#like hua cheng throwing a table around with one hand

[avnasace]

everyones talking about how they animated nanami with one hand, can we tall about hua cheng over here?!?!?!?!

[ellysfir]

The Ghost King hadn’t moved at all during that time while they waited. It was unlikely that Hua Cheng wouldn’t come after he informed him of where he was, and although he had Shi Qingxuan with him he was still a little surprised to see Xie Lian tailing the other so closely.

She Qingxuan’s silence was enough to make his own conflict clear, though what part of the events he was likely mulling over He Xuan really didn’t want to know at the moment. What did either of them plan to do from here?

What was he supposed to do with Shi Qingxuan now? Let him come to his senses first, he figured, and he’d probably leave on his own.

“Gege, this one’s being noisy, can I throw him out?” he petitioned, already knowing the answer.

“I don’t want to be here either, thanks!” Black Water sank further in on himself, casting more of a shadow over his face with his hand to further block Crimson Rain from his sight. His playfulness was so frustrating, how was it that Hua Cheng was older than him, both physically and in time spent in this world?

Seeing that He Xuan was still avoiding his gaze after staring him down for a few moments longer Hua Cheng let his attention drift to the other pair, brows raising higher at Shi Qingxuan’s scolding. He hummed in disapproval, but didn’t have time to steal Xie Lian’s attention away because the sulking void in the far corner of the room finally uncoiled and looked back over. The two watched one another for a time before He Xuan dragged himself up to his feet.

“I’m hungry,” he finally announced quietly, Hua Cheng not even bothering to pretend to be surprised by it, though it sounded more like resignation than him being genuine, using it to dismiss himself. From his belt he removed the diminutive form of the Earth Master’s shovel, returned it to its true shape and dropped it on the expensive-looking tea table. His now empty hands struggled with the smoky light cloth, trying to wrap it tighter around himself so that it was arranged in a way that the gaping tatters of the front fell back upon another layer of black rather than his chest as he tried to to escape down the too-familiar halls of Paradise Manor.

A snap! echoed through the quiet room. He Xuan paused to sneer over a shoulder at being thwarted, and Hua Cheng was standing there with a dangerous, toothy grin on his face. Yin Yu may have chased away the servants to give the two privacy earlier, but he knew he was lurking close by, listening, and would go let them know to prepare them food. “I’m adding it to your debt,” he laughed, watching He Xuan deflate.

They both looked as a pillow fell over, a little skeleton fish head popping out from beneath the cushion of the divan.

Turbulent Tides

Characters: Shi Qingxuan, He Xuan Secondary: Xie Lian, Hua Cheng Timeframe: Black Water arc, canon-divergent AU @windmasterreturns @ellysfir @puqiprayerservice @mothboxhuacheng

Mere moments ago there was so much clamour shaking the stiff air of Nether Water Manor – the eager cries of those madmen, the bickering between the brothers and his own rage. It was dissonant and loud, even they had to shout to be heard above skirl surrounding them. If not for the location of the domain even the stormy waters outside would not have kept them hidden.

It wasn’t the sudden swirl of rage not his own that silenced those madmen.

It was the sound of Shi Wudu’s head rolling across the floor.

He Xuan seemed startled in his absolute lack of reaction. He moved his head and eyes only enough to follow the path the falling body took as it collapsed to the floor, delayed, as if it still had the means to remain on its knees by itself. He watched for a long while in his own silence, unmoving, features blank and confused.

When He Xuan gathered enough wit about himself to move the steps he took were slow and heavy, the sharp click of his heel echoing through the still silent manor. It was nothing like the way he’d moved before as he approached Shi Qingxuan a last time, unconcerned that he dragged his long robes through the quickly spreading pool of blood. He came to crouch at the former Wind Master’s side, cold, slender fingers gathering one arm at a time to free him from the shackles with a feather-light touch.

The sound of metal scraping against stone seemed to snap him out of his stupor and he withdrew quickly, reality flooding back in, washing away the numbness. He swept backwards, drawing himself upright with an unsteady sway, thin, wispy fabric following each sharp movement light as fog. He stood there silently, partly twisted, his eyes elsewhere out in the emptiness of the room, unfocused and intense with his hands tightly curled into the fabric at his sides.

All at once there was so much going on in his head, a different sort of turmoil than the anger and anguish from earlier.

Most prominently, he was still here. The option had been presented as an impossible path, and the death of Shi Wudu hadn’t released him.

What was he supposed to do now?

His mind was silent save his own racing thoughts, and he knew that meant Hua Cheng expected the same outcome he had and he didn’t dare reach out to him first.

[bluemoonfantasiesiii]

Say It Again (HuaLian)

It was early morning, and Xie Lian awoke from a wonderful dream to an even more wonderful view. Hua Cheng was laying next to him on his side, his cheek propped up on his hand with his elbow resting on the pillow below, his single black eye watching him with more fondness and adoration than Xie Lian had ever received as a prince.

“Morning, San Lang,” he said with a yawn.

“Morning, gege,” Hua Cheng replied lightly. “You were smiling in your sleep. Pleasant dreams, I presume?”

“En.” Xie Lian sat up and stretched as his smile faltered. “Although… My dream made me realize something.”

“Oh?”

Xie Lian looked back at his husband’s face, still lazily elevated above the pillow by his hand, but now his brows were furrowed in worry.

“We’ve been as intimate with each other as two people could possibly be,” Xie Lian began, “but there’s something I have yet to say to you out loud.”

Hua Cheng finally sat up properly so he could be eye to eye with the other. “And why would a few silly words be troubling you so?” he asked.

Xie Lian looked down at his lap where he’d begun wringing his hands. “Because those ‘few silly words’ are pretty important in this kind of relationship, and I feel bad for not saying them despite everything we’ve been through.”

Hua Cheng ran a soothing hand through Xie Lian’s loose hair. “Then why not say them now? I waited 800 years just to be able to lay my eye upon you again. I don’t mind if these oh-so important words come a bit late. I’m a patient man.”

Xie Lian turned his head to gaze into the single eye of his ghostly love. “I suppose you’re right. Better late than never, as they say. San Lang… I love you.”

Hua Cheng’s hand paused in its brushing. His onyx eye went wide, appearing to sparkle in the light of dawn as he processed Xie Lian’s words. He opened his mouth and closed it again, as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he should. Xie Lian could see him debate with himself until he finally came to a decision, his face doing its best imitation of his favorite maple red robes that hung on the back of the chair at his work table.

“Gege… Could you…say that again…? Please?”

Xie Lian smiled and took Hua Cheng’s frozen hand in his. “I love you.”

“One more time?”

“I love you, San Lang.” Now that it was out, he felt giddy. “I’ll say it as many times as you want! I love you, I love you, I love you!” Giggles began to slip past his lips before he even finished talking. His heart had never felt lighter. He felt like he would float away if Hua Cheng didn’t throw his arms around his waist, laughing with him as he rolled them both over so that Xie Lian was hovering over him, hands braced on his bare chest and hair slipping over his shoulders and falling around them both like curtains of brown velvet.

“You have no idea,” Hua Cheng said once he calmed down, “how many times I dreamed of hearing those words from your lips. I truly am the luckiest man to have lived and died.”

Xie Lian giggled once more. “Well then, your luck must have rubbed off on me, too! So very lucky am I to have met you.”

Hua Cheng lifted a hand from Xie Lian’s waist to stroke his cheek. “Gege… Dianxia, I—“

“Wait,” Xie Lian interrupted. “If you’re going to say it back, then please address me properly?”

Hua Cheng was taken aback for a moment. It was true that he had yet to address his love by his name, but that was because the Crown Prince’s name was so sacred. Someone as lowly as himself speaking it out loud would be akin to blasphemy. He didn’t dare. But if this was what Xie Lian wanted, then who was this loathsome Ghost King to deny him? He swallowed his apprehension.

“I have loved you for nearly a millennium, and I’ll continue to love you for countless millennia more…Xie Lian.” Hua Cheng averted his eye, ready to reprimand himself for such a transgression, when he heard a soft gasp above him. He chanced a glance at his love. Honey-colored eyes were shimmering, wide with awe, and his cheeks were flushed a light pink.

“Again,” Xie Lian breathed, barely audible. “Say my name again.”

Feeling emboldened by this reaction, Hua Cheng locked eyes with his husband and said with more conviction, “Xie Lian.”

In the next breath, Xie Lian’s hands were cupping his face and his lips were pressed to his own.

[immacaria]

Almost

  Hello there! How are you? I hope you are alright! So, this is day 5 of Beetober 2021 from @bloody-bee-tea and the prompt is Almost. This kind of a sequel to Day 1 and takes almost exactly from where the first part ended, so it would be good if you read the first part if you still haven’t. Anyways this day’s word count is 4269 words, way bigger than the previous one lol. Well, this being said, I hope you enjoy this and are okay!

________________________________________________________________

  After the reveal, all hell broke loose and the only thing that Jiang Cheng did was put his mask back on and walk to Nie Mingjue’s side, sitting on the arm of his throne and watching amused as everybody around paled and started throwing questions at him. Beside them, the Nie disciples were invading the room with their sabers in hand and ready to attack. They only stopped because Jiang Cheng lifted a hand and kept staring at the irritated Sect Leaders. 

  “I thought you were dead! You were dead!” Jiang Fengmian said and Wei Wuxian moved to hold him back when two of the oldest disciples stepped ahead, lifting their sabers. “What are you doing here? Why are you here?” 

  “A-Cheng, what happened?” Wei Wuxian asked, surprise and confusion written all over his face. 

  “I died, Wei-gongzi. That’s what happened.” Jiang Cheng crossed his legs, shrugging before leaning back on the throne. “You even mourned me, don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I remember! We all mourned you and what were you doing? You were her-...” He screamed, stepping in front of Jiang Fengmian. 

  “I was dying, that’s what I was doing.” He snarled, eyes lighting up in anger. 

  “Stop saying that! You aren’t dead!” He screamed and this time it was Jiang Fengmian who held him back while the Nie disciples stepped ahead and around the throne. 

  “Because of the Nies! I’m still alive because of the Nies.” He screamed back and Nie Mingjue put an arm in front of him, holding him back, as Nie Huaisang stepped ahead. 

  “Let’s calm down, alright? We can’t do much if -...” Nie Huaisang started but Jin Guangshan spoke over him quickly. 

  “Nie-gongzi, and I don’t mean to offend when I say this, but I think this is a matter between the Jiangs and --” He started but Nie Huaisang quickly cut him off back. 

  “He is not a Jiang anymore, Jin-zongzhu, despite his given name saying the contrary. This is a matter between the Nies and the Jiangs, one that wouldn’t be solved now.” He closed his fan, pointing it at him and the Nie disciples stepped ahead one more time. “When no one but the Jiangs and the Nies are present. So, if you all are to be so kind, please leave so we can settle this down.” 

  “I’m sure that you will ne--” He tried again, but this time it was Nie Mingjue to cut him. 

  “This does not concern you, Jin-zongzhu, or anyone on the Jins for all the matter.” He got up and Jiang Cheng looked up to him, before standing as well. “This conference ended, we will continue this tomorrow.” He announced out loud and saw Jiang Fengmian’s face reddened in anger as he turned around to Jiang Cheng and whispered. “Come on, A-Cheng, let’s go.” 

  “He is not going anywhere!” Wei Wuxian screamed and, to his bad luck, he pulled his sword out. 

  “Wei-xiong!” Nie Huaisang screamed, eyes wide as the first Nie disciple clashed swords with him. “A-Yu!” 

  "Nie Daiyu, retreat right now!" Jiang Cheng barked, lifting his hand to the girl as a thin string flew off it and circled her waist. "Retreat." He said one more time as the string retread and pulled her back. 

  "Wanyin…" Jiang Fengmian started, but he only shook his head, not stepping away from Nie Mingjue. 

  "Swords down. Now!" He said and all the Nie disciples put their swords down - though very bedrungigly so - before looking at his father and Wei Wuxian and sighing. "Later." With that he turned around and walked out of the room with both Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue behind him. It wasn’t until they were away from the conference room and sure that nobody was listening to them that Jiang Cheng finally took his mask out and turned to Nie Mingjue as Nie Huaisang disappeared from a side door, pulling him to sit down next to a table and looking all over his face and body. 

  “A-Cheng, I’m fine.” Nie Mingjue said, holding his shoulders at the same time Nie Huaisang came back with a pot of tea and three cups and sat beside them. “That explosion did nothing to me, I swear.” 

  “You are still taking the tea, though.” Nie Huaisang said and passed a cup to him. “What was that, A-Cheng? What the hell?” 

  “I’m so, so sorry. I lost the grab on myself.” He sat between them, hugging his legs and putting his head between his knees. “When they started talking about Shijie marrying that peacock, I- I saw red and before I could think I was ripping the mask out.” 

  “We understand, we really do.” Nie Mingjue said and both of the others said in unison. 

  “Drink the tea, Mingjue.”

  “Shit.” He hissed, before carefully bringing the cup to his lips and making a face at the taste. “This thing is fucking horrible.” 

  “And we are going to drink three of those.” Jiang Cheng added, not looking at him and somehow still urging him up to drink the damned thing. “I just wanted them to take my opinion seriously on that matter.”

  “Well, they did. And that was, for sure, a power move.” Nie Huaisang nodded, opening his fan and smiling slightly when it brought a chuckle from both of the men. They fell in silence, one of them with his eyes closed and face hidden while the other two looked at him worryingly. Jiang Cheng’s shoulders were bended downwards and his breath came in shallow and quick breaths, his hands fisted in the fabric of his robes and every part of his body screamed discomfort and tension. It screamed fear. “Care to share your thoughts with the rest of us?” 

  “I do, actually. And I would prefer not, thanks.” He whispered, curling up even further. “Just let me breathe for a while, okay?” He said before falling silently once more and the brothers shared a look between them. They had been living with that boy for eight years by now and they knew how he could get sometimes.

  In the beginning, it was practically impossible to rile him out of the training fields because he felt that he needed to repay them for letting him stay there instead of kicking him back to Yunmeng like other clans may have done and wanted to learn their style as quickly as possible. When they finally managed to explain that he didn’t need to let his old fighting style go, that he could very well stay practicing the Jiang style, Jiang Cheng had only looked lost for a moment before nodding and leaving. They deemed the topic solved until Nie Huaisang came across him in the dogs’ shelter, sitting exactly like that while one of the biggest and most terrifying Nie dogs simply sat by him and whined. 

  Nie Huaisang had entered there and asked what was wrong but was only met with silence. So, he did the only thing he could and knew that helped his brother and hugged the sad bundle of boy in front of him. The amount of time that they stayed like that wasn’t something that he actually remembered, but he knew that at some point Jiang Cheng’s breaths settled down and, slowly but going, he started to talking and Nie Huaisang swore by the umpteenth time to never let him come back to his old family. 

  “Do you want me to go get Xiao Mifeng for you?” Nie Huaisang asked, already thinking about the maneuver that it would be to bring that beast of a dog to him without destroying absolutely everything.

  “No. He took a bath today, he’s going to be all ridden up all day long.” Jiang Cheng said, this time a little louder than before and shook his head as it lifted up. “Better leave him to lick his wounds in peace.”

  “Like we should do with you?” Nie Mingjue tried and Jiang Cheng turned to him, eyes going from his face to the cup of tea on his hand multiple times. 

  “Drink the tea, Mingjue.” He said, before putting his legs down and taking another deep breath. “No, I don’t need to be left alone. Not now, at least.”

  “Alright.” Mingjue nodded as Nie Huisang scooted closer to him and held his arms out with the best puppy eyes he could do. 

  “A hug, then?” He asked and Jiang Cheng huffed in exasperation.  . 

  “A hug, then.” He rolled his eyes before leaning down against him and having his feet pulled by Nie Mingjue. “And a foot massage, by the look of it. Drink the tea, Mingjue, you still have two more to drink.” He nudged his stomach with his toes and smiled when the man groaned and downed the rest of the tea in one go, shivering and making faces at the taste. 

  “This thing is fucking horrible.” He shuddered and pulled his feet closer. “And a foot massage too.”

  “That and you talking.” Nie Huaisang said, putting his head on the top of his and hugging his shoulders from behind. 

  “Oh, why do I get to be this pampered? I'm going to be useless by the end of the season.” He put a hand on his chest and chuckled along Nie Huaisang when Mingjue groaned loudly. “I’m sorry, Mingjue, really. For not thinking before taking the mask off.”

  “It’s okay, Wanyin. If it was Huaisang in the same situation as Jiang-guniang, I would do the same even if I had passed some time without us talking.” He shrugged, starting massaging his feet. “You should really stop walking around barefoot.” 

  “But it’s so good and freeing. And I was wearing boots at the conference.” He said back, throwing the same puppy eyes Nie Huaisang did before. 

  “Your feet are still all callous and rough from walking around barefoot.” He waved a finger at him and Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes at him. 

  “I’m not a maiden, Nie Mingjue. Leave my feet alone.” He kicked him weakly and heard Nie Huaisang gagging behind his back.

