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ninjakk · 2 years ago

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LWJ's POV - Meeting WWX in MXY's body

I've often thought about what LWJs point of view would be during the novel. So I thought it might be interesting to write a little about what I think might be going through his head when he first meets WWX in MXYs body. Obviously this is conjecture, but I will try to base my thoughts on the text as much as possible. Also, as I've read the book many times, I already know the entire plot, so this will come into play as well. Otherwise we'd have no clue what LWJ was thinking, unless you're LXC I guess!

So I think it's pretty safe to assume that our lovely Lan SiZhui, being the exemplary junior he is, reported everything that happened at Mo Village back to LWJ once he arrived on the scene. LSZ probably would have told LWJ about someone controlling the fierce corpses and that MXY went missing once he arrived.

Chapter 8

Lan SiZhui had probably informed Lan WangJi of his suspicious behaviour in Mo Village already. Even so, he had nodded in acknowledgement, probably thanking him for helping out the juniors from the Lan Sect. Without thinking, Wei WuXian immediately returned a salute. When he looked up again, Lan WangJi had already disappeared.

When LWJ meets "MXY" for the first time at Dafan Mountain, he is polite and gives him a slight nod in thanks for helping the juniors back at Mo Village. At this point, LWJ doesn't know "MXY" is in fact WWX, so their interaction is brief. Although WWX does hold eye contact with him as he brushes past him - because he's a minx. So their first meeting is brief and interestingly enough, LWJ is the one to leave first - not WWX trying to get away as fast as he can, as he apparently does later in the chapters. (I personally don't think he tries much at all!)

After JL and the other juniors look like they are in trouble, WWX summons something to help defeat the soul-consuming goddess. To WWX's shock it turns out be WN. Eventually WWX has to play a calming tune to stop WN from developing a killing intent and harming others. WWX clears his mind and a soft song naturally comes to the forefront of his mind.

Chapter 10

To stifle it, Wei WuXian calmed his feelings and assuredly played another melody. The melody had drifted over his mind naturally. It was relaxed and tranquil, contrasting with the bizarre and ear-piercing one from before.

I just absolutely love the second interaction between WWX and LWJ. I can almost imagine LWJ hearing the melody of Wangxian being carried on the wind, floating down the mountain towards him. Calling out to him in a teasing, evocative tone - daring his heart to accept what he was hearing. Evoking so many strong emotions within him, it would have been such a moment of utter turmoil for him. Simultaneously wanting to believe that WWX was back from the dead, as the only logical explanation, and being frightened to let his heart believe such a thing could have actually happened. As no one else knows the song apart from the two of them, he really can't deny it.

We could even go as far as to say LWJ assumes WWX knows what the melody is called. When asked what the tune was called back in the Xuanwu of Slaughter cave, LWJ mumbled something to him twice before WWX passed out. So LWJ may well think, just like he assumes in the cave after the bloodbath of Nightless City, he heard what he said to him back then as well. MXTX likes drawing parallels, so it's not too much of a stretch to assume both apparent 'cave confessions' link up to the some of misunderstandings that surround their relationship.

Chapter 10

Wei WuXian retreated while playing the flute, guiding him to follow. Walking like this for a short distance, they moved into the forest, when suddenly, Wei WuXian caught the chilly scent of sandalwood. Immediately after, his back bumped into someone. With an abrupt pain on his wrist, the flute melody had stopped. Wei WuXian thought, oh no, and turned around to look. His sight collided with Lan WangJi’s eyes. They were light-colored to the point of appearing to be physically cold.

Hearing the music, we can assume LWJ probably got onto Bichen and flew up the mountain as fast as he could. He probably landed in the nearby forest up the top of the mountain and started searching for where the music was coming from. I think he would have been nervous, excited and very confused at this point. The back of "MXY" would have come into view as he edged into the forest, luring WN away from the crowd. Without any doubt, LWJ would have silently walked towards what he now knows is WWX. LWJ then grips WWXs wrist to stop him playing the flute any further.

He decisively ignored the hand that gripped him and raised his arm to continue playing. This time, the tempo was faster, as if it was urging or scolding. His air was not steady and each note cracked at the end, sounding shrill and harsh. Suddenly, Lan WangJi’s hand tightened, almost causing his wrist to break. Wei WuXian’s fingers loosened from the pain and the wooden flute dropped to the ground.

What WWX assumed is LWJ being angry at someone daring to use Demonic Cultivation in front of him, was in my opinion, LWJ trying to protect him. It is even confirmed in the text, that LWJ doesn't pay any attention to WN the whole time he is holding WWX's wrist. LWJ knows that JC is also somewhere around the mountain and that he absolutely hates anyone who mimics WWXs cultivation style. Which I think is why he is trying to stop WWX, to ensure he doesn't attract any attention from JC again. WWX continued to play the flute in order to make WN leave before more trouble ensued. LWJ intensifies his grip on WWXs grip to stop him playing.

Wei WuXian feared that Lan WangJi would chase after Wen Ning, so he backhandedly grabbed him instead. But, surprisingly, Lan WangJi never even looked at Wen Ning once, but stared at Wei WuXian the whole time. The two stood face toface, gripping each other’s arms, and stared.

I love the scene where they are gripping each other's arms and staring into each other's eyes. Whether WWX wants to admit it or not, there must have been some sexual tension there surely?! We aren't even privy to WWX's thoughts at this moment, which is quite interesting. As such, we can only imagine what's going through his head! Probably something to do with LWJ's sexy icey gaze - my personal headcanon! (Never mind WWXs obsession with his eyes - I think I'm developing one! ) On the other hand, LWJ is most likely thinking about how WWX must have seized someone's body, as I'm pretty sure he would not be aware of the technique MXY used.

At this point JC appears and is told about "MXY" summoning WN. JC doesn't need anymore proof, he knows this has to be WWX as WN was summoned - and he was supposed to be ash by now! JC decides to attack WWX with Zidian, in an attempt to whip his soul out of MXY's body.

He let go of his left hand, and a long whip dangled from it. The whip was extremely slender. Like its name, it was a streak of purple lightning which sizzled, as if it had just been taken away from a sky full of storm clouds. He held one side of it in his grip. As it was brandished, it seemed to let out rapid slashes of lightning! Before Wei WuXian moved, Lan WangJi had already placed his zither in front of him.

LWJ instantly protects WWX knowing that his soul will be whipped out of the person's body if it had been forcefully taken. So when WWX is whipped and nothing happens, LWJ (and JC!) are utterly shocked. LWJ is still convinced "MXY" is WWX, because he played Wangxian and no one else has ever heard this song - so he must be perplexed as to how WWX has managed to come back.

LWJ continues to protect WWX to ensure JC doesn't take him back to Lotus Pier and torture him. Personally, I think LWJ had every intention of taking WWX back to the Cloud Recesses this time around anyway - especially to protect him from JC. WWX tries to escape both of them by making them feel so uncomfortable around him they leave him alone. So he uses MXY's reputation as a lunatic and a cut-sleeve to try and scare JC and LWJ off.

Wei WuXian replied, “Which type? Well, I am very much attracted to people like HanGuang- Jun.” Lan WangJi could not tolerate this sort of frivolous and foolish joke at all. If he felt disgusted, he would definitely draw a line between them and keep his distance. Disgusting two people at once—this was killing two birds with one stone! However, as Lan WangJi heard this, he turned around. His face was emotionless, “Mark your words.” Wei WuXian, “Hmm?” Lan WangJi turned back, speaking in a mannerly yet resolute way, “I will take this person back to the Lan Sect.” Wei WuXian, “...” Wei WuXian, “...Huh?”

As we're assuming this from LWJ's POV, we are privy to information we weren't if we were reading MDZS for first time. With that in mind, LWJ is under the impression WWX remembers his confession to him after the Bloodbath of Nightless City. As such, he probably thinks WWX is being flirty and teasing him when he is acting as "MXY" out of gratitude towards him for saving him all those years ago. LWJ continues to protect WWX by taking him back to Gusu. Which I find quite poetic, considering LWJ wanted him to come back with him in WWXs first life.

Later still, WWX is apparently trying to get thrown out of the CR by climbing into bed with LWJ, attempting to 'disgust' him.

Chapter 12

Lan WangJi spoke, “Are you sure that this is what you want?” “...” For some reason, Wei WuXian felt that he should carefully consider his reply. As he was about to curl his lips into a smile, a numbness suddenly came from his waist, and his legs gave out. With a thump, he fell onto Lan WangJi’s body. The curvature of a half-smile was frozen on his lips. His head was at the right side of Lan WangJi chest and he couldn’t move at all. Lan WangJi’s voice came from above him. His voice was low and deep. His chest vibrated slightly as he spoke each word. “Then stay like this for the whole night.”

WWX teasing LWJ is something he has done since his first life, so LWJ probably assumes he's up to his old tricks again. LWJ has matured over the years and has accepted his love for WWX. As such, he can fully embrace WWXs teasing and can now even tease him back! Which is exactly what he does! In fact, I'd say LWJ has gotten very good at teasing WWX. WWX had already met his match with LWJ in nearly every way, but now he is competing for biggest tease as well!

Obviously everyone reads characters and text differently at times, so I'm sure there are many different ways to interpret LWJ's POV. But I just thought it would be fun to share my interpretation of one of my favourite characters.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #mdzs lan wangji #mdzs lwj #mdzs novel #lan wangji #character pov #my thoughts

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years ago

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Prompt: Wei Wuxian has achieved time travel! He's gonna fix so many broken things. Unfortunately, WWX has miscalculated a teensy tiny variable and instead of arriving in his original 15yo body in Lotus Pier, he's crash landed in MXY's tiny 7~8yo body at Mo Manor. But no problem, he can fix this if he can just find his real body. (Meanwhile, Yunmeng Jiang's head disciple is acting the wrong kind of childish, aka, Mo Xuanyu is having the weirdest day of his young life.)

Switcheroo - ao3

Mo Xuanyu thought that this Wei Wuxian person whose body he’d stolen must have been a really interesting person, mostly because he’d been here for three days so far and nobody’d noticed the switch yet.

Possibly it had to do with the fact that Mo Xuanyu still wasn’t exactly sure how he’d stolen the body – he’d just gone to sleep in the shed, same as always, and then he’d woken up in the softest bed he’d ever encountered in his life…no, softer than even his dreams! He’d thought it over and concluded that he must have died from cold out in the shed, turned into a fierce ghost out of resentment, grown powerful (somehow), then stolen some rich young master’s body when they weren’t paying close enough attention and, once he’d possessed the body, promptly lost all his memory of being a ghost.

It seemed like the only logical course of events.

He was very sorry about it, though. Wei Wuxian seemed like a nice, if very unusual person.

The first day, Mo Xuanyu had barely even noticed the body-switch, being quite so enamored of the soft bed he was in – he’d refused to get out of bed at all, declaring that he was going to lie in and sleep for a century or more, and the people who’d come to the door to get him didn’t beat him or anything over it, but rather just laughed or rolled their eyes and then left him to it. Luckily, at the time, he’d just assumed he was dead or something and proceeded to ignore everything in favor of napping.

He only acknowledged that he was alive later in the afternoon, when his stomach started growling – it seemed like a very unlikely thing for a dead man’s stomach to do.

Mo Xuanyu had by that point figured out that he wasn’t himself anymore, which was fine since he didn’t much like himself; he’d also figured out, through looking himself over, that he was old now. At least fifteen or sixteen, which was twice the age he last remembered himself being. That was fine, too, though: being older meant that he was stronger and faster and would be better able to handle it when people wanted to beat him or something. Most importantly, though, it meant he was old enough to enter the kitchen on his own!

Mo Xuanyu already knew that he wasn’t allowed to eat at the main table, being only the bastard son of the younger daughter, and the cook back at home was a fierce woman who didn’t allow anyone under the age of ten into her kitchen; as a result, he had to wait for his mother to bring him back some food, and it was always cold and not quite enough. Now, though, since he was older, he figured he might as well try to go to the kitchen and fill his belly that way.

Luckily, while his current body’s house was much bigger than the Mo house, all houses were generally built along the same lines, so it wasn’t hard to find the kitchen. Everyone there laughed when he showed up, even though he’d tried to be very quiet and sneak in and then screwed it up by tripping over his own feet – it seemed like everyone thought he was doing it on purpose to be funny – and then the cooks gave him a meal of his own that was hot and fresh and wonderful.

He'd wolfed it down.

“Honestly, Wei Wuxian, you eat like a hungry ghost, you’d think the Jiang clan starves you,” one of them scolded him, but with a smile, and from that Mo Xuanyu learned that the rich young master was called Wei Wuxian and that he lived with the Jiang clan. The different surnames confused him a little, but he didn’t dare ask any questions about it, so he just stuffed his mouth and pretended that was the reason he couldn’t answer.

No one questioned it.

No one questioned it when he went wandering all around instead of doing whatever chores or duties he’d been assigned, either. Someone had actually seen him hovering by a door and asked him to bring back a pheasant when he returned, so out of lack of better options he’d headed outside to try to go find one.

He had a pretty good time walking around the forest, then remembered what he’d been asked and chased the pheasants for a while, without success . Fortunately, he then got lucky and stumbled over an old snare that had three pheasants caught inside, so he’d picked up the whole box and carted it back home.

“Three,” one of the boys in purple-blue marveled as he saw Mo Xuanyu walking towards the kitchen. “You know, people say that the birds around the Lotus Pier have gotten too smart to be caught easily, but look at our da-shixiong; he makes it look easy!”

From this, Mo Xuanyu could figure out that Wei Wuxian was (apparently!) part of a cultivator clan, apparently located at a place called the Lotus Pier, and that he was the oldest or at least head disciple, to boot. He knew all about cultivator clans from his mother, since apparently his father had been a sect leader, and that meant he knew enough to call the other boy ‘shidi’ as he passed, making the other boy beam happily.

It also meant that when he chanced a guess and called the young woman in a pretty pink dress who waved at him ‘shijie’, she smiled and nodded, which meant to him that he’d done the right thing.

“I heard you slept even more of the morning away than usual,” she told him, but didn’t seem too upset about it. “I bet that means you’ll be skipping dinner and staying up all night, hmm?”

Mo Xuanyu had no intention of skipping dinner if it was anything like what the kitchens had given him earlier, actually, but while he was still trying to figure out a way to say that, she said, leaning in close to whisper, “It’s probably a good idea, anyway – Mother and Father are fighting again. Just go to the kitchens to grab something…I promise I’ll make it up to you with some soup tomorrow, pork ribs and lotus roots, your favorite. All right?”

“Shijie, you’re the best,” Mo Xuanyu said effusively, willing to die for her at once, and she laughed and tousled his hair.

“I am,” she said, looking happy. “And if my little A-Xian stays good and obedient, I may even feed him.”

She did, too, the next day when he finally tore himself out of the beautiful wonderful soft bed and went to go find her. She’d made him soup, just as he’d promised, and laughed and laughed for some reason: apparently, she interpreted him being quiet and not talking too much as his efforts to be ‘good and obedient’, which was apparently so out of the ordinary as to be a deliberate joke.

From this, Mo Xuanyu concluded that the young master he’d possessed, Wei Wuxian, was a jackass.

Well, perhaps that was a bit harsh. Arrogant and self-centered, talented and brave and probably brilliant, definitely charming and maybe even kind, but also spoiled and inclined to step on other people to get where he wanted to go, if Mo Xuanyu had to guess – why else would everyone constantly react as if him not being obnoxious was the world’s biggest stunt?

No one seemed to expect anything of him at all: he didn’t do any chores, and no one batted an eyelid; he didn’t go where he was told, and everyone just sighed…at one point the sect leader himself came and patted him on the head, scolding him in a joking tone that he hadn’t seen him leading any of the training the way he was supposed to – but when Mo Xuanyu quailed, he’d burst out laughing, telling ‘Wei Wuxian’ to stop pretending to be a scared little rabbit, that it was fine if he’d gotten distracted by some clever new invention or whatever, that someone else would handle it, that he should take as long as he needed.

Mo Xuanyu had pasted a great big smile on his face through force of effort and agreed cheerfully.

The sect leader had accepted it.

Probably a jackass, but clearly a beloved one, Mo Xuanyu thought to himself as he packed up clothing and a few small treasures that no one would miss, a little wistful. The scare of the whole encounter had put things in perspective – he wasn’t going to be able to keep up this sort of façade for long. In fact, he was shocked he’d managed it so long already; surely, no matter how many pranks this Wei Wuxian played, no matter how childishly he behaved, surely someone should’ve noticed that he was actually an eight-year-old masquerading as a sixteen-year-old?

Mo Xuanyu couldn’t decide whether it was sad that no one paid too much attention or something that this Wei Wuxian fellow had brought down on his own head by being so consistently annoying.

Either way, there was nothing for it – he was going to have to leave.

Now that part was really sad: he’d never in his life had such good food, or such a soft bed, or even so many people that just seemed plain old happy to see him as since he’d arrived in this place. But he wasn’t the one all those things were for; he was just a sad ghost possessing a person, and if he stayed, the cultivators would eventually figure out something was wrong and exorcise him.

Probably violently.

Mo Xuanyu probably deserved it, too, but despite that he wasn’t willing.

So he packed up what he could and headed out.

He got all the way to the gate before a new purple-clad disciple – about his age, if he had to guess, and holding a pack like he’d just come back from a trip, with a scowl on his face – called out for Wei Wuxian.

Mo Xuanyu waved a little, hoping that that would be enough.

For the first time, it wasn’t.

The boy’s face settled into an even deeper scowl.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Wei Wuxian! You’re acting all weird – hey! Where are you going?”

Mo Xuanyu was running away, obviously. He wasn’t about to get tied up and exorcised, no thank you.

He didn’t think he’d make it, but it was still worth trying.

Sure enough, the purple-clad boy who was probably called Jiang Cheng, based on what everyone was calling out as they ran by, got tired of running and jumped on his sword, and there was no way Mo Xuanyu would be able to outrun a sword, not even if he tried as fast as he –

Someone picked him up.

It wasn’t Jiang Cheng.

Mo Xuanyu turned his head and stared.

It must be some sort of yao, he thought. Humans were definitely not that pretty.

“Lan Wangji!” Jiang Cheng howled. “What are you even doing in the Lotus Pier?! Put my shixiong down!”

The rescuer, Lan Wangji, frowned a little at Mo Xuanyu.

Mo Xuanyu didn’t know exactly what expression he ought to be making in return, and was a bit too dazed to even dare to guess. He’d just noticed that they were flying – flying! on a sword! – and he was clutching onto this Lan Wangji’s shoulders for dear life.

“You are not Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said. His voice sounded very definitive.

“Uh,” Mo Xuanyu said. “Sorry? Please don’t drop me.”

“I will not. What is your name?”

“Mo Xuanyu,” Mo Xuanyu admitted, and Lan Wangji’s eyes widened as if that meant something to him – except it couldn’t, of course, because Mo Xuanyu was sure he’d never met anyone even remotely like this Lan Wangji fellow in his life. “I don’t remember taking his body. I’m sorry. Can you not exorcise me? I don’t want to die.”

Lan Wangji was silent for a long moment.

