#because well. jiang yanli is alive and there seems to be demonic cultivation at work

[shanastoryteller]

Wen Qing says yes because all she can think of is the consequences if she doesn’t.

She probably should have spent some time considering what, exactly, the consequences of saying yes would be.

~

Wei Wuxian wants to go back to the banquet and shake Jin Zixun until the information they need falls out, but Wen Qing knows that’s a terrible idea, knows that he shouldn’t be helping her at all but he definitely shouldn’t stand in front of the whole cultivation world and threaten the Jin family for her. He asks one of the servants instead, something she wouldn’t have thought to do, but he insists that servants know everything and after a hefty bribe he’s telling them what they need to know and even turns a blind eye when they take a horse that’s been left unattended.

She’s skinny on a good day and she hasn’t seen a good day in a long time. Wei Wuxian didn’t used to be this thin, this breakable, but he is now, and she tells herself it’s a good thing because the one horse is easily able to carry both of them. He sits behind her even though he takes the reigns and she leans back into him because she’s been holding herself up for so long and she’s tired and he’s helping her, something no one has been willing to in – ever, really. She thinks she could almost count his ribs against her back and thinks if she’s alive tomorrow she’ll give him a lecture about eating properly without a golden core to nourish him.

They arrive just as a guard is raising a broken flag pole above his head to skewer A-Ning.

Wei Wuxian stops him, using a talisman to bind the man’s wrist to his own and jerking him away from her brother. Who is alive, and whole, and does not have a pole through his stomach. She’s crying when she holds him and Wei Wuxian stands between them and everyone else and looks at the guards and her people and says, “I have an idea. It’s a bad idea.”

“Your ideas usually are,” she says, but she’s still shaking at having her little brother back in her arms so it doesn’t come out as acerbic as she intended.

~

It is a terrible idea. She doesn’t have to agree to it.

She does.

They go to the nearest temple in Lanling because they need witnesses for this. The monks are confused and frightened but bear witness as she bows three times to Wei Wuxian and is bowed to three times in return.

She is exhausted and scared and is still unconvinced that she’ll live to see the sunrise, but Wei Wuxian had helped her when she hadn’t asked and saved her brother and wouldn’t let the guards stop them from leading her family from the work camp, so she marries him.

~

They go back to Koi Tower. It’s terrifying but Jiang disciples meet them and look askance at all the rest of them but don’t hesitate to obey Wei Wuxian. They surround them as they walk and if they have opinions about being told to guard traitorous Wen, they don’t voice them. Maybe the fact that they’re guarding Wei Wuxian too is enough.

They enter the banquet hall and everything is silent. She doesn’t know how to read the look on everyone’s faces and she doesn’t try. Instead she stands by Wei Wuxian’s side and does what she does best – she doesn’t flinch.

“Wei Wuxian!” Jin Guangshan shouts, appalled. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Sect Leader Jin,” he says, offhand, casual, as if having his hall filled with Wen is a perfectly ordinary occurrence. “You’re so good at throwing parties. I was hoping you would throw one for me.”

Jin Guangshan’s eyes narrow. “Why would we throw a party?”

“Well, it is my wedding day,” he says, and holds out his hand. Wen Qing places her hand in his, lets his other hand settle warm and proprietary at the small of her back. “My wife, Wen Qing. We were just married at the temple in Lanling. Feel free to question the monks if you don’t believe me.”

The silence breaks, everyone shouting now, and A-Yuan’s cry cuts through all of them.

She hadn’t known that Wei Wuxian had any experience with children, but he turns automatically, opening his arms, and Granny barely hesitates before placing A-Yuan into them. After all, if they can’t trust Wei Wuxian, they’re all dead anyway.

A-Yuan, astonishingly, quiets instantly as Wei Wuxian bounces him in his arms, settling his head on his shoulder and sticking his thumb in his mouth.

“You,” Wen Qing turns, sees Jiang Cheng looking between them, and she could probably read the look on his face but she doesn’t want to. “He’s your – you have a – was it when we, after Lotus Pier?”

She and Wei Wuxian glance at each other, and maybe this marriage will work out, because that one glance contains a whole conversation of things they can’t say. The timeline almost works. A-Yuan likely was conceived sometime around the fall of Lotus Pier. If there is a child, Wei Wuxian’s actions become more understandable, seem less like an act of war and something closer to what they really are, an act of love.

She could have, she supposes, laid with Wei Wuxian and gotten pregnant and bore a child in the years since they’ve seen each other. She didn’t, but the only ones who know that are either dead or just as desperate as she is for this to work.

Or. Well.

Jiang Yanli’s face is easier to look at, even as it does something complicated then smooths. She was there and awake while they all recovered with her and Wen Ning. She knows that she and Wei Wuxian didn’t have any sort of epic romance, or even a quick tryst, during that time. Wei Wuxian was so obsessively focused on helping his brother that the idea he’d have paused long enough for sex when he hadn’t for sleep or food is ridiculous. But Jiang Yanli meets her gaze then pointedly lowers her eyes and something like relief trickles down Wen Qing’s spine.

Wei Wuxian looks around the hall and if he hesitates over Lan Wangji, that’s a conversation for them to have later, if there is a later.

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Wei Wuxian says quietly, formally, and Jiang Cheng nearly flinches before catching himself. “Meet my son. Wei Yuan.” He lets that echo through the hall and then says, “I could not leave him, nor the woman who bore him, nor the family that raised him when I remained in ignorance.”

She lowers his gaze as if in shame, for having a child out of marriage, for keeping that child from his father, but mostly she can’t stand to see the look at Jiang Cheng’s face any longer.

~

There is intense debate among the clans. The Lan and surprisingly even the Nie vote against the Jin and agree for the Wen to be released to the custody of the Jiang rather than the Jin. What’s the difference between one great clan and the other, after all, and Jiang Cheng fights for this, fights for them, and Wen Qing knows he’s really fighting for Wei Wuxian. Their marriage makes things too complicated, like they’d hoped. A-Yuan makes things too complicated, and everyone in the hall mostly seems to want to go back to drinking. There is some poorly hidden sentiment that if Wei Wuxian wants a war bride he should be entitled to her, for his contribution to the war, perhaps, and Wen Qing hates these people. They do not call her and her family tribute but they imply it easily enough.

If the price of the lives of her family is her pride, that’s fine. She abandoned that a long time ago.

~

“You have been good for him,” Jiang Yanli tells her a month after they’ve moved into Lotus Pier, a month of being the wife to Wei Wuxian and the mother to the now Wei Yuan. She doesn’t do a particularly good job at either of these roles, she thinks, but Wei Wuxian makes a good husband and a good father and it was his idea but she can’t help but feel guilty, can’t help but think she stole for herself and her family what was meant for someone else.

Her sister in law’s words aren’t wrong, however. She doesn’t let Wei Wuxian drink so much anymore and forces him to eat. She’s there in his bed when he gasps awke from nightmares and when he can do nothing more but clutch his chest and weep. She gets the story of the Burial Mounds from him, eventually, and she doesn’t know how to heal that kind of trauma, but she holds him when he cries and thinks even if she can’t be a proper wife, she can do this, and she heals the damage demonic cultivation does to his meridians, and it seems like such little things, comparatively, but it helps.

She’s offers up the excuse that demonic cultivation makes using his sword difficult and people stop asking him to carry it. A-Ning sticks to Wei Wuxian’s side when she can’t, looking faintly sad whenever Wei Wuxian makes an unhealthy choice, which is even more effective than her scolding, although not as effective as getting A-Yuan to place his chubby hand on Wei Wuxian’s cheek and go, “Baba no.”

Without so many nightmares, with having people around he can talk to freely, with no one pestering him about his sword, Wei Wuxian shoulders all the responsibilities of first disciple and brother of the clan leader, something he apparently hadn’t been able to do before.

She knows what the rumors say. Those that had been against her and her family being set free, relatively speaking, are now patting themselves on the back. Clearly the fearsome Yiling Patriarch has been cowed by marriage. His bastard son, who he loved enough at first sight to legitimize, has softened his sharp edges.

Wen Qing knows that’s all bullshit and Jiang Yanli does too, but.

He is better.

Jiang Cheng can’t seem to decide between being relieved and grateful at having his brother back and resentful that it took Wen Qing to bring it about and – whatever his feelings about her are, and her marriage to his brother are, which she doesn’t know because she refuses to acknowledge them.  

“I’m glad,” she says quietly.

Her sister in law squeezes her hand, and Wen Qing squeezes back, and if this isn’t exactly the life she wanted, well. It’s a life. That’s more than she thought she’d have.

She has a loving husband and an adorable son and living, healthy family. There is nothing for her to complain about.

Just because it all feels stolen, just because it all feels like something she never should have been given, doesn’t make it less good, doesn’t make it less hers.

~

Wen Qing knows that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are in love with each other because she has two functioning eyes. She’s known that since she was a teenager in Cloud Recesses.

She had not wanted to come between them. She hadn’t planned on it. This all hadn’t even been her idea.

She’s guilty enough about it that she ignores her own feelings.

At first, she doesn’t have any, not really. Then it hadn’t been right.

She’s never felt greedy before. She doesn’t like it but she doesn’t know how to stop it.

~

They’ve been married for over a year the first time Wei Wuxian kisses her.

They’ve been married nearly two years the first time Wei Wuxian kisses Lan Wangji.

Something settles in her then, relief burrowing into her bones. Lan Wangji comes to her after, a combination of desirously happy and mortified, and bows to her and looks her in the eye when he tells her that he’s in love with her husband.

“I know,” she says kindly, “he’s easy to love.” She pauses, then says, “I do not mind. If it’s you.”

His lips part, and she holds the place that should be his, married to Wei Wuxian, but.

She can share, if he can. Even if it can’t be official, on paper, she and Wen Ning can bear witness to him and Wei Wuxian bowing to each other and maybe she’ll finally be able to breath when she can give back some of what she stole.

~

There are rumors about the three of them.

They don’t listen to them.

A-Yuan calls Lan Wangji his father and no one corrects him and that’s good enough for her, really.

It’s a good life, and it’s hers, and she’s glad of it.  

#fandom ficcery #untamed #what the fuck is this #i cannot emphasize enough #how much i didn't intend to write this #meant to write like four sentences just to get the idea out #and instead there's this #i just think wwx an wq would be a good married couple #i guess #i comprise the entirety of the wwx/wq community #i just think they're neat

[silverflame2724]

Mute!WWX. Lan Zhan and Jiang Chang meet Wei Ying the night he torments Wen Chao to death, but Wei Ying doesn’t speak. He nervously gets across to them that he cannot speak (he isn’t hurt, he assures them. But his voice has left him in the three months he’s been missing, what he has been through has silenced him). Lan Zhan never realised that a silent Wei Wuxian was never what he wanted. He would do anything to hear him again, to hear his laugh or taunts. But his love is silent, and any progress WWX makes is swiftly undone by the uncaring judgement of the cultivation world. Lan Zhan fears he will never hear his voice again, and vows to speak up on his behalf: as he has what Wei Ying does not. It is hard, but he will do it for Wei Ying. He will speak.

You’re making me cry with this prompt. (But I love it!!)

Sorry for taking so long! Enjoy!

___________

Lan Wangji’s heart was in his throat as he took in Wei Ying’s approaching form. He looked…..haunted, exhausted, and terribly, terribly hot angry. But then he noticed something. For all that Wei Ying seemed to despise the sight of Wen Zhuliu and Wen Chao. He said nothing. Not even a dry laugh or word escaped his mouth.

That was the first thing Lan Wangji noticed was wrong.

Then, Wen Zhuliu went towards him, his core melting technique armed and ready and Lan Wangji crashed through the roof, ready to protect Wei Ying who didn’t seem all that keen on doing so himself. Because he didn’t dodge Wen Zhuliu’s attack. Why?

As Zidian wrapped around Wen Zhuliu’s neck, Lan Wangji relaxed, turning his attention to Wei Ying who didn’t look all that great. He was gaunt, thin and very pale. Resentful energy cloaked him like a mantle and Lan Wangji speed a fleeting thought to those rumors of Wei Ying being tossed into the Burial Mounds. But no one survives the Burial Mounds. There isn’t even there anything to eat—

There isn’t anything there to eat. Lan Wangji realized with a shock. Perhaps, Wei Ying was thrown into the Burial Mounds. It would explain why he’s cloaked in resentful energy and so so pale and starved.

No one survives the Burial Mounds. But what if someone could? There must have been some sort of price Wei Ying had to pay.

Lan Wangji observed Wei Ying’s reaction upon getting his sword and noticed the unmistakable grief passing through grey eyes. Why grief? What happened? And why does it look like Wei Ying has trouble holding his sword up?

His mind was fraying at the edges with worry.

When Jiang Wanyin tried to yell at Wei Wuxian for not responding, Lan Wangji’s first observation proved true. Wei Ying couldn’t speak.

When questioned about the rumors of him in the Mounds, there was a definite shake of his head, denying the claims, but neither Lan Wangji more Jiang Wanyin missed the slight tremble in Wei Wuxian’s frame.

“Wei Ying…..” He said shakily. “Wei Ying, are you well?”

Stupid, stupid me. Of course Wei Ying isn’t fine! Lan Wangji berated himself, acknowledging the unconvincing nod.

Wei Wuxian tilted his head in confusion at his silence.

“Wei Ying, why can’t you speak?” Something haunted passed through Wei Wuxian’s eyes and he rolled his shoulders in an unmistakable expression of ‘I don’t know’.

Neither Lan Wangji nor Jiang Wanyin bought it but both of them decided against pushing him.

Wen Chao groaned and Jiang Wanyin dismissed him, saying that the matter of the Wens in front of him were for the Jiang sect to handle. Lan Wangji noticed the cruelty and anger in his beloved’s eyes and nodded, walking away.

In another world, Wei Wuxian would have deflected from any visible wound - mental or physical - on his body.

In another world, Lan Wangji would have been successfully distracted from his observations and questioned Wei Wuxian on his cultivation.

In another world, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian would fight and the tentative bond that had formed during the Xuanwu fight would break.

This is not that world.

……….

Lan Wangji returned to his room, intent on scouring through his mind for any tomes that might help with Wei Ying’s sudden muteness.

His brother came into his tent, asking how he had been and Lan Wangji conveyed his observations and worries about Wei Ying to his brother. Lan Xichen was silent before replying, “Perhaps it is trauma? I have read of many cases of cultivators becoming mute from their experiences and if the rumors about Wei-gongzi falling into the Miunds prove true…..well. Any cultivator would be sufficiently shocked to silence by that.”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji was angry. Angry at what Wei Ying’s had suffered and at himself.

“Wangji. Don’t blame yourself.”

“But, if I had stayed at Lotus Pier, then maybe……” Maybe the remaining cultivators at the Cloud Recesses could have showed up at Louts Pier to take him back. Maybe they might have been able to save Lotus Pier from destruction. Maybe their added assistance could have prevented Wei Ying from suffering so much.

“Perhaps the both of you might have been in danger then.” Lan Xichen interrupted. “Wangji, there’s no use in thinking of what if’s. What matters now is that the both of you are alive. Maybe not quite safe, but alive nonetheless.”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji felt reassured by these words. It was no use in thinking of the past. Right now, Lan Wangji had to focus on the present and what he could do. “Brother, of those victims, did any have their voice returned to them?”

“Hmm, rarely. It took years and much reassurance by loved ones to slowly coax back their voice.”

“I see.” Lan Wangji frowned. “One more thing. Brother, Wei Ying’s cultivation, it….”

Here, his brother furrowed his eyebrows as well. “Wangji, based on what you have told me, I believe there may be something wrong with Wei-gongzi’s core. From what I have heard, he was captured by Wen Chao. If he didn’t dodge Wen Zhuliu’s core melting attack…..” He trailed off but Lan Wangji finished the picture himself.

He was captured by Wen Chao. And didn’t Wen Zhuliu often travel with him? Though…. “That wouldn’t explain why Wen Zhuliu still used his attack on Wei Ying.”

“Hmm. Good point. Perhaps then, it might be cruel, but Wei-gongzi’s core could be fractured? We all heard how much Wen Chao hated Wei-gongzi. I wouldn’t put it past him to try and torture him this way.”

Lan Wangji was horrified. Could it really be like that?

“Observe Wei-gongzi longer. If he doesn’t carry his sword, then, I would suspect this to be true.”

“Mn.”

……………

It had been weeks since then. Lan Wangji talked to Jiang Wanyin and heard that despite seeing his sister again, Wei Ying still did not speak. He cried, but no sound escaped him. Lan Wangji had hoped, that Jiang Yanli of all people could help coax some words out of him, considering how much Wei Ying loved her.

No matter. Xichen has said it would take years. But this is war. There’s not much time to focus on healing Wei Wuxian mentally. But Lan Wangji could try. He knows that there is something between him and Wei Ying. Something not quite friendship but not quite anything at all.

And lately, in Lan Wangji’s dreams, he fantasized about bringing back Wei Ying’s laugh and smile. It’s true what they say about not realizing how precious something is until you lose it. Lan Wangji always thought what it would be like to see a silent Wei Wuxian.

He hated it.

He wanted to hear Wei Ying laugh and smile and tease him again. He wanted to hear his voice, he exuberance, his brightness again. But the war and the Wens had taken that away. All that is left is a thin, traumatized boy with darkness at his fingertips and at his every beck and call.

And that was the other thing. Wei Ying’s use of demonic cultivation. While it really helped then all on the battlefield, outside, people gossiped about his power. They were jealous of it, frightened of it, greedy to obtain it and him for their own and all of this made Lan Wangji incredibly angry. Because could they not see? For all that Wei Ying was a force on the battlefield, use of his cultivation drained him both physically and mentally. Bruises collected under his eyes, he was unsteady after each battle. He was pale and still thin and always looked on the brink of collapse. And as much as Lan Wangji wanted to berate Wei Wuxian for continuing his use of the cultivation, he noticed no sign of his sword on him and that stopped him from saying anything. After all, if his and his brother’s theory of Wei Ying’s fractured core proved true, then bringing that kind of thing up would only hurt the relationship between them.

And these past few weeks, Lan Wangji hadn’t been idle. He had been working on communicating to Wei Ying and loved the results that came from it.

Though it was difficult, Wei Ying’s brilliant mind came to the rescue as he was able to come up with a talisman that projected his thoughts.

And lately…..lately, finally! Lan Wangji coaxed a smile out of Wei Ying. It had taken the course of two months, but through the Jiang siblings and Lan Wangji’s painstaking efforts, Wei Ying finally smiled. He still hadn’t said a word, but that was progress enough.

And yet……upon the worsening rumors surrounding Wei Ying, it disappeared all too soon. Wei Ying’s smile vanished and he seemed to curl in on himself, trying to withdraw from Lan Wangji and from his own siblings so as to not drag them down with him.

And Lan Wangji, for once, wished he was the type of person to speak his thoughts out loudly to all those who took Wei Ying’s smile away. He wanted to shout that he didn’t care. He wanted to exclaim that he would stand by Wei Ying’s side throughout it all.

He told Wei Ying as such and watched as wonder colored silver eyes.

That night, he took up Wei Ying’s offer of his hellishly spicy food and was rewarded with a small, breathy giggle as his eyes teared up from the sheer amount of chilies that set his mouth on fire.

At the giggle, Lan Wangji’s eyes widened and he saw Wei Ying’s eyes shine mischievously, a remnant of the bright boy he thought he lost. Relief coated his heart despite the hellfire in his mouth and his lips lifted up into a smile.

Wei Ying’s breath hitched and a small blush bloomed across his cheeks. Lan Wangji wanted nothing more than to reach out and—

“Wei-gongzi! There you are, something has happened to your sister!”

The warm and somewhat intimate scene shattered as Wei Ying’s expression darkened. They followed the Jin disciple only to see Jiang Yanli crying and Jin Zixuan looking a little lost and perhaps a touch regretful.

The truth about the soup came out and Lan Wangji felt that Jin Zixuan deserved the punch Wei Ying flung at him.

“You damned peacock!” Wei Ying wrote in the air. “Never let me see you within a li of Shijie again!!”

It was the first time Lan Wangji had seen him so angry since Wei Ying killed Wen Chao. He didn’t know if it was wrong that he thought Wei Ying was really really sexy hot intimidating then.

………….

Wei Ying created the Stygian Tiger Seal. And for all that it helped them, it weakened his love even more than his normal use of demonic cultivation. The first time he used it, he fainted as soon as he was off the battlefield, not waking up for two days. Despite this, everyone else only feared him, desired him, wanted to restrain him even more.

As the rumors got out of hand, Lan Wangji stopped the pretense of being able to hold himself back and glared at everyone in the vicinity, shutting them up.

Lan Wangji swore to get better at speaking. After all, he needed to tell the world to stop judging Wei Wuxian. Without him, the losses would have been a lot worse. So how dare these people slander him?

People should be grateful that Wei Wuxian is sacrificing his well-being in order to use demonic cultivation to aid them and yet, they think of him as a weapon that needs to be dealt with after the war.

His brother knew how much the rumors infuriate him and knew that Wei Ying was traumatized enough to not be able to speak. He had spoken to Chifeng-zun about it who had observed Wei Ying himself and doesn’t take kindly to the rumors. Though, Bie Mingjue said, he doesn’t approve of demonic cultivation. As long as Wei Wuxian stops it after the war, he would be fine with it.

Lan Wangji could only hope that Wei Ying wouldn’t need to use demonic cultivation. The matter of Wei Ying’s core is a secret that both he and his brother have kept to themselves.

On that topic, Lan Wangji is sure, more than ever, that Wei Ying’s core is compromised. He can barely feel the spiritual energy emanating from Wei Ying, after all. Wouldn’t a fractured core do that? Wangji just hoped that with all this use of demonic cultivation, that the state of his core wouldn’t worsen.

.

.

.

The war ended finally. But there was no time to rest as Jin Guangshan, who finally decided to show up, wanted to take Wei Ying under his wing under the pretense of “monitoring” him since the Jiang sect is recovering. Lan Wangji understood that this wasn’t the intention at all. No one had missed that the Jins are the sect that came out the least damaged. And now they’re trying to control Wei Ying? Anyone with a brain could see that it’s a poor attempt at gaining power.

Which is why Lan Wangji is shocked at how many people decidedly do not have a brain.

They fell for Jin Guangshan’s coated words so easily that Wangji wondered just how some of these people became sect leaders in the first place.

Jiang Wanyin is visibly unhappy with this. Lan Wangji knew how overprotective the other man had gotten over Wei Ying especially considering his lack of speech and hearing how another sect leader wants to take him away infuriated him.

Wei Ying tried to calm Jiang Wanyin down but without his gift of speech, it’s difficult. Wei Ying had ran out of talisman paper to be able to project his thoughts and hadn’t had time to replenish his stock so he’s reduced to gestures.

Jin Guangshan is smart enough to notice that and deflects to reinstating the engagement between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan and Lan Wangji wanted to stare at that man in disbelief. Did he not hear Jin Zixuan insulting Jiang Yanli one too many times? Even if Jiang Yanli has a big heart, a person is bound to be hurt by that. Wei Ying is visibly mad and frantically gestures around, only calmed by Jiang Yanli, who points out their mourning sashes. They weren’t subtle.

(She gently refused the offer. After all that has happened between her and Jin Zixuan, she had begun to doubt her feelings for the other man. And with his sect trying to get their grubby hands on her A’ Xian, her feelings for Jin Zixuan mattered little.)

