#will i write today or will i sit here and think about hua cheng

[yingren]

making ren a smoker is the funniest thing i've done and i won't elaborate

[shuriken696]

//I'm legit should be writing my fic rn but this is getting to my head.//

Has anyone ever thought of an AU where when SQQ is dead, his soul via self imploding, goes to Ghost City?

But the way that it's been transported is a complication. A Sun and Moon Dew flower is a 'rare plant' after all. You can't just come back to life that easily.

Hua Cheng just looks at Shen Yuan who is confused af as to why he was in front of a throne. He knew that Shang Qinghua messed up on the SMD Mushroom but he didn't think it was that bad!

"Fuck, am I actually dead? Is this Hell?" Shen Qingqiu asks Hua Cheng. He tries calling on to the System but it was to no avail.

"Daozhang is a curious case. His stay in Ghost City is only temporary only when his 'plant' is fully ready is he able to go." Hua Cheng tilts his head. He did not expect something so unexpected to happen today. This soul didn't even turn into a ghost flame upon meeting him! He just came fully corpreal like it wasn't even a problem at all.

Well, at least Shen Qingqiu isn't fully dead if that counts as anything. He would be able to come back. His plan would work.

But, PIDW had never mentioned anything about a Ghost City, or any description of the man in front of him!

PIDW was more extended than just the novel? Or was it a deleted outline that Shang Qinghua robbed the readers of?

"How long would that be?" Shen Qingqiu had to get back as soon as he could. What if Binghe got mad at someone else now that the scum villain is gone? "Can I leave this place? I need to be somewhere and it has to be as quick as possibe" He figured that maybe he could float around and haunt people like they showed in the movies?

"I can't allow you to do that, Daozhang. It's against the rules." Hua Cheng raised his eyebrows. This man refused to rest in peace even though he had sacrificed his life for his disciple.

Or was he just like Hua Cheng, refusing to rest in peace until he reunited with the one he loved?

"That man who you sacrificed your life for, what is he to you?" The Ghost king asked. Shen Qingqiu pulls out a fan from his sleeve.

"He is my student. The sword's influence on him was too much so as the one who was responsible for all of this, I had to repay him for the faults I did." Shen Qingqiu answered easily.

Hua Cheng wanted to snort. With the way he's answering, this was more than just a Master-disciple relationship. But if the man didn't know, then he wouldn't tell him. It was more interesting this way anyways.

But for the sheer fact that this cultivator wanted to go back to the man he sacrificed himself for (or what he could assume by reading in between the lines) Hua Cheng couldn't help but see himself in him and respecting him, just a bit.

"I can get you a good place to live while you're residing here but daozhang hasn't told me his name?"

Shen Yuan bows.

"This humble one is Shen Qingqiu, Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak of the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect."

There was more to 'Shen Qingqiu' that met the eyes, but everyone had their own secrets. As long as he didn't mind Hua Cheng's business then he wouldn't pry into Shen Qingqiu's as well.

"And I am Hua Cheng, the ruler of this city."

Oh shit, I was talking to the leader this whole time?! Shen Qingqiu wanted to smack himself in the head for messing up that badly. Of course the man who was sitting on the fancy throne would be of high status!

Shen Qingqiu bowed again, apologizing for his lack of manners earlier and Hua Cheng waves him off.

"It's alright. Daozhang didn't know."

After that, Hua Chang and Shen Qingqiu became somewhat friends and HC tells SQQ about him trying to find Xie Lian.

(In between that, Wei Wuxian also pays Ghost City a visit, but thats a story for another time)

Years after Binghe and SQQ are married, they find Hualian on a crossing path and Hua Cheng just looks at Binghe and then to Shen Qingqiu.

"Does he treat you well?" Shen Qingqiu hid a smile behind his fan. He didn't think the Ghost King cared that much.

"He's alright. When I saw you, I never thought he and I would get together."

Meanwhile Binghe is so confused. How does his Shizun know this man thats reeking of resentful energy? Why is this man holding hands with someone who had pure energy? Is that even possible?

His Shizun had some explaining to do later!