  “You two are gross. Ew!” He made another gagging sound and Jiang Cheng elbowed him in the thighs. “Ouch. Evil baby, evil.” 

  “I’m only five months younger than you.” He muttered, crossing his arms and Nie Mingjue patted his leg pitifully. 

  “We are running away from the topic.” He said and smiled when Jiang Cheng mouthed a 'I hate you' while Nie Huaisang nodded. 

  "Exactly, we are running away from the topic. Talk, A-Cheng." He nudged his shoulder and Jiang Cheng groaned, letting his head fall against his shoulder. "You were saying you were sorry for taking the mask so impulsively." 

  "And I am. I am sorry for it, but I am not sorry for the looks that I put on their faces. That shit was hilarious." He smiled slightly, putting his hands over Nie Huaisang's. "But, thinking now, they aren't worth the hassle I brought upon your clan. I mean, our clan." He corrected himself when Nie Mingjue tightened his grip on his left foot. "It's just that, I know my mother and my father and they are too proud to not take this as an offense. And Shijie is going to be so disappointed at me for not coming back. Wei Wuxian is going to be so mad.” 

  “And none of them are going to do anything because, officially, Jiang Wanyin is dead and you are Nie Qinghua, our cousin and little baby.” Nie Huaisang squeezed him and Nie Mingjue laughed at the wheeze he let out. “Unless you want to go back?” 

  “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to leave Qinghe and come back to Yunmeng with them. I want to stay here.” He tightened his grip on Huaisang’s hands and hooked one of his feet under Mingjue’s thighs as if afraid that someone would come and take him away from them. 

  “Okay, then. You are not going away. And it isn’t like A-Sang would let you anyway.” Mingjue shrugged as Nie Huaisang nodded and kissed the top of his head. Jiang Cheng smiled at him, patting Nie Huaisang’s hands gently, and turned his face when a knock reached their ears. “Who is it?” 

  “It’s me. Nie Daiyu.” The girl said, still not sliding the door open and by that alone they knew that whatever problem she had brought to them was serious. “I can come back later, if you want.” 

  “No, no, come in, A-Yu.” Jiang Cheng said, sitting up and stealing his boots back. “The tea.” He slid one more cup towards Nie Mingjue at the same time the door opened and revealed a disheveled and angry Daiyu. “What the hell happened to you?” 

  “I got angry and almost got in a fight with Wei-gongzi. It was only because Nie Zonghui held me back that I didn’t end that boy.” She growled before remembering who she was talking to and bowing deeply. “This one apologizes for the indiscretion and causing problems.”

  “Alright, A-Yu, but why are you here?” He chuckled as Nie Huaisang opened his fan to hide his smile and Nie Mingjue lifted the cup to his lips. In front of them, Nie Daiyu took a deep breath and her shoulders went back as she gathered the courage to speak. Or the patience to.

  “Jiang-zongzhu wants to speak with Nie-guwen, I mean, Jiang-guwen, I mean... Wait, what should I call you now? Nie-guwen still or something else?” She shook her head and lifted her hands. “I’m lost here.”

  “Poor girl.” Nie Huaisang chuckled and Jiang Cheng hit his shoulder weakly. “Wait, I didn’t think about that either.”

  “What an idiot.” He rolled his eyes before stopping too and looking between both Nie brothers.  “Do you mind if I still use the Nie name? Like, if the kids keep calling me ‘Nie-guwen’?”

  “What? No! Of course we don’t!” Nie Huaisang said, snapping his fan closed and looking at him horrified. 

  “But you don’t want your name back? Don’t you want people calling you ‘Jiang Cheng’ or ‘Jiang Wanyin’ again? They are your names, after all.” Nie Mingjue said, turning to him and moving to put the cup down before Huaisang’s fan appeared under it and pushed it up again. 

  “The more you delay drinking the tea, the worse it will get.” He said while Jiang Cheng fell silent between them. He was staring at his hands, lost in thought, and his eyes got unfocused for a moment. Slowly he furrowed his eyebrows as he turned to look in Nie Mingjue’s general direction before looking back at his hands again and closing his fingers slowly. 

  “I…” He started before he fell silent again and Nie Daiyu looked at them with fearful eyes. They understood, really.

  In all the years that Jiang Cheng kept living with them, the disciples got used to call him ‘Nie-guwen’, ‘Yin-gege’, ‘Hua-shixiong’ and even ‘Cheng-gege’ and they were used to see him like this constant moving person, always barking orders or helping them with their stances in the gentlest way while simultaneously bickering at them. Gods, Daiyu was used to seeing him as this unstoppable person that not even death could hold back and was crazy enough to dump a whole pot of paint on their Sect Leader’s head without fear. 

  So, seeing him with an unfocused look on his face and a loss of words like that, it was terrifying. And all because some asshole didn’t care enough about his son to search properly for him and know where trying to give off the image of a good and worried father. Seriously, she was happy that Nie-zongzhu had come across him and they got to grow up with him because that way they could go and fight tooth and nail for him. 

  “Call me like you always called me, Yu-meimei.” Jiang Cheng said finally, looking up to her with still unfocused eyes but determination written all over it. “Bring the name ‘Jiang Wanyin’ back or even ‘Jiang Cheng’, it’s the same as bringing a boy who has been dead for eight years back.” 

 “So, Nie-guwen still?” She said, face illuminating at the answer. 

  “Yes, Nie-guwen still. And tell my father and my brother to find us in the smaller conference room. I want to end this topic as soon as possible.” He said, smiling at her before turning to Nie Mingjue with furrowed eyebrows. “Drink the damn tea, Mingjue.” 

  “Oh, fuck off.” Nie Mingjue said, downing the thing all at once and making a face at the taste. “This was a bad decision.” 

  “And you still have one more to go.” Another cup was deposited on his hands while Nie Daiyu got up and walked around the table to kneel beside Jiang Cheng with a wide smile on her face. 

  “So you're staying, right? You are not going back?” She nodded, practically jumping up and down on her seat and it was hard to see her as the sixteen years old she was. “Can I hug you?” She asked when Jiang Cheng nodded and squealed when he nodded, throwing herself at him and squeezing him for a moment before grabbing her saber and running out of the room in her giddiness. 

  They smiled at that and when Nie Mingjue finally finished the last cup of tea, they headed to the small conference room, only stopping when Jiang Cheng said that he wanted to change his robes. When he stepped out of his room, he was wearing outer robes in the colors of the Nie clan and inner ones in a pale shade of purple. His hair was half held up by a simple ribbon and he was wearing two earrings with intricate metal work and a purple gem in the middle. It was the first thing that he brought after finally presenting himself to the world as Nie Qinghua. 

  When they finally arrived at the smaller conference room, Jiang Fengmian and Wei Wuxian were already there along with Nie Daiyu, Nie Zonghui and some other Nie disciples. There was a pot of scalding on the table and some pastries on the top of the table and Nie Mingjue quickly reached for one as Jiang Cheng poured them five tea. They sat down with Nie Mingjue in the middle, Nie Huaisang staring at Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng at Jiang Fengmian. 

  Some minutes passed without them saying anything, just looking at each other and Nie Mingjue saw the way that Jiang Cheng started turning his ring around. In front of them, Jiang Fengmian was looking all over his son, taking in all the changes and new details. Wei Wuxian looked torn between starting to say what he thought aloud at any given moment or staying quiet and seeing what they were going to say in their defense. 

  “You look well, A-Cheng.” Jiang Fengmian said, smiling at him and Jiang Cheng smiled back weakly. “Your hair is shorter, though.”

  “A beast got me by it some months ago and I had to cut it to prevent getting my head bitten off.” He shrugged and some strands of his hair slid over his shoulder, barely reaching past his collarbone. 

  “Or maybe it was because you didn’t want to have something to do with the Jiangs anymore.” Wei Wuxian muttered, crossing his arms and looking to the side when Nie Huaisang glared at him. 

  “A-Xian, please.” Jiang Fengmian said before smiling placantigly to Nie Mingjue. “Please, excuse him, he’s just a bit shocked.” 

  “We understand that the situation isn’t the best, Jiang-zongzhu, but please understand that we only want what's best for A-Cheng always.” Nie Mingjue said, smiling back at him and Wei Wuxian glared at him before huffing and saying. 

  “By doing what? Keeping him from his family?” 

  “No, by respecting his wishes.” He retorted and Wei Wuxian huffed again. 

  “Wei Wuxian, please, can’t you believe someone else just this once?” Jiang Cheng said, sighing and looking at his brother tiredly. 

  “No! Not when they are lying and keeping you from us.” He uncrossed his arms and glared right back at him. “Why are you even there, anyways? Why didn’t you come back?”

  “To be what? A ghost? A-Die had already decided that you were going to be the heir of the clan by the time I was strong enough to get back to the clan and I didn’t see any reason to get back if I was only going to be a reason for A-Die to be resentful.” He said, furrowing his eyebrows. “At least here, I had a purpose, Wei Wuxian. I have a purpose.” 

 “What about Shijie? What about me?” He said, put his hand on his chest.

  “What about you? You had Lan Wangji, Shijie had the peacock! I had Nie-zongzhu and Nie-gongzi with me.” He took a deep breath and Nie Mingjue surprised himself with the way that he hadn’t screamed once yet. 

  “But th--”

  “No! Wei Wuxian, stop. Let me talk, at least this once.” Jiang Cheng interrupted him and held his cup to his lips. “After that night hunt, I don’t know if you searched for me or not, and if you did, thank you, but--”

  “They did. The same night you disappeared and when they didn’t find you, they said you had died. Simple like that.” Nie Huaisang said, at the left side of Nie Mingjue and glaring at both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Fengmian. “Sorry, A-Cheng. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” 

  “It’s okay, A-Sang. Anyways, after the night hunt, I woke up disoriented and started walking around until I found a kind enough lady that took me back to Yunmeng where I discovered that I was dead. Surprise, surprise. The lady waited for me and explained that apparently the Jiang heir was missing and had been declared dead two days before.” He shrugged, drinking the tea before continuing. “I thanked her and kept walking away. At first, and maybe because I was disoriented and poisoned, I thought that I was a ghost. So, I started wandering around and traded some of my old things for new and unbloodied robes. That was how I found Nie-zongzhu, near here actually. That way, I think.” He pointed to the general direction of a part of Qinghe’s forest before turning back to his brother, eyes sharp and angry. “I’m still alive because Nie Mingjue found me and took care of me. I’m still alive because Nie Huaisang didn’t let me go back. I’m still alive because I didn’t want to go back. So, if you want to scream at the Nie clan, scream gratitudes and thanks for keeping me alive and well. Because if I had come back, I surely would have died.”

 “What? But, we called you! We called for you multiple times.” Wei Wuxian said, eyes frantic as he looked between the three of them. “‘Surely would have died’? What are you trying to say, A-Cheng?” 

  “Nothing, I’m just stating facts. The poison in my body wasn't merely from the beast we had been fighting against that day, there was something more. Something that was there before we got to the beast.” He shrugged before his eyes went to Jiang Fengmian. “Nothing to say, A-Die?” 

  “What are you trying to imply here, A-Cheng? Are you trying to say that someone tried to poison you? Someone from Yunmeng?” Wei Wuxian asked, eyes wide, as Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Cheng stared at each other. 

  “I don’t know, Wei Wuxian. The day is a blur in mind, but what I know is that I almost died and I’m not risking it again.” He shrugged, finishing his tea and taking one of the pastries on the plate. “Have you tried one of these, A-Die? I find them especially delicious.” He smiled and his smile was nothing beside just a pull of his lip, a dark and dangerous thing. 

  “I have. They are good, yes.” Jiang Fengmian said, smiling and drinking some of his tea too. “A-Li will disappointed you are not coming back, A-Cheng, and your mo--”

  “Will live, I’m sure. I’m not coming back, A-Die. I’m staying here with the Nies and If you must call me something, call me either Nie Qinghua or Nie-guwen.I’m not a Jiang anymore.” Jiang Cheng said and bit at the pastry as Nie Huaisang closed his fan and smiled at them.

  “Are there any other matters you want to solve, Jiang-zongzhu? Because if there is not, Zonghui will gladly take him and Wei-xiong to your quarters for the night.” Nie Mingjue said and watched as Wei Wuxian turned between him and Jiang Cheng. “We’ll see each other at the conference tomorrow, I assure.”

  With that Nie Zonghui stepped ahead and bowed at them, waiting for them to get up and follow him. Jiang Fengmian stared at him for some more seconds before smiling and bowing at him, thanking him for tea and the pastries while Wei Wuxian followed suit, though a lot more bedrungigly so. After they left, Jiang Cheng sighed and leaned against Nie Mingjue, putting his head against his shoulder and nipping at the pastry in his hands. 

  The next morning, Nie Mingjue explained what they had decided and followed with the conference as usual. Jiang Cheng stayed at his side the whole time, this time without his mask, and didn’t run away from any questions that the other Sect Leaders threw at him as much as he didn’t even blinked when he refused to go back to Yunmeng. He had almost died once in there, he was not risking it again. Not when he had a family that loved and cared for him in Qinghe. 

[hualianff]

More Than This VI 《V》

It’s no surprise XL gains his own taste of fame after walking the red carpet with one of the most sought-after actors in the country. He doesn’t mind it, going as far as to create a few social media accounts to interact with fans and scroll through their photos and edits of him. He has a few fan sites too, but only for fancy events where he chooses to be recognized in public.

XL and HC agreed before sharing their relationship with the public that they would maintain a strong sense of privacy when it came to their personal lives. They only share what they want to. The paparazzi who manage to take photos without permission are immediately disciplined so it doesn’t happen again.

(“I can’t believe you did it.”

“Hmm, Gege said he was okay with it.”

“I know! But I didn’t expect you to actually....” XL stares at a recent selfie of them HC had posted on his Twitter, taken the night HC won his award. “We look like we just had sex.”

“Nobody’s gonna know.”

XL raises an unimpressed eyebrow at his boyfriend. HC insists again.

“Nobody’s gonna know-”

“They’re gonna know,” XL says with a sigh, pointing to the hickey marks clearly visible on the photo. HC rolls over closer to XL in their bed, scrutinizing the image on XL’s phone.

“Oh, I didn’t see those when I posted the photo.”

“San Laaang!” XL cries, pushing at the taller man’s shoulder before burying his face into his pillow. HC makes XL breakfast in bed as an apology and promises to not drunk-post anything again.)

Eight months after officially dating–which is over two years since they met–HC asks XL to move in with him. XL doesn’t even need to think about his answer, a simple “Yes! Yes please!” escaping his lips. Both HC and XL’s faces light up with overjoyed smiles.

They seem to have had the same idea about where to live, purchasing a home they’ve been eyeing for months! The best aspects include a massive yard (front, side, and back) for XL to tend to, a hot tub, and a spacious living and dining room area to entertain guests. It’s not the grandest or most impressive residence by size or feature. In fact, the first months have them living in a half-finished, rusty house with the prettiest garden you’ve ever seen.

It gradually gets better. HC and XL knew they would have to do a lot of work to improve the shape of their home. Over the next year, they repair and remodel the house themselves, simultaneously adding value to the property and curating the style to fit their dream home. XL makes sure to post progress photos on his social media. His most recent selfie of HC and himself in hardware glasses got over 500k likes! He pinned HC’s comment that said, “Gege is my own very handyman!”

(HC, in a sleeveless tee, shorts that show off his ass, hair pulled back into a high bun: “Gege, you’re the boss now. Tell me what to do.”

XL, struggling not to gawk at HC’s side boobs: “O-okay, first, can you smash those cabinets-”

Cue them making out against the counter when it’s the only part of the kitchen that is fully done.)

***

Having a partner who considers the outdoors as a second home is a special experience. XL often takes HC on dates to national parks and plant nurseries. They go on weekend camping trips where XL teaches HC how to properly filter water, summit long stretches of terrain, and stay warm during cold nights with below-freezing temperatures.

(HC, trying to fit into XL’s sleeping bag: “Hi, gege-”

XL: “San Lang, you have your own sleeping bag that you can actually fit in.”

HC: ‘But I’m cold. Gege helps keep me warm.”

XL: “Fine. But let’s use yours because it’s bigger.”

HC, kissing XL’s forehead: “Thank you, my love.”)

On their hikes, XL points to different plants, explaining their origins and why he finds each one particularly beautiful. At first, HC picks up random flowers on the way home and then he asks XL about what flower fate gave him that day to gift his beloved. (“San Lang, that’s not allowed!”) HC eventually stores all the random facts in his mind, always eager to listen to XL talking about his passion. He also learns to keep his hands from digging up “poor, helpless plants from their home soil.”

However, this unfortunately doesn't prevent HC from accidentally squishing some plants in their yard that he thought were just weeds.

(HC, thinking he’s a good partner: “Get out, stupid weeds. CHOP CHOP!”

