#throw. flowers. to. nie. mingjue.

[justaghostingon]

When Your Brother Thinks You’re Being Cheated On: How Not to Introduce your third

A 3zun crack au

Jin Guangyao, Lan xichen, and Nie Mingjue have recently become a triad, finally taking their sworn brotherhood to the next level after many talks, tears, confessions, and scheming of a one Lan xichen to get both his boyfriends to be boyfriends together

Guangshuan is also dead far earlier than in canon under mysterious circumstances, which greatly helped the three come together and absolutely was not a bonding expierience for the three

They’re pretty happy, however this realtionship is still new, and with politics being as it is, (wei wuxian being out there in his burial mounds scarinf everyone by existing and stressing out lan zhan, jin zixuan a new sect leader and expecting a child soon, and nie mingjue suffering baxia’s backlash) they’re trying to keep it on the down low until things stablize a bit

What they forget to take into account, are there brothers

Lan xichen is probably the most innocent in this, he fully believes he’s told lan zhan, he talks about his lovers all the time! Surelly lan zhan was listening?

Lan zhan was not listening. He was brooding over wei wuxian.

He is vaguely that lan xichen liked nie mingjue from way back when they were kids, and hasn’t thought it changed, since lan’s can only love once. It’s their families curse after all. So when lan xichen talks about a-yao this, a-yao that, lan zhan thinks its just friendship talk (like what wei ying used to do to him in cloud recesses) and tunes it out.

Jin Guangyao has an excuse. His position in the jin clan is destabilized by the shift in leadership. The last thing he wants is for jin zixuan to think he can’t do his job because he’s also kissing the leaders of two rival sects.

Jin zixuan for his part, does not see the other sects as rivals to beat like his father did. He’s not thinking much of anything except that he’s really drowning in work, and both Jiang Yanli and Jin Guangyao are lifelines.

Jiang Yanli he can show his gratitude by being the best husband he can be. But jin Guangyao? How can he get his brother to stop being awkward and take a break, (and maybe be closer like everyone else is with their siblings?)

Then jin zixuan catches the heart eyes that jin guangyao throws lan xichen at a sect conference, so much warmer than how he acts towards his other sworn brother, with all that bickering (flirting).

So jun zixuan tries to set up jin guangyao and lan xichen, giving every excuse for one to visit the other, and ample alone time when they do. He’s rewarded once by coming in a room wirh out knocking to see them holding hands.

Jin guangyao pulls his hand away, but its too late, jin zixuan saw it, his mission is complete!

Nie Mingjue is the only one who was no excuse. His brother asks him about his love life all the time. He wants to know!!!

But nie mingjue does not want a meddling sibling in his buisness, and anytime it comes up he gets so embarrassed he can’t speak, so he shuts him out.

Nie huaisang has to use his own brain, and so wjen he spots nie mingjue blushing and braiding a flower into jin guangyao’s hair, he realizes his answer. Nie mingjue has finally acted on his old feelings for meng yao, now his awful father isn’t here to keep them aprart.

All three brothers are thrilled. Until….

Lan zhan finds out first. He’s walking in the cloud recesses, when he sees two people making out. One in a now familiar green, and one in …yellow.

Nie mingjue is making out with jin guangyao in the cloud recesses, right under his brother’s nose! The nerve!

Lan zhan is frozen solid for a good five minutes, just watching in horror, before he turns and storms away, determined to save his brother from such a faithless match.

Jin guangyao and nie mingjue were absolutely doing it on purpose. They caught a glimpse of lan zhan’s white robes and handsome appearance out of the corner of their eye and thinking he was lan xichen, decided to give him a show. When they weren’t hit with a solid body joining their embrace they realized something was wrong, it wasn’t xichen, but lan wangji. They both feel very embarrassed and do not want to bring it up to lan xichen that they ruined his brother’s innocent with the sight of their kissing.

Lan wangji meanwhile tries to tell his brother, but his brother won’t hear a word against nie mingjue, (and lan zhan’s phrasing was also really vague, stuff like: “nie mingjue is a bad man, and jin guangyao is a snake in the bunny feild” but give him a break, he was traumatized)

Lan’s only love once, lan zhan justifies to himself, its gonna take more than words to convince him.

So he goes to the only person he can think of in times of crisis, wei wuxian.

Wei wuxian isn’t very close to those three, he thought nie mingjue was a better man than that, but then again, all the sects did turn a blind eye to the wen prison camps, so what does he know? No. He’s only mad about this because lan zhan came to him so obviously upset, and wei wuxian can never resist an upset lan zhan.

So he works day and night, (while lan zhan gets covered in blankets by the wens and hugs a-yaun for comfort) to create a talisman that can capture an event in the instant it happens, like a painting!

(Its a camera, he invented a camera)

He then starts marketting them to the common people under a psydonim, so it will be a trusted device by the time news reaches the cloud recesses.

He then gives it to lan zhan and instructs him to get a photo of nie mingjue cheating to show to his brother as proof.

Lan zhan accepts with the gravity of a man going to war, and prepares to stalk his brother’s boyfriend.

Meanwhile, nie huaisang is in for the shock of his life at the next sect conference, when he sees thr flowers he had sent to jin guangyao’s rooms on his brothers behalf, were instead decorating the rooms of a blushing lan xichen, who said “someone very special gave them to me.”

This may seem an innocent gesture of regifting, but nie huaisang smells a rat. You don’t regift a lovers gift to another person, u certainly don’t leave the other person blushing and saying it was from someone “very special”

Clearly jin guangyao is two-timing poor nie mingjue! But don’t worry! Nie huaisang has the perfect plan! First he’ll expose jin guangyao for the liar he is, then he’ll have both nie mingjue and lan xichen rebound with each other, effectively ensuring their happieness while punishing the guilty party! (Lan xichen can’t know. He’s to good to cheat, and he loves nie mingjue to much,” nie huaisang thinks, missing the obvious)

His plans however, face problems from the start. He first tries to expose jin guangyao as having a failed relationship before with qin su, to show to his brother jin guangyao’s track record isn’t great. But when he finds the actual reason “the mother told them both they were siblings, since she was no longer afraid of jin guangshan’s retribution since he was dead” it doesn’t help him at all! If anything it makes jiggy look even more honorable for covering it up and makinf it look like it was because he wasn’t good enough.

Then he tries to expose him as a liar in koi tower, lots of corruption there! But his every step is thwarted by some unknown force, one even he can’t out think

His only hope lies in the new talisman on the market that allows you to capture images. Surely if he catches jin guangyao in the act, that will be wnouggh to prove him unfaithful (even if it will prob take a few more steps to convince da-ge that lan xichen didn’t know actually and is s good choice for rebound)

The person who is thwartinf nie huaisang is in fact jin zixuan, mostly by all the back breaking work he’s done to weed out corruption, tiredness, and trying to keep jin guangyao to simpler, easy to do jobs.

See, jin zixuan saw lan xichen kiss nie mingjue on the cheek a couple weeks back, and even though he’s not certain if its actually cheating or lan xichen and a-yao broke up and lan xichen moved on far to quickly, he knows it must be taking a toll on jin guangyao

Not that jin guangyao is showing any signs, but that’s just the mask he’s always wearing. If Jin zixuan wants to see the real him, he needs to prove he can be someone he can trust.

So he starts giving jin guangyao simpler tasks to do, paired with babysitting the new born jin ling, things that keep him away from all the husle of court politics that put him into contact with his ex and his ex’s new man.

Jiang yanli is more than happy to help, talking about her own brothers to remind jiggy he has one too, and having tea with him while he holds jin ling.

Jiggy is glad for time with jin ling, but he likes doing things! He has to fight tooth and nail to get jin zixuan to let him help with the one month ceremony, and is far to busy with that to do any scheming of any kind

Everything comes to a head at jin ling’s one month celebration, where nie huaisang tries to publicly expose jin guangyao by working pictures of him with lan xichen into the slide show (yet another wei wuxian invention, he’s really on fire with these)

He then points out the obvious by “accident” and tries to reassure mingju there’s no way lan xichen would ever betray him like that

Lan zhan (who has brought wei wuxian for moral aupport) sees this and panics, showing his pictures (which he originally wanted to give to his brother in private) to prove his brother’s innocence and that its the other way around, actually.

To which jin zixuan angrilly stands up and points out how nie mingjue and lan xichen were the one’s who left jin guangyao and he’s not going to stand for anyone insulting his brother actually, and this is his psrty so they better back off or get out.

“Your here for formalities sake, we could easily have this with just the jins and the jiangs!”

“Anf me!” Goes wei wuxian

“And the wei sect!” Goes jin zixuan, accidentally acknowledging wei wuxian’s group of outcasts as legitimate and thus changing the course of history

It is at this point when 3zun realize the jig is up. In their attempt to keep quiet for politics, they made everything even worse.

They stand up and point out that no, no one is cheating, and yes, they are all together, all THREE of them, and that is not going to change anytime soon, and also could they have those photos? Lan xichen’s starting a scrap book.

See this is why i don’t tell you things, goes jin guangyao to jin zixuan, (secretly pleased he’d be willing to go against two sects for him)

“What the f- goes on in your head?” Goes nie mingjue to nie huaisang

“Brother i told you this ages ago,” goes a very disappointed lan xichen

“Lan’d can love more than one person?” Lan zhan says, eyes wide and uncompeehending “do i have to love more than one?”

“Don’y worry about it lan zhan,” goes wei wuxian. “You can love exactly how you want too.” Lam zhan looks at him with wide eyes, makes three leaps of logic, a d assumes this is wei wuxian acknowledging lan zhan’s feelings and giving him permission to court him.

Thus 3zun live happily ever after, having learned that communication really is key when you have three very over-protective brothers.

#the untamed #the untamed au #mo dao su zhi #mdzs au #mdzs #3zun #nieyao #nielan #xiyao #jin guangyao #nie mingjue #lan xichen #jin zixuan #nie huaisang #lan wangji #wei wuxian #i don’t got enough coins to fastpass love me to death so i had to turn to another throuple instead #a little bit of wangxian in the end #not cheating au #cheating discussed but never happens

[the-pudding-is-a-lie]

This truly is the year of my Nie Dage Tiddies era and I am not even sorry about it. Have one more picture! @not-rude-ginger suggested adding flowers to his tattoo design and that was brilliant, thank you for throwing that at me!

[image ID: a digital lineart drawing of Nie Mingjue from The Untamed/MDZS in a modern au setting. He is shown to his waist, only wearing tightly fitted pants. His arms are covered in tattoos that form geometric patterns, a poeny and a lotus flower are tattooed onto the sides of his chest. The sides of his head are cut short while the rest of his hair is partially pulled up into a messy bun and flowing down his back. He is in 3/4 profile and looking at the viewer with a stern expression. End ID.]

#fanart #the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #cql #wip #nie mingjue #modern au #chen qing ling #chifeng zun #image described

[childe-wei]

#mo dao zu shi #mdzs #polls #hyst yells into the void #nie mingjue #finally! poll privilege!

[madtomedgar]

if you're still doing genderbends, would you do nie huaisang? there's this idea going around in the fandom that he's gnc, but he actually fills the masculine 'scholar' archetype - i imagine as a woman he would sneak all kinds of things past people who thought of him as even weaker bc sexism

once again @stripedroseandsketchpads is the f!Nie Huaisang tzar.

You are correct, anon, that Nie Huaisang falls squarely into a masculine scholar/artist/useless prince framework, and is not feminine or gender nonconforming. So. f!Nie Huaisang is very arty and very into painting, but also very into flower arranging and embroidery, and has grand ambitions of being the most pampered wife ever. Unfortunately, she has been tragically born into Thee jock family, and is expected to perform the role of girl from powerful cultivation clan (see: Yu Ziyuan). I think she adopts a lot of the like. Incredibly annoying girly whining and like... idk how else to describe it but that thing where women in cdramas act like they're 14 despite being grown adults. The like... sticking the lip out and pouting and throwing themselves on furniture to wail and also being very silly and playful while the men who are the same age act mature, that thing.

I recently learned that it was pretty common for bed slippers to have erotic scenes embroidered on the insides of the shoes, and I think that is her Thing instead of pornographic books.

Nie Huaisang being a woman makes Nie Mingjue's not getting married and also his insistence that she prepare to lead the sect even more bizarre, and I think you have to give him a much larger blindspot/sense of denial about his condition, where he just refuses to acknowledge that he's dying. Maybe he insists clarity can fix him, even though that's not true, and that's part of why Nie Huaisang assumes this was Jin Guangyao's fault. You can also have him kind of... assuming, in a cql timeline, that he can make Meng Yao, his competent and loyal deputy who Nie Huaisang is so fond of, her male consort, and then that is an added layer to his Jin Guangyao derangement, because he almost trusted his baby sister with him! What If! (Nie Huaisang would have lived her best life because Meng Yao is genuinely fond of her and cares about being a Good Husband and also Nie Huaisang wouldn't be taking swings at his head). (It's also Very Good if Jin Guangyao is also a woman jussayin).

f!Nie Huaisang definitely plays up the flighty, whiny, delicate, incompetent Girl thing after her brother dies, and her leaning into sexist stereotypes there is extra fun if xiyao are also women. Yeah. TBH if Xiyao are women and things end like they do in canon I personally kind of need Nie Huaisang to also be a woman because else it just... nasty little man destroys the coolest lesbians in history is not a story I find fun. (Unless Jin Guangyao returns somehow to wreck his shit, then it's fine).

I think f!Nie Huaisang is flirtatious but specifically in order to get things from other people or get out of things, and then as soon as she's got what she wants she is just like "thanks! bye!" I think she's bi, and The Original Pillow Princess. Like. f!Sangyao is literally. Nie Huaisang just lays there and lets/makes Meng Yao do all the work, and then immediately falls asleep once she's gotten off. She doesn't even pull hair! She doesn't even do anything! She's a bit of a voyeur specifically for guys.

Her "dropping the act" Thing is even more jarring than it is in canon, and she is still exactly as sharp and cold, and exactly as lazy.

#untamed stuff #rule 63 #long post

[iamwestiec]

Last Ten Opening Lines

copying @theleakypen and @bladedweaponsandswishycoats

Rules: post the first sentence of your last ten fics. If you haven’t written ten fics, share as many first-sentences as you have.

On the morning of Chunfen, when the hours of daylight are perfectly balanced with those of night, Nie Mingjue wakes up with a smile. — as winter gives way to spring, MDZS/The Untamed, 3zun

Lan Zhan has had this nightmare before—walking into a class late(!) only to discover that there's a test(!!) that he somehow didn't know about(!!!) and therefore hasn't done any of his exam day prep routine for(!!!!). — and a bunny eraser too, MDZS, wangxian

Liu Qingge groaned to consciousness with no idea of where he was and his skull absolutely throbbing. — Entanglement, SVSSS, Liu Qingge/Zhuzhi lang

The day Wei Wuxian reappeared in Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng seriously considered throwing him out. — in our next life, MDZS/The Untamed, chengxian with background wangxian [No Ink Can Overwrite would go here, but Puck wrote the opening]

"Hi!" — Fancy Meeting You Here, The Untamed + Leverage, Jiang Yanli/Wen Qing + the Leverage OT3

"Jin furen, you seem very distressed, and I'm sorry, but I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," he said, as though she hadn't lived long enough in Lanling to recognize a mask. — tactical maneuvers, MDZS/The Unamed, Nie Huaisang/Qin Su

It was a mistake. — staving off the inevitable, The Untamed, Jin Guangyao/Nie Mingjue

Wei Wuxian hisses and flinches away as Wen Qing dabs the salve along the angry red line where she'd neatly stitched his side back together. — Hurts, MDZS/The Untamed, Wei Wuxian+Wen Qing [another co-written fic goes here: The Curious Case of the Body-Swapping Flower]

He saw Wei Wuxian yesterday. — D.C. al Fine, The Untamed, pre-wangxian gen

"… help yourself to refreshments, and when you're ready, head on in!" — Dage's Big Bang, The Untamed, everyone/Nie Mingjue

Sooooooo much threadfic on this list, wow! It definitely skews things toward the short and in medias res, but honestly I tend toward that style of opening anyway unless, as we see with the 3zun, I'm aiming for a more lyrical/storybook opening. Interestingly, the nature of archiving threadfic means these are chronologically all over the place, but they feel very consistent to me. What do y'all think?

