#she betrayed her sect to give birth to him

[phoenixkaptain]

Thinkin about Su Xiyan, Tianlang-jun, and Luo Binghe again…

Su Xiyan who was forced into doing things and who desperately didn’t want to betray Tianlang-jun and who drank poison so she could see him again and warn him only to find out that she was far too late. And she gave birth to a little baby boy and instead of tossing him overboard into the water or letting him freeze, she wrapped him in her own robes to send him down the river. She must’ve been hoping he’d live, right? She must’ve been desperately longing for her child to live. She must’ve been so tired. She looked back on those times when she and Tianlang-jun would tease and flirt with each other and despite everything, she must’ve felt so terribly, terribly alone.

Tianlang-jun, who begins as a legitimately almost pure-hearted maiden. He likes to bounce around the human realm and play their songs and read their stories and spend way too much money until he’s broke. And he falls so hard for Su Xiyan. He falls so hard for her, to the point that he brings her up constantly and he asks Zhuzhi-Lang whether or not he’s handsome and he trusts her and trusts her and trusts her… only for everything to be torn apart. Only to be buried under a mountain and stuck thinking that Su Xiyan is the one who caused all of it. Barely even able to mourn for everything he’s lost.

It isn’t like the world is kind to them after everything. Tianlang-jun is painted as a monster who was on the verge of storming the human realm. Su Xiyan is badmouthed the moment people find out that she was pregnant with Tianlang-jun’s child. No matter what she does, she can’t win. If she betrayed her sect for Tianlang-jun, then she was a traitor who was seduced by a demon. If she betrayed Tianlang-jun for her sect, then she was a horrible mother and terrible woman. If she tried to kill her unborn child, she’s unfit to be called a woman. If she tried to save him, she brought an unholy abomination into the world. She just can’t win.

And of course Luo Binghe’s supposed to be tragic. Of course his story is supposed to be sad. But he’s so desperate for any hint of affection and he’s told to his face that he’s an unholy abomination and his father doesn’t seem to care about him and his mother tried to abort him and it’s so easy to feel all alone. It’s so easy for him to feel like he doesn’t fit anywhere, because he’s both human and demon, which means he’s neither human nor demon.

The part that always makes me tear up is when Luo Binghe tries to merge the two realms together. He’s so desperate. He’s so broken. He doesn’t know what to do and he only knows that he doesn’t want to be left behind. He says that nobody has ever chosen him. He says that it would be fine even if Shen Qingqiu hated him, as long as he didn’t toss him aside.

And it’s awful! This family is awful! It’s so sad! It’s too sad! Su Xiyan chose Luo Binghe before anyone else did. Su Xiyan chose to save him, chose to try and keep him warm and dry. Even at the cost of her own life, she chose him! And she chose him because she loved Tianlang-jun! She basically poisoned herself trying to keep the only thing she had left of Tianlang-jun alive! Tianlang-jun says that Luo Binghe looks like her. Tianlang-jun can’t even be angry or sad when he mentions her, he just goes blank, until he finds out that she really wanted to save him and he can’t help but love her all over again! Tianlang-jun looks at Luo Binghe and Luo Binghe is proof that Su Xiyan loved him!

Luo Binghe realizes that he hurt Shen Qingqiu and he’s more than horrified. All he’s ever wanted to do is be strong enough that Shen Qingqiu doesn’t have to get hurt saving him anymore, but all he ever seem to accomplishe is hurting Shen Qingqiu himself. He tries to learn demonic cultivation to get stronger and he gets pushed into the Endless Abyss. He tries to learn spiritual cultivation and Shen Qingqiu dies in his arms. He tries to keep Shen Qingqiu’s body in perfect condition so that he can bring hin back to life, only for the body to be stolen out from under him twice. He asks, again and again, for Shen Qingqiu to choose him, and he never gets chosen.

But, you can’t actually blame Shen Qingqiu. Because all of those scenes of him not choosing Luo Binghe ARE him choosing Luo Binghe! He chooses Binghe and Binghe’s safety everytime, he just never realizes that he himself is necessary for Binghe to be safe. And why would he assume that? He hurt Binghe and he feels like he can’t be forgiven for it, to the point that all of his suffering is him punishing himself.

Luo Binghe in the wedding extra asks Shen Qingqiu to marry him and he’s so nervous beforehand that he literally trips. He stutters. And even after he asks, he tells Shen Qingqiu not to answer, because he can’t listen to the answer, he can’t listen to Shen Qingqiu turn him aside again and he contents himself with thinking that even if they aren’t married, Shen Qingqiu has indulgently allowed him to follow wherever he goes, and that’s enough.

So when Shen Qingqiu does say yes, it’s emotional. He’s shocked. And even as he pulls out all the stops for the “wedding,” I don’t think Luo Binghe is actually convinced that Shen Qingqiu meant it until the next day, when Shen Qingqiu calls him “Husband” without even being asked. I think that’s the moment it hit him. Shen Qingqiu chose him.

We start the novels by hearing a basic outline of PIDW, which starts with Su Xiyan choosing Luo Binghe. We end the novels with Shen Qingqiu choosing Luo Binghe. Luo Binghe finally, finally understands what it feels like to be loved.

Meng Mo and the Huan Hua Palace Master want Luo Binghe as their student because he’s powerful and capable and, in the Palace Master’s case, he reminds him of Su Xiyan. His wives, it’s somewhat strongly implied, mostly wanted him for sex and what he could do for them. Nobody ever really befriends Luo Binghe at any point. He’s always standing apart from others. He’s never part of the Huan Hua disciples and he stands out amongst the Cang Qiong sect disciples and he stands out among demons and he stands out among humans and

And he finally stands with Shen Qingqiu. He’s finally not alone. He’s finally someone’s first choice. He finally feels like someone’s first choice.

[fortjester]

an angle that i can't remember anybody pointing out abt Gideon re: christ allegory is the idea of Wake as Mary conscious of what her role entails. Mary conscious of and accepting of the sacrifice her child will be used for.

she's visited by one of god's lyctor's – directly contacted by Mercymorn with an opportunity – and outside her interactions w G1deon, she's the only one of them Wake ever meets. in the bible, the angel who visits Mary is the same angel that directs the wise men to seek Mary and Jesus out in Jerusalem, which adds a more sinister parallel to Mercy being the one to direct G1deon to Wake's location over the Ninth.

Wake has no direct interaction with John/God until after she’s already dead, and therefore Gideon’s conception is, like Mary’s conception of Jesus, almost completely separate from God at all, except that the resulting child will be his biologically (or spiritually in Jesus’ case).

she takes a literal journey while heavily pregnant to reach the Ninth, and has to give birth in less than ideal conditions and surroundings. and the story diverges further from there, because instead of being visited and given gifts for her child’s birth, she’s attacked, betrayed, and murdered before she can complete the mission she did any of this for.

(one could argue that G1deon and Pyrrha’s role in this allegory is both that of the wise men (keeping up three separate identities = three wise men right? g1deon, pyrrha, and the Saint of Duty all visited on her in one form. much to think on) – but also of Joseph (especially given Pyrrha tells John in HTN that she didn't tell him abt Wake's pregnancy because she assumed the child was hers, and upon finding out Gideon isn't hers, she's obviously conflicted abt it, but inevitably settles on wanting to be a parent/parental figure to her despite the truth and the complexities of Wake's actions) but that’s just a whole Can of Worms, because we know very little of what actually went down during their interaction leading up to the airlock, so we’ll just let the concept lie there for the moment.)

Wake conceives, carries, and gives birth to Gideon, the distanced but biological child of God, knowing she’ll be used as a sacrifice, knowing through trial and error that the only viable method for this plan to work is through carrying the child herself. she does it all under the faith that if she does it all correctly, if she works hard enough, toughs it out, it will all be worth it. arguably, she never sees the Tomb fully opened, but she sees it breached.

another fun tidbit from this train of thought is the idea that her niece is named Our Lady of the Passion, a tangential name for the Virgin Mary in some sects of catholicism. beyond death, Wake’s belief in her mission to rid the universe of John and the Houses, her passion, as it were, is once again present in Pash, who is not exactly present when the Tomb is opened, but is around and conscious enough of her connections and roles to realise her dang cousin is also hanging around on the same planet her aunt died on. excited to see whatever dynamic she and Gideon develop in atn, Muir willing.

[blackmoonlightexpress]

Easter Eggs from Till the End of the Moon🎁(Part 1)

Now that everyone's had a chance to watch and rewatch, here's a list of easter eggs or hidden details from the show that I jotted down. A lot of spoilers below, obviously.

Throwaway lines that foreshadowed the end:

(1) At the end of ep 1, Susu asks her servant what is Tantai Jin (TTJ)'s Achilles Heel, and Chuntao responds it is Ye Xiwu (YXW). We all think this is funny because YXW is a bullying wife, but this is actually foreshadowing for the ending (Susu is TTJ's Achilles Heel after all)

(2) Pang Yizhi seems like a joke but is actually right on critical things:

When he first meets TTJ, he predicts that TTJ would be rich and powerful, which Susu thought was indication that Xiaoyou Sect’s standards have declined. Pang is actually correct as TTJ did end up reuniting the Jing and Sheng kingdoms.

In episode 6, he predicts the person who will unite the kingdoms and bring lasting peace is in his presence (Xiao Lin & Ye Qingyu). Everyone assumes he is referring to Xiao Lin, who is in line to be king, but in fact it is Ye Qingyu who takes over from TTJ in ruling for 500 years

In episode 8, he predicts that YXW would come into contact with water and the danger would be resolved. This ends up being true as YXW survives jumping ship. He then says YXW might even become queen of the Jing kingdom, which did end up happening.

(3) In episode 7, Ye Xiwu's dad was so excited that Ye Qingyu stayed overnight at a lady's place that he says he would accept this daughter-in-law even if she were a "widow or even a demon". Pianran is in fact a fox demon who's had a previous lover.

(4) In episode 19, when Pianran gives YXW the suggestion that she should cook for TTJ, she joking wishes that TTJ would be poisoned by YXW. He was indeed poisoned by YXW later.

(5) The entire sequence in the festival where YXW is chosen to play the goddess and TTJ is chosen to play the demon god is foreshadowing for what happens in the end. The demon god willingly allows the goddess to kill him. In fact, there's a fan theory that the "ancient tale" is left by the prophets as instructions for what must happen in the end.

Connections between the Dream Arc and the rest of the Story:

(6) Time God Jize says to Sangjiu that they have a special connection, a connection that "you [TTJ] know, she [LSS] knows, but Sangjiu and Mingye do not know", hinting he is aware that she is Susu is playing Sangjiu and that she would experience the dream of wisdom (Bo're Dream).

(7) Chuhuang also says she feels a strange sense of familiarity with Sangjiu. Susu is actually her daughter. She doesn't know because, unlike Jize, she doesn't have prophetic powers.

(8) You can think of the ancient gods continuing to fight a proxy war 10,000 years later through the next generation of characters:

Jize waits in the Abyss for 10,000 years to tell Susu the prophecy i.e. how to defeat the demon god and pass on the Mirror of the Past. He also leaves behind his student Pang Yizhi to provide continued guidance in his holographic form.

Mingye leaves his dream behind to educate the reincarnated demon god. He lures TTJ in, recognizing who he is as he's seen the Ancient Demon God without his mask on.

Chuhuang leaves behind her daughter LSS, the last goddess on earth and only person who can defeat the demon god. Upon her death she becomes the Chongyu harp, LSS's godly weapon, which is able to harm the Demon God as we see in Episode 1.

(9) TTJ didn't trust Dimian because he's the only one aware that he betrayed the Ancient Demon God

(10) The little boy that Jize pushes off the podium is Pang Yizhi (as indicated by the birth mark on his hand.) That explains why Pang has prophetic powers and helps move the story forward even in his virtual form - he's a student of the Time God

(11) The drama very clearly explains what happens to the three weapons of the Demon God after the ADG falls 10,000 years ago:

During the fight, the God-Piercing Bow (屠神弩) is cast into the Weak Sea by Mingye. 10,000 years later, it is absorbed by TTJ while searching for YXW’s soul

The Marrow Cleansing Seal (洗髓印) creates the Buzhao Mountains and was later collected by Mingye, who tries to repurpose it into a tool that can cleanse Sangjiu’s demon bone into an immortal bone. After Sangjiu dies, he uses his remaining powers to lock it under the water mirror in the Upper Immortal Realm. It remains there for 10,000 years until Siying attempts to steal it.

The Heaven-slaying Sword (斩天剑) is stolen by Dimian to stab the ADG in the back. It later resurfaces when a power-hungry Dimian uses it to kill Susu's adoptive father and steal LSS’s extracted demon bone

(12) Mingye and Li Susu experience mirroring life events: They both lose their sight, give up their immortal bone, become a True God, kill the Demon God, and lose the love of their lives at the end of their story.

Special Relationships between Objects and Characters:

(13) TTJ has a special connection with the Dragonheart Shield (护心鳞) – it comes from Mingye and is later refined by Cang Jiumin:

The Dragonheart Shield originally comes from the dragon scale protecting Mingye’s heart, which he gave up in order to retrieve the Marrow Cleansing Seal at the Buzhao Mountain, hence it was left with the Xiaoyao Sect. This happens 10,000 years ago in Mingye’s dream

The Shield is then offered as a wedding gift to Xiao Lin (perhaps to protect him from future events?) from the Xiaoyao Sect. (This is its first appearance to the audience.) XL then gifted it to TTJ as a gesture of goodwill in order to secure protection for Ye Bingtang.

The Shield protects TTJ from YXW's three final nails, suggesting some protection from Mingye and his faith that TTJ is still salvageable

After TTJ disappears, it was safeguarded by Ye Qingyu (as masked Jin emperor) for 500 years. In the draft screenplay, Cang Jiumin and Li Susu were supposed to collect it from YQY (that was why they had to fight the nightmare demon - YQY wasn't willing to give it up because the demon was impersonating Pianran).

CJM then distils the shield’s powers to form a protective boundary for the cultivation world and was given the shield for safekeeping

Later it's suggested he left a fragment of himself in the Shield. Some fan theories state that he would eventually be able to take physical form after years healing in the Shield

(14) Similarly, LSS has a connection with the Jade of Doom (倾世之玉) – it is created by Sangjiu and later absorbed by YXW, connecting and symbolizing tragedy in the two characters

The Jade of Death is created by Sangjiu with the fallen bodies of the Snake Clan in order to resurrect her family. As this is a violation of natural order, SJ invites a divine trial of purple thunders, which she does not pass, even with Mingye’s immortal bone, due to her lack of a physical body.

The Jade is then left at the bottom of the Mo River, which is later collected by YXW when she falls into the river. YXW has a dialogue with the jade’s unseen creator. The jade is later absorbed by YXW to divert it away from TTJ and prevent him from gaining its powers but suffering a cursed fate

Later YXW uses the Jade in her body to rapidly cultivate an immortal bone, which she successful swaps with TTJ’s demon bone, giving him cultivation powers. This also attracts purple thunders that serves as YXW’s divine trial, which she passes and travels back to 500 years later as LSS

(15) Similarly, the Ice Crystal Casket (冰晶盏) has a connection with TTJ, Xiao Lin, and Ye Bingchang – it is used twice to resurrect XL using powers of TTJ and YBC, symbolizing rebirth and redress:

It is first created by Mingye from a 10,000 year old ice crystal guarded by the Snake Clan (Tianhuan’s clan) in order to resurrect the Clam Clan, specifically Sangyou. Sangjiu breaks the box in front of Mingye and says she will find another way to resurrect her brother

After Xiao Lin dies, Pang Yizhi repairs it to resurrect XT, using TTJ’s blood and YBC’s tears as ingredients to rebuild him into a new character, GZJW.

(16) LSS uses the Mirror of the Past (过去镜), a sacred object safeguarded by the Xiaoyao Sect, to travel back 500 years, which is where she meets the Time God Jize. When Jize dies, his powers form the Mirror of the Past, which LSS collects and entrusts with Pang Yizhi to be brought back to Xiaoyao Sect for safekeeping, thus completing the time loop.

[hetaoren]

HC fic: Becoming An Uncle

The anger and betrayal Lan Qiren feels for his brother is still raw, unable to see the man without them starting an argument. Despite this, he agreed on being present at the birth of his brother's first child, since the father could not. Qiren is, of course, waiting outside the Jingshi, waiting for news about mother and baby, having no clue what is going on since he cannot look inside and there are silencing spells on the house. All he can do is wait, standing there stiff and ramrod straight, hands folded behind his back. Then, the door slides open, showing the midwife with a bundle in her arms. Qiren frowns as she approaches him, holding out the baby. "Lan-gongzi, your nephew needs a name." Not knowing what else to do, he takes the baby. He holds him very gently, making the midwife chuckle and telling him the baby will not break and instructs him how to better hold him. Qiren does as told and the small boy rests on his arm, pressed against his chest.

Not until the baby is settled does he take a proper look at the boy, still red and wrinkly, but clean. Small pouty lips, a round little nose, tuft of black hair and then, then he opens his eyes and the unfocused gaze looks towards Lan Qiren and the baby makes a gurgling sound. Qiren inhales sharply, something warm spreading in his chest at the look of this fragile newly-born human. His nephew. His blood. One of his rare smiles gently curves his lips. "Welcome to Cloud Recesses, Lán Huàn. I am your shufu." Huàn, the melting of snow and dispersing of water, gentleness and peace. The little boy has dispersed some of that anger he's constantly felt since his brother choose a woman over his sect, betraying them all. Washed Lan Qiren's heart with cool, fresh water. In turn, he promises to protect the boy, to make everything he can to give him a life of peace and security. Yes, he will do everything he can to make this boy's life good, even if he's not yet of age himself, but he will fight for his nephew forever and always.