XL: “SAN LANG STOP, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

HC: “Gege always works so hard. I just wanted to help you in the yard today because you deserve it.” 🥺

XL: *sigh* “I appreciate the gesture, San Lang. But those particular grasses took months to grow, and you just killed them-“)

***

Countless media outlets try to stir up trouble like they typically do with celebrities. Especially when HC has roles that involve romance, articles claiming HC and XL are on the brink of breaking up receive lots of attention. However, what gains more attention are the videos the couple posts on Youtube or Instagram live of their reactions to their “scandals.”

(XL, reading a headline: “Actor bachelor Hua Cheng and co-star Yushi Huang seem to be cozying up after a late-night shoot.’”

HC: “I’m not a bachelor, the fuck?”

XL, smiling: “You could be. Me as well. We can be bachelors together.”

HC, chuckling: “All right. If gege is, then so am I.”

The comments: “That doesn’t make any sense!?”

HC, reading another headline: “HC’s lover found with a mysterious third party??”

XL, exclaiming: “Oh, that’s Shi Qingxuan! You know, the designer for all our red carpet outfits!” 🥰🥰

HC: *nodding along*

XL, cheekily: “-and my secret second-lover”

HC: *blanches* “What.”

XL: “Kidding!!!! San Lang is the only one for me, hehe.” *kisses HC’s cheek* “Okay, next one!”)

Everyone watching the videos is 50% confused and 50% entertained as HC and XL make light of any drama the media portrays them in. Viewers accept that of course, the rumors aren’t true; HC and XL are still very much in love.

They’re in love with each other and will continue falling for many years to come.

***

HC doesn’t like watching himself on screen. However, he does enjoy previewing his own movies for the first time with his boyfriend.

While XL watches the new movie, HC observes XL’s reactions. It helps that XL is a conversational movie watcher too. XL’s narrations consist of horny comments during the sexual scenes (“Ooh, that’s hot. Nice tongue.” “Thank you?”), side remarks about the plot and characters (“San Lang, your character is very rude.” “...”), and dramatic reactions to the huge reveal scenes where HC becomes a human punch bag. (“Oh my goooosh, San Lang!! It was him all along- AHH!!”)

As a perfectionist, something you have to be in HC’s field of work, HC is incredibly self-critical of his performance. Which is another reason why it’s nice to have XL watch alongside with, who never has a shortage of praises for his boyfriend.

(HC: “Fuck, why did they leave this shot in the final? I’m supposed to be mourning for my dead lover but instead, I look like I’m crying out of daddy issues. Why did no one tell me!? It looks so bad-” *pointing to himself on the screen* “-stop looking so constipated-!”

XL, squeezing HC’s nape and massaging his shoulders: “San Lang, no one thinks that except for you. You did everything perfectly. Please acknowledge your hard work and just enjoy the movie.”

HC: *sigh* “You’re right. Okay. Thanks, gege.”

A beat of silence. HC cuddles closer to XL.

HC: “Love you.”

XL: “Love you too.”)

***

XL now knows HC’s movies well enough to quote HC’s lines in his movies to make him laugh. HC happily indulges him, questioning after breaking character, “Gege, are you sure I’m the actor out of the two of us?”

One time, HC and XL are in their kitchen re-enacting a scene with HC as the investigator going to a bartender for more information on his suspect. HC has XL caged against the counter, asking in a teasing manner, “How can I repay you for your help tonight?”

XL lowers his eyelids, looking up through his lashes, flawlessly depicting his character. “Any restrictions on your offer?”

“No, darling. Name a price, a brand, a desire. Right now, anything is on the table,” HC says huskily. XL slyly bites his lip.

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

XL brings a hand up to cup HC’s jaw, then smooths it down his neck, traveling down his bare chest. XL tilts his head to expose his neck, wanting to build up his boyfriend’s anticipation. But before he can say his next line, HC effortlessly throws XL over his shoulder like a bag of rice.

“San Lang, wait, this is not how it went in the movie!” XL shouts, a little dizzy from the sudden lift turning him upside down. HC takes long strides to their bedroom, plopping XL on their mattress and blanketing him with his larger frame.

HC only utters a husky “we’re improvising” before diving down to devour XL’s lips. XL’s arms hook around HC’s neck, holding him impossibly close.

***

After a filming shoot where HC’s character gets beaten up–HC performing his own stunts–he heads home beyond exhausted. He just wants to take a relaxing shower and cuddle his boyfriend in their warm bed.

HC arrives at their house a little past midnight. He opens the door and finds XL’s back facing him, quietly humming a song as he takes care of the vase in the living room. The sight makes HC smile.

However, as XL turns around, the vase slips from his hands and explodes into pieces on the ground.

“San Lang! What happened to you!?” XL cries out, the panic in his voice only comparable to the day he had confessed. HC stands in the doorway confused. Was something wrong with his appearance?

XL is on him in an instant, his pupils shaking as he frantically asks, “Does it hurt a lot? What happened!?”

HC blinks, expression blank as he still doesn't understand what has freaked XL out. But as the shorter man gently caresses HC’s face, it suddenly hits him.

The make up!

HC urgently starts rubbing the fake bruises off his face. “Gege, I’m okay! It’s just make up, none of this is real. See?” He holds his hands out for XL to see as the pigment stains HC’s palms. “I’m so sorry! San Lang is dumb, he didn’t mean to make you worry,” HC murmurs as he takes XL between his arms. He really loves this man too much.

XL’s teary eyes shine glimmer as HC embraces him. “Y-you’re sure you’re okay?”

HC nods, leaning into the slender hand that cups his cheek.

“Thank goodness,” XL breaths out as he buries his face into HC’s neck. His next words are slightly muffled. “It looks…so realistic.”

“Yeah, the make up artists are all quite talented, aren’t they?”

XL clings tighter to HC.

“Very much so. Let’s shower so we can properly wash it off.”

“All right,” HC says. “Wait, we?”

XL tugs HC toward the master bathroom.

“Hush, let’s go.”

***

They lay in bed together after four long months of separation. Both of them had been in different parts of the country; HC filmed a drama series while XL traveled for several high-profile projects. Their respective busy work schedules limited communication to brief video chats and text messages, which never seemed enough.

Now, with his head resting on HC’s chest, their legs overlapping comfortably, XL finally feels like he’s where he belongs.

“Why did you choose me?”

Tactical fingers massage XL’s scalp, lulling him into a serene state of bliss. XL nuzzles further into his boyfriend-sized pillow.

“It’s not like I can choose who I fall in love with, Gege,” HC states with a light chuckle. “But if you want an answer, it’s because you are everything I’ve ever wanted in a partner.”

XL looks up at his boyfriend, mouth forming a shape of an O.

“That simple? Even when we made a deal to have no strings attached?” XL asks. HC groans at the reminder of their initial agreement.

“Yes, which was a dumb decision on my part.”

“I agreed to it too. We were both dumb.”

They are silent for a moment. It’s not the first time they’ve talked about or referenced their insecurities when it came to confessing their feelings. XL’s luck when it came to dating someone who could love him for every part of him was practically nonexistent. HC’s constant grappling for his self-identity and worth rendered most of his relationships superficial. And temporary.

Always temporary.

“I can’t believe you thought I didn’t like your plants though. They’re so pretty. And fascinating.” HC says, breaking the silence.

“They take up half our living room space.”

“So? You work with plants all day. They’re bound to be a part of your personal life as well.”

XL’s heart bursts with a sudden fondness. It’s a wonderful thing to be appreciated for the little things.

“I’m glad you think so,” he says happily. HC hums in response, sending vibrations to where XL’s cheek lays on his chest. “I can’t believe I didn’t know you were a famous actor for the first three months we…”

“Met up for sex?” HC finishes with an impish grin.

“Yes,” XL laughs.

“It was nice not to be recognized for once. With you, I could just be myself,” HC says with ease he never thought he would be able to do. He’s struggled with letting himself be vulnerable his whole life. It turns out, HC just had to find the right person. And thank god he did. XL is more than HC’s outlet from his career. He’s become HC’s closest friend who knows him the best; he is HC’s number one supporter in any endeavor he pursues; he makes HC feel important. XL sees and loves HC for who he is. No amount of fame or wealth could come close to comparison.

“Gege?”

“Hmm?”

“Does it ever bother you that my life is always everyone else’s business?” HC softly asks.

“Well, the fame can be a bit…uncomfortable,” XL admits. “But you’re an amazing actor. And a remarkable person. I can’t blame your fans for loving you so much, you know? I also got to ride in a limo-“

“Which you rode very well-”

XL flicks his boyfriend’s forehead.

“You’re so predictable.”

“You would’ve said the same thing given the chance. Don’t lie, gege.”

They go back and forth a little longer, never once creating unnecessary distance between each other as they roll around until they’re on their sides. Facing each other in their bed that’s been vacant for months, HC and XL are inseparable.

“As I was saying, fame is something that comes with your job–your passion. You can’t control it, nor does it solely characterize who you are. Besides, I get to be a part of your life! That’s all that really matters,” XL continues. He shifts forward so their bodies are closely pressed together. XL plants a kiss on HC’s chin, then whispers a confession that tilts HC’s entire world on its axis.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone like you.”

HC’s world spins and spins until all that he sees is his beloved, gleaming brighter than all the galaxies without the power to disrupt their orbit. He wraps his arms around XL and kisses the top of his head.

“Me too, Gege.”

Bonus:

HC watches wearily as XL salivates at a showering scene where HC’s bare ass flashes in the frame. XL turns to HC with a serious look in his eyes.

“San Lang! Hiking has done your ass wonders.”

XL sneaks a grope to a meaty cheek. HC chokes.

***

“You can’t be late to your own premiere!” XL cries incredulously.

“Try me,” HC purrs into XL’s ear, delicately kissing the lobe.

XL gasps as teasing hands roam around his torso, one of them slipping down to cup his behind. He vaguely thinks about how SQX is expecting them in the next hour to help with their red carpet outfits. But when hungry lips attach to the sensitive column of his neck, XL is a goner.

“Gege doesn’t have to do any work. Just lay back and look pretty.”

(Brainchild with @no-one-says-hi!)

[sheadre]

Aurora Borealis (Jiang Cheng x Reader) Part One

Summary: Zhu Ran'En (Reader) has always been forced to fight for her life through schemes and lies, betrayal and cruelty. However, Jiang Wanyin who grew up in Yunmeng and lived a complicated life full of obstacles, did not have to play these games. Therefore, when he has to face the cruelty of noblemen and the royal family, he has to ask the Imperial Princess for help. Will they manage to dodge all the life threatening dangers the snake Zhu HuaJin and the Second Prince is throwing at them?

Word count: 2720

Warnings: violence (later in the story), mature, fluff

A/N: Hello everyone! So, this story is in the MDZS fandom like a few of my previous works. I will usually post the chapters way later here than I post them on my quotev account or my ao3 account so please check them out here:

https://www.quotev.com/491346452

https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaeri/works

Lotus Pier was quiet now that things settled after Jin Guangyao got out of the picture. Wei Wuxian visited Yunmeng a few times but left just as quickly on Hanguang-Jun’s arm. Jiang Cheng found it ridiculous how Wei Wuxian acted like a whining wife but that is Wei Wuxian. Yanli once said that there is a thing called Aurora Borealis. A natural electrical phenomenon caused by the interaction of charged particles from the sun with atoms in the upper atmosphere. He had no idea how his shijie got her hands on the book she learnt it from but she said that the same thing could happen between two people. He always thought that something of the sort was rare to be witnessed let alone find it for yourself.

However, seeing Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, he realized what his shijie was talking about. Witnessing it – his shijie said – was rare and special. Jiang Cheng only felt envy. The elders were pestering him to find a suitable wife and marry quickly to ensure the heirs of their sect. Honestly, he had no want in marrying someone he never even met before. No one could really match him and moreover, who would want to marry him knowing about his… not so kind and righteous past. Things changed ever since Wei Wuxian came back and now, he regretted some of the things he’s done out of anger and want for revenge.

He cursed his thoughts for wandering so far during a nighthunt. The woods around them cast them in their dark shadows and the leaves hid the starry night sky from their eyes. Their was a cold humidity in the air as they walked, crunching the fallen dried leaves under his boots as he walked. He needed to focus, Jin Ling was with him after all, who would show the kid how to do things right if he didn’t? Not that Jin Ling was not pleading with him to accompany him. Even if Jin Ling was a sect leader, he needed to learn a lot of things and who else would aid him if not his uncle. Jiang Cheng never told the kid that he was proud of him but he thought he didn’t need to. The kid was self-assured without him praising him.

There was a roar suddenly coming from ahead stopping him and Jin Ling in their tracks. His body froze in place and listened carefully for any other sound. He knew they in disadvantage in the darkness and lighting up fire would possibly endanger his nephew.

“Uncle, it’s ahead of us!” the kid said with a hushed tone, warning in his eyes and readied himself for attack. However, before they could move, the song of an erhu interrupted the quiet of the night. It seemed like the time has stopped around them. Even the wind seemed to stop. Everything fell into a dead silence. The sound was beautiful yet terrifying. It had an alluring tone meanwhile anyone would shudder by the notes. Jiang Wanyin carefully walked forward in search of the cultivator who played. The foliage was crunching under his feet as he walked carefully, one step after the other. His heart was beating loudly in his ears as he approached the opening in the line of trees ahead. The resentful energy was so thick he could cut it with his sword. As he led his nephew out of the forest onto a clearing, his eyes widened.

In the middle of the field a woman was playing the erhu, her long hair flowing in the wind, her robes indicating her connection to nobility. Jiang Wanyin never saw her before and by the patterns, she was a member of the royal family. The monster he was chasing with his nephew slowly fell apart by itself. It was a monster that fabricated itself from different corpses. He was on the road trying to catch it around the town where people reported seeing it. The commoners of course were frightened to death by only the sight of it even from a far. The woman stood up and with the motion of her hand the erhu flew back into its holder which she strapped onto herself. She stopped in her tracks and turned to them, her eyes flashing with crimson red before it returned to a natural (e/c) eye color. Her lips pulled into a smile one that people wouldn’t be able to tell if it was kind or sinister.

“Jiang sect leader, Jin sect leader” she bowed to them in respect with a small smile playing on her lips. Her voice was melodic and Jiang Cheng couldn’t compare another woman to her beauty. He had no idea how she knew their names and if she was a member of the royal family, she was definitely not acting according to it. If she was a princess, she should’ve not addressed them first but wait for them to pay their respect. He narrowed his eyes as he raised a hand in front of Jin Ling to push him back behind himself. Jiang Wanyin couldn’t let his guard down now, this woman could be dangerous.

“Who are you?!” Jin Ling spoke up with his eyebrows furrowed yet his cheeks blushed. The woman chuckled and walked up to them. Her movements were graceful like a goddess’. Her (e/c) eyes never left the two of them and her smile held something strange. It was not threatening nor was it scary but it was definitely off-putting. Jiang Cheng felt her eyes roaming his form and he felt a blush forming on his cheeks. He couldn’t decide if it was from how inappropriately this woman was checking him out or from the notion of being checked out.

“I am Zhu Ran’En” she replied with a melodic voice. It was like a dangerously alluring spell drawing men so they would run into their demise. “Nice to meet you.”

“Zhu Ran’En?” Jin Ling gaped in surprise making her chuckle again.

“You might’ve heard about me” Ran’En shook her head a little like she was disappointed. Of course they knew the name especially after the official announcement of the Imperial Princess’ execution for her crimes. But if she was executed, how could she be standing in front of them? Jiang Wanyin narrowed his eyes at her while waited for her to continue. “Made up, evil-minded, biased rumors I bet…” A small pause as she sighed sadly before she bowed again and continued: “If you excuse me, I have to get to Xutong. It was nice meeting you, please excuse me.”

Ran’En straightened up and smiled at Jiang Wanyin gently before turning around and leaving them in the middle of the clearing. Jiang Cheng felt like he met her somewhere before. It didn’t make sense as he never stepped foot anywhere near the capital let alone the Imperial Palace. However, the feeling was strong even while he was making his way out of the forest with his nephew.

Later ~

The weather was nice but in the early hours of the day, fog fell down on the town. It was not too cold outside but people could barely see to walk around for long. That is why the inn she was sitting in was packed completely. Men were talking with boisterous laughter, others were telling each other stories, drinking to their hearts’ contents. Witnessing such simple life made her feel curious. She always wished she could live somewhere peaceful instead of being a princess and now she was here, sitting in an inn, drinking tea in the sea of commoners. It was truly fascinating.

She was aware that her existence was no longer a secret now that Jiang Wanyin found her. Zhu Ran’En tried to keep her existence and whereabouts a secret. Her ways of cultivation were frowned upon after all, yet she had no other choice but to use resentful energy. She never had a golden core no matter how hard she tried. Trying to learn cultivation from just books was difficult especially with the eunuchs and maids scolding her younger self how she was not acting like a proper lady of court. She had no need for it because as an imperial princess, she never had to defend herself. A few months ago, the lowest ranked imperial princess, Zhu Hua Jin and the second prince, Zhu Li Qin worked hard to make the emperor believe them. That is why Zhu Ran’En, the elder daughter of Zhu Zhi Qi – who was the third prince – lost the favor of the emperor and was sent into exile.

