were betting on the gender.”

Jiang Cheng twisted around in Jiang Yanli’s arms to glare at Nie Huaisang.

“I lost,” Nie Huaisang said, as if that would make things better, and weirdly enough it sort of did. “Never bet against da-ge.”

Jiang Cheng thought about it and nodded. That seemed like a good rule, no matter the circumstances – and anyway, if that meant that Nie Mingjue was there when Wei Wuxian was told, that was all the better. As far as Jiang Cheng was concerned, there was nothing in the world that Nie Mingjue couldn’t handle.

He wished he could one day be even half of what Nie Mingjue was. Confident and self-assured, an excellent sect leader beloved by all, a war leader and a filial son, righteous and terrifying…

“I hope he won something good off of you,” he told Nie Huaisang, who grimaced at him in a way that suggested Nie Mingjue really had won something good. “You deserve it.”

“You have no sympathy for me,” Nie Huaisang whined.

“Forget sympathy for you, what about sympathy for me?” Wei Wuxian put in. “‘Oh, hi, Wei Wuxian, nice to see you, been a long time, guess what, your shizi’s a boy!’”

Okay, that sounded really funny actually. Jiang Cheng kind of regrets missing it.

He smirked at Wei Wuxian, who saw it and made a rude gesture in return.

“It was traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said with a sniff. “Really, truly. Shijie, you need to make me some soup to help me get over it.”

“No way,” Jiang Cheng said at once. “If she’s making soup, she’s making it for me.”

“You’ve apparently been getting her soup every week for the past few months; I deserve it more!”

“I’m the one getting my chest gnawed off by a wild animal three times a day –”

“I can make enough for both of you,” Jiang Yanli said patiently. “Nie-gongzi, is there a kitchen..?”

“I’ll show you the way,” Nie Huaisang said with a grin. “I’m eager to see how this famous soup gets made. I had to beg Jiang-xiong for three weeks to get a single spoonful, and it was worth every minute of it.”

“You flatter me…”

They left together, and Jiang Cheng used the opportunity to scrub the tear tracks off his face as best as he could.

“It really was pretty traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said, pointedly only looking at an increasingly sleepy A-Lian instead of seeing what Jiang Cheng was doing. “Not as traumatizing as the lecture Chifeng-zun gave me afterwards about how badly I’ve been behaving.”

“Badly?” Jiang Cheng said, frowning. “What do you mean, you’ve been fine; the effect your demonic cultivation has been having against the Wens alone –”

“No, I haven’t been,” Wei Wuxian said, and his tone was uncharacteristically serious. “Not because of the demonic cultivation, but because I haven’t been standing by your side the way I promised I would.”

“You’re doing your best,” Jiang Cheng said firmly. “You have demonic cultivation now, and that means you can do a lot more things – it makes sense for your to be at the front line.”

“I’m not saying that I shouldn’t be at the front line. I’m saying that I promised you that you’d be my sect leader, that I’d follow you, and instead I keep treating you like you’re still my shidi. Making decisions on your behalf, insisting on doing things my way because I think I’m right…” Wei Wuxian shook his head. “I got used to doing things that way, all these years. But things are different now. You’re my sect leader. Decisions like how to best deploy me are your decision, not mine – if you want me by your side instead of on the front, I should do that; if you want me to lead the Jiang sect cultivators, I should be doing that. I can try to persuade you that my plan is better, but in the end, if I’m going to be part of the Jiang sect, I need to accept that it’s your word that’s final, because anything else would be disrespectful – and I don’t want to disrespect you, Jiang Cheng. Sect Leader Jiang.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jiang Cheng said, words sharp but only because otherwise he’d have to acknowledge that he was crying again. He hadn’t even known he’d wanted to hear that from Wei Wuxian until he had – he hadn’t realized how important it was that Wei Wuxian finally acknowledged him, that Wei Wuxian thought he was capable of being sect leader; he hadn’t realized how much his feelings had been tangled up by the fact that Wei Wuxian still treated him as if he was just a foolish child that didn’t know better. “Everyone else can call me that, but you call me Jiang Cheng, okay? Always.”

He reached over and grabbed Wei Wuxian around the shoulders, drawing him into a tight one-armed embrace.

“Watch the baby,” Wei Wuxian said, as if he wasn’t hugging back just as hard. “Don’t drop my shizi because you’re not paying attention.”

“I’m not going to drop him,” Jiang Cheng said, grateful for the mostly-a-joke. “Does that – does that mean you’re coming back to the Jiang sect? For real this time?”

“Yes,” Wei Wuxian said. “I am. No more running around outside, I promise.”

Jiang Cheng’s hands were busy, holding his shidi in one and his son in the other, so he had to bury his face into Wei Wuxian’s shoulder to help stop the flow of tears. “Wei Wuxian,” he said. “You really don’t – you’re not angry at me?”

“Why would I be angry at you?” Wei Wuxian said, pulling back and frowning at him and then frowning even more when Jiang Cheng made a flailing sort of gesture with his head towards A-Lian. “For - for that?! Jiang Cheng, it wasn’t your fault you got captured!”

It sort of was, actually, and Jiang Cheng has always been a terrible liar; he shouldn’t have let his insecurities get away from him enough to even ask, because now Wei Wuxian’s eyes were the ones filling up with tears. He’d never been an idiot.

“You didn’t,” he insisted, and his hands were white-knuckled where he grabbed onto Jiang Cheng’s arms. He was probably leaving bruises, and neither of them cared. “Jiang Cheng, tell me you didn’t! Don’t – in the marketplace, when the Wens were about to find me – Jiang Cheng…!”

“Someone needed to avenge our parents, and you were the better choice!” Jiang Cheng blurted out. “And I was right, wasn’t I? You did it! You even invented demonic cultivation –”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “There wasn’t any other way out of the Burial Mounds, and now I’m stuck, Jiang Cheng – you don’t understand, it’s not just, I don’t – I can’t – it’s demonic cultivation or nothing for me, and when the war ends, when it stops being useful and starts being horrifying, the entire cultivation world is going to turn against me, and I can’t bring you down with me –”

“Why are you talking like it’s the only type of cultivation you can do anymore?” Jiang Cheng demanded. “How can one type of cultivation block you from doing another? That doesn’t make any sense – even if it did block you, you could just stop, it’s not like you don’t have a golden core –”

Wei Wuxian didn’t say anything.

“You have a golden core,” Jiang Cheng said again, more urgently this time. “Wei Wuxian, you have a golden core, right? You didn’t –” He was starting to panic. “It was Wen Chao that threw you into the Burial Mounds, wasn’t it? He said it himself that that was what he did, and where there’s Wen Chao, there’s Wen Zhuliu – did he melt your core? And I took your name when we went to Baosan Sanren’s mountain, I took your birthright away from you –”

“Jiang Cheng, no! That’s not what happened!”

“You told me to tell her I was you!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, because what else could it be? Baosan Sanren was a true immortal, powerful enough to fix a golden core, but everyone knew that her disciples weren’t allowed back onto the mountain once they’d left – the gift she’d given him, reviving his core, that must have been a once-in-a-lifetime offer. “I told her I was you so she’d heal me and now she won’t heal you; I did to you what Mother was always afraid you’d do to me –”

“I lied!” Wei Wuxian cried out, and he sounded as if his heart was being torn out of his chest. “I lied, Jiang Cheng, stop trusting me so much! There’s no Baosan Sanren, no mountain; just me, making stupid decisions on your behalf again, because I’m arrogant, because I think I know better, because I –”

“What did you do?” Jiang Cheng said. His lips felt numb. His whole body felt numb. “Wei Wuxian, what did you do –”

A-Lian burst into tears.

That knocked them both out of their self-absorption, turning at once to see what was wrong with the baby.

“Did we jostle him?” Wei Wuxian asked anxiously once they’d gotten A-Lian a little calmer. “We didn’t hurt him, did we?”

“I think we were just being too loud,” Jiang Cheng said after concluding his inspection. “And anyway, he’s kind of a blob right now – you pinch or pull at him and he goes back the way he used to be. The doctors all say that babies are very flexible.”

“A little bun,” Wei Wuxiand agreed. “With just a little dusting of sesame on top.”

Jiang Cheng looked at the very few scraps of black hair A-Lian had managed to grow. “…he does kind of look like that, doesn’t he? Come on, A-Lian, calm down, it’s okay, we’ll stop yelling, we promise –”

“Really?” Wei Wuxian said. He sounded skeptical. “You’re going to stop yelling?”

“Shut up, you sound like Nie Huaisang. Don’t think you’re getting away without telling me what you did…you gave me yours, didn’t you?”

No wonder his core had felt different, stronger, when he’d woken up – he’d assumed it was Baosan Sanren giving him a gift, but in reality it was only that Wei Wuxian was a better cultivator than he was, that he’d strengthened himself more.

No wonder, too, that his core had felt familiar – he’d pressed his ear against Wei Wuxian’s belly a thousand times, feeling the warmth of it, and he’d mistaken that familiarity for it being his.

Wei Wuxian nodded, and Jiang Cheng scowled. “Can it be reversed?”

“Absolutely not,” Wei Wuxian said at once. “For one thing, I wouldn’t agree; for another, it was only a fifty-fifty chance of it working successfully the first time, I’m not taking that risk again. Anyway, I have demonic cultivation now, and if we traded back, you’d need to be the demonic cultivator, and what would that do to the Jiang sect’s reputation?”

Jiang Cheng hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“Especially now that we have an heir,” Wei Wuxian added, reaching out to rub A-Lian’s head. “You’ve got to make sure the Jiang sect is thriving so that you’ll have something good to hand down to him.”

Jiang Cheng really hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“I can’t believe you did that for me,” he said.

“I can’t believe you got captured for me,” Wei Wuxian rebutted. But that wasn’t the same at all, it was –

Okay, maybe there were a few superficial similarities.

“At least that explains why you’ve been so distant,” he said, shaking his head and smoothing A-Lian’s minimal hair down as the baby started to fall asleep again. “I thought you just didn’t trust me to be a good sect leader…”

“What? No! Jiang Cheng, you’re a great sect leader. I just didn’t want to risk dragging you down.”

“How can you drag us down? I’m literally using your golden core to lead the sect!”

“It’s yours now,” Wei Wuxian said. “I built it up, but I can’t decide on how you use it – everything you’ve done since then, that’s still yours. You know that, right? It’s all still you. Your achievements, not mine. Saying it’s mine would be like saying that every person that Chifeng-zun has ever defeated was actually the triumph of whoever forged Baxia for him.”

Jiang Cheng would murder anyone who dared to say something like that, except he’d never get the chance to because Nie Huaisang would have ruined their life before he’d even gotten started.

“Fine,” he said. “But you’re still not dragging us down. We’ll just have to be careful, that’s all – we can even use it to our advantage: whenever we need something to happen that we can’t really admit to, we have you do it, excuse it as being because of the influence of your demonic cultivation, and tell everyone we’ll get right on fixing it right away. Just the way Father used to do with Mother’s temper tantrums.”

“…wait, those were staged?”

“Well, some of them were, anyway,” Jiang Cheng said. He was mostly sure. “But you have to run anything really crazy by me first, okay?”

“Right,” Wei Wuxian said, nodding. “Uh – does that count past actions?”