[stiltonbasket]

How does Lan Wangji feel about Wei Wuxian's new title, Xinhua-jun?

The first time someone addresses him as something other than Honored Master Wei during an assembly, Wei Wuxian barely registers it.

But in his defense, he’s been up all night for a week straight, hurrying to get his irrigation talismans finished in time for the planting season, and the first batches have just been shipped off with a handful of Lan-trained shidao cultivators accompanying them to supervise.

All Wei Wuxian wanted to do was sleep, after that. It’s a wonder that he stayed awake long enough to  attend the conference at all, which is why he doesn’t realize what the petitioners from Moling called him until he takes a soak in his bathtub that night and asks Lan Zhan to rub his shoulders for a while.

“How was the assembly?” Lan Zhan asks, while Wei Wuxian raises the temperature of the bathwater until the washroom fills up with steam. The ability to take long, hot baths without harming his cultivation is the only good thing that came from losing his golden core, and Wei Wuxian made sure to bathe in heated tubs as often as he could after his resurrection; he used to envy the Jiang shimeis in his childhood, since heat only benefits cultivators with excess  yin energy, but now...

“Wei Ying?”

“Oh!” Wei Wuxian sighs and straightens his back before reaching up to pat his husband’s arm. “It was fine, I suppose. The Su cultivators presented their case, Uncle and I went through it, and then we agreed to all their demands except the one about Moling receiving a sixth of Gusu’s tax revenue.”

“A sixth?”

“They don’t have enough noble families living within their borders,” he says absently, making a small sleepy sound of approval as Lan Zhan pats the tension out of his neck. “The Lai and Xu clans relocated to Qinghe last year, and the Liao family—you remember that clan whose little mistress proposed marriage to Jingyi this spring?— they moved to Laoling the year before that, and they all paid enough taxes to keep the Su clan comfortable.”

Lan Zhan’s hands withdraw from his neck and reappear in his hair a moment later, covered in the sweet-smelling hair soap Wei Wuxian makes from the lotus pond in the back hills. “Did they—treat you well?”

It’s a sensible question, Wei Wuxian supposes, even if the worry in his husband’s voice makes his heart ache with love for him. “Better than most Moling cultivators usually do, Lan Zhan. It was all Xiandu this and Xinhua-jun that, until—”

“They called you Excellency?”

The conversation comes to a swift end at the realization, because Wei Wuxian accidentally swallows a mouthful of foamy water and chokes on it until Lan Zhan helps him cough it up. And then they have to get ready for dinner, and coax the children into finishing it before they fall asleep in their bowls, which is why Wei Wuxian doesn’t think about the conference again until after hai shi. 

When the truth of Su She’s association with Jin Guangyao came to light—as Wei Wuxian recalls when Lan Zhan and the little ones are safely asleep—most cultivators from Moling Su seemed to detest Wei Wuxian more than they did while he was dead, if Jiang Cheng’s spies were to be believed. As a matter of principle, none of them even attended Wei Wuxian’s wedding, and offered nothing but flimsy excuses when Lan Xichen traveled to Moling to deliver the invitations in person; and since then, they preferred to keep their distance from him, and would likely have continued to do so if Xichen hadn’t been in Baling for the month to see his new baby grandson.

But today’s petition had been urgent, so Wei Wuxian had to stand in as Lan-zongzhu by proxy while his husband and brother-in-law (not to mention A-Yuan and Jingyi, who accompanied Lan Xichen to Baling) were occupied elsewhere, and none of the Su cultivators were discourteous to him in the slightest.

Oh, no,” he groans, as Lan Zhan tries to hush him with a kiss. “This can’t be good, Lan Zhan. They ordered their city magistrates to send word if I crossed the Moling border, and they turned Xichen-ge down  again  when he invited them to Chun-bao’s hundred-day feast—you don’t think they’re planning something, do you?”

Lan Zhan only gives him a fond look and kisses him again. “Go to sleep, A-Ying,” he says gently. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

*    *    *

When Wei Wuxian married into the Cloud Recesses nine years ago, the question of his formal title remained unsettled until after the month before his and Lan Zhan’s first wedding anniversary. If he were a woman, the cultivation world would have known him as Lan-furen, and that would have been the end of it: but Wei Wuxian was a man with no title save that of the Yiling Patriarch, and even Lan Zhan was at a loss when his uncle asked what he should be called following the wedding.

