Sandu Shengshou is the literal scourge of the local insect population

The original got deleted somehow, but this was for the Ask “Does Jiang Cheng use Zidian as a bug zapper?”

/JC bursts in Guanyin temple and fights with Zidian and uMbRellA/

Jin Ling: Hah, you look like Mary Poppins.

Jiang Cheng: Is he cool?

Jin Ling: …

Jin Ling: Yeah he’s cool.

Jiang Cheng: I’M MARY POPPINS Y'ALL!

I wonder if flying on swords is a thing that happens in all Xianxia novels.
Also what are the logistics of this ?

I mean, do cultivators have to also put up an array to stop the wind from changing them into icicles ?
Do some cultivators have some specific outfits for sword-flying ?

How high have they tried to fly, historically speaking ?

Also, how the hell do they manage to balance on a flippin *sword* ??
Balance *has* to be magically sustained some way or another, not everybody can be a fantastic snowboarding sword-flying genius after all.

What happens if your sword is feeling down today and doesn’t want to fly ? They are spiritual weapons after all.

Is it easier to fly on a large saber like Baxia than on a flimsy one like Suibian ?

… what if, hypothetically speaking, you had a powerful spiritual weapon that was an awesome lightning whip (let’s call it Zidian) and you wanted to see if you can fly with it ? Would you invent the Xianxia equivalent of a helicopter ? OO

Has *anybody* tried to fly on their spiritual weapons that aren’t swords/sabers ?
Imagine a cultivator flying on a guqin or a flippin *flute*

HOW DOES IT WORK ??
So many questions.

With Suibian I’m not sure, just because it is capable of locking people out; I wouldn’t be surprised if that went beyond just being able to seal itself in its sheath. And yeah, odds are if he could control Zidian a) all evidence suggests coming back in MXY’s body wouldn’t take that away from him and b) he could just free himself when JC tied him up and left. And yeah, it would be kind of funny if JC lost the ability to wield Zidian with his golden core.

Also, here’s a major difference: YZY gave Zidian to JC directly. We know that this sort of thing isn’t based entirely on the golden core because as you say Suibian still allows WWX to wield it; he is still recognised as its master regardless of his golden core because Suibian recognises him. Also there’s no evidence that Zidian works the same way as Suibian; it’s entirely possible that the golden core has nothing to do with whether or not it’ll serve someone beyond them being able to give it energy. YZY directly handed Zidian to JC and passed mastery of it to him, we have no reason to believe that that was tied to his golden core. And… yeah, people talking about how YZY toooooooooootally loved WWX based on vague evidence when she abused him for his entire childhood leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I want to see Jin Ling using Zidian😔

Sangchengmonth2020 (on ao3)

Day 16: Zidian

The first time it happened, he hadn’t noticed. He’d grown so used to Zidian’s weight and yet he hadn’t realised when she’d sneaked off his hand and onto another’s.
It turned out Zidian could be discreet when she wanted to be.

He and Nie Huaisang had been walking along the lake, Huaisang’s constant chatter mixing with the sounds of the wind and the frogs and the distant noises of Yunmeng. It had been peaceful. The weight on Jiang Cheng’s shoulders always seemed lighter around Nie Huaisang.

Jiang Cheng had only realised Zidian had gone when Nie Huaisang took his hand, and he felt her familiar, comforting spark on his skin. Nie Huaisang felt it too and jumped so high he almost dropped his fan.

They looked down at their joint hands to see Zidian on Nie Huaisang’s hand and definitely not where she should have been on Jiang Cheng’s.

Jiang Cheng glared Zidian down until she was cowed enough to slither back onto him. He muttered something about needing to do paperwork and fled before Nie Huaisang could see his blush. Nie Huaisang ran after him, asking him what had happened. He refused to answer.

Hopefully, Nie Huaisang would leave it alone.

Nie Huaisang didn’t leave it alone, unsurprisingly. He spent the rest of his stay at Lotus Pier badgering Jiang Cheng day and night about Zidian’s strange behaviour.
Jiang Cheng did his best to ignore him.

Zidian had never done that before, but it wasn’t hard to guess why she’d chosen Nie Huaisang.

Huaisang would figure it out eventually; he was smart like that. But Jiang Cheng wanted to delay that moment of realisation and the embarrassment he would have to endure following that moment for as long as possible. It was stupid. Nie Huaisang loved him and wouldn’t judge him for this; he knew that.

Jiang Cheng still wasn’t going to be the one to tell Huaisang, though.

Keep reading

Zidian could only have ever been passed on to Jiang Cheng. Not to Yanli, not to to any son or daughter of WWX or JC. Only him.

This is because Zidian represents resentment. Particularly, resentment towards Wei Wuxian.

That is what this moment was:

Originally posted by elvencantation

That is more than just the inheritance of a weapon and a sect. That is the inheritance of his mother’s hatred and fury towards our main character.

From this moment on, the brothers’ bond deteriorated. JC’s resentment started directly after this, festering and growing and, eventually, climaxing into killing intent.

That’s what Zidian is. And that’s why it couldnt have been passed on to anyone else. Yanli? No way. Maybe at some point Jin Ling could have wielded it, but not for long.

As a matter of fact, it is after WWX has gained Jin Ling’s respect that this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment happens:

He REFUSES Zidian. Refuses to inherit the anger and resentment towards WWX that has defined the Jiang leaders for so long.

I like to think that, eventually, even Jiang Cheng retired Zidian forever, too. And that it never saw use again, from anyone.

(Second set of gifs by @mylastbraincql)

A good point. Zidian isn’t designed for fighting people, it’s designed for removing possessing spirits. It can be used as a weapon Because Lightning, but that’s not what it’s made for. I doubt whoever created it expected it to be used on its own; the fact that it shrinks into a ring instead of being coiled up and hung on a belt or whatever suggests to me that it was made so that you could switch between it and something else (presumably a sword) very quickly and using only one hand, which makes sense if it’s designed to be a tool and not a weapon. If Zidian was designed to be someone’s primary weapon, why would it be so easy to store when that sort of thing isn’t used in making swords? Making it shrink without the requirement of using your hands doesn’t make sense if that’s the only weapon you’re using, because… well, if it’s your weapon then you wouldn’t be putting it away in a situation where you only have one hand free as a general rule (and you can put a whip away one-handed, it just takes longer), but if you’re expected to have it and a sword out the one-handed unsheathe and sheathe (for lack of better words) seems a lot more reasonable.

Zidian if is electric electric, like actual lighting. Imagine if they’d tricked attacking Wen cultivators into water and Jiang Cheng on the other side of the river had just activated Zidian and electrocuted them. Like depending on the amount of power Zidian could probably severely fuck someone up.

Zidian

I absolutely hate that you can find thousands of post about how Lan Wangji was whipped because of/for Wei Wuxian, but I have yet to find a single post that‘s about Wei Wuxians whip scars and how much he suffered at the hands of Madam Yu when the Wens invaded Lotus Pier.

(I am not even going to talk about how much I hate that Zidian, a weapon that is basically a string of lightning didn‘t leave any scars.)

*slaps the zidian in its ring form* this bad boy can fit so much lightning in it *immediately gets electrocuted*

The Untamed Ep2, collage 12: Conflict

modern au Zidian but it’s an electric fly swatter

zidian recognizes jin ling as its master bc jin ling swallowed it once when he was at That Age when children put everything into their mouth

Zidian could only work if it recognized its owner.

ZIDIAN ⟡ 紫電