He was still flying very fast, and Jiang Cheng was still following, shouting out curses and demands that he stop, not that Lan Wangji was listening.

“There will be no exorcism,” he finally said, and Mo Xuanyu exhaled in relief. “We will, however, fix this.”

“…we?”

“Wei Ying and myself.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded. That sounded more likely than anyone relying on his participation.

“Where are we going?” he asked. Jiang Cheng was falling further and further behind.

“Mo Village.”

Mo Xuanyu tensed up at once.

“You will not be left there,” Lan Wangji clarified, and – how did he know that Mo Xuanyu didn’t want to be left there? “But we must collect Wei Ying, who I suspect is currently in your body.”

“In my…I’m still alive?”

Lan Wangji was quiet again, and then said, “Yes. And you will remain so.”

That was reassuring, mostly.

“Okay,” Mo Xuanyu said, and found that he mostly felt relieved. He’d be very happy to have his normal body back again, if possible, especially if he didn’t have to stay in Mo Village…“Wait, if I don’t have to stay there, where will I go? I don’t have anywhere else to go, unless my father comes back for me. He's a sect leader –”

“He will not, and even if he did, you should not go with him. Once Wei Ying returns to his body, you will be able to stay at the Lotus Pier. If you do not wish to stay there, I will bring you back to the Cloud Recesses – that is my home – instead.”

“Oh,” Mo Xuanyu said, feeling bewildered. That was an awfully nice offer, even if Lan Wangji was feeling guilty about Wei Wuxian stealing his body by accident – which seemed like what had happened here rather than Mo Xuanyu being the one who did the stealing. Maybe he should go with Lan Wangji instead, he seemed much more responsible than Wei Wuxian was, rushing over to rescue him and explain things instead of throwing him into a body and leaving him all alone in a strange place. But on the other hand… “Is the Cloud Recesses…I mean…no offense, but…does it have…”

“Yes?”

“Does it have soft beds, too? And – and hot food?”

Mo Xuanyu didn’t need much, not really. He looked eagerly at Lan Wangji, who had an odd expression on his face briefly before wiping it back to neutral and nodding in confirmation.

“Okay,” Mo Xuanyu said, and curled up in Lan Wangji’s arms. “Then I’ll stay with you. You can take care of me.”

“I will,” Lan Wangji said, sounding strangely serious. “In return for the gift you last gave me – I will.”

#mdzs #mo xuanyu #jiang cheng #lan wangji #my fic #my fics #switcheroo

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eigwayne · 2 years ago

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Foolish Chances

The Untamed/ Chen Qing Ling fic by @eigwayne Sequel to A Little Spoiled (not required though)

AO3 Links: A Little Spoiled | Foolish Chances | Chapter 2 Tumblr Links: A Little Spoiled | Foolish Chances ch.1 (I’ll make an AO3 series once I figure out a name, but for now, please navigate via the links above)

Chapter 2: Rendez-vous Wen Qing receives a letter (via a curious Wei Wuxian). She arranges a short get-away and Jiang Cheng shows her a new trick he picked up from Nie Huaisang's books. (The trick is smutty, I almost forgot to warn you, gentle readers, my apologies. This chapter’s second half is smut.)

~*~

“Wen Qing! I have a letter for you!” Wei Wuxian announced- loudly- when he returned to the settlement. He waved it above his head.

“Qing-guniang has a letter?” one of the uncles wondered, a bit too loud, and Wen Qing stormed over to grab it before anyone else got too interested. Heedless of danger as always, Wei Wuxian grinned and held it higher.

“I was doing my perimeter check,” he explained, dancing out of her reach. “I didn’t know I’d be playing delivery boy! Really, you should tell your friend to leave it in a safer place. Like with the offerings from my admirers!”

“And let those simpletons know I’m receiving correspondence? Hah!” She followed him easily, her skirt swirling as she matched his steps. She couldn’t reach the letter but she kept up with his footwork- a minor miracle after how little she trained herself lately.

“Oh, come on!”

“No! The last thing we need is your fan club thinking the rest of us are reachable! It’ll be nothing but ‘Wen-guniang, put in a good word for me! Wen-guniang, grant me an audience with the patriarch!’ all day along!”

“It wouldn’t be all day…”

“It would!” She made a move like she was reaching for her needles and Wei Wuxian promptly stopped and handed the letter over.

“So I warded your mail tree,” Wei Wuxian said like he hadn’t interrupted his train of thought earlier. “It’s not quite in my normal barrier but it’s close enough to keep most of the wandering dead away if they escape. And I added a little ward to keep the hole in the trunk dry. That’s where I found the letter. You’re welcome.”

Wen Qing ignored him, which was definitely not the reaction he was looking for (it was good to see him so lively but she wasn’t going to encourage his shenanigans). Instead, she took a few steps away, opened the envelope, and pulled out the letter.

‘Greetings to Wen-daifu. I know it hasn’t been that long since we last met, but I would like to see you again. I will be traveling soon and will be passing through Yiling-‘ Wen Qing refolded the letter and took a few more steps away. Wei Wuxian took the hint and stopped trying to peek over her shoulder. He waved her off, like he was the one with something to do, and she headed to the cave for some privacy. Wei Wuxian and A-Yuan’s voices soon rang out in play behind her.

The letter named the date he would be in Yiling and again expressed wishes to see her. He was foolish enough to sign it “Jiang Wanyin” and she was glad she’d gotten it away from Wei Wuxian. She would never endure the questions if Wei Wuxian had confirmation it was Jiang Cheng who was writing to her. She’d never endure the hurt he would hide if he didn’t get a letter of his own.

She thought about refusing the meeting, or not showing up, after she tucked the letter away and went about the rest of her chores. It was a foolish thing to do, to run around with a man at all, never mind Jiang Cheng who had a sect to look out for and a brother Wen Qing had ruined, and who was frankly not nearly nice enough to A-Ning (which was complicated, she admitted when she was feeling gracious, with that whole “his job is basically to destroy fierce corpses” thing. She didn’t often feel that gracious, but the thought had snuck in once or twice). It was also foolish to let that man think he could just write a letter and she would drop everything to come to bed with him.

Wen Qing did not consider herself a fool normally. But she remembered the way it felt to have Jiang Cheng’s hands on her, his arms around her. And she certainly felt foolish for how much she wanted that again.

So when the day came, she went into Yiling.

~*~

There was a teahouse at the far edge of town. The tea was mediocre at best, the sweets barely more acceptable, but it was well stocked and cheap, so travelers and skinflint locals alike kept it in business. It was also far enough from the market where Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning sold their produce that they were unlikely to cross paths, even if there had been a crop ready to sell. Just to be safe though, Wen Qing set her brother to preparing what radishes were ready for pickling and their greens for drying, to bulk their stores before the best growing season ended, and Wei Wuxian was supposed to start teaching A-Yuan to write.

She arrived, wearing her second best robes (the best being the peach-colored gown she wore for their tryst three weeks before, too showy for Yiling but safely tucked in her qiankun pouch). Jiang Cheng was already there, talking to a man in Jiang Sect colors with a vaguely familiar face. The man nodded and said something in a low voice, and then left, striding away like a man with a purpose. Wen Qing gave a little curtsy and turned her face downward, hoping he wouldn’t notice her, mumbling an “Honored immortal,” the sort of greeting that normal citizens sometimes used for cultivators. They didn’t know most cultivators weren’t actually immortal, after all.

She held her gaze to the floor until she was certain he was gone.

“Chen Boliang didn’t even notice you,” Jiang Cheng grumbled when she reached his side. “I should whip him until he cries for being so unobservant.”

“It served me well, not being noticed, so please don’t,” she said. She placed a hand over one of his. His sour expression melted into a slight smile and her heart skipped. She removed her hand like he burned her, snatching it away, and sat down for a cup of tea. It was mediocre as expected, the sort of tea she would have turned up her nose at in Qishan, but there was no tea at all in the Burial Mounds so it tasted like heaven.

“Has he been with you long?” Wen Qing asked about his subordinate, just to make conversation.

Jiang Cheng nodded. “He was with me when we discovered Yiling.”

‘Discovered Yiling.’ He surely meant the former supervisory office, when Wei Wuxian had killed so many Wen soldiers through spirits and the terror they wrought, and Jiang Cheng had found her in the cells below the main house. It was doubly lucky Chen Boliang had paid her no mind; he might have recognized her as the woman from the cells, who had clearly been a Wen.

Did Chen Boliang know about the comb his sect leader left for that Wen woman, the half-spoken promise? Did he know why Jiang Cheng stayed behind an extra night in Yiling while the nighthunt group headed home today? Wen Qing didn’t dare ask. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, either. It would only lead to spiraling thoughts on what Jiang Cheng’s sect must think of their leader and his absences.

Despite her nerves, she still finished her tea and followed Jiang Cheng when he left. He politely asked her if she was done first, a shy look creeping onto his face, but he still took the lead when they left and Wen Qing let him. A Sect leader should be commanding, after all, and her work on his golden core- Wei Wuxian’s golden core- would be for nothing if he wasn’t a worthy sect leader.

(She tried not to think of the golden core often. When she thought of it in context of Wei Wuxian, she regretted even letting A-Ning talk her into it. When she thought of it in context of Jiang Cheng, she swelled with pride. No one else had created such a man, dragged him up from despair and mundanity like she had. But no one else could ever know, not even the man himself. She had to content herself with knowing his core was working, and leave it at that.)

They decided to fly to the next town over; Yiling proper was too close, too many people had seen Wen Qing and Jiang Cheng there even if they didn’t know them, and might make a connection. It was a lot of trouble, but his reputation was too hard-won and precious to risk. She didn’t dare think about hers.

(If she did, she would only remember how far she’d fallen, and she’d worry what the people who saw her leaving the teahouse with a well-dressed man would think.)

She didn’t hold him as close as she would have liked as they flew, leaving herself and him space to maneuver. His body radiated heat, and if she opened up her senses, she could feel his spiritual presence like an electric storm brewing in her arms. The thought of taming nature itself through him made a thrill run through her. ‘Such hubris,’ she scolded herself, but it didn’t make the ache below her stomach lessen any.

They landed outside the town, in a strategically secluded copse of trees, and he was a perfect gentleman as she changed into her flowing pink-orange robes. Even though he would be removing them later, even though their whole purpose here wasn’t gentlemanly at all. Wen Qing thought about pinning him against a tree and showing him that she understood the hidden meaning of his letter. She was shrugging her plain robes off and almost left them there, the urge to just grab him was so strong. ‘I know you want me,’ she almost said. ‘Why are we pretending so hard when we could have just had each other under our tree hours ago?’

But she knew the answer to that. Reputation, reputation, reputation. And she had to agree.

As for turning his back while she changed, well, she had admitted to herself that his stumbling inexperience was charming.

“You look beautiful,” Jiang Cheng said when she was dressed, hunger seeping into his voice. She could almost feel the sparks when he took her hand. The fussing was worth it, at that moment, and his tone, his heated expression, made her feel beautiful in a way she never cared about before, without his gaze to inspire it.

She felt wanted, and it was intoxicating.

“Kiss me?” she said, and he obliged. It was disappointingly light and it must have shown on her face because he touched his lips to her forehead and apologized.

“I don’t want to get to involved now. You deserve better than a carpet of fallen leaves.”

Wen Qing suspected her standards were too low because she found that incredibly romantic, but she acquiesced, and they walked into town hand-in-hand, like a pair of sweethearts traveling to market.

“Do you need anything?” he asked as they walked through town.

“No,” she told him, even though she could list at least ten things she wanted for the settlement. She had already accepted so much from him. Any more would kick off an endless cycle of debt, even if it was just in her mind.

He bought her things anyway. A decorative comb no wider than the length of her thumb, with three short chains with small pearls dangling on the ends. A length of linen that was meant for something practical but delicate, like a fine lady’s socks, and would most likely make underclothes for Granny and A-Yuan. A jar of powdered dried chilis and a packet of candied ginger.

“You shouldn’t,” she said, and meant it, but she accepted the items nonetheless. “I can’t pay you back,” she told him, but she ached to kiss him and that would probably be enough for him.

“Touch me,” she demanded when they reached the room he rented. He had just set down his purchases and wasn’t even standing straight again, and he gawked at her, uncomprehending. She took a step closer and pulled the pin from her hair. “I’ve been waiting for you to touch me since I read your letter. When I decided to meet you, I knew what you wanted. And I want it too.”

~*~

“And I want it too.”

The words stopped Jiang Cheng’s heart. Of course he wanted her to want him, but hearing it was something else. He took her hairpin from her and tossed it onto the table with her gifts. Then he pulled her into his arms. “This is better than the clearing,” he said, as if justifying the wait. “You’re certain?”

Wen Qing nodded and looked up at him through her eyelashes. The sight of her dark eyes, her fluttering black lashes, the curve of her lips, all of it went straight to his gut. And lower, of course. He didn’t have a chance to pick up his reading again while he was on a night hunt, but he remembered the images vividly. “I want to try something with you,” he told her, leaning closer.

“Try something?” A hint of suspicion crept in her voice and her expression became guarded.

Jiang Cheng tried not to scowl. She had good reason to be nervous; he hadn’t explained a thing after all. But having to admit he’d gotten help… He tried to dodge it. “I heard about some things that feel good. You’re the only one I would want to try them with.” Her expression didn’t soften yet. “You’re going to make me say it?” he snapped.

“Forgive me if I’m hesitant, but there are any number of things you could be talking about, and I haven’t heard good things about some of them. We’re adults. We should be able to talk about these things.”

“Well, forgive me for being hesitant! It’s not exactly easy to just… say these things! What if you think it’s weird?”

“It’s better than being mysterious about things you want to do to me!”

“I thought it would be more romantic!” He felt silly, arguing about romance while he still held her. Because his embrace hadn’t slacked at all. “We’ve barely even kissed and you want me to just tell you I want to taste you?”

She reached up and kissed him hard, nearly slamming their lips together. “We’ve kissed,” she declared. “Now spit it out.”

He gave up trying to control his features and scowled. “I wanted it to be romantic. I wanted to treat you well and undress you and all that, and you ruined it.”

“You ruined it yourself. But you’re cute when you try to look tough, so I’ll let you try again.”

“’Try to look tough’? Wen Qing, you impossible woman!” He was insulted, but she had her arms around his neck still, and she also looked cute when she tried to be stern so the feeling faded quickly. “I got some books from Nie-xiong,” he admitted. “I wanted to learn when women want. And there was one… Ever since I saw it, I wanted to try it on you.”

She still looked skeptical, so he tightened his arms around her and made himself keep going. “He was so overcome by her beauty that they didn’t even undress. And I know that feeling. Because when I think about you…” He paused to kiss her, the slower, languid type of kiss that made the heat rise in his body. He licked her lip, asking permission to make the kiss deeper. Wen Qing relaxed in his arms and leaned against him. He felt a surge of joy- she accepted him!- and tried to hold himself back, to take his time and make it last. It took more concentration than the hurried kisses from their previous encounters, but he was rewarded as she arched into him and made a small, needy sound.

He broke the kiss, not without regret. “I want to do that to you in other places,” he said as she panted against his mouth. “I want to take off this dress and kiss you underneath.”

“Yes,” she breathed, and she kissed him again. This one was demanding and hungry. She tightened her arms around him, pressing against him so tightly he could feel his belt digging into them both. He would have to fix that. So he swung her up into his arms and crossed the room to the bed, laying her down as gently as he could, which was, admittedly, harder than stories made it out to be. But he got her safely to their bed (their bed! It was a thought he wanted to have more often, every day if he could). He unfastened his belt and dropped it to the floor with a clunk.

He caught her eye then, her gaze hot and wanting. ‘She wants me,’ he thought, and although it wasn’t the first time ever or even the first time that day, it still made a jolt run through him, pure joy at being needed by Wen Qing. He leaned over her and brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m going to kiss you everywhere,” he told her. Her lips parted in anticipation, her eyes dark and huge, and she reached up to touch his face.

“Please do,” she told him. What could he do but start kissing her? He began with her lips, coaxing her mouth open and tasting her again. He couldn’t resist nipping a little when they parted. His hands went to her sash and he loosened her clothing until he could peel away the top layers. He kissed her neck, cautious not to leave a mark where it could be seen, as his fingers found the ties of her bottommost layers. She wriggled beneath him, trying to get out of the unfastened layers quickly even though the length of her skirts were trapped beneath them. Her struggling pushed her body up against him, her breasts pressing into his hands as he untied her top.

As much as he would like to enjoy the feel of her in his hands, he didn’t like to see her trapped and fussing. “I got you,” he said, trying to reassure her. He seized the peach fabric and yanked it out from under her. At least one seam ripped from the sudden movement and Wen Qing’s arm pinkened from the friction. But she was free from those layers, at least. He arched down to kiss the delicate skin. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I guess I’m in too much of a hurry.”

“Definitely not too much,” Wen Qing said, and there was a touch of impatience and breathiness in her voice. She took her hands in his and brought them back to her chest. He obliged her; his research had noted that a woman’s breasts were sensitive, and responsive to touch. Of course, his research was just Nie Huaisang’s pornography and one night with Wen Qing prior, but it was fairly uniform in that conclusion so far, so he squeezed and pinched, gently at first, and then firmly when she made appreciative noises. Her nipples peaked between his fingers and it was so gratifying to feel her response, his erection throbbed in answer.

Wen Qing’s hands went to the tie of her top as he teased her chest. It was awkward and they got in each other’s way, but soon she opened her shirt and bared her chest to him. “I believe you said you were going to kiss me everywhere?” she said. He couldn’t say no to that, so he lowered himself to reach, kissing the plain of her chest under her collarbone and up the slope of her breasts. He held her breasts, squeezing them to keep her nipples pert. His tongue darted out to taste them and she moaned. It was brief and soft, barely more than a sigh, but it was all Jiang Cheng needed for encouragement. He grasped on nipple between his lips. Wen Qing writhed under him and bit back another moan, so he did sucked hard and swirled his tongue. He switched breasts and lathed the nipple to a peak. Leaving it nice and wet, he trailed kisses down her stomach, his hands following on either side, caressing her body.

His travels were interrupted by her last layer of bottoms. “Definitely too much of a hurry,” he said, his voice growling in contrast to the sweet moans from Wen Qing. He sat up and shrugged off his top layers, since it was now far too hot in the room (maybe it was just him, reacting to Wen Qing’s beautiful squirming). He moved quickly and surely, so there was no time to get self-conscious about his scars and ruin things overthinking. Then he yanked off the rest of her clothes, until all she was wearing was the ribbon in her hair.

He repositioned himself, knees between hers, and resumed kissing his way down her body. He nipped at the skin below her ribs, licked a line down her stomach, traced a circle around her belly button. He ran his hands over her hips (and tried to ignore how sharp they were. That was an issue for another time), and caressed her thighs as he kissed lower and lower.

“Don’t tease me,” she said. She was trying to be commanding, and it was certainly a command, but she was writhing and panting and it sounded like begging. Jiang Cheng smirked and ran his hands up her thighs again.

She set her hands on his shoulders and gave him a little shove downwards. “Jiang Wanyin!” she complained.

