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jiangwanyinscatmom · 3 years

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Jin Guangyao isn't cruel because he is nice sometimes! No... no... just no. He pretends to be a nice, sweet person to get what he wants, it is exactly why he got away with the killings and plannings for the Yin Hu Fu, YEARS AFTER JIN GUANGSHAN IS OUT OF THE PICTURE. He's the only legitimate Jin left old enough to take over the Sect, who the hell was gonna argue that when all relevant Jins were dead and Nie Mingjue was killed by the happy smiling pretty boy?

First example, he was actively friends with Xue Yang, there is no saying he was coerced into that one since he recommended him as a guest disciple and made creepy little jokes with him.

Jin GuangYao sighed, “I only turned around for a second and you stirred up so much trouble for me. I only had to pay for a bowl of dumplings in the beginning, and now I have to pay for his table, chairs, pots and pans, and even bowls.”

Xue Yang, “You’ll miss the couple of coins?”

Jin GuangYao, “No.”

Xue Yang, “Then why are you sighing?”

Jin GuangYao, “I don’t think you’ll miss the couple of coins either. Why can’t you try being a normal customer once in a while?”

Xue Yang, “Back in Kuizhou I never paid for anything I wanted. Just like this.” As he spoke, he casually plucked off a stick of sugared haws off a vendor’s pole. It might be the first time the vendor saw such a shameless person. As he stared open-mouthed, Xue Yang took a bite, “Besides, you can deal with the trouble of me wrecking a tiny stall, can’t you?”

Jin GuangYao smiled, “You little delinquent. Wreck stalls however you want. I wouldn’t even care if you burned down the entire street. Just one thing—don’t wear the Stars Amidst Snow robes and cover up your face. Don’t let anyone know who did it, or it’d be trouble for me.”

He tossed the money to the vendor

A.K.A: haha you're funny and I don't care who you fuck over but be sly and

Next example:

And so, Jin GuangShan sought after all those who imitated Wei WuXian in cultivating the ghostly path and gathered them under his rule. He spent a great amount of money and resources on these people, ordering them to study and analyze the structure of the Tiger Seal in secrecy so that they could replicate and restore it. Among them, not many achieved anything, while the one who walked the furthest was the youngest Xue Yang, recommended by Jin GuangYao alone.

Jin GuangYao was overjoyed. He accepted him as a guest cultivator and gave him high rights and freedom. The corpse training ground was an area of land Jin GuangYao specially requested for Xue Yang for him to research in secrecy, which meant for him to fool around however he wanted to.

He gave a whole torture playground for Xue Yang to use, he specifically asked for this from his own mouth, for Xue Yang to use and he would check in on progress. As for his morals:

Jin GuangYao’s tone was somewhat reproachful, “He Su gongzi is a respected cultivator, after all. How could you refer to him in such a disrespectful way?”

The cultivator laughed coldly, “I’ve already fallen in your hands. What are you keeping up the pretense for?”

Jin GuangYao responded with a kind expression, “You don’t have to look at me like that. I also had no choice. To elect a chief cultivator is an irresistible trend. What was the use of stirring up trouble and seeking arguments everywhere? I’ve already warned you again and again, yet you were determined not to listen to me. Under these circumstances, things are already beyond redemption. From the bottom of my heart, I, too, feel utmost pain and regret.”

He Su, “What was the irresistible trend? What was stirring up trouble? Jin GuangShan wanted to establish the position of chief cultivator only to imitate the QishanWen Sect in being the only one at the top. Do you think all the world is ignorant? You frame me like this only because I spoke the truth!”

Jin GuangYao smiled, saying nothing. He Su continued, “When you really succeed, all of the world of cultivation would see the true face of the LanlingJin Sect. Do you think killing me alone would put you eternally at ease? How wrong you are! We, the TingshanHe Sect, teem with talent. From now on, we’ll unite and never surrender to you Wen-dogs of another skin!”

Hearing this, Jin GuangYao squinted slightly, the corners of his lips curving up. It was the usual kind, gentle expression. Seeing this, He Su felt his heart skip a beat. At the same time, commotion sounded outside the corpse training ground, among it the cries of women and children.

He Su spun around, only to see a group of LanlingJin Sect cultivators drag inside sixty or seventy people all wearing the same uniform. There were men and women, old and young. Every one of them was a cross between shock and fear, while some were already crying. Both tied up, a girl and a boy kneeled on the ground as they wailed at He Su, “Ge!”

He Su was shocked speechless, his face instantly as white as paper, “Jin GuangYao! What are you doing?! It’s enough if you kill me—why drag my entire sect along?!”

Jin GuangYao looked down and fixed his sleeves, still grinning, “Weren’t you yourself the one who reminded me just now? Even if I killed you, I wouldn’t be put eternally at ease. The TingshanHe Sect teems with talent, and from now on, you’d unite and never surrender—I was quite frightened. After much thought, this was the only thing I could come up with.”

Among the group are children. That he did see and stare at gleefully as he lets Xue Yang decide to use all of them for corpse experiments. What does that mean??? Maybe that Jin Guangyao is also not in fact best uncle as he similarly was willing to kill Jin Ling who he "loved" as bait to try running away and is more than willing to use his "friends" for his own rise to power or to run away.

Examples of him enjoying emotionally torturing others as much as Xue Yang as a tactic:

Example 1:

“That’s not the way to go about things, is it? The TingshanHe Sect rebelled and schemed to assassinate Sect Leader Jin with all its forces before it was caught red-handed. How could that be called without a reason?”

The ones overhead cried, “Ge! He’s lying! We didn’t, we didn’t!”

He Su, “Utter nonsense! Open your eyes and fucking look! There are nine-year-old children here! Old men who can’t even walk! How could they rebel against anything?! Why would they assassinate your dad out of nowhere?!”

Jin GuangYao, “Because you made a mistake and committed murder, Young Master He Su, while they refused to accept Koi Tower’s conviction of you, of course.”

He Su finally remembered the accusation for which he was transferred to such a creepy place, “It’s all made up! I never killed a cultivator of the LanlingJin Sect! I’ve never even seen the person who died! I don’t even know if he was really a cultivator from your sect! I… I…”

He stammered for a while before eventually caving in, “I… I don’t even know what happened, I don’t even know!”

Yet, at such a place, nobody would listen to his protests.

Example 2:

Just as he was about to move, Jin GuangYao smiled, “HanGuang-Jun, it’s best if you take five steps back.”

Wei WuXian suddenly felt a small, sharp sting come from his neck. Lan XiChen lowered his voice, “Be careful. Do not move!”

Lan WangJi’s gaze landed on Wei WuXian’s neck. His face paled slightly.

An almost invisible guqin string, light and golden, was tied around Wei WuXian’s neck.

The guqin string was extremely thin. It was covered in special paint as well, making it almost invisible to the eye. Along with how disoriented Wei WuXian was, unable to pay attention to anything else, he didn’t notice it when it wrapped around his throat.

“Lan Zhan, don’t! Don’t back away!”

But Lan WangJi immediately walked five steps back without any hesitation.

Jin GuangYao, “Wonderful. Now, please sheathe Bichen.”

With a clank, Lan WangJi obeyed again. Wei WuXian raged, “Don’t ask for too much!”

Jin GuangYao quipped, “This is already asking for too much? Next, I’m even going to ask HanGuang-Jun to seal away his spiritual powers. What would that be called?”

Wei WuXian seethed, “You…”

Before he could finish, the sharp pain of flesh being lacerated came from his throat. Something dripped down his neck. Lan WangJi’s face was pale. Jin GuangYao said, “How could he not listen to me? Just think about it, Wei gongzi, his life is in my hands.”

Lan WangJi spoke one word at a time, “Do. Not. Touch. Him.”

“Then you know what to do, HanGuang-Jun.”

A moment later, Lan WangJi responded, “Yes.”

Lan XiChen sighed. Lan WangJi raised his hands. With two strong taps, he locked his own spiritual powers.

Jin GuangYao smiled, his voice soft, “This really is…”

Lan WangJi’s eyes were locked on them, “Let him go.”

Example 3:

Wei WuXian wouldn’t have had to be responsible for a life as heavy as Jin ZiXuan’s, and the things that happened later wouldn’t have had to happen.

Yet now, he finally realized even the reason behind culprit’s curse wasn’t to frame him. Even the cause didn’t have anything to do with him!

Such a fact was truly difficult to accept.

As he laughed, Wei WuXian’s eyes reddened. He mocked, whether at himself or otherwise, “I can’t believe it’s because of someone like you… because of such a ridiculous reason!”

But Jin GuangYao seemed like he knew what he thought, “Wei gongzi, you really shouldn’t think like this.”

Wei WuXian, “Oh? You know what I think?”

Jin GuangYao, “Of course. It’s quite easy. You’re definitely thinking about how unfortunate you are. In reality, you’re not. Even if Su She didn’t curse Jin ZiXun, Mr. Wei, you’d receive a siege sooner or later, because of some other reason.” He smiled, “Because that’s what kind of a person you are. At best, you’re the untamed hero; at worst, you offend people wherever you go. Unless all those whom you’ve offended lived their lives safely, as soon as something happened to them or someone did something to them, the first person they suspect would be you and the first person they seek revenge on would also you. And this is something you have no control over.”

Somehow, Wei WuXian smiled, “What should I do? For some reason, I think you make a lot of sense.”

Jin GuangYao, “And even if you didn’t lose control at the Qiongqi Path, could you guarantee you didn’t lose control sometime in the rest of your life? Thus, someone like you is destined to have a short life. You see? Doesn’t it feel a lot better if you think about it this way?”

He takes little time in using others hurt or their protective instincts against them, and is just as gleeful to see others in powerless situations in comparison to him as it still gives him a form of control to worm his way out of everything that has caught up to him.

Jin GuangYao, “Ge, every word of what I say is true.”

His tone was more than earnest. Ever since he captured Lan XiChen, he’d indeed been treating him with respect. At this point, Lan XiChen wasn’t able to turn against him yet. He could only sigh, “Sect Leader Jin, I have already said, when you went your own way to scheme such havoc at Burial Mound, that there was no longer any need to call me ‘Brother.’”

Jin GuangYao, “What happened at Burial Mound was an accident, a mistake. But, I can’t go back anymore.”

Lan XiChen, “What do you mean you cannot go back?”

Lan WangJi frowned slightly, his voice cold, “Xiongzhang, do not engage in excessive conversation with him.”

Wei WuXian reminded him as well, “Sect Leader Lan, do you remember what you said to Sect Leader Jiang? Don’t spend too long talking to him.”

Jin GuangYao, “Ge, listen to me. I don’t deny that I did those things…”

Lan XiChen, “How could you deny them? There are both witnesses and proof!”

Jin GuangYao, “And so I said I don’t deny them! But to have killed my father, my wife, my son, ge—if not because I had no other choice, why would I have done those things? Could it be that I’m really so out of my mind in your eyes?!”

"Your… wife…” As though he couldn’t say it, he immediately changed his phrasing, "Your sister, Qin Su, did you really marry her while knowing what blood relationship you had with her?”

Jin GuangYao stared blankly at him. Suddenly, tears rolled down his eyes. He answered with pain, “… Yes.” Lan XiChen took in a deep breath. His face was almost ashen. Jin GuangYao whispered, "But I really had no choice.”

With a sigh, Lan XiChen continued, “Third, do not try to avoid it and answer me—did you plan the death of Jin ZiXuan on purpose?!”

Hearing his father’s name, Jin Ling, who’d been holding Jiang Cheng, widened his eyes.

Lan WangJi raised his voice somewhat, “Xiongzhang, you believe him?”

Lan XiChen’s expression was complicated, “Of course I do not believe that Jin ZiXuan ran into the attack at Qiongqi Path by accident, but… let him speak first.”

Jin GuangYao knew he wouldn’t be believed if he denied it no matter what. He clenched his teeth, “… I indeed didn’t run into Jin ZiXuan by accident.”

Jin Ling immediately clenched his fists.

Jin GuangYao continued, “But I’ve never thought of planning everything that happened afterward either. You don’t have to think of me as so clever and faultless. Many things can’t be controlled at all. How could I have known that he’d definitely die by Wei WuXian’s hands together with Jin ZiXun? How could I have predicted that Wei WuXian would definitely lose control and the Ghost General would definitely run a riot?”

Wei WuXian’s voice was harsh, “And you said you didn’t run into him by accident? Isn’t that self-contradiction?!”

Jin GuangYao, “I don’t deny that I told him about the attack at Qiongqi Path on purpose, but I only thought that he’d encounter some difficulties if he ran into you when you were being troubled by his cousin since he’d never been on good terms with you. How could I have known that you would simply kill everyone present, Wei gongzi?”

“Why was a sect leader who spent money like water unwilling to do the smallest favor and buy my mother’s freedom? Simple—it was too much trouble. My mother waited for so many years, weaving together so many difficult circumstances when she talked to me, imagining for his sake so many hardships. And the real reason was only a single word: trouble.

“This is what he said, ‘It’s especially women who’ve read some books who think they’re a level higher than other women. They’re the most troublesome, with so many demands and unrealistic thoughts. If I bought her freedom and took her back to Lanling, who knows how much fuss she’d make. It was best that I let her stay where she was just like that. With her conditions, she’d probably be popular for a few more years. She wouldn’t have to worry about her spendings for the rest of her life.’

“‘Son? Oh, forget it.’”

Jin GuangYao’s memory was extraordinary. With such a word-by-word repetition, one could even imagine that drunk expression of Jin GuangShan’s when he said these words, “Ge, look, those three words were all that I was worth to my father, ‘Oh, forget it.’ Hahahaha…”

Pain flashed before Lan XiChen’s face, “Even if your father… you…” He still couldn’t find an appropriate comment and gave up, sighing instead, “What is the use of saying all this now?”

Jin GuangYao shrugged as he smiled, “I can’t help it. To seek pity even after doing all these terrible things—that’s the kind of person I am.”

At the word ‘pity’, he suddenly flipped his wrist. A red guqin string wrapped around Jin Ling’s neck.

Tears still hung at the corners of Jin GuangYao’s eyes as he spoke, voice low, “Don’t move!”

