#which i now realize is everyone in koi tower

[ivoryratdoggerythethird]

“do any of you even sleep?”

su minshan: fitfully.

mo xuanyu: once in a blue moon.

jin guangyao: i can’t say i do, no.

xue yang, injecting powdered candy directly into his bloodstream: what the fuck is a sleep.

#this was originally with xxc and sl as mxy and jgy but #this is better #koi tower villain squad #which i now realize is everyone in koi tower #except the children and qin su #and jzx #but lets ignore that yes #mdzs #xue yang #jin guangyao #su minshan #mo xuanyu #the a-qing show #my post #poor little golden meow meow bastard #feral candy gremlin #mdzs crack

[poorlittleyaoyao]

Top 4 Jiang Yanli Survival Scenarios That Still Allow the Plot to Happen

HOT TAKE: JYL didn't actually need to die and the story would still be plenty crunchy if she hadn't. (Also, it is geographically implausible for her to somehow get all the way from Koi Tower to Nightless City unless she was faking her low cultivation this whole time and secretly mastered teleportation talismans, but that's not what this is about.) Below are 4 ways JYL could live that would still allow the major post-timeskip plot beats to unfold.

SCENARIO 1: JYL remains a widow and stays in Lanling as a member of the Jin household.

SCENARIO 2: JYL is married off to JGY after JZX's death (+ a spicier, alternate version of this)

SCENARIO 3: JYL ends up married off to NMJ after JZX's death.

SCENARIO 4: JYL remains a widow and returns to Lotus Pier.

With descriptions under the cut!

SCENARIO 1: JYL remains a widow and stays in Lanling as a member of the Jin household.

THE POTENTIAL: JYL in this scenario occupies a fraught position at Koi Tower; she has some sway as Jin Ling's mother, but it's unclear where Jin Ling stands in the line of succession. (She's also now trapped in JGS's household without a male guardian so. You know. That's great. 😬) JGY would strive to foster a positive relationship with her, I think; she doesn't pose a threat to him, and even if he has no personal affection for her, showing kindness to his sister-in-law is good optics and maintains the alliance with Lotus Pier. What are the ramifications of that? Maybe she becomes close with QS and help advocate for her marriage? (Maybe she then becomes close-close with QS later on, given that they'd both be terribly starved for physical intimacy.) Maybe she stumbles upon some of the secrets of the Jinlintai Murder Basement and becomes one of NHS's informants. Maybe she has no idea about the Murder Basement and is as shocked and appalled as everyone else when she learns about JGY's crimes and wonders how the hell she didn't realize any of this was happening. Good stuff!

SCENARIO 2A: JYL is married off to JGY after JZX's death.

THE POTENTIAL: Much the same as above, except now JYL has sealed her position as THEE Jin-furen once JGY ascends to Sect Leader and Chief Cultivator. She and JGY are connected with and presumably have developed some degree of fondness for each other, which makes the reveal of JGY's actions that much more dramatic! She's going to feel as betrayed and conflicted as LXC does, and is going to struggle when both her brothers end up in opposition to her husband. Does JGY persuade her to go with him to Dongying, or does he take her hostage as he does LXC? To what degree does proximity to JGY make her potential collateral damage for NHS? This is all very stressful for JYL, but it averts the terrible, horrible, no-good very bad accidental incest marriage with QS, so... winning!

SCENARIO 2B (CQL only): JYL and JGY marry after JZX's death, but had a whole affair going on prior to that.

THE POTENTIAL: There's this one chaotic group interview with a bunch of the CQL actors where they're like "HMMM IT'S PRETTY SUS THAT JIN LING LOOKS SO MUCH LIKE HIS UNCLE!! SHIJIE HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO!!" and while poor Zhu Zanjin was sitting there going "nooo stop it's not like that! it's a coincidence! ☹️" it had me like 👀because I love mess. My fave interpretation of Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet is that they were always in love with each other and Claudius killed King Hamlet 1.0 so he could be with her (obligatory plug for Haider, my fave Hamlet adaptation, which has this precise dynamic and it's *chef's kiss*), and like... what if THAT'S going on. JYL can have an extramarital affair with far-reaching consequences, as a treat. Sorry, Jin Ling, but the revelations from Guanyin Temple just got THAT much more complicated for you to process.

SCENARIO 3: JYL ends up married off to NMJ after JZX's death.

THE POTENTIAL: Ohohohoho, this one might be my favorite one. The Jin clan (possibly at JGY's suggestion) marry JYL off to NMJ in an attempt to repair Lanling's relationship with Qinghe and get NMJ to stop wilding. NMJ and JYL hit it off (shared experiences include: being parentified at a young age, violently losing a parent to the Wen clan, a strong sense of duty, and chronic illness)... but NMJ does not, in fact, stop wilding, so JGY begins playing Turmoil. NMJ's increasingly volatile behavior would be even more terrifying for JYL than it is for NHS--she's not only worried about her own safety, but if the Jin clan deem the Unclean Realm unsafe for little JL, then JYL's not going to get to see her son. Once NMJ succumbs to qi deviation, JYL is widowed once again, and she's starting to wonder if she's cursed... until her brother-in-law comes to her with his suspicions about JGY. (She might even be the one to ignite the suspicions in CQL canon, since she's present for LWJ playing Cleansing for WWX and thus knows what it's supposed to sound like.) Now JYL is pissed, and even more worried about JL's safety. She keeps Qinghe afloat while NHS goes into his scheming flop era, and perhaps even suggests to him that WWX is the person to call if he wants his brother back. As NHS's plan endangers people JYL cares about--including her son! repeatedly!--JYL starts to question his methods and regrets not confiding in JC instead, but the die is cast at this point.

SCENARIO 4: JYL remains a widow and returns to Lotus Pier.

THE POTENTIAL: This isn't bringing the spicy melodrama the way the other scenarios are, but I do like the quieter change it means for her, JC, and JL. JC doesn't have nearly as much unresolved grief to work through with his sister still alive, and would be a better-adjusted person. He might, in fact, be even better-adjusted than JYL herself, who grieves for and loves WWX but cannot forgive him for killing her husband. WWX upon his resurrection would have to face the consequences of shijie's anger, and now they're the ones having a tearful heart-to-heart in a public space while JC frets. (And then they ALL get to deal with the golden core transplant fallout! Woo!) Plus, an unattached JYL would have the freedom to accompany JL to Lanling, so she's going to be closer with JGY and QS and be present for whatever the hell happened with MXY, so she is going to have some REACTIONS to certain revelations, let me tell you!

I would love to write any one of these, but I am the world's slowest writer, so if it's up to me, they will never actually happen. So fly forth, ideas! Be free! If you write one of these, hmu, because I'd love to read it!

[allthelittlecreepycrawlies]

SangYao Horror(Ish) Ideas, Part Three

(with bonus SangYu)

Purge AU

Jin Guangshan is a wealthy club owner/politician who sells the addresses of his bastard children and their mothers to rich and bored purge gangs for ludicrous amounts of money. 

Meng Shi was killed by one such gang but had managed to hide her son so well (after drugging him so he wouldn't try to come save her) that he survived.

As an adult, he's living in an apartment above the bar he works at. 

Unbeknownst to him, the residents of another apartment down the hall are Mo Xuanyu and his mother, more names on Jin Guangshan’s list. 

And unbeknownst to Jin Guangshan and his murderous cronies, the owners of the bar downstairs, one Nie Mingjue and his younger brother Nie Huaisang, are both survivalist-trained and are very protective of their turf, their employees, and the other residents of the building. 

If the purge attackers manage to get away with just injuries, they'll be very lucky. 

(At one point, Meng Yao gets cornered by one of the purgers who's armed with blades of several types and lengths, only for Nie Huaisang to pop up out of nowhere and beat the guy to death with a barstool, even as it breaks in the process. 

Wow. 

He might be in love.)

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

(I might have posted a snippet of this one already, I'm a little too out of it to tell.)

When Meng Yao goes to Koi Tower for the first time, it's discovered (to his surprise) that he's part yao. 

A disgusted Jin Guangshan decides that banishment is too nice a punishment, but execution might get some nosy people suspicious, which could lead to people discovering the boy was his. 

Not wanting Meng Yao anywhere near Koi Tower, he has Meng Yao dragged off to some falling-apart mansion of a disgraced magistrate near the border and sealed in, then offers a bounty to anyone who can kill the monster "haunting" the house. 

Many try, but Meng Yao, having realized his own father is sending assassins after him, taps into his yao side in a desperate bid for survival and kills any comers. 

Eventually, he's forgotten about by everyone except his father, who despises the fact that he's not dead yet. 

Years later, Nie Huaisang is caught in a wild thunderstorm that blew in as he was escaping from a kidnapping party of Wens. 

Terrified, exhausted, wounded, and now soaked, he ducks into the first empty house he comes across, passing out almost the moment he falls across the threshold. 

The pursuing Wens, realizing where they are, see this as a bonus opportunity. Not only can they recapture the Nie heir, they can force Jin-zongzhu to owe their sect for getting rid of his little problem. 

One strides forward and grabs the unconscious Nie Huaisang by the hair, but then there's a growl out of the shadows…

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

Thinking about a SangYao/SangYu haunted romance.

Nie Huaisang is on a trip with a bunch of other grad students (he's the only art conservationist) to a supposedly haunted temple on an island.

Being from an extremely old family well-versed in ritual, Nie Huaisang is the only one who can actually see the ghosts, and it turns out the official story (the ghosts were all plague victims) is only partially true. Yes, a plague wiped everyone out, but they all moved on.

All the ghosts that are still around arrived afterwards, when a noble notable for his womanizing started having any bastard children dumped there. 

He crosses paths with Mo Xuanyu first because Mo Xuanyu just can't help being curious about this guy in particular who is so careful with and fascinated by the murals (even the not-as-good additions Mo Xuanyu himself made while he was still alive).

It scares the hell out of him when Nie Huaisang looks right at him and asks if he worked on any of them and it takes Mo Xuanyu a week to get up the nerve to make another appearance.

But while he's in hiding, his half-siblings start showing up, unable to keep themselves from being intrigued that someone has made contact with one of them.

Jin Guangyao, understandably, is one of the most suspicious of this stranger's motives, but once he's decided Nie Huaisang is harmless good company, suddenly Nie Huaisang has like 20+ ghosts vying for his attention because all they've ever had is each other and their mutual unhappiness about what their father did to all of them.

It's gonna be a weird summer. Imagine the messages sent back home to his brother.

'Hey Da-ge, having a great time studying old art, trying not to kill my fellow students, miss you. Oh, BTW, I seem to have acquired a gaggle of ghost besties/bfs/gfs. Is it okay to bring them home with me?”

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

Haunting AU with Huaisang being the ghost for a change.

Meng Yao as the "human" exorcist. This is his first case just out of his apprenticeship under his mother. 

(There aren't any cultivation sects in this one, just powerful noble clans.) 

He arrives at the seat of the Nie Clan having followed rumors and his own sense of Trouble. 

His investigation turns up a nasty little conspiracy. 

In this timeline, Huaisang's mama had never become er-furen (papa nie and da-furen had always intended it, but Something would always come up before they could set up a private ceremony, and then suddenly it was too late because she died in childbirth), so Huaisang was "just" the child of a concubine. When he was a toddler and it became evident that he was probably going to be sickly all his life, a handful of retainers decided to "solve" the problem of their lord and lady having to care for a pitiful child who wasn't even in line to inherit. So they lured the boy out of his room one night and took him out into the forest. 

It wasn't a gentle death at all. 

The pain and terror and anger warped the poor child's spirit into something unrecognizable as having previously been human. 

He succeeded in killing one of his murderers, but the rest had ended up dying in a clash with another noble clan, robbing him of his revenge and leaving him too twisted and hurting to be able to communicate with his family. 

Once they hear the truth Papa Nie and Da-Furen beg Meng Yao to give Huaisang relief instead of simply exorcizing him. 

It's much more difficult to do, but he succeeds, and the result is a ghost who looks like the teenager Huaisang would currently be if he had lived. The lord and lady and Mingjue all insist on letting him reside in the household as a peaceful ghost, and also insist that Meng Yao feel free to use their home as a base to return to whenever he is exhausted from work or travel. 

(And of course he's free to visit his mother whenever he likes.) 

Naturally, this ends in an unorthodox romance because once he's free of his misery, Huaisang is a very cuddly (and halfway solid, if very chilly) ghost.

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

Slay the Princess AU

Feat Nie Huaisang as The Princess

Newly-legitimized Jin Guangyao as the Main Character

And Jin Guangshan as The Narrator

Jin Guangyao being forced into the position of having to kill Nie Huaisang no matter what he tries.

And some of his efforts only make things much worse for him when Nie Huaisang revives.

Because Huaisang very much doesn’t like betrayals or efforts to trick him.

The only time they get any peace is the ending where Jin Guangyao gives up and kills him immediately, followed by taking his own life after being trapped as a result.

They may be stuck together for eternity as ghosts, but it gives them time to sort out the bullshit that led them to this fate and maybe even fall for each other?

#mdzs #jin guangyao #nie huaisang #mo xuanyu #sangyao #sangyu #nie mingjue #ideas

[wangxianficfinder]

In the mood for a Fic...

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1. For the next ' I'm in the mood for ' is there any yiling patriach arc where wwx accidentally lashes out and hurts lwj on accident? with happy endings though.

the shadow of a name in skin by iliacquer (E, 8k, WangXian, Sex Magic, YL WWX, Bottom LWJ, Dubious Consent, Praise Kink, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Dom/sub)

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2. hello dear admins!! i hope you're doing well <3 do you perhaps know any mdzs fanfics where mdzs watches mdzs, preferably the past and the future watches together but it's not necessary :] i would love to see them reacts to wei wuxian's past ^^ thx in advance and i hope you have a lovely day <33

We actually have a Characters reading/watching the series compilation post~ but if anyone has a rec not on the Comp, please rec it for Anon ^^

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3. Hi. I was hoping for the IITM for some great fics where Yuan's parents live and Wangxian are just the amazing gay uncles who love him and don't have to adopt him. @lizzybgood

in case of fire, break glass by Jenrose (T, 65k, WangXian, Time Travel Fix-It, Post-Canon, Canon Divergence, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, unless I hate them, BAMF WWX, BAMF LWJ, Genius Inventor WWX, NHS Finds His Calling, No Women Die) has a time travel do-over in which this happens, but they have been his parents? So 50% what you asked for

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4. Hi!! Any recs on fics where jgy is treated badly in koi tower (physically or emotionally or mentally or anything) and his sworn brothers find out and do something about it and take care of him. Listen i just thought what that if ayao had a bruise he couldnt explain nmj would be all "who did this to you" and now im craving this

What Could Have Been by tucuxi (G, 27k, JGY & NMJ & LXC, JZX & JGY & JYL, Canon Divergence, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Kid Fic, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Family FeelsDysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Scheming, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, mentions of difficult childbirth, JGS's A+ Parenting, Child Neglect, What Could Have Been [PODFIC] by Opalsong)

chancellor of the morning sun by stiltonbasket (G, 22k, WIP, NieLan, WangXian, Gender Changes, Family Dynamics, Good Uncle LQR, Arranged Marriage, Developing Relationship, Period-Typical Sexism, LXC is a boss, Fix-It, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Baby Wangxian, War, Political Alliances, Espionage) has lxc defending jgy.

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5. Hello lovely lovely people! Has anyone ever written crossover fics between MDZS x 19Days? A chaotic, hillarious, shameless, crack fics? Hope I am lucky this time! Thank you all! @yellowridge

for #5 in the latest IITMF, do they mean 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian?

I couldn't find any works that crossed over with 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian (for any ship) on ao3 however maybe I'm not searching properly

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6. Hello! I've recently read Karmiya's essay on WWX's position in the Jiang household, and I was wondering... do you know any fics that take a similar tone? e.g. where the text and wwx himself acknowledge that he is not the Jiangs' sibling and is not respected as their equal? it would be interesting to explore that idea more in-depth, and how it impacts his many different relationships once he pulls himself free.

spaces between words (hiding the truth skillfully) by PrismaticAvocado (G, 651, WangXian, Post-Canon, Not Jiang Family Friendly, Truth Spells, Established Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, the hurt/angst is very minimal tbh it's just a few hard truths, Married WangXian, POV WWX)

The Debts of a Child by Hauntcats (G, 3k, WWX & Jiang Family, Not Jiang Family Friendly, WWX realizes there is more in life, Angst with a Happy Ending, Minor Original Character(s), Dark, Be prepared to suffer)

AITA for not contacting my family for 10 years after running away from home? by weiyus (T, 2k, WangXian, aita wwx edition, References to Past Child Abuse, references to verbal abuse, wwx sharing his life story in a long post, Happy Ending, Jiāng Family Bashing, Canon Jiang family characteristics)

for #6, the person who asked for those fics could maybe try to jiang family critical/jiang family bashing tag

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7. Hey! Can you please suggest me a fic where Lan Wangji's love remains unrequited, Wei Wuxian is married to someone else...and still the fic makes your heart warm ( and obviously you wholesome cry for lwj) Have a good day! ❤️🐰

happy and beautiful by nienie (T, 1k, LQY/WWX, one-sided wangxian, modern, angst, jealousy, hurt no comfort, weddings) pls have tissues ready 😭

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8. hi!! I'm in the mood for fics in which lwj or the lan clan hold madam yu accountable for her abuse of wwx. canon verse would be ideal but modern aus work too!! Thank you so much!

💖 in payment, a hand series by justdoityoufucker (M, 10k, wangxian, not jiang friendly, amputation, injury recovery, self reflection, abusive YZY, families of choice)

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9. Hiiiii im in need of some good lqr and wwx bonding, platonic relationship, some good feels, etc any recs???

Righteous at a Cost by thunderwear (G, 21k, wangxian, LQR & WWX, fix-it, LQR finds out about WWXs core, fluff, WWX goes to Gusu)

but his smile never dimmed by Stratisphyre (G, 9k, LQR & WWX, modern w/ magic, college/university au, panic attacks, parenthood, JFMs A+ parenting)

Variations on WWX & LQR in Assorted Keys series by nirejseki (T, 68k, LQR & WWX, wangxian, teaching, pregrudging friendship, post-canon, de-aging, time travel, pre-canon, bonding)

No Strings Attached by stiltonbasket (G, 3k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Fix-It, LQR is a good uncle, and he also knows a thing or two about politics, Smitten LWJ, Golden Core Reveal)

Seasons of Falling Flowers by merakily (G, 40k, WangXian, LQR & WWX, Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Character Study, Introspection, In-Laws, Golden Core, Emotional Baggage, Family Bonding, Protective LWJ, Good Parent LQR, LQR has feelings, LQR and WWX become friends, [PODFIC] Seasons of Falling Flowers, by merakily by Spinifex)

CSI: Gusu Edition Series by Stratisphyre (M, 39k, WangXian, WWX & LQR, Modern with Magic AU, College AU, Golden Core Reveal, Single parent WWX, Good Uncle LQR, Hospitalization, Allusions to violence and murder)

When we were small by deliciousblizzardshark (T, 7k, LXC & WWX & LWJ, LQR & WWX, LQR & JFM, Implied WangXian, Modern AU, Kid Fic, Good Uncle LQR, Neurodivergent LWJ, Baby LWJ, Baby WWX, Parenthood, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV LQR, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort)

Deeper Seasons by piecrust (G, 8k, LQR & WWX, WangXian, basically LQR being nice to WWX)

I'm For You Now by phnelt (T, 5k, wangxian, sick fic, caretaking, bathing/washing, good uncle LQR, domestic fluff) LQR applies his experience in caring for LSZ and knowledge of Chinese Traditional Medicine (including a *sweet* medicinal soup!) to treating a feverish WWX.

Lessons relearned by Iamnotawriter (T, 44k, WangXian, LQR & WWX, Not YZY Friendly, Time Travel Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inventor WWX, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, No Golden Core Transfer, YZY Bashing)

~*~

10. hello!!! thank you so much for gathering the ITMF posts, it makes it so much easier finding good fics, so I can't thank you enough. I'd like to request fic recs in which jc adopted sz (bonus if lwj find out and gets really angry about it) @youkidding-me

Would You Come Home? by s6115 (Not Rated, 46k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Family Feels, Junior Quartet Dynamics, Journey of self discovery, Good uncle JC, Junior Quartet Centric, Time Travel) there's "Would You Come Home?" by s6115, it's not exactly what anon asks, but it has jc ALMOST keeping bby ayuan until lwj shows up and takes him with him

none lives forever, brother, and nothing lasts for long by eena (M, 38k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, LSZ raised at Lotus Pier, JC found him first, Twin Prides of Yúnmèng Dynamics, Yunmeng Bros Reconciliation) JC adopts LS, and LWJ bullies his way into their lives

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11. helloo i could you help me find any fic abt wei wuxian coming back as mo xuanyu but lan zhan doesn’t find out about his identity as fast or as soon, like i wish it took him much longer to find out. if you could recommend me some would be superrrrr amaaaaaazing :D

💖 By Any Other Name by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 31k, Wangxian, Canon Divergence, Crossdressing, Misunderstandings, Identity Porn, Identity reveal, [PODFIC] By Any Other Name by sakizar) 

Love Song In Reverse by timetoboldlygo (T, 237k, WangXian, Amnesia, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Falling In Love, Slow Burn, agressively mixing and matching novel and cql canon, No Homophobia, Mentions of Starvation, Parental WWX)

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12. Hi!!! I'm in the mood for fanfics where WWX takes up the offer of going to Gusu during or after the Sunshot Campaign.