“Tell me what you want. If I have to say it, so do you.” He kissed her, halfway between her bellybutton and the dark curve between her legs, just to let her know he wasn’t unaware but was definitely teasing despite her command. She moaned and shifted her knees apart, giving him a glimpse of her delicate, heated folds. He resisted the urge to lick his lips.

“I want you to kiss me everywhere,” she said, squeezing his shoulders. She loosened her grip but only to run her nails over them. “I want you to put your mouth on me.”

He kissed her lower as a reward. “Yes,” she sighed, and he went lower. He moved his hands closer, put his fingers on the temptingly plush outer lips that hid her entrance, and parted them gently. She made another soft encouraging sound. Her folds were pink and already glistening with her slick. He wanted more than anything to taste them.

His books were of divided advice on the next part, though. Should he start with kisses? Explore with his tongue? Or dive into her entrance? He would have to rely on her cues. But since she was so intent on talking today… “Tell me what’s good,” he said. Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to her folds.

Wen Qing hummed a little, and sighed when he sampled her with his tongue, and gave him a “Keep going” when he lapped at her entrance. She tasted sweet- not literally sweet like sugar, but like having her was precious and ‘sweet’ the only word he could come up with for it. Not that he usually wrote poetry of any sort, but something about this moment, about her, made him want to. With his nose just as buried in her folds as his tongue, and his ears attuned to only her voice, his whole world consisted of Wen Qing and nothing else. She was all he could hear and taste and smell, all he touched besides his clothes and the sheets, and when he opened his eyes, all he could see was her quivering body.

He loved it. If the world ended while his face was buried between her legs, he would die fulfilled.

Wen Qing’s hands gripped his shoulders for support, and he decided exploring her folds was the right choice. He pushed her thighs further apart and licked a stripe with the flat of his tongue, slow and taunting, from the entrance of her body to the sensitive nub above it. Her breath hitched and she made a short keening noise.

“Good,” she panted. “It’s good. Keep going.” So he did. He lapped and traced circles and sucked at her until she started rocking her hips into his mouth and telling him he was good. That only renewed his devotion. Hearing her say “You’re so good” made him want to hear more. He wanted to be good for her, wanted to hear her cry out her approval. Her hands shifted to his hair but the tug didn’t matter as much as making her call his name.

And she did call his name. Her back arched, her hips canted up into his mouth, and she cried out, “Wanyin!” as she pulled him hard into her, using her grip on his hair. Slick gushed and he lapped it up, which only made her moan more. Eventually she collapsed back onto the bed, her legs trembling and her hands resting strengthless at her sides, and she begged, “Wait, give me a moment, please, wait.”

He gave one last lick and she gasped, beautiful and breathy. When he raised his head, she stretched her legs and let them fall to the mattress. He looked up at her expectantly, but she only panted, her eyes closed and her whole torso heaving with the effort of breathing. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Finally, finally, she shifted to look at him, bracing herself partially up on her elbows.

“I’m sorry I pulled your hair,” she said. “You were too good. I couldn’t control myself. I’ll try to behave next time.”

‘She said next time!’ Jiang Cheng hid his smile by resting his head on her stomach and she flopped back onto the pillows, like that was too much for her. She stroked his hair, gently this time, and even though his cock ached for attention, he was happy for the contact.

“You were so good to me,” Wen Qing said as she petted his hair. Her voice was distant and her speech languid, like she was thinking out loud. “You must want to come too. Can you give me a bit longer? That was very nice and I’m not sure I can move.”

“You don’t have to move if you don’t want,” he told her. He wasn’t sure what he would do yet, but she was more important and if she was too tired, he would do all the work. And if necessary, he was fairly experienced in taking care of his own needs by now. Those books had helped him in that department as well.

“No, I have to take care of you, too,” she insisted. She wriggled up onto her elbows again. “It’s only fair.”

He lifted his head and frowned. “But if you don’t want to…”

“I want to.”

Wen Qing was, as far as Jiang Cheng was concerned, the most beautiful and wonderful woman in the entire world. He crawled up to kiss her sweet lips, forgetting he tasted of her. She still accepted the kiss gracefully even though the taste made her scrunch up her face, and somehow even that was cute.

She put an arm around him when he broke away and gently pushed to one side. He obediently and somewhat hastily followed her unspoken instruction and lay down beside her. She turned toward him. “I can’t let you do what we did last time,” she said. “It’s not the right time.”

He gaped at her, trying to understand her evasive words. She flushed and snapped, “In my cycle. I don’t want to get with child.”

“Oh!” Jiang Cheng felt foolish, of course, but this was the first time he’d had to worry about such things. She hadn’t mentioned it before and he wasn’t knowledgeable enough to think of it, relying on her for cues in his inexperience. The spring books were no help; the only story he’d read so far that dealt with the topic claimed a certain position was best for achieving that result, but it had been more of a comedic moment than anything else.

(It was a short story about a well-endowed man, and there were so many analogies involving and references to horses it made Jiang Cheng wonder just what he was reading. The scene claimed that mounting a woman “as a stallion does a mare” would surely result in a child. He’d stopped halfway through, unable to imagine Wen Qing allowing such a position and too unnerved at the direction things were going in the story, as a horse-tail whisk was presented shortly after.)

“You don’t have to do anything,” Jiang Cheng said, even though his cock throbbed in protest. Wen Qing gave him a look like he was being foolish and wrapped her hand around him.

He didn’t last long after that. Wen Qing’s touch was firm and sure, and maybe her hands were roughened by the work she had to do but it was good, and she told him he was good, and soon he spilled over her fingers. He lay in her arms until his heart stopped racing, and lay there a while longer simply because he enjoyed it, the feel of her warmth around him and her skin against his. They eventually had to wash up and dress for dinner, but the desperate urge to touch had ebbed and Jiang Cheng moved comfortably around the room with her, their hands touching, helping each other with their hair in a way that felt natural, like when he imagined how spouses should be, like in the stories.

(Not Nie-xiong’s stories, of course. Hair touching led to a second round, often more athletic than the first. No, this was more like something his sister would like, where a couple found perfect harmony and all the sex was offscreen.)

He presented Wen Qing with another dress in pale aqua once he collected his wits enough to remember it was in his qiankun pouch especially for her. Combined with her beauty and poise, it made her look like a fairy, and Jiang Cheng was overcome by the desire to have this every day. Not just Wen Qing in his bed, but by his side. Her confidence was attractive and her skills were invaluable, and-

He shook off the thought. He was being ridiculous and dreamy, and Jiang Cheng’s personality only let him have that for so long before his reality in again. He could have this for the night and maybe into the morning, but that was it. There was no use listing all the reasons he wanted her when it had to end so soon.

By the time they descended the stairs, he was just as dignified and proud as a wealthy young master should be. He was a perfect gentleman at dinner, of course, but they walked back to their room hand in hand and her thumb rubbed slow circles against his skin until his heart pounded. He ached for that dream-like feeling from earlier, for Wen Qing in his arms or he in hers, until they were all that mattered in the world.

He could have this for tonight, he told himself, and swept her up into his arms.

------

Notes: Chen Boliang is a random name that felt good. I did not note the characters and I don’t know if he’s going to show up again or not, so don’t worry about it.

I know Jiang Cheng is being weirdly okay with his thing with Wen Qing being temporary when he hung onto to his siblings so hard in canon. I'll explore that more thoroughly in the future if I get a chance (I've made a note about it) but for now, remember Wen Qing hasn't made him any promises.

#my writing #chengqing #the untamed #untamed fanfiction #jiang cheng #wen qing

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bloody-bee-tea · 3 years ago

Text

Hostage

Inspired by this prompt from Twitter

Jiang Cheng is disoriented. He doesn’t know where he is and he doesn’t know where he’s stumbling towards, but right now it doesn’t matter.

Right now he just needs to get away.

From Wen Qing and Wen Ning, but especially from Wei Wuxian who is planning something so horrifying that Jiang Cheng’s stomach churns with fear and horror at just the thought of it.

Jiang Cheng will not allow Wei Wuxian to rip his own core out just because Jiang Cheng is too weak and lost his.

He will not allow his brother to suffer the same.

But panic does not make for a good travel companion because Jiang Cheng is blindly stumbling along, his breath coming way too fast and his chest hurting in unfamiliar ways, though a very practical part of Jiang Cheng thinks that is something he’ll have to get used to.

It’s not like the wounds will heal without a trace as they would if he still had his core.

The thought about his lost—destroyed—core makes him sob again and not for the first time does Jiang Cheng wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to simply lay down and let nature do its thing.

There’s no sense in living like this.

Jiang Cheng stumbles and falls down, and he’s not fast enough to break his fall and he’s definitely not strong enough to get back up again, so he simply stays where he is.

The fall re-opened his wounds again, Jiang Cheng can feel the blood oozing out of the slashes, but he doesn’t care.

It hurts, and the empty spot inside of him hurts and everything is so hard.

He lets out a sob, and once he started, he can’t seem to stop. Jiang Cheng cries and cries, wondering if he’ll die here, if he should have stayed with Wei Wuxian and the Wens if he should have just let Wei Wuxian do what he wanted, and it all comes out in sobs and gulping breaths and whimpers.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t even feel ashamed anymore.

He is so unaware of his surroundings that he startles badly when someone suddenly yells out and the movement only upsets his wounds further.

“Hey, who is there?” someone asks and even if Jiang Cheng wanted to answer, he can’t find his voice.

It seems like his sobs are indication enough, though, because suddenly someone is standing over him.

Jiang Cheng almost hopes it’s a Wen who doesn’t recognize him so his death will be swift and painless.

“Jiang-gongzi?” the person asks, suddenly sounding alarmed and Jiang Cheng curls further into himself. “Nie-zongzhu, it’s Jiang Wanyin!” the person yells and all of a sudden there’s a flurry of activities around Jiang Cheng.

He tries to keep track of everything, but things are happening too fast and his mind is too slow.

“Jiang Wanyin,” Nie Mingjue says, appearing in front of Jiang Cheng and he sits him up, almost with no help from Jiang Cheng at all.

“Jiang Wanyin, we thought you are dead,” Nie Mingjue tells him and there’s a smile on his face almost as if he’s positively surprised.

Well, that’s not going to hold on for long, Jiang Cheng thinks, but then he sees the state Nie Mingjue is in and he frowns.

“Is that blood?” he asks and Nie Mingjue seems confused.

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is—”

“You are literally bleeding.”

“As are you, Wanyin,” Nie Mingjue gently gives back and pulls Jiang Cheng up to his feet. “Can you stand? Can you walk? Our camp is not far from here.”

“I—” Jiang Cheng starts but he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know anything anymore, but he’s certain that he doesn’t want these people to know what happened to him.

Nie Mingjue will probably wish he’d left him laying where he was, instead of burdening himself with a useless Jiang Cheng.

“Come on, we have a healer with us,” Nie Mingjue says not waiting for Jiang Cheng’s answer and sweeps him right along.

Jiang Cheng is too exhausted to protest.

~*~*~

The healer bandages his chest again, and going by the burning questions in his eyes he noticed Jiang Cheng’s lack of a core and wants to ask a thousand questions, but Jiang Cheng glares him down.

It’s only when he’s left alone again that he relaxes, if only for a little bit. His siblings will no doubt know by now that he’s gone and he didn’t even get that far; word that Nie Mingjue found him will spread soon and before that happens Jiang Cheng has to figure out what he wants.

Not like he has much choice without a core, but still.

“Wanyin,” Nie Mingjue suddenly says from the entrance of the tent Jiang Cheng was led to and Jiang Cheng stiffens.

Of course his healer told him.

“What happened?” Nie Mingjue wants to know, coming fully inside the tent and throwing up silencing talismans.

At least no one else will have to hear how weak Jiang Cheng was.

“Lotus Pier burned,” Jiang Cheng rasps out, his voice still shot from his crying earlier and Nie Mingjue nods.

“We heard. I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, clearly knowing just how inadequate that is but soldering on anyway. “Your siblings?”

Jiang Cheng works his jaw at that, because he still can’t believe that after all the Wens have done to them Wei Wuxian would lead them right into the hands of other Wens.

“With Wen Qing and Wen Ning,” Jiang Cheng presses out and then it just bursts all out of him.

He tells Nie Mingjue everything; Lotus Pier, how he got captured, and held hostage, his time at Wen Chao’s hands, what he overheard Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian talk about.

By the end he feels drained and not for the first time he wonders if this is his life now. Aches all over and tired all the time. He is still not sure it’s something he can take.

“Wen Qing has a way to restore a core?” Nie Mingjue asks, suddenly thoughtful and Jiang Cheng nods. “And Wen Zhuliu got to you and burned your core out of you? And you survived?”

“I’m not sure I should have,” Jiang Cheng mutters and is not prepared for the fury that spreads over Nie Mingjue’s face.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jiang Cheng scoffs right in his face, because he is no longer the heir of a Sect, no longer a cultivator at all and he doesn’t have to trouble himself with all these niceties.

“Just look at me! I’m useless now! There’s nothing I can do. I’m powerless and useless and just a waste of space. I should have died at Wen Chao’s hands because everything is better than this. I am nothing without my cultivation!”

The words ring out in his tent, and Nie Mingjue goes very still.

“If you really thought that to be true, you would have stayed. You would have let Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian do what they planned. But you didn’t. You left.”

“Because we need Wei Wuxian for this war,” Jiang Cheng hotly gives back. “He’s twice the cultivator I used to be and we need him.”

“We don’t need one single person for a war,” Nie Mingjue shoots back. “Maybe we would have needed you for the war, too, did you ever think about that?”

“I was useless before. I am even more useless now. Let’s not pretend.”

Nie Mingjue levels him with a look that makes Jiang Cheng uncomfortable down to the bones and he squirms in his seat.

“You think you’re no longer fit to be Sect Leader,” Nie Mingjue says after a long while and Jiang Cheng laughs.

“Of course not! Who would ever accept me as a Sect Leader? I am nothing!”

“Do you think every person who didn’t manage to form a golden core is worth less?” Nie Mingjue asks him and he seems honestly curious. “Do you think the common folk to be beneath us?”

Jiang Cheng works his jaw, because the answer is obvious, but he can’t say it. He is not ready to see or accept any kind of logic.

“If you truly think a cultivator is better than a person without a golden core, then I agree with you. You are nothing and you shouldn’t be around anymore,” Nie Mingjue heartlessly tells him. “But that’s not what you think or you would have said something.”

“Shut up!” Jiang Cheng hisses but Nie Mingjue only leans forward.

“Do you think you can only lead a Sect if you can fight?” he mercilessly asks him and Jiang Cheng is quick to nod.

Of course that’s the only way to lead a Sect. How will anyone ever respect him if he can’t even use a goddamn sword.

“You think Jin Guangshan got his position because he’s a good fighter? He has one of the weakest golden cores I have ever seen in my life. Your father wasn’t a good fighter, either, as sorry as I am about his passing. Still, they were Sect Leaders. Lan Qiren isn’t this beloved because he’s a good fighter; he’s a teacher and his strength lies in music, not his cultivation. Do you think all of them to be useless?”

“Stop,” Jiang Cheng whispers. “That’s different.”

“Is it?” Nie Mingjue wants to know and Jiang Cheng puts his hand over his ears in the most childish action he has allowed himself in years.

“Stop talking,” he begs and tears drop from his eyes when Nie Mingjue puts a hand to his neck.

“I heard about how you led the people out of the cave. About how you pushed yourself to your limits to get your brother and Wangji the help they needed. Huaisang speaks highly of you, Lan Qiren apparently hasn’t stopped talking about you since you left his classes and Lan Xichen is looking forward to seeing you grow into your place. You think that only means something because you have a core?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng chokes out, because it can’t be.

He can’t have worth if he doesn’t have a golden core.

“It doesn’t matter if you have a golden core or not,” Nie Mingjue finally outright tells him. “It only matters what you do with your life. Your father was not a fighter and he’s dead. Your mother was one and she’s dead, too. Innocent people died and bad people died. People who could fight and who couldn’t. The core has nothing to do with it. You matter. And it seems to me like you have an iron will.”

“I don’t. I’m weak,” Jiang Cheng sobs out, remembering how fast he broke under the whip, still hearing Wen Chao’s laughter in his ears.

“And yet you survived. You survived things that killed more talented people, stronger people. You survived what no one else survived before,” Nie Mingjue says. “I think that speaks of strength. And I also think that you have all the qualities it needs to be a good leader.”

The praise sinks warm into Jiang Cheng’s bones and he hates himself for it, how he’s always weak for a kind word.

But Nie Mingjue sounds like he means it, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t know him to lie and maybe, just maybe, he could be right.

“Wanyin, we have enough fighters. We need people who plan, who recruit, who make sure we have supplies, who keep up the morale of the warriors. We are lacking those people. Can you be one of them?” Nie Mingjue asks and Jiang Cheng sits up.

His chest is still throbbing and the hole in his body is threatening to swallow him whole, but Nie Mingjue looks at him as if he expects him to say yes, as if he can’t imagine anything else, as if he believes in Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Cheng nods.

“I can,” he says and it doesn’t feel as wrong as he feared.

He’ll just have to do the impossible.

(And he does.)

Link to my ko-fi on the sidebar!

#bt writes #the untamed #mdzs #mdzsbingo #jiang cheng #nie mingjue #pre-relationship if anything #hope #golden core transfer fix-it #hurt/comfort

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stiltonbasket · 4 years ago

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Please write a follow up for the laughing soulmates au! WWX growing up thinking his true chance at love was gone before he knew what he lost, oh man oh man.

Wei Wuxian was ten years old when he first began wearing mourning.

“Jiang Fengmian,” Madam Yu hissed, when she returned to Lotus Pier after a brief vacation in Meishan to find her adopted ward practicing his sword forms wearing robe of the palest, most dirt-resistant white linen that money could buy. “What is Wei Ying doing in white? Where are his red robes? Or his purple ones?”

“It has been more than four years since he felt his soulmate laugh,” Jiang-shushu replied--calmly, but with a low, challenging hum to his voice that meant his mind was firmly made up. “He has decided to wear mourning for them.”

“He is a child,” Yu-furen retorted. “He never met his soulmate, and if you are encouraging melancholy in the boy before he even comes of age, then--”

“His manner has not changed, San-niang. He laughs as much as he always does, and attends to his studies with diligence. Surely allowing him to honor his mingding zhiren’s passing would be no trouble to you?”

“Me? What trouble is it to me? As long as he does his duties and doesn’t disgrace our family, what should I have to say about it?”

And with that, she swung her long purple train behind her and stalked off to her private pavilion, leaving Wei Wuxian to finish his drills on the training field and pretend he had not heard.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about how quickly his adoptive parents settled the argument about his mourning clothes, even if such a thing would never have happened during his first few years in Yunmeng. The whole world changed when he realized his soulmate was dead, and Madam Yu’s refusal to punish him or scold him in any way (she only ever took out her frustrations with him on Jiang-shushu, and even that never lasted longer than a few minutes) was hardly the strangest alteration Wei Wuxian had to come to terms with. His tutors tried to go more easily on him, Jiang Cheng was always gentle with him, and Yu-furen never protested when he got the same treats and privileges that her own children did--and of course, Shijie doted on him more than ever, though that was more out of love than pity. Even the vendors on the streets of Lufeng plied him down with sweets and snacks before he had a chance to steal them, to the point where he had to stay home when his shidis went to raid the market because all their ill-gotten spoils would be free of charge if he went along with them.