Jiang Cheng wasn’t even surprised. “What’d you do?”

“Promised a safe harbor to one of the branch families of the Wen sect?”

Jiang Cheng might be gullible where his shixiong was concerned, but he wasn’t dumb. “Wen Qing and Wen Ning? They’re the ones that helped you do – what you did.”

Wei Wuxian nodded guiltily.

“Well, in that case, I can hardly turn them down, can I?” Jiang Cheng said, pretending to grumble. “That’d make me ungrateful. Fine; I retroactively authorize your offer, they can come be guest disciples at the Jiang sect –”

Wei Wuxian hugged him again.

“If you wake the baby up again I will kill you,” Jiang Cheng said, but he hugged him back.

“I think they’re done,” Nie Huaisang’s voice drifted in from the door, and they both turned to look.

Jiang Yanli’s eyes were red, suggesting that she’d been listening – and Jiang Cheng hated that, hated that he’d ever caused her pain or sadness; his jiejie deserved the best things in life, always, not more pain and disappointment and everything he brought with him. But true to form she didn’t say anything, only smiled and said, “I knew A-Xian and A-Cheng would talk it out eventually.”

“Bet you didn’t predict the baby,” Nie Huaisang chirped, and then cowered when all three of them glared at him. “Sorry, sorry. Please ignore me.”

“In the future, there will be no such secrets, understood?” Jiang Yanli said to them, with more steel than usual in her soft voice. “A-Xian will tell us before he does something crazy, and A-Cheng won’t not tell us when something important happens –”

“Well, it’s hardly likely to happen a second time,” Jiang Cheng protested, but not very strongly.

“Hey, don’t be so hasty,” Nie Huaisang said. “We could want more kids after we get married.”

“Wait,” Wei Wuxian said. “When did –”

“We are not getting married!” Jiang Cheng bellowed. It was a good thing that A-Lian apparently found Jiang Cheng’s yelling soothing, or else he would’ve woken up again. “Nie Huaisang, stop telling people we’re getting married!”

“I don’t tell people we’re getting married, I only tell you!”

“That’s not better!”

“Wow,” Wei Wuxian said to Jiang Yanli, voice deliberately pitched obnoxiously loud. “It’s almost like they’re married already –”

“Wei Wuxian! I will throw something at your head, just watch me!”

“Just don’t throw the baby!”

[kexing]

Honestly i think Zishu could easily refuse to get married. Especially after they did some work for prince and at least he paid well for all the troubles.

So he gathers everyone and starts a serious conversation. In fact this situation does not really bother him. very luckily for him and wkx his shidi Jiuxiao is in love with a daughter of an influential family. it wasn't difficult to redirect attention from himself to his shidi and tell everyone that hey that's simply better option where couple already in love and they don't even need to do much work, Zishu only need to send a letter first and then meet with her parents. Imagine how flustered Jiuxiao would be (he couldn't stop thinking about how he actually ready to do it for his shixiong. He spent a lot of time with both him and wkx and he doesn't know what but he definitely can sense that something is happening between them. I can imagine even how he tried to talk with Zishu but you know by hints to show his support and Zishu didn't yell at him or chased him away or asked him to stop. and this is the biggest indicator hehe so what if he wasn't planning to even admit his feelings yet? Maybe it was lucky for him too that his dashixiong will do all the work 😉)

But while all this happened i think healer Wen won't let that situation go so easily 😅 very offended he will lock himself in his rooms, conducting experiments and recording the results. on the door, of course, the inscription: do not get in - it will kill you. (He's very dramatic in this universe too).

It was really wrong for him to skip the gathering.

When his Shixiong finished the meeting and went to his rooms, completely not caring about the warnings, he saw a very focused Wen Kexing who was sitting at a small table in the middle of the room away from the larger table which now had a big hole in it. Zishu looked at it for a few seconds, walked closer to his shidi and knelt right behind him (let's pretend that wkx is sitting on the floor with a pillow under him).

What's wrong? - asked very cunning manor leader Zhou who put both hands on Wkx's waist and put his head on Wkx's bony shoulder.

Everything. - he didn't make a single move to pull away from zzs, - This formula is not suitable for my primary purpose at all and you're going to marry someone we don't even know. you'll leave, and you'll come back with your wife. we won't be able to sleep together under the same blanket at night anymore because there won't be enough room for three people on your bed! - with each new sentence he spoke louder and at the end he even slammed his palm on the table.

Dear, this is what you are worried about? - Zishu tried very hard to hide any hint of laughter in his voice.

Shixiong, i... - Wkx took a deep breath, - It's me who should get married. Remember the promise i made to you. I will always be by your side to share your burdens and make you smile (this words was part of his love confession). With a wife by your side your life will change completely. in fact i know that you won't welcome those changes but won't show it to anyone. I'm the second disciple of the Four seasons manor. It will do. You can marry me to whoever you want. after wedding we could arrange separate pavilion for my wife where she could live. I will treat her gently i promise. I-

Should I consider that option? - Zzs was silent for a minute as if he really was thinking about it. - What about your work? A married man will not have the opportunity to lock himself in his chambers for a week in order to search for one recipe from a pile of scrolls that he bought all over the district. Or without warning anyone to go to a village not the closest to us because an unusual case of a well-known disease was discovered there.

(to be continued 😅 now i really feel like i write wholeass fanfic in your inbox gsvuszxj in fact that's just what i saw in my head again and thought oh this is so funny and somehow in character let's write about it)

omg yes!!! that’s a great way of solving the situation with minimum angst, just wkx being his dramatic self alskaksksksks (which we always appreciate)

supportive jiuxiao is something that can Actually be so personally!! i love this!! 🥰🥰🥰

healer wen not knowing how to deal with the news and with his emotions therefore locking himself away and being dramatic about it is *chefs kiss*

wkx worrying that they won’t be able to spoon each other anymore i’m—

and his gay ass offering to marry a woman so zzs doesn’t have to 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

zzs really is enjoying this situation huh!!! dude stop torturing your man, he’s devastated over there aldkskdkkskd (at least wkx will not be skipping any more gatherings in the future lmao)

omg yes please i’m loving it. feel free to write more!! and thank you for choosing me of all people to share this amazing piece with ❤️💙

[thebiscuiteternal]

BIG SPOILERS for the Reverse Nie timeline because this isn’t supposed to happen for like two more fics but I couldn’t stop myself from writing it now.

This is how Wei Wuxian dies and Nie Huaisang signs his death warrant.

In the end, after all the arguing and secrecy and frustration, it’s a very simple arrangement. Wei Wuxian and his Ghost General will give themselves up for execution in exchange for the lives of the other Wens they have been hiding in the Burial Mounds.

Jin Guangyao is acutely aware that it is unlikely this will remain that simple, on the fact that while he can trust Nie-zongzhu and Jiang-zongzhu to have negotiated honestly, he finds himself trusting his own father much less. Jin Guangshan has 'allowed' him to act as the mouthpiece for the discussions themselves, but he isn’t foolish enough not to track the orders that are being given -supposedly behind his back- to others as well. 

His nerves are humming uncomfortably as he stands off to the side of his father's entourage and watches the small group of men reach the top of the stairs and approach. He doesn't pay attention to his father's rehearsed, grandiose words. He'd been the one to write them, after all, he didn't need to hear them again. Instead, Jin Guangyao watches their 'guests'. 

Both of the Nie siblings look exhausted. Lan Wangji's expression is closed as always, but there are  dark circles under his eyes. Jiang-zongzhu's face can only read as 'haunted'. 

His gaze misses the Ghost General's face and graze over his hands instead, remembering the state his half-brother had been brought home in. 

Poor Zixuan. He hadn’t actually meant for the man to foolishly go rushing off to try and save the day. 

He hadn’t.

And as for Wei Wuxian himself... 

There isn't much of the fearsome Yiling Laozu that lurks in the nightmares of so many to be found in the thin figure brought to stand before them. His spies had reported that the man wasn't doing well at all, but hearing that and seeing the half-starved figure and hollow expression for himself are on entirely different levels. 

The Ghost General is clapped in even more chains as guards approach to drag him away from the crowds and- 

Oh. So this is what all those ‘secret’ orders had been about. 

He isn't surprised. He isn't surprised in the slightest. In fact, he should have expected this double cross to happen, really. He already knew that his father had an interest  in Wei Wuxian's research, in the possibilities it held for consolidating their own power. He'd been sent to scout for cultivators who held the man in enough esteem that they might be capable of replicating those methods, even. 

He's fairly sure the others, at least Nie-zongzhu and Wei Wuxian, probably predicted something like this would happen as well, if not in such a blatant and public manner. If anything, it only makes them angrier at the whole situation, Nie Mingjue and Jiang-zongzhu's voices rising in sharp protest against the change in plans. 

His father looks back to him for the first time since the day began, a clear order to pacify what he sees as childish retorts. 

Jin Guangyao bites back a sigh, plasters on a smile, and starts to step forward, but then Wei Wuxian moves. Chained hands raise as he turns his back on the gathered Jin and bows to his escorts. 

"This humble one thanks Nie-zongzhu for his efforts and apologizes to his  family for the troubles he has brought them," the man says, voice so very soft and tired.

Then with a speed he shouldn't have been capable of, Wei Wuxian reaches into his sleeve and produces the object that has become the source of all this contention, raises the Seal with both hands and a surge of resentful energy, and dashes it to the stone beneath their feet. 

For a moment, even the air around them goes still. 

And then all hell breaks loose. 

People scream and run from the resentful energy that erupts from the broken seal in a boiling miasma. Forced to take cover due to his own weak core, he sees Nie Mingjue yank his brother behind him and draw Baxia to shield him from being overcome. Lan-zongzhu has emerged from his assigned position to protect as many of the coreless servants as possible. Jiang-zongzhu is yelling something that can't be heard over the roar of the escaping magic, Zidian and Bichen flashing as he and Lan Wangji try to fight through the malevolent fog towards his once-shixiong. 

And Wei Wuxian... 

Wei Wuxian turns to his once-shidi and smiles in the moment before he is enveloped completely, the expression possibly the most peaceful he has ever seen the man wear. 

As quickly as they had come, the shadows are gone. 

The courtyard is nearly empty, his father and most of the other spectators having fled, but he can't move, unable to stop watching as Jiang-zongzhu drops to his knees and howls, clutching a familiar black dizi to his chest. As Nie Mingjue runs to him and both Nie-zongzhu and Lan-zongzhu catch Lan Wangji before he can collapse as well. 

Dazed, dizzy, and feeling oddly cold in his chest, something he dismisses as an effect of the resentful energy, he distantly thinks that it's a very good thing he had encouraged Jiang Yanli to go back to Lotus Pier with her son as soon as her husband’s funeral had ended. 

He has a sense that things are only going to keep getting worse from here.

---

((Bonus Scene:

"And that-" Nie Huaisang says, "-is exactly your problem."

Wei Wuxian's face scrunches in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"You owe a debt. Your family owes a debt. None of the other sects, great or small, owe these people anything."

"But-"

"As far as the cultivation world is concerned, Wen Qing was and is still an enemy."

"But she didn't do anything!"

"No? Who was Wen Ruohan's personal physician? Who healed the soldiers who came to her supervisory office?"