❤️ Trojan Kiss by malkinmalkout (E, 33k, wangxian, misunderstanding, public sex, smut, fluff, humor, hurt/comfort, dub con)

these colours fade for you only by doodlebutt (T, 36k, wangxian, fix-it, fluff, angst w/ happy ending, everyone lives au, golden core transfer fix-it, hurt/comfort, pining, slow burn)

💖 Minding series by WithBroomBefore (G, 85k, wangxian, canon divergence, what if WWX got therapy and recovery post-sunshot, trans LWJ)

Red Flower With One Hundred Petals; Smoke Carried on the Blue Dusk Air by carolyncaves (T, 32k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Post-Sunshot Campaign, the working title of this was 'wwx goes to gusu', Alcohol, Mental Health Issues, Angst, Tenderness, Golden Core Reveal, Hurt/Comfort, thoughts of death/dying, Rabbits, Caretaking, Marriage Proposal, Wedding Fluff, Family Feels, Literal Sleeping Together, Shotgun Wedding, angry wedding planner JC, Yunmeng sibling drama and fluff, physical affection, Terrible Parties, Happy Ending)

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13. Hi hi! Thank you for all that you do and for introducing me to so many lovely works. I would like to ask for an “in the mood for” fanfics where Lan Sizhui calls Wei Wuxian “mom” or other similar titles like mother, mama, a-niang, if possible. Thanks again!! :)

Baby Of Mine by pupeez4eva (Not Rated,3k, WangXian, Time Travel, Humor, Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, A-Yuan comes from a much happier version of the future, Where WWX and LWJ are married and everyone is alive, Gusu School Days, Family)

Green-gege Saves a lot of Lives by Eternal_writes (T, 11k, WangXian, YL WWX, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, Burial Mounds Ensemble as Family, Wēn Remnants Live, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, Soft NMJ, POV NMJ, POV WWX, Supportive NMJ, Protective NMJ, NHS & WWX Friendship, Sworn Brothers NHS & WWX & WN, Golden Core Reveal, JC & WWX Reconciliation, Good Sibling JC, Soft JC, WangXian Get a Happy Ending, WWX Lives, Featuring WWX's inventions)

Chaotic Demonic Cultivator Shirks Gender Roles by misbehavingvigilante (T, 4k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gender Roles, Gender Non-Conforming WWX)

Mother Knows Best by misbehavingvigilante (M, 12k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Crossdressing, Food Issues, Gender Identity, Gender Nonconforming, Trans WWX, Poverty)

#13 was where someone is asking for fics where LSZ calls wei ying mom, that was a previous IITMF post, however I am not sure how to search for it on the blog, but i remember there were a good amount of recs

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14. Hi hi mods, I hope life's treating you good <3 I really love this blog, is one of my reasons to keep going <3 on that aspect, may I ask for some A) soft wangxian for the next itmf? like LWJ calling WY A-Ying or something sweet and cute like that (i could really use the comfort uwu)

Also if you have any B) nhs-wwx friendship fics that would be great, I need that as reference for my own fic ^^

Thank you Mods, you are the bests <3

14A)

a life in your shape by lanzhan (gothguk) (M, 5k, WangXian, Modern AU, Sexual Content, tenderness is stored in the wangxian, so much yearning, Fluff)

They are Practically Married Your Honour by Asmayi (G, 1k, WangXian, Modern AU, Dorks in Love, Oblivious WWX, Oblivious LWJ, Mutual Pining, Idiots in Love, Domestic Fluff, Best Friends, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, LWJ is So Whipped, Public Display of Affection, 5+1 Things, Soft WangXian, Tooth-Rotting Fluff)

Playing Nice by deliciousblizzardshark (T, 11k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Love Confessions, First Kiss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Drunk LWJ, Phoenix Mountain, The wens are fine, Public Display of Affection, Soft WangXian, Fluff and Crack, POV Alternating)

14B)

your problem as a mountain. by cupofwater (E, 31k, wangxian, NHS & WWX, canon divergence, no sunshot, epistolary, getting together, misunderstandings, pen pals, sexual fantasy)

Friends, Sabers, and Other Essentials for Solving a Conspiracy by MeridianGrimm for Lisa_Telramor ( T, 50k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Mystery, Smart NHS, WWX doesn’t stay dead, LWJ gets a new friend, Happy Ending, Fix-It, To be clear the WangXian is mostly background, This fic is about friendship)

while covered in mud by merthurlin (T, 12k, NHS & WWX, NHS & NMJ, NHS & Wen remnants, mentioned wangxian, canon divergence, fix-it, NHS goes farming and Hates It)

Story-Shaped by lingering_song (T, 13k, wangxian, NHS & WWX, post-canon, chief cultivator LWJ, inventor WWX, found family, alcohol, protective NHS, not JC friendly)

if you can't beat them, recruit them by moeblobmegane (T, 216k, Time Travel Fix-It, Conspiracy, Spies & Secret Agents, Team as Family, Found Family, WIP)

a grain of millet drifting by RoseThorne (T, 7k, NHS & WWX, Assassination Attempt(s), Introspection, Regret, Travel, Post-Canon, POV Third Person, POV WWX, Ghosts, Reconciliation, Exhaustion, Pining, Pre-WangXian)

~*~

15 Hi!! I really love this blog and I always look forward to reading more fics being posted here!! Anyways, for the next itmf, may I request for fics where everyone (or at least other than LWJ) wants a piece of WWX? Be it them wanting to have them in their sects or romantically? Thank you always!!

Worth of a Good Man by Vrishchika (G, 6k, WangXian, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Not Jiang Sect Friendly, Not JC Friendly, Tumblr Prompt)

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16. Hi! Do you have any fic recs for sassy or savage LWJ, or maybe where he is a gremlin with a straight face? Thank you. 🥺💕

caught in the sugar by occultings (microcomets) (E, 13k, WangXian, Modern AU, Fake/Pretend Relationship, fake FWB, Workplace Retreats, Drinking Games, Humor, Barebacking, First Time)

Turn the Other Cheek by Minyoongiisacatuwu (E, 19k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, Oblivious WWX, Panties, LWJ flirting very hard, Rabbits, Rimming, Mutual Pining, LWJ is a top in a Thong, LWJ in heels, Fashionista LWJ, Friends to Lovers, Aftercare, Porn with Feelings)

So I love you because I know no other way than this by Trueredhearts (E, 20k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, CSR and WCZ Live, Tattoos, Nipple Piercings, Genital Piercing, Law Student!LWJ, Engineering Student!WWX, Childhood Friends, Explicit Sexual Content, mentions of SS, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Graduate School)

At the End of the Road by trickybonmot (E, 4k, WangXian, Modern AU, Practice Edging, Straight Boy WWX vs Fuck Around and Find Out LWJ, Pining but like Angry, Mildly Dubious Consent, A little Spit, Porn with Feelings, comphet is a hell of a drug, [PODFIC] At the End of the Road, by trickybonmot by Spinifex)

~*~

17. Hiii!! Thank you mods for all your hardwork! For the the next in the mood post, may I request fics where post canon lz forget that wy is alive bc its the day of his death? He and wy could alrdy be together but theres MOURNING and stuff like that. Hope this makes sense! Thank you againnnn! <3 @losing-victor

hello my old heart, how have you been by ravenditefairylights (M, 10k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Temporary Amnesia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, Pining, Hair Washing, Hair Brushing, Hair Braiding, Soft WangXian, A lot of prose, wangxian are MARRIED and they have a SON, LWJ Needs a Hug, Sleepy Cuddles)

the gift of sincerity by lariyats (T, 40k, WangXian, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon, Amnesia, or more specifically, the lwj amnesia au, where he regresses back to the 13 year period, but actually, Surprise!!, Established Relationship, very mild angst, Implied Sexual Content, ok maybe it’s not as mild as i said it was but it’s still v fluffy, Hurt/Comfort)

All My Life I Walked in the Cold by Milk_Tea_Fantasy (E, 8k, wangxian, ABO, omega LWJ, sub LWJ, alpha WWX, dom WWX, smut)

~*~

If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack, whatever - it’s all good!***

#wangxian #mdzs #wangxian fic recs #i'm in the mood for a fic #the untamed #wangxian fic search #wangxianficfinder #long post

[aitchnkay]

Jiang Gunian Made A Change Part 12

"Koi Tower?" Jiang YanLi echoed. "Are you certain?" She realized how stupid she sounded. Of course the Jin disciple was certain which sect was attacked. "Never mind. Please continue."

"Wait." Jin ZiXuan whirled angrily to stand right in front of his former intended. "Koi Tower? You said Cloud Recesses, then Lotus Pier, then the Unclean Realm. You didn't say Koi Tower!"

"That was how it would have gone. But we changed things," she tried to appease him. "Please let the man speak so we can know the situation."

"The situation? Is that what you're calling it? My sect has been attacked and all you can do is call it 'a situation'?"

Wei WuXian ran to plant himself in front of his martial sister. "Show some respect, Jin Gongzi. To my sister and to your fellow disciple."

"Or what?" Jin ZiXuan sneered. "You'll punch me again?"

Jiang Cheng was almost as fast as his brother. "I'll punch you, this time," he promised with a growl.

"Boys," Jiang YanLi admonished the three of them. "Silence." To the disciple now kneeling properly, she apologized. "I'm sorry about that. Please. Report the most important facts."

"Four days ago, Wen Xu launched an attack on Koi Tower. Two days ago he managed to overcome our defenses. Jin ZongZhu was captured and is being taken to the Nightless City as a prisoner. Jin Furen has disappeared along with her personal guards and almost every woman cultivator in the sect. As of this morning, there were three hundred, fity-two dead, one hundred, thirty confirmed to be Wen prisoners, and over two hundred unaccounted for."

"The two hundred include Jin Furen and her ladies? Or just men?"

"That includes Jin Furen and the women. Everyone else in Koi Tower has knelt to Wen Xu and sworn to QishanWen." The disciple wobbled a bit, clearly in need of medical care and perhaps some food and water.

"Thank you." She motioned to a Jiang disciple. "Please escort this disciple to Wen Qing." She then led the other sect leaders to the building they were using as a headquarters. "Jin Gongzi, please accept my condolences on your sect's losses."

"Condolences?" The Jin heir was shaking, with anger or hurt or fear. "I'm sure you're just glad it wasn't Lotus Pier."

"When the Wen attack Lotus Pier, I fully expect that the report will state that my parents died defending their home. I don't expect either of them will surrender, allow themselves to be captured, or to flee while our disciples are still fighting," she spat back. "Your parents are alive. Which means they can be found or rescued." She turned to her younger brother. "XianXian. How is your research replicating the butterflies going?"

Wei WuXian smiled regretfully. "It's not as easy as it looks. Which is why I suppose no other sect has managed to make a working copy. I'll keep trying."

"No." Jiang YanLi took a breath. Tried to calm her suddenly pounding heart. It has to be him. He's the best choice. "Your hiding talisman. Can you put it on and remove it easily?"

"Of course."

"Good. We need eyes on the ground in Lanling. Do you agree?" She glanced at the sect heirs and leader. Seeing their agreement, she nodded again. "XianXian. I'll ask you to scout for us. And find a way to get your reports back to us. Disguise yourself as a rogue cultivator or a mundane. Wait a bit for the Jin messenger to recover a bit. Question him. Then go skulk about. Remain hidden under the talisman as much as possible."

"Yes, ShiJie," Wei WuXian bowed. "Can I take someone with me?"

"Who?"

"I will go." Lan WangJi answered for Wei WuXian, who flashed a grateful smile.

"You'll have to remove your forehead ribbon," he teased.

"Mmm."

"Be careful, WangJi," Lan XiChen cautioned.

Jin ZiXuan set his jaw. "You'll look for my mother?"

Wei WuXian opened his mouth to answer, but Jiang YanLi spoke first. "Ask about her whereabouts if you can appear casual. She is not your primary mission." She turned to the Jin heir. "Your mother is a formidable woman. I'm sure she is safe in Meishan by now. Or in Lotus Pier with my mother; they are good friends as you know." Another deep breath, was insufficient to settle her nerves. "Be careful, Wei WuXian, Lan Er Gongzi. Stay safe."

#wangxian #the untamed #chen qing ling #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #jiang yanli #wei ying #cql #lan zhan #wei wuxian #lan wangji #jiang wanyin #jiang cheng #jin zixuan #lan xichen

[redsamuraiii]

10 J-Dramas You Could Watch

The dramas I can’t get enough of. They’re a mix of comedic, romance, heartfelt, inspiration and the chemistry between characters are fun to watch!

1) Please Love the Useless Me (Dame na Watashi ni Koishite Kudasai)

After losing her job, 30 year old Michio (Kyoko Fukada) struggles to find a job and repay her debts. She’s having a mid life crisis as she’s not able to be normal like everyone her age, having a career, a lover, a house and more. 

But her life change when she runs into her former employer, Ayumu (Fujioka Dean) whom she hated for being mean when she was his employee. He left his corporate job to run his own café and employs Michio again!

Out of desperation, she accepted his offer to work part time at his café while she searches for a full time employment elsewhere. As she get to know him and his circle of friends, she realizes he is not the person she thought him to be.

2) A Story to Read When You First Fall in Love (Hajimete Koi o Shita Hi ni Yomu Hanashi)

Junko Harumi (Kyoko Fukada) was once a famous high school girl but her life changed drastically when she failed to enter the prestigious Tokyo University and her life has not gone smoothly since then into adulthood.

In the blink of an eye, she’s already 31. She struggles to find love and hates her job as a teacher at a private institute where she feels unappreciated by her students and overshadowed by other more capable teachers.

She began to wonder how her life became such as mess which was a far fetch from her young school days. But little does she know that the appearance of three men from her past and present will change her life forever.

3) Deep Love (Koi wa Deep ni)

Mio Nagisa (Satomi Ishihara) is a researcher and oceanographer who is passionate about the natural environment and wants to protect the marine life from the threats of humanity’s rapid urbanization and development.

Hasuda Rintaro (Go Ayano) is a son of a marine resort developer owner who is obsessed with developing an underwater tower at the seaside as a new tourist attraction but finds himself at odds with his brother in the same company.

When Mio is hired into the project to act as an environmental consultant, the two find themselves on the opposing sides. As the two tried to find out more about what motivates the other, they both discover a mysterious secret.

4) From 5 to 9 (5-ji Kara 9-ji Made)

Junko Sakuraba (Satomi Ishihara) is a 29 year old English teacher at a private institute with wealthy and business clients as her students. She dreams of working and living in New York City as she’s tired of everything Japanese.

Takane Hoshikawa (Tomohisa Yamashita) is a young monk whom Junko met a funeral by accident. Takane fell in love with her at first sight that he arranged for their first lunch date at the temple and prepared her favorite crab dish.

Despite Junko’s rejections, Takane did not give up and continued pursuing her, involving her family and friends, which makes up for some pretty comedic happenings while there are those who do not want to see them together.

5)  Our Sister (Nee-chan no Koibito)

Adachi Momoko (Arimura Kasumi) is an outgoing 27 year old who lost her parents when she was in high school. She gave up college to work and support her three younger brothers who are now 20, 17, and 14 year old respectively.

Momoko's daily life begins to change around Halloween when she meets her love interest, a soft-spoken and kind man named, Yoshioka Manato (Hayashi Kento), by chance at her workplace when he work with her on a project. 

Unlike Momoko, Manato is less upfront about his true feelings and good at hiding his true emotions which aroused Momoko’s curiosity into knowing more about the real him which caused her to dig into his past to discover a secret.

6)  Love That Makes You Cry (Itsuka Kono Koi wo Omoidashite Kitto Naite Shimau)

After Sugihara Oto’s (Arimura Kasumi) mother passed away when she was young, she was raised by adoptive parents in the countryside of Hokkaido. Although she gave up having dreams, she lives cheerfully and bravely. 

Soda Ren (Kengo Kora) lost his parents early and was brought up in the great outdoors in Fukushima by his grandfather. However, his grandfather gets swindled and Ren leaves for Tokyo to earn money to recover the farmland. 

Oto heads to Tokyo too to escape a forced marriage. This is the story of two individuals from the countryside who tries to find meaning in their lives in the heart of Tokyo, as they met different people before bumping into each other.

7)  Why I Dress Up For Love (Kikazaru Koi niha Riyuu ga Atte)

Kurumi Mashiba (Haruna Kawaguchi) works for home decor company ‘el Arco Iris’. Her job is to do PR activities for the company. She runs social media pages for el Arco Iris and she has accumulated 100,000 followers for the company.

She lives in a co-living space and lives with three other tenants, Shun Fujime (Ryusei Yokohama) a minimalist chef, Haruto Terai (Ryuhei Maruyama), a consultant counsellor and Ayaka Hase (Anne Nakamura) a freelance artist. 

Mashiba often clashes with Fujime over their opposing lifestyle and beliefs, each thinking the other way of life and thinking is ridiculous, Mashiba being a social media addict and Shun being a minimalist who is totally offline.

8)  Examination’s Cinderella (Junken no Cinderella)

Tooru Igarashi (Kotaro Koizumi) is a preparatory school teacher with charisma, who often gets his students into prestigious Universities. But recently, his life falls apart and he loses his students, causing him to go into heavy drinking.

Maki Endo (Haruna Kawaguchi) is a student at a part-time high school who works multiple jobs to cover her expenses and lives with his single mother who thinks that school is a waste of time and a scam to get money.

Tooru and Maki happened to meet each other when they’re at the lowest point of their lives and out of anger and frustration, set out a challenge that the other would follow in order to prove the other wrong, thus changing their lives.

9)  I’m Taking The Day Off! (Kyou wa Kaisha Yasumimasu)

Hanae Aoishi (Haruka Ayase) is set to turn 30. She works for a general trading company and has never taken a day off or been late for work. She dresses pleasantly plain and has zero dating experience much to her embarrassment.

She attends a company party and drinks with part-time employee Yuto Tanokura (Sota Fukushi). Through the evening, Hanae becomes drunk and passes out. When she wakes up, Hanae finds Yuto Tanokura sleeping next to her.

Meanwhile, a CEO of a food company located in the same building as her company, begins to pursue her. Hanae feels lost and confused as she just went from single to someone who has two men who are interested in her.

10)  Heaven and Hell : Soul Exchange  (Tengoku to Jigoku: Psychona 2nin)

Ayako Mochizuki (Haruka Ayase) is a 35-year-old detective. She is a hard worker and seeks out justice ruthlessly, but she lacks flexibility. She pursues her current murder suspect, Haruto Hidaka (Issey Takahashi) mercilessly. 

But just as she was about to arrest him under the full moon, something supernatural occurred, when they swop bodies as she wakes up in his body, about to be arrested by the suspect who is now in her cop body.

It’s a suspenseful and comedic (at times) thriller as the two tries to outsmart and outdo each other, before their bodies are switched back. As Ayako tries to find out the reason for the mysterious switch, she learns something about him.