"I had no choice", "I couldn't predict anyone would be killed" "He mocked and forgot my mother and I". He uses all of this as a try to convince a kind Lan Xichen to let him go. However,he contradicts his own defenses as he had said Wei Wuxian was always fated to die for his actions and lack of being to keep things under control. This empathy is faked on his end while he makes excuses all while he never extended the same courtesy to those he killed, innocent or not, and underhandedly still tries to get those sympathetic under his manipulations. When they are not working he resorts again to threatening lives. He uses his mother also as a reason for revenge, however his grab for power alone after Jin Guangshan and Nie Mingjue are killed was solely based on his own obsession of status at that point. His mother was no longer a goal to accomplish anything and his continued lies dragged in more than one innocent party to get what he wanted.

He never saw Jin Ling, Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji, or Wei Wuxian as anything but pawns despite his soft words to them that are really just a mockery within Guanyin Temple at that point. He has placed none of them before himself in terms of what he cares for and never had.

TL:DR: Jin Guangyao's "kindness" was always a mask and Nie Mingjue was right that he was irredeemable, genuinely unkind and cruel as a person.

(Edit: Jin Guangyao stans don't even try, I will block you if you dare to reply to this)

#mdzs #mdzs mo dao zu shi #Jin Guangyao #I'm a little tired of him being painted as something he is not too #he would never have been kind to Wei Wuxian in turn as he used his infamy for his own benefit #he said he was fated to die anyways #that's not friend material #nor would Wei Wuxian ever willingly work with him #lol good friend and shushu Jin Guangyao #please this take is just as annoying as any of Jiang Cheng's excuses

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wangxianficrecs · 3 years

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Follower Recs

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Hi! First of all, thank you so much for running this blog, It's become one of three reasons why I haven't yet committed arson (I jest but the Feeling is true). [Hee, hee, hee.] I have a rec for you! It's called "wholesome life usurp immediately" by comfect on ao3 and it's. So good. It's unfinished but the author updates it literally every other day if not faster! It's a lovely fic, I hope you enjoy it. 🌻

Wholesome Life Usurp Immediately

by Comfect (T, 55k, yunmeng sibs, qingli, wangxian, WIP)

Summary: Wen Qing examines Jiang Yanli at Cloud Recesses and has a cure for her poor cultivation.

Now there are Three Prides of Yunmeng.

Everything kind of fixes itself from there.

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hello mojo!! I would really like to recommend standing still (but we keep going) by lwjromantics!! it's really good!!

standing still (but we keep going)

by lwjromantics (justfantaestic) (T, 5k, wangxian)

Summary: Lan Wangji supposed that if having to take care of little A-Yuan and Mo Xuanyu and having to look at the reminders of Wei Ying in their habits and mannerisms was punishment for his actions, he would willingly take it and flay his own back open.

— There are children in the Burial Mounds.

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hii mojo! I just read this cute fic and I loved it so I wanted to rec it :)

Word Up, Talk the Talk

by Larryissocute (G, 2k, wangxian)

Summary: It wouldn’t have been a problem (it really wouldn’t) if they weren’t best friends. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know what good deeds he did in his past life to be blessed with Lan Wangji as a friend nor does he know what evil things he did to be cursed with being only a friend to Lan Wangji.

Or the one where Wei Wuxian kisses Lan Wangji and then runs away.

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Hey! Love your account — and proud of you for taking the hiatus you needed. [Lol - it was really nice!] Idk if you take fic recommendations, but I'd love to rec Roots by ardenrabbit. Fantastic characterization, I really love it!

Roots

by ardenrabbit (E, 46k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary: After Wei Wuxian's duel with Jiang Cheng, he finds that stab wounds aren't so trivial when he doesn't have a core to heal them. He wakes to find Lan Zhan in the Burial Mounds with him, already beloved by the Wens and making himself at home. When Lan Zhan tells him that he wants to stay and offers more help than Wei Wuxian knows how to accept, he fears that it's only too good to be true.

Lan Wangji knows that Wei Ying is doing the right thing, and he couldn't live with himself if he let him do it alone. For everything Wei Ying has sacrificed, Lan Wangji is determined to give something back to him.

Hanguang-Jun has turned his back on the clans to join the Yiling Wens and their demonic cultivator leader, and every clan has a different opinion on the matter.

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Hello! I wanted to rec a fic on ao3 called "Restoration" by jelenedra. It's complete, an alternate universe of the sunshot campaign told nonlinearly. It has strong fairy tale and fae elements, with a touch of mystery. Bit of a fix it. Some delightful one liners, and the final ending imagery is just LOVELY. The fic deserves much more love. There's also some YilingWei, wwx not raised by Jiang, and sentient Burial Mounds elements. Enchanting read that keeps you enthralled and curious and intrigued.

Restoration

by jelenedra (M, 85k, wangxian)

Summary: They say he was thrown into Luanzang Gang by the man who killed his parents; they say that he is an immortal cultivator who had been in a deep trance until the Wen sect disturbed his rest and incurred his wrath; they say that he is the fierce corpse of a cultivator who had somehow regained his mind and his spiritual powers.

When Lan Wangji sees him for the first time, he understands why people talk.

Meng Yao wants safety. Xue Yang wants vengeance. The Sunshot Campaign wants victory. Yiling Laozu provides, for a price.

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I usually read all your recommendations. Thanks for gathering all good recs of wangxian. I am in love with every single story your recommend especially the favorites. [I’m so glad!] I just wanted to suggest a fic i came across while searching for phoenix!wwx. Its a new story I think as author has published it today. The first chapter was very interesting that i thought ill recommend it you and know your opinion. The legendary phoenix and his dragon -Devipriya and Hidden Path to Love by ShadowTenshiV

Hidden Path to Love

by ShadowTenshiV (G, 78k, wangxian)

Summary: Wei Ying is a servant working at the Gusu Lan castle. One day he enters through a secret passage way connected to the library where he meets a Lan for the first time. He may have left quite an impression, gaining the other´s attention and slowly becoming friends. They would like to become something more, but a servant can´t be with a prince, but maybe his secret can change that.

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hello mojo! i was wondering if I could make a fic rec? it’s called “and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow” by izanyas. it used to be on ao3 but the author has since moved it to eir own website and has started posting updates there. i was wondering if this could also act as a signal boost bc some old readers on ao3 might not have known that it is now on another website. Author's been through a tough time so I think it deserves a lot more love.

For new readers, please mind the warnings in the prologue and the beginning of each chapter! it’s omegaverse and a very heavy read as it deals with (possible spoiler) off-screen rape that results in an unwanted pregnancy, as well as secondary gender oppression which runs deep, but for people who can bear it the writing, worldbuilding, and emotions are truly spectacular.

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow

by izanyas (E, 270k, wangxian, WIP, link is to WordPress rather than AO3)

Summary: Cangse Sanren was the first of her kind to become a cultivator. Talented, passionate, free-spirited, she bested everything that ever came her way until the very end.

Jiang Fengmian refuses to see her son deprived of that same freedom.

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Hello Mojo! I dunno if this's been recced before, but here's another ficrec for you? It's complete, on ao3, "The Third Young Master of Qishan Wen" by KouriArashi. It's 'if wwx was raised by dafan wen, but gets recognized as 3rd heir due to his skill' scenario. Some really nice banter and characterization. Wwx and lz get together before the sunshot campaign. Story follows the live action but diverges into au, and does some cool callbacks to original canon. Love Meng Yao in this! [Oh, I know KouriArashi from my last fandom, I love her works!]

❤️The Third Young Master of the Qishan Wen

by KouriArashi (T, 139k, wangxian, my post)

Summary: The fic where Wei Wuxian is adopted by the Dafan Mountain Wens instead of the Yunmeng Jiang.

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Hi Mojo! I can count the number of times I’ve spoken on Tumblr on one hand (I’m shy heh) but I found this fic that I think you and others would really like? I’m a sucker for emotional hurt/comfort and this was just too sweet for me not to share (did I go through 20 pages of bookmarks just to make sure you don’t already have it? Maybe …) [Aww, you can do a sidebar search in the bookmarks for the author’s name. But I hope you found other good fics by carding through the whole catalog!] It’s “Close Your Soft Eyes” by timetoboldlygo! I also wanna say thank you for all the hard work you put into this blog! It’s a treasure beyond compare. :D [Thank you so much!]

Close Your Soft Eyes

by timetoboldlygo (G, 12k, wangxian)

Summary: When Lan Wangji woke, the first thing he noticed was the slip of paper, folded and tucked between his index and middle fingers, not Wei Wuxian’s absence. His fingers trembled as he unfurled the paper. A donkey with a little smile beamed down at him.

On the nights that Wei Wuxian was gone, Lan Wangji woke to gifts on his pillow.

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Hey Mojo! I love your blog it is beyond awesome! [Thank you!] I was wondering if you would consider reading JaenysBloodcourt series "A Bond to Takes us home"? The summary is weird but I like the fics and would love to hear your opinion on LWJ POV (it's part 2). Part one is Mingxian but part two (Wangxian) reads as a standalone for the most part. Anyways, thank you for all your hard work! <3 [I’ll put it on my list!]

A Bond to Take Us Home

by JaenysBloodcourt (T, 10k, mingxian - nmj/wwx, wangxian, series in progress)

Summary: Wei Wuxian has two soulmarks. He has two soulmates that seem to be the opposite of him. During his first life he meets both of them, loves only one and longs for the other. In his second life, the one he loved first is dead, and the one he pined after is pining after him.

These are the many tales of his soulmates and the raucous they made across the cultivation world.

Some are dark, some are light. Beware.

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I forgot to send this in for Mother's Day a few weeks ago, but have you read dragongirlG's "into the light of a dark black night"? It's a short canon divergence where Mama Lan escapes the Cloud Recesses after spending one last, heartbreaking night with her sons. It's so beautiful and bittersweet! [Oh, ouch. I just read this author’s time travelling juniors au, but hadn’t seen this one.]

into the light of a dark black night

by dragongirlG (T, 3k, Madam Lan & sons)

Summary: The night that Wu Yuhua, formerly known as Madam Lan, plans to escape from the Cloud Recesses, she runs into an unexpected complication.

That complication comes in the form of her younger son A-Zhan running up to her door and kneeling in front of it, hushed whimpers escaping from his throat.

Wu Yuhua knows it's not the full moon, knows that it's not the one day a month she's allowed to see her children—but like hell is she going to leave her six-year-old son out there trying to stifle sobs in the snow.

She opens the door. "A-Zhan," she says, bending down and reaching out a hand. "Come in, my sweet boy."

On a snowy night in the dead of winter, Wu Yuhua, formerly known as Madam Lan, unexpectedly spends one last night with her sons before escaping from the Cloud Recesses.

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Hello queen I’d like to recommend for ur follower rec posts Avatar: The Untamed Waterbender by KouriArashi. Banger of an ATLA au, def the best one I’ve seen. It’s a WIP but the author updates pretty regularly and it’s all around an A+ fic [Oh, yes, I’ve been waiting for this one to finish before I jump in.]

Avatar: The Untamed Waterbender

by KouriArashi (T, 123k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary: You know the drill. Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

100 years later, Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli find Wei Wuxian sealed in an iceberg.

Featuring: avatar WWX, waterbending JC, firebending Wens, airbending Lans, earthbending Nies and Jins, Jiang Yanli in possession of the brain cell, et cetera.

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[My ko-fi.]

#follower rec #wangxian fic rec #I HAVEN'T READ THESE YET #wangxian #mdzs #follower recs

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Unfettered (aka NHS goes feral) - part 3 - previous parts: on ao3 or tumblr pt 1, pt 2

Lan Xichen had the strangest feeling that something was going to happen.

He wouldn’t pretend that he had a touch of foresight – life had shown him the hard way how completely he lacked any sorts of skill in that direction– and there was nothing altogether unusual about anything that had happened in the past few days of the war. Lan Xichen was helping with so much more now than he had during the Sunshot Campaign, when he’d been able to be a little above it all as a mere courtier or a single but powerful scouting force, thanks in large part to his sect’s then-existing weakness and Nie Mingjue’s utter brilliance. Nowadays he had to deal with the endless drudgery of war administration: the clean-up before and after battles, the mechanics of feeding and supplying all the cultivators in their front lines, planning their next move and the next after that…

Nie Huaisang had received a message and stormed out, looking annoyed, but that wasn’t new, either.

There were many demands on his time, after all. Nie Huaisang might not have much experience at war on a personal basis, having largely (and willingly) been sidelined during the Sunshot Campaign, but he was a sharp study and an excellent judge of people. He managed their generals – selected for merit without any attention to what sect they were from, if any – with an iron fist that rivaled his control over his own disciples, and on top of the war there was also his extensive network of spies, his constant scrutiny of their supply lines, his supervision of internecine disputes between the sects…

The divisions between us will be the first place Jin Guangshan strikes, he had said – snarled, rather – at the last meeting between sect leaders, taking to task men twice his age without so much as the blink of an eye. I want this petty bullshit between you resolved, now, and I don’t care how many generations you’ve been fighting over it. If you don’t fix it, I’ll fix it for you, and I assure you that neither of you want that.

They’d resolved it.

After all, Nie Huaisang was right: no one wanted him to step in.

It was a little ironic, Lan Xichen thought. The entire war had started because of Jin Guangshan’s lust for power, his desire to be called Chief Cultivator – a term Nie Huaisang denounced, as Nie Mingjue had before him – and now it was Nie Huaisang to whom the cultivation world deferred without question.

People were afraid of him.

It still seemed a little ridiculous to Lan Xichen, as if at any moment someone would step in and say that it was all a joke that they’d all been taken in by. That Nie Huaisang was still the excitable little roly-poly puppy he’d always been, Lan Xichen’s good friend’s little brother: stubborn and cute and smarter than he pretended to be, interested in nothing but his art and his fans and his clothing, lazy and indolent and unabashedly happy in a way that had brightened Lan Xichen’s day to see, every time.

He wasn’t, though. And it was Lan Xichen that had helped make him into what he was now.

During his travels, he’d heard cultivators in the field referring to Nie Huaisang as the Pallbearer, obliquely calling him the virtuous mourner as if he were a death-god whose name should not be directly uttered lest it draw his attention – it wasn’t anything Nie Huaisang had accepted as a personal title, utterly inauspicious as it was, but if he didn’t take one soon, he’d be stuck with it. If he wasn’t already.

People were simply uncomfortable calling him Nie-er-gongzi the way they had before, and Lan Xichen didn’t blame them one bit – the Nie-er-gongzi of the past was unrecognizable in the man of today.

But neither could he blame Nie Huaisang for refusing the title of Sect Leader Nie as long as his brother still had a single spark of life in his body.

Nie Mingjue…

Lan Xichen missed him terribly.