Suddenly remembering that the midwife is still there, he schools his expression and reluctantly hands his nephew back. "His name will be Huàn, Lán Huàn." The midwife nods, takes the child and then goes back inside the Jingshi, to wait for the wet-nurse to arrive and take little Huàn to his caretakers. Qiren has already decided he will visit him daily, even if it will be a few years before he can take care of the boy, but he will do his best to be a part of his life until then. If he can learn to effectively leading a sect within eight months, he can learn to make room for daily trips to visit his nephew and how to eventually raise that nephew. Qiren nods, it's settled. He can and he will do this. The boy should have a good, secure and peaceful life despite the crimes of his parents, his shufu will make sure of that.

[catmaid-san]

This actually reminds me of Gu Long, and the controversies about the misogynistic in his Classic WuXia literatures. One of the major controversial points is about the Sword God Ximen Chuixue and his wife, Sun Xiuqing. Sun XiuQing is a woman, who chose to betray her Master, betray her Senior Brothers, betray her Sect---to marry Ximen Chuixue, the one who killed her Master, Dugu Yihe.

As if to mock the irony of her choice, later, Ximen Chuixue abandoned her who's heavily pregnant, to fulfil a battle appointment with Ye Gucheng. As if it's not enough, just when Sun Xiuqing and their newly born son were about to welcome Ximen Chuixue back home after his victory, she actually received a letter of divorce and was asked to leave Ximen Chuixue's residence. The reason? It's because after battling with Yu Gucheng, Ximen Chuixue realized he's lost the heart of a Swordsman. Sun Xiuqing has become an obstacle for him to pursue the purest way of Sword (according to his own epiphany). Ironic. Humiliating. To the woman who was left while pregnant and kicked out right after giving birth. A lot of readers, especially female readers, protested that Gu Long was heavily misogynistic toward his female characters. But I feel like, instead of being hateful, Gu Long was actually really good in portraying "choices" in a person "way of life" in the world of Martial Arts/WuXia. Sun XiuQing choose to betray her Master, her Martial Siblings, and married the person who killed her own Master, for the sake of love. Ximen Chuixue choose to abandon his wife and child for the sake of Sword.

Both are Scumbags. Gu Long, the Author, wasn't just being mean to the female character but also slapping the Scumbag Title to his male character.

Rather than being malicious toward women, I think what the Author, Gu Long, meant to convey was that, there are countless people in Jianghu, and countless ways of life. And the choice that a person has chosen in their life, may lead to whatever consequences thereof.

Ximen Chuixue chose the Ruthless Way of Sword, by forgetting 7 emotions and 6 desires, but the consequence was that he might become the second Ye Gucheng, a hollowed person who will lose his way after he reaches a bottleneck or has no more people to challenge in Swordsmanship. Him abandoning Sun XiuQing was just the beginning. Afterward, he might lose even the loyalty and compassion toward his best friend, Lu Xiaofeng. The consequence of his choice was that he will lose everyone and later even himself. Sun XiuQing chose to betray her relatives and friends for the sake of love, but the consequence was that, when the love she pursued so hard, abandoned her, she would be left with no one to turn to.

Mxtx, creating a beautiful and well-rounded female character that appears only briefly: Hey, isn’t it fucked up that this character who is so important in the world of this story and to the people that knew her can only be known to you, reader, through flashback memories because the people in power were willing and able to sacrifice her in their never-ending quest for ultimate dominance? Do you feel the constant grief over what could have been had her potential not been killed in its infancy? Do you understand that you as a reader are mourning in the same way that her loved ones she’s left behind are, knowing that the world has been changed for the worse by her premature death? Doesn’t it suck?

(English-speaking) Mdzs fandom the bane of her existence (probably): Killing women in stories can have no other meaning than that you hate women, so this was a misogynistic choice, actually.

[joylinda-hawks]

Does anyone remember Quiming's Eighteen Moves? WOH, Episode 33, Part 3. WKX holding Bai Yi in his hands stands in front of the gathered as a symbol of justice. He asks the assembled WKX if they remember any fighting technique and introduces it. The elegance and ease with which WKX performs the movements of this forgotten technique impresses the audience. ZZS is closely watching WKX. WKX is the epitome of a young dragon fighting for his place on the throne. ZZS still doesn't know what WKX's plan is, but they are proud of it. Some masters recognize the technique of Zhen Ru Yu from the Valley of Healers. Master asks WKX what this has to do with ZRY. Ironically, WKX replies that they remember ZRY. In a firm voice, he tells WKX what happened to his father after his father tried to save RX. Almost screaming, WKX asks the gathering where they were when ZRY was killed by the evil Ghosts. This accusation hits hard, because no one in the assembly is blameless. The sect master on Mount Emei asks who he is in relation to WKX - ZRY. WKX simply replies that he is his father, Master refuses to believe it, saying his name is Wen. WKX responds by explaining that his father's name was Wen, and he took the surname Zhen out of respect for his master. After the exile of his father, at his request, the son took the surname Wen. Master Zhi Yin accuses him of insulting ZRY. WK x calmly relates that a year after his birth, her sect sent his parents a Baijiai outfit as a gift. WKX adds that he didn't get a chance to say thank you for the gift. Master finally understands that she was wrong. ZJ tries to convince her that WKX is lying. He accuses WKX of getting the ghosts to pretend to side with ZJ in order to accuse him later. He accuses him of planning it. WKX doesn't say anything, just listens intently, wondering what lies ZJ will come up with. ZJ knows he's on edge, he knows he has to do everything in his power to convince the audience that he's been accused of something he didn't do. He emphatically claims that Ghost Valley is a master of discord, adding that GC has been deceived by the spirits and wrongly accused. Disgusted, WKX listens to these nonsense explanations with a smile on his face. However, when ZJ's allegations cross a line, Shen Shen speaks up, claiming that he has no right to mention GC's name. ZJ takes the initiative and accuses Shen Shen of dealing with Ghost Valley. He adds that the SS was a spy. The Scorpion King can't believe what he's hearing. ZJ publicly accuses the SS of what he himself did. The assembled conference participants start talking, they are shocked by what they heard. WKX and King Scorpion confirmed their suspicions. The Scorpion King wasn't much of a shock, but what he heard made him not regret his decision. He still didn't trust WKX and had his plans, but ZJ completely betrayed his trust. Now all he had to do was wait for further developments. I divided this long scene into several parts. What I want to convey here is that sometimes it's not worth trusting people you think are trustworthy. I want to focus on the issues of honesty, honor and trust. Over the years, ZJ slowly peaked with his skills of betrayal and manipulation. He used every person he could and every opportunity to get to the top. He seemed kind and empathetic, but that was a facade. He deceived many, only ZZS and WKX showed who ZJ really is. This scene should teach us not to trust implicitly everything we see and read. It is worth checking things that raise doubts and analyze the facts yourself. What seems real to us is not always true. Facts, analysis of the situation, knowledge of aspects of the event and conclusions contradict the original assumptions. ZJ beautifully shows us on stage the degree of manipulation of facts and uses the ignorance of the whole situation of strangers to create an alternative version of events. That's why this scene is important. And that should give everyone a lot to think about these days. Also, GJ has a fantastic smile and ZZH is such a quiet, icy beauty.

[kshithi-and-stories]

JC is not the only one...

I read the novel long back and I do not remember much. But I can say for sure that JC is not the only who had problems. 

Lan Zhan -  His mother was isolated and he got to meet her only once a month. Then she died. He lost his father because of Wens. He lost Cloud Recesses to fire because Wens attacked unprovoked. He had to attend the Wen camp with a broken leg. He saw his beloved as he was vilified and abused for doing the right thing. He lost his beloved for 13 years. He had to live with the fact that he could not save Wei Ying. He was whipped for trying to save his beloved which took 3 years for him to recover. He was punished into isolation just like his mother. 

Wei Ying - Lost his parents at 4, lived on the streets for few years with no shelter from bad weathers, had to fight with wild dogs for food, gets bitten by these dogs. In Lotus Pier he is abused emotionally and physically by people  who were supposed to be his guardians/parent figures. He is punished for no reason. He is made to take blame for the other’s mistakes and whipped again and again. He is always reminded of the debts he owes the Jiangs. He cannot do better than JC in school because Madam Yu will not like it. He is whipped because some Wen maid told Madam Yu to punish him. He is blamed for saving Jiang sect allies and Yanli loves one of them. He is blamed for the attack of the Lotus Pier for no reason at all and he had to take on this blame through out his first life. So, it was not some heat of the moment. JC did not correct this mistake at all. Had to save JC from Wens and from himself by giving away his golden core. Then thrown into burial mounds. Faced with distrust and envy from all even though he is a war hero. He was vilified and made into an enemy for saving innocent lives, including a child. He was abandoned and betrayed by his so called brother for repaying a debt which the Jiang sect owes. He was ambushed by the Jins for attending a function in which he was invited. He had to see his shijie die in front of him and blamed for her death.  All of his found family was massacred in front of him in a siege led by his so called brother.  In essence he lost three families in his first life. 

Lan Xichen - Lost his parents as mentioned above. Then manipulated by his sworn brother into being an accessory for numerous crimes, including killing of his other sworn brother.

Nie Huaisang - Saw his brother getting murdered by a trusted person. He is the only surviving member of his family. 

Meng Yao - Abused through out his lift for his birth status.

Xue Yang - Lived on the streets, abused in his childhood.

Jin Zixuan  - Jin Guangshan was his father and Meng Yao was his brother. 

Wen Ning - Abused under Wen Rouhan and by his cousins. Tortured and killed in a prisoner camp for no other reason than having the surname Wen. A sect leader whom he had helped turned his back on him and led a siege against all of his remaining family members. Cultivation world massacred his remaining family. He was held captive for 13 years.  Saw his sister being burnt alive.  

JC - His mother abused him to some extent and always compared him to WY. His father might have neglected him (I am not sure about this). Lost his parents to Wens. Lost his sect. Lost his sister. Lost his golden core and gained another golden core immediately. Please add if I missed out anything. And no, WY saving Wens is not him abandoning JC. It is WY repaying the debts which JC owes the Wens  and also trying to save Jiang sect from backlash. It is actually JC abandoning morals and his so called brother. 

I know that people process trauma in their own way. Not everyone handles adversaries and trauma the same way. You can be excused for your actions when you are young. You can have trauma as a blanket excuse for everything wrong you do when you are young. The same cannot be true when you are an adult.  No matter how scarred you are and how traumatized you are, as an adult you need to have accountability and face consequences for your actions. No one should be made responsible for your happiness and your well being. Only you can decide to be happy. Others can show you kindness and empathy, but not at the cost of their own mental health. In the end, only you can decide if you want to get better.  

[mediumsizedpidegon]

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#OP!!!! OP ARE YOU WRITING THIS? WILL TEHER BE FIC???#i think airplane/sqh is a person who's had to scramble for everything to the point that he will fight viciously tooth and nail for everythin#that is HIS. to wit: an ding and MBJ#and YEAH THE RESENTMENT#like those two lifetimes worth of resentment become fuel to the MINE and just the absolute will to live dominating this little rat man#he's like FUCK YOU I AM GETTING MINE#just anger-walking out of the grave to go lick all his stuff#Aaaah and mbj reacts so badly to Emotions - or like expresses them badly that's just rife for Mishaps#and having to come to terms with NOT being strong enough even as a demon lord to keep what was his#but also like who the fuck BUT sqh would just nope out of being dead? he's gonna be p wowed once he's done hyperventilating#it also does interesting thing to the power balance and the way they are perceived#like 'demon + human bad'  ok but 'demon + ghost'???#what is the opinion of mbjs boyfriend in the demon world?#i can picture yqy kinda staring blankly#first one shidi betrays the sect for demons#then another marries a demon#scandal obviously#THEN one turns out to be a ghost? and still doing his job?? possibly actually even better???#mostly because he has more time since he doesn't need sleep#(although i bet sqh still likes good food and little comforts because what is he if not greedy for everything?)#and the rest of the cultivation world goes 'gee wtf is wrong with this generation of peak lords'#and 'so do you need anything to dispel that ghost?'#and yqy is like 'actually the ghost is getting a raise' because he stared paperwork in the face and blinked first#he has many qualities#admin is not one#ALSO idk if that's a direction you're going but: sqh with a body he can control? and an eidetic memory of porn?#like a wide and weird range of porn?#ALSO loving the imagery of ghost!sqh#ALSO YEAH you're right mbj WOULD still hurt him#but also i posit: sqh lashing out with ghost power unthinking

Yeah, I am writing this! I haven't gotten much written down but I'm working on it!

MOVING ON TO SU XIYAN: SXY definitely dies in this AU. I don't know... anything about the timeline but I'm gonna say that Tianlang-Jun is sealed and SYX dies in the first year or so after the Qing generation ascends to the position of Peak Lords. Wherever in the timeline I could to put it, SQH isn't a ghost yet, and he's so new and untrusted by his fellow peak lords that he can't really... do anything, even if the system wasn't there. (Because there's nothing like your esteemed immortal masters dropping the growing tensions between demons and humans right on your lap and peacing out! Not to go on a tangent, but there is literally no way the Qing generation is this fucked up and bad at working together if their predecessors weren't even worse messes.)

Anyway, SXY gives birth and with last of her iron will, implements the seal on LBH's demon heritage she's been planning since the water prison. But it requires more strength than she can give. SXY is a righteous cultivator, the head disciple of a righteous cultivation sect, with all the rituals to prevent her from being one of resentful dead that every disciple goes through. And yet– SXY's love is the Demon Emperor. She makes teasing fun of Zhuzhi-lang, a man even demons think of as a monster. And her son, her boy, her child of her body and her heart is a half-demon half-human hybrid. SXY is the head disciple of Huan Hua Palace Sect, ruthless and cold as steel. SXY is the woman who took poison and refused to let it even touch her son's heath at the price of her own. SXY, above all, is pragmatic. If her son requires more strength than she can give, she'll simply have to dig deeper. So SXY draws on her blood and her flesh and her bone and quite literally burns herself inside out like some sort of supernova, becoming a ghost in the process. The end result: LBH is set down the river, his birth mother's last touch (for now. for now) marked in the smudge of dried red on his forehead, all while a pile of ash and blood watches and commits herself to cultivating herself a more mobile shape.

And here is the thing– SQH couldn't do shit because of the system but the sealing of TLJ and the death of SXY is over. LBH has been born, set down the river, and adopted by a washerwoman with all the world's hope in her heart. What's required has been done, and by now (a few years later), SQH is a ghost and the system is gone. He can do what he wants now, and what he wants is for LBH to not grow up to murder his entire sect. So SQH travels to a river looking for a child, and he finds him, yes, but he finds that pile of ash and blood first, haunting the washerwoman and her adopted son. It has by now transformed into something with a shape passingly like a human's, outlined in burning black veins, though it cannot speak (yet).

The washerwoman is much less afraid when she learns the ghost "haunting" her is her son's birth mother who stayed to protect him from beyond the grave and the only response she has to TLJ's terrible fate is that they must go get him, if only for LBH's sake, much to both SQH and SXY's bafflement. The end result: SQH comes alone to the Luo River and returns to the Tian Gong range with five people, though he is still a little confused about how.

LBH's adoptive mom is a creation of tosawary (who is both on tumblr and ao3, look them up, they're great), who wrote a fic called 'Pride Is Not the Word I'm Looking For" that asked 'what would happen if SQH met and saved LBH's adoptive mom?' They created the character of Luo Jiahui, LBH's adoptive mom, from literally nothing. And I love her. So Luo Jiahui is here, she lives, and she becomes a cultivator if not a fighter.

LBH grows up with three parents (one human, one ghost, and one demon), a snake cousin (a snusin if you will) and a very weird uncle who tells the best stories. He is a deeply strange and clever child because of this (and oh so loved.)

Su Xiyan's "final form" or true form would be star-like. All black-hole veins, burning stardust-patterned skin, and bright, bright eyes. And and and she's poisonous and venomous because of the poison that killed her! I don't quite have an idea on what her power set would be. Maybe something to do with justice and revenge? Some sort of vengeful patron of people betrayed by those they trusted?

As for how the fuck this family can live anywhere and not be hunted for sport by cultivator OR demons, I say this: Shang Qinghua fucks around and accidentally creates his own territory (is it underground? is it somewhere notoriously hard to get to but SQH has author-god shortcuts? Is it deep within the Tian Gong Mountains, hidden where no one would expect it? Who know. I haven't figured it out yet.) All he wanted was for his family these people to be safe, but no, people kept testing his patience or barging in to ask for sanctuary and now he's in charge of an entire goddamn city! Truly, you do one good thing, and you're rewarded with what? More work!

DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE MYTHOS SQH'S GHOST PERSONA ACCIDENTALLY INSPIRES. I HAVE SO MUCH THOUGHTS AND ALL OF THEM ARE TORMENTING SQH WITH RESPONSIBILITY OR GOOD THINGS THAT HE FEELS LIKE HE HASN'T EARNED.