………………

Lan Wangji decided that he’s had enough at a Discussion Conference when Jin Guangshan brings up Wei Ying’s cultivation.

Chifeng-zun got ahead of him though, annoyed at the constant prodding of Wei Wuxian (who had indeed stopped using demonic cultivation after the war). He shouted at Jin Guangshan, only further incensed when Jin Guangyao tries to placate both sides by bringing up the Seal.

Lan Wangji, who had been spending time with Wei Ying in between rebuilding the Cloud Recesses, knew that Wei Ying had planned on destroying the Seal once the Jiang sect was in a good spot.

“You say this, but without Wei Ying’s use of the Seal, would we have so easily won?” Lan Wangji said, quietly, but firm.

The room went silent.

“Wangji—”

“Wei Ying sacrificed his health, his well-being to use the Seal and all you can think about is trying to control him?” Lan Wangji demanded.

Wei Wuxian stared at him, wide-eyed and mouthing his name but Lan Wangji was too busy fuming. The room burst into a frenzy of chatter as people were unsure of what to do. The general consensus was to monitor him as one would do a dangerous weapon but the moral thing to do would be to leave him alone.

Xichen put out a hand to calm him and Wangji reluctantly sat back down. “So, what would you suggest we do, Jin-zongzhu, to an already traumatized boy? It is widely known that he lost his voice because of the events that occurred in the war. And yet, you suggest taking him away from his family, from his home and put him in an unfamiliar place.”

Jin Guangshan smile goes stale while Jin Guangyao’s goes strained. “Well, Lan-zongzhu, he would be given adequate care here. He would want for nothing.”

“Nothing matters more to Wei Ying than family.” Lan Wangji stood up.

Lan Xichen nodded. “Wangji is right. Though I’m sure that the Lanling Jin sect is more than equipped with people who can help Wei-gongzi and make him comfort but it would be counterproductive nonetheless. The last thing Wei-gongzi needs to do is get separated from his family.”

And that was the end of that. The Discussion Conference ended swiftly and they were all quickly escorted out.

——————

Things I should explain. Lan Wangji is an observant fellow. I headcanon that he did have suspicions that Wei Wuxian fell into the Burial Mounds but in canon, Wei Wuxian denied this so he put his suspicions to rest. Here, Wei Wuxian can’t speak. He can’t dodge the question as easily because he can’t use wordplay to deflect from the conversation. I’m sure Lan Xichen would receive Lan Wangji’s observations but in canon, Lan Wangji was too frazzled and heartbroken at his fight with Wei Wuxian to tell his brother of what Wei Wuxian’s general condition was like. For Lan Wangji’s observation of a possible fractured core, I did it this way to explain what Lan Wangji might have seen in canon. Because for sure, Lan Wangji sensed that something was off because I’m sure a cultivator can sense the spiritual energy emanating from another but Wei Wuxian has only a little since his meridians are still intact. They must contain a little bit of spiritual energy which is why Lan Wangji thinks that Wei Wuxian only has a fractured core. Of course, a healer would say something different but I’m sure Wei Wuxian avoided healers like the plague unless absolutely necessary.

I’m sorry this took so long! Being in a summer camp that restricts technology was not exactly conducive to writing. Hope you enjoyed it!

Btw, my asks are still locked because I want to finish the rest of the prompts people have given me.

#wei ying #wei wuxian #lan zhan #lan wangji #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #angst #mdzs #jiang yanli #hurt wei wuxian #sad wei wuxian #protective Jiang Cheng #protective lan wangji #golden core reveal #sort of #Lan Wangji thinks WWX’s core is fractured #they don’t really talk about it #but aside from that #communication #fluff #mute wei wuxian

[antebunny]

Intervention Gone Wrong

^^despite the vaguely crack title this swings wildly between crack and angst because those are my two midnight moods^^

When Wei Wuxian hears that the sects are all gathering to form an alliance to kill him, it’s depressing how quickly he believes it. His initial reaction is disbelief, rejection, denial, but all too soon reality sets in. Even after all Wei Wuxian has lived through, apparently he’s still managed to be naive. It’s not like he’s done anything. He’s been holed up with the Wens in the Burial Mounds, trying to turn the resentment-soaked ground into something farmable. He even missed his sister’s wedding, and staged a fight between himself and Jiang Cheng just to fully sever ties with the cultivation world. All he wants is to be left alone.

“They say even Sect Leader Jiang is going,” the people of Yiling are whispering when Wei Wuxian descends from the Burial Mounds. 

Wei Wuxian is glad that none of them recognize him as the Yiling Patriarch, because he strolls up to one of the vendors he heard whispering, and prods him for more information.

“All the cultivation sects are gathering in Nightless City to kill our Patriarch,” the man says. “Someone must’ve let it slip, but it was supposed to be a secret–he’s not supposed to know.”

Well. The Yiling Patriarch knows.

He abandons the quest for potatoes and returns to their settlement in the Burial Mounds. When he tells the Wen siblings, their faces turn white.

“I’m s–” Wen Ning begins.

“Don’t apologize,” Wei Wuxian cuts him off. “It’s not your fault.”

“If you hadn’t protected us–” Wen Qing begins.

“It’s not your fault,” Wei Wuxian says again. “It’s.” He presses his lips together, and when he opens them, he means to say why couldn’t they just leave us alone? But what spills out is a plaintive: “Even Jiang Cheng?”

They’re looking at him with pity now, and Wei Wuxian hates that, but he can’t take the words back. He can imagine how it happened: if the rest of the great sects all agreed–so he supposes Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen must have changed their minds about him, though he doesn’t know why–then Jiang Cheng would’ve been pressured into agreeing as well. 

“We have to evacuate,” Wen Qing says.

“Maybe they’re just rumors,” Wen Ning suggests at the same time.

Wei Wuxian can’t help but spare a fond thought for his endlessly optimistic friend, but it’s optimism he no longer shares. “We still have to evacuate,” he says. “If you take everyone to the forest island between Yunmeng and Qishan, I can join you there. And then we can find a plot of land somewhere, I suppose, to hide.”

He’s already turned his back on the cultivation world, but hiding from it entirely–completely leaving it behind, without any chance of seeing his family ever again–is a worse kind of goodbye.

“And where are you going?” Wen Qing asks suspiciously.

Wei Wuxian manages a bone-weary smile for her. “Isn’t it obvious?” He says tiredly. “Nightless City.” 

-

Contrary to popular belief, Nie Huaisang actually does care about people, not just his birds and his fans. And he doesn’t just care about his brother, although his brother is of course his first priority. Nie Huaisang cares about his friends, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and he cares about the Nie disciples under his brother’s care, and he cares about his brother’s sworn brothers. Nie Huaisang empathizes with people, he just usually chooses not to act on it. 

The thing is, Nie Huaisang likes Wei Wuxian. They’re not the sworn brother type of friends; Nie Huaisang’s not exactly dying for him. He likes Wei Wuxian’s easy-going friendliness, likes his willingness to help, and admires his unwillingness to bend his core principles. It reminds him a lot of Nie Mingjue. This is all to say that Nie Huaisang thinks that the world is a better place with Wei Wuxian, and unfortunately the world seems to disagree. 

Nie Huaisang just wishes that the job of keeping Wei Wuxian alive fell to anyone but him. He’d kept his head down and assumed that they’d figure it out eventually, but he’s not stupid, he sees where this is going. His first thought is that Jiang Cheng will figure it out, but then he remembers his friend is pricklier than a pear, and with more parental issues than Jin Guangyao. Jiang Yanli, he thinks, could help in theory. Nie Huaisang briefly muses on encouraging Jiang Yanli to fix things, before deciding that getting her to overcome a lifetime of being told that she’s no help is much harder than just doing it himself. 

And since there’s no one else who cares about Wei Wuxian, that means that if Nie Huaisang wants to visit Lotus Pier at any point in the future and trade gossip with his friends, he’s going to have to stage an intervention for Wei Wuxian.

Honestly. The things he does for his friends.

Nie Huaisang also hopes that an intervention can get Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng out of the dark mood they’ve been in ever since the end of the Sunshot Campaign. It’s understandable, truly, but Nie Huaisang isn’t touching that with a ten-foot saber.

The first sect Nie Huaisang goes to is the Lan sect. Lan Xichen is bound to hear him out, now that he’s Nie Huaisang’s brother’s sworn brother, and Nie Huaisang wants to know where they stand on the whole Yiling Patriarch business. 

Lan Wangji is the most difficult person Nie Huaisang has ever tried to understand, and he didn’t try all that much. All he’s really sure of is that Hanguang-jun could not get away from Wei Wuxian fast enough back during their guest disciple year, and hates demonic cultivation. This he knows second-hand, from countless tales of arguments between the two during the war. It’s a bad combination for Wei Wuxian, but luckily for him, Lan Wangji also has an unmatched reputation for righteousness. Considering that he chose to argue with Wei Wuxian over demonic cultivation instead of just letting the man rest and win the war for them, Nie Huaisang figures this is more or less accurate. All in all, Nie Huaisang is pretty sure that Lan Wangji will support Wei Wuxian, if he realizes that the Jins are purposefully trying to get him killed. 

Lan Xichen, it turns out, is fully aware that Jin Guangshan is up to something, but he’s pretending that he doesn’t. 

“Sect Leader Jin’s business is Sect Leader Jin’s business,” Lan Xichen says firmly, when Nie Huaisang prods a little too much. “You know we don’t gossip.” 

Ah well. It’s not like Nie Huaisang was expecting support on his one-man intervention quest. He does a little more snooping before he leaves the Cloud Recesses, which is how he discovers a stunning secret. 

“Wangji,” he overhears Lan Xichen saying. “I know you…care for Young Master Wei–”

That’s as good as a declaration of love from either Lan brother. Which is to say: Lan Wangji is in love with Wei Wuxian. Now that’s a match that even Nie Huaisang, matchmaker extraordinaire, didn’t see coming. 

Once Lan Xichen has accidentally confessed his brother’s love for Wei Wuxian to Nie Huaisang, suddenly Nie Huaisang has a great advantage. He hasn’t the faintest clue how their relationship will work out in the future, between Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation and Lan Wangji’s sect rules, but that is another issue that Nie Huaisang isn’t touching with a ten-foot saber. For now, it’s enough to know that there’s someone else, someone with power, that Nie Huaisang can rely on to keep Wei Wuxian alive. 

So the next place Nie Huaisang goes to is the Jin sect. He drags Jin Guangyao away from his duties for a night of drinking, and then proceeds to get blackout drunk. Or at least, he pretends to get blackout drunk. 

“Did you know,” Nie Huaisang says, through hiccups, “That Lan Wangji has a th…” His mouth works, trying to form the word. “A thing!” He fumbles for his glass again.

“Perhaps you should have water now, Young Master Nie,” Jin Guangyao suggests.

“Ah ah ahhhh,” Nie Huaisang corrects, slurring the sounds together. “What did I say about this young master business?”

Jin Guangyao smiles indulgently at him. “Not to?”

“Uh-huh.” Nie Huaisang thinks for a moment. “A thing!” He repeats. “For Wei Wuxian!”

“What sort of thing?” Jin Guangyao asks. 

“Oh, you know,” Nie Huaisang fumbles for his fan and waves it around airily. “That sort of thing.”

He can see Jin Guangyao pale, and knows he’s working through the logical thought process. If Lan Wangji will be sad when Wei Wuxian dies, then Lan Xichen will be sad, and Jin Guangyao doesn’t want that. But even as Nie Huaisang sees this, he knows that it won’t be enough. Jin Guangyao will still do it, on the off-chance that he finally wins his father’s approval. 

Nie Huaisang wants to shake him by the shoulders and tell him that he deserves better, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tries to imagine that he’s Jin Guangshan (ew), and his plan to stir the sects into killing the Yiling Patriarch isn’t working, because Wei Wuxian just isn’t doing anything. If he were Jin Guangshan, he would either find a way to lure Wei Wuxian out of the Burial Mounds, or find a way to frame him for something and rally the sects to kill him before Wei Wuxian can protest his innocence. 

So Nie Huaisang just has to move first. 

-

“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang begins sweetly, and he is offended by the very visible flash of fear in his brother’s eyes. “I’m your favorite brother, right?”

“What’s wrong?” Nie Mingjue says, a bead of sweat forming on his upper lip. “I haven’t even made you practice saber recently.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Nie Huaisang says, throwing in a pout for good measure. “But things could be better.”

“What is it?” Nie Mingjue asks warily.

Nie Huaisang blinks innocently. “I was just thinking how much happier I would be if you did me this one small, small favor.” He stops to estimate how much Wei Wuxian is worth to him. “I’d even do two consecutive weeks of saber practice,” he wheedles. 

Nie Mingjue eyes him like Nie Huaisang is the one twice his size. “Depends on the favor?” He settles on finally.

Nie Huaisang tells him.

-

“You want me to what.”

-

“No,” Jiang Cheng says.

“Hear me out,” Nie Huaisang wheedles. 

Lotus Pier is the last of the great sects on Nie Huaisang’s list, just because he feels like Jiang Cheng will be a lot easier to convince once there’s nothing he can do about it anyway. 

Jiang Cheng merely glares at him, looking about one second from kicking him out of the Jiang sect leader’s private meeting rooms. “I know you’re behind this, Huaisang,” he says flatly.

Now Nie Huaisang has to admit that in his haste to act before Jin Guangshan, he’s been more obvious than he would’ve liked, but he’s truly been transparent if even Jiang Cheng knew he was up to something. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Nie Huaisang wails, fanning himself aggressively. 

“I know you’re the reason your brother decided to join Jin Guangshan’s crusade!” Jiang Cheng explodes. “I don’t know why, but–”

“Sect Leader Jin was going to do it sooner or later,” Nie Huaisang interrupts, eyes innocently wide. “I only thought that if we joined in we’d have more control over it.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrow into slits. “Let me get this straight,” he says. “You think Jin Guangshan wants my brother dead, for the Seal.” He doesn’t even bother waiting for confirmation, which is how Nie Huaisang knows that Jiang Cheng already believes that. “So your solution is to get the sects to make a pact to kill my brother–just so that you do it before Jin Guangshan does.”

Well, when he puts it that way…

“Okay, look,” Nie Huaisang says, snapping his fan shut. “Jin Guangshan goes to Nightless City thinking he’s heading an alliance to kill Wei Wuxian. Then my brother suggests destroying the Seal, and you support him. The Lans are bound to support that, so then either Jin Guangshan is forced to reveal his hand or he’s forced to back down.” 

And hopefully whatever’s going on between you and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian gets sorted out as well, Nie Huaisang thinks. He doesn’t have a plan for that, exactly, so much as the hope that if he pours the chaos of the entire cultivation world into Wei Wuxian’s lap, something’s bound to come loose. 

“Alright,” Jiang Cheng relents, albeit begrudgingly. “Who’s going to tell Wei Wuxian?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Nie Huaisang says, snapping his fan open again and hiding his smile. “I have a plan for that.”

-

“I d-don’t know why da-ge changed his mind!” Nie Huaisang sobs into Lan Xichen’s arms. “B-but now everyone is going to kill Wei Wuxian, and he hasn’t even done anything!”

Lan Xichen pats Nie Huaisang on the back, his face pale. “I’m sure we can talk this out,” he says weakly. “But, Huaisang, my brother–”

“He hates Wei Wuxian, I know,” Nie Huaisang interrupts, sobbing even louder. 

He pauses, breath hitching just in time to hear the sound of a spiritual sword being unsheathed–and then, presumably, mounted. Lan Xichen had probably been about to say something like “my brother is coming.” It’s really too bad Nie Huaisang interrupted him.

“It’s so sad, because Wuxian really likes him!”

Lan Xichen blinks several times, and his face does something funny. “R-really?”

Nie Huaisang sniffs loudly. “But that’s not the point,” he cries. He tugs on Lan Xichen’s robes. “You have to go stop them!”

“The Lan sect will surely have a presence,” Lan Xichen says. “But Huaisang–”

Nie Huaisang bursts into tears again, successfully distracting him from escaping Nie Huaisang’s clutches. He doesn’t stop crying, or let Lan Xichen leave, for another ten minutes, until Lan Wangji has had plenty of time to leave the Cloud Recesses.

Doubtless he’ll fly to Yiling, where he’ll tell Wei Wuxian a less than comprehensive overview of their plan. It’s not exactly the informant Jiang Cheng had been picturing, but Nie Huaisang will make do, so long as it’s Lan Wangji. Perhaps he’ll vow to protect Wei Wuxian, and then declare his undying love to Wei Wuxian–so Nie Huaisang’s a romantic, sue him–so by the time the two of them actually make it to Nightless City, another piece of the puzzle will be in place. 

-

Wei Ying. 

Lan Wangji lands at the base of the Burial Mounds running. He tears up the path, worn into the mountain’s face by Wei Ying and the Wens. When he reaches the top, the place where the little Wen settlement once stood is completely empty. The cave where Wei Ying once slept is empty. Little Wen Yuan is nowhere to be found, nor are the elderly Wens. There’s no sign of life, anywhere, save for the abandoned plot of land, ready for farming. 

Lan Wangji falls to his knees, sullying his white robes with dirt. Wei Ying, he thinks desperately. Where are you?

-

The last time Nightless City had this many people, they were leading the final attack of Wen Ruohan. 

The memory randomly occurs to Wei Wuxian as he alights on the massive outer wall of the Sun Palace, before the great pavilion where all the sect cultivators have gathered. Last time, they were charging up these steps, while Wen Ruohan stood in the entrance. Now, Wei Wuxian stands on top of it, one hand on Chenqing, and the other on the Seal. 

Down below, he sees the bright yellow robes of the Jins. Jin Guangshan has placed himself at the head of the alliance, because of course he has. But Jin Guangyao is there, his father’s silent shadow, and so is Jin Zixuan, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Nie Mingjue is stone-faced at the head of the Nie contingent. Lan Xichen is blank-faced at the head of the Lans, almost like his brother. 

In vain, Wei Wuxian looks for Lan Zhan. He doesn’t care what he sees reflected back at him, he only wants to see Lan Zhan. But he isn’t there. Finally, Wei Wuxian looks over the Jiangs. Jiang Cheng is scowling, to Wei Wuxian’s utter lack of surprise. 

“How rude,” Wei Wuxian calls, interrupting whatever Jin Guangshan’s going on about. “A party for me and I wasn’t invited?”

Jin Guangshan startles when he hears Wei Wuxian, though he hides it well. Jiang Cheng doesn’t seem surprised, merely directs his scowl directly at Wei Wuxian. Which is rather unfair, Wei Wuxian feels. It’s not like he’s done anything wrong.

“Get off the roof,” Jiang Cheng snaps. “Get down here.”

Wei Wuxian stares down at him, eyes fizzling with red light. He can’t be serious. Just because Jiang Cheng didn’t tell him doesn’t mean Wei Wuxian doesn’t know what this is about. 

“You can’t be serious,” he sneers.

“It might induce a better conversation,” Lan Xichen says, solemnly.

That’s certainly no lie. The Lans never lie. Though Wei Wuxian would make a case for misleading–his sentence implies that the reason they want Wei Wuxian to come down is just so that they don’t have to shout at each other from so far away, and not–

“Won’t you come down and join us?” Jin Guangshan says, sickly sweet. “We were discussing some concerns that people have raised about your behavior.”

–So that they can kill him easier. 

Why is he here again? Oh, that’s right. Wei Wuxian was hoping this was an overblown rumor. 

Wei Wuxian laughs harshly. The sound is swallowed by the endless night. “Sect Leader Jin must think I’m stupid,” he says, with thinly veiled anger. 

“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng fumes. “Stop playing around and get down here.”

“Who’s playing around?” Wei Wuxian demands, Chenqing twirling around and around in his hand. He stalks up and down the roof, just an inky smudge against the vast black sky. Torches flicker all around the pavilion, lighting the cultivators up in all their colors. 

Usually Jiang Cheng is a terrible liar, but there’s not a hint of deception in his demeanor right now. If Jiang Cheng wants to settle a score with him, then Wei Wuxian is happy to do so. But as far as Wei Wuxian is concerned, he doesn’t owe the rest of the world anything.

“I heard Sect Leader Jin’s moving speech,” Wei Wuxian continues, full to the brim with anger. He stops pacing, and stands facing the cultivators. His hand trembles on Chenqing. He didn’t come here for a fight, but now his blood is singing for one. 

From the back of the mass of cultivators, a moving white blur comes in at full speed. Soon, the blur reveals itself to be Lan Wangji, late for clearly the first time in his life, if his expression is any indication. Every line in his typically stoic face is drawn taut with tension. Wei Wuxian’s hunger for a fight drains away. 

He’s still angry, but he has to protect the Wens. They’re waiting for him, on the forest island halfway between the Burial Mounds and Nightless City. He has to return to them, or Wen Ning is probably going to come wandering into Nightless City looking for him. He can’t afford a fight. 

“Good for you,” Jiang Cheng gripes. “Now will you get off the roof?”

Wei Wuxian is still angry, but beneath that, beneath all the bravado and the sneers and the self-righteousness are the white-knuckled, shaking hands that he draws in front of him to clutch Chenqing protectively by his chest. Beneath it all is the shaking voice that Wei Wuxian forces down until his tone sounds acceptable. Beneath it all is the part of Wei Wuxian that he doesn’t want to admit: the part that’s terrified. 

Lan Zhan stops next to his brother, joining the ranks of Lan cultivators, and whatever hope Wei Wuxian had sinks like a stone to the soles of his boots. Dread pools like acid in his stomach, hissing and churning his emotions into knots. 

Wei Wuxian looks across 3,000 cultivators, and swallows, laughter and sneers fading away at last. His voice is small and shaking when he finally speaks. “I’m not coming down, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian says.

#so this doesn't make sense #but in my defense #uh it's 1 am? #what can you expect? #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #the untamed #wei wuxian #nie huaisang #lan xichen #jiang cheng #my writing #writeblr #lan wangji #nie mingjue #antebunny's ficlets

[robininthelabyrinth]

For the prompt thing if you're still doing it: what if Madam Yu had sent some of the youngest juniors with WWX and Jiang Cheng when she sent them away from the incoming Wens. I doubt it would've impacted anything long term but I like the idea, i feel like the 3 siblings are all good with kids in very different ways. Also it means that in addition to 3 (not quite) adults who've just lost their home and family, there's a bunch of kids whom the same is true for and it'd be a disaster

1

A-Su was the one who told Wei Wuxian what happened.

The Wen cultivators that had been patrolling the marketplace, approaching Wei Wuxian from his blind spot, and Jiang Cheng had seen them coming –

“– and then shixiong put me down and told me to go back,” he said, crying bitter tears. “He said to tell you that you have to – that someone has to avenge –”

“That idiot,” Wei Wuxian said, his lips were numb. “The Wens – they have Wen Zhuliu there! Doesn’t he know what they’ll do to him –”

And now all three of them were crying, A-Su, A-Min, and A-Lei; the three of them weren’t even proper shidi, having never paid their respects to Sect Leader Jiang as their master, even though everyone had known that it was only because they were too young. They’d been so jealous when A-Jun, the oldest of the lot, had officially become the ninth shidi, before he’d been taken away by the Wens…

Wei Wuxian was helpless. He’d promised Madame Yu he wouldn’t let Jiang Cheng down; he’d promised Jiang Cheng that he wouldn’t leave the children behind, that he’d take them to safety – they’d found them hiding in barrels in the ship Madame Yu had sent them away in. Someone had told to sit and hide until it was safe, and it wasn’t safe, it still wasn’t safe. How could he choose between the two oaths he’d sworn?

