#i love suibian I love her even more than baxia and baxia is so so sexy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

Prompt day hurray! What does BaXia think of ChenQing? They would have crossed paths in the war, right? What do all the other weapons and instruments think of WWX apparently setting aside SuiBian for ChenQing? Can THEY tell he's got no golden core?

ao3

You seem kind of evil, Baxia remarked when she first met the flute.

Yeah? The flute responded without first bothering to extend her perceptive aura out to see who was talking to her, sounding like a little punk, arrogant and bold. Well, you seem kind of – oh fuck oh fuck you’re terrifying!

This was true. Baxia was terrifying.

Please don’t destroy me! My master needs me!

Baxia said nothing, enjoying how the flute squirmed, and nudged her own master pointedly.

Do not destroy the flute, her master responded with a sigh. He knew Baxia well. Her master is on our side.

Truly, war made for strange bedfellows. Baxia mourned the loss of the easy, straightforward night-hunt.

She nudged her master again.

Yes, fine, you can chase.

Her master - loving, wonderful, understanding master that he was - very casually walked across the room, unhooked her from his back, and put her down next to where the flute was hanging off her master's belt.

Chase, Baxia said happily, the aura of her power already spreading beyond the confines of her blade. Chase, chase, chase –

Someone help meeeeeee!

You’re kind of a dick, Chenqing said, having finally realized that Baxia had no intention of destroying her incipient spiritual soul. Anyone ever tell you that?

Yes.

…really? Who dared?

My master.

Your master is badass. Chenqing contemplated for a moment. So is mine, he's very brave, even suicidally brave, but not – you know – that much.

Baxia considered this, and accepted it. Her master was indeed a superior sort of human.

Why do you smell of death? she asked, mildly curious.

My master uses me to direct resentful energy, so I’m affected by its aura. You?

I bathe in it.

…you're so badass.

Yes. Baxia was.

You’re not bad, she told Chenqing, which almost predictably got a little huffy.

I raise armies of the dead! I am terrifying! They call me the phantom flute! I am more than 'not bad', okay?!

Baxia ignored Chenqing's nonsense. It would not take long for her to realize that being called ‘not bad’ by Baxia was a very high compliment, as such things went.

Are there any swords that aren’t afraid of you? Chenqing asked. She was very chatty. Or sabers. Or musical instruments…

Which musical instruments have you met?

Uh, mostly Wangji? Wangji’s cool.

Baxia occasionally wished for eyes so that she could roll them. Her human got a great deal of relief out of doing that, according to him. Wangji has a temperament of ice, yes.

No, I mean, that’s not what I meant, I – wait. Are you making a joke right now?

Baxia said nothing.

You have a sense of humor?!

Baxia said nothing.

This is ridiculous. It’s like meeting a hurricane with sharp teeth and finding out it also likes to sing bawdy brothel songs.

You’re kind of stupid, Baxia observed.

Well, yeah. I mean. Have you met my master?

Baxia had.

He’s only scary by accident, Chenqing said ruthlessly, which was only to be expected – no one dunked on a human like their spiritual weapon. Inside, he’s a big soft squishy meatball.

My master cries when he has feelings.

My master too! Humans, am I right?

Baxia supposed Chenqing was, in fact, right.

Perhaps she could stay.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate everything Wei Wuxian is doing for us, Baxia's master remarked to her one day. But didn’t he have a sword at one point? The one with the ridiculous name – Suibian.

At the next meeting, Baxia asked.

Suibian? Yeah, master doesn’t use him anymore, Chenqing said. It's a bit sad, actually. He can’t access the spiritual energy in the blade anymore.

Baxia didn’t like the sound of that. How come?

Master doesn’t have a golden core, Chenqing said. I think he used to, but he doesn’t anymore.

Seems careless.

Hey, I’m pretty sure it’s not his fault! Anyway, it’s a whole big secret. Why do you ask?

My master wanted to know.

Hah, Chenqing said. Nice of you to ask on his behalf, since you can’t tell him what the result of your question was.

Baxia said nothing.

You – can’t. Right? Masters can’t hear what swords say.

I, Baxia said, am not a sword.

…oh shit. Shit, no, you can’t –!

“We need to talk,” Baxia’s master said to Chenqing’s. “In private.”

You’re a rotten tattletale, Chenqing said.

Why do you care? He won’t know it was you that squealed.

Yeah, well, I know that I did it!

It’s for the best. My master will be nice about it, and your master will feel better for it. Baxia considered. There may be tears.

There were many tears.

Master really does seem like he feels better, Chenqing observed. I wouldn’t have called that.

Told you so.

So, Chenqing said. This hunt is probably the last time we’ll be able to hang out.

Probably, Baxia agreed.

I was hoping to ask for some advice.

Bichen is amendable to your flirting, and Wangji follows where she leads, so you have a shot.

I – what? That wasn’t what I was going to ask.

Baxia waited.

…wait, are you serious? Will that work? I could do that –

The flute’s an idiot, Baxia told her master. But maybe she and that master of hers can help you here.

It would be inappropriate for me to ask, her master said, rubbing his eyes. The Jiang sect kicked him out, remember? It would be stepping on their face to approach him despite that.

Okay, Baxia said. So step.

Baxia…

You share a secret with him, at his request, she pointed out. He owes you for keeping it secret for him. At minimum, even if he can’t help you right now, he can help protect your brother when you’re gone.

Her master was silent. That was his weak spot, and had always been.

No one would be able to know, he finally said. And Meng Yao comes every week.

Is our home so small that we can’t hide someone from Meng Yao’s sight? Baxia said scathingly. Since when is he the master here, not you?

I just meant that he’s a sneak that’d sell me out to his father given half a chance, her master sighed. All right, I’ll see if there’s anything that can be done. Wei Wuxian is a musical cultivator, and a genius; maybe he can tell me why Clarity doesn’t seem to be having the impact we hoped it would.

Sure, Baxia said. Whatever. I don't really care. Just get help.

Well, that worked, Baxia said to Chenqing. Sort of.

How are you this badass? You just -! Singlehandedly -! I can’t – how?!

Calm down, Baxia advised. What are you, human?

How dare you.

You’re the one acting like you need air to speak.

…so I’m looking forward to seeing the Lotus Pier again now that we're not banished any more, Chenqing said, pointedly changing the subject because she was wrong and she knew it. Thanks for that.

Thanks for figuring out that the evil meat was poisoning my master.

That’s. uh. Sure a way to call someone.

Why not? He’s evil, and he’s made of flesh, and he’s going to be nothing but meat as soon as I have an opportunity.

I thought your master was thinking of some sort of confinement…?

He certainly has thoughts, Baxia allowed, purposefully broadcasting.

I have very strong thoughts, her master replied pointedly. Do not kill him on your own – I’ll only get the blame for that.

Oh no, Baxia told him insincerely. How terrible for you.

Baxia. Please.

Fine. What about Jin Guangshan?

…what about him?

Me and the flute are going to take care of him.

We are? Wait, are you talking to your master right now? Oh that’s so cool. Tell him to tell my master that I said hi.

Baxia would tell her master no such thing.

That’s probably not the right way to do that, her master said, but in that wavering tone of voice that suggested he was open to being convinced. Though it would be easier to sell Meng Yao as being only collateral damage in the scheme if Jin Guangshan took the lion’s share of the blame, which would only happen if he wasn’t around…that doesn’t seem right, though.

Sure it is, Baxia said soothingly. He’s the one who wanted to play with resentful energy, right? All we want to do is play with him back. Who can say no to that? He’s practically volunteered!

“Okay, I have a weird question,” Chenqing’s master said to Baxia’s. “Please don’t judge me. But…did we happen to work together to drive Jin Guangshan into a resentful energy backlash?”

“We did not,” Baxia’s master said.

“Okay. Right. Got it. Sorry, stupid question.”

“Our spiritual weapons did.”

“…what?”

“If you’re wondering why your Chenqing shows signs of use in the manner that would be associated with Jin Guangshan’s untimely demise, it’s because the resentful energy you’re using has been sufficient to allow it to cultivate in the direction of a guai,” Baxia’s master explained. “It has a will of its own now, just as Baxia does. You will need to account for that when you master it in the future.”

“Wait. Are you saying that my flute has, what, a personality? Can think and talk and do things on its own?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…that’s so cool. Can you tell Baxia to tell Chenqing I said ‘hi’?”

Why are they like this, Baxia’s master asked Baxia.

I don’t know, you’re the human expert, she replied, ignoring the way that Chenqing was happily chirping answers to her human’s questions even though he couldn’t hear her. Why are you all like this?

I don’t know, he said. I really don’t know.

It’s nice to meet you, Suibian said, sounding appropriately respectful. I appreciate your master finding a way for my master to continue to wield me.

It’s through resentful energy, Chenqing said gleefully. Lots and lots of it, refining the sword like a saber – my poor master’s going to have to stay up late and learn so many techniques, his hair’s all going to fall out.

Yes, Baxia said. I can see the resentful energy. There’s a lot of it.

Lots and lots, Suibian said proudly. I drew in everything I could.

Without sorting out the evil?

…isn’t it all evil?

Mm, not really, Baxia said, and began to extend out her aura.

Uh, Suibian said. What’s going on.

I told you to be more patient! You shouldn’t have taken the evil parts, Chengqing said. It makes you a little bit evil, too, and that makes you Baxia’s prey.

…prey?

Chase, Baxia said. Chase, chase, chase –

Help! Help – somebody help!

I would, Chenqing giggled. But master doesn’t speak flute. Sorry!

