#gg i really enjoy writing stuff where yingxing and you or OC were in a relationship

[kurim-chis]

“The one who buried the beloved, was also you.”

—— blade/yingxing x reader (VERY lightly implied dan feng x you)

BACKGROUND: You're a short-lived species who arrived to the xianzhou alongside Yingxing in the merchant ships (perhaps childhood sweethearts??), you've been in a relationship for a few years now and while Yingxing is gruff and rough around the edges, he's nevertheless besotted with you and fiercely in love with you; a happy ending to this story seems likely —— until you get struck with the mara-disease.

AKA this is half-assed narrative and half-assed word vomit, I just want to add more pain and suffering to Blade's past while being self-indulgent trash :D

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yingxing has seen the mara disease so many times before, during the war and within the ships with their citizens, especially once their times passed the five hundred mark and madness slowly creeps in. their faces had mostly been obscured by golden flowers and twisting branches the first time he saw the corpses, but throughout the years he's seen many variations of them.

faces contorted in agony, twisted in fear and despair, or slack and numb as roots wriggled out of their skin and flowers bloomed over their eyes, and most often they would be driven into mara-struck madess and insane bloodlust in their rampages.

yingxing never expects the mara to fall upon you.

if yingxing tries to look back on it, perhaps it had started way more earlier than they'd known — perhaps it was the itching, the little scratches healing faster than they should, the headaches and the daydreaming. it doesn't quite strike either of you until one day you are screaming as golden lines split your skin, as little branches claw their way out of your arms, and small buds blossom from the wounds on your flesh. it's sudden and unexpected and terrifying and you are hunched over yourself trembling and shivering and sweating as he tries to hold you, a hand hovering over the tiny blossoms that grows out of your neck and collarbone, the tiny roots wriggling out of your arms, and it gets progressively worse from thereon.

this can't be happening, you say

i'm scared, you say

please believe me, you say

(because you're a short-lived species, and the only way you could've been struck with mara like this is for you to receive the plague author's blessing)

yingxing believes you (yingxing loves you)

you are frightened and terrified and yingxing can only hold you through the tears and terror and confusion and pleasedon'thatemeyingxing

perhaps, if it had been just the blessings of the abundance, it would've been fine. there are countless individuals within the ship who use the power of the abundance in medicine and aid, after all. but roots continue to wiggle and settle over your skin like bangles and chains, golden flowers begin sprouting from the buds in your flesh, and even your eyes and hair starts losing their colors.

you try to snip the blossoms and the locks of hair and the branches, and the wounds only heal over and over and over again, each time faster than before, the blooms brighter and livelier than the last, and the tips of your hair take on the color of dry blood and your eye color melt into the gold of the mara disease.

you are in pain, you are in agony and miserable, and eventually, even your memories and sense of self start deteriorating amidst a haze of golden petals and blood.

you start asking if it would be better to die "while you still can" (you are afraid of becoming like the mara-struck soldiers in the game), but yingxing doesn't allow you to.

this cannot be happening, yingxing thinks.

it breaks yingxing to watch you like this, but no one else can know. xianzhou will see you dead for suspicions of worshipping the plague author. he can only hold you during the nights and soothe your fits until you settle like a docile beast in his arms, and then during the day, he researches

yingxing puts aside the forgery for as long as he possibly can without arousing suspicions and throws himself into mara research discreetly, but there's not much he can find. access to advanced texts are restricted and he only learns about as much as anyone interested in the mara disease knows, but one thing is for sure —— there's no documented recovery from the mara in the centuries of the xianzhou history.

become mara-struck, and you either die in a flurry of golden flowers or are striked down by the cloud knights.