But if he didn’t go, Jiang Cheng might be –

“We go,” he decided, even though it was foolish. Jiang Cheng was the only hope of the Jiang sect continuing – as much as he loved his shijie, Jiang Yanli would be unhappy as sect leader, with all the fighting and political maneuvering that the position required. If there was no Jiang sect, the children would grow up sectless, or be absorbed into another sect, and Wei Wuxian hated that idea.

Just as much as he hated the idea of Yunmeng Jiang becoming Yunmeng Wei.

“All of us?”

“I can’t let you stay by yourselves,” Wei Wuxian said, and it was true. The three of them were too young to hide the fact that they were cultivators, and bad at lying; leaving them alone was tantamount to giving them up entirely, and odds were good that he’d never find them again. He couldn’t break his promise to Jiang Cheng like that. “It’s very dangerous, though. You have to listen to me all the time.”

There was no way to balance out his promises. He’d just have to try to do the impossible.

To do – to do what Jiang Cheng had done for him.

Wei Wuxian swallowed hard and went back.

2

A-Lei tugged at the older man’s sleeve. “Can you help us find our ninth shixiong, too?” he asked shyly.

It was officially ‘shixiong’ now, even if Jiang Cheng was – was unwell, as Wei Wuxian put it. He’d barely been able to sit up in bed, but he’d still accepted their offerings of tea and let them kneel in front of him, and just like that they were proper Jiang sect disciples at last.

The cultivator that had helped them get Jiang Cheng away from the Lotus Pier – his name was Wen Ning, he said – blinked down at them. 

“What do y-you mean?” he asked.

“The Jiang sect’s ninth inner-door disciple,” A-Lei explained. “He was flying a kite, and the Wen sect took him away and said he’d done something wrong – but that means he wasn’t at the Lotus Pier when there was all that fighting. Do you think he might still be alive? He’s my biological brother. Well, half.”

“I don’t know,” Wen Ning said, hesitant. “I don’t have much status in the Wen sect, just a few subordinates that listen to me…”

“He’s my brother,” A-Lei said. “And my shixiong. His name is A-Jun and he’s better at shooting than our sixth shidi; he’s strong but a little silly sometimes. Can you try?”

“I can try,” Wen Ning agreed. “I’ll go back and look for him.”

“I’ll come with you,” A-Lei said. “You won’t know what he looks like, otherwise. Da-shixiong has to take care of Sect Leader Jiang, and it’s not like we’re doing anything to help.”

“I guess that’s okay,” Wen Ning said. “My sister needs me to help with something for a couple of days, but I think we can go after that –”

3

A-Jun was missing an arm when they found him, working as a slave in the Wen sect’s army canteen because he knew how to put together Yunmeng food that didn’t scorch the unaccustomed tongue, but he was alive.

There was a lot of crying.

“Everyone else is dead,” A-Min sobbed.

“I thought you were dead!” A-Jun said, his one remaining arm wrapped around A-Lei. “There were piles of bodies!”

A-Su just wailed.

“Can we maybe not be doing this here?” Wen Ning said, rubbing his face until his cheeks were red. “Please? We should go back. My sister doesn’t want me doing anything with you; I didn’t tell her I was going to meet with you. Or coming here. Or anything. I’m not supposed to have anything to do with the Jiang sect after - after what happened. She’s going to be so angry…I really need to get back.”

“You can’t go back yet,” A-Lei said. “Didn’t you hear what I told you before? Da-shixiong is missing.”

“I know Wei-gongzi is missing,” Wen Ning said. “But I haven’t heard anything about him or where he is. I promise I’ll tell you if I do. But really, we have to go! If anyone finds you in the middle of a Wen camp –”

“But you said that they won’t recognize us while we’re wearing Wen robes,” A-Min said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“Neither will the Nie sect, if they attack,” Wen Ning pointed out. “Which they might.”

A-Jun looked at his three shidi. “You trust him?” he asked.

“He brought us to you,” A-Lei pointed out, and both A-Min and A-Su nodded. “He’s pretty all right.”

Wen Ning looked surprised, and then flattered to the point of blushing – he really wasn’t very good with compliments.

“Okay,” A-Jun said. “In that case, I have an idea…”

Less than a shichen later, Wen Chao was laughing at Wen Ning as a naïve idiot and Wang Lingjiao threw her shoes at him, but they had their answer – of course the report of Wei Wuxian had to be a false sighting, Wen Chao said between somewhat frenzied laughter, how could it be anything else when they’d thrown Wei Wuxian into the Burial Mounds in Yiling with their own two hands…?

Wen Ning bowed his head and hunched his shoulders, looking the perfect picture of embarrassment, and scuttled out of the room, bumping into Wen Zhuliu and recoiling a bit, then moving around him and out, going back to the kitchens.

“It worked,” he said, shoulders still shaking from the adrenaline. “But Wei-gongzi…”

“We need to go get him!” A-Su said at once. “Even if it’s just his bones. Otherwise Sect Leader Jiang will never stop looking.”

“Don’t curse him!” A-Lei said. “Who says da-shixiong is dead, huh? He’s really strong. He could survive the Burial Mounds.”

“He’s definitely dead,” Wen Ning said gloomily, his hands still shaking, though whether from the revelation, the humiliation, or the close brush with Wen Zhuliu, who he sincerely and utterly hated, despised, loathed. “How could he survive? Especially without a –”

4

A-Min was the one who said, “We need to go find Wen Ning” to Jiang Cheng, because of course he was – A-Lei was the brave one, A-Su the crybaby, A-Jun the cautious survivor, but A-Min was most notable for being straightforward, simple-minded, and stubborn.

In other words, stupid.

“Why in the world would we go find one of the Wen-dogs?” Jiang Cheng snapped.

“Because he might get hurt,” A-Min said, puzzled. “He’s a Wen, after all. None of the new people fighting know that he’s a good one.”

“There’s no such thing as a good Wen.”

“No, Senior Wen is good,” A-Min insisted. “He helped us rescue you from the Lotus Pier, he helped take care of you when you were sick, he even helped us find da-shixiong in the Burial Mound…”

“Wait. That’s how you found Wei Wuxian?! A Wen told you?”

“No, Senior Wen didn’t know. He smuggled us into a Wen army camp and A-Jun had the idea of making him come in with a report that he’d heard someone had seen da-shixiong, and Wen Chao told him that was stupid ‘cause he’d been tossed into the Burial Mounds,” A-Min said.

Jiang Cheng opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking conflicted.

Finally, he said, “Even if he helped you, it wasn’t necessary. Wei Wuxian would have gotten out of the Burial Mounds even without your help – without any of our help.” He looked a bit bitter. “He certainly doesn’t seem to need any of us anymore. With his demonic cultivation, he’s an entire army on his own – who needs all the Jiang sect cultivators I took so much time to raise up?”

“The Jiang sect does, of course,” A-Min said, not really understanding the connection between the two. “Imagine how boring it’ll be back in the Lotus Pier if it’s just you and us and da-shixiong! Actually, why don’t we invite Senior Wen to join the Jiang sect? That way, he won’t be a Wen-dog anymore.”

“Definitely not!”

“Why not? You took everyone else that’d join. You should probably kick some of them out, actually; they’re no good.”

“I will once things are a little more stable – anyway, that’s not the point. I’m not taking in a Wen. We’ll be accused of betraying the cultivation world.”

“Oh, that,” A-Min said. “That’s no big deal. They say that about da-shixiong’s cultivation, too.”

Jiang Cheng pinched the bridge of his nose. “It is a big deal. Even if it’s about Wei Wuxian’s cultivation. It’s very useful for killing Wens, but it’s still unorthodox. Once this is all over, he’ll have to give it up and go back to normal.”

“But how can he go back to normal if he doesn’t have a golden core?” A-Min wanted to know. “Isn’t that why he invented demonic cultivation?”

Jiang Cheng lowered his hand and stared at him. “What.”

“What?”

“Wei Wuxian doesn’t have a golden core?”

“No, of course, he gave it to – oh, no,” A-Min said. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“A-Min. As your sect leader, I am ordering you to tell me everything you know about this. Right now.”

5

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” A-Min protested. “Not tell him? He gave me an order!”

“You should have joined the Nie sect,” A-Lei said with a sniff. “You’re as blunt as a saber.”

“No way. There aren’t enough chili peppers in Qinghe for me.”

“There aren’t enough chili peppers in Yunmeng for you,” A-Jun said, serving them all soup. “I still can’t believe you told da-shixiong that his congee wasn’t spicy enough – I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look more offended, and I’m including the giant fight he had with Jiang Cheng over their cultivation.”

“Don’t worry,” A-Su reassured the dubious-looking Wen sect members that Jiang Cheng had claimed from the Jin sect after the fighting was over. “It’s not that spicy, and anyway we have some milk in case it is.”

After Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian got over their argument, they’d put their heads together and came up with a plausible-sounding argument about how the Jiang sect needed people more than any of the other sects, having lost so many of their own, and that as a result they should be given all the prisoners of war as part of the spoils. It meant they got fewer treasures, and less money, and the Wen sect remnants were mostly old men, women, and children so the deal was actually pretty bad for them, but Wei Wuxian said it would be dishonorable to do anything else and Jiang Cheng reluctantly agreed.

He’d insisted very loudly that it didn’t mean he forgave them for anything, but they’d all seen him kneeling on the ground to show little A-Yuan the basics of archery early in the morning when he thought no one was looking, and no one believed him even a little bit.

Still, it all worked out pretty well. Wen Ning was an excellent archer, even if his cultivation was a bit weak and his body not fully recovered from the beatings he’d suffered in the Jin war camp, and Wen Qing a uniquely talented doctor, and there were a few more useful people besides – even if all the old grannies knew how to do was laundry, that was still useful, since the Jiang sect had lost all its old grannies in the attack on the Lotus Pier.

They could make up the money another way.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I think of da-shixiong’s congee,” A-Min said after he finished his first bowl of soup, reaching out for more. “We won’t have to deal with it for much longer.”

“What makes you say that?” A-Su asked, immediately anxious. “Is he sick? The demonic cultivation…”

“No, his demonic cultivation is much better now that he’s using all those clarity rituals,” A-Jun assured him. “Wen Qing started up a correspondence with some people in the Nie sect, since they have all those qi deviations, and they’re working on a whole bunch of new ideas – even the Lan sect is chipping in. With three of the Four Sects working on it, they’ll fix the problem, don’t worry.”

“That’s not what I meant, anyway,” A-Min said.

“What did you mean, then?” A-Lei asked. “Why would da-shixiong stop making us his horrible tasteless congee? And don’t say it’s not – being spicy and having flavor are two different things.”

“Well, he might get married,” A-Min said. “During the hunt at Phoenix Mountain, I saw him and Hanguang-jun kissing in a tree –”

#mdzs #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #wen ning #original characters #my fic #my fics #of course things would change if you added a third party observer to any of WWX or JC's scenes #Wen Ning is good with kids #wangxian #in the background #Anonymous

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

[@redrequiem has requested some time-travel fix-it Yunmeng brothers, and here it is! I hope this is something like what you were hoping for ^_^] (Also posted to Ao3)

[Writing masterpost]

--

In hindsight, Jiang Cheng can admit that chasing blindly after the latest demonic cultivator of the week probably hadn’t been his smartest idea. Normally he wouldn’t let anyone even dare to suggest that let alone admit it, but, well. The disciples he had brought with him are nowhere to be found, and he’s tired. Sue him.

He looks down at the burnt-out array he’s standing in the dead center of, the unfamiliar lines of it no longer glowing red. They’re just marks on the ground, and he realizes as the breeze picks up through the forest that they’re not even permanent. Ash drifts around his feet, the characters blurring and then disappearing altogether into the breeze. There goes studying it to see if he can reverse it - not that he would because he’s not a fucking demonic cultivator but damn if it wouldn’t be nice to try to see how to undo whatever it is that has left him stranded in the middle of the woods with nothing but what he’s carrying on his person. 

The breeze carries with it the smell of green water and lotus flowers, and at first he thinks nothing of it - the scent of it is so intimately familiar that he notices it more when it’s gone than when it returns. Except he’s supposed to be on the border with Qinghe. Nowhere near the lotus lakes of Yunmeng. 

This just keeps getting fucking better and better.

----

Let it never be said that Jiang Cheng can’t find his way around the forest that surrounds his home. Getting down to the water is easy, and from there it only takes a quick look around to get his bearings to know what part of the river he’s on before he’s on his way home. He flies low over the water perched on Sandu, seething with irritation. Fucking demonic cultivators. Every time he kills one it’s like three more pop up in their place, and no one else is hunting them down to help him cut their numbers down. Not that he necessarily wants the help - better if he just does it himself. But still, it’s the principle of the thing. It’s a thankless and arduous task, and the last thing he needs is to be stuck randomly back all the way in Lotus Pier with his disciples all the way out by Qinghe. His free time to go out trailing these monsters is limited.

He barely pays a thought to Zidian sparking on his wrist as he flies closer to home, he just corrects the flow of his angry energy away from the whip automatically to keep from waking the weapon up entirely. It takes a few more moments before he registers that the weapon is still sparking even without his energy to fuel it - a few moments in which Lotus Pier comes into view, the lanterns on the docks steady in the evening air.

He alights at the end of one of the docks furthest from the main boardwalk back into the complex itself and he sheathes Sandu to take a closer look at Zidian on his hand, his irritation growing when sparks spit and flash along the length of it, utterly uninformed by his own energy. He turns his wrist this way and that as if that will help him solve the problem, and then he hears it.

“Fengmian!”

His blood goes ice cold, his entire body as still as a corpse. It doesn’t even feel like his heart is beating as he holds his breath, muscles in his jaw jumping as he clenches his teeth hard enough to give himself a headache.

“When are you going to stop running off on this fool’s errand?” Yu Ziyuan demands, voice snapping out across the water. Zidian sparks higher on his wrist in response to the anger of her former master somewhere nearby, close enough that he can hear the sneer in her voice. “They died years ago! Their boy is probably dead by now too, and you have a son right here!! Does he mean so little to you that you have to run from home every other week so you can find that boy to replace him?!”

A soft voice, low, conciliatory replies too quietly to be understood, and the breath rushes back into Jiang Cheng’s chest in a painfully sharp inhale. Mother. Father. Arguing about - what else - him and Wei Wuxian. His hand curls into a fist tightly enough around Sandu’s sheath that the worked metal designs on it threaten to puncture. He likes that pressure, he usually finds it grounding, but there’s really no comprehending or coping with the sound of his parents alive and - well, if not well then at least normal - somewhere so close. So so close. He can practically feel Yu Ziyuan’s arms around him in the last embrace she had pulled him into that day the Wen had torn his world to shreds. He can feel the phantom of Jiang Fengmian’s thumb on his cheek brushing away his tears.

The tears are real, but he has to reach up to scrub them away with his own hand. A lantern sparks to life at the end of the pier, bobbing and swaying rather than stationary, and Jiang Cheng darts into the thickest shadows thrown by the overlapping corners of one of the closest buildings, crouching down low as he peeks around the wood and there they are. Younger, alive, and as he remembers them most often - Jiang Fengmian walking sedately where he wants to go, and Yu Ziyuan storming after him to demand answers that will never satisfy her. 

His entire body aches to run to them.

“I have a duty to him, I cannot ignore it,” Jiang Fengmian says now, close enough that Jiang Cheng can hear the weariness already so present in his voice. 

“You have a duty to your own first! Do you think A-Li and A-Cheng don’t see you leaving to search for him?! What do you propose I tell them, that they’re inadequate children because I bore them for you?! That you do not love them as you love a boy who is, for all you know, already nothing more than a figment of your imagination!”

“Yu Ziyuan!”

“Jiang Fengmian!!” 

Jiang Cheng is expecting them to storm apart, to go their separate ways and seethe until the next time they come together. But...if they’re talking about Wei Wuxian like he’s not even here, if the only children in Lotus Pier are...himself and Jiang Yanli, then, he supposes, it shouldn’t surprise him that their reactions aren’t like what they will later become the more their marriage fractures apart.

Jiang Fengmian turns and sets the lantern at their feet so that he can place his hands on Yu Ziyuan’s shoulders. Jiang Cheng blinks as Zidian settles down on his wrist, finally no longer spitting little sparks under his muffling hand there in the dark. He watches with wide eyes as Jiang Fengmian sighs and pulls Yu Ziyuan to his chest and she...goes. To him. To her husband. She folds herself into the circle of his arms like she belongs there. What the fuck is happening?

“I will go out once more, no more than three days. If we can protect him, we must. I owe his father the wellbeing of his only son. It is a good lesson for the children in duty to protect those weaker than us, to extend kindness where we can.”

Yu Ziyuan is still for a long moment before she extricates herself from Jiang Fengmian’s hold and pushes him away by the arms to look up at him. Jiang Cheng can’t see her face clearly from here but he can imagine all too easily - her eyes angry and determined under the hard cut of her brows, lips pressed together in open irritation.

“Do not let this boy take your son’s rightful room in your heart or in this Sect,” she says, voice deadly calm. “I will revisit such hell on you a hundredfold for each day I see it. Do not test my patience any longer, Jiang Fengmian.” She stoops to scoop up the lantern and retreat back towards the residences, leaving Jiang Fengmian alone on the pier.

Fresh tears spring to Jiang Cheng’s eyes as he stays frozen in the shadows watching his father tip his head back to look up at the moon overhead. He stays there for a long time, lost in thought, before he heaves a sigh and turns to follow after Yu Ziyuan back into Lotus Pier.

The only other time Jiang Cheng has so desperately wanted to follow after them is the day they died. He knows he can’t. This is either a figment of his imagination, in which case it would likely end how all of his dreams of them do, or he has truly somehow been forced to travel to a time where he’s still a child, in which case they wouldn’t recognize him, nor believe him when he tells them who he is and what their future holds. He doesn’t know what will happen if he’s discovered, but it seems better not to risk it, much as he longs to run to them and collapse into their arms.

A different plan takes reluctant shape in his mind as he crouches in the shadows and watches the complex gradually go darker and darker as candles and lanterns are extinguished for the night. By the time everything is still and quiet but for the frogs in the mud and the wind in the trees, he knows what he’s going to do.

He’s going to find Wei Wuxian, and he’s going to kill him.

----

Finding Wei Wuxian is so easy he nearly laughs aloud at the sight of him. After chasing ghosts and rumors of his brother for thirteen years it’s almost anticlimactic to find him sitting on a stoop in town gnawing on a piece of..something that’s burned so black as to be inedible to anyone but the truly desperate. 

Any doubts that he may have had about this somehow being the past are thoroughly dashed as he stands there watching the boy who is without a doubt the same boy he remembers his father bringing home so many years ago. He’s hunkered down over his ‘meal’ as if afraid someone will come along and snatch it from his hands. There’s a bundle of coarse fabric beside him that may have once possibly been meant to carry vegetables or rice or any number of things, but Jiang Cheng knows from that first night together as children that it’s full of the sorts of things a young boy with nothing else to his name would consider worth keeping. An extra shirt, so riddled with holes and bare patches that it’s more rag than clothing. A blanket suitable only for swaddling a baby that he had sworn up and down that he could still curl up tightly enough to fit under as long as he didn’t mind cold toes or fingers. A few melon rinds to snack on. A grass butterfly to play with.

Jiang Cheng looks at his waif of a child and he can’t help but see all the pain he’ll come to cause in the future. He can prevent it all right here, right now. Zidian sparks on his wrist, begins to flicker to life. Little Wei Wuxian looks up and around suddenly at the noise of it, his eyes zeroing in almost instantly on the purple lightning at his side.

“Whoa!!” he cries with delight, his entire face lighting up with delight. “That’s so cool, sir!! How do you do that?!”

Zidian sputters and then flickers out again, responding to the horror in his chest that replaces the fury. He’s just a child. A child. 

He’s his brother.

Jiang Cheng holds onto the last vestiges of his fury for another long moment or two as he watches Wei Wuxian return to gnawing on his food with his back teeth as he looks up at him with wide, guileless, quicksilver eyes.

And then with a breath he shoves 13 years of blinding hatred away from his chest.

It feels like setting down a heavy pack at the end of the day. Like taking his guan out of his hair and removing the stiff shells of his Sect Leader robes until he’s stripped down to just..himself. Jiang Cheng, A-Cheng, who misses his siblings more and more with each passing day and yearns for the days when things were so much simpler. Whose grief is threatening to swallow him whole in a blaze of blistering fire.

“Do you want more to eat?” he asks his brother, small and vulnerable sitting there with nowhere else to go. Wei Ying blinks up at him and then glances at the food in his hands and back up to him. “You can say yes, Wei Ying,” he sighs and Wei Wuxian’s eyes go even wider.

“You know my name?!” he chirps, seeming torn between being afraid and excited.

“Yes. I know you. I can keep you safe and get you more food, food that isn’t burnt. Come with me.” Jiang Cheng turns on his heel with a swish of silk and he hears Wei Wuxian yelp a little before tumbling to his feet to come running after him.

“Hey!! Mister! Wait!” he calls, out of breath, and Jiang Cheng stops in his tracks so suddenly that Wei Wuxian runs into his legs with an, ‘oof’. “Ow,” he mumbles as he rubs at his head. Jiang Cheng is going to have a bruise on the back of his thigh in the exact shape of that head but he scowls as he recognizes that he really has no one to blame but himself.

“What? Aren’t you hungry?” he snaps, and Wei Wuxian blinks slowly up at him.

“Yes,” he replies as he reaches tentatively towards Zidian with one dirt-smeared hand. “But...I don’t want to get separated,” he adds, voice small, and then those little fingers are slipping into his palm. Not reaching for Zidian, then. Reaching for him. “Can I?” he whispers, eyes beginning to shine with unshed tears as he tries to hold Jiang Cheng’s limp fingers in his tight little fist. Jiang Cheng swallows past the sudden tightness in his throat and glares straight ahead for a moment before turning and kneeling on the hard-packed dirt in front of the boy. He adjusts his grip to clasp Wei Wuxian’s hand like he had when they had both been this age, when they had held hands in his room in Lotus Pier and promised to protect each other from their worst fears. 

“Yes,” he says now, chest tight. “Yes, we should not get separated again. You can hold onto me. Don’t let go, alright?” 

Wei Wuxian smiles at him wide and happy like the break of dawn and Jiang Cheng finds himself smiling in response, his eyes definitely wet again. “I’ve missed you, Wei Ying.”

He’s not prepared for Wei Wuxian to throw himself into his arms for a hug, but he immediately wraps his arms around the boy anyway and holds him close, his eyes squeezed shut against the torrent of emotions flooding through him, too numerous and too raucous to be named. So he just hugs his brother there in the middle of a street in Yunmeng, and he wonders just what the fuck they’re going to do now.

----

Lotus Pier is, of course, not an option. Not only can he not show up there dressed like the Sect Leader and wearing Zidian, but if he takes Wei Wuxian there nothing will change. Gusu’s out as well. He’d like to claim that he has some rational, thought-out reason for it, but honestly he just doesn’t see a point in letting Lan Wangji finally get what he wants after all these years, even though he’s just a boy right now. Petty? Sure. Jiang Cheng has never claimed not to be.