Onto SQH himself, you're so correct about him being greedy and stubborn and fighting tooth and nail for what is HIS. Like. This world is fundamentally different from his previous one: it's dangerous, filled with so much more uncertainty, and it'll eat you whole with no remorse. This world is in every way a dog eat dog world and SQH has been surviving it for decades. He survived it, he climbed to the top, he spat in death's face and carried on with his business. And SQH is fundamentally a man who has been surviving on scraps for two lifetimes, meting out subsistence from the bare minimum. When you have so little, when you die such a painful death and wake up in a baby's body, and everything that made your life tolerable in another world is gone, you learn to savor what you have. You learn to cling and hold tight. You learn to bare your teeth and do things that your old world would send you to prison for and this world calls "righteous" if you frame it just right. (you make the spy network your predecessor said you wouldn't need. you use your sword. you accept the crown of barbed wire that is the position of An Ding Peak Lord and you do your best to make An Ding less cruel, for all that your hands hold no kindness.)

And you're right. MBJ is SQH's. MBJ isn't even MBJ until the Airplane Extras. Mobei-Jun is a title this prince cannot lay claim to, and yet SQH calls him my king, and he is. SQH makes MBJ into MBJ MBJ, crowns MBJ as SQH's king and doesn't realize that this is something that would definitely resonate with MBJ??? SQH never realizes in canon the enormity of his effect on MBJ, how SQH is very likely to be MBJ's first person he can fully trust, the first person since LGJ to be safe. SQH opens his home, offers his knowledge and his medicine, his food and his drink to MBJ, and goes gee, I hope he won't kill me today. You fool! You idiot! You are the person MBJ associates with safety and comfort and healing!! SQH is more efficiently claiming MBJ (and getting MBJ to claim him) than the whole DEMON REALM and no one knows it.

And yeah!! SQH is this character that is so tired of life and yet he's a fucking cockroach when it comes to death. He just. won't die. And MBJ is probably super aware of SQH's death-defying nature and stops being surprised by the fifth year in MBJ's service. Like, "oh, yeah? You got that artifact by SNEAKING INTO THE DEMON REALM and answering the three riddles of this fabled monster that not no one knew still existed? Classic Shang Qinghua." He's going to upset for YEARS, if not DECADES about SQH being a ghost, especially that's his person!! that's his safe place and they died while under his service and protection!! But he will definitely have several moments where he goes "... only Shang Qinghua could have done this shit. Only Shang Qinghua could have died and then gone back to work. Only Shang Qinghua could have LIED ABOUT THIS for decades." As the power inbalance or lack thereof now that SQH is an extremely powerful ghost, SQH desperately doesn't want to talk about it. Look, it's was a common trope in his writing for servants that grow too powerful to be killed by their masters!! It was interesting and fun to write until he started LIVING HERE. Meanwhile, MBJ is like "Qinghua is resistant to cold now? Qinghua has all these folded paper and ink minions? Qinghua can tell a story so well that his enemies go deaf? .... Hot."

As for the cultural perception of Moshang on the demon side now that SQH is a ghost: ghosts aren't normally really... stable? They can be extremely powerful but most of them are are non-corporeal and as easily extinguished as candle-flame. And all of them, powerful or not, are liable to fade. Since SQH is corporeal and clearly at least somewhat powerful so the general perception is "good for MBJ, I guess? But he should be careful in case his lover ends up fading." Anyway, when the information that SQH refused to die fully because (in part) of MBJ, the demons are going to switch over to both "oh, that's so romantic," and "he's sticking around until MBJ kicks the bucket for sure." So yeah, definitely more respect than if SQH was still human!

As for your idea of YQY's reaction– sjwkkwjwkskjskjskwjskwskjska THE GHOST IS GETTING A RAISE!!! (god, the Qing generation really is full of freaks.) YQY would NOT know how to handle this at all. He's going through seven stage of grief in five minutes. What do you DO when you realize your shidi died on a mission you might have sent him on and he CAME BACK???? Really, the most likely option is that YQY would probably do a sort of press conference where he goes "yeah we knew SQH was a ghost (lie), but he's not resentful (lie) or dangerous (lie), and he's our ghost (truth)."

And yeah SQH can shapeshift!!! There will absolutely be some things that transfer over to all his forms (haven't decided what but he needs something to make this less OP) though. I don't know about eidetic memory but maybe absorbing the system caused him to have a sort of... data bank in his head?? where he keeps important info and can pull up anytime.

As for SQH lashing out with ghost powers at MBJ: I don't see this happening under normal circumstances. MBJ is SQH's to protect and SQH, despite running his mouth when he's nervous, is definitely careful when it comes to MBJ. But if SQH was under special circumstances, not in his right mind, or surprised while in bad state, this could absolutely happen. And it would be GREAT if this was how MBJ found out. The mess of SQH, not in his right mind and too-honest because of it, and MBJ, feeling so betrayed– was SQH mocking him by asking for MBJ's protection? Was SQH lying to him the whole time? Is this a imposter in SQH's body and his SQH is gone? Before the implications of SQH being dead catch up to him and crack him all the way through. It will be such a mess, but a necessary one, if they want to learn to communicate better and get on the same page.

Though him finding out SQH's family 'friends' will be... fun. Very much a "Only Qinghua" moment when MBJ when looks back on it.

This is getting too long, but I have so many ideas on the mythos SQH and SXY inspire, how SQH's city develops, as well as how/who SY transmigrates in.

thinking about Shang Qinghua as a calamity again…

[ouyangzizhensdad]

On the importance of MianMian: musings on the differences between the novel and CQL (PART 2/2)

If you haven’t already, please read through part one first, otherwise this will probably not be very cohesive or comprehensible. There is also some bonus meta because I keep having thoughts about MianMian. 

In part one, I contrasted MianMian’s first appearance in the novel and the web series in order to show how MianMian’s characterisation and position within her society were established quite differently in both works. In this post, I will explore the domino effect of those adaptation choices, as well as consider how the two subsequent appearances of MianMian in the novel got translated into a visual format in CQL. Through this exercise, my goal is not only to illuminate the depth and significance of this minor character in the novel, but also to argue that the way her scenes were adapted in CQL ultimately reduced the impact of the character and excised many of the nuances put into her portrayal despite increasing her presence in the work. 

(although kudos to CQL for casting Ann Wang because I do not get tired of looking at her face: look at that smile 😳) 

The Servant’s Daughter Valued Jin Cultivator Standing up to a Room of Powerful Cultivators

In the novel, we meet MianMian for a second time after the Sunshot campaign has ended. Cultivators from the main sects and allied sects (including some who used to be loyal to the Wens!) are discussing at Jinlintai Wei Wuxian’s actions after he protected the Wens and set up residence on Mass Grave Hill. By that time, it appears her position in her sect, and even her sect’s position, has grown. We can speculate as to why (my personal take is that MianMian proved herself during the war and that her sect is one of the sect who pledged loyalty to the Jin and gained influence as a result). What is important is that she goes from someone who is so inconsequential she might have not even have been a disciple yet when we met her to someone who stands next to a sect leader (who we can safely assume in this context to be her sect leader). A lot is hinted about her character and what she experienced since we last saw her through that small and innocuous detail. 

Suddenly, a careful voice interjected, “It’s not killing indiscriminately, is it?”

Lan Wangji seemed to have entered a realm of zen that blocked all of his senses. Hearing this, however, he moved, looking over. The one who spoke was a young woman with a fair face, standing beside one of the sect leaders.     

I will not repeat here the entirety of her speech, which highlights the hypocrisy and the bad faith of the sects, and particularly the Jin sect’s unwillingness to shoulder any blame for their deplorable treatment of the Wens. Instead, I find important to highlight how the other cultivators present react to MianMian based on her positionality. 

First, MianMian’s opinions are undercut by the people present due to the fact that she is a woman. Her motivations for speaking out are reduced to the irrational ramblings of a maiden in love.

“You can stop arguing,” someone sneered suddenly. “We don’t want to hear the comments of someone who has other motives.”

The woman’s face flushed. 

“Explain things,” she said, raising her voice. “What do you mean, that I have other motives?”

“There’s no need for me to say anything. You know deep down and we know too. You fell for him back in the cave of the Xuanwu just because he flirted with you? You’re still arguing for him, calling white black no matter how irrational it is. Ha, women will always be women.”

The incident of Wei Wuxian saving a damsel in distress in the cave of the Xuanwu was indeed once a topic of conversation. Thus, many people realized immediately that this young woman was ‘MianMian’.

At once, somebody murmured, “So that’s why. Explains how she’s so desperate as to speak up for Wei Wuxian…”

“Irrational?” she fumed. “Calling white black? I’m just being considerate as it stands. What does it have to do with the fact that I’m a woman? You can’t be rational with me so you’re attacking me with other things?”

Then, when members of her own sect disparage her for speaking up, they suggest that her place in the discussion, in this palace of gilded power and privilege, is ultimately illegitimate or at the very least incredibly easy to render illegitimate.

“Stop wasting your time on her. That this kind of person actually belongs to our sect, that she was even able to find her way into the Golden Pavilion; I feel ashamed standing alongside her.

Many of those who spoke against her were from the same sect.

In this situation, not even her fellow sect members are willing to come to her defense or to give her the benefit of the doubt; she is to be shamed and separated from them, lest her actions reflect badly on their own standing. 

MianMian’s choice to leave her sect behind is meaningful because she is not privileged. She does not have anyone powerful in her corner to back her up. She does not have many options; people act like she should be glad to even have made it this far, and we can infer that she only achieved her current position due to her skills and hard work. It is also meaningful because she is making that choice while knowing that she’s giving up on the privileges of the social position that she has worked to achieve. The fact that she is giving up on something big is highlighted by the reactions of many cultivators after her departure, who think she will come crawling back to find once more the security and privilege of the position she left behind.

Saying nothing, MianMian turned around and left. A while later, someone laughed. “If you’re taking it off, then don’t put it on again, if you’re so capable!”

“Who does she think she is… leaving as she pleases? Who cares? What is she trying to prove?”

Soon, some began to agree, “Women will always be women. They quit just after you say a few harsh words. She’ll definitely come back on her own, a couple of days later.”

“There’s no doubt. After all, she finally managed to turn from the daughter of a servant to a disciple, haha…”

Beyond what it means for her characterisation and the themes explored in the novel, this moment is significant because there are clear parallels between how she is treated in that moment and how WWX is talked about for protecting the Wen remnants and, later, for ‘deserting’ the Jiang sect. In fact, just before MianMian speaks out, sect leaders call WWX a “servant” and the “son of a servant” when underlying the ‘nerve’ of his ‘arrogance’ toward the sects with his actions. 

One of the sect leaders added, “To be honest, I’ve wanted to say this since a long time ago. Although Wei Wuxian did a few things during the Sunshot Campaign, there are many guest cultivators who did more than him. I’ve never seen anyone as full of themselves as him. Excuse my bluntness, but he’s the son of a servant. How could the son of a servant be so arrogant?”

These passages are also reminiscent of the way WWX is discussed by cultivators celebrating his death in the prologue:

“That’s right, good riddance! If the YunmengJiang sect had not adopted him, educated him—this Wei Ying would have been a mediocre scoundrel all his life, nothing but riffraff…… what else could he be! The former head of the Jiang clan treated him as his own son, but what a son! [...]”

“I can’t believe Jiang Cheng really let this arrogant manservant live for so long. If it were me, when this Wei first defected, I wouldn’t have just stabbed him; I’d have cleaned house straight away. Then he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to commit all those deranged acts later. When it comes to these sorts of people, how can you even take sentiments like ‘same clan’, ‘same sect’, or ‘childhood loyalty’ into consideration?”

Due to the circumstances of their birth, even people who manage to achieve a higher position in society hold a tenuous grasp on the power and respect they have gained: their legitimacy is fraught. And even if they play the game right, the lines of legitimate belonging are always ready to be renegotiated by those in power. Despite the “few things” he did during the Sunshot Campaign that aligned with the interest of the sects, and despite being raised among the gentry in the Jiang sect and being perceived as a gongzi, WWX remains in the imaginary of the cultivators who see themselves as the legitimate holders of power as someone who needs to “remember his place”, someone who should be grateful and loyal as he has been “allowed” to raise in influence and be treated well in society despite being the son of a servant. And so when he stands against the interests of the sects, he’s not just betraying them: he betraying the social order which gives them legitimacy. This is directly tied to MianMian’s treatment in this scene. In the novel, MianMian is not only shamed and dismissed because she speaks out against the sects: it is also, if not primarily, because she did not, in the process, “remember her place”.

The scene as it is presented in the novel thus goes out of its way to set up a clear parallel between WWX and MianMian, not only in regards to their righteousness, but also in regards to how they are perceived and treated for being the children of servants. It also takes pain to underline the unfair treatment of women in that society. Moreover, if we’re only considering MianMian’s characterisation, it says a lot to see her have reached this level of importance in her sect despite her circumstances and then for her to let it all go. 

In CQL? You’ve probably guessed it; all of these nuances are evacuated from the text. On top of the fact that MianMian continues to be established as a valued member of the Jin sect, the scene is cut short and a lot of the censure sent her way is excised. There are no mentions of her ‘having made her way’ into the room of powerful people who are allowed have an opinion on the state of the world. No mentions of her low social background and no mocking that she will crawl back to her sect after realising she can’t make it into the world without their influence and support. No dismissal of her based on the fact that she is a woman, or suggestions that she is standing up for the YLLZ only because she is enamoured with him. The scene is turned into a pale shadow of its original.

Instead of these elements, we do get a gasp from JZX (which becomes a dangling plot thread because he does not stand up for her nor does he reach out for her even though she’s supposed to be his good friend, nor do we see him being conflicted about being unable to beyond his gasp) and MianMian telling JGS that she is leaving his sect, which I’ll admit is pretty baller. But it does not even come close to having the significance and thematic implications of the scene as presented in the novel. CQL!MianMian stands up against the organized smear campaign against WWX and the sects’ unwillingness to accept their faults, and is only disregarded for having spoken against them: not because of who she was while she was raising doubts about their evaluation of the right and wrong. And that is significant, because it undercuts the discussions the novel explores through so many other characters about the impacts of being considered inferior by others. 

The Travelling Rogue Cultivator who Stayed Home

Finally, in the novel, we meet MianMian once more when her daughter, Xiao MianMian, stumbles upon something she should not have seen while accompanying her parents on a night-hunt. The reason their paths cross is that, just like Wangxian, MianMian feels compelled to pursue night-hunts other cultivators disregard for their lack of glory in order to help the common people. This is her life mission as a travelling rogue cultivator: differently put, she goes where the chaos is. This set-up serves to highlight that MianMian and Wangxian are like-minded and share the same definition of what it means to be ‘Righteous’. 

He asked, “Did you come here to night-hunt as well?”

Luo Qingyang nodded, “Yes. I heard spirits are haunting a nameless graveyard on this mountain, disturbing the lives of the people here, so I came to see if there’s any way I could help. Have you two cleaned it up already?”

The night-hunt also serves to reintroduce the theme of deception and rumours, and the ways in which MianMian is a character who is not swayed by public opinions but knows how easily others may be.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji exchanged a glance. “This was a lie too. No lives were lost. We looked it up. Only a few villagers who robbed the graves were bedridden for a while after being scared by the ghosts, and another broke his own leg when running away. Apart from these, there were no casualties. All those lives were made up for dramatic purposes.”

“So this was what happened?” interjected Luo Qingyang’s husband. “That’s absolutely shameless!”

“Oh, these people…” sighed Luo Qingyang. She seemed as if she remembered something, shaking her head, “They’re the same everywhere.”

This is because in the novel MianMian is tied to many themes, and always in a positive manner. Like WWX, she represents the good that is stifled by an unjust  social order. She also represents the people who choose to defy and deviate from this social order to pursue a righteous life rather than trying to find vindication and power within that very social order (ie JGY or XY). Like the juniors, MianMian is a character that represents hope for the cultivation world, the potential for small but significant change. Like WWX and LWJ, she represents integrity in the face of the corrupting influences of power and politics, as well as the desire to protect the common people. Like Cangse Sanren, she represents the courage to make her own path in the world, and to marry for love with no considerations for social status or conventions, and the decision to becoming a travelling rogue cultivator. 

On top of all these great things this scene accomplish, it is also just incredibly cute. After their talk, their parting is described like such: “Soon, the group had gone down the mountain, and Wei Wuxian could only say goodbye to them with some regret, continuing on another path alongside Lan Wangji.”  Honestly, my ‘WWX and LWJ become Xiao MianMian’s shushus’ agenda is alive and well and I will not accept anything else.

In CQL, however, the reunion happens by pure coincidence. The scene is in actuality a mash-up between the reunion we have in the novel and another scene that takes place earlier, in which fugitives WWX and LWJ enter the home of strangers as they are looking for some water (and end up frolicking in hay). 

Simply by changing the circumstances and the setting of the reunion, something is lost of the thematic connection between WWX/Wangxian and MianMian, even though viewers still get told that MianMian is someone who night-hunts. Without entering into the specific debate of whether show don’t tell is the only acceptable storytelling strategy, I think it’s fair to say that it is more effective to run into MianMian as she is night hunting based on the same rumours of hauntings as Wangxian instead of seeing her get home, pull a sword willy-nilly after hearing something suspicious in her backyard and finally getting told that she was out night hunting. 