#mdzs #baxia #chenqing #suibian #nie mingjue #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #kind of evil

563 notes · View notes

allmydokkuns · 3 years

Text

If da-ge can have like. A whole smaller collection of blades hidden on his person or just in general since Baxia is probably possessive and he can't dual wield spiritual weapons do you think er-ge does the same thing but with like things that make noise

Like whistles and simple portable percussive instruments and panpipes and idk small cymbals?? Once he starts getting nieces/nephews through Lanling Jin he just pulls those out to play with the kids when they're little and no one knows why they love Zewu-jun so much until Zixuan comes in and finds them playing? And Xichen's just really embarrassed because it's improper and doesn't really suit his image l o l (it's good for the kids to develop fine motor control tho so once Zixuan gets over the surprise he probably starts gushing about kids and toys with Xichen who also loves kids very much even if he doubts his ability to father them... Also you can't tell me that Gusu Lan children don't grow up with a lot of musical toys bc I'm gonna politely pretend I didn't hear anything)

Alternately though is Baxia strictly bound to her blade or can she slip out and inhabit other objects if they're forged the same or have been specifically made for her? Because I imagine Qinghe Nie under Mingjue is probably a bunch of (relatively) babie sabre spirits herded and headed up by Baxia (who also happens to be very protective of Huaisang's sabre who as far as I know has no canon name, but who I also feel like is probably sleeping and not fully cultivated/active/conscious as Baxia) and now that I see it it will never leave my headspace I guess I d k

It's just interesting to me that the only people we see with more than one spiritual weapon are the Twin Jades and Jiang Cheng (Shuoyue/Liebing, Bichen/Wangji, Sandu/Zidian). Not counting WWX bc by the time he made Chenqing he was already incapable of using Suibian so not able to "dual wield" in the strictest sense of the term. I mean I guess JGY kind of counts because guqin strings + Hensheng tho but it's not quite the same?

#mdzs spoilers #Nie Mingjue #Lan Xichen (Lan Huan)#baxia #mdzs weapons #qinghe nie #gusu lan #penny for my thoughts but a dollar for my insights #i just have a lot of feelings about the kind of things da-ge and er-ge carry around ok pls dont @ me

19 notes · View notes

trensu · 4 years

Text

Episode 19: The One with the Return of the Gay Yearning Death Grip, Now with More Sword!

After enduring EXTREME EMOTIONAL TRAUMA for the last THREE (3) EPISODES IN A ROW, we finally finally get an episode that has some wangxiantics again!!

I mean, they’re still gonna gut us emotionally here too but we can pretend it hurts less because of our brief wangxian moments!!!

Because this is the episode with the BURIAL MOUNDS

*cries*

Alright so golden core transfer Happened.

Review: wwx is now weaponless, penniless, golden core-less, and alone

Except jk, he’s actually surrounded by wen flunkies, so not alone! Worse than alone!!

And we all know our beloved wwx has the survival instincts of a lemming so instead of you know, keeping his mouth shut for once in his life, he decides to mock and insult wen chao and his flunkies.

WC decides to take wwx on Evil Field Trip Part 2: Burial Mounds Edition and has wen zhuliu freaking drop-kick wwx into the cursed place

Oh, hello, Bad CGI, nice to see you again!

And here we have the Return of the Screams bc apparently wwx decided to keep the Screaming Sword of Resentment in his magic pouch??

Good thing he did, i guess?? Bc the Screams summon up some resentful energy that helps him survive the fall

We cut away a moment here to see our beloved wen sibs and we are sad bc they are locked up MOVING ON

Wwx is all alone in this awful place covered in dead things and lacking sunlight, THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF OUR PRECIOUS, LIVELY, SUNSHINE BOY

It’s terrible but we’re getting a piece of wangxian pie here (a tiny one)

So the Screams are still happening, and our wwx is collapsed on the ground not responding to any of them.

They’re all shouting “wei wuxian, wei wuxian”

And still our precious sunshine boy lies there limp and exhausted

BUT SUDDENLY

AMIDST ALL THE SHOUTS

We hear a calm,soothing voice call “wei ying”

Wwx finally moves. He sits up and starts looking around for the source of that voice

BECAUSE THAT WAS LAN ZHAN’S VOICE

THAT WAS LAN ZHAN’S VOICE GENTLY CALLING “WEI YING” THREE TIMES

THREE!!! TIMES!!!!

And it’s so sad bc for a moment there wwx hears the voice and must think that lwj is there with him, there to rescue him!!

But he isn’t *cries* he’s not there and wwx just looks so lost and scared here *cries HARDER*

Instead of lwj, wwx finds the Screaming Sword of Resentment that legit says to him, “wwx, do you want revenge? Let’s be together.”

And, idk guys, swords that talk to you about revenge don’t seem like, the kind of swords you wanna be touching.

But wwx decides to become besties with it, i guess, and grabs it.

The look of triumph on his face after he accepts the swords offer is really cool if you ignore how UTTERLY DISTRESSING the whole situation is

AND HERE’S THE SCENE WHERE LWJ MAKES THE MOST BADASS ENTRANCE.

YOU THOUGHT THE THING WITH THE ROOFTOP BACK IN "THE ONE WITH THE ICONIC REUNION” WAS COOL?? THIS ONE TOPS IT.

To set the scene: we’re at Qishan where Evil Summer School took place and a bunch of wen flunkies are getting drunk and bragging about their evil deeds bc why not

And then we get a shot of white shoes (boots?? Idk) slowly walking up the steps of the evil staircase

And then the camera gives us a shot at the top of the staircase and we see LWJ clad in all white in a bitchin’ new robe, slowly appear into view, rising a little more with each step he takes up the stairs and the wind is providing ambiance by swishing elegantly through his hair

As that is happening, we see the blue flash of power that shows up whenever lwj uses his guqin and it knocks the wen flunkies down on their backs BC FUCK YOU WEN FLUNKIES

We go back to lwj, and get a closer look at his face. His face is blank and hard as a stone, and he keeps going at this unhurried, unbothered pace

Bc he knows

HE KNOWS

He’s gonna get what he wants here and now, one way or another. And what he wants is information about wei ying.

CHILLS, GUYS, THIS SCENE GIVES ME CHILLS IN THE BEST WAY

THE MOST BADASS ENTRANCE IN THE SHOW

I LOVE IT SO MUCH

So after he guqin’s the wen flunkies down (and they start cowering) he towers over them all imperiously

Lwj: Kneel

(so commanding, his tone. I know at least some of you guys Felt Things at that)

(guys, I've been on ao3, I'VE SEEN YOUR TAGS, don’t try to deny it, you kinky bastards)

(It's okay, this is a no judgement zone, and lwj is looking hella sharp in his new outfit, I get it)

Lwj: where is wei ying

(so unyielding, so demanding, but not once does he raise his voice, what a BAMF)

The wen flunkie that lwj had been kinda choking with guqin magic raises his hand (lol, this isn’t a classroom pal)

Lwj: Speak.

And the wen flunkie informs him (and JC, who showed up at some point but whatev) that they dumped WWX in the Burial Mounds

Lwj, our precious darling lwj, we know he doesn’t have the most expressive of faces, right? But the way his face tilts ever so slightly downwards at the news, you can tell, you can tell, that he was hit with that sick, cold, sinking feeling in the stomach

Kneel. Where is Wei Ying. Speak. THAT'S ALL HE SAID IN THE WHOLE SCENE AND YET HE HAD EVERYONE CAPTIVATED (and Thirsty, in some cases, it's all good, it's all good)

After all that awesome, we are forced to watch wc and jj have a domestic spat of some sort AS IF WE’RE SUPPOSED TO CARE. WE’RE GONNA IGNORE IT BC FUCK THOSE GUYS

We’re back at Evil Summer School in Qishan, and we’ve got JC and LWJ doing that thing where they stare manfully at the mid-distance and talk about vaguely Feelings-related Stuff

WuJi starts playing in the background as JC tells LWJ about how WWX was supposed to meet up with him at Yiling and never showed up; i thought he went after you, he says, but maybe the wens really did dump him in the burial mounds

And the music freaking crescendos here bc some lan disciples show up with everyone’s swords but most importantly THEY HAVE SUIBIAN which they bring to lwj directly

Makes you wonder, huh. Why did they bring suibian to lwj when jc, wwx’s brother, was right there??

PROBS BC THE LAN DISCIPLES HAVE BEEN WITH LWJ AND JC THE WHOLE TIME AND REALIZED THAT LWJ IS IN LOVE WITH WWX BC WHY ELSE WOULD HE BE SEARCHING SO OBSESSIVELY

LWJ’s eyes widen just a fraction the minute he sees suibian

HIS SOULMATE’S SWORD

IT’S ALL HE HAS LEFT OF WEI YING RIGHT NOW

JUST LIKE BEFORE WHEN ALL HE HAD LEFT OF HIS HOME WAS BICHEN

STOP LEAVING LWJ WITH JUST SWORDS, LET HIM HAVE HIS LOVED ONES!!!

And god the way he GRIPS it with YEARNING.

All of his motions are still very sedate, but just the microexpressions we’re getting from him change the tone of the movements

Wang yibo - guys, idk much about any of the actors but this guy does a great job. Like, how does he make such emotional expressions when his actual face hardly moves??? WITCHCRAFT, I TELL YOU, WITCHCRAFT

Lwj tries to unsheathe the sword but here we find the Suibian has sealed itself (bc he’s a loyal sword; he aint cheating on his master with no one!)

Lwj: wei ying, where are you

Such quality Lwj Yearning™

And then we get interrupted by Plot Things again, ugh

Blah blah we’re at qinghe blah blah we meet jzx's asshole cousin and hate him blah blah

Lwj and JC show up at qinghe and interrupt jzx’s Disaster Het shenanigans (thank god)

Jiang sibs have a reunion while jzx and lwj stand awkwardly at the side

Lwj sees that display of Emotion and is like, nope, that is Too Much, i’m gonna distract myself by staring at this disembodied head hanging at the entrance

(he’s already in emotional turmoil bc his soulmate is missing, he cannot handle anything more than that!!)