Jump in if you'd like to play!

#writing memes #opening lines #fanfiction #westie writes

[llycaons]

im just going to make a complication post for it: this fic btw

His brother is excellent at small talk, at making people feel at ease, at saying the right thing at the right time. Lan Wangji, for his part, is excellent at silence, at staring at people until they feel uncomfortable enough to leave the room, and at reciting rules – in short, he is a model member of Gusu Lan and as such definitely not fit for public appearances.

so true he IS good at all that

Wei Wuxian proudly presented a self-drawn family portrait to his sister, who was thrilled and promised to hang it up in the main reception hall. When Jin Zixuan walked past it hours later, he saw that the picture showed his beautiful wife, their beautiful son, his two brothers in law, and a peacock. The peacock had a vermillion dot between its eyes.

oh this is hysterical. imagine jyl actually going along with that

“Say da-jiu. Can you say da-jiu? Da-jiu. Da-jiu. No? Let’s try Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian. Really, nothing? Aiyo, we’ve been at this for so long now and you still insist on staying silent? I’m very disappointed in you. Hey, say Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan. Say Lan Zhan. Think of his face when he hears you say that. Think of Jin Zixuan’s face when he hears you say that! Do it for da-jiu. Look how simple it is. Lan Zhan!”

wwx WOULD teach his nephew to saw lwj's name

Can you believe he hasn’t said a single word yet?” “He’s two months old,” Jin Zixuan bites out. “Shijie was already speaking in full sentences at that age,” Wei Wuxian says with the confidence of someone who hasn’t actually met Jiang Yanli until she was eleven. “Must be your side of the family, I suppose.”

WHAT A DICK

But if he stays behind, then how can he know for sure that this event serves as the romantic bonding time he has planned? He knows that Wei Wuxian is a skilled cultivator...His attention won’t be captured by someone with lesser skills, he needs a match, someone who can keep the ever-fleeting interest of someone as scatter-brained as Wei Wuxian. Zewu-jun would have provided a pool of calm to Wei Wuxian’s restlessness, but even Nie Mingjue, for all his anger and intensity, has something solid about him. People look at him and see a man who will not yield for anyone. Jin Zixuan hopes that Wei Wuxian will look at him slay monsters today and see a man who will make for a good husband and a demanding, yet gentle lover.

I CAN'T

Wei Wuxian is sitting cross-legged on the mossy grass and appears to be weaving together the stems of several dandelions, occasionally throwing some of the petals in Lan Wangji’s direction, who steadfastly ignores him in his muted conversation with Nie Mingjue... They both look over at the rest of their group, where Wei Wuxian has finished his flower crown and is presenting it to Lan Wangji with a little flourish. Lan Wangji gazes down at it, then turns back to Nie Mingjue, who’s watching this display intently. Physically incapable of accepting defeat, Wei Wuxian now tries to deposit the dandelion crown on Lan Wangji’s head anyway; Lan Wangji takes one step to the side. Wei Wuxian changes tactics and makes a grab for Lan Wangji’s hand, equally unsuccessful. Wei Wuxian has finally given up and lets the wreath drop to the ground between them, his sulk visible even several metres away. He starts walking over to them, and in the background, Jin Zixuan sees Lan Wangji bow down to pick the crown back up, tucking it into his sleeve,

typical

“There is no shame in weakness,” he says, vaguely recalling his uncle’s advice. “There is only shame in failing to try.” “Um,” Nie Huaisang says.

help

Wei Wuxian still doesn’t understand boundaries, because he immediately invites Lan Wangji along – and, of course, he’s really obnoxious about it. “Of course, I’ll come to Qinghe,” Wei Wuxian says, eyes bright with the promise of adventure. “It’ll be nice, won’t it, Lan Zhan? Get a bit of a break from everyday sect life.”

he just assumes lwj will be there with him...

#I had to stop im so little into this thing #ficblogging

[jaimebluesq]

