#ch: wang so

[skymoral]

Bi-Han x wife b!reader

When someone (a guest or a new member of the clan) tries to put reader in her place (threatening or grabbing her doesn’t matter what happens) because she is a women and thinks that she is a maid. But when she says that her husband is the grandmaster of the clan but doesn’t believe and see it as a insult and tries to put her in place before our SEXY husband comes and puts him in his place while their kids kick the guys ass for disrespecting their BEAUTIFUL mother. Put. Some. Respect. On. Her. Name. 😤

Baby! BABY! B A B Y!!!!!! You don’t fuck with Queen!

I kinda want to make this a threatening thing, and turn it into a fatality/brutality❤️‍🔥 BLOOD WILL BE SPILT!

🩵 FATALITY! 🩵

Bi-Han x B!F Wife Reader W/Children

Summary: The audacity to threaten Bi-Han’s wife, you are not leaving the temple A L I V E.

Tags: threat, death, fatality, protectiveness, children don’t play about they momma

A/N: I’m loving the idea already lol

‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ ˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙° ·♡ ̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙° · ·♡ ̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

Bi-Han had an important guest coming, his name was “Wang Shu” to the Lin Kuei. A man that has offered great services, to bring greatness to the clan

His power and skill was well known, Bi-Han was in his office already busy with a pre-engagement before Wang. The children were practicing training with each other.

Wang was wondering admiring the clans home, you were taking your 8 month old son for a bath. You weren’t paying attention as you were playing with him, making him giggle.

You then bumped into someone, apologizing quickly before continuing. Till you felt a snatch on your locs, pulling at your fresh extensions.

You yelped, almost dropping your child as you were pulled back on the ground. Your grip on the baby stronger and closer to your chest.

You glared up at the person who dared to pull on your hair.

“Next time be careful where you step, I would’ve assumed the maids of the Lin Kuei would be more aware.” He looked down at you with disgust.

You looked at him like he lost his mind, standing up. “Negro I don’t know WHO YOU ARE! Or care at that matter! You must not know who you talking to. I am the grandmistress of the Lin Kuei and wife of the great Grandmaster Bi-Han!”

He just scoffed at you, he snatched your locs with a strong grip and pull. “How dare an insolent little tramp, try to deceive the great Wang Shu with lies. Someone like you must be taught a lesson, for daring to speak to me in such a manner.”

“Fuck you, Bitch!” You tried to loosen his grip, tears on the side of your eye. Because it began to hurt more, especially when it was done.

Your son started crying.

“What is the meaning of this!?”

Wang noticed Bi-Han approaching you both, he pushed hard to the side. Falling on your ass, using your free hand to hold your head.

“Mommy!” Your children ran to your side, helping you up.

“I do apologize grandmaster Bi-Han, it seems one of your maids we-“

“MAIDS! That is no maid, that is my wife!” Bi-Han glared at him, Wang’s face turned white.

You ran up to your husband hugging his arms, “I don’t know what made him do that babe, I was literally minding my business. Then he started pulling at my hair, after freshly being done now it hurts. Calling me all kinds of names and… and… HE HIT ME!”

“WHAT! Is that so?” Bi-Han looked back at Wang, who looked at you. You looked at him with a wicked smile, sticking your tongue out.

“N-Now I-I know how it sounded a-and look… B-But I swear to you… I-I didn’t m-“

“Even if she was a maid, you dare disrespect anyone of my people in the Lin Kuei… You a worthless sorcerer with no name or purpose, yet I gave you the chance to make a name for yourself by showing your worth to the Lin Kuei. A worthless insect, and had the audacity to DISRESPECT MY WIFE! And lay a finger on her HAIR!” Bi-Han, approached him with small strides making him step back everytime. The children glaring at him.

“Children! Let our guest know what happens. When they disrespect the Lin Kuei.”

“Haiiii!” One of your sons yelled, running doing a spin jump kick on his chest. Knocking the wind out of him, he feel back.

Then the other for kids threw there Kunai rope. One kid had his left arm, the other his right hand, another one his left leg, and the other his right arm. The kunai wrapping around and pierced his inner wrist.

Pulled at him, holding his body in mid-air with a tight pull. He cried in pain, One of the boys stabbed him in the eye with a Kunai and another in his chest.

The boys froze his arms and legs, Bi-Han freezing his head. Then simultaneously Bi-Han slammed his leg on his throat offing his head, and the children disloacting his limbs ripping them off. Making his torso fall.

“You will show my Wife respect!” Bi-Han announced, a warning to anyone feeling bold. You looked at the scene shocked, but they did that to themselves you thought.

As his men came to clean up the mess. He walked back to you, you were still groaning in pain. “Are you alright my love?”

“No my hair is in so much pain, and now I have a headache… And it hurts a lot babe.” You whined, he pulled you into him holding you close.

Leaning your head on his chest, as he made his hand cold. Resting it on the spot you were holding, you immediately sighed in relief relaxing yourself in his hold.

For once his coldness was useful, you laughed internally.

Tomas stepping into the hall, looking at a bunch of papers, “Brother, the guest that was supposed to be-“

Tomas froze looking at the scene of a corpse, getting cleaned up and at his brother. “Was th-“

“Our guest couldn’t make it, that was nothing but an intruder.” Bi-Han answered not looking at Tomas, Bi-Han handing him his son who was asleep now. The children went back to playing, and Bi-Han caught you off guard carrying you back to your shared room.

“I am to not be disturbed for two hours.” He slammed the door behind him.

‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ ˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙° ·♡ ̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙° · ·♡ ̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

Tomas went back into the office with his son where Kuai Liang, was waiting for Bi-Han.

Kuai Liang looked up at him confused, standing. “Umm… Where’s Brother and why are you holding his son?”

Tomas just sighed, “I can guess what happened, but I believe to be wise if you don’t know… As for brother, meeting today’s guest was cancelled.”

A/N: You thought Bi-Han was scary, his children are just as scary if not worse! They also inherited there father’s ability💅🏾

This one was fun as well though, love the request

What your sons warrior outfits would look like

#mortal kombat #bi han sub zero #bi han mortal kombat #fem reader #reader insert #black reader #fanfic #bi han x reader #bi han fanfic #bi han mk #black fanfic writer #black family #grandmistress #bi han’s children #don’t fuck with the lin kuei

[stonedporcupine]

Past Due

💚 First Lin Beifong x reader fic y'all !!! 🧡

Slow burn! ❤️‍🔥

All reviews and comments are appreciated;

Will eventually add on Ao3;

Warnings: Violence, little blood.

Chapter 1 Ch 2 - p.1 Ch 2 - p.2 Ch 2 - p. 3 Ch 2 - Part 4

Y/N´s PoV

Ahhh, Republic City, first time I moved in here about 1 year ago I had a blast. I felt it was about time I got myself away from that hell hole I was supposed to call home…but we don’t talk about that. “Bills are catching up to me…and I´ve got nowhere to run.” I mumble beneath my breath, as I hold a bunch of letters on my hand. The large, thick, red letters with a prominent “Past Due” and “Final Demand” written on each one of them. I feel the unpleasant weight on the pit of my stomach and swallow dryly, shoving the letters aside with a loud exhale. Who knew it cost so much to make it to detective?! I mean, sure hands down it’s the fucking capital city of the United Republic Nations AND one of the largest and most modern cities in the world but Tui and La…ease on the prices!

I look up at the old clock, on the small entry hall of my apartment. “Fuck fuck, shit shit shit!!” I gasp, I am so going to be late to practice. I grab my black jacket, with the fire nation insignia on its back, and my dark matte helmet as I run out the door, down the old elevator, towards the garage. The loud and stressful squeaking of the elevator only heightens my already high cortisol levels. I swear to Raava, one day this shit is going to break down and take the building down with it! Once the old, loud, rusty metal doors of the elevator open I barge right out heading for my perfectly parked satocycle on its assigned place. A gift from Asami and Mr Sato for my hard work for the company. Shoving the helmet in my head, part of my dark messy curled hair hangs out on the bottom. I speed out of the garage, the bike taking off the ground slightly as I go over the bump on the entrance of the parking space, joining the satomobiles on the road with a loud squeak from the wheels of the bike, as I drift to the right.

I can´t be late again! Officer Wang will kill me and probably pull me out of the program, which is a big ass no no. I haven’t come this far just to fuck things up all over again.

Chief Beifong´s PoV

“Officer Song, didn´t I JUST tell you to take the route to Northern Avenue?!” I grumble between gritted teeth at the officer who´s driving. Guess I know who´s driving next time. I mean how much of an imbecile do you have to be to not follow simple orders?! Orders I JUST GAVE!!?? I look at the terrified officer, gripping the wheel of the satomobile as he mumbles and gags on his words. “I- uh- Ch-Chief I just I- I´m sorry I wasn´t paying attention.” He swallows. I remain unimpressed with the attempt of a shitty excuse that was made. “Well focus and listen. You´re not getting paid to sit around, mouth agape listening to the spirits.” I groan loudly at him.

Fear in his eyes officer Song nods his head up and down quickly and practically yells “Yes Chief!”. Just as I was about to tell him to tone it down the loud screech of wheels catches me off guard. Just as I look to my side, a black satocycle with a few red highlights speeds right past us. What the flame-o was that?! Swiftly making its way past traffic the motorcycle speeds away. “Officer Song, catch up to that satocycle, now!!” I practically scream at the officer as he presses the clutch, changes to 4th and speeds up.

Y/N´s PoV

Did I just fucking see what my eyes saw. Did I just speed through a police patrol satomobile?! The loud sirens catching up behind me answer my fears. Well, that´s it. I´m officially fucked. I´m done for life. I´m left with two choices, obey, pull over, pray it´s not the fucking Chief of Police, flirt my way out of this and definitely arrive late for class…or drop it, speed off like a demon, hopefully not get caught or die on the way and…still arrive a little late to class. I groan as my head drops in defeat.

I´m so done with my life.

I signal to the right as I slow down, pulling over. The blaring sirens emitting a last Woop before silencing, as the satomobile pulls right behind me. I turn the motor of the bike off, getting off and standing up, as I hear the doors of the car shutting behind me before a deep female voice sends a shiver down my spine. No, it can´t be. You can´t be serious right now. My eyes wide in fear as I slowly turn around to be met with the most beautiful yet lethal jade eyes I´d ever seen my entire life. Damn, hearing her voice back in headquarters from far away was already…something, but seeing her up close?! Not even The Avatar ,wherever they're at, can save me from this one. It´s the first time I get to see the Chief of Police personally. Sure I´m in the Detective´s Program but we rarely stay in the headquarters where she seemingly lives at. I am snapped back from my thoughts when her striking voice booms through my eardrums. Wait, was she talking? Shit I didn’t hear anything…

“I am talking to you. Take off your helmet, now! I asked you a question, better start speaking.” she says. I didn’t even realise my helmet was still on. I carefully take it off, still in shock at seeing THE Chief Lin Beifong in front of me. My messy, dark hair falls to my shoulders. The, once bright, blood red highlights shining on the sun. “I- uh” I try to speak but nothing comes out. My mouth feels dry, as I lick my lips. I look at the other officer behind her, he seems to be putting a strong façade, but I can see the nervousness behind his eyes. “Don’t stare at my officer! I asked you a question.”

Chief Beifong´s PoV

Oh for fuck sake, she´s slow…is she go- why is her hair painted? It´s not exactly unlikable. I think I´ve seen her, but I can´t recall where from. Why am I staring? WHY IS SHE STARING? “Don’t stare at my officer! I asked you a question.” Her mouth agape, my already visible frown deepens. She has three seconds to answer. 1…2..- “I- uh I´m sorry ma´am- uh Chief. Sorry, could you repeat the question? The uh…helmet was- I don’t think I heard.” I groan rather loudly as I exhale. I clench my jaw, as I breath in. “I asked. Do. You. Know how fast you were going?” I speak slowly and clearly as I cross my arms.

Y/N´s PoV

Spirits…and I thought I was stressed, this woman is going to explode! “I asked. Do. You. Know how fast you were going?” I hear her say loud and clear. So that´s the Beifong scowl people talk about. It´s cute. A little unnerving for those who can´t handle it. “Uh…not fast enough clearly!” I joke to get some tension off the air, but as I look at the Officer behind her, I only see his eyes widen beyond possible. I look back at the Chief and if looks could kill… “Is this a joke to you?! Is endangering other citizens lives a hobby for your entertainment? Clearly you seem to be asking for your license to be revoked.” Her stern voice makes straighten my back. It´s not that I´m afraid of her, but if I want my way out of this I might as well show some class. I clear my throat as I say “I apologize Chief, that was never my intention. I am pretty secure on my driving skills, and I am fully aware of the dangerous action I was doing. In my defence I am in a huge hurry. I´m in the Detective´s Program and I´m just trying to not get kicked out of there, this is my last chance…” I mumble that last part as I rub the back of my neck. Fuck it´s weird to be so verbally polite. I look back up at her to see what kind of reaction I got off of her only to be met with the exact same Beifong scowl as before. Well, that was worth shit. Her gaze is penetrating mine, almost as if she´s analysing me.

Chief Beifong´s PoV

That´s where I know her from. She´s in the Detective´s Program and sometimes wonders in the headquarters, she must be the firebender that Officer Wang told me. What was her name? Just as I am about to ask her, I am interrupted by the blaring sound coming off my radio. “Chief, come in. Over.” I groan in annoyance. Spirits, when do I ever catch a break? “I´m busy, what is it?” my stern and strong voice talks back to the radio. “Chief, we´ve got a Triple Threat Triad attack going on, over at the Eastern Market. We need your assistance. Over.” I look back at the young cadet with a scowl as she smiles back at me. Ugh, why is she smiling?

Y/N´s PoV

I just might make it out of here. I look at the Chief with a smile on my face as she stares back at me, the same Beifong scowl on her face but this time thicker, more prominent. I hear her exhale. “I catch you driving that thing over the speed one more time and I revoke your license and you better not drive it on my watch if you ever make it to detective, which hopefully, you won´t!” I hear her yell at me. Before I can even say anything back, she turns back around heading for the police satomobile. Well, isn´t she charming? Hot…and charming. “Song, move it! I drive.” I hear her yell at the officer. Poor guy, spirits. Though he is lucky he gets to be by her side. Hm, maybe I´ll be lucky enough for that once I´m a detective, which I want more than anything now that she seemed so annoyed by it. I smirk to myself as I think how it would be like to be next to this very angry yet stunning woman all day. Pushing her buttons does seem fun.

I put my helmet back on as I drive away towards the officers’ training site. I do my best to keep the speed on limit but as I look at the time on the satocycle I almost pass out. I am already 10 minutes late. FUCK. I groan loudly as I check my surroundings for any secret police satomobiles as I speed away. The faster I get there, the faster this is all over.

.- Later during practice -.

Y/N´s PoV

Fuck, I´m beat. Wang sure is getting his revenge for my late arrival. We are not many in the Detective´s Training Program and we´ll be even less given there are only two spots available. The majority of the class is all earthbenders, me being the only firebender. Which should make me feel perhaps uneasy or maybe a little scared, but honestly it just makes me feel like a total badass. I mean, hear me out, the only firebender in the troop and I get one of the Detective spots?! How crazy would that be? I´m quickly pulled from my thoughts when I hear that annoying voice once again. “So, Y/L/N, seems like you can give up already and give me my position as Detective.” The man says with a pleased smug on his face. “Why don’t you go bother someone else, Kang?” I groan annoyed as I take a sip from my water. “I´m just saying, as the only firebender you should at least make an effort to arrive in time don’t you think?” He scoffs loudly. I ignore his little stunts as I smirk to myself. “And you should make an effort on brushing your teeth. You got a little something there.” I scoff as I point to my own teeth with a disgusted face. I can visibly see him get red as a smirk makes its way on my lips.

