#it's li lianhua feels hours

[zishuge]

I'm supposed to be working but instead I'm thinking about Li Lianhua growing vegetables and how, once upon a time, he was so happy that he almost cried when he finally managed to grow some turnips.

Thinking about how he must've been at rock bottom then - sick, injured, heartbroken, having just lost in one fell swoop everyone and everything he's ever cared about. His shixiong, dead. He believes it's his fault. His shifu, dead. He believes it's his fault. His sect, in ruins. He believes it's his fault. His people no longer believe in him. A-Mian doesn't love him anymore. It's all his fault, it's all his fault.

He doesn't have Hulijing yet. He's alone. He's heartsick. He'll be dead in ten years, or much sooner than that if he can't find some food and shelter. His Sigu Sect leader token is only worth 50 taels of silver. It turns out everything he has built his life around is worth only 50 taels of silver. I can hear his self-deprecating laugh. How foolish he must've felt, having his life's ambition put so violently and abruptly into perspective.

Have you ever been so despondent that you cling desperately to just one thing, anything, that you can focus on in order to not think about everything else? So: turnips.

Tending, weeding, watering, counting, day by day by slowly passing day. The vegetables grow and he survives. And finally, one day, he discovers that against all odds, he has turnips. These hands which he believes have caused the destruction of all that he once held dear, somehow managed to nurture creation and support life. Everything and everyone is gone, but here in his hands is this one small glimmer of hope that perhaps he is not only capable of ruin. How happy he must've been. Was it the first time he felt joy since before the East Sea battle? How he must've wanted to tell someone, but there was no one there.

You know who he must've most wanted to tell? His shifu. His shifu, who once told him that he didn't care about Xiangyi becoming any great martial artist. Just eat well, drink well, and live well. Maybe kneeling there in the dirt, gently cradling his small misshapen turnips in his hands — maybe that's when Li Lianhua finally understands what Shifu meant.

[qpjianghu]

If episode 30 of mysterious lotus casebook is like multiple stabs to the heart, episode 31 is like. A gentle wiping of the blood from your face, a tender caress of the knife as it's lovingly guided deeper and deeper into your soul until it pierces your very being. Because Fang Duobing finds Shan Gudao's box of knicknacks, and he and Li Lianhua share a smile -- Fang Duobing's beaming, Li Lianhua's soft, reminiscing. And they find the knife that Li Xiangyi meticulously crafted for his shixiong, but it's broken -- and Li Lianhua unthinkingly points out that he wasn't very good at making weapons, so it's his fault that the knife broke after a few uses. But Fang Duobing, sweet, smart Fang Duobing, says that's not right -- the knife was purposefully snapped. It's not Li Lianhua's fault.

And it just got me thinking about how Li Lianhua is so quick to blame himself for everything. The knife breaking was his fault -- but really it was Shan Gudao who broke it. Li Lianhua's shifu's death was his fault -- but really it was Shan Gudao, again. Shan Gudao, who Li Lianhua adored, respected, loved, and crafted his entire life around (we also learn that Li Xiangyi / Lianhua's love for candy came from Shan Gudao).

Then we see Li Xiangyi's name maliciously struck out at the bottom of Shan Gudao's box, and the moment of realization for Li Lianhua is just... I need to lie down for 7-10 business years or maybe forever

[acequinz]

I don't know how to express this but Cheng Yi is just so beautiful to me.

Like not in the - I find him attractive or I am attracted to him like I am with some other actors ... But in a- I can watch him for hours and just be in awe.

There's no part of me that goes- I wanna kiss him- in any capacity but at the same time I don't want to stop looking at him.

That's especially true during his fight scenes.

And I know the actors are different from characters but I really can't think of a better person to play Li Lianhua than Cheng Yi.

I think that's also why I have the hardest time writing Li Lianhua being sexual.... Like he's just so beautiful and amazing and it causes an itch that I can't scratch.

And then I wonder if that's how Di Feisheng feels whenever he saw Li Xiangyi fight.

The need to watch, to be close enough to see it yet far enough that you don't ruin his performance and so he resorts to more fighting challenges, to be able to see that performance again to be close enough to feel the beauty he has been unable to look away from.

[eirenical]

WiP Wednesday

I made it by an hour! A nod to @bbcphile who helped me figure out which scene to post and for always being super supportive. ^_^

This bit takes place after Li Lianhua has had a bad Bicha flare-up. He wakes up in Di Feisheng's arms and instincts overrides common sense for a little while before Di Feisheng puts a stop to the proceedings. This little tete-a-tete happens as part of a much longer discussion after that disaster.

[Other snippets posted, not necessarily in order.]

*

Silence returned, slipping between the cracks in the Lotus Tower's walls and stealing Li Lianhua's breath along with his will to fight one more fight.

"…I'm sorry."

Li Lianhua looked up, finally meeting Di Feisheng's gaze across the disheveled covers.  Flatly, he said, "…you're sorry."

Di Feisheng sat back, all of his limbs properly in their own space again, a wince dancing about his features as his hands found each other in his lap, an uncharacteristic burst of fidgeting capturing Li Lianhua's attention as completely as his words did a moment later.

"I shouldn't have—"

Li Lianhua overrode him, a bite in his words joining the flush in his cheeks.  "You shouldn't have what, Di-mengzhu?"

Abruptly, Di Feisheng was still once more, his undivided attention narrowing in on Li Lianhua's words.  "I thought we were past that."

Li Lianhua crossed his arms over his chest, turning to look out the window.  There was frost on the ground.  He'd have to get the rest of the harvest in and prepare to leave, to seek out warmer climates that wouldn't tempt the Bicha out of hiding so easily.

If Di-mengzhu would let him.

A soft growl laced through Di Feisheng's next words.  "Li Xiangyi…"

A snort.  "It seems neither of us is past that, then."

Li Lianhua could tell the exact moment when Di Feisheng considered reaching for him with injuring intent… and decided against it.  Li Lianhua can't handle rough treatment, after all.  Li Lianhua can't handle the simplest of chores on his own without help.  Li Lianhua can't do any of the things Li Xiangyi could do with such ease.  Li Xiangyi was an object of worship of admiration of desire and Li Lianhua was only to be pitied.  Li Lianhua couldn't bear that look one moment longer and turned away.  Quietly he said, "I'm going to ask you one last time, Di-mengzhu.  What do you want of me?"

"I've told you that already."

"To stay by my side."

"Yes."

"Just that and nothing more."

"Yes."

"That will be enough for you, will it?"

"Yes."

Li Lianhua shivered at the finality in that tone, arms raising to wrap around his own torso as he shook—from the cold or from something else, he could no longer say.  "What if that isn't enough for me?"

Li Lianhua startled at a sudden movement beside him, only settling when the fallen blanket was draped over his shoulders once more.  He pulled it tight, crossing the fabric over itself at his neck and tucking the ends underneath the blanket on his lap.  It helped, but not nearly as much as the furnace of Di Feisheng's body under the covers with him had.

Di Feisheng met his gaze and held it.  Like a moth to a flame, Li Lianhua couldn't look away.  "Then what, Li Lianhua, do you want of me?"

For a moment, their gazes locked, frozen in place as each held their breath.  The easy lie was right there, sitting on the tip of his tongue, ready to lash forth like a whip against this fragile moment.  Safe.  Protective.  Li Lianhua could cut his losses and run.  Right now.  He just had to say the words.

He couldn't say the words.

Instead, Li Lianhua gave in to the shivering, small thing in his chest that just wanted to feel warm, even if only for a moment, to the sheer unadulterated need that had fluttered through his stomach more times than he could count since Di Feisheng had walked back into his life.  And he said those words instead.

"I want you to want me the same way you wanted him."

"Him?"

"Li Xiangyi." 

[rageprufrock]

Sneak Peak: Untitled Mysterious Lotus Casebook Fan Fic Because I Make Bad Decisions And Don't Sleep Enough

Instead of sleeping last week, I watched Mysterious Lotus Casebook. And instead of sleeping next week, I expect I will be working on this Mysterious Lotus Casebook fan fic.

It takes Li Lianhua almost an hour to claw his way out of his own grave. 