“You’d better stay back and help Jiang-shijie with the kites,” one of his junior brothers told him once, while Jiang Cheng promised to bring back his favorite strawberry tanghulu from the candy-seller near the blacksmith’s workshop. “It takes all the fun out of it if you go, Wei-shixiong! We don’t even get to steal anything!”

And now, even Lan Zhan treats him like something made of glass, something that could break if spoken to harshly, and Wei Wuxian is sick of it. It’s different when Jiang-shushu does it, because Jiang-shushu’s soulmate is dead too, and it’s different when Madam Yu does it because she thought she would never have one until Yanli-shijie was born--but Lan Zhan has a soulmate who makes him happy, and he treats Wei Wuxian with the deference due a widow whose husband was barely cooling in the grave.

Lan Qiren just treats him like a loud, unpleasant slug, though, so at least that’s some comfort.

“You know, you could stop wearing mourning,” his brother says, when Wei Wuxian pours out his woes in their shared guest quarters that evening. “You’ve been wearing it for the past eight years, Wei Wuxian. Even widows don’t do that. Of course Lan Wangji treats you like a trembling flower, he thinks your heart is broken.”

“It’s not broken,” Wei Wuxian protests, more than a little offended. “I miss my soulmate, but I’m not pining into the grave like some bereaved maiden!”

“How’s Lan Wangji supposed to know that?” Jiang Cheng returns. “You look all tragic every time we pass those girls in the Caiyi river market to make them give you free food! Lan Wangji saw you do it, twice! He didn’t even scold you for flirting because you looked so sad!”

Wei Wuxian scratches at his nose and pouts; because Jiang Cheng is right about that last one, but Wei Wuxian isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.“But what am I supposed to do to make him treat me normally?” he wails, screaming into his pillow. “He’s already seen me wearing white before the rules made me do it, and he’s already seen me tear up at one of the loquat vendors because it was evening and the evening was my fated one’s favorite time of day--”

“Was it?”

“Huh?”

“Was evening their favorite time of day?”

“They used to laugh a lot in the evenings, so I guess it must have been,” Wei Wuxian shrugs. “Or maybe they just got really excited about dinner. But forget about that--how am I going to convince Lan Zhan that I’m fine, and show him that he doesn’t have to walk on eggshells around me?”

“Break more rules,” his brother suggests. “Then he’ll punish you, and he’ll have such a good time doing it that he’ll forget why he ever tried to ignore your nonsense.”

“Tried that already,” Wei Wuxian says dismally. “All he did was ask Shijie to make me soup, because I had to be in distress if I couldn’t see the merit of obeying the sect edicts for the sake of my own betterment.”

Jiang Cheng winces. “Barge in on him in the cold springs?”

“I did that too! All he did was turn his back and tell me that I shouldn’t expose myself in public, even if I was so honorable in my grief for my fated one that I would never do anything untoward, or entertain the forwardness of others.”

“Entertain the forwardness of others?” His brother frowns. “What does that even mean?”

“Beats me. Hey, do you think I should ask Nie-xiong for help?”

Jiang Cheng yawns. “Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I don’t see why this is supposed to work,” Jiang Cheng mutters, about a week later. He and Nie Huaisang are hiding in the bushes near the library pavilion, keeping an eye on the open door--and Wei Wuxian is sitting inside, writing out all the lines Lan-xiansheng assigned him under Lan Wangji’s supervision. “Lan Wangji didn’t even react to Wei Wuxian stripping in public.”

“The cold springs are hardly public, Jiang-xiong,” Huaisang says vaguely. “And I swore it would work! You should trust me!”

And indeed, scarcely five minutes later, they hear the loud, splintering crash of a table being overturned, and Wei Wuxian comes pelting out of the library with ink splashed all over his robes and torn paper stuck in his hair--and Lan Wangji is hot on his heels with his hand on Bichen’s hilt, roaring Wei Wuxian’s name like a younger version of his uncle as they speed towards the lanshi.

“Wei Ying!” Lan Wangji screeches. “How can you--I trusted--shameless!”

“I warned you, Lan Zhan! Should I lend you another one?”

“What have we done?” Jiang Cheng moans, when the two boys finally move out of earshot and vanish down the stony path. “This is all your fault, Nie Huaisang.”

“I know,” Nie Huaisang laughs, sweeping his fan across his lips. “Don’t worry, Jiang Cheng. I’ll take full responsibility.”

#wangxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #my fic #soulmate au

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chalkrevelations · 4 years ago

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So, Word of Honor, Episode 36 (and “Episode” 37) again, because I want to do a little bit more unpacking of this, particularly with some of the extra material and information that people have been able to point me to.

Spoilers, obvs. For right now, I mainly want to pull out this bit of my initial reaction to 36 & 37, because I think it remains a key point for me:

It would be nice, though, if the connective tissue from 36 to 37 made any sense. Or existed whatsoever. Just, like, throw me a bone, show, some kind of explicit hand-waviness that actually gets mentioned for why Ye Baiyi apparently was not as smart as he thought he was and didn’t really know what he was talking about when he was doomsaying about how one of the pair will surely, oh surely perish. None of this “Sooooo, they managed to figure out the technique and master it?” from some random shidi who never actually gets an answer. I mean, the door was left open for fanwankery on this one, with what looks to be a very last-minute conceit of all this being a story told by grown-up Chengling to his disciples, which begs the question of how much of what he’s telling them is totally accurate, given any number of issues …

I do feel like there’s an interesting meta thing going on here, in that the entire show has been about – let’s be honest, it was never really about the plot – queer-coding this couple in ways that supposedly fly enough under the radar that people can handwave them as Just Good Friends and Brothers (I mean, I guess) with a Bury Your Gays tragic ending (ugh) for good measure. And Chengling is telling a story in-universe that seems to conform to some of this same formula. And yet, we all know well and good that these guys were husbands … So are we supposed to carry the same assurance out of the show, on a meta level, that what appears to be happening in the story at the end of Ep 36 – what we discover we’re learning through Chengling’s story-telling, isn’t really the truth? Just, look: While we’re getting the Good Friends and Brothers push, there’s stuff like obvious voice-over work that doesn’t match the much more queer version of what the actors actually said, which is apparently blazingly clear to any viewers who know Mandarin and can manage to lip-read. The show has literally put de-queered words into these characters’ mouths. You can’t trust what you hear. But apparently the show has also made this obvious enough that, if you’re a good enough speaker of the language the show is being told in, and you have a good enough eye, you can see what is actually going on. Are we being taught to trust our eyes more than our ears, are we being told that what we’re being told – by the end of Ep 36 on a meta level, by Ye Baiyi-through-Chengling’s-story on an in-universe level, and by what we learn about what happened from Chengling’s story, itself, also on an in-universe level – is inherently untrustworthy, but that if we “speak the language” of this show well enough, and have a good enough eye, we can decode it and see what “actually” happened and is later made explicit in Ep 37?

So, that’s a lot, but the reason I wanted to pull it back out is because I feel like this no-homo, surface-level, smoke-and-mirrors effect that gets layered over a queer bedrock of “reality” is precisely what the show did with its ending, and I want to approach that on a couple of different levels. Particularly since I’ve seen several reactions from other people who didn’t seem to have seen/didn’t have access to the extra of “Ep” 37, or who also found it difficult and vaguely unsatisfying to make the leap from Ep 36 to full belief in, and commitment to, “Ep” 37.

When I first posted this, I was really leaning on the idea of a classic Rashomon effect, given that we see – imho – a final Zhou Zishu/Wen Kexing scene in Ep 36 that’s filmed to lead us to believe that Wen Kexing died, with a subsequent cut to Zhang Chengling wrapping up a telling of the “story” of ZZS and WKX to his disciples. The easiest fanwank on this is that all of what we’ve seen so far has been Chengling telling the story of ZZS and WKX to his disciples, making him an unreliable narrator who in fact doesn’t know the truth of what really happened. I was actually reminded of the contrast in The Untamed (god, I don’t need to warn for spoilers for The Untamed, do I, we’ve all seen Chen Qing Ling at this point, right? Anyway, SPOILERS FOR THE UNTAMED) between the cliff scene in Episode 1 when they make it look like Jiang Cheng stabbed Wei Wuxian, leading to his fall off the cliff, and you go back later and realize this is the version that the storyteller was telling to the people in the teahouse vs. Episode, god, what is it, 33? When we see the cliff scene in “real” time, and discover that’s not what actually happened, that what happened is that Jiang Cheng stabbed a rock and Wei Wuxian shook himself free of Lan Wangji’s grip to fall to his death. You can’t trust what you hear. Also … well, we’ll get back to Chengling in a minute.

The second level of uncertainty to unwind is Gao Xiaolian calling bs on Chengling’s story. So, I felt like the kid who’s practicing his forms in the snow and being coached by ZZS in “Ep” 37 might actually be someone, not just a random kid, and that might be important, but I could not for the life of me figure out who he might be. I wasn’t aware until I watched some of AvenueX’s wrap-up of the show (I think that’s the first place I heard this info pointed out) that this kid is supposed to be the son of Gao Xiaolian and Deng Kuan, and the dad who comes to take him home is Deng Kuan (formerly Da-shixiong of Yueyang Sect, who – let’s face it – Gao Xiaolian really wanted to marry). Seriously, I spent so much time making fun of ZZS’s stupid facial hair tricks in this show, and then they actually do just put a dumbass mustache on a guy, and I completely don’t recognize him. I have to admit, the mustache threw me enough that I had no idea that was Deng Kuan (well, and maybe only seeing him for three episodes also helped). But if that’s Deng Kuan, and if the kid is his and Gao Xiaolian’s son, then she would have some reasonable standing to know a story detailing WKX’s death was bs.

Finally, and most crucially – thanks to everyone who directed me to resources (including AvenueX and other fans who were able to do some translation) who were able to talk about the voiceover work in this final ep, because when I talk about how you can’t trust what you hear, but if you speak the language well enough and have a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on? When I talk about de-queered words being put into these character’s mouths? Apparently, this is what happens to Chengling in the final scene. That last scene - and the story he tells his disciples - apparently DOES provide the connective tissue from Ep 36 to Ep 37, but you can’t trust what you hear. Apparently, this is one of the places where you can see something different from what you hear if you’re able to lip-read, with Chengling telling the disciples something much closer to the idea that two people who love each other equally can equally support each other through this cultivation technique and both come out alive.

In the AvenueX discussion of this (Livestream #21, starting around 1:22:30), there’s an additional tidbit about the use of the word “cauldron” – I believe by Ye Baiyi - to describe one person in the pair, a word with a specific and widely-understood meaning within the genre that’s not necessarily known outside of the genre with, yes, sexual connotations. (Come on, slash fans, don’t tell me you don’t giggle every time you pass a perfectly innocent Jiffy Lube auto shop, at something that the mundanes don’t think twice about.) Apparently, “cauldron” is in the script, I believe it’s in the English subs, and it apparently was in the original Chinese subs, until too many people started talking about it and how it had been slipped past censorship, because it’s a perfectly common Jiffy Lube auto shop, right? and then it appears Youku went back and changed the character in the Chinese subs to something that doesn’t even make any sense. So again, we get an example of a case where if you’re a good enough speaker of the language this show is being told in – in this case the vernacular of wuxia – with a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on. Something that then gets no-homo’d. And has some nonsensical de-queered meaning laid over top of it. How many times do we have to do this until we learn the lesson that you can’t trust what you hear?

ANYWAY, I’m wondering if the visuals are important, too: Something we see in the last scene with ZZS and WKX in Ep 36, when WKX is either unconscious or dead (CLEARLY UNCONSCIOUS), is that ZZS – twice – doesn’t let WKX’s hands fall. He catches him by the wrists and then catches him again by the hands as WKX’s hands start to slip away from ZZS’s hands – aaaannnnd end scene. I have to wonder if that’s not a subtle but important detail, that we see ZZS refusing to let WKX physically slip away, and maybe, by implication, refusing to let WKX slip away from him into death.

Also, again with Ye Baiyi – in the flashback when WKX is yelling at ZZS, Ye Baiyi says “No one dies!” as he comes bursting into WKX’s sickroom. And then even reiterates it – “No one dies before me!” But then the voiceover during the qi transfer, he’s supposedly going on about here’s how WKX is going to have to kill himself to save his husband? I think the script has dropped the ball in a few places, but that would really be a tremendous flub. That also deserves some unpacking, but I’m running out of free time right now.

So, just some additional thoughts. I will probably have more, but next up, I think, will be a re-watch from the beginning.

One last thought, tho’: What’s the likelihood that Nian Xiang is Actual A-Xiang and Goa Xiaolian’s/Deng Kuan’s kid is Cao Weining, reincarnated?

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #zhang chengling #gao xiaolian #deng kuan #ye baiyi #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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disastermages · 4 years ago

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I was talking to @agendratum earlier and I realized that I’ve never written anything with jin ling even tho I love him

“Uncle Jiang says that you punched my father once.” Jin Ling says, and Wei Wuxian almost jumps. When did this kid get so good at sneaking around?

“I punched your father twice.” Wei Wuxian clarifies, leaning back and holding a single finger up and grinning as if he were giving a lesson. He’s not even trying to hide the fact that he’s starting to love it when Jin Ling seeks him out, he’s already shuffled to the side and patted the spot right next to him, though whether or not Jin Ling decides to sit next to him is his own choice.

“How come? When I asked my uncle he only told me that I should ask you.” Jin Ling sits down, but leaves a few inches between them, just enough room to get up and run away in case Wei Wuxian were to say something especially embarrassing or shameless. Jiang Cheng used to do the same thing.

He doesn’t answer right away, he’s pretending that he has to think about it, grabbing up the jar of wine next to him and taking a sip thoughtfully. “The first time, your father said he didn’t want to marry your mother, the second time he insulted her.” Wei Wuxian had gone back and forth about telling Jin Ling the truth, but if he didn’t hear it from him, who would he hear it from?

When Wei Wuxian looks back at his nephew, Jin Ling is frowning in a way that’s wholly his father, his eye brows knit together. “You’re lying.” Jin Ling decides, his hands clutching his robes so tight his knuckles turn white.

“Am I?” Wei Wuxian asks with a grin, there’s his brother again.

“My father loved my mother, he built her a lotus pond just to show it.”

Wei Wuxian couldn’t disagree with that, he’d been long gone and in Yiling by the time the peacock had gotten it in his head that Jiang Yanli was a goddess walking in the mortal world, but even he’d heard the great love story of the second Lotus Pier.

“Your father did love your mother,” Wei Wuxian confirms, setting his wine off to the side and sitting up again, “but only after he offended her twice and ran away from her once.” Jin Zixuan wasn’t likely to come back from the dead to defend himself, so Wei Wuxian doesn’t stop himself from telling the whole truth, or as much of it as he cared to remember. “Shouldn’t your Uncle Jiang be the one telling you this story?”

Silence wraps around them like a too warm blanket, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t rush Jin Ling, he only looks over at him every few seconds to make sure his face isn’t so red that he looks as if he’s about to topple over.

“Uncle Jiang doesn’t like talking about my mother, it’s too hard for him.” Jin Ling’s voice is soft now, his fingers shaking as he lets go of his robe, but he doesn’t make a move to smooth it out where it’s wrinkled. “I stopped asking when I was little.”

The words are arrows through Wei Wuxian’s chest. How many times had Jin Ling asked Jiang Cheng for stories about his parents? How many of those requests were shot down or indulged, but just barely?

Wei Wuxian should shorten the hems of Jiang Cheng’s robes for this.

“He tried for a while, but he just looked sad, so I stopped asking.” One long moment passes and for half of it, Wei Wuxian thinks about reaching out and putting a hand on Jin Ling’s shoulder, but he stops himself. Jin Ling wasn’t like Sizhui, he might not want to be touched, especially not by him.

“Your mother had a crush on your father.” Wei Wuxian offers, though it sounds paltry, even coming out of his own mouth, still, he watches Jin Ling perk up at the scrap of information, his eyes getting wide and bright, just like his mother.

“Really?” Jin Ling shifts closer to him now, turning his knees towards Wei Wuxian as he nods.

“A big one, Jiang Cheng and I couldn’t believe it at first, but she liked him so much and he didn’t even know it!” The smile is coming back onto Wei Wuxian’s face again, his elbows coming to rest on his knees. He’d already mourned for his sister after he’d been brought back by Mo Xuanyu, the least he could do is tell stories about her to her son, but someone else would have to tell Jin Ling stories about his father, someone who had a better opinion of him than either Wei Wuxian or Jiang Cheng ever had.

The idea hits him and a grin spreads across his face before he can stop it. “A-Ling, has anyone ever taken you to meet your Auntie Luo?”

#the untamed #mdzs #mdzs fic #wei wuxian #jin rulan #wei ying #jin ling

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tanoraqui · 4 years ago

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Inspired by @robininthelabyrinth’s “Helping Yourself”. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the initial reveal would go.

A young man walked out of the Burial Mounds. He seemed to be alone, but of course he wasn’t: the dead accompanied him. The dead always accompanied him.

The first living people he met were some peasants on the road. They were’t particularly notable, so he waved hello and passed them by.

The next were a small group of in white and red - cultivators, he thought vaguely. He hated them. He hated them. Gorge rose in his throat with the desire to tear them to bloody shreds, not in a single instant only so they could plead as they watched each other die.

But that sort of hate wasn’t particularly natural to him, even if it was true, so he waved a greeting, same as with the peasants.

“Hey, isn’t that the.....bastard brat?” one of them said, with a mumble in the middle. The others cried agreement, and drew their swords.

It really did feel good to tear them apart. Mostly he didn’t do it himself - the ghosts and ghouls had even stronger yearning for the tangible feeling of muscle and bone breaking apart, warm blood bursting forth, agonized screams shaking to pieces in deflating lungs. But he watched as he played his music, smiled, and afterward when one of the corpses offered him a hand covered in its own blood, he licked it off. Sharing was only polite. It was warm.

It was a few weeks before he met anyone who made him feel anything but indifference or murderous hatred. He was killing more of the red-and-white cultivators at the time - well, one in red and white, and his looming shadow in black. If he’d thought he hated the general assortment of these cultivators, it was nothing on how he hated these two. He sat on a table and whistled as two strong corpses held the shadow back and let him watch a pretty ghost woman flay the whiny one. But the shadow broke free and lunged for him -

And came up short with a whip of lightning around his throat, wielded by a furious-looking man in purple robes. He was accompanied a pristinely beautiful man in white.

“Wei Wuxian!” bellowed the man in purple, as he yanked the shadow to the ground and bound him further in lightning. “Where have you been!”

Oh yeah, Wei Wuxian was him. It was easy to forget, sometimes.

“Oh, here and there.” He waved a hand vaguely, then pointed at the lightning-bound shadow now choking on the floor. “I was killing that, but do you want to help?”

