Four times Jiang Cheng protected someone
Bonus: Two times Jiang Cheng was protected by someone
Yet, at the same time, Wen Zhuliu was closing in on Madam Yu. He looked as if he was about to knock her down. Jiang Cheng hurried, "Mom!"
He immediately gave up on Wang Lingjiao and threw himself over.
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Chapter 58 - Poisons - Part 3
That, at the town we passed on our way, when you were buying food, a group of Wen Sect cultivators caught up. That, I discovered them early and left where I sat, hiding at the corner of the street and didn't get caught, but they were patrolling the streets and would soon run into you outside.
That this was why I ran out and distracted them.
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Chapter 110 - Concealment - Part 4
Jiang Cheng heard the voice as well. In an istant, his face had turned white, "Sis? Sis! Where are you? Where are you?"
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Chapter 78 - Nightfall - part 3
With a roar, Nie Mingjue grabbed at Jin Ling. Both Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling had backed away to the corner of the wall, unable to retreat further. Jiang Cheng could only stuff Jin Ling behind him and unsheathe Sandu, which at the moment was unable to use spiritual energy, forcing himself to fend off the attack.
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Chapter 107- Concealment - Part 1
Bonus:
Lan Wangji grabbed Wei Wuxian's shoulder with one hand, letting Wei Wuxian stand behind him, and with his other hand he forcefully pushed away Jiang Cheng's hand. Rage could be seen hidden within his eyes. Although his push held no spiritual energy, it was quite powerful in terms of strength. The wound at Jiang Cheng's chest ripped apart again. Blood surged.
Jin Ling cried, "Uncle, your wound! Hanguang-jun, spare some mercy!"
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Chapter 102- Hatred - Part 5
Nie Mingjue's heavy fist punched through a body.
But the body was neither Jiang Cheng's nor Jin Ling's.
Wen Ning blocked himself before the wall, in front of the two of them. With both his hands, he grabbed Nie Mingjue's iron arm and slowly pulled it out of his chest, leaving behind a large, hollow hole. There was no bleeding. Only a couple of black organ crumbs fell out.
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Chapter 107- Concealment - Part 1
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“He resembles Princess Luthien greatly,” Oropher said and Celeborn stiffened on instinct.
He side-eyed his kinsman, bracing for the impact of whatever came next. Oropher never made idle comments. Oropher epecially never made idle comments to him, not without the direct intention of starting a fight.
Celeborn hoped this wasn’t intended to be a fight. He’d promised Gil-galad, and more importantly, Galadriel, that they wouldn’t so much as bicker tonight. They were supposed to stand next to one another in solidarity and pretend like the High Council of Lindon wasn’t fracturing at the seams and about to fall apart, the direct consequence of Oropher’s words and desires and pride.
But right now, Oropher at least wasn’t speaking of their king- ‘I don’t remember choosing him, do you think you speak for all of us?’- but of the one standing next to him on the ballroom dais. Of perhaps the one person whose name and presence between them was just as, if not more, incendiary than Gil-galad’s. Poor Elrond.
“He does,” Celeborn replied mildly, biting his tongue before he could ask why Oropher was bringing this up now. It wasn’t like he’d never seen the young lord- no longer a boy, not a child by any race’s measure, though it was hard to remember- before. It wasn’t like they all didn’t meet and talk often enough.
“More than either Elwing or Earendil. Or her.”
And, ah. There it was.
“True enough,” Celeborn said, and he wasn’t sure if Oropher wanted him to agree or not, but he wasn’t going to lie.
Elrond took greatly after dear Aunt Luthien. In some lights it was slightly nerve wracking.
Oropher crossed his arms rather than reply immediately, his face closed off. Not stony or hard like at council meetings, but his thoughts and feelings were far away from any observer. He actually looked like the lord they pretended he was, rather than the rogue marchwarden he actually was; regal. When Oropher looked like that he reminded Celeborn of Galathil.
He looked away.
“I think, in the details though, they are more present. His cheeks, for example-“
“And it’s funny,” Oropher said, and he even huffed a very sad laugh, trying and failing to make it sound like he actually was joking. The two of them hadn’t shared a joke since… since.