He knew he didn’t have the right to – Nie Huaisang had made that clear enough – but he did. He missed his old friend, with his confidence and his kindness and his goodness. He missed having a confidant who esteemed him and who trusted him, who shared everything with him without a moment’s hesitation, who always tried his best and honored those who did the same.

He’d once, and only once, caught a brief glimpse of Nie Mingjue after everything had happened: he’d been in bed, pale as death, face quiet and slack and peaceful in a way it never was, with doctors surrounding him. At the time, they were working furiously to save his life as Nie Huaisang paced furiously outside the door, refusing food and only drinking enough water to replenish the tears that streamed endlessly down his face.

That had been early on, before they’d realized Nie Mingjue had lapsed into a deep coma from which there was no telling when or if he would awake and, even if he did, in what state he would be left in. That had been before Nie Huaisang had banned Lan Xichen from the Unclean Realm…banned everyone, really, hosting them anywhere else he could rather than allow them anywhere near his brother when he was vulnerable.

Before he’d slowly started giving up hope. Before they all had.

It’d been years, after all. Surely if Nie Mingjue’s indomitable strength could heal him, it would have done so by now?

Of course, even if Nie Mingjue did eventually wake up, it wasn’t as if Lan Xichen would get his friend back the way it had once been. Nie Mingjue had always been righteous to the point of rigidity, willing to make the hard choices to punish those who had done wrong no matter their identity, and Lan Xichen had failed him so thoroughly, so completely…

Guiltily, too, he knew that if Nie Mingjue woke up, he’d undoubtedly step up as general once more, coordinating everything the way he had during the Sunshot Campaign – and that meant they wouldn’t need to rely on Lan Xichen’s assistance anymore.

Nie Huaisang had made that clear, too.

Whoever had raised his ire by sending him that message that had pulled him away from their work together…well, they’d better have a very good excuse. Nie Huaisang hated to be interrupted, his temper as short as anyone in his family’s had ever been, and his tongue was more poisonous than Jiang Cheng’s.

Lan Xichen would know, being its most frequent target.

Nie Huaisang had never forgiven Lan Xichen in his part in preserving Jin Guangyao’s life, and lacking the actual assassin to rend to bits, he had grimly decided to make do with the accomplice. He needled Lan Xichen at every instance, taunting him with his failures and deficiencies, making nasty jibes and underhanded remarks that cut deep – and Lan Xichen deserved every single one of them.

Back then, it had been Lan Xichen who had hesitated, refusing to believe the truth. Refusing to believe that his then (and, perhaps, still) beloved A-Yao could ever do such terrible things of which he had been accused, either at his time in the Nightless City or the assassination of Nie Mingjue – he had pushed back, prevaricated, insisted on investigating more, finding out more…in the end the truth had come out in all its ugly wretched filthy glory and the only thing his foot-dragging and indecisiveness that he’d pretended was a devotion to justice had gotten him was Nie Huaisang’s endless disdain.

The worst of it, though, wasn’t the humiliation or the insults, nor his feelings of failure and guilt.

No, it was the way his foolish heart raced at how Nie Huaisang looked now, with all restraint a distant memory – the sharp Nie features on his delicate face turning from blurred to clear as the childhood fat on his cheeks melted away; the intelligence that flashed in his eyes, now unhidden by any pretense or indifference; the utter brilliance in the casual way he rattled off orders, effortlessly taking command without permitting any backtalk; the way he moved, a mixture of the martial general and a dancer’s grace; the way everything about him perfectly fit to Lan Xichen’s taste –

He really was a fool.

He had a crush on you for years, Lan Xichen reminded himself. Nie Mingjue even told you about it, he’d even approved of it back then if only you were interested, and yet you pretended you knew nothing. But now, now when he hates you, despises you, sees you as little better than a worm to crush beneath his heel, now is when you finally choose to see what’s always been there?

He hadn’t said anything to Nie Huaisang about it, of course. There wasn’t any point when Nie Huaisang already thought of him in the worst possible terms – weakling, willfully blind, murderer – and he could easily imagine how it might go, if he ever tried anything.

(“I heard some soldiers say that I resemble Jin Guangyao,” Nie Huaisang had mused one day, his hands locked behind his back as he looked down at their troops training in the field. His voice was cold as ice and sharp as a blade. “Though there’s some disagreement as to whether it’s my face or the devious turns of my mind that bring up the comparison. I thought I’d ask you, Zewu-jun, you being the expert and all – am I a good replacement? A suitable stand-in? If I smile at you enough times, will you do whatever I say without question, the way you did for him?”

I would already do anything for you, Lan Xichen had thought at the time, full of sorrow. In a way that goes well beyond what I felt for him. But even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?)

No, it was clear enough to Lan Xichen that his father’s blood ran strong in him, dooming him to only love where he was not loved in return, and to finally realize the strength of that love only when it was too late. At least it seemed that Lan Wangji had escaped that fate with Wei Wuxian, their earlier misunderstandings aside.

A moment later, as if summoned by his thoughts, the man himself appeared.

“Oh, Zewu-jun, there you are! Have you seen Nie-xiong?” Wei Wuxian asked, popping his head in through the door. Lan Wangji was a few steps behind him, waiting patiently as he always did – he was always patient with Wei Wuxian, gentle in a manner that reminded Lan Xichen of the way he sometimes cared for the wild rabbits back at the Cloud Recesses.

They hadn’t spoken much, of late. Lan Wangji had understood Lan Xichen’s weakness and had not held it against him, but that didn’t mean Lan Xichen had forgiven himself, nor did it lessen the sting of shame he felt over events he felt must have lost him the respect of his younger brother, no matter how Lan Wangji denied it – it was easier to focus on matters of war.

“He was called away suddenly, I’m afraid,” Lan Xichen said. “He left a few shichen ago, but he said he’d be back in time for dinner.”

“Dinner has already passed,” Lan Wangji said, his voice neutral – an obvious reprimand for Lan Xichen for having not noticed, shaded with concern over the way Lan Xichen didn’t always eat the way he should. He wouldn’t be hurt by it, he practiced inedia the way they all did, of course, but that didn’t mean he should miss meals if he didn’t have to. “He has not yet returned?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. But if it’s that late, he should be back soon. Do you need him for something urgent?”

“As urgent as anything else in this war,” Wei Wuxian said with a shrug. “If you see him, let us know.”

“Why do you assume I’ll see him first?” Lan Xichen asked, a little amused, but Wei Wuxian blinked at him as if he’d said something foolish.

“He always comes to you first,” he said. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

Lan Xichen’s breath caught briefly – no, he hadn’t noticed, and his mind immediately started to race, his heart growing warm…but no. He only was being foolish again. As the army’s courier, its administrator, Lan Xichen was the obvious person for Nie Huaisang to contact if he wanted to get his plans spread out to everyone as soon as possible.

There didn’t have to be anything more to it than that.

“So when he arrives, if you could just tell him –”

“No need,” Lan Wangji interrupted. “He is approaching.”

A few moments later, and it was clear from the footsteps that Lan Wangji was right, as always – when Lan Wangji was younger, Lan Xichen used to tease him about having the ears of a bat, capable of detecting everything, and sometimes he really thought it might be true.

They waited, and the door opened, and Lan Xichen instinctively turned away as Nie Huaisang let himself in, not wanting to see those hard eyes turn even harder, the instinctive sneer that rose to Nie Huaisang’s lips at the sight of him that it always took him an extra moment to suppress.

“Nie-xiong?” Wei Wuxian asked, his voice rising a register in his shock. “What happened?”

Lan Xichen turned back at once, suddenly cold all over in terror. Had Nie Huaisang been injured? Some ambush, some attack, or worst of all a garrote made of guqin string the way he’d so foolishly taught A-Yao – but no, when he examined him with his eyes, Nie Huaisang looked hale as always, but for the redness and swelling around his eyes.

He looked for all the world as if he’d been –

Crying?

And yet Lan Xichen knew that Nie Huaisang hadn’t wept in years. One could probably accurately say that Nie Huaisang hadn’t had any expression in years, nothing that wasn’t a sneer or a grimace, maybe at best a smirk. What could have caused him to do so now…?

Nie Huaisang shook his head and unexpectedly – smiled.

A real true smile, his eyes curving into crescents and wrinkling at the corners, his cheeks glowing pink and his teeth flashing just like when he was younger and more innocent and smiled like that all the time. A smile of the sort that Lan Xichen hadn’t appreciated when he had it, the sort he’d thought was lost forever.

Lan Xichen’s heart stopped in his chest.

He wished he could stop this moment, too, to keep it with him for the rest of time.

“It’s da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said, beaming. “He woke up.”

Oh, Lan Xichen thought. Oh.

Oh no.

#mdzs #lan xichen #nie huaisang #wei wuxian #lan wangji #my fic #my fics #unfettered #xisang

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i-like-plan-m · 3 years

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If you're accepting prompts, how about one where people either can't lie to LWJ or he can tell when they're lying, and he inadvertently discovers a whole bunch of stuff WWX would rather he didn't (could be either WWX's low self worth, or his intense LWJ-based thirst!)

such a good prompt omg thank you [Posted to Ao3]

It was a curse, some said. A gift, according to others. The sect debated for years on the technicalities and argued their differing opinions over Lan Zhan’s head until Lan Qiren insisted the sect leave his nephew alone.

No one ever asked Lan Zhan what he thought.

He considered it neither a gift nor a curse. It was simply a part of him, the same as his golden core.

Except while a golden core was perfectly normal, Lan Zhan’s ability to detect any lie— spoken or unspoken— was less so. He heard falsehoods like music; words were notes, conversations were harmonies, and lies were the jarring wrong note that scraped harshly across his ears.

The hardest part was learning the reasons for a lie. Lan Zhan did not understand people the way his brother did, could only hear their lies and quietly disapprove. But Lan Xichen spent hours upon hours with him, testing the bounds of the skill and gently pointing out the different types of lies, and why the distinctions were important.

Sometimes, he’d said, people lie to protect themselves or others. Sometimes a lie is kinder than the truth. They were not all born of malicious intent, and he’d taught Lan Zhan how to distinguish between them. How to identify the dangerous lies, the harmful ones, and those that were best left unacknowledged out of kindness or respect.

Lan Xichen had been eternally patient, remarkably encouraging, and quietly concerned about the effect this curse would have on his little brother. Lan Zhan had seen it in his face, the nonverbal lie reading to him like a whisper every time Lan Xichen smiled to hide his worry.

His brother had never asked about the source of the curse or gift or whatever the sect considered it; Lan Zhan suspected he had his own theories, and Lan Xichen’s guesses would most certainly be better than the elders’.

But only Lan Zhan knew its origins for sure.

His mother had been lied to, once, and as a result had spent the rest of her days a prisoner in a small, lonely house. His clearest memory of his mother was her holding him close, tucking him into her lap and wrapping her arms around him in a loving, protective cocoon. It was the safest he had ever felt.

He’d been too young to recognize his mother’s sorrow for what it was at the time, the way she’d clearly known her death was approaching. But he remembered the quiet words she’d whispered to him, words of love and fear and protectiveness. The way her golden core had enveloped him, warm and steady, as she made sure her youngest son would not live in a house of lies and silence like her.

It was her greatest gift to him, and her last.

~*~

Lan Zhan knew the sound of a lie. So when a particularly irritating disciple arrived and immediately began causing trouble, Lan Zhan expected any number of lies from the boy. He was eager, even, for vindication for his own prejudice against such a disrespectful nuisance.

But Wei Ying had a way of talking that sounded like slurred notes to Lan Zhan’s highly trained ear. He was all chaos and deflection, and Lan Zhan experienced something uncomfortably like whiplash trying to keep up with the words in Wei Ying’s never-ending chatter.

It could not have been deliberate— no one outside of the Lan Sect’s elders and his own family knew of Lan Zhan’s particular skill— but nonetheless Wei Ying avoided giving straight answers, topics sliding sideways and off course with a joke, a question of his own, or some wildly inappropriate comment that made Lan Zhan too furious to focus.

He was infuriating.

He was beautiful.

Somehow that was worse.

Lan Zhan did not bother to look over as Wei Ying bickered with his sect brother, not in any mood to deal with him or his own feelings about the biggest troublemaker he’d ever met in his life.

Wei Ying’s laugh rang over the courtyard, bright and happy as he slung an arm over Jiang Wanyin’s shoulders, ignoring the sect heir’s incensed protests. “Don’t lie, shidi, I know you love me!”

The lie sounded like a gong in Lan Zhan’s head, startling him so badly that he stumbled to an awkward stop and snapped his head around to stare at Wei Ying, who was for once paying him no attention.

His ever-present smile was in place, nothing false or fixed about it. Wei Ying wore happiness and humor like armor, and Lan Zhan wondered if anyone had ever seen past it. He hadn’t… until now.

Lies were interesting things. Sometimes entire speeches were a lie (for instance, everything that came out of Jin Guangshan’s mouth). Sometimes gestures held the lie, such as Nie Huaisang’s amiable nod of agreement whenever his older brother ordered him to go train with his saber. And sometimes the lie was only a single word.

I know you love me. The low, booming signal of Wei Ying’s lie was significant for two reasons: the timing, and the strength of the sound. The greater the lie, the louder the noise, and this one had left a painful echo in Lan Zhan’s ears from the force of it. And the timing… the lie had been marked on a single word: love.

I know you love me. But Wei Ying did not believe this, not even a little.

Lan Zhan… did not know what to do with this revelation.

By the end of class that day, during which Wei Ying had been bellowed at by Lan Qiren and handed off to Lan Zhan for yet another punishment, he still had not figured out what to do about it. He would have gone to his brother for advice, because Xichen always helped him find the right thing to do, but lately his brother had a terrible light of laughter in his eyes every time Lan Zhan mentioned Wei Ying, and he was not about to willingly subject himself to that indignity.

So he was left to his own devices. Lan Zhan stared down at his scroll, not reading a single word of it because of to Wei Ying’s indecent sprawl across a nearby desk. He was humming innocently, like Lan Zhan couldn’t see him urging a tiny paper man on a march towards Lan Zhan’s pot of ink.

“Focus on your work,” Lan Zhan said sternly, capturing the figure just before it dipped its little arms in the bowl and went on a rampage.

“Ugh, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whined, flopping over the desk. “This is so boring, how can you stand it? Not even Madam Yu would make me do all this!”