“Third young master Lan?” Wei Wuxian suggested, absently petting Xiao-Yu’s fluffy hair. “Or Wei-gongzi? It doesn’t really matter, Shufu.”

“Third young master Lan is unsuitable,” Lan Qiren pointed out, plopping another baby rabbit into Xiao-Yu’s lap. “Xichen is the sect leader, and Wangji is the Chief Cultivator. Neither of them can rightly be called gongzi any longer, so the titles of first and second young master must pass to Sizhui and Jingyi.”

They settled on Lan-san-gongzi in the end, mostly because everyone already knew that Sizhui and Jingyi were the first and second heirs to the Lan sect, but then Lan Xichen (who remains the best brother-in-law Wei Wuxian could ever have hoped for) came to bring Wei Wuxian his lunch one afternoon while he was working in the produce field, and laughed himself silly at the sight of his difu  talking to a particularly stubborn lotus bloom in an effort to get it to grow.

“What a happy flower, to be so doted upon!” he chuckled, passing Wei Wuxian a wet cloth so he could clean his hands and sit down to eat. “Xinhua-jun, xiao-hua, be good for A-Xian and grow, won’t you?”

And then a strange excited grin spread across his face, right before he dropped the lunch boxes into Wei Wuxian’s arms and ran back towards the main compound as fast as his legs could carry him.

Wei Wuxian’s students have called him nothing but  Xinhua-jun  ever since, even though it was more of a pet name than a  title. But it never caught on outside the Cloud Recesses, since most of Nie Huaisang’s court is much older than he is, and Yunmeng still knows him as Wei-zongzhu from the year he spent leading Yunmeng Jiang before he and Lan Zhan were married; and the less said about Lanling Jin the better, even if Jin Ling and Mianmian have been ferreting out the last two sect leaders’ supporters ever since A-Ling succeeded Jin Guangyao.

The thought of his title becoming common knowledge in  Moling of all places gives Wei Wuxian a chill down the spine, and he says as much the next evening while going over the reports of young women’s education rates from Gusu’s subsidiary sects.

“Who could possibly have told them? It’s very suspicious,” he grumbles, answering a plaintive letter from a particularly pompous scholar who insisted it was far too much work for his colleagues to teach the boys in the morning and stay three hours longer to teach the girls in the afternoon. Teach them both in the same class, Wei Wuxian writes back, snorting at the man’s foolishness as his daughters climb into his lap to peer curiously at the scroll. If any of the young ladies’ parents prefer their daughters be taught separately from the boys, the Cloud Recesses will send a delegation of lady tutors to Xibei and have a second school built.  

“Suspicious?” Shuilan pipes up, before pointing to one of the characters on the scroll. “That’s part of my name! It says shui!”

“Very good!” Wei Wuxian smiles, kissing the top of A-Lan’s head. “Chun-bao, can you find any?”

Chunyang nods shyly against his neck. “A-Chun see cloud,” the baby says, happily smudging the  yun  in  yunshen buzhichu with her little hands before snuggling down into Wei Wuxian’s silky robes. “A-Die, eat? A-Chun is hungry.”

Wei Wuxian glances up at the sky and cries out in dismay as he notices that night has nearly fallen. “Come, come—but A-Lan, sweetheart, put your socks on first! It’s cold in the kitchen, and I don’t want to leave you here all alone.”

“I’m a big girl,” A-Lan complains, as Wei Wuxian laughs again and slides a pair of soft slippers onto her dimpled feet instead. “Can’t I stay with gege?”

“Gege’s taking a bath,” Xiao-Yu shouts—from the bathroom, naturally, since he spends his afternoons getting delightfully muddy in the produce field and moseys back home by sunset with grubs and leaves and rich black earth clinging to his clothes. “Be a good Lan-bao and go with A-Niang.”