#j drama #japanese drama #dorama #japan #asian drama #kyoko fukada #fukada kyoko #satomi ishihara #ishihara satomi #arimura kasumi #kasumi arimura #haruna kawaguchi #kawaguchi haruna #haruka ayase #ayase haruka #dame na watashi ni koishite kudasai #hajimete koi o shita hi ni yomu hanashi #koi wa deep ni #5-ji kara 9-ji made #nee-chan no koibito #itsuka kono koi wo omoidashite kitto naite shimau #Junken no Cinderella #kyou wa kaisha yasumimasu #tengoku to jigoku: psychona 2nin #my recommendations #kikazaru koi ni wa riyuu ga atte

[sasutiddy]

Ok more hokage's househusband Sasuke because i have brainrot and this AU has become a lot more than expected

Sasuke and Naruto elope right after the war, half because they just realized that they are crazy in love and half because Naruto really doesn't want Sasuke to go to jail, and mayhaps being the husband of a war hero will cut him some slack

So Yeah, they are the first of their generation getting married but they do so with only a few people present (team taka, team 7, and Iruka) right after Sakura estabilizes them, so IMAGINE everyones surprise when they come back attached by the hip and being lovey dovey

Tsunade sees that shit and goes binge drinking immediately because if she, at any moment, was doubting passing the hat to Kakashi, now she was sure SURE

They go back to Konoha alright, but the second Sasuke steps inside village territory he is forbidden from getting out until he "proves himself" to the elders, he hears that shit and immediately decides that he is going to be a bitch about this

After some fighting he gets the Uchiha compound land back with Kakashi's help and starts renovating babyy, and out of pettiness he doesn't let anyone else live in there outside of him and Naruto, the whole thing is mostly a fully planned giant forest/garden around a big house, also he puts a big ass wall around the whole thing, the elders are, of course, furious

After some months in, Sasuke kinda settles in his new Konoha life, since he already kinda decided that he'll just wait to get permission to go out of the village from Naruto when he ends up being Hokage, he decides that in the meantime he might as well learn a thing or two about caring for their house and pets and things like that (also, how to take care of the growing collection of house plants that Naruto is buying)

And with that, Sasuke starts....taking care of the house when Naruto is away, a thing that happens a bit more often when Naruto starts his Hokage training; (it's kinda earlier than expected, but Kakashi really knows that with Naruto, he'll have to pass down so much because that boy has so many gaps in knowledge) so, Sasuke learns how to cook well, specially the recipes from his mom's cookbook, learns how hard it is to clean a house, (he regrets building it so big in his lazier days) and overall learns how nice and fulfilled he actually feels while caring for his new home with the man he loves

Naruto and Sasuke quickly become pet fanatics; Sasuke starts the whole thing with falcons, but then after that he just gets a bird obssession, at one point he buys chickens, he raises chickens and he's very happy with that, Naruto, on the other hand, gets kinda crazy when he realizes he can have frogs, and fish and things like that!!! The pounds around the forest are full of frogs and pretty koi fish

Once Naruto becomes Hokage Sasuke gets his "can get out of Konoha" free card, but he mostly doesn't use it: like yeah, he goes out to see team Taka for a bit and see if he can bring them back with him (they didn't go after the war because they were kinda afraid of being locked up) and when he does finally convince them they kinda take a few weeks to just hang out and chill together, after that he takes some vacations and sometimes accompanies Naruto when he goes to other villages, but he does not go on missions and a fuckton of people are very mad at him for it

When they get kids (and they get kids of course) Sasuke is, of course, the stay at home parent, and he is an INVOLVED one at that, he is there and present at EVERYTHING, and even if both him and Naruto discovered that Naruto can be a bit of a workaholic, he gets his husband in line to be just as present in their kids lifes (he sometimes has to remind himself with how little affection Naruto can run with, and how he seems to think it's the same for everybody else, it takes a while, but they kinda fix it little by little)

Once the kids are at the academy Sasuke and Shino start a very...weird friendship, they always look like they are plotting murder when they are just talking abt which bugs would work the best in pollinating Sasuke's new flower garden or whatever

The few times a year Sasuke and Shikamaru have to see eachother are everyone's else's hell, the entire village always seems to forget how much those two like to inconvenience and bother eachother when they are in proximity, Naruto and Temari say it's because of how long they spend apart: Suna and Konoha are far away and being ambassador and literal desert princess is enough for Shikamaru and Temari to not come to visit that often, and time makes people forget how bad Sasuke and Shikamaru can get

Chunnin exams with Sasuke screaming at the top of his lungs for his kid to obliterate everyone, Naruto almost does the same but is stopped by Sakura every time before he starts a war or something

Sasuke drives people in the Hokage tower CRAZY at least twice a week, he brings Naruto lunch and they always end up making out in the office or smt like that, more than one person has entered the place just to find them in compromising situations, Sakura constantly reminds them that the place is full of windows and it's easy as shit to see them

They are disgustingly in love, and happy, and everyday Naruto gets home and says "I'm home!" and Sasuke responds "Welcome home" with a soft smile on his lips and they have a quick kiss before Naruto goes to talk with the kids, and after that, when Sasuke is all done with his chores and things like that, they'll sit in the front porch side by side, holding hands, and watch the kids run around and play or train around the forest, Naruto will talk abt his day and ask Sasuke about his, and they'll be the most fulfilled they've ever been in their entire lives

#The Hokage's househusband AU #sns #Sasunaru #sasunarusasu #narusasu #narusasunaru #long post #Naruto gaiden AU #Naruto #Sasuke #Uzumaki Naruto #Uchiha Sasuke #this kinda sappy damn #they deserve it tho

[songofclarity]

To your point about the XXC-NMJ parallels, I think the popularity of the x!yao slash pairing has warped everyone’s perception of NMJ until everyone is convinced that XXC = LXC. I actually see more parallels bw LXC & SL. I think the destruction of Baixue Temple was supposed to parallel the destruction of Cloud Recesses. CQL makes the parallel more explicit than the novel by having XY learn demonic cultivation from the Wens.

Yeah, that's true about the shipping too, sadly lol

And it's a little bizarre, really, because the Xue Yang & Xiao Xingchen relationship and Jin Guangyao & Lan Xichen relationship are very different from beginning, middle, and end. Lan Xichen was under the belief that Jin Guangyao was a fundamentally good person. When he finally found the will to stab Jin Guangyao, it was only when he thought Jin Guangyao was going to stab him, first. He never really stood up to Jin Guangyao or saw him as his enemy, not even when Jin Guangyao confessed to and the evidence showed how he had done horrible and grotesque things to other people.

Meanwhile Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen were opposites from the start. The delinquent and noble rogue cultivator. The mass murderer and the righteous hero. Xiao Xingchen quickly jumped to "Xue Yang is dangerous" when he found out the truth despite having lived peacefully for three years with Xue Yang. Xiao Xingchen didn't try to convince himself into thinking Xue Yang had changed or was good now just because they had some good times together.

Which is... just like Nie Mingjue jumping to "Jin Guangyao is dangerous" when he finds out Jin Guangyao is once again not actually the gentle person he pretends to be. Xiao Xingchen and Nie Mingjue both go through a phase with Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao respectively that maybe they can live peacefully with this person, only to realize that no, they can't, because this person is dangerous and needs to be stopped.

To me, Song Lan is much more like Nie Mingjue than Lan Xichen in that the way Song Lan confronted Xue Yang is also similar to how Nie Mingjue confronted Jin Guangyao at Koi Tower. They didn't beat around the bush. They showed resolved and purpose. They faced down the person that had hurt them personally and threatened to hurt others. Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan, and Nie Mingjue all share a certain kind of grit with their justice that they don't back down from.

Lan Xichen, meanwhile, isn't much of a justice-seeker. And seeing how he begins making an issue over whether or not Nie Huaisang saw true rather than the fact Lan Xichen attacked without looking, for example, he lacks ownership in even his most decisive actions.

I can't say I'm feeling/understanding the Baixue Temple and Cloud Recesses parallels even though it's an interesting consideration?

Xue Yang attacked Baixue Temple as a round-about revenge on Xiao Xingchen, who had no worldly connections except his connection to Song Lan. The destruction of Cloud Recesses is far less clear but obviously happened to send a message, albeit a less murderous one. There's a mention that Wen Xu demanded to see Lan Xichen's father, then the Wen ordered the Lan to burn Cloud Recesses, and Lan Wangji had his leg broken for trying to stop them from destroying the library. Lan Xichen's father was critically injured at some point during all this but, whether by the Wen or the fire, it's not clear.

Lan Xichen, however, escaped unscathed and remained with Jin Guangyao while Lan Wangji, injured, was forced to go the indoctrination camp in his stead. (I can't find any mention in the novel that Lan Xichen was ever pursued by the Wen.) So you could make a connection that during the destruction of their homes, Song Lan and Lan Wangji were punished because Xiao Xingchen and Lan Xichen were out of reach.

#asked from above #anon #mdzs thoughts #this reply is all over the place but just getting thoughts out there!

[nillegible]

Jin Zixun accidentally saves canon, Part2

(Read part one of the fic, here!)

“Did you hear? The Yiling Patriarch killed Jin-er-gongzi, and dragged away his corpse.”

Jiang Cheng might not have been the intended listener, but he has no qualms in stalking toward the cultivator who was speaking. Pale green robes with white accents, he must be from Laoling Qin. Jiang Cheng doesn’t take him by the collar, but his fingers twitch. He definitely wishes to.

“What did you say?” he asks.

From the expression of abject terror that crosses the other man’s face, Jiang Cheng didn’t do a particularly good job at appearing non-threatening.

“Jian-Jiang-zongzhu. I. Jiang-zongzhu, it was. They’re all saying.”

“That Wei Wuxian killed Jin Zixun and took away his corpse? When did he even get here? Where did he drag him away from?”

“Ah, no. It wasn’t. Jiang-gongzi must know I don’t speak for Jin sect, but it wasn’t here.”

Jiang Cheng considers shaking a more coherent answer out of this coward, but decides against it. Gods knew what nonsense he would actually spout. No, he needs a better source, he needs Shijie.

Protocol forgotten, he storms into Koi Tower.

*

Oooh, Jiang-xiong looks furious. Jiang Wanyin had stormed into Carp tower like a small purple thundercloud. He’s taller than Yu-furen was and less delicate looking, but one could absolutely see that Jiang-xiong was his mother’s son. The air even smelled electric when he strode by, purple sleeves billowing elegantly.

Where is Jiang-xiong going, making quite so much of a display? Huaisang directs his casual wandering in his wake, stretching his cultivation senses to keep track of him when he storms out of view. He wonders if this is about the rumours that have been slowly spreading from the anxious and guilty looking Jin cultivators. And there are so many­, oddly many, low-level cultivators who can’t have all been invited at this time for the naming-day ceremony, it was gauche. So much yellow, they interfere with the decorations.

“Whatever did Jin-gongzi do this time to anger Jiang-zhongzu so much? Ah, I’d hoped a nephew would mellow him,” Nie Huaisang complains, or something along those lines to the most disgruntled people he crosses, with a laugh and conspiratorial smile. The reminder of Jiang-xiong’s rather Extra tendencies seems to put people at ease, and Nie Huaisang sails through, keeping an eye out for anyone who might actually matter.

He sees Lan Wangji, who, in spite of the way he stands separate from the crowd like a drop of water on a lotus leaf, definitely matters. Nie Huaisang makes his way towards him.

*

“What nonsense is everyone spouting about Wei Wuxian and Jin Zixun?” Jiang Cheng demands, bursting into Jin Zixuan’s office, where the wary Jin disciples had directed him.

“Jiang-gongzi!” says Jin Guangyao, the first to stand, just as Jin Zixuan says, “Jiang Wanyin, you’re here!”

Jin Zixuan says, after a beat, “Wei Wuxian and the Ghost General were seen taking my cousin away.”

“Surely even he couldn’t attack and cart someone off from Koi Tower. What would he even want from Jin Zixun?”

“It wasn’t from Koi Tower, he didn’t reach here,” says Jin Zixuan. “It was on the way.”

“Explain,” says Jiang Cheng.

“A-Yao will explain,” says Jin Zixuan. His voice is colder than Jiang Cheng has become accustomed to hearing it.

“Jin Zixun was cursed. It was the hundred holes curse. He got it into his head that Wei-gongzi had to be the one who did it. I only found out this morning, but he – he went to waylay Wei-gongzi and demand that he remove the curse.”

“Leaving aside the absolute idiocy of Wei Wuxian being the one to curse him, why would Wei Wuxian then kidnap him? Maybe he actually knows a way to remove that curse, and Jin Zixun’s gone back with him.”

“Ah, it wasn’t quite so amicable as that–” Jin Guangyao looks towards Jin Zixuan, but when he doesn’t take over the explanation he continues, “Jin Zixun took three hundred archers with him –”

“THREE HUNDRED archers? Why would the Jin sect send a full battalion to ask Wei Wuxian to remove a curse?”

Jin Guangyao’s voice, which was already quiet, lowers further, “I believe that the show of strength was only meant to make Wei-gongzi give Jin-er-gongzi his due consideration. Wei-gongzi doesn’t always listen.”

“That is not what you told me,” Jin Zixuan says.

“He may… he may have planned to end the curse in a different way if Wei Wuxian didn’t comply,” says Jin Guangyao, finally.

Jiang Cheng tries to choke back his rage. How dare they! “If it turns out that Wei Wuxian has been harmed, Jin sect will not be forgiven,” Jiang Cheng threatens. “He may not be of my sect anymore, but to ambush him and try to kill him on such a stupid pretence, after you invited him to my own nephew’s ceremony! As if Wei Wuxian would not kill Jin Zixun himself if he had wanted him dead, and reanimate his corpse!” Jiang Cheng knows what happens to those his brother punishes. Jiang Cheng had joined him, in exacting their vengeance against Wen Chao, Wang Lingjiao, and Wen Zhuliu.  

“Jiang-zonghzhu, seems to be planning to do that, now. They say he carried Jin-er-gongzi’s body away,” says Jin Guangyao. Implicit in that is what foul things Wei Wuxian is known to do with corpses.

Jiang Cheng just can’t believe it. In a rage at the people who had murdered Wen Ning? Perhaps. But to kill Jin Ling’s uncle on his special day? Wei Wuxian would know better! And there’s more that doesn’t make sense. “How did Wei Wuxian kill Jin Zixun? You said he took a whole battalion!” Even if Wei Wuxian had killed half of them, it’s unlikely he could get away, especially if they were archers.

“Ah. Uh. Wei-gongzi did not kill him. The Jin archers shot him.”

It takes Jiang Cheng a moment. “The Jin archers shot Jin Zixun?” he turns to Jin Zixuan for confirmation. His brother-in-law looks miserable and angry, but nods. “How the hell did.” Jiang Cheng is out of words. “Do you not train your disciples to aim?”

“Faced with the Yiling Patriarch, one of the younger disciples may have been afraid? As far as I gathered they were actually aiming for Wei-gongzi,” – Jin Guangyao winces as Zidian sparks – “but he ducked, and so Jin Zixun was shot.”

“He ducked,” repeats Jiang Cheng, looking between Jin Guangyao and Jin Zixuan, who don’t disagree with that frankly ridiculous assessment. They have to be joking. Or worse, they have to be lying. And if they’re lying to his face, then who knows what really happened? Jiang Cheng bows lightly to his brother-in-law. “Jin-gongzi, I take my leave of you. My apologies for missing Jin Ling’s celebration, but if I’m lucky, I can fetch Wei Wuxian and be back in time to meet my nephew and my sister before they retire from the feast. I know how much A-jie was looking forward to seeing our brother.” Jin Zixuan winces at that, no doubt imagining explaining to Jiang Yanli that his stupid cousin had tried to murder her brother.

That’s Jin Zixuan’s problem though. Jiang Cheng is going to fly to the Burial Mounds and his brother’s awful little encampment, and shake him until he gets some answers.

He ducked.

Which meant, at the least, that Wei Wuxian was being shot at. Stupid, I told you I couldn’t protect you, and this is what you get up to? Jiang Cheng had thought his brother would keep his head down until people forgot about him! Some sort of self-imposed imprisonment that kept him out of everyone’s way. That was why he wasn’t even invited to the wedding. Stupid, stupid Wei Wuxian.

As Jiang Cheng sweeps out the doors of the main hall, he sees Lan Wangji, looking stiff, and if Jiang Cheng isn’t just projecting, angry. He meets Jiang Cheng’s eyes and weaves his way closer.

“Jiang-zongzhu.”

“Hanguang Jun,” returns Jiang Cheng. On any other day he’d wait and glare until the second jade spoke his mind, not making it any easier for him. Today, he hasn’t the patience. “If you’ll olease make my excuses to Lan-zongzhu, but I will be unable to greet him. I need to go to Yiling and find my–” he realizes with a jolt that he’d called Wei Wuxian brother too many times today in conversation already. “-Wei Wuxian. There’s all sorts of rumours flying about, I don’t like it.”

“I will come with you,” says Lan Wangji.

Jiang Cheng eyes him. “If Hanguang Jun believes me incapable of judging Wei Wuxian if he is at fault today–” he snarls, but is cut off by a sharp gesture from Lan Wangji. And what might even be a real emotion on his face.

“Wei Ying would not have,” he says, with a certainty that even Jiang Cheng could not feel. Jiang Cheng hates how much he appreciates the words. “Let me come.”

Jiang Cheng should say no, should say that Wei Wuxian was his responsibility.

‘Just Let me go. Tell the world that I defected. From now on, whatever Wei Wuxian does, it would have nothing to do with Yunmeng Jiang sect.’

“Fine,” says Jiang Cheng. “Just keep up.”

He knows from experience, as he takes off into the sky, that Lan Wangji can keep up.

#Shitty!JZX #Jiang Cheng #jzx #jgy #canon divergence #fix it au

[xiyao-feels]

Following on this post, I was thinking—I feel like there's this idea that at the beginning of MY and NMJ's relationship, when it was good, that MY starts out by idolizing NMJ? And I really don't think it's supported by the text.

I'm pulling the whole first meeting here, from chapter 48, and I want to take a close look at it.

Right after the Sunshot Campaign began, Meng Yao joined the QingheNie Sect’s troops.

The cultivators under Nie MingJue’s command, both rogue cultivators and those from the QingheNie Sect, were stationed in various locations. One of these was a nameless mountain ridge in Hejian. Nie MingJue went up the mountain by foot. Before he was even close to the station, he saw a boy dressed in cloth leave the emerald forest, a bamboo tube in his hand.

The boy seemed as though he had just finished collecting water, legs betraying some fatigue. As he was about to enter the cave, he suddenly stopped. He stood outside the mouth of the cave and listened for a while, as if debating between whether or not to go in. In the end, with the bamboo tube still in his hand, he walked in another direction in silence.

After a while of walking, he found a spot on the side of the road and squatted down. He fished out some white-colored food from his provisions and washed it down with water.

Nie MingJue walked toward him. As the boy was eating, his head hanging low, he suddenly found himself enveloped in a tall shadow. He looked up, then put his food away and stood up, “Sect Leader Nie.”

The boy’s figure was on the smaller side. He had fair skin and dark brows, precisely those favor-gaining features of Jin GuangYao. At this point in time, he hadn’t been accepted by his clan in Koi Tower yet, which was why he didn’t have the bright mark of vermillion on his forehead. Nie MingJue clearly remembered the face, “Meng Yao?”

Meng Yao answered respectfully, “Yes.”

Nie MingJue, “Why didn’t you rest inside the cave like everyone else did?”

Meng Yao opened his mouth, but only smiled awkwardly, as though he didn’t know what to say. Seeing this, Nie MingJue went past him and walked in the direction of the cave. Meng Yao looked as he wanted to pull him back, though he didn’t dare to. Nie MingJue concealed his breathing so that nobody noticed him even as he arrived at the mouth of the cave. The people inside were still chatting loudly.

[Ten dialogue paragraphs of people being horrible about MY]

A flame of anger sprout within Nie MingJue’s heart, burning all the way into Wei WuXian.

His hand immediately pressed onto the hilt of his saber. Meng Yao hurried to stop him, but failed. The saber had unsheathed already, and a boulder in front of the cave crashed down. A few dozens of cultivators originally sat resting within the cave. All of them jumped up and unsheathed their swords, surprised by the fallen boulder. The bamboo tubes in their hands scattered over the ground.

Without any hesitation, Nie MingJue scolded, “Drinking the water he brought you while speaking such spiteful words! Did you join my forces not to kill the Wen-dogs, but to make idle talk?!”

The entire cave was in a muddle. Everyone knew ChiFeng-Zun’s personality—the more one tried to explain, the angrier he was. Seeing that they probably couldn’t escape punishment and would have to tell the truth, nobody dared to speak a word. Nie MingJue laughed coldly. He didn’t walk inside the cave either. Instead, he turned to Meng Yao, “You, follow me.”

He turned around and walked toward the foot of the mountain. Meng Yao followed. As the two walked, Meng Yao’s head hung lower and lower. His pace had slowed as well.

He only spoke after some hesitation, “Thank you, Sect Leader Nie.”

Nie MingJue, “A proper man should carry himself with proud righteousness. There’s no need to care for the talk of those idlers.”

Meng Yao nodded, “Yes.”

Although he answered as such, his face still bore a streak of worry. By lending him a hand, today Nie MingJue was able to hold the others down for him. In the future, though, the cultivators would definitely make him pay a price tens or hundreds of times greater. How could he not be worried?

Yet, Nie MingJue continued, “The more these people talked drivel behind your back, the harder you’re going to work to have them speechless. I’ve seen you on the battlefield. Everytime, you’re on the foremost lines and stay behind to help with the commoners in the end. Well done. Keep it up.”

Hearing this, Meng Yao paused for a moment, his face blank. His head raised up slightly. Nie MingJue added, “Your swordwork is quite nimble, but not solid enough. More work is needed.”

This was already an obvious encouragement. Meng Yao hurried, “Sect Leader Nie, thank you for your advice.”

Wei WuXian, however, knew that it wouldn’t be solid no matter how hard he practiced. Jin GuangYao wasn’t like the other disciples. His foundation was so poor that he’d never reach new heights. Thus, with cultivation, he could only aim for quantity instead of quality. This was why he rounded all of the sect leaders and learned their techniques. It was also why he was criticized as the “stealer of techniques”.

--

So that's the whole scene, to have all the context; I'd like to pull out some parts and look at them one by one.

Nie MingJue clearly remembered the face, “Meng Yao?”

Meng Yao answered respectfully, “Yes.”

Nie MingJue, “Why didn’t you rest inside the cave like everyone else did?”

So here we have NMJ asking MY directly why he isn't inside the cave, even though—knowing MY's name, and therefore knowing his story (this is established earlier in the chapter)—he probably has some idea. That he has some idea is perhaps also suggested by his not pressing MY when he doesn't answer but continuing on to the cave. Obviously this isn't the worst thing in the world! But it is somewhat characteristic of his lack of grace in handling the situation.

Seeing this, Nie MingJue went past him and walked in the direction of the cave. Meng Yao looked as he wanted to pull him back, though he didn’t dare to.

So MY would rather NMJ not, but NMJ doesn't notice—it doesn't seem to occur to him to consider MY's preferences on the matter.

Nie MingJue concealed his breathing so that nobody noticed him even as he arrived at the mouth of the cave. The people inside were still chatting loudly.

[Ten dialogue paragraphs of people being horrible about MY]

A flame of anger sprout within Nie MingJue’s heart, burning all the way into Wei WuXian.

His hand immediately pressed onto the hilt of his saber. Meng Yao hurried to stop him, but failed.

Now, since MY "hurried to stop him" and also is right there when NMJ is leaving despite having found a place to eat after "a while of walking" away from the cave, and in general there doesn't seem to be a suggestion to the contrary, it seems pretty likely that MY was there with NMJ the whole time he was listening to people be awful about MY. NMJ does not wave him away so he doesn't have to listen to people being awful, or for that matter even seem to consider MY having to listen to people being awful about him at all.

