thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

Just take the money Xie Lian…

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

Ko-Fi donation ficlet #11:

CW: gore

Xingxing throws her elbows into the crowd’s legs and races into the food stall. A crowd means Hua Chengzhu and Xie-daozhang are out on the town, and sure enough, when she emerges from the sea of ghosts, she finds them. Hua Chengzhu rests his cheek in a palm and watches granduncle eat a barbecue skewer.

“Daozhang-gege!” Xingxing cries, and Xie-daozhang drops his skewer, turning in his seat. At the sight of her, he beams.

“Xingxing.”

“I found something neat!” she says.

“No one gives a shit!” a crane spirit yells.

“That’s not true,” Xie-daozhang disagrees politely.

“Did you hear that?!” a disembodied head heckles. “Granduncle cares!”

“Stop calling him granduncle!”

“He is our granduncle!”

“You dumbass—”

Xie-daozhang cringes and smiles as the ghosts bicker. He asks Xingxing under the boisterous noise, “What is it? What did you find?”

“Look!” Xingxing says, and digs through her robes until she finds the palm-sized glowing rock she stole off Yu-er for being a jerk. As soon as her bare skin makes contact with it, Xie-daozhang’s eyes widen, the same way hers did when Yu-er held up the rock and part of his head caved in.

“What is that?” Xie-daozhang asks, his mouth pulled into an uneasy smile.

“Isn’t it neat? It shows a ghost’s death wounds!” she says, and turns her face back and forth to show off the mess of claw marks she can’t feel but knows are there now, from being mauled to death by a tiger.

“Don’t worry, gege,” Hua Chengzhu says. His eye zeroes in on Xingxing and frosts over, but his tone stays sweet, the way it always does with granduncle: “It’s just a gag curse that brats use to scare each other. An illusion.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Yeah. See?” Xingxing pats her cheeks, and her hands come away blood-free. “You can have this rock. I can find another one,” Xingxing says. She happily pushes the rock into granduncle’s palm regardless of his protests—

and stumbles back.

The crowd goes silent.

“What?” Xie-daozhang asks innocently.

No one speaks. Everyone stares.

“Gege,” Hua Chengzhu breathes. He’s frozen.

“What? What is it?” Xie-daozhang asks, like he isn’t covered with more blood than Xingxing has ever seen in her entire life. There isn’t a patch of him that isn’t coated in gore. His robes are so drenched they’re nearly black. He doesn’t look human. His skull is smashed in. His throat torn is open. There are stab wounds everywhere on his clothes.

“But…” Xingxing says dumbly.

“Oh,” Xie-daozhang says, and sets the stone on the table. The blood vanishes, and absent it, he smiles, kind but awkward. “I’m, um… I’m full. San Lang?”

Paralysis broken, Hua Chengzhu flies into movement. He crushes the rock on the table to dust with one hand, and with the other, he tosses a set of dice. In a flurry of butterflies, he and granduncle disappear.

Abandoned, Xingxing hovers in the food stall with the other ghosts. Their silence is only broken by someone asking, “How many fucking times has that guy died? Holy shit!”

“Granduncle is alive, you fucker,” someone corrects.

“Alive or dead—who fucking cares! Xie-daozhang is stronger than all of us!”

“No wonder Chengzhu built a whole temple to that guy,” a hanged ghost says.

“I heard Heaven tried to elect granduncle their new emperor and he turned it down,” another voice pipes up.

“Granduncle is the best!”

A dozen more cries follow along the same variation.

“What do you think happened to him?”

“Mind your own fucking business!”

“Yeah! Mind your own fucking business! Come on! Let’s go to the temple! Let’s leave offerings for granduncle!”

“I’m leaving one of my legs!”

“Then I’m leaving my head!”

“What the fuck is your head worth? Ain’t nothing in it!”

Xingxing stares at the spot Xie-daozhang vanished. How does anyone so gentle carry a past like that, she wonders. How can someone be so kind to the world after being mutilated by it? She swallows, unease in her belly, and runs off in the direction of the temple.

She’s going to send up a hundred prayers. A thousand. A million.

I hope you’re okay, daozhang-gege.

Please be okay, daozhang-gege.

But mostly: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

here's the second one ;)

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

sorry man its nothing personal but if i dont kill you my cursed sword will call me a pussy

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

The fact that hua cheng is canonically the best in bed out of all the mxtx tops is funny to me only because i imagine him painstakingly studying erotica novels and the kamasutra

Taking notes only he can read only because his handwriting is abysmal

Highlighting information like he's learning for an exam

Practicing dirty talk and seductive lines

All completely shamelessly because he must know all these things. Not that dianxia would ever do such things with him, dianxia's so holy and pure, but just in case! Just in case! This is just in case!

Hua Cheng is not fantasizing about it happening, this is just in case something wild happens and dianxia needs him to do this! This is purely practical knowledge!

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The thing about Hua Cheng is that there is in fact two wolves inside him and one is the very cool extremely competent hopeless romantic ghost that rose to power to support the love of his life whenever he needed him and the other one is the cringefail 10 year old who saw a boy so pretty he forgot to hate the world and instead took a nose dive of a giant wall because he was experiencing being a fangirl for the first time and both those wolves start fighting when Xie Lian throws hands.

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

i just think that Jiang Cheng genuinely loves Wei Wuxian a lot! but in their youth, he’s not allowed to love him bc of his parents’ relationship and his status. and after the war he’s not allowed to love him because he’s a nearly powerless leader of a sect that is starting over from scratch and wwx is an outcast. and then he’s not allowed to love him bc wwx is dead (and so is his sister and her husband and his parents and everyone he’s ever loved). and then he’s not allowed to love him bc everyone lauds jc for having killed wwx the first time (noooo that’s the thing he’s sensitive about) (and also sunk cost fallacy a little). and then he’s not allowed to love him bc he’s hated him for so long and wwx has made an enormous sacrifice for him and jc can’t admit that he’s loved wwx enough this whole time to have made the same sacrifice for him. so he’s angry instead.

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

“Your crown, Dianxia”

“Thank you, San Lang”

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

Day 4 - Eye of the storm

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

I always thought I might be bad

Now I'm sure that it's true

'Cause I think you're so good

And I'm nothing like you.

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

omg is it 1???? you're so cool I can totally see 2 and 3 being true

At one time in school I was learning 5 different languages at once.

My high school English teacher used to be my mother's student at uni.

I have a birthmark that looks like a fried egg.

tagging @edenwolfie, @sorceringing, @ladyarrowhead, @rasema and @shedramoontauren

Two truths and one lie! Tag someone else to play!

1. I have a fake eye

2. I have a calico cat

3. I have killed 47 people!

@yippe3allthedamnnamesrtaken @number-2-hero-hawks

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

Xianle quartet

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

xie lian in ghost city

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

"Dying for shizun or dying together with shizun, either one is something this disciple would gladly do."

- Luo Binghe

"'Dying together' also included a 'together'. It didn't seem that bad."

- Shen Qingqiu

AND YOU'RE TELLING ME I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BATSHIT INSANE FOR THEM?!

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]

[thecrimsonrainthatseekstheflower]