At twelve years old, Xiaohui has finally settled on a course of cultivation study, surprising everyone but his parents by deciding he wanted to learn natural cultivation instead of following the martial dao, and he and Wei Wuxian have been working on agricultural talismans together for the past two years; Xiao-Yu even had a hand in the talismans Wei Wuxian just sent out for the border territories, since Wei Wuxian relies on his son’s spiritual energy to activate them. He is so very proud of Xiao-Yu, grubs and mud and all, and Wei Wuxian throws back his head and laughs when his tall son rolls into the kitchen half an hour later with his hair pinned up in a damp knot at the back of his neck.

“Is supper ready, A-Niang?” Xiao-Yu asks, while A-Lan sits at the table with one of her brother’s many, many cats purring in her lap. “Should I lay out the bowls?”

“Yes, please, A-Yu,” Wei Wuxian yawns, swaying back and forth with Chunyang on his hip as he stirs chili paste into his pot of soup. “And fetch a shawl for A-Lan, her clothes aren’t warm enough.”

“A-Niang stir more,” Chunyang tells him, pointing down at the pot. “Not done.”

Wei Wuxian does as she says, breaking up the last chunks of paste just as A-Yu comes rushing back in with a warm shawl to drape around A-Lan’s shoulders. After that, he puts a broad wooden lid over the pot and leaves it to boil, moving from cauldron to cauldron with one hand keeping Chun-bao in place and the other wielding his ladle: a weapon almost as effective as his sword, if A-Yuan’s condemnation of his cooking at the Burial Mounds is to be believed, though Wei Wuxian learned how to cook without covering everything with chili oil during his brief stint as Sect Leader Jiang ten years ago.

“I love A-Die’s food,” Shuilan declares, squeezing Heimao (named, quite literally, for his smooth black fur) in sheer delight when Wei Wuxian plops a bit of hot tofu into her mouth. “If Papa doesn’t come home in five minutes, can I eat everything?”

“A-Lan can eat as much as she wants,” Wei Wuxian promises, because A-Lan is only five years old and eats less than half of what Lan Zhan does. “Come help Yu-gege serve the rice, and then we can eat.”

Lan Zhan comes home late that night, after Lan Yu and Wei Shuilan have finished their dinners and gone to bed. He went to Lanling to help Jin Ling oversee a trial just after mao hour, and his early return is a pleasant surprise; Wei Wuxian nearly weeps with joy when his husband opens the door to the  jingshi and sweeps him and A-Chun up into his arms, carrying them to the long divan in the receiving room to kiss them to his heart’s content, and fussing over A-Chun until she toddles away and comes back again with the little bowl of hot soup that Wei Wuxian left on the table with a warming talisman.

“Papa eat,” she says adoringly, curling into a chubby pink ball against Wei Wuxian’s stomach and watching with big eyes as Lan Zhan raises the bowl to his lips. “A-Niang cooked!”

“Your A-Die always cooks dinner,” Wei Wuxian says, kissing the tip of her sweet pink nose. “Remember, Chun-bao?”

“Papa breakfast, and A-Niang dinner,” the little girl agrees, before drifting right off to sleep between her parents with one tiny fist curled around the end of Lan Zhan’s forehead ribbon.

Jiang Yanli used to fall asleep like that, Wei Wuxian remembers, safe in Jiang-shushu’s purple-draped bed with him and a toddling Jiang Cheng curled up next to her on either side, and she always stayed asleep no matter how often they squirmed and kicked and whispered over her head.

“Sweetheart?”

“I missed you,” Wei Wuxian sighs, without mentioning where his thoughts had gone—the pain of his shijie’s passing will never heal as long as he lives, but it has been easier to bear with Lan Zhan beside him, if only a little. “Will you have to go again next week, Lan Zhan?”

His husband shakes his head and gives him a lingering soup-tasting kiss on the soft dent over his mouth. “It is finished, my heart. Forgive me for coming home so late?”

Their faces draw together again, yearning towards one another like two mated butterflies forcefully parted as Lan Zhan shifts A-Chun to the crook of his arm and lays Wei Wuxian down on the divan to kiss his cheeks, and his forehead, and then caresses his hands with heart-breaking tenderness, as if he were holding a treasure beyond price. In turn, Wei Wuxian reaches up to touch his husband’s face, tracing the smooth lines of his brow and chin until Lan Zhan catches his fingertips with his lips and pulls him upright to keep Chunyang from getting squashed.