Lanling is an enormous ‘absolutely not’ written in bright red ink in his mind’s eye, as is Qishan. Qinghe very nearly makes the list, but then he thinks about trying to explain such esoteric, questionable events to anyone in the straightforward, bullheaded Nie Sect and he puts it under a mental column labelled, “I guess, but only if it’s absolutely, 100%, life or death necessary”. Not very promising.

In the end, there’s really only one place he can think of that’s at all viable, and so after a few days of Wei Ying eating his fill as often as necessary and sleeping almost constantly in their room in an inn a few towns away from Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng gathers his brother up with their few meager belongings and begins the trek to a place few people know about, even among the Great Sects.

It takes another two days of travel at the pace Wei Ying is capable of maintaining with him, and then a day after that of looking for what he knows to search for in the area, but finally he finds it. Or, rather, it finds them.

“Where are we?” Wei Ying chirps from where he’s perched on his back like a sack of potatoes (potatoes with very knobbly knees that won’t quit squeezing his ribs) and Jiang Cheng shushes him, but it’s too late.

“Stop!” Jiang Cheng obeys the command and between one blink and the next there are two women blocking the path in front of him, nearly identical down to the numerous weapons strapped to their belts. And the knives leveled at his throat.

He can’t put his hands up or Wei Ying will fall off his back, but he does his absolute best to look as unthreatening as possible.

“You are trespassing on the lands of the Meishan Yu. Turn back.”

“I need to see the Grandmistress.”

“Turn back.”

“Please,” he adds, desperation beginning to bleed into his voice. Wei Ying is very still on his back, mostly hidden in his cloak, and Jiang Cheng can feel him trembling faintly. “Hold on tight,” he whispers before he lets go to brandish Zidian on his wrist for the two women to see. “I am her grandson. I need to see her, it’s urgent.”

The two guards share a glance with each other and then drift forward in sync to study the weapon on his wrist. There’s no mistaking it for anything but an artefact of the Meishan Yu. And everyone in the cultivation world knows who its current master is.

“Demonstrate,” one of the women says, the one on the left who he’s pretty sure is the one who ordered them to stop. He nods and takes a step back before holding his wrist out to the side and letting Zidian spark to life, feeding his fear and desperation into it until the whip uncoils and he’s got his hand wrapped around the hilt. Lightning spits and arcs from the whip as he lifts it to crack once into thin air before he withdraws his energy and it goes dormant again.

“I need to speak to my grandmother.”

For too long there’s nothing but the sound of the wind through the trees, Wei Ying’s too-quick breathing in his ear, and two unreadable gazes fixed on his as the Yu warriors size him up. Without any external cue that he can see, the pair of them suddenly turn at the exact same moment and begin walking up the path. Jiang Cheng scrambles to get a good hold on Wei Ying’s knee again so he can follow after them. 

----

“So - you’re from the future.”

“Yes, Popo.”

“And this boy is going to ruin it?”

Jiang Cheng looks over at where Wei Ying is studying a rack of retired spiritual swords so closely his nose is almost touching the side of one of the blades, his little puffs of breath fogging up the cold surface.

“Wei Ying!” he barks. “Not so close!”

“Yes Yin-gege,” he says dutifully, without moving an inch. Jiang Cheng slumps forward to brace his elbow on his knee so he can hide his eyes in his palm. 

“That means step away from the swords, Wei Ying.”

“Yes Yin-gege,” he says again, but this time he at least shuffles two steps back. And then he leans even further forward to keep squinting at the steel at precisely the same distance.

“He seems truly monstrous,” Grandmistress Yu says with an indulgent chuckle.

“You haven’t seen what he’s capable of later,” Jiang Cheng mutters, his tone dark. “The things he did...what I’ve seen..”

“Mm, I believe you, very ominous. What would you like me to do about it?” Grandmistress Yu is just as pragmatic as Jiang Cheng remembers her, and just as emotional alongside it. She had taken one look at Wei Wuxian hidden in his cloak and ushered him out to ply him with sweets and tea and an affectionate ruffle to his hair. Not for the first time in his life he wonders how his life could have been different if he’d been brought to Meishan Yu to be raised rather than staying in Lotus Pier.

“I don’t know,” he admits with a growl of frustration, though he’s quick to check himself when Grandmistress Yu raises an admonishing eyebrow. “Sorry, Popo. I really don’t know. I just..I figured if I’m here, now, maybe it means everyone can maybe..try again. Growing up with me and jiejie in Lotus Pier wasn’t...it led to such terrible things, in the end. Maybe things can be different if he’s raised somewhere else. Maybe people won’t have to die.”

“A-Li won’t have to die, you mean.”

“There are plenty of others! He killed so many cultivators! And Wen Ruohan, he -”

“Oh yes, you leave that snake to me. But we’re discussing this parentless, future-evil child you’ve brought into my home. What are you looking for, A-Cheng? Someone to adopt him for you? A wife to raise him with yourself?”

“No!” Grandmistress Yu raises her eyebrow again at that outburst and he ducks his head, but this one he won’t apologize for. “No, Popo. I don’t want a wife or..anybody. But thank you. I don’t think I could even raise him, anyway. I don’t even know if I can stay here or if I have to try to go back or..I don’t know.”

“Hmph. I always thought you Great Sect Leaders always have an answer for everything,” she needles, a glint in her eye.

“Who would have an answer for this?!”

“Well. Probably Wei Wuxian,” she chuckles and, as if summoned, Wei Ying suddenly pops up next to her, his little face peering over the edge of the table between them.

“Hey, that’s me! Popo, can I have more sweets?”

“Of course xiao-Ying,” she tuts, pulling the plate of little honey cakes close enough for Wei Ying to reach over and snag one.

“Don’t touch anything with sticky hands!” Jiang Cheng turns in his seat to call as Wei Ying promptly runs off again to resume studying the weapons lining the walls as he munches on his cake.

“Okay Yin-gege!!”

“He’s a cute little thing, isn’t he?” Grandmaster Yu chuckles, though she finally relents when Jiang Cheng gives her a look that can only be described as ‘morose’. “A-Cheng, you worry too much!” she chides. “You can stay here for now, with xiao-Ying of course, while you get things figured out. You’re safe here, you know that. And if everything you’ve told me really happens so far from now I’d say you’ve got plenty of time to figure out what’s going on.”

“Popo..”

“Aiyah, A-Cheng, I know. I’m sure it’s very disorienting to be here from the future, but we’ll figure it out! And anyway, you’ve already changed things just by stopping your father from finding the boy. No matter what happens next, you’ve changed the future. Best to just take things one day at a time, there’s only moving forward.”

“What a nightmare,” he mutters into his hands as he scrubs them at his face. “I need to go back to where I came from, I believe. Whether things are different there or not, I don’t think it’s a great idea for me to exist here at the same time that I’m a child in Lotus Pier.”

“Mm I suspect you’re right about that. You said Zidian recognized your mother and you simultaneously?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting, I’ll want to look more closely at that one day. Until then - we’ve got all sorts of unorthodox cultivation manuals in our library. Perhaps something we find there can help you.”

Jiang Cheng drops his hands at that to stare at Grandmistress Yu, who scoffs at him as she picks up a honey cake for herself.

“Don’t look at me like that, A-Cheng. We’re known for crafting unusual first class spiritual tools and utilizing thoroughly unique combat methods. Do you really think we limit ourselves to the hidebound orthodoxies the other Sects do? Open your mind a bit, child, you’ll be much more content in life for it. Xiao-Ying, come talk to your Popo.”

Jiang Cheng watches in stunned silence as Grandmistress Yu pulls Wei Wuxian up onto her lap to talk to him, indulging him and his chatter easily as he talks, clearly thrilled to have an attentive audience.

Research. He can do research. He can research the hell out of unorthodox cultivation manuals, and one way or another he’s going to go home.

----

“Yin-gege, look what Popo gave me!!”

“Not now, A-Xian, I’m busy.”

“Yin-gegeeeeee,” Wei Wuxian whines, flinging himself into his lap and laying across him with one arm flung over his eyes. Jiang Cheng turns a page in his book and tries very very hard not to think about this exact scene playing out almost identically in Cloud Recesses in less than a decade from now. He really doesn’t want to compare himself to Lan Wangji but the resemblance is mildly uncanny in this particular moment. “It’s really really cool! It’s just like your bracelet!”

Well. That’s one way to get his attention.

Jiang Cheng snaps the book shut and looks down at the boy in his lap. Over the last few months in Meishan Wei Wuxian has gained all the appropriate baby fat for his age and is now, obnoxiously, cuter than ever. A fact which he absolutely uses to his advantage, no one will ever convince Jiang Cheng otherwise. Right now Wei Wuxian is grinning up at him so widely his eyes are nearly shut and sticking his right hand up towards Jiang Cheng’s face to show him a jet black bracelet, currently far too loose on him but it’s clear he’ll grow into the fit of it nicely.

“Popo made that for you?”

“Uh-huh. She won’t tell me what it does yet,though, she said I have to learn how to talk to it and ask it myself. But isn’t it so cool?! Maybe it’ll make lightning like yours and we could be like twins!”

Jiang Cheng pauses at that and can’t help but cast a slightly guilty glance at his book set aside on the table. Raising Wei Wuxian, even temporarily, has become full of these little moments - moments where Wei Wuxian is certain their future together is as set in stone as the present, while Jiang Cheng is desperately researching how to leave.

He refuses to let the reversed circumstances make him at all sympathetic to the Wei Wuxian of their adulthood after the Sunshot Campaign, though he can at least acknowledge the dark humor of whatever or whoever is in charge of deciding such twists of fate. The brother who was left behind is now the one attempting to escape. Funny, in a sick way. If he ever meets the author of his fate he’s going to punch them.

“Yin-gege, are you ever going to help train me to fight like the others do?”

He’s going to punch them hard.

“No, A-Xian.”

“Why?”

“I don’t fight like the Meishan do and you shouldn’t learn different styles when they’re trying to teach you theirs.” It’s not strictly a lie but it still sits sour on his tongue.

“Oh okay! Yin-gege?”

“What, A-Xian?”

“Popo said there might be one day when you’re not going to be here anymore.”

Jiang Cheng goes still and he looks down at Wei Wuxian still laying in his lap, his cheerful face unusually solemn all the sudden.

“Did she?” he whispers. It’s surprisingly gutting to hear it from Wei Wuxian’s mouth. 

“Mhm. When do we have to leave?”

Oh - that’s worse. That’s so much worse.

“A-Xian..I...we’re not...I can’t take you with me.”

Wei Wuxian blinks up at him and Jiang Cheng watches in horror as it clicks. As understanding floods his little face and his eyes fill quickly with tears.

“Oh,” he manages to choke out and Jiang Cheng tugs him upright quickly to crush him to his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, tears springing to his eyes without his permission. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He repeats it over and over into Wei Wuxian’s thin, trembling shoulder, but it feels so painfully inadequate. How can he even begin to apologize for this? For everything? For horrors that haven’t even happened to him yet, and for the sorrows that have?

“If you’re sorry then don’t go!” Wei Wuxian demands, petulant and sure that the solution is just that easy, in the simple way that children so often try to solve their problems. Jiang Cheng manages a watery, strangled sort of laugh and holds on a little tighter.

“It’s not that simple, A-Xian. I wish it could be. I do.” 

Wei Wuxian clings to him hard enough that his nails leave little scratches in the back of his neck and Jiang Cheng still feels like it’s not enough to make up for all the years without him, all the years of pain and misunderstandings, or what he still has to do no matter how much it’s going to upset them both. 

Grandmistress Yu finds them like that just before dinner. Their tears have mostly dried but Jiang Cheng can’t stand to let go of his brother, and Wei Wuxian doesn’t seem inclined to let go either.

“A-Cheng,” she says quietly as she lights some of the candles around the room to chase away the evening shadows. “I found something.”

----

“I’ll make sure he meets you and A-Li,” Grandmistress Yu promises him a week later. The array they’ve agreed is their best bet to get him home is glowing the same sickening shade of blood-red as the one that had brought him here. “And I’ll tell him what I feel is important for him to know about all of this. I’ll help him, A-Cheng. Trust your Popo.”

Jiang Cheng nods and tries to pretend that he’s not clenching his teeth against the pressure of the lump in his throat. Grandmistress Yu reaches up to caress his cheek and brush his tears away, an unconscious echo of Jiang Fengmian’s final goodbye to him. Needless to say that doesn’t help him stop crying.

“No tears, A-Cheng, come along. He’ll find you when you get home, I’ll make sure of it. He’ll know to find you.”

Jiang Cheng nods again and turns resolutely away from Wei Wuxian’s tiny form, sleeping soundly in Grandmistress Yu’s bed on the other side of the room. It’ll take a couple of days for the drugs they gave him to wear off enough for him to wake. By then Jiang Cheng will be long gone, and Wei Wuxian will have to move on, grow up without him. Without their family. Fresh tears drip down his cheeks as he steps forward into the array. No sooner does he center himself in it just so than it flares blindingly bright around him, obscuring everything but the shadow of his hands through his eyelids as he raises them in front of his face to shield his eyes from the glare.

When the light fades, he keeps his eyes closed. He’s sobbing anyway, so there’s really no point in opening his eyes yet. Jiang Cheng drops to his knees and wraps his arms around his chest and he wishes he could hold his brother. Over the months of raising him as A-Xian, of being his Yin-gege, he’s had to let go of his anger entirely to avoid taking it out on him, so young and defenseless and still so wonderfully, beautifully innocent.

Now, all that fills him in the vacuum left by his anger is the gaping wound of a sibling he’ll never have again. He had told Grandmistress Yu everything he could about their lives and what he knew of the political intrigues that had been their ruin. He had needed to make sure she knew so she could prepare for the events that would unfold between then and now, but he’d also needed someone still alive to understand just how much he loved - loves - his brother. No one is alive now to remember just how inseparable they were, how they would both be willing to either kill or die for each other with no questions asked.

He had needed to remind himself of it, most of all.

But all of it, now, is gone. He knows he’s not in Meishan anymore. The world is quiet around him, too quiet for the middle of a sect. He’s in the woods again, the sound of trees rustling and the call of a night bird underpinning the ragged sobs tearing from his chest.

“A-Xian!” he manages, trying to give a voice to his pain, a name, to speak it into the air so maybe it won’t weigh quite so heavily on his heart. “Wei Wuxian!!!”

“Jiang Cheng?!”

Jiang Cheng’s head snaps up and he forces his eyes open as there’s the sudden sound of hurried steps crashing through the underbrush. 

“Jiang Cheng!”

He can only stare in shock as Wei Wuxian himself - a grown man - comes skidding to a stop on his knees in front of him, frantically patting him down looking for injury, for a good reason for him to be on the ground in the middle of the woods crying like he’s lost Lotus Pier and his parents all over again. 

“You’re here.”

Wei Wuxian laughs nervously, still patting him down. “Yeah? Where else would I be, huh? What’s wrong, are you hurt? I can’t find anything.”

Jiang Cheng grabs both of Wei Wuxian’s wrists and the gesture forces the man to meet his eyes, his own wide and startled. 

“Wait - what in the world are you wearing, A-Cheng?” Wei Wuxian laughs as he pats him down again, this time just tugging on his robes - the same ones he had been given soon after he had decided his Jiang robes were too conspicuous to keep wearing in Meishan. “Is this Yu Sect? Where did you -” Jiang Cheng watches as Wei Wuxian’s eyes somehow manage to go even wider.

“Yin-gege?” he breathes, as if afraid of the answer, and Jiang Cheng isn’t sure if the sound that escapes him is another sob or a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks. “I didn’t want to leave you like that I swear I didn’t, A-Xian, please, believe me-”

“Oh A-Cheng come here,” Wei Wuxian chuckles, pulling him in for a hug and holding him tight. “Shh, it’s okay. Popo told me everything, she wrote every bit of it down for me, it’s okay. That was so long ago for me, you don’t have to be sorry. Come here, I’m here. I thought this might happen soon, we’re the right age for it hm? It’s alright, don’t cry.”

“Everyone else - Lotus Pier. Jiejie -”

“All alive, everything’s fine, Jiang Cheng. Shh. Just calm down first and then I’ll catch you up on everything, alright?”

Jiang Cheng nods and gulps in deep breaths as he clutches Wei Wuxian’s robes, buries his face in his brother’s hair. 

“I’ve missed you, Wei Ying,” he whispers, his voice breaking. Wei Wuxian shushes him again and rubs a hand slowly up and down his back.

“I missed you, too, Yin-gege, A-Cheng, my didi. But I’m right here. You’re alright.”

There’s a long pause and then, as if lifting the weight of the world off both of their shoulders with the depth of his sigh, Wei Wuxian adds, “We’re alright.”

#the untamed fanfic #Wei Wuxian #Jiang Cheng #prompt fill #fix-it AU #I'm gonna be cross posting this to my Ao3 as well of course #hope y'all like it! #I'm not totally sure if I did the prompt justice but I may or may not have cried a couple of times while I was writing it #hopefully my tears count for something lol #It's a happy ending though I promise!

[veliseraptor]

giving my brain a kick gentle nudge in the pants by doing another one of these 150 words meme things. eight options! my yi city obsession still showing whoops

send me up to three numbers and I’ll write 150 words in the relevant fic. hit me with it. if you don’t recognize a title/want to know what something is, you can check the wip masterlist here.

1. Frustration broke through Xue Yang’s focus. “The only reason you have him here at all is because of me, Song-daozhang,” he said, voice turning vicious. “If it weren’t for me he’d be gone completely, nothing left to heal, and you’d be all alone, forever. The only reason you’re getting a chance at seeing him again is because I kept him here.” 

If it weren’t for you he would still be alive.

Xue Yang flinched. Very slightly, his eyes flicking away from Song Lan for less than a breath before they fixed on him again. Something had shuttered in his expression when he did. “You were the one who pushed him away,” he said, voice turning sweetly vicious. “You left him all alone. Just think, Song-daozhang. If you hadn’t done that-”

Xue Yang’s voice cut off. Song Lan was standing, holding his fuchen by his side, and Xue Yang was holding his hand to his face, looking genuinely surprised. Song Lan’s hand trembled slightly and he forced it to still.

You cannot, he said, he wrote, blame me for what you did to Xingchen. (Walking Far From Home)

2. Flat on his stomach, arm extended to its full length, Jiang Cheng stared down at Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian stared up at him. 

No, said part of him, strangely removed from the proceedings. This isn’t happening. This is a nightmare and you are going to wake up from it. 

He’d had those dreams. Back at Nightless City, Wei Wuxian hanging over the edge of the cliff but this time he was the one holding on, not Lan Wangji. And he kept trying to pry his fingers loose but couldn’t make them let go. 

Only those were dreams, and he wasn’t waking up. (Slippage)

3. Xue Yang clocked the little blind girl immediately for an opportunistic, thieving little gutter rat, and he was absolutely right. 

It was obvious she’d latched onto Xiao Xingchen as a combination of protection and meal ticket, and she seemed to think of him as hers, like she got the monopoly on taking advantage of the idiot just because she’d found him first. 

If nothing else Xue Yang had to admit he could admire the entrepreneurial spirit. She’d seen a chance and taken it. Made it easier to understand how the fuck she could’ve stayed alive this long, blind and on her own. (two faces, three knives)

4. There were cracks in every wall. Xue Yang was good at finding them.

The wall the sects had put up around the Burial Mounds was harder to crack than most. But Xue Yang’d always been good at getting in places he wasn’t supposed to be, and he really wanted to get into this one.

Yeah, sure, maybe the Yiling Laozu’s lair had been picked over like a dead cow’s carcass but there was always a chance something’d been missed, some small thing that didn’t look important to the idiots who’d sacked the place but could still be useful to him.

Maybe the last piece to fill in those infuriating fucking gaps in his notes. The thing that’d make it all fall into place.

Something that would tell him how to fix Xiao Xingchen. (a symphony for the departed)

5. “Lemme try something,” Xue Yang said. He grabbed Jin Guangyao’s wrists and brought them up to his throat. Jin Guangyao’s fingers clenched reflexively, squeezing, and Xue Yang’s face lit up. Jin Guangyao stared at him, almost mesmerized. 

“Yeah,” Xue Yang said, his voice slightly strained. “Like that. Do it.” (choke chain)

6. “Have you seen my brother,” she said, finally, careful to keep her voice even. A grin spread across Xue Yang’s face, his eyes lighting up, and the hairs on the back of Wen Qing’s neck stood on end. 

“Yeah,” he said. “As it happens, I have.”

Wen Qing’s fingers tightened around the orange. “Is he alive?” 

Xue Yang laughed, bright and sharp. “Well, no,” he said. “Not really, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”  (fall apart, destroy, release)

7. Jiang Yanli didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to talk to this stranger about her didi, and she didn’t have to. “Leave,” she said.

“Okay, okay,” Chengmei said, hopping to his feet and stretching languidly. “I’m going. Just one more question?” 

Jiang Yanli leveled the hardest stare she could manage in his direction.

He cocked his head that little bit to the side again and said, “how long have you been practicing demonic cultivation, jiejie?” (this world is gonna break your heart)

8. Xiao Xingchen met his future boyfriend in an alley by a dumpster, semi-conscious and covered in blood.

He’d smelled him before he’d seen him - as much as he’d seen him at all, which was ‘barely.’ Even then, his sight was already almost all the way gone, corrective lenses or no. But he could see enough to make out the body wedged in the corner created by the back of a dumpster and a wall.

“Holy shit,” a-Qing had said, grabbing onto his elbow and yanking. “No you don’t, don’t even think-”

He’d tugged his way gently free of her and walked over, relieved to hear breathing even if it was quiet and raspy. “Hello?” he’d said reaching out to find the arm, which twitched. “Can you hear me?” (Redux)

this is not all of the things I’m working on obvs it is just the things I’m feeling most like I can focus on at the moment

#fic excerpt #confessions of a frustrated writer #150 words meme #meme

[rosethornewrites]

Fic: the thread may stretch or tangle but it will never break, ch. 15

Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī & Wēn Qíng, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn

Characters: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Wēn Qíng, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Granny Wēn, Lán Yuàn | Lán Sīzhuī, Wēn Remnants, Wen Meilin (OC), Fourth Uncle, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén

Additional Tags: Pre-Slash, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Secrets, Crying, Masks, Soulmates, Truth, Self-Esteem Issues, Regret, It was supposed to be a one-shot, Fix-It, Eventual Relationships, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, wwx needs a hug, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Filial Piety, Handfasting, Phobias, Sleeping Together, Fear, Panic Attacks, Love Confessions, Getting Together, First Kiss, Kissing, Boys Kissing, Family, and they were married, Bathing/Washing, Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, Feels, Sex Education, Implied Sexual Content, First Time, Aftercare, Morning After, Afterglow, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Torture, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Hand Jobs, Chronic Pain, Biting, Conversations

Summary: The conversation continues, and the Jiang siblings react.

Notes: This chapter was hard to write, but I finally got there! Lots of dialog, which had to be balanced. Updates are slow. Life is busy. Lots of responsibilities, and non-productive insomnia. Honestly, the most research I did for this chapter was on family and martial family names.

AO3 link

Chapters:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

--------------------

Wei Ying’s words only seem to echo in the courtyard, their gravity giving them weight that feeds the illusion. The Jiang siblings stare at him, looking concerned but puzzled. 

“But you found her,” Jiang Wanyin says slowly. “She restored my core.”

“I never found her,” Wei Ying says, looking at his bowl on the table rather than his brother. “I didn’t know what to do, A-Cheng—you wanted to die!”