She sat in the inn sipping on her tea when two known faces walked in. She felt the shift of the resentful energy no matter how low it was in the room. Her eyes snapped to the new comers just to see the Yiling Patriarch staring back at her. Her lips pulled into a smirk as an invitation for the pair. Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian – known as Mo Xuanyu in his current life – looked around in search for a seat but most tables were full. She had to admit that both of them were good looking. Zhu Ran’En smiled at the black clothed young man and stretched out her arm motioning towards the untaken seats by her table.

“Ah, come and sit, gentlemen” she smiled gently. She quickly waved a waiter over to clean the table for the two cultivators. “I was about to finish here. Feel free to sit.”

Zhu Ran’En stood up and bowed to them while she heard Hanguang-Jun murmur a quiet ‘thank you’ before she straightened up and left them alone. It was better to not linger around for too long. She had no idea if Wei Wuxian could tell that she was a fellow demonic cultivator but she didn’t need him to notice. At least for now. Leaving the inn was easy even though she felt the lingering feeling of someone watching her. A smirk was playing on her lips as she turned down an alley and disappeared from sight.

She spent many days and nights roaming the cities in her exile, collecting information and plotting in the dark. She needed to get back to the imperial palace to protect her younger sister, Zhu WuXi. Ran’En wondered how she was doing these days. WuXi was always bouncing around the palace halls, admiring the beauty of nature and perfected her dance moves. Ran’En was always envious of her younger sister’s delicateness, how lady-like her sister was compared to her. Many people said her younger sister took after their mother and it was true in every possible way. She was just as naïve and good hearted, assuming the best in everyone without a doubt. This made her an easy target for Ran’En’s opponents.

Suddenly, a dog came running towards her while barking loudly, making Ran’En’s smirk pull wider on her beautiful face. Her eyes darkened as she looked at the dog which stopped a few feet away from her in fear. It whined in fear at the sight of her expression she was wearing. Soon, the young Jin sect leader came after the dog with eyebrows drawn together.

“You!” he cried out angrily. The youngster didn’t recognize her right away because she was wearing a simple attire from cheap material. It was easy to hide yourself if you just changed clothes and make-up – she thought. “You scared Fairy!”

Ran’En laughed out loud and lifted her sheathed sword to stop Zidian wrapping around her body, so instead it curled around her sheathed sword. She could hear Jiang Wanyin coming from behind since she rounded the corner.

“Sect leaders” she chuckled. “Pleasure to meet you again in such a short time.”

“Who are you?” Jiang Wanyin yelled angrily. She lifted an eyebrow curiously turning to the man. “Zhu Ran’En, the imperial princess died two months ago.”

“Died?!” she cackled as she was now facing Jiang Wanyin. Her lips pulled into a sneer. “They still lie even when they beat me… I am still here…”

“You’re using resentful energy for cultivation” Jiang Cheng replied but now he took a step back from the woman.

Zhu Ran’En pulled out a seal and showed it to him. The small stone badge was carefully carved, the characters ‘princess’ emerged from the flat surface of the stone. She watched his eyes widen before she hid her last reminder of her title back into her sleeve. To her surprise Zidian loosened and let go of her sword.

“Sect leader Jiang, I advise you to stay out of my business… these are royal matters” she said coldly before she jumped up onto the roof of the building and disappeared from their sight.

She was supposed to be locked up in Qi mansion waiting for the emperor to call her back one day. However, she had no time to wait for so long if she wanted to save her little sister from the evil clutches of her uncle and her cousin.

Jiang Cheng’s PoV.

A few months back, Jiang Wanyin noticed Imperial guards appearing in the town and other towns nearby. They were asking people about a woman, the drawing they were showing to the citizens was drawn with attention. The sect leader now knew who the woman was. The imperial princess was a traitor after she got caught in the crime of money laundering. Everyone was informed that she was executed publicly in the capital, however, if she was executed, why were imperial guards asking around about her?

People were spreading rumors about her but if someone would really think over everything, with the princess’ righteous past, it would be easy to smell something was fishy about this whole thing. And Jiang Wanyin’s nose was similar to a hound. After meeting the imperial princess in real life, he could tell that there was more than what meets the eye and he was keen on finding out the truth. That is how he found himself in front of Qi mansion in Yangsu.

The building was looking like a prison or a robust castle with the dark brown and black colors and stone walls. Thick stone pillars held the roof while there were no windows visible from the front entrance. The wall stretching around the mansion could be around six cun* wide and thirty chi* high.

*[1 cun (寸)= 5 cm; 1 chi 尺 = 0,5 meters]

The doors were closed but there were no guards in front of the mansion and when Jiang Cheng pushed on the wings of the door they easily opened up giving him a view of the insides of the mansion. He could hear some folks talk about how no one entered the mansion since the princess’ arrival to spend her exile in there. He walked inside but when he was far enough inside, the doors closed behind him and as much as he tried, he couldn’t open them again.

“Jiang sect leader… It is a pleasure to meet you in my humble abode” came the familiar melodic voice of the princess. Jiang Wanyin turned around in a blur, his eyes spitting lightning as Zedian unfurled from his hand ready to strike. The princess stood nonchalantly in front of him, in the usual embroidered rich hanfu all the royal family members wore, her figure petite yet something dark was encircling her form as the smile stretched on her beautiful face. Jiang Cheng had to admit that the woman was beautiful, very intimidating yet beautiful. She tilted her head to the side and turned sideways, lifting her arm inviting him further inside. “Would you like to have tea? Lili just arrived back from the market with a new batch of herbs and teas.”

“What are you doing?” Jiang Cheng hissed angrily at the woman who’s features looked like they were frozen into stone. She turned back to him fully, her lips ever so slowly returned into a neutral line before she spoke up.

“If you’re here, you already know exactly what awaits you once you dig yourself into my case” Zhu Ran’En said coldly. “Imperial guards already noticed you entering my mansion, you got involved in imperial affairs. Now come, let’s have some tea.”

The sect leader narrowed his eyes at her but followed her inside silently.

To be continued…

[stiltonbasket]

How does Lan Wangji feel about Wei Wuxian's new title, Xinhua-jun?

The first time someone addresses him as something other than Honored Master Wei during an assembly, Wei Wuxian barely registers it.

But in his defense, he’s been up all night for a week straight, hurrying to get his irrigation talismans finished in time for the planting season, and the first batches have just been shipped off with a handful of Lan-trained shidao cultivators accompanying them to supervise.

All Wei Wuxian wanted to do was sleep, after that. It’s a wonder that he stayed awake long enough to  attend the conference at all, which is why he doesn’t realize what the petitioners from Moling called him until he takes a soak in his bathtub that night and asks Lan Zhan to rub his shoulders for a while.

“How was the assembly?” Lan Zhan asks, while Wei Wuxian raises the temperature of the bathwater until the washroom fills up with steam. The ability to take long, hot baths without harming his cultivation is the only good thing that came from losing his golden core, and Wei Wuxian made sure to bathe in heated tubs as often as he could after his resurrection; he used to envy the Jiang shimeis in his childhood, since heat only benefits cultivators with excess  yin energy, but now...

“Wei Ying?”

“Oh!” Wei Wuxian sighs and straightens his back before reaching up to pat his husband’s arm. “It was fine, I suppose. The Su cultivators presented their case, Uncle and I went through it, and then we agreed to all their demands except the one about Moling receiving a sixth of Gusu’s tax revenue.”

“A sixth?”

“They don’t have enough noble families living within their borders,” he says absently, making a small sleepy sound of approval as Lan Zhan pats the tension out of his neck. “The Lai and Xu clans relocated to Qinghe last year, and the Liao family—you remember that clan whose little mistress proposed marriage to Jingyi this spring?— they moved to Laoling the year before that, and they all paid enough taxes to keep the Su clan comfortable.”

Lan Zhan’s hands withdraw from his neck and reappear in his hair a moment later, covered in the sweet-smelling hair soap Wei Wuxian makes from the lotus pond in the back hills. “Did they—treat you well?”

It’s a sensible question, Wei Wuxian supposes, even if the worry in his husband’s voice makes his heart ache with love for him. “Better than most Moling cultivators usually do, Lan Zhan. It was all Xiandu this and Xinhua-jun that, until—”

“They called you Excellency?”

The conversation comes to a swift end at the realization, because Wei Wuxian accidentally swallows a mouthful of foamy water and chokes on it until Lan Zhan helps him cough it up. And then they have to get ready for dinner, and coax the children into finishing it before they fall asleep in their bowls, which is why Wei Wuxian doesn’t think about the conference again until after hai shi. 

When the truth of Su She’s association with Jin Guangyao came to light—as Wei Wuxian recalls when Lan Zhan and the little ones are safely asleep—most cultivators from Moling Su seemed to detest Wei Wuxian more than they did while he was dead, if Jiang Cheng’s spies were to be believed. As a matter of principle, none of them even attended Wei Wuxian’s wedding, and offered nothing but flimsy excuses when Lan Xichen traveled to Moling to deliver the invitations in person; and since then, they preferred to keep their distance from him, and would likely have continued to do so if Xichen hadn’t been in Baling for the month to see his new baby grandson.

But today’s petition had been urgent, so Wei Wuxian had to stand in as Lan-zongzhu by proxy while his husband and brother-in-law (not to mention A-Yuan and Jingyi, who accompanied Lan Xichen to Baling) were occupied elsewhere, and none of the Su cultivators were discourteous to him in the slightest.

Oh, no,” he groans, as Lan Zhan tries to hush him with a kiss. “This can’t be good, Lan Zhan. They ordered their city magistrates to send word if I crossed the Moling border, and they turned Xichen-ge down  again  when he invited them to Chun-bao’s hundred-day feast—you don’t think they’re planning something, do you?”

Lan Zhan only gives him a fond look and kisses him again. “Go to sleep, A-Ying,” he says gently. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

*    *    *

When Wei Wuxian married into the Cloud Recesses nine years ago, the question of his formal title remained unsettled until after the month before his and Lan Zhan’s first wedding anniversary. If he were a woman, the cultivation world would have known him as Lan-furen, and that would have been the end of it: but Wei Wuxian was a man with no title save that of the Yiling Patriarch, and even Lan Zhan was at a loss when his uncle asked what he should be called following the wedding.

“Third young master Lan?” Wei Wuxian suggested, absently petting Xiao-Yu’s fluffy hair. “Or Wei-gongzi? It doesn’t really matter, Shufu.”

“Third young master Lan is unsuitable,” Lan Qiren pointed out, plopping another baby rabbit into Xiao-Yu’s lap. “Xichen is the sect leader, and Wangji is the Chief Cultivator. Neither of them can rightly be called gongzi any longer, so the titles of first and second young master must pass to Sizhui and Jingyi.”

They settled on Lan-san-gongzi in the end, mostly because everyone already knew that Sizhui and Jingyi were the first and second heirs to the Lan sect, but then Lan Xichen (who remains the best brother-in-law Wei Wuxian could ever have hoped for) came to bring Wei Wuxian his lunch one afternoon while he was working in the produce field, and laughed himself silly at the sight of his difu  talking to a particularly stubborn lotus bloom in an effort to get it to grow.

“What a happy flower, to be so doted upon!” he chuckled, passing Wei Wuxian a wet cloth so he could clean his hands and sit down to eat. “Xinhua-jun, xiao-hua, be good for A-Xian and grow, won’t you?”

And then a strange excited grin spread across his face, right before he dropped the lunch boxes into Wei Wuxian’s arms and ran back towards the main compound as fast as his legs could carry him.

Wei Wuxian’s students have called him nothing but  Xinhua-jun  ever since, even though it was more of a pet name than a  title. But it never caught on outside the Cloud Recesses, since most of Nie Huaisang’s court is much older than he is, and Yunmeng still knows him as Wei-zongzhu from the year he spent leading Yunmeng Jiang before he and Lan Zhan were married; and the less said about Lanling Jin the better, even if Jin Ling and Mianmian have been ferreting out the last two sect leaders’ supporters ever since A-Ling succeeded Jin Guangyao.

The thought of his title becoming common knowledge in  Moling of all places gives Wei Wuxian a chill down the spine, and he says as much the next evening while going over the reports of young women’s education rates from Gusu’s subsidiary sects.

“Who could possibly have told them? It’s very suspicious,” he grumbles, answering a plaintive letter from a particularly pompous scholar who insisted it was far too much work for his colleagues to teach the boys in the morning and stay three hours longer to teach the girls in the afternoon. Teach them both in the same class, Wei Wuxian writes back, snorting at the man’s foolishness as his daughters climb into his lap to peer curiously at the scroll. If any of the young ladies’ parents prefer their daughters be taught separately from the boys, the Cloud Recesses will send a delegation of lady tutors to Xibei and have a second school built.  

“Suspicious?” Shuilan pipes up, before pointing to one of the characters on the scroll. “That’s part of my name! It says shui!”

“Very good!” Wei Wuxian smiles, kissing the top of A-Lan’s head. “Chun-bao, can you find any?”

Chunyang nods shyly against his neck. “A-Chun see cloud,” the baby says, happily smudging the  yun  in  yunshen buzhichu with her little hands before snuggling down into Wei Wuxian’s silky robes. “A-Die, eat? A-Chun is hungry.”

Wei Wuxian glances up at the sky and cries out in dismay as he notices that night has nearly fallen. “Come, come—but A-Lan, sweetheart, put your socks on first! It’s cold in the kitchen, and I don’t want to leave you here all alone.”

“I’m a big girl,” A-Lan complains, as Wei Wuxian laughs again and slides a pair of soft slippers onto her dimpled feet instead. “Can’t I stay with gege?”

“Gege’s taking a bath,” Xiao-Yu shouts—from the bathroom, naturally, since he spends his afternoons getting delightfully muddy in the produce field and moseys back home by sunset with grubs and leaves and rich black earth clinging to his clothes. “Be a good Lan-bao and go with A-Niang.”

At twelve years old, Xiaohui has finally settled on a course of cultivation study, surprising everyone but his parents by deciding he wanted to learn natural cultivation instead of following the martial dao, and he and Wei Wuxian have been working on agricultural talismans together for the past two years; Xiao-Yu even had a hand in the talismans Wei Wuxian just sent out for the border territories, since Wei Wuxian relies on his son’s spiritual energy to activate them. He is so very proud of Xiao-Yu, grubs and mud and all, and Wei Wuxian throws back his head and laughs when his tall son rolls into the kitchen half an hour later with his hair pinned up in a damp knot at the back of his neck.

“Is supper ready, A-Niang?” Xiao-Yu asks, while A-Lan sits at the table with one of her brother’s many, many cats purring in her lap. “Should I lay out the bowls?”

“Yes, please, A-Yu,” Wei Wuxian yawns, swaying back and forth with Chunyang on his hip as he stirs chili paste into his pot of soup. “And fetch a shawl for A-Lan, her clothes aren’t warm enough.”

“A-Niang stir more,” Chunyang tells him, pointing down at the pot. “Not done.”

Wei Wuxian does as she says, breaking up the last chunks of paste just as A-Yu comes rushing back in with a warm shawl to drape around A-Lan’s shoulders. After that, he puts a broad wooden lid over the pot and leaves it to boil, moving from cauldron to cauldron with one hand keeping Chun-bao in place and the other wielding his ladle: a weapon almost as effective as his sword, if A-Yuan’s condemnation of his cooking at the Burial Mounds is to be believed, though Wei Wuxian learned how to cook without covering everything with chili oil during his brief stint as Sect Leader Jiang ten years ago.

“I love A-Die’s food,” Shuilan declares, squeezing Heimao (named, quite literally, for his smooth black fur) in sheer delight when Wei Wuxian plops a bit of hot tofu into her mouth. “If Papa doesn’t come home in five minutes, can I eat everything?”

“A-Lan can eat as much as she wants,” Wei Wuxian promises, because A-Lan is only five years old and eats less than half of what Lan Zhan does. “Come help Yu-gege serve the rice, and then we can eat.”

Lan Zhan comes home late that night, after Lan Yu and Wei Shuilan have finished their dinners and gone to bed. He went to Lanling to help Jin Ling oversee a trial just after mao hour, and his early return is a pleasant surprise; Wei Wuxian nearly weeps with joy when his husband opens the door to the  jingshi and sweeps him and A-Chun up into his arms, carrying them to the long divan in the receiving room to kiss them to his heart’s content, and fussing over A-Chun until she toddles away and comes back again with the little bowl of hot soup that Wei Wuxian left on the table with a warming talisman.

“Papa eat,” she says adoringly, curling into a chubby pink ball against Wei Wuxian’s stomach and watching with big eyes as Lan Zhan raises the bowl to his lips. “A-Niang cooked!”

“Your A-Die always cooks dinner,” Wei Wuxian says, kissing the tip of her sweet pink nose. “Remember, Chun-bao?”

“Papa breakfast, and A-Niang dinner,” the little girl agrees, before drifting right off to sleep between her parents with one tiny fist curled around the end of Lan Zhan’s forehead ribbon.