“Let’s put this little lotus to bed,” Wei Wuxian whispers, though it turns into another yawn before he gets to the end of the sentence. “Come with me, xingan?”

His husband—his beloved, precious, perfect husband—goes with him without a word, coaxing their daughter into her sleeping gown and laying her in the middle of the bed without waking her. “I heard some news in Lanling before I left,” he says, while Wei Wuxian helps him take off his Chief Cultivator’s headpiece and put away his waist-pendants. “I investigated the issue with Moling Su, since I feared that they might have a greater grudge against you than we thought, and Jin Ling informed me that the minor sects have begun to address you as xiandu of their own accord.”

Wei Wuxian feels his jaw drop. “What?”

“You have been taking over the portion of my work that cannot be solved by night-hunting,” Lan Zhan points out, as they slip under the covers and tuck A-Chun in between them to keep her warm. “The schools, the trade conferences, the farming failures in the south and the northwest. These matters are resolved by letters written in your hand, not mine, and petitions written to the Chief Cultivator are taken to court by the Chief Cultivator’s husband.”

He pauses to brush their noses together, and then:

“It has been so since you married me,” he says, with a smile that melts Wei Wuxian’s limbs into jelly. “Did you never notice, Wei Ying? It is well known that Hanguang-jun follows the jiandao, and goes wherever the chaos is, and that Xinhua-jun sees to the everyday matters that must be put right for a sect to thrive. Even the clans who would have dared speak against you know it now, and give credit and praises where they are due.”

“I can’t just  become the Chief Cultivator by sharing your work,” Wei Wuxian snorts, rolling his eyes fondly as Lan Zhan leans over to blow out the candle on the nightstand. “I’m your husband. What else would I do?”

“I have not yet heard your sister-in-law being called Jiang-zongzhu,” Lan Zhan returns, with a bright spark of mirth in his sweet voice. “Though I suspect your brother would not mind, if she was.”

“Yes, I suppose—but Lan Zhan, surely the minor sects can’t just  decide to call me Chief Cultivator? You were chosen for the position by vote.”

“They chose me for Chief Cultivator ten years ago, did they not? And now, since there is no law that two people cannot share the title, they have chosen you. Nie Huaisang will support it, since he lives in fear of me stepping down and making  him succeed me as Excellency, and so will Jin Ling. And Jiang Cheng.”

“...I’m never getting out of this, am I?”

“Do you wish to stop?” Lan Zhan inquires, with some concern. “You have done more good than I could ever have dreamed of, but if you do not want—”

“Let’s talk about it in the morning,” Wei Wuxian begs, thoroughly overwhelmed at the thought of it. “Come hold me, er-gege.”

And Lan Zhan does, hugging him so tightly that all he knows is the sharp scent of sandalwood on his husband’s clothes and the soft-smelling lotus of Chun-bao’s hair until he falls asleep.

*    *    *

  Nanhai Cheng, Baling Ouyang to the Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan

  Senior Wei,

      When did you become the Chief Cultivator? Jingyi and A-Yuan want to know, but they can’t write at the moment because A-Qing put them on diaper duty. Is it true? Or was A-Ling just making fun of us?

      Best wishes,  

            Ouyang Zizhen.  

    P.S.—make sure to bring Lan-xiansheng for A-Chen’s full month party! You haven’t forgotten about it, have you?

*    *    *

  The Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan to the Unclean Realm, Qinghe Nie

  Nie-xiong,  

      If I ever find out that this Excellency business was your fault, I’ll steal all your grandchildren and hide them in the jingshi. What in Heaven’s name were you thinking?

    Suspiciously yours,  

            Wei Wuxian.  

*    *    *

  The Unclean Realm, Qinghe Nie to the Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan

  Brother Wei,  

      My, such accusations! I really can’t say. But have fun with all the paperwork, Wei-xiong—it’s the best part of the job!

      Your (best) friend,  

            Nie Huaisang.  