The words are said in a rush, with remembered grief. For once, Jiang Wanyin seems struck dumb, and Lan Wangji is glad of it—Wei Ying needs no interruptions. Already his posture is defensive. 

“I looked for a way. Went through Wen Qing’s whole library. And I found a theory.”

His voice breaks at the last word, and Lan Wangji squeezes his hand, letting Wei Ying know he is here for him. He knows this reminds his husband of the decision he made, to what for most would seem like an impossible choice. 

“A-Xian, what theory?”

Jiang Yanli, despite her makeup, looks wan and afraid. 

“In her papers. Treatments she’d theorized,” Wei Ying clarifies. “It was the only place I found any options. And I didn’t know what else to do.”

He’s stalling, but inadvertently drawing out the pain. Lan Wangji squeezes his hand again, unable to resist the urge to comfort him. 

Zidian sparks and Jiang Wanyin glares, his patience spent.

“What did you do?” he hisses. 

Lan Wangji is fairly certain they’ve already realized and are hoping they’re wrong. He rubs the back of Wei Ying’s hand with his thumb. 

“It was a theory about core transplants,” Wei Ying says. 

The shifting of emotions on Jiang Wanyin’s face makes his understanding clear. Jiang Yanli’s brows furrow, her expression one of confusion. 

“Tell me you didn’t,” he hissed. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

Wei Ying flinches—he can tell him no such thing, at least not without lying, because he did. Instead he silently holds his free wrist out to Jiang Wanyin, as he had only days before with Xichen, inviting him to see the truth himself. 

The Jiang sect leader recoils, physically leaving his seat and backing from the table, his face a mask of horror.

“No,” he whispers, his voice hoarse.

And so it is Jiang Yanli who reaches forward, sends her qi through Wei Ying’s meridians, and finds the emptiness where his core once sat. Lan Wangji can tell the moment she realizes, as tears spill over, cutting furrows in her makeup. 

Wei Ying immediately panics, pulling his hand from Lan Wangji’s grip, dabbing at her face with his sleeves.

“Shijie, you’ll ruin your dress. It’s okay, don’t cry.”

“It’s just a dress,” she says, her voice hitching. “And it’s not okay, Xianxian. Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you let us help you? You’ve been suffering for so long and…”

She lets out a sob so deep it seems like it comes from her soul. Wei Ying lets out a little distressed noise, his hands fluttering helplessly, as though he wants to hug her but fears sullying her wedding dress. 

“Wei Wuxian, why?” Jiang Wanyin asks, his chest heaving as he fights his emotions. “I didn’t ask you to do that!”

He’s still standing backed away from the table, unwilling or unable to come closer. 

“You wanted to die,” Wei Ying says helplessly. “You said if you couldn’t avenge Lotus Pier alive or dead you’d rather be dead. You’re my brother—what else could I have done?”

Lan Wangji knows there is more, implied—after losing so much, how could Wei Ying stand to lose his brother? How much family could he stand to lose, losing his parents young, and then his entire martial family with the fall of Lotus Pier?

“I’d rather lose my golden core than that,” he finally whispers. “You could rebuild the sect with my core.”

“You could’ve rebuilt the sect with your core,” Jiang Wanyin retorts with a scowl.

Wei Ying smiles, but it’s a twisted, broken thing. 

“No. I’ve always been whatever the gentry decides I am: the worthless son of a servant overreaching, sect leader’s secret bastard, weapon of war, and now Yiling Laozu. No one would accept me rebuilding the Jiang sect, even without the demonic cultivation, A-Cheng. I’d be a usurper at best, never taken seriously.”

“You would’ve proved them all wrong!” Jiang Wanyin protests. 

Wei Ying shakes his head. 

“Nothing will ever be enough. I’d never be able to restore the Jiang sect to its full glory. Only you could do that, A-Cheng.”

“He is correct,” Lan Wangji interjects when it looks like Jiang Wanyin might argue over it. “They have never accepted him, even after he helped win the war. Wei Ying has never been thanked or shown respect, only belittled and vilified. He would never have been permitted to be sect leader.”

Jiang Wanyin frowns at that but doesn’t try to argue. He cannot deny the truth. 

“If they knew I took you to Wen Qing and you had died in her care, they’d say I killed you myself for power, that I worked with the Wens to destroy Lotus Pier, even. I’d have been executed, and shijie would be all alone and without a sect.”

There’s a touch of bitterness in his husband’s voice, and Lan Wangji touches his elbow, just to remind him he is there for him. 

“Lotus Pier was my fault, so I guess they’d be part right,” Wei Ying mutters, the naked grief in his voice heart-wrenching. 

Lan Wangji wonders if perhaps Wei Ying’s difficulty after the war was being in a place filled, at least metaphorically, with the ghosts of those for whose deaths he felt responsible. He had, by his own admission to Xichen, spent much of the time following the war drunk, until he liberated the work camp, using it as a way of coping with his trauma—from the fall of Lotus Pier, from the surgery, from Burial Mounds, from the resentful energy, from the war…  All of it. 

Perhaps rescuing these people has been his way of trying to even the scales on a debt that isn’t truly his. 

“A-Xian, it wasn’t your fault. They were always going to attack Lotus Pier,” Jiang Yanli protests. “A-Niang would never have tolerated a supervisory office in our home.”

She’s still crying, and Wei Ying mops at her face so her tears won’t ruin her dress. Her eyes seem to search his face, desperate for a sign he believes her. 

“It was never your fault,” she insists.

Wei Ying swallows hard. 

“Madam Yu said—”

“A-Niang was wrong,” Jiang Wanyin snarls. 

“And I know a-die told you to protect us, but who was going to protect you?” Jiang Yanli asks.

When he avoids her gaze, she reaches forward to cup his cheek. 

“We didn’t protect you. You’d been whipped with zidian and lost your home, too, but you’re the one who took care of us. No one took care of you, but you’re our brother, my sweet didi.”

Wei Ying’s breath hitches, and instinctively Lan Wangji pulls him close, holds him from behind gently, hopes he can take strength from the embrace. It’s not a full embrace, the position awkward, more of a press of chest against back, his hand a light pressure on his hip, but it seems to help, regardless. It takes a few moments for Wei Ying to compose himself enough that he is willing to release him, and during that time Lan Wangji avoids looking at his siblings, not wishing to see their reactions. 

A-Yuan is abruptly tugging on Wei Ying’s robes.

“A-Die sad? A-Die need a hug?”

Somehow Wei Ying manages a smile for the boy and pulls him up on his lap.

“Ah, my sweet son. That’s exactly what a-die needs.”

The child is happy to oblige, and then he lets Wen Ning take him back.

“You told him to call me guma, not shigu,” Jiang Yanli points out softly. “A-Cheng called him zhizi, not shizhi. And you told him to call A-Cheng shushu, not shishu. You know you’re our brother.”

She sounds almost forlorn, a sharp contrast from her fire when she claimed him as her didi on Phoenix Mountain to Jin Zixun.

Jiang Wanyin takes a step toward the table. 

“Lotus Pier is rebuilt, and so is the Jiang sect,” he interjects. “You’re coming back. I’m giving it back. We’ll undo it.”

The offer is startling, something Lan Wangji didn’t expect from him, and the soft gasp from Wei Ying tells him it is a surprise to him as well. Wei Ying shakes his head. 

“I don’t think it’s possible,” he says tiredly. 

“Why the hell not?!”

He seems almost affronted by the rejection. Lan Wangji can feel Wei Ying shiver, knows he’s struggling. His husband has had to have so many difficult conversations in quick succession, and this one is the hardest so far. And the offer to return the golden core seems to have thrown him. 

“Scarring,” Lan Wangji answers for him, remembering Wen Qing’s words. 

Silence reigns for a moment, the Jiang siblings looking upset, clearly wanting more detail. 

Wei Ying speaks haltingly, tells the tale he hasn’t told Lan Wangji, of being caught in the tea house in Yiling, of trying to escape, of Wen Zhuliu punching him right in the lower dantian, his stitches tearing at the impact. Of being beaten by Wen Chao’s men and burned by Wang Lingjiao.

“I had to get them to leave Yiling,” he said. “If they caught you coming down the mountain, it would’ve all been for nothing. I thought they’d toss me in a cell in Qishan. I didn’t expect Burial Mounds.”

Much of the rest of the story is the same as he told Xichen, this part having been omitted before likely to avoid having to talk about the Core-Melting Hand. This time, though, he also talks about the sword from the Xuanwu cave, the one filled with resentful energy, how it helped him survive Burial Mounds, that he crafted the seal from it during the war to help win it. Not, as the rumors suggested, from Xue Yang’s still-missing piece.

Much of this is new information to Lan Wangji, painting an even clearer picture of how incredibly impossible the odds were against Wei Ying’s survival. 

Wei Ying continues to dab at his sister’s face with his sleeve as he talks, keeping her makeup from running onto her dress as she cries. In the quiet that follows, her soft crying seems to echo in the courtyard.

A-Yuan vocalizes that she needs a hug, and Wen Ning murmurs softly about her special dress that needs to be kept clean. 

“Later,” Wen Ning says, and A-Yuan is assuaged. 

Jiang Wanyin has, during the course of the telling, returned to the table to sit heavily. The customary pinched expression normally on his face is gone, his anger drained away for the moment. 

“All those times I harassed you about your sword, about carrying it and polishing it,” Jiang Wanyin whispers, his voice choked. 

“It’s too heavy for me to wield for more than a minute or so,” Wei Ying says hollowly. “Even to polish it.”

He had taken joy in his cultivation and even having given it up willingly, Lan Wangji knows it’s still something that hurts him deeply. He himself remembers the joy of crossing swords with him on the rooftop, what feels like a lifetime ago now. Bittersweet, never to happen again. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jiang Wanyin finally asks. “You convinced me to expel you from the sect, dammit. Why would you tell Lan Wangji and not us? After he wanted to take you back to Gusu for punishment!”

“He did not tell me until I discovered his golden core was missing,” Lan Wangji says.

Wei Ying is guiltless in that, and he will not let him be blamed. 

“I wished to take him to Gusu for protection and healing, not punishment,” he adds. 

Lan Wangji could see, throughout the war, that Wei Ying was suffering, that something was wrong, had wanted desperately to help him. He wonders if Jiang Wanyin is partly behind Wei Ying’s misconceptions about that, and tries not to be peeved—how much heartache could have been prevented? 

“Wei-g-gongzi did not intend to t-tell anyone,” Wen Ning contributes. 

His voice is sad, with a hint of disapproval for Wei Ying’s decision to withhold it. A-Yuan seems to decide he, too, needs a hug, throwing his arms around the fierce corpse’s neck. 

“Then how do you know?” Jiang Wanyin demands. 

“Wen Ning assisted Wen Qing with the core transplant,” Wei Ying says before Wen Ning can answer. “They were the only people who knew, until Lan Zhan found out.”

He does not, Lan Wangji notes, tell how, clearly sparing Wen Ning more ill-placed ire from Jiang Wanyin. It feels odd to be grateful his husband was injured, but without it, he might have walked away, down the mountain, ignorant of Wei Ying’s suffering. 

“Is that why you stayed, Lan-er-gongzi?”

Jiang Yanli’s gaze is level despite her tears, her eyes sharp, and Lan Wangji feels as though she is weighing him still. 

“En,” he answers simply. “I could only help him if I stayed.”

He had known for some time that his uncle was unlikely to help Wei Ying heal, that hiding him in Gusu would stifle him and destroy him just as it had destroyed his mother. Lan Wangji could continue to walk away, or he could stay. 

“And the marriage?”

Lan Wangji isn’t quite certain what she is asking—perhaps the reason he told Wei Ying of the handfasting?

“It could protect him, even if it was simply political.”

She smiles, but it’s tight. 

“No, I mean would you have told him, if you hadn’t learned?”

He doesn’t need time to consider the question; he assumed Wei Ying would reject him, as he had rejected the prospect of coming with him to Gusu. He had miscommunicated and misunderstood. 

“No,” he says, welcoming her judgment, as he judges himself. “I expected it would be a burden to him, unwelcome.”

Wei Ying startles at the admission, glancing at him. Lan Wangji hates that he sees guilt in his expression over the misunderstanding, runs his hand across his shoulder to comfort him. 

And realizes when his husband’s eyes go a little glassy that he’s run his hand over the hidden bite mark. 

How could he have thought this would be unwelcome?

Jiang Wanyin snorts, and Lan Wangji’s ears burn at the sense of being seen doing something illicit.

“The way he mooned over you? Talked about you all the time.”

He sounds long-suffering, as though Lan Wangji should have been aware of Wei Ying’s regard. Now, of course, he can see nothing else. But before...

“And then after the war, he didn’t,” Jiang Yanli murmurs.

After Wei Ying had survived Burial Mounds and come out scarred and afraid. 

“When I told him, Wei Ying tried to convince me he was unworthy,” Lan Wangji says. “I disagreed.”

Wei Ying tried to push him away before, when they were reunited after his disappearance, and Lan Wangji now knows it was out of a belief that he would somehow taint him.

“He feels himself unworthy of protection and love,” he adds.

A troubled look passes over Jiang Wanyin’s face, and Jiang Yanli just looks sad.

“That would be a-niang’s influence again,” she says softly. “A-Xian, we should have protected you better.”

Wei Ying shakes his head as though to deny their culpability, and she takes his hands. 

“No, A-Xian. She was wrong about your worth, and I hate that she cut you and A-Cheng down so much.”

Jiang Wanyin looks uncomfortable, and Lan Wangji doubts it’s because of his sister’s lack of filial piety. 

“She always compared me to you,” he grates after a moment. “I was never good enough, because you were better. And now you’ll always be better.”

Lan Wangji bristles on Wei Ying’s behalf, but his husband speaks first. 

“I didn’t do it to compete with you, A-Cheng,” Wei Ying says tiredly. “What the fuck was the point of competing when you were dying? I just wanted you to live.”

“And what about you?” Jiang Wanyin retorts. “What about your life? You think I want it to be a competition, you asshole? You told me to abandon you, but you wouldn’t tell me the truth! You keep trying to throw yourself away!”

Wei Ying cringes, and Lan Wangji returns to holding him, his own anger fizzling out as he recognizes the feelings behind Jiang Wanyin’s. 

“You didn’t expect to live this long, did you?” 

The Jiang sect leader’s tone implies it’s not really a question but a realization, and Wei Ying’s flinch implies he’s right. Lan Wangji can’t stop his hold from tightening on Wei Ying, Jiang Wanyin’s words making him feel ill. 

He has known his zhiji didn’t expect to live as long as he has, but neither of them has spoken of it. Wei Ying managed to survive Indoctrination and the Xuanwu, the fall of Lotus Pier and massacre of most of his adopted clan, the removal of his golden core, the fall and entrapment in Burial Mounds, the war… Lan Wangji hates that Jiang Wanyin is right in this, and hates even more that Wei Ying has faced so many situations that could have killed him. 

“You keep protecting other people, but you won’t let anyone protect you!”

Jiang Wanyin is practically panting in anger.

“You always need to be the hero, Wei Wuxian! But all the heroes die!”

He sounds dangerously close to tears, and his words send a jolt of dread through Lan Wangji—just the idea of Wei Ying dying sends his stomach plummeting. He can feel Wei Ying shiver against him. 

Jiang Yanli lets out a long breath, trying to compose herself. She gives Jiang Wanyin a warning look, and he scowls, looking away but clearly making an effort to calm down. 

“We can only move forward,” she says. “A-Xian will just need to learn to let us protect him.”

“He is learning,” Lan Wangji tells her. 

She manages a watery smile.

“When you’re hurt, it hurts us, Xianxian. Please let us help you.”

Wei Ying seems beyond words, and just nods. A tremor runs through him, and Lan Wangji knows he’s exhausted what energy he had left for the day with this conversation. His sister seems to sense this. 

“A-Xian, you look tired.”

Again, Wei Ying only nods, but Lan Wangji is of the opinion there should be no more secrets. 

“He was nearly possessed by a resentful spirit a few days ago,” he supplies. 

Jiang Yanli gasps, and he tries not to be pleased that she will want to fix this, too. It will strengthen her resolve. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying protests, but it seems more of a token protest. 

“Fortunately, xiongzhang was visiting. He calmed it with Liebing. There are now talismans where we sleep.”

“It tried while he was sleeping?” Jiang Cheng almost demands. “Is it still so dangerous there?!”

“I fought her,” Wei Ying murmurs, almost petulant. “She was liberated in the end.”

“Not the point, Wei Wuxian!”

“A-Cheng,” Jiang Yanli scolds. “We can talk about this later. I need to change so we can go with him and talk to Wen Qing. I expect she will have more to say about it, as well.”

“J-jiejie needs some items from the market, so we need to b-buy them before we go back,” Wen Ning offers.

Jiang Yanli nods firmly.

“Then we’ll meet you in the market. And then I’ll be finally able to get a hug from my zhizi.”

A-Yuan beams at her, already recognizing himself as her nephew, and she stands and shakes out her cloak to don it. Jiang Wanyin packs the tureen back in the basket.

“Get this idiot to eat the rest of his bowl,” he says gruffly. “He’s too fucking skinny.”

“A-Cheng, language,” Wei Ying says almost automatically. 

“Jiang-shushu said a bad word?” A-Yuan asks.

Jiang Wanyin looks almost panicked for a moment, then frowns.

“Yeah, yeah, Jiang-shushu said a bad word. Don’t be like Jiang-shushu.”

He gestures to the boy, who immediately climbs off Wen Ning’s lap and runs over, latching onto his leg, and he reaches down and rubs A-Yuan’s head affectionately. 

“Get your a-die to eat the rest of his soup before he goes shopping, okay?”

A-Yuan nods emphatically, happy to be given such a task, then rushes to his a-die’s side, climbing up onto the seat Jiang Yanli vacated.

Jiang Wanyin stares at Wei Ying for a long while. 

“We’ll fix this. We’ll figure something out,” he says heavily. “I owe you.”

Wei Ying shakes his head, obstinate. 

“You don’t. I owed the Jiang sect everything.”

That proclamation doesn’t seem to sit well with his brother, who scowls.

“No. No debts between family. It’s not a debt I owe, and you didn’t owe me your Golden Core. It’s what you deserve as my brother. I let Jin Guangshan’s stupid mind games get to me.”

Jiang Yanli, back in her cloak, her wedding robes and headdress hidden, approaches him and touches his elbow, murmurs his name. Jiang Wanyin glances at her, and nods, taking the basket from her. 

“We’re the Twin Heroes of Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian, and our sect motto is to attempt the impossible. We’ll find a way.”

Jiang Wanyin sweeps out of the courtyard with Jiang Yanli, and Lan Wangji can’t help but wonder if he spends his free time planning dramatic exits. 

Wei Ying releases a long breath, sagging against him the moment they’re gone. 

“Always needs to have the last word,” he murmurs. 

It’s almost a mirror of what Lan Wangji is thinking, and he can’t help a huff of amusement. Wei Ying turns to him with a tired smile.

“Aiya, all that was missing was a cape for him to swish dramatically.”

Lan Wangji has seen some of those capes, and can easily imagine such a thing. 

“Wei Ying also has a flair for the dramatic,” he comments.

“Yeah, but I have style,” he retorts with a snort. 

He turns to the soup, thankfully not needing prompting. Lan Wangji had expected it would have gone cold by now, but it’s still steaming. Likely the scent aroused Wei Ying’s hunger. He suspects the bowl has a talisman affixed to or carved onto the bottom, meant to keep the contents warm. Somewhat extravagant, but it allows his husband to enjoy hot soup even after all the arguing, so he is grateful for the forethought. 

They will have some time, he knows. Jiang Yanli’s robes are intricate and will need to be removed with care to avoid damage, and the headdress will also be complex to remove. She will need to wash the makeup from her face as well. 

Time enough for Wei Ying to finish eating, to dawdle a little while shopping to account for the exhaustion he undoubtedly feels, to take a breath before more difficult conversation. 

They have time, a gift Wei Ying apparently didn’t expect to have, and Lan Wangji will work to ensure he has much more. 

The Twin Prides, after all, now have the support of the Twin Jades.

#the untamed #mo dao zu shi #chen qing ling #CQL #cql fanfic #cql fanfiction #cql fic #mdzs #mdzs fanfic #mdzs fanfiction #mdzs fic #untamed fanfiction #untamed fanfic #untamed fic #wei ying #wei wuxian #lan zhan #lan wangji #jiang yanli #jiang wanyin #jiang cheng #a yuan #wen ning #wen qionglin #my fanfiction

[tanoraqui]

time to clarify my personally cultivated (ha) MDZS/The Untamed timeline. which should be assumed to apply to most fics:

it’s mostly the book bc that’s what I read

BUT Wen Qing, Wen Ning, and Jiang Yanli were all at Cloud Recesses with the rest of them because a) what if female characters got more screentime and b) what if everyone was more or less friends-adjacent before they all went to war

HOWEVER there’s no Yin Iron plotline at all. the Wens were there on account of...probably still spying, and also Wen Ruohan was still playing slightly nice idk. Maybe he wanted Wen Qing to steal some texts from the Lan library

EDIT: Actually, it was definitely A Political Decision for GusuLan to invite summer guest disciples from a wide assortment of other sects, including the heirs to all the other Great Sects except QishanWen, even though Wen Chao (not heir, but direct lineage) seems to be of the right age. And it’s likewise A Political Decision for Wen Ruohan to send students from his clan anyway, daring the Lans to be so rude as to turn them away - but not his actual son(s), of course. Just the odd rural healer cousins. Mild espionage should be assumed as well, though maybe not theft of texts.

Also Edit: Realized belatedly that Wen Qing and Wen Ning being the weird rural healer cousins isn’t actually book!canon - but it is MY canon. 