Normally he’d never consider sharing, but for the first time, his chest was filling with warm relief rather than burning rage. He’d missed both these men achingly, had been going quietly mad not knowing if they were alive and well, and hadn’t realized it until now. He wanted very much to jump down and hug the one in purple, check him over for hurt, and maybe hug him again (if no hurt evidenced itself, in which case he’d also have to go kill whoever’d inflicted it.)

(The dead had started to hiss a little, like restless snakes, but that idea quieted them.)

So he did. The man scowled and didn’t hug him back, but he did let it happen. For a moment, he even laid his head on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder with something like a sigh.

While Wei Wuxian was holding his shoulders and looking him up and down for injuries, the man pulled a sword from his belt - sheathed, the whole shebang - and shoved it at his chest.

“Here, we got this for you,” he said.

Obligingly, Wei Wuxian looked the gift over, and even drew it an inch. It was very nice. Shiny. The hilt fit perfectly in his hand, though nothing else leapt out to him as particularly curious.

Much more interestingly, he turned to the man in white with a wide grin.

“‘We’?” he teased, and pressed the sheathed sword against his chest with one hand (with the other, he still held his flute. On the floor, the ghost continued peeling the brat in now much more red than white, though she’d put a hand over his mouth so he’d stay quiet.) “Why, beautiful sir, is this gift from you as well?”

He wanted to fling himself at this man, too, but in a very different way. He didn’t, because the emotions about this one were more complicated, colored with wariness. And instead of scowling like the man in purple, which was more for show than anything, the beautiful man in white looked concerned.

“Wei Ying,” he said. “What is wrong?”

Wei Ying was...also Wei Wuxian? A cold breeze brushed by with the displeasure of the dead, but, yes, that sounded right.

“Nothing?” Okay, maybe he’d fling himself just a little bit. Saunter closer, at least, and look up at him through lowered lashes. “Am I misbehaving?”

The man’s ears turned pink and he stepped hurriedly back - and tripped over man in red and very little white. Wei Wuxian looked down at him as well, and whistled for the ghost to stop playing with her food for now. He didn’t want this one to die without feeling it beneath his own hands.

The bloody sight seemed to renew the beautiful man’s confidence, even as it sparked a deeper, darker concern in his eyes.

“You are acting unusual,” he said. “Do you not recognize.....”

Wei Wuxian cocked his head curiously as he trailed off into an indistinguishable murmur. Or maybe it was just obscured by the suddenly restless whispers of the dead: don’t need that anymore, no no, only us.

The man in purple snapped something in address, and, “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he does. It’s just...been a lot.”

He didn’t sound convinced, himself. The man in white kept his gaze fixed on Wei Wuxian and asked, “Wei Ying, do you know me?”

Wei Wuxian could’ve said something joking about of course, we’ve been speaking for several minutes, or even, you make my heart beat twice as fast and I feel like I’m standing on solid ground and a daring precipice both at once. But the man looked so distressed, behind a feeble mask of calm, that instead he frowned and tried to focus.

The scent of sandalwood...a strain of music in darkness...something with an L...

No! the dead shrieked in chorus, and he clapped his hands to his ears. It didn’t help. You promised, Wei Wuxian, you promised! Us and us alone!

Yes, yes, he shouted back. Calm down! And he pushed them away, and smiled easily at the man in white again.

“I’m sorry, beautiful sir. But I’m sure I’ll remember you forever, with such an immortal face!”

The reassurance didn’t work. His face didn’t actually move very much, but it was plainly shattered. The man in purple sounded just shy of that heartbreak as he grabbed Wei Wuxian’s arm and demanded, “What about me? Do you remember me?”

Wei Wuxian didn’t want to watch that shattering again. He enfolded the man in his arms again and stroked his hair, and searched for something comforting to say.

“Don’t worry, I’m here,” he managed. “I won’t lose you again. Hey, we’re going to kill these bastards, right?”

That was good, right? As Wei Wuxian’s ghost still pinned the whiny one, so the purple man hadn’t once dropped slack the lightning whip that held the man in black trapped and half-choking. This was a shared vengeance, he knew in the same heart that burned with hatred and affection, respectively.

The man in purple yanked away much faster, this time.

“You know.....and.....?” he demanded, with traces of both hope and disgust.

“Sure.” Wei Wuxian shrugged. “I mean, I know I want to watch them both die in agony.”

Satisfied agreement flashed across the man’s features, but he kept pressing. “Why? Do you remember what they did?”

Wei Wuxian shrugged.

“To whom?”

Another shrug. He was starting to get annoyed. Maybe the dead were right - he didn’t need these people. They were only getting in the way. Maybe it would feel good to pull their beating hearts out of their chests and feel the warmth fade in his hands...

He waved the gathering resentful energy away with his flute, and sternly hushed the whispering dead. They didn’t need to kill everyone. Even if it was tempting. He liked these ones.

“Do you remember where you’re from at all?” the man in purple asked. He was trying to keep scowling, but his voice cracked.

Fortunately, that was an easy one. Wei Wuxian relaxed, ire disappearing without effort.

“The Burial Mounds! I’ve been walking for weeks, you know.” He cast a sly glance over at the man in white. “If only someone would give me a ride on their sword...”

[edit: continued here!]

#mdzs #the untamed #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #lan wangji #my fic #ficlet #to be continued??

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i-like-plan-m · 4 years ago

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Prompt: (Part 1) Lan Qiren and his young (maybe 14 and 10 yrs old, respectively?) nephews (Lan Xichen and Lan Zhan) are all going to a discussion conference. To go to that conference they pass through Yiling. An attack occurs and tiny Lan Zhan gets separated from Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen for whatever reason. Lan Zhan meets young Wei Wuxian and for some reason, Lan they have to run away from the attackers and end up in the burial mounds as that’s the only palace they can hide.

(Part 2)To Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen, Lan Zhan goes missing and they can’t find him among the dead nor anywhere in the village. Eventually, they leave but never stop looking around the cultivation world in hope of someday finding him. I’d like to see how Lan Zhan’s disappearance affects the Lan family and how they change as characters with a Lan Zhan filled a hole in their lives.

(part 3) Meanwhile, in the Burial Mounds, Lan Zhan and Wei Wuxian have to figure out how to survive in this dreadful environment as well as get to know each other and become close as they hurt and struggle throughout their stay. They try to find exits but the Burial Mounds is designed to keep its occupants in, not out.

(Part 4)Some years later when they finally find an exit, they have no idea how to function in normal society as all the company they have had for the last few years was each other and they can’t really remember how to interact with other people. A prominent theme could be their codependency and separation anxiety that they have for each other and how they try to fit in with other people. If you’re interested, please feel free to make any adjustments or make any changes to the prompt!

...this got long, whoops [posted to Ao3]

The problem, Wei Ying reflected, was that, regardless of his ratty robes and threadbare shoes, Lan Zhan was just too damn pretty to be overlooked.

It made traveling unnoticed impossible. Worse, Lan Zhan didn’t even notice. He only cast an icy glare at those who wandered too close, forever mistrustful of strangers who dared approach him-- or worse, approach Wei Ying. He acted as though he expected someone to snatch him right off the street.

To be fair, it had happened once or twice.

Demonic cultivators, it seemed, were not appreciated outside of the Burial Mounds. Wei Ying took the brunt of the harm that the occasional cultivator they crossed (and always the ones with far too much moral superiority to allow Wei Ying to pass without harassment, the bastards) inflicted upon them. They never expected the full force of Lan Zhan’s fury to come crashing down upon them.

Wei Ying wondered if perhaps they were gaining a reputation in the cultivation world. It was potentially a problem-- he had no intentions of returning to the Burial Mounds. Not after six years of uninterrupted hell, with only his Lan Zhan there to keep him sane.

The Burial Mounds had taken so much from them-- hope, joy. Memories, even, of their lives before. But not each other. Not even literal mountains’ worth of resentment and hate and slaughter could separate them. Between Wei Ying’s quick, clever thinking and Lan Zhan’s indomitable will and strength, they’d slipped the net and stumbled back into the world outside, one that held so much life and brightness it physically hurt to witness.

But oh, how he loved re-learning how to be human. The Burial Mounds had made them something else, something a little too strange to be just ordinary cultivators. They’d learned to wield resentment early on-- Wei Ying much faster than his forever stubborn Lan Zhan-- in order to survive. There had been no other option.

Now, though. Now they had the freedom of choice. Lan Zhan could unbind his golden core after years of hiding it from the Burial Mounds’ sights, could use his own spiritual energy instead of the resentment he so detested.

Wei Ying smiled, eternally fond, and glanced sideways at Lan Zhan, who was eyeing a particularly boisterous vendor with a familiar, dangerous glint in his eye.

“Aiya, Lan Zhan,” he said, exasperated. He nudged him in the side, drawing Lan Zhan’s attention away from the vendor insistently flapping poorly drawn talismans after them. “You’ll scare everyone away, looking like that!”

“He should not sell useless protections,” Lan Zhan muttered, staring straight ahead. “It gives false hope.” Behind them, there was a cry of dismay as the vendor’s talismans burst simultaneously into flames.

“So cranky,” Wei Ying sighed, leaning his weight into Lan Zhan’s side. “Simple wanderers like us can’t judge others for how they make a living!”

“I can and I will,” Lan Zhan said reasonably, and Wei Ying dissolved into giggles. Lan Zhan frowned down at him, softened by the slight, affectionate curve of his mouth. “He makes people think they are safe when they are not.”

Ah. Wei Ying sobered. “Well, when you put it that way..” Hard to argue, really. After half a lifetime of the same feeling in a place much worse than this... The vendor wasn’t so harmless after all.

He stared into middle distance, lost in thought as they walked, never more than an arm’s length from Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan’s gaze flickered to Wei Ying when he remained uncharacteristically quiet-- after years of forced silence in the Burial Mounds, sometimes because their lives quite literally depended upon it, Wei Ying responded to the freedom of the outside by chattering nonstop, as though compensating for six years of quiet.

Wei Ying stuttered to a stop a moment later, realizing that Lan Zhan had stepped aside, out of the stream of people. He had a single heartbeat of pure, unfiltered panic, dizi clutched tight in his hand as he searched frantically for Lan Zhan. He raised it to his mouth, prepared to send a burst of noise into the air to find him-- and then went limp in relief as Lan Zhan appeared beside him once more.

“Lan Zhan!” He scolded, trying for stern but undermined by the wobble in his voice. “You can’t just disappear on me like that! I was about to level the street.” He was only kidding. Mostly.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said disapprovingly anyway, then softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worried.” And then, because Lan Zhan was the greatest thing to ever happen to Wei Ying, he held up a jar of Emperor’s Smile.

“Forgiven!” Wei Ying chirped, and snatched it from his grip. Lan Zhan watched the spill of the alcohol from his mouth, down his neck, and suddenly turned sharply on his heel and stalked back into the street, ears a delightful shade of pink.

“This way,” he said, guiding them to a small building just off the main street. Lan Zhan’s qin needed serious repairs-- it had been a stroke of pure luck that he’d had it with him the day they’d been swallowed whole by the Burial Mounds, and only with his meticulous care had it survived. A few strings had snapped on their last night hunt, and Lan Zhan had been so quietly devastated that Wei Ying had badgered him into visiting Caiyi, known for their famous Emperor’s Smile... and their mastery of music.

The shop was large and clean, with small rooms off to the side for repairs. Lan Zhan strode immediately to the desk, quietly discussed the items he needed with the owner, and then followed behind the closed door of the back room. Wei Ying nursed his Emperor’s Smile and wandered around the shop, pausing occasionally to inspect the dizis displayed on the wall.

He smiled, sharp and dark, and rubbed his thumb along his own instrument. Chenqing was slender and pitch black, carved in and from the Burial Mounds. He suspected these dizis would shatter under his full power where Chenqing only sang for more.

“Sir,” the owner said politely, hovering behind him. “Looking for a new dizi?”

“Oh, no,” Wei Ying laughed, wincing internally at the flicker of indignation from Chenqing. He patted it reassuringly. “This dizi has been my friend through many dangers. I couldn’t bear to part with it.”

“It is certainly... unique,” the man said, like he’d had to choke it out. Amused-- his carving skills at the time had been fueled by desperate terror and shaking hands-- Wei Ying nodded cheerfully in agreement.

“Is Lan Zhan almost finished?” He asked, and let the man guide him into the room.

“How’s it going?” Wei Ying asked, hooking his chin over Lan Zhan’s shoulder to watch the way his long, elegant fingers ran along the qin. Suddenly flushed, he sat back and sprawled out beside him, averting his eyes to his Emperor’s Smile.

“Repairs require attention and care,” Lan Zhan said, intently focused on his instrument.

Wei Ying left him to it, knowing he’d get no attention from Lan Zhan until the qin was fixed, and closed his eyes, tipping his head back against the wall. His situational awareness was unmatched except for Lan Zhan, so they both noticed when someone else entered the store, unseen through the closed door.

But Wei Ying was aware-- always aware-- that this man was a cultivator, and so immensely powerful his spiritual energy was almost tangible. He opened his eyes and eyed the door, absently mouthing at Chenqing’s mouthpiece now instead of the jar of alcohol.

There were quiet voices outside, and he exchanged a wary glance with Lan Zhan. The shop owner didn’t sound agitated, though, or like he was ratting them out to the newcomer.

Soon after, another door closed and soft music reverberated through the thin walls. He didn’t recognize the song, uncultured as he was by the Burial Mounds barbaric version of society, but something about it made him ache. His eyes burned at the outpouring of emotion, a lament of grief and regret, of pain so encompassing it reshaped the very air.

“Another qin,” Lan Zhan murmured, hands frozen in place over his own instrument. Wei Ying sat up and curled a hand around Lan Zhan’s wrist, needing the touch to keep him grounded, to keep the memories of the Burial Mounds at bay in the face of such a song. They sat in suspended silence until the song ended, heads bowed under the weight of such grief, and listened as the cultivator very softly thanked the shop owner and left.

“Who was that?” Wei Ying wondered, and the shop owner paused as though confused as he entered their room.

“That was Sect Leader Lan, young master. He comes every week to play.”

“A sect leader?” Wei Ying traded a glance with Lan Zhan, who had clearly once been a member of the Lan Sect at one point but had no memories of it otherwise. “Can’t he afford a qin of his own? Why does he come here?”

The shop owner’s mouth twisted with something like pity. “He comes to play for his lost brother, young master. Sect Leader Lan still deeply mourns the loss, but the qin was his brother’s favored instrument. It is hard for his uncle to hear, I’m told.”

“Everyone mourns in their own way,” Wei Ying said, sympathetic. He waited until the man left again to turn to Lan Zhan, who hadn’t moved. “Lan Zhan?”

“Hm?” Lan Zhan blinked as though awakening from a deep sleep.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes. I have finished with the repairs.” He stood and left the room, off to use their meager funds to pay for the supplies.

But Wei Ying didn’t move, wondering if perhaps the sect leader would know of Lan Zhan’s family. How to find them. Part of him wanted to take Lan Zhan out of Gusu immediately, to keep him to himself, and he hated himself for the thought.

If there was a chance for Lan Zhan to find the family he’d lost, then Wei Ying would help him... even if it meant losing the only thing that mattered to him in the world.

#this was so fun #i got carried away #prompts #writing #my writing #asks #anon #the untamed #wangxian #wei wuxian #wei ying #lan wangji #lan zhan #lan xichen #mdzs

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lady-of-the-lotus · 4 years ago

Text

Xue Yang whisks a solipsistic Lan Xichen off on a murder roadtrip to raise Xiao Xingchen and Meng Yao from the grave. Because that will solve all of their problems, right? AU where Wei Wuxian never came to Yi City and Xue Yang is still running around post-canon disguised as Xiao Xingchen.

Lan Xichen can’t remember most of the day, spent pacing the Chang manor in a state of increasing desperation.

A-Yao had been back.

A-Yao had been in his arms.

A-Yao had been warm. Alive.

Whole.

And now, A-Yao is gone.

XueXiao & XiYao - Rated M - Read on AO3! Tumblr: Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 6

a bit of blood here but the violence itself isn’t incredibly graphic...I mean, it’s still rated M!

Chapter 7: bigger than my bones

A-Yao sits up.

“A-Yao!” Lan Xichen falls to his knees beside him, staining his robes with blood from the array. “A-Yao!”

A-Yao stares up at him, dazed. He looks as if he’d just been struck over the head after having been abruptly woken from a drugged sleep.

“Er…Er-ge?” His voice is thick. “Lan Xichen?”

Lan Xichen grips his bare white shoulders. They’re warm. Solid. Real. Two arms— two. Both warm.

Solid.

Real.

A-Yao swallows hard. He’s shaking all over. “Er-ge?”

Lan Xichen whips off his outer robe and drapes it around A-Yao. “It’s me, it’s me, I’ve brought you back, I’ve brought you back—”

Xue Yang clears his throat. “Actually, you just stood there and goggled at me and passed out.”

Lan Xichen ignores him. All he can hear is A-Yao’s breathing, all he can see is A-Yao’s face. “You’re back, you’re back—”

A-Yao slumps forward, pitching against Lan Xichen’s chest. His face is warm against Lan Xichen’s throat, body completely limp against his own.

Lan Xichen turns to Xue Yang in panic. “What happened?! What happened?!”

“How should I know? The last time I did this I killed the man as soon as I confirmed I could do it. Was just trying to see if I was doing something wrong and that’s why it wasn’t working on Xiao Xingchen.”

Lan Xichen feels A-Yao’s throat. There’s a steady pulse, and the skin is warm. “Perhaps he's simply exhausted. It must take a lot out of one, being dead—”

Xue Yang laughs. It’s not a particularly nice sound. "I don't think anyone else has ever spoken those words."

Gently, Lan Xichen scoops A-Yao up into his arms and carries him to the first bedchamber he can find, laying A-Yao under the covers as if putting a newborn to sleep for the first time. He seats himself at the bedside, eyes fixed on A-Yao’s face.

“How many days will it take for those servants you let escape to reach Cloud Recesses?”

Lan Xichen barely hears Xue Yang, too intently focused on A-Yao. He’s too overwhelmed to know how to feel. Elated? Worried? Overjoyed? Terrified?

Xue Yang snaps his fingers in his ear. “Are you in there? How long do we have until those servants tell the Lan where we are?”

Lan Xichen looks up. “With no detours, on foot, two weeks.”

“Then we have that long until anyone comes after us on their swords. Unless they meet Lan cultivators on the road—”

“I told them not to speak to anyone.”

“As if they’d follow your orders if it were convenient not to?”

“I’m the clan leader.”

“Not of their clan.” Xue Yang loses interest. “Doesn’t matter. We need to get moving anyway. As soon as your dimpled little friend is on his feet, we’re out of here.” He stretches, yawning, and gives Lan Xichen a look he can't decipher. “Wake me if anything important happens.”

Lan Xichen sits at A-Yao’s bedside all night, longing to reach under the covers for his hand, hold it, feel its reassuring warmth and weight in his, but he’s too afraid that if he moves, if he touches A-Yao, A-Yao will dissipate in the moonlight pouring in through the open window.

Shortly before daybreak A-Yao stirs.

“Er-ge?”

A-Yao! Lan Xichen wants to say, but his mouth is suddenly too dry.