Moreover, having to recreate most of the beats of MianMian’s last appearance into this new context seems to have been quite confusing to the CQL production team, and seems to have breed, as a result, a lack of internal coherence to the scene (cut between the end of ep 43 and the beginning of ep 44), regardless of any of its other pitfalls as an adaptation. 

In the CQL version, when we meet the family on their way back to their home, Xiao MianMian had been running around and her father chastises her by telling her something along the lines of “Don’t run around, what if you had gotten caught by the YLLZ?”, thereby suggesting that MianMian’s husband believes what is said about WWX. To this, Xiao MianMian replies But Mom Says he’s a Good Guy Though. Obviously, the intent of the writers was to show that MianMian had never bought into the rumours about WWX. However, this exchange makes seemingly no sense if one thinks about it for longer than a second. It suggests that MianMian had never talked about this topic with her husband or that he had never heard her talk about the YLLZ with their daughter. Considering how dangerous the YLLZ is said to be, and that they were night-hunting while he was a fugitive, I don’t see how that would have not come up even if for some unlikely reason she had until then only talked about the YLLZ with her daughter. Of course, one could suggest that MianMian’s husband says this to tease their daughter, fully aware that the YLLZ’s reputation of swallowing children is a tall tale, but the tone is not quite right? And it does not jive with the fact that MianMian is not on board with defaming people: I don’t think she’d be okay with her husband knowingly using the myth of the YLLZ to scare their kid into obedience because it’s convenient to do so? A miss.

To make matters worse, when WWX later asks MianMian is she’s back from night-hunting, Xiao MianMian says that they are back from searching for the YLLZ. First, there is a clear lack of coherence with the previous exchange between Xiao MianMian and her father. And again, it’s hard to get to the meaning of that exchange: is it implying that MianMian was looking for WWX to offer him her help? She certainly doesn’t once she does meet him, so that appears unlikely or at least it’s a plothole/dangling plot thread. But why be looking for him, if she knows he’s not the monster the rumours make him out to be? Clearly, the writers wanted to tell the viewers that MianMian is a rogue cultivator, and figured that having her back from a night-hunt would be enough: but why this line by Xiao MianMian about searching for the YLLZ? Is it just the fancy of a kid, who makes up her own stories while her parents pursue other cases (especially since MianMian says she was looking for puppets)? But then Xiao MianMian does say that ‘we’ were searching for him...

I can’t figure it out. I find it even weirder that, when WWX asks Xiao MianMian whether she is scared of the scary YLLZ (although she’s literally just said moments before that she was not scared of him in her exchange with her father that WWX certainly heard), Xiao MianMian starts replying that she is not scared and MianMian cuts her, apologizing to WWX that he daughter is too young and naive. What is she apologizing for? How is her daughter naive for not being scared of the YLLZ? Or is she apologizing for her daughter suggesting they were searching for the YLLZ? If so, why cut her now and not when she suggested that they were searching for him? 

What’s happening in this scene?!

Also, even an attempt to keep lines as close to what they were in the novel ends up backfiring with the new context. In the novel, out night-hunting, MianMian asks “ 什么人” when she sees WWX come out from the direction of a graveyard (she has not seen LWJ yet). Knowing that she might suspect him of being a corpse or a spirit considering that it is night and that he is leaving a graveyard said to be haunted, WWX responds  “不管是什么人，总归是人，不是别的东西 “ (No matter who I am, I’m a person after all, and not something else). In CQL, when MianMian hears a sound in her backyard, she asks  “ 什么人” and, after LWJ comes out and is recognized by MianMian, WWX still responds (??) with a similar yet slightly different sentence: “ 不管是谁，反正是个人，不是东西 “ (No matter who I am, anyway I am a person, not a thing). This exchange in the context of the scene in CQL baffles me because: why would there be then an expectation that they would not be a person in this situation? Why would he say that after MianMian has seen and recognized LWJ, thus knowing full well that it is a person and not a spirit or a corpse? As well, why change “ 别的东西 “ (something else/different thing) for “ 东西 “ (thing) since MianMian’s question does not imply by itself that she thinks they are not people since she asks "什么人” (literally: what person?), making WWX’s statement that he is “not a thing”  completely come out of nowhere? And it’s so much more perplexing than his original statement that he is not “something else” from a human. 

I’m spending time on these two lines because I find them to be a sort of microcosm of some of the questionable adaptation choices made in CQL: at times the web series chooses to keep things from the novel even after changing the context in which these elements unfold without understanding how these no longer work within their new context. Yet, at the same time, it feels comfortable making what appear on the surface to be minute changes without thinking through the implications of them, and thus changing the point of these elements through these minute modifications. 

Aside from these elements which prevent this moment in CQL to give us a scene that is internally coherent, let’s further interrogate some of the adaptational changes made between the novel and the web series, and their impact on the themes and characterisation. 

One change that conflicts with the characterisation and the thematic discussion regards WWX inquiring about MianMian’s husband. Unlike in the novel, where WWX engages him in a little bit of chitchat and then feels forced by conventions to ask to which sect he belongs, CQL makes it seem as if it is an information WWX wants to ask because it’s literally the first thing he says to him, not even after a salutation or a “well met” (I will be magnanimous and believe that that choice to do so was for the sake of brevity and not because the preceding dialogue had not been written in the novel and the CQL writers couldn’t be bothered to come up with something). This, however, makes it look like WWX puts a lot of importance in knowing someone’s allegiance to a sect, which is the exact opposite of how he feels about it. 

She pulled the man up, “This is my husband.”

Noticing that they held no malicious intent, the man softened visibly. After some chatter, Wei Wuxian asked out of convenience, “Which sect do you belong to and which kind of cultivation do you practice?”

The man answered frankly, “None of them.”

Luo Qingyang gazed at her husband, smiling, “My husband isn’t of the cultivating world. He used to be a merchant. But, he’s willing to go night-hunting with me…”

It was both rare and admirable that an ordinary person, and a man at that, would be willing to give up his originally stable life and dare travel the world with his wife, unafraid of danger and wander. Wei Wuxian could not help feeling respect for him.

Of course, without WWX’s thought process provided to us in the narration, the implications of MianMian’s husband being originally a merchant are a little bit lost in CQL, even if CQL!MianMian provides that piece of information. Of course, CQL could have chosen to include WWX’s musings, since it does include in this very scene some voice-over thoughts earlier. It is a shame though, that it does not, since MianMian and her husband are clear parallels for WWX’s parents in that regard: his father also left a stable life to travel the world with his wife.

Although, to be fair, CQL!MianMian is no longer a rogue cultivator who travels the world, so it is not like her husband made the decision to travel the world with her. Indeed, by frankensteining the two scenes from the novel, MianMian is by default no longer a rogue cultivator who travels the world: she is a rogue cultivator, sure, in that she does not belong to a sect, but she is a rogue cultivator with a home she clearly needs to inhabit during the day, what with the fact that they raise animals (we see little chicks in the background and there are piles of hay), and who night-hunts close enough to her home to be able to come back home in the morning. Moreover, without the context of meeting MianMian at the same glory-less night-hunt as Wangxian, it is harder to express the idea that MianMian is someone who chooses, like them, to do so for the common good and not for any prestige or rewards. MianMian is no longer another cultivator who goes ‘where the chaos is’ and, in terms of positive female representation, it is truly a shame. After all, the novel frames this as a positive and admirable trait which we see in our two main (male) protagonists: to have a woman follow, independently, the same path as them is meaningful. 

Finally, instead of the scene closing with a regretful parting that hints at the sense of kinship between MianMian’s family and Wangxian, we get a truly (imo) patronizing ending. In CQL, their conversation is disrupted by threatening sounds. LWJ then instructs MianMian to stay in her home and protect Xiao MianMian while LWJ and WWX take care of things. So feminism..... such empowerment... To be honest, if CQL meant to change things and put MianMian in scenes where she wasn’t originally, why not have her go with Wangxian? Why not have her be there for the Mass Grave Hill Siege? Why not have her leave her daughter with her husband and let her be a badass? Instead, they conveniently check her out of the action after putting her directly in the middle of it. Instead of having MianMian be away from the sects and doing her own rogue cultivator thing as the events of the novels unfolded in WWX’s second life, explaining her absence, CQL reintroduces her just before an important moment but chooses to send her away once more, to stay home and protect her daughter, probably because they did not want to take the time and energy to figure out how and where she would fit into these scenes in which she had not be written in the novel. This is the kind of adaptational choice that makes me question why people consider CQL a more progressive work of fiction with regards to its treatment of female characters. 

Final Musings: sometimes, less is more

Does an increase to the number of appearances of a character shape their impact on the audience? Or, conversely, does it dilute their meaning within and their impact on the text? There is not a simple answer to that question. Certainly, repetition is in itself a literary device, and many readers need salient and blunt reminders to get a message across, the likes of: the important characters are the ones you see the most often. Likewise, having a character feature more often in a work can provide the necessary breathing space to explore more and in more depth their psychology, motivations, past, actions, etc. However, the simple act of increasing the presence of a character does not inherently increase their impact on a work of fiction nor does it increase the nuances and depths of that character. 

It is possible to adhere to a cynical or optimistic perspective regarding CQL’s decision to feature MDZS’ female characters more prominently. It is not hard to divine why the decision could have been made solely for the financial incentive of “pandering” to a female audience who dares to want to see themselves on  screen. Conversely, one can imagine a production team animated by good intentions, who simply want to give more limelight to these female characters. Whether purely motivated by a profit-based logic or solely well-intentioned, or at a vector of both motives, it is clear that the CQL production did not increase the screen presence of MDZS’s female characters out of a desire to tell a stronger, more effective version of the original story they were working with. And that is why the urge to quantify good representation will always end up failing us in my opinion.

While it can be productive to consider trends, it does not give us a better media landscape or better individual works of fiction; it does not necessarily give us more impactful or better written female characters. This type of analysis urges us to see female characters as female first, without truly attempting to understand their purpose and treatment within the story. While MDZS has fewer female characters, these characters showcase different personalities and occupy different positions within the social world of the novel; they have arcs and thematic resonance and they cannot be simply replaced by a “sexy lamp” without disrupting the plot completely. They are also often given a surprising amount of depth, if readers are willing to pay attention to all that is found in the text and in the subtext.

For such a long novel, MDZS is able to remonstrate a certain amount of restraint wrt its storytelling. The timespan it wants to cover is expansive, its cast of characters not insignificant, and the story it aims to tell is ambitious. It is easy to imagine a meandering version of MDZS where many more characters are present, including many more female characters, or where the existing female characters get an extended presence within the narrative. But would those female characters have been more impactful? Would the story told have been a better one? The way the CQL production team chose to adapt MianMian hints that this is not a done conclusion. 

(+ bonus MianMian meta)

[songofclarity]

Omg I love your headcanons about WRH being LSZ's bio dad and fully support them!

Do you have any ideas about the mom though?

I personally think LSZ took the most after her in looks and temperament (because if the Jin saw a wen child that looked like WRH in the labor camps they would've killed him right away) I suppose after losing both his sons in such a traumatic way, a grieving WRH would be more drawn to someone kind and gentle and compassionate on whose shoulder he could cry and be vulnerable.

Idk if a-yuan was a planned child or an "oopsie" baby but either way he was the product of a healthy loving 100% consensual relationship and both parents wanted and loved him (I hate it when WRH's character is reduced to "perverted abusive rapist" just because he's an antagonist, we already have JGS godammit!)

also I want the madam Wen from "heliocentric" in there too because that woman gives me chills and interfering in WRH's sex life is maybe her way of coping with his lack of interest in herself by being indirectly part of his romances but it's still so weird and creepy lol

I'm also thinking MY was involved in LSZ's mom's death. Maybe she was getting suspicious of him or she was trying to convince WRH to negotiate for a peaceful end to the war... Etc either way her being alive wasn't in MY's advantage so she had to go, and I don't think MY would hesitate to murder an innocent young mother if it served his purposes after all he did to gain WRH's favor. Also if WRH loses that source of emotional support he would become easier for MY to manipulate and betray

Sorry this was meant to be a short ask about LSZ's birth mother's headcanons but I ended going off the rails lol

Yay, more support for Wen RuoHan as Wen Yuan's dad! And everything you said about the mom is great, I'm a fan!

I don't exactly have solid headcanons on the mom, but I do have a collection of options in mind depending on what I'm in the mood for! I have been sitting on another ask which asks me how I imagine Madam Wen and I have been planning to go through a few versions of her on that, including the one(s) that could be Wen Yuan's mom lol

Love Wen Yuan looking more like her though 🥺 While I do acknowledge this passage exists:

Wen Ning, "I thought every single person from out sect was dead. I really didn't expect that A-Yuan would still be alive. He looks so much like my cousin when he was around twenty." (ch. 89, ERS)

Wen Ning was looking for Wen resemblance in Lan SiZhui, so he would be searching for all the similarities with Wen RuoHan first. Considering the Jin viewed the Wen Remnants like animals, little Wen Yuan would hardly be recognized with dirt on his face and dirty clothes. Plus baby fat~ Jin GuangYao might have recognized him, but Wen RuoHan's whole household would have been killed in Nightless City by the Sunshot Campaign, so no one is looking for Anastasia a missing baby in the aftermath.

I also like to consider that Granny Wen is Wen Yuan's maternal-grandmother, and she took care of him when everyone, including her daughter/his mother, were reeling from Wen RuoHan's death. Maybe Wen Yuan's mother didn't want to leave her husband, and sat staunchly at his casket/tablet, dressed in white, even as the gates of Nightless City were broken in...

Let Wen Yuan's mother love Wen RuoHan! 🥺 Let them be sweet together! A lady both gentle yet strong, which comes with the territory of having to stand out of a very large crowd to get Wen RuoHan's attention in the first place. And when she has him, she has him! Let Wen RuoHan love her, too! 🥺

And while I don't think their relationship is at all a political/alliance one as I headcanon her from a clan already loyal to the Wen, I think there would have been some pressure on her (not by Wen RuoHan) to maybe do whatever needed to be done to encourage a pregnancy. For one thing, the Wen Clan survives on the prevalence of the Wen bloodline, so a new little Wen heir would improve morale vs the Sunshot Campaign. For another thing, I headcanon Wen RuoHan just loving being a dad and having a family in general. But he is grieving the loss of his last family. So an "oopsie" baby for Wen RuoHan, who is not in the mindset to have children right now, while more or less planned by everyone else. I think it would be something he didn't think he knew he wanted, however, and he would be very happy along with his wife~!

The Madam Wen from Heliocentric is a unique case and I would love to explore her role in a story where Wen Yuan is Wen RuoHan's child (not necessarily their child, for reasons not yet revealed lmao). And also, I *have* thought about Meng Yao doing more dastardly deeds in Nightless City exactly as you describe. If the Wen are expected to all die at the hands of the Sunshot Campaign anyway, what's the difference between now or later besides the risk of getting caught? Since Meng Yao plans to betray and kill Wen RuoHan, what's the life of one innocent women on the side to help get him there? There are plenty of ways to make it look like an accident, and then Wen RuoHan is easy picking...

Which just means I need more AU where the story changes and headcanoning more Wens doesn't just mean more dead Wens 😂 Happy Wen family, please!

[guqin-and-flute]

ok but if jiang cheng gives jin guangyao a jiang sect clarity bell he's going to be so confused and shocked and then probably cry. for days. this family wants him! on purpose! not even as a disciple but as part of the family itself! and they're all accepting him intentionally! and publicly! he's not going to be able to handle that at all.

Anonymous said: Yanli is pregnant, about to give birth and JGY is so anxious and nervous. It's his first kid! He doesn't want to do anything wrong, neither for this child, nor for Yanli, nor for her brothers. He's going crazy. As time went by, the more involved with the affairs of the Jiang sect he became, but now, in the face of the birth of his son, nothing was enough to soothe his nerves. He was genuinely going crazy. So JC, WWX and JGY bonding time!!

(WONDERFUL, anons! I’m putting these two together because it felt right! This is a trip and a half to write because I came into it going ‘this is fluff!’ and JGY came into it going ‘this is torture’. Did you know that having nice things is untenably terrible? Cause I didn’t until I consulted JGY, but this seems to be the case)

[First post/fic of the Peony to Lotus verse. Set after these posts]

Jin Guangyao hated when his thoughts became too much to ignore. It should not happen, he should be able to package this anxiety into a neat little box like every other thing that had ever made his hands shake and get on with his business but here he was, gripping the edge of the window sill tight enough to make his knuckles ache as he simply fought to breathe. 

A-Li was far enough along, now, that she spent most of her time bedridden, radiant and tired and soft and patient and--

Sometimes, he would come to himself realizing he was smiling over something ridiculous Wei Wuxian had said, or the way that A-Li looked in the sun just then, or A-Yuan clinging to his leg and he wouldn’t have meant to and it was so fucking awful. And he had no one to discuss it with, not even A-Li, not even Er-ge because they would have no idea what he was talking about. Because they had had the practice of their whole lives to bear the weight of putting their heart into other people and letting them run around and do what they would with it. Soon, he would have a child. A child. 

He already had a wife, and he had felt the uncomfortable stretch of accommodation in his bones when he had realized, with deep terror, that he actually loved her. Deeper still, somehow, when she had loved him back. Then Wei Wuxian had elbowed his way into His People--when had he gotten people? When had that happened?--then Jiang Wanyin, then Wuxian’s little A-Yuan. Lying in bed next to a gently snoring A-Li, staring at the ceiling above, painted in the slow, light ripples from the lake, he had quietly realized that even Wen Qing and Wen Ning would leave holes within himself he would be able to trace in their outlines, were they taken from Lotus Pier.