Wen Qing also still had to be WRH’s personal medic while he did Sketchy Dark Magic Shit - probably, yeah, demonic cultivation. Power-hungry asshole that he is. Maybe experimental curses? But in this house, we stan people just making bad or malicious decisions WITHOUT Evil(TM) Mcguffins to egg them along, thank you very much

except the Stygian Tiger Seal, wrought from the twisted iron of a sword imbued with a thousand-plus angry spirits found in the stomach of a raging turtle nearly-god. That can stay

demonic cultivator!Su She is also SO out, FUCK you for taking away from the tragedy of Wei Wuxian’s hubris and "you want a villain? FINE” phase that immediately goes wrong when he loses control. It is so much less interesting for him to be framed in any other way

while I’m intrigued by mixing the Yi City crew into the story pre-WWX’s death, I don’t really know how it works in the show and there’s also something achingly heartbreaking about the protagonists missing these characters by like...a hair, a single year at most of wandering in just the right direction, and because of that, missing them utterly

I don’t see why we can’t have a conversation about soulmates AND a blindfolded makeout session on Phoenix Mountain. Don’t be cowards

in fact, I cannot emphasize this enough: absolutely all sexual activity in the book is GONNA happen. And the loud public confession of love (and lust!) when held hostage at Guanyin Temple? You can pry that out of my cold undead hands

speaking of: blood pool corpses fuck yeah. I get why the show conflated the Nightless City and Burial Mounds confrontations but it’s actually MUCH worse if all the cultivators showed up 3 months later to kill 50-odd malnourished would-be farmers and watch Wei Wuxian explode half the Tiger Seal and consequently get torn to pieces by resentful energy and corpses. Though actually, definitely the only one who saw it close enough for any detail was Jiang Cheng, which is why he gets credited (he did Not Do It)

book canon re: break in time between Phoenix Mountain and Wen Qing coming for help. Also, no Wens at Phoenix Mountain

Edit 3: Apparently the show has ALL the Wen refugees at the Burial Mounds be from the Dafan branch, but mostly non-cultivators? That’s dumb. They’re a sad found family of the 50-odd people from the Qiongqi Pass work camp who thought the safest risk, upon being freed, was to clamber on three-to-a-horse and follow the Yiling Patriarch (and Wen Qing) to god knows where. Most probably ARE cultivators, though not of Wen clan itself and not, perhaps, particularly strong. But as prisoners they were specifically forbidden from using cultivation, so it must be an option 

finally: we PROJECT A BIT ON STAN Jiang Yanli not cultivating because she had a chronic medical condition that either made her unable to safely practice or was only solved by some clever spiritual/medical fixed loop that channeled all her spiritual energy into keeping herself alive. Or both! I like a heart condition myself

#mdzs #the untamed #my fic #ALSO also (in tags bc more headcanon - well this is all headcanon but) #pre-wwx death lxc really was hte only one who knew lwj was in love with wwx #maybe jyl suspected? but everyone else was like 'that hanguang-jun is so stoic and righteous. wow he really hates the yiling patriarch' #lxc also Highkey suspected A-Yuan's origins but never asked bc plausible deniability #both jiang sibs knew their dumb brothers was head over heels for lwj even if their dumb brother didn't #man where the FUCK is an au where everything is canon-ish but without going to hell #and sometime probably shortly after jin ling's birth jyl and jc pull lwj aside for a Talk about the Consequences #of leading their brother on like this #zidian does not feature in this talk but it's implied in jyl's tone

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 21 - The PTSD is strong with this one & we need more braincells

Hello hello! Welcome to the commentary. How’s everyone? I’m frozen solid because it’s mid-June in Spain and yet we had 11°C yesterday. Fucking awesome!

I AM NOT WEARING MASCARA SO I CAN CRY ALL I WANT. I DONT KNOW IF THATS GOOD OR BAD THO.

Can I just take a second to appreciate how much this big strong powerful men emote? I mean, I know this isn’t western media where the tough guy can’t show emotions, and I don’t know that eastern media has the same hangups about men emoting but just... it’s so refreshing.

Huaisang bb you’re so sweet.

Oh, oh the PTSD is strong with this one.

Also, bless both JC and NHS, they absolutely noticed WWX flinch and, in their own ways, went and steamrolled over it so WWX wouldn’t feel scrutinised.

WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST TO INFORM YALL THAT I GOT A KITTEN ON MY LAP. (She’s kneading my boob, which, ow, but...)

*BICHEN GRIIIIIIIP*

How do y’all think the guards go deliver bad news to WRH? Like do they paper-rock-scissor it? Draw straws?

NMJ did you have to?

And once again I wonder what would’ve happened if JFM had let sect leader Yao kick it.

Ughvhfnevus it’s this clown. Same as with Su She, if you see a bunch of screaming it’s just me not wanting to listen to Jin ZiXun.

The Nies: let’s throw a banquet to honour WWX’s return

Every asshole there: *gossips about WWX while in the room with him*

Once again I wish I could transmigrate (and speak mandarin lol) and just start delivering tongue lashings.

Listen, I have no idea how to play Guqin, but I did play the guitar for years and even from here I can see how much YiBo’s hands don’t match the melody. Nothing against him but why does this always happen? I know they got classes, so was the music not written by that time or something? Because one thing is not hitting the correct notes, another is plucking slow notes when the tempo is much faster.

JC: Since yours and LWJ’s unhappy separation...

My dumbass: do you mean breakup? *eyebrow waggle*

You will pry my “JC knows his brother is pinning after LWJ, he probably doesn’t want to know anything else” hc out of my cold dead hands thankyouverymuch.

WWX: *spouts a bunch of misdirection to avoid giving JC a straight answer*

JC: Bull-fucking-shit.

Should I count how many times WWX PTSDs all over the place or would you like me to leave your hearts intact? That’s two so far.

Ok ok, I feel that, if someone with a bit less trauma and a bit of insight (NHS maybe?) had seen the bit where ChenQing fucking hurts Shijie thing would’ve gone differently. I mean, yes, LWJ keeps warning WWX that this shit is gonna fuck him up, but as I said in my previous commentary LWJ also has the communication skills of a hermit crab so that wouldn’t work, and JC would be too wound up and WWX too busy trying to conceal his lack of golden core for that conversation to go anywhere. But if someone who WWX knows is a good egg (I’m not gonna say trusts bc paranoia) had sat him down and told him “your new instrument that you use for your new form of cultivation just hurt the person you love most please be careful when you use it.” I think it would’ve worked wonders towards his health overall.

I know Shijie says it’s like Zidian, but she’s not working with the fact that this thing is made for and by the Dark Side of the Force and I’m sorry but I can’t help but see ChenQing as a bit of a horrocrux almost. Or like, if you like me think the Burial Mounds is an Entity, something that’s a bit more sentient that it lets on.

Speaking of reputations and NHS being a good egg, I have oh-so-many ideas (I won’t say plot bunnies because I can’t write for shit) in which NHS for Reasons (time-travel? Letter from the future? His massive brain?) realises just how much damage WWX is doing to his public image. And he might be a sheltered dandy, but he saw what being the son of a sex worker did to Meng Yao despite how hard he worked (I’m assuming he doesn’t know about the whole betrayal business). This is way fucking worse, like hell is he going to let one of his best friends paint a target on his back. So he pulls back his sleeves, engages his slytherin brain and proceeds to lay down a plan to throughly destroy WWX’s reputation as a powerful genius.

I’m guessing LWJ and JC protest, and maybe WWX, and NHS just hits them with “do you want him respected or alive?” And they shut tf up. He glues himself to WWX, and brings up as many instances in which their behaviour can be compared as he can (we got drunk and punished at cloud recesses, we slept in class, we skipped to go fishing, I don’t carry my sword either). And, because assholes be assholes, people like Sect Leader Yao or Clown Cousin are quick to start spouting their own derogatory bullshit and thus WWX the untamed powerful prodigy dies a fiery death. Now he’s just a mouthy kid with a quick mind that “does tricks instead of battle” (I’ll never get bored of using that Thor quote). I also like to think that people who personally know WWX and are not pieces of shit go give NHS a tongue lashing for messing with what they thought was his friend, NHS takes that as a test of good eggness and bring them into the plan. Soon the whole Cloud Recesses class is swearing up, down, left, right and centre that all the shit WWX has ever successfully pulled is just an insane amount of luck and quick thinking.

I don’t know how would they work him into the battlefield (disguise? Mask?) to unleash his demonic cultivation but that’s Plot and I don’t do that.

Also, because I’m a terrible human being I want to say that people assume LWJ is on “pretty but useless” WWX like white on rice because *insert derogatory comment about being good in bed and sexual favours*. Because y’all know the assholes here are Like That. And WWX is horrified because holy fucking shit he’s gonna drag LWJ’s reputation down, he can’t have people thinking HGJ is ok with having him as a concubine pretty much. But before he can act LWJ politely all but confirms that yeah, he’s tapping that, y’all wish you were but he doesn’t share and none of y’all are good enough for his Wei Ying anyway. CUE FAKE/PRETEND RELATIONSHIP BECAUSE I AM INDEED TRASH FOR THAT TROPE.

Muahahahaha y’all thought I was gonna devolve into my personal hcs and not include my fave trope? Shouldn’t y’all know me better by now?

(Btw I like this bit ^ so I might polish it a little and post it separately as well, just a warning if you find yourself reading an eerily similar post by me)

WuJi is playing and LWJ is pining so much. Also, if LWJ did not just realise that, just like Yu the Great, WWX had no other option but tame resentful energy I’ll eat my blanket.

I refuse to believe Jiang Yanli didn’t become the unofficial war camp therapist/sounding board/only sane person/everyone’s mum/I just need a hug and a corner to cry in peace. There are not enough fics about Shijie being her gentle BAMF self while in the camp and it’s a pity. My crops are dying y’all!

Also, I will fight anyone who scoffs at Shijie being the epitome of the “gentle woman who cooks and waits for the men to come back from war”. Look at her mum, do you think it is easy for a kid (she was a kid in the flashback when WWX ran away) to see that day in and day out, to have that as a “role model” and decide that she was not going to be like her mum? That she didn’t like what she saw in her so she was going to be kind and gentle? And do you think it is easy for a person barely in their twenties to deal with years of verbal and psychological abuse for again, being gentle and kind, and not grow a hard shell of bitterness to protect themselves? And to keep being gentle and kind while at war, with your parents dead and your siblings unraveling before your very eyes? Shijie is so fucking strong and I love her.

Hey look, the White Walkers!

“Resentful energy is just energy” ok, valid. But my dude, you’ve got black ghost smoke coming out of you and can hear people screaming in your head. I’m not saying it is evil, like someone’s uptight set in his ways arrogant uncle; but it sure as shit ain’t healthy.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH (that’s a Clown Cousin scream btw)

Ok ok, just one little thing: IF SOMEONE ELSE CALLS WWX WEI YING AS A SHOW OF DISRESPECT IMMA SCALP THEM.

...are those crows eating that man alive? Yikes on bikes.

(Assume my comment about YiBo’s Guqin playing also goes for Xiao Zhan and his flute. I can’t play the flute but the tempo doesn’t match his fingers)

I’m just gonna say it, I think 3zun (well, 2zun as of now) suspect shit went down badly for WWX, that’s two questions by both of them in a very soft conciliatory tone. They are genuinely interested/worried about the topic, and don’t seem to come off as chiding or judgemental. I mean WWX is a weirdo irreverent kid and they’re sect leaders, they outrank him so much it’s ridiculous. I’m also counting the fact that both their baby brothers like him towards them being so kind. But I also think WWX just triggers all their big brother instincts the second he walks in.

Oh there’s a thought, Shijie, Wen Qing, NMJ and LXC take a look at everyone’s shitty parents and just decide to adopt everyone.

What happened at Yiling was a traumatised teenager (is WWX even 20?) PTSDing all over the place with the Dark Side of the Force whispering in his ear and an all powerful trinket at his disposal. Not saying I approve of all the torture and murder but he clearly isn’t revelling in them.

That is some outstanding bit of big-brothering on LXC’s side and I love it. Also, my dumbass just realised LWJ probably wasn’t quoting WWX when he was being punished (what is white what is black?) I think he was quoting his big brother. Which is magnitudes deep too, but in a different direction and I might love that scene even more.

Ok fuck it, I’m gonna tangent. So I had a terrible boyfriend when I was 15-18. He alienated me from my friends, sunk my self-esteem to the molten core of the earth, tried to convince me my parents were abusive and encouraged (aka threatened manipulated and cajoled) the slow tanking of my high school marks. I have A Problem when I see media where someone latches onto their significant other and everything they are shifts towards that person. Now, love, true genuine love, is powerful, and I believe it can be the catalyst for shifting your world-view for the better. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t have a problem with people sticking with their romantic partner if it is clear their previous “family” is so much shit. I don’t have a problem with LWJ coming out of his shell and defying corrupt precepts because his love for WWX made them see they were wrong, or getting sassy and unrepentant during his punishment (I have a problem with the punishment bc that’s abuse but...). But I do side-eye WangXian being the only thing in their orbit. People need people, and WangXian have other good people around them. So I kind of love that yes, WWX showed him the system was corrupt, but it is the words of his brother he is sticking by to the defy said system.

Let’s go back to our scheduled slew of held pinning glances shall we?

LXC after That awkward run-in: WangJi I wasn’t gone that long, what the fuck did you two oblivious pining idiots do?

(LXC has “bitching” tea sessions with Shijie and you can’t convince me otherwise)

LWJ: *is being dramatic and not knocking on WWX’s door*

Me: oh my god you fucking idiot

Shijie: *walks in*

Me: oh thank god someone with a braincell.

Ah yes, there we go triggering WWX’s paranoia again. Why would he get a break.

OH MY GOD YOU PAIR OF FUCKING IDIOTS. THATS IT, FUCK THIS SHIT IM OUT.

@ LWJ: bitch wtf was that? I know you’re shit at talking but have you thought about writing it down? Letters anyone? It worked for mr. Darcy.

(Yes LWJ is mr darcy and now I want an au where LWJ writes WWX letters and just pours everything in them, WWX finds them, any everything is sunshine and rainbows)

While this bullshit fight/misunderstanding is all on LWJ’s shoulders, I’m also going to scream at WWX. Because yes, he is in PTSD hell, but he trusted LWJ before, and yet he can’t get past his perceived notion of LWJ’s character (and his own inadequacies) to trust him again and ask for help. Plus, you know, he thinks he doesn’t deserve he’ll bc *waves hand at WWX’s trauma conga line*

These episodes can’t be good for my BP.

Thanks for reading!

#the untamed #cql #mdzs live action #mdzs #foxglove watches cql #foxglove watches the untamed #lan wangji #wei wuxian #wangxian #jiang yanli #jiang cheng #yunmeng trio #yunmeng siblings #commentary

[ceescedasticity]

MDZSBURB

I've settled on Classpects and moons and Lands but I've still got two distinct possibilities for timeline. Here's one of them.

It starts sometime in the chaos that should be leading up to the Sunshot Campaign but won't, exactly, in this timeline. It starts slowly, subtly even -- maybe there are meteors and maybe there aren't, but there's no rain of them, and people are already disappearing for months at a time. They could easily just be dead. There's no Game structure to lure them into it -- it just takes them, with little warning, and they have to learn the rules afterwards.

Maybe it's Wen Ruohan triggering it somehow -- he certainly tries to take advantage of it once he understands what's happening (as much as it's possible to understand anyway). He's powerful and cunning and he gets himself and some of his into the Medium, to try to seize the power there, and they do impressively well. For a while. He doesn't really understand how to deal with an environment where he is defined as a superfluous obstacle. Skaia has chosen its protagonists and will not be swayed.

I'm not sure of the full order entry, or the exact circumstances under which they're all taken, but I know a lot of it.

Wen Ning is taken early. He's Page of Life, a Derse dreamer, of the Land of Chains and Flowers. He is probably the Hero Least Traumatizing To Consorts.

Wen Qing follows not long after, and she was one of the very few to actually anticipate it. She's Seer of Doom, after all. --And she even understood it would be wise and safest to take her close kin with her, as little sense as that seemed to make, so she has quite a lot of company in the Land of Silk and Needles. She's a Derse dreamer, too, and wakes up fast to look for her brother.

Nie Huaisang goes pretty early, too, completely unobserved, out of somewhere that was supposed to be safe. He's just missing, no clues. (NMJ is Very Unhappy About This.) In fact, of course, the Bard of Void is sound if not safe in the Land of Wind and Whispers. He's not very happy about it either, but at least the current situation enables more unconventional fighting. Derse, again.

Jiang Cheng is snatched out of the ruins of Lotus Pier (before he can get his core destroyed). It is the opposite of subtle. The good news is that a handful of not-yet-executed disciples were hauled along to the Land of Mist and Causeways, too, and attending Wens helpfully were not. The less good news is he ends up with his mother for a sprite. It's stressful. He's Knight of Rage, and yet another Derse dreamer.

Wei Wuxian has his core intact but still runs afoul of Wen Chao and flunkies and still gets thrown into the Burial Mounds. A rather regrettably large chunk of the Burial Mounds accompanies him to the Land of Chimes and Ashes, leading to his not actually realizing he's in another dimension for about a month until he manages to get out through the borders which are at least not warded. He's still developed demonic cultivation, although in the end he uses Chenqing less for controlling corpses and more for his new powers as Rogue of Time. --The corpses do come up some, though.

I think at this point we finally get a Prospit dreamer with Lan Wanji, Mage of Space. He's not completely alone like some of the others, but he was off roaming. He may end up bringing some random people along to the Land of Rabbits and Frogs, but no one terribly interesting.

I'm not sure if there's any feasible way for Jiang Yanli to figure out where the hell her brothers have disappeared to and how to trigger the thing that will take her after them, but she's Witch of Hope, so maybe. She rounds out the Derse dreamers from the Land of Earth and Sky. Don't have more details here yet.

Next up we have a spectacular exit from Jin Zixuan, accompanied by way too much of Koi Tower, way too many hangers-on, and both his parents. It's frankly a nightmare. He spends as much time as possible out exploring the Land of Twists and Feathers. He's Heir of Light, although he's not particularly good at it. --Both his parents will end up sprites eventually, but he's fortunate enough that his is his mother. Prospit.

Depending on what canon we're going with Mianmian may or may not be in fairly close proximity, but either way she's next. Maid of Breath, and I can't say more about her circumstances of entry but I can say she's the only candidate for a Breath player in this horrifically unfree and entangled group (with the possible exception of WWX but I need him for Time).

I'm not sure what order the next two are in. By this time they definitely know something bizarre and catastrophic is going on at least.

Lan Xichen is Sylph of Heart, Land of Leaves and Hindsight. He probably gets pulled out of the Cloud Recesses survivors' camp; he probably has a lot of company; his sprite is probably either his father or Lan Qiren and I'm honestly not sure which would be worse. Prospit.

Nie Mingjue is Prince of Blood and probably gets yanked off the battlefront somewhere. (He's one of the top candidates for Wen Ruohan to follow into the Medium.) Prospit. He is arriving late if not last and a lot of other people understand the rules here a lot better than he does and he does not enjoy it.

And, finally, Meng Yao. Thief of Mind (I wanted to give him Vriska's Classpect but I was running low on Aspects and I didn't think JZX could carry Mind). I have no idea when and where he is when he falls off the map and into the Land of Mirrors and Stains. Has he become a spy yet? Did he even get a chance to start working for NMJ? Did he meet LXC? Had he fallen down the stairs yet? Which Meng Yao is being asked to become a hero? This is obviously a very important question but I do not know the answer. --But regardless of the answer he ends up with JGS as a sprite, and then probably kills him.

So anyway there's quite a bit of carrying on and fighting and reunions and dealing with Wen Ruohan's doomed but troublesome power grab, and it all ends up… I don't know. Everyone's alive, anyway.

—The other possibility is similar in its mechanics but kicks off right about when WWX absconds with the Wen remnants — they end up in LOCAA instead of the Burial Mounds, or possibly the Burial Mounds immediately followed by LOCAA. And then there's increasing chaos and confusion that's all blamed on the completely unlocatable Yiling Patriach (despite demonic cultivation's lack of association with giant meteors) as everyone else gets grabbed up over the next… while. (Not too long a while, though, because I have limits and I am not throwing JYL into a Game with an infant, let alone pregnant.)

#crossover classpects

[darklanwangji]

AU in which CQL!Lan Wangji DOES stand with Wei Wuxian

.A glimpse of Dark!Lan Wangji reveals himself when the Yiling Laozu loses the will to live after Jiang Yanlie dies and from the accumulated stress.  Wei Wuxian never gets the chance to head for that jagged cliff, Lan Wangji knocks him out.  He makes a run for it leaving the Cultivators to whomever is manipulating events. Because he is done.

.(This finally clues Lan Zichen in because he knows his brother and this behavior is abnormal in the extreme.  This also sparks suspicion in Nue Hueisang...which will become full blown revenge scheming when Nie Mingjue dies.)

.Lan Wangji goes first to Yiling and nearly loses his shit after finding a hidden, malnourished and badly soiled Wen Yuan.  The child has open sores and infections developed from laying in his own feces for several days. He cleans Wen Yuan up and, still with an unresponsive WWX, sets off again knowing staying in one place too long is not good.

.He stumbles across Xiao Xingchen who is already blind at this point.  XXC's heard of the Sunshot Campaign AND what came after. XXC figured out that WWX is his Shijie's child long after they met.  He rushed back but thought he was too late.

.The two struggle to keep WY and WWX in the world of the living.

.In one of LWJ's exhaustive searches for spirit grass to make into medication and salves he runs into Luo Qingyang aka Mianmian.  At the same time random Cultivators recognize LWJ and attacks, meaning to take him back to Gusu Lan and receive handsome rewards for finding him.

.Before MM could do anything to help, Dark!LWJ's already taken cared of it.  He does not hold back. He nearly destroys their Golden Core if not for MM reminding him that WWX would probably not like what he's doing.  He cripples them instead. Permanently.

.He asks if MM would like to join their haphazard Flight To Somewhere Safe?  With one more person joining the team they're able to stabilize A-Yuan, leaving only WWX still in a disassociated mess.

.When it's XXC's turn to go out, MM goes with him.  They separate outside of an unnamed city and she finds Song Zichen.  XXC is robbed by A-Qing and he pretty much adopts her on the spot. They all meet again to go back with precious people and materials they've gathered.  (A-Qing only comes along to be close to XXC, let's be real.)

.LWJ and SZC take turns next to go out and get supplies.  They run across a heavily injured Xue Yang. They bring him back because SZC is still righteous even if LWJ is slipping slowly away.  XY, bluntly called a perpetual Work in Progress by LWJ, is beside himself with glee at being in the same place as XXC.

.LWJ has no qualms about using XY like a coal canary to sense if he fucked something up beyond repair with demonic Cultivation when trying to reach WWX's traumatized mind.

.SZC hasn't forgotten what the little twerp has done and is adamant that XY's not allowed to wander freely, either.  (XY has deity binding rope cuffs around his wrists making him unable to lift anything heavier than his shoes as a result.)

.XY respects exactly no one and continues trying to murder people until Dark!LWJ has had enough.  No one is sure what happened but XY is now scared shitless of LWJ.  It doesn't stop XY's murderous tendencies (LWJ isn't always around) but no one actually gets murdered despite XY's increasingly fantastic attempts.

.Lan Wangji realizes he inadvertently created a sect.  He shrugs when everyone came together to figure out how to go from there/label their Sect.  No one can agree. So he calls them all annoying and wishy washy, and now they are Whatever Sect because Suibian the sword is dearly missed by LWJ.

.And that's his story and he's sticking to it.

.LWJ may be the founder but XXC and SZC are the "face" of the Sect.  Bless them both, they are trying to be proper, responsible role models for the kids but...yeah.

.MM is Head Disciple with an iron-clad discipline.  She's also an unrepentant prankster with a particular gift towards the Chord Assassination technique.  She likes creating deadly, layered traps catered specifically towards XY to see how quick he is on his feet.  Or maybe she just likes making him jump on command.

.A-Yuan is very capable, ruthless and will end you with a single look from LWJ but is also fair.  His grasp of the Qin language is second only to LWJ, delicate and insidious. He can turn the unwary into his puppets with it. Sometimes will take pity on XY and give him vague hints on what the day or night or next turn around the corner has in store for him.  Mostly he's off taking care of WWX if LWJ isn't able to or taking care of LWJ whenever be can sneak in the chance.

.A-Qing has zero interest in Cultivation despite her talents.  She does it grudgingly because it makes XXC and SZC happy. She also teams up with MM to torment XY on occasion.

.XY couldn't give two shits about learning even more crap but likes showing off his more bizarre abilities.  He's also exhausted from being. On. Guard. All. The. Time. He really hasn't had the chance to cause much mischief.  Not that it's going to stop him from trying his damnedest.

.On one of XY's escape attempts he ends up literally falling atop Mo Xuanyu.  They nearly scare the life out of each other. Hot on XY's heels are A-Yuan, A-Qing and MM.  They drag Mo Xuanyu back to their Sect when they noticed that he's actually incredibly, intuitively, talented with demonic Cultivation.  LWJ is gonna wanna know about this kid.  (LWJ instantly has MXY help out with WWX.)