The saber had unsheathed already, and a boulder in front of the cave crashed down.

Here we see NMJ taking out his anger on physical objects.

He turned around and walked toward the foot of the mountain. Meng Yao followed. As the two walked, Meng Yao’s head hung lower and lower. His pace had slowed as well.

He only spoke after some hesitation, “Thank you, Sect Leader Nie.”

Nie MingJue, “A proper man should carry himself with proud righteousness. There’s no need to care for the talk of those idlers.”

Meng Yao nodded, “Yes.”

Although he answered as such, his face still bore a streak of worry. By lending him a hand, today Nie MingJue was able to hold the others down for him. In the future, though, the cultivators would definitely make him pay a price tens or hundreds of times greater. How could he not be worried?

Although NMJ is being supportive, MY knows that it's going to end up costing MY down the road. And what he knows, and what NMJ doesn't realize, is that MY does indeed need to care about the talk of those idlers, and people like them.

>>Yet, Nie MingJue continued, “The more these people talked drivel behind your back, the harder you’re going to work to have them speechless. I’ve seen you on the battlefield. Everytime, you’re on the foremost lines and stay behind to help with the commoners in the end. Well done. Keep it up.”

Hearing this, Meng Yao paused for a moment, his face blank. His head raised up slightly. Nie MingJue added, “Your swordwork is quite nimble, but not solid enough. More work is needed.”

This was already an obvious encouragement. Meng Yao hurried, “Sect Leader Nie, thank you for your advice.”

Wei WuXian, however, knew that it wouldn’t be solid no matter how hard he practiced. Jin GuangYao wasn’t like the other disciples. His foundation was so poor that he’d never reach new heights. Thus, with cultivation, he could only aim for quantity instead of quality. This was why he rounded all of the sect leaders and learned their techniques. It was also why he was criticized as the “stealer of techniques”.

It's praise and support, and that's absolutely meaningful! But the advice is both obvious and useless; the problem MY has is that his foundation is weak, and no matter how much he practices, he can't make it actually solid.

Like, I don't want to dismiss the positives. This is a sect leader, a /major/ sect leader, actually caring about people treating MY unfairly, intervening on his behalf, praising him for what he's done well, encouraging him! Quite seriously, it's genuinely impressive of NMJ that he's so much less prejudiced here than pretty much all the rest of society, and his kindness to MY however clumsily executed is still meaningful; and given how shitty pretty much everyone is to MY, like, all the time, this is absolutely very important to MY, and I can 100% see why it lead to NMJ mattering to him, and to his caring about NMJ and even NMJ's opinion.

....but it also very much demonstrates NMJ's flaws—his temper, the way he really fails to actually account for the impact MY's circumstances necessarily have on him—and I don't think there's anything in the text to suggest that MY is too starry-eyed or anything to notice those flaws; rather the opposite.

Even when NMJ promotes him to be his deputy, a little later on—and again, I'm sure that's something MY is very grateful for!! It's a recognition of his competence and hard work, and in a way that really matters!—well, consider the teacup scene. I usually talk about this in the context of LXC's graceful intervention, but it's worth remembering that NMJ is also right there and notices absolutely nothing:

After an exchange of small talk, Meng Yao, who had been standing by Nie MingJue’s side, walked up and offered everyone teacups. In the frontlines, one person was used as though there were six; there wasn’t any space for maids and servants at all. And so, these everyday trivalties had also been willingly accepted by Jin GuangYao, his deputy. A few of the cultivators hesitated as they saw his face, their expressions varied. Jin GuangShan’s “intimate tales” had always been widespread conversation starters. Meng Yao had been a famous joke for a certain period of time, which was why a few recognized him. Likely thinking that the son of a prostitute perhaps also carried some unclean things with him, the cultivators didn’t drink from the cups that he had presented with both hands. Instead, they put the cups to the side and even took out white handkerchiefs. As though it felt too uncomfortable, they repeatedly wiped the fingers that they’d touched the teacup with, either intentionally or not. Nie MingJue wasn’t someone mindful to such things. Wei WuXian, though, caught sight of this through the corners of his eyes. Meng Yao acted as if he didn’t see anything, his smile unfaltering as he continued to pass around tea.

It is true that I don't think he anticipates that NMJ will end up condemning him for his mother after all (although the expectation that NMJ won't might actually be stronger after the first couple times NMJ comes near to killing him, as he still doesn't condemn him in that way). But I don't really think that's the same as idolizing NMJ, especially since, credit where credit is due, that does seem buried fairly deep in NMJ.

(Also I think it's worth remembering, when considering NMJ's impact on MY here, that at this point in the novel MY has already met and bonded with LXC, to the point of telling him about his hopes about his father—so NMJ isn't even the first cultivator, or even the first head of a major cultivator clan, who's treated MY with respect. ETA: LXC wasn't the clan leader at the start, but the old clan leader died while LXC was still missing per JC's report at the end ch 56. That said even if we think they didn't learn this while they were on the run, LXC was still of course the clan heir of a major clan leader, and they might or might not have been aware of the injuries QHJ had taken earlier. Which is all to say, whether or not they knew he'd become clan leader, he was still absurdly high-status)

#anger burned in his heart #we can't change places #more than one tag could contain #I'm not doing much analysis here I honestly think the text is pretty clear? #but I'm pulling out a few lines to look at them specifically #short meta

[robininthelabyrinth]

My fav MDZS stories are ones where Mo Xuanyu lives and WWX takes him under his wing when the Sacrifice Summons goes slightly wrong. I would love to see your version of this au bc your writing is very very good and I've fallen in love. However you want to character MXY is fine, but I know you'll make him compelling.

also on ao3 because long

“It’s not wrong if you write it down,” Mo Xuanyu muttered to himself like a mantra as he scribbled down a rough explanation of what he was going to do. “If you write it down, it’s just an experiment, and that makes it okay.”

That’s what they used to say back at Koi Tower. Not all of them, no – most people didn’t talk to him, stupid shy useless stuttering bastard that he was.

But Jin Guangyao had smiled at him, smiled the way he smiled at everyone no matter how lowly, and Mo Xuanyu, flattered at the unfamiliar feeling of positive familial attention, had tentatively smiled back. That had been a mistake, of course, but he hadn’t realized it at the time – he was still young, then.

He hadn’t been crazy, then.

(Had he? He didn’t remember. The screaming nightmares weren’t until later, after he’d swallowed down that medicine that Jin Guangyao gave to him, that he’d forced down his throat with Xue Yang holding his shoulders down – they’d been regretful about it, he remembered that. That’d been nice. No one’d ever been sorry about what they’d done to him before. Or after, for that matter.)

That came later, though. Towards the end. The experiments – that was earlier, wasn’t it?

Yes. Back when Jin Guangyao still thought he might be useful, and he let him follow him around; back before Xue Yang had disappeared – wait, if Xue Yang had disappeared, who’d held him down? – back when he still called him Xue-gege because Xue Yang thought it was funny, and if he did that he could sit around in a place where no one would find him and watch while Xue Yang did…stuff.

Usually bad stuff.

Still, it was better than being anywhere else in Koi Tower. With Madame Jin, who hated him and threw things at him, just like Auntie Mo did, and his father who wanted him to talk about girls (Mo Xuanyu didn’t know anything about girls), and all the people who giggled at him and talked about him behind their sleeves as if he couldn’t still hear them.

If you write it down, it’s just an experiment, Jin Guangyao told him, smiling, because he always smiled. That’s why what Xue Yang does is okay.

Xue Yang taught him the basics of drawing arrays, how to hold the brush in your hand and push spiritual energy into it. Mo Xuanyu didn’t have very much, so it made him very tired and then he dropped the brush; that made Xue Yang laugh at him, push him down until his face was on the ground so he could get a better look at what he was drawing, and then he got bored and pulled him back up to try again.

It was still better than being taught by the Jin sect cultivators who sneered at him and ordered him to get hit with boards any time he made a mistake, and Mo Xuanyu made a lot of mistakes.

Mo Xuanyu didn’t like to talk to people much, wasn’t very good at it. Wasn’t much good for anything, really.

Except this, he supposed. This was something he could do.

Xue Yang taught him the basics of drawing arrays, but it was only ever the basics – as soon as he figured out how to do it, Jin Guangyao took over the teaching, and he only ever wanted Mo Xuanyu to learn one array in specific.

It didn’t have a name. It was an ancient, forbidden technique; those didn’t get names. Jin Guangyao’d found it in a book, hidden on an abandoned old mountain – a place where lots of people died in a battle a long time ago, and then again not so long ago – and he’d thought it was just right for Mo Xuanyu.

The array required blood, blood of the caster, incisions all over – painful ones – and the point of it was to offer up your body to some extremely villainous ghoul so that it could take revenge for you.

“But I don’t want revenge,” he’d told Jin Guangyao, plaintive and naïve. “And I don’t know any villainous ghouls.”

“You don’t have to ask for revenge,” Jin Guangyao had told him, patient. He was always patient when he wanted something. “You can ask for something else, if you want. Revenge is just the usual reason.”

“Not many things besides revenge are worth sacrificing your soul for,” Xue Yang had opined, and Jin Guangyao had glared at him like he’d said something stupid. “What? It’s true.”

“We’ll discuss the Chang clan later, Chengmei. I was talking to Xuanyu.”

Mo Xuanyu had been poking at the manuscripts, feeling doubtful, and Xue Yang’d huffed and grabbed them. “Don’t touch the papers! Wei Wuxian didn’t leave much behind; I’m not losing the bit we got.”

“Wei Wuxian,” Mo Xuanyu had said, feeling the weight of it on his tongue. He didn’t know much, but even he’d heard about the Yiling Patriarch. “Is he the villainous ghoul you want me to summon?”

“No,” Xue Yang’d giggled. “He wants you to bring back Nie Mingjue.”

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t known that name – he really didn’t know anything – but the weeks that Jin Guangyao thought that he could one day become him were probably the best in his life. He’d never been petted or coaxed before, never been treated so well; he ate nice food every day, wore nice clothing, slept as late as he liked, took lots of baths…Jin Guangyao wanted his body to be in good condition before he did the ritual. He gave him lotions to make his skin feel soft, used medicine to nourish his organs, spent hours and hours teaching him to braid his hair the way the Nies did, all complicated and pretty yet practical.

(“He’ll hate it so much,” Jin Guangyao whispered in his ear on the nights he let Mo Xuanyu share his pillow. “Soft and decadent and weak – you’ve got the weakest golden core I’ve ever seen, Xuanyu, weaker even than me, and you’re too useless to even have any ambition to make it stronger. I could push you down with one hand, overpower you, make you crawl…no one will ever be scared of you. Let’s see how much you like being the weak one, da-ge.”)

It’d only been when the ritual failed – not just once, but many times, no matter how many cuts Mo Xuanyu made on his arms or how well he painted the array – that Jin Guangyao had given up on Mo Xuanyu.

They hadn’t been able to figure out why it wasn’t working, back then, but now Mo Xuanyu thought that maybe he just hadn’t wanted it enough back then. He’d wanted to make Jin Guangyao happy, yes, and he hadn’t really cared what it cost to do it – Jin Guangyao’s arguments that he was useless and pointless, his life worthless, and so he might as well do something useful with his death were pretty convincing – but he hadn’t wanted it.

He wanted it now, though.

Something worth sacrificing your soul – it really could only be revenge, couldn’t it? Xue-gege knew what he was talking about. Revenge was something you needed, something that ate away at your soul until sacrificing it was the only thing left to be done with it, and that, that, was what was going to make the ritual work this time.

Mo Xuanyu was going to get revenge. Revenge on Auntie Mo, on Master Mo, on Mo Ziyuan, on A-Tong…they deserved it. He hated them. He hated what they did to him and how often they did it, he hated that this was his life and that nothing would ever get better, he hated hated hated…!

(“You don’t have to do this,” the young sect leader surnamed Nie had told him when they’d had tea for the last time. He’d bought Mo Xuanyu the cosmetics he liked – he’d offered to buy him something nicer, but Mo Xuanyu had his preferences; the expensive stuff didn’t feel heavy and greasy on his face, didn’t make him feel like he’d painted himself into being somebody else, someone braver. “Just so you know.”

“I know,” Mo Xuanyu’d said. Sect Leader Nie had come to ask him for any information he had about Jin Guangyao. He didn’t say why, but – Nie, Mo Xuanyu’d thought to himself, Nie like Nie Mingjue – he hadn’t been at all expecting to hear the story Mo Xuanyu’d had to tell him. He hadn’t been the one to suggest the ritual, that’d been Mo Xuanyu – he hated, hated, hated – but Mo Xuanyu never did learn the name of any of those extremely villainous ghouls so he’d asked him for a suggestion.

He’d suggested Wei Wuxian, and that’d made Mo Xuanyu giggle to the point of hysterics. Don’t touch the papers, Wei Wuxian didn’t leave much behind – oh, Xue-gege, you’d think this was so funny!)

“Gotta write it down,” he said to himself as he made the cuts and drew the array: it was already starting to glow in a way it hadn’t any of the other times he’d done it, and it wasn’t that he’d gotten any stronger. “Writing it down makes it okay…”

He went to get some paper, and that’s when the cat came in. A big old fisher cat, vicious and mean.

And, well, Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang were always talking about how you’re supposed to try stuff out before you do the real thing – practice makes perfect, that’s what they always said, until the day Jin Guangyao got tired of Xue Yang’s practice and made him disappear, and after that it wasn’t all that long until the day that he got tired of Mo Xuanyu, too, and made the sect kick him out.

(They said he was a cutsleeve, which was true, and they said he’d attacked Jin Guangyao, which was laughable – wasn’t Jin Guangyao the one who was always commenting on how weak Mo Xuanyu was? But that was after he drank the medicine that came with the nightmares and the weird spasms and the rest of it, and it wasn’t as if anyone in Koi Tower had ever listened to anything he said even before that.)

He wasn’t actually going to do anything bad to the cat. He just wanted to use it to make sure he got the markings all done right; it wasn’t as if the array would actually work, not without him in the middle – this array ran on resentment, on revenge, and how much resentment could a cat have?

Apparently Mo Xuanyu’d underestimated cats, or possibly his array-drawing skills, or maybe even it was only that he’d poured so much hatred into the array that when he put the cat down in the middle to see if the positioning was right the whole thing exploded right in Mo Xuanyu’s face.

He woke up to Mo Ziyuan kicking him and yelling about how dare he report him to his parents (he hadn’t reported anything, just asked for his stuff back, he hadn’t even meant to do that because he knew it was pointless but they’d asked what he was thinking about and it had just slipped out) while A-Tong broke all his stuff, but that was pretty normal so he didn’t think too much about it.

The cat leaping for Mo Ziyuan’s face, howling something that sounded an awful lot like the words fuck you except sort of halfway into being a cat’s meow, was new.

Kind of funny, too.

Mo Xuanyu giggled and lay back down on the floor while Mo Ziyuan ran out, crying for his mother, with A-Tong right on his heels as always.

The cat made its way back over to him and jumped up on his chest, looking down at him. It was a pretty handsome cat, now that Mo Xuanyu was looking at it: long and black, with white on its chest and like little socks on its forepaws, a noble appearance that had been concealed by the messy state of its fur.

“I’m sorry I accidentally nearly sacrificed you to a villainous ghoul,” Mo Xuanyu said to it.

“Who told you that I’m a villainous ghoul?” the cat said back. “You couldn’t find another wandering ghost as harmless as me!”

Mo Xuanyu was crazy, yes, but it wasn’t – it wasn’t that type of crazy. He had fits that sent him down to the floor, limbs thrashing crazily; he had days in which he wanted to do nothing but die; screaming nightmares at night and sometimes during the day, hearing and seeing things that weren’t there…

This was still new.

“Did you just talk?” he checked.

“You bet I talked,” the cat said. “Now tell me, how in the world did you manage to offer up the body of a cat? That’s not how that ritual’s supposed to work!”

“It was supposed to be my body, Master Cat,” Mo Xuanyu explained. “But they said that you should always try something out first –”

“First off, you shouldn’t be sacrificing yourself either,” the cat said. “That’s your soul you’re talking about – the ritual just says the soul goes back to the earth, but what if it destroys it entirely? You could’ve been doomed never to reincarnate!”

“That sounds restful,” Mo Xuanyu said wistfully.

“…you have serious issues. You know that, right?”

“Yes, Master Cat.”

“Stop calling me ‘Master Cat’. You know my name, you can use it.”

Mo Xuanyu blinked, long and slow. “But I don’t know your name? You were just the stray that lived out back behind the grocer…”

“I’m Wei Wuxian! You summoned me here and offered me a body!”

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t realized it’d worked. “Does that mean you won’t help me get revenge?” he asked, disappointed.

“I don’t exactly have much of a choice, do I?” The cat – Wei Wuxian – huffed. “That stupid ritual…how many cuts do you have?”

“Four,” Mo Xuanyu said automatically, except when he checked they were about half-there, half-gone, and after a little bit of investigating it looked like the other half of them were echoed in appropriately parallel locations on Wei Wuxian’s fuzzy feline body. “Oops.”

“Oops, he says,” Wei Wuxian said, but he already sounded cheerful again. “Seems like you bound our souls together when you brought me back – probably because there were too many souls in the center of the array, once you added in the cat. Anyway, don’t count me out – two legs or four, I can still help you get revenge. Who on, by the way?”

Mo Xuanyu tried to explain. He wasn’t very good at it, tongue tripping over his words as he tried to put into words why he hated them so much that the idea of killing them had possessed him in every one of his three souls and seven spirits, and it all sounded really stupid when he said it so he went off on a tangent and explained how his father had wanted to use him but he was too useless for that, and his half-brother wanted to kill him but he was too useless for that, and his family just wanted him to die, but –

“Too useless for that,” Wei Wuxian said, and his ears were pinned back against his head with his hackles raised and fur all puffed up all over. “Yeah, I got the gist. Okay. I’m sold. Let’s kill ‘em.”

“Really?”

“…I’m actually pretty bad at cold-blooded murder, even if the people you want me to kill do sound like scum. Hmm. Maybe we could just cause them a lot of trouble? A lot of trouble?”

“That seems like a bad idea,” Mo Xuanyu said doubtfully.

It was, if only because Mo Xuanyu was about as terrible at causing a disaster as he was at anything else.

Wei Wuxian ran off into the main greeting hall and started knocking things around, bellowing unconvincing meows as if he’d never met a cat in his life, and Mo Xuanyu wanted to die of embarrassment, stuttering apologies at the visiting Lan sect disciples that looked about as awkward about the whole thing as he was.

(They’d tried to get him to deal with the fierce corpses first, sending him out to the hills and yelling at him to do something, but he’d never been invited to night-hunts back at the Jin sect so he just stood around uselessly until they’d given up and invited some real cultivators.)

Auntie Mo was furious – even more so when Mo Ziyuan showed up and started trying to hit Mo Xuanyu for being a liar, except he wasn’t lying (Wei Wuxian had shouted something about theft and robbery, about cutting off someone’s hand if they stole from him again, and everyone thought it was Mo Xuanyu doing the yelling and then he’d had to explain, hadn’t he?) and eventually the entire thing got to be so stressful that it brought on one of his fits.

He woke up not long afterward, with his head in a Lan sect disciple’s lap – he was transferring spiritual energy, which was nice of him but unnecessary – and Wei Wuxian on his chest, frantically licking his cheek and trying to whisper questions of “Are you okay? Mo Xuanyu? Can you hear me?” into his ear.

“I’m okay,” he said, blinking away the daze. There were broken teacups and wine jars tossed all around – it must have been one of the screaming fits, where he threw himself down on the floor and tossed and turned and screamed and sometimes frothed at the mouth. He broke a lot of things during those fits, almost always his own. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

“I told you he was a lunatic,” Auntie Mo said, her voice shrill as always. “Always breaking our things, and then he still complains when A-Yuan borrows a little, as if he wouldn’t just break it himself anyway…! Wretched thing! Useless thing! Honored cultivators, please pardon us this embarrassment, forgive me. We’ll take him away at once –”

Mo Xuanyu flinched, and the Lan sect cultivator who still had his fingers on his pulse frowned. He was very young, and Lan sect; he’d probably never encountered a lunatic before. “No need,” he said. “We need to go and get started with setting up the array in the Western Courtyard. Senior Mo here can show us where it is…can’t you?”

“I can,” Mo Xuanyu said, eager to avoid being locked away again. He scrambled to his feet, not forgetting to scoop up Wei Wuxian the troublemaker. “Follow me.”

They said a few more words, reminders not to go outside once the array was set up, and then they followed him, talking quietly behind him –

“Why’d you call him Senior, Sizhui?” one of the Lan sect disciples was asking the other in an undertone. “He’s a lunatic!”

“He’s a cultivator,” the one that had helped him earlier said. “He has a golden core, and he’s older than we are; that means he’s a senior.”

“He’s got a golden core? No way! He paints his face like he’s a hanged ghost!”

“Jingyi! What does it matter what he does with his face? It’s true, I felt it when I transferred him spiritual energy. Anyway, I didn’t want him to get punished just for having a fit…hey!”

