#at the very least the founding 12 and the shizuns of this current generation

[everytimewetouch-dot-mp3]

good morning, today i am thinking about dragon god shen yuan, tea, and rituals, so have a few scattered thoughts on the theme:

every cang qiong peak lord has at least one tea pet fashioned after the sect’s god. for the ones who consider themselves tea connoisseurs (shen qingqiu, qi qingqi, and the presently unnamed lords of the agricultural and engineering peaks), the dragon god tea pet only comes out for ceremonial/ritualistic use, though for those who rarely have gongfu cha, the dragon god is likely the only tea pet they have. when new disciples are admitted, the dragon god tea pet is part of the tea ceremony. pouring tea over it is treated as an offering to him.

cang qiong has a few sect-wide festivals annually. one is a multi-day festival honoring ascended peak lords, with one full day dedicated to the founding lords. there is a temple on the dragon god’s mountain, and during the peak lord festival, the current peak lords bring a small delegation (usually their head or most senior disciple, the eldest member of their peak, and two or three of the innermost inner disciples) to light incense and pray. this ceremony opens and closes with the zui xuan peak lord brewing a large pot of tea, and each member of the group offering the dragon god a cup (by pouring it over him). it’s treated as an invitation for luck and an expression of gratitude for protection from evil.

shen yuan didn’t drink much tea in his first life. he knew how to prepare and serve it properly, mostly for the sake of entertaining his mother’s friends and his father and brothers’ business associates, but he really didn’t drink much on his own

dragon god shen yuan always smells vaguely of the tea that cang qiong’s agricultural peak is famous for—tian gong jasmine tea. it’s near impossible to purchase and rare outsiders have had the occasion to try it. the leaders of the great sects have each tried it, and when lbh becomes ruler of the demon realm, the peace treaty between his empire and cang qiong is finalized over a pot shared between himself and yue qingyuan. it is also, coincidentally, both the tea offered most frequently to shen yuan and his favorite to drink.

because of all the tea offerings while he was hibernating in dragon mode, when the system finally allows shen yuan to wake up properly and attend to his sect, he’s developed a really strong taste for tea. he can distinguish stages of fermentation within two or three days just by taste, and for tea that was grown in the tian gong range he can describe things like the tea’s growing conditions, including weather, soil quality, and spiritual strength of the cultivators who tended to/processed the trees and leaves. shen yuan finds this extremely odd knowledge to just Have

the second-best pot of tea shen yuan has had in 700 years is the one that luo binghe prepares for him when he takes binghe as his personal disciple. the best pot of tea is the one luo binghe prepares for him on their wedding day.