It’s another shichen before Li Lianhua manages to drag himself out of the yawning arms of the earth. His legs shake, his arms shake; the air that expands his lungs hurts going in and breathing out. But no matter how meticulously he catalogs his suffering, each revelation is disquietingly ordinary: he’s thirsty, he’s tired, his body hurts from immobility–from very recent death. He feels staggeringly, unfathomably alive.

Gasping, dizzy with some sizzle of power still shivering out of his bones, he props himself up against his own funeral stele and realizes that he can no longer feel the necrotic, rotting hunger of the Bicha poison, and–when he looks around, across the sweeping mountains, toward the misted pink of dawn–that he had been buried, lavish, in the private family cemetery of Tianji Manor. 

When he’d died, when he’d discarded the last of his worries, cut all the vermillion silks and half-formed hopes that had buoyed him, Li Lianhua had given himself to the sea. He remembers the bitter bracing salt of the water, the forgiving lap of frozen waves, how he’d buckled—left, then right knee—the jade colored water closing over him, absolving. He remembers the searing ice of the ocean, the swirl of his worn linen clothes, the weight of his cloak at first suffocating and then nothing, nothing at all.

Now, Li Lianhua takes one step after another through a greener sea, a canopy of late summer leaves, marveling at his robes of emerald silk brocade, embroidered gold with gold and silver threads–flawless on the right and wrong sides of the fabric, as soft as new grass under his fingertips. Now, he listens to the trilling of magpies, spies the velvet ears of half-hidden rabbits, the fleeting russet flanks of swift-moving deer, feels the soft veil of summer light, smells honeysuckle and the petrichor of recent rain. 

He crosses a brook, through the forest as it thins to a glade and in the distance now, Li Lianhua can see the curled-up roofs of a home he barely knows, and that is at once as familiar and well-loved as its young master. 

“Xiaobao-ah,” he says, the first words he’s said out loud, his voice a startling rasp, rattling out of his chest, “what on earth have you done?” 

A little while later, when he’s being thrown ass over elbow into the street by a full phalanx of Tianji Hall’s most ferocious enforcers, Li Lianhua realizes the answer to his question is, ‘plague me in my second life, just as he did the first.’ 

***

Getting from Tianji Manor to the headquarters of the Bai Chuan Court takes more than a week, a journey funded by strategically pawning off a jade thumb ring he’d acquired sometime between dying at the shore and waking up buried in a fucking mountainside. 

Along the way, he buys a set of less ostentatious robes so that people stop trying to rob him like a guileless fop and hears no fewer than two dozen stories–each more absurd than the last, which is frankly astonishing given the truth–of his death and resurrection and death again. At least three of them include morally questionable methods of yang energy application, and a woman who sells him a skewer of tanghulu assures Li Lianhua that a friend of a cousin heard from a reliable source that Li Xianyi had managed his miraculous revival as a result of a profound bond with his martial rival and marital match, Di Feisheng. It leaves him speechless with horror for a full 30 seconds before he implores her to stop spreading the story, because sooner or later Di Feisheng will hear about it and raze her entire village to ashes. 

“Now, everyone knows the heroic story of Li Xiangyi’s death and resurrection and death again,” says an old storyteller at an inn the next night. 

Around him, the crowd gathered close and eager to hear over the sound of a roaring storm outdoors, the wind and sleeting rain too dire for any more travel that night. Li Lianhua is hiding in a back corner on his second jug of wine, still far too sober for another, ever more fabulist recounting of his so-called adventures. 

“But tonight,” the storyteller goes on, “I want to tell another story, one of a legend in the making: a most tragic romance–” 

“Thank God,” Li Lianhua murmurs to himself.

“–For while the story of Li Xianyi is well known,” the old man says, “that of his second love with the young master of Tianji Hall is not.”

Li Lianhua chokes on his wine. “What.” 

“Now listen as I tell you of a remarkable young man, a brilliant scholar, a refined gentleman, and a generational martial arts talent,” the storyteller invites. “And so passionate in his devotion to Li Xiangyi that he turned down the hand of a princess to wander the jianghu in mourning, as faithful as a widow.” 

“What?” Li Lianhua asks again. 

By the end of his tale of woe, there’s not a dry eye in the inn and Li Lianhua has progressed through two further jugs of wine, too mortified and then too drunk to go anywhere or do anything about the abject slander he’s hearing. 

At no point during any of the cases he’d investigated with Fang Duobing had anybody made any stoic declarations of unwavering devotion during any driving snowstorms, and they were both far too skilled with their weapons for any cutting of sleeves, accidental or otherwise. There had been an extended interlude on how–as they were both dutiful men, and having honorably severed any other previous betrothals–they’d engaged one another in a match of swords that had progressed into a dance of the clouds and rain. It speaks well on the miraculous nature of whatever sorcery had revived him that Li Lianhua does not immediately vomit blood and expire again. 

It’s dawn by the time the storm lets up enough for the storyteller’s captive audience to disperse into the city, and Li Lianhua staggers out of the inn a shattered ghost of himself. He hitches a ride with a farmer traveling two cities over, toward the place where where the provincial border is drawn by a fast-moving river, and along the way he reflects that with this additional information, it makes much more sense that all the loyal attendants and members of Tianji Hall had taken one look at him, threatened his life, and violently chased him off property. Nevermind Di Feisheng–He Xiaohui will kill him first for allegedly dishonoring her precious son, and Fang Duobing will be stuck with the tedious work of burying Li Lianhua all over again, which feels churlish given how thoughtfully Xiaobao appears to have done it the first time. 

In another life, with the privilege and the right to such sentiments, Li Lianhua would be outraged with anybody at the root of such defamations against his lone disciple. In this one, where Li Lianhua is only–with extraordinary reluctance–willing to admit to another living soul he has any sort of affection or sense of responsibility toward Fan Duobing, it is of course fitting and just that he is the source of said defamations, and will likely suffer untold tortures for his part in sullying Fang Duobing’s reputation. 

At the river, he buys passage on a boat and stares out at the steamy gray-green of the fog over the banks, the way that the sun paints the surface of the water a blushing pink. It is, just as he remembers from his final walk to the sea, all so very, very beautiful. He closes his eyes to focus on the susurration of water against the flanks of the boat, to feel the damp wind against his face, the way it blows the loose strands of hair back from his face, how it catches in the rough-spun collar of his hastily purchased robes. He can hear the other passengers telling stories, exchanging gossip, the sound of someone snoring as their journey brings them from the chill of morning into the hot sun of high noon. 

A shichen later, the boat is being pulled in toward a little cluster of docks, and Li Lianhua disembarks into the a marketplace transitioning from its daytime of vegetable sellers and grain merchants to its nightly amusements of street food stalls and performers setting up their stages. And by the time it takes for him to navigate the dozen li to the front gates of Bai Chuan Court, it’s nearly full dark, lanterns orange-bright against the midnight blue evening. 

Li Lianhua is sweaty, filthy from travel, and ravenous, and it is only the certainty that if he evades the guards and arrives unannounced in the receiving room, someone will think he is a ghost that has him bothering with the heavy brass knocker at all. 

When the terrified guards bring him to Ji, Yun, and Bai, they think he’s a ghost anyway. 

“Sect Leader Li, I’m sure you can understand that we must investigate your miraculous return. Again,” Shi Shui tells him, at once peerlessly respectful and with absolute disapproval. “Although this certainly contextualizes some recent events in the Capital.”

Li Lianhua smiles ruefully. “I have a theory that useless disciple of mine may have overreached.” 

Shi Shui scowls, not at the words or even at the thought of Fan Duobing, but very clearly and directly at Li Lianhua. It’s absolutely terrifying. 

“Well, if overreach was what brought you back to us, then Fang-gongzhi’s seven days of fasting at your funeral would have had you here three years ago,” she tells him, matter-of-fact and utterly gutting, before she waves for one of the junior disciples. “Ye’er, send a runner to Fang Manor–I’m sure the investigators and doctors there will need to know of this latest development.”

Li Lianhua tenses. “Doctors? Investigators?” 