Lan Zhan studied the paper man in the cage of his fingers. This was a chance to learn more, he thought, about Wei Wuxian’s life in Yunmeng. Maybe even about why he did not believe his own brother loved him.

Why do you care? This does not concern you. Lan Zhan mutinously banished the thought and set the paper man free to explore the stack of books on his desk.

Hesitantly, he asked, “Do you like Lotus Pier?”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying laughed. “What kind of question is that?”

Lan Zhan felt the familiar surge of frustration at the deflection; he could never get a straight answer out of Wei Ying, and it was a source of much aggravation.

“You mention punishments at Lotus Pier frequently,” he said instead of pinning Wei Ying to the floor until he got a truthful answer. The image sent a flash of heat through him, and he held himself very, very still until he had control over himself again.

“Eh.” Wei Ying waved a dismissive hand. “I get in trouble everywhere, Lan Zhan, whether I mean to or not.”

Truth.

“Are you punished in similar ways?” Lan Zhan asked, looking pointedly at Wei Ying’s abandoned paper of half-copied rules.

“No one gives punishments like the Lans. Don’t worry, your sect’s reputation is still the most feared of all!”

Not true, because anyone with half a brain knew to be wary of Wen Ruohan. This lie was like a slipped finger on the string of a qin, a short, wavering note that was discordant and vaguely unsettling. An untruth, technically, but said as a joke, as a sort-of truth because both of them knew the statement wasn’t genuine and that they other knew it as well.

Lan Zhan had a headache.

He tried a different track. “You were adopted by Sect Leader Jiang?”

Wei Ying sat up, propping his elbows on his desk and studying him for a moment before grinning. “So many questions, Lan Zhan! If I didn’t know better, I’d think you want to be friends.”

It was said teasingly, and the lie was held in the latter part of the sentence— Wei Ying did not believe Lan Zhan wanted to be friends. That, combined with the frustration of yet another question avoided, made Lan Zhan say, “It seems you do not know better.”

Embarrassingly, his heart was pounding at the admission. Lan Zhan had never had a friend before, other than his brother, and he certainly did not know how to make them. But he knew that he wanted to spend time with Wei Ying more and more often, even though part of him rebelled at the thought.

It was oddly silent in the library. Lan Zhan knew his ears were flushed red with embarrassment and uncertainty, and he waited with bated breath for Wei Ying to tease him again, to deflect with another laugh or joke that kindly disguised the fact that he did not want to be Lan Zhan’s friend, that Lan Zhan was too stiff and weird and boring to be anyone’s friend.

A little nauseated, Lan Zhan lifted his eyes from his paper and gathered his courage to look at the other boy.

Wei Ying was gaping at him like a fish.

“Friends?” He finally managed. Lan Zhan dropped his eyes back to the desk and said nothing, couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat. “You don’t want to be my friend!”

His gaze flickered back towards Wei Ying. The statement was untrue, obviously, but it was a lie that Wei Ying believed to be true, so it sounded like a half-missed note on a flute. Easily corrected, quickly covered, but there nonetheless.

“Says who?” Lan Zhan asked, wondering… hoping…

Wei Ying blinked at him for a moment, visibly stumped. Ridiculously, it made Lan Zhan feel as though he’d won something. Triumph over being the one to shock Wei Ying into uncharacteristic silence for once.

As expected, it didn’t last long.

Traitorous fondness glowed in his chest as Wei Ying planted his hands on the desk and raised himself onto his knees with an indignant expression. His hair fell in disarray around his face, a half-tied red ribbon spilling over his shoulder and against rumpled robes.

“You did!” Wei Ying said, outraged. “I said we should be friends on the first night!”

He’d said a lot of things that first night, Lan Zhan thought with reluctant amusement. Lan Zhan had forgotten most of it thanks to the veil of rage that had overtaken him as he chased a beautiful boy under the moonlight.

“Hm,” Lan Zhan said, dismissive, mostly just to watch Wei Ying’s expression contort into disbelief. “Did you ask?”

Wei Ying spluttered. “Of course I asked!” He said too loudly, and then cocked his head like he’d heard the ring of the lie, too. “Oh. Huh, I guess I didn’t ask, now that I think about it.”

He looked at Lan Zhan with a gleam in his eye. Lan Zhan had only a second to think, uh oh, and then Wei Ying had vaulted over his desk to land on his knees across from him.

“Lan Zhan,” he whispered, leaning in like they were sharing secrets. Lan Zhan’s hear thundered in his ears as Wei Ying grinned conspiratorially at him and leaned in close enough that Lan Zhan could smell the floral scent of his hair oil, the tinge of chili oil that he’d smuggled into the Cloud Recesses and then at some point spilled on his sleeve. “I want to be your friend. Do you want to be friends?”

Lan Zhan savored the silence around his words— I want to be your friend, he’d said, with no single hint of a lie— and tried not to let the mischievous glint in Wei Ying’s eye distract him.

It was too late, though. The seed of mischief had taken root in Lan Zhan, which was why he said with a perfectly straight face, “Hm. I will have to think about it.”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying squawked with indignation, and then must have caught the tiny curl of Lan Zhan’s mouth because he exploded into laughter a second later. “Were you teasing me just now? Lan Zhan, I can’t believe this.”

Quietly pleased with himself, Lan Zhan watched as Wei Ying laughed until he ran out of air, falling onto his back with his usual exuberant expressiveness. The laughter was a joyous sound, bright and honest, and hearing it in one of his favorite places made Lan Zhan’s chest feel warm and tight.

His mother would have liked him, Lan Zhan thought wistfully. For his humor, his irrepressible love of life, his fearlessness. His heart felt too big for his chest as he listened to Wei Ying laugh, unrestrained emotion where only disciplined constraint had ever been permitted.

He would investigate Wei Ying’s beliefs about his own worth later, he decided. They were friends now, so this was allowed.

For now, though, he let the clear, ringing music of Wei Ying’s laughter fill the room. Basked in the warmth he hadn’t felt since his mother had been alive, and softened enough to smile back at Wei Ying.

#y'all have sent me some fantastic prompts #this one was fun #the untamed #wangxian #lan zhan #lan wangji #wei ying #wei wuxian #mdzs #asks #anon #prompts #my writing #my fics

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ofwindsweptpines · 3 years

Note

❛ you never quite forgot him, did you ? ❜ there was a distinct 𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 in his otherwise soft voice as he spoke. his hands were balled into tight fists, clutching the fabric of his sleeves between slender fingers. ❛ all this time, was i just a replacement for wei gongzi ? did you close your eyes && imagine his face instead of my own ? ❜ / unprompted angst bc i can.

༺🌕༻ His gaze rest on the box sitting atop the crisp blankets of his bed, a detached distance in his amber hues as he took in the open lid, the papers strewn over the mattress — long lengths of hand-written rules accordioned in stacks. He’d only kept the ones Wei Ying had taken creative liberties with, little caricatures in the margins, silly quips or comments jotted once his work had been finished. There was, as well, a portrait in ink of him, scrawled that day in the library but not properly appreciated until some time much later. There was a flower, pressed and dried. A shard of white opalesced ceramic that had once been a jar of Emperor’s Smile, found amidst the white pebbles of Cloud Recesses’ paths. A small wooden plaque that had once marked his dormitory with his name carved neatly upon its surface.

Wangji had kept these things tucked away safely beneath his bed. He looked at them seldom these days, but gazing at them now something cold ran down his spine and settled in the pit of him, deep and roiling like shame. Shame that he had dishonored the part of him that had once felt so deeply about the objects in that box, revered them, worshiped them as if doing so might bring their owner back. Shame that he had not been enough for Xingchen that such questions had to be asked. Had he been so very inattentive?

His eyes turned toward the man, saw the bitterness in the rigidity of his jaw as if the words tasted sour in his mouth. Wangji knew that Xingchen would sense the torn nature of his thoughts in his silence, for not all silence rang the same. Because of this he would not dishonor the man with anything less than the truth, painful and confusing though it may be.

“No,” he spoke softly, simply. A multi-pronged answer to every question posed to him in that moment. He had not forgotten Wei Wuxian, for Wei Wuxian was not a man easily forgotten; he’d made himself indelible in the minds of all whose lives he’d touched, for better or for worse. The ghost of him haunted Wangji even now, though the soft whispered voice in his imagination had all but silenced over the years as the yearning to hear it again had faded into solemn acceptance that he likely never would. When he had met Xingchen once more that voice had been voluminous, demanding — ‘Lan Zhan. . . Lan Z h a n.’ Even when there had been joy in the steeping of himself in the rogue cultivator’s company the streak of a shameless smile would at times cross his vision, a face broken into wanton laughter, boyish, striking. Always unbidden.

Had Xingchen been a substitute for Wei Ying in those miserable, haunted years? No, just as his simple, monosyllabic answer had suggested. But it would be a lie to say the man’s face had never found its way into his minds eye when they were together. Nor had he made Xingchen any promises in those days that the parts of him willingly given were all of him, just as the parts of Xingchen that belonged to Song Lan, or others, would remain untouched by him. They were, at best in those days, eager comforts for one another. When Wangji was haunted by memories of fires that burned within and without he need only open his eyes and look on the peaceful, satisfied man beside him. Need only listen to the sound of his breath, or the tone of his voice — his laughter, his sighs, his moans that rang with such a different timbre than that haunting, boyish whisper deep in the recesses of his mind. The way Xingchen spoke his name with a reverence that he’d never heard from Wei Ying’s lips. The smile that curled at the tips in its own unique way. He had never wished to pretend Xingchen was anyone but Xingchen, else why would he have ever fallen into bed with him in the first place when he’d known what it was to be deeply and unshakably devoted to the idea of a person already? Nothing short of a remarkable man could turn him from that haunted devotion. No fingertips but Xingchen’s would disturb the dust on top of that box where once it would have been unthinkable for any to collect. ༺🌕༻

#divinelament #༺V༻ Hunters of the Night #༺C༻ Xiao Xingchen #//it's fine #//I'm fine #//this is fine

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wangxiangiftexchange · 3 years

Text

Winter Solstice Gift for wangxianbunnydoodles

For @wangxianbunnydoodles <3

Read On AO3

*****

Flowers Sprinkled With Blood/Blood Sprinkled With Flower Petals

It was nothing but pure coincidence that found Lan Qiren exiting the library right at the moment his punished nephew erupted in a violent coughing fit. Naturally, if he had just heard him without bearing witness or given himself a moment to reflect about it before taking action—if it was any other disciple than his younger nephew—and perhaps even him, if he was even slightly less rattled—he would have simply recommended at the punished party to visit the physicians once his disciplinary action was done and moved on… However it was Wangji and he found himself rooted on the spot.

He was right to be concerned, what he had taken as a mere coughing fit (Wangji had still managed to remain in position, the disciplinary rods not lowered a single cun) continued for long moments, Wangji’s sternum—his whole body—shook like a leaf, hoarse sounds turning wetter and wetter….

—Wangji who hasn't been sick not even a single day in his life—not even as tiny A-Zhan, who spent hours upon hours kneeling outside his late mother’s door, in the snow and heavy rain, without even the help of a formed golden core to sustain him--

…until—Heavens!—it culminated in a final fit with blood spraying forth, painting his nephew’s mouth and chin, even failing down on his robes… That was it, Lan Qiren had enough.

He wasn’t going to stay still while Wangji suffered a Qi deviation.

Qiren couldn’t stand even thinking about it; he grabbed his nephew’s wrist — not a major imbalance on the Qi flow but not quite normal either — and he took to racewalking towards the infirmary. Wangji, being aghast either by the sudden malaise or his own atypical reaction, didn’t put up any fight. He followed him dazetly, even submissively, and that terrified Lan Qiren most of all……

“Find the Sect Leader and tell him he’s needed at the infirmary,” he all but barked at the first disciple he found on the way.

“Shufu!?” Wangji sounded utterly scandalized and almost openly irritated, far closer to a normal state than his dazed spell, which made Qiren’s own breathing ease the tiniest bit. They were going to deal with the problem, whatever it was.

It was only after they reached the infirmary that Qiren got a closer look at the bloodstains on his nephew’s robes that he took an even greater shock. It wasn’t just blood that sullied A-Zhan’s pristine robes, some of the reds were actually flower petals, flower petals from red lotuses if his eyes weren’t mistaking him, to be exact. Qiren froze.

“Wangji!” Xichen had found them just in time to be equally horrified, the risk of a Qi deviation, even small, was bad enough—this was something worse.

It wasn’t a story they would ever willingly share outside their clan but every single Lan by blood had heard about it as a child, as something between a cautionary and a fairy tale, why they needed to restrain themselves for all their propensity for love. Why love without measure could be deadly for them….

—How Lan Bai, courtesy name Biming, fourth son to Lan An (and the most spoiled) grew restless and wanderlusting in his longing to meet his own fated one and had left the newly built Cloud Recesses to find her.

How he had traveled all over the world, even down to Dongying, how he had met a Dongying Samurai girl and had loved her with his entire being but she was engaged and he left to not dishonor her. How he returned in Cloud Recesses deadly sick and spewing flowers, utterly expecting to die from it.

(Healers, then and now, couldn’t find neither an explanation nor cure)

How Matsumoto Ichika couldn’t accept this and had thrown her honor to follow him home, dodging her father’s wrathful retainers and traveling millions of Li to be with Lan Biming—her a woman alone even with her high education and her form of cultivation, it was a miracle that she —indeed— found him even belatedly as she did.

How she had found Lan Biming, nearly three years later, right at the death’s door and had thrown herself at his feet, how the man with the destroyed lungs and squashed heart—surviving so long only due his golden core—had become able to breath good as new not even a month after their reunion — the physicians not finding even a trace of the cursed flowers in his lungs or bloodstream.

How the cursed affliction (not exactly a curse for no cultivator nor healer in all their generations had been able to deal with it as such) kept reappearing every few generations and taking its toll, for not everyone had been lucky like Lan Biming. For some—very few, Thank Heavens—it had been nothing more than a lingering excruciating death.

Lan Qiren glanced towards Lan Xichen and his nephew did the same with something like pleading, both looking away almost at once. They were both all too well aware of the stakes as well the recipient to say a single word. Wangji was now with healer Lan Baozhai, and they were going to have a time estimation at least.

Neither had Wangji said a single word, either in sorrow or with shame, but he had met his eyes without shame almost in pure defiance-—-looking for once exactly like his father, when he presented the bloodied gentian to the elders, when they had come for that woman’s head.