“What´s going on over here? Y/L/N, Kang break is over. Get over here you two.” I hear Officer Wang´s voice yell from the other side of the field. Over? Spirits, I didn’t even have time to piss! I groan as I look at Kang´s smug little face. “Quit your whining and come prove your worth, princess.” I hear him chuckle. Did this cunt just call me, princess?! Now he better pray to Raava I won´t kill him. My blood boiling at the nickname I groan angrily. I have nothing to prove to you, cunt.

“Alright cadets, Y/L/N and Kang you two seemed to be having a nice chat back there. Get sparring, the others watch.” Wang´s voice echoes through the dusty field as I walk towards the centre, Kang right in front of me with that smug still plastered on his face. I scoff to myself.

I am going to wipe the fucking floor with you.

Once I see Officer Wang´s hand signal us to begin Kang wastes no time and throws a large piece of boulder at me, I swiftly avoid it, turning my body sideways and leaning slightly backwards. Just as quick as that boulder came at me I 360º my body, lowering myself to the dusty floor my right leg pushes forwards as a small wave of fire strikes all the dust away and forces Kang backwards. Before he can react, I get back up and briskly uppercut him in the jaw getting a loud grunt from him. How ´ s that for a princess? I don’t let my guard down knowing this isn´t over until Officer Wang decides. My arms close to my ribs and fists closed tightly near my face I watch Kang´s movements attentively, guessing his next move as he cracks his neck and smugly says “That all you got?” I roll my eyes as I stare at him through my eyebrows. Kang´s right leg rises and hits the ground, making it shake in an attempt to shake me off my feet. I use my fire propulsion to elevate myself from the ground slightly to lower the impact, flying over him and landing on the ground behind him. Before he has even time to acknowledge where I went, I lower kick his leg, spinning my body after the hit to gain power and land a higher kick to his arm which was protecting his ribs. I hear him grunt and groan in discomfort and anger as he throws a punch to my face. I quickly dodge downwards, pulling the same first move by pushing my leg outwards and kicking Kang´s body to the ground. He hits the ground with a loud thud, dust setting in the air around us, I look over at Office Wang to know if it was over yet, but Kang takes my short distraction as a chance. His body still on the floor, he raises his arm and the piece of boulder I was standing on goes flying with me in it. Throwing me through the air and across the field as I land on the ground, rolling over due to the speed I was thrown, getting a few scratches and dirt all over me. I breath loudly as the dust covers my sight, relying on my hearing I hear the rumbling sound of the earth beneath me as I look ahead and see a wave coming from the ground. I barely have time to react, my eyes widening, as I dodge to the right but not fast enough. My left shoulder caught on the edge of the rock-wave as I stumble backwards. I don’t fall, my feet sliding backwards with the dust as I grip my shoulder and wince in pain. Fuck! This bastard almost dislocated my shoulder. I sway my arms in the air and push them outwards as a thin wave of flames pushes the dust away, finally allowing me to see Kang. Does he ever stop smirking? I run towards him as he sends two fat boulders my way, I lower myself, dragging my body through the ground as I avoid the boulders. I get back up quickly and jump, using my fire propulsion to help me gain height. I see Kang´s eyes widen as I stretch my leg down, my foot coming at high speed in contact with his face. He barely has time to register what happened before his body jerks downwards with the force of the hit. Faceplanting on the floor with a loud thud and grunt he stays there, the dust on the ground escaping sideways from us. “Who´s the princess now Kang?” I whisper smugly on his ear as I stand up and hear Officer Wang´s annoyed voice “Alright that´s enough of it. Get here you two.” Is he mad that Kang didn’t beat my ass? Why is it that nobody wants me to succeed?! “You fucking bitch…” I hear Kang grunt between gritted teeth as he gets up. I smirk proudly to myself, “What´s wrong? Hurts much?”. I hear Kang scoff loudly, “Barely feel it.”, pfff yeah right.

We walk backwards towards Officer Wang and the rest of the trainees. “Alright, as you know our program is coming to an end. We have two detective positions open and there are ten of you. Being Detective is no easy job, that is why there is a final exam in five days. Me and Chief Beifong will be deciding on who gets the job positions and who goes out.” No. Fucking. Way. Now I know for sure I won´t make it to Detective! Beifong and I were already off to a bad start this morning! She said it herself; she doesn’t want me to make it to Detective! “…Final Exam will be set in two parts. In the morning you will have the written exam, to make sure you actually listened to what was taught these past few months, and, in the afternoon, it will be a competitive sparring. Just like Kang and Y/L/N did, except the first one to fall is automatically disqualified.” Written exam? What is this, fucking high school?! Ugh, I better not be paired with Kang. “That´s it for today cadets, see you tomorrow at 9am sharp.” Officer Wang glances at me sideways as I mouth a ´sorry` silently. “Y/L/N, hit the showers in the headquarters, your shoulder is bleeding.” Officer Wang says with a hint of despise on his tone. Spirits, sorry I´m not made of fucking metal. I didn’t even notice I was bleeding. I look at my shoulder and notice the few reddened scratches and a small trickle of blood coming out. I hear Kang snicker next to me. The fuck are you smirking about? “Your nose also looks like shit Kang, but I guess a shower can´t fix that for you.” I smirk as I grab my towel, shoving it over my shoulder and heading back inside the headquarters before he can say anything.

My body is covered in dust and sweat; my defined muscular arms filled with small little scratches from rolling on the ground. My once black tank top also covered in a light brownish dusty substance. Gosh do I need a shower…My body is killing me. I pass through the Officer I saw with the Chief in the morning. Shit, she´s probably close by. I rush my way to the showers as to avoid her. It´s not that I don’t want to see her. Spirits know how much I´d pay to see those penetrating jade eyes of hers. But I don’t want her to see me while I look like shit…and probably smell like one too.

Chief Beifong´s PoV

As I am filing down some more reports and going over them, I hear grunts and noises from outside. Annoyed at the disturbance I get up from my chair with a sigh as I look over the window. Must be Wang training the cadets. Seeing the training field, I stare at one of the male cadets throwing boulders and another one dodging them out. Trying to figure who the other one is, I squint my eyes. The amount of dust surrounding them makes it hard, but the worn-out red highlights and the distinctive fire coming from the body allows me to figure out who it is already. It´s that speeding satocycle cadet I caught this morning. I observe them as I see the male cadet shake the ground, a wave heading towards her. But there´s too much dust for her to see anything at all. Fuck even I am struggling to keep up with what is going on. She dodges it but seemingly not totally. “That’s a nasty hit…” I mumble to myself. But she does seem to handle it…quite nicely I must say. Spirits, I´m staring again. I shake my head and groan in annoyance but am quickly distracted by the fire coming off her feet. Fire propulsion, that’s useful. I stare as she lands a powerful hit on the male cadets’ face. That´s going to leave a mark. I guess…she´s not that…bad. Whatever. If she´s to make it to Detective she´s supposed to be, at least, useful. I turn away and decide to head downstairs to check how Song is getting along with the other files. He´s not in the Detective´s Program, but he has some…potential, I cannot deny that.

“Officer Song, how are those files coming along?” I see him tremble underneath his armour. “Uh- well, Chief. It seems that the Triple Threat Triads crimes are lowering in amount…” I scoff. Sure, but they are not getting any easier to deal with. Song continues talking but I barely catch what he is saying as I look over his shoulder and notice the firebender cadet. She´s all dirty. Bunch of scratches in her shoulder too…bummer. She can deal with it. I think to myself, but yet, I can´t seem to find an explanation as to why I feel so drawn towards her. I shake these thoughts away and refocus on Officer Song. “…So, I guess that is pretty good right, Chief?” What´s pretty good? Shit, I didn’t hear. “Uhm yes, yes, it is. Now, get back to work Officer.” I clear my throat as I make my way back to my office. Sitting down on my chair I exhale, looking up at the pile of files and papers to read and fill in. Spirits I´m exhausted. I get started against my will. It´s going to be a long night, I might as well get it over with. After some time of insufferable writing, scribbling, and scratching I hear a knock on the door. I look up from the papers as I catch a glimpse of the clock and then stare at the door. It´s 10pm who the fuck is still in here?

“Uh, Chief, can I come in?" Is that- What is she doing here?

#lin beifong #lin beifong x reader #avatar the last airbender #legend of korra #fanfic

[mdzs-fanon-exposed]

MDZS Fanon VS Canon: 6/?

Jiang Fengmian was in love with Cangse Sanren

Rating: RUMOR

Some characters, notably Wang Lingjiao and Madam Yu, bring up the gossip that Jiang Fengmian was in love with Wei Wuxian's mother in order to reason why he seems to favor Wei Wuxian over his own wife and son. Despite the idea originating in the text, however, there is no concrete evidence either way, so it cannot be considered "canon." Instead, this is only an in-text rumor.

Supposedly, "the entire cultivation world knew" the rumors surrounding the Jiang marriage drama, but as we learn in the very first chapter, the information spread throughout the cultivation world is incredibly inaccurate and relies on misinformation (Seven Seas Ch. 1, Ch. 12).

We do know that even at the time, people thought Jiang Fengmian and Cangse Sanren were romantically involved:

Speculation abounded that Cangse-sanren was extremely likely to become the next mistress of Lotus Pier. To everyone’s surprise, it was around this time that the Yu Clan of Meishan proposed a marriage alliance with the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng. (Seven Seas Ch. 12)

But as established above, while the popularity of this rumor implies that it may have been based in fact, the assumptions that the "cultivation world" makes are not a reliable source of information.

Crucially, of the few characters who mention the rumor aloud, it is Madam Yu herself who first brings it up with her husband:

"I refuse to believe you haven’t heard the gossip—that after so many years, Sect Leader Jiang is still obsessed with a certain Sanren and sees his old friend’s son as his own. Everyone speculates whether Wei Ying is your…" (Seven Seas Ch. 12)

But only a few pages later, Wei Wuxian refutes this "nonsensical bullshit":

“My mom and dad are real people and have names. I can’t stand when people blindly assign me to other families!” (Seven Seas Ch. 12)

With all this contradictory evidence in the books and no first-person account from someone who witnessed their relationship (Wei Wuxian wasn't born yet; Madam Yu only refers to the gossip as if she learned it second-hand; Jiang Fengmian never confirms nor denies), there is no way to know for sure whether Jiang Fengmian had feelings for Cangse Sanren.

However, canonically, multiple characters labor under this assumption. In the end, because of the complicated nature of this topic and its roots in the text, the idea that Jiang Fengmian was in love with Wei Wuxian's mother has to remain a rumor.

#fanon vs canon #mdzs meta #jiang fengmian #cangse sanren #madam yu #rating: rumor

[lunanoc]

first tentative meta post about wu xie my beloved, more specifically about his characterization in his less than stellar moments, sparked by a discussion with @thelaithlyworm about whether or not the lost tomb 2.5 is in character for wu xie according to the books. i figured i'd take the rest of my thoughts to a separate post since our exchange was clogging up poor OP’s replies, and because i feel like a difference in opinion like this is worth being made public if only so people can get both sides of a rare discussion about the books and reach their own conclusions, so for those who are interested here’s a link to the original post where this discussion takes place in the replies if you'd like the full context. sorry in advance for how long this will likely be, and i hope there's no problem with me directly tackling some of the arguments that were made in favor of lost tomb 2.5 being an accurate adaptation of book wu xie's characterization, which is a take i strongly disagree with

i think much of the problem in the discussion simply lies in the fact that we seem to have fundamentally different interpretations of wu xie’s character in the books, because as i see it, none of the insistences that were quoted prove that wu xie has ever acted the way he does in 2.5 in the books—if anything, they disprove it. the quote from ch. 92 of sand sea that was brought up goes as follows:

this is where i believe the problem of different interpretations is at play, and to be fair some of it is ambiguous so there is some leeway, but i read this recollection very differently from how @thelaithlyworm seems to. as i see it, wu xie is recalling a time where pangzi, understandably concerned about his friend because he sees the toll the sha hai plan is taking on wu xie, and the lengths he’s having to go to in order to set it in motion, tells him it’s not too late to stop and turn back. to which wu xie replies that even if he had decided to stop and live his life blissfully unaware of the extent of the wangs' reach and their machinations, things would have caught up to him eventually given they’d infiltrated the jiumen to the extent they had.

“and at that time you’ll have already left me one by one, leaving me to foolishly face those fists” is the most ambiguous as to what exactly it's referring to, but i personally see it as referencing either the fact wu xie and his friends would have by then eventually drifted apart or they'd have stopped giving him their support should he have decided to ignore the truth and sit around doing nothing, or more sinisterly, would have potentially all been replaced by then if there hadn't been a plan in motion. it's likely a little bit of both. to which pangzi replies that he’s right, conceding and agreeing that wu xie never truly had a choice about his involvement to begin with, which is more or less the entire point of sand sea and the wider narrative of the main story.

no part of this conversation is reminiscent of the open conflict between them in 2.5 in that neither of them here are angry, and neither of them are even aggressive or antagonistic towards each other or in general. this is quite a calm if resigned conversation wu xie is recalling that also fits the overall cynical tone of the chapter itself, and wu xie’s certainly not acting out and pushing his friends away in a bid to deal with everything himself. if anything the entire point of sand sea is to show that despite each character acting independently, the sha hai plan only succeeded because they worked together and not alone, and that wu xie needed his support system to create an invisible yet tangilble network that could take down the wangs. so no part of this particular passage reads as though pangzi is saying he ever considered bailing on wu xie because of his behavior, and even if that were the case, it would still be referring to a hypothetical situation and not their current one.

wang meng's behavior in ten years later is also not the greatest example to use as an argument to prove 2.5 wu xie’s characterization is present in the books, mostly because it's actually wang meng himself who's more so the one acting like that than wu xie himself. wang meng, in his concern for wu xie, tries to guilt trip him into letting go of his obsession with xiaoge, and he is the one who instigates a conflict with wu xie that culminates in him staging xiaoge's "death" as a last ditch effort once spewing bottled up vitriol at wu xie and threatening to take over wushanju don't work.

it's however misguided at best given that not only did all of wu xie's close friends who participated in the sha hai plan agree to do so willingly (i’m of course not talking about li cu and co among others who very much did not consent) and so accusing wu xie of having coerced them takes away from their own agency, but the sha hai plan was a necessity beyond freeing xiaoge, which is something wang meng fails to understand. wang meng makes the mistake many people in the fandom do of pinning wu xie’s determination to see that plan through solely on his desire to free xiaoge, and of course that’s an important part of it, but the narrative makes a point of building up over the course of the main books and tibetan sea flower that wu xie’s entire family was at stake as well, and had been for several generations, so on a personal level it went beyond xiaoge alone. but again, whatever truth there is to wang meng’s words (which is an interesting but entirely different topic) still doesn’t make it true that wu xie was either actively petty or vitriolic towards his friends as a way to vent his own frustrations.

several moments in which wu xie objectively does terrible things or acts horribly were listed as a way of justifying that his behavior in 2.5 is in character and in line with how he acts in the books. and of course these moments do happen, and it's very true in sand sea especially that wu xie does terrible things (it's part of what makes him such an interesting character). but again, this argument feels somewhat in bad faith in that it conflates all negative behavior and traits together regardless of what specific shape those negative behaviors take in order to justify that his portrayal in 2.5 is faithful to the books simply because he displays negative behavior in that adaptation, completely disregarding that his less than stellar actions and emotions aren't expressed in the same ways in the books and in 2.5. my dislike of wu xie in 2.5 doesn't stem from him doing unlikeable things, otherwise i wouldn't like wu xie as a character in general. wu xie absolutely does do a lot of terrible things in sand sea especially, but the inherent problem with 2.5 is that none of the things he does or the way he acts in the books ever lines up with the specific way he acts in 2.5. 

in the books, even before sand sea, yes wu xie is manipulative (re: threatening bodily harm to himself to force wu erbai into sharing information with him), yes he cut up bodies and sent them to li cu among other extremely morally questionable things, yes he kidnapped li cu and made him go through literal hell, and likely did much the same to other people before him (hence the seventeen scars on his arm). he has and continues to have even in recent book canon re: yucun biji the ability and will to inflict permanent psychic damage on people he deems to be deserving of it or a threat. he’s by no means perfect or even overly kind, and if someone were to say that a number of the earlier drama adaptations especially soften his character and make him much more wide-eyed and innocent than he actually is in the books, i would absolutely agree with them. i would also agree if someone said that gap in characterization is why some people don’t like him much in the sand sea drama. but the fact is for all the negative traits and behavior he displays at varying points in the books, none of them are ever expressed in the very specific way they are in 2.5.