A-Yao sits up. “Where am I?”

“Chang Manor. Yueyang.” Lan Xichen runs his bone-dry tongue over his equally dry lips. It’s like rubbing sandpaper with sandpaper. “Xue Yang helped bring you back.”

A-Yao looks alarmed. “Xue Yang is here?”

“He helped get you back.”

“Have I any clothes?”

Lan Xichen points to Chang Ping’s clothes and goes to wait outside. His heart is beating fast again, a sick feeling in his stomach.

A-Yao doesn’t want to be back.

Or rather, if he does, he doesn’t care that Lan Xichen was the one to bring him back.

Or else—or else how could he speak so—so mundanely —

A-Yao steps out of the room. His hair is in a simple half-knot, and he’s wearing Chang Ping’s simple, if well-made, clothes and shoes. They’re too large on him, and he looks even smaller than he had when naked, almost frail.

Nothing like Jin Guangyao. Nothing like the man in Guanyin Temple. Hatless, unassuming, with no poisonous red dot between his eyes. Younger, too, as if the years of crushing responsibility, paranoia, and dread have been erased.

He looks , Lan Xichen thinks despite how illogical he knows it is, like Meng Yao.

A-Yao heads straight for the main hall, as if he remembers the manor’s layout from his one visit over fifteen years ago. He stops short when he sees Chang Ping’s body hanging from the hall's rafters, a sticky brown mass of dried blood with dozens of bloated flies feasting on its flesh. There’s far less of that flesh than Lan Xichen remembers, the body whittled down to a mere floppy, fat-coated skeleton, as if most of his flesh and bone and muscle had gone into remaking A-Yao’s fragile new body.

A-Yao looks down at the array on the floor, at the bucket, at the blood still staining Lan Xichen’s knees.

“Oh, Er-ge ,” he says.

Lan Xichen peers at him anxiously. “What is it? What happened?”

There’s sorrow in A-Yao’s large black eyes. “Did you help him do this?”

Blood pumps through Lan Xichen’s head with such force he’s afraid he might pass out again. “I—I—”

“Oh, Er-ge ,” says A-Yao again, and, his beautiful face twisted in agony, he begins to fade, rapidly growing fainter as the first touches of pink sunlight creep in through the front door.

“A-Yao!” Lan Xichen leaps forward, snatching at him, but it’s too late.

A-Yao is gone.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned.” Xue Yang stands leaning against the doorpost. He’s in his green inner robe, collar wet, as if he missed his face when splashing it with water. His glossy black hair is in a messy bun at the nape of his neck, feet bare, dark circles under his eyes. Maskless. He yawns, stretching like a sleepy cat. “He say anything interesting?”

Lan Xichen flies across the room and grabs him by the throat. “You little rat, what did you do, you promised me A-Yao back—”

Face turning purple, Xue Yang desperately tries to pry Lan Xichen’s fingers from his throat, but Lan Xichen is too strong.

“U—gh—uhg—”

Lan Xichen flings him out the door so hard he bounces twice and rolls down the discussion hall steps.

Xue Yang stands slowly, coughing raggedly. He’s a resilient little cockroach, Lan Xichen will give him that.

Lan Xichen flies down beside him. “What did you do, you repugnant little liar—”

Jiangzai appears in Xue Yang’s hand. “I brought him back!” he chokes through bared teeth. He’s bleeding from his tongue, face red with white splotches. “I swear!”

“You bastard, you lied to me—”

“I told you, I’ve never done this before! I swear I did my best! Do you think I wanted this? I need that dimpled little madman too!”

Lan Xichen hits him so hard that the delinquent cultivator is knocked flat on his back, Jiangzai falling with clang. He draws Shuoyue, but Xue Yang has Jiangzai back up, a new light in his eyes.

“Lay one more finger on me,” Xue Yang says, his voice a chilling rasp, “and it will be the last thing you ever do.”

“As if I care—”

Xue Yang spits blood. “I’m the only one who can get him back, and you know it!"

Lan Xichen freezes, then slowly sheaths his sword. “You have until tonight,” he says.

Rubbing at his bruised throat, Xue Yang grins. It’s a grin full of teeth. “Anything for you, my friend.”

* * * *

Lan Xichen can’t remember most of the day, spent pacing the manor in a state of increasing desperation.

A-Yao had been back.

A-Yao had been in his arms.

A-Yao had been warm. Alive. Whole.

And now, A-Yao is gone.

He avoids the main hall, where Xue Yang is holed up with Chang Ping's body. The ground is mere air beneath his feet, the walls and grass and trees and ceilings misty nothings. He tries to meditate but can’t. Can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t rest, can’t think of anything but A-Yao.

The way A-Yao had looked at him.

“Did you help him do this?”

And—

“Er-ge.”

That soft, sorrowful, disappointed, “Er-ge.”

Without giving Lan Xichen time to explain, without letting him explain how Chang Ping had deserved it, and how even had he not deserved it, nothing truly mattered, nothing mattered except getting A-Yao back. A-Yao, the only real thing in a world held together by spider-silk and starlight—

The moon is high in the sky when Xue Yang flings open the doors to the main hall. The day had been unseasonably warm, and a blast of rotting meat and stale blood comes gusting out around him.

“Your little friend is back,” he says shortly. “I’ll be packing. We need to leave this place.” He turns and strides off without so much as a smart remark.

A-Yao steps out of the hall, takes a few steps, and collapses heavily on the steps.

Lan Xichen opens his mouth to speak, then closes it and sits beside him.

“What did he do?” he finally asks.

A-Yao’s head jerks up as if startled. “Nothing, as far as I could make out,” he says, and his voice is the same old voice Lan Xichen remembers, the same…not casual, A-Yao was never casual, not even with him, but what passed as casual for him, the voice he had used while they lived together after he fled the Cloud Recesses. “I…I believe I will disappear every morning, to reappear at night.” He glances down at his hands. They’re lying like baby birds in his lap, shaking despite the night’s unseasonable warmth. Lan Xichen wants to reach out, cover them with both of his, but he’s too afraid to move, to do anything that might result in A-Yao drawing away with a hiss of disgust. “It...it hurts.”

Lan Xichen is crushed by a sudden wave of guilt. “My fault,” he says. “I never should have brought you back…”

“No, no, Er-ge, I—I thank you.” A-Yao darts a nervous glance around at the utter stillness of the courtyard, as if afraid his words might manifest a demon out of thin air to drag him back to his coffin with Nie Mingjue. He takes a deep breath, shudderingly, as if it’s difficult for him to fill his lungs.

On a sudden impulse Lan Xichen reaches out to brush his shoulder with the back of his hand, make sure A-Yao is in fact there, that he’s not a figment of his imagination, and A-Yao flinches at his touch, face blanching.

So Lan Xichen was right. A-Yao does not want to be here. At least not be here with—with him.

He forces himself to speak, say something, anything. To sound friendly, light, casual.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asks A-Yao.

A-Yao closes his eyes and tilts his head back as if to catch the moonlight, painfully, eerily beautiful in its otherworldly silver rays. “I remember everything,” he says quietly. “I wish I didn’t, but I do. But I—I feel—I feel different. Feel like…”

“You look like Meng Yao,” Lan Xichen blurts, then blushes.

A-Yao opens his eyes. “You’ve changed too, Er-ge.”

“Lan Huan,” Lan Xichen hears himself saying. He needs to hear it from A-Yao’s lips just once, just once in case he loses him again, just one time he can look back on and remember. “Lan Huan.”

“Lan Huan,” says A-Yao, and Lan Xichen wants to reach out again, grab his hand, press it to his cheek, feel his warmth as he speaks his birth name, but is too afraid that A-Yao will pull away again. “A-Huan.”

Lan Xichen clasps his hands together in his lap so that A-Yao won’t see how badly they’re trembling. Perhaps if he thinks Lan Xichen is his old calm self then he won’t realize how different Lan Xichen has become, won’t think he’s changed any more than he already knows he has, won’t be disgusted.

Won’t leave him again.

“I am sorry, A-Yao,” he hears himself saying. It sounds woefully inadequate. “I’ve spent the past year trying to…” He trails off. Trying to forget? Trying to bring him back? Moving on? Mourning?

A-Yao doesn’t seem to hear the first half. “A year?” He looks almost anxious. “Is Jin Ling well? Koi Tower is a pit of vipers… Are the Jin prospering?”

“They’re doing well.”

“He must hate me.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you.”

“I would, if I were him.”

“Jin Ling is fine.” Lan Xichen doesn’t know how true that is, but lying is nothing compared to the things he’s done. “Jiang Cheng supports him. He’s doing fine…”

A-Yao stares fixedly at the ground. He really does look younger. Almost most fragile, in a way that he never fully had in the past. “And you?”

“I’ve been…fine.” He hates the sound of that word. Fine.

A-Yao bites his lip. His voice is very low, almost inaudible. “I spoke to Xue Yang.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t ask him what exactly Xue Yang told him. Better not to know. Suddenly he’s having trouble breathing, anyway, and isn’t sure he can speak at all. He feels himself drifting, and he reaches down and squeezes the stone of the steps, but it’s soft and formless beneath his palms—

“Hey. Lovebirds.” Someone nudges him from behind. Xue Yang, prodding him with Jiangzai’s scabbard. Shuanghua and its scabbard have been safely tucked away in his qiankun sleeve since he used the blade to carve up Chang Ping. He’s wearing dark blue robes he must have found in the manor. “Time to hit the road.”

“A-Yao is in no shape to travel.”

“Then maybe next time don’t let witnesses escape. I’ll bet you even gave them money. You self-righteous naive types are all alike.” With a curl of his lip, Xue Yang heads off.

A-Yao follows him with his eyes. “Perhaps you haven’t changed so much after all, Er-ge— A-Huan.”

Lan Xichen feels a surge of warmth. “Let me help you up—”

“I’m fine,” says A-Yao, struggling to his feet on his own.

The warmth fades.

Lan Xichen changes into simple rust-colored robes found in one of the manor’s rooms before following the strangely silent Xue Yang up the road to Yueyang. It’s the obvious place for anyone to look for them, but it’s the largest city for miles around and the best place to get lost in.

A-Yao stumbles once, and Lan Xichen reaches out to steady him, briefly gripping his arm before A-Yao pulls away.

He feels better after that. He hadn't been mistaken before. A-Yao is real. Is here.

But for the most part, A-Yao makes it all the way there under his own power, somehow. As resilient, in his own way, as Xue Yang.

He’s had to be.

Lan Xichen remembers A-Yao telling him about how his father had kicked him down the stairs on his fourteenth birthday, how his mother’s client had kicked him down the stairs as a child before flinging his half-naked mother out into the street, how he’d lain in bed for weeks with a concussion that almost killed him. How the client had eventually returned, had pointedly ignored his mother and started patronizing another prostitute. “Why pay for something the whole town’s already seen?” he’d laughed—

It was Meng Yao who had told him that, he remembers. Jin Guangyao had rarely spoken of his past, as if afraid speaking the words aloud, even when cloistered alone with Lan Xichen in the innermost room of his chambers, would remind the entire Koi Tower of his past, would make him less worthy of his position, would form a black stain on his forehead for all to see.

Yueyang isn’t far, but the going is slow. They reach the city at dawn.

A-Yao fades as soon as the sky begins to turn orange and pink, his face a mask of pain.

“It hurts him,” Lan Xichen says, turning to Xue Yang.

Xue Yang tosses a candied peanut in the air, catching it in his mouth. “So? What do you want me to do about it?”

Lan Xichen presses his lips into a thin line. “Anchor him here. Do something !”

“You’re the scholar. You’re the expert on ghosts.”

“On getting rid of them! You’re the one who knows how to—to work your wicked tricks—”

“Ah, the second they’re no longer working in your favor, they’re suddenly ‘wicked tricks.’ ” Xue Yang points to a dodgy-looking tavern on the street corner. “Shall we stop there for the day, rest up, and decide where to go from here? I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.” Whistling, he strolls off towards the tavern, where he orders four bottles of wine up to their room.

“I thought you don’t drink much,” says Lan Xichen. Aside from that one time outside of Qinghe, he’s yet to see Xue Yang drink more than a cup of wine with dinner.

“Everyone has to start sometime. Besides, if you think I can put up with you and that dimpled weasel making eyes at each while sober, you are gravely mistaken.” He takes a deep drink from the wine jar. “Just go and ask the little freak straight out.”

A-Yao is clearly not “making eyes at him” in any possible way—he won’t even let him brush his arm!—but Lan Xichen doesn’t dare follow up on this. “I beg your pardon,” he says instead. “Ask him what?”

“ ‘I beg your pardon’?” Xue Yang mimics. “Just ask the dimpled little freak what he needs done.”

“Needs done?”

“Are all of you Lans this dense? This is demonic cultivation. Everything is the opposite of what you know. The thing that would normally set his spirit at rest will instead bind him to this world. No more disappearing and reappearing.”

“No more pain?”

“I can’t answer that. But I’d guess not.” Xue Yang has already finished one jar of wine. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying it—it smells like dry wine from where Lan Xichen is sitting—but he unstops the second jar and takes a sip, which goes down the wrong pipe. “Not that we can fix what’s wrong with him up here,” he adds once he’s finished coughing, tapping his head. A splatter of blood comes out with the clear white wine, as if the bite on his tongue has reopened. He looks at the blood on the floor, then gives a little laugh. “Guess being locked up for a year with an angry ghost who hates your insides isn’t a lot of fun.”

“What do you mean?”

Xue Yang doesn’t answer, just heaves a long-suffering sigh, rolls his eyes, finishes the jar of wine, and passes out—pretends to pass out?—on his bed.

Lan Xichen would have liked to spend the day pacing, but he’s too tired to do more than nap on the other bed, which is larger than usual for these kinds of inns. His nap is more of a doze than anything else, but he feels stronger when he wakes that night.

A-Yao is kneeling beside his cot.

“Er-ge?” A-Yao whispers. His face is glowing white in the starlight coming in through the window. “Oh, you’re just asleep.” His shoulders relax. “I…” He swallows and looks over his shoulder. Xue Yang is lying sprawled in an uncomfortable-looking position, four empty jars of wine on the floor beside his cot. “You weren’t waiting for me.”

A wave of crushing guilt. Lan Xichen reaches out for A-Yao’s hand, manages to brush it, be reassured of his warmth, of his reality, before A-Yao jerks away.

He continues lying there, A-Yao kneeling beside the low cot with his one arm lightly resting beside Lan Xichen. Close enough to touch him, if he wanted.

Which he clearly doesn’t.

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen says finally, “what is the one thing tying you to this world?”

A-Yao looks slightly startled, like a baby deer asked who it thought the next Chief Cultivator should be. “I—I don’t know.”

Not me. Of course not.

“I mean, if you were a ghost, and there was one thing you needed done to set you at peace, what would that one thing be?”

A-Yao’s eyes are wide. Lan Xichen has only seen that expression once before—in Nightless City, when he hid behind him from Nie Mingjue, and he feels a sudden twinge of uncertainty.

Not that he has any reason to doubt A-Yao, he reminds himself. This is just his paranoia speaking. A-Yao has made no promises to him. A-Yao is not trying to get out of anything or manipulate him into doing anything. He had been the one to ask A-Yao what it was A-Yao wanted.

Besides, that had not been manipulation back at Nightless City, he reminds himself, no matter what Nie Mingjue had claimed. A-Yao had been ready and willing to die for the terrible things he’d been forced to do to maintain his cover…

“You want to get rid of me?” A-Yao asks. He leans forward slightly, so close Lan Xichen imagines he can feel his breath on his skin.

“Xue Yang says that it would bind you to this world.”

A-Yao glances over at Xue Yang again. “He might be right.”

“You think so?”

“I think it’s worth a try.” He rests his cheek on the rough blanket, closing his eyes. “It’s worth a try…”

Lan Xichen inches over to the other edge of the bed, glancing over at A-Yao across what feels like a vast expanse of mattress. “Are you tired, A-Yao?”

A-Yao opens his eyes at the sound of his name. “In a strange kind of way.”

Lan Xichen takes the one pillow and lays it beside him as a kind of invitation. He doesn’t say anything. They’d shared a bed many times before while hopping from one run-down inn to the other after the destruction of the Cloud Recesses, always with a pillow between them. Does A-Yao remember? Or will he think Lan Xichen is being presumptuous—

A-Yao lies down beside him.

He lies on his back, rigid, like a corpse laid out in a coffin, straight and stiff and still until he finally relaxes into something almost human. Lan Xichen thinks he can feel his body heat, feel it radiating into him, warming him, making the dark shapes of the room come into sharper focus, the cool night air almost alive in his lungs.

“If I had to choose one thing,” A-Yao finally murmurs, in a voice very unlike his usual clear, almost over-enunciated tones, “it would be to kill him.”

Suddenly Lan Xichen knows that his having remembered A-Yao’s story the night before was no coincidence. He knows exactly whom A-Yao is talking about.

“I should have done it myself long ago,” continues A-Yao in that same low, uncharacteristically natural-sounding voice, “but his death would have raised too many questions back then, and after that I had too many things keeping me busy…I owe her this much. I should have long ago…”

“What’s his name?”

“Wu Shen. He’s a merchant in Yunping City.”

“Not…” Not Nie Huaisang?

A-Yao shakes his head. “I have been unfilial.”

“Then I’ll…I’ll go to Yunping.”

He hears A-Yao swallowing hard. Something brushes his hand, very briefly, and then A-Yao pulls away as if he can’t bear to touch the man who rammed a foot of ice-cold steel through his chest.

Lan Xichen doesn’t close his eyes the rest of the night. He lies very still, watching A-Yao sleep, memorizing every flutter of eyelash, every murmur, every twitch. A-Yao seems to be plagued by nightmares, but Lan Xichen doesn’t dare wake him.

“If I had to choose one thing, it would be to kill him.”

Lan Xichen thinks back to those idle days in the Cloud Recesses all those years ago. Lan Qiren’s interminable lectures, Wei Wuxian’s question about pacifying restless spirits: “But what if the wish was to kill many people in revenge?”

Deserving of death, is Wu Shen. As much as Chang Ping had been. And if Lan Xichen were to refuse now, then Chang Ping’s extrajudicial death, his torment, would have all been for nothing. Real or not, his pain had existed in some form.

Lan Xichen raises the hand A-Yao touched, stares at it in the moonlight, presses the spot A-Yao had brushed to this cheek. He has to do this. Prove he’ll do anything to bring A-Yao back fully.

Maybe then A-Yao would forgive Lan Xichen for killing him.

* * * *

The trip to Yunping City takes a week. Fourteen times Lan Xichen is forced to watch A-Yao suffer, fourteen times he’s forced to endure Xue Yang’s intense stare as it happens.

The sun is setting when they arrive in Yunping, bloody red streaks across a sky hung with thick gray clouds. A light early-season snow is beginning to fall as they check in at a reputable inn and hurry up to their room.

“Dinner first, I think,” says Xue Yang after A-Yao has appeared. “Can’t practice demonic cultivation on an empty stomach, now, can we?”

A-Yao gives his head a little shake. He hasn’t eaten anything since he’d been brought back.