Jiang Yanli used to fall asleep like that, Wei Wuxian remembers, safe in Jiang-shushu’s purple-draped bed with him and a toddling Jiang Cheng curled up next to her on either side, and she always stayed asleep no matter how often they squirmed and kicked and whispered over her head.

“Sweetheart?”

“I missed you,” Wei Wuxian sighs, without mentioning where his thoughts had gone—the pain of his shijie’s passing will never heal as long as he lives, but it has been easier to bear with Lan Zhan beside him, if only a little. “Will you have to go again next week, Lan Zhan?”

His husband shakes his head and gives him a lingering soup-tasting kiss on the soft dent over his mouth. “It is finished, my heart. Forgive me for coming home so late?”

Their faces draw together again, yearning towards one another like two mated butterflies forcefully parted as Lan Zhan shifts A-Chun to the crook of his arm and lays Wei Wuxian down on the divan to kiss his cheeks, and his forehead, and then caresses his hands with heart-breaking tenderness, as if he were holding a treasure beyond price. In turn, Wei Wuxian reaches up to touch his husband’s face, tracing the smooth lines of his brow and chin until Lan Zhan catches his fingertips with his lips and pulls him upright to keep Chunyang from getting squashed.

“Let’s put this little lotus to bed,” Wei Wuxian whispers, though it turns into another yawn before he gets to the end of the sentence. “Come with me, xingan?”

His husband—his beloved, precious, perfect husband—goes with him without a word, coaxing their daughter into her sleeping gown and laying her in the middle of the bed without waking her. “I heard some news in Lanling before I left,” he says, while Wei Wuxian helps him take off his Chief Cultivator’s headpiece and put away his waist-pendants. “I investigated the issue with Moling Su, since I feared that they might have a greater grudge against you than we thought, and Jin Ling informed me that the minor sects have begun to address you as xiandu of their own accord.”

Wei Wuxian feels his jaw drop. “What?”

“You have been taking over the portion of my work that cannot be solved by night-hunting,” Lan Zhan points out, as they slip under the covers and tuck A-Chun in between them to keep her warm. “The schools, the trade conferences, the farming failures in the south and the northwest. These matters are resolved by letters written in your hand, not mine, and petitions written to the Chief Cultivator are taken to court by the Chief Cultivator’s husband.”

He pauses to brush their noses together, and then:

“It has been so since you married me,” he says, with a smile that melts Wei Wuxian’s limbs into jelly. “Did you never notice, Wei Ying? It is well known that Hanguang-jun follows the jiandao, and goes wherever the chaos is, and that Xinhua-jun sees to the everyday matters that must be put right for a sect to thrive. Even the clans who would have dared speak against you know it now, and give credit and praises where they are due.”

“I can’t just  become the Chief Cultivator by sharing your work,” Wei Wuxian snorts, rolling his eyes fondly as Lan Zhan leans over to blow out the candle on the nightstand. “I’m your husband. What else would I do?”

“I have not yet heard your sister-in-law being called Jiang-zongzhu,” Lan Zhan returns, with a bright spark of mirth in his sweet voice. “Though I suspect your brother would not mind, if she was.”

“Yes, I suppose—but Lan Zhan, surely the minor sects can’t just  decide to call me Chief Cultivator? You were chosen for the position by vote.”

“They chose me for Chief Cultivator ten years ago, did they not? And now, since there is no law that two people cannot share the title, they have chosen you. Nie Huaisang will support it, since he lives in fear of me stepping down and making  him succeed me as Excellency, and so will Jin Ling. And Jiang Cheng.”

“...I’m never getting out of this, am I?”

“Do you wish to stop?” Lan Zhan inquires, with some concern. “You have done more good than I could ever have dreamed of, but if you do not want—”

“Let’s talk about it in the morning,” Wei Wuxian begs, thoroughly overwhelmed at the thought of it. “Come hold me, er-gege.”

And Lan Zhan does, hugging him so tightly that all he knows is the sharp scent of sandalwood on his husband’s clothes and the soft-smelling lotus of Chun-bao’s hair until he falls asleep.

*    *    *

  Nanhai Cheng, Baling Ouyang to the Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan

  Senior Wei,

      When did you become the Chief Cultivator? Jingyi and A-Yuan want to know, but they can’t write at the moment because A-Qing put them on diaper duty. Is it true? Or was A-Ling just making fun of us?

      Best wishes,  

            Ouyang Zizhen.  

    P.S.—make sure to bring Lan-xiansheng for A-Chen’s full month party! You haven’t forgotten about it, have you?

*    *    *

  The Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan to the Unclean Realm, Qinghe Nie

  Nie-xiong,  

      If I ever find out that this Excellency business was your fault, I’ll steal all your grandchildren and hide them in the jingshi. What in Heaven’s name were you thinking?

    Suspiciously yours,  

            Wei Wuxian.  

*    *    *

  The Unclean Realm, Qinghe Nie to the Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan

  Brother Wei,  

      My, such accusations! I really can’t say. But have fun with all the paperwork, Wei-xiong—it’s the best part of the job!

      Your (best) friend,  

            Nie Huaisang.  

[touchmycoat]

If you're still taking prompts from the smut list: 5, 7, 12 or 22 for He Xuan / LQG. Sexual or not, considering the leverage!au, those quotes could be job related.@.@

((Smut dialogue prompts))

5. “Take your clothes off. Right now.” 7. “Hands behind your back.” 12. “I’m going to fucking ruin you.” 22. “Look how good you take it.”

Word Count: 3267 Leverage!AU

(i)

"Take your clothes off. Right now."

Liu Qingge was halfway out of his shirt before he really registered the order, and then He Xuan was next to him yanking the shirt off the rest of the way before Liu Qingge could pull it back down.

"Pants."

"Back off," Liu Qingge tried to snap, but was quickly losing ground as He Xuan backed him up among the racks of clothes and stage design props. And when he smacked He Xuan's hands away from his belt, He Xuan smacked his hand right back with his own belt buckle.

"You heard her," He Xuan said, low and dangerous in something that sounded a lot like the fuck around and find out voice he reserved for marks. "Models and designers only."

"So you be the model."

He Xuan tugged Liu Qingge's belt off with a neat yank. Then he took a step back and folded his arms.

"Fine. Then talk fashion."

Liu Qingge had to resist the urge to fold his arms in mirror, because in his current state, it would look just a little too much like he was covering himself up out of shyness.

"Shen Qingqiu?" he snapped into his earpiece.

"Sorry," Shen Qingqiu coughed. "All I know are brand names."

"Come on, Liu Qingge," Luo Binghe chimed in, all schadenfreude, "you were hired for your body."

"And not to rush but Lan Xichen is being held hostage..."

"Fine." Glaring vicious murder, Liu Qingge thrust out a hand at He Xuan. "What do I wear?"

With a smug not-smile, He Xuan turned on his heel and tossed the long end of Liu Qingge's belt over his shoulder. When the leather smacked against his back, Liu Qingge's gaze flickered.

"You're not wearing anything," He Xuan snorted. "Just shut up, follow me, and flex."

(ii)

"State police! Nobody move!"

He Xuan, slipping his fake detective badge away, of course made for Liu Qingge first, who stood in the middle of a pile of broken noses and unconscious bodies, as was his wont. A frenetic, giddy smile split the mark's bloody mouth (which had already been split once by Liu Qingge, before the private security forces moved in) as four policemen stepped into the room.

He Xuan grabbed Liu Qingge by the back of the neck like an errant puppy and shoved him face-first against the wall.

"Hands behind your back."

Behind him, the mark was babbling some thank god, where have you been bullshit, but He Xuan was too busy not-smirking at Liu Qingge's hissed curses when the cuffs went on too tight. Then there was a hand on his elbow. For the sake of the con, He Xuan didn't tear the man's arm off.

(Didn't unleash Liu Qingge on him; what the mark got a taste of before was really just a friendly nip.)

"Cheng Luan, was it?" He Xuan growled into Liu Qingge's ear. "I've been looking forward to this moment for a long time."

"Hey, excuse me—"

Then he was hauling Liu Qingge around to bury a fist in Liu Qingge's gut. It was real—it had to be at this proximity—but He Xuan had already given Liu Qingge's stomach a little tap to signal where he was going to hit. His knuckles found flexed muscles, but Liu Qingge doubled over anyways.

"Whoa, whoa hey—"

With a palm over Liu Qingge's jaw, He Xuan pulled him up and squeezed. Liu Qingge's pupils were completely blown when he glared at He Xuan.

"Wait just a moment, look, are you, are you one of them?"

He Xuan gave Liu Qingge's face another little shake, and Liu Qingge actually growled. Adorable.

"I'm talking to you!"

"What?" He Xuan finally snapped back, tossing a look of annoyance down at the CEO-of-the-week beside him.

"I'm asking," the mark said, throwing his hands up in exasperation, "if you're one of the dirty cops I pay off! Holy Christ, you really are all just a bunch of meatheads, huh? Don't know anything but violence, but it's fine, you're doing me a favor here. Make sure he goes away for good for me, alright? Whatever you did to that last Chen guy, I want you to double for him. I'll pay you double too, just make sure he really, really suffers."

Rabid blood-thirst slipping away in an instant, He Xuan moved his grip down into Liu Qingge's shirt collar and pulled Liu Qingge up straight. There was a loud plastic snap, as Liu Qingge broke the fake link in the cuff behind his torso.

"Hear that? He wants you to really suffer," He Xuan said as he plucked the detective badge out of his pocket and tossed it across the room. As they walked past the dumbstruck mark, Liu Qingge got right up into his face.

"He's lucky I didn't break his jaw."

"I don't—You're not real cops?!"

He Xuan didn't know how the mark hadn't pieced it together yet—he'd already answered that question with the detective's badge. One of the four men who'd entered with him—real police officers—had caught it, and pocketed it with the solemnity that spoke volumes about whom that badge belonged to. A fallen cop, perhaps, one set up and ambushed by his own, who were in turn on the payroll of a local arms-dealing CEO.

"You actually punched me," Liu Qingge complained on their way out. He Xuan eyed the halved handcuffs still hanging from his wrists, and the skin rubbed red beneath the teeth.

"You're the one who told me I wasn't putting my hip into it."

(iii)

The cuffs this time were real. At Xie Lian's light-voiced, inflection-less call, He Xuan hauled Liu Qingge out into the swimming pool.

"Is this the man who's been giving you trouble?"

The trafficker smiled, toothy and depraved, as he drank in the sight of Liu Qingge's bare feet and torn clothing. Liu Qingge jerked forward in He Xuan's grip and spat at his feet.

"Sang Jingxing, I'm going to fucking ruin you!" he promised.

"Master Fangxin," Sang Jingxing applauded, "you truly exceed your reputation. This man's managed to avoid me for days."

Weeks, actually, but He Xuan didn't bother calling him out on it. He let Xie Lian's mild little smile take care of that.

"You've proven your skills..." Sang Jingxing continued, glossing over the look. "Alright, you've got a deal."

Xie Lian touched Sang Jingxing's outstretched hand with the very tip of two fingers in lieu of a handshake. His hands were even gloved.

"Thank you for your time, Master Sang. We'll be on our way now."

"Ah, just a moment." Of them three, only Liu Qingge's feet slipped on the tiles, and that was because they were meant to, with He Xuan hoisting him half-up in the air like this. "Master Fangxin, if you'd be so kind—I like to do all my inquiries and reconnaissance in-house."

Meaning, he wanted to keep Liu Qingge. With any other underground criminal boss, the threat would be torture by electricity, blunt force trauma, and dismemberment. Sang Jingxing had all of the above plus one favored trick up his sleeve—one that made the slip of Xie Lian's eyes over to him go icy cold.

"Ah yes," Xie Lian said, smiling just barely, "I've heard of Master Sang's proclivities. Several stories involve this precise setting, I believe—a VIP hotel swimming pool. With as many men."

Sang Jingxing chuckled, and so did the eight bodyguards poised around his surroundings.

"Drains and plenty of water, you understand," Sang Jingxing leered. "Gentlemen like yourself always frown upon a touch of more libidinous fun. Such a shame, for a figure like yourself."

"I'm going to tear out his eyeballs," Hua Cheng said calmly through the comms, and He Xuan thought he saw a touch of genuine humor light the corner of Xie Lian's mouth.

"It's true I don't personally participate in such methods, but you've got the wrong idea," Xie Lian spoke, shrugging. He waved a hand in gesture to He Xuan. "It's simply that I've already promised my trusty lieutenant here the same reward."

"No, you're certain? Then he simply must demonstrate." Simpering, Sang Jingxing clapped once and loudly, the sharp sound echoing through the tiled room. Liu Qingge was stiffening in He Xuan's hold. "Such a fine specimen—I actually said to my men how lucky we were that a man like that was coming after me. Surely you won't deny me a taste?"

Xie Lian had really perfected the look of heedless nobility, completely ignorant to the suffering of people beneath his station.

"If Ming Yi doesn't mind, I certainly don't."

He Xuan was instantly in motion, marching Liu Qingge forward and slamming him over the nearest table. He had to swipe aside fruits and cakes and coffees to do it. With Liu Qingge bent over, he tore one sleeve of Liu Qingge's shirt clean off, before moving down to Liu Qingge's pants.

They hadn't planned out of any of this, but Liu Qingge knew damn well there was only one thing he was meant to do in this position—he struggled like his honor depended on it (and it certainly did), bucking and kicking and twisting even after He Xuan slammed his forehead twice into the table.

"Feisty," He Xuan heard Sang Jingxing comment gleefully. "Just say the word if you want any help."

"My lieutenant's not a fan of touching what other people have soiled," Xie Lian commented idly, to Sang Jingxing's chuckles.

When a toss of Liu Qingge's head almost broke He Xuan's nose, He Xuan's hand found a roll of plastic wrap sitting by the fruits. This was the good stuff too, translucent and thick, breakable only by blades.

Forcing Liu Qingge down with a well-jabbed elbow, He Xuan flung the box off the roll of wrap and yanked a clear film over Liu Qingge's face. Fast as anything, he pushed the roll through the crook of his elbow and wrapped another bunched-up loop over Liu Qingge's neck.

Then he started pulling. Liu Qingge's back arched, plastic divoting instantly into his mouth, into his nostrils on an inhale. When he exhaled, He Xuan adjusted his left hand, pulling the cling film even tighter to not let any air in or out. Soon enough, the noises of Liu Qingge's ragged choking were echoing through the room.

"Wha—He Xuan?" came Shen Qingqiu's voice over the comms, alarmed. "Liu Qingge? What's going on? Xie Lian?"

"Alright, alright! That's enough!" Sang Jingxing said, laughing brightly and clapping his hands. "Don't whet my appetite if you're not going to feed it. You can take him, but on the off-chance there are any pieces left, why don't you have your man bring it back around? I'm less persnickety about those sorts of things than your man."

"I'll see what I can do," Xie Lian replied. "Ming Yi."

But He Xuan still hadn't let up. He could feel each of Liu Qingge's unfinished breaths lose rhythm in their panic, Liu Qingge's body going slack under his weight. Still, he kept his hands taught, leaning forward and pinning Liu Qingge's hips to the table with his—

"He has to sell it, A-Yuan-ge, Sang Jingxing's only testing—"

"Ming Yi."

He Xuan halted. Released his hands.

Liu Qingge spat the plastic wrap off his face and promptly vomited bile onto the table.

"I said, we're leaving." Xie Lian's voice this time was icy, and Sang Jingxing almost clasped Xie Lian's shoulder with a sympathetic hand until he thought better of it.

"Everybody gets carried away sometimes. Boys will be boys."

And he had the nerve to wink at He Xuan. If He Xuan were any less good at keeping his own feelings under wraps, he'd have hauled across the room and beaten Sang Jingxing to a pulp by now.

"I have no use for attack dogs that don't follow my order," was all Xie Lian had to say on that. He inclined his head, and that was all the order He Xuan needed to pull Liu Qingge up again and march him back out the room.

(Ignoring what felt like a very little but very real flinch when his hand closed over Liu Qingge's shoulder.)

A bit later, they parted ways with Xie Lian, who would make his exit through the hotel lobby. He Xuan and Liu Qingge took a circuitous route to the back of the hotel garage, where Liu Qingge shrugged off He Xuan's gesture to help, instead marching over ten meters of rough gravel ground on bare feet to get to his shoes and their car.

"Oooh," Luo Binghe murmured in his I'm-cracking-a-safe-so-have-little-brain-to-mouth-filter voice. "Trouble in paradise?"

"That's why you should always ask for consent before choking people," Shen Qingqiu mumbled mutinously. "Liu-xuedi, can you even speak right now?"

Liu Qingge snarled, but didn't answer, which definitely meant that he knew his voice would be compromised. A rough red line was carved across the left side of his neck where He Xuan had applied most pressure, and He Xuan couldn't help but stare at it when they got into the car.

It wasn't until Liu Qingge smacked a hand against his steering wheel that He Xuan looked up, and saw Liu Qingge mouth clearly and angrily, drive!

Pressing on the cabin lights above their heads, He Xuan articulated his motions as he moved in to pluck the earpiece from Liu Qingge's ear. Then he did the same for himself, gathering the two comm pieces into one fist. Liu Qingge looked at him with a distrustful frown the whole time.