[touchmycoat]

Hi :) Congrats on finishing tgcf and thank you for your read along commentary!!! I was wondering what your thoughts were about the characters and if your impressions changed from when I previously asked your thoughts?

hello hello hello~!! sorry for the late reply ;;; but thanks for coming back~!!!!!!!!

SO!!! SPOILERS AHEAD

I’M HORNIEST FOR:

Hua Cheng, jesus fucking christ. capable devoted sociopathic dramatic bitch but kind of shy i’m DEAD. Like what. mxtx knows devotional kink; she saw how we all went feral for lan wangji and his 16 years and went ���ohohoho, here try 800″

Xie Lian, babyyyyyyyyyyy. Talk about a Good Man through and through. My coworker and I were chatting about tgcf today and she was like, “this forum was saying Jun Wu only needed a Hua Cheng of his own” and I was like, “bITCH, Xie Lian has a Hua Cheng because he’s Xie Lian.” He’s so! Fucking! Brave!! And his heartbreak was so goddamn real the whole way through but no matter how badly he was hurt, he made the decisions to claw his way back from crossing that bottom line—not without help!!! But that’s not the point!!! He doesn’t have to do this alone TTTTTTTTT ALL IT TAKES IS THE KINDNESS OF ONE I’M BAWLINNNNNNNGGG

(okay and y’all know my tastes; the sacrifice on the alter vibes with all that piercing action.... i was both sad and horny.... i was sarny.....)

Shi Qing Xuan. Hello talk about my favorite character archetype to read/write dark edgeplay for. 不知者有罪！Give them guilt give them messy complexes give them an unquenchable need to repent. But also give them this painful optimism!!!! I’m horny!!!!

He Xuan , ,. ., sexy water calamity  ,, . ., vengeful , . angry . ,.. swallows,,,

YUSHI HUANG???????? BITCH???????????? BITCH?????????????!!?!??!!?!??!?!?!?!? PLOW ME YOUR MAJESTY AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

LESS HORNY FOR, BUT LOVE:

Mu Qing. Duuuuuude what a journey with this guy. I support him! Bitchy lil man with that Relatable class resentment. Virgin for Life Squad of One. Protective but bitchy about it. Capable but bitchy about it. An anxious mess and bitchy about it. I genuinely adore him.

Feng Xin. Bruh. All muscles and fealty; brain empty. This man gets to fuck once and only once, he’s so goddamn foolish and Taurus, he had me shrieking with laughter all the damn time.

(if anyone has fic recs for feng xin finding out about the sword shit, and why xl lost his mind when they were in exile afterwards?)

Quan Yizhen & Yin Yu! damn I really enjoyed Yin Yu’s story, and i fucking love autistic!qyz just Doing the Most, chasing after cool carriages and putting on random cursed clothing and stuffing people’s temples with gold. Yin Yu is so sympathetic, and I really liked his whole bit before he totally didn’t die! His whole “YOU’RE RIGHT I HATE HIM A BIT DON’T I GET TO HATE HIM??” Embracing resentment, but not to a toxic degree, is a good look on him lmao

AAAWWWWWWW:

fucking qi rong & gu zi

he was so goddamn fucking LOUD

aslkjnflksjdnlfsd but the thing with the kid was really sweet

Ban Yue & Pei Su

like they were fine! chillin’

....poor pei su

HISSSSSSSSS:

jun wu, in both rage & sympathy tbh

SQUINT:

Ling Wen. I love me a female character who’s ambitious and ruthless and also kind of heavy-handed & has moments of dumbassery. But i just don’t think i get... why she killed the guy? And has all these feelings about it now? If you got Ling Wen-centric fic throw them my way I’d love to see people puzzle her out ‘cause she seems complex! and kind of a fucking fool!!! i love that for a woman!!

Pei Ming. As lucky & i have discussed, he’s kinda the uncle you don’t necessarily wanna sit next to at family dinners, but if you had to you could make conversation and excuse yourself to use the bathroom every hour to take a break from him.

Shi Wudu. Lol I still like the horny twitter fanart but yeah, I’m pretty fine with him getting decapitated. #SupportBlackWater #EatTheRich (sucks for sqx)