Shi Shui slants a look toward him, watchful. “According to our network, seven days ago, Fang-gongzhi was grievously injured, and hasn’t regained consciousness since–seven days, that’s when you say you escaped death once more, if I remember correctly?”

“Yes,” Lianhua croaks, remembering all the hundreds and thousands of small and seismic ways that Fang Duobing had tried to save him in their months together, imagining Xiaobao in roughspun mourning, honoring a ghost in a way so intimate and harrowing it shames Li Lianhua to acknowledge it, to know how well he was loved. 

“Quite a coincidence,” Shi Shui says, acid, and tells the doctors, “You had better do some painful, invasive testing on him–just to ensure it’s really Sect Leader Li, of course.”

Li Lianhua gets about as far as saying, “Ah–that’s–” before the doctors, clearly reading the room, swarm him armed with bitter medicines, silver needles, and accompanied by a shaman who’d been summoned in a cacophony of shrieking that should have been beneath three of the four hallowed directors of the almighty Bai Chuan Court. 

[hils79]

Hils Watches Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Ep 27

Fang Duobing: I'm really angry with you for letting me think you got killed by zombies Also Fang Duobing: MUST PROTECT THE BOYFRIEND I AM ANGRY WITH

Aww come on I thought you were friends now

They both care about him now 🥺

The way Fang Duobing ran to catch him when he fainted 🥺

The protector is now the protected. This is all too much.

OH SHIT! He just revealed himself to everyone including Fang Duobing to save Fang Duobing's life. There is so much happening in this episode.

Nooooo! She took away their A-Fei!

God, I knew it would be heartbreaking when Fang Duobing found out. The way he immediately runs to Li Lianhua when he collapses but then draws short of touching him because everything is different now. My heart!

Props to Zeng Shunxi for his acting. Fang Duobing looks like he's aged about ten years in the time it took for Li Lianhua to wake up

I shouldn't laugh because this is heartbreaking to watch but yes, he has, in more ways than one

Now he's crying. This is horrible. I just want to wrap him in a blanket and cuddle him.

I do feel bad for Li Lianhua. He just got used to having people in his life again that he can trust and he lost both of them in the space of about an hour

I'm placing a bet now that he's faking not remembering anything that happened after he left seclusion so he can stealthily find out what Jiao Liqiao is up to

I am laughing at her having all her men on stanby though in case Di Feisheng woke up and immediately tried to kill her

Yeah, he's acting way too heterosexual for this to be anything other than a ruse

Well, he kept a piece of Di Feisheng's under armour so I suppose I'm not surprised he kept the broken flute too

Oh no :D

I literally had to pause this for five minutes because I was laughing so hard. This dude just came right out and said 'don't you think it's sus that Di Feisheng suddenly isn't gay anymore'

Usually when they show part of the face of the mysterious mastermind I can fairly easily figure out who it is. I have no idea who this dude is though.

[madamadragon]

my insomnia has struck again, here's a very small fic

don't take it seriously

-------------

A GREAT SOLUTION

Nobody. No one had shown up. They had opened more than two hours ago and there wasn't a soul there.

He Xiaohui, Fang Duobing's mother, had recently paid for a spa that was once renowned for its miraculous springs.

She believed that by renovated it, it would return it to its former glory bringing great profits but not a single person showed up at the inauguration.

Fang Duobing sighed, his cheek resting on the palm of his hand. He was sitting in the lobby waiting for customers who clearly would never come.

His mother had asked him to help her welcome the guests but at this rate he would die of boredom. His mother always made bad investments.

"Your mother must have been disappointed," a voice called from the entrance.

He looked up at it and as soon as he saw who it belonged to he jumped up.

"Li Lianhua! What are you doing here?"

"Master He had invited us to the inauguration but we were late," explained Li Lianhua, reaching the boy followed as always by Di Feisheng.

Those two had a strange relationship, something Fang Duobing couldn’t figure out. They were always next to each other and I often exchanged long looks and half smiles.

He shook his head, freeing himself from that thought, now the priority was the spa.

"The opening was two hours ago," Fang Duobing scolded him.

"There doesn’t seem to be much lost," Di Feisheng grinned, looking around.

"You!" Fang Duobing exclaimed outraged, trying to kick him.

"Ayo, leave him be" Li Lianhua said, grabbing the boy by the arm and blocking his attempt to hit the former Jinyuan alliance leader.

"It would be better to find a way to help your mother, Xiaobao" 

"It’s a kind thought Li gongzi" thanked him Master He entering the lobby.

Li Lianhua made a slight bow in greeting.

"We can discuss this over a cup of tea," Tian Ji Hall’s master continued, urging a waitress to bring the trays.

While passing the cups to the various guests, the young maid, intimidated by the presence of Di Feisheng, accidentally poured the hot drink on his clothes.

"I’m s-sorry!" She stuttered in panic.

"It’s nothing serious," the doctor comforted her with one of his gentle smiles.

The girl made a quick bow and then ran away.

"You scare everyone," Fang Duobing muttered as he followed the waitress with his eyes.

Di Feisheng did not answer and simply took off the top layer of clothes that had become wet.

Fang Duobing at that sight wided his eyes. The great leader of the Jinyuan alliance stood almost shirtless in the atrium of a spa at the sight of all.

And what a sight. Broad shoulders and abs sculpted.

"Xiaobao, close your mouth or you’ll get bugs in it," Li Lianhua laughed.

Fang Duobing turned to him sulking. The doctor did not seem to be surprised by the sight of Di Feisheng’s body, as if he was used to seeing it that way.

That those two were having an affair?! This explained Li Lianhua’s nocturnal visits to Di Feisheng’s room when they stayed at an inn or disappeared for several hours and then returned as if nothing had happened.

Fang Duobing stared at the doctor in astonishment with an exaggerated expression of betrayal on his face.

"I just had an idea," exclaimed his mother.

He turned and noticed that she was grinning as she looked towards the door.

He followed her gaze and saw several girls who had stopped in front of the spa and who giggled among them eyeing Di Feisheng in all its beauty.

"I need to borrow A-Fei," smiled Master He.

Fang Duobing snapped at her perplexed.

"A-Fei?" Since when did she call him that?

"If my son calls him A-Fei, I don’t see why I can’t do it!" 

Master He approached Di Feisheng with a big smile and then wrapped her hands around his bicep.

"I feel this will be a great idea"

------

And so it was that shortly after the new spa was flooded with customers.

"I can’t believe it," Fang Duobing said in disbelief as he watched people go in and out.

His mother’s plan was to put Di Feisheng at the entrance and show off his chest, thus attracting women and girls, thus creating an interest in the spa by bringing other customers.

And so it had been. Di Feisheng was leaning against the counter with his arms folded with a bored expression on his face, drawing everyone’s attention.

"But how did he convince A-Fei?"

"I convinced him," Li Lianhua explained as he positioned himself next to him.

Fang Duobing turned to him curious.

"How?"

"A favor in exchange for a secret"

Fang Duobing raised a confused eyebrow.

"I thought you were done keeping secrets."

"Let’s say it’s not really a secret"

Fang Duobing was about to push the issue when his mother called him across the hall.

"Fang Xiaobao, I have another idea, take off your clothes!"

Li Lianhua next to him burst out laughing.

"Mother!" the boy exclaimed, turning red on his face.

"Oh come on, put all your hard work into martial arts in to use!"

"MOTHER"

[shamera]

NaNo day 13

where am i going with this it was meant to be tiny scene tiny scene maybe 4k in total for whole story

guess what. it was even supposed to be time loop for EACH of the three characters, but i feel like it's just gunna end with dfs now because wow this got long and wordy. but then again. nano. if i can't hit the word count, i cry.

He made his way downstairs without disturbing Fang Duobing, and gave Hulijing a pat to keep her quiet as she snuffled up next to him. He would have to call for Wuyan for information and for breakfast in a bit, but in the dawn hours with Lotus Tower parked firmly along the forest road leading up to the strange village surrounded by budding greenery, something twisted within his gut. 

Li Lianhua was curled in bed facing the wall, blanket pulled halfway up his head in the chill of the morning air, hair unbound and trapped against his neck. Di Feisheng stared for a moment, although he didn’t know why, before he deliberately made a noise just loud enough to wake a trained swordsman.