That last exclamation had been because Wei Wuxian had twisted out of Mo Xuanyu’s arms and leaped towards the flags they were carrying, snatching one to the ground and rolling around with it.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mo Xuanyu said, wanting to cry. He didn’t have any grudge against these Lan sect disciples; why was Wei Wuxian making trouble for them? “I didn’t mean to mess up your flag formation, or the…”

“Spirit Summon Flag,” Wei Wuxian muttered from his feet and Mo Xuanyu quickly used a foot to slide him back behind him and pretended he’d been the one to speak, smiling earnestly at them. “Weak, with a range of no more than five li, but serviceable enough; they can go ahead and use it.”

“You know about Spirit Summon Flags?” the taller Lan sect disciple – the one who’d been called Jingyi – asked, looking surprised, and Lan Sizhui elbowed him in the ribs.

Mo Xuanyu shrugged helplessly. “They used them sometimes at the Jin sect,” he said, which was true, even though he’d never gotten involved in that sort of thing. Saying that just made them all look even more surprised, though; probably at the idea that a lunatic like him had been part of the Jin sect in any way shape or form. “That was back before I went crazy. And you don’t have to call me senior – I got kicked out before I learned anything useful.”

“You’re still a fellow cultivator,” Lan Sizhui said, and smiled at him. Mo Xuanyu felt his face go red and he looked away, regretting how easily he showed his emotions; it would probably embarrass Lan Sizhui later on, when he heard the rumors about Mo Xuanyu’s sexual preference. That wasn’t the reason he’d blushed, he’d never had any interest in children – it was only that he liked it when people smiled at him.

“I’ll be going,” he said, and grabbed at Wei Wuxian again, only to miss and nearly trip before finally managing to pick him up. “Good luck with your hunt. I hope it goes well.”

It did not go well. Mo Ziyuan got himself killed by stealing a Spirit Summon Flag – Mo Xuanyu and Wei Wuxian both checked their left arm or forepaw at the same time, seeing the cut there heal up before their eyes; apparently the curse considered it to be close enough, maybe because Wei Wuxian had invented the thing – and somehow Mo Xuanyu ended up being accused of his murderer.

And that was before things got really bad.

“Set up a blocking array at the corner,” Wei Wuxian hissed in his ear.

“I can’t!” Mo Xuanyu said, hiding behind a tree. “I don’t know any arrays!”

“What?! Impossible. You did the body offering array – that’s extremely difficult, especially for someone of your cultivation level.”

“It’s the only one I was ever taught,” Mo Xuanyu explained, and Wei Wuxian’s fur suddenly puffed up all over again.

“Someone is going to die, and not necessarily the Mo family,” he said darkly; it might have been more intimidating if Mo Xuanyu hadn’t tied a red ribbon around his throat earlier to try to make the idea of him being someone’s pet a little more believable. “Whoever did that really only wanted you for one thing, didn’t they? I wonder why they wanted me back so badly.”

Mo Xuanyu was about to explain that actually Wei Wuxian hadn’t been the original target, but then there was more yelling – the Lan sect juniors were very competent but the ghost hand was terrifying – and Wei Wuxian got distracted, hissing at Mo Xuanyu to kick Lan Jingyi.

He obeyed on instinct, which saved Lan Sizhui’s life, and then Wei Wuxian was out of his hands again, streaking towards the corpses like a bolt of feline lightning, and suddenly there were three more corpses standing up and fighting against the possessed remains of Auntie Mo.

“Looks like I can still cultivate,” Wei Wuxian said happily, strolling back over and using the tree to leap back up to Mo Xuanyu’s shoulder. “I thought I should be able to use your golden core, given the way the curse bound us together…how are we doing on the curse, anyway?”

Mo Xuanyu checked. “I think that’s everyone, actually? I should thank whoever sent the ghost hand.”

Wei Wuxian was silent for a moment. “Huh, you’re right,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about it at first, but those Spirit Summon Flags definitely didn’t have enough of a range to summon a ghost hand like that from far away – and we would have heard of a lot more deaths if it’d been that close. Someone must have released it near here.”

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t been thinking along those lines at all. It was only that no matter where he lived, Mo Manor or Koi Tower, there was almost always someone causing bad things to happen.

“Should we do something to help?” he asked hesitantly, watching the battle unfold and then flinching when there was an unexpected sound – two strums on a guqin, full of spiritual power.

“Nope!” Wei Wuxian said. “In fact, we should leave. Right now.”

“Leave…?”

“You can’t be planning on staying at Mo Manor now that everyone’s dead? Come on! Let’s go! Hanguang-jun’s here; he’ll take care of the ghost hand.”

“I wasn’t planning anything,” Mo Xuanyu argued even as he headed towards the exit obediently. “I was going to be dead, and the body would be yours, and you could do whatever you liked with it when you were done.”

“Well, we’re done,” Wei Wuxian said. “And you’re not dead. You’re just going to have to live with that.”

“Live with…not being dead?”

“Just accept the glorious wisdom of your elders already,” Wei Wuxian said cheerfully. “Either way: we go. As quickly as possible. Before anyone notices. Is there anything you need to pack? We should take the donkey in that courtyard.”

“And money,” Mo Xuanyu said practically, heading for Auntie Mo’s room first. After all, she was dead and wouldn’t need it, and he was the last living heir of the Mo family – it was only reasonable that he take the first pick before everyone else got it. “You can always use money, even if you’re dead. Or a cat.”

Travelling was a bizarre experience.

Mo Xuanyu hadn’t been allowed to go outside of Mo Manor in a few years – Wei Wuxian hissed and spat some very impressive curses on the Mo family name, present company excluded – and even at his time in the Jin sect, he’d always been taken places by other people. Now, for the first time, he was alone…well, alone but for Wei Wuxian, who insisted that they had to stay together, curse or no curse, because of how they’d been bound. Mo Xuanyu suspected the real reason was because he didn’t think Mo Xuanyu could make it by himself, and he was probably right.

At any rate, he didn’t have anywhere to go, so instead he followed Wei Wuxian’s instructions to head towards Dafan Mountain to see if they could find some tombs that Wei Wuxian would be able to use. He still had fits, still wanted to die rather a lot, but he ended up spending so much of his time trying to coax the donkey (dubbed Little Apple by Wei Wuxian after they figured out that apples were the best and possibly only incentive to get it moving) that he didn’t have time to think about it too much.

Not being around either Auntie Mo or anyone from the Jin sect helped. Wei Wuxian wasn’t too bad – he may have been a villainous ghoul once, but now he was a cat.

“Didn’t you used to cultivate with a flute?” he asked as they walked along the mountain paths late at night. Well, the donkey walked, Mo Xuanyu rode the donkey, and Wei Wuxian rode in Mo Xuanyu’s arms. “What are you going to do about that? You can’t play a flute anymore; you’re a cat.”

“Cats are innately musical creatures,” Wei Wuxian said. His voice had become a lot more human in the past few days, rich and compelling and increasingly lacking the rough meows that had initially interrupted his speech. It was no surprise that someone as talented as him could pick up being a cat faster than Mo Xuanyu had ever learned to pick up being human.

Mo Xuanyu narrowed his eyes. “That’s a lie, right?” Wei Wuxian had been trying to teach him how to distinguish those, but they weren’t having very much success with it. “I don’t think I’ve heard a single decent sound out of –”

“Why don’t we see who’s making that noise?” Wei Wuxian said loudly, so they dismounted and went to go look.

There were people yelling, caught in a golden net.

“Can you get them down?” he asked Wei Wuxian, who reached out with his claws to grab a leaf, muttering something that was probably uncomplimentary.

And then –

Oh, no.

“Why are you hiding behind a tree again?” Wei Wuxian asked him, not keeping especially quiet. “Don’t tell me you’re hiding from that little Jin sect boy who clearly didn’t have a mother to teach him?”

Mo Xuanyu dropped him like he was a boiling hot skillet.

Like everything he’d ever done on instinct, the move immediately backfired: Wei Wuxian landed on Little Apple’s foreleg claws first and suddenly Little Apple was braying loud enough to wake the dead, which set Wei Wuxian off yowling and hissing right back at him.

“Who is that?!” Jin Ling demanded, striding over with an extremely cross expression that suggested he’d heard the bit about mothers. “Who is – oh. It’s you.”

Mo Xuanyu weakly lifted up a hand. “Uh…it’s nice to see you, Jin Ling.”

Wei Wuxian’s yowls cut off as if he’d been suddenly smothered.

Jin Ling glared at him. “Stupid cutsleeve, you think I didn’t hear what you said earlier?”

“I didn’t!” Mo Xuanyu said immediately, starting to shake at once. He couldn’t bear it when people in bright yellow were angry at him, not since those last few days at the Jin sect; it was a sure-fire way to bring on a fit. “I swear I didn’t! I – I –”

Jin Ling lifted his sword and Mo Xuanyu squatted down to cover his head at once, feeling his eyes overflow with blubbering tears as he began to panic. “I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t,” he wailed. “Don’t hit me! I don’t want to drink any medicine! I don’t want to get hit! I didn’t do it!”

“You…!” Jin Ling didn’t seem to know what to do now. “You’re such a coward! You – damnit!”

Mo Xuanyu had his face hidden away, so he didn’t see what Jin Ling did next, braced as he was for a blow. He could vaguely hear the sword being put away, but that didn’t diminish his fear in the slightest: the majority of the Jin sect had never been willing to use swords on each other, thinking it disgraceful. Even Jin Guangyao didn’t use his sword very much – he preferred other methods.

Mo Xuanyu was most afraid of those other methods.

He flinched violently when someone lightly touched his shoulder.

“Stop crying, you’re making a fool of yourself!” Jin Ling said, his harsh voice at odds with the gentle touch of his fingers. “Have some thought to your face, okay?! You can’t embarrass yourself like this! Aren’t you my uncle, after all?”

“He’s your what?!” Wei Wuxian’s muffled voice came from under a bush.

“It’s true no matter how you look at it, even if I don’t want it to be,” Jin Ling said with a sniff, clearly assuming the exclamation had come from Mo Xuanyu. “Listen here, what are you doing on Dafan Mountain anyway?”

Mo Xuanyu snuffled, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Well, my cat –”

“Night hunting!” Wei Wuxian hissed.

“I mean, I was night hunting,” Mo Xuanyu repeated obediently, then frowned. “That’s not really believable, is it?”

Jin Ling looked pityingly at him. “Not really. Do you need – is there something…?”

“Those words from earlier were really rude,” Wei Wuxian said from the bushes, and Mo Xuanyu covered his face with his hands. “They shouldn’t have been said.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. It’s not like I haven’t heard it all before –”

“Jin Ling, get away from him,” a low, cold voice said from behind him.

Mo Xuanyu’s shoulders slumped. It wasn’t relief so much as it was resignation: if there was one thing he knew, that everyone knew, it was that you didn’t cross Jiang Cheng. They said he could smell the stink of demonic cultivation on you, and once he did, that was that, and Mo Xuanyu was pretty sure, though no one had ever said for sure, that the body offering array was some form of demonic cultivation.

They said Jiang Cheng would take demonic cultivators back to the Lotus Pier to be tortured to death.

Mo Xuanyu was almost looking forward to it. Other than the horrible sword flights back and forth to Koi Tower in Lanling, Dafan Mountain was the furthest from home he’d been, and Wei Wuxian had been waxing poetic about the beauties of the Lotus Pier for days now; it would be nice to see it, however briefly, before he died.

He’d probably get to see lots of Jiang Cheng, too – he’d only ever caught glimpses of him before, when he was visiting Koi Tower, so he’d never had a chance to look his fill. And whatever could be said about the man’s temper, it couldn’t be denied that he had a first-rate face.

“Why?” Jin Ling asked, not moving. “It’s only Mo Xuanyu. Did you ever meet him? He’s –”

“Not him,” Jiang Cheng said, and he looked – bemused? That wasn’t the expression Mo Xuanyu would have been expecting. “It was – Wei Wuxian…wait, the cat?!”

Mo Xuanyu’s mouth dropped open in shock. How did he know?

“Definitely not!” Wei Wuxian blurted out, which didn’t seem smart, and suddenly Jiang Cheng looked extremely confused and abruptly sat down.

“Uncle, what are you talking about?” Jin Ling said. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Jiang Cheng said, a hand to his temple as if he had a headache, or possibly questioning his sanity. “It’s – it’s the cat. I heard – that voice – Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be sniveling on the ground like a newborn infant, and the only other thing around is – so it must be –”

“Is lunacy contagious or something?” Jin Ling demanded. “Uncle, I know you’ve been looking for him for years, but you can’t seriously think Wei Wuxian resurrected himself as a cat!”

“Meow!” Wei Wuxian said desperately, except it was as awful a meow as it’d ever been – entirely human. “Meow, meow –”

“That voice –!”

“Uncle!”

“Shut up!” Mo Xuanyu abruptly yelled, pushed entirely beyond his limits. “All of you! Just shut up! Stop yelling and stop harassing my cat!”

With that, he grabbed Wei Wuxian and ran blindly into the woods.

He kept running until the air wouldn’t enter his lungs anymore, and then he fell down under a tree and burst into tears again, the fear and panic and exercise all escalating uncontrollably until he fell into another fit, no matter how much Wei Wuxian tried to talk him down.

When Mo Xuanyu woke up, he felt as though he really had gotten beaten up by Jin Ling, even though he knew he hadn’t been. He groaned.

“You’re awake again, good,” Wei Wuxian said. He was standing on his two hind legs, forepaws behind his back as he slowly paced a circle. “Those fits of yours – they only started after you went crazy, you said?”

Mo Xuanyu nodded and sat up, rubbing his face – he didn’t have a mirror to check, but all those tears must have messed up his make-up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the case of cosmetics he’d insisted on taking the time to remove from Mo Manor, no matter how much Wei Wuxian had urged him to leave quickly before they were found.

“Based on the things you’ve said, it seems like there was a particular point in time where you went crazy – enough that you can accurately pin-point things as being before and after.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded again, using his fingers to apply more red paint around his eyes, which were still a little swollen and tender from all the crying.

“And you said something when Jin Ling was holding his sword – damnit, that was Suihua, I should have recognized it at once – anyway, you said something about…about not wanting to drink medicine?”

Wei Wuxian certainly fixated on the strangest things, Mo Xuanyu reflected. Maybe lunacy really was contagious.

“Someone poisoned you,” Wei Wuxian concluded. He still had the red ribbon around his neck – in combination with the way he was just barely maintaining his upright balance and the way his tail was lashing around, it was rather cute. “If it took place in the Jin sect, it was probably something with quicksilver, since they use it to make vermillion. It damages the brain and liver if consumed in high quantities, and it’s associated with epilepsy, hallucinations, and terrible nightmares; it’s been used since ancient times to make men into fools.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded politely, mostly disinterested. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know who was behind it, and it didn’t really matter what exactly was involved – if anything, the medicine could almost be seen as Jin Guangyao’s way of being nice. He could have had Mo Xuanyu disappeared the way he did for Xue Yang, or he could have fed him to Xue Yang’s fierce corpses, or even just slit his throat...at least by going mad, Mo Xuanyu would still be useful to Jin Guangyao, a vivid demonstration that any madness in their bloodline must have come from their shared father’s side, not the mother.

He wasn’t sure why Jin Guangyao cared about that, but at least he wasn’t dead. No, wait, didn’t he want to be dead? His half-brother was so confusing sometimes.

Maybe sending Mo Xuanyu back to Mo Manor, back to Auntie Mo and all the others that Jin Guangyao knew Mo Xuanyu feared, maybe it was supposed to teach him how to hate enough, so that he could make the ritual work – if so, Mo Xuanyu’d probably disappointed Jin Guangyao all over again.

“…some ways to at least ease the symptoms, maybe more if we can find a good enough doctor.” Wei Wuxian was still talking, for some reason. “At least you have your golden core; if you were a regular person, there wouldn’t be any hope at all.”

“Hope is overrated,” Mo Xuanyu said. “It just makes it worse when you’re inevitably disappointed, and then you die, if you’re lucky.”

Xue-gege had taught him that one, and he was even pretty sure he’d quoted it correctly, but Wei Wuxian didn’t look particularly impressed.

“I’ve heard that quicksilver poisoning can cause qi deviation, which is associated with suicidal urges,” Wei Wuxian said, dropping to all four legs and then hopping onto his shoulder. “Let me try to stabilize your qi – maybe it’ll keep you from saying things like that all the time. Go on, get up and stretch your legs a bit; they’re probably sore from all the running and thrashing you were doing.”

Mo Xuanyu walked all right, walked right into a confrontation with a stone goddess, which was honestly just how this day was going. Wei Wuxian really needed to stop being so surprised when bad things happened.

“Can you play the flute?” Wei Wuxian hissed into his ear, all thoughts of qi stabilization forgotten. “I need to summon something powerful, and yowling, while surprisingly effective, isn’t going to cut it.”

“I can play the dizi,” Mo Xuanyu offered. “But I’m not good at it, and anyway we don’t have –”

“Good enough! Grab that piece of bamboo and give it to me, I can use my claws to make the holes, and you can follow the tune that I show you –”

Wei Wuxian meowed, Mo Xuanyu played, and Wei Wuxian’s ears went flat backwards in apparent agony.

“Whoever taught you should be tortured to death,” he said briefly before resuming his guidance, focusing in on whatever demonic cultivation technique he was doing – it made the Ghost General appear, so Mo Xuanyu assumed it was successful, although Wei Wuxian’s shocked muttering suggested something had gone wrong regardless. Again, not much of a surprise.

One thing led to another, and then a tall man in Lan sect white showed up along with the juniors from Mo Manor, along with Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling, and at that point Mo Xuanyu decided that some of this bad luck had to be Wei Wuxian’s, because even the worst of his bad days weren’t usually this bad.

Wei Wuxian panicked when they bumped into the tall man – Hanguang-jun, apparently? Mo Xuanyu vaguely recalled hearing about him, but he’d never come to Koi Tower while Mo Xuanyu had been there – and it was very uncomfortable to have a panicking cat on his shoulder, especially when he was still trying to remember enough flute-playing to follow along with the tune Wei Wuxian was meowing, something more relaxing to try to calm down the Ghost General.

“…Wei Ying?” Hanguang-jun said, staring at the cat.

Mo Xuanyu stopped playing and turned his head to stare at Wei Wuxian. “How are you this obvious?” he asked.

“This is not my fault,” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, aggravated. “I’m a cat! Nobody should be blaming me!”

“I think I’m losing my mind,” Jiang Cheng, located somewhere further away on the field, said, his voice sounding strangled. “I really do swear I just heard….”

“That was me!” Mo Xuanyu said quickly. “Totally me! I picked up ventriloquism to better process the auditory hallucinations! I’m very sick, and also a lunatic – you can just ignore me!”

Nobody seemed especially convinced.

“…Sect Leader Jiang,” Hanguang-jun said after a while. “There are very good healers dedicated to the calming of the mind at the Cloud Recesses. I can take Young Master Mo – and his cat – with me to see them, which I think will be beneficial to everyone involved.”

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng said. “But I’m coming too. I think I need it.”

Hanguang-jun frowned for a moment and the two of them stared at each other for a long time, unspoken emotions crackling in the air between them. Finally, he nodded. “Very well.”

“You know, I don’t think we’ve ever agreed to go to -” Wei Wuxian started to say, but Mo Xuanyu stuffed his fingers over his little snout. Hanguang-jun was the second master of the Lan sect, which meant Zewu-jun was his brother, and Zewu-jun was Jin Guangyao’s friend – and you didn’t go against what Jin Guangyao wanted, not if you knew what was good for you.

Mo Xuanyu might be stupid, but even he could figure something out after it hurt enough.

“It’s fine,” he said. “We’ll go with you for a little, but you have to promise to let us go afterwards. You have to promise, you hear me? I don’t want to be locked away again!”

Hanguang-jun had a strange expression on his face, which was about the same as the expression on Jiang Cheng’s face, and Jin Ling’s, and all the Lan juniors – had Mo Xuanyu said something wrong?

“Your freedom and safety will be assured,” Hanguang-jun said.

“And my cat’s!”

Jiang Cheng put his hand on his head, looking pained.

“And your cat,” Hanguang-jun agreed peaceably, and turned and started to lead the way.

Mo Xuanyu and all the others followed behind.

“Fine,” Wei Wuxian muttered in Mo Xuanyu’s ear once the others were far enough ahead to not immediately overhear. “We can go with Lan Zhan back to Gusu one time. They really do have good healers there, anyway – but I want to talk to him about that ghost hand. Someone released it right next to Mo Manor, probably the same person who wanted me back so badly that he taught you how to do the body offering array, and I want to have words with that person.”

Mo Xuanyu was a little confused: was it Sect Leader Nie he wanted to talk to or Jin Guangyao? And why was Wei Wuxian so angry at them? They were both so nice, at least some of the time…better not to ask.

“You should get some Emperor’s Smile when you get to Gusu,” Wei Wuxian added.

“I don’t drink,” Mo Xuanyu objected.

“For me.”

“Cats don’t drink.”

“I’m not planning on being a cat forever,” Wei Wuxian said. “And won’t that be a surprise to everyone?”

Mo Xuanyu thought about it. “No,” he said after a moment. “I really don’t think it will be, actually.”

#mdzs #mo xuanyu #wei wuxian #jin guangyao #xue yang #lan wangji #jiang cheng #jin ling #nie huaisang #my fic #my fics #dark #just assume ALL the trigger warnings #Anonymous

[no--envies]

Nightless City – An analysis of Wei Wuxian’s accountability

I’ve come across several takes about the bloodbath of Nightless City that don’t really sit well with me. Some people say Wei Wuxian is totally to blame, others that he’s totally blameless, and I personally disagree with both. I think that, like in many other events in the novel, what really happened is more complex.