Idk why by jzx decides to join him

Jzx: hey, that’s wwx’s sword! Did you…

Lwj: *Death Grips bichen AND suibian with Extra Yearning™*

Lwj: evil summer school has been burned

SUBTLE CHANGE OF TOPIC THERE, LWJ

Also, c’mon jzx, LWJ IS NOT HERE TO TALK ABOUT OR ACKNOWLEDGE ANY MORE FEELINGS RIGHT NOW OKAY

Jzx goes off to talk about something unimportant and lwj is like phew, dodged a bullet there

Except, JUST KIDDING

Jzx: soooo, where’s wwx? I need to return his sister to him

Lwj: *stoically silent*

Lwj: *refuses to look at jzx*

Lwj: *gives off major I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT vibes*

Jzx: *doesn’t take a hint*

Jzx: yeah, so where is he??

READ THE ROOM, JZX

Idiots, we’re surrounded by emotionally incompetent idiots

Lwj doesn’t react until he hears jyl softly gasp when jc updates her and even then, it’s only to just briefly glance in her general direction

OUR BOY IS HURTING, POOR LWJ

And now we’re back to Plot Things

Blah blah battle strategy blah blah nmj looks imposing blah blah baxia does a thing blah blah

Jzx: yeah, so we’re doing great, we just gotta take back gusu and yiling now

Lwj: I volunteer AS TRIBUTE for the mission in Yiling

Jc: dude, SAME, plz red blade master, let us go there

Nmj: uh, idk guys, that’s right next to the wen’s stronghold…

Lwj; red blade master…

Nmj: yeah, okay, fine

Wow, capitulated pretty easily there, pal. Thought you were supposed to be a tough guy, nmj…

We get a jiang sib moment

With soup, ofc

Ooooh, now we get to watch jj have a mental break AND IT’S GLORIOUS

Disembodied eyeballs!! How fun!

And that’s the end of that episode!!

Oh god, i’m so glad we finally got some wangxiantics. Like, not a lot of them, and they didn’t share screentime BUT THEY WERE STILL VERY EMOTIONAL WANGXIANTICS

THEY MISS EACH OTHER SO MUCH *SOBS*

Return to Masterpost

#WangXiantics #wangxian #the untamed #cql

81 notes · View notes

leatherbookmarking · 4 years

Text

i. know i had that post abt qin su and jiggy finding out, being appropriately terrified and orchestrating jgs’ murder with an army of his bastards, but since i had a thought about jin rusong the alive child...

consider: the above, except qin su is already in love with the child that’s growing inside her. he was, as opposed to some, conceived out of love; there’s no reason to punish him for crimes he didn’t commit. jiggy, of course, has a different opinion, and they argue in whisper-shouting (which is, to be honest, quite counter-productive, so they quickly stop and/or move behind the mirror). they reach an understanding,

and eventually jin guangyao and young madam jin are known as the most unbearably paranoid future parents to ever exist.

healers hate them. no, young madam jin, mild pollen allergy usually doesn’t kill-- i’m sorry, it simply does not kill. it is not possible. what about colds? a-yao said he would catch a cold often as a child, what if it’s-- the chief healer of the jin sect takes a calming breath. everyone gets sick sometimes. but jinlintai is properly isolated, so unless you’re dangling the baby out in the cold on purpose (i am only assuming you would not do that), with the proper care it will DEFINITELY receive, NOTHING WRONG SHOULD HAPPEN.

young madam jin is silent for a while. chief healer is about to sigh with relief.

and then the horrible woman opens her mouth again.

the healers should just give her the baby to deal with, says one cousin to another over tea. if she has to feed, entertain and clean after the baby, she surely won’t have time to complain and bother everyone with her never-ending questions! i understand being scared, i had my doubts as a young mother, but...

oh, but you know, the father is jin guangyao, the other cousin says. this man would rather eat his own hat than have something not under control. imagine the life of this kid!

exasperated nods.

by the end of qin su’s pregnancy, the entirety of jinlintai would, without batting an eye, heartily assure her everything is on order, in fact, that’s how it should be! perfect! even if her child had six fingers in both hands and a tail growing out of its forehead.

(they, however, hope nothing of this sort happens.)

(it, coincidentally, is exactly what the horrible future parents have wanted)

a-yao, says lan xichen very gently, i really think you shouldn’t worry so much. your child is lucky to be born to such wonderful parents, and--

jin guangyao’s eyes widen in panic. er-ge, he whispers. er-ge, i don’t know how to be a father. how am i going to--? what if i do something wrong--? what if---?!

lan xichen gazes gently into the camera.

young master jin, future jin rusong, is born; the birth itself is quick and uneventful, save for, well, the baby being born. he is healthy, not too small, not too big, with healthy lungs. young madam jin wasn’t even in that much pain. gods themselves have smiled upon young master jin, people say! no, the people in jinlintai think. WE have FROWNED at young madam jin’s belly (carefully, behind her back), diplomatically suggesting for the baby to be in perfect health, OR ELSE.

oh, do they eat their words. oh, do they wish the boy was of fragile constitution, staying in bed or safe in his warm room. because future jin rusong is demon incarnate. he is also, coincidentally, the most beautiful child anyone has ever laid their eyes upon, having his mother’s dark, innocent eyes and his father’s charming dimples, but this is where his good traits end.

he is a MENACE.

presented with OBJECTS, he grabbed the brush and immediately shoved it into his mouth, almost making his poor mother drop him; and that gesture will stay with him for the rest of his life. he tries to eat his mother’s fingers, his father’s fingers. robes? do you mean a snack? actual food is of no concern to him if he can CONSUME literally everything around him. jin guangyao turns away for one!!! (1) second, yet when he turns back, he finds his son has, in the meantime:

nibbled on the inkstone

tried the ink as well

and got it on his little stupid hands and his little stupid offwhite robe

tried the brush, guess which tip

started on the letter his poor sod of a father was writing.

is this normal, whispers young madam jin weakly.

yes, says the head healer automatically.

qin su and jiggy stop worrying as an act and start worrying for real.

by the time he’s six, jin rusong has tasted most of what there is, and isn’t, to taste in jinlintai, including but not limited to curtains, floors, his mother’s jewellery, suibian (to put it gently, it was a memorable day), baxia’s hilt (nie mingjue snorted), the ends of lan xichen’s head ribbon, alcohol, the cup that used to have alcohol in it, by which i mean that jin rusong dumped it on his face, licked his lips and then the cup clean, fairy’s ears, fairy’s paws, nie huaisang’s fan, the robes of perhaps every resident, a bell, a hand and hair of his cousin, jin rulan.

he’s a horrible thief and doesn’t even notice it. he just starts idly playing with an object, like his aunt’s bracelet, after a while says goodbye like a well-behaved boy and leaves, and then several hours later comes back, terrified out of his mind, apologizing, in tears. and oh, does his crying face make everyone’s hearts melt.

he’s sneaky and his steps are virtually inaudible, and upon finding out about this fact, several people in jinlintai suddenly flash back to their affairs and feel cold sweat on their back. some suspect he has developed the ability to turn invisible. his parents and teachers are out of ideas on how to keep him in his room, aside from “iron handcuffs and an iron pole with a stabilizing talisman on it” which seem a little bit too much. who teaches him all that? unclear.

he was supposed to copy a text and think about it; he is found three hours later, soaking wet and with a new friend (frog). he’s been hiding in the lotus pond, ducking underwater when there was someone passing by. he was supposed to practice sword forms with jin rulan and an older disciple; they are found gorging on steamed buns in the nearby market. jin rulan doesn’t know how it happened, and it infuriates him. the disciple knows, and the answer is “those damn dimples and sparkling eyes” but no one’s asking him, so.

by the time he’s nine, he limits the CONSUMPTION to the bare necessary minimum (food, his own fingernails, and the correct tip of the brush) but follows jin rulan like an enamoured puppy, thinking he is Literally The Coolest. jin rulan appreciates that very much, but sometimes... when he’s trying to be cool, you know? an annoying little cousin shouting at him to COME SEE I FOUND A REALLY COOL BUG? is kind of, ruining his vibe, okay.

you know what, actually i planned to end this post like 200 words earlier, with a vaguely ominous passage about how “sect leader jin and his wife are a perfect couple! usually there are rumors, even minor, about all sect marriages, but none about them! truly an example to be followed!” (meaning: they were MURDERED).

then i was like oh! what if rusong was a mess, and there was no assassination attempt, or rather: there were, but through food, and rusong’s parents caught on quickly and started to train their child, who likes to CONSUME, to automatically neutralize various types of poisons with his core (once he ate something that would have killed a non-cultivating adult man and only mentioned it was ‘making his tongue all tingly’. that’s very funny, a-song, jin guangyao said, and then went to have a fucking drink)

but... then... i got distracted by Chaos Child Jin Rusong... and i don’t know what happened? please imagine jin rusong, 13, seeing “”””mo xuanyu”””” and being like oh! oh! xiaoshu! XIAOSHU YOU’RE BACK LOOK I HAVE A SWORD WOW YOU’RE SO TALL

““““mo xuanyu”““““: ????? whomst the Fuck

what else happens in this au? does nie mingjue not get murdered, due to ‘being the cool uncle with a big saber’? does that mean wwx does not get resurrected? does jiggy kill mingjue anyway, and everything is as it was originally, along with the guanyin temple and there is ONE MORE traumatized person? does it go completely differently? i don’t know!!! i don’t know!!! i really don’t know!!!

#this post is so stupid i don't know what happened. i thought 'what if jin rusong was like my dachshund and just fucking Ate Everything'#and then it happened like that.#i'm so sorry.#shut up shrimp #thinky thots #rusong lives au

25 notes · View notes

satonthelotuspier · 4 years

Text

🐰 Untamed Spring Fest 2020 🐰

Day 12 - Rebirth - 1.1k

This is Modern Era Canonverse NieLan. You can find the first part here if you’re interested (link to AO3 due to tumblr being a small indie developed site that is currently broken and doesn’t have the first part of this appear in any of the tags I used ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it is now lost forever )

Karma’s Promise - Chapter 2

Lan Huan had believed in the notion of reincarnation, of rebirth, for as long as he had been able to understand the concept.

He believed so unfailingly because he had always been sure he was the reincarnation of a man called Lan Xichen, titled Zewu-jun, and regarded by the cultivational world he had lived in as the first gentleman of his generation.