.Well, that and every time they run into MXY he seems to be ignored, being abused/bullied or bullying others.  The kids reason that they can give as good as he gives. So they should be his opponent/buddies instead.

.XY and MXY get along like a house on fire.  Of course.

.XY is v disgusted that MXY is similarly gifted as MM towards the Chord Assassination technique. MXY is surprised to realize he's useful and others, like the eerie Hanguang-Jun (Did he take a vow of silence?!?!) actually values his input.

.A-Yuan and A-Qing keeps trying to befriend XY in their own way.  XY has no idea what that's about and for once in his adult life is horrified.  (Also A-Yuan is LWJ's son. XY's not interested in becoming bait of any kind ever again, courtesy of a calmly furious LWJ during that one time kthnxbai.)  He'd rather be trussed up like a pig to be roasted then endure their attempts at...whatever they're trying to do.

.He spends a lot of time trying to get away and maybe, sort of, teaches everyone how to hunt down wily prey.  AKA humans. XXC also teaches them, including a startled XY, how to survive if one or more of their senses are no longer working.  Combined this makes the kids elusive and self sufficient when they're finally allowed to venture out. (And terrifyingly effective spies/assassins.)  Not that XY and MXY needed much help in that department but the self discipline and patience forcefully taught was...needed.

.The Sect offers reading and writing classes.  They start to host all kinds of teachers and scholars, workshops and exercises.  They invite wilderness survival guests who take whoever wants to live off the land and not worry about farming into the forests to basket makers and monks.  They elevate aged farmers and lonely elders in the area into teachers who impart their hard won, real life wisdom to newbie farmers or anyone interested.

.Not everyone likes this.  Lots of classism, racism and sexism comes into play.  The Sect does its best to stand by XXC's shining ideals and personal warmth but often fall short.  They are human after all.

.The area they sort-of settled in suffers massive natural disasters.  They end up becoming lifelines to many rural folks. This goes a long way to settle ruffled feathers.  They are still considered "outsiders" by the village bigots and those who are scared of change but they are less vocal.  Mostly those types died out though.

.(Most of the Jianghu and Cultivation world are still unaware that LWJ and WWX are with them.  Or even alive.) They organize the displaced folks when lawlessness breaks out due to a combination of famine, disease and general human misery.

.This further endears them to the people of this area.  The Sect is hidden in plain sight by then.

.Some years down the road MM falls in love, her beloved gets thoroughly interrogated by everyone.  She reveals exactly what she is, part of a "bad/evil" sect, to him but it doesn't matter.  He accepts all of her.

.They have a child.

.This infant is introduced to WWX, as part of a now established tradition.

.WWX slightly, briefly responds. LWJ comes to life.

.WWX fully awakens when MXY casually mentions the Ghost General still exists... tortured and trapped.

#modaozushi #the untamed #wangxian #cql verse

[azure7539arts]

Regarding chapter 76

Warning: SPOILERS

I’ve been seeing a few opinions about this matter around, and while I’m not here to say that what happened in chapter 76 was not Wei WuXian’s fault (it is), I feel like there are some misinterpretations floating around somehow??? So I’m leaving my own take on things under the cut:

While Jin ZiXuan’s death was indeed Wei WuXian’s fault, I feel like the situation is too complex to be downplaying other elements and saying that he is entirely to blame here, even though he was only reacting instinctively to the situation. What else was he supposed to do anyway?

First of all, regarding Wei WuXian’s hatred toward Jin ZiXuan: there was no reason why Wei WuXian, as far as he could see at the time, should’ve forgiven Jin ZiXuan. This is the man who looked down on Jiang YanLi—arguably one of the people Wei WuXian loved the most—and basically implied he didn’t even want to go near/hear the mention of the Jiang family because of his engagement with her. That, apart from the already stuck-up first impression he left in Wei WuXian’s heart for years and years since they were nothing but children, is only the beginning to this justifiable resentment Wei WuXian had toward Jin ZiXuan. 

Wei WuXian realized later on, after the engagement had been broken off for some time, that his beloved shijie still harbored feelings for Jin ZiXuan, and that she must’ve been especially hurt to hear that Jin ZiXuan had denied her in such a way. Strike two. (I mean, who wouldn’t hate the idea that your soft, golden-hearted sister was pining for that stuck-up, good-for-nothing rich kid who wouldn’t even acknowledge her properly?)

Strike three, and the one that left the worst impression on Wei WuXian’s heart, the one that he could not possibly find it within himself to let go, was when Jin ZiXuan made Jiang YanLi cry. Jiang YanLi who had never shed tears in front of anyone, even her brothers (possibly especially them). And because of what? Because Jin ZiXuan, instead of properly looking into things and properly finding out what was going on, decided (out of his own bad impressions that he couldn’t let go about Jiang YanLi—bad impressions that were not a result of anything she had ever said or done, too, because they were only there out of his own selfishness and refusal to even acknowledge YanLi or try to understand her) that Jiang YanLi must be the bad person who was stealing other people’s hard work for her own gain. It wasn’t even difficult to figure out what was going on, which Wei WuXian did whilst beating the crap out of Jin ZiXuan, but Jin ZiXuan didn’t bother, much like how he had never bothered with Jiang YanLi. 

Strike four is Jin ZiXuan, for no apparent reason that Wei WuXian could personally see, suddenly started asking after Jiang YanLi—after outright saying she wasn’t worthy of him, after saying that she stole other people’s hard work to make herself seem better, after making her cry and breaking her heard again and again. Jin ZiXuan, being a proud person, never said it outright that he had wanted to talk her YanLi to apologize to her and perhaps get to know her better now. Wei WuXian, protective of his sister, only assumed—and not incorrectly, from everything he had personally witnessed so far—that Jin ZiXuan was doing this because his mother was making him to. And he had every right to want his sister to not have her heart broken again by this rich boy who thought very highly of himself.

Strike five (and this is a lot of strikes here, and if it were me and this was happening to the one other remaining out of the two still-alive people whom I loved the most, I would’ve totally hated Jin ZiXuan, too) happened on Mount Baifeng when Jin ZiXuan did not allow a clearly uncomfortable Jiang YanLi to leave even though she had already excused herself??? I mean, from the POV of a protective little brother who did not know Jin ZiXuan was nervous and only wanted to spend some more time with YanLi, this would be a very worrying and disconcerting move. They were in the middle of a forest with no one else (but for Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi who were hiding in a bush), and anything could happen. What if Jin ZiXuan was one of those people who resorted to violence/forcefully taking what he couldn’t have when he realized he couldn’t have them? This is a very big what-if that Wei WuXian could not risk because this was his sister here. Combined with the fact that people had been turning on him left and right now that the Sunshot Campaign was done and they didn’t have to side with him anymore, Wei WuXian’s outlook on life was not rose-tinted anymore, and he’d rather protect first before he could let something horribly go wrong. Which is not on Jin ZiXuan, but this general distrust of people didn’t help Jin ZiXuan’s case any.

So after these 5 strikes, things happen, Wei WuXian left YunMeng Jiang Sect, left the Jiang family, and suddenly, one day, he heard that his sister, once again, was getting married to Jin ZiXuan. He did not get to see Jin ZiXuan’s change in attitude, didn’t get to see how well Jin ZiXuan treated his sister now (instead of the contempt he had for her before), and he felt like Jin ZiXuan was having it too easy because he didn’t deserve YanLi at all. But since this was his sister—her wedding, which he didn’t even get to see or celebrate with her—he pushed it back and smiled for her as he said his congratulations when she came to show him her wedding robes especially. 

He never worked out his problems with Jin ZiXuan, never had the chance to nor had he ever been given one. 

Fast forward to chapter 76, in which Wei WuXian was happily on his way to his nephew’s full-month party, the first time he would officially get to see Jiang YanLi and Jiang Cheng in a very long time, and was suddenly ambushed, accused, attacked by Jin ZiXun over something he didn’t even know about. Jin ZiXun not only tried to trap and kill Wei WuXian, he also mocked Wei WuXian’s own little happiness that he would be able to see his family soon before crushing the present he had worked so hard on to give Jin Ling, the little nephew who his sister let him pick out a name for, too. 

This was not a good situation. Needless to say, he was extremely agitated for a good reason. And with the demonic cultivation already destroying him from the inside out, this was the recipe for a disaster, and Jin ZiXuan’s appearance only added to it. 

Jin ZiXuan meant well, we all know this, but first of all, he and Wei WuXian parted on bad terms. Second of all, he insisted that Wei WuXian backed down first to go back to Koi Tower for questioning, and this is not really okay. They had no proof he Wei WuXian did anything to anyone, but they’d still rather take him in for questioning first instead of assuming his innocence (not that Wei WuXian had, admittedly, been doing anything to help his reputation anyway). But why shouldn’t Jin ZiXun and his 300 some people back down first? And what would even happen should Wei WuXian had allowed them to take him back anyway? Jin GuangShan did not like Wei WuXian after he had pointed out that the man was only trying to take over the power vacuum left by the Wen family; he even wanted Wei WuXian to hand over the Stygian Tiger Seal, claiming that it was too dangerous for Wei WuXian to keep. Jin ZiXun was dead set on making sure he either made Wei WuXian admit to doing something he hadn’t done, or killed him for it. 

It didn’t help that when Wei WuXian asked if he had known about this all along after inviting Wei WuXian to Jin Ling’s party, Jin ZiXuan did not outright deny it. “Are you mad?” is not a no, and in his state, along with the five strikes of distrust mentioned above, Wei WuXian couldn’t have been in the mood to stand back and interpret it.  Jin ZiXuan tried, but did he outright deny it when Ji ZiXun said, “Whoever touches him gets nothing but a splash of black! ZiXuan, when you invited him, weren’t you worried that you, Sister-in-Law and A-Ling would receive an irremovable stain for the rest of your lives?!” No, he didn’t.

The situation was hostile, and Wei WuXian, whose survival instincts had always been high (even higher in those days because he was the one overseeing the protection of more than fifty other people who had been hounded and hunted for having the wrong family name), had to be hostile also, or he understood that he wouldn’t be making out of this alive. 

So, all in all, Jin ZiXuan’s blood is indeed on Wei WuXian’s hands because he lost control (which he didn’t even realize that he did, at any rate), but the situation was too complex to dump this entire thing on him and overlook how other people played their parts in aggravating the already tense political atmosphere that surrounded Wei WuXian’s decision to take 50 some refugees under his wings. People were being openly hostile toward him—they wanted to kill him if they could—and he responded in kind. How else could he have survived up to this point?

If people hadn’t assumed the worst of him because it was convenient—because he was practicing demonic arts, because they wanted to make him pay for tearing their schemes out right in the open, because they desired the power he had despite condemning him on principle based on his demonic cultivation alone—then none of this would’ve happened. 

#mo dao zu shi #mdzs #mo dao zu shi spoilers #mdzs spoilers

[kae-and-boi]

iv: family

wei ying, from the start of his life, has always had a family.  (spoilers for chapter 72)

Wei Ying vaguely remembers the first time he met his (adopted) son.  

It had been the day Wen Qing came to him, tears staining her face and dirt smudging the white of her robes.  She’d begged him to find Wen Ning, so he’d barged in on a private banquet that the LanlingJin Sect threw, angered that Wen Ning had gone missing.  

He found the body of his friend in Qiongqi, missing half his ribs and days-old dried blood staining the corner of his lips.  It made his own blood boil, but Wei WuXian had already given Wen Ning his revenge.  

As they were getting ready to leave,Wen Qing’s grandmother, she’d called the woman ‘granny’ at least, had been struggling to hold both the reins and the child on her back.  She couldn’t ride a horse and hold her grandson at the same time, so he’d plucked the child from her back despite the blatant fear in their eyes.  A-Yuan had regarded him with a rather intelligent gaze despite being around two years old, and remained quiet while his grandmother hysterically yelled.

He hadn’t meant to seem like he was kidnapping the boy for GuanYin’s sake, but at the time he couldn’t think about anything else aside from the fact that Wen Ning was dead and that they had to leave Qiongqi Path as soon as humanly possible.  Commaning Wen Ning to kill his murderers had been enough of a rash decision, judging by the terror in everyone’s expressions, and Wei WuXian didn’t need any more blood on his hands than he already did.  

(A-Yuan was quiet and calm as they rode out of Qiongqi, the complete opposite of the unspeakable rage Wei Ying felt.)

Flash forward a few weeks and Granny Wen’s age finally caught up to her.  The rest of the party was sure that it had something to do with the cruel treatment in Qiongqi, but none of them said it out loud.

Without his grandmother, A-Yuan became an orphan.  Wen Qing occasionally looked after him while they were on the road, but she had never been interested in motherhood and was still in mourning over her younger brother.  Wei Ying let her be, unfortunately already intimate with the grief Wen Qing felt.  

When they finally arrived in Lotus Pier, Wei WuXian decided that he would adopt the little boy as his son.  He was Wen Ning and Wen Qing’s cousin after all, and felt that he owed them that.

A-Yuan was wary of him at first, always lingering behind Wei WuXian like a shadow until Wen Qing was able to convince him that no matter how scary he acted, Wei Ying was still (relatively) harmless.  The fact that he tirelessly sought a way to bring Wen Ning back probably helped too, further proving that he wasn’t as scary as he seemed.

The first time Wen Ning opened his eyes and they weren’t blank and white, his sister collapsed on the spot and cried.  A-Yuan hadn’t reacted as strongly, simply smiling and patting Wen Ning’s slightly matted hair and asked him to take a bath.  (“That is not what you should say to him, A-Yuan,” Wei Ying laughed.  The boy wrinkled his nose.  “But he smells, A-Ba!”)

Of course, Wen Ning hid himself away for a few days after awakening, ashamed of being a fierce corpse, but the three of them didn’t care.  He was ‘alive’ in a sense, and that was all that mattered to them.

All four of them made a little family, even if it was a little unconventional, and Wei Ying would never admit it out loud, but he adored his tiny family.  Both Wens reminded him of what life was like when he was younger, Wen Qing taking Jiang Cheng’s place and Wen Ning replacing A-Li.  The only difference was A-Yuan, but Wei Ying loved him nonetheless.  Jiang Cheng was still his brother, but even Wei WuXian could feel them slowly drifting apart as the days passed.

Wen Qing was the first one to die.

They had been content, living in YiLing where no one had bothered them.  Sure, there’d been a few side glances from townsfolk wondering why Wei WuXian was in their town, but no one openly did anything.  However, a few cultivators began to see him as a threat.  

LanlingJin above all disliked Wei Ying, denouncing his ways of demonic cultivation and demanded he hand over the Tiger Seal.  That ended up with Wen Qing sacrificing herself to save A-Yuan from the sword of a LanlingJin cultivator’s sword.  Wen Ning hadn’t cried, being a corpse, but he was still overcome with grief.  A-Yuan, on the other hand, bawled his eyes out at the loss of his cousin.  

The three of them buried her in QiShan, sneaking past the cultivators to carefully lay Wen Qing’s body with those of her parents.  Wei WuXian had wanted to turn her into a fierce corpse like her brother, but Wen Qing adamantly refused.  As a healer, it was only natural for her to die a single death.

They paid their respects to the three family members, and Wen Ning hoped that one day, he too might be buried there with his family.

Wei WuXian built them a house near LuanZang Gang after that.  The burial mounds was where it was the quietest and the easiest to work, being secluded and a place where the cultivators wouldn’t dare step foot in.  He also wanted A-Yuan to be as close to him as possible, but Wei Ying was unwilling to bring him to the heart of LuanZang Gang where the workshop was.  It was too dangerous for anyone but him and Wen Ning, so the house was built.

If anything, it reminded Wei WuXian of his time in the Cloud Recesses when he was fifteen.  Every day for a month, he would rise early and climb the stone steps to the Library Pavilion to antagonize Lan WangJi.  Up at dawn and down before nightfall, just as he did now.   He didn’t mind in the slightest, because seeing A-Yuan’s smile upon his return was more than enough to make ti worth the trouble.

A-Li found him once, completely on accident one day while Wei WuXian was traveling to YiLing for supplies.  She and Jin ZiXuan had been in the area, the latter leading a few night-hunts around YiLing.

She tried to reason with him, begging, even, for him to return home to Lotus Pier or go to Gusu with Lan WangJi.  

It stung a little, when Wei Ying realized that every time Jiang YanLi said ‘home’, he did not think of Jiang Cheng or Lotus Pier, but instead of A-Yuan and the little house in YiLing.

Jin ZiXuan had been nearby and heard his wife, then before he knew it, Wei WuXian found himself surrounded by yellow uniforms and white Sparks Amidst Snow.  He felt betrayed, hurt that his shijie would trick him like that, and hastily called Wen Ning to help him escape.  It would be a pain and a waste of effort to try and summon any fierce corpses that were lurking, so he didn’t bother.

Wei WuXian and Wen Ning had almost gotten away before one of the disciples with Jin ZiXuan lifted a flute to their mouth and began to play.

It had none of the skill that Wei WuXian’s music had, but it was more than enough to confuse Wen Ning.  He could tell that the cultivators wanted Wen Ning to turn on his friend, to rip him to pieces like he’d done to countless other cultivators, but Wei WuXian’s power was stronger than that.  Wen Ning was able to fight the other cultivator’s order and ended up killing everyone but Wei Ying in the process.  (He’d apologized afterwards, profusely and repeatedly, trying to atone for killing A-Li and her husband, but Wei Ying told him the same thing every time his friend apologized.  It wasn’t your fault, Wen Ning.  It’s not you who killed them.)  He’d cried once, and destroyed a forest in his grief, cursing the world for taking shijie from him.  It was unfair and if Jin ZiXuan hadn’t tried to interfere, then everyone could’ve walked away.  But no.  Instead, Jiang YanLi and Jin ZiXuan left behind one son, a sword, and a seedling of hate that would blossom into a burning fire.  

Wei Ying thought about taking the little Jin as his son like he had with A-Yuan, but ultimately decided that he would be better off at Jiang Cheng’s side.  If he adopted Little Jin as well, not only would Jiang Cheng hate him more, but the cultivators would only have more reason to detest him.  

Then a group of cultivators, long having been ordered to detain Wei WuXian on sight, found Wen Ning on day while he was in YiLing.  He’d been asked to keep an eye out for any yellow or purple robes, but Wen Ning never returned from his patrol.  A-Yuan had worried, asking his A-Ba where gege was for hour on end and it wasn’t until Wei Ying lifted Chenqing to his lips that he realized something was wrong.

The smell of smoke had finally reached their little house by the time it was too late, and Wen Ning never returned home.

A-Yuan had cried then too, both because another member of his family was gone and because now, Wen Ning would never be buried with his sister and parents in QiShan.  Whatever ashes he had left behind had probably been scattered on the wind.  (Or worse, into LuanZang Gang.)  Wei Ying comforted his son, promising that no matter what, he would protect him from anything that dared to hut him.  

The cruel hands of fate would not take A-Yuan from him like it took Wen Ning or the Jiangs.

Too soon, the day when the Four Clans marched on LuanZang Gang approached.  Wei WuXian hid his son away where the cultivators would not find him and promised to come back.  A-Ba will return when everything’s safe, he’d vowed, fully intending on following through.  

Fate had other plans in store for him, however, and Wei Ying died on LuanZang Gang next to the man whom he used to call ‘brother’.  His only regret was that he didn’t get to see A-Yuan’s smiling face one last time, but at least he knew that his son would be safe.

(What he didn’t plan on was A-Yuan taking after his adoptive father and leaving when told not to, only to stumble into HanGuang-Jun.)

Opening his eyes to the view of an unfamiliar ceiling, Wei Ying thought that he was back in his house at YiLing with Wen Ning and A-Yuan before he received a swift kick to the ribs.  That was most certainly not any of his family members.  (Later, he would learn that it was Mo Village where he woke, and that he was no longer in his own body, but that of Mo XuanYu’s.)

There were two GusuLan cultivators in the small village, but for the first time in years Wei Ying didn’t feel the same fight-or-flight response he had back when the name ‘YiLing Patriarch’ struck fear into the hearts of everyone.  If he recalled correctly, the two junior cultivators were named Lan JingYi and Lan SiZhui.  For some odd reason, the shape of Lan SiZhui’s face was familiar.  The longer he started at the boy, the stronger the pain in his chest grew.  

(You know how the rest of the story goes.)

Now, finally safe with Lan Zhan, Wei WuXian fondly recalls the memories of his family from before.  He hadn’t been able to remember much, something clouding his mind, but during the second siege of LuanZang Gang, the fog lifted and everything snapped into place.  The longer he stood in the wreckage of his old workshop, fighting alongside Lan Zhan and SiZhui, the more me remembered.  Living with Wen Ning, the tiny boy he’d called his son, and for the very first time, Wei Ying found himself wondering what had happened to him.

The answer was fairly obvious, but Wei WuXian was blind to most things.  It took him more than a month to finally see that A-Yuan had been standing next to him for the entire journey, from the moment when he woke to Yi City, and even now.  (Lan Zhan had quietly laughed at him and called SiZhui into the jingshi and the three of them had the family reunion they deserved.)

Wistfully looking out the window, Wei Ying can’t help but ignore whatever nonsense his husband is spouting in favor of focusing on where A-Yuan is sitting in the shade of a magnolia tree with Lan JingYi and Jin Ling.  The three boys are laughing and all sharing a look that Wei Ying is very familiar with.  It’s the same lovestruck gaze that Jiang Cheng gives to Lan XiChen when he thinks that no one is looking and that Wei Ying and Lan Zhan constantly throw back and forth regardless of their company.

With a smile, Wei Ying can’t help but think that his small family is about to get a little bigger.

read on ao3 || day v

#mo dao zu shi #kae writes #inktober #inktober 2018 #after october ill probably rewrite this since i dont rly like this version \_(ツ)_/

[robininthelabyrinth]

I need to know what u think of an AU where JC is the one who dies (sacrificing his life to save WWX) instead of JYL, he’s not as angry with WWX bc JYL is still alive so when he sees his brother about to get murdered he just steps in front of him while JYL and WWX see :) I don’t even know what I want u to do with this? Give me some headcanons? Is it a prompt? Idk I just want u to to see what u make of this (I promise JC is my fav but my mind likes to make me suffer :p)

1

It wasn’t a matter of conscious thought when Jiang Cheng threw himself between that cultivator’s sword and Wei Wuxian’s unguarded back, all his defenses down in the face of Jiang Yanli’s pleading, same as always; it was just instinct. Wei Wuxian was always the troublemaker, the crazy one, and Jiang Cheng always the one being dragged along; he’d long ago learned to spend all his time watching his shixiong’s back, keeping him away from dogs, away from angry shopkeepers, away from any harm. It was instinct, just as it had been the day he’d thrown himself out into the street to distract the Wens, and he’d always justified that instinct because he knew that Wei Wuxian would do the same for him.

Though – he didn’t know that anymore, not after everything that happened recently. Wei Wuxian had made him all the promises in the world, to stand by his side through wind and lightning, and he’d seemed to have no issue abandoning those promises, picking the remnants of the Wen sect over the remnants of the Jiang sect without a moment’s hesitation and not even the courtesy of an explanation.

The Yiling Patriarch was all but a stranger to him, and Jiang Cheng still didn’t understand why.

So it was probably stupid of him to react as if the person being stabbed at was Wei Wuxian, not the Yiling Patriarch – stupid of him to give up his life for someone who didn’t care about him nearly as much as Jiang Cheng cared for him.