Li Lianhua stirred, movements groggy and slow, and to Di Feisheng’s surprise, he only pulled the blankets up higher before moving to settle back to sleep, only the end of his fingertips showing from the cocoon of the blanket. 

Di Feisheng kicked at the stool again, and this time Li Lianhua made a sighing noise and spoke from beneath the blankets, voice deepened with the dregs of sleep, “Go back to sleep, A-Fei. It’s too early for this.”

“I need to talk to you,” Di Feisheng insisted, although his voice was also quiet in deference to the early morning. His hands untensed knowing that Li Lianhua had known he was there all along, and had chosen to remain sleeping rather than— than what? Had Di Feisheng been interrupted from his sleep like this in his rooms at Jinyuan Alliance, he would have already held a sword to the throat of the offender, if they were lucky. If they weren’t, there would already be blood spilled. 

“Mmm,” Li Lianhua intoned, and turned his head further into the blankets. “Later.”

Di Feisheng didn’t respond, although he also didn’t leave, staring at the bundle of blankets on the bed. 

It didn’t take long before Li Lianhua pushed down his blanket irritably, turning over to glare back at him. “Are you just going to stay there the entire time?”

“Until you listen.” Di Feisheng confirmed. 

“It’s unnerving.” Li Lianhua complained. “No one can sleep with you staring like that.”

“Then stay awake,” Di Feisheng challenged, even as Li Lianhua glared harder. “Get dressed. The day’s already started.”

“Are you going to stare for that as well?”

Di Feisheng was tempted, just to be contrary. But he would rather Li Lianhua be a better mood for the upcoming conversation, so he turned and left Lotus Tower, taking the time to wander far enough to summon Wuyan in his usual fashion to deal with the search for the Styx flower and with breakfast. 

— 

What Lotus Tower lacked, Di Feisheng realised, were walls that were sufficient for privacy purposes. He didn’t understand how Li Lianhua could stand to stay there during harsh winters when there were gaps that constantly needed to be filled or fixed in the tower, several parts more aesthetic than functional. Keeping out rain was bad enough, but sound travelled easily, and he could hear Fang Duobing’s stomping around upstairs when he got back, and there was no way to prevent the words from being overheard when Li Lianhua already opened a window and even had the wall of the back of the house open for the air and the view. 

It was sufficient for one person, but three meant constantly tripping over each other. 

He could see Fang Duobing lean over the railing of the room upstairs, mostly dressed but still looking bleary as he called out, “Have you seen my boots? Are they down there?”

“No,” Li Lianhua answered, voice only the slightest bit muffled despite not being seen. He wasn’t even speaking loudly. “Why would they be down here? Check under the bed, Xiaobao.”

Fang Duobing disappeared back behind the curtains of the upstairs room, and called out moments later, “Found them!”

Shaking his head, Di Feisheng entered Lotus Tower again. 

Li Lianhua was fully dressed and prepared for the day, folding the blankets on the bed and smoothing out the creases in the linens diligently. Di Feisheng took a seat at the bench, and said, “Yesterday, we went fishing and you lost a hairpin in the water.”

Li Lianhua paused in his movements, brows creased. “...Yesterday, we stayed in because it was raining and both you and Xiaobao nearly wrecked my home fighting. Lao Di, what are you on?”

“Yesterday, I told you I have been living the same day over and over, and you thought I ate something off, or that I had a strange dream. I asked you to tell me something that I shouldn’t know, so that I can convince you of my words today.”

“Lao Di,” Li Lianhua said slowly. “You were definitely dreaming.”

“Yesterday,” Di Feisheng pressed yet again, “you spoke of once wanting to be a weaponsmith, before giving up on the idea because you lacked talent.”

Here, Li Lianhua looked perturbed, motion stilling. 

“Li Lianhua,” Di Feisheng addressed him. “This day has been repeating for me for a while now. I live through the day, but when I sleep, I wake to find that it is today all over again. The same morning no matter the weather the night before, the same place no matter where I fell asleep before, the same me no matter if I was wounded the day before. No one remembers living through the day before, and nothing that will happen today has happened yet.”

“An odd statement.” Li Lianhua’s expression was still composed, but his tone was more bewildered. 

“We have investigated the village several times,” Di Feisheng told him. “They attempt to poison us three times on average, and trap us at least once this day. We have left this area to travel in all directions, and had uneventful days that only led back to today once more. You always go along with what I say, but have yet to fully believe me.”

“That’s… a strange story,” Li Lianhua said, and Di Feisheng thinned his lips in frustration. “I’ve never heard of such a thing happening before.”

That was a terrifying thought— that perhaps this had happened to others before, but no one ever heard of it because they continued to live the same day over and over and never made it to the next day where the information might spread. 

Di Feisheng refused to believe that. 

“Help me figure this out.” He said, although the words were gritted. “Or if you still don’t believe me, tell me a way I can make you believe me.”

By now, Fang Duobing had made his way downstairs as well, his footsteps light as he came in the door, confusion evident on his face. Lotus Tower really did not allow for private conversations. 

“Repeat?” Fang Duobing asked, “Lao Di, what do you mean?”

Exactly what he had said, although he understood Fang Duobing’s confusion. Rather, Di Feisheng focused on Li Lianhua, knowing that even Fang Duobing’s response this time around was different and it was because Li Lianhua wasn’t brushing the statements aside as easily this time around. 

There was a tense moment of silence before Li Lianhua resumed folding the blankets, putting them away before coming to sit next to Di Feisheng on the bench, eyes narrowed in thought. 

“Alright,” he said. “Suppose what you said is true. Tell me everything that happened.”

— 

Li Lianhua said, there must be something in the village that triggered this the first time around.

Li Lianhua said, there is a way to convince him this was the truth in the mornings.

Fang Duobing sat opposite them, listening intently the entire time even as Wuyan came by to drop off breakfast, staying a few moments longer to give Hulijing a jerky treat and a scritch behind the ears. The pan-fried meat buns cooled as their conversation continued, marking out details and what could be said and done. 

“Tell me how to convince you again if today doesn’t work out,” Di Feisheng told the both of them. 

“Whatever I tell you, it won’t guarantee anything,” Li Lianhua told him. “We should focus on finding what happened to you in the village.”

Fang Duobing, on the other hand, just shook his head. “It won’t hurt to tell him something. Just in case we don’t find out what happened today.” He looked rather perturbed. “What happens to us, then? If you get sent back to the morning? If we don’t get sent back, then… are you just missing, if we get to the next day? Or do we not exist at all?”

“Try not to think of that yet,” Li Lianhua told him. 

“Tell me something to convince you if today repeats again,” Di Feisheng urged Fang Duobing. “Before, you asked me to predict fortune sticks. I can still do that, but something to convince you immediately would be most efficient.”

“You can predict fortune sticks?” Fang Duobing gaped, and then his gaze turned devious. “What about gambling in town—”

“Don’t,” Li Lianhua interjected quickly. “Pick up bad habits.”

Fang Duobing looked properly admonished, pulling back with a nervous laugh. 

“But Xiaobao had a point with the fortune sticks,” Li Lianhua admitted. “If you could predict, say, something yet to happen, it would be more convincing than words we may have shared.”

“What did you have in mind?”

— 

“Circumstances change from moment to moment,” Li Lianhua said as they set up to grind ink on the plate. “Different movements or time of day would trigger different responses. If I asked you to think of a bird right now, your answer may be different than if I asked you to think of a bird the moment you wake up, merely because you heard a songbird as you woke, or because you just ate something that reminded you of another bird. If I asked for the first colour that comes to mind while we’re in the forest, you may think green, but in here you may think brown. Questions can’t be nebulous like that, but rather grounded in something solid that is unlikely to change.”

“Too confusing,” Di Feisheng dismissed. “Tell me what I should ask.”

“Take the fortune sticks for example,” Li Lianhua ignored him. “A person could throw them twice in a row and get different results. Will likely get different results. Even if the day repeats for you, the results may be different. So it will have to be something you can predict, but we cannot.”