Wei Wuxian is slowly growing even more pale, his expression increasingly desperate. "But that... that was only to protect her family, she-"

Nie Huaisang sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Look, I understand. I do. There are very few lengths one wouldn't go to for family that they love. But that devotion goes multiple ways. You're looking at a lot of families directly injured by her decisions and a great sect that's whipping them into a frenzy. Not to mention the provocation and fear you added to the mix.” 

Wei Wuxian opens his mouth at that, but Nie Huaisang cuts him off with a gesture.  “I mean, really, announcing publicly that you can and will kill anyone you damn well please for opposing you? You really thought that wouldn’t come back to bite you in the ass?"

Wei Wuxian had the grace to look somewhat abashed at that. 

"The Seal is potentially enough to save the rest of your sect-to-be-"

"'Potentially'?"

"This is Jin Guangshan we're talking about," Nie Huaisang said, not bothering to hide his distaste. "The man doesn't understand the word 'negotiation', only 'demand'."

"That's a polite way of putting it," Wei Wuxian mutters, then turns away with a sigh of discomfort and folds his arms.

Nie Huaisang lets him have the space to think, taking the moment to better examine their surroundings.

If they do manage to sort something out, like hell he's letting anyone keep living here. Even with his level of cultivation, the air feels greasy, itchy under his skin. He’s fully aware that there are at least three mid-range cultivators among the Remnants; they can’t possibly be any more comfortable than he is-

"Me."

He blinks, surprised out of his planning. "Beg pardon?"

The smile Wei Wuxian gives him is so worn out and resigned that it's painful to look at.

"I can offer me." ))

[elencelebrindal]

Sorry if they're too many, you don't have to answer everything! What is your fave novel of the three? Favorite/least favorite character for each one? Favorite male/female character for each one (aside from you all-time fave)? Favorite canon ship? Favorite non-canon ship? Least favorite of them (and why)? Favorite tool/weapon in the three? They're so many, sorrysorrysorry!

Don’t worry, I love answering questions! There might be some spoilers here, so... be wary of them. 

Ok, let’s go in order:

1.

My favorite novel of the three is Tian Guan Ci Fu. When I read Mo Dao Zu Shi I told myself “okay, I don’t think anything could beat this”, and then TGCF came around. I think this novel is, in general, one of my favorite books of all time. Aside from the romance part of it (which is often what people mainly focus on when it comes to MXTX), I really loved the characters and the story is absolutely incredible. I ended up getting so involved in it that I read the entire thing + the extras in three days, subsequently read what was out of the manhua in... maybe two hours? and watched the entire donghua as soon as it came on Netflix in one sitting. The only time this happened to me before TGCF was with the Silmarillion. 

This tells a lot. 

2.

Favorite SVSSS character: Luo BingHe shares his first place with Shen QingQiu.

Least favorite SVSSS character: Immortal Master Lao Gongzhu of Huan Hua Palace. I cannot even begin to explain how disgusted I was by that character, I almost never hated anyone more than him. 

Favorite MDZS character: Wei WuXian. He’s been my favorite character from the beginning. His story follows exactly one of my favorite character dynamic, much like many other favorites of mine (from good to evil to neutral/somewhat good again, even if in this case WWX didn’t actually turn evil). I’m pretty sure the same can be said of almost everyone in my favorite list... oh well.

Least favorite MDZS character: it’s a tough choice between Su She, Wen Chao, and Jin ZiXun. I just... I disliked them so much. It’s not even hate, I just didn’t want to see them on screen. Maybe Wen Chao is the worst of them... yeah, he’s the worst. I could count Jiang Cheng in my least favorites as well, but my reasons for not liking him are way too complicated so I won’t insult him so much. 

Favorite TGCF character: Hua Cheng!!!!!!!

Least favorite TGCF character: I don’t have a least favorite character. 

3. 

Favorite SVSSS male character aside from LBH and SQQ: MoBei-Jun and LiuQingGe. I’m not troubling myself with trying to choose between them.

Favorite SVSSS female character: I used to be torn between Sha HuaLing and Liu MingYan, but SHL follows my general preferences way more so she wins. 

Favorite MDZS male character aside from WWX: Wen Ning. He deserves all the love in the world. All of it. Also I really love Nie MingJue and Xiao XingChen. 

Favorite MDZS female character: Jiang Yanli (because I fell in love with her gentle personality while watching The Untamed and I can’t bear myself to stop loving her). Wen Qing is right up there with her.

Favorite TGCF male character aside from HC: well, first of all Xie Lian. Second of all, Bai WuXiang and He Xuan.

Favorite TGCF female character: Ling Wen, but only because I don’t count Shi QingXuan as a fully fledged female (I am too in love with both forms to choose one side, sorry guys). 

4. (they’re all going to be the main ones, lol)

Favorite canon SVSSS ship: Shen QingQiu x Luo BingHe, though... MoBei-Jun x Shang QingHua is a really close second. 

Least favorite canon SVSSS ship: I don’t think I have one? I mean, there’s not much material to examine when it comes to canon pairings.

Favorite canon MDZS ship: Wei WuXian x Lan Wangji.

Least favorite canon MDZS ship: it’s not really a ship (I think, maybe it’s just me?) but whatever they tried to do with Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing in the drama doesn’t sit right with me. For reasons that are a bit more complicated than it seems, and that would need me explaining my opinion about JC first. 

Favorite canon TGCF ship: Hualian! Hualian! Hualian! Hua Cheng x Xie Lian is one of my all time favorite ships, in general. I stand by the statement “Hualian invented love”. 

Least favorite canon TGCF ship: that weird bullshit the mortal realm like to do with Shi QingXuan and Shi Wudu. Poor guys. It’s canon only because their perverted followers say so. 

5.

Favorite non-canon SVSSS ship: I don’t think I have one...? Maybe ZhuZhi-Lang and TianLang-Jun, but I’m still way too confused about that. I know people ship a lot Liu QingGe and Shen QingQiu, but I never saw the appeal of it.

Least favorite non-canon SVSSS ship: again, don’t have one, mostly because I never delved too deeply in the world of non-canon SVSSS ships. 

Favorite non-canon MDZS ship: Xiao XingChen x Song Lan. It’s probably the pairing that makes the most sense (to me) out of everyone else. And it’s heartbreaking, so bonus points for that. 

Least favorite non-canon MDZS ship: Xiao XingChen x Xue Yang. [heavy spoiler alert] I absolutely HATE this pairing. I love Xue Yang, he’s an amazing villain, but this pairing is straight up abuse, no matter how you look at it. I am a sucker for angsty shit, but I really draw the line at the fucked up pairing that is this one. Xue Yang literally destroyed Xiao XingChen psychologically, lied to him for years, gaslighted him, forced him to kill innocent people, forced him to kill Song Lan, and then ended up ruining him so much that Xiao XingChen killed himself and destroyed his own soul. 

I have no idea why people love this pairing so much, but I genuinely hate it. There’s nothing redeeming about it. 

Another ship I don’t like is Jiang Cheng x Lan XiChen, but once again this has more convoluted reasons that revolve around JC, mainly. There’s also Lan XiChen x Jin GuangYao. Please, no. I really don’t like it. 

Favorite non-canon TGCF ship: Pei Ming x Shi Wudu and He Xuan x Shi QingXuan. We all know why beefleaf is important in our hearts, so let me explain something about Pei Ming and Shi Wudu; this pairing doesn’t mean I completely disregard everything else about Pei Ming. He’s our good old manwhore womanizer and I haven’t changed that (too much). But this pairing... in my headcanon, which is something I’m also going to write in my desperate attempt and being a good fanfic writer, Pei Ming fell in love with him so hard that he was like “okay, fine, there’s just you now, I’m done with sleeping around”. After Shi Wudu dies, Pei Ming keeps his word and doesn’t cheat on him for the reminder of his life. My own headcanon is the reason why this is my favorite non-canon ship. I stumbled into it my complete chance, but I genuinely love it. 

Least favorite non-canon TGCF ship: anything that has Xie Lian and Hua Cheng not with each other. I don’t like seeing them paired with anyone else. 

6.

Favorite SVSSS weapon/tool: Xin Mo and Xiu Ya. 

Favorite MDZS weapon/tool: Chenqing

Favorite TGCF weapon/tool: E-Ming and Fang Xin

If you want to ask anything else, feel free! My blog is mostly Saint Seiya, but I do write about other stuff if you ask me! ^ - ^

[beneaththebrim]

How is the Priest fandom? Are you enjoying it? I’ve been wondering if I should pick up works beyond MXTX’s but it also seems daunting for some reason.

The eng-speaking Priest fandom is definitely smaller than the MXTX one, and it mainly exists on twitter. There’s a Priest discord server, but only mods can generate invites to it–they want to keep the server pretty close-knit.

That being said, since it is a smaller fandom, it is pretty friendly, if quiet at times.

I’ve definitely been enjoying Priest’s writing. She writes in more of a literary style than MXTX–although I would classify MXTX’s books as R18, they are written in more of a YA style, whereas Priest uses more poetic allusions, philosophy, and politics. Her writing, too, is very poetic in itself. I also feel like her characters *pop*: they don’t ever feel like archetypes; they feel like real people. And her plots, oh man her plots–they are so intricately woven.

And the knives man, the KNIVES

I should probably mention that Priest doesn’t write explicit sex scenes, but there are fade-to-blacks, so like, her characters fuck, just not on screen.

Anyway, I’ve been reading four of her books: Qi Ye (Lord Seventh), Tianya Ke (Faraway Wanderers), Liu Yao: the Revitalization of the Fuyao Sect, and Sha Po Lang.

(Note: I’m not planning on reading any of her modern setting books where one of the main characters is a cop, just fyi, so I can’t give any info on, like, Zhenhun (Guardian) or Mo Du)

But anyway, I can give an overview of the four books I’m reading, as well as links to the translations:

Qi Ye (jjwxc)

Court drama with supernatural elements. Lots of scheming. Main theme is fate/people’s ability to alter their fate.

(MC description courtesy of jimorlas): Main character is Jing Beiyuan, a genius and a good boy who is fucking tired as shit because he’s 7 incarnations deep and they all sucked and his 7th has taken him right back to the terrible 1st one. He’s here to protect his land and support the prince who screwed him over but who is good for the country, but also he just wants to nap ok. He’s sleepy after several centuries of this shit.

And, as for the romantic lead, who doesn’t get revealed until Ch.6, so slight spoiler: Wu Xi, the soon-to-be Great Sorcerer of Nanjiang, a melancholic OP warrior-shaman who’s far from home and more likely to make friends with animals than people, but warms up to our sanguine protag. Meanwhile JBY is constantly terrorizing all WX’s many, many pets which could very easily kill him instantly, and repays WX the favor of ensuring that he doesn’t die an early death by nicknaming him “Little Venom.” Their ship name is xiyuan.

Translations (78 chapters total): Ch. 1-5, Ch. 6, Ch. 7, Ch.8-31

The wattpad tl updates about once every couple weeks.

Tianya Ke (jjwxc)

Sequel to Qi Ye, typical wuxia setting. There’s trouble in the jianghu, and various powerful characters from around the realm are drawn into a treasure hunt, the object of which is rooted in an old conflict. Main themes are freedom, greed, and making amends for what’s happened in the past.

