#wen ''but wei-gongzi asked me to 🥺'' ning

[spriteofmushrooms]

hiya! how about things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear + ningcheng for the ask game?

"A-jie, Zixuan-ge, I'm here again." Jiang Cheng's voice is soft, and Wen Ning wants to leave, but... but Wei Wuxian had asked him to watch out for Jiang Cheng. Even when Wei Wuxian doesn't put any power behind his words, it's still difficult to disobey. Wen Ning should tell him, but wouldn't Wei Wuxian feel bad? So he stays.

The Jin ancestral hall is nothing like the Jiang clan's. Engulfed in gold, Jiang Cheng is a point of darkness kneeling before grandeur.

"I'm not sure what that brat a-Ling has told you, so..." Jiang Cheng describes the past few months of Jin Ling's life--a notable night hunt, a well-negotiated treaty, the fight for the watchtowers. He tells them that Jin Ling has grown again, and that he's almost taller than Jiang Cheng already. That his friends are sweet, annoying, and promising. That he very obviously maneuvered so that Jiang Cheng would have to take care of Fairy while he studies in Cloud Recesses, because it would be 'so helpful, jiujiu.' He pauses. "He's such a good boy, a-jie."

He laughs, self-mocking. "Your a-Xian, though." Wen Ning should leave! "Your a-Xian has bewitched Lan Qiren's perfect, dutiful nephew, which is somehow something he thought I should be advised of. Not one personal letter in almost eighteen years, and this is what he thinks I want to know? Your didi was responsible, though, and he did not describe every imperfect act by Hanguang-jun. So, you see, I am still diplomatic."

Jiang Cheng curls down, perfect posture forgotten. His hands grip the skirts of his robes. Wen Ning can't see his face. After a few silent moments, he adds, "Jin Ling says that your a-Xian is gaining weight. So he must be eating something, even if it is bland."

The silence of the ancestral hall presses in.

"I wish..." Jiang Cheng whispers. "I wish..."

But then he shakes his head and wipes his face. "I'll visit again soon."

[stiltonbasket]

yllz era has such burn the witch vibes soooo fem!yllz pls 🥺🥺🥺

(follow-up to this!)

___

Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure why she expected Lan Zhan to come back.

She’s even less sure why it confuses her when he does.

“I am your intended,” he insists, when she makes her way over to the edge of the Burial Mounds with corpse blood spilled down her front and A-Yuan wailing in her arms. “My place is with you.”

His stubborn faithfulness is sweet, even if it’s the last virtue he should be sticking to just now. “Lan-er-gongzi, please turn back,” she says. “There is no worse place than the Luanzung Gang for one such as you. Go home.”

She and Lan Zhan haven’t really been on good terms since before the war, so by all rights their betrothal ought to have been called off long ago; but alliances are important, though he only reluctantly endured her teasing at the Cloud Recesses and fought with her during the Sunshot Campaign. He had the right to correct her when she strayed from the path of orthodoxy, or so everyone said--it was only anger born of love, according to everyone who clamored for her favor during the latter days of the assault on Qishan, and nothing but his own good character according to the Lan and Jin regiments.

Lan Zhan’s reappearance here has more to do with duty than affection, so Wei Wuxian scarcely thinks twice before trying to send him away again.

“I will never be the wife you hoped I could be one day,” Wei Wuxian tells him. “I will never take up my sword again, and I will never forsake the Wens. Thus, I consider our troth broken, and you can go where you will. Now leave me.”

Inexplicably, Lan Zhan looks hurt. “How can you say such a thing?” he demands, his beautiful dark eyes going wide with pain. “What have I done to be--”

“I cannot be your wife. Go away!”

“Then may I stay here as your friend, and a fellow cultivator who seeks to join you in this venture?” Lan Zhan asks humbly. “Please, Wei Ying?”

And then he looks down at the wriggling lump in her arms and frowns. “The child?”

“I gave birth to him.”

The hurt on Lan Zhan’s pale face changes to devastation. “You gave birth--with Wen Qionglin? Is that...is that why you...”

“What? No!” splutters Wei Wuxian. “I was joking! He’s Wen Ning’s baby cousin.”

“He needs something nourishing to eat,” Lan Zhan notes, rallying immediately. “I will go into Yiling now and buy food. Do you have a grocery list I can take?”

“Ah--if you can afford it,” she stammers. “Don’t buy anything too expensive, we don’t have much mon--”

“Price is no object. I will bring meat and vegetables and rice, and find someone to deliver warm clothes to the foot of the hill.”

With another low bow towards her and A-Yuan, Lan Zhan makes his way down the hill, and leaves Wei Wuxian standing on the dirty path with her jaw hanging halfway to the ground.

“What’s the matter with him?” she mutters, bemused. “Lan Zhan barely even likes me.”