“Then how are you sure you could convince me with fortune sticks?” Fang Duobing asked Di Feisheng suspiciously. 

“Li Lianhua cheated.” Di Feisheng revealed shamelessly. “The results would always be the same.”

Fang Duobing turned his suspicious stare at Li Lianhua, although this time with a twinge of wide-eyed betrayal as well. 

Li Lianhua waved a finger, “You didn’t know that, and he shouldn’t have known that either. That makes it an accurate prediction.”

“That makes it cheating,” Fang Duobing grumbled. 

“Ahh, but he’s not the one doing it, is he?” Li Lianhua placated him, and then turned his attention to Di Feisheng. “Is there anything special that happens through the day not to do with us that you can predict? A tree falling in the forest, a disturbance outside?”

Di Feisheng thought about it for a long while, and shook his head slowly. “Outside of what happens in the village, different events occur each time. The day is calm.”

Li Lianhua rubbed his fingers together and furrowed his brow in thought. 

“Then you’ll have to create those events.”

Di Feisheng raised an eyebrow. “Then I cause it instead and you will not believe me.”

“Not necessarily,” Li Lianhua said. “Say, if you send Xiaobao hunting first thing in the morning, then you can tell me what he comes back with before he gets back. But it will have to be first thing in the morning, before you can influence his actions to change the results.”

Fang Duobing looked between them and then shook his head, mouth in a determined moue. “I refuse to go hunting before the sun is up. I won’t do it.”

“It’s just an example.” Li Lianhua reassured him. 

“...It could work,” Di Feisheng admitted with a smirk as Fang Duobing crossed his arms. 

“The point is,” Li Lianhua interrupted their to-be spat, “that if the day is repeating exactly the same, then you are the only thing changing it. Whatever you don’t change remains the same. Unless, of course, this isn’t truly a repeat of the day, but rather something to make you think it is.”

“Inconsequential.” Di Feisheng dismissed.

“Of course, that’s just to prove yourself in case we don’t believe you.” Li Lianhua frowned, hands pausing on grinding the inkstone. “So long as you give sufficient information, you may not need to prove yourself.”

“Tell me something, then,” Di Feisheng said once more. “That you’ve never said aloud before.”

Li Lianhua set down the inkstone, and Fang Duobing reached to pull the plate away. “Something I’ve never said aloud? There’s usually a reason for that.”

“Something that can’t be used against you.” He thought for a moment. “How did you get your dog?”

“Hulijing?”

At the mention of her name, Hulijing perks up her head from where she was lying in a patch of sunlight, tail wagging slowly. 

“She followed me home one day. Not unlike you two.”

“And you just let it stay?” Di Feisheng questioned. 

“I was still building Lotus Tower then,” Li Lianhua elaborated, reaching for one of the cold buns. “It was at one of the coastal towns. Back then, I had… more health issues. The townspeople were not unkind, but they didn’t like outsiders. I kept mostly to myself, but there was once…” he trailed off, lost in thought, and Hulijing stood from the patch of sunlight and yawned before padding on soft paws over to Li Lianhua, setting her head on his knee. He smoothed a hand against her fur absentmindedly, offering her the bun. “I didn’t account for how sick I was. I couldn’t make it back by myself, so I just sat in an alleyway for a while to catch my breath. She found me and stayed with me the entire time, and then came with me when I finally went home again. Then she never really left.”

“No one helped you back?” Fang Duobing sounded heartbroken. 

Li Lianhua reached to pat his hand. “I was ill, and an outsider. It was kind enough of them not to throw me out. For all they knew, my illness could be contagious. Besides, Hulijing helped me back.”

[tiny-breadcrumbs]

A Notes on that "Battle Husbands" drawing process

First of all, Here is the quick sketch I do In between. Mostly when I feel like crying because I can't mix the right shade for li lianhua's robes or shoes. But then it frustrated me even more because zhan yunfei didn't looks like himself! so it served to motivatived me to go back to the main project.

Below are several of the thumbnail and initial sketch when I trying to figure out the composition,

I eventually choose the low angle perspective over the bird view for a more intimidating presence to our main. So it can give a clear distinction of which side has the upper hand on this fight.

And for the character, Yangzhouman is a calmer, steady energy (in comparison to di feisheng's baifeng baiyang) and it made for speed. So I do need li lianhua to be "light" on his feet. But still look fierce, alert, and ready to strike at any moment. Some of the pose I try for him have this softer energy for his stance, and I try to balance it with a sharp movement in his upper body. He also got some baifeng baiyang at this point, eh, so I refined his pose sharper and sharper. Initially, I want him to hold his sword in his regular habit of holding it upward (because it kinda majestic) but turns out I don't have enough brain power to draw it between the tangle of his sleeve and all that hair. So I throw out that idea really fast.

I also try one or two more pose in a different paper that sadly got drenched in the rain, along with all the planning for di feisheng! So this is all that left.

There is a change in the composition from vertical to horizontal. Because in vertical composition, they stand too close to fit in the frame and li lianhua looks like he is one wrong move away from stabbing di feisheng. (Can't let him injure his newlyweed husband after all)

I laugh for a whole ten minute while stubbornly trying to make it work. And it still didn't work. So eventually, the final sketch is in the horizontal format.

I forgot to take more photo of the process after this one. Probably too distracted with all the mixing of blue and purple to make everything coherent because I desperately avoiding any green. There is only the very bright kind of green on my color stash. The cursed one. And I'm not friend with green. Unfortunately, Li lianhua wear this ambiguous muted greyish green robes. And they are in a open space of a forest. A lot of green. And di feisheng wear a very dark color. It will not looks good for their contrast if one character blended with the surrounding and the other not, when they both supposed to be the main focus.

So the overall process took around 12 hours within the span of three days. I'm so slow 😂 But yes, all nice and fun, already on my way to draft a new fanart.

Stay tuned

[eirenical]

Full Circle (2685 words) by eirenical

Summary:

Two people meet in the course of a journey, and endings aren't always what they seem. Endings aren't always the end. Sometimes they're just a new sort of beginning.

He'd walked for hours, perhaps days, nothing to guide his steps but a vague instinct, a pull that knew no rest. His journey would be over soon, that instinct said. He could lay down his burdens, let go of the last of himself and finally be at peace. Just a few steps more… just a few hours more…

The light was so dim now.

He kept walking.

*

It had been a risk, a desperately calculated one, made too fast for real thought or logic to hold sway. He wouldn't be the first to fake his own death, to flee from the consequences of his actions. They would search for him, he had thought, but someone had intervened. What difference did it make if his body was fuel for someone's fire or a grisly example for others like him? He was dead. Gone. No longer a threat.

As if he'd ever really been one.

And so he walked, one aching foot in front of the other, letting instinct guide his steps. He would put as much distance as possible between himself and those who might seek him out, might suspect the truth behind his "stolen" corpse. Every step forward was a step away from that.

He kept walking.

Continue reading on AO3

Notes, tags, and other fic info beneath the cut.

June 2nd: Feels over Shan Gudao and Li Xiangyi have been eating at my brain for weeks now, and I finally found the energy to put some of it down on paper. This is a "what could have been" alternate ending. Since this show is so fond of people faking their deaths, let's say it could have happened once more. I've left the ending ambiguous, so feel free to make of it what you will. ^_^

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 莲花楼 | Mysterious Lotus Casebook (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Li Lianhua | Li Xiangyi & Shan Gudao Characters: Li Lianhua | Li Xiangyi, Shan Gudao Additional Tags: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Closure, Reconciliation, Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Shan Gudao Lives, Blindness

[shamera]

NaNo day 27

DID IT, this is where I originally envisioned part 1 of the hunter AU ending, lol. If anyone has read the manhwa, they will now know which one had a ginormous influence on this story.

unedited, part 1 came in at 46 pages and 27,447 words. (i am FEAR) I guess I should go back to the time loop story tomorrow, especially since I'm in no rush now that I passed the NaNo goal, so i can take my time to try and get as much done as I can in the next two days before November ends!

It was nearly two full days before Fang Duobing was allowed out from under watchful eyes and got his things back. Two days of interviews, interrogations, doctor check-ups and psych evaluations to ensure his injuries would heal properly, especially the poison in his legs. Two days of deflecting when asked what happened in the dungeon, telling things accurately all the way up until everyone else left and it was only him and Li Lianhua. 