Tianya Ke’s a lot of fun–the main couple, wenzhou, are constantly bickering and bantering. Main character is sarcastic and scarred ex-spy Zhou Zishu who doesn’t have long to live. Somehow he’s dragged into a situation where he has to protect a helpless, wooden-headed kid (Zhang Chengling) from multiple assassination attempts, all while the jianghu is imploding around them, everyone searching for the mysterious ‘lapis armor’ that can supposedly grant anyone’s deepest wish. He didn’t sign up for this!! He just wanted to go sightsee for his last three years!!! He’s not your shifu, goddammit!

Romantic lead is Wen Kexing, a slut (well, until he meets ZZS) and a clown (especially after meeting ZZS 😏 ) who’s definitely very shady behind his 🤡 persona. I feel like their dynamic can be summed up in this twitter post I made (based on an actual scene from the novel):

WKX: Kill? :) What are you talking about?:) I wouldn’t kill a chicken :))))

~Five seconds later~

WKX, investigating a corpse: lmao these bones look like chicken bones when I’m done with em amirite AYYY

ZZS: *looks into camera like he’s on the office*

Translations (78 chapters total): Ch.1-30, Ch.31-53 by Liyou (see pinned thread for drive folder)

The Liyou translation updates about once every week or two.

Liu Yao: the Revitalization of the Fuyao Sect (jjwxc)

Wuxia/xianxia, found family. A man who appears to be a half-dead weasel spirit takes in five unruly kids and teaches them cultivation on the run-down Fuyao mountain. But, before they can grow up, they are wrenched from their home and are forced to scatter over the next century, gathering power and teasing out the causes of Fuyao’s decline. Upon reuniting, an imminent question looms over their heads: What are they willing to sacrifice in order to return home?

Main themes: Sacrifice, the isolation that comes with power, whether cultivating to immortality is worth it. Lots of Daoist philosophy in this one (it’s probably my favorite c-novel so far). Here’s a line that murdered me: Perhaps the epitome of ascension is when one can pass without regrets. 🙃🙃🙃

The main ship, mingqian, is between the narcissistic, wealthy dashixiong, Yan Zhengming, and his cold, chuuni & judgmental sanshidi, Cheng Qian (the MC). They’re very protective of each other and their sect siblings.

There’s also a tragic side-ship (ruchun) involving their shifu, but I won’t say much about that, as it involves some big spoilers.

The other disciples are:

CQ’s ershixiong, Li Yun, ie MY BOY MY GEEKY TOAD BOY/the voice of reason,

CQ’s sishidi, Han Yuan, ie oh boy we got a lot to unpack here but basically he’s… complicated, and

CQ’s wushimei, Han Tan, the half-yao baby of the bunch who has EXCELLENT FASHION SENSE SHUT UP DASHIXIONG

Translations (109 chapters total): Ch.1-33, Ch.34-56, Ch.35-81, extra 3 (ruchun-centric, can be read after Ch.77)

The rustycol tl updates about once a month.

Sha Po Lang (jjwxc)

Steampunk, sort of a ‘what if the Industrial Revolution happened during the Song or Ming Dynasty?’ setting. Politics & war; main plot is resisting European attempts at colonization, as well as fortifying Da Liang (the name of the ruling dynasty) to adjust to the changing times (a shift from agrarian to factory labor, the development of fiat currency, breaking up the power of prominent aristocratic families). SPL gave me a more charitable view of Legalist philosophy, as well :P There’s a wee bit of fantasy, but the exact amount is up to reader interpretation.

Main themes:

Change–what is lost with the past, and how can a nation adapt to the inevitable flow of time and technology without becoming like an automaton that keeps moving despite holding only a corpse inside?

Loyalty–the various relationships and conflicts between personal attachments and commitment to one’s country.

Legacy–imagine seeing a train for the first time, and wondering how history will remember you.

The main character is Chang Geng, the son of the emperor and a barbarian consort ‘goddess’ who was sent as tribute to Da Liang. For the first fourteen years of his life, however, he’s made to believe he’s a simple country boy. Not only that, but his aunt tortures him and places a curse on him, which gives him terrible nightmares and will eventually cause him to go insane. Chang Geng’s coming-of-age happens along with Da Liang’s, and his changing identities, tempered by trauma, mirror the changes Da Liang must undergo in order to survive.

The romantic interest is the commander of Da Liang’s army, Gu Yun, who starts out as Chang Geng’s adoptive father (there’s a 7-8 year age difference, but nothing happens until CG is 20, and CG is the pursuer–for sure avoid SPL if this squicks you out, but I’ll just say that the parts of their relationship that have issues are addressed and resolved with care; that being said, CG has an undeniable daddy kink).

Gu Yun was poisoned as a child and is mostly blind and deaf as a result, but drinks medicine that allows him to temporarily regain his senses. Initially, Gu Yun is pretty much forced to lay down his life for his country at every juncture, but Chang Geng’s entrance into his life gives him new purpose.

Translations (128 chapters total): Ch.1, Ch.2-128 & 10/15 extras (that’s right, the main story is done being translated!)

I also HIGHLY recommend the audio drama: S1, S2, S3, which can be bought for about $15. There are English translations up to S2E5, but it follows the book closely enough that after jumping off from the English subbed versions, you can follow along pretty closely with the wattpad translation/mtling (ie, ‘Translate this page’) the audio drama page, which has subtitles if you keep the barrage on.

Also, if you like to read essays for fun as much as I like to write them, I wrote a meta about the theme of loyalty in Sha Po Lang here.

[ceescedasticity]

outline: jin guangyao’s hoarding problem, part 1

I am STILL NOT WRITING THIS.

Cast:

Jin Guangyao, schemer extraordinaire. He’s got a lot on his plate right now, scheming for the Jin Sect’s advancement, scheming for his personal advancement within the Jin Sect, trying to get Qin Cangye to let him marry his daughter, trying to juggle his sworn brothers, wrangling weird 13-year-old Mo Xuanyu who his father dropped on him as some sort of power play, wrangling Xue Yang insofar as it is possible to do so, promoting research into demonic cultivation, and on and on and on. Jin Guangyao, as no one will ever let him forget, was not born rich; he understands that you can’t just go throwing things out when you might want them again later; and in this universe he’s let that reluctance to discard outweigh his caution.

Wen Ning, conscious fierce corpse. Keeping Wen Ning was always the plan, even when plans to control him didn’t quite work out. Because he’s a really good conscious fierce corpse. Maybe they’ll work out controlling him someday. Maybe he’ll be good as an example. They went to a fair amount of trouble faking his destruction, so no sense wasting that. (Wen Ning, for his part, is… not happy. Even when they’re not trying to control him, he is not happy. But he is not making trouble if he can avoid it, because…)

Wen Qing, really outstanding doctor. Jin Guangyao cannot understand why his father was planning to execute her – she’s such a good doctor! Groundbreaking! Sure, she has some inconvenient morals, but she’s simple enough to leverage, just grab some family members – Wen Ruohan kept her in line for years. Why would Jin Guangshan not try to obtain such a valuable resource? It’s probably because when he looks at a woman he stops after the boobs. Anyway, now Jin Guangyao has the opportunity, and it’s easier to fake her death than Wen Ning’s (just have to kill a heavily bruised woman in Wen robes, rather than something that passes for a fierce corpse). She can be kept in line just by threatening Wen Ning’s non-life as the stick, and for a carrot, taking the nails out of his head when they’re not actively experimenting. (Wen Qing is sick to her stomach. Although not everything she’s been required to do is bad–)

(Off stage, but alive, is Jiang Yanli. Jin Guangyao likes her more than he likes most of the Jin Sect, he didn’t want her dead – and whisking her away to a mystery doctor who saved her life means Jiang Wanyin owes him. Big. —He doesn't want her angling for any kind of power/regency after Jin Guangshan dies, so he's been making sure there are plenty of rumors that she's physically and mentally fragile, and his leverage over Yunmeng Jiang is better with her in Jinlintai so he's angling to maintain that, too, but unlike that other idea he's not blackmailing her. This is probably a mistake.)

Wei Wuxian, Yiling Laozu. Smuggled back to Jinlintai at least half dead, and really wanted to get all the way there. Didn’t really change his mind on that until after he got conscious enough to process that (a) Wen Qing and Wen Ning were alive(ish), and might be punished if Wen Qing couldn’t save him; (b) Jiang Yanli is alive, but in Jinlintai, which means not safe. Even after he’s trying, though, he’s in for a long convalescence – especially without a core. (Which Jin Guangyao has figured out and, worse, figured out the reason for.) Wei Wuxian is claiming he couldn’t possibly recreate the Stygian Tiger Seal outside the Burial Grounds and/or without all the pieces and/or while he’s still so weak. The last one is true, the others are… not completely false? He certainly couldn't make it like it was before.

Mo Xuanyu, weird 13-year-old. Inexplicably if usefully devoted to Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao doesn’t trust him to do more than some very basic reading on demonic cultivation, but when the secret prison acquired the gravely wounded Wei Wuxian it became important to have someone other than Xue Yang checking on things, refreshing supplies, and getting Jin Guangyao immediately if necessary. Mo Xuanyu also likes Wei Wuxian, and Wen Qing, and Wen Ning, and (for some reason) Xue Yang. Not enough to impact his devotion to Jin Guangyao, though.

Xue Yang, spite elemental. (This Xue Yang has never worked for Wen Ruohan – I may keep the Yin Iron in this universe mashup, it just had no particular connection to Xue Yang.) Half feral (at least). Demonic cultivation natural talent. Delighted to have the opportunity to independently recreate the Stygian Tiger Seal, not that it stops him badgering Wei Wuxian for tips. Big fan of “better to ask forgiveness than permission”. No, that’s not it. Big fan of “better to say ‘yeah, I did it, what are you gonna do about it?’ than ask permission.”

WQ, WN, and WWX are full-time imprisoned in some sort of secret dungeon/basement/hidden complex in Carp Tower. MXY and XY are in and out a lot. JGY less so because he has a busy schedule.

So, moving forward:

Wen Qing is trying to keep WWX alive. WWX is cooperating halfheartedly.

Xue Yang is trying to recreate the Stygian Tiger Seal. WWX is cooperating hundredthheartedly.

JGY picks up that WWX is not being entirely sincere in his cooperation. He decides to show that his threats have teeth, in a very mild way. He plays some 'healing music' for JYL.

JYL has a bad week.

WWX becomes somewhat more cooperative.

(JYL is aware enough of her own body and mind and has enough of an ear for music to say — extremely politely, and not implying (or suspecting!) any malice — that she thinks JGY may need a little more practice.)

(JGY decides he needs to be a little more conservative with his use of the Collection of Turmoil, and maybe, say, not teach any bits of it to people who are not definitely on his side, no matter how innocent and gullible he thinks they are.)

(Nie Sect's trip to the Sword Hall can't be said to go well by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not an almost-TPK either. No one unwittingly kills or spiritually poisons anyone they love. It doesn't make much difference in the timetable of NMJ's decline, really. It doesn't make as much of a difference as you might expect in the timetable of NHS Figuring Shit Out, later on. It does make a difference in the experience level and cohesiveness of Nie Sect's inner-ring disciples. It does make a difference in NHS's emotional health and support structure. It may in fact make a difference in whether JGY is going to get out of all this alive. But that's later.)