It had taken him quietly confessing to Lan Xichen the depth of his anxiety over the pregnancy, his gentle chuckle, his hand on his cheek as he assured him that he would be an excellent father that Gods! Gods, he was one of them, too! One of His, living there already, before he even knew to look. How had he not known? When had he filleted his heart in such a manner and with what knife so sharp that he hadn’t even felt the sting? Was it supposed to be this easy to lose yourself in others? The last time he had been a part of anyone, she had died in his arms on a whorehouse bed, whispering about a man who had never come back to collect his token, his son. Her son. 

Jin Guangyao blew out his breath, rocked from heel to the ball of his foot as if limbering up for exercise, trying to expend the buzz of anxious energy that crawled under his skin, excise the slow panic that had been building these many months. 

Wen Qing had said it was going well. That everything was normal. Back pains and knee pains and trouble sleeping were normal. 

A child.

Pushing away from the sill, he shook his arms out at his sides as he turned away from, then back to the window when the nausea within him bloomed, bid him to grab something, hold something, anchor himself against the current of this emotion. He wrapped his fingers back around it, put his head down and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He was supposed to be meeting Jiang Wanyin in the Hall of Swords. He was going to be late.

There was no reason for this. There were duties to attend to, things he must do, errands he must run. A-Li had said she felt fine. They had a while, yet; weeks. Days. 

Days and he would hold a baby. His baby. Their baby. Made from them, of them, out of them and into the world where it could grow and think and laugh and run and leave and die--

A harsh, clamped down sound left him as he squeezed his eyes tighter, tucked his chin down lower as he rocked back again, stretching back from his arms, feeling the burn down the backs of his legs. Focus on the physicality. Focus on the feeling. Accept the inevitable; what was done was done. 

Bring in a life to the world and you bring in a death. How equitable, how balanced. How insane.

How was he allowed to do this? How could someone like him who had never dreamed of fatherhood past a vague, uninterested ‘perhaps’ of a future just...choose that? How on earth could someone like him be allowed to make another human and be tasked with its health, it’s happiness? What did he know of happiness, having had so precious little of it? 

Well, until now. And there lay the problem. 

For here he was, in a place he thought was exile but was, in fact, a seeming paradise unlike any he had known, full of ease and warmth and love and it was worse than he could ever have possibly imagined because he was used to the struggle it was supposed to have been. Had always been. Was going to have been. His goals had never been about comfort and love but about safety and what was owed to him. He was a Jin, therefore he would be a Jin--he would work to become it at the expense of everything and everyone else because it was the place he belonged. If he could get there, if he could be recognized, it would be Right. Not necessarily good, not necessarily comfortable, but Right. Safe.

And now here he was, miles and miles away at Lotus Pier, amongst Jiangs and Wens, lilypads and lotuses, and he was happy. Not necessarily Right. Not necessarily...Safe, in the most concrete of definitions. The scorch marks at the base of some buildings, the abundance of tablets in the shrine told how nebulous such physical safety might prove to be. The Jins had the money and numbers for that safety. But ask him--ask him, don’t ask him, please--whether he now wanted that or this and his hesitation would betray decades of his life, his promises to his mother, his plans. 

And it was all transient. Able to be taken and broken in the beat of a heart. Lanling was supposed to have been forever. Yunmeng was supposed to have been a setback, a roadblock, a stalling, a breaking, a dying of a dream. How on earth had this hidden in the folds of that? Just burst into being with no intention? How had this happened?

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought of these things throughout A-Li’s pregnancy, hadn’t spent many a night pacing throughout the walkways of Lotus Pier, taking care of this or that at some godsforsaken hour where he would sometimes cross paths with a cheery Wei Wuxian, wiling away the wee hours of the morning on less focused pursuits. But these thoughts had been successfully contained and filed away, not unearthing themselves in the light of day when other obligations required his attention. 

They would grow louder when he saw A-Li’s belly, when he lay his cheek on it in bed and felt the restless life within push back against him, but they were still containable, kept at bay by the sheer joy that lit his wife up whenever she caught him looking at her. She was infectious with it, her excitement to usher in this new person seeming so clean and pure and delightful through her eyes. And he could see it--of course he could--the joy in the idea of a little one who came out loving you, would only ever know loving you, if you did it right--

And that. And that made his stomach churn and his hands clench, made every uncertainty that had ever used his ribs as a ladder to his throat scream in chorus because it was if you did it right. There was no plan to cover everything. No contingency that caught everyone, in all cases. And there were so many ways to fail--in little ways, big ways, catastrophic ways. 

When this tumble of a thought started, it was nearly impossible not to be crushed beneath its roll, the parade of every man he had ever seen in the brothel of his childhood playing across the backs of his eyes, accompanied by the ever present absence and then terribly wounding reality of his own father. How could he not be like them? What treacherous part of his own psyche did he have to avoid so he did not wound this child the ways he had been? Could he? 

Could he only wait, without a plan, without warning, for the time that he would bring harm to his child, whether through action or inaction? He would go insane. He would absolutely lose his mind. 

He felt as if he was already. 

He pushed back from the window again, hard, swung himself around and set off for the Hall of Swords. The sun passed hot on his face through the windows, brief bands of cool striping over when he reached the edge. 

Jiang Wanyin was seated on the lotus throne with Wei Wuxian perched insolently on one of it’s sleek petals, both looking down at something in Jiang Wanyin’s hand. “Hello, Jin-gongzi,” came Wen Ning’s hesitant voice from his side and, wound as tight as he was, Jin Guangyao had to clamp down his startlement and instead offer a smile and nod to the man that moved as quietly as a ghost. 

“Good afternoon, Wen-gongzi. Jiang-zongzhu. Wei-gongzi.”

“Sooo formal,” Wuxian drawled, spinning Chenqing through his fingers with a grin. “Come here, we’ve got something to show you.” Eagerly, he hopped down, then hesitated and turned back to peer at him closely. “You alright?”

Jin Guangyao flashed a smile he knew pressed in his dimples and stuffed down every part of him that shook. “Perfectly.” When he approached, Jiang Wanyin traded a knowing, poorly suppressed smile with both Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning beside him and held out his hand.

In it was a tiny silver bell set on a long purple tassel, the knotwork fine and intricate, hung with a little jade lotus above it. The Jiang Sect’s Clarity Bell. Since it seemed to be what he was intending, Jin Guangyao accepted it with a smile and polite nod as he brought it closer to study, absorbing the engraving of the lotus petals on the metal, the clear chime that rang out when it moved. It was a beautiful little thing and it took him half a moment to realize that this was them seeking his approval for a gift for his child. The spread of his smile became slightly more real and he tilted his head. “Ah. It’s beautiful, Jiang-zongzhu.” A bit long for an infant, he added silently, but they will grow into it, certainly. “Very lovely.”

“Uh...mn,” Jiang Wanyin answered, the way he had started doing when he was unsure of what just happened and when he glanced up, he caught him sharing a befuddled look with Wei Wuxian.

“Wow. I dunno what I was expecting, but not that,” Wei Wuxian laughed, putting his hands on his hips and shaking his head as if he were puzzled. 

Jin Guangyao let his placeholder smile emerge, holding the pleasantness in place while his mind whirred, attempting to piece together what had gone wrong. Was he supposed to be more excited? He could certainly do that. “I appreciate it very much,” he elaborated, stroking a finger down the sleek tassels in obvious admiration. “The workmanship is incredibly intricate and lovely. A-Li will be very pleased and I’m sure it will serve our child well.” Perhaps it was supposed to be of bigger consequence--but if that were the case, wouldn’t there have been more ceremony?

Wei Wuxian snickered again, very clearly at him, and even Jiang Wanyin grinned, tilting his brother another one of those infuriating  looks that, at present, was sending irritation skittering down Jin Guangyao’s spine. Usually he had the patience for their antics, but with the background noise of his fear, it was a bit much. 

“Jin-g-gongzi,” Wen Ning spoke up again, the hint of a smile in his voice. “It’s for you.”

Jin Guangyao looked back at him, uncomprehendingly blank. It’s for him. What was for him? The bell? The bell was for the Jiang Sect--

His head jerked back around to stare at it again, his fingers closing like a vice around the smooth flow of the tassels. For him. It was for him. “But….” choked from him without warning, so he snapped his mouth shut and simply...stared.

“Oh-ho, that’s a new one. What does that one mean?” Wei Wuxian leaned down in his peripheral, the indistinct blur of his face cut with the white of his smile.

He could not answer. That burning, trembling fear was bubbling up his stomach, his throat, his spine until it throbbed in his temples and sinuses. 

“--figured it was about time, I mean, considering how long you’ve been here and all--” Wei Wuxian was saying breezily in the background, but Jin Guangyao felt the cold weight of Wen Ning’s gentle hand on his arm like gravity, pulling him back to this room. 

“Jin-gongzi, are you alright?” he asked, softly.

Wei Wuxian stopped at this and the brightly colored forms in the corners of his eyes drew closer, reached out to touch him as well, his shoulder, his arm. “Hey. Hey, Jin-xiong, look at me.”

He did, because it was simple, because it was asked of him and when he did, Wei Wuxian blinked. “Wow. You really didn’t know, did you?”

“We have one for the baby, of course,” Jiang Wanyin added in from his side, as if that was even remotely the problem. “It’s smaller, but….”

They seemed to be waiting for him to say something, which at this moment seemed absurdly impossible. It was for him. For him. Without asking. Without begging. Without having to bow and scrape and kowtow and….

They wanted him. They wanted him. They wanted him. 

He opened his mouth to say something, anything but all that came out was a strangled, shaky, “Ha….” that squeezed shut at the end as his stupid fucking traitorous ill-behaved throat closed and he, all at once, had to crouch down to stop the spinning in his idiot head, burying his face in his knees. There was a hand on his back as he sucked in a shuddering breath, then another on his wrist as someone crouched before him but he couldn’t look up because his eyes were dripping unsanctioned tears onto his purple robes and the clarity bell rang out sweetly with every ridiculous tremor of his hand. 

He didn’t want this. A child. A family. He couldn’t want this because he wanted this and if he wanted something, it would hurt to be taken away, it could tear him, it could kill him. He wasn’t big enough to have this many People huddle inside of his chest. He hadn’t enough heart to go around. 

But they wanted him anyway. Not out of obligation or guilt or political savvy or because he had done something so exceptional it could not be ignored but because they did. Him.

Help.

At least he had always cried quietly. The one blessing in this whole ordeal. If he couldn’t control his damn self, at least he wasn’t wailing like...an infant. A baby. His baby.

Gods, what in the hell was he doing?

“Should we get A-jie?” was muttered and he surged to his feet, startling Wei Wuxian stumbling back a few steps.

“No!” he gasped, allowing his hand to clamp onto Wen Ning’s supportive wrist so he didn’t topple over. “No, no, don’t bother A-Li, I’m fine, I’m--”

“You’re definitely not,” Wuxian interrupted with an incredulous laugh. “Did we break you? Is it bad?”

“Is it bad?” Jiang Wanyin echoed, quieter, more uncertain from his side and Jin Guangyao shook his head, tried desperately to latch back onto his control. 

“No, it’s not. It’s...um….” That stupid quaver spoiled it again as his gaze landed back on the bell, innocent and fine, resting on the backs of his knuckles from where it sprouted through his grip. His face crumpled anew, this time a little softer, at little less wildly transporting, but still fully out of his control and dammit, shit, and fuck. This was stupid. He was stupid. This didn’t need to be happening.

Wen Ning gently patted his back as he covered his face, trying in vain to stifle this absurd, unceasing flow that seemed to come from deep within him as every part of him writhed, knowing he was being seen doing this. Knowing that he could not stop. That this weakness was….

 On purpose? A small, helpless part of him was asking repeatedly. Did you mean to do this? You know everyone will be able to see if I wear this, right? This is on purpose? 

A stupid question. An obvious answer. The reasons for which eluded him. 

“If it upsets you so much, I could take it back for you,” Wei Wuxian teased--obviously teased--while reaching out and in the most terrifying motion he had ever made, Jin Guangyao jerked the bell away from him and pressed it to his middle. He hadn’t even meant to do it. 

He needed to leave.

“No. I’m fine. I...thank you. Thank you for this, I….” He looked over at Jiang Wanyin, saw the alarm and furrowed bemusement in his face and managed to force out, nakedly. “I’m...having a difficult time...absorbing this.”

“Well, that much is clear!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, clapping his brother on the shoulder. “Look, Jiang Cheng! We’ve made him speechless! Took the silver tongue right out of his head and turned it into a bell.”

“Are you...happy?” Jiang Wanyin asked, hesitantly.

Jin Guangyao was not so certain--was happiness supposed to burn like this? Dredge your deepest depths without mercy? But he could not lie and say that that small voice hadn’t now transmuted into simply chanting mine mine mine mine mine. He needed to absorb this. He needed to be away. It was wrong because it was not Right--but when had Right ever made him so warm? Golden. He swallowed and took a deep, shuddering breath, stifling the steady swell of tears with immense difficulty. “I think so.”

“You are so strange,” Wei Wuxian grinned, throwing his arms around him and Wen Ning. “Here, I’ll put it on.”

When he cheerily plucked the bell from Jim Guangyao's frozen grip, Jiang Wanyin shot his brother a scowl. "Don't you think I should be the one to do that?"

"I don't see you shifting yourself to, so it's my job as oldest brother to welcome him in," Wei Wuxian announced. "Deal with it."

It all seemed so wretchedly possible as he knelt down before him and gleefully manhandled his belt around, as Jin Guangyao just...let him, staring down at him in a daze. A life here, raising children--happy children with a happy wife and happy brother-in-law's and happy sect-mates. Happy. Ephemeral.  Delicate. Unprotected.

“There,” Wei Wuxian proclaimed as he rose again, wrapping his arm around his shoulders again and thumping his chest affectionately. “Now you’re officially one of us. It was all Jiang Cheng’s idea, to tell you the truth.”

It was all Jin Guangyao could do to take an iron grip of his throat’s functions, look up at Jiang Wanyin’s nervous smile and ask in a tight, small voice. “You’re sure?”

While his smile turned slightly sour with puzzlement, the Clan Leader gave a huff of amusement. “Of course I’m sure. What kind of question is that?”

“Congratulations, gongzi!” Wen Ning beamed eagerly, bobbing his head. They all looked at him with wide smiles. Now knowing smiles. The knowing that he wanted to hate but couldn’t muster more than a prickle.

When Jin Guangyao bowed, deeply, they scoffed and the tiny bell hung from his belt gave a little chime. Still smiling, they watched him go and he blindly made his way back and back and back to his room. To A-Li. 

She was reading on the bed when he burst in and she blinked up at him. “Oh! Are--” her eyes went to his hand, clutching the slim silk line that connected to his belt, and her worry melted away into beaming excitement. “So they did it? They made me promise not to be there. Here, come here, come here, you.” She held out her arms and he shakingly made his way to the bed and practically collapsed within them, burying his nose into the softness of her as she wrapped around him. 

Here, he was safe. Here, he could ask. “Is this alright?” he whispered, voice choked again. “Is this allowed?”

“Is what, A-Yao?”

He clenched the bell in one hand and laid the other on her stomach, both still trembling as he shook his head, encompassing all of it, everything, anything here.

“Oh, love,” she crooned into his hair, stroked his face. “Of course.”

And here, against her, in the quiet and the safety, he let the tears come again as the pressure threatened to burst him--let himself weep, either in joy or grief, for all the things he now had to lose.

[jackhkeynes]

15m Lexembr

nau /no/ (obsolete or poetic) ship, boat, sea-faring vessel powered by oar or perhaps sail; (obsolete) nave, the middle or body of a church building usually containing the pews; (archaic or dialect) navel, bellybutton, indentation remaining in the abdomen of mammals from where the umbilicus was attached before birth; (dialect, by extension) indentation, hole, result of drilling with an auger; (archaic or historical) bowl, dish, boat, utensil with a handle and spout used for serving and pouring sauces such as gravy; (with bel in the phrase bel nau) saying, affirmation, profession, creed, words and promises as opposed to material acts

particularly bel nau /bɛl no/ [ˌbɛwˈno] fine words, promises or flattery usually viewed as empty, insincere or hypocritical; literally "beautiful creed".

Etymology: in most senses originally from Latin nāvis "ship; nave of a church", both senses of which survive unmolested into various Old Boral forms nau, naf, nof etc (though some of these are likely imported from Old French). The form naf for "nave" wins out by the end of fifteenth century, while the form nau is retained primarily for the innovative use "dish with handle for sauce"; this presumably is motivated by the similar shape.

Meanwhile, in the western dialects of Sothbar et al, the Old English nafola "navel" enters Boral as nau(l) in the same sense. The meaning of "navel, indentation" is occasionally seen in other dialects (perhaps motivated by the hollow shape of a bowl) but never catches on completely.

The jump to "aphorism, short witticism (usually in bel nau)" is less clear. There are extant 1760s ceramics with sayings written around the rim, but the causality here could flow in either direction: it is either that sayings were first likened to a pouring sauce dish and the ceramics are a reference thereto, or else some enterprising potter decided to decorate their wares in this way and the semantic shift of nau comes afterwards.