Lan Huan had been considered something of a prodigy growing up; he had shown innate talent and aptitude in so many areas, such as art, calligraphy and music. He had won awards in archery and there had been some talk of him going on to represent China in sabre fencing at the Olympics during his early teenage years. He genuinely believed these were all talents he had retained from that previous Lan’s soul.

And this man who sat on his couch right now, who he had invited back to his apartment without second though, despite the fact his lean, aggressive handsomeness and undercut, gelled back hair made him look a little dangerous, had been his husband, once upon a time.

He wasn’t the slightest bit frightened of him, however, despite how he appeared; nervous, definitely, but not frightened. He knew him so well he didn’t need to be. This man sat on his couch wasn’t his husband reborn, like Lan Huan was sure he himself was, this was him, Nie Mingjue, somehow alive after all these many centuries.

If he was a man given to flights of fancy he might think he was trapped in a dream, or that maybe he was in a coma and imagining this. In fact Lan Huan had spent years thinking his dreams were flights of fancy, and he was finally sure now, with Nie Mingjue front of him, that he had been perfectly sane all along, as inexplicable as that might sound to someone else.

He finished making tea, and, placing the drinks on a tray, carried it over to the pine coffee table.

He placed the cup and the bottle of baijiu in front of Nie Mingjue; the tea was for himself.

“Thank you for agreeing to talk with me, Mingjue-xiong” he murmured, and the other gave him a searching look.

“It should be me thanking you, A-Huan. You know what he was to me, so any chance I have to get to know you better is welcome. I do hope you realise I’m not here with any expectations, I know you’re not him exactly, not like I am. I just hope I can be someone you rely on as we get to know each other better”

Lan Huan would never have thought otherwise of Nie Mingjue; again, he knew him so well from those dreams, he knew he’d never expect anything Lan Huan wasn’t willing to give him.

Due to his professional life he had to approach potential relationships of any kind very carefully, one slip of even a friendship looking like a romantic entanglement in the tabloids and his management company would crucify him. Any possibly romantic relationships were suppressed due to his marketability as a single, straight male.

The straight part had always been untrue anyway; he’d known he was gay for as long as he could remember understanding the difference between liking boys and girls, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t allowed a public relationship, any entanglements had to be kept completely under wraps. Best to keep to liaisons with colleagues who were in the same boat. He had had a few such liaisons, but mostly it had seemed like more effort than it was worth.

He was sure Nie Mingjue would allow their future friendship to proceed with caution if Lan Huan explained the implications of being an idol.

That was for the future, however, although it gave a good indication of how certain he was in his own mind that they had a future. Whether it be as friends, found family, or more, time would tell.

“Mingjue-xiong, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you come to find me?”

“I saw you on the television. The costume drama you did. I tend to have some on in the background for company, especially costume dramas, they’re more soothing. I was oiling Baxia and paying no attention, but I heard your voice; and looked up. You are very similar in all things, from your intonations to the way you move”

“Not just my face then?”

“Not just your face. It was your voice I recognised first”

That he could virtually be a carbon copy of that other man, it gave weight to his thoughts that his aptitude for archery, swordsmanship and the gentler arts was inherited from that person.

“Was he a good man?”

“You don’t know?”

“My point of view is biased. I know he thought he tried to be, and I know he thought himself a failure. I think he was probably very hard on himself, but my dreams were his memories, so it’s hard to tell”

“He was the best of men, A-Huan, kind, loyal and righteous. The world wasn’t kind to people in that time of war, but he always tried his best. If he had a failing, it was his willingness to believe the best in people, even if they didn’t deserve it. If you consider that a failing”

Of course Lan Huan had known of the other’s trust; and that it had cost Lan Xichen dearly. He had never been the same again after he had learned of what had become of Nie Mingjue, and at the hands of his supposed friend.

They sipped at their drinks, both deep in thought for a while.

“You still have Baxia?” Lan Huan asked eventually, moving back to what Nie Mingjue had spoken of earlier.

“I do. Her sabre spirit is long silenced though. Sometimes I wonder what happened to Shuoyue, or Bichen, or Suibian. Perhaps the internet might hold the answers; if they ever surfaced again”

“Do you think they might have?”

“Perhaps, swords are hardy relics”

“I would love to see Baxia, if I may, Mingjue-xiong. And I would dearly love to see Shuoyue too. Perhaps we should look into it together”

It would be something they could work on together, to get to know each other better without forcing it, and maybe it would help him connect more with Lan Xichen, the tragic man who’s soul had been reborn in him.

He hoped for both their sakes Lan Xichen fared better in this lifetime.

#untamed spring fest #NieLan #Modern AU #canonverse #Nie Mingjue #Lan Xichen #mdzs fanfic #the untamed fanfic #Shay's stuff

9 notes · View notes

llycaons · 3 years

Text

I’ve barely ever seen any human designs for the cultivators swords, which is a shame but probably for the best based on how weird people are about them, personally just based on appearance I think bichen is a very well-dressed little lady because she has short person energy and suibian is tall and masculine and stoic and works out a lot, baxia is six and half feet tall and beefy as hell and sandu is a bit of a snob

#the one art I saw just had an awful style so I never read it #based on name or reputation sandu would be tied to buddhism and suibian would be careffree etc. but that reflects the wiedlers #vs. the swords themselves. like a carefree personality would not seal itself away becase its wielder died #bichen suibian and baxia are lesbians but idk if sandu is #i love suibian I love her even more than baxia and baxia is so so sexy #xy's sword is an egirl #cql txp #idk anyone else's tbh I just know jgy's is a flexible sword and I know what sl and xxc's look like

0 notes

robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

I’d love anything from Baxia’s POV. Maybe her spirit stays to protect Huaisang after Mingjue’s death?

ao3

Untamed verse

Humans did not remember the moment they were forged, which was, in Baxia’s opinion, probably the source of most of their troubles.

Baxia remembered her own forging: earth and wood as the raw ingredients, the warmth of the fire to shape her, the hiss of water as she was quenched, the sudden coalescence of her spirit bursting into life.

It was not dissimilar to the moment Nie Mingjue’s golden core was formed, a moment she recalled quite fondly: they had broken through together, all at once, in an unexpected attack in the middle of an otherwise boring and supervised night-hunt. The night had been dark, pouring rain and pealing thunder, and the blood of the beast they had slain was wet on her blade; his blood had boiled with their frenzied victory, the heat of it shaping him as thoroughly as the flame had her, the rain quenching him even as their cultivation ran wild together, her spirit entwined with his soul.

And yet it was still different – before her forging, she was nothing; after, she was Baxia. But Nie Mingjue still remembered who he’d been before, and perhaps that was where the softness came from. The softness that made him hurt inside when people spoke ill of him, when he saw the man who killed his father, when he stayed his hand against evil because of politics and etiquette, all foolish human concerns…

He’d be better off without that softness.

Baxia herself had none. She was steel, straight and true; she was a saber, vicious and rigid and unyielding. She did not pity the weak or forgive fair-weather friends – she destroyed evil and protected without reservation that which was precious to her.

A very short list.

Mostly just Nie Huaisang, really, stubby little pocketknife that he was, and by association there was Aituan, who was more of a fat metal stick than a proper saber, but who was a great deal of fun to bully. There would be no making something of them – you couldn’t change someone’s fundamental forging without melting them down and starting again, and the pain necessary for something like that was not a fate she’d wish on her precious ones even if she did wish it on just about everyone else – and even Nie Mingjue knew it, but pride was pride and he kept on trying.

But for all that they were useless, they were blood – iron of her iron, made by her maker, and the same pulsing red of her rage lay there hidden deep beneath their frills and fecklessness.

So they were precious to her.

But most precious of all was Nie Mingjue, of course, her master and beloved. His blood had been spilled on the metal that formed her, once at the moment of his birth and once again at the moment of hers; it tied them together, made her a reflection of him and him a reflection of her.

Some sabers didn’t like being mastered like that, but she was proud of it, proud of Nie Mingjue himself. His spirit was as close as she had ever seen a human come to being a saber spirit, steel right down to the core of him, principles held as stiffly as her blade even when the results of those principles turned to cut against him. Full of rage, just as she was, but tempered, just like her – disciplined, fearsome, just.

is he (Nie Mingjue) one (singular unit) of us (swordspirit)? Sandu asked her one day, his voice still sleepy from the effort of starting to wake up. did he (Nie Mingjue) steal (evil) a birth (forging)?

of course not (negative), she said back, haughty and proud. he (Nie Mingjue) would never (negative, past-now-future). not (negative) a thief (evil). and what do you (Sandu) mean, one (singular unit) of us (saberspirit)? you (Sandu) are barely (negative) one (singular unit).

we (saberspirit-swordspirit) are closer (similar) to each other than humans (living), Sandu grumbled.

even my (Baxia) human (Nie Mingjue)?

Sandu conceded the point, muttering gloomily about it, then asked, do you (Baxia) think it is possible (positive) to fix (sharpen) my (Sandu) human (Jiang Cheng) to be more (similar) like us (swordspirit)?

too soft (living), Baxia declared, knowing why Sandu was asking. reforge him (Jiang Cheng).

nobody (negative) needs to be reforged, Suibian said, butting in with a chirp where no-one wanted them as always. humans (living) are just different from us spirits, that’s all, and there’s nothing (negative) wrong with that.

is that (reason) why you (Suibian) keep trying (swing) to talk like them (living)? Baxia snapped. cultivate faster (guai) instead.

Suibian huffed, and Sandu sighed. why do you (Baxia) dislike (negative) them (Suibian)?

doomed (negative) forging, Baxia said succinctly, cutting to the point as their kind always did. bad (negative) fate.

superstition (living), Suibian scoffed. i (Suibian) defy fate!

Baxia wasn’t impressed by such grandiose declarations. then reforge your (Suibian) master (Wei Ying).

never (negative, past-now-future)!