When the reconstructed Seal is mostly complete, Xue Yang takes off to Yueyang to "test" it. He may or may not have informed JGY first. Let's go with 'not' (not out of any concern that he'd disapprove, Xue Yang just doesn't want to bother).

So here's the thing. The Seal is not a loyal tool. Insofar as it has a consciousness and feelings it's kind of pissed off at WWX anyway. But he is still its original creator, and this time he's alive, and this time he was extorted into helping reconstruct it, and this time — unlike when he was forging it the first time — revenge doesn't even really make the motivation list, so it's not quite the same reconstructed Seal. It's not a benevolent tool. It doesn't like people. It doesn't want to help people. It doesn't have principles. If Xue Yang just stood outside and ordered fierce corpses to slaughter everyone in the Chang compound, the Seal would have cooperated eagerly.

But obviously Xue Yang isn't about to just stand outside, he goes in and gets his hands dirty, and when he tries to use the Seal to directly, personally attack a child, something goes… sideways. There's an explosion which blows a large hole in the side of the house. Some of the corpses attack Xue Yang. The Seal levitates six meters up into the air and won't come down until grabbed. It's very annoying. Xue Yang makes sure there's no one with a golden core left and sets the building on fire and leaves in a very bad mood.

There are only like a dozen survivors total, no adult cultivators, and the one surviving kid who saw him is too young to give any kind of useful witness statement, but still.

He goes back to the basement and blames WWX for the unsatisfactory performance of the Seal. WWX's response of "Good" didn't deescalate things any, but he probably would have gotten the shit kicked out of him regardless.

Someone interrupts before he can actually beat WWX to death (which had better not have been WWX's plan, says WQ). Right. No core, already seriously injured. Xue Yang gets Wen Qing, who has to do surgery for flail chest. Xue Yang makes a surprisingly good surgical assistant.

JGY gets back from wherever he was (Qinghe playing fake!Clarity? Laoling trying to get a date?) and is like. I was gone for two days.

Xue Yang does not deny almost accidentally killing the only available Yiling Laozu, but blames it on WWX being too fragile due to being coreless and injured.

Maybe if we gave him someone else's core he would be sturdier?

Jin Guangyao doesn't immediately shoot it down. Wen Qing tries to — WWX would never survive the procedure in his current condition, and the donor has to be willing, does JGY really want to sacrifice someone loyal for this questionable gamble?

No, he doesn't. At least not right now.

Xue Yang says he's taking time off. JGY tells him not to get caught.

He gets caught.

Trial, commutation, official imprisonment, and now Xue Yang is stuck in the basement with the others basically full-time. He's seriously trying to convince Wen Qing to teach him surgery. She's appalled, but on the other hand would surgical skills make him any more dangerous than he already is? And it keeps him from sticking nails in Wen Ning's head.

While she's distracted Wei Wuxian is trying and failing to convince Wen Ning and/or Mo Xuanyu that he is recovered enough from the flail chest to walk around. He is failing.

Jin Guangyao is spending a lot of time in Qinghe…

[ibijau]

Deathbed Wedding pt 10

Lan Xichen learns a little more about his family, and preparations for the wedding begin (also on AO3)

News travelled fast inside Lotus Pier. Upon hearing about what had been decided, Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng rushed to see Lan Xichen, curious to get more details. All three boys were clearly in great distress over what had happened. Jiang Cheng in particular felt intense guilt, since he confessed that it was while protecting him that Nie Huaisang had been fatally wounded. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji also insisted on taking their share of the blame.

The two of them had ended up trapped in that cave after everyone had escaped, they explained, forced to kill on their own the monster living there. They hadn’t thought to check whether Nie Huaisang was dead or alive until they were rescued, when they insisted his body needed to be brought home. Because of his injuries they had simply assumed the worst right away, and now felt that if they had noticed earlier that he was alive, they might have tried to heal him somehow.

Lan Xichen, at first, was angry over that mistake. Then, realising the scope of Nie Huaisang’s wounds, seeing what state the two other boys were in even after being cared for, hearing how Jiang Cheng had rushed to Lotus Pier to get help, he decided it would be unfair to blame them. They had done the best they could.

When he returned from his negotiations with Qingheng-Jun, Nie Mingjue agreed with that sentiment. He placed the blame on Qingheng-Jun for lying about the chance of changing his mind, and on Wen Chao for his badly organised hunt. The three younger boys seemed somewhat relieved to hear that, though they also did not seem to fully believe him. When Yu Ziyuan ordered Jiang Cheng to go in town and help Nie Mingjue find a pair of wedding robes and a paper effigy to take Nie Huaisang's place in the wedding, her son did not look particularly at ease. He still obeyed without questions, but seemed very nervous as he left with Nie Mingjue.

In fact, as Yu Ziyuan gave orders to everyone to hurriedly prepare for a wedding the next day, nobody dared object to anything. They all dashed away to do whatever task she’d given them, until only she and Lan Xichen, still kneeling by the bed, remained in the room where Nie Huaisang laid. Now that they were alone she looked somewhat less terrifying, and Lan Xichen thought there might even be pity in her eyes as she watched him and Nie Huaisang.

“Yu-furen, I am deeply grateful for your kindness today,” he said, letting go a moment of Nie Huaisang’s hand to bow to her. “I realise what trouble this must be causing you, and I am sorry. Whatever happens in the future, I am in your debt for what you have done. I will work hard so this doesn’t negatively impact the relationship between our sects.”

“Your father doesn’t have a tenth of the influence on Gusu Lan’s life that he thinks he has,” Yu Ziyuan retorted indifferently. “I know who really rules your sect, and after this I am still in good terms with your uncle. Qingheng-Jun’s opinion is nothing to me, or to my husband. In fact, I did this more to annoy him than to help you, boy.”

Lan Xichen couldn’t help a small gasp, which made her laugh.

“Are you really surprised?” she asked, walking closer to the bed. “I might not have been on very good terms with Yu Chenxi when we were young, and I don’t agree with what she’s done, but she still deserved better than to be locked up and forced to marry a man she didn’t like.”

Politely, Lan Xichen smiled at her, unsure what she was talking about. This, in turn, made her frown.

“You do know that your mother was from Meishan Yu, don’t you?” Yi Ziyuan asked, eliciting another gasp from him. “Pah. I shouldn’t be surprised. Your father is an idiot, your uncle holds a grudge like nobody, and you were young when she died. She’d left our sect anyway, over a disagreement that blew out of proportion. Her temper was always bad.”

Lan Xichen gaped at her. His mother was never a topic for conversation at home, and all he knew of her were those precious few moments when his brother and him were allowed to visit her. She had never spoken of her past during those visits, and Lan Xichen had never heard anyone call her anything but Madam Lan. Even her grave did not bear her name, and she had been denied a tablet in the ancestral hall out of deference for the elder she had murdered who was already honoured there. Qingheng-Jun, ashamed of an impulsive marriage that had brought him no joy, had done his best to erase his wife from everyone's memory.

Feeling tears coming again, Lan Xichen bowed once more before Madam Yu, lower than before.

“I did not know this. Thank you Yu-furen for sharing this information, I am now doubly grateful to you. I hope in the future, you will allow me to ask you about… about Yu Chenxi, if that is not too unpleasant to you.”

“Rise up, boy,” Yu Ziyuan ordered impatiently. “This isn’t some great favour I’d be doing you. But if you want to know so badly, I will tell my mother to write to you. As I’ve said I wasn’t very close to Yu Chenxi, but I can at least help you find people who were.”

Ignoring her order, Lan Xichen was about to bow again when there was a knock on the door, followed by Meng Yao coming in with a bowl on a tray. He appeared surprised to find Lan Xichen still there, and exchanged a look with Yu Ziyuan who shrugged and motioned for him to come closer to the bed.

Meng Yao obeyed, putting the tray down on the nightstand next to the bed, then taking the bowl and slowly coaxing the unconscious Nie Huaisang to drink the dark liquid inside, one spoonful at a time. Lan Xichen looked on with curiosity.

“Medicine?”

“Hm. To help with the current situation,” Meng Yao cautiously explained.

“May I… may I give it to him? I feel so useless, everyone is doing something now, while I’m just staying here. I… I want to help him.”

Meng Yao hesitated, and glanced at Yu Ziyuan who shrugged again.

“You can help him when you’re married to him,” she decided. "For now, he is still the responsibility of Qinghe Nie, so it's normal for one of its disciples to care for him."

Meng Yao relaxed and continued his task, while Lan Xichen, disappointed and unsure what else to do, took again Nie Huaisang’s hand. 

"You're not wrong about being useless," Yu Ziyuan remarked. "If you want to help this badly, go see if the kitchens need anything. They're always short on people, and I'm sure they'll find you something to do other than mope around like this." 

Although cooking wasn't something he was proficient at in any way, Lan Xichen still felt grateful to be given a task at last. He rose up and made to leave, only to change his mind and quickly come press a kiss to Nie Huaisang’s forehead. 

"I'll be back, A-Sang," he promised. "And tomorrow we'll get married."

"You certainly will," Yu Ziyuan agreed with a smirk. "And I've checked already: it'll be an auspicious day for it." 

-

There was plenty of work to be done in the kitchen, just as Yu Ziyuan had predicted, and some of it could be done even by someone as unskilled as Lan Xichen. He was given a knife, a pile of vegetables to peel, and asked to do his best if he wanted a decent wedding feast. Food was not particularly on his mind at the moment, but having something to do with his hands, and an unusual task at that, forced him to focus on what he was doing instead of worrying about what was to come. All of his anger and grief were taken out on those unfortunate vegetables.

Whenever he took a break, Lan Xichen found himself watching Jiang Yanli give orders and handle everything, helping the cooks when needed. She seemed perfectly at ease doing this, a stark contrast to the meek young woman he’d occasionally spotted during conferences, and who upon learning they might get engaged had shyly said she was sorry they were pushed together when neither of them wanted this. Lan Xichen felt deeply sorry as well that she would not get a better husband, and wondered how odd this situation might be for her, helping prepared a feast to marry her suitor to a dying person.

He must have looked at her too often. After their eyes met a few times, Jiang Yanli came to see him and asked how he was handling things.

“I fear I’m not very good at peeling carrots,” he confessed. “But I’ll continue trying, since it’s the only thing I can do.”

“You’re better at it than my brothers,” she assured him. “But I was asking more about… about this situation. I cannot imagine what this must be like.”

“I imagine your position is unpleasant as well. I am sorry that you and your family have gotten mixed up into our affairs this way.”

Jiang Yanli smiled. “If your father and my mother have their way, it seems your family affairs will be my family affairs someday. And even if that doesn’t happen, Nie gongzi protected my brother, so this concerns us, in a way. I am so glad Jiang Cheng made such a good friend.”

Lan Xichen nodded, his eyes falling to the pile of badly peeled vegetables in front of him. 

He should have been glad, perhaps, that people suddenly were taking notice of Nie Huaisang, but he couldn’t help being upset. Mostly, because apparently Nie Huaisang had had to get himself nearly killed to be really appreciated. In Lan Xichen's opinion, Nie Huaisang should have been noticed for his other qualities, the ones that were truly a part of him, rather than this recklessness he had only acquired when forced to. Lan Xichen had come to love and respect Nie Huaisang for his cleverness, his artistic skill, his good understanding of how people thought, and he wished others would have respected him for the same reasons.