@thelaithlyworm rightfully mentions wu xie's ptsd as justification for much of his more "toxic" reactions to things, and his ptsd is incredibly important in understanding how wu xie works as a character and what his experiences have forged him into, to the point it's a topic that deserves its own in-depth post. but saying we have different definitions of what ptsd is is both accurate to the complex nature of ptsd, and a bit disingenious because of the complex nature of ptsd, because the emotional dysregulation and impaired decision-making it entails won’t necessarily manifest in the same ways in different people.

in 2.5 wu xie, ptsd manifests in the form of vitriol and anger he directs at pretty much everyone in his immediate vicinity, more especially pangzi, because it has no other outlet in that situation than outwards. and i’m not saying ptsd expressing itself like that never happens, because it very much does. what i'm saying is that book wu xie's ptsd, while very real, doesn't manifest in the way it does in 2.5 wu xie.

in book wu xie, ptsd manifests in much more internalized ways, and so he’s far more prone to directing the anger and pent-up emotions inwards through self-harm, both mental and physical (i.e. the scars on his arm, his persistent self-hatred, etc.), and the emotional dysregulation very often comes not in the form of chaotically expressed emotions, but rather abnormal lack of them, as arguably wu xie's bad coping mechanism is emotional dissociation, and when the emotions are truly too strong to be distanced from, they come out in the form of panic attacks he often doesn’t recognize as such (i.e. when he finds xiaoge and believes he’s dead in book 8, or when he has flashbacks on their way to motuo in yucun traveling notes) or of general breakdowns (i.e. wu xie stays numb once xiaoge disappears behind the gate up until he starts crying in the street once he returns to hangzhou).

it’s incredibly rare that wu xie’s trauma directs itself outwards towards his loved ones, and while he might do so in his head quite frequently (which we the readers see since most of the books are from wu xie's point of view), it's rare he actually externalizes it, and since his comments can only lead to conflict if they're extrernalized, there's rarely ever genuine conflict between him and his friends. one of the only times it happens with pangzi specifically is in tibetan sea flower were he makes an honestly cruel dig at pangzi about yuncai because pangzi’s withheld information about xiaoge from him:

but even this scene, which is the closest to anything that's portrayed in 2.5 between them, plays out differently, not only because wu xie knows very well he’s going too far, his mention of yuncai isn't solely an outlet for his anger. he’s very consciously trying to bait pangzi into telling him what he knows, and so aims at where he knows will hurt most. it's targeted and mean because it's meant to be, but it's also not a gratuitious outlet either unlike his comments are more often than not in 2.5. it's manipulation, and he's certainly not trying to push pangzi away, nor is it driving a wedge between them despite how uncalled for his comment it. and more importantly, pangzi once again proves himself to be the most emotionally stable of the iron triangle by not stooping to that level or making light of the conversation. he knows perfectly well what wu xie is doing, so any conflict is diffused before it can even take root, and stays an isolated incident, whereas in 2.5, conflict is an underlying theme.

ironically there are more examples of this type directed at xiaoge, but even those don't showcase the same blind anger or gratuitous meanness that 2.5 wu xie consistently displays, and it's that specifically that's out of character. while wu xie vents his frustrations at xiaoge in book 4 over being kept in the dark, he's more serious about it than angry, and very quickly realizes his foot-in-mouth comment and backtracks accordingly:

he's at his most openly angry with xiaoge at the end of book 8 when xiaoge leaves them all in banai, and even goes as far as trying to have xiaoge detained by qiu dekao in a last ditch effort to force him to stay (which in itself is the real manifestation of him not being able to control his emotions correctly and reason going out the window where xiaoge is concerned, and it only ever really happens in relation to xiaoge, but that's also a topic for another post):

but again, while he's visibly angry and upset, and is looking for support from others around him to validate his upset at xiaoge leaving, he never actually spews any vitriol at xiaoge himself despite his anger being obvious, never actually calls him names outside of his own head despite the rare quality of his anger, never tries to instigate conflict for the sake of venting his overflowing emotions, nor does he ultimately stop xiaoge from leaving. even later as he follows xiaoge up changbai mountain, his desperation eventually turns into resignation and acceptance, not venting.

this post is way too long, but my entire point here as it has been from the start of this discussion is that while wu xie in the books does get angry, he does have ptsd, it does manifest in the ugliest ways and he's certainly not an angel, his anger in general never veers into extended open conflict or gratuitous vitriol thrown at his loved ones as a misguided form of venting his own emotions like it does throughout the vast majority of lost tomb 2.5, just like a number of the conflicts he gets into with other characters stem from out of character reactions from those characters to begin with (i.e. xiao hua absolutely losing it over wu xie hiding wu sanxing's betrayal of xie lianhuan in 2.5 vs. this information being very casually received in book 7). and that's where my point of contention with that adaptation lies.

i feel as though this is a case of agreeing to disagree as far as interpretation of wu xie's character goes, and that's absolutely fine, but in the same way that it's alright to dislike things simply because, it's equally as alright to like things for the same reasons. it's fine to like lost tomb 2.5, and my opinion of it is purely my own, but liking it doesn't necessarily have to be rooted in whether it's adapting the books correctly, even if it can be.

my dislike of 2.5 stems from how i consider it to be out of character by comparison to the books, and my entire point here has been to explain that different interpretations of any particular source material can exist, and therefore yes, it's entirely possible to view 2.5 wu xie as out of character, just as it's entirely possible to dislike that adaptation for the same reason. and i'm far from the only person to have this interpretation. so no, my dislike of 2.5 doesn't come from not liking it when wu xie’s doing unlikeable things, or else i wouldn't like wu xie as a character, nor is it because i don’t understand what ptsd is given the particular ways in which it can manifest from one specific person to another

#i just have strong opinions about this sorry if it's coming off strong #and i'm perfectly willing to debate with quotes etc #but lbr there's a reason lost tomb 2.5 is more or less unanimously the most disliked adaptation across the board #both in the western fandom and chinese fandom #though tbf the chinese fandom doesn't tend to like the dramas all that much in general #which is valid sometimes tbh given some of the takes i've seen about dmbj as a whole from people who refuse to touch the books but well #still #first wu xie meta #exciting #dmbj #dmbj meta #wu xie #dmbj novels #lost tomb 2.5

[lotusflowerbreakingthesurface]

Wu Xie's Birthday Congratulations

On this special day, let's get to know the cutest protagonist in DMBJ, Wu Xie aka Tianzhen aka Xiao San Ye, in a deeper understanding although everyone must already know him (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

One of the best ways to understand what kind of character Wu Xie is by reading the book. I found some interesting meta/analysis about Wu Xie (and PingXie) and I want to share them here. However, everyone has a different perception and understanding of things, so just take it easy, okay? ദ്ദി(ᵔᗜᵔ)

Note: I'm not good at Chinese, feel free to correct me if you find some mistakes.

⚠️ Very long post ⚠️

Uh, I feel bad that this post turned out to be so long, while Xiaoge's birthday is so short, sorry Xiaoge! >.<

First of all, let's refresh our memory about Wu Xie that was going around on Chinese sites and other sites as well.

Wu Xie's Apperance

Source: Baidu

Handsome, with a face like a crown jade, fair skin, gentle and restrained, bookish, and as gentle as jade.

Slender hands: "Unfortunately, although my hands are slender, I have no strength at all." (Daomu Biji: Angry Sea, Hidden Sands Ch. 42 [MereBear's Translation] | Chinese version Ch. 13)

Pretty face: "Tianzhen, your original face is pretty. Why do you need to be the same as your Uncle Three?" (by Pangzi, Daomu Biji Vol. 8 Ch. 25 [MereBear's Translation])

Occasionally wear glasses (NPSS's interview)

As a lotus flower breaking the surface (idiom): "Indeed, our family’s Tianzhen is a fresh and clean refined little master, a surpassingly beautiful young public figure ..." (by Pangzi, Tibetan Sea Flower Ch. 22 [MereBear's Translation] | Chinese version Ch. 22 | The meaning of the idiom is here)

"When I was in college, a girl who seemed to like me once said that my face was very calm and other people wouldn’t feel annoyed looking at it." (Tibetan Sea Flower Ch. 27 [MereBear's Translation])

"He was young with a slender figure, wearing a brown jacket and gloves, and looking very casual." (Sand Sea Ch. 6 [MereBear's Translation])

"From Liang Wan’s point of view, although Wang Meng’s boss was young, there was a weathered and worn look about his brows that were beyond the reach of ordinary people." (Sand Sea Ch. 6 [MereBear's Translation])

The eyelashes are long, and the curve of the neck is more feminine than that of a woman: "Black Glasses said that the curve of my neck was more feminine than that of a woman." (Sand Sea Ch. 180 [MereBear's Translation])

"The only part of your body suitable for fighting is your long eyelashes."(Sand Sea Ch. 178 [MereBear's Translation])

Wu Xie is the ultimate beauty in the world (NPSS's interview)

Chronology of Wu Xie’s Major Events (Weibo)

Wu Xie's Personality (According to NPSS)

Source: MereBear's Translation

In the postscript of Daomu Biji Vol. 8:

Wu Xie is a difficult person to describe. If I have to say it, I want to say: he is actually an ordinary person.

But this doesn’t mean that he isn’t great. It’s because he’s an ordinary person that people admire him so much for all he has experienced.

I think many friends will hate his weakness and hesitation when they first see him, but as the story progresses step by step, more and more people like him. He is a boy as weak as water, but please don’t forget that in harsh winter, the most formless water will become solid ice.

Wu Xie is a person like that. He is simple, a little clever, cowardly, and someone who cherishes his life. He’s sensitive and afraid of hurting people around him and is the least suitable person to experience danger among all those on the team.

But I let him become the protagonist of the story and let him experience the most terrifying journey, which is probably the most special part of the story. When everyone can back down, he just can’t; when everyone can escape, he can’t.

I really want to say sorry to him for pushing this ordinary person into such a complicated puzzle. When I look at his entanglements and troubles, it’s like I see my own entanglements and troubles. For a period of time, I could even deeply feel the despair in his heart for everything he had gone through. At that time, I wanted to know what he would do when faced with such complicated despair.

I didn’t expect him to survive. In the development of the story, everyone could see how an ordinary person struggled to become a person he didn’t want to be. But the thing that made everyone like him was that he maintained his conscience in all the places that could be turning points in his life. Even though he eventually wore a sinister mask, he was still Wu Xie at heart. He could have a lot of petty crimes and petty vices under his belt, as well as a lot of minor moral problems, but when it came to making the biggest choice, he would always be the Wu Xie who wished everyone well.

“I hope all of us can live well along the way, and all of us can see our own ending. We may not live long, please let us live the life we deserve.”

Wu Xie prayed to the sky when Pan Zi was dying, even though he was in a dark cave. He took all the responsibility and blame upon himself, unable to face the meaning of his journey.

This is Wu Xie, the “useless” one in the team and the most useless leader in the Iron Triangle. He needs other people’s protection and help. He has boundless curiosity and desire, but as long as a person is hurt, his own things aren’t important. He’s an ordinary person who wishes you to live no matter how much he hates you. This is because he doesn’t understand killing or the wealth that transcends life, he only understands the value of the word “alive”.

[2023.03.11] Taobao Live

Source: 瓶邪bot (mtl)

Q: We all know that Zhang Qiling has a gift from heaven. Why hasn’t he forgotten his companions ten years later?

A: I think this is a kind of bond. It really is a bond. Of course I can write a tragedy. (Host: Don’t write it then), it is all logical, but when such a strong bond exists, especially Wu Xie must not be an ordinary person, even though he appears as an ordinary person, he made full use of his ordinary qualities and became an ordinary person who was not an ordinary person (laughs). That Zhang Qiling must have gone through a very painful struggle and intense confrontation. He finally did it. In the end, he may have forgotten a lot, leaving only that glimmer of light, and then he remembered it again bit by bit from that glimmer of light. I think this must be Zhang Qiling’s efforts. (Host: So this is actually because he worked hard not to forget them. This is not a lucky or small-probability thing, but a result of his own efforts) Yes, because heaven is ruthless, and humans are sentient.

[2023.03.24] Douyin Live Broadcast

Source: 瓶邪bot (mtl)

Q: "Restart", this book has its entire story line structure of separation, reunion, and restarting. Do you think Wu Xie’s personal mentality has changed between the original novel and "Restart"?

A: In the main story, he is really a bit naive. He may be a little clever and a little bit of a cunning, but his understanding of the world is essentially relatively simple. When it comes to "Reboot/Restart", Wu Xie is actually still innocent. You can see that he is slowly returning to his previous innocent state. One is that Zhang Qiling has returned, and he no longer needs to show his fangs. But behind his innocence is an innocence that is not easy to mess with. He has sealed up his huge energy, but he can take it out again at any time, and some very interesting things will happen, because many people think that he is a very naive and easy-to-deceive person when he is in a very gentle state, when he is really bullied, he will return to the state of Sand Sea.

[2023.03.24] Douyin Live Broadcast

Source: 瓶邪bot (mtl)

Q: I would like to ask, what do you think Wu Xie’s mental state was when he was about to take Zhang Qiling home.

A: I think Wu Xie was not ready when he hit the road. He was ready only after he hit the road. He was slowly, slowly... he was already ready when he arrived at the Bronze Gate. Maybe Zhang Qiling was not ready. Come out, or Zhang Qiling has left. I think it is such a process. When he accepted the worst possibility, he might have calmly enjoyed the moment when Zhang Qiling came out of the bronze door if he had not left. I think he had a lot of distracting thoughts at the beginning.

Q: Actually, he has a certain amount of timidity and nervousness.

A: I think I will have random thoughts, because just in case, after living in this world for a long time, I always feel that there are chances in this world. No matter how small the probability of an event is, if you encounter it once, you will feel that it is very likely to encounter it again.

Wu Xie's Mental Journey (Meta)

Source: MuzzledIdealist

This one is a meta/analysis from Chinese fandom and it's written by MuzzledIdealist on Weibo. They already give consent to repost it as long as the source is indicated. If you are interested, you can see other analysis on their homepage.

Please note that this is an edited MTL, if anyone wants to translate it, you're very welcome to do it :)

⚠️ This meta or analysis is cp-oriented ⚠️

⚠️ This is a repost, not my meta ⚠️

【PingXie】 “When I Know That I Will Never See Him Again”

Written by MuzzledIdealist

"The things he saw were things that he hadn’t been able to come to terms with. But I saw Men You Ping, so did that mean that I wasn’t over everything that had happened during those ten years?" — [Note: Ten Thousand Mountains in the Extreme Night Ch. 63 (MereBear Translation) | Chinese version Ch. 62]

Why he wasn’t over the past?

Let’s analyze Wu Xie’s mental journey over the years:

A major premise is that Men You Ping has always been Wu Xie's greatest source of security.

Wu Xie is too curious, but as a fledgling young man, he lacks experience and force value. If his curiosity is not satisfied and the problem cannot be solved, he will easily fall into anxiety (the book mentions many times that he was anxious when encountering difficulties, so I won’t take screenshots.), and Men You Ping has been providing guidance and protection to Wu Xie, which can be said to have given him a great sense of security in both physical and mental aspects (here I summarized it before. If you are interested, you can take a look at "Sharing Some Cute Details of Men You Ping’s “Double Standard”").

Xu Lei (NPSS) also said in the interview that Zhang Qiling had been protecting Wu Xie and helping him deal with many problems, so when he left, Wu Xie was forced to become like him.

(The screenshot is added in the original post)

Therefore, when Men You Ping was no longer with Wu Xie, his source of security was suddenly taken away.