He didn’t know what to say. How could he tell anyone what actually happened?

To the world at large, Li Xiangyi disappeared and supposedly died ten years ago. Fang Duobing could change that supposed fact now, he could rub in the faces of disbelievers who all thought Li Xiangyi actually perished fighting a dungeon boss. As if! How could the founder and leader of Sigu Sect, the one who took out reams of dungeon bosses, be felled by one?

(Especially when Fang Duobing just watched Li Lianhua defeat one in just a little over a minute.)

The news from the television in his hospital room kept covering the sudden and unexpected dungeon, the first one in China in two years, and the shock when it opened only to close again within an hour of its inception. 

The first dungeon, in fact, to close in the past decade. 

It brought about plenty of questions, especially since no one understood what happened, and the number of dungeons throughout the world was close to reaching its starting point. The common theory was that once the earth held enough dungeons as when the event initially occurred, then unexpected dungeons would stop appearing, and there would be a sort of stability and civilizations would stop having to worry about unexpectedly being pulled into a gate the same way Fang Duobing did twice in his life now. 

He didn’t know if he believed that theory. It sounded nice on paper, but there was evidence to back it up, and it just— didn’t feel right to him. 

So. He feigned amnesia for the duration of his time in the dungeon. Terrible side effect, so sorry, and it only prompted doctors to do extra tests and scans that came up with nothing. 

(Besides, there were plenty of other people from Wansheng Sect within the dungeon all the way to the end, searching for people, and they should know far more than he did!)

Every time he asked about Li Lianhua, the answer was the same. 

He hadn’t woken up yet. 

When his parents came to visit him, sitting by his bedside as he tried to protest that he felt fine, that he was okay with only surface wounds that would heal within a week or two, they stayed quiet with a strained smile, their hands white in their laps. 

His father had to leave after half a day being the busy man that he was and the fact that he would be the one taking care of any media slip-ups from this incident, and Fang Duobing only breathed a sigh of relief when his father gave him a comforting squeeze of his shoulder and was ushered out the hospital room by his harried assistants who already had things they needed him to read over and liaisons that were searching for him. 

His mother, on the other hand, stayed the entire time with a grim countenance. 

“We could have lost you,” she murmured as she held onto his hand, running her thumb over his wrist over and over again. It made Fang Duobing feel horrible, remembering all the times during his childhood where his mother would sit by his bedside doing the same thing at the height of fever or recovering from treatments. “I would ask what happened, but… we won’t talk of it here. Once the doctors release you, I’m having both you and Li Lianhua transferred to private care.”

Fang Duobing couldn’t prevent his tense frown. “...He’s still not awake yet?”

He Xiaohui’s hand tensed over her son’s and she gave him a stern look. “No. He’s… we won’t speak of it here.”

A government liaison gave him back his things when he was finally discharged with orders to report in the moment he remembered what happened within the dungeon. Within the plastic bag were his dirtied and ripped clothes and his cracked phone. 

Fang Duobing gave a hollow smile at that moment, glad for the one privileged of being a Hunter that allowed him to conceal items on his person at all times like an invisible Qiankun pouch. He didn’t want to be questioned about the wooden dagger he had.

In the western countries, it had often been compared to video game inventories, but for Fang Duobing the space had been too small to be of proper use. He tended to only shove his wallet, keys, and phone in a space that amounted to a tiny purse (along with whatever might end up in pockets normally so he tended to have a napkin or piece of candy and some paper bills now that he got used to living with Li Lianhua). His cracked phone had been shoved into his pocket on instinct as they ran, a holdover from before he Awakened as a Hunter. 

The government liaison gave him a squinty look as Fang Duobing attempted a polite smile back, but there was no law yet requiring Hunters to empty out their inventory and Fang Duobing was prepared to refuse if asked. 

He didn’t have anything to hide, not really, but it was a matter of privacy. And if forced, then he could show what he had and turn the situation into one where he wasn’t trying to hide anything, but rather that his rights were being violated. 

(It was a suspiciously Li Lianhua thing to do.)

With the tower of Tianji Hall still under surveillance, not the mention a portion of the building still gone and the surroundings cordoned off as workers demolished the top of the building so that it wouldn’t fall on unsuspecting civilians before it could be rebuilt— Fang Duobing found himself bundled up back to his childhood home rather than the apartment he had been renting away from his family. 

(It was a bet, really, and a concession. Living away so he wouldn’t be pressured by his family on the regular, but also proving that he could live away on his own. Proving he could be the person his family wanted him to be, but that he just didn’t want to— that had been his way of proving to them that he had the capability to choose his own path rather than having it chosen for it. It was only meant to be for a year, just long enough to drive the point home.)

The home of the Fang and He family was a lavish and luxurious one, one that He Xiaohui inherited and her husband moved into despite his own prestige and wealth. Fang Duobing knew he was lucky in this way, to have parents so content with each other, who were in a happy and harmonious relationship in an era of divorce, especially for the families of wealth and status. While his father was extremely serious with his job, he was far more relaxed in his home life, often content to leave decisions to his wife and support whatever she wanted. 

Pulling up into the ridiculously long driveway and beyond the gardens specifically designed to both look beautiful and hide deadly traps for anyone who might think their family easy to infiltrate, Fang Duobing had a moment where he wondered if all his adult years had been just one fever dream. 

There were people in the gardens tending to the plants, and Fang Duobing parked carelessly along the driveway, slipping on his sunglasses against the bright afternoon before he left the vehicle, taking even that basic level of protection against the barrage he knew he was about to get. 

“Fang Xiaobao!”

And there it was. He tried not to cringe as his aunt shouted, somehow coming up behind him even though he hadn’t seen her on the drive in. Fang Duobing mustered up a sweet smile, hands up placatingly as he turned to face her. 

“You sure do have some nerve, not responding to any of my texts! Do you make a habit out of making trouble for me, while pretending to be a good son for my sister, huh? I had to take care of all the clean-up and the PR with your dad, and shareholder meetings since my sister obviously deserves to spend time with her injured son, but what about me? If she hadn’t been keeping me updated on if you were okay, I would have thought you died in the hospital! Maybe the doctors strangled you to death for how annoying you can be!”

“Xiao-yi,” he pleaded, “I just got my phone back today, I swear. I wasn’t even allowed out of my room the last two days, how could I have contacted you? I was being watched around the clock! Didn’t they do the same for you? So you have to be a little more understanding for your favourite nephew, alright?”

She took a step forward to jab a finger at his chest, and he was glad to see that she looked far healthier now, merely a bandage on her arm exposed by the sleeveless sundress she was wearing and the dramatic makeup gone now to reveal a more familiar look. 

“Oh, you think you can sweet-talk me, mister? I ought to—”

“Xiaobao.” They were both interrupted as He Xiaohui called out from the front door. “Do come inside before you catch a cold. You too, Xiaofeng.”

Fang Duobing wanted to give his mother an incredulous look as he glanced up at the blue sky. Catch a cold? In this weather? But his aunt was already dragging him forward by the arm, and he only protested mildly, letting her get her way. 

After the door closed behind them, Fang Duobing realised that there were no servants in the foyer to greet them. Even his aunt calmed down immediately, her earlier expression of indignation fading away fast enough for Fang Duobing to grab that it was a front all along. 

“Anything outside?” He Xiaohui asked her younger sister, who shook her head. 

“Not that I can find.” He Xiaofeng responded, unusually serious. “But we wouldn’t know all the abilities that they have at their disposal.”

“What is this about?” Fang Duobing demanded, pulling off his sunglasses. He looked between his mother and aunt, remembering the wording while he had been in the hospital. “...Are people spying on us?”

His mother, her mannerism impeccable even now, merely pursed her lips in response, the muscles of her jaw tightening. 

“There’s no proof of it.” She admitted, and ushered him along down the hall to the main room. “But there have been some suspicious inquiries being made. On what happened to the dungeon, of course, and on whether Tianji Hall had anything to do with it as it appeared right in our building, and then disappeared before a Sect could confirm that it would have been a harvesting dungeon.”

