#and the second one is 'hhhhfuck do we tell zewu-jun'

[leatherbookmarking]

a wild concept because i got sad and i WILL practice zanzan levels of acrobatics to unsad myself: what if jrs lives and he’s a lan but he’s Not jingyi. like idk. jgy suspects something’s going to Happen and he puts a couple of neat little (but powerful) charms on him and has someone drop him off in some village. that way he has approximately as much of a chance of living as in jinlintai, in theory. here he can simply die of hunger, unnoticed, but if someone chooses to take him, they can be poor, he can fall ill, maybe someone murders him simply, because it just happens; in jinlintai, well. well.

so the boy who used to be jin (name) courtesy rusong grows up with elderly parents; he doesn’t remember his first dad or mom, although he can do the things a normal, healthy child his age could do; it’s as if he just came into existence at the age of (insert age), out of thin air. but he’s very thankful to the parents that found him, and he helps his father at work and his mother at cooking and taking care of their little house. for some reason, he also has a penchant for arts and books -- he always points it out when he thinks something’s pretty, and he has such a memory for stories and news, even though no one’s taught him that. outside of that, he’s a bit of an airhead and can be shy around other kids, but eventually he warms up to them and sometimes he goes with them to the river, or just wanders around (but he has to come back before it gets really dark). he doesn’t make many good friends, in fact, the other boys sometimes seem to forget he exists, or struggle with recalling his name, and the girls -- well, it’s almost like they don’t even notice he’s a boy! which is not something he’s telling his parents, but it’s a bummer either way. still -- it doesn’t stop him from hanging out with others, having fun and so on, so he lives on, why not.

the boy who used to be jin rusong hears, of course, about cultivators, and like every child his age he’s absolutely smitten by them as a concept, claiming there’s no job in the world better than being a cultivator, possibly even a wandering one because that way no one tells you what to do and you’re so powerful and you can do whatever you want! etc etc, although if he had the chance he guesses he could also be a disciple because it’s TOTALLY COOL too. they have those uniform colored robes, isn’t that neat? you see a dude in gold/yellow and you go oooooo it’s a jin disciple! or in blue or purple and it’s a jiang fella. the jiang sect is cool, they have so many colors and stuff it would be nice to be a jiang disciple and yunmeng is said to be great in summer, save for the humidity

so years pass and he’s maybe like around fifteen, and his father has passed away so he’s just living with his old mom. and he’s finishing it up in the field when he hears a scream from the house and he runs but there’s no more screaming and he hopes that it’s because it’s alright now, maybe mother has saw a mouse or slipped and fell--but someone grabs him by his collar and there are lights coming from inside his house, and more screams but those are definitely not his mother’s, and then it’s all blurry because sometime around being caught and being released he began to cry, but -- hello, we’re lan cultivators, there’s been a bloodthirsty fucking Thing and it chose your mother to feed, our condolences.

and maybe there’s some senior disciple with them who’s feeling particularly bad about this village dude who’s just lost his old mother -- if she was this old and he’s this young, then he must have been really, really loved, and the disciple just realizes how much it sucks, why isn’t hanguang-jun there to solve this problem somehow, aughhh he’s not that much older than this newly-minted orphan boy! anyway, they end up taking him with them.

well, he’s grieving, so he’s not the best partner for either conversation or travel, but in general, the senior disciple notices he’s kind of smart and listens with rapt attention when they talk about cultivator stuff -- for example, when he explains something to the juniors -- so he hopes that maybe he’ll do as a disciple, even though he’s like. old. too old. ohh god what has he done

also, he’s got something on his face. on his whole person, really, and the senior disciple isn’t sure what it is, but--it’s definitely something. if he had to be super specific, well, his features are pretty plain, but it’s unnerving how he can’t really describe his face once he stops looking at him. normally he’d be able to say -- oh, he’s had a round or square face, thin or bushy eyebrows, broad or thin nose, but with this dude? nothing. is wei-qianbei’s horrible memory starting to rub off on him? is this village kid who’s never interacted with a cultivator carrying a curse on himself? who knows! that is. probably hanguangj-jun will know. gotta bring it to him

and then they come back, only for one of the elders, who’s just happened to be outside, to take one (1) look at the poor dude, go “hey, what the fuck is that” and wave a hand, sending the kid sprawling onto the floor in a cloud of dust. the meaning of “hey, what the fuck is that” in this case means “this child is clearly under some appearance-altering spell and it displeases me greatly that he’s been a/ let in like this, b/ apparently smart enough to get past the notice of our disciples? hm? hm? what the fuck?”.

she suspects those kids just casually brought back a sad victim of a monster, like the cloud recesses were a cheap inn and not a prestigious place of learning, withouth checking if he’s completely free of any residue ghost/monster fuckeries, and she’s very, very disappointed. she doesn’t expect him to just... stay horizontal, motionless but breathing, staring into the space with wide eyes and most importantly, looking very much like a child of his parents