"I'm sorry," He Xuan said, simply and honestly. He didn't bother giving any reasons or excuses or promises, only his regret, pure and true.

Liu Qingge watched him back for one long moment, before rolling his eyes.

You had to take off the comms to apologize? he mouthed, clearly angling his face and exaggerating his lip movements for He Xuan to see. Something tight between He Xuan's lungs loosened and slipped away, and He Xuan turned back to face the steering wheel, the tight line of his own lips relaxing.

"Sorry," he said, dropping the comms into the cup-holder between them. "I don't read lips."

(iv)

"Xuedi, you know my money's on Binghe," Shen Qingqiu had shrugged.

"And I'd bet on you, Liu Qingge, but I'm afraid with my luck, you wouldn't want me to," Xie Lian had laughed apologetically.

"He Xuan," Liu Qingge now demanded to know, rounding on He Xuan and crossing his arms. He Xuan just adjusted his glasses and kept typing on his computer. "Who's your money on?"

They were after a black widow predator, so of course Luo Binghe and Liu Qingge had made the bachelor auction into a competition.

By the door, Luo Binghe was rolling his eyes.

"Oh sure, go crying to daddy when you're losing a bet—"

He Xuan personally thought Luo Binghe, of all people, had no business mocking other people's relationships with the term "daddy." But that wasn't why he interrupted.

"Keep talking, Luo Binghe, and I'm changing my mind."

Luo Binghe brightened, standing up straight.

"Wait, you mean?"

"A hundred on you."

Whooping with a brilliant and admittedly handsome grin, Luo Binghe lifted his chin at Liu Qingge in a gesture of triumph.

"Told you I'm going to get a higher bid. But chin up, maybe you'll defy all, and I do mean all expectations and take home the pot. Cheers, He Xuan."

With that, he left, closing He Xuan's apartment door behind him, leaving only He Xuan and a very, very betrayed-lookng Liu Qingge standing inside.

He Xuan finally shut his laptop screen and looked up, meeting Liu Qingge's glare with an unapologetic look of his own.

"Yes?"

With a huff of disbelief, Liu Qingge turned and stormed away. Mid-storm, he paused, pivoted, and stormed right back.

"You're always—!" He jabbed a finger into He Xuan's chest, and He Xuan let him. He Xuan even circled over to the other side of the counter to let him. "Mocking me."

With a sound of agreement, He Xuan took a step closer. And as always, Liu Qingge read exactly what he wanted in a gesture, and didn't back away, despite clearly wanting to stomp off somewhere and lick his wounded pride in peace.

He Xuan nudged up his chin with a single knuckle, and allowed himself something just a tiny bit smaller than a smile, but no less true.

"And look how good you take it."

(iv)

It started after they stole an election, and then a country, and then took down Wen Ruohan.

"Take your clothes off. Right now."

It caught aflame between bright, almost disbelieving stares that they'd pulled off such a thing, and that Lang Qianqiu was now legally the president-elect.

"Hands behind your back."

It surged into all-consuming fire with Liu Qingge, all pliant limbs and steel-certain center as always, making his way into He Xuan's hotel room.

"I'm going to fucking ruin you."

"I fucking dare you."

It found them encased in sunlight, warm and oven-hot on this tiny European island. Luckily, the AC was on full blast, cooling the room enough that Liu Qingge and He Xuan could comfortably heat it back up again.

Indeed, Liu Qingge was sweating, and He Xuan was wiping his own forehead and body clean with a wet washcloth by the open-planning bathroom sink. At a leisurely pace, He Xuan twisted open a complimentary glass bottle of sparkling water and quenched his own thirst.

He made sure to gulp loudly enough that Liu Qingge, panting and grunting on the bed, could hear what he was doing. And sure enough, Liu Qingge growled in response.

A look of pleasure broke out over He Xuan's face, and he strolled back to bed, dangling another bottle between his fingers. He didn't open it though, opting instead to watch the little show he'd left going on the bed.

They'd co-opted one of the hotel curtain rails and some white satin curtain ties. The rail was currently tied between Liu Qingge's ankles as a make-do spreader bar. When he was fucking Liu Qingge, He Xuan had hauled that spreader bar far over Liu Qingge's head, hooking the center over a point on the headboard. Beneath Liu Qingge's thus-lifted ass, his hands were tied, wrist-to-wrist by yet another white curtain tie.

After he'd finished and before he'd gone for a towel and a drink, He Xuan had said, if you want me to fuck you again, don't let any of my cum leak out.

So now Liu Qingge was left to compress and contort himself every time he felt He Xuan's spend leaking out of him. When he saw He Xuan so blatantly watching, Liu Qingge went red—but that didn't stop him from gritting his teeth and chasing after a leaking trail with his straining fingers.

He Xuan hummed, pleased, as Liu Qingge fingered the cum back into himself, which inevitably just smeared white liquid even more messily over his exposed hole and the flesh of his ass.

"Look how good you take it," He Xuan murmured, getting back onto the bed.

Due to his position, Liu Qingge sounded a bit winded as he spoke, all of his abdominal muscles engaged to keep his hips and legs up like so.

"Don't you ever get tired of giving orders?"

It was a lighthearted complain, as meaningless as Liu Qingge, such a meaningful man, could make anything sound. It might have struck a nerve in He Xuan on any other day, but on this day, it liquefied in his belly and turned to warmth, pleasant like hot tea.

Because he understood that against all odds, this was Liu Qingge understanding him. Liu Qingge's exasperation, rather than humiliation or frustration at being put in such a position and given such a task, was proof that he knew what it was that made He Xuan tick. He got it, He Xuan's thing with orders.

That was why he was so damn good at taking them.

So He Xuan cracked open the second bottle of water and placed it between Liu Qingge's palms. Lifted an eyebrow when Liu Qingge realized He Xuan had no intention to help him get that bottle to his mouth (or vice versa—as such, it might actually be easier for him to get his mouth to the bottle).

"To you?" He Xuan murmured as he sat back against the pillows to watch the show. "Never."

[ticklygiggles]

Big melons and juicy apples | HuaLian

A/N: Ah, my sweet boys. I love writing for them so much ashjfjsdgjjs I hope you enjoy this! Thank you for your request!

Summary: Xie Lian doesn’t like to share - he is not one to blame, whatsoever.

28. “Shhh they’ll hear us!”

Words: 3,113 (short? what’s short?)

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"San Lang should've worn something to block the sun," Xie Lian said tenderly yet severely as he looked up at his lover from under his hat. 

It had been a while since the last time Xie Lian saw Hua Cheng as that young boy he once met in that ox cart; was it three years ago? Ten? He didn't know, it was hard to keep counting the years when they passed by endlessly, so why to worry. 

The sun was up right above their heads, shining bright and extremely hot. Xie Lian felt sweat droplets falling down his back and the sides of his face and neck, making him feel sticky and overly, a bit uncomfortable, but Hua Cheng, walking by his side with the brightest of smiles, was not even sweating, he looked fresh and Xie Lian wanted to jump into his arms right on the spot. 

But he didn't. Of course he didn't. He was sure that Hua Cheng wouldn't care at all, but that rumor about him was already out there in Ghost City and he didn't exactly want to create even more in another town where they were just looking for some ingredients for dinner. He could wait until they were back to the temple. 

Hua Cheng chuckled. "Do not worry, Your Highness. San Lang is okay."

"Is he?" Xie Lian hummed, too distracted seeing the way Hua Cheng's Adam's apple moved as he talked. 

His belly fluttered at the thought of being wrapped around Hua Cheng's arms. Hua Cheng's skin was always cold, so Xie Lian would definitely hide his flushed face against his neck, refreshing himself as Hua Cheng's lips gently touched his skin, leaving butterflies kisses over his neck and shoulder and whispering words of love against his ear. 

Xie Lian felt his cheeks turning bright red and he lowered his head, hiding under his hat. Hua Cheng lifted one eyebrow, his childish smile morphing into a grin.

"Hmm? Gege, what is it that you're think-

"Handsome Daozhang! Come and buy our sweet melons!" Xie Lian lifted his face and he was slightly surprised to find a group of ladies giggling and looking over at him. "Don't be shy, Daozhang! We also have the sweetest and juiciest apples! Come, come!" 

Xie Lian smiled softly, bowing his head a little as he walked away from that stall, hearing them let out sad sighs, but then he could hear more giggles.

"Wah! What a handsome gege! Will you also leave without trying our sweet, sweet melons?" Xie Lian immediately looked at his side and his eyes widened when he didn't find Hua Cheng there. He turned around and was even more surprised to see him talking with those girls, a smile on his lips.

*Hmm? I think I would love to see these beautiful ladies' melons," he purred and Xie Lian gasped when he felt a little tug to his heart. 

The ladies giggled, covering their mouths, their cheeks bright red. "Now, now, handsome gege, you just wait here!" One of them said. "I will show you my amazing melons, you just wait, please!"

"That sounds perfect," Hua Cheng said. Xie Lian had never heard him using that coquettish voice with someone else but him. 

A sudden wave of an awkward sensation rushed through him. He felt like he was being robbed and he gasped again when the thought 'he's mine!' suddenly filled his mind. Oh, he so desperately wanted to go there and drag Hua Cheng out of the stall and away from their eyes. He is mine! He wanted to scream to their faces, but he didn't. Of course he didn't. 

Goodness, was he a child? Not wanting to share his toys with anyone… yet again Hua Cheng was not a toy and he certainly didn't want to share him with anyone. He just wanted to bring him back to Qiandeng Temple, where he only had eyes for Xie Lian and there weren't pretty ladies flirting with him.

But, instead, he simply stood there, waiting for Hua Cheng with a tense little smile as Hua Cheng kept dirtily joking with those maidens. 

He really wanted to get back home. 

"Gege!" Hua Cheng said with a bright smile. "Your Highness, look what I got. They all look delicious, don't they?" He said excitedly, showing Xie Lian the big melons. 

Xie Lian nodded, forcing out a smile and trying to fight the need to throw the melons away like a spoiled child. "They really do."

"I'm glad His Highness also thinks so," Hua Cheng nodded proudly. "So, where else did Gege want to go?"

"Ah, I think we should head back home," Xie Lian said, turning around to start walking his way back to the temple. "I am feeling tired already."

Hua Cheng hummed. "Is that so? Then as you wish, Your Highness."

They walked back and Xie Lian wondered if he was the one making the silence surrounding them so heavy. They usually talked about anything and everything when they walked together, but right now, Xie Lian really didn't feel like talking, in any case, he felt like he really didn't want to look at Hua Cheng, so he tried his best to avoid looking at his lover as much as he could. 

"What is making His Highness upset?" Hua Cheng asked and Xie Lian almost jumped out of his skin as his cheeks turned bright red. 

It didn't surprise him that Hua Cheng noticed he was… upset, but he felt a bit embarrassed about why he was feeling like that. He cleared his throat softly. 

"I am just tired, San Lang,* he said softly, his eyes glued to the path in front of him. "You should carry me on your back," he joked to cut a bit of tension. 

"I can do it."

Xie Lian chuckled softly. "I am just kidding you. I can still walk."

Hua Cheng hummed and the conversation was dead again… at least for a few more minutes. When they were entering the Ghost Market, Hua Cheng started to talk again and Xie Lian accidentally turned around to look at him; he was surprised to see him back to his Ghost King form, his skin glowing under that beautiful red robe and his bright eye looking at him with a bit of concern. 

"Gege knows I usually don't force him to tell me things he doesn't want to tell me,” Hua Cheng started again and Xie Lian felt his heart jumping, "but it seems like this time, the reason why Gege is upset is because of this lowly one, am I wrong?"

Xie Lian immediately averted his eyes, thankful when a ghost greeted him happily. "That's- That's not it, San La-

"Do not lie to me, Gege," Hua Cheng begged as the speed of their steps increased when they could see Qiandeng Temple again. "I know I'm in fault, but if His Highness doesn't tell me what I did wrong, then how am I supposed to not hurt him again?"

Xie Lian sighed, feeling even more embarrassed and a bit bad because he made Hua Cheng worry, but back then he really was feeling extremely upset and even a little betrayed, now he feels a bit more at peace, except for the tug of guilt twisting his insides. Was he overreacting?

He sighed again and looked up at Hua Cheng with a little smile, this time a bit more sincere, almost apologetic, his cheeks pink. "I am sorry, San Lang. It really was nothing."

"Gege," Hua Cheng whined softly and Xie Lian actually let out a little chuckle. "Please tell me!"

Xie Lian shook his head solemnly as they stepped out of the market, now closer to their home. "I said it was nothing, San Lang," he said softly, balancing the sack he had on one of his hands to the other. 

"Gege," Xie Lian actually looked up at Hua Cheng when he heard that warning tone on his voice, his insides fluttering. He let out a gasp when the sack in his hand suddenly disappeared, the melons in Hua Cheng's hands were also gone.

"What did you-

"I have my ways to make you talk, Gege," he purred with that flirty voice and Xie Lian felt his heart doing a little flip.

"W-What ways- ah! N-No! Wahahahait!" Xie Lian squeaked before bubbly giggles poured out of his mouth as Hua Cheng latched his hands to his waist and started to squeeze it softly. "N-Nohoho!" Xie Lian giggled, grabbing Hua Cheng's wrists and trying to push them away, but he has always been so weak against tickling, he could only feel his knees giving up a little as he bend forward. 

"Shh! They'll hear us, Gege!" He whispered into Xie Lian's ear and he knew Hua Cheng was talking about the ghosts at the market. Xie Lian squeaked and giggled more. "And I don't want anyone else listening to your laughter!"

And I don't want anyone hearing your flirty voice! 

"Thehehen don't do thihihis!" Xie Lian let out a bark of laughter when he felt a squeeze near his bottom ribs, he struggled a little and managed to pull himself out from Hua Cheng's grip, making a run to Qiandeng Temple. 

"Gege!" Xie Lian covered his mouth, trying to stop the uncontrollable giggles that bloomed out as Hua Cheng chased after him. 

"Don't chahahase me!" He said, finally stepping inside their temple and looking for a place to hide. 

"Then don't run, Gege!" Xie Lian could hear the smile on Hua Cheng's voice and he felt butterflies filling his stomach.

Now that things had escalated to this, Xie Lian felt even more embarrassed to actually admit the reason he was feeling upset!

"You're gonna do that!" He squealed as he shielded himself with the table, using it as a barrier between him and Hua Cheng. 

"It's because His Highness doesn't want to let me know what's upsetting him!" Hua Cheng was smiling and Xie Lian could barely stand looking at that beautiful smile, his pink cheeks turning red.

"I- I already told you it was no- ah!" Xie Lian shrieked when Hua Cheng suddenly launched at him and he started to run away once again, feeling his back tingling at how close Hua Cheng was. "Stop! Sto- ah!"

He thought that his luck had improved after being with Hua Cheng for so long, but it hadn't. He always, always, found something to trip over whenever Hua Cheng chased him, this time, unfortunately, was his own foot. He shrieked and laughed when, instead of falling face first into the wooden floor, Hua Cheng caught him and started to squeeze his waist again. 

"Oh nohohoho! Plehehease!" Xie Lian tried to run again, but Hua Cheng was holding him good as he tickled him silly. "Sahahahan Lahahang! S-Stahahap!"

"Yes, of course," Hua Cheng said. "I'll stop as soon as Gege tells me why he's sad."

Xie Lian shook his head, letting out bright laughter when Hua Cheng's fingers climbed up to his ribs, rubbing deep circles against the sensitive bones and in the grooves between them. 

Xie Lian wrapped his arms around his ribcage, trying to push Hua Cheng's away, but it was impossible, he had no choice but to squirm and laugh and squeak between his arms as he stubbornly tried to keep his secret safe. 

What would Hua Cheng say if he knew? Would he be angry? Would he laugh at him? I can do whatever I want, Gege… would he really say something like that? Deep inside, Xie Lian knew that Hua Cheng wouldn't do any of those things, he'd probably apologize deeply and say he'd never do it again, but still, Xie Lian felt too embarrassed by his behavior. 

He was never envious. He didn't remember the last time he was jealous of something or someone, but with Hua Cheng… it definitely was different. He'd lost many things in his life, but he thought, Hua Cheng was the only one that he didn't want to lose ever. Xie Lian loved him tenderly and deeply and a lifetime without him just didn't sound right. 

He possessively wanted Hua Cheng by his side for all the eternity and he was sure that Hua Cheng felt the same for him, so Xie Lian thought that it was only normal to have these kinds of feelings if someone looked like they were trying to steal his lover away from him. 

"Is Gege ready to talk?" Hua Cheng suddenly asked, whispering against Xie Lian's ear, causing him to squeak as tears of laughter slowly started to fall down his blushed cheeks. 

"Sahahahan Lahahang!" Xie Lian cackled, not knowing what else to do to pry those hands away from his ribs. "Leheheheve thohohose alohohohone!" He felt his ears flushing when Hua Cheng chuckled softly. 