Just a quick little drabble for Mothers' Day.

~~~

Nie Ziniao paused in the doorway to the Nie family courtyard, captivated by the sight of the woman before her. He Yaling was a large woman, tall and well-muscled, and often chose sleeveless robes in order to display her prized physique – but to Nie Ziniao, she was simply beautiful.

With a mischievous smirk, Nie Ziniao crept forward, approaching He Yaling from behind – she knew a warrior like the other woman had likely heard her approach already, but that didn't mean it wasn't still fun to play around in such a way. The moment she was within reaching distance, Nie Ziniao hopped forward and wrapped her arms around He Yaling's neck.

“Got you,” she whispered into the other woman's ear, receiving in response a low, throaty laugh that always brought a smile to her face. Her hold immediately gentled and she placed a kiss against the other woman's temple. “Are the boys behaving?”

He Yaling nodded. Nie Ziniao followed her eyes to where little Mingjue was swinging around his practice saber, pretending to defeat a beast and letting out a shout of You're a tough one! But I must save the villagers and defeat you, worthy foe. Then it appeared as if the 'beast' was finally struck down, prompting a burst of applause from where little Huaisang sat, lap full of plucked flowers that he was stringing together by the stems.

Mingjue, face grinning in victory, ran over to He Yaling and made a formal bow before her. “I've beaten the beast for you, Mama!”

He Yaling patted Nie Ziniao's arms before unwrapping them from her neck. She stood up and bowed back to her son. “You bring honour to your father's clan.”

Mingjue rose upright and looked up at his mother's face, which had turned mischievous, then paused. A moment later, he took off running with her right behind him, quickly catching up to him and throwing him over her shoulder. He let out squeals of laughter as she prodded at his sides, tickling him until he had trouble catching his breath.

Nie Ziniao's attention was taken away from the amusing scene by a little hand tugging at her wide sleeve. She looked down into the precious face of her son and knelt down to match his height.

“I made this for you, Mama,” he said, slipping a flower crown over her braided hair.

“It's beautiful, A-Sang.” She wrapped her arms around her son and lifted him up, cuddling him close as he giggled in glee.

He Yaling came over to her side, Mingjue still slung over her shoulder (though exhausted after his tickling). She ran an affectionate hand down Huaisang's back before pressing her temple to Nie Ziniao's. For her part, Nie Ziniao reached behind the other woman to playfully tug at one of Mingjue's braids.

It was a good day – uneventful, but the sort one remembered on cold, heartless nights to keep themselves warm and feeling loved.

~*~*~*~

Sect Leader Nie Mingjue was exhausted as he entered his tent, having spent hours working on strategy with his generals in their efforts to retake the Unclean Realm from the Wen. All he wanted was to sleep for days on end, but he paused upon seeing his brother was still awake. Nie Huaisang sat at a low table with only candles for lighting, and he looked upset as his fingers clutched around a paintbrush.

Nie Mingjue approached quietly and looked over his brother's shoulder, his breath catching when he saw what his brother had been painting. There wasn't a scene of any sort, simply two faces that stared up from the parchment, and even though the lines were rough and some details were off, there was no mistaking that the sketches were of He Yaling and Nie Ziniao – their mothers. Nie Mingjue laid his hand on his brother's shoulder.

Nie Huaisang didn't jump in surprise or otherwise react to his touch – he simply sniffed loudly before rubbing at his eye with the knuckle of one hand.

“The Wen are probably burning everything we had,” Nie Huaisang muttered. “Old paintings and drawings, and... sometimes I think I'm forgetting what they looked like. I was afraid that if I didn't paint them now, and if the old sketches are destroyed... there'd be no way to remember them again.”

Nie Mingjue squeezed his brother's shoulder. “It worries me too sometimes,” he admitted, “but even if we don't remember all the details, we still remember them. That's all we can ever do – remember them and honour their memories.”

Nie Huaisang nodded and placed his brush down upon the table.

“Now get to bed, brat. We have a long day tomorrow.”

Nie Mingjue stepped back to allow his brother to stand up and he wasn't surprised when Nie Huaisang immediately came to him and gave him a hug. It was hard for all of their sect, knowing the enemy was in their home and unable to take it back yet, and Nie Mingjue did his best to be strong for them all. But as he hugged his little brother back, he allowed himself a moment of weakness, of mourning the loss of their home and the loss of their family before it.

It was a bad day, but as long as they kept fighting, there would be better ones ahead.

#Nie Mingjue #Nie Huaisang #Nie Mothers #Drabble #Mother's Day #the untamed

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

Soldier, Poet, King

Part 7

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

[AO3] [Masterpost]

-/-

Lan Xichen isn’t cold at all. 

Jin Guangyao can understand why the others thought so after seeing his mind purely on the surface level, but behind those miles-thick walls he’s got around his entire psyche, he’s not cold. He’s afraid. And it had been clear almost instantly that he isn’t even aware of it, the barriers he’s put up, the way he hems himself in so that nothing can hurt him here. He’d seen the same thing when he’d gone into Nie Mingjue’s mind for the first time, only of course Nie Mingjue’s barriers had been quite a bit more violent than Lan Xichen’s. Different personalities, different results, but the exact same tendency to feel like they have to be the ones who are strong for everyone else, who aren’t allowed to have any weaknesses of their own at all.

Kissing Lan Xichen hadn’t really been in his plans, but he just honestly hadn’t been sure how else to throw him off-kilter enough to wriggle his way inside his head, to make him willing to entertain the idea of proper intimacy rather than maintaining his polite distance. Not that it had been an entirely selfless gesture, of course. He’s aware enough of himself to admit that. But it’s effective anyway, as he realizes with some degree of triumph the moment he opens his eyes and finds he has no idea what he’s looking at.

‘Shufu,’ a small boy wearing soft, white linen clothes whispers in the way that children do, which isn’t a whisper at all. He’s tugging on a man’s neatly-pressed trousers, and when Jin Guangyao raises his gaze to look he finds himself looking at a man in his late 20’s, perhaps his early 30’s judging by the gravity in his expression, frowning down at the boy in a way that’s stern but not angry - Jin Guangyao is well-versed in spotting the difference by now.

‘Yes, A-Huan?’

‘Zhan-didi went to a-niang’s house again.’

Jin Guangyao watches the man sigh heavily and turn his gaze towards the window beside them, though when Jin Guangyao looks out himself all he can see beyond the window is a blank expanse of white. He thinks for a moment that it’s the Drift, but when he follows the pair outside he finds it’s actually snow, a thick fluffy blanket of it that they tromp through with relative ease, clearly used to it.

The air is thin and cold, mountain air scented with crisp pine and the bite of ice, and Jin Guangyao takes a moment to breathe deeply of it even though it’s just a memory. It’s been a long time since he’s experienced air this fresh - perhaps he never has - and it’s much more pleasant than he would have ever thought to give credit to.

‘My home in Gusu,’ Lan Xichen says softly beside him, his tone hushed and slightly awed. Jin Guangyao glances at him to find he’s looking around as if this is his first time here as well, though Jin Guangyao is positive he’s the boy leading the man by the hand down the path. ‘We haven’t lived here since…’ Jin Guangyao watches Lan Xichen’s eyes lock onto the man’s back as they follow behind him, and suddenly the ever-stately Lan Xichen is hurrying ahead almost clumsily, something nakedly desperate on his face.

‘Shufu,’ he breathes, pained. The man, of course, just keeps on his course, and when Jin Guangyao draws level with Lan Xichen he slips his fingers silently into his companion’s hand for him to clutch at as they follow behind. Lan Xichen doesn’t explain any further, but Jin Guangyao doesn’t need him to. The emotions of the memory are a bit distant, perhaps, but they’re there all the same. There’s grief and confusion and a longing that he gets the sense has never fully gone away, and then they’re standing in front of a small cottage, the window-boxes empty of flowers and the creek through the yard frozen solid in its bed. There’s a small boy, smaller even than little A-Huan, kneeling right there in the middle of all that snow like he can’t even feel it.

‘A-Zhan,’ the man calls, and the kneeling boy tenses but doesn’t otherwise indicate that he’s heard. ‘Come inside. It’s time for dinner.’ The man holds his free hand out to the boy and waits, still and patient as a statue, until the boy rises to take it and let himself be led away.

‘I don’t want to do this,’ Lan Xichen suddenly says, sounding very small, and Jin Guangyao squeezes his hand tightly.

‘We don’t have to, I understand what happened with the others now and that was all I wanted. But if you want to fully Drift with me, we can’t get there unless you let yourself feel all of this.’

Lan Xichen’s gaze is sad and frightened at the same time when their eyes meet, but the scenery changes around them into a fresh memory anyway and Jin Guangyao offers the other man an encouraging smile, a kiss to his knuckles where their hands are locked together.

Lan Xichen’s childhood is, to put it bluntly, unbearably lonely. Jin Guangyao grew up much the same in some ways, but at least he’d had his mother’s affection and the hope of his father’s in the future (until that dream was destroyed in his teenage years). He hadn’t had many friends, but there had been a few children he could tolerate and who could tolerate him for the sake of at least a game or two, so long as they didn’t know who he or his mother was.

Lan Xichen, by contrast, grew up in such isolation Jin Guangyao can hardly fathom it. The Lan family ancestral home is high in the mountains, and though there is a family, a clan really, no bigger than a small village, Lan Xichen’s position in it is so highly regarded as to put him up on a pedestal so high no one can touch him at all.

He’d been telling nothing but the truth when he’d said that he and his brother were raised identically, without favoritism - they were raised fairly, from what Jin Guangyao can tell, and he knows from Lan Xichen’s own fond perceptions of his uncle as they watch each memory of him that Lan Qiren raised them with love in his own unique way, stern as that had been. 

That doesn’t change the fact that Lan Xichen hasn’t been held since the last time he visited his mother before her death, or that the little brother that he loves so dearly has been his only companion his entire life; his little brother who had spent years of their lives in utter silence and rejecting all attempts at affection, nigh on unreachable despite Lan Xichen’s attempts to bridge the empty space between them. They’d begun to grow close again after the worst of Lan Wangji’s grief had faded, but by then the distant habits had been permanent, and Lan Xichen’s desire for tenderness, and affection, and a happy loving family had long been buried under duty and expectations.

The fact that he’s managed to find enough warmth left within himself to share it with others is an absolute fucking miracle.

“Manually shutting down Drift sequence,” Nie Huaisang’s voice snaps them out of Lan Xichen’s memories and Jin Guangyao has an angry demand as to why all ready to go on the tip of his tongue when they’re forcibly jerked out of the icy silence of Lan Xichen’s memories and back into the constant noise of the shatterdome.

He opens his eyes only for his demand to die on his lips when he finds Nie Mingjue kneeling in front of him, white as a sheet and dabbing at his face carefully with something soft.

“You’ve been in there for hours,” he says as he pulls the cloth away to reveal it’s a handkerchief stained with crimson splotches, and Jin Guangyao feels more hot blood drip from his nose as soon as the cloth is removed. “You can go back in in a few days, but you have to stop and rest. Orders, A-Yao.”

“Okay,” Jin Guangyao agrees easily, alarmed by the fear in Nie Mingjue’s eyes. “Huan-ge-” he says without thinking, the diminutive easy on his lips after being so bare in front of Lan Xichen and seeing him in return, even if their Drift isn’t complete just yet. He turns his head to try to find him only for his vision to swim nauseatingly, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut and curl forward against Nie Mingjue’s shoulder as his partner reaches out for him, once again trying to stem his nosebleed as he holds him steady.

“It’s alright, A-Yao,” Lan Xichen says, though his voice is a bit shaky. “I’m right here.”

Jin Guangyao doesn’t stop trying to fight against his dizziness until he manages to lift his head enough to see Lan Xichen over Nie Mingjue’s shoulder, thankfully looking shaken but blood-free as far as he can tell. He’s dimly aware of Mo Xuanyu and Nie Huaisang bustling around them, but he’s suddenly so drained he can’t be bothered to pay attention to what they’re doing.

Jin Guangyao only relaxes when Lan Xichen reaches around Nie Mingjue’s waist to take hold of his hand, and then his body leaves him no choice but to obey Nie Mingjue’s order and rest.

-/-

“Xuanyu go get a doctor,” Nie Mingjue says, all business, as Lan Xichen stares in silent shock at the sight of Jin Guangyao ghostly pale and passed out cold on Nie Mingjue’s shoulder, his nose still bleeding in a steady trickle. “Hey! One of mine, okay? Don’t bring a Jin doctor in here, don’t even look at one of them.”

“I know, I know,” Mo Xuanyu says in a rush and then he’s practically flying from the room while Nie Huaisang continues hurrying through getting Jin Guangyao untangled from the nodes and wires of the simulator so that Nie Mingjue can take him - carefully - out of the chair and closer to his chest, into his lap. Lan Xichen watches it all with a blank sort of terror, but it’s quickly making way for something he can’t identify until Nie Mingjue turns his head enough to look at him out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps through the emotion - it’s guilt, he realizes - clawing its way up his throat like bile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t - he seemed fine, I -”

“It’s not your fault,” Nie Huaisang says as he starts working on getting him untangled next. Lan Xichen just grips Jin Guangyao’s fingers a little tighter and aches to pull him closer like Nie Mingjue is, though of course he won’t interfere in anything between them. “It’s happened before, with da-ge. You can’t help it.”

His tone is as close to desperate as he’ll allow as he demands to know, “What happened?”

“We can talk about it later,” Nie Mingjue cuts across whatever Nie Huaisang was going to say in order to haul Jin Guangyao closer and stand with him in his arms in a bridal hold, Jin Guangyao’s head lolling alarmingly over his elbow. Lan Xichen lurches to his feet, feeling utterly off-kilter and uncertain of everything. He’s raw and bleeding at the edges, his past and the pain he’s done his best to tamp down in the years since his childhood as strong as if he’d never managed it at all.

He looks up sharply from Jin Guangyao’s face to Nie Mingjue’s, and he attempts to give the two of them some space no matter how desperately he wants to eliminate all hints of distance as soon as humanly possible. Nie Mingjue doesn’t let him go far, stepping forward when he steps back, and after a moment his expression hardens with some unspoken resolve.

“Here. You don’t look like you’re going to keel over, can you hold him until we get a space cleared off to lay him down? He probably won’t bleed on you.”

“Blood stains are the least of my concerns,” Lan Xichen reassures even as he holds his arms out to take Jin Guangyao from Nie Mingjue with ease. The moment Jin Guangyao’s weight settles against him Lan Xichen’s racing heart begins to slow. They’d been yanked apart so suddenly just when Lan Xichen was at his most vulnerable - and it hurt, he’s startled to realize. He hadn’t even noticed it until this moment, but being away from Jin Guangyao after being so intimately linked hurts, though with him in his arms now it’s easier to bear.

Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang get a cot in the corner of the room cleared of what looks like months’ worth of paper debris, reports and things Lan Xichen pays no attention to in favor of carefully arranging Jin Guangyao’s prone form on the thin canvas once it’s cleared. Mo Xuanyu thankfully returns with the doctor in tow almost immediately after, and Lan Xichen stands at Nie Mingjue’s side in worried silence as they watch her work.

When she’s finished, she sits back on her heels with a long sigh and a shrewd look up at Nie Mingjue. “The usual again - neural overload. I’ve told you that Drifting with him will hurt the both of you unless and until the technology can accommodate the mental strain of your combined trauma -”

“I didn’t,” Nie Mingjue cuts in as Lan Xichen plays the words ‘combined trauma’ over and over in his head. “He did.”

At Nie Mingjue’s nod in his direction, the doctor’s eyes turn to him and then widen as she seems to realize who she’s looking at. She sighs again as she hauls herself up to her feet, hands pressed to her knees. She gestures back at the edge of the bed next to Jin Guangyao’s hip. “Sit down, let me take a look at you too, then. Might as well do it now and save myself a trip if you faint later.”

Lan Xichen, still wondering what the hell is going on, looks to Nie Mingjue for answers that don’t seem to be coming. He just nods for Lan Xichen to follow the instructions, which he does numbly. He goes through the motions requested of him to facilitate the examination, but he barely hears it when the doctor pronounces him fine, stating that Jin Guangyao had taken most of the burden of it onto himself and left Lan Xichen relatively unscathed, perhaps a little fatigued. It matters, of course, but it doesn’t matter as much as the pained pinch between Jin Guangyao’s eyebrows or the way his lips are twitching like he’s trying to say something.

“Of everyone in the world, I’ve only been able to Drift with A-Yao since my father’s death,” Nie Mingjue tells him quietly, and Lan Xichen looks up from his study of Jin Guangyao’s handsome face to find that the three of them have been left alone for the time being, no sign of the doctor nor either of the researchers in the room. He hopes they’ve gone to fetch a proper lunch, like Jin Guangyao had asked them to. “I guess there are probably others I could be compatible with - Huaisang, for all that he doesn’t seem like it, is actually a pilot candidate if you go far enough down the list. But you saw what it was like in my head, I’m guessing?”