But that’s why it wasn’t a thought. It was instinct.

He heard someone scream “Jiang Cheng!” as if their heart were breaking, and he thought for a moment that it was Wei Wuxian again, the one who loved him best. Wei Wuxian, not the Yiling Patriarch, who threw him to the dogs over and over again, put his sect at risk of utter destruction a second time over, just to indulge himself and his bizarre fixation on saving the Wens at the expense of everyone else. Who didn’t care about their duty to their sect, to their parents - who didn’t care about him at all.

Jiang Cheng’s heart hurt. It was probably just the sword that’d just been driven through it, though.

Hands grasped at his clothing, pulling him back; his sister’s face had lost all blood, and Wei Wuxian looked as if his world had ended – he wasn’t sure why. Jiang Yanli had her son to care for, a new life in Lanling that she refused to abandon even if Jin Zixuan was now gone; Wei Wuxian had his Wens, his new cultivation – perhaps it was some little regret, far too late, for the Jiang sect that would now come to grief, leaderless, the end of their family line and the disappointment of their ancestors. Jiang Cheng’s final and most absolute failure.

Jiang Cheng looked at them both, the ones he loved the most and who had left him without a single glance backwards, and found with his last breath that he had nothing to say to them.

He closed his eyes so they wouldn’t have to.

2

The battlefield was full of corpses, and Jiang Yanli didn’t care about a single one of them.

“Do you think he can be brought back, the way Wen Ning was?” she asked, holding the corpse in her arms as if it were still the baby brother she sang songs to as a child, the little crybaby who was so fierce on the outside and so soft on the inside. She had been able to lie to herself with Jin Zixuan’s body – he almost looked as though he were sleeping, head on the pillow beside her own – but Jiang Cheng had never slept well in his life, his brow always furrowed as if he was worrying about something even in his dreams, and the blank peace on his face was so wrong that she couldn’t bear to look at him.

She wasn’t asking Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian had only stopped the massacre when Lan Wangji, of all unlikely people, had bodily tackled him; everyone had always said that the Second Jade was like oil and water with her A-Xian, but he’d unexpectedly taken their side in this battle and was even now letting a barely-conscious Wei Wuxian sob Jiang Cheng’s name into his collar. He looked silently at her, his gaze a quiet reminder that her question was inappropriate – one Ghost General had already been enough to cause all of this tragedy, and certainly no one would ever accept another as a sect leader.

She looked steadily back at him, indicating in return that she didn’t give a damn about the standing of the Jiang sect if it meant she wouldn’t have to bury her baby brother.

Lan Wangji hesitated, looking down at Wei Wuxian. “You cannot stay at Yiling,” he finally said. “After this…”

They’d killed people from virtually every sect; no matter who had sympathized with Wei Wuxian before this or how much they felt he was wronged, they would have no choice but to raise up arms against him.

Jiang Yanli understood. They would be fugitives, condemned by all. She didn’t care. “Will you help us?”

He nodded and stood, Wei Wuxian cradled as gently in his arms as she held Jiang Cheng in hers.

“Will you come with us?” she asked. Anyone who loved her brother enough to defy his sect, to stain his untainted blade with the blood of his own kin, deserved a chance to court him properly, if she hadn’t misunderstood his intentions; she didn’t think she had, not with the expression so clear on his silent face.

“I will help you,” he said, and that wasn’t an answer, wasn’t the one she wanted, but it would have to do for now. “Let us go.”

3

It was Jin Zixuan who figured it out, oddly enough. Perhaps it was because he was an outsider, looking at the situation without affection to blur his eyes.

“You gave him your golden core,” he said, less than a week into his resurrection – Lan Wangji had been very efficient in his help, not only finding a new place to hide Jiang Yanli and the remaining Wens but also returning to Lanling to steal Jin Zixuan’s corpse and little Jin Ling before returning to his own sect at the first sign that Wei Wuxian would awaken from his coma. He hadn’t sent word since that time, whether from regret or other reasons; their only consolation was that there was no news of his death. “That’s why you couldn’t do anything other than demonic cultivation – is that right?”

Wei Wuxian looked at him through blood-red eyes. “Get lost,” he said; the phrase made up the majority of his vocabulary, these days, and because he refused to curse his shijie he mostly ended up not talking to her at all.

“Wen Qing was a famous doctor – she could have figured out a way to do it, and that would explain why you felt so indebted to them,” Jin Zixuan continued. “You never told him because you didn’t want to burden him. But instead you left him without any reason, any explanation: he must have felt that you abandoned him because you didn’t want him.”

“Get lost!”

“You broke his heart,” he said, and looked down at Jiang Cheng’s body – still perfectly preserved, but unmoving. The resurrection spell had already failed three times. “No wonder he doesn’t want to return.”

“I did it for him!” Wei Wuxian screamed, tears of blood dripping down his cheeks. “He didn’t – he wouldn’t – he has to come back!”

Jin Zixuan said nothing.

4

They ended up back in Yunmeng, rather unexpectedly; the new leadership of the Lotus Pier, a distant branch cousin who’d survived the massacre because he’d been night-hunting elsewhere, had all but begged Jiang Yanli to return. Against all odds her reputation had survived the massacre at the Nightless City; the loving wife, sister, and shijie that nearly sacrificed herself to save what lives she could and to banish the dreadful Yiling Patriarch who was never seen again from that day forth –  she was very nearly regarded as an incarnation of the goddess of mercy.

She had no idea where that ridiculous notion came from, but it did mean that she could live in Lotus Pier again, with Jin Ling by her side – she’d told Jin Guangshan to name someone else as his heir, or at minimum as regent; the Jiang sect needed her and her son more. It wouldn’t have worked if Jin Zixuan hadn’t snuck into his mother’s room to convince Madam Jin to throw her support behind it; officially he was still in his tomb, since Lan Wangji had been very subtle, but in fact he lived within shouting distance of the Lotus Pier, spending his days playing with his son.

They all did, actually, the whole lot of them resettled into a tiny adjacent water town populated largely by civilians that relied on the Jiang sect for their prosperity. As long as Wei Wuxian never did anything, which he didn’t, the illusion that he was gone for good in a cloud of self-destruction after his terrible massacre could be maintained; no one expected they could possibly be so daring as to simply go home after all of it.

Lan Wangji was in seclusion, they were eventually told; Wei Wuxian hadn’t believed it for one second, smuggling himself into Gusu to check – he’d come back unconscious, slung over Jin Zixuan’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Struck by the discipline whip,” her husband, the fierce corpse that wasn’t fierce at all, said, and didn’t comment when she instinctively reached out to touch Jiang Cheng’s body, to trace the scar he had; she often spent her days next to the bed that preserved his corpse. “Many times; his body is ruined. It will take years for him to heal – the Lan sect saying he was in seclusion was their way of saving face. Wei Wuxian wants to bring him back to the Lotus Pier to hide him.”

Jiang Yanli rubbed her face, thinking not for the first time that the world would be an easier place if only her two brothers weren’t so stubborn. One who wouldn’t wake up, his spiritual consciousness all in pieces; the other who wouldn’t give up – “The Lan sect wouldn’t accept that.”

“He wasn’t planning on asking. That’s why I knocked him out. Anyway, they’re distracted with the Xue Yang matter now – my father’s still insisting on protecting him, and the Nie sect gets angrier about it by the day; without the Jiang sect, there’s only the Lan to play peacemaker, stop there from being another war.”

Jiang Yanli, who was very nice but also very much not the goddess of mercy, tilted her head to the side; something of her mother was in her eyes. “A war would be a good cover, though, or at least the rumblings of one. If we were going to steal Lan Wangji away from his sect, that is.”

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll sneak into Lanling to talk to my mother, maybe see if I can follow Xue Yang and see what he’s up to. You go talk to the Nie.”

5

Jiang Yanli’s visit to the Unclean Realm turned out to be more fruitful than anyone had expected. The moment she walked into Nie Mingjue’s receiving room, her Jiang sect bell rang so hard that it shattered, which it definitely hadn’t done during the war – they both stared at it wordlessly for a while.

Eventually, he cleared his throat, averting his eyes. “You know my family history,” he offered as an explanation, embarrassment at the public revelation of his problem already turning to anger but suppressed by his strict adherence to etiquette.

“That’s no family history,” she said, bemused, as she crouched down to poke at the pieces. “The silver bell of the Jiang sect can steady focus and calm the mind, and the ones made for the family are the strongest by far; it would only shatter like this in the effort to resist a spiritual poison…how are you feeling now, Sect Leader Nie?”

He considered for a long moment, and his face grew black with rage. “Better. I feel – like my mind has been filled with fog, and a clear breeze has blown it clear.”

She smiled up at him. “Perhaps you should visit Yunmeng.”

He scowled, and she realized he must know about Wei Wuxian’s presence, though she wasn’t sure how; despite that, in the end, after a roaring argument with Nie Huaisang in another room, he agreed to go, even if the idea of staying willfully blind clearly pained him to the core.

Jiang Yanli quietly approved of his decision to put family over principle.

When they put their mind to it, the Nie sect  had an underrated talent for saying ‘I don’t know’ to just about everything. Neither brother blinked an eye at the Wen sect remnants that still teetered every time they went on a boat, very clearly not Yunmeng locals; they politely greeted Jin Zixuan as if he’d only been gone a while and not murdered; much to his older brother’s very evident irritation, Nie Huaisang even leapt over to give Wei Wuxian an enthusiastic hug while Nie Mingjue was still talking with Jin Zixuan about what it meant that Jin Guangshan had hidden away the still intact Wen Ning, who Jin Zixuan had found in a hidden part of Koi Tower during his most recent visit and immediately liberated.

“Definitely a case of spiritual poisoning,” Wei Wuxian said after a short examination, and the most reliable doctor they had left in the Jiang sect concurred. “The silver bell can help a little –” 

They’d already shattered seven of them, but Nie Mingjue had actually cracked a smile for the first time in months, to hear a sobbingly relieved Nie Huaisang tell it. 

“–but it can only help so much; that technique is really only meant for acute cases. And you really need to figure out what was doing the poisoning; there’s no point in curing you if you’re only going to get poisoned again.”

“A matter for a later time,” Nie Mingjue, who clearly had some suspicions that made him look as though he’d been stabbed in the back, said. “Now that we know it’s a poisoning, and my mind is clearer, I can take some action myself – the Nie have plenty of techniques to stabilize the spirit.”

Wei Wuxian’s smile was full of self-hatred, as it always was these days. “I don’t suppose any of those are designed to work on the dead.”

“Actually,” Nie Huaisang said. “Several are. Why do you ask?”

6

Jiang Cheng opened his eyes.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #lan wangji #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #jin zixuan #my fic #my fics #congrats! #you get a full ficlet #this one just wouldn't stop writing

[mihanada]

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

(back to masterpost)

The name of this arc is “Poisons”. I don’t like the sound of that...Seems like we’re continuing with the flashbacks. I wonder how far we’ll go into the events up to and including the Sunshot Campaign...

There is a lot to talk about in this chapter!

Chapter 56: Poisons (Part 1)

Ooh, I see how it is. This story is going to troll us about that song’s name until it somehow gets played again in the present day storyline, isn’t it. It served its purpose, I suppose, since he slept through help arriving and carting him back to Yunmeng.

“When he woke up again[...]what he saw was neither the black ceiling of the underground cave nor Lan WangJi’s pale yet handsome face[...]”

I don’t like to make a mountain out of a molehill, but do I sense a tiiny crush here? Yet again, he finds Lan Wangji handsome despite spending 7+ days in a grimy underground cave after slaughtering a giant beast and swimming in its blood. He couldn’t have even used the water to clean himself.

“[...]a funny series of kissing heads[...]”

He probably (hopefully) drew this on his bed when he was younger, as kids tend to do. It suits him, somehow.

Jiang Yanli finally gets a spoken line! She deserves more lines though, how many times has she been mentioned and she never gets to talk at length.

Wei Wuxian’s banter with Jiang Cheng is rapid-fire, jumping back and forth naturally and giving the impression they’ve been through conversations in this style many times before. I like it, it shows how close they were (sob enjoy it while you can before everything goes to hell).

“Wei WuXian realized that he really did forget to count the time needed to get there.”

lol poor Jiang Cheng getting accused for being too slow when he couldn’t possibly drag his ass home and back in that amount of time. xD

Alright, Wei Wuxian keeps talking about his bad memory and such, but at least this time it’s justified. Who wouldn’t be delirious enough to not add correctly after what they went through in that cave?

“But why didn’t Lan Zhan remind me?”

This is funny for some reason. Wei Wuxian is so used to him being the level-headed proper guy so he also expected him to correct him. xD

hahaha my mother recently made something like this lotus root and rib soup. even though it’s summer here. o-o Lotus roots are a strange food (how do you even describe their texture? crunchy, fiber-y, but they’re also soft if you cook them long enough) but they’re very good.

“Where’s Lan Zhan? He’s also been saved, hasn’t he? Is he here? Or did he go back to his sect in Gusu?”

“He went back alone? Over in Gusu, his sect…”

Accordingly with his personality, especially when he was younger, Wei Wuxian asks so many questions one after another.

“Wei WuXian didn’t take the handkerchief. Instead, he pouted his mouth with exaggeration, “Yes!” ”

It’s interesting how he acts even more like a kid than usual around Jiang Yanli. It makes sense, considering where he came from and how he doesn’t remember much about his parents aside from a few words they said to him. Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Yanli were probably the first ones to be kind to him in a long while, and instead of scolding him for acting childish they indulge him. So, naturally he’ll just continue this behavior (even at 17 lol but that’s where his shamelessness comes into play).

“Glancing at the porcelain jar, he seemed as if he wanted to taste it as well, but the bowl had already been taken away by Jiang YanLi.”

loool everyone wants to taste this soup but only Wei Wuxian gets to.

ha, the Wen Sect steals the credit for killing the Xuanwu while Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian try to give each other the credit for killing it. aw, I like what that says about them as people. We explicitly learn that Wei Wuxian doesn’t consider his contribution to be that much. Meanwhile, Lan Wangji’s motive was for giving Wei Wuxian the credit...probably was that without him luring its head out, it wouldn’t have been possible to kill it.

However, without the Lan Sect’s assassination skill, anyone would have been hard-pressed to kill that thing with no proper weapons and it still took 6 hours.

“So it seems that both of you killed it together. What’s yours is yours. Why would you give him all the credit?”

This is also interesting, in line with the above. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are like night and day, it’s easy to spot their differences and how they fill in what the other lacks, but it’s rarer to see their similarities and this is one of them.

“You shouldn’t have played the hero and you shouldn’t have cared for such a hell of a thing.”

I think this is the line Jiang Fengmian feels wasn’t appropriate and not in line with the Jiang sect’s motto “To attempt at the impossible”.

“Since when was it your turn to play the hero?”

Before I launch into the whole complicated family situation, I’ll address these lines first.

This is a very interesting part of Wei Wuxian’s character. It’s not that he tries to be the hero or wants that glory, but he isn’t someone who can stand by and let things be other people’s problems (another similarity to Lan Wangji/the Lan Sect, actually). He does these things because he feels they are right (aka saving Mianmian, helping to hold off the Xuanwu so others can escape) and because no one else is willing to.

“[...]he thought to himself, He couldn’t have dared to do anything to them? That���s not for certain.”

His concern for others shows through here, but also some of his ignorance as a youth. 1) he’s more concerned about others than himself; he thinks that it is a real possibility the Wen Sect could have retaliated against the Lan or Jin Sects, never mind his own self; 2) he doesn’t seem to realize that his actions do have consequences for his sect and this is a very real concern of Madam Yu’s.

Perhaps it’s because he is in an odd position himself. He’s the top disciple of the sect, but also part of the inner circle of the Jiang clan, yet at the same time he is an outsider amongst them. When they bring up how Mianmian might be the daughter of a servant, Wei Wuxian even compares her to his own background as the son of a servant. Also, his “I don’t want others assigning me to other households!” was a sentiment probably born of a bit of pride and a bit of this toxic environment. even though he was adopted by the Jiang clan, he didn’t feel exactly part of them...

His self-identity when he was young is an interesting thing to think about...

“Do you still remember, between the one lying there and the one standing here, which one is your son?”

yikes

This is one woman you don’t want to cross.

“Do you think that anything will change just because you raised your voice?!”

kids, remember – talking louder doesn’t mean you’re more right.

On a serious note, this whole argument, which apparently has been hashed out many times before, gives a good look into the Jiang clan’s dynamics. It’s a tough situation (and a toxic environment). At least now we know where Jiang Cheng’s parenting skills come from (his own father was harder on him than Wei Wuxian, in turn Jiang Cheng also gives Jin Ling a hard time)

Speaking of his father being harder on him, it’s probably as Wei Wuxian observed and tries to assure him (and not Madam Yu’s skewed perspective): his father loves him, but he also is hard on him because he has to raise him as the next sect leader while Wei Wuxian has none of that, plus he’s not his own child but a good friend’s and of course he’ll be more lenient.

Which is actually a good point...Madam Yu works from the idea that Jiang Fengmian sees Wei Wuxian as his own child and favors him over Jiang Cheng and that’s why he’s lenient. But, Wei Wuxian sees it as him being lenient because Wei Wuxian isn’t his own child.

it is sort of an awkward situation isn’t it. Looking from the other side, it’s also easy to see how Jiang Cheng developed those feelings of frustration and believing his own father didn’t love him. From Jiang Cheng’s perspective, he doesn’t see Wei Wuxian as a servant or anything, so to him this preferential treatment means his father favors Wei Wuxian over him.

I like Wei Wuxian’s attempts to cheer Jiang Cheng up and talk him through it though. He’s actually trying to be helpful and his arguments are good.

“So what if there’s the motto?! Do you have to follow it just because it’s a motto? Look at the rules of the GusuLan Sect—there are over three thousand. If people followed every single one of them, would they even be alive at this point?”

lol. just. lol. “would they even be alive at this point?”

I love how he just throws the Gusu Lan Sect out as an example on all points though. xD

“In the future, you’ll be the sect leader, and I’ll be your subordinate, like your father and my father.”

Ah, there it is. Yeah, the discrepancy is here. versus...

“Jiang Cheng, “How can you compare to her? Whose servant is like you, having your master peel lotus seeds for you and boil you soup. I didn’t even get to have some!”

hahaha everyone wants that soup. see, you do have some things in common with your father.

 “I had a perfume sachet somewhere around my waist.”

Ok who can keep up with your thought process? he literally jumps from topic to topic with no transition lol

“Right, we were talking about Lan Zhan.”

like, 10 minutes ago...

ahhh but Lan Wangji’s dad has passed away...eep. Guess that means he didn’t make it home in time...

Wonder what the “Poisons” part is going to mean for the events in this arc though...

(quotes from ExR’s translations)

← back・onward →

#grandmaster of demonic cultivation #founder of diabolism #mo dao zu shi #gdc aka the liveblog of TEARS

[drwcn]

Hi! I was wondering on what you thought of the reunion scene where Wen Chao dies, why didn't WWX hug JC back?

Hi!! Sorry for the late reply, I was thinking of a coherent way to answer this after my exam. Here it goes:  

I think it boils down to a combination of 1) his personality, 2)his trauma/state of mind, 3)his long-term intentions. 

First and foremost, Wei Wuxian is not a touchy-feeling character, as least, not from what I saw from tv canon. I don’t mean he doesn’t have emotions, or that he doesn’t express affection, but that he is a very layered individual who keeps what he’s feeling deep down very well hidden from everyone. Yes he may be loud, mouthy or whatnot, but his true emotions, his true thoughts and feelings are kept bottled up and shielded against the world. In a way, I can sort of identify with that, as someone who seems very extroverted and is not afraid to speak. I am willing to share and talk about a lot of things, but the things that are closest to me, deepest most private emotions, I will never speak of to anyone. Perhaps I’m projecting or misinterpreting WWX, but I truly believe that he is quite like that as well. 

This is very different from Jiang Cheng, who although is bad at communicating, actually very much seeks to communicate. There are many instances where he asks wwx what’s going on, reaches out to him, and tries to understand. And his own outbursts of anger are his way of demonstrating that he is trying to understand, trying to communicate. Given his dysfunctional parents, I doubt Jiang Cheng was ever taught how to communicate healthily. He yells at wwx, again, and again, and again, because he wants a response. Because Jiang Cheng is confused and he just wants to sit down and talk about what the hell has been going on.

When Jiang Cheng hugs WWX, he is holding nothing back. He is damn relieved that his brother is alive, and he is so, so overjoyed. But the WWX who crawled out of Burial Mount is a different person than who went in. Nobody who goes through that kind of trauma consecutively (home destroyed, core surgical removed, beaten, tortured and tossed into the abyss of living hell) can be expected to stay the same. But he has to move forward, because the war is not won, because WRH is still alive, and he has a clan to avenge. At the same time, he couldn’t let Jiang Cheng know what had happened to him, because if there’s one thing more important than revenge to wwx at that moment in time it’s to keep the secret of the core transfer. 

When burdened with all that, WWX has to steel himself against everything. Have you ever been so angry, so hurt, so vulnerable that when a friend tries to reach out to comfort you, you shrink away. You shrink away because you can’t be touched, can’t be comforted, because if you even let go a little bit you’ll completely break. Because holding onto your anger and your coldness and that numb apathy is hundred times better than confronting everything that’s buried inside you. 

And lastly, I believe WWX has been working to self-sabotage himself since the very beginning. His target (whether he is aware of it or not) is that he is going to have to walk this demonic path alone. To him there are only three types of people in the world 1) people he needs to use demonic cultivation to protect e.g. the Wens; 2) people who he needs to keep away from to not taint with his demonic cultivation e.g. the Jiangs, Yanli, A-Cheng; and 3) the enemies who want to destroy him because in their ignorance they believe he is evil (Lan Qiren) or the enemies who want to use him for their own gains (Jin Guangshan). 

Until Lan Wangji (with 16 years to ruminate and reflect) makes it crystal clear to WWX that he wants to stand with his Wei Ying, no matter what, I don’t believe Wei Wuxian felt like there was anyone he could share this part of himself with. Even Wen Ning is in away... a creation of demonic cultivation, and not on par with him, the creator. 

I believe Wei Wuxian knows that he’s fucked from the get go. He never anticipates there will be a good end for himself, and he probably foresaw that in the end he’s going to have to walk this path alone. He begins isolating himself from those around him incrementally. He shuts himself off from Jiang Cheng just as he pushes Lan Wangji away. Because to him, he has no other choice. He has to keep walking this path because there is no other path to walk, but he couldn’t explain that to anyone. If he explains why he can’t walk the spiritual path....all the secrets he kept is going to to come out and he can’t have that. So, he is set to go down this single plank road, and he believes he has to walk it alone. 

He isn’t wrong. Without explaining why he is walking this path, no one 16 years ago is going to walk with him. No one. Not Lan Wangji nor Jiang Cheng. No one. And that’s perfectly reasonable. It’s like seeing your best friend randomly decide to rob a bank one day without telling you why. Of course you’re not going to help them. But if they explain to you that they’re being forced to do it because their son/parent/spouse is being held hostage, suddenly your position to stand with them might change. The same reason applies here. 

Thus, anticipating his future, it is probably easier for Wei Wuxian to isolate himself first than to be actively rejected by his friends and kin later. He strikes first instead of waiting to be struck.  Not hugging Jiang Cheng back, in its essence, is Wei Wuxian’s defence mechanism. 

#corie replies #cql meta