Celeborn certainly wasn’t laughing. He closed his eyes and swallowed his annoyance at being interrupted. He knew Oropher did it on purpose, perpetually the preteen at his brother’s table delighting in ribald and shock.
And there were his words to consider.
“El-Elwing didn’t really take after Luthien very much.”
She didn’t. She’d taken after the person whose presence hung between Oropher and Celeborn like the unlight of Ungoliant, sucking the air out of the room. Which was a horrible legacy for someone they both loved so much, but grief did strange things to already strained relationships.
“I keep asking myself if there’s something about Earendil I’m forgetting.” Oropher was rambling now, highly uncharacteristic. Celeborn drew in a long breath and re-centered himself in anticipation for wherever this was headed. “Has Galadriel said anything about a resemblance to anyone in her family?”
Celeborn raised an eyebrow, but Oropher wouldn’t look at him. His eyes were locked somewhere past Elrond’s head. Hopefully he hadn’t noticed.
But Oropher acknowledging Galadriel’s family, Earendil’s family willingly?
Oropher had always seemed to operate under some purposeful mental dissonance, wherein he forced himself to think of Galadriel as some Telerin princess who had mystically made her way across the sea alone and by sheer force of will. And Earendil? He might as well have been prince to some lost, entirely independent Elven kingdom- not Sindar, not Laiquendi, certainly not Noldor- for how Oropher acted, for the most part.
He’d slipped in an argument about Gil-galad once when he shouted that, ‘Earendil was the only Noldo I would have ever had for my king and he’s gone!’
“She’s never made any special mention of a resemblance,” Celeborn said carefully. He didn’t want to call attention to the… mannerisms picked up from certain half-cousins that Galadriel had noticed. That wasn’t a resemblance, after all. “Why?”
“No particular reason,” he said, though it was becoming clear that there was a very particular reason, “just, many remark that his brother took after Earendil and I never saw it, so I-“
“I always thought Elros more so resembled Dior.”
Oropher’s head snapped over to finally look at him. He nodded, slow and low, not even slightly upset at being interrupted.
“Yes, I thought the same,” he said. “Funny that. Identical twins, but it’s in the- the bearing. Who they take after. Luthien and Dior.”
Celeborn fought off the shudder that threatened the shake him, to make him crack and crumble under the weight of the thing between him and Oropher that would never go away. He actually looked Oropher in the eye, and in that faraway gaze, this time he saw the same weakness.
“How much have you had to drink this evening?” Celeborn asked.
Oropher shrugged casually, with one shoulder, and that was plenty of answer. Surely he couldn’t be as drunk as either the time Celeborn found his and his friends deep into Galathil’s liquor cabinet or the night they drank themselves into a state in Sirion after… after. Still.
“That’s very unbecoming.”
“You see it though, right?” Oropher said, voice still uncharacteristically even, but when they met eyes…
He was such a weepy drunk.
“Elwing and Earendil’s boys, they carry themselves well,” he said, voice bitter as could be. “Beautiful, kind, clever, magnetic, the both of them. Princess Luthien’s wildness is in Elrond, and Dior’s wonder at the world is in Elros. They stand so tall. And, yes, you’re right, Elwing and Earendil are there in the margins, but there’s also- also them. And so much space is taken up, our- Lothig is eaten whole.”
Hearing Nimloth’s childhood nickname come out of Oropher’s mouth was like being stabbed. There was no more air. Just like that, Celeborn was drowning.
“You should be proud,” he hissed back, trying to keep his head above water. “That is a fine legacy to resemble, our princess, our king. We loved them as well. At least, I did.”
Oropher wasn’t listening. He never did.
“Do you think any of these people-“ he swept his arm out to gesture at the entire room, the entirety of Lindon’s court; Noldor, Sindar, Nandor, Men and Dwarves in the margins, and one peredhil. “-care that they killed her?”
“Don’t put that on him,” Celeborn snapped quietly, “he doesn’t owe you grief for someone he never knew-“
“I don’t care what Elrond feels, I can’t even look at him,” Oropher spat out, every word sounding pained, and there was torment in his whisper quiet voice.
That whisper, more than anything, tipped Celeborn off to the fact that this conversation wasn’t just one of their drunken spats about trading blame.