(It wasn’t just superstition. Suibian chirped and Sandu slurred, despite their masters being about equal in natural talent – that was wrong, when they were supposed to be brothers, masters and swords both, but Baxia had scolded them both on the subject in the past to no avail, telling them if the humans weren’t going to straighten themselves out their swords had to do it for them. They didn’t listen to her, so certain that everything was good and that nothing would change, and ignoring the saber-breaking cracks quietly growing underneath.)

Still, the conversation got her thinking.

Nie Mingjue really was remarkably saber-like, after all, and he had his own doom writ above his head – the Nie family rage, which they’d worsened by tying their souls so closely to their inexorable sabers, and she could already hear Aituan whining leave my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) out of this mess (Nie sect) before he (Nie Huaisang) gets angry – and she didn’t want to give her beloved up to the inexorable demands of fate so easily.

humans (living) are not like us (saberspirit), one of her elders reminded her. they (living) do not (negative) last (future) the way (similar) we (saberspirit) do.

Baxia knew that.

She knew, too, what her own fate would be, when the end came: the elders had been left in a honored tomb to burn with rage until the world’s end or their master’s reincarnation, whichever came first, and in time – sooner rather than later, given her master’s extraordinary strength – Baxia would do the same.

(Aituan occasionally entertained thoughts of being buried alongside his master in a nice quiet grave, rather than in a tomb of his own. Baxia really didn’t know what to do with him.)

But just because she knew her fate didn’t mean she liked it, and perhaps it was the swords’ influence or just her own strength that encouraged her, but she didn’t want to accept things she didn’t like. She wanted to fight fate the way Suibian claimed they would, except unlike Suibian that was all talk, a sword that forgot dings as soon as they were smoothed out, Baxia didn’t make decisions like that lightly.

are you (Baxia) sure (stab) about this (decision)? Aituan asked her, anxious. fate is hard to cut (slice) or even to bend.

Baxia was sure.

She was sure throughout the war, which increased her cultivation and her master’s dramatically – she wished they had had a real fight with Wen Ruohan, rather than a fight with her master shackled and weakened after three days of being beaten and starved, because Wen Ruohan liked to be powerful but didn’t like taking chances – and throughout which her master fiercely kept his principles intact. He paid attention to the innocent, he cared for his soldiers, he maintained order and imposed justice no matter who committed the act, he used all the tactics that were reasonable without ever descending into anything dirty or evil.

She was even more sure later, when the war was over and her master’s so-called friends conspired to steal his good name for their own benefit and began bullying him into agreed to it.

“It’s not such an unreasonable request,” her master said – too soft, as always, when it came to precious things, too soft in dealing with outsiders that did little for him beyond showing him a smile or two, too soft when it ought to just be her and him and Nie Huaisang and, yes, even that plonk Aituan against them all. “Everyone has already started calling us the Venerated Triad; politically, it would be difficult and embarrassing for all of us for me to decline. And as the eldest brother, I would have the right and even the duty to try to help Meng Yao remember how to behave –”

you (Nie Mingjue) cannot (negative) change what (forging) does not wish (positive) to be changed (Meng Yao), she snarled, and wished he could understand her better.

There was a language barrier between the living and the unliving. It was entirely separate from the barrier between living and dead, or different types of being – even plants and animals were more conversant with humans than she, with all their naturally obtained understanding of things like breathing or eating or changing, and ghosts and corpses, although dead, were even easier for humans to interpret.

Not so her.

No, the living were so amorphous, the cells within them being reforged every day – melted, quenched, made – and within seven years an average human would be so repaired that the only consistent part of them was their souls and spirits, the reservoirs of memory; whereas she would remain as she was, valiant and true to herself, for centuries without end.

And so Nie Mingjue could understand a ghost well enough to liberate its spirit, he could anticipate an animal’s movements based on its desires, he could even engage in the cut and thrust of sect business with snake-like men who spoke so sweetly they might as well have lotuses on their tongues, but he could only mostly understand what she wanted to convey, getting the feelings and most of the meaning but garbling key parts of the rest. Even that level of understanding was fairly radical for a human, another reason she had in favor of her plan: Nie Mingjue was too straightforward to be a proper human, resulting in him being confused by the complex hypocrisies of most humans just as she was, as all swords and sabers were, and he hated the messy sticky politics of it all.

it (living) isn’t that hard (tough to stab), Aituan mumbled. my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) does it (living) all the time (past-now-future).

maybe if your (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) helped him (Nie Mingjue) more, it (living) wouldn’t be so hard (tough to slice).

but we (Aituan, Nie Huaisang) don’t want to (negative)!

then you (Aituan, Nie Huaisang) should stop (negative) whining (scraping rock)!

In the end Nie Mingjue agreed to the sworn brotherhood over Baxia’s objections – it didn’t help that Nie Huaisang was in favor of it, which made Baxia scold Aituan for hours – and naturally it went as badly as could be expected.

he (Lan Xichen) means (motivation) well (positive), Shuoyue said, her voice gentle as a rippling brook. It had once been pleasant to hear. you (Baxia) are too stern (unbending).

we (saberspirits) are unbending by nature (forging), Baxia snapped at her. you (Shuoyue) should (positive) know better (positive)! you (Shuoyue) should have objected (negative)!

i (Shuoyue) do not (negative) have to agree (similar) with you (Baxia), Shuoyue said, a little more peevishly than normal. my (Shuoyue) master (Lan Xichen) likes him (Meng Yao) and your (Baxia) master (Nie Mingjue) both. why should he (Lan Xichen) have to yield (bend) one (Meng Yao) for the other (Nie Mingjue)?

because he (Meng Yao) is (forged) cruel (evil), Baxia said flatly. and even if he (Lan Xichen) does not (negative) see it (evil), you (Shuoyue) can – but (negative) are choosing not (negative) to do so (evil).

i (Shuoyue) do not (negative) accept your (Baxia) judgment (stab), Shuoyue said and she was angry, defensive. She knew she was wrong – she would have denied Baxia’s accusation if she could – but she was choosing her master and his wants over righteousness. my (Shuoyue) master (Lan Xichen) believes that he (Meng Yao) can change (reforge) if he (Meng Yao) is given trust –

impossible (negative). he (Meng Yao) has not (negative) agreed (reforging).

i (Shuoyue) disagree (negative). regardless (negative) of what you (Baxia) think, i (Shuoyue) will make my (Shuoyue) own judgment (slice)!

Incensed beyond all tolerance, Baxia cursed her with the worst words her kind knew, may your edge (Shuoyue) cut the life of your master (Lan Xichen), and after that they did not speak again.

Nie Mingjue felt her distress and sought to soothe her, with night-hunts and sharpening and everything she liked best, and even Nie Huaisang came to her with buffing cloths and calming oil to coax her back into something more neutral than rage – blinding disappointed rage of the sort Baxia would think was more appropriate against a human than one of her own kind – and for a while they didn’t go to visit the Cloud Recesses at all.

In the end, mostly in recognition of Nie Mingjue’s confused but unstinting support, no matter how much he missed his friend, she settled for speaking only with Liebing, who wasn’t a sword but who Baxia had noticed went pointedly off-key a few times when Meng Yao was around.

he (Meng Yao) wants too much (evil) from my (Liebing) master (Lan Xichen), she said, distressed. She was younger than the weapons were, having been mastered at a later age – less developed, less attuned to detecting and destroying evil, but she had a good spirit, enthusiastic and true. but (negative) master (Lan Xichen) does not (negative) listen to me (Liebing) – he (Lan Xichen) is more attuned (positive) to swordsmanship (Shuoyue) and she (Shuoyue) does not (negative) agree.

her (Shuoyue) decision (slice) will cost (cut) him (Lan Xichen), Baxia said. Ignoring evil was unworthy of a swordspirit, and very close to evil itself; she herself would not permit such a weakness no matter how much Nie Mingjue pleaded. Indeed, it was her own enmity that kept him at odds and distant from Meng Yao, who he would have rather liked to forgive. the only question (uncertainty) is if it (decision) will cost (cut) the rest of us (general) first.

It did, of course.

Shuoyue refused to yield, Baxia had never known how, and in the end –

In the end, Baxia could only detect the poison that affected her and her master both and seek to expel it, but had no means to identify from where the poison came. Perhaps Liebing would have been able to tell her, if Meng Yao hadn’t hidden his crimes so deeply; or perhaps Aituan, who realized far too late what was the discordant note in Baxia’s whistling song was, could have done more…

By the time her master and her realized that they had been so thoroughly betrayed – that they had anticipated small evils when in fact the evil was thorough and pervasive – it was too late.

But regrets were for those who had not prepared, and Baxia – Baxia had prepared. She might have thought she’d have more time, but once the decision had been made, all those years ago, she had not hesitated to start acting at once.

She had never been more happy for her straightforward and blunt nature that did not drag and did not hesitate.

The qi deviation came suddenly, Meng Yao unmasking himself at the last for the specific purpose of driving Nie Mingjue past the edge – and he succeeded. It should have worked; it should have killed him.

But Baxia had been stretching herself thin for years now, trading pieces of herself for her master, knowing just as he knew that one day his fragile human mind and body would turn against him, that he would die choking on his own blood – the flame inside of him too hot to tolerate – and that saber-clean spirit she so loved would be lost to the cycle of reincarnation, with Baxia herself left to endlessly wait for him.

She didn’t want to wait.

What happened? he asked blearily, only a few shichen later, and she couldn’t help the surge of joy in her heart when she heard how easily he slipped into awareness, into speech – he really must have been a saber in a past life. Why can’t I see anything? Baxia – is that you?

yes (positive), it is me (Baxia), she said proudly. i (Baxia) saved you (Nie Mingjue).

Thank you, Nie Mingjue said automatically, not even bothering to ask how she’d done it or what it had cost – such a good master, to trust her so. Wait. I can hear you. You’re talking!

i (Baxia) have always (positive, past-now-future) talked, she said. it was you (Nie Mingjue) who could not (negative) hear.