A-Yuan looks supremely unimpressed. But he’s only two years old, so Wei Wuxian will forgive him.

___

“And that was how A-Die convinced A-Niang not to break their betrothal,” nine-year-old Lan Sizhui says, securing his bewildered baby brother in his lap as their parents’ voices drift out from the jingshi’s kitchen. “And then they got married the next year! That’s the end.”

“Not the end,” his brother insists, frowning so hard that his big brown eyes disappear under his brows. “Where’s Xiao-Yu? The story can’t end yet.”

“Xiao-Yu wasn’t born then, Yu’er. You had to wait four more years to get here.”

“Mean! Xiao-Yu was born,” A-Yu argues back. “A-Niang, Yuan-gege says I wasn’t born!”

“He’s right,” A-Niang calls back. “You weren’t. I couldn’t dig another baby up out of the ground like I did with A-Yuan. Your A-Die and I hatched you from a crane’s egg. But you were so small that I kept forgetting where you were, so I ate you up like a sweet little baozi and let you grow big enough in my stomach.”

Xiao-Yu blinks, so bewildered by this turn of events that he turns to Sizhui with teardrops brimming on his lashes. “Yuan-gege! A-Niang ate Xiao-Yu?”

“Wei Ying,” A-Die says despairingly, kissing Mother on the forehead before running out of the kitchen to comfort Xiao-Yu. Mother hurries after him, trying not to laugh, and lifts poor A-Yu into her lap so she can cover him with kisses.

“I promise I didn’t eat you, darling,” she soothes, cuddling Sizhui in her right arm and Xiao-Yu with her left. “My little dumplings are too sweet to eat. Right, Lan Zhan?”

“En,” Father agrees. “I promise.”

Xiao-Yu frowns. “But if you didn’t eat me, how did I grow big?” he wonders. “Yuan-gege, do you know?”

Sizhui nods, because this is something he does know; and cousin Jingyi was very reluctant to tell him, so it must be true.

“A-Niang touched A-Die’s mo’e too many times,” he says gravely. “That’s why it’s against the rules to touch anyone’s forehead ribbon unless you’re cultivation partners. If you touch it a hundred times, you get a new baby.”

Mother stares at him.

“Ah, Yuan’er, who told you that?”

“Jingyi did.”

“....”

“Lan Zhan! Aiyah, xingan, don’t laugh at him!”

__

(the end c:)

[gloriousmonsters]

wen ning for the character ask meme :3c

for you, and the anon that asked for WN!

one aspect about them i love

I really like how on the surface he's like 'i'm a sweet and nervous boy you can push me around no problem' and then underneath it's like 'I Also Have Seething Rage The Likes Of Which You Cannot Imagine'. but it's not really that the top layer is false - he is sweet and caring and socially awkward, it's just there's also The Rage, and sometimes it comes out in hellish undead screaming and sometimes it comes out in kicking jiang cheng's ass verbally six ways from Sunday. love it.

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

honestly just. see above

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

one of the only things he regrets losing from being alive is his archery ability. mostly his undead angst is pretty low - he's happy to be back in some capacity, his golden core wasn't that great anyway, he's always been sort of awkward and stiff and had a hard time interacting with other people - but he worked really hard at archery and he was good and Wei-gongzi complimented him for it. and now he just doesn't quite have the fine control and coordination to do it :(

one character i love seeing them interact with

Wei Wuxian, obv. TBH ningxian is my main point of interest with both these characters, so I love seeing them together - I especially love how cql chose to adapt some things, like how devastatingly romantic they made the moment where Wen Ning hears WWX's flute again.

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

I wish we saw more of Lan Wangji and Wen Ning interacting! I love their vibes of like... they're both people who deeply, obsessively care about wwx and are scarily protective of him, and they never had much cause to meet or know each other before, so it could have gone so badly, but instead they meet and (not counting drunk!lwj's jealous fit in the novel lol) they're just kinda like 'oh this guy's alright' and then they see the other one go crazy for wwx and they're like 'oh this guy's REALLY alright'. and there's that moment - I can't remember the occasion, but wwx gets annoyed because something WN says makes it clear him and LWJ are talking behind his back, and WN is possibly letting LWJ order him around a little bit which. Juicy??? pls show me more

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

wen ning as a teen was 0% interested in medicine but dutifully learned some basics so he could assist his sister bc jiejie was very insistent on how it would be better for him to be her assistant than trying to actually be a fighter (meanwhile teen wn was just like but jiejie i crave violence 🥺). In present day & postcanon, wn clings to the basics he still knows - some that he can perform himself, albeit with a lot of difficulty, some that he can instruct people on how to do - because it's one of the few things that still make him feel connected to his sister. every time he tells the juniors the way to set a broken bone he'll reiterate that it was his sister, the greatest doctor that ever lived, who taught it to him.