“I’m sorry, I did not mean to upset you,” Jiang Yanli said. “I will leave you alone. There’s a lot to be done before tomorrow, and it’s already late.”

“It is, and I am grateful for your efforts, Jiang-guniang.”

Jiang Yanli turned away, ready to go help some more.

“Jiang-guniang, wait,” Lan Xichen called. “I… I have to say something more.”

She stopped, and smiled at him with such sincere concern it almost hurt.

“I’m listening.”

Lan Xichen took a deep breath to centre himself.

“Jiang-guniang, if it does come to a marriage between us when this is over, I will do my best to be a good husband. I know you do not want me as your husband, and I am sorry you might be forced into this anyway. And so I will endeavour to make sure you are happy, as much as it is in my power to do so. I have little to offer you, except my friendship and respect, but I will gladly give you both.”

“That is more than my last fiancé was willing to give me,” Jiang Yanli replied with a strained smile. “More than many women get. I am a reasonable person, Lan gongzi, and I will satisfy myself with that, if this does happen.”

She went back to work then, leaving Lan Xichen alone with his pile of miserable carrots, to go with his miserable mood. 

He stared for a while at the vegetables, then at the knife in his hand, wondering if any of this even had a point. Rage built up within him, turned against his father who had caused such suffering around him, against his mother for starting this whole chain of event, against Nie Huaisang for not seeing that Qingheng-Jun had set him on an impossible quest. Above all, he felt a burning rage against himself for being so weak and obedient that he hadn’t seized any of the chances offered to him to set things right before it was too late.

Had he been alone, Lan Xichen might have broken into tears, or screamed, or unsheathed his sword and turned it against the room around him, just to feel in control of something.

But he was not alone, and there was much to be done.

So he picked another carrot from the pile and started peeling it.

-

When morning came, Lan Xichen had not slept. 

Even after being kicked out of the kitchen when there was no longer anything for him to do, he simply had not been able to rest. He tried to go see Nie Huaisang, but his uncle caught him on the way there and told him it would be bad luck to see his fiancé before the ceremony.

The idea that their luck could be anything but bad anyway made Lan Xichen laugh and laugh, until he ended up crying against his uncle’s shoulder. Lan Qiren allowed it for a long while, then took him to the room that had been given to Lan Wangji where a mattress had been hurriedly added for him. Yu Ziyuan had offered to give Lan Xichen his own room, but Lan Qiren had insisted such an arrangement would be better.

For this, Lan Xichen was grateful. Even though his brother was not a very talkative person, nor a very demonstrative one, his company was still appreciated. Lan Wangji, who always fell asleep at the same hour, made the effort of staying awake alongside his brother and, at Lan Xichen’s request, told him the full story of what had happened in that cave. He tried to feel proud of his lover, but above all he felt once again bitter that Nie Huaisang had thought he needed to go to such lengths.

Eventually, Lan Wangji gave in to sleep, and Lan Xichen remained alone. He tried to sleep as well, guessing the day to come would be long. He had little success in doing so, too many thoughts running through his mind. When that failed, he tried to meditate instead, with little more success. So instead he resolved to simply wait until morning, and left the room as soon as the first hints of dawn appeared in the sky.

Unsure how much he would be allowed to wander, Lan Xichen went to walk by the piers, hoping the lake would bring him some peace. All it did, though, was deepen his sorrows as he found himself thinking that Nie Huaisang would have loved the way this scenery looked in the golden light of dawn, how pleasant it would have been to watch the sun rise together. They'd done it in the Cloud Recesses sometimes, on those few times they'd had a chance to spend the night chatting together. Lan Xichen remembered those as the most colourful sunrises of his life. He wondered how dull dawn would feel in the future, without Nie Huaisang to share it with. 

His mood darkened further when, as he walked back toward the buildings of Lotus Pier, Lan Xichen found himself face to face with his father who was also out for a morning stroll. Barely keeping his anger in check, Lan Xichen tried to pass by him without acknowledging him, only for Qingheng-Jun to grab his wrist.

“You will regret this,” his father warned. “It is morbid and will bring you bad luck.”

With more force than he would have allowed himself normally, Lan Xichen pulled his wrist free and glared at his father.

“I might regret it,” he conceded. “I also might not. Right now, I think it is the right thing to do. And didn’t Yu-furen say that she checked, that today is the most auspicious day possible for a wedding?”

“Yu Ziyuan is not kind enough to help others so easily. If she’s doing this, then she must have reasons of her own.”

Lan Xichen almost smiled, remembering Yu Ziyuan stating that her motivation wasn't kindness indeed, and more of a personal dislike against Qingheng-Jun. Growing up, Lan Xichen had sometimes felt guilty for holding a grudge against his absent father. There was a certain comfort to be found in discovering that others disliked him as well.

“I don’t think you have any right to judge others’ motivations, father,” Lan Xichen calmly retorted. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must get ready for my wedding. My husband is waiting.”

“Don’t come crying to me when this goes wrong!” Qingheng-Jun warned.

Lan Xichen stared at him in shock. Then, too exhausted to keep himself in check, he laughed.

“Not once in my life have I ever looked to you for comfort. Why would I start now?”

Before his father could scold him for being insolent and unfilial, Lan Xichen left. He had better things to worry about than his father's offended pride.

After all, it was his wedding day. 

[restingdomface]

Okay I can’t believe I’m going there, but, Lan Wangji’s magical healing cock and also mpreg AU:

Okay. So. Instead of Jin Zixuan being a dick to his crush, he genuinly never had a crush on her at all, and in fact, it never came to light until the Sunshit Campaign started, but JZX had a crush on Jiang Cheng all along. Jiang Cheng, who, reluctantly, returns his affections. Wei Wuxian is disgusted. His brother has terrible taste in men wtf.

So. Things went differently this time. What’s the change here? Meng Yao never left Nie Mingjue’s side. Of course, he did the spying thing, but he never betrayed him (this could be a part of my idea where NMJ and MY plan to actually have him be a spy and send him off after a planned execution of a soldier that NMJ decided needed a death sentence more than banishment, or, an AU where MY presented the idea to Wen Rouhan that his coming to WRH’s side was the betrayel itself). Now how does this change things? Because I honestly and truly think that if MY didn’t go to Jin Guangshan’s side afterwards, JGS wouldn’t have had the sway to execute anyone else in the Wen Family, or do anything horrible like that.

TBH he tries to wipe out the rest of the Wens, but it goes so badly and this time MY isn’t on his side (lol you know JGS would have tried tho, imagine how humiliating it would have been to be publicly denied by your own bastard son at the banquet after wow) and so JGS ends up removed from power entirely and JZX gets made sect leader instead.

This means, that since JZX is about to marry JC, they’re going to have to move to LanlingJin instead of both of them arguing over if they’d move to Lotus Pier or not. Cause they would argue over that. This means that Jiang Cheng is going to be the next Young Master Jin and Jiang Yanli is now officially the Jiang Sect Leader. Nice.

So. We’re rid of JGS and everyone’s happy and MY probably isn’t gonna kill anyone cause now he can marry NMJ in peace and not have to deal with anyone else, where does LWJ’s magic healing dick come in? Hold on I’m getting to it. Impatient.

So. The Wens. Of course, before JGS was removed from power, Wei Wuxian was actually running around saving Wen survivors and gathering them in the Burial Mounds, so he actually has to be coaxed into leaving by his siblings and LWJ and even JZX and NMJ (who thinks this is rather like that one time he had to coax Nie Huaisang out from under his bed when he became convinced NMJ’s cat was a demon because it wouldn’t stop attacking his songbird and he couldn’t come out cause she was in the room and she would steal his soul but she’s just sitting on the windowsill and meowing at them and NMJ is just silently planning to feed her more and keep her away from the atrium and tbh plz NHS you’re 16 years old you’re too old for this plz stop crying) and it’s great. It’s just great.

Anyways. WWX is paranoid af. Like so fucking paranoid. Cause they have been attacked. He’s got 12 year old girls talking about what the adult men in the Jin sect did to them. He’s got a traumatized toddler on his hip that screams when he sees Jin robes. He’s got children with branded scarring on their faces and wounds you can’t even imagine to come from anything but torture. He’s paranoid. He’s trying to keep the kiddos safe. They’re healers, and he’s given them the tools to heal, but they’re scared, and he’s paranoid without his Golden Core, and he’s scared, and he’s not putting down the toddler plz stop asking, he’s keeping this one, shut up.

So. What can he do but make a few demands? The Lan sect may have strict rules, but they would never attack innocent civilians, and they have rules about killing even animals in Gusu. He asks them to send all the Lan guards they can to escort them to GusuLan. He doesn’t think they’d hurt them in YunmengJiang either, but he can’t risk it. He was there when Lotus Pier burned. Cloud Recesses didn’t lose nearly as many people, and he’s still too traumatized to spend much time in LP rn.

So they go to Cloud Recesses. This actually, also gives the other sects a lot of time to get some glimpses at everyone that came from the Burial Mounds.

Not a single one of them was a cultivator.

This is a little different than canon. WWX can’t handle the loss of his golden core in this one. Not to say that he shouldn’t have done it, but that the resentful energy is dragging him down to the point where all he can feel is paranoia and fear. He’s almost completely unresponsive at this point. He follows after LWJ when told to, and he holds little A-Yuan in his arms, but he doesn’t pay much attention to anyone.

Wen Qing tells them of the loss of his core, but not how it happened. Lan Qiren doesn’t much like WWX still, but he accepts that a cornered animal will bite, and WWX lost his main weapon right before a major war. Of course he would do all he could to keep himself safe.

Jiang Yanli offers for the Wen Survivors to be integrated into YunmengJiang, since they lost so many people. It could help a lot. They accept, since she’s offering them protection and help.

Of course, Wen Qing and Jiang Yanli used to Spend A Lot Of Time Together in Cloud Recesses, so love is blooming there between the two sect leaders, and by the end of a year, they’re getting married themselves.

WWX doesn’t go back to LP with them. He couldn’t do it. A-Yuan and Granny and Wen Ning stay with him in Cloud Recesses. Granny talks with Wen Qing regularly, and A-Yuan is attached to Lan Wangji enough that Lan Xichen starts mentioning that he could attend classes there when he’s old enough. LXC is a WangXian shipper and is trying to get his brother to adopt the child. Y’all know he would. WWX spends his time arguing (loudly, but in a room with magical wards for sound so they don’t get in trouble) with a Lan mind healer that talks through his bullshit with him, sleeping the day away in one of the rooms of the Jingshi (because LWJ made him move in right away and WWX couldn’t even argue cause A-Yuan loves him too and he can ask LWJ to play Their Song whenever he wants to hear it) and following after A-Yuan as he enchants (and terrifies) all the rabbits in the field. Also getting yelled at (softly) by LQR for breaking rules. LQR and LWJ have been making it their personal mission to find a way to either purify the resentful energy so WWX can go back to his normal cheerful self that doesn’t jump or hide when startled, or to regain a Golden core so the yin and yang energies can balance each other and keep him stable.