"Leave your ribs alone?" He asked teasingly and Xie Lian nodded, feeling goosebumps covering his skin with each brush of Hua Cheng's lips against his ear. "Okay, Your Highness, whatever you say."

"Ahahaha! No! NAHAHAT thehehere!" Xie Lian shrieked with laughter when Hua Cheng shot his hands under his arms.

Xie Lian threw his head back against Hua Cheng's shoulder and laughed hysterically as Hua Cheng's fingers wiggled into his underarms, tickling him mercilessly. Xie Lian trashed about, but the more Hua Cheng kept tickling him there, the weaker he felt, so after only a few seconds, he was barely standing on his feet, arms pressed to his sides and hands trying to join those of Hua Cheng under his arms to protect them from those mean tickles. 

"Not here? Then Your Highness should just be sincere with me," Hua Cheng whispered, his mouth gently grazing over his ear moved down to nibble at his neck and Xie Lian snorted softly, bright, bubbly giggles sneaking into his hysterical laughter fit.

Xie Lian shook his head, his shoulders scrunching up as his body arched and squirmed weakly. 

"Okay! OKAHAHAY!" Xie Lian finally gave up. "S-Sahahan L-Lang w-wahahas- he wahahas- ahahaha I'm tahahahalking!" He squeaked out when the tickling continued and Hua Cheng only chuckled. 

"Oh, you're right. I'm sorry, Your Highness," he said, finally stopping his fingers. 

Xie Lian barely had time to talk again before Hua Cheng was turning him around. Chest to chest now, Xie Lian felt like his face was about to explode; Hua Cheng was looking at him so tenderly and he was smiling so sweetly as his arms wrapped around Xie Lian, holding him close as their faces were mere millimeters away. 

"I'm all ears, Gege."

Xie Lian started, his words a stuttering mess. "W-well... San L-Lang was flirting with those ladies... And I think uh... I got a bit jealous since, since I was there too," Xie Lian explained and he let out a little whine, pressing his face against Hua Cheng's chest. "I really wanted to drag you away from them."

The fact that there wasn't a racing heart inside Hua Cheng's chest made him feel even more nervous - what was Hua Cheng thinking? Did he think Xie Lian was being silly? 

He felt Hua Cheng moving one of his arms and Xie Lian wrapped his own arms tightly around Hua Cheng's waist, he didn't want to let go. Was Hua Cheng actually leaving him for something like that? No, that couldn't be. It just couldn't!

"S-San Lang." 

He went quiet when he felt Hua Cheng's fingers placing a piece of his hair behind his ear, making Xie Lian shiver.

"Gege," Hua Cheng said softly and Xie Lian almost squeaked when he felt the cold touch of the palm of his hand against his warm cheek. 

He was trying to lift his face and, sucking all embarrassment, Xie Lian let him. He was surprised when Hua Cheng's lips were suddenly pressed against his own, kissing him tenderly as his thumb gently caressed his cheekbone. 

Xie Lian felt his insides melting and his heart fluttered heavily. What did this kiss mean? 

When Hua Cheng pulled apart, he pressed his forehead against Xie Lian's. "I sincerely apologize."

Xie Lian widened his eyes slightly. "Yes?"

"Gege has the right to feel this way because what I did was extremely wrong. I deeply apologize, Your Highness."

"N-No! It's not-"

"It is," Hua Cheng said and Xie Lian saw the intensity in his eye. "If His Highness were to flirt with someone else right in front of my face, I also would be upset "

"I know San Lang only wanted to get us the best fruits," Xie Lian said softly, his eyes looking down as he rubbed Hua Cheng's back gently. 

"It does not matter. I am sorry, Gege."

Xie Lian smiled and he tiptoed to kiss Hua Cheng's lips. "I forgive you, San Lang." 

The bright smile that Hua Cheng gave him almost made him faint. How could he love this man so much, he didn't know. Xie Lian smiled just as brightly and he closed his eyes, leaning in so their lips could meet again and again and again until Hua Cheng pulled apart a little. 

"My apology is sincere, Gege," he started and Xie Lian frowned, "I will not do that kind of thing ever again, but… I can't help but feel happy that His Highness was jealous of those maidens."

Xie Lian felt his face heating up. "Ah, San Lang. Don't get too full of yourself," he said, looking away from his playful lover, but letting out a soft chuckle, relief filling his chest.

"Ah, but His Highness must totally have grabbed me and dragged me away! I think this lowly one would've swooned!" 

Xie Lian giggled. "don't be silly… but, from now on," Xie Lian said, his voice dropping low as he stared at Hua Cheng's eye, "San Lang has to remember that… I don't like to share what's mine."

Hua Cheng widened his eye, his mouth dropping open as he stared at Xie Lian's raised eyebrow and severe eyes. He was not joking.

"Oh Heavens, Gege!" Xie Lian squeaked when he was suddenly lifted up and Hua Cheng was peppering Xie Lian’s face with kisses, making him giggle. "This lowly one will not do something like that again. My life is in your hands, Gege. I am, definitely, all yours," Hua Cheng promised and Xie Lian smiled at him. 

"Mn. Just as much as you are mine, I am also yours. Until my last breath," Xie Lian said and he was the one to look for Hua Cheng's lips to kiss him again and again and again until they consummated their love on that divan with the orange light of sunset bathing their bodies.

[pengiesama]

Celestial Confluence/Cultivation Cross (Fic, TGCF, HC/XL)

Title: Celestial Confluence/Cultivation Cross Series: Heavenly Official’s Blessing (Tian Guan Ci Fu) Pairing: Hua Cheng/Xie Lian

Summary:

All of Heaven has been brought to its knees by the hot new gatcha game, Celestial Confluence/Cultivation Cross. The gods are at each other's throats, and are at the brink of civil war, in pursuit of the rarest of .pngs.

Chaos reigns. And it is most emphatically Hua Cheng's fault.

Link: AO3

Check out my commission info here.

Read on Tumblr!

“...so you see, profits are up from last quarter, and attendance at the gambling halls is at an all-time high,” said the bird demon at the front of the conference room. “Our Lord’s bold strategic moves in this fiscal year have broken previous records into such dust.”

“Master’s business acumen is unmatched,” stated the hog demon to the horned woman seated next to him at the polished wood table. The horned woman nodded at this sage assessment, and the rest of the room murmured in agreement.

“Unmatched.”

“Unparalleled.”

“Who other than a Supreme could wield such horrible power?”

Suddenly, the demon business consultants found their voices silenced. They could not utter a peep -- it was as though an invisible hand had reached down their gullets to pluck out their tongues. But there was little mystery to who had performed such a feat. A perceptible dark aura had descended upon the room, and at the center of it all was the object of their praise and adulation: their Lord himself, Hua Cheng. Despite their acclaim, despite the numbers from last quarter’s gross profits displayed prominently on the overhead projector in a neat, color-coordinated bar graph, Hua Cheng’s expression was grave. He swirled red wine in a goblet of fine, translucently white porcelain.

After a long and deliberate silence to build up an appropriate sense of dread, Hua Cheng spoke.

“Not good enough.”

He hurled the porcelain goblet against the wall, splattering its contents -- looking to all the world as red blood and white bone, a scene of spectacular violence. Hua Cheng snapped his fingers and a nearby handmaiden handed him an identical goblet. Hua Cheng swirled it again, once, twice, before he spoke once more.

“Profits are up,” Hua Cheng repeated, mockingly. “An all-time high. Meaningless. I need more than that.”

His consultants said nothing, out of terror. And also out of still not being able to speak because Hua Cheng stole their voices. Hua Cheng seemed to remember this part only belatedly, as he waited a little bit too long for a response. He rolled his good eye, sighed in frustration, and gave the bird consultant his voice back.

The bird consultant knew he had a role to play in this scene, and wasted no time embracing it. “M-my lord!” he coughed, trying to get his tongue back in the right place in his throat. “Whatever do you mean?”

Hua Cheng threw another goblet against the wall, and accepted its replacement in his waiting hand.

“I have built an empire on cards and dice. However, there remains the need to attract more clientele. New clientele. Clientele that think themselves too good, too noble to enter my gambling halls. Tempt them, ensnare them, enslave them -- only then will I approach the profits needed for my ultimate goal.”

Their Lord’s riches were unparalleled -- truly, the stuff of legends. Mountains of gold, oceans of jewels. Jurisdiction over the nether realm, command over an army of souls and a bottomless abyss of power. Wealth that even the richest of kingdoms could only ever dream of. To lust for more and more was the nature of demons, to be certain. But their Lord’s aspirations seemed to be approaching the limits of reality itself.

“Such devious and lofty ambition is surely within my lord’s reach,” said the bird consultant, with utter sincerity -- for it was a simple truth that everything was within reach for their lord, the king of the ghosts, the lord of the demons, the terror of the heavens. “But does my lord already have something specific in mind?”

Hua Cheng was idly throwing goblet after goblet at the wall, clearly bored of the meeting. “I do. I don’t care about your input, and I don’t know why I pay you or why I have these meetings. You’re all dismissed. Bye.”

The demon consultants found their tongues forcibly returned to their mouths, and they quietly filed out of the room, trying to reattach them properly. It was no use, and was entirely unwise, to inquire any further into their lord’s plans.

After all, surely, they would find out soon enough.

--

Xie Lian was used to being out of the loop on the latest trends in Heaven. It didn’t really bother him -- he was just too old to keep up with this gossip or that fashion trend or that new joke, especially when it was sure to be old hat in a week or less. What’s more, it was always so awkward trying to fit in. He distinctly remembered the pain on Shi Qing Xuan’s face as he tried to explain to Xie Lian why that picture of a frog puppet on fire was relevant to the current conversation in the heavenly array. Xie Lian still didn’t understand. Why would someone want to set a puppet on fire? It seemed like a perfectly good puppet. He probably could have put on a street performance with it.

“It’s just like -- an expression! It’s you! You’re all excited and on fire and you’re the frog puppet!” Shi Qing Xuan explained, in increasingly desperate tones.

“I’m not a frog puppet,” Xie Lian said. “And I don’t want to be on fire. It hurts, trust me.”

Shi Qing Xuan lowered his head to the table and buried himself under his voluminous silken sleeves. “You are the least cash money person I have ever met.”

“Sorry,” Xie Lian said. “I am the trash god, you know.”

In any case, Xie Lian’s willful ignorance of popular trends allowed him to live a peaceful -- if uncool -- life. But as he was soon to discover, one cannot escape from the cold, clammy grasp of popular culture entirely.

Xie Lian didn’t remember why he’d needed to visit Heaven, that day. Perhaps he’d needed to get some holy water from the celestial stream, perhaps he’d needed to gather herbs to make medicine, perhaps he was just feeling masochistic and wanted to go to a place where everyone deliberately ignored him. Whatever the reason, it was as though he had stepped into the realm of the damned.

Gods stumbled down the streets, mumbling to themselves as they tapped away at glowing screens that floated in the palms of their hands. Cries of joy and cries of despair echoed from the palaces and alleyways. All around him, Xie Lian saw faces twisted by anguish, by ecstasy, by madness -- still more with eyes that were utterly dead to the world. Xie Lian almost thought that he had made a wrong turn, and had landed in the entertainment district of the Ghost City by mistake. But no. This was Heaven, but somehow, it had become overrun with the unmistakable aura of hell.

Surely no one would have blamed Xie Lian if he had simply turned around and left. But alas, he never did know how to leave well enough alone. Xie Lian hastened to the Windmaster’s mansion, hoping against hope that Shi Qing Xuan was still in possession of his full faculties...or as full faculties as could be expected from such a devoted follower of hot trends. It took a few knocks, but eventually, Shi Qing Xuan answered the door. Xie Lian was disheartened to see that he (well, currently she, for the present moment) had that same glowing screen in the palm of her perfectly manicured hand; however, Shi Qing Xuan’s expression was still bright and cheery, her eyes still clear. With any luck, she still had enough strength of will left to answer questions.

“Just in time!” Shi Qing Xuan said cheerily, dragging Xie Lian in by his wrist. “I’m about to stream my next few dozen ten-rolls. You can be my guest commentator! Ming-Xiong and I have a channel, you know, and we can always use guest commentators, because Ming-Xiong doesn’t really talk, he just eats into his microphone even though we’re not a mukbang stream except when it’s Thursday and we’re a mukbang stream. We have a podcast, too, did you know that?”

“No,” Xie Lian said. “I didn’t.”

“Well, if you stick around, you can be a guest on that too!” Shi Qing Xuan said cheerfully. “Come come, sit here so the cameras can see you.”

Xie Lian settled down awkwardly, watching as Shi Qing Xuan attached her glowing screen to a strange setup. Ming Yi didn’t seem to acknowledge his presence at all, and continued to engage in the activity that he had been partaking in since they entered the room, which was slurping noodles extremely loudly into a microphone. A large screen displayed on one of the walls, showing the camera footage of the three of them in the room, and showing a scrolling feed of the conversation taking place in the heavenly array -- as well as a running tally of the merits that were being tossed their way. Xie Lian was extremely puzzled as to what they were doing that merited...merits. Every time Ming Yi made an especially loud slurp or finished another bowl of noodles, a new wave of donations pinged onto the screen. Pictures of that frog puppet kept popping up in the chat, in new and strange situations.

Frog puppets. Noodles. Podcasts. Heaven transforming into hell. And Xie Lian could do nothing but watch.

“Hey everyone! We’ve got a special guest today; he’ll be chatting with us while I whale for my new outfit card in Celestial Confluence/Cultivation Cross!”

“You’re doing what to a whale?” Xie Lian asked, regretting the question when it wasn’t even fully out of his mouth.

Shi Qing Xuan laughed uproariously, then stopped, seeming to realize from previous experience that Xie Lian wasn’t joking. However, instead of having a swooning fit over Xie Lian’s uncoolness as she usually did, she seemed to have the scent of something interesting. She scooted in close, closer, closer. Xie Lian fought the urge to bolt.

“Xie Lian. Your highness. Lemme ask you this. Do you know what Celestial Confluence/Cultivation Cross is?”

“Absolutely not,” Xie Lian said.

“He doesn’t know!” Shi Qing Xuan crowed with glee, clapping her hands in delight. “He doesn’t know at all! Your highness, it’s only the most popular game in the Heavens right now. Or like, ever. You seriously haven’t heard of it?”

“Not at all,” Xie Lian said. He looked around for anything that resembled a game board. “It’s a game? Where are the game pieces?”

Shi Qing Xuan gestured with a flourish to the screen display, her sleeves fluttering like leaves in the wind with the motion. “You’re looking right at them, your highness.”

On the screen, there was...a series of pictures of Shi Qing Xuan, in a dizzying variety of different outfits. Shi Qing Xuan pointed to each one, proudly.

“This is me in my travelling robes, and this is me when I’m feeling a little sassy and want to go out incognito dressed as a simple but also beautiful mortal cultivator, and this is me except I’m a schoolgirl, and oh, there’s me when I’m a schoolboy too, and this is me on a day out at the beach in a cute polka-dot bikini and couture sunglasses and kicky little high heels, and this is me as a Santa Claus -- watch out or else you’ll be on my naughty list, Ming-Xiong!”

Ming Yi had nothing to say to that except another loud slurp. Another torrent of merits pinged on the screen.

“And this is me as a sexy cat burglar, and this is me as a famous idol singer, and this is me as a dazzling bride, and this is me as a star athlete, if you’ll notice the diamond-studded booty shorts, and this is me as a pastry chef, and--”

“Windmaster,” Xie Lian interrupted, seeing that Shi Qing Xuan was not about to stop any time soon. “Would you be so patient as to explain to me how one plays with...such game pieces as these?”

Shi Qing Xuan squinted at the screen, frowning. “...I dunno, I just pick whatever outfits I’m in the mood for and then let the auto-battle option do the rest. Anyway, this is another idol outfit, but it’s from a different collab and in THIS one you can see that I’m wearing striped panties--”

“Is there an aim to the game?” Xie Lian prodded gently, trying to keep Shi Qing Xuan on...some sort of track that didn’t just involve her showing off her pretend closet for the next hour. “Does one battle against any sort of opponents?”

“Ugh, you martial gods and your one-track minds,” Shi Qing Xuan sighed and shook her head. “Yes, I guess you fight monsters and stuff. And like, you can join a team with people on your friend list and take on raid battles with them -- those are like, battles with really strong opponents. And once you kill ‘em you get prizes.”

Xie Lian gave a polite “hm.” He supposed he could see the appeal of practicing strategy with such a...low-impact method, but he wasn’t convinced it would impart any real-world benefits when it came to actual combat. He didn’t become a martial god by sitting inside playing xiangqi, after all.

“There’s a story.” Ming Yi had finally diverted his attention from his noodles. He cleared his throat, and squared his jaw, clearly itching to say more. “In the game.”