Alcot y bel nau, tu pos ja traiçon me dar. /alˈkɔt i bɛl no | ti pɔz ʒa treˈdzɔn me dar/ [ɐˈgɔt i ˌbɛwˈno | ti ˈpoʒ ʒa tʀɪˈdzɔn mɪ ˈdɑː] how.much def pretty words | 2s may.sbj still betrayal 1s.obl give-inf Whatever you say, you might yet betray me.

--

lifted in translation from the pages of the diary of Nadàlla fi Carol [c. 1576 - 1641 N], eldest daughter of the town reverend in Santrafew [1] during its initial growth. Her records, surviving due to a misclassification leading them to be archived with accounting books, are an invaluable view into the close perspective of the early town.

1592 Nascentiæ, Friday 15th August

…another argument with Dembro and his masons over the reconstruction of the nave after one of the butresses failed last year. The temporary pine roofing has been rather noticeable and Father's talks with Dembro have led him to believe the simplest thing would be to take down some of the stonework from the surviving side and give the nave a fully wooden roof.

This idea had barely been set to parchment before the ediculate [2] crowd were up in arms, and Zocala came downriver from her acreages by moshone [canoe] for the first time all year. None of us have yet seen the new husband except Father for the wedding, but she was this time alone*. Given that she finds her worship elsewhere I can hardly see it is her affair whatever the nave…

---

[1] Named for the archangel Saint Raphael, patron of travellers and medical practitioners, Santrafew (Markish /sənˈtɹa.fəw/) is one of the earliest and most northerly New Provincial settlements, located at the mouth of the Becouin River [the Charles River]. It is roughly coterminous with Boston in Massachusetts.

[2] A Christian sect with an unsteady relationship to the Roman popes; their practices centred in particular holy places and monuments.

*here likely meaning she was accompanied by at least two maidservants.

[lostsoulaltair]

OnS Theories (17S). Ninth Theory - Mahiru’s plan

Hello everyone, I hope you had a great day, I hope you managed to spend time with your loved ones, remember to stay safe!

This theory will explain the rather crazy plan of Mahiru’s agenda. While I’m aware she’s the least loved character by the fandom, it cannot be denied her plan finally has striked down or halted Shikama Doji.

Let’s proceed to discuss such plan.

P.S: Theories exclude ships and remain within a neutral view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsZRq9BPb3A

As many might be aware, Mahiru Hiragi has been designing a plan to counter the First Progenitor ever since she got tired of having her life controlled by the Hiragi Family and the First Progenitor; her wings were cut down since she was a genious, one of a kind within the Hiragi Family which only made Tenri hold Shinoa as a hostage, which is something Tenri reveals to Kureto in the LNs of the Catastrophe.

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 98

But what exactly has been Mahiru’s plan? What has she been fighting for?

It is finally known that, after she met Guren and was eventually separated from him, she had to endure experiments; but within this, Mahiru’s demanor or attitude turned rather cold until Shinoa was born:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Guren Ichinose Catastrophe at 16  - Chapter 18

Shinoa became her happiness but at the same time, the one that would pick Tenri in order to cut the wings of a genious. But then, what was her plan all along?

Her first plan or rather original plan was to betray the Hiragi Family by working together with Rigr Stafford, but of course, what she’d never take in consideration was that her fate would be sealed or set in stone ever since she was born. And thus, the plan began; at first it might seem she was the one behind the experiments but it was Rigr Stafford who began the experiments with young kids; such thing is stated in the World Resurrection LNs:

In the 2nd Volume of the Resurrection; Rigr has conversation with Guren on which he tells him he isn’t sure if his own men or group were working under the First or him; despite everything he proceeded with his own agenda.

Of course, within this, Mahiru eventually got herself involved with the Hyakuya Sect:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Guren Ichinose Catastrophe at 16 - Chapter 30

Back in those times, Mahiru was observing the progress of the experiments of the Hyakuya Sect, of course, that didn’t mean she enjoyed seeing kids being experimented upon which was the case with Yu; she saw how he was constantly experimented upon until she told him he should find a reason to live no matter what since he had a right to live.

But what was the purpose of her monitoring the experiments the Hyakuya Sect were performing? Was it only to feed her ego? Was it because she enjoyed them?

Mahiru was aiming to use Rigr’s strategies and plan in order to take them with her and make them work since she was aware that Rigr would eventually dance within the palm of the First Progenitor, and for that, it is most known that the only one being capable of not being an influence from the First was Guren Ichinose, which is something stated by Rigr in the 2nd Vol. World Resurrection at 19 LNs.

It could be said that the original plan of Rigr was to use the old experiments of the First while boosting them with the Seraph of the End project in order to defeat him with a more powerful being; but given how he ended up losing it in the battle against him:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 84

It is promptly to say that Mahiru might have seen an outcome within Rigr/Saito. 

Returning to the chronological order, in order to achieve victory, she needed allies, she was aware if she told Guren and Guren’s friend about everything, the common outcome would be a crazy idea, but furthermore, Shinoa’s life would have been endangered; what do I mean? Is that even possible when everyone in the story and the readers see her as a selfish monster?

First of all, Mahiru needed backup from the least expected zone, and that is with the Queen of Vampires, Krul Tepes:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Guren Ichinose Catastrophe at 16 - Chapter 33

But the question goes, why the Queen?

For this, it is clear that Rigr Stafford suggested her the idea mostly because he rejected on turning her into a vampire; therfore, his suggestion went as to ask the Queen Krul Tepes to turn her into one since the plan they had in mind, in order to work, was to execute the First’s in order to remove the sight of the First Progenitor on them; which is why Mahiru Hiragi relied on the transformation of the 3rd Progenitor Krul Tepes; along the knowledge she got from Rigr in order to make the Queen interested:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 98

 These events followed suit to a private deal between the Queen and Mahiru, on which they agreed that there would be a demon within their plan, the birth of a new one related towards test subjects of the Hyakuya Sect:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 94

Such statement of their deal is visible when Krul says: “Just like my deal with Mahiru said, the demon transformation has already begun!”

Among this, Mahiru would eventually reveal the whereabouts of Ashera Tepes in her own time

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 62

In said panel, Krul states that Mahiru upheld her part of their bargain, meaning that when the deal between them was sealed, one of the parts of said bargain would be the whereabouts of her brother

Within the deal, such events would lead to her eventual transformation as a vampire:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Guren Ichinose Catastrophe at 16 - Chapter 37

Now, returning to the question about why Mahiru had no choices, this is due to one reason:

The reason comes after the battle she had with Kureto Hiragi in the Catastrophe LNs. After Kureto lost against her, he dialed Tenri Hiragi to inform him about the events going with Mahiru to which Tenri retorts that Kureto would never catch up with Mahiru since he had knowledge of the events due to a deal. Said deal was that if she fulfilled her part, Tenri wouldn’t experiment on Shinoa any further.

Which of course lead to the events of the end of the Catastrophe LN. While those events being the most disturbing ones and one of the reasons the fandom gets triggered, it is to say that tributes were required for the Apocalypse to fall down on Earth.

Now, after the events of the Catastrophe, did Mahiru aim to torment Guren as a floating ghost?

No, they needed to have patience, and one of their missions was to get or rather pick two boys who were enlisted by Rigr Stafford, said boys were of course Yuichiro Hyakuya and Mikaela Hyakuya. But within this, someone came to the plan without the knowledge of the Queen Krul Tepes and that character is Ferid Bathory no less, which would lead to the transformation of Mikaela Hyakuya as a vampire; since it is to be known that Ferid Bathory is quite aware of those who possess the Michaela trait which is still unknown on how he tracked Crowley Eusford in the LNs:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 5

Eventually, the plans into motion would take place after they prepared Yuichiro Hyakuya in order to tame his Seraph powers along with the bond of his demon and the reunion between him and Mikaela Hyakuya.

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 65

Of course, at that time, they were aware Shikama Doji would start making his moves towards Shinoa which would eventually take place in Shibuya and within this, the late transformation of Guren into the most powerful demon would take place in order to face down the First Progenitor and eventually lead to the awakening of the Demon Mikaela which are the events of the latest chapters from the manga story.

But now, why does Mahiru is so eager to make everything work? Is it due to her selfishness?

No.  One of the reasons of her biggest plan is to protect Shinoa and remove the curse that she has carried in all her life, but within this, she also supports Guren’s plan which is to bring back all humanity along the end of the First Progenitor since he alone is the one who can take him down which is stated by Rigr Stafford; due to the fact that Rigr altered the Ichinose Family using his DNA in order to make his scion that would reject the power of the First, that wouldn’t be able to listen to the commands of the First hence why with the latest chapter, they aim to trap the demon Mikaela in order to awaken the key to face down the First and expell it from the World they live.

Said key relies within Yu, Mikaela and Asuramaru:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 79

The first Key being Yuichiro labeled as the Sun God Aten which name means or is reference to the Archangel Michael.

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 85

The second key being Asuramaru labeled as the Sword of Michael but for that, they need to find a way to break the control of the First and lastly:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 98

And of course, the last member to this is Mikaela, the one and only one harboring the Seraph trait and the Michaela trait within him which would give the 3 of them the chance to face down the First Progenitor and banish him forever but then, the controvercy.

Why does Mikaela have to be a demon and why does that even count as saving?

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 99

The First Progenitor’s goal is not to save Mikaela but rather use him by his own goals, and by that, he needs to devour his soul in order to awaken completely with all his real powers and might he once had before he took the current form he has.

Along this, the final goal or plan within Mahiru and Guren’s agenda is to resurrect humanity which was doomed by the First.

While I understand this is one of the most umpleasant thing within the fandom; the story takes in a destroyed world, it takes in an era on which a being with powers close to almighty, close to God, was able to change history and humanity to his own goals and ends.

And for that, for the one that needed to taint his hands with experiments was Rigr Stafford, Mahiru Hiragi that partook in them with the creation of cursed gears along different drugs capable to help the wielders and drugs capable to restrain the First Progenitor to held him or bound him at a certain point which is finally being visible in the story and lastly, give the key to bring back all humanity that perished after the 25th.

In Guren’s case, he is the anti-hero, he is the one that was capable of withstanding the First, he was the scion he needed to face down the First Progenitor admist Guren’s will, he was at the end the guy that was required to trigger down many events but within this, despite all the pain he had to carry on, he needs to fight.

The war is far from over, and just as one of my favorite anti-heroes states. 

“Humanity shall win”

What do you think?

Let me know!

P.S: Theories exclude ships and remain within a neutral view. The theory itself focuses on what the plan has been all about to the current chapter. 

[ibijau]

how about... chengxuan with 5, 10, and/or 15? if you would be willing to water my crops with a shower of angst i would be greatly indebted

You asked for it :)

warning for some mentions of homophobia/internalised homobophia

“Wake up, please wake up.” /  “it hurts.”/ “don’t move, they hit your head really hard.”

‘It’ll be a great bonding chance’ Jiang Yanli had said, and ‘A-Cheng loves Night Hunts as much as you do, don’t you want to go with someone other than your cousin sometimes?’ but also, and more treacherously, she’d smiled in that resigned way that made Jin Zixuan ache and said ‘I want my family to get along’. What could he have said against that? She had lost her parents, the man she’d treated as a brother had betrayed their sect to help their former enemies. All Jiang Yanli had was her grandmother (who Jin Zixuan had charmed as best as she could, but who mostly cared that he was rich and his father powerful) and her blood brother (who had apparently never forgiven Jin Zixuan for his youthful mistakes).

Jin Zixuan had agreed.

For Jiang Yanli, he would have agreed to anything.

Which isn’t to say that he doesn’t regret this Night Hunt about a quarter of a shichen in. Jiang Cheng, who arrived at their meeting point early, accuses him of being late. He then criticises everything about Jin Zixuan, from the bow he brought to his posture as they fly together, the strength of his talismans, the expression on his face. Jin Zixuan bites his tongue and keeps silent, but he does not care for the nagging sensation that he’s being compared to Wei Wuxian and found lacking.

This is for Jiang Yanli, he tells himself several times as they stalk the group of monsters that has been causing trouble near a much frequented road. It’s fine that Jiang Cheng is an authoritative little shit who refuses to listen to his suggestions, who throws it in his face that regardless of age, he has the higher status now. This is all for Jiang Yanli who will be so proud of Jin Zixuan for his efforts, who will praise him and smile at him like she truly believes he’s a good man and not just a rich brat.

If Jin Zixuan is very lucky, Jiang Yanli will even scold her brother for his behaviour. Gently, of course, she’s always gentle, but… a scolding is a scolding and Jin Zixuan would feel very avenged.

It will be nice.

It would have been nice.

Seeing Jiang Cheng scolded is now the furthest thing on Jin Zixuan’s mind, because his future brother-in-law is…

He can’t even say how it happened. Or perhaps he can tell too well. The creatures described to them were no match for them, great heroes of the Sunshot Campaign, and so they were careless. They attacked faster than they should have, with less care. They didn’t check that all of the monsters were truly gathered, didn’t expect it when reinforcements arrived in greater numbers than imagined. 

Jin Zixuan tried to warn Jiang Cheng when he noticed some creatures sneak up behind him, but it was too late, just a second too late, and Jiang Cheng…

Red trailed behind him as he collapsed.

Jin Zixuan, moved by despair and rage (what would Jiang Yanli say? She’d be cancelling the engagement this time, and there would be no going back, not if he let her brother die) quickly eliminated the monsters still standing, and now he’s…

He’s sent a distress signal of course. They’re close enough to Lanling that it should be seen. They’ll be rescued soon enough.

Hopefully it will be soon enough.

Because Jiang Cheng is… his head is bleeding a lot, the bone of his skull dented in a way that Jin Zixuan can feel under his fingers. It is not a wound he can try to heal. He’s not skilled enough to begin with, healing isn’t something he knows a lot about, and an injury of that sort is too serious, too much could go wrong.

At least, Jiang Cheng is still conscious, and that’s good. Jin Zixuan doesn’t know much, but he knows he has to keep Jiang Cheng awake. It’s important because… he doesn’t know. He can’t remember. He never bothered to learn, maybe. He just knows that Jiang Cheng can’t sleep.

“Well, at least now you have a reason to hate me,” Jin Zixuan says, pinching Jiang Cheng’s arm hard to keep him awake.

“Don’t hate you,” Jiang Cheng grumbles, his words slurred. His eyes are unfocused as he glares up toward Jin Zixuan, clearly unhappy to have his head on the lap of his brother-in-law. It’s an awkward position, but Jin Zixuan wants to keep a close eye on his wound and this seems the easiest way.

“Jiang zongzhu, there’s little point in lying when it’s just the two of us,” Jin Zixuan retorts. “You’ve always hated me. You can say it. Your sister isn’t here to mind.”

Jiang Cheng frowns somewhat, which is a good sign. Anger is his natural state. If he can be annoyed, then he’s got to be fine.

“Don’t hate you,” Jiang Cheng insists, trying to sit up, only to wince. “It hurts.”

“Don’t move!” Jin Zixuan scolds him. “They hit your head really hard, of course it hurts.”

“Sleepy.”

Jin Zixuan pinches Jiang Cheng again, harder. There might be bruises later. Jin Zixuan prays to any god willing to listen to let there be a later.

“Don’t sleep,” he orders, his tone a perfect imitation of his mother’s. “Talk to me. Tell me… tell me why you hate me so much. I imagine that should be an easy subject.”

Jin Zixuan, of course, knows already why Jiang Cheng hates him. While Jiang Cheng himself has managed to keep a veneer of politeness around his hatred, Wei Wuxian has been vocal enough for both of them. Jin Zixuan can’t even blame them. He really was that bad as a youth. He hopes he’s improved. Jiang Yanli seems to believe he has, at least.

Jiang Cheng scoffs weakly.

“Don’t hate you,” he repeats, stubborn even in such a state. “Wanted to hate you. It’d have been easy. I still remember the first time you came to Lotus Piers. All in gold, looking like a young god. Never seen anyone so pretty, thought I was dreaming.”

That’s not the answer Jin Zixuan expected. He tries to recall that first visit, but he can’t remember how Jiang Cheng behaved that time. All his attention had been on Jiang Yanli, his fiancée from birth who he’d been so determined to despise.

“Wanted you to look at me,” Jiang Cheng whispers, closing his eyes. Jin Zixuan pinches him, and his eyes open again, trying to catch Jin Zixuan’s. “Always wanted you to look at me, but everyone told me you were here for Yanli. I hated it. Nothing good was ever for me. First Wei Wuxian was getting father, and now jiejie was getting you… it was unfair.”

Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath, and looks away.

“Was so happy when the engagement fell apart, and Wei Wuxian left,” he confesses, so low Jin Zixuan barely hears it. “I’m a bad son, a bad brother. I was so happy, I thought maybe I could have you. Wanted to be your friend. Wanted to talk to you. Study with you. We’d have made good friends, no?”

“Why didn’t you try to become friends then?” Jin Zixuan asks.

He’s not curious, not really, it’s just to keep Jiang Cheng talking. And if his heart beats faster it’s only because he’s worried, nothing else.

Jiang Cheng grimaces.

“Was going to. But heard you… Huaisang was joking about his print collection, how he had something for every taste, even cut-sleeves. Heard you say it was disgusting and wrong. Couldn’t speak to you after that.”

