#there's an annual ceremony held on an ding that doubles as a shit talking festival for the poor overworked disciples

[vermillioncrown]

Could we please have more z!zzl?

after careful thought (re: maladaptive daydreaming), z!zhizhu-lang will be heading to cang qiong in disguise to sus out how to destroy the array and figure out the best way to make the cultivators pay their pound of flesh back

baby-looking z!zzl has a way to suppress their demonic qi (otherwise they wouldn't have been able to roam freely in the human realm before), joins the entrance exam after a few years of trying to get their bearings and deciding on their course. bc they aren't suited for human cultivation (but some sort of cultivation - it ends up looking like z!zzl is okay at cultivation but doesn't have high potential) (which is perfect). they're really good at digging holes, and no one can say that z!zzl isn't a hard worker. what really cinches the exam in their favor is that the engineer's mindset still lives on in z!zzl, and they're a sucker for efficiency. airplane-sqh takes one look at them and "oh yeah, this snot-nosed brat is perfect for an ding"

and an ding is perfect for z!zzl. yes it's a lot of bitch work, but they're low enough in the pecking order that the big brain logistics are handled by the seniors and elders, and they get to go everywhere in the sect and outside the sect.

no one pays attention to servants, right? no one pays attention to an ding. coupled with their passive gossip-collecting skill (baatpo life always) they learn some very interesting tidbits about the peaks, general cultivation realm, even cultivation techniques (it's not that the elders and teachers are neglectful, but cultivation at its core is a personal thing and requires self-motivation and self-study. it's enough to watch to learn, and do it for yourself).

they couldn't find their little cousin, but he should appear in due time. and the system in their head doesn't help. z!zzl is stuck fulfilling minor missions here and there, things that the system doesn't explain but they should mean something, right? ...right? (it's all little plot points that get the ball rolling towards what the system would deem a climax in the future life of lbh) ("wow if you're saying my cousin should peak in his early 20s then that's kinda... tragic, system") the missions go all over the realm. whenever z!zzl has time, they go back to check on their uncle.

(once z!zzl is older, there are a lot of missions that end up near huan hua palace. and with some mishaps in the area, the huan hua disciples nearby end up collaborating with z!zzl and their sect siblings. and perhaps one of the disciples from huan hua ends up starting a friendly rivalry w z!zzl.

"fellow young master, this one is gongyi xiao. i look forward to future collaboration with such talented and hard-working disciples of cang qiong."

z!zzl 👀👀👀 at gyx, not quite used to human mannerisms anymore after decades of snake demon life. "a..a aha... perhaps, just hard-working - gongyi-xiong is too generous. this zeng zilang (z!zzl's undercover name: 曾 - once, ever, great-grand (family member), surname; 子 - son, person, common character in name; 筤 - young bamboo) will remember your name for the future.)

(and the old palace master, with why he deigned to let gyx take the place of his beloved ex-head disciple - he one day catches gyx and z!zzl interacting. z!zzl looks enough like his uncle and gyx looks enough like sxy that it makes the old palace master seethe)

(but that's another subplot for later.)

on cang qiong, z!zzl has to evade the notice of the sect leader (who actually fought against tianlang-jun and z!zzl such that he has enough dots to connect), sqq (he's a paranoid and shady bastard, like recognizes like), and surprisingly mobei-jun (who appears on an ding randomly, and goes bananas at the scent of another demon, however faint, lingering around his human).

sometimes, it's safer to just be off the peak, no matter how much sqh favors z!zzl for being both efficient and hard-working, but not overly talented and dramatic ('joke's on you; my drama is just buried deep and waiting to be unleashed'). so z!zzl volunteers for the bai zhan peak jobs bc they have the highest percent chance of interacting w bai zhan and leaving unscathed.

unfortunately (for their health, but fortunately for their eyes), z!zzl gets caught up in a bai zhan beating session courtesy of their peak lord. they spent too long ogling lqg and lqg thought they were a bai zhan disciple trying to escape their beating.

while z!zzl doesn't have human cultivation talent, they do have martial talent. and now they're roped into 'training' on bai zhan whenever they make deliveries or fix buildings.

('i can stay a little longer' z!zzl thinks as they get asswhooped for the nth time by their liu-shishu. is this how tlj felt when sxy put him in his place? nice. 'uncle can wait a bit longer')