“I would have raised that boy like we raised his mother and your brother raised me,” Oropher said, “but that didn’t happen, and I can’t look at him. He looks like Luthien. His brother looks like Dior. And that’s a wonderful thing for everyone else in this room, isn’t it? That’s hope. The beautiful king taken too soon reborn and the Nightengale who stole her happy ending walking among us, and that’s such a lovely end to this tale for them. But what about for us, Celeborn?”
For Celeborn? Celeborn was shaking with the effort it was taking to keep his breathing even. Galadriel touched the edge of his fea to ask if he was okay. He gently pushed her away.
Oropher was right about one thing, this was about their family; about Doriath and Menegorth and being the last two members of Thingol’s inner court on this shore.
Eru Iluvatar, how did it end up being them? Just a pair of hot-headed youths with the weight an entire dead kingdom on their shoulders.
“Gondolin and Nargothrond are gone too,” he replied, the words dull even to his ears. “Hithlum and Dorthonion, half of Ossiriand, and even Himlad and Thargelion. It’s about building something new for all of us. Hope is not a bad thing.”
“It’s different for us.”
Yes. It was. Because Doriath and Sirion need not have fallen like that, and the monsters who took their homes and their loved ones from them weren’t even defeated. They faded, sad and pathetic and allowed to escape by everyone and everything but their prize, and there was no catharsis in that.
And in this kingdom they spoke Sindarin, but they took a Noldorin king who ruled through Noldorin traditions- with a few of Cirdan’s lessons thrown in there- in a city built by Noldorin hands. After his death, Thingol had lost his war of cultural influence. Badly.
“No one here remembers her but us, Celeborn,” Oropher urged. “They remember our heroes and our most tantalizing tragedies, but they don’t remember her. They don’t see her. She’s just one more dead wife and mother, if they get that far, but not a cousin, a niece-“
“Enough, Oropher.”
“-an astrologist, a troublemaker, a queen, a girl who was so scared of being outshined-“
“Oropher!” Celeborn snapped, more harshly than he meant to. It made Oropher stop long enough that he could put a hand on his shoulder, though.
“Oropher, you’re weeping.”
He blinked harshly, then brought up a hand to wipe at his cheek. When he pulled away, Celeborn could see how wet the palm was. Oropher glared at the remnant of his tears like they’d personally offended him.
He muttered, half to himself, “Surely you can’t keep living like this. Ignoring what was done to us because it’s awkward and inconvenient for the new age they’re building.”
Could he? Celeborn didn’t know. He was trying. Galadriel was trying; she had as many wounds as him she was trying to swallow for the sake of something new and bright. But it was hard. Lindon made Celeborn feel old, somehow. But with Oropher he was always just a boy again, strutting around Menegroth, trying to make his place, being too loud and too proud and too sure of himself.
Perhaps that was part of why they couldn’t stop fighting. Always just boys when together. And those boys, they had a few things in common.
Doriath, Galathil, and Nimloth were in Oropher. And when Oropher looked at him, those same things were in Celeborn. There was no place for those things in this new world.
Because Doriath, Galathil, and Nimloth were forever gone on this shore. Oropher needed to realize that. Not matter how much it fucking hurt.
“Go to bed, Oropher,” Celeborn told him softly. “You’re drunk and emotional. You’ll embarrass your son. He’s one of those young people looking for something new. Something hopeful.”
And when they looked back towards Gil-galad’s dais and the youths surrounding him, there was Thranduil, charming smile on his face, making Elrond toss his head back and laugh. If anyone took after Nimloth, it was him; her mother and Oropher’s had been identical twins.
Celeborn’s hand was suddenly colder and hanging in the air. He turned back to the kid who showed up one day and took so much of his older brother’s attention and who he’d never forgiven for that small slight. Oropher was composed and looking like Galathil once more.
“I hate that you’re right,” he whispered. “And he probably needs me to be better than this. But I can’t be better here.”
And he left.
The next week, Oropher would formally announce his intention to travel east and settle there, alongside anyone who would join him. Celeborn, to the surprise of every other council member but Galadriel, raised no objection. Very briefly, the thought crossed his mind to join Oropher.
But that desire faded quickly. The envy didn’t, though, not for many, many years.
Not until the day he planted a little silver tree in Lothlorien.
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