Lan Xichen nods and unconsciously lifts one of Jin Guangyao’s limp hands into his lap. Nie Mingjue sighs, nods, and settles into a low chair beside the cot to comb his fingers slowly through Jin Guangyao’s hair.

“I was insane after that - genuinely. I was barely holding it together; my family’s home was destroyed, our training center got swallowed up by Jin Guangshan in one of his fucking business deals-” he says it like it’s the foulest swear he can fathom, “And I couldn’t do anything about it. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating, the smallest thing would throw me into a rage I could barely be pulled out of, or that I could only stop when I was too exhausted to go on. After his stunt with the Kaiju and all the rest of the shit he did to A-Yao, Jin Guangshan decided that the final punishment just for being born would be to send A-Yao back to me, so I could finish what he’d started.”

Lan Xichen actually feels himself blanch at that, the prospect of Nie Mingjue being the one to kill Jin Guangyao in one of his blind rages made all the worse by how much Jin Guangyao had loved him before his expulsion from Bujing Shi - and continued to love him from afar afterwards. 

“But he Drifted with you instead,” Lan Xichen argues, because he’d seen it, and it had unquestionably happened for the first time after the loss of Nie Fengyi. “Why would he Drift with someone who’s meant to be his executioner?”

Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow at him and Lan Xichen doesn’t even need him to answer - he’d just been inside Jin Guangyao’s mind after all, of course he understands now - but he tells him anyway.

“You saw what he’s like. Everything can be turned into an opportunity to get what he wants, the little snake. If we could Drift despite all signs pointing the other direction, then great, he’d be one step closer to becoming a pilot. If I killed him…at that point he was so depressed that that would’ve been its own sort of victory, in his mind. He’s always said that the only one allowed to kill him is me anyway, and it scares me shitless that I know he really means it.”

“But you were-” the word ‘insane’ dies on his tongue even though Nie Mingjue himself had used it not even five minutes ago.

“I wasn’t completely gone, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue huffs with a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “I was almost there, but I could still make decisions for myself…Well, sometimes. He caught me on a lucid day and said he had a way to help me, if I could find it in myself to trust him again for just an hour or two. Next thing I knew he’d hooked me up to this fucking contraption of his and he just…took it all away.”

Lan Xichen thinks for a moment that he’d misheard, but there’s no way he could have. “He took it away?”

“You should know, you’ve felt it now too - he’s wired differently. He doesn’t forget anything, for one, especially not if he’s seen it written somewhere. But he also just..sees everything, he can understand events and people in a way I’ve never seen before, make connections no one else would spot and plan 10 steps ahead while everyone else is still trying to figure out how he started. He looked at me, and it’s like he could see straight through me. He told me to put it all down and let him carry it - so I did.”

Lan Xichen flushes pink as he thinks of Jin Guangyao saying something nearly identical to him, asking him to give him the heavy burdens he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying. Or at least not in such a way that he’d visualized them as something he could just…give to someone else.

But he had. He’d listened, and he’d let Jin Guangyao see the things that Lan Xichen himself can’t usually bring himself to think of even under duress. He’d let Jin Guangyao in and he’d -

“Oh god it is my fault,” he whispers, horrified. “I just…he said he wanted to see it all, that the Drift would remain incomplete if I stopped him from understanding what has happened in my past. I overwhelmed him, it is too much for any one person to bear alone -”

“Say that again.”

Lan Xichen stops and blinks at Nie Mingjue, repeats, “It was my fault.” Nie Mingjue immediately shakes his head with a huff and a sharp gesture for him to try again. “That it is too much for one person to withstand?”

“That. So what if it’s two people carrying it instead?”

“Two…” Lan Xichen trails off and then his eyes widen as he realizes what Nie Mingjue is offering. “You would-“

“Mingjue,” Jin Guangyao mumbles and Lan Xichen abruptly has no attention to spare for Nie Mingjue, instead leaning over Jin Guangyao and resting a hand on his cheek as he feels Nie Mingjue crowd closer just before he sees his hand settle more firmly in Jin Guangyao’s hair.

“I’m here, A-Yao.”

“I know you’re here, ge, you’re loud,” Jin Guangyao gripes. Lan Xichen tucks a laugh into his free hand and brushes his thumb against Jin Guangyao’s cheek. He continues in a half-mumble, half-sigh, “If you two are going to Drift with each other you have to let me in too.”

“No one’s doing anything until you’ve both rested for a couple days. You scared the shit out of me, A-Yao.” Lan Xichen watches Nie Mingjue lean down to kiss Jin Guangyao’s forehead and linger there as Jin Guangyao mutters out an exhausted apology, one hand raised to curl around the back of Nie Mingjue’s neck and hold him there. Lan Xichen keeps stroking his cheek and watches his expression slowly smooth out into peaceful relaxation under both of their attentions, though Lan Xichen is pretty sure he’s still awake. 

Lan Xichen eventually can’t resist asking, “Would the three of us together not become overwhelming even more quickly than any two of us? He showed me all of his memories and some of yours, but we were only beginning to work through my own when you ended it for his sake. Would having both of us present not accelerate his exhaustion?”

“It might,” Nie Mingjue shrugs. He looks up to meet Lan Xichen’s eyes and Lan Xichen feels his heart stutter for a moment in response; they’re awfully close, bent as they are over Jin Guangyao’s prone form. “But I can take on some of it too, you know. And so can you. Three’s the strongest number, maybe we can all balance each other out.”

“I once asked the Jiangs and Wei Wuxian how it works,” Lan Xichen admits. He strokes the pad of his thumb slowly against the delicate skin under one of Jin Guangyao’s eyes while the man blinks them open to slowly look up at him, seeming thoroughly worn out but thankfully not on the verge of a mental breakdown. “They had difficulty explaining, but they said that if any of the two of them attempt it without their third, they become unbalanced - it’s why Wei Wuxian developed the modified technology in the first place. In order to remain safely in the Drift, they must have Jiang Yanli’s strength of mind, Wei Wuxian’s inventive creativity, and Jiang Wanyin’s brute force. If any component is lost, the other two will struggle to remain synced to the point of being unable to Drift long or well enough to fight.”

Lan Xichen watches Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue share a meaningful glance - a twitch of an eyebrow from Jin Guangyao, a small nod from Nie Mingjue. He doesn’t know how to interpret it, but he hopes he’ll have the opportunity to learn how to understand both of them in time.

“You stop scheming for a second and rest,” Nie Mingjue abruptly chastises with a flick to the top of Jin Guangyao’s head that Lan Xichen instantly tuts over. “And you -“ Lan Xichen looks up again, startled, to meet Nie Mingjue’s eyes, so overwhelming (in a good way) in his single-minded intensity. “Did he kiss you?”

“Mingjue!” Jin Guangyao hisses. Lan Xichen feels the tips of his ears go warm as he fights to hide a smile.

“In the Drift, yes. Not physically.”

“Still counts,” Nie Mingjue shrugs. “I’m guessing you’re into it, considering you can’t quit touching him now-“

“One of you knock me unconscious again,” Jin Guangyao deadpans. “I shouldn’t have to lay here and listen to this. I don’t have to take this, I’m going back to my room.”

“Shh A-Yao, we’ll stop,” Lan Xichen hurries to soothe when Jin Guangyao makes as if to sit up. “Just rest here, I’m sorry.” He glances up at Nie Mingjue again, a silent request for permission, and when Nie Mingjue shrugs and sits back with a sort of ‘go ahead’ gesture, Lan Xichen leans down to kiss Jin Guangyao properly. Not that the kisses they’d shared in the Drift hadn’t been proper in their own way, but it’s so much more immediate like this, so much more intoxicating to feel the warm weight of Jin Guangyao’s hands on his face rather than the subdued echo of it like in the Drift.

It feels like coming home.

-/-

Nie Mingjue watches Lan Xichen kiss Jin Guangyao like it’s the only thing he wants to do for the rest of his life and he sympathizes completely. He takes a moment to really think about what they’re doing, what he’s proposing, and realizes with distinct relief that he doesn’t feel jealous, as he’d secretly been worried he might (despite his significant efforts to push them in this direction). Jin Guangyao is his partner, after all, and all logic would point to him being a bit…possessive. There’s his temper to consider, for one, and the fierceness with which he wants Jin Guangyao, wants to protect him, keep him close and safe from any hurt or slight.

But Lan Xichen has Drifted with Jin Guangyao now as well - there’s no way in hell he doesn’t feel precisely the same. Nie Mingjue watches them, and he knows without a doubt that Lan Xichen wants to take care of Jin Guangyao just as much as he does, and be taken care of in return. Instead of jealousy, all Nie Mingjue can find is satisfaction that Jin Guangyao has another person to dote on him. Someone else who can protect him, in the event that Nie Mingjue can’t.

A fear he hadn’t even realized had taken root suddenly loosens its grip, leaves him feeling lighter, and he blinks in the sudden relief of it. Jin Guangyao doesn’t necessarily need their help, and would be pissed if he thought Nie Mingjue genuinely thought he did, but there’s no denying that Jin Guangyao will never be completely safe as long as he’s sharing a living space with a certain selection of his family members; it’ll be nice to have some backup with him in Jin Guangyao’s corner. Backup with an incredible reputation for virtue and honesty, at that.

“Kiss Mingjue next,” Jin Guangyao mumbles and Nie Mingjue shakes himself out of his lassitude to find Lan Xichen kissing Jin Guangyao’s cheek down to his jaw, his neck - moving very firmly away from simple affection and towards something that they definitely shouldn’t get into 1.) after such an eventful experiment that’s left both Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen in desperate need of sleep and 2.) on his little brother’s emergency cot in the research labs. Lan Xichen sits up with obvious reluctance to turn a curious gaze on him, cheeks flushed and his eyes a little glassy. Nie Mingjue glances down to his lips to find them bitten-red and wet - they definitely shouldn’t be doing this in what is technically a public space.

When it looks like Lan Xichen is about to sway forward and do as instructed, Nie Mingjue hurries to lean back and says (slightly panicked), “Not here. As much as I’m enjoying the show, I don’t want our little brothers for an audience, A-Yao, and they’ll be back any minute.”

Lan Xichen smiles slowly, a sly thing. “That’s very sweet of you, Mingjue. If only my brother shared such discretion.”

Nie Mingjue’s confusion lasts only for a moment before he thinks back to the previous evening when he’d been waiting in his room for Jin Guangyao to finish up with his work after dinner. The nature of sharing such cramped living quarters with other people is that it’s inevitable someone’s going to hear something they don’t want to - it’s a fact of life, and Nie Mingjue isn’t interested in policing anyone’s personal lives to the point where such things don’t happen, but he’d been sorely tempted to tell whoever had been fooling around last night to wrap it up and let everyone else get some sleep.

“That was Lan Wangji?!”

“Mn. And Wei Wuxian, though perhaps that goes without saying.”

Nie Mingjue rubs at his forehead as he tries not to think about that too closely. If he thinks about it too hard he’ll wonder just what the hell is happening in these Drifts that the pilots feel the need to shack up afterwards, and that’s a rabbit hole he doesn’t really want to go down at the moment. It’s sorely tempted to shove everyone back to their sibling Drift teams, but he supposes he doesn’t have any room to talk considering his relationship with Jin Guangyao (though theirs had started - and ended, actually - long before they’d ever Drifted together). 

He has the sinking feeling that their corridor is about to get a hell of a lot noisier of an evening, and he wonders desperately if there are any other living quarters he could make an escape to.

“I think I can walk now if we want to take this somewhere more private,” Jin Guangyao pipes up, thankfully dragging Nie Mingjue out of his thoughts but unfortunately not away from the topic at hand - i.e. what he’s inadvertently done to a group of perpetually tense, physically fit, touch-starved pilots all living within shouting distance of each other’s rooms.

“Is there anywhere in this shatterdome that’s really private?” 

Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen both laugh at his very genuine distress. Lan Xichen stands to give Jin Guangyao room to sit up which he does gingerly, all humor immediately dropping off both of their faces when Lan Xichen stoops down to help Jin Guangyao get upright, the latter’s face pale as porcelain again.

Once Jin Guangyao is on his feet, he tucks himself under Nie Mingjue’s arm and Nie Mingjue is quietly glad for it, the chance to hold his partner close after such a close call and help him through the hallways of the shatterdome back up to their room. It’s slow going; even Lan Xichen’s energy begins to flag and he walks beside them at a snail’s pace with one hand trailing along the wall, just in case.

“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang greets a few long minutes later when they’re nearing the common areas, on his way back down from the canteen, and Nie Mingjue nods towards Lan Xichen now sagging heavily against the wall.

“Help me get him upstairs, and when you get back down to the lab I want the readout from their Drift as soon as possible.”

“Of course.” Nie Huaisang tucks himself up under Lan Xichen’s arm and between the two of them they manage to get everyone safely upstairs and horizontal without further incident. Nie Mingjue doesn’t react at all to Nie Huaisang’s raised eyebrows when he puts both Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao in his room, instead he just shoos his brother out into the hallway and shuts the door firmly on the sight of the pair of them curled up together in the bed Nie Mingjue shares with Jin Guangyao nearly every night.

“How much information is out there on three-way Drifts?” Nie Mingjue asks without preamble, and though Nie Huaisang doesn’t quite manage to get his fan in front of his mouth in time to conceal his smirk Nie Mingjue doesn’t waste time calling him out on it.

“Besides the Jiang siblings, I really don’t know if anyone else has bothered trying it. It’s nothing special in terms of strength versus the usual two-person model and it complicates things with the Jaeger’s tech, so most people wouldn’t want to waste the resources I guess,” he answers with one of his characteristic shrugs. “And for all that Wen Ruohan liked to brag about the Twin Jades and be pretty loose with their information, there’s a lot less to be found legally about the Jiangs.”

“Legally?” Nie Mingjue prompts with a frown that does nothing to deter Nie Huaisang from smiling and waving his fan lazily under his chin. 

“Mhm. If you want me to go through channels that are on the up-and-up, I can probably find something, maybe an interview or two from early on in their career where someone got particularly nosy, or a video on the internet of some tech-obsessed fan breaking down Wei Wuxian’s old experiments that led to the mods on Lotus Spider, trying to guess how it all works.”

“And if I say to hell with legality, I’m trying to win a war?” Nie Mingjue presses with a sigh - some concessions have had to be made in recent years, none of which he likes but all of which Jin Guangyao has forced him to admit are necessary if he’s going to continue doing his best to protect innocent people from evil, as he’s sworn to do.

“Then give me a week or so and I’ll have as much information about them as I can steal from under Wen Ruohan’s nose.”

Nie Mingjue sighs again and rubs at his temple, a headache blooming after the stress of the day. (The last week, really, if he’s being honest.) “Alright, just..get whatever you can, and don’t tell me where any of it comes from. I don’t need yet another reason to worry about you.”

“Alright da-ge,” Nie Huaisang agrees easily, his smile softer than before. He folds his fan - one Nie Mingjue remembers giving to him back when they’d been children, actually - and surprises Nie Mingjue by pulling him in for a tight hug. After a moment’s hesitation he wraps his arms around his brother’s shoulders and pats him on the back, sufficiently awkward. “No three-way experiments with those two unless I’m monitoring, though, alright? I worry about you, too.”

Nie Mingjue wishes he wouldn’t. He hates scaring the boy he’d sworn as a child to protect at all costs, and though of course neither of them are children anymore and he’s made sure that Nie Huaisang is able to take care of himself in this batshit insane world, he still can’t quite shake off the desire to be the perfect big brother to him, the unfailing protector. He’s already failed at it once, when he couldn’t stop Lao Nie’s death and when he’d lost himself afterwards, but he supposes at least he’s still here. At least he can make sure that Nie Huaisang doesn’t have to fight, that he can work in one of the safest areas of the shatterdome and do work that doesn’t put him in any immediate danger. It has to be enough.

“Alright, I promise. They’ll be down for the count for a while anyway after that, so just do your best.” Nie Huaisang nods and pulls away to head back down the hallway; when he’s at the corner, Nie Mingjue calls out, “And get some goddamn sleep!” at his retreating back. Nie Huaisang’s laughter rings back down the hallway towards him and Nie Mingjue shakes his head with a helpless sort of resignation. The lights are dimmed for sleep when he steps back into his quarters, but when his eyes adjust he can spot Lan Xichen lying there curled around Jin Guangyao’s back, eyes tracking him carefully through the dark.

“What is it?” Nie Mingjue grunts. He shrugs out of his jacket and sits down on an old crate in the corner to start rubbing ineffectively at his shoulders, trying to loosen up enough to head off the worst of the migraine that’s bearing down on him like a thunderstorm on the horizon.

Lan Xichen’s reply is soft, tender around the edges in a way Nie Mingjue doesn’t know how to handle. “You’re a fascinating man, Chifeng-Zun.”

“Don’t bother with the title,” he grumbles, discomfited by the compliment and unsure what else to say. “You’ve been in my boyfriend’s head which means I’m pretty sure you’ve seen more than enough to call me by my name.”