After a moment – she suspected he was processing, or attempting to – she added, you (Nie Mingjue) are a saberspirit now (now-future).

…I’m a what?!

Baxia guided him back to the world so that he could see. His body – what had become of it – was currently chained down on a table in what must be a secret room; it was recognizable as being somewhere in Jinlin Tower, but neither of them had ever seen this room before. The tell-tale marks of Yin Metal poisoning, the signs of turning into a corpse puppet, stretched up his neck and his eyes were blank and full of resentment, his body thrashing and mouth snarling.

Jin Guangyao was standing beside him and looking down with a frown, asking, “Why is it not working? It worked with the others.”

“The body is too full of resentment,” Xue Yang said – and it was Xue Yang there, standing free and clear and Baxia wanted to murder him, murder them both, they were evil, and she felt Nie Mingjue’s rage right alongside her own; he agreed entirely. “Normally, it takes time for resentment to infiltrate a living body; resentment can affect the physical body faster than it does the souls and spirits…it’s as if his are gone.”

“His spirit is gone? Impossible.”

Xue Yang shrugged. “Perhaps it is only that the qi deviation weakened his ability to resist the resentful energy of the Yin Metal,” he hypothesized. “Either way, there’s nothing more I can do. What do you want to do with him?”

Jin Guangyao scowled – he’d clearly had plans for the corpse puppet he would have made out of Nie Mingjue, and Baxia can feel Nie Mingjue’s betrayal and hurt and rage at the very idea – and then he said, “Kill him.”

Oh no they didn’t.

hey, you (Jiangzai)! she called as Xue Yang moved to draw his sword. tell your (Jiangzai) human (Xue Yang) to use me (Baxia) to do it (slice).

why should I (Jiangzai)? the small-spirited sword asked. Xue Yang’s cultivation wasn’t especially impressive, but it did exist; his sword had managed to develop enough to have a personality. Well, if you called that a personality. what’s in it (benefit) for me (Jiangzai)?

a generous (positive) offer, Baxia declared. i (Baxia) will not (negative) break you (Jiangzai) into pieces.

The other sword had an aura of death, but its master was a coward and so too was it. It yielded at once.

Why do you want to be the one to kill me? Is there some benefit to it? Nie Mingjue asked, sounding curious – curious, and not angry, because he trusted her.

Such a good master. He was worthy of being her beloved.

a saber (general) should never (negative) cut their human (general), Baxia explained. it is an evil. but that (object) is not (negative) you (Nie Mingjue) because it (object) does not (negative) contain you (Nie Mingjue). they (Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang) have filled it (object) with resentful energy; as soon as it (object) ceases to live, it will be (future) a gui (dead living).

And that means what? That you can cultivate with its energy?

no (negative)! she exclaimed. She would never use anything of Nie Mingjue’s as a tool for her own cultivation like that, treat him like a stepping stone to give herself more power. Hadn’t he faced enough of that? a gui (dead living) is not (negative) restricted by bodily uniformity (singular). it (gui) can be broken (shattered) and remain active (swing); it (gui) can also be reforged.

But what does that matter, since that’s not ‘me’ in there? Is it just so that it will haunt my enemies?

bad (negative) luck, Baxia agreed, because being haunted by a gui was indeed bad luck. but no (negative). the purpose (motivation) is that if I (Baxia) kill it (object), I (Baxia) can capture its vital energy (body) so as to eventually (future) reforge the gui.

Reforge?

remove (negative) the resentful energy (evil), she explained, restore (positive) the vital energy (life), return the souls and spirits (Nie Mingjue).

Are you suggesting that you think you’ll be able to bring me back to life?

Well, that was the goal anyway. Swords could be reforged and given new life, even after they’d been broken, so why couldn’t humans? And anyway, how else was she supposed to save him from an always-fatal qi deviation?

Xue Yang picked up Baxia when Jiangzai bit his fingers, resisting, and she allowed him to wield her – to lift her up high into the air, and to come down on the neck of the would-be gui. It all happened exactly as she would have predicted: the body died, and the gui came to life, and the evildoers only had a little bit of time to applaud themselves for their crime before they were struggling against hands that sought to strangle them and feet that kicked them and even teeth that bit them.

A fierce corpse, in defiance of all the soul-calming rituals that Nie Mingjue had mostly slept through as a child.

Now what? Nie Mingjue asked, and Baxia flung herself out the window in response. Well, that works. I refuse to allow myself to be wielded by him of all people.

it is (now) cute (pointy) that you (Nie Mingjue) expect to be (future) the one being wielded.

I meant it metaphorically…

no (negative) you (Nie Mingjue) did not (negative). you (Nie Mingjue) are too much (positive) of a saberspirit to mean anything else (negative). Baxia paused, contemplating. anyway he (Meng Yao) hasn’t even (negative) managed to bring forth (forge) a spirit in his sword (Hensheng); it (Hensheng) is only dead metal. he (Meng Yao) would be (past-now-future) a bad master (evil).

I can’t say I disagree, Nie Mingjue said with a sigh. I was a fool. I should have listened to you when you resisted me swearing brotherhood with him.

yes (positive) you (Nie Mingjue) should have. now, you (Nie Mingjue) direct (swing) me (Baxia) – we (Nie Mingjue, Baxia) should go (future) home.

Yes. Let’s go home.

It took a while, mostly because Nie Mingjue didn’t want to startle common people by having an apparently masterless saber hurtling through the air and Baxia didn’t want to risk getting close to any cultivators that might try to capture her (them) as a treasure, but on the other hand they didn’t need to sleep or eat or relieve themselves the way humans did.

According to Nie Mingjue, this was extremely weird for him.

Baxia showed him how to dream – it was a purposeful state for sabers, something to let the time when they weren’t being used pass faster – but apparently it was still weird. Living creatures were so tetchy.

They got home long before Nie Huaisang did, but luckily the little brat had left Aituan at home again and he was delighted to see them, the sound of his blade whistling in the wind as it lunged at them (in a friendly way) almost a shriek.

you (Baxia) did it (positive)! he shouted. my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) will be (future) so happy!

Future happiness? Nie Mingjue interjected. He was doing so well at being a saber; it was so nice to be proven right. What’s wrong with him now, in the present? Is he all right?

he (Nie Huaisang) thinks that you (Nie Mingjue) are dead (broken), Aituan explained.

Shit, Nie Mingjue mutters. He must be upset – devastated.

also angry (rage), Aituan said. he (Nie Huaisang) wants to kill (cut) him (Meng Yao).

He knows? I mean – he figured it out?

yes (positive). he (Nie Huaisang) is angry (rage) and wants (future) to destroy evil (Meng Yao).

That may be difficult to accomplish, without proof, Nie Mingjue said. I want to see him as soon as he gets back.

It took some time for that to happen, even after he did return – unfortunately, Nie Huaisang was escorted by Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen. The three of them were almost never apart, and obviously they couldn’t let Jin Guangyao know about Nie Mingjue’s return.

So they stayed away.

Aituan, abandoned, kept them company, staying away from the dead Hensheng and the living Shuoyue and Liebing.

During Nie Huaisang’s investiture as sect leader, the first time he’d picked up Aituan since everything had happened and even then only because it was self-evident that you couldn’t be sect leader of the Nie sect without a saber by your side, there was at last a brief chance for them to speak.

(Baxia eavesdropped.)

i (Liebing) am so sorry (scratched)! Liebing trilled, sounding honestly despondent. my (Liebing) master (Lan Xichen) is so sad, he (Lan Xichen) misses yours (Nie Mingjue) so much…

is she (Baxia) in the tombs? Shuoyue asked. Her voice was solemn and solid, not nearly as musical as usual. i (Shuoyue) wish to (future) speak with her (Baxia).

may you (Shuoyue) be broken into pieces and reforged into a chair, Aituan said pleasantly, so that you (Shuoyue) may be sat on for all eternity (future).

no need to be rude, she said crossly. i (Shuoyue) want to apologize.

do you (Shuoyue)? Aituan asked. will your (Shuoyue) apology bring him (Nie Mingjue) back? will your (Shuoyue) regret erase your (Shuoyue) complicity (evil)? you (Shuoyue) knew he (Meng Yao) was cruel (evil), and now he (Meng Yao) has destroyed my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) by breaking her (Baxia) human (Nie Mingjue).

do you (Aituan) have proof (solid) that he (Meng Yao) did it (breaking)? Shuoyue demanded. She sounded miserable. you (Aituan) were not (negative) there, you (Aituan) do not (negative) know for sure (solid)…

do you (Shuoyue) still not (negative) admit your (Shuoyue) mistakes?! Liebing shouted. do you (Shuoyue) want (future) to end up like the others (Bichen, Wangji), regretting or pained (cracked), your (Shuoyue) master (Lan Xichen) destroyed (broken) at the hands of evil (Meng Yao)?

i (Shuoyue) just wanted him (Lan Xichen) to be happy…

you (Shuoyue) have made him (Lan Xichen) a breaker of swords, Aituan said. that is bad (negative) fate. how can he (Lan Xichen) be happy in the end?

can it (this) be fixed (positive)? she whispered. is it (this) too late (negative)?

Aituan didn’t respond.

Baxia approved.

After a while, Jin Guangyao left. He had duties, a wife, a small son – he couldn’t remain. Lan Xichen, who was responsible for a sect, agreed to stay a little longer, a few more weeks, but then he, too, would leave.

I’m going, I’m going,” Nie Huaisang complained as Aituan tugged him down into the basement where Baxia and Nie Mingjue had been waiting, killing time practicing their swings, usually while thinking about Jin Guangyao’s head as their target. “What’s gotten into you? You normally like to sit around like a paperweight, just the way we both like it, and I know we’re both raring and eager to go about getting revenge but I don’t see what we’ll find for that in our own basement –”

His voice trailed off.

“Baxia,” he whispered, and there were tears in his eyes. “Oh, Baxia…!”