During the ten years when Xiaoge was away, Wu Xie must have dreamed of Men You Ping countless times during the long agony of waiting and dealing with the enemy. Especially when he encountered difficulties, He prayed, hoped, and imagined that Men You Ping would fall from the sky and appear next to him like it did in the past, because this is a habit he has developed due to Xiaoge's protection.

He has grown up during the period of Tibetan Sea Flower, but he will still frankly tell Pangzi, "I always feel that a place with a Xiaoge will be safer. If he is not here, at least having a statue of him is better than nothing". The fat man said he was superstitious, but that was not the case, because as a top student, Wu Xie had always been accustomed to using scientific knowledge to explain all the strange things he experienced (there are many examples in the book), but for his subconscious dependence on Men You Ping, he had no way to explain it scientifically and rationally.

(The screenshot is added in the original post or take a look on MereBear's translation: Tibetan Sea Flower Ch. 39)

During Sand Sea period, Wu Xie grew up a lot, but when faced with a desperate situation, he still longed for the appearance of the person he wanted to see most for a long time. Even though he was about to cough up pneumoconiosis, even though he knew that the stuffy oil bottle in front of him was just his hallucination. The pain of those ten years also made Wu Xie addicted to smoking because he needed to use cigarettes to relieve his anxiety.

(The screenshot is added in the original post or take a look on MereBear's Translation: Sand Sea 4 Ch. 187)

The title of the chapter in Sand Sea where Wu Xie's throat was cut and he fell off the cliff is the poem "Like red beans inlaid in the ivory dice, my yearning for you is deep in my bones" (the translation comes from here). Why was this poem chosen as the title of this chapter?

Xu Lei once answered this question in a vx (Weixin/WeChat) interview. He said that this was his emotion at the time. Writing in the first person, the author's mood at that time represents the mood of the protagonist at that time, so the meaning of this poem is Wu Xie's mood at that time.

(The screenshot is added in the original post)

The meaning of this poem is: to express the woman's deep yearning for her husband, her longing for her husband and her inseparable love, and she looks forward to her husband's early return. (From Baidu Poetry Analysis)

(The screenshot is added in the original post)

Xu Lei said in a lecture at Fudan University in 2013: "Wu Xie was doing a lot of things with a sense of resentment in Sand Sea, because everyone abandoned him and left him alone there as a widow. The only person he can settle accounts with is Men You Ping, because he is a person who will appear at a fixed place at a fixed time, so Wu Xie must be holding his breath and preparing to ask that person for something back." (This paragraph is dictation + general summary, the original video is more than an hour long. You can search and watch it by yourself.)

(Regarding the widowhood, Xu Lei once explained that Wu Xie changed his name to "Guan Gen 《关根》" in order to maintain his chastity.)

(The screenshot is added in the original post)

Therefore, during the Tibetan Sea Flower period, Wu Xie had just left the sense of security provided by Men You Ping, and would still subconsciously seek his protection when encountering difficulties, even if it was just his statue. During Sand Sea period, he had clearly understood that Men You Ping was no longer by his side, so he had to force himself to become stronger and become like him. But even so, when he was extremely anxious, he still couldn't help but miss Men You Ping, which put him in a state of both longing and resentment.

This is also reflected in the "Ten Years" chapter. In "Ten Years" Wu Xie said, "After so many years, I no longer expected anything from anyone, because these people will eventually leave for various reasons." This is his complaint. He added, “There are some people you just can’t stand up. There is a chance that Men You Ping will appear, and I may die on the road, but after going through so much, I need a relief and an end." This was his thought.

(The screenshot is added in the original post or take a look on MereBear's Translation: Ten Years Later Ch. 20 and Ch. 21)

However, in addition to this feeling of longing and resentment, Wu Xie also has worries, deep worries about whether Men You Ping will live or die in the door, so he wrote in "Ten Years": "In the past ten years, I have had many dreams. I dreamed of him meeting me when I was young. I dreamed about the white bones in front of the bronze door, and dreamed that he had turned into something like Chen Pi Ah Si when we met again. There were many possibilities in ten years, which were enough for me to imagine and accept them one by one."

He has had this kind of nightmare many times in the past ten years, and it has become a knot in his heart that is difficult to untie, so even if Men You Ping is back now, he still feels that he has not completely passed those ten years.

(The screenshot is added in the original post or take a look on MereBear's Translation: Ten Years Later Ch. 36 and Ten Thousand Mountains in the Extreme Night Ch. 63)

But even so, even in those ten years, Wu Xie had thoughts, resentments and worries about Men You Ping, and thought about asking for something from Men You Ping, but he still couldn't bear it. The moment he saw Men You Ping again, he still chose to cover up all these emotions, so he subconsciously pulled down his sleeves to cover the scars on his hands, just as he said during Sand Sea period. When he sees Men You Ping again, he will not tell him all this, he will only tell him that you are just a patient, and you can rest now. So he took Men You Ling and lived in Yucun, the place where there is legendary ginseng that can make people remember for a long time.

(The screenshot is added in the original post or take a look on MereBear's Translation: Ten Years Later Ch. 41 and Sand Sea Ch. 92 | Chinese Version Sand Sea 2 Ch. 53)

It has been analyzed before that the reason why Xiaoge went to Hangzhou to say goodbye to Wu Xie before entering the bronze door and said to him "You are my only connection with this world" is because for the first time he had his own "desire". (This is a long story, see "Psychological Activities of Xiaoge" for details)

If Men You Ping had realized that he had fallen in love with Wu Xie at this time, then when did Wu Xie realize that he had fallen in love with Men You Ping? Probably when he realized that he couldn't lose him, as the saying goes, "How do we measure love, the pain after separation."

(The screenshot is added in the original post)

---

This one is a more in-depth analysis about Wu Xie in Sand Sea by the same writer.

Source: MuzzledIdealist

The sunrise in the desert was also beautiful back then, but Wu Xie had no memory of it. But now that he and his brother are in the world’s second most valuable tomb, he can truly feel the beauty of the sunrise. Because the experience of Sand Sea was not a good memory for Wu Xie. Xu Lei once explained why Wu Xie had seventeen scars on his arms during Sand Sea period. It was because as an originally kind-hearted person, he was forced to do many things that went against his conscience in order to defeat the Wang family, including using others. Therefore, he hurt himself by scratching his arms to relax himself. Xu Lei said that Wu Xie during Sand Sea period had a kind of hatred for him.

Wu Xie has indeed grown up in the past ten years, but this growth comes at a price. Wu Xie gave himself the pen name Guan Gen (Xu Lei explained that it means "keeping his chastity"), and made seventeen cuts on his arm with hatred for himself. When he fell off the cliff, his mood was "Like red beans inlaid in the ivory dice, my yearning for you is deep in my bones" and various injuries that have caused permanent damage to his nose and lungs. From all of this, it can be seen that Xiao Wu suffered from both physical and mental pain during the Sand Sea period, and all of this cannot be summed up by the simple word "Evil Emperor". This seemingly cool title seemed to lightly cover up all the suffering he experienced during that period.

He was repeatedly entangled and pulled between his persistence towards his goal, his hatred for himself, and his extreme longing for Men You Ping. For him, the experience during Sand Sea period was once a painful memory, that's why he subconsciously pulled down his sleeves to cover the scars on his arms when he saw his brother on the day of their ten-year appointment. Maybe he didn't want Men You Ping to know who he was before. But with their tacit understanding, it is impossible for him not to see it, that’s why there was a follow-up story about Xiaoge in "Fishing King Extra" who took Xiao Wu to the Stagnant Water Dragon King Palace to make Xiao Wu suddenly enlightened in order to untie the knot buried in Xiao Wu's heart for the past ten years. Now, the same is true in Yucun Notes when Xiaoge accompanies Xiao Wu to revisit Medog (Motuo). When his lover returns to his side, the greatest source of security returns, and Xiao Wu becomes the "rough jade" again.

"I will exchange my life for ten years of your innocence." Zhang Qiling used his infinite sacrifice to Wu Xie in exchange for a limited benefit (Xu Lei's original words), "Like red beans inlaid in the ivory dice, my yearning for you is deep in my bones" Wu Xie use his ten years to buy Zhang Qiling's freedom for the rest of his life. Some people say that the relationship hurt/comfort is old-fashioned, but I don't think so. The two-way redemption between PingXie and the uniqueness between them is always moving.

---

My thought:

Maybe the word "fall in love" or "lover" the writer uses here is too strong for some people lol, but they did care for each other, no matter what the relationship is, it can't be denied, right? There were some questions that appeared in my head when I read the book, why did Wu Xie do that? Why did he do this? Why did he do all of these things to this extent? Then I understood. Actually, Wu Xie, especially in his early stage, reminds me of my old-self, so I feel like I can sympathize with him somehow. His "innocence" is different from the innocence that most people think, Wu Xie's innocence is the kind of innocence who wished everyone well.

And then, happy birthday, Wu Xie! May you be safe and live a happy life with Xiaoge, Pangzi, and all of your good friends! 🎉🎉🎂(⁠人⁠*⁠´⁠∀⁠｀⁠)⁠｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+ *⁠.⁠✧

#wu xie birthday #daomu biji #dmbj #pingxie #dmbj meta #dmbj analysis #wu xie #meta recs #pingxie only #special recs #盗墓笔记 #吴邪 #瓶邪 #瓶邪only

[extraordinarilyextreme]

today, i wanna talk about this point that i've referenced a couple times across my yrzx fics:

For the fate of the world, Wang Ye relinquished his days of peace and tranquility. To save Zhuge Qing’s life, Wang Ye could sacrifice everything beneath the heavens. (from 岁月不待人 | the moon and the tides, you and i)

i'll start during Beijing arc, when ZCL asks why WY doesn't just give up Feng-hou Qimen to the ppl who want it.

in the manhua (ch. 185) & donghua (s3, ep. 3), WY's response is vague: "for various reasons, i can't give out [that power]."

(note that the dialogue differs slightly btwn these two adaptations, but the meaning is the same)

but in the live-action (s1, ep. 22), WY clearly explains that "it would throw the ways of this world into greater disorder. this calamitous fate must be shouldered by me alone."

these lines perfectly demonstrate one of WY's most defining traits: 心怀天下 / a heart that cradles everything beneath the heavens.

we see it first during the tournament arc, when WY admits to ZCL that he didn't need to get involved in this mess—but did so anyway because the fate of the world was implicated.

WY: Actually, whatever happens to you all has nothing to do with me. No matter how terrible the world ends up, I can still protect myself and my family and keep us unscathed. So, actually, I shouldn't have come here. [...] ZCL: What you mean is that if I continue my investigation, the future of this world may very likely develop in a bad direction. Daozhang, who this "bad future" impacts isn't limited to only me, right? The two of us are neither kin nor kith; you wouldn't have come to get caught up in these troubled waters because of me, right? WY: This, involves another concept. I call it the weight of fate. [...] And you, Zhang Chulan, you hold a high ratio of that weight. Your choice will change the fates of many, many people. (LA s1, ep. 14; see also manhua chs. 121-122 & donghua s2, ep. 12)

this is the extent of WY's selflessness. and as his conversation w ZCL continues, something else is revealed to us.

ZCL: The you who could have stayed out of this matter entirely chose instead to come here and persuade me. Did you also not choose the future that would have been best for you? (LA s1, ep. 14)

that 'something' is none other than WY's conduct: 明知山有虎，偏向虎山行 / knowing full well the mountains harbor tigers, yet insisting on traveling deep into the mountains anyway. or, in other words, the practice of forging on into promised danger.

which, coincidentally, is exactly how WY praised Zhuge Liang's character during his match against ZGQ.

可他却放弃了作为一个修者该坚守的一切。就算逆大势而行，也要投身到乱世当中，只为了去救那个明知已无可救药的天下。/ But he chose to give up everything that a cultivator should uphold and protect. Even if it meant opposing the momentum of the times, he threw himself utterly into chaos of the mortals—all to save a world he knew full well was beyond redemption. 为了那个天下情愿去和天理和大势对抗 / For that world, he was willing to hold off divine order and destiny itself. 明知不可为而为，这就是他那个级别的术士作为。/ To do something knowing full well of its impossible nature—this was the practice of a sorcerer of his caliber. (LA s1, ep. 13; see also manhua ch. 110 & donghua s2, ep. 10)

with such a heart of compassion (怜悯之心, HMH's words) and sense of responsibility, WY is unlike anyone else in his generation. instead, it can be argued that the character most similar to WY is in fact one of his seniors, lao-Tianshi.

they are, at least in the LA, the only two 麒麟 in the story after all (s1, eps. 8 & 20):

and just like lao-Tianshi, it's easy to think of WY as a saint (圣人) or a god—something "above" mortal humans. he's operating on a scale (格局) far greater than anyone else in our main cast; WY is always taking the whole world into consideration, even if that's the choice least favorable to him.

(LA s1, ep. 23)

and then Beijing arc happens. and by the end of it, WY has an epiphany:

“The me who has always avoided involvement with worldly affairs has no right to speak of leaving them behind.” (manhua ch. 196; see also LA s1, ep. 23 & donghua s3, ep. 7)

he's begun to have a reckoning with his own human-ness. he's starting to realize that he's fallible, that he's ordinary and secular, that he has attachments—and, importantly, that he wants attachments. that he desires companionship (just as humans are wont to do).

and it's with that moment of enlightenment that we dive into Biyou Village arc.

because, overall, WY has not actually changed that much. he still feels responsible for the peace and safety of the world; he still wants to figure out how ZCL and FBB are related to the Jiashen Calamity. he still remembers clearly what Hong-ye said: "you are the chosen one." (LA s1, ep. 4)

and even ZGQ himself remarks (manhua ch. 228; see also donghua s4, ep. 5):

yet when ZGQ's safety is at stake, WY doesn't hesitate for even a moment:

(donghua s4, ep. 5; see also manhua ch. 228)

that is not the conduct of someone who always thinks about the bigger scheme of things. that's the conduct of someone making a choice for himself, an arguably selfish choice, to save his friend and doom everyone else.

WY would sooner give up his Feng-hou Qimen and restart the Jiashen Calamity than see ZGQ in danger. that is how important ZGQ is to WY.

在王也的心中，诸葛青的命比天下苍生还重要。/ in Wang Ye's heart, Zhuge Qing's life is more important than everyone in beneath the heavens.

and that's because ZGQ is the first of his generation to approach him. to make an effort to befriend him. to look beyond the power he possesses and also see him.

(LA s1, ep. 15; see also manhua ch. 131 & donghua s2, ep. 14)

in other words, it was ZGQ who made WY's godlike love for the world human. WY is no longer an outside viewer looking down on the plane he feels beholden to; WY is a part of this secular world, and that is why he should want to protect it.

because the red dust realm is where ZGQ exists. here is where their bond exists.

(unrelated pic from manhua ch. 196; see also donghua s3, ep. 7)

tldr: Wang Ye places the world before himself, and Zhuge Qing before the world.

— all this to say, i really am excited for s2 of the live-action, even though the casting rumors have been disheartening. Biyou Village arc is a climactic chapter for YeQing, so i hope the adaptation does it justice.

(LA s1, ep. 27)

#异人之下 #i am nobody #cdrama ramblings #yeqing #一人之下 #hitori no shita #crossposted from twitter but this version is much longer lol #does this count as meta? i always hesitate to use that word bc i read other ppl's stuff and im like WOW #THAT'S MINDBLOWING #but i feel like this is just 'they really really care a lot about each other please cry with me'

[gatoraid]

Character ages in The Radiant Emperor series

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been a little confused about some of the characters’ ages, so I compiled this checklist for fanfic and other purposes. I hope this is helpful for others too! 