(All the translations are by Exiled Rebels Scanlations)

First of all, the text shows us that Wei Wuxian wasn’t completely clear-headed even before going to Nightless City, which is normal considering what he was going through. His whole world had crumbled in just a few hours. Everything he’d done until that moment – the sacrifices he had made for what he believed was right – appeared to be for nothing. He ended up hurting the people most dear to him, and he couldn’t even protect those he had wanted to protect. When he could move again after the three days he spent in the cave immobilized by Wen Qing’s needle, for a while he didn’t even know what to do or where to go.

After he got down the mountain, he stood amid the bushes, catching his breath. Bent down, he propped his hands against his knees for a long while before he stood up straight again. Yet, looking at the wild grasses that covered many of the mountain paths, he didn’t know where to go.

Burial Mound—he’d just gone down from there.

Lotus Pier—he hadn’t been back in over a year.

Koi Tower? Three days had passed already. If he went now, it was likely that Wen Qing’s corpse and Wen Ning’s ashes were the only things left.

He stood blankly. Suddenly, he felt that the world had no place for him, despite how large it was. He didn’t know what to do either.

(Chapter 77)

It’s rare to see Wei Wuxian so utterly lost and miserable. What happened was too much for even someone like him – who always tends to look at the bright side of any situation – to be able to deal with it. Since he doesn’t know where else to go, he decides to go to Koi Tower to retrieve the Wen siblings’ ashes, but he doesn’t manage to do anything before he’s discovered and forced to flee. He wanders without purpose for a long time until he arrives at a city gate where he hears a group of cultivators talking about him with contempt, which triggers his anger.

The longer Wei WuXian listened, the colder his expression grew.

He should’ve understood long ago. No matter what he did, not a single good word would come out of these people’s mouths. When he won, others feared; when he lost, others rejoiced.

He was cultivating the crooked path either way, so what exactly did the years of persistence mean? What exactly were they for?

However, the colder his eyes were, the brighter the raging fire within his heart burned.

(Chapter 77)

We see him come to a very bitter realization: no matter his noble intentions and moral integrity, everyone has already made up their mind about him, he would be made into a villain no matter what he does. Before what happened at Qiongqi Path he had managed to keep a positive mindset, since he was doing fine in the Burial Mounds with the Wen remnants. It wasn’t an easy life, but they were safe, they didn’t starve and Wei Wuxian was free to focus on his research and inventions in peace, creating the Compass of Evil and the Spirit-Attraction Flag. He missed his family, but he also found another one. He had people who loved him and valued him, and whom he loved and valued in turn. All in all, he was content. He thought that as long as he didn’t actively seek trouble, the world would leave him alone. But he was wrong. Jin Zixun ambushed him accusing him of something he didn’t do, and everything spiraled down so quickly he couldn’t do anything to prevent it, until he lost control of his demonic cultivation and killed Jin Zixuan.

In this moment, Wei Wuxian feels completely alone. The Wen siblings are gone, his beloved shijie might hate him for killing her husband and the cultivation world as a whole can’t wait to besiege him. If it had been another time, he wouldn’t have beaten up those random cultivators. It’s not like it was the first time he heard awful rumors about himself. The fact that he reacts so violently here says a lot about the state of mind he’s in. Wei Wuxian is clearly looking for a way to vent his anger, so he takes it out on the cultivators who are speaking ill of him. His rage is justified: not only were they saying malicious things about him without even knowing the full story, but they were doing it cowardly behind his back. However, his reaction is somewhat disproportionate to their offense: one of them gets kicked in the face until he passes out from the pain, while another gets his legs broken for daring to speak up. Although he doesn’t kill them, he does terrorize them and in the end he leaves them there immobilized by the spirits he had summoned (if Lan Wangji hadn’t been looking for Wei Wuxian, who knows how long they would have had to wait to be freed).

After this, Wei Wuxian sees the announcement of the pledge conference and goes to Nightless City. I’ve seen people argue that he was only trying to protect the Wen remnants and that the people who were there had already pledged to kill him, so it was self-defense. But is it really the case? Personally, I don’t think what he did was self-defense. Sure, he tried to discuss first and didn’t attack until he was attacked, but defending himself and the Wen remnants wasn’t the main reason he was there in the first place.

The crowd flung curses at him, but Wei WuXian accepted all of them.

Anger was the only thing that could suppress the other feelings within his heart.

(Chapter 78)

All of his pain, desperation and guilt were too much to handle at once, so he tried to suppress them all with anger, and directed that anger at the people who hated him. Wei Wuxian didn’t go to the pledge conference to try to prevent the siege from happening (since he thought it wouldn’t change anything anyway) or to weaken the Sects’ forces. He went there to vent his anger and frustration. Wei Wuxian is not clear-headed here, as highlighted by this passage:

Wei WuXian spun around to dodge the attack and laughed, “Fine, fine. I knew since the start that we’d have to fight a real fight like this one sooner or later. You’ve always found me disagreeable no matter what. Come on!”

Hearing this, Lan WangJi’s movements paused, “Wei Ying!”

Although he shouted the words, any sane person would be able to tell that Lan WangJi’s voice was clearly shaking. However, right now, Wei WuXian had already lost his judgement. He was already half-mad, half-unconscious. All evil was being augmented by him. He felt that everyone loathed him and he loathed everyone as well. He wouldn’t be scared no matter who came at him. It wouldn’t matter no matter who came at him. It was all the same anyway.

(Chapter 78)

In this moment Wei Wuxian believes everyone hates him and there’s no use trying to convince them otherwise – there’s no use trying to reason with them in a diplomatic way because no matter what he says or does, his words will be twisted to fit the opinions of the crowd. He almost welcomes the attack because this way he can attack them back and vent all his pent-up anger. Wei Wuxian is not behaving like his usual self here. He can’t see Lan Wangji isn’t trying to hurt him because his mind is not lucid. This is why he loses control of his demonic cultivation for the second time, injuring Jiang Yanli.

His shijie is the only one who manages to calm him down a little despite his chaotic state of mind. He manages to stop the corpses from attacking everyone and waits for her to tell him what she thinks of him, if she forgives him or not. However, she dies to save his life before being able to say anything, and the whole situation becomes simply too much for him to bear. All of his emotions crush him at once, so in his already half-unconscious state he activates the Tiger Seal, effectively erasing any chance he might have had to redeem himself in the eyes of society.

The point of this analysis isn’t to blame or absolve Wei Wuxian. It’s very easy to empathize with his anguish in these scenes. What he was going through was incredibly stressful and the root cause (the ambush at Qiongqi Path) wasn’t his fault. Even Lan Wangji says he can neither condemn nor justify his actions, but he’s willing to face all the consequences with him anyway.

I told [Wangji] when I went to see him, Young Master Wei had already made a grave mistake, there was no use augmenting it. But he said… that he could not say with certainty whether what you did was right or wrong, but no matter what, he was willing to be responsible for all of the consequences alongside you.

(Chapter 99)

Wei Wuxian isn’t blameless for what happened at Nightless City. I don’t think he’s proud of what he did and all the people he killed, either. The fact that he destroyed the Tiger Seal after returning to the Burial Mounds is quite telling. He definitely didn’t act in the most rational and clear-headed way, which resulted in a lot of people – including his shijie – to lose their lives, but the point of all this is that Wei Wuxian is human. He makes mistakes because no one is infallible, no matter how heroic, selfless and virtuous. Not even he can be totally immune to all the criticism and accusasions, even though he often acts like he is. Wei Wuxian is a fundamentally positive person, so most of the time he can ignore the bad things that happen to him and focus on the good, but this time his situation was simply too extreme for anyone to be able to stand it.

#mdzs #wei wuxian #wei ying #mdzs meta #nightless city

[thedawnwall]

Overheard at the Stables of Koi Tower - 12 Days of Mingcheng

Prompt: Pure. Read on AO3 here.

The barest dusting of snow started to fall as Nie Mingjue crossed the yard, returning to the stables after dinner. It was a rare occasion, but they had no guests, no foreign dignitaries that night at Koi Tower, and so all he needed to do that night was do a final check on the horses, then he could actually prop up his feet and read for a while.

A puff of steam escaped the door to greet him as he entered - the smell too familiar to be bothersome anymore. He walked through the stables and checked each stall with an idle eye. At the end, he turned to slip out the back toward his own quarter – a simple servants’ house for the stablemaster, – when his ear caught on the sound of a voice.

Surprised, Nie Mingjue turned his head, angling his ear toward the sound, trying to make it out a little better. Definitely a voice. A deep murmur. He took a few steps in that direction.

His eye caught on a light then, out of place in the stables, which were almost cavernously dark after dinner on a winter night. The light flickered against a wooden door frame leading toward the dog pins. The dogs bedded down in a little area tucked away in the stables - Nie Mingjue likely wouldn’t have even noticed the bare flicker of light if he hadn’t heard the voice.

Nie Mingjue was not alarmed, he was more than capable of handling a run-of-the-mill rogue. Still, his pulse sped up in anticipation. His hand grasped instinctively for a sword that was not there. He stepped closer, making his steps quiet as the snow outside.

Who was the man speaking to?

“- it’s just, why did he have to go off and get into trouble anyway?” the man griped, tone surly. Dripping with exasperation. “He’s always making trouble! And then everyone else has to go around and clean up after him.”

Very slowly, Nie Mingjue poked his head around the open entryway to peek at the dog pins and the source of the voice. The man was turned away from him. He relaxed, releasing his breath. His hand lowered from where it had come to rest on his belt.

Then his lips twitched when he realized that the man was alone and talking to, well, the dogs.

“So now I have to - what? Drop everything and become a damn servant? Just to go chasing him down?” the man, in servant's robes like Nie Mingjue, huffed out a weary sigh and slumped against the wall.

He was sitting on a little mound of straw, right by the rails of the dog pin. The three dogs were watching him, comically enthralled by his diatribe. Their eyes did twitch over toward Nie Mingjue and his head in the entryway, but they showed him absolutely no interest otherwise. Usually the dogs liked him well enough - he might have been a little injured if he wasn’t so amused.

“I’m just - He just -” The kid seemed to work himself up, almost stuttering with frustration. “I - I’m worried about him, Princess!” In spite of his obvious fury, the kid set a hand down very gently on top of one of the dog’s heads and rubbed between her eyes. Her tongue lolled out in happiness. “I hate this. I’m worried about him! Damn it. Why is he such a fucking disaster?”

Nie Mingjue was bewildered. Had this kid… named the dog… Princess?

He had no idea what this kid was in his stables venting about, but it was almost unbearably endearing. Too pure for words. He wanted to laugh. But he also was loathe to disturb the moment. Something about it clenched painfully around his heart. He saw his brother before him, talking to his songbirds or making up whimsical stories for random people they passed on the road. It was difficult to tell the kid’s age, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the servant in front of him was around Huaisang’s age.

“He’s just - there’s no trace,” the kid’s voice tipped further toward despair. It was obvious now that his fury before had been fueled by concern. Whoever this missing disaster of a person was, he was clearly missed dearly. “We can’t find anything anywhere. Wen Qionglin and I have looked all over, talked to everyone.”

Now A-Ning was someone Nie Mingjue knew. The personal servant for First Young Master Jin Zixuan, a well-respected person among the servants himself, even if he was incurably shy and underconfident. Nie Mingjye didn’t know him very well, but he liked him well enough. To imagine him getting along with or assisting the fiery kid before him though, well, that was curious. Maybe A-Ning was a little less timid than Nie Mingjue had believed.

“Love, you won’t believe it.” The younger man took his hand off of his so-called Princess’ head and placed it under the chin of the next dog, giving a vigorous rub. Nie Mingjue clamped a hand over his mouth and ducked out of the doorframe, leaning back against the wall to ground himself as he tried to laugh silently into his hand. “Jin Zixun runs a whole secret fighting ring in Lanling City! And that utter dick caught us down there and forced Wen Qionglin to fight. I totally thought he was going to get his ass kicked. I was legitimately worried for his life. But Wen Qionglin destroyed that guy. You should have seen it. It was - it was - well, I’ve never felt more glad that a guy was on my side before that, not the other way around.”

Nie Mingjue couldn’t help it. He snorted, then clasped the hand around his mouth tighter.

“What was that?” the kid gasped.

Nie Mingjue tried to edge, quiet as a mouse, along the wall and away. Honestly, he didn’t even know why. He was the stablemaster. This was where he belonged, not that kid. But for some reason, he got a feeling that if he caught the kid in the act, he’d be embarrassed and wouldn’t come back. And for some reason, Nie Mingjue didn’t like the idea of depriving that kid of his nighttime debrief with Princess and Love.

“Oh, well, right, you all will know if someone else is around before I do. And you would tell me, right? Wouldn’t you, Jasmine?” he said, at last, and Nie Mingjue slumped back against the wall, blowing out a breath.

Jasmine, Princess and Love, then. Nie Mingjue grinned in the dark.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re all here. I don’t know what I’d do without you, really,” the kid said, sounding a little melancholy, entirely too lonely. Nie Mingjue’s smile dimmed with sympathy. Loneliness - that was a thing he knew. Having no one’s company but your own to keep. “I - I mean, I know I sound like a crazy person. Maybe I am. You hear that, Wei Wuxian? You’ve finally fucking driven me crazy. Are you happy now?”

Wei Wuxian… now that sounded familiar. Another house servant, he guessed. Nie Mingjue couldn’t conjure an image in his head of the man.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you all really want,” the kid griped, sounding falsely put-upon, teasing. Nie Mingjue heard a little shuffling around, and he crept closer again, poking his head around in time to spot the kid pulling scraps of bread out from his robes.

Dinner scraps.

Nie Mingjue scowled. He had half a mind to - no, damn. He wasn’t going to scare off this kid, was he? He made him think too much of Nie Huaisang, panged too much of his own loneliness,  stirred up the desire in him to share his troubles with another, a desire he thought had burned out long ago. Nie Mingjue didn’t want to be the person to take this one comfort away from him.

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes and ducked his head back out, realizing that he was going to have to monitor this kid’s visits now, see how often he was coming to talk to the dogs and determine if he needed to scale back on their food, all because Nie Mingjue was too damn tender-hearted to kick him out.

#12domc21 #mingcheng #jiang cheng #nie mingjue #nie mingjue is a horse girl #servant verse #mdzs fanfiction

[crossdressingdeath]

Twin Treasures Chapter 1, v. 1

AN: So, the great editing spree has begun. Chapter one is finished, you can read the edited version of this chapter here, but everyone who commented on it wanted me to move the original versions over to Tumblr when I changed them so... here we are, I suppose. Chapter one, old version!

Yiling is small and loud and filthy, and Jin Rong doesn’t know why his mother brought him here.

“Experience,” she says when he asks, and, “You cannot work with the other sects if you don’t know what they face,” which he doesn’t think is a proper answer.

“Father wouldn’t bring me here,” he grumbles, but only quietly. His mother’s hatred of his father is legendary, even though he’s not entirely sure why she hates him so much. Don’t you dare turn out like your father, she says over and over, and Jin Rong nods every time despite not understanding. Everyone in Koi Tower knows you don’t say no to Madame Jin, and despite being only ten years old (a very mature ten years old, he’d insist if anyone asked), he’s learned that lesson several times over.

Which is what brings him here, walking down a filthy street with his mother holding his hand tightly. She’d brought a little basket of dumplings for his lunch, which he’s now clutching in his free hand, but she refuses to let go long enough for him to eat any.

He hears dogs barking from down an alley and tugs on his mother’s sleeve. “Mother, Mother, there are dogs down there! Can we go see them?”

“They’re probably strays,” Madame Jin tells him. “They can be dangerous, especially for children, so it’s better for us to stay away.” Before Jin Rong can complain, she turns back to the alley in one sharp movement. Something in her face shifts. “…A-Rong, stay close to me.” That said, she hurries down the alley towards the sound of barking. Did she change her mind?

As they get closer, Jin Rong begins to hear what she must have. There’s someone screaming, a high, reedy sound that must be coming from another kid. “N-no! Stay away! Get away from me! Help! Somebody, help me!”

Madame Jin draws her sword as the dogs come into view. They’re huge, hungry-looking beasts, nothing like his own pets back at Koi Tower, and Jin Rong shrinks into his mother’s side as she drives them off with a few quick slashes. The screaming dies down to whimpering, and he gets his first look at the kid. He looks young, and far dirtier than any child he’s ever seen. He’s definitely younger and dirtier than Jin Rong himself is, he notes with quiet satisfaction. Madame Jin kneels down and speaks soothingly, like she does when Jin Rong scrapes his knee during training. “Child, are you alright?”

The kid sniffles and wipes at his eyes, leaving smears of mud on his cheeks. “I’m okay…”

…That’s not mud, Jin Rong realizes. “You’re bleeding!”

Madame Jin nods, seeing the same thing he did. “What happened? Were you bitten? Here, let me see.”

“I-I’m okay,” the kid insists. “Really, I’m- Ow!” The last part comes as Jin Rong grabs his arm and yanks it forward so his mother can look.

“A-Rong!” Madame Jin snaps. She gently takes the kid’s arm, clicking her tongue at the sight of a deep bite. “Well, that looks painful. Here, let me…” She pulls a ribbon from her sleeve to bind the wound. “There. That should hold until we get you proper medical attention. Where are your parents?”

“Gone.”

“Gone?” Madame Jin echoes. “What do you mean?”

The kid shrugs. “They left on a night hunt, ages ago. I haven’t seen them since…”

Madame Jin takes a deep breath. “…I see. What’s your name, child?”

“Wei Ying!” the kid says.

“Wei Ying,” Madame Jin repeats. Jin Rong doesn’t understand why she cares so much. “Really?”

“Mhm!”

“Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze’s child?” Madame Jin presses.

"Mhm!” The kid nods. “D’you know them? When are they coming back?”

Something sad creeps over his mother’s face. “…I don’t think they are, A-Ying,” she says.

“Oh.” Wei Ying ducks his head. “…Are they dead?”

“I’m afraid so,” Madame Jin says gently.

“Oh,” Wei Ying repeats, very quietly. He sniffles quietly.

He’s not going to cry, is he? Jin Rong isn’t any good with crying people. He fumbles for his basket and pulls out a dumpling, which he holds out to the kid. “Here.”

“Eh?” Wei Ying stares at him, then at the dumpling. “Is that for me?”

“Just take it,” Jin Rong grumbles.

Wei Ying smiles at him, still a little teary-eyed. “Thank you, Rich-gege!”

It’s like the sun has just risen in the filthy alley. Wei Ying’s face lights up, his eyes shining as he bites into the dumpling. “It’s good!” he chirps around his mouthful. “It’s really, really good!”

Jin Rong manages to tear his eyes away from the brightest smile he’s ever seen long enough to catch his mother’s approving nod. “Do you… want more?” he asks.

“There’s more?!” Wei Ying steps closer, eyes wide. “It’s really okay if I have some? Even though they’re yours?”

“Why would I offer if it wasn’t okay?!” Jin Rong holds out the basket of dumplings.

Wei Ying takes it hesitantly and reaches in to pull one out. “Okay!”

He begins eating in quick bites. Jin Rong watches jealously. He’s hungry too! But his mother is looking at him with a proud smile, like he’s done something right. So he keeps watching, trying to ignore the way his stomach growls.

Wei Ying doesn’t ignore it, though. “Oh! Are you hungry, Rich-gege?” He glances into the basket, already half empty. “Sorry… I ate your food.” He holds it out. “You can have the rest, though!”

Jin Rong glances at his mother, then nods and takes the basket. She smiles at Wei Ying as he starts on the remaining dumplings. “A-Ying, do you have anywhere to stay?” Wei Ying shakes his head. “Would you like to come and stay with us?”

Wei Ying blinks at her. “Stay… with you and Rich-gege?”

“We have a huge house,” Jin Rong boasts. “With lots of servants and good food and warm beds!”

“And… I can stay there?” Wei Ying asks. “You don’t mind?”

“Of course,” Madame Jin says.

“Father won’t like it,” Jin Rong says.

Wei Ying flinches. Madame Jin frowns at Jin Rong. “What does that matter?” she asks. “Do you think I am beholden to your father’s wishes?” Jin Rong shakes his head quickly. Madame Jin nods and turns back to Wei Ying. “You don’t need to worry about him,” she says gently. “I’ll take care of everything.”

Wei Ying hesitates, looking away as he thinks. “It’s really okay?”

“It’s okay,” Madame Jin assures him.

Wei Ying smiles again. “Then… yes, please.” He giggles. “Please take me home with you!” He bows clumsily.

It’s cute. Sort of like when his dogs do tricks. Jin Rong glances at his mother, who smiles at both of them. “Well then, shall we go?”

“Mhm!”

Jin Rong nods. “Yeah, I want to go home.”

Madame Jin turns to leave the alley. Jin Rong follows. After a moment, a little hand takes his. He turns to see Wei Ying clinging to him. The kid smiles at him. “Is this okay?” he asks.

“…Sure,” Jin Rong decides.

Wei Ying giggles, grabbing onto Jin Rong’s arm more firmly. Jin Rong doesn’t bother to shake him off.

…

The sun has long since set when they return home. Wei Ying is exhausted by the time they reach the top of Koi Tower’s steps. So is Jin Rong, but he’s less exhausted, so he keeps his head up and looks superior as they stand before his father.

“My lady,” Jin Guangshan says. “You want to… adopt this child?” He says it like Madame Jin has suggested they roast and eat him.