(Qiren had been as shaken as the rest of them, back then, but his opinion had changed over the years. —Mere acceptance had never been enough to apeace the affliction, there were at least three separate cases that had died a scant few years after their wedding, it had to be wholehearted love or nothing else, and it was all but apparent that that woman loathed his brother to her dying day. More to the point his foolish brother had supposedly lived with this all nine years of their marriage—and ten after—. For all his incredible cultivation there was no way he would have survived that long if he had indeed had the affliction, he had deceived them all to save her life)

Lan Qiren would have suspected that his equally foolish and passionate nephew would have tried to pull the same trick to save Wei Wuxian but no, even if he hadn’t been a witness to this, Wangji—his little A-Zhan—wasn’t capable for such a deception.

Xichen’s heart trembled in his chest and it took every single scrap of his discipline to not allow the trembling to show on his hands. His baby brother was dying.

His baby brother was dying from love, it may not happen today or tomorrow or maybe not for a few years, but it was going to happen all the same. The only thing capable of stopping it was if Wangji was loved by Wei Wuxian.

Lan Xichen had very mixed feelings towards Wei Wuxian.

In the early days, when he was here for lessons, he quite liked the spirited boy, primarily for all those feelings he had inspired to his brother—as well pulling him out of his shell (Xichen was always going to feel grateful for that)—as well generally enjoying his mischievous nature, maybe a tad too mischievous for Cloud Recessess, but enjoyable none the less….

War reshaped everyone, most of all Wei Wuxian.

Lan Xichen was never going to tell anyone, not even his sword brothers — and definitely never Wangji — but there was something like atavistic terror inside him every time he saw Wei Wuxian bring his demon flute to his lips, every time he saw him totally devastate a battle….He wasn’t going to forget what he had seen not even if he wanted (and he wanted it, desperately) .

—and that was the man that his brother loved…

Wangji insisted that for all the harsher temperament Wei Wuxian—his Wei Ying (even if had far too much decorum to call him so in front of him) — remained very much the same person. Xichen himself had seen enough, even right before everything blew up, to recognise a great deal of truth to this.

So, Wangji’s wish to bring Wei Wuxian in Cloud Recesses to protect him and cure him from his resentful energy addiction was concerning but very acceptable to him, both for brother’s happiness (always his first concern) and as a chance to peacefully correct a source of corruption before things escalated (what should have been his first concern).

But now the stakes were very different, it wasn’t just A-Zhan’s happiness but his very life. The question whether Wei Wuxian could love—or learn to love—Lan Wangji became of the essence not merely an ideal solution.

Xichen was ashamed to admit—though not regretful—that if it actually came to this he cared infinitely more whether his brother lived or not than whether Wei Wuxian ever deigned to return at the righteous path or not, it was utterly inconsequential to him at this point.

Their uncle may see things differently, even believing that Wei Wuxian was already lost to them and irredeemable, making even attempting it an insult to Wangji’s dignity but Xichen himself didn’t care. It was hypocritical and despicable but he really didn’t.

So what if Wei Wuxian refused to take up again the sword, he himself had seen his face light up like the sun at the mere idea to see Wangji and it was only due his own insistence to return on the righteous path that had seen all that warmith extinguished. He would have gone for very different choices just now.

So what if the dead Jin soldiers from the Qiongqi Path were seeking their own justice, Xichen was regretful over what had befallen them but there was a good possibility their hands weren’t that clean in the first place. He believed A-Yao who had told him that from all the information he had it was a camp for Wens’ most powerful but he had also been there at the Banquet Wei Wuxian’s frantic worry and concern about Wen Ning had been nothing short of utterly genuine.

It was also equally established that Wen Ning ended up dead that night and no matter how many people had called Wei Wuxian unbalanced he frankly doubted the young Wen had died at his hands. More so, he had Wangji’s own witnessing that while Wen Ning was terrifyingly powerful, as a fierce corpse, Wei Wuxian’s work had restored him to his living sweet and timid personality and that was nothing short but the work of the most devoted friend.

Honestly while many people—Xichen among them—considered Wen Ning’s current existence a crime against very nature it wasn’t a crime he would wish rectifying, if the price was his brother’s life.

Wen Qing: while as far as Mingjue was concerned she had been Wen Ruohan’s enabler, allowing him to live and pursue the war, when he could have died years earlier, as well leading a Supervisory Office she was also more of a loving sister than a devoted Wen subject and she refrained from giving in the Jiang siblings during their time of need (or at least that he had gathered from Jiang Wanyin’s scant explanations) Mingjue didn’t consider it quite enough to buy clemency in light of her crimes but Mingjue could sit on it as far he was concerned…

There was still the matter of the Wen cultivators (Wangji had said he seen only old and civilians but it could simply be that Wei Wuxian didn’t allowed him to see them) and he couldn’t believe there were none—for what would be the point to have a work camp with old civilians, one must be insane from resentful energy—like Wen Ruohan had been, a monster. —And whatever else may be called Jin Guangshan was very much sane.

No, it was far more in character to Wei Wuxian, twisted though he had become, to also take the infirm relatives to those he had already saved, that one he could believe.

There could still be problems if those liberated Wens were heavy war criminals and—according to A-Yao’s sources—that camp held the worst of the worse… Still, as far he was concerned, they could be all that and he was still willing to take the fail, if it came to this. They could even be among those that had burned Cloud Recesses and he was still going to demand clemency on their behalf. Wens had taken from him more things that he cared to count they—alive or dead—weren’t going to take Wangji as well.

He would rather spit blood himself and be shamed, or answer to their ancestors, than bury his brother.

Lan Wangji allowed Lan daifu to examine him while his mind worked furiously in finding ways to deal with his condition.... He wasn’t truly surprised that this had happened to him, he was already aware that he loved Wei Ying well beyond measure, the only question of some note was: ‘Why now?’

The only answer he could come with this was the feeling of permanence that had settled in his soul the moment he saw Wei Ying with A-Yuan in his arms. Everything before, even their common oath, had some transience to it. For all the intensity of his feelings all they could be to each other, friends, comrades, even zhiji held peripheral places to their lives and nothing—not even the wild imagination that Wei Ying could someday respond to his feelings—looked like it could lead to their own personal road…

...And yet, everything changed that dusty day in Yiling, Wei Ying with that sweet little child in his arms that called his own culminated all his dreams, even those he hadn’t yet dared to make.

A child, a family with Wei Ying, a way for him to keep his oath to something that felt more than mere afterthought to the rest of his everyday life … That frankly eventual day he had seen his future as he wanted—as he needed—it to be, not as it was already shaped.

It didn’t change anything, Wei Ying didn’t love him and all the same he regarded him too much, as his friend, to ask him to risk his own standing to help them. Wangji himself had done his best, from the position he was, and had talked with his brother.

For the first, and hopefully the last, time Xiongzang had utterly disappointed him. Firstly he had explained that this couldn’t officially concern Gusu Lan, it was a problem mainly concerning Yunmeng Jiang and Lanling Jin not anyone else. When Wangji had protested that all those people Lanling Jin made such a huge fuss about it were just a handful of old and infirm his brother had looked at him sadly and told him that it didn’t agree with his own report, he had probably not been allowed to see them…

Wangji had never felt such helpless resignation, sour bitterness had risen to his mouth (even more choking than the flower petals that now dominated his taste) and he had been unable to find his words, like he was facing a stranger and not his brother. Never before Xiongzang had treated him with such placid condescension, not even as a child, it was like his love for Wei Ying had transformed him in their eyes (his brother and uncle) to something less than himself, something feeble.

It hadn’t stopped him from trying, his attempts to talk on Wei Ying’s behalf had led to more and more punishments from his uncle (he didn’t mind) to more and more condescending and pitying looks from his brother (that he actually minded) but he kept insisting, he wasn’t going to stop—not for anything.

-—-And now this had come in his life. Wangji honestly didn’t want to deal with it, the mere thought that Wei Ying could learn of this, that he would some how blackmail Wei Ying to try and love him was more sickening than his family treating him like a feeble child, more sickening than the war and all its brutalities, the mere thought of it was unbearable.

But still, the poisonous thought was still there, the insidious whisper... That his impossible dream—all his dreams—were now within his grasp: That if there was someone that could willingly change his very self to help a friend, if someone could fell in love with a friend to save their life that was Wei Ying, his heart was huge enough for it.

Wangji shuddered with revulsion like if Mara himself had whispered to his ear. He was Lan Zhan, courtesy name Wangji and he was better than this, his love for Wei Ying was better than this and he would rather throw himself at Bichen than rape him in whichever way…

But willing to ignore it or not the family affliction was here, affecting him, his days were now numbered. Maybe this will be enough for his family to give his words some consideration, maybe this will be a way to protect him— to protect them all —better than before. It wasn’t in his nature, nor had any wish to deceive, but his truths, His Truth, may be heard better this time.

If not... There were options for this as well, tradition was on his side. No one with Lan blood would ever think to censure him if he chose to spend the last of his days at his beloved’s side, in whichever capacity. He was Hanguang-jun, he had earned that title, his word held weight in the outside world he could lend that weight to Wei Ying. Hopefully it will be enough to keep him safe.

Maybe, if he and his family of choice were indeed out of danger, Wei Ying would feel safe enough to let go of the resentful path and return to the sword and outside of everyone’s censure and contempt. If he managed to accomplish this Wangji was going to go utterly content to his deathbed.

Wangji and the healer returned, Wangji looking far too serene for someone that had received the news he had, (not his usual calm but something far deeper) it filled Lan Qiren with terror.

“Wangji?” he asked with the kind of terror that sounded like anger.

“Wangji is sorry for worrying Shufu, Xiongzhang. Wangji is not to die today.” his dry voice wasn’t utterly without emotion, and even some actual regret, but Qiren still buried the urge to scream at him.

Only then Lan Baozhai stepped forward, in a normal day Qiren respected her medical knowledge and quite approved her unpresuming and reserved nature, right this moment her second quality was driving him up the wall.

“Well?” He nearly barked.

“Lan-er-gongzi knows his own body indeed, we are but in the start. His Qi may shape small amounts of his blood into lotus petals but there are no leaves no shoots and definitely no roots, all symptoms are nothing but Qi actualization at this point. With the right kind of diligent meditation he can keep the creation of growths for two, three, five years, maybe even more if the discipline he’s known about holds on…”

“Could it be...” Xichen sounded hesitant and not entirely heartened from the first kind of hopeful news they had heard since they stepped foot into the infirmary.

Wangji shook his head. “I’m sorry Xiongzhang,” his voice sounded so very, very gentle.

Xichen flinced.

Qiren himself felt like the walls were closing on him. Not Wangji, not his little, A-Zhan... His brother had attempted to be a father the first year of Xichen’s life, his little A-Huan and just as precious , but A-Zhan had been placed right in his hands from the very start he couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, it was beyond him.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Xichen was now saying. “Only that it may have been brewing for years and was just slow in appearing,” a pause, “I wouldn’t, I won’t ask you to live with it if there can be the natural solution.”

“I understand, brother.” From Wangji who guarded his words more than silver that was both appeasement and apology.

“So......” Xichen wore his professional smile, slightly forced but—to Qiren’s trained eye—definitely more genuinely warm than what he put on business. “We need to reintegrate the Wens into cultivation society, maybe even give them refuge into Cloud Recesses.” in the last sentence his eldest nephew’s voice was utterly forced.

Qiren understood. While it was an utterly acceptable price compared to Wangji’s life (and even happiness) none of those present were ever going to forget and even less forgive the burning of Cloud Recesses... Wangji definitely wouldn’t, he knew this, but...

...To have Wens here sounded very much like a sacrilege.

Wangji was regarding Xichen with his own version of understanding, patient stare. “Non combatants, eldery, doctors,” Wangji was gently insisting, “None of these people hurt our home, Xiongzhang.”

Well, except Wen Qing who spied on them and very probably reported their defence arrays…. But to ask for her head was to incite the Yiling Patriarch’s rage, his friendship with the Wen siblings was an unassailable fact… Definitely not worth the exchange with Wangji’s life...

Xichen looked ready to refute this, still incapable to believe that if it was so they would have prosecuted them in the first place, but Qiren sighed and shock his head.

Xichen may have been idealist but Qiren knew better: Jin Guangshan—and people like Jin Guangshan—would have done this just because they could.

‘But then, if you suspected this, even if just you considered him capable why did you keep silent when word of what happened in those camps came around? Where is your Righteousness?’ Qiren could practically hear those words in Wei Wuxian’s voice, his eyes—so much like hers—judging him.

Lan Qiren didn’t have an answer to this, not one that could be considered righteous in deed not just in word. It was the easy answer that the Wens had gone so far that whatever happened to them was automatically righteous, some part of him was viciously pleased with that answer.

So many of their youth had been cut down by the Wen, children that he had taught personally (to say nothing about his brother) nothing was ever going to make those deaths right. And yet, if he had to ponder this facing some kind of mirror, he would have never been able to claim the money the Jin Sect had donated for the restoration of his home had absolutely no bearing to his decision…

‘Coward!’ He could practically hear Wei Wuxian calling him so, practically seeing the characters shaped on his mouth, that same mouth smilingly mocking him... Sometimes he wondered if Wangji’s eyes also judged him...

Same, and even more complicated, about Wei Wuxian: he was just fifteen when he first spoke about controlling resentful energy and less than a year later he had executed it, it should have been an easy answer. What could have been more evil than disrespecting the dead, there shouldn’t have been any kind of question (Never mind that if he hadn’t done so, today, he and everyone he cared about would have been dead—and even more disrespected at Wen Ruohan’s hands) .

Wei Wuxian was still just fifteen the first time he addressed his younger nephew as his zhiji and Wangji didn’t refute it. Qiren could admit to himself, with slightly less self-hate, that he hated Wei Wuxian even more for this than his heretical ideas… ( Not entirely for the cut sleeve inclination, the insufferable boy was utterly blind to this even if his nephew wasn’t, though Qiren hated the possibility that his nephew could lose face in society for this…) If Wangji had found some shy and unpresumptuous disciple he believed he would have been all too happy to look aside)

But his boy had chosen Wei Wuxian and no one else. Brilliant and arrogant and compassionate Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian who burned from both ends, just like her. Qiren had spent every day since that fateful ‘zhiji’ terrified that he would see those bloody flower petals, terrified that even if his nephew weren't rebuffed he was still going to end up all alone, or dead alongside the other in somewhere or else… (That was how —she— and her husband had died after all)

He had been so relieved that Wangji was like him after all. Able to love, but never putting everything that mattered—the Sect namely—behind this.

