#look i just think a sigu sect that got a little more fucked up political could be fun

[where-the-water-flows]

hey like ok but. terrible awful au sparked by seeing a killer gifset of the aborted return to sigu sect

li xiangyi who staggers back to the sigu sect and hears all the complaints, all the things no one told him, all the ways he failed and was blind and caused this, hears how even his allies, his closest companions except his Shixiong who he drove away to his death who he got killed who he failed blame him for being arrogant, for being willful, for not being enough

and who is dying, who knows he's dying, walking fatally wounded, spitting blood, poison in his veins, the fury burnt out to smoldering embers eating him alive and Li Xiangyi died in the east sea and this corpse is just waiting to catch up; Li Xiangyi was always known for his speed so it's not a surprise he outran his own death (for a moment, for long enough to register the fatal blow, for long enough to hear the truth he was too blind to see in life)

and then someone actually sees him, and--

Sect Leader's miraculous return. Sect Leader's wondrous victory. Sect Leader's unyielding strength, Sect Leader who slew the demon lord, who walked into the east sea battle alone and came back bloodied but alive, and he'd already all but brought peace to the Jianghu, no one would ever have doubted him, how dare anyone say they did, never, not them--

(no one notices he's dying even when they're told, a decade after his first death; why would anyone look for it now, not even yet a corpse except to himself?)

Sect Leader Li is never the quite same, after the battle, after the loss of his Shixiong; pale and quiet and almost a ghost of his former self, slow to rouse and far more prone to just watching, to listening, to wandering in the quiet hours, staring at the moon like he's looking for answers he doesn't expect to find.

dies not even a year later, alone in the dark, his body found well past dawn in one of the pavilions, covered in dew gone pink at the corner of his mouth, like the last traces of blood washing out into the ocean, and--

well. the sect's already been all but lead by a ghost for a year. what's a few more?