If their first meeting has been forgotten, Jin Zixuan does, in fact, remember that conversation with Nie Huaisang. Hearing the other boy speak so easily of his interest in men had sparked jealousy in him who had long struggled with the fact that he looked at other boys more than he should have. Back then, he’d been terrified that his father would notice and disown him. It didn’t matter than he liked girls too, his father would only have seen this blemish and gotten rid of him. Even his mother might have… 

Jin Zixuan hasn’t thought of his attraction to men in a while. Not since he started falling for Jiang Yanli, truly falling for her. He recalls, though, how relieved he was when he realised that he was in love with a woman. It used to terrify him that if he someday truly felt love, it might be for a man. But Jiang Yanli saved him from that. And he does love her, not just because she’s a woman, but because she is kind and gentle and determined and hides steel under her warmth. She is the most unique person he’s ever met, and he loves her so much.

He adores his future wife.

And yet some traitorous part of his heart wonders what might have happened if Jiang Cheng had talked to him and offered friendship back in Gusu. Jin Zixuan has never… he’s never really considered Jiang Cheng, never seen him as more than a thorn in his side, but he’s… he’s handsome, and strong, with the same inhuman resilience as his sister and…

He looks down at Jiang Cheng, and finds that the other man has closed his eyes. Jin Zixuan urgently pinches him. In a twisted way, it’s almost a relief when Jiang Cheng doesn’t react right away, because it gives him something to focus on.

“Wake up! Please, wake up,” Jin Zixuan urges. “Think of your sister, she’ll be disappointed if you die like this. Don’t you want to be there at her wedding?”

Jiang Cheng grumbles weakly.

“If you die here, then I’ll have to ask Jin Zixun to help organise things instead of you,” Jin Zixuan points out.

Jiang Cheng’s eyes snap open. “‘ver my dead body,” he mutters. “Little shit has no taste.” He sighs. “‘m sleepy.”

“Then tell me something else. Tell me… remember when we escaped that cave after Wen Chao trapped us with that monster? You had to run home to get help for Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Tell me about that, about the way you got home and rescued them.”

Jiang Cheng blinks weakly. He does look so sleepy, but Jin Zixuan insists and keeps pinching him until he starts telling that story. It’s not much of a tale, Jiang Cheng isn’t a born story-teller, but it keeps him awake and focused and that’s all Jin Zixuan wants.

Jiang Cheng has to stay awake until they’re rescued, and then…

And then, for everyone’s good, it’s best if they both forget this conversation.

[honest-moth-of-silver-grove]

I just had a thought cho dampire daughter coming after alucard to avenge her mother but them both falling in love bouns points if alucard gets obsessed with her

A/N: So I got this ask twice but slightly different the 2nd time around, but because the endings of what I envisioned for both scenarios were so different, I’m going to keep them separate. This is the first one with a more happy ending. :) 

Alucard Falling for Cho’s Daughter (Who Initially Resents Him) 

Initially, he assumes the visitor who stops at his front door is another foolish traveler looking to plunder his castle for great treasures, that is until he senses the stranger isn't human.

‘Well, that’s… odd.’ He muses.

Not a single vampire had bothered to scope out Dracula’s castle since he, Trevor, and Sypha took down his father’s generals and armies. He knows that a small sect of vampires, who had formerly been in his father’s company, marched from Braila all the way to Styria; but he demonstrates little concern for them. At the moment, he could not find any willingness to bother with the existent power vacuum Dracula’s death had created.

But then this mysterious vampire shows up on his doorstep, clearly having some sort of bone to pick with him. She appears to have come from far away, her makeup and manner of dress considerably different from anything he’s seen in Wallachia. As it happens, she reminds him of…

“You’re here about one of my father’s generals, aren’t you?” He asks. “You dress similar to her.” But then a second thought crosses his mind. “Or perhaps,” he gestures back to the rotting corpses behind her, “You’re here for them?”

The stranger makes no move to look back, but from her change in expression, he gathers it’s the later. “I am here to take my revenge on those responsible for the death of my mother.”

‘So then,’ he thinks, ‘She is Cho’s daughter. But what is she doing here?’

She’s not all that impressed or deterred by his presence. But still, she respects his position enough to not outright assault him. She isn't certain who's to blame for the sudden absence of her mother, but she intends to discover the truth before she attacks. Her mother was a very calculating woman and so is she.

“I’m afraid they’re not here,” Alucard confesses.

“Do not lie to me, half-breed,” she practically spits. “I had been in communication with her up until she arrived here. I come home and find everyone either dead or gone. And those two are the ones who freed her other human pets.” She invites herself in. “So, inform me, why are they strung up outside your door?”

“They betrayed me,” he replies modestly. “Their defiance cost them. And now they exist as a warning to others who may try the same.”

She inspects him curiously. “So, even after freeing my Mother’s captives and betraying you, you seem to believe they are of no interest to me. Why is that?” She asks.

“Because you seek who was responsible for the death of your mother. And as I communicated before, they are not here.”

“Where have they gone?”

Alucard shrugs. “They’ve been gone a little over a month now. I haven't kept in contact with them.” There’s a sudden melancholy in his voice.

“But you wish to be, don’t you?” Her superior stature fades into one of a more relaxed status. “You have been abandoned as well.”

Alucard scoffs at her suggestion. “I am part vampire. The sheer combined lengths of their lives will be no longer than a second compared to the entirety of mine. It makes no sense to feel lonely.”

“But you are,” she counters.

“Vampires are solitary creatures,” he speaks more to himself. He pays her no mind as she wanders further in. 

“Indeed,” the closeness of her voice startles him. “But you are not fully vampire and even full vampires were human once.” At her admittance, Alucard’s brows furrow.

“You are not Cho’s daughter, then?” He inquires.

“Not by birth, no.”

Alucard nods.

He supposed she could have been related to Cho by blood. While exceedingly rare and extremely dangerous, a female vampire giving birth was not unheard of. But being a general of such power and importance, it did make more sense for Cho to not put herself in such a vulnerable position. After all, humans reproduced all the time. It would have been considerably easy to kidnap one and cultivate them as her own. What's more, Cho certainly had a large enough entourage of human, um, breeders to choose from, if Sumi and Taka’s stories were true.

“How long since you’ve been turned?” He asks.

She merely shrugs. “A few years perhaps. It’s as you said. Time moves slower once you’re one of us.”

They stay like that for a moment, in the silence, secretly enjoying the proximity of each other’s company. It had been years since Cho’s daughter had felt such human emotions. As for Alucard, it had been a long time since he felt more himself in the presence of a vampire than he did a human.

“I came here to kill you, you know?” She whispers, afraid to break the flimsy wave of peace between them. “But I find myself...” she trails off. “You say you are not the one responsible, yet you are the only one here. My entire journey has been for nothing.”

Alucard examined her a moment. “You truly forged all this way to avenge the woman who snatched you away from your family? The woman who cursed you to live like…”

“Like what?”

‘Like me,’ he wants to say. But he couldn’t. Even though both were dead and gone, he knew it would wound his parents’ hearts for him to refer to his life, to his very existence, in such a manner. His mother had called him ‘their miracle’; his father, ‘the greatest gift he’s ever received.’ To despise himself would be to spit in the faces of their sacrifices, their hopes, and dreams for him. No, he wouldn't, no he couldn’t declare such a thing.

“Some might deem it a curse, to live as a vampire.” Is what he settles on instead.

The full vampire reaches her hand out, her long nails just daintily scraping against the leather of his gloves. “It’s only a curse if you’re alone. And we are not alone, anymore.”

Alucard regards her suspiciously. “A moment ago you were intent on slaying me, and now you expect us to be companions?”

“Yes,” she answers plainly. “What I was struggling to say earlier, was, while initially, I wanted to hate you, to blame you, to kill you, and avenge my mother… I find myself thankful for you. My mother,” she starts, then shakes her head. “No, Cho wanted a legacy. A loyal servant, one as powerful as her. She preferred having human honor guards because it amused her. But she required someone to entrust with territory meetings and border negotiations. She couldn’t send a human to do it and didn't trust her vampire armies not to double-cross her. I was the solution.” She explains.

“That doesn’t explain why you’re thanking me,” Alucard points out. “What's more, I told you, I was not the one who finished off Cho.”

The woman hums in agreement. “I know, but I believe you had a part in her demise,” she prods.

Alucard nods.

The stranger walks past Alucard, into the foyer. She stops at fallen chandelier, taking the time to admire the welding work.

“Do you know what she called me?” She inquires. “What she named me?”

This time Alucard is the one who shakes his head ‘no.’

This makes the stranger vampire laugh. “It’s odd. I’ve heard so much about you, it’s as if I know you.”

“Is that so?” Alucard challenges.

The stranger laughs again.

“Oh yes,” she says, using a finger to trace the patterns in the lighting fixture's brass. “I’ve heard all about the infamous Alucard: son of Dracula and a mortal woman. How you were raised as both a human and a vampire. How you’re a legendary savior to the people of Lupu, how you were to represent the antithesis of your father. I’ve heard all the stories.” She pauses at the tip of a particular chandelier arm. “Would you like to hear mine?”

“I do feel I’m at an awful disadvantage,” Alucard muses. “You know so much of me, yet I know so little of you.” He gestures for her to continue.

“I am called Tsuna,” the stranger presents him with a mournful look. “It means ‘bond.’ I have been bound to Cho all these years. She snatched me, raised me, turned me, and as a result, I was a loyal fledgling to her.”

“But now she’s dead,” Alucard finishes for her. “And you are no longer bound to her.”

“For the first time in my life, I’m not sure what to do. She would be angry with me if she were here. ‘An unsure character represents a weak character’, that’s what she’d always say.”

“Character is what you do despite orders,” Alucard counters. “Anyone can blindly follow the fool off a cliff. It’s the wise man, who does not.”

Tsuna offers him a humorous look. “Are you certain you’re not saying that simply because you’re relieved I no longer have any intention of executing you?”

Alucard smirked. “Perhaps.” He beckons her to follow him. “Furthermore, I’d doubt you’d find my blood tasty. My Father stored canisters of all different blood types in the cellars of the castle. I’m sure we can find something down there more suited to your tastes.”

Tsuna extends her hand out once more, this time, in a friendly manner. “Deal. But if we don’t,” she jokes, “I’m devouring you.”

And for the first time in a long time, Alucard laughs.

“Deal,” he says, as they walk hand-in-hand towards the cellars.

[disastermages]

this is chapter 13 of the au where Xiao Xingchen raises Wei Wuxian

--

The Wen guards who had accompanied Wen Qing look nervously between themselves as they wait in the doorway, but Xiao Xingchen is barely paying attention to them as he walks forward, standing at his grandmaster’s opposite side and reaching for her elbow, though he’s quickly batted away.

“I’m fine, Xingchen. I’m only tired.” Baoshan Sanren shakes her head, trying and failing to wave off his concern when she stumbles and Wei Ying tightens his grip on her. If she was only tired, she wouldn’t have to lean on Wei Ying the way she was, she would at the very least be able to stand on her own, but the sight of it makes Xiao Xingchen’s eyes snap up to his nephew’s.

“A-Ying, what happened? Was there trouble in town?” There were a thousand worst case scenarios that Xiao Xingchen could think of, more than half of them involving Xue Yang, if he was still somewhere in the village.

Wei Ying shakes his head and opens his mouth to answer, but A-Qing beats him to it, “Grandma crushed the metal with her hand!” She peeks around Wei Ying’s robes as though she’s afraid of getting a scolding, but Xiao Xingchen can only blink at her, unsure if he’d heard her correctly.

Baoshan Sanren hadn’t been able to do anything about the Yin Iron when Lan Yi had decided she wanted to purify it, but more than a hundred years had passed since then, it had to be possible, right? “Grandmaster?” Xiao Xingchen asks now, setting a hand on her shoulder and nudging himself just behind her.

She doesn’t push him away again and Xiao Xingchen takes that as progress.

For a few seconds, Baoshan Sanren says nothing, looking past Wei Ying’s robes to where A-Qing had been standing before she sighs. “To think my own granddaughter would tell on me.” There’s exasperated fondness in his grandmaster’s voice and Xiao Xingchen smiles just a little, reaching out and setting his free hand on top of her head when A-Qing reappears at his side.

“We ran into Grandma while we were in town,” Wei Ying continues, picking up where his sister had left off as they guide Baoshan Sanren to sit down at one of the tables, though she waves them off again once she’s settled. Xiao Xingchen pulls Wei Ying back up with him, shaking his head just slightly. Their grandmaster was more stubborn than Wei Ying could ever hope to be. “Me and Lan Zhan told her everything we could think of, but we might’ve forgotten some stuff.”

Xiao Xingchen nods as he listens, glancing back at Lan Wangji as he presents Wen Qing with the now limp qiankun pouch, his arms held behind his back while she examines the contents. Her mouth falls open and she looks back at the four of them crowded around the table and Xiao Xingchen nudges Wei Ying when she starts to walk over, clutching the bag tightly.

“Sect Leader Wen,” Xiao Xingchen says, not bothering to bow this time, “please allow me to introduce my grandmaster, Baoshan Sanren.” Beside him, Wei Ying gives a short wave to his former classmate, smiling even as a look of determination sets across Wen Qing’s face.

“I am grateful for Baoshan Sanren’s help.” Wen Qing says, her voice and face both serious as she moves into a bow, not seeing the way Baoshan Sanren’s head cocks to the side at her, her own face dropping off into something thoughtful, as if she were trying to remember something. “If you would allow it, I was a doctor before my appointment as sect leader, I would like to offer my services as repayment for your aid with the Yin Iron.”

“You remind me of someone I once knew,” Baoshan Sanren says, rather than accepting or declining Wen Qing’s offer, her eyes squinting, “which branch of the Wen sect are you from?” Baoshan Sanren offers her wrist slowly, her eyes flicking between Xiao Xingchen and Wei Ying and Xiao Xingchen feels himself stand up straighter on instinct.

If he were any younger, he might’ve gotten a lecture about wandering headfirst into the trouble involving himself with sects would bring him, he still might, but Wei Ying and A-Qing would have to sit through the lecture with him.

Baoshan Sanren came down harder on he and Cangse than he ever had with either Wei Ying or A-Qing. Xiao Xingchen could only hope that she would continue spoiling the two of them, even if she ended up lecturing him.

“I’m Dafan Wen by birth.” Wen Qing answers, transferring a steady stream of spiritual energy directly into his grandmaster’s wrist, her eyebrows knit together as she works. “I was brought to Qishan when I was very young, Ma’am.” Baoshan Sanren huffs a laugh then, bringing up her knee and resting her elbow on it before she drops her cheek against her hand, dull amusement in her eyes.

“Dafan Wen…” The smile that spreads across his grandmaster’s face is one Xiao Xingchen hadn’t seen before, though the faraway look in her eyes was more familiar. “Wen Liao would be proud of her descendents, but I never thought she would actually break away from her brother.” The smile on Baoshan Sanren stays in place as she shakes her head, though she pulls her wrist back from Wen Qing. “That’s enough, little one, you’ll exhaust yourself if you keep going. I’ll be fine.”

Looking at her, Xiao Xingchen can see that Wen Qing has grown pale, though her energy has barely made a dent in Baoshan Sanren’s color. His grandmaster’s stores of spiritual power ran deep, Xiao Xingchen knew that firsthand.

“Sect Leader Wen, what happened to my grandmaster?” Xiao Xingchen asks, looking between the two of them, an unfamiliar anxiety settling in his chest like a summer storm cloud, thick, dark, and heavy. There had been a handful of times that Baoshan Sanren had returned to the mountain injured and bloody, she’d locked herself away in her own rooms with Cangse until she had recovered then, but Xiao Xingchen had never seen her so spiritually exhausted.

Pursing her lips, Wen Qing stares hard into the table, as if she could burn a hole into it with just her thoughts alone. “The Yin Iron most likely attempted to latch onto her golden core with the intent of draining her spiritual power.” Wen Qing says, dropping down to both knees and sitting at the table properly now. “I saw similar effects while I was caring for my uncle, but he lacked a core as strong as Baoshan Sanren’s. When she crushed it, the resentful energy may have attempted to fight back and harm her in retaliation, but I cannot say without having seen it for myself.”

“Grandmaster Baoshan became agitated while handling the piece.” Lan Wangji speaks quietly, coming to stand beside Wei Ying, their shoulders brushing together. Out of the corner of his eye, Xiao Xingchen thinks he sees his grandmaster’s eyes narrow at the two of them, though Lan Wangji doesn’t back away.

Xiao Xingchen turns to Baoshan Sanren then, her face betraying nothing as she nods along. “It was more spiritual power than I’m used to using on a singular thing.” She confirms, lowering her knee back into its original spot, a frown replacing the smile that had been on her face. “While I was holding it, it felt as though something was trying to dig its claws into me, every instance of irritation and anger was dragged to the front of my mind as if it had just happened.” Baoshan Sanren doesn’t look over as A-Qing begins to press herself into her grandmother’s side, she only lifts her arm and drops it again once A-Qing is comfortable, her own gaze burning into the table.

“Memories I’d sworn to forget nearly drowned me when they came flooding in.” A sigh weighs down Baoshan Sanren’s shoulders as she speaks, and very suddenly, her age shows, though only for a moment. “My mind only cleared when it was dust in my hand.”

“You believe this piece of the Yin Iron has been purified?” Wen Qing asks, holding the bag up and looking at it quizzically, as if she expected it to leap up and sink teeth into her hand.