“I am going to adopt this child,” Madame Jin says firmly.

“You know what people will say if you do this,” Jin Guangshan wheedles. “Everyone will think he’s mine, you know.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Madame Jin assures him. “I would never allow anyone to believe such nonsense.”

“My lady…”

Madame Jin turns to the children. “A-Rong, why don’t you show A-Ying around his new home?”

“My lady!”

“Go on,” she says, ignoring her husband. Jin Rong glances between the two of them, then turns to Wei Ying. The kid has his head down, swaying on his feet from exhaustion, staring at the floor like he can convince it to swallow him if he begs it hard enough. He’s still filthy; the three of them were brought to Jin Guangshan almost immediately, leaving the servants to prepare a bath in Jin Rong’s room.

Jin Rong grabs his hand and tugs him toward the door. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll take you to my room.”

“Okay.” Wei Ying follows him obediently.

They walk until the sound of arguing fades into the distance. The servants look at them oddly, the heir to the sect walking hand in hand with a filthy beggar boy. Jin Rong glares at anyone who does, but if Wei Ying notices he’s ignoring it.

“Here,” Jin Rong says, stopping in front of his bedroom door.

“This is your room?” Wei Ying asks.

“Yeah,” Jin Rong says. He reaches for the door.

There’s a bark from the other side, and Wei Ying goes pale. “D-dog!”

“She’s not like those dogs on the street,” Jin Rong tells him, a little annoyed. His puppy is a good girl, she’d never bite!

Before he can inform Wei Ying of this, the puppy gets tired of waiting for him to open the door enough for her to get out and throws her full weight against it. Jin Rong loses his grip as the door flies open and his puppy leaps out, barking joyously.

Wei Ying screams. He scrambles to hide behind Jin Rong, arms wrapping around his neck so tightly he can barely breathe. “Help!” he wails. “Help, help, save me! Rich-gege, make it go away!”

“Calm down!” Jin Rong snaps. “And let go of me!”

“I can’t!” Wei Ying cries. “Scary, it’s so scary! Gege, make it stop!”

“Fine!” He turns to the puppy. “Sit!”

She sits. Wei Ying doesn’t let go of him. Jin Rong groans. “What now?”

“Make it go away!” Wei Ying whines. “Please make it go away!”

“Alright, alright!” He waves a hand at the puppy. He’d pet her, but when he tries to step closer Wei Ying shrieks and yanks desperately at his clothes until he stops. “Go to the kennels! The kennels! Good girl!”

He’s glad Father got him a spiritual dog; he can’t imagine how hard it would be to get a regular dog to the kennels with Wei Ying clinging to him. At least he’s light.

…He’s very light, actually. Definitely lighter than Jin Rong, as well as shorter and scrawnier. He should talk to his mother about that. Maybe Wei Ying needs more food, like when Jin Rong found that little puppy whose mother hadn’t been feeding him. If Wei Ying didn’t have a mother to feed him before then he probably didn’t get enough, right? If he’s really going to be Jin Rong’s little brother then it’s his job to look after him! He doesn’t want Wei Ying to die!

While he’s been thinking, his puppy has slunk off towards the kennels. He makes a note to bring her some treats later; it’s not her fault his new brother doesn’t like her! “There, she’s gone! Will you get off now?”

Wei Ying all but throws himself off him. “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to bother you!”

“It’s… fine.” He’s still a little annoyed, but who’s going to make a fuss looking at those big eyes, still wide and bright with tears from the fright? Who could upset him more over something this small? It’s not like he can’t see his dogs, he just has to keep them away from Wei Ying! Or teach him not to be scared of them! He can do that! “Don’t worry about it.”

“Really?” Wei Ying blinks at him. “You… You can call it back if you want…”

“I don’t want you screaming in my ear all night,” Jin Rong scoffs.

“All… night?”

“Well, why would we get a bath ready for you here if you were sleeping somewhere else?” Jin Rong asks. “Or would you rather sleep in the hall?”

“N-no!” Wei Ying says quickly. “If you’re really okay with me staying in your room…”

It occurs to Jin Rong that he doesn’t actually know if his mother has had another room prepared for Wei Ying or not. But it’s too late now! He’s already said that Wei Ying can stay in his room, and Madame Jin always says that a good sect leader keeps his word! So he’ll share with Wei Ying, at least just for tonight.

He manages to usher Wei Ying into the bedroom and to the tub of water without any more issues. While the younger boy bathes, he grabs a set of his own inner robes for him; it’s not like there’s anything else for him to wear other than the dirty rags he brought with him. What would be the point of bathing if he’s just going to put on filthy clothes again?

When Wei Ying finally emerges from the bath, clean with his hair still wet and dressed in Jin Rong’s too-big clothes, Jin Rong is considering the next problem: he’s only got one bed.

“Um… I can sleep on the floor…” Wei Ying offers, glancing from Jin Rong to the bed and back again. “I’m used to stuff like that.”

“Mother says guests always get first priority,” Jin Rong says as haughtily as he can. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“But it’s your room!”

“Shut up!” Jin Rong snaps. “I said you could take the bed so you take the bed! Stop arguing!”

“O-okay!” Wei Ying scurries over to the bed. “Um… good night.”

“…Good night.”

Jin Rong blows out the candles as Wei Ying settles into bed. He giggles, nuzzling into the sheets. “Your bed is so nice!”

Jin Rong shrugs, even though Wei Ying probably can’t see him in the dark. “It’s okay.”

“You must be really rich, Gege,” Wei Ying sighs. “If this is only okay…”

“Go to sleep already,” Jin Rong grumbles. “I’m tired, and I can’t sleep with you chattering.”

“Sorry, sorry!” Wei Ying says. “I can’t help it, I haven’t had anyone to talk to in ages and ages! Am I bothering you?”

“Shut uuuuuuuuuup!” Jin Rong groans. He climbs onto the bed to throw a hand over Wei Ying’s mouth.

Wei Ying yelps and tries to squirm away, but Jin Rong pins him down without too much trouble. It’s nice to be stronger than someone. “Hey, let go!”

“Not until you stop talking!” Jin Rong says.

Wei Ying grabs the arm Jin Rong is using to hold himself up and pulls, knocking him off balance and onto his side on the bed. “I’ll stop talking when you stop talking!”

“You-!” Jin Rong considers punching the younger boy, but decides against it. “I’m not moving,” he says, closing his eyes.

He gets the sense that Wei Ying is eyeing him closely. “…Me neither,” he says eventually. A hand creeps into his hesitantly. “Good night, Gege.”

Jin Rong sighs and squeezes Wei Ying’s hand. “Good night.”

(He wakes the next morning to Wei Ying’s head on his shoulder, their hands still clasped together. Somehow, despite the bruises from being kicked at some point in the night, he can’t bring himself to mind.)

#twin treasures v 1 #(yeah that's what i'll be tagging them as for now)

[gingersnapwolves]

The Untamed, a brief summary [part 6/6]

Part One: Sword Wizard School

Part Two:  The Search for the Yin Iron and the World’s Worst Summer Camp

Part Three: The Fall of Lotus Pier and the Sunshot Campaign

Part Four: The Downward Spiral

Part Five: Mo Manor, Hungry Sabers, and Yi City

Part Six: The Hidden Room, Burial Mounds Redux, and Guanyin Temple

Ext, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and Lan Xichen roll up to Koi Tower. Jiang Cheng is already there and decides to make it awkward for everyone by asking the Lans to introduce the masked Wei Wuxian, even though a) he knows or is at least pretty damn sure it’s Wei Wuxian, b) he knows that they know it’s Wei Wuxian, and c) he doesn’t know if they know that he knows. Thanks for making me type that sentence, Jiang Cheng.

ENTER A WOMAN WHO SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN A BETTER PRE-NUP

Jin Guangyao comes out. He still has a great smile and he and Lan Xichen are still cute together. But it gets really awkward because, if you’ll remember (and I don’t blame you if you don’t), Wei Wuxian is pretending to be Mo Xuanyu, who is Jin Guangyao’s half-brother who got thrown out of Koi Tower for bad behavior. How bad? Well, apparently Mo Xuanyu had a habit of harassing Jin Guangyao’s wife, Qin Su. Whoops.

Of course, it’s difficult to say whether or not Mo Xuanyu actually did this, since all we have to go on is what people say about him, and ‘maybe don’t believe every rumor you hear’ is like the main thesis of this show.

 Int, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Nie Huaisang shows up too, and throws himself at Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen because “the old problems are solved, but new problems have arrived!” He is a drunk mess and it’s a little embarrassing for everyone.

 Ext, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Jin Ling is being bullied. Wei Wuxian tells him that he should beat the bullies up, because once you’re an adult you can’t just beat people up anymore and it sucks. He teaches Jin Ling some moves and they have some nice nephew-uncle bonding time, even if Wei Wuxian is pretending to be a different uncle from the one he actually is.

 Int, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian uses a little paper man talisman spell to sneak into Jin Guangyao’s rooms. His wife is there and she’s upset about a letter she got. Jin Guangyao comes in and they argue about it. She keeps asking if what’s in it is true, and what happened to their son. He keeps asking her who wrote the letter and saying whoever it was only trying to upset her. When she won’t back down or answer his question, he burns the letter and then puts some sort of trance spell on her. Then he takes her into a hidden room behind a mirror.

The room is full of all sorts of treasure, including Wei Wuxian’s old sword, and more important, Nie Mingjue’s head. Yeah, just his head, with blinders over its eyes and everything. It’s weird. Wei Wuxian does a spell called Empathy to communicate with the dead guy.

  Int, Nie Mingjue’s mind [currently Lanling]

We see flashbacks to him first meeting and promoting Meng Yao, who was getting bullied by the other soldiers, then to the day he exiled Meng Yao (with slight differences from the way it was presented earlier because unreliable narration is fun). We see them argue a few times over the years, then see Jin Guangyao playing music for Nie Mingjue (ostensibly to keep him from qi deviation). They get into a big fight, Nie Mingjue throws Jin Guangyao down the steps of Koi Tower, but then his brain basically explodes. Jin Guangyao looks pretty satisfied with how things are turning out but then Nie Huaisang runs up, shouting for his brother, and Jin Guangyao switches to looking super worried instead. He keeps Nie Huaisang from running to his brother, saying he won’t recognize him. Then Nie Mingjue is held down in the treasure room we’re currently in, still alive and fighting qi deviation, and Jin Guangyao tells Xue Yang to kill him (with Baxia, which Xue Yang is holding), which he does.

  Int, the hidden room [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian separates his mind from Nie Mingjue’s and says ‘well that was fucked up’.

Jin Guangyao notices the little paper man and starts trying to catch it, or stab it. Wei Wuxian manages to use the paper man to manipulate his own former sword, which is very cool, and get away.

Jin Guangyao is like ‘gee, who could that have been, using Wei Wuxian’s paper man talisman to wield Wei Wuxian’s sword?’

  Int, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji about all the fucked up stuff he just witnessed. They go to force their way into the hidden chamber. Lan Xichen catches up with them on the way. A bunch of Jin disciples try to stop them, including Jin Ling. Lan Xichen asks Jin Guangyao to let them in if he has nothing to hide. Jin Guangyao tries to demur, but Lan Xichen insists. With so many witnesses, he’s left with no choice.

  Int, the hidden room [Lanling]

Nie Mingjue’s head is gone, but Qin Su is still there. Wei Wuxian goes over to try to talk to her, and Su She (remember this guy? Betrayed the Lan sect way back when, made friends with Jin Guangyao afterwards) says that ‘Mo Xuanyu’ just wanted to harass Qin Su some more. While Jin Guangyao is showing off a knife that’s part of his treasure, Qin Su grabs it and uses it to kill herself.

Everyone is super fucked up about this. (Don’t forget, Jin Ling is there! This 16 year old is having a Time of it.) Lan Xichen is like ‘holy shit my best friend’s wife just killed herself in front of me’ and Wei Wuxian basically blue-screens trying to figure out if she did that to herself because of whatever was in the letter, or if Jin Guangyao somehow coerced her to do it with the trance spell. (Unclear! Draw what conclusions you will.)

Jin Guangyao, who is either really upset or the world’s best actor (or both) asks them why they demanded to come into the treasure hall and what the fuck is going on. People outside, who have heard the commotion, come running in, including Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng (who looks at Wei Wuxian like ‘I leave you alone for five fucking minutes and now there’s a dead woman’).

Lan Xichen explains about the sword spirit and the body in Yi City and how they were looking for Nie Mingjue’s head. Jin Guangyao asks ‘did you really think I had our sworn brother’s head in my treasure room?’ Lan Xichen looks at his best friend cradling his dead wife that yes, he was in fact about to accuse of such a thing, and looks like he’s going to be physically ill. (Lan Wangji, however, is staring Jin Guangyao down like ‘listen up you lying asshole’ and Wei Wuxian is just impressed he’s found someone who’s even more shameless about crime than he is.)

Jin Guangyao takes the opportunity to blame ‘Mo Xuanyu’ for everything. He pulls his sword on Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji steps between them. Wei Wuxian tries to de-escalate things but it doesn’t work for shit because Su She attacks him, and he grabs his old sword off the display to protect himself. This is a Big Deal because the sword sealed itself when he died, so nobody except Wei Wuxian would be able to draw it. Oops. (Wei Wuxian has a sad moment with his sword for being so loyal, even though he was unable to use it for years before his death, since he had no golden core.) Then they run outside because fuck this shit.

  Ext, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Jin Guangyao reassures Jin Ling that it’s not his fault he got tricked by Wei Wuxian, because Wei Wuxian is so evil and everything. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji try to get away but get surrounded. Jin Guangyao again calls Wei Wuxian out on being Wei Wuxian, so he takes off his mask. Everyone acts shocked even though 90% of the characters already knew this.

The Jin cultivators surround him. Wei Wuxian pushes Lan Wangji away and says to tell them that he didn’t know who Wei Wuxian was and that he was tricked by him. Lan Wangji refuses, immediately telling everyone he knew damn well that Wei Wuxian was Wei Wuxian and what the fuck are they gonna do about it? Wei Wuxian still tries to get him to leave, and Lan Wangji runs up to the line of what the Chinese censors will allow in terms of declarations of devotion between two men and plays gay chicken with it. He and Wei Wuxian smile at each other. Jin Guangyao has a ‘really? Right in front of my salad?’ look on his face.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji fight off the Jin guys but then Jin Ling stabs Wei Wuxian in the stomach. It sucks for everybody. Lan Wangji grabs him and they run away.

 Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Lan Wangji has taken Wei Wuxian back here to heal. Lan Xichen is there, too, and says that it was with his permission. But he’s clearly pretty upset about what happened at Koi Tower, since he’s the one who forced Jin Guangyao to open the treasure room on Wei Wuxian’s word, and now he kind of looks like an asshole. He and Lan Wangji come as close to a fight as they’re capable of getting in. Lan Wangji thinks Lan Xichen should believe Wei Wuxian. Lan Xichen points out that he’s known Jin Guangyao for nearly 20 years at this point and he trusts him. Since neither of them saw Nie Mingjue’s head with their own eyes, they cannot know which of the two (Wei Wuxian or Jin Guangyao) is lying. It’s frustrating, but Lan Xichen has good reason to be wary, considering that witch hunts are what led to everything that happened to Wei Wuxian in the first place. In fact, Wei Wuxian is much less upset about it than Lan Wangji.

He tells Lan Xichen what he saw while using Empathy, and plays the Song of Clarity (the qi-deviation prevention music that Jin Guangyao was playing in the memories). Lan Xichen said he played it wrong and Wei Wuxian said he played it exactly as he heard it in the memory. They realize Jin Guangyao altered the song to cause qi deviation instead of prevent it. Lan Xichen still finds this pretty hard to believe, but he says he’ll test the version Wei Wuxian heard on himself and see what happens.

Lan Xichen walks Wei Wuxian back to where he’s been stashed, and Wei Wuxian takes the opportunity to ask him why Lan Wangji has so many whip scars. Lan Xichen explains that after Wei Wuxian died, Lan Wangji flipped his shit a bit and prevented all the other sects from sacking Wei Wuxian’s cave of neat stuff. It’s a bit vague but you get the impression he might have beaten up some important people. So Lan Qiren punished him with a whipping and three years of seclusion in the back hills of Cloud Recesses. Then they show him being beaten because sometimes this show’s continuity is not great.

(Lan Xichen is like ‘hey, you know my brother’s in love with you, right? I mean, only an idiot could not know that. But you really seem to be an idiot. Let me tell you a story about how our mother killed a guy and our father insisted on protecting her anyway. Please use your lone brain cell to connect the dots.’)

Lan Wangji comes back with booze for Wei Wuxian. They talk a bit about Lan Xichen, and Lan Wangji asks if they should tell him about the second flute. He talked to Wen Ning, who told him that he heard two flutes playing at Qiongqi Way. Wei Wuxian says he wanted to know at first, but now he’s not sure it matters. No matter what, people will always say he’s evil, but at least Lan Wangji still believes in him. He says to Lan Wangji ‘I’m sorry, and thank you’.

  Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Jin Guangyao has turned up, and says he definitely believes Lan Xichen that Wei Wuxian isn’t there, but maybe they could take a look anyway, to reassure the other clans? Lan Xichen doesn’t even dignify it. Then Jin Guangyao says that they’re all going to band together and do a siege on the Burial Mounds because strange things have been happening there, fierce corpses are roaming, and obviously Wei Wuxian is there and up to no good. Obviously Lan Xichen knows that this is not true since Wei Wuxian has been convalescing at Cloud Recesses. He is fucked up by the fact that Jin Guangyao is lying straight to his face and he really can’t deny it. Jin Guangyao leaves, and Lan Xichen says he’s going to go to Koi Tower, while Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian plan to go to the Burial Mounds.

  Ext, some random cabin [somewhere]

They meet up with Mianmian. She’s got a husband and a daughter and is a badass rogue cultivator. There’s really no point to this scene but it’s nice to see that at least one female character got a happy ending.

Then they meet up with Wen Ning, who’s been trying to scare people away from the area so they don’t encounter the fierce corpses that Jin Guangyao has raised with the yin iron (to make people think Wei Wuxian was doing it). They head to the Burial Mounds together.

  Ext, the Burial Mounds [Yiling]

Wei Wuxian and company find all the juniors tied up in the cave, and they say they were abducted but they’re not sure who was behind it. Then an absolute fuckton of cultivators show up, including Jiang Cheng, Lan Qiren, Su She, and Nie Huaisang (who says he’s just there to make up the numbers). They’re all shouting about how they want Wei Wuxian dead for all the crime he committed last time around. Jin Guangyao’s not there because ‘someone tried to assassinate him’ that morning, and Lan Xichen is tending to his injuries. Wei Wuxian looks extremely skeptical.

Then they get attacked by fierce corpses. The gathered cultivators realize that they’ve all had their spiritual power leached away by ill-gotten means. Ruh-roh! They all end up hiding in the cave.

  Int, the Burial Mounds [Yiling]

Wei Wuxian sits everyone down for an Agatha Christie reveal. He deduces that Su She is the one who took away their spiritual power, by playing malicious music on their way up the mountain. Su She denies it but Wei Wuxian tricks him into revealing that his own power is still intact.

Su She ruins the protection seal and then uses the teleportation talisman and bounces. Wen Ning tries to fight off the horde with some help from the juniors, who still have their spiritual power, but there are too many. Wei Wuxian paints a lure flag on himself and uses himself as bait, with Lan Wangji killing the fierce corpses, so the others can escape. When he catches up, he half-collapses into Lan Sizhui’s arms and Lan Sizhui is really worried about him. It’s cute. Wen Ning looks at Lan Sizhui and realizes he’s actually Wen Yuan.

  Ext, some docks [Yunmeng]

They’re heading back to Lotus Pier to figure out what to do. Wen Ning comes over to talk to Lan Sizhui. The juniors are scared of him but decide he seems harmless enough, and he did just help them fight the horde, after all. He tells Lan Sizhui that he looks like a cousin of his.

The parents tell their kids to stop associating with evil, and the kids tell their parents to get a grip, and it’s beautiful.

  Ext, Lotus Pier [Yunmeng]

Jiang Cheng won’t allow Wei Wuxian in, so he and Lan Wangji hang out on the steps. Wen Ning tells Lan Sizhui stories about the little boy that Wei Wuxian used to plant in the dirt.

  Int, Lotus Pier [Yunmeng]

Some mysterious ladies show up. Jiang Cheng talks to them for a while and then gathers everybody together (although he still makes Wei Wuxian basically stand in the doorway).

Mysterious lady A is a prostitute who was there when Jin Guangshan died. Basically Jin Guangyao had his father fucked to death. It’s gross, although to be fair, couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Then all the prostitutes except her were murdered. (Why she was spared is actually never explained in the show. It’s because she was friends with Jin Guangyao’s mother and was nice to him when he was a kid.)

Mysterious lady B is a maid who worked for Qin Su’s mother. She tells everyone that she wrote the letter to Qin Su, telling her that her mother had a secret. Qin Su is not the daughter of the man she always thought, but was actually conceived during an act of rape by Jin Guangshan. She and Jin Guangyao were half-siblings. It’s strongly implied (although never outright stated if I recall correctly) that their son had some developmental delays because of this and Jin Guangyao had him killed so nobody would find out. He then blamed his son’s death on a sect that was opposing him on some political stuff and wiped them out.

Everyone is Big Time Shook over all this news. They immediately begin calling for Jin Guangyao’s head.