“Zewu-jun? No? Suit yourself. Meet back here in an hour, and we’ll head out.” Humming, Xue Yang disappears down the stairs.

Without a word A-Yao follows him. Lan Xichen hurries after them. With every passing night A-Yao has become more and more detached from this world, not uttering a single sound on some nights. Lan Xichen sometimes thinks A-Yao’s skin has grown translucent, at least from certain angles, as if he has begun to fade as his connection to this world weakens.

Tonight will change that.

Lan Xichen wishes Xue Yang hadn’t insisted on eating. Every second, every minute is precious—

But he silently walks beside A-Yao, following him out of the inn all the way to Guanyin Temple. It’s no longer a temple, just a pile of rubble belonging to Jin Ling as A-Yao’s next of kin. He flies A-Yao over the wall into the courtyard, waits outside the temple as A-Yao disappears into the darkness.

Lan Xichen paces the courtyard as he waits. The last time he was here—

The last time he was here —

Don’t think about that. It doesn’t matter, not anymore—

The snow is falling faster now, thick eddies of white whirling around the courtyard, wet powder melting on his hair and robes, but he barely feels the cold.

Tonight—tonight—

There’s a smear of red on A-Yao’s face when he eventually emerges, as if a tear of blood had been clumsily wiped off. A-Yao notices him looking at, reaches up, scrubs the last of the blood from his face.

“I interred her,” Lan Xichen says, very quietly, “near the Cloud Recesses. With honor.”

A-Yao gives a brief nod. No need to tell him of the concessions he’d had to make to Nie Huaisang in order to get him to release A-Yao’s mother’s body.

There would be plenty of time after tonight.

They’re about to leave the temple courtyard when Xue Yang flies over the courtyard walls and lands in front of them, grinning.

“Figured you’d be here,” he says, dumping a man on the thin layer of snow blanketing the ground. A bound, mustached man with a face that it was a crime for him to inflict on the local populace without a license. Xue Yang has placed a Lan silencing spell on him, and the man’s face is bright red with anger as he struggles to tear his lips open.

Lan Xichen darts a glance at A-Yao. A-Yao’s eyes are wide, the rest of his face frozen.

Wu Shen.

“Let’s go inside,” Xue Yang suggests, shaking the snow from his skirts and hair. “Too many eyes out here.”

Lan Xichen glances around at the walls surrounding the courtyard.

Xue Yang sighs. “There are Lan cultivators flying around the area. I saw them on my way over. Besides, it's cold and wet."

They hurry inside the temple. The ceiling is half cratered, the entire place turned upside-down, but the damage isn’t as extensive as it could have been. Humming, Xue Yang moves around the temple, lighting the surviving candles with his Wen talismans.

There, right here, that was where Lan Xichen had stabbed A-Yao—his blood remains on the stone floor; shielded from rain and snow by fallen beams—

A-Yao’s breathing is shallow. Desperate for a distraction, Lan Xichen removes the silencing spell on Wu Shen.

“—sue you all! Unhand me at once! What is the meani—”

Lan Xichen replaces the silencing spell.

“ ‘Unhand me at once’?” Xue Yang snickers. “If you don’t kill him, I will.”

Lan Xichen glances back down at Wu Shen, who’s rolling quietly towards the front door.

Xue Yang places a foot on his shoulder and shoves him down to the floor. Jiangzai is out, slung casually across his shoulders.

“He’s all yours,” he says. He sighs at the look on Lan Xichen’s face. “Our dimpled friend can’t do it, or it would just create more resentful energy,” he explains, answering a question Lan Xichen didn’t realize he had. “You know about these things from your studies, don’t you, Lianfang-zun? Tell the man.”

A-Yao ducks his head in agreement, eyes still fixed on Wu Shen.

Xue Yang prods Wu Shen’s belly with the tip of his sword. Wu Shen gives a silent eep of indignation. Strangely, he seems more angry than scared. “Better hurry, Zewu-jun, before I give it a shot myself and nab all the credit. ‘Unhand me at once’—”

A-Yao looks up for the first time. “Er-ge?”

Shuoyue is quivering in Lan Xichen’s hand. He shoud let Xue Yang do it, he knows he should, but A-Yao had asked him, asked Lan Xichen—this is his one chance to prove himself to A-Yao, be the instrument of his salvation just as he had been the instrument of his destruction—

“Take my advice,” says Xue Yang, leaning on one of the surviving columns, “and get it over with quick. Don’t try to have fun with it this time. I mean, I did my first time, but—”

Lan Xichen plunges Shuoyue through Wu Shen’s heart.

A-Yao watches impassively, then spits on the man’s corpse, a vulgar gesture Lan Xichen would never have expected from him.

Lan Xichen releases Shuoyue’s hilt, leaving the sword stuck deep in Wu Shen’s chest. His hands are shaking, and he can’t take his eyes off the corpse.

He just murdered a man in cold blood, in almost the exact spot he had murdered A-Yao—

Two wrongs to make a right. A-Yao would be back now. A-Yao would have a second chance. Wipe away what had happened here a year ago—

A-Yao turns to Lan Xichen.

“I didn’t think you would actually do it,” he says, very softly. “Xichen, I…” He grips Lan Xichen’s sword hand. “Goodbye, Xichen,” he says. Lan Xichen feels a stinging spark where A-Yao is gripping his wrist. “Find m—”

He’s gone before he can finish, diffused light flowing outward to join the flickering candlelight, a thousand sparks of gold fading for the last time.

Gone. Gone, just like that.

For good this time.

Lan Xichen stares at the spot A-Yao had been standing, at the bleeding corpse at his feet, and drags his eyes up to look at Xue Yang.

Xue Yang glances up from where he’s using Wu Shen’s blood to draw an array on the floor.

He’s grinning.

“That went well,” he says.

“Did you know?” Lan Xichen grabs Xue Yang by the throat. “Did you know he’d disappear? You told me it was different for demonic cultivation; you told me it would bind him here—”

“Better question to ask is if he knew,” Xue Yang chokes out.

“If—if—”

Xue Yang pries Lan Xichen’s nerveless fingers from his throat. “It was a test. You failed it. Gave in right away, as I understand.”

“I—”

Xue Yang is laughing as he rubs the bruises forming on his throat. Lan Xichen has torn his Xiao Xingchen mask, but Xue Yang doesn’t seem to care. He peels it off and drops it to the floor, his disarmingly boyish face mottled with pink and white. “You were the better part of him,” he sneers. “Supposed to be the better part of him. Moonlight in the darkness and all that nonsense.”

“You—you lied to me!”

“I suppose all the beads were put in the looks bucket when you were made,” Xue Yang grins, “without a lot left over for brains.” He clicks his tongue. "What else did you expect from someone as repugnant as me?"

Lan Xichen falls to his knees, palms pressed to the spot A-Yao had been standing as if he can still feel his heat on the stone tiles. The room has faded, and the old weight is crushing his limbs again, keeping him pinned to the ground, barely able to breathe. Squeezing his lungs, threatening to crack his skull, a thousand times worse than it had ever been in the Cloud Recesses. There’s a dark red spot on his hand where A-Yao had been touching him—

“Aw, how nice,” Xue Yang clucks. “He marked you as his own. Can’t decide if it’s like a dog pissing on a tree or—no, I think I’ll go with ‘dog’ on this one.”

Lan Xichen stares at the red spot. Something is pricking at his half-melted brain—something familiar—but his blood is pumping too hard to think. He’s hot, so hot —

“To help find him in the afterlife,” explains Xue Yang. He bites his lip, hesitating, then shrugs. “Better not blow it again the next time, my friend.”

Lan Xichen is on his feet, swaying slightly. “Why did you do this?”

“About time you asked.” Xue Yang removes a folded sheet of paper from his qiankun sleeve. “You really should have asked more questions, my friend.”

The missing page from the book, the one that had supposedly been destroyed in a fire.

Lan Xichen grabs it.

“The ritual calls for the corruption of a soul of equal so-called purity in order to create a proper vessel for me to call the soul into before putting it back in his body,” Xue Yang explains as Lan Xichen stares at the paper, as if knowing Lan Xichen’s thoughts are too hot and flurried to be able to read, his vision blurred. “Not exactly easy to find a person like that in this fucked-up world. Not to mention access to the Lan library and Inquiry.” He shrugs. “You were the very obvious choice. Too bad you didn’t intentionally kill those Lan cultivators when we left the Cloud Recesses or those Nie guards, or I could have saved a lot of time.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Lan Xichen can barely hear his own voice over the blood roaring in his ears.

Twice. He’s killed A-Yao here, in this same temple, twice.

And A-Yao—

He has to find him. Has to explain. Has to be explained to. About why A-Yao would prefer death over life with him—

“Kill Zewu-jun?” Xue Yang twirls a strand of hair around his finger, eyes wide and innocent. He takes the pages back. “I can’t take you down on my own. But I figure they can, which is why I invited them. Right on time, too—”

With a squelching sound Lan Xichen draws Shuoyue from Wu Shen’s corpse and flies at Xue Yang. Laughing, the hooligan easily springs out the way, and Lan Xichen is about to pull out Liebing when he hears a familiar voice from behind him.

“Clan Leader!”

He whirls around. Six high-ranking Lan cultivators have dropped through the ceiling, swords in hand, snow gusting down around them. One has his guqin out and has begun to play the Song of Clarity—

Shuoyue arcs through the air, slicing the guqin in half.

And the cultivator.

Lan Xichen hadn’t meant to kill him but he, Lan Xichen, the top-ranked cultivator of his generation, is suddenly unable to govern his own spiritual energy.

But—

Is it really such a bad thing?

They’re trying to stop him from joining A-Yao. Stop him from killing the man responsible or A-Yao’s death. They're trying to bring him back to the Cloud Recesses—

Something echoes through the blood pounding in his ears.

“Too bad you didn’t intentionally kill those Lan cultivators when we left the Cloud Recesses—”

How many other Lan cultivators has he killed?

No. He couldn’t have killed them—

But he remembers the sound of the cultivator’s bones cracking against the stone as he fled the Cloud Recesses, and something bursts inside him.

A fistful of blood spatters out past his teeth, hot on his chin, speckling the floor with red.

A dozen more Lan cultivators have appeared, flickering around him, laughing, grinning, sneering. Despising him, ridiculing him for his desperation, his weakness, for his having fallen for Xue Yang's lies not once but twice—

Coming to take him home. Coming to lock him up again—

Something inside him snaps.

Blood burns his eyes, his vision half-obscured, but he hacks and slashes at the phantasms around him. There’s not a hint of his old elegance as he spins and whirls and lunges. He’s seized by Nie-like berserker rage as he rips them apart with Shuoyue—(they’re not real, anyway)—he knows they aren’t real—they’re just specters sent to haunt him, to taunt him, inventions of his overheated brain—

(Not that it matters, now. Nothing is real, nothing matters.)

The cultivators' bodies disappear. A dozen more men and women have appeared to take their places—

A face.

Wangji? No. Wangji couldn’t be here—nobody is here—

Sorrow on Wangji’s face— not Wangji’s face—not the real Wangji, anyway; if Wangji were truly here Lan Xichen wouldn’t stand a chance, not in his current condition—

A tear slips down Wangji’s face.

A hand on his shoulder, the first solid thing he’s felt other than Shuoyue’s hilt in—in how long—?

Where is he—

The temple. Still in the temple.

He scrubs the blood from his eyes, looks down. His blue robes are soaked with blood. Fresh blood dribbles from his eyes, his mouth, from the thousand ruptures in his flesh. Blood coats the snowy floor, taints the air, blossoms beautifully on the while robes of the six Lan corpses surrounding him.

Xue Yang looks down at him, watching him bleed out. Xiao Xingchen’s spirit-trapping pouch is in one hand, the Stygian Tiger Seal shard in the other.

For once there is no smile on Xue Yang’s face. “Shall I do it, my friend? The ritual will heal any damage to your body so that he will be whole when he returns—”

Lan Xichen stabs upward with Shuoyue.

Cursing, Xue Yang falls to his knees before the kneeling clan leader, blood spraying out past his teeth, eyes wide with shock. Lan Xichen must have struck an artery, because there’s a rapidly spreading pool of red around him, the hot crimson liquid surrounding the two of them.

Instead of using his spiritual energy to heal, Xue Yang instead begins to laugh, a laugh tinged with more than a touch of hysteria.

His knife is out.

Lan Xichen stares down at the mark A-Yao branded into his wrist, barely visible through the blood.

He looks up at Xue Yang again.

Waits.

“You’re welcome,” says Xue Yang, blood spurting over his chin, and he plunges his knife deep into Lan Xichen’s breast.

Lan Xichen hears a cry from the doorway, a familiar voice.

Or maybe he just imagines it.

The metal blade is cold as it pierces his skin, enters his muscle, scrapes bone. As cold as the mountain stream outside his mother’s house—

Lan Xichen wonders if the crane is still there.

He can almost see it now. Fluffing its wet feathers in greeting as Lan Xichen glides low over the Cloud Recesses—

The faint red light of an activated array comes from far away. Dimly-glowing symbols spin around him, as if someone is pouring the last of their life essence into the array as a soft new presence envelopes Lan Xichen—

The red light fades as he circles the mountain, flies higher into the crystal-clear sky. Frigid air is all around him, caressing his bare arms and legs, but he’s wrapped in warmth, in starlight.

A growing, glowing feeling, as if he’s bigger than himself, as if he’s become something more.

Something new.

He soars higher.

The Cloud Recesses looks so small from up here. So insignificant.

Like everything else.

He’s out among the stars now. Glowing, expanding, leaving a trail of green and purple stardust behind him.

Cosmic light envelopes him.

He melts into it.

* * * *

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. AO3

#The final chapter: Things come to a head #Or: The night sky sure is pretty and stars are cool #Fractured Ice #Lan Xichen #mdzsnet #Xue Yang #the untamed #mdzs #cql #check out Ao3 for the warnings

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wangxianficrecs · 4 years ago

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❤️live from new york by varnes

❤️live from new york

by varnes

E, 87k, wangxian

Summary: Wei Ying lets out a long, ugly groan. “I am fine, Lan Zhan. Everybody is overreacting, it’s so embarrassing for all of you.”

“You had undiagnosed pneumonia, which you walked around with for weeks until you passed out during dress,” Lan Wangji corrects him. “It got a big laugh, until everyone thought you were dead.”

He keeps his voice even and does not tell Wei Ying that it had been Lan Wangji who caught him, who called the ambulance, and who rode with him to the hospital, where he was yelled at by nurses who wanted to know why he hadn’t noticed that Wei Ying couldn’t stop shivering or string proper sentences together.

“Rumors of my demise have been vastly overstated,” Wei Ying says. “Anyway, I’m already feeling much better. Basically fine. Really almost completely back to normal, so stop babying me and tell me why the fuck you let your stupid brother hire the worst man in the world to host our show.”

OR: the one where they all work at SNL, Yanli's ex-boyfriend is hosting, and that's just the beginning of everybody's problems.

My comments: This was sooo funny, ohmygoodness, but also chock full of pining and withheld communication and stupidly sacrificial idiots. Author juggles an ensemble cast flawlessly, and everyone's personality shines in the rawest and most shamelessly hilarious way (I saw someone comment that they were all feral, which suits). Story is most often lwj POV (he and wwx are co-head writers) and this boy is SO IN LOVE, but doesn't want to damage what he's got, so he stays silent (mostly). Their relationship drama is subsumed in the utterly hectic week that leads up to a Saturday show (Sunday is off, Tuesdays have a hallucinatory never-ending feel, Fridays are actually much busier than Saturdays).

Excerpt 1: There is no “end” to Tuesdays. There is Tuesday, and then later Tuesday, and then midnight Tuesday, and then timeless Tuesday, when it stops being nighttime but isn’t yet morning, and then eventually the sun is up and it’s not Tuesday on the calendar but it’s still Tuesday spiritually, because no one has slept and everyone is all hopped up on caffeine and cigarettes.

Excerpt 2: Some funny bits:

“Laughter is the best medicine!” Wei Ying wheedles. “Come onnnnn, Lan Zhan, I’ve been rotting away for months and months, if someone doesn’t let me get a joke on TV in the next twenty minutes I’ll die. I’ll literally be forced to fling myself out of the Jiang family’s beautiful bay windows, and on the way down I’ll shout, ‘This was avoidable! This is because Lan Zhan wouldn’t let me punch up the promos!’ and then you’ll be fired for secondhand murder and it’ll be a tragedy like the sketch comedy circuit has never seen.”

Lan Wangji says, “Second-degree.”

“What?”

“Murder. Not secondhand.”

Wei Ying furrows his brow. “...I’ve heard it both ways,” he says. “That would make a good detective show spoof skit, though. Secondhand Murder.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji agrees. “Murder She Wrote, but an idiot.”

“Keeps suggesting a series of increasingly implausible manners of death,” Wei Ying agrees, scribbling on the back of the takeout menu. Yanli and Lan Wangji share a look. “All the deaths are like — incredibly obvious and she goes buckwild with her theories anyway.”

“Police keep asking her to leave.”

“I want to be one of the victims,” Yanli says. “Put like, a sword right through my chest, but I’m still alive, telling the cops what happened, and she’s still like, ‘No no, that’s what the murderer wants you to think.’”

“Gruesome! Love it,” says Wei Ying, making a note.

Excerpt 3: some just plain esoteric turns of phrase:

Lan Zhan mutters, “Wei Ying,” in that voice of his. He says Wei Ying eight million times a day but never the same way twice. A mood ring of Wei Ying. Wei Wuxian wants to be fully dead about it, wholly and completely excused from this earth because of how Lan Zhan says his stupid name.

“Lan Zhan,” he sing-songs back. “Ah, Lan Zhaaaaan.”

Excerpt 4: Some gut-punches:

Wei Wuxian wants bruises; Lan Wangji wants scars.

_____________________

ETA: There's a Sequel!

It's 19k of sheer delight as our boys go to the courthouse to get hitched... only to find out they've been married for the past 3.5 years. How. How did this happen? Wwx points out that they've never had anything but married sex which is very responsible and traditional of them. But still. How do you get accidentally married???

Excerpt: “How are you so chill about this,” Wei Wuxian demands, turning his face into Lan Zhan’s palm and kissing it at the center. “I feel like someone just informed me that everyone else on the planet except me has two dicks, and you’re just like, tralala, dry cleaning.”

“It’s easier for me,” says Lan Zhan, very tenderly. “I’ve always had two dicks.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, helplessly. “Lan Zhan.”

modern au, SNL au, saturday night live, humor, comedy, pining, FOREST OF PINES, light angst, lots of jokes, ensemble cast, feels, oblivious wei wuxian, oblivious lan wangji, idiots in love, slow burn, lack of communication, self-sacrificial idiots, flirting, getting together, everyone ships it, top lan wangji, bottom wei wuxian, roommates, hijinks and shenanigans, comedian everybody, jiang siblings, friends to lovers, found family, adorable juniors, happy ending, favorite, @itsvarnes

(You may wish to REBLOG as a signal boost for this author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

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tt205 · 4 years ago

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THE GHOST GENERAL || MDZS

Wen Ning × reader

Requested: Yes

Can you please do an x reader with Wen Ning best boy 🥺 maybe reader has had a crush on this fluff muffin since meeting at Cloud Recesses and how they react after he and Wei Wuxian come back, they're just kind of overwhelmed so they start to splur all their feelings 🙂

Requested by : rozesdance

WARNINGS: None - just my not so good English and a kiss in the end that's all . Pretty fluff pretty cute - could read to grandma - if she is into the drama only :) lol . Not so much based onto the actual drama plot but still accurate.

