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[saccharides360]

Nine Sols - Eclipse AU

A lonely moon on New Kunlun, not quite alive, not quite dead.

She should not be here, yet despite it all, she found herself on the island stranded in space, away from home.

Through her connection to Great Fusang, Heng was fully aware why she was in this state, why she was in this place. However, now no more than just a phantom, she could do little for her predicament, nor for the unfortunate residents on New Kunlun.

Centuries passed away in the blink of an eye, and an opportunity finally arived.

Yay, my first tumblr post and first contribution to this community!

This AU is heavily inspired by many other community works e.g. Sister of the Innovator AU by @mystic-menagerie and discussions in The Tianzhu Hive discord server for the Corruption of the Innovator AU by @gensational. I'm really sorry I can't remember or mention all of them in this post 😭.

This timeline follows roughly the same story as canon with the main protag as Yi, but it has Heng slightly more actively involved in the main plot.

The story diverged from canon after the explosion incident. As Eigong helped to save Yi from the injury, she took notice of Heng's connection with the roots. Intrigued by the girl's power, she offered to also take Heng under her wings as another disciple. Out of a desire to learn more about this ancient friend of hers, Heng gladly accepted the offer (very much to Yi's joy and their parents' dismay).

In the counsil, Heng was well-liked just like in canon, and as a young scholar she showed unexpected levels of talents and aptitude studying about Fusang and the symbiotic fungus in Solarian bodies over the years. Her result allowed Eigong and Yi to improve their root stabilizer models (which also means Eigong Prime is canon in this au). As a result, she was even allowed to study Tianhuo as Eigong's assistant by the time of her adulthood. While she was qualified enough to be a potential Sol candidate, the position did not interest her. She was still very proud of her brother becoming a sol though.

Knowing it would be about time for Heng to find out Tianhuo's truth, Eigong decided to spill the beans herself. Although the young lady was saddened by the information, she understood why her teacher did not make it public. Therefore, she helped to keep it a secret, even from Yi in case he went rogue.

While the counsil meeting was supposed to be exclusively for the Sols, Heng begged Yi to let her attend, to which he happily approved. After all, she was so excited to know about this secret project her brother's so proud of, and she had to be there for Yi's special moment. This was a decision she regretted.

After knowing the specifics of the Eternal Caldron project, Heng was horrified that her brother could propose such a thing. In the meeting she was very vocal about her objection, and also suggested that maybe Tianhuo was just their destiny, maybe it was just the time for the Solarians to return to the Greater Tao, and maybe they could just accept the end of their race. In spite of the bonds she built with them ove the years, this idea was fiercely mocked by almost all counsil members (except for Fudie who was too afraid to speak up, Fuxi who let Nuwa do all the talking, and Ji who just went 👁👁). She tried to put up an arguement but was quickly silenced by her brother, who was deeply disappointed and furious that she would be against his brainchild, that she would bring shame to him at such an occasion, and that she still hold such backward ideas as a scholar.

After the meeting, Heng and Yi went to sweep their parents grave. At the graveyard, Yi apologized for his words at the meeting (but apologizing in a way that's like "We're both at fault"). Heng begrudgingly accepted the apology, but also informed him the decision that she would stay in Penglai. This reignited Yi's anger who thought his sister had "realized her mistake". Seeing no way to dissuade her, Yi took an opportunity and knocked her out. Afterwards, he placed her in her freshly constructed sleeping capsule in the Four Season Pavilion. As no apeman brains had been harvested at this stage, Yi let Ruyi power Heng's Soulscape System. Later, Eigong found this out. While she did not approve of Yi's actions, she did not overly condemn him since she found this to be for the best. A potential threat of leaking internal information was neutralized, and her student would not die due to the mistake she made (or as she thought).