Wei Wuxian is frankly disgusted. Because sure, he thinks Jin Guangyao’s evil and everything, but it’s sickening to him how quickly everyone turns against him, just based on a few rumors – so much like what happened to him. He wants to know where the ladies came from, and why they came forward after so much time has gone by. But in the end he acknowledges that the gathered cultivators being against Jin Guangyao helps him, and he can’t convince them of anything anyway, so whatever.

They go to the ancestral shrine so he can pay his respects to his parents. Jiang Cheng finds him there and picks a big fight. It’s really painful for everyone. After the first couple minutes, Wei Wuxian tries to leave but Jiang Cheng won’t let him go. Wei Wuxian ends up passing out. Lan Wangji tries to leave with him but Jiang Cheng is using the lightning whip to try to stop them.

Wen Ning shows up and he’s pissed. He tells Jiang Cheng the truth about his golden core, in basically the meanest way possible, directly targeting his insecurities with dead accuracy. It’s fucking brutal. Was Jiang Cheng being a dick? Yes. Did he deserve everything that Wen Ning said to him in this scene? Not really, given that it wasn’t his fault he didn’t know. (Does Wen Ning have a right to be pissed at Jiang Cheng on general principle because Jiang Cheng didn’t help him and his family back then? Now we’re getting into the reams of meta that are written about this show.)

Anyway, in telling Jiang Cheng, Lan Wangji finally finds out, too. He’s clearly horrified to find out that Wei Wuxian went through something so awful and he didn’t even know. He picks Wei Wuxian up and they leave.

  Ext, a boat [Yunmeng]

Wen Ning gives Lan Wangji the details about the golden core swap. Lan Wangji looks like he wants to cry for an hour. I feel you, Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian wakes up and tells Lan Wangji not to be mad at Jiang Cheng, he’s just a jerk sometimes. He wants to pick lotus seeds but Lan Wangji reminds him that the lake they’re on belongs to someone and so the lotus seeds are private property. Then he picks some and gives them to Wei Wuxian anyway. It’s super romantic. Wen Ning pretends he’s not the world’s thirdest wheel.

  Ext, Yunping City [Yunmeng]

So while Wei Wuxian was in the hidden room, he saw a deed for a temple in this city. They figure it has to be important since it was in Jin Guangyao’s safe, so they go to check it out. It has a weird vibe.

  Ext, Guanyin Temple [Yunmeng]

Literally so much happens in this scene you guys. It’s almost 4 entire episodes long. Let me try to sum up as quickly as possible.

First of all, the show never actually bothers to explain why Jin Guangyao is even here. It’s actually because this is where his mother is buried (and he had the temple built just for that). He’s planning to go on the run because the jig is obviously up, and wants to bring her remains with him. He also wants to get one last date with Lan Xichen in, possibly apologize for ruining everything, et c. Lan Xichen was with him in Koi Tower, and Jin Guangyao tricked him and sealed his spiritual power, then carted him off to the temple. Romance!

Anyway Jin Guangyao doesn’t get that date because literally everybody in the damn story shows up. First Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, for obvious reasons. He has Lan Xichen as a hostage so it’s pretty easy to catch them. Then Jin Ling shows up. Then Su She shows up, which is less problematic since he’s a henchman, but he brought Nie Huaisang with him because he found him passed out in a gutter or something. Jin Guangyao can’t just kill Jin Ling and Nie Huaisang because he still has feelings I guess.

Then Jiang Cheng shows up! He makes a grand entrance and then promptly gets his ass kicked. This is partly because Jin Guangyao tells Wei Wuxian that Jiang Cheng found out about the golden core thing, which upsets him. Lan Xichen tells everybody not to let Jin Guangyao talk because he’ll manipulate you and get the better of you. Everyone proceeds to let Jin Guangyao talk for the next forty-five minutes.

At some point during all this they confirm that yes, Jin Guangyao sent Jin Zixuan to Qiongqi  Way to get him killed, and that Su She was his accomplice playing the evil music. Su She is also the one who cursed Jin Zixun. Jin Guangyao’s basically like “whatever, I said what I said”.

They finally get the coffin dug up, but instead of Jin Guangyao’s mother, Nie Mingjue’s body, complete with head, is inside. Jin Guangyao has no idea how he got there and he freaks out, which seems reasonable.

Wei Wuxian points out that while Jin Guangyao has been so impressed with himself and neatly manipulated everyone around him, someone has been pulling his strings as well. He points out the letter sent to Qin Su, the emergence of the mysterious ladies at Lotus Pier, the release of the sword spirit at Mo Manor, even his own resurrection. Jin Guangyao freaks out more.

At this point they’ve dicked around long enough for Lan Xichen’s spiritual power to come back. He puts his sword at Jin Guangyao’s throat. Jin Guangyao makes sad ‘you don’t like me anymore?’ eyes at Lan Xichen. Lan Xichen responds ‘dude, you killed, like, everybody’. Jin Guangyao admits that this is a fair rebuttal, but begs his forgiveness and pity anyway. Lan Xichen seems to forget that he literally just told everyone not to let Jin Guangyao talk because he’ll manipulate you.

Then Wen Ning shows up, and he’s been possessed by the sword spirit. He chops Jin Guangyao’s arm off. Ouch. Then he attacks Jin Ling, because the sword is just pissed off about everything, which seems fair. Wen Ning manages to fight off the possession and not kill Jin Ling, so good for him. Wei Wuxian gets the sword suppressed using his awesome mojo.

Lan Sizhui shows up at some point. I really don’t remember why the hell he’s there. Late night field trip?

Nie Huaisang screams that Su She attacked him, and his leg is bleeding. The sword springs right back to angry spiritude and murders Su She. Wei Wuxian is like “wtf I just put you to bed” and has to do it again.

Lan Xichen patches Nie Huaisang up. Everyone else sits around thinking about how truly fucked up the last 2 hours have been, especially Jin Ling, who is really having trouble with realizing one of his uncles was evil and not the one he thought. He is going through it. Meanwhile Jin Guangyao is kind of slumped against a pillar behind Lan Xichen because somehow he is not dead after losing an arm, which seems kind of whack when you consider what killed some of our other characters.

Then Nie Huaisang shouts, “behind you!” and Lan Xichen, assuming that Jin Guangyao is about to attack him, whips around and stabs him through the chest. Double ouch. Jin Guangyao is, understandably, upset at being run through. Nie Huaisang says he had a knife but Jin Guangyao calls bullshit (yes, while being run through, I don’t even know), saying even though he’s done tons of terrible things, he never once hurt Lan Xichen. Meanwhile Lan Xichen is having a complete mental breakdown, standing there with his sword in Jin Guangyao’s chest. Jin Guangyao realizes that Nie Huaisang is the one who orchestrated all this, in revenge after Jin Guangyao killed his brother. Also the angry spirits are back. A lot is happening. The temple starts to collapse. Jin Guangyao asks Lan Xichen to die with him, and it looks like Lan Xichen is going to do so, but then Jin Guangyao pushes him clear at the last second. Lan Wangji grabs him and gets him out of the temple before it collapses.

  Ext, Guanyin Temple [Yunmeng]

Everyone is injured and in various states of shell shock. A ton of people show up and start fussing. Wei Wuxian reveals that the last curse mark from Mo Xuanyu is gone, indicating that Jin Guangyao was the last person Mo Xuanyu was holding a grudge against. (Presumably for throwing him out of the Jin sect and back to his abusive family, which Jin Guangyao presumably did because Mo Xuanyu found out about Qin Su’s parentage, which presumably Nie Huaisang told him. I know, it’s a lot of presuming. I’m trying not to be biased and pass judgment lol.)

Lan Xichen asks Nie Huaisang if Jin Guangyao really had a knife. Nie Huaisang prevaricates rather than answering.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are leaving. Jin Ling asks Jiang Cheng if he doesn’t want to talk to Wei Wuxian before he leaves. Jiang Cheng says everyone is going back to where they belong. He flashes back to just after his parents were killed, when he vanished from the inn, and we see him realize Wei Wuxian was about to get caught and lure the soldiers away. All this time we thought he just wandered off and got captured like an asshole, but no, he was saving Wei Wuxian and never told anybody. In the present, he says ‘take care’ to himself as Wei Wuxian leaves. Five thousand ‘Yunmeng bros reconciliation’ fics spring into existence.

  Ext, the forest [presumably still Yunmeng]

Lan Sizhui approaches Wei Wuxian and tells him what little he’s remembered about his childhood, and that he’s realized his family name used to be Wen. Wei Wuxian realizes that he’s Wen Yuan, and that Lan Wangji saved him back then. It’s super touching and I happy cried, like, so much.

  Ext, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are standing around by the waterfall acting married. Lan Wangji is chief cultivator now. Wei Wuxian has finally figured out how Lan Wangji recognized him even though he was wearing a mask when they first met up again – it’s because the song he was playing is the same song that Lan Wangji sang to him in the cave of the murder turtle. Lan Wangji actually wrote that song just for him and has never played it for anybody else.

Nie Huaisang comes for a visit. Wei Wuxian asks him if he wants to be chief cultivator. Nie Huaisang tells them that no, he was really only in it for the revenge. It’s awkward, especially given all the morally questionable choices Nie Huaisang made while on his revenge quest and the fact that Lan Xichen is super fucked up about everything, but we all hope that they’ll eventually work it out. Or at least I hope that. Your mileage may vary.

  Ext, a mountain [the world]

Wei Wuxian goes off to wander for a little while. The show really makes us think that it’ll end with the two of them splitting up, but then at the very last second they meet again. We all collapse into sobbing, emotional heaps.

 ~end of part 6~

Characters/naming notes, as promised

I use the Mandarin for names and titles in fanfiction because it just reads better. Some of these don’t have an exact translation, so, the original is better, here are the basic terms you need to know:

Zongzhu = sect leader

Gongzi = young master

Furen = madam

Guniang = maiden/miss

Ge = older brother

Jie = older sister

Xiong = kind of like “bro” in a friendly sort of way

Da, Er, San = first, second, third – these are used in conjunction with the above, so “da-ge” is “oldest brother”, “Lan-er-gongzi” is “second young master Lan”

A- = an affectionate diminutive

Wei Wuxian (courtesy name)

Birth name: Wei Ying (only Lan Wangji calls him this)

Title: Yiling-laozu (used mostly in the second half of the show)

Also called: Wei-gongzi (by Lan Xichen, Wen Ning, and assorted others), Wei-xiong (by Nie Huaisang), A-Xian (by Jiang Yanli)

Lan Wangji (courtesy name)

Birth name: Lan Zhan (only Wei Wuxian calls him this)

Title: Hanguang-Jun (by the juniors and various others)

Also called: Lan-er-gongzi (by various characters)

Jiang Cheng (birth name)

Courtesy name: Jiang Wanyin (Lan Wangji calls him this)

Also called: Jiang-gongzi before he’s sect leader, Jiang-zongzhu afterwards, A-Cheng (by Jiang Yanli)

Jiang Yanli (only name given, not specific if birth or courtesy)

Also called: a-jie (by Jiang Cheng), shijie (by Wei Wuxian), Jiang-guniang (by pretty much everyone else)

Lan Xichen (courtesy name)

Birth name: Lan Huan, but nobody uses this

Title: Zewu-Jun (most people use this)

Also called: Lan-zongzhu (I think a few people use this instead of his title), xiongzhang (by Lan Wangji, this is a formal word for older brother), er-ge (by Jin Guangyao)

Wen Qing (only name given, birth)

Also called: Wen-guniang (by Jiang Cheng), jiejie or just jie (by Wen Ning)

Wen Ning (birth name)

Courtesy name: Wen Qionglin (used very rarely)

Title: Ghost General (never used to his face, I don’t think)

Also called: A-Ning (by Wen Qing)

Nie Huaisang (only name given, courtesy)

Also called: Nie-xiong (by Wei Wuxian), Nie-gongzi (by assorted others)

Nie Mingjue (only name given, courtesy)

Title: Chifeng-Zun (called this by many people)

Also called: Nie-zongzhu (by Meng Yao and others), Mingjue-xiong (by Lan Xichen), da-ge (by Nie Huaisang, then later by Lan Xichen and Meng Yao)

Jin Zixuan (only name given, courtesy)

Also called: Jin-gongzi (by most people)

Meng Yao (birth name)

Later in series, courtesy name: Jin Guangyao (used commonly)

Title: Lianfang-Zun (used occasionally)

Also called: A-Yao (by Lan Xichen), Xiandu (after he becomes Chief Cultivator), Jin-zongzhu at some point probably

Hoo boy all. That was a lot, huh? “I’ll write a brief summary,” she said. 20 thousand words later ... but this was as condensed as I could make it without it reading too disjointedly! So I hope you’ve all enjoyed and that this will help those of you who want to plunge into the fandom but didn’t have the time or the spoons for the show itself. 

If you have any questions about something that wasn’t clear or a part of the story you want more detail on, feel free to ask me anything!

Love y’all!

#liveblog #the untamed

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

1- you know JC stans always try to deflect claiming LQR LXC LWJ and NMJ are all equally at fault bc they didn't stand for trhe wens either but JC and WWX are literally the only two people who know the truth about the wen sibs and he decided not to tell anyone so the public has no means of knowing everything they did and risked for him, they literally committed treason to save the jiang sect and protect them from the wen army but in the eyes of the public they are known as loyal disciples to WRH-

Thank you for the question anon!

Relevant passages in regards to this issue posted first since a lot of it gets very misconstrued with what blame lies where with the Sect Leaders before the events when it came to the massacre at Nightless City and the deaths of the Wen Remnants. This is not necessarily clean cut after the fallout with Jin Zixuan and Jin Zixun's deaths. This is also still with the underlying plot of Jin Guangshan aiming for the Yin Hu Fu. There is a lot of political intrigue that goes ignored with this by manipulation of the Jin Sect and Jiang Cheng being blinded by his own jealousy.

“… Four inspectors were harmed. Around fifty of the remaining Wen Sect members escaped. After Wei WuXian led them into Burial Mound, he summoned hundreds of fierce corpses to patrol the base of the mountain. Our people still can’t get any further.”

“… Four inspectors were harmed. Around fifty of the remaining Wen Sect members escaped. After Wei WuXian led them into Burial Mound, he summoned hundreds of fierce corpses to patrol the base of the mountain. Our people still can’t get any further.”

When he finished, silence filled the Golden Pavilion.

Jiang Cheng only spoke after a few moments, “What he did was indeed a bit too much. Sect Leader Jin, I apologize to you in place of him. If there’s any way at all to help the situation, please let me know. I’ll definitely compensate for things however I can.”

What Jin GuangShan wanted, however, wasn’t his apology or his compensation, “Sect Leader Jiang, at first, for your sake, the LanlingJin Sect didn’t intend on saying anything. However, some of these inspectors weren’t from the Jin Sect. There were a few from other sects as well. This makes it…”

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 these 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.

Passage 2:

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 ‘favors 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 The Burial Mounds and deal with this.”

Here the sect leaders were aware of the Wen Sect remnants as prisoners of war and saw it as a justifiable reason to keep the remaining Wens imprisoned regardless of age status etc. When Jiang Cheng is asked by Nie Mingjue for clarification on the matter of the debt owed by the Wen siblings it is deflected by Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao with clever wordplay to rile everyone up. This leaves those who either asked for more information, Lan Xichen who is shutdown by not having enough information by the majority and Nie Mingjue distracted by his hate of the Wens already, and Mianmian and Lan Wangji who argued that Wei Wuxian was protecting innocents and was not trying to cause a coup ignored as being irrelevant opinions. Wei Wuxian is eventually labelled a defector and danger due to Jiang Cheng exasperating what they had actually planned in the staged fight.

After this several months pass until Lan Wangji comes to tell Wei Wuxian of Jiang Yanli's marriage in a week's time. Several days later the Jiang siblings arrive with the same news and Jiang Yanli is the one to extend a peace branch to try keeping the three connected with the courtesy naming or Jin Ling. Almost a year's time later Wei Wuxian is in fact invited to the one-month celebration as another peace branch by Jin Zixuan who was the one to extend the offer. Jin Guangshan, Jin Zixun and Jin Guangyao planned the murder of Wei Wuxian in Qiongqi Pass against Jin Zixuan's knowledge. This leads to the mess of his murder and Wei Wuxian being hunted down as well as all of the remaining Wens on order of Jin Guangshan in retaliation after Wen Qing is killed as the remaining leader of the Wens and Wen Ning secretly suppressed. This leads to days later to the Pledge Conference at the city which holds Jin Zixuan's body and Jiang Yanli who is there to keep the death vigils (Shou Ling) as family. It's also why her and Madam Jin are wearing the white robes when Wei Wuxian sees them and by bad luck comes across the sect leaders pact when he tries to flee.

After the the wine had seeped into the dirt, Jin GuangShan stated, “No matter the sect, no matter the surname—this cup of wine is to the soldiers who have died.”

Nie MingJue, “May their souls live on.”

Lan XiChen, “Rest in peace.”

Jiang Cheng, however, still had on a darkened expression. He didn’t say anything even after he poured the wine.

Afterward, Jin GuangYao walked out from the LanlingJin Sect’s array and presented with both hands a square box made of black iron. Jin GuangShan took the box with one hand and raised it high in the air, shouting, “Here lies the ashes of the Wen Sect’s remnants!”

After he spoke, he sent forth his spiritual energy and shattered the box with his bare hand. The iron box broke into pieces, and white dust drifted alongside the cold wind.

A scattering of the ashes!

A series of cheers exploded through the crowd. Jin GuangShan raised his hands, signaling for the people to be quiet and listen to him talk. When the cheers slowly died down, he continued, raising his voice, “Tonight, the ones whose ashes had been scattered were the two leaders of the Wen Sect’s remnants. And tomorrow! It will be the rest of the Wen-dogs and—the YiLing Laozu, Wei Ying!”

Suddenly, a low laugh interrupted his grand speech. The laugh was too untimely, sounding both stark and jarring. In unison, the crowd turned to look at where the sound came from.

The Palace of Sun and Flames was a rather magnificent palace. A total of twelve ridges made up its roof, and at the end of each ridge were eight heavenly beasts. Yet, right now, the people realized that on one of those ridges, there were nine. The laugh from before came from over there!

The extra beast shifted slightly. The next moment, a boot and a corner of black clothes dangled down from the roof, swaying softly.

Everyone placed their hand onto their sword hilt. Jiang Cheng’s pupils shrunk. Blue veins lined the back of his hand.

Jin GuangShan was overcome with both shock and hatred, “Wei Ying! How dare you show yourself here!”

The person opened their mouth to speak. What came out was indeed Wei WuXian’s voice, but he spoke in a strange tone, “Why should I dare not show myself here? Do you people here even add up to three thousand? Don’t forget that back in the Sunshot Campaign, let alone three thousand, I’ve fought against five thousand on my own before. And by appearing here, haven’t I granted your wish? No need for you to come all the way to my home tomorrow to scatter my ashes.”

A few of the QingheNie Sect’s disciples died in the hands of Wen Ning as well. Nie MingJue spoke coldly, “What arrogance.”

Wei WuXian, “Haven’t I always been arrogant? Sect Leader Jin, how does it feel, having slapped yourself in the face? Who was the one that said he’d let the matter go if the Wen siblings went to Koi Tower and gave themselves up? And who was the one that just said he’d scatter my ashes and the ashes of the rest of the Wen Sect’s remnants tomorrow?”

Jin GuangShan, “Let’s consider things as they stand! At Qiongqi Path, you slaughtered over a hundred of the LanlingJin Sect’s disciples—this is one thing. You made Wen Ning kill at Koi Tower—this is another…”

Wei WuXian, “Then let me ask you, Sect Leader Jin, at Qiongqi Path, who was the one being ambushed? And who was the one to kill? Who was the main schemer? And who was the one being schemed against? In the end, just who was the one that came to provoke me first?”

Keep in mind none of the other sect leaders were privy to the scheme between Jin Guangshan, Jin Guangyao and Jin Zixun. And they believe they are certainly fighting off a crazed Wei Wuxian and what they think are his fodder Wens meant for corpses. After this Wei Wuxian desperately fights against Lan Wangji who is trying to calm him down before it's too late which is unsuccessful leading to Jiang Yanli also trying to calm him down enough to get him away and talk some sense to get him out of there to run and get to the Wens. After her death he mentally blacks out and Lan Wangji is left trying to take him away to safety close enough to Burial Mounds. Lan Wangji then fights off his elders as Lan Xichen gathered the Lans to find them. Immediately after this is in sequestered secrecy Lan Wangji is punished. Lan Xichen presumably stays with his own brother while Lan Qiren is the acting Sect Leader for the actual Siege that the other three are part of as support. That leaves Jin Guangshan with the ulterior motive of getting the Yin Hu Fu, Jiang Cheng who wants revenge for the death of Jiang Yanli, and Nie Mingjue left to think he is killing what he considers disgraceful Wens.

So, in short, each of them had different motivations for actually being there, and different accounts for those reasons. The Jins for more power, Jiangs for revenge, Nies for justice and the Lans in solidarity. And the fault of it isn't meted out equally as all had misunderstandings and manipulated by Jin Guangshan's pull to each of their morals as cultivation sects. In the end each of the four were there to kill the Wens and Wei Wuxian aside from Lan Wangji and arguably Jiang Yanli when she was caught up trying to get Wei Wuxian to run.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #Nightless City and the First Seige #don't mind me #asks #I can never make these short it seems