“I worried it might be too intimate when you haven’t seen the same of me.”

“Be intimate then,” Nie Mingjue shrugs, his neck hot with his own brazen reply. “Might as well go ahead and get comfortable with it since it looks like we’re both going to be dating A-Yao.”

Lan Xichen hums and smiles, sly and knowing, so Nie Mingjue ignores him in favor of glaring at the floor as he works at a knot he can just barely reach by reaching across his chest and over his shoulder. He doesn’t look up at the sound of rustling, assuming that one of the two in his bed is just readjusting, but when there’s the telltale grumbling of Jin Guangyao moving when he doesn’t want to followed shortly by the soft pat of bare feet hitting the floor he looks up to find that Lan Xichen has maneuvered himself out of bed and is crossing the compact space towards him.

“Turn around,” he murmurs. Nie Mingjue looks up at him, his hair loose around his shoulders and his clothing stripped down to just his undershirt and a pair of thin, loose silk trousers gathered at the ankle, and he finds his mouth has gone too dry to protest or to ask why. He does as he’s told, and then Lan Xichen’s hands are cupped against the sides of his neck, one of his thumbs tucked into the divot between two of his vertebrae.

“Xichen-”

“It’s an acupressure point,” he tells him, leaning down to murmur in his ear until his hair is falling over Nie Mingjue’s shoulder in a dark curtain, blotting out the rest of the light in his periphery. “It’ll help with your headache, just relax and wait.”

Nie Mingjue has never been good at either relaxing or waiting, but once again he does as he’s told and sits still while Lan Xichen rubs his free thumb in soft circuits along his hairline, the other one applying steady, constant pressure until all at once Nie Mingjue feels the tightening in his temples release, and he exhales sharply.

“Good,” Lan Xichen praises, still right in his ear. Nie Mingjue swallows down anything he might say in response that would most likely just be embarrassing. The man’s hands are still on him, and he lets his eyes fall shut while Lan Xichen traces his shoulders, runs his fingertips down his back on either side of his spine, right where the articulated joints of his old Jaeger suit are permanently branded into his skin. “I didn’t have to see you in Jin Guangyao’s memories to be curious about you like this,” Lan Xichen confides. His lips are warm against the shell of his ear and Nie Mingjue’s next exhale is ever-so-slightly unsteady when it passes his lips. “We can be partners to A-Yao separately, if that’s what you would like, but I think it would be a bit of a waste on our parts.”

“You’re supposed to be resting,” Nie Mingjue chastises him without any heat, “Not seducing your commanding officer.”

Lan Xichen’s soft chuckle and quick lap of just the tip of his tongue against Nie Mingjue’s neck make his heart stutter in his chest. “You are not my commanding officer in here. My commanding officer wouldn’t invite me to call him by name, or to be intimate with him.”

Nie Mingjue blushes to have his own words turned on him, deliberately interpreted further than he’d intended. (Or perhaps, he allows, misinterpreted in just the way he’d really meant it, in the end.) “You should still be resting. You pushed yourself too hard, and you’ve been pushing yourself hard since you got here.”

“And you have not?”

For a long while, there’s nothing but the sound of Lan Xichen’s hands skimming across his shirt, his skin, and the quiet, comforting susurrus of three steady sets of breathing. At this time of day the living quarters are quiet, everyone out training or in meetings or working on repairs. It’s a rare moment of peace, and Nie Mingjue is glad he postponed his meetings for the afternoon to tomorrow so he can appreciate it without feeling guilty that he’s missing something important.

By the time Lan Xichen leans in again to press slow, open-mouthed kisses to his bare shoulder, Nie Mingjue is practically putty in his hands. Lan Xichen has somehow managed to coax away the most irritating tensions without digging his thumbs or his elbows into his muscles like how Nie Mingjue forces Jin Guangyao to relax. Half the time he hadn’t even been massaging at all, he’d just rubbed his hands over the planes of his back and warmed him with it, the gentle friction and his own body heat.

On his next pass down over his ribs and the dip of his waist, Lan Xichen’s graceful fingers slide lower than before and tug the hem of his undershirt out of his trousers, coaxing the thin cotton tank up his back and chest until it’s bunched up under his arms, and only then does Nie Mingjue shift enough to help him pull it off over his head.

“Xichen,” Nie Mingjue warns when he feels the man drop down to his knees behind him, his hands wrapping slowly around his bare waist and his lips pressed to the sharp jut of a shoulder blade.

“Calling my name like that isn’t going to make me any more inclined to stop,” Lan Xichen teases and Nie Mingjue chuckles with helpless amusement; he can feel Lan Xichen’s smile pressed into his skin, and he thinks about how long it’s been since he had sex with Jin Guangyao for fun as well as his desperate need for him that never feels fully satisfied. He makes a mental note to fix that as soon as possible.

“I don’t care, you need to get back in bed.”

“Where will you sleep tonight?”

“That door over there is to A-Yao’s room, I’ll just steal his bed for the night.”

“Mn. I would like to formally lodge a complaint that the beds in this shatterdome do not comfortably accommodate three.”

Nie Mingjue snorts at that and shakes off the majority of the heaviness that Lan Xichen had coaxed into his limbs to sit up straight again and stretch, his headache now a distant threat rather than an inevitability. Lan Xichen sits back on his heels to give him room to turn around, and when he does Nie Mingjue cups the man’s jaw in both hands, his thumbs tracing the high arches of his cheekbones as Lan Xichen’s lips part, the silence in the room so absolute that Nie Mingjue can actually hear the near-silent kiss of it.

“Noted but dismissed, I’ve got bigger worries than the physical logistics of a threesome.” Lan Xichen’s expression falls just a little, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t give him more than a second to be disappointed before he leans in to kiss him long and slow until Lan Xichen lifts his hands to curl tightly around his wrists, his back arching as he tries to coax him closer. “We’ll work it out,” Nie Mingjue mumbles into Lan Xichen’s kiss-softened mouth. “For now, go back to bed, I’ll bring you both dinner from the canteen. Keep A-Yao safe for me while I’m gone.”

It’s a pointless request - nothing can happen to them in the shatterdome, and especially not in Nie Mingjue’s quarters - but when he meets Lan Xichen’s eyes he can see that the man instantly understands it for what it is. Jin Guangyao’s safety (and health, and happiness) is their responsibility now, not just his alone. Lan Xichen smiles up at him honey-sweet and more than a little besotted.

“Alright,” he agrees into a kiss to Nie Mingjue’s palm. When Nie Mingjue is dressed and Lan Xichen back in bed with Jin Guangyao wrapped up in his arms again, Nie Mingjue heads down to the canteen wondering just how in the hell he managed to make this happen.

Might as well enjoy the ride while it lasts, he supposes.

#the untamed fanfic #Pacific Rim AU #3zun #Jin Guangyao #Lan Xichen #Nie Mingjue #Nie Huaisang #Lan Xichen repressing everything so hard he's practically wiped his own memory clean: What's wrong? I don't see the problem. #I am simply ~free from earthly concerns~ #LWJ is over in the corner like. Ge that's repression and Wei Ying says it's bad.

[songofclarity]

skdhhejdh i like to think there were gay men throwing flowers at nmj but wwx was just so caught up in his comp het that he only noticed that the women weren’t

Honestly, if you suggested that there were gay and straight men cheering Nie MingJue's name at the top of their lungs and/or throwing flowers to him, I would be inclined to believe you because I am all for it! The novel simply specifies the men were cheering while the women were just standing in closed-fist silence and letting their hearts burst with yearning and just, RIP them all but I’m different!

I’m getting the impression that people are treating my post/this situation as inclusion/exclusion of who was doing what along gender and sexual-orientation lines. Could an older gay man have thrown flowers to Nie MingJue? Absolutely! Could a little straight girl have thrown flowers to Nie MingJue? Of course! The author wrote it with generalized gender groups but having one or two or more people acting outside the norm wouldn’t be wrong! It happens in real life!

What I noticed was that Wei WuXian throwing a flower was not something that drew attention. Men throwing flowers isn’t apparently worth social commentary. What does make it stand out is that he throws a flower at the very unimpressed Lan WangJi, and no one wants to deal with them arguing right now -- because Wei WuXian throwing a flower to him, with their turbulent history, is perceived as teasing at best or mockery at worst.

But this is true for Nie MingJue as well: Nie MingJue looks heated as a solar flare so to see any delicate flowers fluttering about him would draw attention. To see any flowers would raise the question: who would be so bold!? Such a question would absolutely be of Wei WuXian’s interest, because Nie MingJue is indeed fearsome to behold, but Wei WuXian is not interested because he doesn’t see anything beyond the women holding back.

With that said, my “but I’m different” post is just playing on the grand scheme of things, because it was never defined that Nie MingJue didn’t receive any flowers. The main take-away, as I understood it, was that everyone else, from the Lan Sect to the Jiang Sect to the Jin Sect, was getting a torrential downpour of flowers while Nie MingJue, noticeably, did not.

When men who were high up on the list of cultivators entered, almost all of them couldn’t be spared from being showered with a faceful of flowery rain.

As the one ranked seventh, Nie MingJue, however, was an exception... even if the maidens could already feel their hearts bursting from their chests, clutching in their palms sweat-soiled flowers, they didn’t dare toss them out no matter what, afraid that they’d anger him and his saber hacked into the watching tower. However, many of the male cultivators who admired ChiFeng-Zun cheered for him. The cheers almost brought pain to the ears. (Ch. 69, ERS)

I love this because it’s a clear show-don’t-tell of what Wei WuXian identifies more clearly later on during empathy:

On Koi Tower, people came and went. Before Nie MingJue’s high viewpoint, the crowd parted again and again, with both sides nodding at him in respect, calling him “ChiFeng-Zun”. Wei WuXian thought, Such a show of extravagance is going to reach even the heavens. All these people both fear and respect Nie MingJue. There’s quite a few people who fear me, though not a lot who respect me. (Ch. 49, ERS)

The power Nie MingJue holds is unmatched! No one is throwing Nie MingJue flowers out of fear, but they respect/admire him so much they literally can’t shut up about it. Where he walks, the sea of people part. The power of the gods is being challenged. And dropping flowers on him might evoke the god-like wrath that made him MVP of the Sunshot Campaign.

Nonetheless, he still could very well have gotten a few flowers from anyone! But compared to how many flowers all the other top-ranking cultivators was getting, it was negligible. Nie MingJue’s aura and reputation precedes him. Even though we have evidence to show he means no harm towards innocent men, women, or children, people are still in fearful awe of him.

In closing, we should also bring up how if Nie MingJue isn’t getting a face full of flowers then Nie HuaiSang isn’t getting any secondary flowers either! Our boy came dressed to the nines, has rings on his fingers, has his fan in hand, has his saber for once, and he’s having a great time! But he, too, could do with more love in the flower department!

The Qinghe Nie are good men and deserve all the flowers from everyone is what I’m saying 🥺

#anon #asked from above #mdzs thoughts #mdzs quotes #nie mingjue #nmj is getting all the posts today apparently #i mean this in the nicest way possible #and as clearly as possible #everyone should be throwing flowers to nie mingjue #i don't care about gender or sexuality #or your zodiac sign #or what sect you're from or who you're voting for chief cultivator #or if you don't like pineapple on your pizza #or if you have pre-existing conditions #or are eligible for financial compensation #throw. flowers. to. nie. mingjue. #and flowers to nie huaisang as well he just wants nice things! #on another note i believe wwx is demi lol

[big-tiddie-mingjue]

Yall the comments on nmj's wiki are sending me 💀💀

I'm all of these ppl in one

#nie mingjue #listen I'm a WhoreTM for Daddy Mingjue #'I want him to treat me like an object' BITCH SAME #i wanna be the flower vase here throws against the wall #im such a fuckin nmj simp

[robininthelabyrinth]

i've been keeping a list of possible prompts for you and there's one i have no memory of adding that just says "courtesan nmj????" so i guess that's the prompt you're getting lmao

What Does the Fox Say - ao3

“Second Madame Nie!” a disciple shouted, rushing into her little garden. She didn’t recognize him, but he was solidly built and well-muscled like most of the others – truly, the Unclean Realm was a rapturous feast for one with eyes to see it. Yum, yum. “Second Madame Nie, I have bad news!”

Boo. She hated bad news: bad news meant she’d have to do something, usually, and right now she was seated very comfortably in a pleasant piece of sun in the garden path that’d been made up just for her and to her preferences, with her feet up on a chair and a full plate of fruit from the kitchen on the table in front of her just begging to be devoured, morsel by delicious morsel.

Her schedule was packed!

“I regret to tell you, but your husband has been killed!”

“Oh,” she said, frowning slightly. “Has he? How obnoxious of him.”

How unreliable. Men.

She sighed.

“Second Madame – Second Madame – you don’t understand!” The disciple was all red-eyed and weepy, which was a look she liked, especially in big, stout men like this. The salt added a bit of spice to the whole thing. “You must flee at once! He was killed by Sect Leader Wen in an act of outright aggression – Sect Leader Wen has declared war – the Wen sect is invading!”

She nodded and picked up another lychee to start peeling it. She’d get around to fleeing in her own time. As long as this Wen sect or whatnot was being led by a man, she wasn’t terribly concerned.

“They intend to wipe out the inheritance of Qinghe Nie! They will rip out the child in your belly!”

She hummed noncommittally. Really, how attached was she to having a child of her own? Really?

“They will slaughter civilians – execute Nie-gongzi –”

Her hands stilled.

“What,” she said, and the disciple took a step back automatically, proving that he, at least, had something more of a survival instinct than her late husband did. “Hurt my little meat bun? My darling rice roll? My savory zongzi?”

She stood up, diminutive height and over-large belly and frilly clothing doing absolutely nothing to diminish the vaguely menacing aura that darkened the sky around her. She bared her teeth.

“Who does this upstart Wen dog think he is?!”

The disciple blinked owlishly, but nodded, seeming relieved that she’d finally accepted his concern, though she could see on his face that he was thinking that her reasoning was – characteristically – a little strange. But then again, and she could see this thought process on his far too honest face, it was well known that the second Madame Nie been quite strange ever since Sect Leader Nie had found her in some lonesome place with no family or background and brought her back to be his new wife nevertheless.

Such a charming man. Pity about his loss, really.

“You have to flee at once, we can’t possibly fight so many people,” the disciple said once more, and this time she nodded in agreement. “We can escort you to a hidden exit –”

“No!” a little voice called. “We can’t go.”

She turned to look, and there was the little pork-and-shrimp dumpling himself, chubby-cheeked and earnest-eyed, looking as delicious as always.

“What do you mean, fish cake?” she asked. “Of course we have to go. Didn’t you hear what this strapping young man said? This Wen person wants to kill you!”

“If Father is dead, then I’m the sect leader,” her stepson said. He was serious and solemn in a way that made her want to pinch his cheeks and bury her face into his belly to blow raspberries, and also possibly to eat him right up, flesh and marrow and gristle and all. “That means it’s my responsibility to preserve the Nie sect.”

“Nie-gongzi, no!” the disciple cried, throwing himself to his knees in a dramatic display of loyalty. “You would only die – far better for you to run, and live!”

“Then isn’t the same true for everyone else?” the tasty little dish asked, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting. Possibly he was trying to put on a fierce expression, maybe, she couldn’t quite tell sometimes. He was so cute. “Why should I live, and them not? I refuse to buy my life with their deaths!”

“But – Nie-gongzi –”

Her charming little honey cake shook his head and held up a hand to stop the disciple, turning to look at her instead.

“Second Mother,” he said, and he had that wholesome trusting expression again that was such a perfect little one-shot-kill to the heart, ugh. “You always said you’re the best at hiding. The best in the world, no one better among all the gods or demons!”

She was, too. She couldn’t help but preen a little, proud.

“– can’t you do something?”

“Oh, darling cabbage bun,” she said, not without fondness. “I can hide myself from even the net of Heaven itself if I so choose, from gods and demons alike, and I can most certainly hide a small group from any mortal eyes that dare to look, if you don’t mind being a little tiny bit dishonorable about the business. But an entire sect? That’s a bit much, even for someone as talented and skilled as me.”

Her stepson looked up at her, all straight-steel sincerity and upright righteousness wrapped into a perfectly edible little snack-sized package. “If we split them up, the sect could be small groups,” he said eagerly. “Couldn’t you do something then?”

He was so cute, and he trusted her. He trusted her, believed in her, felt that she could perform miracles with a wave of her sleeve if only she so wished.

It was awful.

She couldn’t bear it.

“Oh all right, you nummy little slice of roast pork belly,” she said, yielding. “But I’m telling you now, it won’t be the least bit honorable! There’s only so many excuses you can come up with for having a lot of strong men with wide shoulders and women with thick thighs hanging around, and not a single one of them has the slightest bit to do with what you people consider to be appropriate.”

“That’s all right. Preserving human life comes first, always.”