Of course, JYL sends him a message that she’s getting married, and WWX pulls himself out of the fog enough that he can ask them to go to the wedding (he’s being polite, he’s going no matter what they say lol,) and LWJ accompanies him to the wedding. His siblings are so happy to see him there.

Anyways. Things get rocky when WWX hears them talking about kids.

Jiang Yanli will carry Jin Zixuan’s children, and they’ll keep the Jin name. They’ll know that all four of them are their parents, but it’s a way to pass on the name.

Wen Qing will carry Jiang Cheng’s children, and they’ll carry the Jiang name. This also helps to keep track of what kids are heir to what sect.

Of course, Wei Wuxian, the master of ‘I know The Most Obscure Bullshit Ever’, asks why they don’t just have their spouses children. There are spells and potions for that.

Well. No one else in the room knew that but him apparently. Well, they’re still going to go with their idea for the first few kids, and then they’ll decide if other means of pregnancy options are viable.

Anyways. Guess who else didn’t know it was possible for men to get pregnant? You guessed it. Lan Wangji. Who was also in the room at the time.

So. Wedding is lovely. They all have an amazing time. WWX is able to pull himself out of bed every day. He was even able to work on some cultivation items that LQR begrudgingly admits are amazing items and very useful to cultivation.

They go back to Cloud Recesses, and Lan Wangji combs through his and his uncle’s notes till he finds a viable solution to a return of a Golden core that they had originally scrapped because WWX wasn’t a girl.

To return a Golden core to a body by means of very careful pregnancy. Of course, such a thing would be considered stealing under normal circumstances, and most mothers would rather die than harm their child in the womb in a way that could kill them. But this was a method made to keep both parent and child from harm. A way to build the slightest lump of core in the parent, enough to stick and allow a base to build off of later.

Of course, without consulting Uncle (because the man would be horrified at the idea, and LWJ would rather be rejected by the man himself thanks very much) he takes the proposal to the man in question.

WWXA has to think about this one for a long time. He thinks about it while helping Wen Ning with zombie stuff so he can maintain a stable body. He thinks about it while writing letters to his siblings. He thinks a LOT about it while tucking their two year old into bed and reading him a story with the funny voices. He thinks about it when he spends a night in the cold springs with LWJ one night, close enough to touch the man, because without a Golden core, the water is too cold for him to survive in on his own.

He asks why LWJ would besmirch his honor like that. Having a child out of wedlock, his uncle would throw a fit. His name would be in tatters.

LWJ blinks, once, and twice. He quietly tells him the offer could involve marriage if WWX thinks it’s of import.

So. They get married. So they can have a child. Another child. Just. Yeah. Let’s get married so we can mate like rabbits.

They’re in love. Of course they are. But they’re also shy idiots. LWJ is a sex fiend like usual, and WWX quickly gets addicted to it, but they’re both too shy to say anything sappy yet. Well. No. Scratch that. LWJ is fully willing to admit his love to the world. But he’s a very quiet person. So he mostly just tells WWX how much he would do anything for him, and even eats his horrible poison cooking. Not even A-Yuan will touch that shit.

A-Yuan is so excited to be a big brother. His favorite place to lay is curled around WWX’s big belly and giving it kisses while A-Die scratches his hair and reads him stories.

A-Yuan finally gets his baby and Wei Wuxian gets the stability that a Golden core provides so he can continue using resentful energy to dodge the many many scrolls Shifu Qiren will throw at him over the years to come. LQR swears that if that man hadn’t given his nephew happiness and also many great nephews-

Anyways. The Lotus Flowers are all gay and all happy send tweet.

[a-nonny-mouse-0]

Jin Sibling AU Part 2

Note: So I am incorporating the untamed and the novel a bit. I haven’t finished reading it yet so I’m sure this may get tweaked or I may leave it as is.

So Jin Jixuan failed to apologize to Yanli. Meng Yao is seriously wondering if he is allergic to apologies.

After the conference both are feeling better and have a slightly better semblance of a brother like relationship.

Meng Yao: It looks like your upset. This has nothing to do with Lady Jiang does it? o(*￣▽￣*)ブ Remember if you can’t formally apologize, then say it simply. You can start by saying “I’m” then finish it with “sorry”.

Jin Jixuan:(* ￣︿￣) Shut up

Note: This may be a little more cavalier than I expected, but yeah, I like this interaction a little more.

Going back to Quighe and Lanling, both brothers thought everything was fine until it wasn’t.

Meng Yao didn’t think to be honest. Nie Mingjue thought he stabbed him because he insulted him due to his origins. He didn’t bother correcting him. Disrespecting Jixuan’s honor? What right did that man have? It is only because he saved his life and maybe even remembering Jixuan’s letter that Nie Mingjue doesn’t kill him. He’s banished from his sect.

Meng Yao works at the bookstore, still writing letters to Jixuan, until he comes to across Xichen. He has heard of Gusu burning and hides him until they had no choice but to go on the run together when it’s apparent that the Wens are looking for Xichen.

Jixuan wasn’t able to send letters to Meng Yao when he’s forced to take part in the Wen ‘classes’. He hopes that he won’t do anything foolish and that this farce would end soon.

Jixuan escapes with the other cultivators and relays what happened to his father. Afterwards he goes to his room. Let him have this time to rest and read the letter’s his brother Meng Yao sent. Afterwards he’ll write the letter apologizing (He’s been working on it!) from the abrupt loss of contact and ask him to please join him.

Several things happen. Lotus Pier burns down which send Jixuan in a worried state (Is Lady Yanli okay?) and let’s not forget that he lost contact with his older brother Meng Yao (What happened? Why has he sent no letter? The last one was from his employer saying that Meng Yao just up and left. And okay hearing him demean him and his mom is another reason. It’s already decided that they would go to war and there’s no one more clever and dare he voice it, reliable that he wants next to him.

Back with Meng Yao and Xichen, they are constantly on the run, but they outwit their pursuers. One thing is certain, Lan Xichen is forbidden from washing clothes... EVER!!!!

Still, there is a moment of happiness. Including when Meng Yao goes ahead and grabs some apples from the tree.

          Meng Yao climbs the tree. Was he scared? A little. He remembers how he climbed the tree’s with Jixuan during the conference to hide from other’s. Jixuan hated it, but  it was the best way to talk. After all, he wasn’t acknowledged by Jin Guangshan and for Jixuan to talk to him? They already heard the rumors and cruel remarks. No need to get him in trouble.

          However, he wasn’t climbing to talk to his estranged brother. He was climbing because Xichen was hungry and remarked that the apples looked delicious. He tried to talk him out of it, but Meng Yao wanted to repay his kindness. To Xichen he saw him as an equal, not the son of a prostitute.

         “Meng Yao! Meng Yao! Please get down. There’s no need to get those apples! Please, I don’t want you to get hurt.” Meng Yao could see Xichen is worried as he walked back and forth. He wouldn’t be deterred from  it.

         “No worries, I’ve got them!” Replied Meng Yao, and he did. Already he had picked three delicious looking red apples. Just plump and juicy, ready to eat. He was on his way to pick the last one when he missed a branch. He didn’t scream, but he let out a sharp gasp. A quick moment of his life flashed by his eyes. His mother’s love. Buying him books. Giving him the pearl necklace, proof of his lineage. His father. How disinterested he was, how he ordered one of his men to kick him down the stairs. He didn’t care about him. Jixuan smiling. That’s right, he didn’t write to him yet. He left the bookstore before he could write one. Still, that left the possibility of the Wen’s intercepting the letter. He couldn’t take that chance even though he knew it would bother Jixuan. Hopefully, he wouldn’t worry too much.

         It caught him off guard when he felt a pair of arms around, holding him tight. He already knew who it was with the white sleeves, but still he looked up, blushing from embarrassment. He sees the worried face of the Gusu Sect heir transform into a smile.

      “Thank goodness you’re okay!”

      “Lan Xichen...” he does a quick calculative look. The tree he was climbing was tall, very tall. He looks down to see his next thought correct, unfortunately. Xichen saw fit to use his blade to fly to catch him. It was great, since he saved him from a nasty fall, however the threat was too real. They immediately land and walk away from the place until they felt safe. Meng Yao was upset at Xichen for endangering them more so for Xichen himself. It was him the Wen’s were looking for. That didn’t mean to say he wanted to be killed. He had goals, after all.

As they settle down they end up talking about their brothers and Meng Yao’s parentage. It’s a bit eye opening as he felt jealous about Jixuan having a better life than him. Xichen can’t really give him proper advice, after all his relationship with Wangji is obviously better than Meng Yao’s and Jin Jixuan. He makes it a point to not forget that Jixuan has built a connection with him and he should value it just as much as Jixuan does himself.

When it comes to his father’s approval, Xichen states to be himself, which is smart, steadfast and caring and for sure Jin Guangshan will see his worth. Wishful thinking, but ok.

Meng Yao is confused about his situation. They end up talking about lighter topics. (The apples were a good choice to fill their bellies though)

Months later Xichen has rallied the others, and they are now fighting against the Wens. Jixuan is still worried and that soup that appears at his tent just helps him out a little. The same situation happens between him and Yanli but now his negative attitude comes in from his worries about Meng Yao. After all how dare she take credit for someone’s hard work, she’s nothing like the kind lady or Meng Yao. Then the truth comes out.

He denies vehemently that he heard his brother’s teasing voice.

Instead of a half-hearted apology, he does the simple one his brother suggested. WWX is a little gremlin surprised about ‘The Peacocks’ apology but both Yanli and Wangji are quick to shut it down.

Yanli does accept the apology but can’t find it in her heart to bring him another bowl of her delicious soup. Jixuan finds himself comparing himself to his father’s way in disrespecting women.

Xichen still receives coded messages. And even though he doesn’t ask, Xichen sends updates about a certain Jin.

It is during one of his visits (in particular when he heard about a fight that could have broken out i.e. WWX and Jin Jixuan) he talks to Jixuan. It’s first military talk, but it becomes awkward when it’s apparent that Jixuan has a favor he wants to ask. He tells him he has an ulterior motive and admits that he is looking for his half-brother (this is the first time he acknowledges him to anyone else)

Xichen doesn’t lie, but he neither alludes to knowing where Meng Yao is. Meng Yao has a high position now and Wen Rouhan has sent him to certain locales. He can’t say for sure where he is, but he tells him he met his brother and without his help, he would’ve been caught by the Wens. They went their separate ways, him to rally other’s to fight in this war and Meng Yao to help however way he can.

Xichen can’t admit that Meng Yao is a spy, but he tells Jixuan to not give up hope to see him again. Jixuan is suspicious, but withholds his remarks and thanks him.

So I have about three and a half pages that I have written out about the story outline, but I am tired. I wrote about three and a half pages. That is not counting me adding more to it because there were some things I wanted to add originally but I didn’t until now since it is easier to edit this on a computer versus paper and pen.

Edit: the rest of the jin sibling au @lolmouseywriting

[trensu]

Episode 30: The One where LWJ Wishes Jin Zixun Would STFU and Die Already

Okay, so we’re still in Yiling

Non-wangxiantics stuff happens

Unimportant nonsense happens

Ooooh, jc just appeared, looking awesome in purple robes as usual

Turns out he’s helped jyl sneak away so she can show off her wedding robes to wwx!!! And we get some wonderful Yunmeng Sib time!! I LOVE MY YUNMENG SIBS SO MUCH

OMG

Wwx’s face when he sees her in her wedding robes

HIS EYES WELLED UP WITH TEARS. SHE LOOKS SO PRETTY.