With dungeons placed in different categories and ranks based on how dangerous they were, harvesting dungeons were the most convenient for people, with weaker monsters to allow for Hunters to go on and look for goods they could bring back to the world. It meant the location would be protected for the Sects to use so long as they logged the items they brought back and paid a portion of it as taxes. 

That meant, however, that Tianji Hall would lose their entire building location to the Sects due to that. 

“Why would anyone think that?” Fang Duobing demanded. “It wouldn’t benefit us at all! Not to mention, it was our people who got harmed in the process— who do they think they are? No one can predict, much less command the location of new gates—”

A whap to his ear halted his complaints, and his mother responded fondly, “Of course all you say is true. But rumours are hard to dispel once it’s been released.”

“Not to mention,” his aunt added, “just how unusual it is for a dungeon to disappear like that. It’s the first time it’s happened, so people have a right to be suspicious, even if we had nothing to do with it.”

Fang Duobing stared between them. 

“Actually.” He said, then halted. Then he thought better of saying anything, but then thought at least they should know. “About that.”

He Xiaohui held up a hand. “Explain later. I know there was more to your story, Xiaobao, but there’s someone you should see.”

Fang Duobing’s childhood home was large and sprawling, situated just outside a metropolitan city for quality real estate, and there was an entire wing dedicated to when He Xiaohui felt like working on her unusual inventions at home. That meant there was also a makeshift medical room besides her laboratory, in case of emergencies. It had been something her husband asked her to build, worried about her burning or electrocuting herself. He fitted it with hospital worthy equipment, and no one questioned its existence after He Xiaohui’s experiments nearly shut down the city power grid when Fang Duobing was thirteen.

Now, the room was renovated yet again, with another occupant in mind. 

Fang Duobing felt his breath catch as they entered. 

“I took the liberty of securing Lotus Tower out of harm’s way,” His mother said quietly, settling behind him. “Your aunt made sure to visit him when she could since they didn’t have him as tightly guarded as you, and the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. The Hunter specialist they sent in thinks there might be signs of a curse, but they dismissed that soon after. After several… suspicious individuals were found around his room, she called me and I made the arrangements to have him brought here instead. As he didn’t have any family listed, a more determined organisation would be able to keep him until he woke otherwise.”

“You think someone would have just stolen him away?” Fang Duobing asked, his eyes still on Li Lianhua, connected to several machines and resting atop a makeshift hospital bed. The man was so still underneath the connected wires and breathing tube that the only consultation was the heart monitor steadily ticking away. 

“There were a few fake names on the visitor registry,” his aunt said darkly. “I left Zhan Yunfei to keep watch, and they were definitely there for Physician Li. We didn’t manage to see their faces in the hospital, but… well, I have people checking the identities against CCTV. They should get back to me today.”

Fang Duobing had the nagging feeling that someone knew. 

After crossing back through the gate, Fang Duobing barely had a moment to breathe a sigh of relief, of being safe now, before Li Lianhua just. Dropped. Next to him. Dropped like his strings had been cut, nearly bouncing on the ground before Fang Duobing noticed and dropped to his own knees painfully on the uneven pavement as if he could still catch the man. 

Everything had been fine right before they crossed the gate— and for a single shameful moment, Fang Duobing imagined that Li Lianhua arranged something like this just so he could get out of the conversation he promised. 

Then he noticed the blood staining his mouth underneath the darkness that was still fading away from where they had originally been drenched, and the panic turned very real as Fang Duobing made to carry Li Lianhua the rest of the way to the paramedics. 

He thought perhaps it was the fight that caught up to the man, the exertion that Li Lianhua usually could not expend. But the doctors could take care of that, couldn’t they? They would fix him and he would rest, and then Fang Duobing would be able to confront him about what happened in the dungeon. 

“Xiaobao,” his mother said gently. “The two of you were the last ones out of the dungeon. I know how you are when you lie, and you’re not very good at it. And with Li Lianhua like this…”

“It really does look like a curse.” His aunt interjected very quietly. 

Fang Duobing could understand why the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, and why the Hunter specialist might dismiss the idea of a curse. Curses only applied to Hunters, mostly because civilians tended to die immediately rather than be afflicted. Yet a curse shouldn’t have— shouldn’t have taken him down like that. Not when Li Lianhua had no trouble battling the dungeon boss, not when he could yank Fang Duobing from the darkness, and not when he was just fine as they left. 

All sects had curse specialists, the way they aspired to have healers. Too many times Hunters would come back from dungeons with a debilitating curse that would need to be seen to, sometimes taking the specialist months before they could figure out what it actually was and how to break it. 

“Did the two of you… encounter something? Something unusual, something out of the ordinary? Did he touch something or, god forbid, accidentally eat something—”

“Not like that.” Fang Duobing interrupted his mother. “But we… The entire dungeon was unusual, wasn’t it? We found a place that… well, everything he touched, I must have as well. But I’m fine, nothing’s happened to me.”

“You’re a Hunter,” his aunt said quietly. “It could be different.”

So is Li Lianhua, Fang Duobing thought, but did not say. 

“Whatever it is,” He Xiaohui gave a frustrated huff. “So far I haven’t figured it out. And I wanted to bring you first because events at the hospital were far too fishy, and because— Xiaobao, you might have to prepare yourself. He’s not doing better—”

And then he thought of letters he had seen in Lotus Tower before, that niggling feeling when his mother said Li Lianhua had no one to claim him from the hospital. 

“He did have someone.” Fang Duobing said suddenly, realising only in that moment he had sat next to the man’s bedside when he had to look up at his mother. “He often wrote to… a temple. A monk. Not even emails or anything, but actual real letters.”

That must have been a close friend. Li Lianhua certainly never wrote him letters before the times Fang Duobing had been dragged back home, not even emails. 

Once more, Fang Duobing was struck by the idea that he had never really known Li Lianhua. 

Above his head, the He sisters exchanged troubled looks. The silence stretched for a long moment until He Xiaofeng’s phone alerted her of a message, and she hurriedly pulled it out in an effort to focus on something else. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled, checking through her message. “It’s an alert—”

And then she quieted, and Fang Duobing looked at his aunt when she didn’t continue. “What?”

“I’ve got hits for three of the people who tried to visit Li Lianhua at the hospital.” He Xiaofeng said, eyes glued to the glow of her screen. “All three are ex-Jinyuan Alliance members.”

Fang Duobing stiffened. Jinyuan Alliance. The very reason for Li Xiangyi’s disappearance, now looking for Li Lianhua. 

“All the more reason to keep him here.” His mother said firmly. “Whatever specialist he needs, we can bring them here instead. I’d like to see anyone try to send a spy here or break through my defences. I’ve been needing new test subjects for my experiments.”

“And I keep telling you that you can’t say things like that aloud if you don’t want the lawyers to come down on us,” He Xiaofeng grumbled with a pout. “Xiaobao, what happened in the dungeon? Do you know why it closed suddenly or why the Jinyuan Alliance is now sticking their nose where they don’t belong?”

It made sense for the Jinyuan Alliance to investigate this. They disbanded a decade ago just as Sigu Sect did, when the last dungeon had been closed. And now ten years later a new dungeon appeared and closed. If Li Xiangyi hadn’t died in that disastrous event back then, then what about the Jinyuan Alliance leader Di Feisheng who was said to have died alongside him, was said to have killed Li Xiangyi…?

“I don’t know,” Fang Duobing admitted. He turned his attention to Li Lianhua, far too quiet and pale and still on the bed. “I’m still working that out myself.”

It must have been enough of the truth to pacify his mother, as she only sighed and laid a hand on his hair, fingers curled to sift through the strands above the ponytail. 

“Don’t take too long.” She told him. “In fact, sort through your thoughts today and tell me by tomorrow if you can. Whatever you can manage, that is. Whatever this situation is, there are forces we’re not aware of at play here and I’d like as many details as I can to better prepare. Tianji Hall can’t sit on the sidelines this time, not when we’re right at the centre of it.”

“I know, mom.” Fang Duobing told her. 