————————————————————————————

It was all so sudden .. you were a member of the Lan Clan Sect of Gusu and he was a member of Wen Clan Sect .

You knew having feelings for a person with such a family background wasn't ideal but you didn't care , what you did care about thought was the fact that there was nothing more than friendship between the two of you .

You attended classes with him and even thought he had a weaker spiritual power than yours he still did well on them .

You used to eat lunch with him , Wei Wuxian , Nie Huaisang , Jiang Cheng and Yanli and even sometimes you had the chance to eat with Jin Ling .

You all spend a lot of time together when your schedules aloud you to and had come pretty much closer than you could imagine .

There was times when Ning would drop by your room and play games with you or even try out some new music on guqin .

Your favorite moment of you together was when you went stargazing on the roof .

Wuxian had gave you some "emperor's smile " before hand and it was all you needed for that night , the soft breeze kissing your bodies and rushing its way through the leaves of the beautiful trees.

You did all you could possibly do to avoid thinking about how could things go if you to were together but nothing seemed to work, the moonlight covering his features in the most beautiful way . You shivered a little as a stronger breeze passed by making him eye to your direction before pulling you closer to his giant body . " are you cold ?" He asked and you tried to say otherwise just to end up covered like a burrito with him by your side in the next second .

" I would prefer watching the stars rather than staying in bed " you whispered playfully poking his side .

" I can open a hole on the roof if you want me to " he grinned widely making you giggle

" tststts .. really funny " you said sarcastically moving around and looking into his eyes leaving just the appropriate distance between your bodies to not make the situation uncomfortable later on .

The night went by rather peacefully full of laughs and smiles wishing it could last longer but everything good has to come to an end .

It's been 4 years since the last time you saw him after he left with Wei Wuxian for the Burial Mounds .

The bad news didn't take long to come to your ears the person you loved now is dead or a living dead to be correct, a puppet .

Has he been changed ? You thought.

Will he be able to recognize me ?

You paced back and forth into the small space of your room feeling the thin walls suffocating you .

You opened the door heading out to the yard , the rabbits jumping here and there lazily.

You decided to visit Lan Xicheng today a friend you haven't see for days , him been now Sect leader making it even more difficult to find time for hunging out .

On your way there you met Lan Wangji a smile decorating his face as he walked calmly.

" Lan Zhan ! " you called following behind him

" Are you going to Xicheng? " he asked making you nod

"I'm going there too " he spoke

" Wei Ying is coming here today to visit us with the Ghost General - I mean with Wen Ning " he continued speaking and your heart rushed a beat at the last name .

"Wen Ning is here too?" You asked waiting for an answer in order to feel reasured .

"Yes! In 30 minutes I believe they will have arrive " he ended his sentence with a small smile .

Both of you continued your wei to the main building before entering and taking a seat there waiting for the guests to arrive .

"They are here " a sect member announced moving away allowing both men to enter.

You lifted your head straight up to Ning's face .

Nothing is changed yet his face looks pale more than it used to be .

His features are a little sharper but he is mainly the same .

You bow your head as you make eye contact with him , giving him a shy smile .

His once red robe is now replaced by a black fabric & leather .

His calm face makes you less concerned about his situation .

Both of them take a seat in the room and after a refreshing meal you are free to go .

You are pulled aside on your way out.

Looking around you are taken by surprise coming face to face with the dark clothed man.

"May I have a moment with you ?" He asks taking your hand in his own .

"Mm- yes " you say stuttering a little.

He takes you out next to the 4.000 rules wall and you can do nothing but look I his eyes .

" I really don't know how to begin with but I believe this will do .." he says pausing for a short second

" I know you for so many years but I never had the chance to talk to you about it y/n .. I think - no basically I really like you-no I love you y/n " he breathes out and your mouth gapes open to his boldness

"my point is that I would really like to take you out on a date .. if you dont like dating we can get married if your family says so - I can do everything you want for us to be together just give me a chance " the words leave his mouth and you can no longer keep your mouth open .

You blink your eyes twice before trying to regain your composure .

"I like you too Wen Ning - no I love you , I always did" you say , brain to burned up to find the proper words to answer .

"So that means that you do want to be with me ? Be my wife even though of my situation?" He asks both to have you reassure him and maybe give you a moment of consideration but you know the answer before he finishes his sentence.

" Yes " you answer confidently.

" I want all that and much more " you look into his eyes before being pulled into a tight hug and a heated kiss that both of you will remember as the first step of your oh-so-dream-like long love story ~~

————————————————————————————

Hope you enjoyed reading this- thanks rozesdance for requesting-

Stay happy + healthy ♡

#mo dao su zhi #mdzs #wen ning #ghost general #the untamed imagines #the untamed #wei ying #lan wangji #lan xichen #lan xicehn #gusu lan #gusurabbit #cinnamon roll #× reader #x reader #please request #requests open

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years ago

Note

Jin Zixuan knows what he wants, and that’s to be the next pretty but useless Madam Jiang. All that he has to is 1) pass his title of heir to his new brother, 2) convince JYL to fall back in love with him, 3) not embarrass himself. Three easy enough goals, right? -🙃

ao3

Untamed

Jin Zixuan was almost – almost – not surprised to open his eyes and find himself sixteen again.

Instead of, you know, dead.

Honestly, it just seemed like the perfect capstone of his life of happenstance: born an idiot, raised an idiot, continued to be an idiot, realized he was an idiot, remained an idiot but a better class thereof, and somehow despite all that managed to hit the jackpot of luck not only once but twice – the first in being born in the right womb, the second in convincing Jiang Yanli to give him a second chance despite the aforementioned unbroken streak of lifelong idiocy.

Possibly because of. She thought he was cute.

Anyway, as if to make him pay up for that amazing streak of luck, just when he’d finally achieved all the things he’d ever actually wanted – a wife that loved him and who he loved in return and a son to dote upon – he had, for the first time in his life, grown up and decided to not be a complete idiot…only to immediately die.

Being reborn seemed pretty much part and parcel with the whole stupid tragedy.

Not that he regretted inviting Wei Wuxian to come visit. That’d been the right thing to do, and Jiang Yanli had been so happy – it hadn't even been his fault; it had been Jin Zixun’s ambush that had ruined it all, really. Jin Zixuan wasn’t even entirely sure what it was that had actually killed him, whether it was a stray arrow or a misplaced sword or even the Ghost General gone berserk, but he was sure that if his stupid cousin hadn’t decided to attack, Wei Wuxian would have come and left in peace.

If he hadn’t rushed out by himself to try to fix things, to make sure the one thing he’d ever managed to do right by Jiang Yanli worked out well, then maybe he wouldn’t have ended up leaving her and Jin Ling behind.

Alone.

In Lanling City.

He shuddered even to think it.

Jin Zixuan knew that there were people who loved their sects – passionately, devotedly. Jiang Cheng had been one of them, defying death itself to resurrect the Jiang sect in his parents’ honor and reestablishing it as one of the Great Sects. And then there was Lan Xichen, the steadfast and honorable, who had sacrificed everything, even honor, to make sure his sect’s books survived what they had feared would be the end. And all this was to say nothing of Nie Mingjue, who had come to power painfully young and had played the game of politics that he so despised in order to stay the course, to avenge his father and keep his sect strong…

Jin Zixuan did not love his sect.

He did not love his city, he did not love his people. He had wondered if it was a failing in himself, but then looked at the rest of his family and realized it was just his blood running true. Lanling Jin had a soul of rot and a heart of stone, each one of them careless and indifferent in their own way – his father couldn’t give a damn about his sect except in the sense that it aided his personal power, his mother the authority it gave her whether through her husband or her son, his cousins the impunity they could derive from it…

Jin Zixuan had told Jiang Yanli about it when she agreed to marry him, worried that she'd change her mind when she learned the truth but even more worried that she'd wake up one day to find herself trapped and disappointed in him. But she was as ever the luckiest thing that had ever happened in his life: she’d said that she would be fine because she had him by her side, and he would be fine because he had her, and they would balance. He’d accepted that argument – and then, of course, he’d gone and died, like the idiot that he was.

And yet, somehow, he’d been reborn, granting him another chance to change his fate, and this time, this time, he wasn’t going to deceive himself.

After all, it seemed pretty clear from his last life that he was never going to not be an idiot, and that fate wasn’t too happy about him trying to stick his nose into politics or major events.

This time around, he wasn’t going to struggle against his destiny – Jin Zixuan was going to accept it.

He was going to be absolutely useless.

He sat up in his bed, observing that he was in the Cloud Recesses, and that his eye hurt; it must be not long after his fight with Wei Wuxian, which meant his engagement was broken. He’d have to win Jiang Yanli again – still, he’d somehow managed it last time around, so that wasn’t what he was worried about.

No, the main problem was definitely how he was going to manage the whole “be useless” part of his ambitions – and for that, he needed the advice of an expert.

“Nie-er-gongzi, can I ask you for some advice?” he asked.

Nie Huaisang blinked blearily at him. “Jin-gongzi? It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s important,” Jin Zixuan said apologetically. “It’s something that only you can help me with.”

“…me?”

“Yes, you. I need to learn how to be a good-for-nothing.” Jin Zixuan thought about it. “Also, I need to get in contact with Meng Yao. He’s at the Unclean Realm now, right? Someone needs to inherit Lanling Jin, might as well be him.”

Nie Huaisang blinked owlishly at him.

“…okay.” He pulled open the door. “I think you’d better come inside.”

#mdzs #jin zixuan #nie huaisang #my fic #my fics

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farmerlan · 5 years ago

Text

Farmer Lan’s Rewatch Guide to The Untamed - Episode 11

Jiang Fengmian’s palms getting real sweaty rn

episode masterlist here

SPOILER WARNING!

[Jin Guangyao takes his leave and Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng decide to return to the Lotus Pier. Jiang Cheng is worried about being punished for leaving without permission and grouses that he will never stop getting into trouble because of Wei Wuxian. When Jiang Fengmian appears, he seems unusually concerned about whether they encountered any trouble along the way as opposed to whether they stirred up any trouble.]

Differences from the novel:

This pretty much doesn’t happen since none of the events leading up to it happens in the novel.

It’s kind of interesting because I think the show makes Jiang Fengmian appear more disciplinarian than he is in the novel? In the drama, he definitely harshly rebuked Wei Wuxian at the Cloud Recesses and Jiang Cheng mentioned being punished by him. But in the novel Madam Yu was 100% the disciplinarian and Jiang Fengmian either was way too relaxed (with Wei Wuxian) or just didn’t care (with Jiang Cheng).

[Jiang Yanli arrives as well and they all sit down for lunch when Madam Yu shows up. I LOVE how her entrance is accompanied by villainous music. She has a bone to pick with...well, just about everybody. She goes off about the Wen ‘indoctrination’ and the unfairness of Jiang Cheng being forced to go as the heir while Wei Wuxian is given a choice. She doesn’t give face to ANYBODY, picking on Jiang Yanli, Jiang Cheng, and Wei Wuxian in turn.]

Differences from the novel:

This does happen in Chapter 51, pretty much almost word for word. There is, I think, some interesting nuance in her choice of words here that might have been missed if you relied on the Netflix subs (which kind of suck, sorry), so I summarized my thoughts in the overall section below.

[Lan Wangji is ambushed by Wen Chao on his way back, but manages to escape. Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren do the whole “no, YOU leave and I stay” routine and Lan Xichen finally accepts that he must escape with the Lan archives. We watch the Lan disciples get massacred.

Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng disclose their involvement with the Yin metal to Jiang Fengmian, and Jiang Fengmian speculates that while the Wen sect won’t come for them YET, the Lan sect is likely in deeper shit than the rest of them due to their involvement with the Yin metal.

The Lan disciples and Lan Qiren convene outside the cold cave, and are joined by Lan Wangji. They make it into the cold cave, but are betrayed by Su She. Lan Wangji tells Wen Xu to leave the Cloud Recesses in exchange for the Yin metal - and gets one of his legs broken.]

Differences from the novel:

We don’t really get to see what happens at the Lan sect during the burning of the Cloud Recesses - we only learn of it through what was recounted by Lan Wangji. He does get his leg broken though.

Lan Xichen claims he cannot leave because he is the sect leader, implying that their father is already dead. However, in the novel, the raid happens when their father, Qingheng-Jun, is still alive. In Chapter 55, while trapped in the tortoise cave, Lan Wangji mentions that when he left for the Wen indoctrination, his father was severely injured in the attack, and Lan Xichen escaped with as much of the sect’s archives as possible, with his current whereabouts unknown. When Wei Wuxian awakens at Lotus Pier afterwards, he learns from Jiang Cheng that Qingheng-Jun had passed away while they were at the Wen sect. :(

Ambush doesn’t happen, and the Su She/cold cave scene doesn’t happen. In the flashback timeline, Su She really only shows up twice - once as part of the water ghosts excursion and once at the tortoise cave.

[Back at the Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian demonstrates his archery prowess. Jiang Cheng says, ‘Shooting under their sun won’t be as easy as today” - on the surface a reference to the weather, but keep in mind that the Wen sect’s symbol is the sun, and in Chinese what he said can also be translated as “THIS sun” (这太阳), right after one of the disciples mentions the Wen sect, so it’s literally foreshadowing the eventual Sunshot Campaign (射日).

Wen Ruohan is displeased that Wen Qing lets Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian escape, and she promises that there will not be a next time. Meanwhile, Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are headed to Qishan and Jiang Fengmian sends them off with his famous line, “明知不可为而为之，有所不为，方有可为”.

They arrive at Qishan and we see some familiar faces, but the Lan sect is conspicuously missing. Wen Chao makes his appearance and the Wen guards bring in Lan Wangji, and then demands they surrender their swords.]

Differences from the novel:

I have thoughts about the English translation of the Jiang sect’s motto (“attempting the impossible”), I’ll save them for down below. Also - Jiang Fengmian never says the latter half the line in the novel - only the motto (明知不可而为之).

In the novel, they are practicing archery/fooling around right before Madam Yu shows up to admonish them, and then they learn about the Wen sect indoctrination. So the sequence of events is flipped around.

Since Lan Wangji didn’t have to surrender the Yin metal to the Wen sect in the novel, he just shows up with the rest of the Lan sect disciples in the novel.

This is the first time that we run into Wen Chao in the novel, and he’s flanked by Wang Lingjiao and Wen Zhuliu.

Overall thoughts：

First of all, Netflix’s subtitling needs work. I mean, I know it’s definitely not easy to do any kind of translation, so I don’t want to rag on anyone’s efforts either, but I was laughing at parts of the show. I didn’t have subtitles on when I first watched The Untamed, but I turned it on for the re-watch since it might be helpful to see how my understanding aligns with that of a non-Chinese viewer. It’s not bad, but also missing some flavor.

I first laughed at Netflix’s subtitle usage of ‘myrmidon’ when subbing Madam Yu - it’s a serious SAT word where servant would have sufficed. Madam Yu’s speech is actually pretty much identical to what was in the novel, but I wanted to point out her specific usage of the word ‘household servant/家仆’, and the subtext here that might be missed for people relying on the subs. In the novel, she calls out Jiang Yanli for peeling lotus seeds for Wei Wuxian and says, ‘You’re not a servant!’. In the context of the situation, she is specifically pointing out the difference between her and Wei Wuxian’s status - don’t serve someone who is supposed to serve you, remember your place is higher than his. Keep in mind that Wei Wuxian’s father was a servant of the Jiang sect who eloped with CSSR (whom Jiang Fengmian had fancied). Wei Wuxian’s high status within the Jiang sect is unusual and has always been seen as a symbol of favoritism and therefore a sore spot for Madam Yu. It would have been way more common for him to have a servant/companion relationship with Jiang Cheng (similar to how Jin Guangyao’s relationship was with Nie Huaisang in the drama) since he is after all completely unrelated by blood to the Jiang sect. Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian even discuss this in greater detail in Chapter 56 - funnily enough, Wei Wuxian doesn’t mind this term at all, most likely because he was raised more like the child of a sect leader vs. the child of a servant.

(Mini non-related rant: I sometimes see fan discussions that casually glosses over the importance of blood and familial ties in Chinese culture, and it makes me want to tear my hair out, especially considering that the whole ‘blood is thicker than water’ thing is basically a trope in so much of Chinese xianxia/wuxia literature. There’s a lot of “how could you abandon someone who is basically your brother” talk when discussing the relationship dynamics between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian while blithely ignoring the fact that they are NOT and WILL NEVER BE brothers. Periodt. In fact, they are clearly both deeply cognizant (Jiang Cheng perhaps more so) of their non-familial ties and it is an issue that comes up again and again in their conversations or narrative dialogues. I just hate it when people handwave away their complicated relationship and pin it all on Jiang Cheng as being ‘unsibling-y’. /end rant)

One other thing I’m kind of picky about is the translation for the Yunmeng Jiang sect’s motto - to ‘attempt the impossible’, or ‘“明知不可而为之’. Strictly speaking, I don’t think it’s a great translation of the meaning of the phrase, which is likely derived from the Analects of Confucius (Xian Wen, 38), because it leaves out a big chunk of the meaning. 明知不可而为之 is to do what you SHOULD do, even if it seems impossible and, in the course of doing so, you may find that it wasn’t so impossible after all, but the possibility of success or failure should not preclude you from doing what needs to be done. Lu Xun, one of China’s most esteemed writers, wrote a piece that I think fits in well here - if you see a bunch of people soundly asleep in a room that has no easy way in or out, and you knew they would asphyxiate to death soon, would you wake them? Or let them pass away peacefully in their sleep? (Note: he wasn’t specifically using the example to illustrate this principle, it’s just a story I borrowed that fits in well here)

The argument under the 明知不可而为之 principle would be to wake them. Even though they’ll likely spend their last moments in terror and struggling for air and trying to escape, it is what you should do, even if the outcome is unlikely to be favorable.

Interestingly, it has been used in a much more negative context in the novel. In the novel, the line is often referenced in the light of ‘you knew this would cause trouble and disaster for everyone and yet you went ahead anyway’ - if I were to insert ‘attempt the impossible’ into those situations, it would be really odd.

Lastly, I do love the show’s portrayal of the Lotus Pier! It’s exactly like how the novel depicted it and honestly it still breaks my heart how it was sacked + the changes in the succeeding years as Jiang Cheng rebuilt Yunmeng. I don’t remember if the show goes into too much detail, but in the novel, it’s mentioned in Chapter 86 and 92 that there’s a lot less activity around the Lotus Pier now due to Jiang Cheng’s fearsome temperament. :(

Also straight up I’m gonna say Jiang Fengmian has the best fits in the entire series, how can you not get with that black and purple combo ughhhh

#episode 11 #recap #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #lan wangji #魔道祖师 #wei wuxian #the untamed #cql

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