Jyl: i’m getting married, i wanted to show you my wedding robes!

wwx:*choked up* yeah, i heard you were getting married…(he’s looks so emotional here omg)

Jc: who told you?! 

(he says this all snappishly bc of course he does, this is jc we’re talking about)

Wwx: None of your business! *scowls*

LOL SO DEFENSIVE, WWX. what’s the matter?? You don’t want to tell your sibs about your recent date with lwj?? How you showed him your home??? hoW YOU DISCOVERED YOU WANTED TO CO-DAD CHILDREN WITH HIM????

Ah, brothers…

Jyl calms them down before they could get too into it tho bc she’s a good big sister and knows her little brothers well

Jyl: i came alone tho, so you can’t see the groom today

Wwx: *pouts* i don’t want to see the groom at all

I can’t get over the way wwx keeps looking at her. HE LOVES HIS SISTER SO MUCH. HE’S SO HAPPY FOR HER

Lol, both of them tell her how beautiful she looks and she’s all it doesn’t count when you guys say it bc you’re my little brothers and it’s my wedding so you have to be nice to me

So now we get the obligatory soup time with the yunmeng sibs

And AHHHHHH, JYL JUST ASKED WWX TO COME UP WITH A COURTESY NAME

And wwx is all, “for who???”

And jc says, for my future nephew!! And he looks so damn pleased and proud when he says it. JC WANTS TO BE AN UNCLE SO BAD me too jc, me too

Wwx: hmmm, well, the next generation for the jin clan is “ru” so how about jin rulan?

Jc: jin rulan? It sounds like the lan clan. Why should a kid of the jiang clan and jin clan be called “rulan”??

Omg jc sounds so offended here; chill out bro

Wwx: it’s not that bad if it’s from the lan clan all right? Lan means orchid, a gentry amongst flowers! ALSO MY SOULMATE IS FROM THE LAN CLAN SO THERE

Wwx sounded all sulky here, like RULAN IS A GREAT NAME, HOW DARE YOU

Jyl cuts in before there could be any bloodshed with, oh yeah, having you come up with the courtesy name was jc’s idea

The look jc gives her is one of utter betrayal like, why’d you have to go and tell him that? HE CAN’T KNOW I WAS BEING NICE TO HIM, GOD.

They all have much more sibling time together but since there’s no more wangxiantics we’re gonna skip over it (EVEN THO IT HURTS ME TO DO SO BC I LOVE MY YUNMENG SIBS AND I WANT TO SEE THEM HAPPY AND TOGETHER FOREVER)

We cut to the Burial Mounds where there’s a Wen family dinner going on

Wwx is all spacey bc he misses his sibs so much but manages to distract EVERYONE from it by making grand declarations and generally being an over-the-top Drama Bi.

WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS LET THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU TAKE CARE OF YOU LET THEM TRY TO MAKE YOU HAPPY STOP MAKING YOURSELF MISERABLE OMG

A-Yuan time!

Wen ning saved some of jyl’s soup to give to a-yuan!

He gives a-yuan a taste of the soup and a-yuan’s all “delicious! One more spoon!”

And after wen ning gives him more, he’s like, ONE MORE SPOON!

PRECIOUS, HE’S PRECIOUS AND SO CUTE

Then we get some Sad Times in the Demon-Subdue Palace where wwx has the saddest series of flashbacks ever

the promise he made to JC (twin heroes of yunmeng!!) that he didn’t keep

and then the oath on the lantern (always stand with justice and live without regrets) which he half-keeps

and then his declaration in the rain with lwj (if i should be killed, let it be by you) which he will keep BUT WE’RE NOT GONNA THINK ABOUT THAT

HE’S SO SADDDDDD

I’M SO SADDDDDDDDDDDDD

THERE’S SADNESS EVERYWHERE

Gross, now we’re in lanling, fastforwarding through that nonsense

Now we’re back at the burial mounds and get more A-YUAN TIME!!

Uh oh, a-yuan just murdered a lotus sprout

He’s all, what’s this?? And yanks the poor thing out of the mudpit it was growing in

Wwx yells at him: WHAT ARE YOU DOING

And a-yuan starts crying and wwx looks like he wants to start bawling too

Wen qing kind of tells him off 

a-yuan’s a little kid and doesn’t know better, she says

Wwx gets this defeated look about him and says it’s fine, i see that it’s not meant to be now

LIKE, HE’S JUST RESIGNED THAT HE CAN NEVER HAVE ANYTHING FROM HOME EVER AGAIN?

HE CAN’T EVEN HAVE ONE STUPID LOTUS PLANT BC OF COURSE HE CAN’T HE DOESN’T DESERVE IT

MY POOR PRECIOUS SUNSHINE BOY

After a little adorable convo with wen qing, a-yuan goes to comfort wwx in his cave

A-yuan: i’m sorry i made a mistake. Wq says if you miss your sister, you should go see her

Wwx: she’s so far away...i won’t go

A-yuan: hmmm, you should become a bird and fly over there!

AND THEN THEY PRETEND TO BE FLYING BIRDS AND IT’S SO CUTE

But wwx is still sad inside :(

Now we get a time skip! 

~ONE YEAR LATER~

Wwx overhears a bunch of gossipy cultivators talking about how the jin clan is doing a one-month celebration of baby Jin Rulan!!

WWX IS OVERWHELMED WITH JOY

HIS EYES ARE ALL TEARY AGAIN

AND HE’S LIKE, DID YOU  HEAR THAT WEN NING? MY SISTER HAD A BABY! I HAVE A NEPHEW!!

Wen Ning is a supportive bro so he’s all congratulations!!!

And then wwx gets all the happiness gets drained out of him when he remembers that he has no official ties to either clan so he’ll probably never get to see his nephew ever

We cut to Lanling, where i guess guests are arriving for the upcoming celebration

We don’t really care about any of these people

EXCEPT THAT ZEWU-JUN AND HANGUANG-JUN’S ARRIVAL IS ANNOUNCED

AND WE’RE GONNA LISTEN TO LWJ TALK ABOUT HIS BELOVED SOULMATE

Unfortunately he’s talking to asshole cousin jz, fuck that guy

Lwj: since all of his seniors are invited to the first-month celebration, wei ying should also be invited as he is the baby’s senior too

Lwj says this all respectfully, gaze steadily forward and not looking directly at anyone

Jz: you want us to invite wwx even tho he’s the enemy of all four clans??

JFC IF SOMEONE COULD’VE JUST KILLED THIS GUY WE COULD’VE AVOIDED AT LEAST A QUARTER OF THE PROBLEMS WE HAVE NOW

Lol, lwj glares at jz SO HARD the minute jz calls wwx the enemy; i’m surprised the asshole didn’t drop dead on the spot

Lwj: not an enemy.

Jz: not an enemy? Do you have such a shitty memory that you don’t remember what happened in qiongqi way? Do i need to remind you?

NO LWJ NEEDS YOU TO STFU

Also, HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO HANGUANG-JUN THAT WAY??

Lxc: what wangji said isn’t wrong. Wwx hasn’t caused any trouble since he took off to the burial mounds.

Jz: what, you’re taking the traitor’s side too zewu-jun?

You know, i was almost proud of lxc for finally siding with wwx and lwj

But the minute jz throws that accusation, you can see him start to pull back, WTF LXC

So now, since apparently having to deal with JZ wasn’t horrible enough, we get jgs and jgy on the scene, yuck

Jz gives them a summary of the conversation

Oh, i forgot to mention jzx has been here the whole time too but he’s basically useless bc he never shuts up his cousin

Jgy is all like, ah, hanguang-jun is being kind but perhaps inviting wwx is not the best idea ever

And jz is all well, I heard that he went to the burial mounds but no one knows why he went there!

Lwj: to visit an old friend

LWJ IS NOT ASHAMED OF VISITING WWX. HE DOESN’T CARE IF THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS HE WENT THERE TO VISIT HIS SOULMATE

Jz: an old friend?! Wwx is a ruthless killer! Everyone wants him dead! Why do you have a friend like him?

I HATE THIS GUY SO MUCH

Lwj: when did he kill ruthlessly? Please tell us exactly.

DAAAMMN, LOOK AT MY BOY GO!

Jzx finally cuts in here and shuts them both up

He approaches his dad and is like, yeah okay so wwx killed some of our guys before and he’s kind of rebellious or whatever but like hanguang-jun said, he hasn’t done anything wrong for a whole year!

Then he goes on to show us that he’s completely whipped for his wife (AS HE SHOULD BE) by saying, also, since wwx has seceded from the jiang clan, jyl hasn’t been able to see him and she still misses him very much!!

Jzx: it’s a good opportunity to bring him back

His asshole cousin is all, are you crazy??

WILL THIS GUY EVER SHUT UP, OH MY GOD.

But thankfully lxc puts in his two cents!

Lxc: jzx makes a good point. If wwx intends to change and return to the right path again, it’s a good thing!

Jgs starts droning on and on about stuff i don’t give a damn about and lwj throws him the dirtiest of looks the whole time lol

But he more or less agrees to let wwx come on the condition that he turns in Plot Device 2

And jgy is like, SWEET, we can write him a letter telling him he’s invited but he must come alone (BC THAT AIN’T SKETCHY AF) and then once he’s here we can tactfully request he give me, i mean, the jin clan Plot Device 2

Lwj was looking concerned basically the minute jgy started talking but here he chimes in

Lwj: what will you do if he refuses?

BC HE KNOWS WWX IS NOT GONNA HAND THAT THING OVER TO THE JIN CLAN BC THEY’RE A BUNCH OF SLIMY SKEEVY BASTARDS

Then jgy does that thing where he replies without actually answering the question

Jgy: hanguang-jun, why are you so pessimistic? Wwx is not evil or vicious! (FUCK YOU JGY, WE ALREADY KNOW HE’S NOT EVIL OR VICIOUS, NO THANKS TO YOU) i’m sure if we talk it out, he’ll be reasonable and make the right choice!

Oh, thankfully, lxc answers the question properly

Lxc: even if wwx disagrees, he can go back to the burial mounds as long as he promises not to kill any innocents

Which, wwx would definitely promise that bc he’s never killed an innocent person IN HIS LIFE

BC UNLIKE THE JIN CLAN BASTARDS HE HAS INTEGRITY AND A FULLY FUNCTIONING CONSCIENCE

Jgy: hanguang-jun, can we bother you with the errand of writing the letter?

LOL

Jgy says that and we immediately see lxc smile at his little brother

Like, heck yeah, bro you have the chance to talk to your soulmate now! (LXC is trying to win back his greatest wingman title lol)

Ofc lwj keeps his face blank, but he bows and says yes

BC HECK YEAH HE GETS TO DELIVER GOOD NEWS TO HIS SOULMATE

HE’LL BE ABLE TO MAKE WWX SMILE

OFC HE’S GONNA BE ALL OVER THAT!

And that’s the last of the wangxiantics for this episode. Not a lot of them this time around, and none with shared screen time

But you know what

That’s okay

Bc this shows that they’re always on each other’s minds EVEN AFTER A WHOLE YEAR APART!!

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