The main story is set in 1354-1356. Here is an approximation of their ages in 1355:

Zhu Chongba/Yuanzhang 19/20

Ma Xiuying 17/18

Xu Da 23/24

General Ouyang 26/27

Wang Baoxiang 23-25

Esen-Temur 28/29

Ayushiridara/Third Prince 19

Sources

Zhu is ”technically nineteen” (swbts ch 4, 1354 ninth month)

Ma ”couldn’t be more than seventeen” (swbts ch 9, new year 1355)

Xu Da is 23 (swbts ch 4, 1354 ninth month)

Ouyang has served the house of Prince of Henan for 16 years (swbts ch 8, 1354 twelfth month), the last time he attended the Spring Hunt he was twenty and this year it would be seven years they would attend again (swbts ch 8, 1354, twelfth month)

Baoxiang recalls an event from 10 years ago when he was 14/15 (hwdtw, ch6, 1356)

Esen is said to be two years older than Ouyang in the hwdtw preorder extra story, I guess it’s not technically canon but I’ll take it

The Third Prince is 19 during the spring hunt (swbts ch 12, year 1355 third month)

If you have other, more accurate info, feel free to add it in comments or reblogs!

#she who became the sun #he who drowned the world #the radiant emperor #I'm still kind of unsure about Ma's age but this is all I've got for now without doing a proper reread

[masterofrecords]

The Ravages of Time episode 6

After so long, it's finally here! This was a lot of work for something that maybe two and a half people will read, but I had a lot of fun with it and am ridiculously proud of everything I've learned working on this.

Episode 6

I say Lü Bu is not human

Lü Bu, courtesy name Fengxian, was a famous general of the late Eastern Han dynasty, a skilled horseback archer and a brave and experienced warrior.

Lü Bu was appointed a Registrar by the Bingzhou governor Ding Yuan [1], but later killed him and became Dong Zhuo’s sworn son [2], acting as the official in charge of the imperial palace security, then grew suspicious of Dong Zhuo, and killed him with the help of the Minister over the Masses Wang Yun [3]. He then tried to join Yuan Shu [4], but was refused, and instead turned to Yuan Shao [5], only to again be met with suspicion, and later joined Zhang Yang [6]. After that, Lü Bu and Cao Cao opposed each other for two years. Lü Bu was also occasionally allies, occasionally enemies with Liu Bei, creating the story of Lü Bu shooting the halberd [5].

On the third year of Liu Xie’s third reign (should be around 199 CE), after Lü Bu defeated Liu Bei and Xiahou Dun [6], Cao Cao personally went on a campaign against him. There was a rebellion in Lü Bu’s forces, and he was defeated and taken prisoner. Cao Cao had Lü Bu executed.

---

Readmore here because there are so many notes...

[1] Ding Yuan – a warlord who was summoned to Luoyang alongside with Dong Zhuo to assist in the power struggle against the eunuchs, but arrived slightly later. According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, he was originally from a poor family and rose to power through his bravery and sense of responsibility. Just like Lü Bu, he was a skilled rider and archer.

[2] Sworn son – typically translated as “adopted son”. However, I wanted to dive a little deeper into the nature of their relationship – see this post on the matter.

[3] Wang Yun – a Han dynasty official and politician known mostly for his part in Dong Zhuo’s murder. That was the height (at the time he was the Minister over the Masses – one of the three highest posts in Han dynasty) and the end of his career – within a few months, he was assassinated by Dong Zhuo’s followers in Chang’an.

[4] Yuan Shu – a Han dynasty warlord with an admittedly long and curious biography that won’t all fit here – besides, he’ll be an active participant in the events I assume will make it into the donghua. For now, after Dong Zhuo fled Luoyang, Yuan Shu came into the possession of the Imperial Seal, given to him by his subordinate Sun Jian.

[5] Yuan Shao – another Han dynasty warlord and another active participant in the Late Han politics. He and Yuan Shu did not have a good relationship, partially due to the circumstances of Yuan Shao’s birth. Now this is where things get complicated. English Wikipedia will tell you that he was Yuan Shu’s half-brother, but that’s… not really known, and under the circumstances, I don’t think any certain claims can be made. Yuan Shao was the son of a servant, and later adopted by Yuan Shu’s uncle Yuan Cheng who had no heirs (he is referred as just Yuan Cheng’s “son”, and if you’ve read the “sworn sons” post, looks like it was one of those relationships that gave him the family name and the right to inherit). Either way, despite the shady circumstances of birth, his status was higher than that of Yuan Shu’s, which didn’t stop Yuan Shu from claiming Yuan Shao wasn’t a “true” Yuan when they had disputes. Family.

[6] Zhang Yang – this Han dynasty general didn’t die by Lü Bu’s hand, but he was murdered by a subordinate a few years later while trying to help Lü Bu in his struggle against Cao Cao. He was described as a brave warrior, but wasn’t as involved in court politics as Yuan Shu or Yuan Shao. From what I’ve read in his biography, it almost sounds like politics was happening to him and not the other way around – he was mostly kept out of real power by the people in charge, even when they recognized his talents and contributions.

[7] The story of Lü Bu shooting the halberd is a famous story from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Basically a feat of unmatched marksmanship, but more on that later.

In chapter 16 of the novel, Lü Bu gets caught between two opposing forces of Liu Bei and Ji Ling (Yuan Shu’s general). Ji Ling, who had helped Lü Bu previously, was threatening Liu Bei, and Liu Bei, despite the reservations of his allies, decided to turn to Lü Bu for help. Not wanting to directly oppose Ji Ling and yet also not wanting him to win and gain more strength, Lü Bu called the two of them to his camp to settle things. While Liu Bei was eager to reach a peaceful solution, Ji Ling was intent on fighting. Finally, Lü Bu asked for his halberd, had it set in the ground 150 paces away and made a deal with the two that if Lü Bu could shoot the small blade from a bow, they’d leave peacefully. Certain that the task was impossible, Ji Ling agreed, Lü Bu shot the halberd, and thus the matter was temporarily resolved.

Now, just to put things into perspective, 150 paces is… a lot. To the best of my knowledge, during Han dynasty that would have been around 200 meters (650 feet) (even more if we assume the early Ming dynasty measurements of the time of the writing, that would be about 240 meters (790 feet)). Just… that’s an insane distance for archery. In modern Olympic archery (with the fancy bows and equipment), the largest distance for a recurve bow is 70 meters (230 feet). In traditional archery competitions, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything over 40 meters (130 feet), and the typical distance is 20 meters (65 feet).

I don’t have a conclusion for this, really. Although Lü Bu is typically depicted with a halberd, there’s a reason one of his main defining characteristics is that he was an excellent archer. Of course, this is a fictional tale, but it certainly goes to show how Lü Bu was perceived.

[8] Xiahou Dun – one of Cao Cao’s trusted generals, nicknamed “one-eyed Xiahou” after he lost his eye to a stray arrow some time in the late 190’s. In historical records he is described just as a loyal and humble warrior as well as thoughtful administrator who kept the needs of the common folk in mind. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms really leaned into the whole one-eyed general thing though, describing him yanking the arrow (shot by Lü Bu in this version) out and eating his eyeball.

And now onto episode spoilers!

The song Xiao Meng sings before Dong Zhuo is unfortunately a song written for the show, since Xu Lin is a fictional character, and isn’t an actual old poem. Not sure if Guanshan Road there refers to a specific road, I haven’t been able to find a name for anything period-appropriate, so it could have just been a generic reference to a path through a mountain pass.

The official subtitles are a bit unclear in the part of Dong Zhuo’s speech where the dragon appears, because the translation… doesn’t feature a dragon? It goes something like, “A ruler will be revered by thousands of people wherever he goes. The real ruler is in our hands right now!” The actual words are more like, “Wherever he goes, he will be a dragon revered by thousands of people. This true dragon is now in our hands.”

(Additionally, having finally got around to reading at least the very beginning of the manhua, I actually get why sleeping with Dong Zhuo is absolutely not an option for Xiao Meng. It’s completely omitted in the donghua, but in the manhua Xiao Meng is in fact a eunuch.)

Pretty sure the instructor of the Imperial Guards Yuan Tai is a fictional character.

I had the funniest reaction after reaching the scene of Xiao Meng refusing Dong Zhuo, because that was the first time I fully realized the fake name is Diao Chan. The legendary beauty Diao Chan. And then I went back and rewatched episode 2. And indeed, Xiao Meng is sent to Wang Yun, Minister over the Masses, and I completely missed it then, too busy agonizing over Lü Bu’s halberd and the timelines.

It hasn’t really come up in previous notes, because it’s a fictional story used in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but there, part of the reason for the disagreements between Lü Bu and Dong Zhuo is a woman named Diao Chan (often stylized as Diaochan), Wang Yun’s daughter.

Actually, Diao Chan as Lü Bu’s wife appeared in previous stories, too, the depictions ranging from a woman completely unaware of the surrounding conspiracies to a femme fatale. But I think it was the Romance of the Three Kingdoms that established her connection to Wang Yun and sets Diao Chan as Dong Zhuo’s concubine that Lü Bu falls in love with.

Obviously that’s not what happens in The Ravages of Time, but that story was still clearly a source of inspiration. Though now I have to wonder, with Xiao Meng exposed, will Wang Yun’s involvement in the story change, or will they gloss over that part completely?..

#masterofrecords translates #the ravages of time

[xiyao-feels]

Nie MingJue, “Good. Looks like you’ve been doing these things since sometime ago.”

Meng Yao sighed, “I was in Qishan.”

Lan XiChen sighed as well, his attacks persisting, “MingJue-xiong, he was undercover in Qishan, and sometimes there would be some things that… could not have been helped. When he was doing these things, in his heart he was also…”

(ER trans, ch 49)

I was thinking about this scene right after the Sun Palace. One of the things that drives me nuts is the way LXC's statements here and elsewhere tend to get taken as this kind of—I don't know, excuse for passivity? Just making excuses for JGY? Anything but a statement of actual moral principle: it matters to him why JGY was doing what he was doing, it matters to him what the actual outcome was, he literally actually believes JGY was justified in his actions here. It's not that he likes JGY, though he certainly does; it's that he agrees with JGY about the morality of his actions!

And it's certainly true that he's a lot less likely than JGY to be placed in a situation where all the options are awful, so maybe that, combined with the unfortunate influence of NMJ's point of view, has something to do with it. But I think it's worth pointing out that

a) when he does see evidence that JGY has acted in a way he really does disagree with, he absolutely does act! He brings wang//xian to the cultivation conference, he intends to protect WWX until the truth is discovered, he investigates the song of Turmoil. And of course in the temple he ends up literally killing JGY! So although it obviously does distress him to uncover this, and obviously I myself think JGY was more justified than LXC initially realized, when LXC does have information that JGY is behaving in a way he really morally disagrees with—he acts.

b) we do, actually, know of a scenario where LXC was in a situation where all the options were awful. And we know exactly what he did: he took the best option he could, even though that option was having LWJ physically punished in such a way it took years to recover. And while I don't doubt he regrets the necessity of it, I don't believe there's evidence that he couldn't come to a decision, or thought he himself had acted wrongly.

[presumenothing]

random novel excerpts #4, from book 4 ch 4 (aka 纸生极乐塔 arc):

The 'thousand-year fox spirit' came to lie quietly at Li Lianhua's feet. Li Lianhua looked awhile at that note drenched in fresh blood, then leaned down and lightly stroked its head with a sigh.

Fang Duobing said, coldly: "I was mistaken."

Shao Xiaowu patted both of their shoulders. "No one would've expected for 'it' to let Li Fei go in Jingde Hall, only to kill him here."

Li Lianhua shook his head. Shao Xiaowu could not make out his expression in the dim light, only hear Fang Duobing's cold words: "I already knew ages ago that Lu Fang and Li Fei were closely tied together, I should've realised that with Lu Fang gone mad, 'it' would kill Li Fei next – it's my fault." He struck that tree once, forcefully. "It's my fault!"

The lighter went out yet again. Shao Xiaowu had nothing to say; the killing intent rolled off Fang Duobing. Li Fei's corpse was still slowly dripping blood, one drop after another, like a pained groan.

"Well… in a person's life, there's bound to be mistakes sometime." Li Lianhua said, "If not a mistake here, then a misstep there – after all, you've got to have some topic for conversation when you're well into your seventies and eighties…"

Fang Duobing broke out in fury. "Damn Lianhua! This is a human life! A whole human life we're talking about! Yet here you are still daring to spout utter nonsense to my face, don't you have any conscience at all?"

Still Li Lianhua continued in that longwinded way: "…well… in a person's life, sometimes you do too much or too little, we all make some mistakes, whether intentional or not, whether real or feigned or halfway in between, there's always bound to be burdens, some that you must bear, yet some you don't have to take so seriously… like this one…" He sighed, and said in utmost earnesty: "No one has asked of you, Fang-dagongzi, to be able to anticipate matters to perfection. I doubt Li Fei would ever have thought of expecting you to protect him even when he was dying, so – don't think too much of it, it's not your fault."

Shao Xiaowu nodded, hard, dealing vigorous pats at Fang Duobing that nearly dislocated that elegantly thin shoulder of his. Fang Duobing remained silent for several moments more, before letting out a long exhale. "Why is it that I've never heard you say such nice words the rest of the time, when I'm actually being oh so gracious to you?"

Li Lianhua said, with a serious face: "My words have always been nice…"

Fang Duobing gave a tsk of disparagement. "What now? You haven't caught your 'thousand-year fox spirit', and yet here Li Fei has turned up dead, are Wang-gonggong and the Crown Prince still going to buy your fake priest shtick? Don't go saying I've ever known you at all when they're beheading you and exterminating your whole house."

Li Lianhua answered with cheerful readiness: "Of course, of course, if it comes to that you'll know nobody aside from the Princess, and naturally nothing of me."

necessary (delightful) note: i've omitted it for simplicity but fang duobing jumps back and forth between 我 and 老子 here, with a 本公子 thrown in for flavour. i adore this gremlin so much

#mysterious lotus casebook #莲花楼 #li lianhua #fang duobing #fanghua #mine #also hiiiiiiiiiiii hulijing #long post

[edenwolfie]

why not, it is wip wednesday

small snippet from ch 10 of 'Til our compass stands still :

“Hello!” Xie Lian called as he entered the kitchen. Five heads snapped in his direction, two of them bending very unnaturally.

“Wujin, what the fuck!” Yanxun shouted, leaping over the counter to throw herself at him. Her arms gripped his shoulders, looking over him carefully. “Are you okay? I went to Paradise Manor but that fucking Waning Moon Officer turned me away—”

“Huh, he is pretty handsome though,” Baihua said behind her. “Yanxun, you said he wasn’t.”

“I said he wasn’t my type, idiot, I never said he wasn’t good looking,” she retorted, then slyly turned her focus back to Xie Lian. “Though from what I’m hearing around town you shouldn’t say such things about Chengzhu’s new wife, huh? Seems dangerous to covet something that isn’t yours.”

Baihua blanched, swore at her, and went back to chopping vegetables, though both their ears were perked in Xie Lian’s direction. Predictable.

“Wujin!”

Xie Lian turned to see Dianshui, Chunchun, and Lianzhu pushing in through the hanging cloth of the entry. Longtan and Wang Lu had abandoned their games and followed them in as well. Apparently the allure of gossip was too strong to be resisted, even at the expense of running the Den.

“Ahaha, hello,” he called back, sending them a little wave.

“Damn, you were right, Chunchun, gege is cute,” Dianshui noted, eyes roving over his face as they came to a stop.

Xie Lian resisted sighing. Was his face so exciting?

Chunchun squeezed his cheek gently. “Don’t make that face at your meimeis! We’re here to congratulate you! It looked like Chengzhu had his tongue pretty far down your throat just now.”

“So, tell us, tell us,” Yanxun cut in, batting Chunchun’s hand away and dragging Xie Lian over to the nearest table, maximising the kitchen audience’s ability to hear everything. He sat down and she set a plate of almond biscuits before him. “Is it true?”

“Thank you for the food.” Xie Lian laughed, picking up a biscuit and chewing blissfully. Ah, her cooking really was the best. “Is what true? I don’t know what’s being said.”

#wip wednesday #edenwolfie writes

[chronicallylatetotheparty]

Perfect Paradise Ch.7 Wō Men Zài Zhè Li, Zài Zhè Li Deng Ni

Summary: We are here waiting for you.