“Find me those letters,” she continued. “Not to read through it, but so I can send a message to this monk to tell them what happened. And don’t spend all day in this room. You need to eat a good meal and take a shower— you smell like the hospital. You know where to find me if you need me.”

Then she pressed a brief kiss against his hair and left. 

“I’ll be back in the evening,” his aunt told him.”First I have to follow up on those three— Jinyuan Alliance doesn’t even exist anymore, but if they had anything to do with this dungeon, then I’m going to find out about it.”

She followed her sister out the door, closing it carefully behind her, and then it was just Fang Duobing left. 

“And then there were two,” he said to himself, sitting back against the chair (and did they have to imitate the hospital so much that the chairs were uncomfortable as well?) to relax his knees as he stared at Li Lianhua’s form. “...You were supposed to tell me everything by now. I still don’t know…” he trailed off, uncertain as to what he meant to say.

He reached behind his waist toward his belt where he usually reached for his inventory, and pulled out the wooden sword, which looked more like a dagger now that he was all grown up. Despite using it in the dungeon, hacking through thick monster carapaces, the wood was still smooth and polished, entirely blunt and safe enough for a child to practise with. 

The name ‘Li Xiangyi’ was carved into the base. 

“What’s the truth?” Fang Duobing mumbled to himself, smoothing his thumb over the characters. “You old fox, always avoiding me when I need to hear from you. Even now you’re running away.”

He spent so long— more than half his life, even, chasing after the ideal of Li Xiangyi. To be just like his childhood hero, to live up to him, to continue where he left off… It was really no wonder he felt such a connection with Li Lianhua when he thought about it. It wasn’t that much of a stretch that he could anticipate Li Lianhua’s words and actions when he spent so long scrutinising every detail of every interview and observed moment in Li Xiangyi’s life. Fang Duobing spent his teenage years daydreaming of finding the Hunter again, of perhaps just… meeting him where he stood, and Li Xiangyi would look at him and remember him, and he would smile and look proud and— 

It was a silly dream, especially when he couldn’t even make it into Baichuan Court. 

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, sitting vigil over Li Lianhua and lost in his thoughts of just how he really should have recognised him, have realised everything, from the fact that despite how very different Li Xiangyi and Li Lianhua were (and they were so, so different), at the core of it all, Li Lianhua threw himself into danger the same way Li Xiangyi did to help other people. 

And wasn’t that the crux of how he influenced Fang Duobing’s life? Wasn’t that the very same will, the strong instinct to protect, that Fang Duobing was chasing after? 

He couldn’t reconcile the two, not really. They stood different, they moved different, they looked different no matter how similar. Li Lianhua had tics and habits that Li Xiangyi definitely did not have ten years ago, and one was so earnest and truthful most people took it for arrogance and disrespect while the other lied with a silver tongue in such a way that he always got his way. 

To Fang Duobing, they felt like two entirely different people. 

“Li Lianhua,” he said quietly. “Just… be okay.”

Even if he never got his answers, Fang Duobing would rather be angry at the man for years and years more than to think he might come to some conclusion only to have him leave forever. 

He sighed, listening to the calm pulse of the heart monitor, and tucked the wooden sword back into his inventory, frowning when he found barely enough space for it. 

Why…?

There was something there that wasn’t the usual, and it felt heavy now that he was paying attention. He grasped at it, the item small in his hand, and pulled it out of the inventory, feeling the weight of it like a metaphorical thing. 

It wasn’t physically heavy, but it had such a presence that Fang Duobing couldn’t believe he didn’t realise it was on his person before now. It was round, and as he put it to the light, he could see it looked like pearlescence caught within a ghost. Like a shimmering aerogel shaped into a sphere where the core was denser as it went in, visible despite being only the size of a bottle cap. 

It wasn’t the same, but he recognised that feeling of metaphorical weight. Of the denseness, the heavy presence. 

It was the very same as that black ball that prevented them from exiting the dungeon. Sure, all dungeons had drops, but he had never seen anything like this before. Tianji Hall specialised in Hunter gear and materials, and that included all materials brought back from dungeons. 

“What?” Fang Duobing asked dumbly, raising it against the light. 

“I told you,” Li Lianhua’s tone was cranky, the same as when Fang Duobing used to wake him up too early in the morning. “Not to take anything out of the Black!”

Fang Duobing snapped his head to the side, elation running through his veins for a single moment before he registered the sight. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed next to the prone and unmoving body, was the irritated ghost of Li Lianhua.

(Fang Duobing would later deny the shrill scream that brought his mother racing back into the room.)

[acequinz]

DFS definitely getting frustrated with mixed signals. In FDB's defense he is not aware he's sending any signals at all.

It's a pattern though, them inviting him to dinner every now and then and it increases in frequency.

Fang Duobing is led astray by his best friend (whoever that is) that he has been adopted by the old gay couple and they see him as the kid next door.

Which if LLH heard would have annoyed him for multiple reasons.

1. They are not that old.

2. Fang Duobing is wayyy past adoption age, that's a grown ass man.

But Fang Duobing is totally under the impression that he's being parented. Blame it on Di Feisheng for using a napkin to wipe his face instead of licking it off like Li Lianhua suggested.

Fang Duobing's other best friend has the right idea that they wanna smash.

Once he hears the fact that they at one point had muscle comparing thing and then dfs started giving him tips and offered to help him with the diet and gym training for which he mapped his skin with his hands a lot. (How FDB did not pop a boner at that, I don't know...)

But fdb doesn't believe it.

Li Lianhua has started sharing experimental food and FDB has not run away or stopped coming for dinner so to him they are dating already.

And so he starts inviting fdb to movie nights and FDB sits between him and dfs.

FDB's first friend says it's because they don't want him to feel left out.

His second friend echoes that they are trying to fuck.

FDB continues to believe the 1st friend.

Until one day he spends the night after dinner.. idkw, maybe his room had a leak or heater problem, something he couldn't fix on his own.

He sleeps with dihua, they only have one room but the bed is big enough for three and they let him sleep in the middle because of consideration of course.

DFS accidentally wakes him when he's preparing to leave for the gym in the morning and sleepy FDB follows him to the door leaving behind a still sleeping LLH to lock the door but his sleepy mind is blown when dfs kisses him before leaving him there.

Cue the panic and self talk,

It was an accident

Is he into me?

Did he think I was llh?

Did he like the kiss?

I liked the kiss..

Am I a homewrecker?

That too wrecking llh's home?

I am a terrible person.

He does that for a few hours sitting on the dining table unable to leave because he needs to talk to LLH about it.

Unfortunately his brain crashes before he can get the sentence out when a sleepy LLH kisses him good morning before making coffee for himself.

He probably breaks down screaming that night because no one is acknowledging anything.

LLH is confused because aren't they saying already? They have been dating for 3 months in his head.

DFS is confused because he thought they have been dating for a month, because fdb got drunk with LLH and they made out for a solid 5 minutes before confessing feelings as pulling dfs into the kissing game.

Which neither LLH or FDB remember.

Needless to say FDB has a lot of catching up to do.

He also needs to beat up his first friend and apologise to his second friend.

Hear me out modern au difanghua.

Where dihua have been married for 10 years and both are actually terrible with technology.

Welcome in neighbour Fang Duobing who helps them fix their blenders, the AC, the TV and the fridge...

"you guys need to be more careful. How do you even break the fridge like this?" Fang Duobing laughs, as he fixes the door of the fridge.

"don't worry about it." Li Lianhua laughs awkwardly glancing at Di Feisheng who refuses to look at him and instead holds the door in place as Fang Duobing works on the hinges.

"no seriously, if you are buying appliances from the same place, it would be better to switch it, they could be selling you counterfeit product," Fang Duobing rambles, his eyes still fixed on the work at hand.

"this is your fault" di Feisheng finally looks up and mouths to Li Lianhua who glares and shakes his head, he had only joked about wanting to see the cutie next door again, Di Feisheng had made the decision to break the fridge all on his own.

And now they were stuck with a cute boy who was comfortable enough to yap for about 2 hours as he worked on the fridge about the importance of safety and checking the source and trying to get them to buy stuff from his mother's company instead because they are so much better.