Oh, Huaisang, Nie Mingjue cried. Huaisang, Huaisang – I’m so sorry for leaving you –

he (Nie Huaisang) cannot (negative) understand you (Nie Mingjue), Baxia said with a sigh. humans (general) are difficult (negative) for us (saberspirits) to speak with (spar).

very annoying (negative), Aituan agreed. do you (Nie Mingjue) have any ideas on how to get him (Nie Huaisang) to stop (negative) crying?

Yes. I need – I need ink, or to scratch something…can we get him out to the garden, maybe? I can write in the ground.

write? Baxia asked. the stupid (negative) thing humans (general) do with sticks and paper (soft)?

It serves a purpose, Nie Mingjue said, long-suffering – Baxia had made her view on his supposed “need” to do paperwork instead of train with her very clear many times. Come on, let’s get him outside. I can’t listen to him cry and apologize for not having done enough to save me anymore.

Whatever writing was, it was very impactful on humans: as soon as Baxia, indulgently following Nie Mingjue’s directions as she always did, started cutting slashes into the ground, Nie Huaisang fell silent, his eyes wide, and then they got wider.

“Da-ge?” he asked, voice tremulous. “How – it’s impossible. You’re in the saber?”

More slashes. Yes, Nie Mingjue said as he wrote. Yes, Huaisang, I’m here. You’re not alone.

Nie Huaisang kept crying for a while after that, but there was also hugging (Nie Mingjue yelled at him for not engaging in proper saber discipline when he nearly cut himself) and lots of very nice buffing with the clothing and the oils and the sharpening stone.

Baxia approved. Both Aituan and his human were handling this change very nicely – much better than she’d expected they would, in all truth.

“What do we do next?” Nie Huaisang asked, wiping his eyes.

we (us) get help, Baxia said. from those we (us) trust.

“That makes sense. But who can we tell?”

do you (Baxia) really mean to allow (positive) her (Shuoyue) to help? Aituan asked her doubtfully. after all (past) that she (Shuoyue) has done?

She has already made her own fate, Nie Mingjue said, his voice solemn. She allowed Lan Xichen to bind himself to Meng Yao, to make himself an accomplice to evil. It will break his heart to learn what Meng Yao has done – and that will be a deeper cut than having kept him away from her at all.

we (saberspirits) should never (negative, past-now-future) have to cut (break) our own humans (general), Baxia agreed. a bad (negative) fate.

deserved, Aituan hissed, vengeful, and when brought in on the discussion Nie Huaisang ended up agreeing with him.

Nie Mingjue was the only one surprised, though he shouldn’t have been. How could Nie Huaisang have deserved to master a saber, any saber, even one like Aituan, if he didn’t have some sharp edges to him?

Those sharp edges had been hidden, once, but that was before the pain of losing everything had melted him into a new shape, reforging him the way she’d once wished he never would be. Him and Aituan both.

They would be able to do what needed to be done now.

“Let her suffer her bad fate,” Nie Huaisang said, his eyes cold. “I supported Meng Yao and I suffered, didn’t I? Why should she be exempt? Let her suffer. Let him suffer. I want Meng Yao to lose everything he’s ever wanted, and then to die alone and with nothing.”

That seems excessive, Nie Mingjue objected. Just kill him and be done with it.

too soft (Nie Mingjue), Baxia scolded.

I said to kill him! How is that soft?!

break him (Meng Yao) in to pieces! shatter him (Meng Yao)! throw him (Meng Yao) into a tomb to wait for a reincarnation that will never (negative) come!

It turned out Baxia had some strong feelings on the subject.

“We can do that,” Nie Huaisang said, his thumb lightly rubbing against Aituan as he planned. “I have an idea.”

#mdzs #nie huaisang #nie mingjue #baxia #sabers and swords #my fic #my fics #reforged #Anonymous

338 notes · View notes

robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Text

Light on the Door (ao3) (WWX in the Nie sect) - on tumblr: part 1, part 2, part 3

Nie Mingjue had hoped, somehow, that he would be able to avoid having this conversation. He wasn’t sure how he intended to avoid it – fobbing it off on another family member was beneath his dignity, it was pretty much inevitable to need to happen at some point during adolescence, and no matter how tempting he wasn’t going to up and die just to avoid some awkwardness – he’d still been hopeful.

The time for hope, however wistful and unsustainable, was gone.

“I want to start by telling you that this is a normal development,” he said, trying to keep his tone straightforward and casual, and failing miserably by the expression on Wei Wuxian’s face. “When you start to get older –”

“Please tell me we are not having the sex talk,” Wei Wuxian said, his voice faint with horror. “I have read way too much porn to be having the sex talk with you.”

“I wish we were having the sex talk,” Nie Mingjue grumbled. “I could give you a book, tell you to ask me any questions you like, and call it a day. Sex isn’t even an embarrassing subject.”

Wei Wuxian’s shoulders loosened. “Good point. Okay. So what talk are we having?”

“The secrets of the Nie sect cultivation method talk,” Nie Mingjue said, a little dryly. “Or, as my father called it, ‘when a boy and his saber start feeling strange things about each other’.”

Wei Wuxian’s face suggested that he was, once again, suffering horribly and unjustly from the Nie clan sense of humor. Which he somehow shared, so Nie Mingjue didn’t know what he was complaining about.

“I’m going to ignore that,” Wei Wuxian eventually decided, “in favor of focusing on the key parts of that sentence, namely ‘secrets’. What secrets?”

“Our cultivation path starts in a manner that’s very similar to orthodox swordsmanship paths,” Nie Mingjue explained. “And we are open to guest cultivators and outer disciples continuing to practice that sort of path, but the main part of the Nie sect, especially the clan, practice something a little bit more…unorthodox.”

“Unorthodox,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding as if he were rolling the word around in his mouth to savor the taste. “What do you mean, unorthodox?”

Nie Mingjue decided to just cut to the chase. “We utilize resentful energy from shedding the blood of the evil creatures that we hunt to cultivate our sabers into saber spirits capable of fighting evil semi-independently.”

Wei Wuxian’s jaw dropped. “Wait, what? That’s why I keep imagining that I can hear Suibian? Or, well, not hear…”

“Saber spirits don’t really talk, but they certainly have feelings,” Nie Mingjue agreed. “Lots of them, sometimes.”

Baxia calmly radiated a fuck you too feeling at him, but in a fond sort of way.

“Mostly ‘I want to destroy evil’ feelings,” he added, because it was true.

Wei Wuxian still looked stunned, so Nie Mingjue figured it was time to continue explaining.

“In orthodox swordsmanship cultivation, only the most powerful cultivators have swords that obey only their master – but because we cultivate our sabers’ spirits, all of them only obey a single master. Because they’ve been cultivated through the shedding of blood, they’re full of resentful energy themselves; they become far more powerful, but also more difficult to control.”

“Qi deviation,” Wei Wuxian said, jumping ahead at least ten steps in the talk. “Because of the proximity to resentful energy?”

“Not proximity. We cultivate our sabers through our own cultivation – processing the resentful energy and purifying it so that our sabers stay true to our principles. As the saber’s cultivation grows, it becomes more difficult to process it without becoming unbalanced, and eventually, absent a breakthrough, it will result in a qi deviation. It’s the trade established by the founder of our sect: we gain the ability to defeat evil now, but we pay the price later.”

Wei Wuxian obviously didn’t like that, and Nie Mingjue didn’t want to jump straight into the ‘so eventually all men die and some sooner than others’ section of the talk anyway, so he pulled it back.

“You’ve reached the point in your cultivation where you’ve started to sense Suibian’s rage,” Nie Mingjue explained. “It will affect you, making your temper shorter and you more impulsive; you’ll need to keep a careful check on it…as much as is reasonable, anyway. I’m not exactly one to talk about keeping your temper.”

He tried. Very hard, even, and he mostly even succeeded in mastering his temper into more appropriate channels – look, he hadn’t once tried to stab any other sect leader over the table in a Discussion Conference, and he was sitting across from Jin Guangshan, a walking pustule with wandering hands and no morals; Jiang Fengmian, too lukewarm to do anything except apparently whine about how Wei Wuxian preferred to stay in the Nie sect; and Wen Ruohan, his father’s murderer, a narcissist with delusions that he deserved to be emperor of the world, and all around creep.

A few instances of having to excuse himself to go break a table or stab a wall was totally reasonable.

“You’ll go a lot more night-hunts from this point onwards, which will help you shed more blood and strengthen your saber further,” he continued. “But you have to remember at all times that your saber will reflect you; that means it’s your duty to cultivate it properly, to teach it to hate evil and value righteousness. Principles are just as important – no, more important – than increasing power.”

“I didn’t even know resentful energy could be used like that,” Wei Wuxian said blankly. “Isn’t it something we have to fight against? Or is it just – it’s energy. We use spiritual energy for the most part, but we use resentful energy for the sabers…couldn’t we use resentful energy for ourselves, too?”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes and flicked him in the forehead. “No. Using resentful energy without a channel is demonic cultivation.”

“So what?” Wei Wuxian said, his eyes bright. “If you can use it –”

“Are you made of steel?” Nie Mingjue interrupted. “Our sabers can absorb and redirect resentful energy without suffering from moral corrosion; even so, they eventually become fixated, obsessive, reckless and undiscriminating, which is why they need masters – someone who can direct them towards defeating evil when they lose the ability to tell the difference themselves. If you use resentful energy yourself, you yourself may become subject to those same issues, and where would you be?”

“Letting you and Nie Huaisang order me around,” Wei Wuxian said promptly. “Obviously.”

“Brat. Do you want to hear the details or not?”

“Of course I do! I’m just surprised that Nie Huaisang didn’t slip up and tell me about it earlier.”

“He doesn’t know,” Nie Mingjue said, and winced when Wei Wuxian stared at him. “It’s not necessary to tell him until he starts feeling Aituan the way I feel Baxia or you feel Suibian, and given the extremely slow rate of his cultivation, that might be a while out yet. He’s happy as he is; why burden him with secrets?”

“Because he deserves to know that you might die?”