(there's another thing yingxing eventually finds out, as well —— this is no accident. someone caused this to you)

(yingxing will hunt them down to the farthest reach of the stars, and he will not stop until they are dead. whoever did this will wish they hadn't been born.)

if yingxing cannot find anything about how to recover from the mara, perhaps then he could find a way to control the disease, prevent it from hurting you as it was doing now, prevent it from turning you into a mad creature. it wasn't too late yet, and yingxing refuses to give up on you.

yingxing turns to imbibitor lunae and the scalegorge waterscape — the sacred abode of the vidyadhara, a race devoted to the sealing and guard of the ambrosial arbor, and that becomes one amongst the many mistakes he will have commited.

in the future, the man - yingxing - who will become known as blade will look back on this moment and laugh — madly, loudly, hatefully, as he lives on cursing his life and that of two other sinners.

you are dead, and yingxing could not save you

you are dead, and blade wants to die

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BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO CONTINUE NARRATING:

There are a LOT of layers to what I want to be happening in the premise of this short. For example, I wanted to write that the ones responsible for "you", as a short-lived species, going mara-struck was a result of sabotaging and conflict with Sanctus Medicus (or whatever antagonist there is during the events of Dan Feng and Yingxing's crimes), who wanted to sow strife amidst the Xianzhou. There's a lot of plot going on that my little brain can't be bothered to rationalize.

During his research on mara and trying to find out HOW you turned mara, he begins suspecting of foul play and unearths quite a bit of shit within the Xianzhou. There's a lot of sketchy shit, some not related at all to what he wants to know, and it paints numerous targets of Yingxing.

Their main targets would actually be Jing Liu (who some time later on succumbs to mara and goes on a murderous rampage) and many other higher ups and important figures to different areas of the Xianzhou. In trying to discreetly trigger or infect mara to others, they also partook in indiscriminate damage in hopes one of their targets will be caught unawares and be infected with something that can trigger or coax out the mara disease, and "you" were caught in the crossfire and ended up mara struck (or perhaps you were intentionally targeted as well, can't decide on this) as a short-lived species collateral. Many of the other short-lived species die during this period of time.

By some twist of fate or whatever, your descent into mara isn't instantaneous and is instead painful, slow and with a clear consciense of the changes in your body, but it's only slowed, and your body can't adjust to mara like how Blade and Jing Liu will in the future.

Ying Xing, however, clings to the hope you can mantain your clarity and sense of self, and what he wanted to do in this short is research the vidyadhara's records to see if he could seal away your mara or contain your disease. When that wasn't enough, he will perhaps 1) try to find some other way, 2) try to see if Dan Feng can find a way to contain your mara disease, or at least delay it until something can be done because this wasn't your fault.

Instead, what happens is that Dan Feng kills you.

Dan Feng sees you and you are half consumed with flowers even though you aren't being violent or crazed, you've tanked the attacks of many other cloud knights and mara-struck alike and are covered in blood and tatters while everyone's dead. Your sins are set in stone (are they really?) and your ending is only a matter of time, so Imbibitor Lunae - although pained - decides to put you down and lay you to rest. He tries to kill you - and either fails or obliterates your sense of self so all that remains is a corpse that keeps healing - and then seals/buries your regenerating body into the Scalegorge Waterscape.

Dan Feng's actions are an act of compassion, love and mercy in his eyes. He buries you in Scalegorge Waterscape, where your rest will be undisturbed and none shall desecreate your body, not even the Xianzhou will be able to part the seas of Scalegorge.

But that and what Yingxing sees are different. (they also think differently lmao)

After Yingxing reaches Scalegorge amidst all the chaos that would be happening, he would only know you were hurt very, very badly. Blood, flowers, tattered clothes. Lots of fighting, arguing, etc.

Ending is that - as mentioned - despite his efforts otherwise, Yingxing sees your body cast into the abyss of the Scalegorge Waterscape and sealed there, left to rot in the darkness and cold of an artificial sea.

Afterwards, he himself becomes mara-struck and then is sent of to be killed over and over again by Jing Liu lmao. He wants to die, but he cannot.

At some point in time, he almost forgets that his name is Yingxing and he had loved someone who died unjustly amidst internal conflict and everything, but it comes back to him when he escapes and becomes Blade.

EVERYTHING here is just self-indulgent brainstorming. NGL it could've been better.