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

"Wài sheng nü!" Aunt Fei held out her arms and gave Emma a hug strong enough to rival Grandpa's. "Wài sheng!" She repeated the embrace with Hugo while giving Louis a fist bump. "You've gotten so tall!"

"A yí Fei," Hugo gave a broad grin.

"Thank you for having us on such short notice, Fei." Juleka accepted her own hug.

"You kidding? Buó Buo Wang loves meeting Mèi Xù's family." Fei chuckled good-naturedly. "I swear sometimes he's more grateful about restoring Shīfu's school than I am."

Hugo shifted uncomfortably.

Louis leaned in and asked Emma, "Mèi Xù?"

"She means Papa."

"Oh."

"Awwww," Rose's eyes sparkled as she grasped Fei's hands. "That's so sweet!"

Fei felt her grin widen at Rose's sincerety. "Never change, Rose. Now c'mon, we don't want to leave Buó Buo waiting!"

Emma and Louis' faces were plastered to the window as the Tsurugi car drove itself through Shanghai's streets. Never getting enough of the city their Grandma grew up in.

The cityscape blurred past Hugo's eyes. He forgot Papa gave Aunt Fei the money she needed to rebuild her dad's school as a "birthday present".

It took some convincing. Aunt Fei was as stubborn as Maman when she wanted to be. But if Hugo was remembering this right, she agreed to train Papa once the school was open.

That's probably why Monarch's involvement with Wu Shīfu's death didn't drive a wedge between her and Hugo's parents... His fists clenched at the thought of how close they were to losing yet more family to this... this... this bullshit.

"I hear Ladydragon has been getting into trouble with the cops," Louis stage whispered to Emma as he spotted street art of the shapeshifting superhero.

"Lòng Nǚshì is a servant of the people," Aunt Fei supplied. "If a law is not just then she sees no reason to uphold it."

Aunt Juleka nodded solemnly. "ACAB."

Aunt Fei grinned.

They pulled up to the Thousand Delights. Their Grunkle's restaurant closed for the day.

"Buó Buo!" Aunt Fei called. "We're here!"

"Kids!" Grunkle Wang rolled up to them in his wheelchair and stretched out his arms. The chair was decorated so that it looked like it was wearing a chef's uniform too. Rolled up sleeves on the sides and an apron string tied at the back.

Each of them bowed to him in greeting.

"So good to see you," Grunkle Wang smiled. "Shame Marinette could not come."

"Yeah, a real tragedy," Emma muttered under her breath.

"I'm sure she has a thousand things on her plate and is trying to do them all at once, like usual Buó Buo," Aunt Fei answered.

Emma couldn't quite smother her laughter.

"I mean, she's not wrong," Louis observed.

"Maman is really busy!" Hugo defended her with more than a hint of indignation.

"Buó Buo, this is Juleka and Rose. Family of Mèi Xù and Meì Mei's,"

Juleka blushed. "Oh, we're- that is-"

Grunkle Wang reached out and clasped her hand. "An honor to meet family from France. You are very welcome in our home."

Rose eyes shone. "It's great to finally meet you. Marinette always said you were her favorite part about visiting Shanghai. Well, you and Fei."

Juleka laid a hand on her girlfriend's shoulder. "Thanks, Wang Shīfu. But we already-"

"Nonesense! You are our guests. I insist you stay here."

"Buó Buo, this place isn't as big as it used to be," Fei reasoned.

Juleka started to nod.

"Which is why they'll be staying at my school."

"Exact-" Juleka did a double take.

Wang Shifu grinned. "Yes. That way they are still under the family's roof, no?"

"Well..." Juleka trailed off.

"We'd love to stay with you!" Rose beamed.

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

Hugo glanced through the photos of his family on the walls of his room. It was... smaller than he was used to. And his family looked so big. He wasn't sure how they managed to fit everyone into such a space.

Still, they looked happy. Hugo wished he could've met his great grandparents. His hand hovered over a photo of what he thought was Grandma Sabine standing next to them. Hard to tell with her looking younger than he was.

Odd. The soft pressure at his chest for a time he never knew.

Hugo shook his head of the feeling as he made his way downstairs.

"-this is wise, Renren."

"I promised Mèi Xù."

Hugo blinked. "Aunt Fei?"

"Placing yourself between an unbalanced Yin-Yang could have grave consequences."

"Then it's a good thing this is something they both agree on."

"... Your sense of duty is commendable, Renren."

Hugo walked closer. His Mandarin was rusty and the voices were muffled but that sounded like...

"I know you're just looking out for me like you always do, Mei Shi. But they're family. I can't just tell them 'no'."

Aunt Fei jumped as she saw him standing outside her door. "Hugo!"

"Sorry! Didn't mean to startle you, A yí Fei. Do we have guests?"

"What? Oh, no. I was just talking on the phone with a friend. Let's head downstairs and see if Buó Buo needs help in the kitchen. If I know him he's gone all out again."

Aunt Fei placed an arm over Hugo's shoulders as they passed Grunkle Wang's elevator. The prospect of helping in his Grunkle's famous cooking almost enough to distract Hugo from what he'd overheard.

Almost.

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

Louis breathed in the smells of a five star chef's cooking and tried to keep his mouth from watering.

Rose wasn't trying at all as she stared at the first course. "Ooh! Marinette soup!"

Emma narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the creamy purple bowl.

Hugo rolled his eyes from across the table and picked up his spoon.

Grunkle Wang grinned as Aunt Juleka and Aunt Rose started scarfing down the Marinette soup as politely as possible.

"Mmmm!" Aunt Rose mumbled, mouth too full for words.

"This is amazing," Aunt Juleka praised before following her girlfriend's example.

Emma's eyes went wide as she had her first mouthful. Her second quickly following.

Hugo smirked as he blew on his spoon to cool it down.

Louis savored the warmth of it's flavor. He usually didn't like creamy soups but the texture of this one was just right.

"There's a reason it's stayed on the menu all these years," Aunt Fei grinned as she swallowed. "It's very popular with the clientele." Her smile lessened. "Or at least it was..."

Grunkle Wang waved this away as he rolled up to his plate. "It will blow over once the newest scandal comes along. Then they will not find my soup suddenly 'disagreeable'."

The salty flavor was suddenly bitter in Louis' mouth. From the way Hugo's spoon stopped halfway he felt it too.

Emma looked down at her empty bowl. "Is it because...?"

"No," Grunkle Wang shook his head. "Enough of that. It's time for the second course!"

Aunt Fei stood up. "Buó Buo, let me."

"I can do it," he tried to wave her off.

"Buó Buo you did most of the cooking. Let me."

Grunkle Wang chuckled as he adjusted his position. "So I did."

Louis wasn't easily distracted from the thought of his parents' divorce hurting his Grunkle's restaurant. But the food did it's best. There weren't even any carrots in the stir fry.

He couldn't eat cooked carrots. And no white rice either. Which he recalled was something Aunt Rose was supposed to avoid.

There was brown rice though. Which Louis noticed Hugo trying to drown in sauce.

Hugo's eyes briefly met his gaze before flitting away. So he hadn't forgotten either.

The adults talked about how their jobs were going or asked his siblings how school was. All while Louis separated his food and separated his thoughts.

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

Emma left her contacts in their case and took out her glasses.

Ugh, she was definitely leaning towards glasses. Emma hadn't slept well. A fact she blamed on the jetlag.

Absolutely nothing to do with her parents being so ridiculously famous that their relationship status put family business in jeopardy. Nope. Not at all.

...

Of course if it came down to it Papa would just-

Emma slapped her cheeks to wake herself up and derail that particular train of thought. She really needed to stop trying to solve everything with money.

The comb ran down her hair to smooth it out before she tied it into her ponytail.

Money did solve a lot of things though. Like getting the elevator installed or finding a wheelchair model that Grunkle Wang could maintain without relying on Aunt Fei. Reconfiguring the kitchen-

Emma stood abruptly and, making sure she was presentable, marched towards the door.

Money doesn't solve friendship problems though.

Her brothers and Aunts were waiting for her downstairs.

And it definitely didn't solve family problems no matter how much she wished it did.

"Alright!" Aunt Fei grinned. "First stop: breakfast."

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

Emma greedily finished her jianbing as they walked up to the Shanghai Museum... "Wait. Who-"

Hugo's big eyes and stupid grin was her answer.

She hid the fond smile that threatened to peak out behind what was left of her breakfast. Trying not to roll her eyes. No, really.

"Keep close. This place is fu- freaking huge," Aunt Fei stated.

Emma did roll her eyes at that. Only for her to stare up at the massive crisscrossing stairs connecting the museum's levels. Families and other tourists milling inside.

Aunt Fei led them to the Gallery of Ancient Chinese Paintings.

Hugo's eyes still trying to bug out of his head.

Louis was trying to avoid touching anyone. Thankfully it wasn't that crowded.

"This is a recent addition. I thought all of you might appreciate it. Being from Paris and all," Aunt Fei said that last part like she was about to let them in on a joke.

Hugo muttered appreciatively to himself as he gazed at the paintings. No doubt able to tell what dynasty they were from. Nerd.

"...and this one is..." Hugo jerked.

Oh, his eyes can get bigger!

"Hēi Māo!"

Emma blinked before actually looking at the painting that had Hugo enthralled.

It was a man wielding a long staff. His black robes tied around his waist with the sash trailing behind him like a tail. His short hair denoting his criminalized status. A cat-like mask atop his head.

Hēi Māo. The Black Cat.

"Piáo Chóng!" Hugo exclaimed again.

The woman was similarly dressed to her partner except with less armor and more spots. Her hair denoting that she was at least well off.

The Ladybug's yo-yo twirling around Piáo Chóng.

"I thought the Miraculous wielder's were more well hidden?" Aunt Rose asked.

"These paintings are ancient. Far older than anything found in Europe that relates to the Miraculous," Aunt Fei explained. "Even so they were donated to the museum by an old family. I doubt the painter, or painters, ever meant for their work to be observed by the common people."

Emma stared at these ancient predecessors to the heroes of her city. Feeling strangely connected to the legacy of the Miraculous. Even though it was Hugo who was rattling off their names and what villains they had fought.

Aunt Rose nudged Aunt Juleka and pointed to a painting of Purple Tigress' predecessor. Aunt Juleka blushing for some reason.

"You certainly know more about the Miraculous lore than I do, wài sheng," Aunt Fei praised.

Hugo beamed. "Yeah, Papa taught me everything... I know." His face fell a little as he stared at the image of Húdié, the Butterfly. "Papa didn't know much so he taught himself so he could teach me."

Emma remembed that. It was one of the few fights her parents had before the big one. She couldn't say why.

Aunt Fei froze as she moved to put a hand on Hugo's shoulder. Head tilting up as though she was listening to someone.

"In broad daylight?" she muttered.

Louis looked up at her in confusion. "A yí?"

"Sorry!" Aunt Fei snapped to attention. "I have to take care of something real quick! Be right back!" She gestured to Aunt Rose and Juleka to watch them as she practically sprinted down the stairs.

Emma blinked. Aunt Fei's sudden departure reminding her uncannily of the times her parents would vanish due to 'something important'. "Must be a grown up thing," she muttered. Yes, absolutely nothing suspicious about that.

Louis was talking quietly to Hugo so Emma decided not to interrupt that. Aunt Rose and Juleka were keeping one eye on her brothers and another on the paintings.

Emma turned and- Blond hair in a green suit turned a corner on the other side of the museum. "Papa?"

He definitely looked like her Papa. And it was only the gallery right across from them. She had her phone with her... "Going to the restroom. Be right back!"

Her Aunts nodded to show they heard.

It could not be Papa, Emma thought as she went down and up the stairs to arrive at the same level. But y'know, opposite. In which case it would be slightly less embarrassing without an audience.

Emma turned a corner and to her surprise there he was. "Papa!"

Papa grinned and held out his arms for a hug. Which Emma accepted. Weird, he was wearing cologne.

"Hey there, Em!"

"What're you doing here? I thought you needed to stay in Paris for paperwork reasons?"

"True, but I couldn't just leave my darling daughter like that now could I?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Papa!"

Papa grinned as he moved away from her play shove.

He felt lighter too. Not a lot. But enough that it seemed like the suit was hiding some weight loss. Was Papa eating enough?

"Oh!" He snapped his fingers. "Before I forget, I wanted to ask you. Have you seen my brooch?"

Emma's brow furrowed. O...kay? "A brooch?" Papa wore plenty of rings and sometimes earrings but she didn't remember him ever having a brooch.

He rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah I seem to have forgotten where I put it. It's silver. Shaped like a fan or a fancy flower." He stepped closer with a friendly smile. "You haven't seen it?"

Emma suddenly felt the chill of the museum air against her back. "Felix?"

Felix's charming smile melted into something sharper as he glanced at the other patrons. "I just want what your father stole from me."

Emma backed away from him and closer to the open space of the foyer. "I don't know-"

Felix's hand snaked out and clasped itself around her wrist. "Think! Adrien isn't that good at hiding things!"

"You're hurting me!" Emma cried out. The bones of her arm felt like they were sliding together with the force of his grip. Which didn't budge no matter how much she pulled at it.

"Just tell me-"

A flash of pink and Felix was sent hurtling across the gallery floor. Thankfully missing the exhibits. Patrons screaming in shock and fear.

Emma stumbled back as Pigella stood between her and the impersonator.

"Alright, fuck-face!" Pigella cracked her knuckles. Despite her short stature she radiated Fnd Out energy. "You got two choices. I beat your ass senseless and call Pagasus to dump you into a nice cozy French prison cell. Or you get the hell out of Shanghai."

Felix sneered condescendingly at her. No easy thing to pull off with him holding a black eye.

In answer he pulled something out of his coat and smashed it on the floor. Smoke billowing out of it. Eliciting another round of panicked screams.

"Remain calm!" Pigella held her arm over Emma as though worried Felix might try for her again.

But when the smoke cleared Felix was gone.

"Stupid supervillains and their fucking smoke bombs," Pigella muttered.

"Emma!" Aunt Juleka was on her in a flash. Looking over her for injuries.

She could see Hugo and Louis hovering worriedly behind her.

"Are you ok?"

"I- I- I-"

Breathe Emma.

Breathe.

Emma took a shakey breath.

"I'm... o-okay."

Aunt Juleka hugged her close. Emma burying her tears in purple and black.

#Perfect Paradise #ml au #ml fanfic #emma dupain cheng #hugo dupain cheng #louis dupain cheng #rose lavillant #juleka couffaine #fei wu #felix graham de vanily #ml #miraculous ladybug

[kapyushonchan]

Plague Doctor Ch. 31 short summary

Since it's taking me longer to translate chapters due to busyness, I decided to post on tumblr short chapter retellings that I post on MGPD Discord when chapters come out.

The chapter starts with very... tired/drained Lera, who comes to Sergey's main apartment. Lera is covered in small cuts and bruises all over her body. She is also smoking. She admits that she failed the mission, that there is some f-ed up shit that is going on in the casino, and she ask a permission to enter. A bewildered Sergey agrees. Then he stops and waryly asks Lera how she knows his real address. Lera lifts up her face - her eyes are like a Fireworshipper's. She drops a cigarette and everything starts to burn. Sergey wakes up with a jolt, and thinks wtf is he dreaming about again. Then he turns to the left side of his king-sized bed and says, "Oleg, you-" But the left side of the bed is empty.

Oleg is caughing and playing some videogame (Baldur's gate?).Sergey comments that Oleg spent a day in the ice warehouses and didn't get sick, while here in the summer heat he caught a cold. Oleg reminds about his gift of a minuscule chance. Sergey changes the subject and asks if Oleg has cigarettes. Oleg shows him where to get some and then comments that Sergey doesn't smoke, so why would he need cigarettes. Sergey replies that he had a nightmare and now he wants to smoke. Oleg asks what he dreamed about and Sergey retells him his dream. Sergey finds the cigarettes, freezes, and then says in surprise "Why do I need cigarettes? What the hell."