He had seen the woman he loved choose another (one that he could make her happy in the way she wished, not society) walk away with that man and die at his side just a few scant years later, leaving behind not even a grave to mourn her there….

Qiren had his Sect, had his teachings, his duties—his very life as he choose it—and yet for all that he never spat a single bloody petal for her, wasn’t longing for her, not a single day had passed since her confirmed death that he didn’t spent a solitary moment wishing that she was somewhere else alive and well and happy even if he never got to see her face, or hear her mocking laugh again….

Wangji wasn’t him, as it looked right now he wasn’t even slightly like him. However, he was one of the children he had raised, his prized student, his beloved nephew. It was only natural to wish for him at least everything he had achieved in his life and more, so much more. Genuine happiness not just contentment.

Wei Wuxian wasn’t Cangse Sanren either, but he had all her idealism and twice her craziness and arrogance. It wasn’t that he was afraid that he was going to have the same fate as his mother—a dazzling ……or terrifying…… firecracker, lighting or blinding and dying all too soon—it was that every day he was surprised that the boy yet lived and he hadn’t yet died in that corpse ridden mountain of his at some experiment……

To accept pairing together in his mind that pig with his prized cabbage is a painful stretch for him but much preferable to losing his nephew, even if he had to take the literal labor of keeping that boy alive. It was going to grate on his every nerve but He Will Do it.

But while he was distracted with settling all those ponderings inside him Wangji seemed to have taken a similar journey.

“Xiongzhang, shufu,” he started decisively, “I haven’t told you everything about those that live in the Burial Mounts with Wei Ying, beyond the eldery and the Wen siblings.” a pause.

“There is a little boy, an orphan, not even three that Wei Ying saved among his relatives. —and yes, I saw both A-Yuan and his grandmother that night, at Qiongqi Path. Later, I heard about a slightly older sister that died earlier.”

Wangji had clearly chosen each and every single word to a devastating effect, every word all but piercing them with its rage. It was equally clear how strong affection Wangji already held for that boy, it was the only good thing he could see.

Lan Qiren felt slapped and it was justified. He could hear once again Wei Wuxian’s cold mocking laughter…. ‘Coward, where is your righteousness?’ and he would have been right: For every child, Wen or not, that got tortured, that died in that horrible place the fault set on him and men like him. Men who believed that righteousness was above compassion.

But if he had been slapped Xichen had been crushed, not only because his elder nephew was more tenderhearted, but because the implication was clear. For Wangji to not say a word before it means that he didn’t believe his words were to be taken in confidence, even if they didn’t conclude in the desired result. It mean that he expected his words to reach Jin Guangyao’s ears at the very least if not someone’s more unsavory...

Qiren didn’t really blamed him for it, he had the experience to see exactly how it would have gone.: Some ignorant people may have seen it as the perfect way to resolve the conflict: A boy Wei Wuxian loved, here kidnap him, it's the perfect way to bring him to heel, but no, a single hair to hurt on that kid and it would have been a bloodbath. He had read way too many reports on what Wei Wuxian had done to those that hurt his family...

Heavens helped them all if the Jins ever learned about the existence of that little boy….

It was also a sign of ultimate trust that Wangji chose to confide in them about this matter, Xichen certainly took it as such. He had a tiny breakdown but then he regarded his brother even warner.

“Wangji, I understand, I’m sorry for doubting you, I will do my very best to find the absolute truth then bring the guilty to justice, you have my word.”

Wangji unbended enough to reply.

“I trust you Xionzabg.”

—then, Xichen addressed him…: “Shufu, we need to investigate what really happened, we must—we will—go at the Burial Mounts as possible.”

It wasn’t a question, or observation, it was an order from his Sect Leader. One that Lan Qiren was very happy and proud to obey. (Equally happy because Xichen was finding his footing at least)

“It will be as you say.” He saluted. Xichen blushed.

But Xichen was still Xichen, his way to get past such moments was to tease.

“So Wangji, I understood right that Wei-gongzi sees little A-Yuan as something like a son?”

Wangji was ecstatic enough and apparently had forgiven Xichen enough, that instead of blustering as usual he choose to play along. Ears scarlett he replied:

“The first time he officially introduced him to me Wei Ying told me that he had given birth to him with his own body...”

Xichen was delighted with this but Qiren suddenly wished for that huge nuisance to be there with them…. He was going to throw a book at his head-—-He was going to throw —all— the books to his shameless head…

Still, if everything went well, a tiny grandnephew………

-—Few days later—-

“How are things going Jiejie?” Wen Ning asked his sister after his lengthy patrol around their mountain.

Wen Qing was still ecstatic to have her brother back but something still itched at her, like the bite of a mosquito.

A-Yuan is still mopping that Lan-er-gongzi hadn’t returned and wei Wuxian mopes, even more, he has been stuck in his cave and hadn’t gone out even for food.

Suddenly Wen Ning went utterly still. “Someone is right outside our wards.”

They both turned towards Wei Wuxian’s cave, the man himself was hurrying towards them.

“Two someones, we have two cultivators at our door.”

TBC on AO3!

#wangxianbunnydoodles #wangxiansolstice20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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lveclouds · 4 years

Text

little things ( wei wuxian x lan wangji)

genre: romance, fluff, just tooth-rotting fluff, basically wei wuxian being adorable, and lan wangji being smitten

warnings: very cheesy, a bit angsty, mxm

a/n: this is my first non-bts and mxm drabble! if you don’t feel comfortable reading this, then please do not keep reading. i do not want to make others feel as if they have to read this. also i’m a huge fan of the untamed after just having finished the show last week! and i love wangxian with all my heart and they are actual soulmates ok? this drabble was based off a drawing one of my mutuals (@outroshooky) sent me of them and i just had to write something about it.

word count: yeah i dont know anymore

the air was crisp and clean as wangji stood in an alcove in the forest that surrounded the cloud recesses, gently cradling a snow white bunny in his arms. bichen was carefully propped up against a tree next to him, its interior glinting softly in the warm sun. he looked down at the warm bundle in his arms, eyeing it fondly. though he never showed it, wangji was very fond of rabbits. he’d been taking care of them for a while now, even stopping to feed them occasionally when passing by. though he rarely got to do so due to the amount of chaos and turmoil happening amongst the four clans, wangji still made sure that the bunnies were safe and sound.

months had passed since all the conflict had subsided, but wangji doubted that the peace would last long. after all, there were still a few sightings of ghost puppets in small villages. luckily, they didn’t harm anyone, but that was only because wangji had acted quickly, traveling to different villages to deal with them. and, after sixteen years, the yiling patriarch had somehow come back to life, and people were unaware that he was now among them. luckily, the only person who knew of his real identity was himself and his brother, who had vowed not to disclose the news. they both knew that if the news spread, conflict and vengeance would surely ensue.

wangji sighed heavily, fingers idly petting the rabbit’s soft fur. ever since he had found out that wei wuxian was alive, he hadn’t been the same, or rather, he was having trouble coming to terms with it. wangji still remembered how his heart had felt as if it had been ripped out of his chest as he watched wei ying willingly let go of his hand and fall to his death. the pain that it brought him was nearly unbearable and wangji had never felt so much anger and sadness in his life. though he had never spoken it out loud, wangji knew he loved him. likewise, wei ying never confessed either, but after so many years and all the suffering and turmoil they endured together, lan zhan could now read the former like a book. he was very open with his words and actions, always letting people know what was on his mind and if they said something he disagreed with, wei ying would not hesitate to say so. and while most people found it quite disrespectful and shameless, lan zhan secretly thought it was a bit attractive, in a way. he wasn’t afraid to voice his opinions and stand up for what he believed in, even if it meant cruel punishment or harsh words being thrown his way. his uncle would be ashamed if he knew, and wangji made sure he never let his true feelings come to light. he usually kept a stoic expression on his face, almost as if he had turned off all his emotions, and that was what kept people away from him. wangji knew he came off as intimidating and perhaps a bit annoyed all the time, but maybe it was for the best that people saw him that way, for vulnerability was something that most saw as being weak.

and because of his reputation amongst the four clans, which of course included his own, wangji had to learn how to put up a wall of sorts around him, not letting anyone in. and, of all people, the infamous yiling patriarch was the one to break through those walls that he had put up. and maybe he, lan zhan, didn’t necessarily mind it. he felt like a young teenage girl whenever he heard wei ying call out his name. “lan zhan!” he would say, that devastating smile forming on his handsome face, causing his heart to flutter. it was a bit silly, he thought, getting a bit giddy when wei ying smiled at him or even did as much as glance in his direction, but lan zhan knew that was a feeling he’d have to get used to.

he’d been so lost in thought that he didn’t notice wei ying sneak up behind him, resting his chin on his shoulder, his soft hair tickling his neck. “lan zhan.” he said, which nearly caused wangji to drop the bunny he was holding in shock. “wei ying.” “so you are fond of rabbits.” lan zhan didn’t have to turn around to know that he was smiling. still, he said nothing, even as wei ying pulled away and moved to stand beside him, bending down to pick up a bunny, gently cradling it in his arms as if it were a newborn baby. said man looked down at the bunny and started to coo at it, occasionally scrunching his nose and petted its head, laughing when its ears practically drooped. then, he held up the bunny so it was eye level with him and smiled. “you’re so cute. i wanna bring you back with me to yunmeng, but i’m no longer welcome there and you’re happier here, right? and i’ve heard lan zhan been’s taking care of you. he’s funny, acting indifferent when really, he’s fond of you, just like i am.” wangji hid the small smile that was threatening to form as he watched the scene unfold. at first, wei wuxian had irritated him, but as time went on, those feelings of hatred and annoyance had eventually grown into ones of love and fondness. wangji was new to the feeling, for no one had loved him romantically nor had he loved anyone that way. he had never experienced such a feeling, for he was constantly studying and training and pursuing any sort of intimate relationship seemed the least of his concerns.

but now that wei ying had stumbled his way into his life with his devastating smile and his shameless remarks and bold actions that were enough to leave him flustered, wangji now knew what love felt like. he knew that when you loved someone or something with all your heart, it was almost painful because your heart would ache and yearn for their presence. he also knew what it was like to want to give up everything for that person, even your life. there were numerous occasions where wangji felt like taking an arrow or a sword for wei ying, and everytime said man was stabbed or injured, it had felt like his heart was being broken into a million pieces. he hated seeing wei ying cry and suffer, and found himself wishing they could trade places. and seeing wei ying practically commit suicide that fateful day felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest. after his death, wangji had holed himself up in the library pavilion, refusing to leave. he threw himself into composing and reading, anything to try and ease his mind. of course, nothing worked. everything he did reminded him of wei ying.

but now wei ying was alive, smiling and laughing and making him fall in love all over again. wangji had waited sixteen years for a miracle to happen, and now, it had. wei ying gently set the bunny down on the ground before turning to face him. “lan zhan.” wangji ignored the way his heartbeat quickened and forced himself to make eye contact. wei ying’s gorgeous brown eyes met his, and that devastating smile formed on his lips once again. “i love you.”

those three words were enough to cause a slight blush to appear on wanjgi’s face. damn wei wuxian and his bluntness, he thought, feeling his heart practically pound against his chest. finally, lan wangji allowed himself a small smile. he looked at wei ying like he was the only star in the sky, and when wangji saw those deep brown eyes glisten with happy tears and the devastating smile deepening, he knew that wei ying knew what he meant.

others would say that their love is a strange one. but to wangji, it was unique. they weren’t overly open about it like most were, but they didn’t have to be. after all, actions in fact did speak louder than words, and wangji made sure wei ying knew that he loved him by rushing to defend him, reputation be damned. and. sometimes, a simple gaze said it all. i love you. i will cherish you for the rest of my days and i would risk everything for you. i would die for you. i would risk tarnishing my reputation if it meant i could be with you. you are my world. i would go through hell and back for and with you.

love didn’t always have to be “loud” and “obvious”. it could be subtle and reserved. wangji showed his love for wei ying in little ways, whether it was through a loving gaze or even simply defending him, they both knew their love was like no other. after all, they were soulmates, and while wangji didn’t necessarily believe in destiny, he did believe in fate. after all, it was what brought them together again.

a/n: this took me FOREVER to type but it was worth it!! lmk what you guys think of this!!

dedicated to @jinies @yoonseok @outroshooky @starlightstae @glitterjoons 💜💜

#non bts #drabble #the untamed

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demoniccultivations · 4 years

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temerate: (v.) to break a bond or promise

Temerate (v.) To Break a Bond or Promise

The first time he every breaks a promise it is not intentional, he is small and he promises to not allow anyone hurt his brother. The two are playing together near the dock, he falls and skins his knees and for the rest of the day Wei Wuxian is inconsolable how dare that plank hurt Jiang, how dare it make him bleed, and get stuck under his skin ? Luckily, Yanli is there to help and he cries because he never thought that something like that might happen. He decides that he will become more attentive more vigilant.

He learns that it draws blood.

The second time he breaks a promise, is to Madam Yu. He runs in the hall, she forced him to promise be be a good boy to be well behaved. He promises that he will be good. He is fearful. Will she send him back to the street, she is harsh. She berates him and she hits him for the first time with the Ziadan, it is the first time he has ever been hit by anything of the sort. He screams so loudly he disturbs everyone in the house. Jiang hears and comes running, it is only that Jiang tosses himself over a smaller Wei Wuxian that his mother regains her senses, her hatred is self explained. She’s no doubt heard the rumors, that he is actual the son of her husband. There is no truth to it. This time it is really not Wei Wuxian who has broken a promise, but his Uncle in the eyes of Madam Yu.

He learns even love can be broken.

The third time he breaks a promise is to Yanli, he promises her that he will not use the Stygian Tiger Seal flippantly, that he will be a good boy. That he won’t allow it to steal from him all those things that she loves within him. The bright eyes, the brilliant smile the way mischief is around him like an aura of chaos itself. He doesn’t WANT to do it. He WANTS a little peace especially after the Sunshot Campaign, he wants to be away from the politics, he wants to avoid all of those who play the game of intrigue, but he’s wound so deep into the web, that he can’t see a way out of the entanglements. He wants to be that boy for his sister, because really she is more mother and sister than just a sibling. She is part of his moral compass she is the ever pointing true arrow. He learns even a conscious can be broken.