Then the stuff was kinda the same as in canon. Yi found out the truth, and Eigong executed him etc etc. Before grandma went back to dull down abacus systems, she first paid a visit to the Four Season Pavilion (to mourn for her student though she did not know she went to mourn). She was horrified however to see the central root at the pavilion wrapping around Heng's capsule, from which sprouted out a large fungal flower. Guess she had two disciples to mourn now

However, unknownst to Eigong Heng was still there. While her body died due to complications and stuff, the roots kept her spirit alive. She was now a Rain World echo and only those more in tune with the Great Tao could see her. While she also gained a few new powers (that were connected to the roots, fungal flowers and Tianhuo) in this state, she was in a severely weakened state since the root nodes in New Kunlun were contained within those flower-bud-like structures. All she could do were to wonder around and observe tragedies and monstrosities (and occassionally have tea parties with Lear) for the next 500 years like nightcat rainworld

Out of all the Sols only Ji could see Heng. However, unlike Heng who was desparately wanting to help, Ji was too depressed and unmotivated because they believe all those efforts were to be futile and meaningless. A sentimentality that eventually rubbed onto Heng, making her more cynic and depressed over the centuries.

Things went for a turn when Yi was revived by the roots. Despite everything that happened beforehand, Heng couldn't help but feel happy that he was still alive. And during his journey throughout New Kunlun, he activated many root nodes on the way, allowing Heng's power to grow. This also allowed her to more directly intervene with the real world. Yi, while initially brushing off those incidents as random occurrences, increasingly believed that his sister might still be there.

Shuanshuan was in synch with the Great Tao enough for Heng to interact with him. After the Goumang bossfight, Heng was disgusted to see the state Yi left her in. Therefore, she created an illusion of herself and lured Shuanshuan to interact with the central root node. Using her power, she teleported the boy to a node near Goumang's location (a reckless decision that could leave permanent physical or emotional scars but Heng at this state was too apathetic to realize how messed up this was). Taking notice of the apeman's disappearance, Ruyi immediately informed Yi about the situation. Yi reacted quickly and brought his foster younger brother back to safety, but was also forced to bring Goumang (and maybe her two jiangshi children as well) to the pavilion. Kuafu later built the bird lady a pair of new prosthetic legs, yay!

During the prison section, after Jiequan went away, Heng decided to rescue her brother. She did this by turning the latent Tianhuo inside Yi virulent, forcing him to die on the spot. Right afterwards, she used her remaining energy to activate the node in the jail so that he could respawn there.

The last major point where Heng intervened was after the Fengs fight. As Nuwa crawled towards Fuxi's heavily mutated corpse, Heng caused Fusang roots to sprout out from the ground, preventing Nuwa from moving to her spikey demise. This saved her and allowed her to be recruited back to the pavilion, since there was no longer anything holding her to stay there anymore now that she was forced to accept Fuxi's death.

After collecting all seals other than Eigong's, Heng grew powerful enough to cause energy abnormalies in the central root node. Yi, who half expected to meet his sister, entered the limitless realm for one last time. And there she was, just far more ethereal and ghostly than he ever remembered. Finally the siblings reunited.

Before they part their ways, Yi asked if there was any way he could bring Heng back, to which Heng replied no. She said she could never forgive Yi, but she was still glad to see him grow into a better person.

The player would now be given 2 options - to keep insisting on bringing Heng back no matter what, or accept the fate like Heng has long accepted hers. If the former was chosen, a boss fight against Eclipse Heng would be triggered.

This 3-stage fight would be a mix of Lady Ethereal's and Ji's. She would summon all types of projectiles such as homing daggers, dream orbs, thunder blasts, crimson rings and primordial roots that functions identically to Nuwa's snakes. She could also create a dulled down version of Eigong's crimson balls and geisers. All her attacks would spawn fungal flowers on the arena, and standing on them would cause internal damage to accumulate. Heng's finishing signiture blow would be a taichi-kickable Tianhuo grab that's similar to Eigong's talismans. While this attack deals no damage on its own, it would turn all internal damage into actual damage as well as depleting all of Yi's chi gauge and one azure sand gauge.

I have no experience making music, but I imagine her boss theme to contain the sols leitmotif as well as a fused leitmotif between the regular Heng's theme and the "Life" leitmotif that sounds like this -

After the fight, Heng admitted to Yi that there really was no way to bring her back since her body was long gone, and her spirit was chained to Fusang. She also admitted that the reason why she did not tell him this before the fight was that she wanted to prepare Yi for Eigong's encounter which was going to be much more difficult than hers. Forced to accept this, Yi bid a final farewell to his sister and headed back to his mission.

Aaaaand the rest went the same as canon! And we also recruited Goumang and Nuwa onto the evacuation ship, soooooo yay! A better ending!