As it turns out, the ending of last chapter where Lera infiltrates Mark's casino, inhales spores from his miracle tree and Mark catches her is my mistake, I confused the Triad spy - Wang Lin - with Lera. They have similar hairstyles. That's why Mark caught Wang Lin and not Lera. Meanwhile, Lera is at home reading a book on Slavic mythology, which Mark recommended to her, and thinks he pranked her. Apparently, it's a lot of nonsense. Then she notes that the wound on her knee went away quite quickly, but Fishkin's bite marks are not (I guess the events of the arc take place tightly after the special. During her fight with Fishking, who attacked people, she teamed up with Mir and Aisa to beat him, but he bit her quite hard). Lera has also taken in Chrysalis's cat for foster care while he is at sea. She gets a call from Toma. Toma tells her that he doesn't know who sent her the anonymous letter asking the Plague Doctor to help catch Fishkin (which caused the Plague Doctor to later be blamed for Fishkin's kidnapping, though he simply escaped), and Chrysalis wonders how his cat is doing.

Meanwhile, we are shown what became of Wang Lin after he was caught by Mark. As it turns out, his hallucinations didn't stop, it was just a way to show what was really going on. Mark orders the unconscious Wang Lin to be thrown out. Wang Lin ends up simply going insane and is found by the Triad men and brought back to headquarters. Liu Shengli is very concerned and tries to bring him to his senses. Mrs. Mei is not happy with their failure, beats up Shengli and kills Wang Lin. She then demands that Shengli tell Mark that the Triad demands a fight. Shengli is shoked and broken by his friend's death.

Meanwhile, Mark is examining his man which is blind in one eye and Mark is unable to cure him. To be more precise: his subordinate was walking around with a prosthetic eye. Mark grew an eye for him, but the eye of his subordinate can't see anything. It's strongly implied here that Mark is the one who adopts other people's wounds and then heals them. He also comments to himself that "My father's land was never my own and gave me almost no power. Only wasted my strength." I assume he is half Mexican, his father is from Russia.

Mark shoos his subordinate out and Shengli walks up to him unnoticed. Mark is caught off guard and asks how he got in in the first place. Shengli says that Mark's men searched him and let him in. Mark wonders to himself how he's even still alive with such guards and scoffs at Shengli's words that he's unarmed and defenseless, saying Shengli is a fighter, his body a weapon in itself. Shengli recommends hiring Chinese bodyguards, who are rigorously screened. Mark scoffs, saying, "Did you come for job interview?"

Meanwhile, Lera, in an airy pink dress, approaches the casino and notices Shengli's security guards. Sergey notes that they don't look like building security, just some strange asian dudes. Lera walks up to the entrance and they start harassing her. As soon as one of them grabs her, he gets kicked in the stomach. A brawl ensues and Lera trashes them like puppies. Meanwhile, Shengli sends Mark a Triad message: confrontation. Until the group is destroyed. Mark assigns a location for a showdown - Shuvalov Forest. Mark's man runs in and says there's a fight with the Chinese at the entrance. Mark is unhappy that Shengli told him that he came alone. Mark sees Shengli's beaten guards at the entrance and jokes that Chinese guards are also made in China. Shanley gets angry at thst remark. Seeing Lera, Mark perks up, transforms, and expresses how happy he is to see her again. Lera is surprised that Mark is the owner of the casino, and Sergey remarks snidely that Lera has interesting acquaintances.

Mark is so happy to see Lera that when he learns that she has come looking for a job, he almost offers her the position of head of security. Sergey jokes that Lera should be more careful - "don't overdo yourself trying to get a job, ma chérie, or you'll end up getting a maternity leave".

Shengli also starts apologizing to Lera on behalf of his guards, saying that the order was not to let anyone in, to which Lera replied, "Taking a woman away against her will is also an order?". Shengli apologizes for that as well. Lera notes to herself that Shengli looks somehow doomed. Mark is irritated that Shengli has gotten Lera's attention.

Shengli and Mark start bickering with each other, which does not escape the attention of Lera and Sergey - they realize that before them are competitors at knifepoint. Shengli finds it suspicious that a professional fighter shows up on Mark's doorstep and Mark doesn't care, but decides not to dwell on it. Shengli leaves and reminds Mark about meeting "in Shuvalovsky". Sergey is pleased, he is going to search in where exactly they're going to have their showdown. Mark apologizes to Lera for the scene and escorts her inside. Sergey turns off the microphone just in case, since he's been joking constantly and is afraid that Mark will notice the wiretap.

Lera sees the strange tree with flowers and mushrooms that Mark planted in the hall and says that it is beautiful. Sergey notes that the orphanage didn't have this tree before. Mark says that the St. Petersburg climate is too cold for him, but this tree has taken root here - although that didn't happen even at his home. Anyway, this place where his tree took root is his reason for staying in the city. Lera clarifies whether Mark is a gardener or a landscaper. Mark jokes that he's a magician. This is when they are rudely interrupted by new visitors. Lera is shocked and horrified, Sergey is shocked and horrified, and tells Lera that they'd better shoot the building plan some other time, because Altan Dagbaev and Vadim themselves have come to Mark's casino. As it turns out, Mark had an appointment with them (but he was too happy to see Lera and forgot. Or he just doesn't care, lmao).

That's it folks.

#plague doctor #my translations #bubble comics #altan dagbaev #vadim #sergey razumovsky #oleg volkov #lera makarova #short summary

[phoenixharp-05]

spoilers! ch 129

so it seems like Qin Xian's memories are getting really jumbled now? He seems to be calling Wang Yi big bro from the first world. Wonder what would happen if he reverted back to a completely different version of himself in this setting...

oh yeah, and also what the FUCK was going on with that scene with the chains

#casually implying that Wang Yi either got pulled into Qin Xian's past memories #or that Wang Yi is CURRENTLY living all this out in an illusion Qin Xian created #i like the second idea but i dont think QX has a reason for doing that and i still think his soul is split #but idk. how did QX lose Wang Yi?? how tf did he get in that position and how did WY get to where he is now?? #where is the main system in all this??? #i have to be a great villain #i want to be a big baddie

[lunanoc]

so probably against what should have been my better judgment, i went ahead and actually wrote “meta”, except it’s only borderline meta because it ends up veering off into crack theory territory and is also insanely long, but i figure since it’s now too long to be posted as a discord liveblog like it was supposed to be, i might as well just. post it here (in several parts because no one wants a 10k post lbr)

disclaimer: i like to be transparent about where i’m coming from, so just know that i have not finished reading all the books yet. currently i’m practically through everything, books and extras included, up until and including sand sea part III, so anything i talk about relating to that is my own reading experience. i’ll sometimes reference later books i’ve either read snippets of, or talked about with people who have (and verified the information as best as i could), but because i lack full context for those, any mentions of those elements are automatically grain of salt and relegated to crack theory. for everything i have read that i can grab quotes for, i’ll be providing clear references to the specific chapters of the books they’re from

also, blanket spoiler warning for the books

but that being said, let me actually get into this thing:

king shang of lu, the iron-masked gentleman, king mu of zhou, the queen mother of the west, how they’re connected, who they might be, and what that could mean for the larger dmbj narrative

PART I: KING SHANG OF LU AND THE IRON-MASKED GENTLEMAN

writing this shaved years off of me, the rabbit-holing was insane, and there’s still no clear answers in the end but welcome to the ride i guess

starting off here, the problem with these two characters is that we have conflicting information about them from three different sources that all give a different version of the same story, all of which are various degrees of dubious for different reasons. and you could say ok but really, who cares i do apparently about these two because in the larger plot they don’t really amount to much in the end

BUT

given both the things we learn by the end of sand sea (and elements that pop up in later installments) about all the various parties involved in what’s essentially a subplot, and the fact npss goes into so much detail with such a deliberate throwback to something all the way back in the first book, i don’t think the fact that the various versions of the story of king shang of lu sometimes blatantly contradicting themselves is a mistake, but is rather proof of deliberate obfuscation of the truth. npss tends to like revisiting sometimes seemingly anecdotal or trivial things from previous books to connect them with a subsequent revelation, or open the door to a different interpretation of them, so that he’d do it here isn’t all that surprising to me

the three versions of the story of “the emperor” (or the ruler of the state of lu), king shang of lu, and the iron-masked gentleman we get are, in order of appearance:

version 1 from a silkbook found in the purple jade box in “king shang of lu”’s coffin (Book 1, Ch. 26, Purple Jade Box)

version 2 from xiaoge himself who gives an opposing account to the previous one that he supposedly read from a warring states period silkbook he found in a song dynasty tomb (Book 1, Ch. 26-27, Purple Jade Box / Lies)

version 3 from the powerpoint lesson given by the wang family to li cu (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 132, 133, 134, Lesson / King Mu of Zhou / Deception)

the first two accounts are both from book 1 and immediately follow each other, but neither of them quite fit with the last one, or at least it would seem so. you could argue this is simply because book 1 was when npss was still trying to figure things out both with his plot and characters, so the final account given by the wang family is a retcon, and while that’s always possible, like i mentioned, npss likes to connect things and tends to either incorporate these kinds of seemingly obscure and irrelevant details for a reason, or simply retroactively fleshes them out to revisit them at a later date and shed a new light on the bigger picture. so it’s more the fact we just don’t know which things he implements deliberately from the start and which ones he ties back to retroactively, but in the end seeing as the result is the same it doesn’t matter much. what does matter is that he does it pretty consistently, so it’s safe to assume he’s also doing it with this particular story (side tangent, but i like to think that npss has shown he’s a big fan of something called chekov’s gun and no i won’t elaborate on that or else i’ll be here for hours but google that if you’re interested it’s fun)

so tldr; i basically just want to argue that by intentionally bringing back this story with obvious divergences, it might be a way to shed light on something else that informs king shang of lu’s story while placing it as a puzzle piece in the bigger picture of dmbj lore

but let’s break down those three different accounts of the story of king shang of lu

the first account

i’m going to tldr; most of these for the sake of clarity, but i’ll be referencing the various chapters all these bits are taken from if you want to verify any of it

technically the first real account of king shang of lu’s story we get is what’s written on the stone slab in the hall with all of the coffins in the seven star palace that says that he was “born with a ghost seal and could borrow ghost soldiers from the underworld” (Book 1, Ch. 10, Shadow), but i’m not counting that as a full-blown version of the story because it’s not dwelt on all that much and mostly serves as a preamble for pangzi to later posit to wu xie that it’s a bunch of bs and was probably just an exaggeration meant to mythologize king shang of lu given that the tomb itself is a weird anachronistic mix of western zhou and warring states architecture (which is an important argument but maybe not for the reasons you’d think)

so i consider the first fleshed-out version of king shang of lu’s story we get to be the one wu xie reads off of the silkbook he and wu sanxing pull from “king shang of lu”’s coffin, and is one that very quickly gets debunked within book 1 itself multiple times, so while it may seem easy enough to write off, it’s not so much what it says that’s interesting, but rather why it exists in the first place

this version of the story essentially relates the life and deeds of king shang of lu, recorded on what’s supposed to be a warring states period silkbook pulled from the man’s own coffin. it talks about how he inherited his title from his father and was a lowly grave robber lord who was cruel and greedy, and how one day he gained from a snake demon/spirit in a tomb he excavated “two treasures” in a “purple and gold box” (this will be important later) which are never explicitated, although wu xie speculates one of those treasures to be the ghost seal as its acquisition is directly mentioned in the text. the snake comes to king shang of lu in a dream and promises to make him a high-ranking official and teach him how to use the treasures in the box if he spares its soul (he doesn’t). and so king shang of lu becomes a military officer under the command of the “emperor” of the state of lu. in his later years, however, he starts to get old and sick, and so the “emperor” demotes him back into being a lowly grave robber, and he starts to fear death, so king shang of lu goes to his military advisor, the “iron-masked gentleman” or 铁面先生 tiemian xiansheng, in search of a solution. the iron-masked gentleman then tells him that something called jade burial armor, a treasure from ancient times, exists, and that it can keep someone young forever. so king shang hunts and hunts and scours tomb after tomb until eventually he finds a western zhou dynasty tomb which will later become the seven star palace where he discovers a corpse wearing the famed jade buriam armor. iron mask takes the corpse out of the armor, subdues the blood zombie it turns into, and then helps king shang of lu fake his death in front of the “emperor” so he can be buried in the tomb he built for himself on top of the western zhou tomb he’d found (Book 1, Ch. 26, Purple Jade Box)

however

this version is quickly debunked twice in pretty quick succession, and then a third time a bit later, still in book 1, but before i get to that, a few extra little details i want to point out:

to be fair literally no one (who doesn’t speak chinese and is reading the original text anyway) would be able to guess either from the translation or merebear’s footnotes that “iron-masked scholar/gentleman” or 铁面先生 is not in fact necessarily meant to be taken literally. it’s partly an idiom. 铁面 tiemian is an expression that can mean “someone who is upright in character”, in other words someone with a positive reputation. so this man isn’t necessarily implied to have worn a mask at all (i think he did, but that’s also for later)

the purple and gold box that’s mentioned in this version of the story is the one wu xie finds in the hands of the corpse of the green-eyed fox (who’s also wearing the belt that has the qilin blood clot wu xie accidentally swallows can you believe, which is also another detail for later) that’s accompanied by a key in the corpse of a woman next to it (Book 1, Ch. 22, The Eightfold Treasure Box)

the second account

before we get into the first version of the story more, let’s briefly take a look at the second one. the first version of the story is first debunked by the second version of the story which is told in abridged format by xiaoge pretty much right after wu xie finishes reading the silkbook. he says that the silkbook’s account is incorrect because the person in the jade armor isn’t king shang of lu, but iron mask who faked his own death in order to escape the systematic execution king shang of lu enacted on all the people who knew about and/or helped build his tomb. he then snuck into the seven star palace and disposed of king shang of lu’s body before taking the jade armor for himself

xiaoge explains that he found this story in a song dynasty tomb he’d robbed a few years ago that contained a complete silkbook that turned out to be iron-masked gentleman’s memoirs (Book 1, Ch. 27, Lies). and you’d be inclined to believe this version of the story over the first one because it’s xiaoge telling it, and xiaoge usually isn’t one for intentional deception unless it serves a purpose, even less so if it’s verbal deception (literally the only time i can think of him openly lying rather than lying by omission is when he disguises himself as professor zhang). except even this version is called into question multiple times. the first time is by wu xie himself, who while choosing not to confront xiaoge about it, senses that xiaoge seems uneasy when wu xie presses him on the point that if it’s true that two people were pulled out of the jade armor in that tomb, then why is there no second blood corpse. xiaoge answers that he doesn’t know because iron masks’s memoirs only mention it briefly, and that maybe king shang of lu was pulled out early enough that he didn’t turn into a blood zombie. technically there’s the mummified body they find in the sacrificial ding cauldron next to the coffin with the monster at the entrance to the seven star palace whose head is cut off that could fit that description (Book 1, Ch. 9, Ancient Tomb), but in any case xiaoge according to wu xie looks like he’s lying. the second time this version is refuted is by wu sanxing, but i’ll get to that when i get back to the first account and how it also gets debunked

arguments against the second account 

i already mentioned xiaoge isn’t typically someone who’s into overt deception as a course of action unless it’s strictly necessary (and even then). it’s always possible he was either acting on a compulsion from the heavenly gift or under some order from chen pi ah si (since he was working for him at the time, even if i doubt this to be completely honest) or even something else, so it’s mostly my own assumption that he’s not actively deceiving them by fabricating a story, because xiaoge’s deception usually relies on omission rather than a concentrated effort at producing an elaborate lie. so really, the only fact we can be certain of is that he has an “uneasy look in his eyes” when he talks about the lack of another blood corpse, and that wu xie gets the impression he’s lying, which is a sentiment wu sanxing apparently shares because they look at each other in that moment and silently agree. whether this means xiaoge was *actually* lying, or that wu sanxing was taking advantage of xiaoge’s unease to further his own deception (re: arguments against the first account i’m getting to in a bit) is really up in the air