The forth time he breaks a promise, is to Jiang and OH it hurts so much to not be able to follow through. He allows his brother to think he’s just drinking and over doing it. How many times does he allow him catch him drinking. Its water at that time, his body is not repaired enough from the loss of his Golden Core to do anything with it. He is a diamond in the rough, he is a man to tired in his own skin and his bones. Yet, he finds the will to go on. He did promise Madam on that boat, that he would take care and protect Jiang, he has no other path to walk. Wei Wuxian will always say that he values his freedom above all other, but he is lying there as well. He wants someone to look to him and tell him Come, Come on lets go home. He wants to be wanted to belong. He is of no use to himself, or to his brother, because he’s damaged goods, he’s always been damaged but now its on such a spiritual level. He can’t train anyone, he can barely tolerate his own company at that time. Try, accomplish the impossible–he tries and he fails. Its his fault but its also not his fault at the same time, its all factors.

He learns the spirit can not be broken but the body can.

He flees, he is too damn smart to know once his uses to the Clans are done, that he will be simply a target for what they want from him. He is a wild card, he is a magic user of extreme skill. If they knew half of what he could do they would have long ago simply put him down, as a dog they could not control. This time he breaks a promise to himself, its the only real promise he has willingly broken. He uses the seal. He forges a new path for himself, he reforges himself in those three months from the broken–thing he had become without his Core, still there is the strut the quick smile it never quiet reaches his eyes anymore.

He learns even laws are broken

The next bond that is broken is his trust in the common good. They gather together to put the Wen down but than what do they do ? rather than leaving those who are beaten to nurse their wounds and consider their mistakes they began to destroy them. They being little more than the elderly, woman and children. HOW can they call him wicked, how can they call him walking a crooked path, when they are abusers, when they are as bad as what he helped put down ? He is disgusted with them. His good will is broken the minute he demands the location of Wen NIng, when he storms Carpe Tower, when he stops to rescue Lan Zhan whom they are pushing drink on knowing he does not drink, he is enraged at that. They want everyone to fit into their mold. He is fed up, he doesn’t kill the guard, but he is truly the Yiling Patriarch in that instant, the moment the flute touches his lips he draws the dead back to avenge themselves. He learns morals are broken (even his own)

It seems like a simple childish promise to be broken, but it cuts as deeply as anything else in his life. He and Jiang had sworn they would make sure that their sister had the best and most lavish wedding one that people would be talking about for years after. He can’t keep that promise, nor can Jiang because what can they give that her new beau can’t ? the Jin family is the most wealth in of Clans. In a heart in turmoil it’s that little piece that breaks.

He learns childhood dreams can be broken.

A wedding vow, a young love a promise of forever is broken, it is nothing that his sister has done or that Jin Zixuan should have occur no matter how little he likes the man. Things went wrong, his bonds of control are momentarily broken and the result costs so much for so many.

He learns forever is a joke even the bonds of true love can be broken.

A simple promise to him is broken and it is the one that he still weeps over even in his next life. He took them in all of them. The remaining Wen clan they promise to work and make a life of their own in the Burial Mounds. He would give them a chance at a new life and they would not squander it. They break it in the span that it takes the woman he trusts most in his own inner clan, whom puts him to bed, and uses acupuncture to save him, swearing to go to Carpe tower and turn themselves in taking the knife out of his hands and making it so there is no weapon. They all die, for the selfish reason of not having a simple thing, his Seal. Bonds of Community can be broken

He plans to show them just how broken they are. He has no plans after there is no reason. He is going to break everything. The second his steps into Nightless City his bonds are shattered and he knows this. He even fight the one he believe is his soulmate. He sees the broken body of his sister, clutched into the arms of his equally broken brother, not outside, no outside he is quiet fit, his golden core replenished but everything else is shattered. He turns there own evil upon them, he shatters it with a snap of his finger, the Tiger Seal float down upon a battlefield that never should have been. He hears the broken and discorded sounds of flute music, but believes its in his head. How many break bonds of fealty of family and of love on that field ? His laughter is broken as he attempts to escape. He learns bonds of faith can be broken for power.

He is caught before he can break the final bond that between himself and the Seal. He turns to face the man who has fought for him all along. The man whom he truly views as his soulmate. It is not broken no, its strong as ever beating as loudly as a shared heartbeat. It it terrified and there is a sense of impending doom upon both of them. He can see it in the blood that is too red. He’s hurt badly hurt, his body already lessened by lack of Golden Core is broken it can barely support him. He doesn’t want him to see him like this, he wants –he doesn’t know what he wants. He sees the shattered look on the handsome face of the man he thinks he might well love, but what a moment to break his own heart. There is no time for this or for them. He begs him to come back to him, not to do what he can see Wei Ying is going to do. No one see’s him as the Second Jade of Lan does. He does not hold the promise the made over him like some shackle. He does not want him for anything other than Wei Ying, the name he calls, always so elegant and cultured breaks and even he can feel something break within his soulmate, as he catches his hand and refuses to allow him to fall into the abyss.

Some bonds strength with threats of breaking.

It is the final bond of brotherhood that is broken, when the sword slams into the rocky mountain side that he is being held against. He can’t stand the idea that he might bring the only still beautiful thing in the world to him over the ledge with him. If the bond of rock to stone gives. Wangji would plunge over the side with him. Would he die for him there is a real fear there that he would indeed do so. He doesn’t want that he wants him to live for him. He wants to say this to him but as the sword twists there is no more time for words and he smiles to the ones he loves, though one will hate him and the other love him beyond death. The last and final bond that one breaks is that of life and death.

He learns the secret between the bonds of life and death.

He awakes to a whispering plea a begging voice to promise he will swear to avange him, destroy his enemies he stuck in shackles of flesh and blood again. The bond of death broken as he opens eyes. @jiangswanyin

#warning long post #jiang #drabble #temerate #jiangswanyin #𝓘𝓷 𝓦𝓪𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓰 & 𝓓𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓰-𝓐𝓷𝓼𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓭

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Text

A Sick Thought - Part 3 - on ao3 or on tumblr pt 1, pt 2

Lan Wangji had long ago suspected that he had done some terribly wrong in a prior life, if only because something had to explain everything he’d suffered from the death of his mother to the destruction and rebuilding of his sect to the loss of Wei Wuxian and the terrible wrenching pain that accompanied it.

If before he suspected, now he was certain.

There was no other way to explain why else he would be tormented by the return of his beloved – as a feline.

He had difficulty even thinking about that, really, even though he’d gotten relatively used to dealing with the fact of it in real life. The thought just sounded so absurd in every possible way:

Wei Wuxian is back, but he’s a cat.

The Yiling Patriarch returned at last, meowing.

Purr, says Wei Ying.

(That last one tended to lead him to disturbing thoughts, and so he refrained.)

They were traveling together now, working together, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian together. It was everything he’d ever dreamt of, except for the part that his wildest fantasies on the subject somehow failed to cover the possibility that Wei Wuxian would be small, four-legged, and insist on riding on Lan Wangji’s shoulder except for when he felt the distinct need to zoom around wildly and would pelt up and down the road at top speed, chattering cheerfully as he did.

Similarly, when Lan Wangji had imagined sharing a meal with him, he had perhaps anticipated Wei Wuixan’s eyes going big and round and pleading, the way he inhaled the smell of spices, the way he would reach out to grab – but he hadn’t anticipated that he would need to bat away Wei Wuxian’s little paw before he consumed anything with onion, garlic, or other alliums, which were bad for cats, and would instead be feeding him little bits of raw chicken with no salt. Sometimes, even often, he would succumb to Wei Wuxian’s pleading and rub on a tiny little bit of chili powder – spice was also bad for cats, no matter how they lusted for it, and so it was bad for Wei Wuxian no matter his pleading.

He had imagined sharing a pillow with him, hearing his breathing, and they did, he did - and yet, they were literally sharing the pillow, Wei Wuxian’s entire body curled up into a perfect orb of cat right next to his cheek and sometimes waking him up with foul cat-breath, and instead of needing to watch for nightmares he was more concerned about dreams involving chasing (Wei Wuxian had pounced on his forehead ribbon more times than he could count). He could sooth him with his hand, as he’d hoped, but there was a lot less sighing and a lot more purring - a rumble like distant thunder, more vibration than sound - than he’d thought.

Also, he’d imagined their duets to include somewhat more flute-playing and less…yowling.

Yes, it was all…very, very different.

No matter. It wasn’t important that it didn’t match his dreams; what was important was that Wei Wuxian, his Wei Ying, was back.

That was what mattered.

“I really wish we could’ve gotten more information from Mo Xuanyu,” Wei Wuxian said, padding along at Lan Wangji’s side. He’d permitted Lan Wangji to replace the cheap red ribbon Mo Xuanyu had found for him with something a little more elegant, and Lan Wangji hadn’t been able to resist using one of his spare forehead ribbons (dyed red, of course, to match Wei Wuxian’s tastes); the obvious end result of this pleasurable subterfuge was that Lan Wangji was now having some difficulty looking straight at Wei Wuxian without blushing.

It seemed an appropriate example of suffering the consequences of his own actions.

“I know he doesn’t know anything about the ghost hand – or the legs, I guess, now that we’ve gotten them, and wasn’t that weird with the Nie sect? Poor Nie Huaisang looked even more torn up about it all than I would’ve expected, all dark circles under his eyes and pale skin, you’d think he’d be better at running a sect if it’s been a decade already – anyway, I’m distracting myself from the main point. The main point is, I can’t help but feel like this whole thing is connected to Mo Xuanyu somehow.”

“Agreed,” Lan Wangji said.

Poor Mo Xuanyu.

Lan Wangji had not in nearly a decade and a half regretted his decision never to willingly set foot in Jinlin Tower, but now that he had seen what work they had made of Mo Xuanyu, he regretted nothing more. He who took such pride in being where the chaos was had missed the chaos and wretchedness right under his very nose – for Mo Xuanyu was very wretched indeed.

Lan Wangji had resented Mo Xuanyu at first, always laying his hands on Wei Wuxian without the slightest bit of shame – not that there needed to be shame, given that Wei Wuxian was, well, a cat, and of the subgenre of felines that Jiang Cheng for some unspecified reason continued to crudely refer to as “cuddle-sluts” – and for how Wei Wuxian worried about him and cared for him.

It did not help that Mo Xuanyu was so well known for being a cutsleeve.

And then, one day, Mo Xuanyu had gotten Lan Wangji alone and told him with great emphasis that he was deeply devoted to his successful courtship of Wei Wuxian, offering his help in any possible respect, and also wistfully added that he wouldn’t mind it very much if Lan Wangji were willing to offer some suggestions on how to court Jiang Cheng, who was utterly oblivious to any hints.

After that, Lan Wangji remembered himself what shame was, and guilt, and felt it thoroughly – it was no excuse to say that being around Wei Wuxian roused his worst protective and possessive instincts, for it was his duty to overcome them. Be strict with yourself, the rules said, and as always he had failed to remember the rules when he needed them most.

The extent of his pettiness was only magnified when he thought about it all more closely. Mo Xuanyu was not merely someone to be pitied, was more than simply a victim who had suffered under the outrages of the Jin sect – the harassment, the abuse, the deliberate poisoning and destruction of his mind in order to reduce his credibility...That was all bad enough, and it pained Lan Wangji to no end to hear it.

But more than abuse, more than madness, more than exile to a misbegotten place that somehow managed to beat out Jinlin Tower for sheer viciousness –

It was due to Mo Xuanyu that Wei Wuxian had returned.

He had been willing to give his very life, his body and soul, to bring him back.

And for that, Lan Wangji owed him everything.

Even when it meant –

“We should return to the Cloud Recesses to fetch him,” Lan Wangji said, and Wei Wuxian craned his head around – his tiny, tiny head that could easily fit into Lan Wangji’s palm, covered in a short layer of fur more comfortable than the softest silk – to look at him in curiosity. “I understand that it is a detour.”

“It is,” Wei Wuxian said. “You wouldn’t propose it for no reason, either. What are you afraid of? He’s in the Cloud Recesses, and with Jiang Cheng – surely he’s as safe as safe can be.”

“It is nearly the end of the month,” Lan Wangji said. “My brother will be returning home soon.”

“So?” Wei Wuxian asked, puzzled. And why should he not be puzzled? To even think…and yet. And yet, and yet, and yet. “Jiang Cheng will explain everything to him, won’t he?”

“My brother will be returning home,” Lan Wangji said again. “After a month and more abroad.”

Wei Wuxian looked at him silently, awaiting an explanation. His tail lashed gently against Lan Wangji’s leg.

“He was visiting his sworn brother,” Lan Wangji said. “Lianfeng-jun.”

“Jin Guangyao,” Wei Wuxian said, his tone heavy – he had understood. “Does your brother visit Jinlin Tower often?”

Lan Wangji nodded tightly.

“And has for many years, I expect? Since the end of the Sunshot Campaign.”

He nodded again.

“Surely you don’t believe that he knew what was happening to Mo Xuanyu?”

Lan Wangji hesitated. “I do not know how he could not have known,” he confessed. “I think to myself if I had only been there – if I had overcome my disdain for the Jin sect –”

“Don’t think like that,” Wei Wuxian said at once, a balm to Lan Wangji’s soul. “You couldn’t have known. The Jin sect is the most talented at deception and misdirection – they wouldn’t have let you see. Nor your brother, either - you would have seen only what they wished for you to see, and poisoned the well of your thoughts to discount anything you did see.”

“Perhaps,” Lan Wangji said, and felt more at peace. It was true that even his brother, with his token, could not so easily travel through the depths of Jinlin Tower freely, without an escort. “I do not think Brother knew.”

“I agree. Impossible.”

“And yet - his sworn brother...it is not unheard of for Lianfeng-zun to unexpectedly accompany my brother back to the Cloud Recesses, and I cannot bring myself to believe that he did not know. As a precaution, therefore…”

Wei Wuxian’s ears flicking back and forth. “I see your point. But still, I don’t think it makes sense for us to go to them – why not write to Jiang Cheng and have him bring Mo Xuanyu to meet us here, while we investigate the Chang clan?”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“I’d prefer that, anyway – I really can’t use regular cultivation without Mo Xuanyu around, just demonic cultivation. As we continue to hunt for the ghost pieces, it’ll be good to have both.”

Lan Wangji wondered a little at that. In their first life, hadn’t Wei Wuxian completely abandoned normal cultivation in favor of demonic cultivation?

If so, why the shift back now?