Experimentally, Xiao Xingchen reaches out for it with his own spiritual energy, but receives no response, not even a spare bit of energy lingering behind to snatch at his own. He’d expected something to be there, something to lurk underneath the calm and answer him at the slightest agitation, but there’s nothing.

“There was resentful energy seeping through the pouch while Grandmaster held it.” Wei Ying thinks out loud, tapping his finger against the bridge of his nose as he looked off to the side, his eyes dark and thoughtful, “Her spiritual power must be stronger than the resentful spirits inside the Iron, but that doesn’t explain how Xue Yang is unaffected by it.”

“We don’t know for sure that he is unaffected by it, A-Ying,” Xiao Xingchen reminds, speaking to his nephew gently, trying to pull him back before he even had the chance to bury himself in research. “We’ve never fought Xue Yang long enough to notice any sort of deterioration and from Sect Leader Wen’s information, we only know that Xue Yang was vicious long before he was involved with the Iron.” Wen Qing’s face goes still as Xiao Xingchen speaks, her hands coming to rest on top of the table.

“I had another reason to speak with all of you.” Wen Qing says quietly, keeping her face neutral, “After the five of you left Nightless City, Xue Yang’s quarters were searched, and at first we found nothing of importance, but when we passed through again, we found evidence that he had been traveling to and from the Yiling Burial Mounds though a teleportation spell.”

The air turns too thick to breathe then, Xiao Xingchen, Wei Ying, and Lan Wangji all looking at each other, though Baoshan Sanren and A-Qing both have their eyes focused on Wen Qing.

“I thought you said no one could survive in the Burial Mounds.” Wei Ying says, looking at his uncle, and Xiao Xingchen bites at his own tongue, wishing he had some sort of explanation for him.

“No one is supposed to.” Baoshan Sanren answers for him, “The five great sects have each sent their own cultivators to try and purify it at some point and not a single one of them have ever come back, even a handful of rogue cultivators have tried it. If he’s taken up residence there, I have to wonder what the resentful energy is doing to the Yin Iron.”

“Still, his surname is Xue…” Wei Ying trails off, casting a glance over at Lan Wangji, who only looks away for a moment, before he looks back at Wen Qing.

“Is there any known connection to Xue Chonghai?” Lan Wangji seems to follow along with Wei Ying’s train of thought without hesitation or question, their arms pressed close together as Wen Qing shakes her head.

“None that I know of now, but I could ask my advisors to look through my uncle’s journals, there might be something there.” Even as she says it, Wen Qing looks doubtful, neutral face bleeding into a frown as she rises from the table, hands placed perfectly in front of her stomach.

“I will do all I can to aid you in apprehending him, but I must take my leave now. My advisors have told me that it is no longer necessary or wise to hide my uncle’s death from the rest of the great sects, we’ll be announcing it within the next week. My presence is required in Qishan.” Wen Qing bows deeply at the waist as she finishes, her eyes hard and genuine as she looks between the five of them, “Whatever you need, please request it.”

Another round of bowing passes between them as Wen Qing leaves, her guards closing ranks around her, their security undoubtedly doubled now.

“She’ll do well.” Baoshan Sanren says from Xiao Xingchen’s side, her eyes sharp as she watches them leave, “She might even pull her sect out of the muck Wen Mao’s grandson left them in.” Xiao Xingchen laughs lightly at that, a quiet smile spreading across his face as he turns around.

“Thank you for your help with the Yin Iron, Grandmaster.” Xiao Xingchen says, bowing to Baoshan Sanren, though she stops him cold, her hand tight on his forearm.

“There are things you and I need to discuss without quite so many eyes on us, Xingchen,” Baoshan Sanren’s voice dips low now, dropping to a hum without becoming a whisper, she moves to the side just slightly, and Xiao Xingchen catches sight of Wei Ying and A-Qing both watching from the dining room, though he couldn’t see where Lan Wangji was. “I’ve taken a room, we can talk there.”

“Whenever you called me into your rooms before, I was always in trouble.” Xiao Xingchen teases, dropping his arms back down to his sides when his grandmaster releases him.

“That was because you listened to Cangse.”

“Just like you told me to when you brought me to the mountain.”

“A-Chen.”

“Yes, Grandmaster.”

Baoshan Sanren goes upstairs ahead of him, leaving Xiao Xingchen to come stand in front of Wei Ying, A-Qing, and Lan Wangji.

“Is everyone alright?” Xiao Xingchen asks, kneeling down at the only empty place left at the table, though he waves it off when Lan Wangji offers to serve him tea.

“We’re fine, Uncle Xiao,” Wei Ying speaks for the group, though the small frown on his face is enough to make Xiao Xingchen doubt it, “but is Grandma okay?” There’s uncertainty in Wei Ying’s voice that Xiao Xingchen can only smile at, some of the tension dripping out of his shoulders.

“Grandmaster is fine, A-Ying.” Xiao Xingchen answers honestly, reaching over and brushing his thumb over the crease between Wei Ying’s eyebrows, “If anything, she’s only annoyed that she had to ask for help, you forget how when you’re as old as she is.”

He only gets to sit with them for a few more minutes, letting A-Qing push her way into his side for a little while before he has to stand up and leave again, though he drops her into Wei Ying’s lap and tells the three of them to stay close if they leave at all, only then does he climb the stairs after his grandmaster.

Part of him is pulled towards his and Song Lan’s room as he reaches the top of the stairs, wondering if he’d already woken up alone or if he still slept. He would have to fill his husband in if he’d already woken, but if he hadn’t, Xiao Xingchen should let him rest, there would always be time later, wouldn’t there? Breathing in deeply, Xiao Xingchen forces himself to turn and walk down the hall to his grandmaster’s door, feeling all of 12 years old and like he’s been caught swapping out a sect brother’s water for vinegar at his older sister’s request again.

Xiao Xingchen swallows down that feeling as he raises his fist and knocks on the door and enters when Baoshan Sanren calls him, forcing himself to stand up straight as he closes the door behind himself.

His grandmaster is sitting at the table by the time he looks at her, the sight of it doing absolutely nothing to make her appear shorter. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d gotten lost, come and sit, I won’t have you standing against the wall like a statue.” Baoshan Sanren’s voice lacks it’s usual sternness when she speaks, but Xiao Xingchen won’t make her repeat herself, walking forward and dropping down to his knees across from her. A cup of tea has already been poured and sat at his place.

“If I get lost, I only need to stay where I am and you’ll find me,” Xiao Xingchen says, staring into the dark liquid, “that’s what you always told me.”

“My A-Chen has always had a good memory.” Baoshan Sanren says, lifting her own cup to her mouth and taking a deep drink. “You and Cangse balanced each other well that way. I worried about you after she left, but then you left too. It only proved my point.”

“I missed her.” Xiao Xingchen confesses, still unable to drink his tea, “I was able to meet her again, but I miss her still.” His grandmaster smiles ruefully then, a chuckle shaking her shoulders.

“Wei Ying has her face, it’s hard to look at him sometimes, but it’s harder to hold him at arm’s length.”

“He acts like her, too, you should hear about the tricks he played while he studied in Gusu.” Xiao Xingchen allows himself to smile now, his hand at least reaching for his tea now. He expects another chuckle to leave his grandmaster, but silence is his only answer.

“Do you trust Lan Wangji?” She asks him point blank after a few beats of silence, and Xiao Xingchen nearly drops his cup back onto the table.

He only barely manages to set it back onto the table, dropping his hands back down to his thighs and digging his nails into them. “I trust Lan Wangji as much as I could trust someone with A-Ying’s heart. I believe them to be a good match, Grandmaster.” Saying it that way feels too simple, as though he’d taken a single look at Lan Wangji and decided that he was good for his nephew, like he hadn’t considered the possibility of one or both of them breaking each other’s hearts.

“They are young, Xingchen, and Lans only love once, you know that don’t you?” Regret and envy both run underneath his grandmaster’s words like a river, her dark eyes turning wistful. Xiao Xingchen had heard the story of the Lan sect’s founder, Lan An, and at first, he’d thought it was romantic, he’d only come to understand the tragedy of it when he was older. “They could grow apart from each other.”

“They could also grow together.” Xiao Xingchen argues quickly, regaining his grip on his cup and forcing himself to drink the tea, though now, it was only lukewarm.

“Xingchen-”

“Mother-” Xiao Xingchen starts but catches himself, his head snapping up from his lap and to Baoshan Sanren’s face, his eyes wide as he breathes in deeply.

Xiao Xingchen expects his grandmaster’s face to be red when he looks up, he expects her to be annoyed with him at the very least, but he’s only met with the softest face she’s ever turned onto him. “You truly have faith in them, don’t you?”

Swallowing thickly, Xiao Xingchen nods, setting both of his hands on the table where she could see them now. “I do, I believe they compliment each other.” Xiao Xingchen refuses to allow himself to get quieter, reaching forward and refilling Baoshan Sanren’s cup before his own, his eyes flicking up to her face.

She looks thoughtful, as if she were turning something over and over in her mind like a particularly shiny stone. “They deserve a chance, if you have such faith in them.” It’s an admission if Xiao Xingchen had ever heard one leave his grandmaster’s mouth, her thumb running over the rim of her cup. “Your faith in them won’t stop me from giving that boy a shovel talk, no matter how many times you call me mother. It’s my right as Wei Ying’s grandmother.”

All the tension seeps out of Xiao Xingchen right then as he laughs, his shoulders dropping. “You gave one to Zichen, I’d hate for Lan Wangji to feel left out.” He and Song Lan had been married for a year and a half before he’d told Xiao Xingchen the specifics of the shovel talk he’d gotten from Baoshan Sanren.

Xiao Xingchen had only been able to look at him with wide eyed horror and then embarrassment.

~

“Are you gonna marry Xian-gege?” Qing Sanren asks as she comes to stand just inside Lan Wangji’s room, and Lan Wangji sets his hand across the strings of his guqin to silence them as he turns to face her. He hadn’t heard her come in and he’d only left the door to his room open because he and Wei Ying had been together earlier. Lan Wangji was determined to follow the rules set by Wei Ying’s uncles.

Qing Sanren watches him from the doorway, neither coming in nor running away now that she’s been caught while Lan Wangji struggles to answer her question.

“Did you hear me? I asked if you and Xian-gege are gonna get married.” She repeats herself, though hearing it again doesn’t make it any easier for Lan Wangji to answer her.

“One day, I would like to.” Lan Wangji answers haltingly, “If Wei Ying wanted the same.” Lan Wangji wouldn’t pretend that he hadn’t thought about it, but even in his own daydreams, their wedding was still a handful of years away.

His answer though, doesn’t seem to be what Qing Sanren wanted to hear from him, her face dropping off into a small frown. “Xian-gege said that Baba and A-Die got married when A-Die met Grandma, but you just met her, so shouldn’t you get married to Xian-gege now?” Blinking, Lan Wangji considers the words coming from Wei Ying’s seven year old sister, panic beginning to leave him as he lets his hand fall off the guqin.

“Your fathers were adults when they got married.” Lan Wangji explains simply, “Wei Ying and I are not yet.” That should be the end of it, but Qing Sanren lingers in his doorway still, her head cocked to the side as she considers it.

“Do you have to be a grown up to be married?” Qing Sanren asks, taking a further step into Lan Wangji’s room.

“Typically.” Lan Wangji answers, though another thought crosses his mind, “Sometimes two people might elope.” He lifts his hands back to the guqin strings then, expecting Qing Sanren to walk away and hopefully close the door behind her, but she doesn’t.

“What’s that mean?” Taking his hands away again, Lan Wangji debates whether or not to answer her, surely there wouldn’t be any harm in just telling her what it meant?

“It means that two people run away to get married, usually without their family’s permission.” Before his uncle had warmed to Wei Ying, Lan Wangji had considered the possibility of elopement, though by the end of Wei Ying’s time in Gusu, his uncle had warmed to him as much as he ever would.

Qing Sanren looks as though she’s about to ask another question, but Wei Ying appears behind her then, a sneaky smile spreading across his face as he lifts a single finger to his lips when Lan Wangji catches his eye.

Lan Wangji feels his chest warm almost immediately and manages to betray nothing, his fingers beginning to move over the guqin’s strings again. The corners of his mouth pull upwards when Wei Ying catches his sister up in his arms with a short shout, holding onto her and refusing to let her scramble away from him.

“Xian-gege!” She cries, letting herself hang limp in her brother’s arms, choosing to act as dead weight rather than fight against him like she usually did. “Baba told you not to scare me anymore!”

“That was yesterday!” Wei Ying argues with a laugh, and Lan Wangji feels something in his chest soften. “Besides, I don’t see Uncle Xiao anywhere, do you Lan Zhan?” Lan Wangji shouldn’t help Wei Ying tease his sister, he knows that, but once wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

“I do not, Qing Sanren is at her brother’s mercy.” Lan Wangji waves his guqin away, allowing himself to smile at Wei Ying as he finally releases Qing Sanren from his arms. She sprints away from him like an angry cat, her footfalls heavy in the hallway until they fade away completely.

Wei Ying stands in the doorway to watch her for a moment longer, the smile still on his face when he turns to look at Lan Wangji again. “She’s going to get us back for that, you know.”

“Mn, I will keep Wei Ying safe from his sister.” Lan Wangji promises, moving to the side when Wei Ying comes to sit down next to him, not caring one little bit about the three unoccupied sides of the table. Lan Wangji is half joking and half serious, he’d already seen what kind of tricks Qing Sanren was inclined to play.

Wei Ying laughs though, his smile making Lan Wangji flush with all the warmth of sitting in the sun. “My Lan Zhan takes such good care of me, defending me from A-Qing like that.” Wei Ying leans into him, their shoulders pressing together. The warmth and light pressure of it is welcome, Lan Wangji feels himself leaning into it before he can think twice about it.

“Were you playing something before A-Qing came in?” Wei Ying asks, pulling himself away from Lan Wangji by a fraction of an inch, though Lan Wangji misses him right away. “I thought I heard you, but I couldn’t figure out if you were learning a new cultivation piece.”

“Not cultivation music.” Lan Wangji answers, and says nothing else, though Wei Ying expects him to.

“Were you playing for fun, then? I didn’t think the Lan sect did that.”

“We do, but this song is not one of them.”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying whines, crashing his shoulder into Lan Wangji’s again, though this time it’s gone just as quickly as it came. “At least tell me what it is!”

“Not yet, it isn’t finished.”

“But you’ll tell me when it is?”

“Mn.”

~

Song Lan is sitting up in bed by the time Xiao Xingchen returns, dragging a hand through his unbound hair to comb it back as Xiao Xingchen shuts the door. “Where did you go? I woke up and you were gone.” Song Lan asks, still sounding as if he were half asleep.

Xiao Xingchen sits at the foot of the bed, their knees pressing together as he tries his best to try and summarize the last few hours. “Sect Leader Wen came to offer her condolences.” Xiao Xingchen starts, keeping things simple before they became a complicated knot of words. Song Lan nods along with it, his face falling for just a moment before he pulls it back, allowing Xiao Xingchen to take his hand and hold onto it. “And then A-Ying and Lan Wangji brought my grandmaster with them when they came back from their walk with A-Qing.”

For all the effort Xiao Xingchen had put into saying it casually, he still feels Song Lan’s hand tense in his, any and all sleepiness evaporating from his face. “Baoshan Sanren is here? She’s not hurt, is she?” His husband’s words come out quickly and Xiao Xingchen waves them off just as fast, explaining what had happened as best he could and hoping that he wasn’t forgetting any details in the meantime.

By the time he’s finished, both of Song Lan’s hands are wrapped around one of his, while the other strokes through Song Lan’s hair. It’s meant to soothe him, but Xiao Xingchen isn’t sure it’s working as he watches his husband process the mountain of information he’d just piled in front of him.

“Where do we go from here? The Burial Mounds or Gusu?” Song Lan asks finally, his hands tightening, his eyes burning into the quilt.

“I’m not sure yet,” Xiao Xingchen confesses, shaking his head and letting his free hand drop to his husband’s cheek, “usually I discuss this sort of thing with my husband, but I thought it better to let him rest a while longer.”

Song Lan chuckles, but doesn’t smile, instead, he takes one hand off of Xiao Xingchen’s and lifts it to his other wrist, his fingers curling tightly around it. “Your husband can’t sleep without you anymore.” Song Lan admits, stroking his thumb over Xiao Xingchen’s pulse. “We should go to Gusu first, we can’t risk him getting his hand on another piece of the Yin Iron.” Nodding, Xiao Xingchen strokes his thumb back and forth over the apple of Song Lan’s cheek.

“Are you hungry? I could have something brought up.” He offers, the need to fret and look after his husband coming back the second their next destination is decided. He’d eaten with his grandmaster, and once he’d been allowed to leave her room, he’d made sure A-Qing, Wei Ying, and Lan Wangji had all eaten, making his rounds until he’d finally been able to return to his own room.

“Just tired,” Song Lan says, shaking his head and looking past Xiao Xingchen again.

“Should I put you back to bed now that I’m back?” Xiao Xingchen smiles sadly, he knows he should ask Song Lan to try and eat something, something small, but he can’t make himself deny his husband rest when he asks for it.

“You’ll be here when I wake up?” Song Lan asks, not fighting back in the smallest way when Xiao Xingchen begins to press him back down into the bed, his arms reaching up and wrapping around Xiao Xingchen to pull him down as well.

“I will.” Xiao Xingchen says, moving himself until Song Lan can lay his head against his shoulder, “I promise.”