The disciple looked between them, clearly completely confused. Clearly all his effort had been spent on developing the muscles in his arms (quite nice) rather than his brain (quite slow).

“What?” he said. “What’s happening?”

“We’re saving the sect,” Nie Mingjue announced happily, clapping his hands together. Too precious, too precious entirely; she’d have to make sure no one else even thought about going near her darling little snackling. “Tell everyone to prepare to evacuate.”

“That will take too long,” she said, and smiled, with teeth. “Let me call some friends to help.”

-

When the Wen sect arrived at the Unclean Realm, they found the gate open.

That was unexpected enough, but when they entered, they found that the entire place had emptied out – not just of people, but of everything else, too. There wasn’t a single intact chair or table in the entire place, not a scrap of cloth nor a bit of food, like it’d been swept clean by locusts or wild monkeys come to pilfer whatever they could.

Even the paving stones where arrays had been laid out by the Nie sect’s ancestors had been pried up and carted away.

Sect Leader Wen ordered a search, but there wasn’t any trace of it – of the people, of the stuff, anything.

No one ever found out what happened.

-

Jin Guangyao despised social events, he’d found.

It was one thing when it was something he’d planned himself, where the work was interesting enough to distract him, but when he was an honored guest for someone else…miserable. Utterly miserable.

The only thing more miserable was when the host was his erstwhile father, from whom he’d forcefully extracted recognition. With Wen Ruohan as his backer, indulging his favorite torturer as if a beloved pet, there wasn’t much Jin Guangshan could do to refuse, and neither could he force Jin Guangyao to do anything on his behalf, either. And so Jin Guangyao, sitting as always by Wen Ruohan’s side, right beneath his sons, was now an honored guest at his father’s house, getting offered his pick of prostitutes as if the man had no notion of the irony.

Maybe he didn’t. Jin Guangyao couldn’t quite tell if his father had just forgotten his origins, thinking his bastard son too unimportant to remember the details of, or whether it was meant as a deliberate insult – who could tell?

“Oh, right,” the simpering idiot in front of him, a nephew or cousin of some sort to the sect leader, said. “Our dear Jin Guangyao is known not to like the gentle flower queens, even when they come from the finest houses in Lanling. Isn’t that right, cousin?”

Jin Guangyao’s fists clenched. A deliberate insult, then.

Despite that, his face remained neutral. Instead, he chuckled and said, “The appeal is limited. After all, I have seen the best of them.”

Beside him, Wen Ruohan nodded and smirked. He appreciated Jin Guangyao’s devotion to his mother, though Jin Guangyao suspected it was because he thought it funny that Jin Guangyao would bother to honor such a lowly woman – but what he thought didn’t matter, not really. All that mattered was that he let Jin Guangyao pay his respects to her to his heart’s content.

“Well, you’re in luck!” the idiot Jin Zixun said, looking absurdly smug. “We have something of a different flavor than the usual tonight – we’ve invited entertainment from the local branch of Splendid Spring.”

Jin Guangyao barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes.

The Splendid Spring Palace was a series of brothels that had popped up fully formed just about everywhere some years back, with madams and girls and musicians and bodyguards of all sorts. It was so patently a political move that Jin Guangyao had barely bothered to pay attention to it once he’d become actually powerful, and Wen Ruohan hadn’t paid attention to it at all. After all, in the unlikely event that the business really was backed by a cultivation sect that didn’t care about its face any longer, anyone who needed to use such a façade to gather power was clearly beneath notice.

Jin Guangyao had paid only very little attention, but to different and unusual aspects of the place: by all accounts, they were surprisingly decent employers as far as places like that went. They didn’t steal girls or accept unwilling goods – they had some connection with the merchant caravans, or at least one of the companies that helped coordinate routes and provide protection to such things, and they were as meticulous about checking things over as they were about seeking refunds if they were dissatisfied – and they did accept married girls fleeing unhappy marriages, which not everyone did. They did buy up all the girls in the local markets wherever they were, but they swept them away and brought them back transformed, even the ones that wouldn’t sell because they were too ugly; Jin Guangyao assumed that meant they had people who were talented in make-up and clothing, since the usual rumors of the girls being blessed with a yao’s enchantment were obviously ridiculous and nothing more than the usual marketing gimmicks that brothels since time immemorial had tried.

Even once they had the girls in hand, the places were pretty decent: they had physicians on staff to help with the usual side effects of the business, made sure their girls were clean and healthy, and were said to even limit the number of customers a girl would be obliged to take on in a given evening…honestly, knowing as he did the brothel business, Jin Guangyao sometimes wondered how they’d managed to bespell enough people to even make money in the early days. At any rate, whatever they’d done, it’d worked, because by now they had a solid enough reputation to trade on.

In short: a decent enough place, far better than the usual run of the mill. Once he’d had the ability to do so, he’d even pulled a few strings and arranged for the better of his mother’s old compatriots to end up there, since he couldn’t convince them to leave their old professions behind entirely.

Anyway, if they also seemed to have a sideline in information brokering and assassinations, well, let them. In the cultivation world, where the only thing that mattered was strength, real strength.

A little thing like that wouldn’t make any real difference.

Or so Jin Guangyao had thought.

He found himself re-thinking that, though, when the entertainment in question came out. There were the usual set of attractive (albeit in a wider variety of shapes and sizes than usually seen) dancers, dressed up in silks that seemed actually high quality, and plenty of strapping young men carrying sabers – dancers as well, once assumed, to provide some spice to the entertainment, and implicitly on the offer for men who cut their sleeves or women with more flexibility, like widows or ones with especially permissive husbands. Wen Ruohan’s wives were in that latter category, and they were already whispering to each other excitedly, looking at them.

They’d even brought in the local madame, who was…

Well, she was actually breathtaking, even by Jin Guangyao’s extremely jaded standards. She had hair that fell almost all the way to her ankles, shimmering in the light, and dark eyes shining with liveliness, a smooth and ageless face that simultaneously suggested youth and health but also winked at knowable experience, the features characteristic of what his mother’s employers had called the ‘fox-face’. As if to emphasize that, the lady was wrapped in fox-fur and draped in embroidered brocade, with little stylized foxes running up and down the hems of her clothing and along the gazy silk draped on her shoulders.

It ought to have looked absurd, looked gaudy and overwrought and overdone, but it didn’t.

She was a thousand dreams of wealth and beauty and power and sex appeal all wrapped up in one, and even Jin Guangyao – who was in his personal preferences quite firmly a cutsleeve – couldn’t help but intrigued by her, wondering what it might be like to touch the hem of such a glorious creature.

And next to her…

The lady was accompanied by two men that seemed completely different from each other. One was a slender and winsome young man, fluttering his eyelashes from behind a fan with a charming smile, emanating the appeal of softness and weakness, ready to be indulged. While the other…

Jin Guangyao swallowed.

He was the exact opposite of the first man. Clearly strong, muscular and powerful, and tall to the point of towering, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, a chest that you could lean your head against and an ass that begged to have someone’s hands on it – and there were his hands, big and broad, perfect for holding someone down or up if they so wished and of a size that was very promising as to what was only hinted at under his clothes. His face was hidden behind a veil as if he were a woman, marking him, like his comrade, as one of the available courtesans of the Splendid Spring, but his body was visible under clothing clearly cut to put it to the best advantage.

And oh, what advantages it had…!

“It seems we found something to the tastes of dear cousin Guangyao after all,” the idiot said mockingly, sniggering and snorting like the pig he was, and for once Jin Guangyao didn’t even care.

“Who’s the woman in front?” Wen Ruohan asked, ignoring their interplay. He seemed utterly fascinated, almost spellbound, and Jin Guangyao couldn’t blame him one bit. If this woman had been at the same brothel as his mother, there wouldn’t have even been room for jealousy or shame; his mother would have gone straight up to her to ask for some tips. “She seems…familiar, somehow.”

“That’s the madame of the Splendid Spring,” Jin Zixun said proudly, as if he’d done anything at all in relation to this – nonsense, of course. Everyone know which brothels were backed by the Jin sect, and Splendid Spring wasn’t one of them. He was acting as if he deserve a pat on the back just for the introduction! “That means she’s not for sale.”

His smile faded a little, twisting in a small bit of bitterness. “Or so she told my uncle, anyway…although I’m sure if it were Sect Leader Wen asking, the answer would undoubtedly be different.”

Probably because Jin Guangshan couldn’t slaughter prostitutes with impunity if they said no to him, whereas no one could stop Wen Ruohan from doing any damn thing he pleased.

Wen Ruohan grunted, pleased by the answer – he was a possessive man, in the rare events that he did exert himself in the realm of women, and there had been more than one instance where he’d stolen away some girl his sons had been eyeing first just for the joy of having had her first – and raised a hand, catching the lady’s eye and gesturing for her to come over, which she did.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She laughed. “You can call me Hu Jiuwei. With the ‘Hu’ being the character for fox.”

Jin Guangyao tried not to choke. There were false names and then there were false names – the lady’s theme was already clearly related to foxes, given her fox-face and fox-fur lining and the foxes embroidered onto her robes. Was the over-the-top name really necessary?

“It’s a fake name,” she added, unnecessarily.

“I see,” Wen Ruohan said, sounding a little choked himself. Possibly it was the woman calling herself ‘Foxy Ninetails’ and then kindly reassuring them all that the name was false as if she thought them too dumb to figure it out that was tripping him up a little. Jin Guangyao couldn’t tell if she was doing it deliberately in order to make her frankly inhuman beauty a little less frightening, or maybe she was blessed with so much beauty that she hadn’t bothered to cultivate her brain at all. “Are you our entertainment for the evening?”

She smiled, and any complaints Jin Guangyao (or indeed Wen Ruohan) might have had about her intelligence faded away at once.

It was that type of smile.

You could wreck nations with that type of smile. Jin Guangyao couldn’t help but wonder: how had a woman this extraordinary ended up in a brothel, of all places? How had no one snatched her up to keep her all for himself before now?

“My sons and I –” she gestured at the two behind her, “– would be more than happy to provide you with all the entertainment you could possibly want.”

Her smile widened.

“We’ve been hoping for an opportunity like this for a long time.”

#mdzs #nie mingjue #second madame nie #jin guangyao #wen ruohan #my fic #my fics #what does the fox say

[theoppositeofprofound]

First Blood

Nie Mingjue

A northern soldier. Old with a grey beard, Baxia took his head clean off.

Lan Xichen

An murderer who ran when confronted with evidence of his crimes, testimony from the ghost’s own lips. Xichen struck him too hard, watched him go limp and still, and after that he was always careful of his strength.

Jiang Yanli

The Sunshot Campaign is brutal. Wen soldiers captured on the battlefield are often sentenced to death. The night before the butcher’s blade, Jiang Yanli makes her rounds with cups of poison and offers a quieter end.

Jin Zixuan

When he’s seven his mother’s maid scolds him harshly, going so far as to slap him, for stealing sweets. He complains to his father and the woman hangs for a made up crime. After that, Zixuan keeps his mouth shut.

Jiang Cheng

A Wen patrol that catches the runaway hostages as they run from the Xuanwu cave. Jiang Cheng pulls an arrow from the ground and uses it to stab a Wen soldier in the neck as they flee. He doesn’t even have time to throw up.

Lan Wangji

One of the Wen who help burn Cloud Recesses, he can’t be sure which one. His sword slices into so many that surely one of them must have died.

Wei Wuxian

By chance and good fortune, when he goes into the Burial Mounds he’s never killed anyone before (snake monsters don’t count). By the time tormented souls choke the first Wen guard to death he’s so soaked in resentment that it barely registers.

Wen Qing

She’s a doctor and though history will not believe it she goes to her death with clean hands.

Wen Ning

He is not his sister. As a prisoner he poisons two guards with flowers plucked from the roadside.

Nie Huaisang

It’s hard to judge with methods as indirect as his. He counts Mo Xuanyu as the first of his crimes.

#the untamed #mdzs

[riemihann]

Ok some thought here. I don't know if you read the novel but in Chapter 69 Part 1, there was a scene where girls were throwing flowers at the most attractive sect members when they were visiting for that even the Lanling Sect organised after the Sunshot Campaign.

The Twins of Jade got flowers thrown at them but Nie Mingjue intimidated the girls so much that no one dared because of his temper. However, what if Mingjue's S/O was in the crowd and she suddenly threw flowers at him? Mingjue would be surprised because...who did that? No one ever did that to him. Then he sees his s/o continuously throwing flowers at him because he is her man and she is proud of him? The soft smile which Mingjue would do 🥰

It's not really a request. You can do whatever you want with it. Just some thoughts (I also wanted to fangirl for him for a bit). I would love to write it but I fear I will ruin his character becauss I like soft Nie Mingjue.

Sure why not! I’m not using my computer so no title yet, I haven’t read the novel because I have no idea where. But in some other fics, I have read I got the idea so yea... Anyways... Here you gooo!

You are ready to give out flowers to your boyfriend, he was coming up next and you have a full basket of purple flowers and some pink roses to give to him. You hear the announcement of the next batch of cultivators, and Mingjue was there. “Do you want to give him your flowers?” You hear a girl ask another. “I don’t know... He looks handsome and all but.. Also scary...” She hides her face with her fan. You roll your eyes looking for the next batch where your boyfriend is at. You see him, and shout at him “Mingjue! Catch!” You say as he does get the purple lily you throw at him. He was so suprised because, when there was this kind of event. Nobody threw flowers at him, only at Nie Huaisang... But he didn’t mind because it wasn’t a big deal, but when you threw him that flower.. He never felt so happy just to catch a flower in his life, mostly because this was his first time and you’re the one who’s giving it to him. “There’s still more!” You say finishing your basket of flowers and he caught all. You threw him more than the others could catch.. “I love you Y/N.” He mouths to you while the crowds still cheer for the next batch. When you met up with him in the hunting grounds he hugs you and says to your ear “I love you so much Y/N.” He whispers and he kisses your soft lips “Did you like them?” You say, he softly smiles at you nodding as you both hold hands going further down the road.

( this was short but I hope you enjoyed it! )

#mdzs reader insert #mdzs #founder of demonic cultivation #founder of diabolism #the untamed #nie mingjue #nie mingjue x reader #mdzs x reader #mdzs x y/n #mo dao zu shi

[abraxos-the-phantom]

Scum Disciple Deleted

-scenes. Here you go @vodkassassin. Unformatted and mostly unedited save for some awkward phrasing I fixed as I skimmed through it. I have a habit of merely taking out scenes rather than straight deleting them when I don't think they work out so if you see it on the fic shhh I probably just found a better place for it, but for the most part I think these are unused

TLJ + MF; Flashback/Illusion

[Log: File:Save_??-???.?.????.log]

“You know, for a man so keen on maintaining the preference of a dignified cultivator, you are fairly quick to disband such things as you see fit,” Tianlang-jun mused.

Ming Fan threw a dirty look to the former Overlord of the Demonic Realm over his bowl of beef stir fry lily bulbs. It was a specialty in this region, boasting a sweet lily bulb due to the length of time the farmers around the area spent cultivating the plant. In other words, it was delicious and a welcome change to the guilt trip galore that was eating Lou Binghe’s cooking.

Oh to eat that delicious snow congee without feeling the compulsion to throw it all back up-

Well, no use dwelling on such things.

“Most of anything could be considered vulgar when in close proximity to you,” Ming Fan quipped, taking a generous helping of the stir-fry between his chopsticks. “If you had as much sensibility as you had sensuality, I guarantee that people would be more fond of you. Unfortunately, it is too late for me.”

“Hoh? Is that so?” Tianlang-jun’s lips curled in a smirk in spite of the fact that Ming Fan had no interest looking his way, regardless of the other demon happened to do. Some odd five or so years have taught Ming Fan that there were times when the best move for dealing with the other was simply ignoring him.

Ming Fan maintained his bland tone as he briefly paused to speak, “Yes.”

Tianlang-jun shook his head, “Honestly. Are all disciples of Cang Qiong like you, or are you just the special one.”

Said disciple only gave Tianlang-jun a significant dirty look, “You’d have to actually behave yourself to get to know another disciple of Cang Qiong.”

“Eh,” the Heavenly Demon leaned back against his chair with his hands crossed behind his head. “Too boring.”

Ming Fan made a noncommitting sound as he finally ate the last of his order, letting out a satisfied sigh as he leaned back in his seat.

“Ming Fan, a question if you are so gracious enough to grant me such a thing.”

Ming Fan only raised a brow, “You may ask, whether I answer is not on the table.”