“Besides, I have an idea I want to try that involves him,” Wei Wuxian added casually, so casually that Lan Wangji merely nodded and did not question and did not know until it had already happened.

“Success!” Wei Wuxia hissed in delight, then frowned, poking at his teeth. “Well, mostly.”

“You turned yourself into a catboy,” Jiang Cheng said, his hand over his eyes. “Because of course you did. I hate you. Have I mentioned that I hate you? Becuase I hate you.”

“What’s a catboy?” Jin Ling asked. Apparently he had insisted on joining them, as had Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi – Lan Wangji would have instructed them to remain, but Jiang Cheng had yielded more or less immediately to their requests.

Typical.

“You don’t need to know,” Jiang Cheng said at once.

“How do you know?” Wei Wuxian asked. “Jiang Cheng! What are you doing going about knowing things about catboys? We’ve talked about this –”

“What? No we haven’t! We haven’t talked about anything! You spent the entire conversation that we had over catnip crying your eyes out about how tasty pheasants are!”

Lan Wangji had always surmised that there was more to the conversation than that, being as both of them had emerged significantly less likely to murder the other, but he didn’t have any presence of mind to devote to that line of thought.

Or to any thought.

Not when Wei Wuxian was…well, mostly human.

He had his old face, but a build that more closely resembled Mo Xuanyu’s slenderness and height; his hair was the correct shade, but poking out from the strands were two now-familiar ears that flickered back and forth with excitement. And he was also possessed on inhumanly sharp canines, sharp claws, and what appeared to be a very active tail.

All the features attributed to…well.

Catboys.

(Lan Wangji had also seen the specific genre of pornography being referenced and every single one of those images – including his particular favorite, which involved a collar – was refreshing itself in his mind with a new figure in each starring role.

He was going to spontaneously combust.)

He stammered some excuse and fled the scene at once.

By the time he returned, they had more or less packed up to continue following the guidance of the ghost hand – it almost reminded him a proper night-hunt, actually. The adults, such as they were, led the way, with the juniors following behind, chatting amongst themselves; Mo Xuanyu was hanging off of Jiang Cheng’s arm and chattering at Wei Wuxian like old friends, his eyes curved up in crescents, with much of the terrible pain that he had always carried sloughed off like an old skin, while Jiang Cheng nodded along, oblivious to any hint as always.

Lan Wangji was abruptly struck by a feeling of – satisfaction, he thought.

This was good.

(Don’t look at Wei Wuxian or you’ll start slowing down the trip.)

But how could he resist?

He headed over and took his place at Wei Wuxian’s side, receiving a wide smile – he would die a thousand times over for that smile – for his troubles.

“What do you think, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian asked him, and then barreled right on with the conversation without bothering to wait for a response.

Yes.

This was good.

This was how it should be.

Even Jiang Cheng, who Lan Wangji had despised for years…he made Wei Wuxian happy. And since that was the case, Lan Wangji would be willing to put up with him – on a temporary basis, anyway.

“What is this place, anyway?” Lan Sizhui asked from behind them.

“It’s called Yi City, with the Yi as in ‘coffin’,” Wei Wuxian said casually. “Didn’t you see the marker outside?”

“A better question,” Jiang Cheng said. “If it’s supposed to be a city, why isn’t there anyone here?”

“There is, though,” Lan Jingyi said, pointing. “Look, over there – huh, no. I must have seen the wrong thing.”

“No,” Mo Xuanyu said, and him actually disagreeing with someone when it wasn’t in the middle of one of his fits was so unusual – even after he’d had so much healing – that they all turn to look at him.

He was smiling.

“You’re right,” he said, clapping his hands together happily, his eyes fixed on the distant spot. “There is someone there! I can see them!”

He raised a hand and waved.

“Xue-gege!” he shouted. “Xue-gege, it’s A-Yu! Come out and meet my friends!”

#mdzs #lan wangji #wei wuxian #wangxian #mo xuanyu #jiang cheng #jin ling #lan sizhui #my fic #my fics #a sick thought

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

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Nie Mingjue and Wen Ning as conscious fierce corpse buddies

ao3 link

By everyone’s agreement (except his own), Wen Ning was the sect leader.

Of course, practically speaking, Nie Mingjue actually ran everything; he was the one with the experience in it, after all, and he claimed he was no good at teaching, which was the other thing they generally did.

This was, of course, a blatant lie – the few times he did agree to take on some classes, they were by far the most popular – but Wen Ning had yet to figure out how to get Nie Mingjue to do anything he didn’t want to do, and anyway he really was very good at all the work that went into being sect leader, so it all worked out quite well for everybody in the end.

How they ended up with a sect in the first place, Wen Ning will never know.

The school had been Song Lan’s idea, though; that much was certain. Or, well, Wen Ning supposed it was actually Xiao Xingchen’s idea to start with, or possibly both of them, but Song Lan had been the one to make it an operational proposal and anyway Xiao Xingcheng had been a scattered soul at the time so Wen Ning felt pretty comfortable ascribing the idea to Song Lan.

Xiao Xingchen’s back now.

So was Xue Yang, but that was unfortunately unavoidable – their souls had become so intertwined by the time they’d both died that there was really no bringing one back without the other, much to Song Lan’s annoyance. Out of lack of better options, Xue Yang was currently being kept very firmly under control, even lock and key if it seemed appropriate - he didn’t object as long as it was Xiao Xingchen applying the locks - and they hadn’t entirely decided if he was going to need to be executed for the good of society at some point.

Still, at least for the time being, he was being useful. No one could say that Xue Yang wasn’t a genius when it came to inventing new things, even if he wasn’t as good as Wei Wuxian, and their school was as much about research as it was teaching.

After all, demonic cultivation was pretty new. There was a lot out there to discover.

A lot out there to teach.

It wasn’t like not having anyone around to teach them stopped there from being demonic cultivators in the first decade or so after Wei Wuxian’s death, especially given how easily it could be picked up. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t very good at it, and there were pitfalls for any cultivation path, much less such a dangerous one, reviled by the whole world.

Song Lan, who’d picked up the basics during the time that he’d been controlled by Xue Yang, had argued that it was cruel to allow people to pick it up out of desperation and to charge ahead with no guidance – that without a firm hand to show them the way, most people would end up getting corrupted, or just mess something up and end up in a qi deviation.

(Nie Mingjue was understandably a bit sensitive about those, so that was the argument that had worked on him. Wen Ning, for his part, was a little bit bitter about everyone, and hadn’t much cared what happened ot them, but on the other hand what else did he have to do?)

So they’d started the school.

Only about a quarter of their disciples so far were there willingly – most of the others were dropped off by Jiang Cheng, who had some trouble dropping his habits of finding them wherever they were, and everyone agreed that their school was a better place for them than his dungeons – but the number was steadily growing as their reputation got out there.

Their reputation as teachers, that is. Everyone knew about the other thing.

The whole…fierce corpses thing.

Hard to avoid everyone knowing, what with Wen Ning, the Ghost General, being the sect leader.

Obviously in a perfect universe, Wei Wuxian would be the one in charge – of the school, of the sect they formed to support the school, of the whole demonic cultivation path that he invented – but he was busy in Gusu doing…something.

Mostly his husband.

At least he came by to visit on a regular basis?

Though actually now that Wen Ning thought about it, he didn’t actually like the times when Wei Wuxian and Xue Yang would get drunk together and came up with new ideas – it’d been Nie Mingjue who’d figured out how to restore a sense of taste to a fierce corpse, though he refused to divulge where he got the idea or how he’d come up with it but no one really cared to pry too much because it worked – because the ideas were invariably fascinating, innovative, and uniformly awful.

Also, Wei Wuxian visiting usually meant that Wen Ning needed to sit with Lan Wangji all night to make sure he didn’t accidentally liberate any of their staff, usually in the guise of keeping him company, and he knew the man didn’t like him. He always had a look of a man sucking a lemon whenever he visited.

…maybe that was just the name of their sect that he object to.

In their defense, neither Wen Ning, Nie Mingjue, nor Song Lan were especially creative people, Xiao Xingchen and Xue Yang hadn’t yet been revived, little A-Qing hadn’t yet been reincarnated nor revived her memories – they’d just picked the most straightforward name they could think of.

And, well, they were all gui. What was wrong with calling it the Gui Sect?

Sometimes Wen Ning thought that Lan Wangji was unnecessarily judgy.

“What are you brooding about?” a voice interrupted his thoughts, and Wen Ning looked up with a smile.

“Sect business,” he lied, and Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes at him, clearly not believing him for a moment.

“What about sect business? The trade disputes?”

Wen Ning frowned. “We have trade disputes?!” He hadn’t even heard about – oh, no, Nie Mingjue was laughing. “We don’t have trade disputes.”

“We’re supported by all four of the Great Sects, between Wei Wuxian at Gusu, Jin Ling at Lanling, Jiang Cheng – as a favor to the former two – in Yunmeng, and last but not least my brother. Who’s going to start a trade dispute with us?”

That was comforting. Sort of comforting?

“Are we bullying people with our resources?” he asked, worrying his lower lip with his teeth.

“Of course we are,” Nie Mingjue said, sounding satisfied. Ugh, sect leaders. Somehow – with some admittedly fairly major variations in style – they were all the same, always looking for an advantage for their sects.

Wait, he’s a sect leader now. Does that mean he’s like that?

No, he’s a terrible sect leader, which means he’s exempt. A bit like Nie Huaisang had been all those years, as the Head-shaker…on second thought, that was part of a giant plot that had in fact ended with the Nie sect ascendant above all the others – the Jin sect in tatters, the Jiang sect isolated as always, the Lan sect putting all their attention on having to corral Wei Wuxian – so maybe it wasn’t the best comparison.

Ugh. Why is this Wen Ning’s life?

“Stop thinking about running away to be a rogue cultivator again, it’s much too late for that,” Nie Mingjue advised him, not unkindly. Wen Ning hadn’t even said anything. “Besides, you like teaching juniors. Even delinquent juniors.”

“They’re mostly not delinquents anymore,” Wen Ning objected. It was really amazing how being forced to attend a class taught by Xue Yang was enough to drive most young people far away from the mere idea of being a delinquent again lest they risk turning into him – and to help identify the remaining ones that needed to be kept under very close supervision. “Speaking of teaching, when are you taking another class? Your training sessions with Baxia don’t count.”

“From the number of people watching, they should.”

“It still doesn’t count,” Wen Ning said firmly, even if it really probably should – watching Nie Mingjue, a fierce corpse, working seamlessly with a spiritual weapon specifically designed to eradicate fierce corpses was truly a fascinating sight.

Of course, most people were more fascinated by the fact that Nie Mingjue usually did his training shirtless – including Wei Wuxian, irritatingly enough, though interestingly Lan Wangji, who was usually the first one at the vinegar jar, didn’t seem to object – but nothing much could be done about that.

(Fierce corpses did not need to worry about the heat, or sweat, or any of the usual motivations for going shirtless, but Nie Mingjue claimed it was a psychological need based on years of habit-building. For anyone else, Wen Ning would think that they were vain and secretly enjoying the attention, but with Nie Mingjue…it probably really was just habit.)

“Fine,” Nie Mingjue said. “Give me one of the basic seminars; I’ll do that. Not one of the musical ones.”

Wen Ning had learned by now that there was no point in smothering smiles – after all, he was a sect leader, and no one had the right to criticize or yell at him for smiling too much or for taking too much attention to himself.

Take that, Wen Chao.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten that you’re nearly tone-deaf.”

“At least one of you hasn’t.”

“Xiao Xingchen means well,” Wen Ning said, even though honestly by this point it was pretty clear he was just forcing Nie Mingjue to try out new and increasingly exotic instruments for his own (and everyone else’s) amusement. “It’s a little funny.”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes again, looking long-suffering, but he had a pretty good sense of humor about these things.

Also, if he was ever actually upset about something, Nie Huaisang would have fixed it.

No one would have enjoyed Nie Huaisang fixing things, but he would still have fixed it. He always fixed things that affected his brother.

(Example number one: Jin Guangyao, his eventual demise, and everything that happened after that.)

“I actually came here to give you news,” Nie Mingjue said. “Would you like to hear it?”

Wen Ning had politely requested – a little desperately – that Nie Mingjue check first. The other man had a way of just saying things without any consideration for the anxiety of the person he was talking to, with things like “we’ve misplaced a student” or “don’t worry it wasn’t a student we actually liked” or “Xue Yang is on the loose and he’s summoned something again” or, one memorable instance, “Baxia decided to summon a dozen of her close friends and family and they may or may not be attacking the staff rooms, but honestly she’s having so much fun that I don’t really feel like stopping her, thought you should know.”

Wen Ning took a deep breath that he didn’t need, firmed up his emotional resiliency, braced himself, and said, “Yes.”

“A-Qing thinks she found your sister’s reincarnation,” Nie Mingjue said, and the air shot out of Wen Ning’s lungs as if he’d been punched. “You know that she’s been sensitive to these things ever since her rebirth, we did some investigating, and we’re pretty sure. How would you like us to handle it?”

Wen Ning scrubbed his face. “I – have no idea. I thought her spirit was still haunting the place where her ashes were?”

“Just one of her souls, and the new body is one short. They’ll have to be reunited eventually or else she’ll suffer the physical effects of missing a soul, but there’s a way to do it that maximizes the chances of her recovering her memory from her previous life and a way to do it to minimize it.”

Wen Ning put his head down on his desk. “I…I don’t know. Our life was pretty awful, so maybe she’d be better off not remembering? But I also want my jiejie back…I hate decisions. Why did I become a sect leader again?”

“We told you that you didn’t have a choice and you lacked the spine to resist.”

“…thanks.”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Sometimes I really do wonder what you did in a previous life to deserve this one.”

Ouch. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Nie Mingjue said. “Come out and spar with me, it’ll help you think it over.”

“I don’t have time to think about anything else while we spar, though…?”

“Exactly.”

“…do I get a choice about this?”

“No. Get a move on.”

Wen Ning let himself be dragged over to the training fields. “You do remember I’m sect leader, right?”

“So is my brother,” Nie Mingjue pointed out and – fair.

“Your brother is one of the most terrifying people in the cultivation world.”

“And he still lets me boss him around. What’s your point?”

…fair.

“No point,” Wen Ning said, and waved to some of their more promising students, who immediately perked up at the thought of getting to watch them spar. “No point at all.”

In the end, he thought, his life hadn’t turned out that badly after all.

#mdzs #wen ning #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #Anonymous

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