however

i’d like to think if xiaoge was lying and there was nothing more to it than that, he wouldn’t make it so apparent that that was the case given he only ever really projects visible upset or discomfort at anything when it’s related to his memories or lack thereof, and only much later in the story does that start to extend to allowing himself moments of vulnerability, or just his own brand of open concern for wu xie and pangzi. but this is all happening in book 1 where wu xie, as perceptive as he is about people, doesn’t know xiaoge yet, and so doesn’t know his tells. therefore that he can tell xiaoge is visibly emoting when it’s xiaoge is noteworthy in itself. also, given that book 1 takes place at a time when xiaoge’s memory was still very much lacking and fragmented, and he was likely still working for chen pi ah si partly to search for his memories, i wouldn’t be surprised if his unease was visible because the confrontation of both the first and second versions of the story started triggering his memory in some capacity, or it might have even triggered the heavenly gift senses into letting him know that there was something of importance in these stories since the particular episode of it he’s going through at the time gets a bit fast-forwarded from the seven star palace onward seeing as not too long afterwards xiaoge goes into the gate at the end of book 3

something else that’s worth mentioning is the logic behind these memoirs of iron mask even existing. why it would be in a song dynasty tomb is up for debate and probably irrelevant (although it does to be fair align with king mu’s motives of perpetuating grave robbing for deliberate dissemination of information), but mostly i question how he could have written his memoirs if he faked his death and slipped into the jade armor himself shortly after, unless he waited a significant amount of time before doing so and lived his life in hiding, which is also possible given there’s nothing more we know about him. but more food for thought

arguments against the first account

let’s go back to the first account from the silkbook for a bit and take a look at the other two times besides xiaoge’s second account where this version is debunked:

the second debunking comes from wu sanxing as he and wu xie are waiting around in jinan while panzi is in the hospital, and wu sanxing comes back outraged bc when he tried to have the silkbook they brought back from “king shang of lu”’s coffin, he was apparently told it was a forgery because the gold in it was too pure to have dated back to the warring states period, and so was necessarily more recent, though how recent is never specified (Book 1, Ch. 29, Purple-and-Gold Box). he then suggests to wu xie that he thinks it’s xiaoge who snuck into the tomb ahead of them, and with his skills successfully planted a dupe to trick them. i’ll get back to this eventually, but again, while it’s not impossible, it feels unlikely to me that xiaoge would extend so much effort in deception unless it served a clear purpose he agreed with, which is why i’m not convinced he would have blindly been following orders from someone like chen pi ah ai. and xiaoge would likely not have gone to the trouble of making a fake silkbook either, so the idea would have to have come from chen pi ah si, which then brings into question what motive chen pi ah si would have had to go to such lengths to deceive wu sanxing. again, really the only time we ever see or hear of xiaoge making an effort at deliberate deception is when he disguises himself as professor zhang, and while we never get an explanation for the reasons behind that, that’s more likely to have stemmed from feeling like he had to conceal his identity rather than wanting to deceive if that makes sense. in any case, i don’t know what tangible reason xiaoge would have had to deceive wu sanxing and his team with a fake silkbook even if he’d been acting on chen pi ah si’s orders, because would chen pi ah si have had a reason to go to the effort of creating a fake silkbook to deceive wu sanxing with details so specific that you quite literally have to have been in that tomb before to know them?  

the third debunking of the silkbook version is ironically a reverse uno from xiaoge directed at wu sanxing when he, wu xie, and pangzi are stuck in wang zanghai’s tomb in xisha (Book 1, Ch. 63, Chain). xiaoge’s just recovered a massive amount of his memories related to the first xisha expedition, and very bluntly tells wu xie that not only is the silkbook from the seven star palace a fake, it was wu sanxing who planted it there. to which wu xie obviously responds with “wtf no you did”. to which xiaoge then replies completely deadpan as he does with “no, it was your sanshu, he and da kui dug a hole under the tree to do it, probably why da kui had to be silenced”. which leaves wu xie very torn about what and who to believe. and mind you this is also a little before they find the inscription on the wall from “xie lianhuan” accusing wu sanxing of murdering him. honestly it’s possible xiaoge is telling the truth if you consider that wu sanxing might have planted a fake if he knew ahead of time what the silkbook contained, what the seven star palace was, and basically faked his own way through the entire thing

it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me because he does sound very pretends to be shocked in the delivery of many of his remarks (but again, how much of that can you attribute to this being book 1), and while he did bring wu xie along because he was trying to ease him into the game with the wangs, it’s possible he was prudent enough that he would have made wu xie’s first tomb experience take place in a somewhat controlled environment. which doesn’t mean he’d necessarily been there before, just that as entrenched in the wang shit as he is, i wouldn’t be surprised if he’d known even vaguely what the seven star palace represented and what could be found in there. he did know about the snake cypress and about the stone used to subdue it, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean anything seeing as wu sanxing is a highly experienced tomb robber, it’s worth noting that the only times we’ve ever seen those trees is in the seven star palace and in the snake mine in gutongjing. in other words, always somewhere connected to longevity and The Secret and all the parties involved in that power struggle

but then again, we don’t really know how much wu sanxing knew about the wangs and the zhangs etc, so it���s all very up to interpretation. if he did in fact plant the fake silkbook though, it might have served the purpose of making sure there was something to string wu xie along to push him towards xisha and the conspiracy, but the copper fish ended up serving that purpose in the end. nothing really elaborates on this silkbook again, so we don’t know why xiaoge would speculate that wu sanxing was the perpetrator, unless it was because he’d just recovered his memories of xisha (but even then xiaoge doesn’t accuse people so firmly based on impression alone) or he literally saw wu sanxing do it

regardless of who did it, the bottom line is that it’s safe to say the silkbook was probably fake and was placed there intentionally, both because as wu sanxing points out, it is suspicious that wu xie would conveniently only be able to understand what happened to be key portions of the silkbook relating parts of king shang of lu’s life, and because it mentions the purple and gold box in it, which when opened, wu xie discovers contains the first snake-eyebrowed copper fish

to me this actually pushes suspicion more heavily onto two parties in particular: wu sanxing and the wang family. because to be able to forge a silkbook that would specifically contain passages tailored to wu xie’s knowledge of old chinese and not run the risk of him either knowing more or less than speculated, you would have to have extensive knowledge on wu xie as a person on a personal level. and to be fair, this idea hinges a lot on the silkbook being put into that coffin for wu xie specifically ti find, so i’m working on assumptions again, but if this were the case, then only wu sanxing and the wangs qualify to fill that role, and in some ways the wangs even more so because this kind of covert manipulation is very much the way they do things. xiaoge would not have known wu xie to that extent in book 1, if at all, and while wang zanghai himself is a tempting possibility, he was obviously in the seven star palace long before any of this took place, so it can’t be him. in fact, the only thing that ties wang zanghai to any of this at all is the purple and gold box containing the copper fish, since whether or not the box had originally been there and he simply emptied it of its contents or brought it in from outside, he’s the one who placed the copper fish in it

as to why if it was wu sanxing who planted the fake silkbook he would shift the blame onto xiaoge, my theory on that would be that xiaoge was another convenient means of stringing wu xie along into the xisha expedition mystery by virtue of him being zhang qiling and therefore both highly mysterious and suspicious, as well as personally involved. part of me wonders if part of the reason wu sanxing went to chen pi ah si to hire xiaoge specifically because he was added insurance that he would have the means to trigger wu xie’s curiosity, and provide a first clue to lead him into the It conspiracy. wu sanxing did use the picture of the expedition team to explicitly tie xiaoge into it along with the copper fish story, so there’s that to consider

the third account

which finally brings me to the final version of the king shang of lu story, which is the one given to li cu during the wang family powerpoint lesson. this particular version also overlaps with the story of king mu of zhou and the queen mother of the west, but i’ll get to in another part of this meta. so this version of the story is mostly ironically both the version that most blatantly contradicts the first two, while also being the version most accurate to the tiny introduction we get to king shang of lu at the entrance of the seven star palace that says he was “born with a ghost seal and could borrow ghost soldiers from the underworld”. the only real issue with that this third version has it’s told by the wang family to li cu, so just by virtue of it coming from obvious wang propaganda, it’s immediately suspicious by nature

going back to speculations about who planted the fake silkbook version of king shang of lu’s story in the seven star palace, it then also raises the question of, if the wangs were the ones who did it, what motive they would have had not only to do so, but to tell the story in that particular way, only to then tell a completely different one to someone they consider a candidate to join them. in my opinion, the only thing that makes this third version hold water is that given how it’s explained to li cu, and how wang xiaoyuan (the girl who passes by the window during the lesson) has the same version of it, the wang family believes this version is true, and by virtue of that, it gains a little more credibility, bc suspicious as they are and twisted by their own biases their version of history may be, the wang family is nonetheless well-informed for the most part. not to mention because the narrative has the wang family consistently mirror the zhang family and the way they function so perfectly it’s almost eerie, it stands to reason that the wang family also dabble in historical revisionism when they can, so putting out a fake version of history onto a fabricated silkbook seems up their alley

i’ll get into king mu of zhou separately because that’s a whole other can of worms, but this final version of king shang of lu’s story begins between the “emperor” of the state of lu and his advisor, the owner of a fox mask “with ancient patterns that often appeared on bronze ware” (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 132, Lesson). the “emperor” asks his advisor “around 1000 BC” (fyi the original says 一千年上下 which amounts to “around 1000 years” but it’s more of an approximation and can technically encompass the warring states period too) as a hypothetical whether or not it’s possible “to prevent people from dying”, to which the advisor answers that he himself doesn’t know how, but he does know where to find something that can “beneath the loess inside the mountains”. he then goes on to tell the tale of king mu of zhou to the “emperor”, and of how he was given an elixir of immortality by the queen mother of the west that he likely hid inside of his tomb centuries ago

it very quickly becomes apparent to the reader that this story is an obvious ploy by the owner of the fox mask, who in sensing that the “emperor”, while tempted, is reluctant to cast all appearance of morality aside to deploy his troops to rob king mu of zhou’s grave, calls a “strange man” to the court who’s “believed to be a descendent of the zhou emperor” (that is to say king mu of zhou) “who was able to communicate with the underworld”. the ruler of the state of lu thus gives this “strange man” a jade seal and seals him in an iron coffin deep in a well for 49 days, saying that if he can come back up from it with the ghost seal in hand after having successfully spoken to king mu of zhou, then it would be proof of king mu granting him permission to rob his tomb and take the immortality elixir from it. and so this “strange man” does, in fact, come back, not only with the ghost seal in hand, but with an imperial edict written by king mu of zhou himself that granted him the title of king shang (殇 shang meaning to die young or at war) as well as all the contents of his tomb

the ruler of the state of lu then uses this to make several leaps in logic to justify being in the right if he deploys his troops to rob king mu of zhou’s tomb, because if this “strange man” can communicate with the underworld and was given a title relating to dead people, then surely that means that this strange “king shang” is likely dead himself, and that king mu of zhou chose him as his heir after he’d died. it’s a very convenient out for the ruler of the state of lu to say that he’s only helping an esteemed deceased elder to recover his birthright if he makes him a general and lends him troops to go find king mu of zhou’s tomb (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 133, King Mu of Zhou)

it’s also quickly obvious to the reader that the owner of the fox mask and this newly minted king shang of lu are in fact working together, given it was the former who referred the latter to the state of lu’s court in the first place, which is something i’ll come back to in another part of this meta. from here, under the ruler of the state of lu’s orders, king shang and the owner of the fox mask, together with more grave robbers who also wore fox masks (as according to the wang family, foxes would live in graveyards and grave robber’s tunnels at the time, and so grave robbers associated their imagery with the profession), began their search for king mu of zhou’s tomb and the immortality elixir it supposedly contained. while this version of the story of king shang of lu more or less ends here, you could assume the rest of it might follow along the same lines of the first two versions, and maybe it does. you’d then assume that the person king shang and the owner of the fox mask (who’s by then inferred to be iron mask from the previous two versions) find in the western zhou tomb is king mu of zhou, who they then divest of the jade burial armor to take for themselves

however, one very important detail in this version compromises this assumption: king mu of zhou isn’t actually dead, and he thus gave king shang the edict personally (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 134, Deception). what this means is that the ruler of the state of lu was duped presumably not by two, but three people, all of whom were working together to find the jade burial armor for who appears to be king mu of zhou. in other words, where the other two versions of the story have two key players, this final version suddenly introduces a third one, and that changes things. how much it does is what i’ll be getting into in the next part on king mu of zhou more specifically

(tbc in part II and part III of this madness)

#dmbj #meta #dmbj meta #dmbj novels #i cannot believe i actually wrote this this was not planned #like at all #this was meant to be an unhinged liveblog mini thing #not whatever this is #i guess the crack theory conspiracy theorist is going public #if you don't know where i'm going with this that's ok i don't either

[askgmangraves]

Uh, Wolf Haley

Golf Wang

Yeah

I'm a fucking walking paradox, no, I'm not

Threesomes with a fucking triceratops, Reptar

Rapping as I'm mocking deaf rock stars

Wearing synthetic wigs made of Anwar's dreadlocks

Bedrock, harder than a motherfucking Flintstone

Making crack rocks out of pussy nigga fishbones

This nigga Jasper tryna get grown

About five, seven of his bitches in my bedroom

Swallow the cinnamon, I'm a scribble this sin and shit

While Syd is telling me that she's been getting intimate with men

(Syd, shut the fuck up) Here's the number to my therapist (shit)

You tell him all your problems, he's fucking awesome with listening

Uh, Wolf Haley

Uh, Golf Wang

Uh, Wolf Haley

Golf fuckin' Wang

Jesus called, he said he's sick of the disses

I told him to quit bitchin', and this isn't a fucking hotline

For a fucking shrink, sheesh, I already got mine

And he's not fucking working, I think I'm wasting my damn time

I'm clocking three past six and going postal

This the revenge of the dicks, that's nine cocks that cock 9's

This ain't no V. Tech shit or Columbine

But after bowling, I went home for some damn Adventure Time

(What'd you do?) I slipped myself some pink Xannies (yeah)

And danced around the house in all-over print panties

My mom's gone, that fucking broad will never understand me

I'm not gay, I just wanna boogie to some Marvin

(What you think of Hayley Williams?) Fuck her, Wolf Haley robbing them

I'll crash that fucking airplane that that faggot nigga B.o.B is in

And stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn esophagus

And won't stop until the cops come in

I'm an over achiever, so how about I start a team of leaders

And pick up Stevie Wonder to be the wide receiver

Green paper, gold teeth and pregnant golden retrievers

All I want, fuck money, diamonds and bitches, don't need 'em

But where the fat ones at? I got something to feed 'em

It's some cooking books, the black kids never wanted to read 'em

Snap back, green ch-ch-chia fucking leaves

It's been a couple months, and Tina still ain't perm her fucking weave, damn

Uh, Wolf Haley

Uh, Golf Wang

Uh, Wolf Haley

Golf Wang, yeah

Goddamn goblin

Wolf Haley

Uh, Golf Wang

Uh, Wolf Haley

Golf Wang, yeah

They say success is the best revenge

So I beat DeShay up with the stack of magazines I'm in

Oh, not again, another critic writing report

I'm stabbing any blogging faggot hipster with a pitchfork

Still suicidal, I am

I'm Wolf, Tyler put this fucking knife in my hand

I'm Wolf, Ace gon' put that fucking hole in my head

And I'm Wolf, that was me who shoved a cock in your bitch

(What the fuck, man?) Fuck the fame and all the hype, G

I just want to know if my father would ever like me

But I don't give a fuck, so he's probably just like me

A motherfuckin' goblin

(Fuck everything, man) That's what my conscience said

Then it bunny hopped off my shoulder, now my conscience dead

Now the only guidance that I had is splattered on cement

Actions speak louder than words, let me try this shit

Dead

Am I supposed to know what this is referring to?

#gmanasks