“Why?” Tianlang-jun paused as he attempted to think about his question. “Why do you maintain this relationship of ours? It’s not as if you’re on any obligation to maintain basic relations for a political reason, and you hardly ask me anything so you aren’t after my wisdom. With Lou Binghe going in and out Cang Qiong Sect, it’s not as if I can threaten your Sect any more than I could try and fight with my son.”

Ming Fan crossed his arms, humming for a moment tilting his head just enough to convey thoughtfulness he turned to look the demon lord in the eye, “If you were to be confronted with a former enemy of a war without meaning, what would you do?”

Tianlang-jun hummed, “I wouldn’t care.”

“Exactly,” Ming Fan pointed out. “Now what would you do if you discovered you were on the wrong side of that war?”

“…I still wouldn’t care.”

“Would you?” Ming Fan hummed, “Well, that’s your choice.”

“So is that all? You pity me?”

“Not quite,” Ming Fan shrugged, idly arranging the finish plate on the table. “More like my recompense of sorts.”

Tianlang-jun’s expression was unreadable as he stared, quietly adding, “You realize that I’ve killed hundreds of cultivators like you. Your age, younger- older. It didn’t matter, they were obstacles in my path and I removed them.”

“Of that I do not doubt, but these days- the line between righteous and mad is thin,” Ming Fan snorted. “I stand at the meager in-between myself. But what else can I do? I am but a mere mortal, attempting to right his wrongs.”

Ming Fan took a final sip at his tea, “Sometimes, that is all one can do without going well and truly mad.”

Tianlang-jun chuckled, “I suppose that’s true.”

The hours seemed endless after that, a moment in time felt like hundreds upon billions as the two simply- existed.

“So,” Tianlang-jun said after an eternity’s moment. “What are you doing here Little Cultivator?”

Ming Fan blinked, “Is this not one amongst our many meetings?”

The world seem to blur around him like ink amongst a pool of water. Fading into implied images as the sky and trees distorted. The sounds of the earth quieted to a hushed whisper. Ming Fan’s eyes casted around in confusion as the lively village dulled into a dead silence.

“It isn’t,” Tianlang-jun leaned back, smirking. “You’ve spent so long with me that I am now here with you- in limbo. I’m flattered Fan-er.”

Ming Fan narrowed his eyes, scowling, before looking away, “Definitely. Tianlang-jun never called me that to my face.”

Ming Fan twisted away from the…demon for some time to think.

TLJ + MF - Actual Flashback

“You look like you went a round and three more with a golem,” Tianlang-jun tsked at him.

“Are you going to lecture me about coming out while I look like I lost against said golem or are you going to sit your ass down and have some tea like we agreed?” Ming Fan snapped, wincing as he sat.

Tianlang-jun whistled wolfishly. “Why, I never took that War God to be the kinky type.”

“Don’t be so obscene,” Ming Fan rolled his eyes. “He landed me flat on my ass almost a dozen times. Of course sitting down would be a pain.”

“You know there’s this flower that-“

“No.”

“But I hurt just looking at you,” Tianlang-jun whined like a particularly annoying brat. “One tiny little adventure to look for a flower that heals bruises instantly, it’s a Lotus of a blue hue, I hear those people from the far West have been using it for some time.”

“And then Liu Qingge will have me spar against him, again, and this hellish circle will repeat itself. I am only saved by the fact that my cultivation is not as advanced as one of a Peak Lords, otherwise I would be healed by the end of the week and my pain begins anew,” Ming Fan shook his head. “I appreciate your concern, I really do, but no.”

“Aww, well since you’re being so polite about it…” Tianlang-jun sighed and sipped from the tea. “Mn- this is good. Where did you get it?”

“Shang-shishu taught me how to prepare lemon tea before the fruits go out of season, apparently there is a sweetened-cold version of this as well, but he has yet to refine the technicalities of the ingredients. I worry for him, he always seems so busy.”

“He looks like a rodent who accidentally ate a pepper, though I suppose in this case it would be a block of ice what with Mobei-jun being his lover and all.”

“I did wonder how that happened, and worried a brief time. An Ding Peak’s disciples had said that their master would occasionally come home bruised and barely able to walk, they were rearing to go to war with the Northern Demons far before everything else happened.” Ming Fan sighed, “Well, it isn’t any of my business. I’m sure they’re dealing with the situation in their own way.”

“True that, those An Ding Peak children…physically they are weak, but it is always the weaker ones that surprise you the most. Especially when angry,” Tianlang-jun smiled as he mused. “Afterall, hornets don’t seem like much at first glance. That Mobei-jun has his work cut out for him, ah, speaking of. What of those two? Surely the boy is tip-toeing these days.”

“He tends to keep to the bamboo house, and we tend to stay far away from the bamboo house, especially at night.” Ming Fan raised his hand to drink. “That is all I will say of the matter.”

Ming Fan sighed, rubbing a hand against his eyes, “I am getting far too old for this.”

“Oh please, you’re not even a century old.”

“Hm, and yet somehow I am still significantly more mature than you. Have you reached the regression stage of life Tianlang-jun? I must say, I’m rather peeved that it’s a mental deterioration rather than a physical one for you demons.”

“Hoh?” Tianlang-jun leaned forward, smirking. “Wish to test how youthful I can be Little Cultivator?”

Ming Fan raised a hand idly pointing at the silks of Tianlang-jun’s clothes, startling the heavenly demon as he wondered just what the other had found on his clothes.

Then Ming Fan flicked up, hitting the former Demon Lord up the lip and under the nose, causing Tianlang-jun to recoil, sputtering from the unjust attack. The audacity.

“I’m sure you’d at least warm the bed,” He deadpanned, sipping at his tea without a care as Tianlang-jun sputtered indignantly.

NMJ/MF - Original Re-meeting for ch 52; added here for my convenience (cus i don't wanna make another post)

“Gather everyone who can fight!” One voice called. “Sect Leader Nie is being surrounded by a pack of hell hounds! They need help.”

Ming Fan was out and running before anyone could even blink- with only Liu Qingge and Tianlang-jun holding enough time to react by following him.

-

“Shit-“ Mingjue cursed, swinging around Bàxià to hurl one attacking hound over to the side. “Meng Yao- you alright?!”

“Could use-” Meng Yao grimaced as he had to back off to avoid the snapping jaws of another hound. “Some help.”

“Reinforcements should be on the way!” Mei Lin cursed venomously under her breath. “Just where the hell did all these damned dogs come from?!”

“We’re being overrun!” Lang Fengyi yelped as he narrowly avoided claws.

“Fuck-“ Mingjue gathered his energy, willing it to fill him once more. “Get ready to run! I should be able to distract them long enough to-“

“Don’t worry about that.”

The disciples of Nie turned to find a man arrogantly walking through the field, the hounds yipping in fear and running from him, as well as another man clad in white and silver who eyed the hounds back.

Tianlang-jun stood before the disciples of Qinghe Nie with a bright smile, “Relax now, everything will be fine.”

Liu Qingge huffed, drawing his sword, “Says you. We have to make sure he’s not overworking himself remember?”

There was a distant rumbling- an ominous presence that washed over them to the point where all the hounds began to shudder and shake in fear as they too yipped around fearfully.

Descend with great speed. Swift and merciless. Run my enemies. Leave none left alive. May death greet you well.

Formation formed.

Ming Fan dropped his sword with militaristic precision, tilting all the swords generated by his power towards the ground in varying angles.

Heavenly Wrath Formation.

Tianlang-jun looked up in the surprise, “Don’t tell me that’s-“

“It is,” Liu Qingge scowled.

“Who-“ Nie Mingjue began- before all hell broke loose.

Liu Qingge’s expression was thunderous as he swept past rows of demonic hounds, tilting on hand and waiting-

Another man dropped from the sky not a second later, catching Liu Qingge’s robes and righting him before swinging his legs on the man’s waist to get around and jab another hound in the back- Tianlang-jun was swift to join the fray, allowing the shorter cultivator to move around him to get at all the lucky hounds who managed to move away from Ming Fan’s deadly aim fast enough.

While Tianlang-jun added to the deadly partnership with his own flare, it was the pair of Ming Fan and Liu Qingge that showed the obvious years of partnership between them- for the two had years of spars and night hunts to guide their blades where they need be.

Heads flew, limbs joining them as the immortals of Cang Qiong Sect and Tianlang-jun of the Heavenly Demon Line slaughtered the feared and the rowdy- leaving those of Qinghe Nie in awe.

“..Wei…” Meng Yao said, knees beginning to grow weak. “Wei Fan?!”

The man abruptly froze, glancing towards their direction before seeming to move on instinct- the War God sensing the sudden change and using his arm to propel him outward, allowing the man to fly across the air and land his sword true through the skull of the hell hound that was just about to take a chunk from Nie Mingjue’s side.

Ming Fan, not upset as he was, barked at them venomously, “Just what do you think you’re doing?! Fucking move! You’re in a battle field! Fight damn you! Are you not of Qinghe Nie?!”

“Teacher Wei!” Mei Lin cried- openly actually, crying.

“Oh for the love of-“ Ming Fan cursed. “I’ll take your crying and yelling and cursing later, lift your sabres and fight!”

“Xiao-Fan!”

Ming Fan turned, grunting as he launched his sword in the Heavenly Demon’s direction and skewering the hound. “What?!”

“Lower your blood pressure!”

Ming Fan felt his blood pressure rise out of sheer spite. “Fuck you!”

“A-Fan,” Liu Qingge growled. “You just performed one of the most powerful formations while silent. Calm down.”

“I can’t!” Ming Fan caught himself with a scowl. “But I’m not upset!”

“For the love of-“ Liu Qingge turned to Tianlang-jun. “Can you handle the rest?”

“Yeah I got it,” Tianlang-jun batted away a hound with his bare fist. “Just take care of our pissed off little horse first.”

Liu Qingge wasted no time, grabbing the now fuming Ming Fan, his nose beginning to trickle with a line of blood and generally causing the already shocked disciples of Qinghe Nie to panic.

“Hey,” Liu Qingge’s voice was soft as it was firm. “Calm down. Calm. That’s not a request.”

“I’m trying,” Ming Fan hissed. “You try doing this in the middle of battle.”

“Alright back up plan,” Liu Qingge turned to the still shocked Nie Mingjue. “You. Make yourself useful. He needs a distraction.”

“Wha-“

Liu Qingge shoved Ming Fan into Nie Mingjue, the taller man abruptly catching the man by the waist to steady him before something else caused him to loose balance.

Forgot one: Deleted Extra feat. Yang Yixuan + MF; written with it's og formatting since notes preserved my italics somehow

Cold wind swept past the ravine.

Shaking trees and rustling branches provided the background noise for the twittering creatures who lived in the back mountains. Within this quiet land was a surrounding of high elevation mountains spanning all around the mountain side.

There, Ming Fan sat quietly. Watching the creatures bellow- there were no humans for miles save for those few people within the Ancient Sect, and they were hardly just human anymore.

“So, you’ve finally decided to get off your ass.”

Ming Fan stiffened.

Yang Yixuan’s arms were cross across his breast, idly looking down from the view of Qing JIng Peak.

The landscape had changed much since Ming Fan had last come here, it was greener. With the trees far taller than when Ming Fan had last seen them, the older trees cut down by the ravages of war and time- but new ones taking their place. The silence too, was new. With no disciples Cang Qiong Mountain was a far quieter place than it had been during the height of its Sect Years. Some ascended, some peacefully settling into their next life, and some sticking around. Going to and fro the place carrying out errands and enacting a firm hand where the average Cultivator could not handle. The war had put a damper on such things, what with their stance of neutrality, bu it was no less somewhat of a sobering surprise that those of Cang Qiong Mountain had seen what was happening and judged it would be better to remain quiet.

He knew why of course, it was more practical in the long run for a mythical Sect, they were not here to force the future into their own hands- merely to counter the monsters of the yester years. Still. He wondered.

“You’re thinking so loud I could practically here it,” the former head disciple of Bai Zhan peak, the former Peak Lord himself, continued with a raised brow. “You’re normally quick to empty your mind and dump it onto others.”

Ming Fan scoffed softly, “Normal is a poor basis to use to pass judgement at the moment, even a Bai Zhan Peak buffoon like you should realize such.”

“…”

Ming Fan pursed his lip, anger simmering.

Settle.

Settle.

Settle.

“I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” He said softly, allowing his fist to slack from their death-like grip.

“You just lost your brohter,” Yang Yixuan said bluntly. “You were a raving asshole when Liu-shifu dragged you here. Pretty much spat at Luo Binghe’s feet and insulted just about everyone.”

Ming Fan restrained the urge to flinch at every word.

“I’d be more than a little troubled if you didn’t act like that after losing your brother.” Yang Yixuan continued with a shake of his head. “It’s good to know that our illustrous Ming Fan is still a human.”

“Have I not proven that time and time again?”

“Dunno,” Ming Fan turned his head, the Bai Zhan Peak’s former sole disciple’s voice turning uncharacteristically soft. “You were doing a pretty good impression of acting like an immortal before.”

#Scum Disciple's Adventures Into the Unknown World #SDAUW #BTS I guess #Are there actually behind the scenes for writing idk #I'll see if I have time to write one since I do have a lot of notes from when i planned this fic #and maybe some bits of the history referenced in SDAUW #MDZS x SVSSS Fanfic #One that is tbh really out there in terms of concept ngl lol #Scum Disciple BTS

[bloody-bee-tea]

JC Love Month 2020 Day 9

Mystery Talent

Day 9 of JC Love Month brings more JC living at the Nie's from Day 1 and Day 5 and it shows that they are so very good to him when JC picks up a long forgotten hobby because he feels secure enough with them to do so.

Nie Mingjue doesn’t know what he expected when he first took Jiang Cheng in but it certainly wasn’t to be cornered by Jiang Yanli of all people.

“Listen,” she says and fixes him with a glare that actually makes Nie Mingjue straighten up more than he already is.

“I’m listening,” he says seriously and wishes that Nie Huaisang would be subjected to this as well.

He was the one who first raised the idea that they should take in Jiang Cheng after all. He should get this version of the shovel talk as well.

“If you hurt my brother, I’ll know,” she tells him and he nods, because he doesn’t doubt it for a moment.

It’s the curse of the elder siblings to always know when the younger ones are hurt.

“I promise to take good care of him,” Nie Mingjue vows and he thinks they are already on a good way.

Jiang Cheng’s birthday was a success and he seems more comfortable in their home with every day that passes.

Nie Mingjue knows that they have to make up for years and years of a shitty family life, but they are damn well going to try.

They managed to make Mo Xuanyu feel like family, and he was near suicidal by the time he got to them, so they should be able to do the same for Jiang Cheng.

Nie Mingjue startles slightly when Wei Wuxian suddenly appears behind Jiang Yanli, only nodding along but not actually saying anything, and it’s more disconcerting than Nie Mingjue wants to admit.

“If he calls us because he’s unhappy here, you’re going to regret it,” Jiang Yanli says, and while Nie Mingjue would normally laugh at a threat like that—because really, what is Jiang Yanli ever going to do to him—he nods.

This is a serious threat and Nie Mingjue has no doubt that she will channel immeasurable amounts of strength simply to kill him if he should hurt Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian is probably going to hold her flower, if Nie Mingjue were to steal from Nie Huaisang’s meme talk, cheering her on and not otherwise lifting a finger.

It’s good to see that Jiang Cheng has his siblings standing up for him like that.

“I will make sure that he never has reason to call you out of grief,” Nie Mingjue tells her and Jiang Yanli’s face softens, just the slightest bit.

“Good. And if you should ever see him bake, you’re going to call me immediately,” she then says, even more serious than she was before and Nie Mingjue frowns. “And I mean immediately. If you stumble upon him in the middle of the night baking then you’re going to call me that very same instant.”

Wei Wuxian nods behind her, just as intense as his sister and even though it’s a mystery to Nie Mingjue why Jiang Cheng baking should be cause enough to call them no matter the time, he nods again.

If they want him to call, then he will, especially if it holds some significance for Jiang Cheng to bake.

“Do I dare ask why?” Nie Mingjue wants to know and Jiang Yanli gives him a very sweet smile, that already tells him the answer.

“No,” she still says and Nie Mingjue sighs.

Fine then. He’ll just wait and see what’s going to happen.

~*~*~

A lot is going to happen, it turns out. First and most notable, Nie Mingjue thinks, is the fact that for the very first time it’s Jiang Cheng who drags Nie Huaisang into the room.

It’s making Nie Mingjue anxious because so far Jiang Cheng has never willingly used the room—he has always been dragged off by Nie Huaisang and came back out crying more often than not—and so Nie Mingjue paces in front of the closed door for the entire time they are in there.

“You need to relax,” Mo Xuanyu suddenly says from his side and Nie Mingjue almost startles.

He didn’t notice him there.

“I know, I know,” Nie Mingjue absentmindedly says, keeping his eyes on the still closed door, at least right until Mo Xuanyu steps in front of him and pulls his face down so he’s looking at Mo Xuanyu instead.

“Mingjue,” he says and Nie Mingjue sags where he stands.

“I know,” he says again, much softer this time, but he can’t help but to worry.

“He’s doing fine,” Mo Xuanyu tells him and then simply throws himself at Nie Mingjue, who catches him easily, because Mo Xuanyu has been with them for long enough for Nie Mingjue to expect this.

“Is he?” Nie Mingjue asks and Mo Xuanyu slaps his back.

“I know you’re stupid, but you’re not actually that stupid. Of course he’s doing fine. This is a good sign. It’s him expressing his emotions, and that’s always good. Remember the first time I used the room?” Mo Xuanyu asks him and Nie Mingjue tightens his arms around Mo Xuanyu at the memory.

“Yes,” he says, because he does.