Shi Qing Xuan gestured wildly with her fan. “Yeah, that too! In the idol collab there was a WHOLE story about me and Ming-Xiong and I forget who else teaming up with a bunch of mortal girls who were desperate to save their school from closing, so they offered up a prayer and--”

“The MAIN story,” Ming Yi cut in. “Is about a sect of cultivators out to save humanity from a prophecy of destruction. They summon the aid of the gods to help in their battle, and along the way, they encounter many twists and turns and eventually they discover that the prophecy came from a mysterious race of aliens from beyond the stars who wish to sacrifice humanity in a crucible to split off the timeline, but in actuality this already happened millennia ago, or maybe millennia in the future if you think about it laterally, or maybe it happens in a cycle or all at once, but whatever the case may be the heroes must find a way to unite the True Timeline with the Dark Timeline, but which timeline is real? What will become of our heroes when the timelines are merged? Also the main character cultivator who’s kind of a blank slate but not really if you play the sub-scenarios has an evil twin or possibly an alternate-reality clone who can summon the power of the demon kings and it’s not clear if he’s working with the aliens or a rival cultivation sect or if he’s just a rogue agent out to sow chaos and destruction--”

Shi Qing Xuan started slurping noodles as loud as she possibly could, and the noise combined with the rush of pinging merits drowned out Ming Yi as he continued to confuse and vex everyone who heard him. Fuming, Ming Yi returned to his task of eating his feelings.

“Anyway,” Shi Qing Xuan said, daintily wiping her mouth, careful not to smear her lip rouge. “You get it now, your highness?”

“A bit,” Xie Lian said, lying through his teeth to avoid having it explained further.

“Great! Now, you get all these cute little cards by drawing for them in a lottery, and you can either grind for free game currency by toiling away on tasks...or you can just buy currency and draw until you get everything you want!”

Shi Qing Xuan’s tone clearly showed which method of cultivation she preferred. Still, when it came to matters of luck and lottery, it was best for Xie Lian to not get involved at all.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Windmaster, but I wouldn’t want to upset your fortune by staying here. I wish you and your whale the best of luck in…” He gestured vaguely. “...cultivation?”

“Nononono, stay! C’mon, did you think I didn’t remember about your Thing when I invited you in?” Shi Qing Xuan lunged forward and dragged Xie Lian back down to sit on the colorful silk cushions. “It’s so BORING doing this with just Ming-Xiong to keep me company -- it’ll totally be a hoot to see how bad our rolls are with you in the room! I’ll just draw for my new outfit later. It’s for the ballet event, by the way.”

“Oh,” said Xie Lian.

“I’m a swan princess,” Shi Qing Xuan elaborated. “Cursed by a dark wizard to force me to be his bride. Bird by day, fair maiden by moonlight. And only a kiss from a prince can save me!”

“I see,” said Xie Lian.

“Odette dies at the end of that ballet,” Ming Yi noted.

“Nuh-uh!” Shi Qing Xuan shot back. “The wizard turns into a big ugly monster and the prince shoots him and then the prince cries on her body and stuff and she’s alive somehow! And she’s a human again but she can still turn into a swan for all the sequels. There was a turtle and a penguin or something too.”

Ming Yi stared at Shi Qing Xuan with a mouthful of noodles, and Shi Qing Xuan took this as a victory, somehow. With a flourish, she presented her glowing screen to Xie Lian. There was so much going on that Xie Lian didn’t even know what he was looking at. Beautiful fairies with petal wings, with butterfly wings, fluttered here and there, glowing orbs and blooming flowers decorated banners encouraging players to “draw now!” And surely players had a glut of choices to draw from. There was a banner with Shi Qing Xuan pouting and winking at the camera, there was a banner with Feng Xin and Mu Qing facing each other down with bow and spear in hand, there was even a banner with the Rain Master’s loyal ox assistant...wearing a black blindfold, white wig, and a short, frilly black dress. (“Geez, is that Nier collab still going on?” asked Shi Qing Xuan.)

Shi Qing Xuan tapped on one of the banners, and pointed to a glowing button on the bottom of the screen. A set of eight fairies fluttered their wings, just waiting for their cue to pull back the curtain and reveal what awaited behind it.

“Press the button,” beseeched Shi Qing Xuan, wriggling in place. “Press it, press it, c’mon, your highness!”

“It’s your money on the line,” Xie Lian said, simply, and tapped the screen.

A lavishly-animated cinematic played on the screen. The fairies swirled around the white-clad cultivator character, who raised their sword to the sky -- causing the clouds to split with a crack of thunder. Rainbow light filled the screen, and energetic strings and drums added to the assault on the senses.

“Oooh!” Shi Qing Xuan clapped her hands in excitement. “Rainbow clouds! You got me at least one ultra-rare card out of that, your highness! I think your luck’s finally turning around!”

“Maybe it’s just that his luck’s so bad that it got confused and looped around,” Ming Yi said.

Shi Qing Xuan nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, honestly, that’s more likely.”

“I won’t exactly argue,” Xie Lian said. “But I must protest.”

The cinematic finally ended, and the results of the draw displayed on the screen. Xie Lian squinted, a bit confused at what he was seeing. Shi Qing Xuan and Ming Yi’s jaws had both dropped to the floor; struck into speechlessness by the outcome. But the silence was quite brief. Shi Qing Xuan let out a shriek that rattled the windows and had the microphones panging with horrible feedback.

“THEY DO EXIST! YOU DO EXIST!” Shi Qing Xuan leapt onto Xie Lian, shaking him by the shoulders. “NO ONE’S EVER MANAGED TO FIND YOU BUT YOU JUST FOUND YOU! FOR ME! LIVE! ON MY STREAM!”

Xie Lian briefly glanced at the array chat, which was absolutely exploding with expressions of excitement, of disbelief, of frog puppets. All over -- him? Xie Lian didn’t understand. Least of all because Shi Qing Xuan was making no sense at all and was no longer able to control the pitch of her voice. It was rapidly approaching levels that only dogs could hear.

The roll he’d made was impressive, evidently, by the game’s standards. He’d figured out that much. But...all the cards were just...him. Him in various outfits. There he was in his plain white robes and straw hat, dangling his bare feet in a stream while animated flower petals drifted around him and Ruoye twirled about his ankles. There he was as the flower-crowned martial god, wielding Fang Xin and flinging his golden mask aside as he reached into the air as if to catch something. There he was, holding his hat to his head and smiling over his shoulder at the camera, reaching out his hand as if to beseech the viewer to take it. There he was, in light and colorful summer robes, dancing under lantern light to the beat of the festival drums. There he was, face half-hidden behind the hood of a voluminous wool-lined cloak, warming his hands on a mug of tea as snow swirled around him. There he was, as -- as a bride, gazing demurely up at the camera with blushing cheeks and parted lips as his mystery groom drew back his veil…

“Um,” Xie Lian said. “You...you don’t have to use any of these. As game pieces. In fact, please don’t.”

Shi Qing Xuan briefly stopped screaming directly in Ming Yi’s ear long enough to whirl around, wild-eyed. She flashed a terrifying grin at him.

“I am the only person ever to have gotten even one card of you, let alone ten,” Shi Qing Xuan said. “I am going to show off so much.”

“These cards have amazing stats,” Ming Yi was murmuring to himself. Excitement was coloring his normally-expressionless face. “They’re just broken. They’ll revolutionize the meta. I’ll have to update the wiki; all the literature gods are going to be SO pissed that I got to it first…okay, the game crashes when you try to equip the Chef card, I’ll list that as a bug...”

Shi Qing Xuan snapped her fingers at Ming Yi, and Ming Yi wordlessly handed the glowing screen back to her. They were both staring at Xie Lian with expressions of determination, of hunger. Xie Lian’s eyes scanned the room, looking for the best escape route.

“Your highness,” Shi Qing Xuan said, voice dripping with sweetness. She offered the screen with both hands, and inched closer, closer. “Won’t you roll for us again? Once, twice more, maybe?”

Which would turn into thrice more, which would turn into him being locked in the mansion’s basement for the next month. Xie Lian had no talent for fortune-telling, but he wasn’t blind to where this was going. Those windows looked extremely breakable, surely it would only take a single kick. They were up rather high, however, and Xie Lian couldn’t afford to land wrong and be hobbled with the Windmaster in hot pursuit -- and, from the array’s continuing reaction, perhaps all of Heaven would be only steps behind as well --

Suddenly, there was an announcement on the screen, heralded by the rumble of drums. Shi Qing Xuan and Ming Yi were distracted enough for Xie Lian to start creeping towards the door to make a stealthier escape.

“It’s…a flash event! A limited-edition raid!” Shi Qing Xuan read off the screen, with growing excitement. “‘A Raid for the Strongest and the Prettiest Only’ -- Ming-Xiong, that’s us, that’s us, it’s only us, right?”

“Obviously,” Ming Yi said, rolling his eyes. He summoned his own glowing screen.

“Tell the rest of the guild to get online! Right now!”

“No need. We’ve got ten secret weapons in our deck. Lead off with the one of him in the teahouse waitress outfit, that’s a buffing card, then swoop in with the pincer of the orchestra card and the one of him in the bunny ears, then mop up whatever’s left with that overly-horny one of him in the river flashing his ankles…”

The raid had apparently begun, and to Xie Lian’s surprise, his cards really did seem like they were useful...or as far as he could tell, they were useful. They were easily cutting through the little green goblin sprites that advanced across the screen, and there were a lot of loud noises and flashing colors. It covered his escape quite nicely, and Xie Lian was able to creep out of the mansion and back onto the heavenly avenues without being stuffed into a sack and imprisoned in a locked room, to tap a screen until his finger fell off.

The rest of Heaven was under the same thrall that had swept Shi Qing Xuan and Ming Yi away -- they stood motionless in place, or paced in circles, furiously tapping and swiping away at their screens. The raid had apparently interrupted a real-life brawl between Feng Xin and Mu Qing, and they lay slumped against each other for support, bruised and bloodied and clutching their screens, as they battled for the title of Strongest and Prettiest.

It was truly outstanding. Whoever was behind this game now held control over Heaven -- surely, an entire army could leisurely stroll down the streets and not be confronted by a single god, so engrossed they were in their virtual world. Xie Lian briefly wondered if Jun Wu was a fan, too. He imagined a horde of demons sauntering into the hall that housed the throne of Heaven, and pushing Jun Wu off of it with a single finger as he poked away at his screen. Xie Lian shuddered. Those thoughts were probably some form of blasphemy.

Who could manage this kind of feat? Who was cunning enough? Skilled enough? Audacious enough?

There was only one possible answer, and luckily, Xie Lian had a standing invitation to dinner with him any time he pleased.

--

“San Lang,” Xie Lian said, bowing at the entrance to Hua Cheng’s study. “Please forgive the intrusion.”

Hua Cheng’s expression was warm and welcoming as he rose from his desk to greet Xie Lian at the door.

“My home is always open to you. But to what do I owe the pleasure of a surprise visit? I haven’t had the time to prepare any treats for us, nor the time to prepare my heart for seeing gege’s face and hearing his voice.”

“Oh, stop,” Xie Lian said, waving off Hua Cheng’s teasing. “I just wanted to...lay low here, for a little while. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all.” Hua Cheng’s eye was shining, and his expression was warm as he regarded Xie Lian. He was certainly in a pleasant mood today; Xie Lian hoped his unannounced visit wouldn’t dampen things. “I’ll have a guest room prepared, and we’ll have a feast tonight -- I can have a bath drawn for you while you wait, and I have many fragrant oils I can comb into gege’s hair while he relaxes--”

“Have you heard of a game called Celestial Cultivation Conference?” asked Xie Lian.

“I could rename it to that if gege finds Celestial Confluence/Cultivation Cross too unappealing,” Hua Cheng said. “We could discuss it after we settle on which oil you prefer.”

“Ah,” Xie Lian said. “So you are the mind behind that game. It’s causing quite the crisis in Heaven right now.”

“Oh yes,” Hua Cheng said, his eye crinkling as he smiled. “I know. Almond oil?”

“And you’re responsible for all those strange outfit cards.”

“I outsource some of the art to trusted assistants,” Hua Cheng said. “Though I take care of the most important art personally. Coconut oil?”

Xie Lian eyed him warily. “...and you’re responsible for the game’s, ah, story?”

Hua Cheng made a face. “Ah, your highness, please don’t remind me. No, I outsourced that nonsense too, but I fear I should have paid more attention when the ghostwriter submitted it for approval. No one plays this thing for the story but one has to have standards.”

Xie Lian turned this thought over in his mind. The corner of his mouth twitched. “...ghostwriter?”

Hua Cheng bared his teeth in a wide grin, and Xie Lian snorted before smacking him on the arm lightly. In truth, he didn’t blame Hua Cheng for the...situation in Heaven, nor could he really blame the game itself. No one was ever forced to participate in any of Hua Cheng’s various business ventures. There never any trickery, any unfairness -- Hua Cheng clearly found it far more entertaining to watch as people leapt into his stewpot of their own free will; motivated by greed and pride and vanity and jealousy and other such dark drivers of the human condition. And this new game of his seemed to bring out all of said emotions in spades.

“Rose oil,” Hua Cheng declared with an air of finality. “Its fragrance will suit you. I’ll ring for bath water--”

“Ah!” Xie Lian clapped his hands together. “There were workers here digging a hot spring the last time I visited, yes? I asked them what they were working on. Have they finished?”

Hua Cheng’s eyebrows rose, and he pouted briefly. “...yes. That was supposed to be a special surprise. I haven’t finished arranging it to receive gege yet.”

Xie Lian’s shoulders drooped. “Ah...I understand, I’m sorry for being so forward. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a nice soak. And you mentioning oils reminded me how lovely it is to soothe sore muscles with a massage after a long dip in the springs...”

A pulse of energy palpably resonated through the manor’s structure, nearly knocking Xie Lian off his feet.

“Actually, I forgot, it’s arranged right now,” Hua Cheng said hastily. He rubbed at his arm where Xie Lian had swatted him earlier. “Did I happen to mention that my arm has been very sore lately?”

Xie Lian tutted and shuffled in to take Hua Cheng’s wrist in one hand, and his elbow in the other, flexing the arm carefully to check for stiffness. The floodgates had been opened, and now Xie Lian would talk about health and wellness until physically restrained. “Now, San Lang, you can’t ignore your body like that. If you’re sore or stiff, then you should visit a doctor.”

Driven on by an earnest and entirely innocent passion for Hua Cheng’s well-being, Xie Lian felt his way up Hua Cheng’s bicep with one hand, checking for muscle knots and tender spots.

“I don’t feel anything particularly off, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not hurting. It does mean that I’ll have to give you a more general workup instead of just targeting your arm, though, since I’m not sure of the source of the problem. Will it bother you if I massage your neck and back? Perhaps your thighs and calves, too. Are there any sensitive spots I should avoid?”

Hua Cheng’s expression was blank, and he had a faraway look in his eye. “...his highness may...workup wherever pleases him…”

Xie Lian smiled. “You’re a model patient, San Lang. Fetch that rose oil you mentioned? It’ll suit you, too.”

And so, profits that year broke all previous records, especially after the surprise release of the Hot Springs Set; the most overly horny collection yet in the hottest app on the market. From the creator that brought you My Sword Boyfriend and Rabbit Turf War, download Celestial Confluence/Cultivation Cross today!

--

“Hey. Hey. Crimson Rain Seeks Flower.”

“...”

“I’m way too cute and way too annoying to ignore so I know you heard me! So, Crimson Rain Seeks Flower. As my third-best friend--”

“That is an exceedingly unfortunate sentiment if true, Windmaster.”

“--as my third-best friend, I think you owe me the full scoop on what you’re doing with all this dough you’ve been raking in. C’mon, c’mon. I just wanna make sure you’re investing it wisely!”

Hua Cheng mulled things over for a moment, then pulled a small, elegant notebook from his pocket.

“Investments for the future. Savings accounts to ensure our children receive the best education. Retirement funds -- I wish to be able to eventually devote myself entirely to serving at Qiandeng Temple, you see, and to pass off the reins of the business to one of the children who proves to have a head for it. And before any of that,” Hua Cheng continued. “Wedding planning is quite expensive and tiring indeed. Choosing gowns, choosing flowers, choosing menus for dinner and lunch and brunch and tea and dessert. Bringing together all the guests on my guest list has proven to be quite the headache in and of itself.”

Shi Qing Xuan peeked at the list. “...what’s a ‘Hatsune Miku’? And a ‘Beyonce’?”

Hua Cheng rolled his eye and sighed at Shi Qing Xuan’s lack of culture. “The artists performing at the reception will hail from dimensions far and wide. Which brings us to another item proving to be quite expensive; researching interdimensional travel. Once that’s settled, we’ll be able to finalize the guest list and start looking for a patissier capable of bringing my cake design into reality.”

Hua Cheng smiled at Shi Qing Xuan warmly, and Shi Qing Xuan hesitantly smiled back, unsure of how to react to this sudden outpouring of Crimson Rain’s most secret desires. Hua Cheng snapped his fingers in Shi Qing Xuan’s face, and after a split-second, the Windmaster sighed and slumped over.

“And you won’t remember a word of that when you wake up, because I know you’ll run that mouth of yours and spoil the surprise for gege,” Hua Cheng finished. “I just know he’ll love Miku.”