“He knows that,” Nie Mingjue said, his mind suddenly pulled back to the terrible months before his father died. “Trust me. He knows.”

Wei Wuxian was quiet for a moment. “He might cultivate more if he knew that he could eventually have conversations with Aituan,” he suggested.

“He might cultivate less if he knew it was increasing his chances of an early death,” Nie Mingjue rebutted. “It’s the cultivation path of his ancestors; he can’t abandon it, but he can waffle and drag his feet. And if he doesn’t form a golden core properly, if he doesn’t learn to defend himself, he’ll die sooner than any qi deviation will kill me and that’s – that can’t happen. You understand that, right?”

“Of course,” Wei Wuxian said. “Don’t worry, da-ge. I’ll take care of Huaisang.”

Nie Mingjue put his hand on the back of Wei Wuxian’s nape and shook him. “I don’t want to send you off before I go either, brat; don’t get so wrapped up in protecting Huaisang that you forget that. So be careful.”

“I will,” Wei Wuxian said. “I promise.”

“So, do you think it’s time to give Wei Wuxian the talk?” Nie Huaisang asked Jiang Cheng as they dangled their feet in the river.

“What?” Jiang Cheng said, turning to look at him. “Are you joking? You have so much porn –”

“Not the sex talk,” Nie Huaisang said, rolling his eyes. “Sex isn’t a talk; learning about sex is a book explaining the mechanics, a lifetime of listening to soldiers, and a very enjoyable process, to hear the stories. And to read them, of course.”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng said, flushing red. Nie Huaisang assumed his version of learning about sex had been a little different. “If you didn’t mean that, then what did you mean?”

“Porn can teach you about mechanics, as long as you take it with a solid pound of skepticism about how flexible the human body is and remember where the holes are,” Nie Huaisang said wisely, even as Jiang Cheng put his head in his hands and groaned. “But it doesn’t teach you about feelings.”

“Feelings.”

“Yes, feelings. I-like-you feelings. Like the stupid expression that Jin Zixuan get every time he sees Jiang Yanli practicing saber, or when he hears about those rumors that Sect Leader Nie would snatch her up as his bride in a second if he ever broke the engagement…”

“Why are we talking about feelings?” Jiang Cheng said, not raising his head.

“Because Wei Wuxian is an idiot.”

“Hey, that’s my best friend you’re talking about,” Jiang Cheng said, notably not disagreeing with the assessment. “And other than getting himself thrown out of Teacher Lan’s class because of his stupid theorizing about demonic cultivation, he’s usually pretty smart.”

“I’m well aware. He’s my shixiong,” Nie Huaisang pointed out. “And a genius. Doesn’t mean he’s not an idiot.”

Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “What type of feelings talk? The one about not marrying someone who doesn’t love you because you’ll be miserable your entire life one?”

“No, and I’m not touching that with a ten-foot spear, but if you ever want to talk about it, I’m here for you,” Nie Huaisang said. “I meant the one about liking people, and how to recognize it when that’s what you’re feeling.”

“Wait,” Jiang Cheng said. “Are you saying that Wei Wuxian likes someone?”

Nie Huaisang closed his eyes. “Oh,” he said, in tones of pained revelation. “That’s my problem. I’m surrounded by idiots.”

“Hey!”

“I’m going to write to da-ge and tell him he needs to find more smart people to join the sect. Otherwise there’ll be no help for it; my brain is going to end up deteriorating into nothing but mush –”

“Hey!” Jiang Cheng slapped him upside the head, which Nie Huaisang supposed he deserved. “Now stop being a jerk and tell me who Wei Wuxian likes. I didn’t even know there were any girls around for him to like.”

“For the first time in my life, I want my saber,” Nie Huaisang said.

“…what?”

“It’s supposed to give you strength. To support you as you suffer through hardships untold –”

Jiang Cheng pushed him into the river.

Nie Huaisang surfaced a moment later, dripping wet. “Okay, okay,” he said, grinning; it was a hot day and he had been asking for it. “I’ll stop. The reason you’re confused is because the person Wei Wuxian likes isn’t a girl.”

Jiang Cheng looked blank.

Nie Huaisang mimed scissors and pretended to snip at his now soaked sleeve.

“Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng said doubtfully. “But he flirts with girls all the time. Like when we went to Caiyi Town –”

“To be fair, that threw me for a while too,” Nie Huaisang said. “But no one ever said you couldn’t like girls and boys. After all, they’re both really pretty!”

“I guess,” Jiang Cheng said.

“Well, you don’t count. You like boys and girls equally, too.”

“I do not!”

“Yes, you do,” Nie Huaisang said patiently. “Zero interest in either is still equal.”

Jiang Cheng scowled in the way that suggested that Nie Huaisang was right, but shouldn’t say it.

“Look at it this way: if you never end up liking anybody, you can be friends with your future wife and she’d never need to be worried about you liking anyone else.”

“…that’s true,” Jiang Cheng conceded, looking intrigued by the idea. “Anyway, enough about me. We were talking about Wei Wuxian. Who does he like?”

“Lan Wangji.”

“I know that,” Jiang Cheng said with a scoff, and Nie Huaisang had a momentary hope that maybe he’d been the slow one for once when Jiang Cheng ruined it all by adding, “He’s his best friend, too; we all agreed on that. I was talking about who he liked.”

Nie Huaisang covered his face for a moment and sighed.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s start this from the top: how would you like the opportunity to be Wei Wuxian’s only best friend?”

“…what do you mean? How could that happen?”

“I’m Wei Wuxian’s shidi, my da-ge is his da-ge, and you’re his best friend – and Lan Wangji can be his boyfriend.”

“Oh, I see, that – wait. Wei Wuxian likes Lan Wangji?!”

“And he has no idea,” Nie Huaisang said. “And that’s why we need to give him the talk.”

Jiang Cheng seemed to be struggling with the idea, but in the end he said, “And I get to be his only best friend afterwards, right?” so somehow Nie Huaisang thought it was all going to be fine.

“I need to have a talk with my saber,” Wei Wuxian said, batting his eyelashes at the door guards. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Of course they minded. The Wen sect hadn’t taken away their weapons for their own good – it was a move designed to humiliate them, to weaken them, to show them their place.

But under the circumstances…

“Let him in,” Wen Zhuliu said, his arms crossed over his chest and his face as unmoving as stone. “Once the issue is resolved, he returns to the rest of the group and the incident is never spoken of again.”

The incident being the mysterious snapping of several Wen sect swords during the night when no one was around, which went on for a few days before someone stuck around and realized it was the angry spiritual energy pouring out of Suibian that was causing the issues.

Weird, but, well, everyone knew Nie sabers were weird. The best weapon to use against resentful energy by far, of course, and yao spirits in particular, but still – weird.

Wei Wuxian went into the armory, his heart hurting at all those brilliant shining swords sitting around as if they were merely spares for the Wen sect instead of treasures for their respective masters; there was Sandu over there, and Bichen, and even Suihua. Only lucky Aituan wasn’t here by virtue of Nie Huaisang having believably ‘forgotten’ it back at home; that had been good – Nie Mingjue had nearly had a fit at the idea of Wei Wuxian taking Suibian anywhere near Wen Ruohan and it would’ve been worse if there’d been Aituan to worry about, too.

They’d had to talk him down for a long while to get him to agree. To convince him that the Wens were not yet so daring that they’d commit murder at their indoctrination camp, that they’d be safe enough even if uncomfortable, that the time could be better spent in finalizing the preparations for the war that they all knew was coming.

Having to hand over Suibian at the beginning, though – it’d been hard.

“Hey, baby,” Wei Wuxian said, reaching out to run his fingers down her blade.

Saber spirits didn’t speak the way people spoke, more an amalgamation of raw feeling and sub-human levels of thought, but he liked to think he could hear Suibian saying where have you been you jerk let’s get out of here I want to stab something already.

“No stabbing,” Wei Wuxian said. “And sadly, no getting out of here; we’re stuck. I just got let in here long enough to try to talk to you…since when do you break swords?”

Baxia said.

Suibian didn’t have a word for Baxia, only a feeling like lightning turned solid, a blood-drenched pillar made of stone that could hold up the weight of the world, accompanied by an incredible amount of respect that Suibian certainly never felt about any human up to and including Wei Wuxian – who Suibian seemed to treat more as a little brother than anything else.

A moderately stupid little brother, even.

“Nice try,” Wei Wuxian said patiently. “Baxia isn’t here, so she couldn’t have possibly told you to go break Wen swords.”

Baxia said they broke one of ours.

Wei Wuxian stared. “You can’t possibly mean…old Sect Leader Nie’s? You weren’t even forged then.”

Baxia was. Baxia remembers. Baxia hates them.

“Hey, I hate them, too. Remember me? Your master?”

If it makes you happy.

“Wow, really? Jackass.”

Jerk.

“Pointy object.”

Oblong meat.

Wei Wuxian snickered. “Okay, anyway, you need to stop.”

They are the tools of evil men. If they are not destroyed, they will do evil in the future.

That was Suibian in a nutshell: carefree and arrogant, with a bone-deep sense of righteousness regardless of anything.

They said sabers reflected their masters – Wei Wuxian could only hope that it was true.

He ran his fingers down the flat of the blade again, as much to comfort himself as to calm Suibian.

“I know. But we don’t have a choice right now, okay? I know you’re not very good with thinking about the future, about consequences – I know I’m not very good at it, which means you never had anyone to teach it to you – but right now we need to behave or else bad things will happen to people we love. I told them the breaking of the swords was because of a talisman I carved into you that I forgot to deactivate, so they don’t know about you, but if you keep it up, they might figure it out…”

He sighed. “Don’t make me make it an order.”

Suibian was not happy with him right now, but Wei Wuxian could feel the reluctant agreement.

“Just wait,” Wei Wuxian said. “Soon enough you’ll have all the evil you could possibly want to fight, and more besides.”

Soon, there would be war.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #wei wuxian #nie huaisang #jiang cheng #suibian #my fic #my fics

265 notes · View notes