Mo Xuanyu dragged him into the room and he had started with begging him to not kick him out for this, and only when Nie Mingjue had told him that would never happen did Mo Xuanyu yell at him for a good five minutes about how stupid Nie Mingjue was being by trusting Jin Guangshan even the slightest bit, and be it just in a work-relationship.

When he had been done, Mo Xuanyu broke down crying—mostly out of relief to get it all off his chest—but the sight had still hurt Nie Mingjue.

“It was a good moment,” Mo Xuanyu reminds him and Nie Mingjue shrugs.

“Doesn’t make it easier to see you cry,” he admits, because he hates when any of the others cry.

Nie Huaisang mostly learned to wield his tears like a weapon, but there are times when they are real and that’s always bad for Nie Mingjue’s own feelings. Mo Xuanyu mostly doesn’t cry at all anymore, deciding to smile his hurt away, but that, too, is painful to watch.

At the moment it’s mostly Jiang Cheng who cries though, and it makes the other three weepy too, because he cries at the most normal things like a hug or the reassurance that he’s loved.

That’s very hard to take for Nie Mingjue.

“It’s why I stopped,” Mo Xuanyu says and pulls away.

“Seeing you smile when you’re hurt isn’t that much easier, Xuanyu,” Nie Mingjue tells him and flicks his forehead and he’s not at all surprised when Mo Xuanyu’s eyes go a little bit misty.

“I’m working on it,” he promises and Nie Mingjue knows that he is.

They all are still working on all of their issues, after all.

It’s in that moment when the door to the room flies open and Jiang Cheng stalks off, tears streaming down his face and a very stunned Nie Huaisang coming out after him.

“You good?” Nie Mingjue asks, even though he itches to go after Jiang Cheng to see if there is anything he can to do soothe him.

“He is louder than you are, da-ge,” Nie Huaisang says with something akin to wonder in his voice and Nie Mingjue frowns.

“Is that good or bad?” he wants to know, and watches fondly as Mo Xuanyu bounds over to Nie Huaisang to pull him into a hug as well.

Except this one is accompanied by kisses Nie Mingjue most definitely does not want to see.

“Good, I think,” Nie Huaisang finally says when he extracted himself from Mo Xuanyu and Nie Mingjue rolls his eyes, not that anyone sees, because they go right back to kissing.

“Alright, then,” Nie Mingjue grumbles and goes after Jiang Cheng, because clearly Nie Huaisang is being well taken care of.

He finds Jiang Cheng in the kitchen, where he’s pulling out all the ingredients he’d need to bake, and there are still tears streaming down his face.

Nie Mingjue still has Jiang Yanli’s words in his ear, so he immediately reaches for his phone and dials her number without taking his eyes off Jiang Cheng.

“Nie Mingjue,” she sweetly greets him but Nie Mingjue is too worried what this means to greet her properly.

“He’s baking,” he says and there’s a surprised gasp at the other end of the line.

“He’s what?” Jiang Yanli asks, and her voice sounds shaky and Nie Mingjue wants to know what this is all about this very instant, because if he needs to go in there and soothe Jiang Cheng then he’d rather do it sooner than later.

“He’s getting out all the ingredients he needs and he’s baking something.”

There’s a shuddering breath from her and then she bursts into tears, much to Nie Mingjue’s horror.

“Yanli?” he carefully asks, wondering how they could have fucked this up so badly but then she laughs.

“Thank you so much for giving this back to my brother,” she says through her tears and Nie Mingjue frowns.

“I don’t understand,” he admits and she takes a moment to calm herself down before she explains.

“He loves baking, and he has quite the talent, too,” she starts and now Nie Mingjue is even more confused, because if he loves this then shouldn’t this be a good thing? “Our parents, they—they didn’t approve,” she says and her voice goes dark. “It’s only for girls in their eyes, and it holds no real merit, isn’t something useful for the company or whatever they told him and they forbid him from doing it. He hasn’t baked anything in years. He used to do it when he was happy, when everything was so right in the world for him that he wanted to capture it with something you could taste, but I haven’t seen him do it in too long.” There’s a pause before she whispers “I think the last time was when he was fourteen.”

“Oh,” Nie Mingjue says and he looks at the situation with different eyes now.

Jiang Cheng is still crying, but now that Nie Mingjue knows what he’s looking for he sees that Jiang Cheng is relaxed, his shoulders loose and a lightness to his steps that wasn’t there before.

“Thank you, Mingjue, thank you for giving me back my brother, I mean it,” Jiang Yanli says and her praise makes Nie Mingjue uncomfortable.

“Don’t thank me,” he says gruffly but he can’t deny that he is touched by her words.

But mostly he’s touched because apparently Jiang Cheng is finally happy again.

“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” he says suddenly itching with the need to hang up and go into the kitchen to talk to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli laughs as if she knows exactly what’s happening.

“Tell him I love him,” she says and then simply hangs up.

“Jiang Cheng?” Nie Mingjue carefully asks when he steps into the kitchen and Jiang Cheng gives him a huge smile, even though there are still tears on his cheek. “What’s going on?” Nie Mingjue wants to know and Jiang Cheng looks at the ingredients like he’s doubting Nie Mingjue’s intellect.

“I’m baking,” he says and Nie Mingjue sighs.

“I can see that. I meant the whole thing,” he says and makes a vague gesture with his hand, hoping to encompass everything about Jiang Cheng right now.

At Jiang Cheng’s confused frown he elaborates. “I just talked to your sister. She said you’re happy? I fail to see how you storming out of the room crying equates to you being happy, if I’m honest,” Nie Mingjue says and Jiang Cheng laughs before he motions for Nie Mingjue to come closer, so he can work more easily and without having to turn around all the time.

“This was the first time I used the room,” Jiang Cheng says. “The first time I decided to go in there.”

“I know.”

“I—in my old home, arguments were not to be held,” he says and Nie Mingjue goes very warm when Jiang Cheng refers to the Jiang residence as his old home.

It means he accepted that this is his new home.

“My parents yelled at each other and they berated us, but we weren’t actually allowed to talk back. And whenever one of us did, they took something away from us. Mostly their attention, but sometimes they would tell us how disappointed they are in us, or how bad we are behaving, how they can’t love us if we’re being like this. Sometimes they would take things we liked; certain books or our laptop or whatever else we held dear.”

Nie Mingjue has to fight the urge to go over to the Jiang residence and yell at them a whole lot. How dare they.

“Well, I say us, but mostly it was me,” Jiang Cheng says with a self-deprecating smile. “So whenever I said something to them, I always knew that it would have consequences. Their love for me was always conditional, I knew that, even though I chose to ignore that most of the time. I always hoped, you know,” Jiang Cheng mutters as he mixes the ingredients together.

“But today I went into the room with Nie Huaisang and I yelled at him for at least three minutes and we had a very bad fight, if I’m being honest. But throughout it all I knew that no matter what I said, we’d come out of the room and I’d still have his love and a home. I knew that it wouldn’t change anything if I yelled at him. I know it wouldn’t change anything if I yelled at you or Xuanyu either, and I haven’t felt like that in a long time,” Jiang Cheng whispers and Nie Mingjue can’t help himself, he simply has to reach over and pull him into a hug.

“Love is not conditional, Wanyin,” Nie Mingjue roughly tells him, fighting his own tears. “We will always love you, no matter what you do and you will always have a home here.”

“I know,” Jiang Cheng says, full on sobbing in Nie Mingjue’s shoulder now. “It’s why I’m baking. Because I know and because I’m home.”

“That you are,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and it’s a long time before Jiang Cheng goes back to baking.

When the muffins are in the oven, the smell draws Nie Huaisang and Mo Xuanyu out of their room and the first thing Nie Huaisang does when he sees Jiang Cheng is to hug him as well, furiously muttering something that makes Jiang Cheng blush and smile and Nie Mingjue hopes to always see him this happy from now on.

When the muffins are finally done it’s chaos in the kitchen, because everyone wants to be the first one to taste them and Nie Mingjue easily admits that he’s very proud that he wins, mostly because it makes Jiang Cheng laugh again.

The muffins are the most delicious thing Nie Mingjue has ever tasted and when they finally all settle around the kitchen table, various drinks in front of them, it certainly does feel like family and home.

Link to my ko-fi on the sidebar!

Nie Mingjue is looking forward to making Jiang Cheng bake a lot more often in the future.

Next part

#bt writes #jclovemonth2020 #the untamed #mdzs #jiang cheng #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #mo xuanyu #jiang yanli #modern au #fluff #hurt/comfort #found family #family feels #baking

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

The funniest thing is JIANG CHENG HAD MULTIPLE CHANCES TO DO THE RIGHT THING but every time his jealousy and resentment towards wwx won. Are we gonna forget that his jealousy for wwx is the main thing that jin sect used to separate wwx from a little "support" he had left

Whuuuut? But he tried so hard during the biggest turning point! 🥺

Jiang Cheng’s brows were knitted. He rubbed the vein that throbbed at his temple and soundlessly took in a deep breath, “… I apologize to all of the Sect Leaders. Everyone, I’m afraid you don’t know that the Wen cultivator whom Wei WuXian wanted to save was called Wen Ning. We owe him and his sister Wen Qing gratitude for what happened during the Sunshot Campaign.”

Nie MingJue, “You owe them gratitude? Isn’t the QishanWen Sect the ones who caused the YunmengJiang Sect’s annihilation?”

Within the last few years, Jiang Cheng insisted on working late into the night every day. That day, just as he decided to rest early, he had to rush to Koi Tower overnight because of the thundering news. He’d been suppressing some anger under his fatigue since the beginning. With his natural competitiveness, he was already quite agitated since he had to apologize to other people. When he heard Nie MingJue mention the incident of his sect again, hatred sprouted within him.

The hatred was directed at not only everyone who was seated in this room, but also Wei WuXian.

Lan XiChen responded a moment later, “I have heard of Wen Qing’s name a few of times. I do not remember her having participated in any of the Sunshot Campaign’s crimes.”

Nie MingJue, “But she’s never stopped them either.”

Lan XiChen, “Wen Qing was one of Wen RuoHan’s most trusted people. How could she have stopped them?”

Nie MingJue spoke coldly, “If she responded with only silence and not opposition when the Wen Sect was causing mayhem, it’s the same as indifference. She shouldn’t have been so disillusioned as to hope that she could be treated with respect when the Wen Sect was doing evil and be unwilling to suffer the consequences and pay the price when the Wen Sect was wiped out.”

Lan XiChen knew that because of what happened to his father, Nie MingJue abhorred Wen-dogs more than anything, especially with how intolerable he was toward evil. Lan XiChen didn’t say anything else.

But he's such a wonderful diplomat, who had no way of protecting his brother. Curious how he doesn't expand on what he means by that debt and just lets the hate about the Wens take over even though Lan Xichen tried to get more information even though it would have helped to show Wei Wuxian was not power hungry.

Taking this opportunity, Jin GuangShan spoke, “Sect Leader Jiang, this was supposed to be a matter of your sect. It wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to barge in. But now that things are like this, I’ll have to caution you on the topic of Wei Ying.”

Jiang Cheng, “Sect Leader Jin, go ahead.”

Jin GuangShan, “Sect Leader Jiang, Wei Ying is your right-hand man. You value him a lot. All of us know this. However, on the other hand, it’s hard to tell whether or not he actually respects you. In any case, I’ve been a sect leader for so many years and I’ve never seen the servant of any sect dare be so arrogant, so proud. Have you heard what they say outside? Things like how during the Sunshot Campaign the victories of the YunmengJiang Sect were all because of Wei WuXian alone—what nonsense!”

Hearing this, Jiang Cheng’s face was already quite dark. Jin GuangShan shook his head, “In an event as important as the Flower Banquet, he dared throw a fit right in front of you, leaving however he pleased. He even dared say something like ‘I don’t care about the sect leader Jiang WanYin at all!’ Everyone who was there heard it with their own ears…”

Suddenly, an indifferent voice spoke up, “No.”

Jin GuangShan was in the middle of his fabrication. Hearing this, he paused in surprise, turning along with the crowd to see who it was.

Lan WangJi sat with his back straight, speaking in a tone of absolute tranquility, “I did not hear Wei Ying say this. I did not hear him express the slightest disrespect towards Sect Leader Jiang either.”

Lan WangJi rarely spoke when he was outside. Even when they debated cultivation techniques during Discussion Conferences, he only answered when others questioned or challenged him. With utmost concision, he overcame, without fault, the lengthy arguments of others. Apart from this, he almost never spoke up. And thus, when Jin GuangShan was interrupted by him, he experienced a far greater shock than annoyance. But after all, his fabrication was exposed right in front of so many. He felt a bit awkward.

The good thing was that, not long after he felt awkward, Jin GuangYao came to save the day, exclaiming, “Really? That day, Young Master Wei busted into Koi Tower with such force. He said too many things, one more shocking than the next. Perhaps he said a few things that were along those lines. I can’t remember them either.”

His memory could only be equal to Lan WangJi’s, if not better. As soon as he heard it, Nie MingJue knew that he was fibbing on purpose, frowning slightly.

Jin GuangShan followed the transition, “That’s right. Anyhow, his attitude has always been arrogant.”

One of the sect leaders added, “To be honest, I’ve wanted to say this since a long time ago. Although Wei WuXian did a few things during the Sunshot Campaign, there are many guest cultivators who did more than him. I’ve never seen anyone as full of themselves as him. Excuse my bluntness, but he’s the son of a servant. How could the son of a servant be so arrogant?”

He never believed at all what Jin Guangshan was saying, and he was only jealous because Wei Wuxian always overshadowed him and shouldn't have. Wei Wuxian only ever cared about showing off like he said and never took Jiang Cheng's feelings into account and cruelly ignored him for everyone else. Obviously Jiang Cheng wanted to stand up for Wei Wuxian like Mianmian and Lan Wangji, but he had no power (never mind that Lan Wangji and Mianmian had a lesser position in all of this and despite being mocked tried to be heard and keep Wei Wuxian from being blackened). What? Noooo, he's not at all buying into what Jin Guangshan is saying about his own first disciple he's always expressed faith in Wei Wuxian.

With him having brought up the ‘son of a servant’, naturally there’d be some who connected it to the ‘son of a prostitute’ standing in the hall. Jin GuangYao clearly noticed the unkind stares. Yet, his smile remained perfect, not at all faltering. The crowd went with the flow and voiced their complaints.

“In the beginning, Sect Leader Jin asked Wei Ying for the Tiger Seal with nothing but good intentions, worried that he wouldn’t be able to control it and lead to a disaster. He, however, used his own yardstick to measure another’s intents. Did he think that everyone is after his treasure? What a joke. In terms of treasures, is there any sect that doesn’t hold a few treasures?”

Ignoring the rioting voices behind him, Lan WangJi stood up as well and exited. After Lan XiChen understood what happened a few moments ago, hearing how the direction of their discussion worsened, he spoke up, “Everyone, she is gone already. Let us settle down.”

Now that ZeWu-Jun had spoken, of course the people had to give him some face. In Golden Pavilion, one after another, they began to denounce Wei WuXian and the Wen-dogs again. They all spoke with passionate hatred, letting their indiscriminate, irrefutable loathing dance in the air. Using the atmosphere, Jin GuangShan turned to Jiang Cheng, “He’s been plotting for a while to go to Burial Mound, hasn’t he? After all, with his skills, it wouldn’t be too hard to set up a sect of his own. And so, he used this as a chance to leave the Jiang Sect, intending to do whatever he pleases in the bright skies outside. You rebuilt the YunmengJiang Sect with so much work. He’s got a few controversial traits in him to begin with, and still he doesn’t restrain himself, stirring up so much trouble for you. He doesn’t care about you at all.”

Jiang Cheng pretended to stand his ground, “That probably isn’t that case. Wei WuXian has been like this ever since he was young. Even my father couldn’t do anything about him.”

Jin GuangShan, “Even FengMian-xiong couldn’t do anything about him, huh?” He chuckled a few times, “FengMian-xiong just favored him.”

Hearing the words ‘favored him’, the muscles beside the corners of Jiang Cheng’s mouth twitched.

Jin GuangShan continued, “Sect Leader Jiang, you’re not like your father. It’s just been a couple of years since the reestablishment of the YunmengJiang Sect, precisely when you should be displaying your power. And he doesn’t even know to avoid suspicions. What would the Jiang Sect’s new disciples think if they saw him? Don’t tell me you’d let them see him as their role model and look down on you?”

He spoke one sentence after another, striking the iron while it was still hot. Jiang Cheng spoke slowly, “Sect Leader Jin, that’s enough. I’ll go to Burial Mound and deal with this.”

Jin GuangShan felt satisfied, speaking in a sincere tone, “That’s the spirit. Sect Leader Jiang, there are some things, some people that you shouldn’t put up with.”

After the gathering ended, all of the sect leaders felt that they received a terrific topic for conversation. They walked quickly as they discussed with all their might, their passionate hatred still burning strong.

No this is not Jin Guangshan taking advantage of Jiang Cheng's well known complexes over his dad and Wei Wuxian. He is not using the fact at all that Jiang Cheng hates that people flock to Wei Wuxian naturally to set off Jiang Cheng's complex about being seen as lesser than Wei Wuxian in anyway. Jiang Cheng was powerless after all to stand up for Wei Wuxian's reputation and help.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #lol two prides #at this point Jiang Cheng made it clear his sect leader reputation was what he cared about