#if Meng Xishi is still taking extra requests I'd love more Huanyue disciple content

[hunxi-after-hours]

You've made it clear before that you have nothing but love and respect for the Huanyue disciples. What are some of your favorite moments featuring them?

sldkfjsldjfk all of you 《千秋》 anons emerging from the woodwork... y'all really like making me rank things huh

okay okay here are a few of moments off the top of my head:

absolutely the betting scene with Yu Shengyan and the housekeeper - I don't really respond much to media (never have I ever cried watching a movie, etc), so the fact that this conversation made me laugh out loud says quite a lot. It's such a lovely, lighthearted interlude where Yu Shengyan demonstrates how clever he is (deducing his way to a conclusion about what his shizun and Shen-daozhang must be up to now with very sound logic!) while definitively proving that he is both a fool and a dumbass (he deduced his way to the wrong answer oh honey. hope you're ready to lose that bet).

Bian Yanmei's "沈姐姐" - this is a cheap shot and I know it, but that time when Shen Qiao and Bian Yanmei are infiltrating the imperial rear palace and Shen Qiao is alarmed like, "wait no one told me I had to crossdress for this mission," and Bian Yanmei, cool as a cucumber, doesn't bat an eye and goes "don't worry, I have to crossdress too so we're in this together, also Shen-jiejie am I pretty?" and I just. love one (1) competent Huanyue disciple with the only brain cell in the entire narrative, who is truly just living his best life

Yu Shengyan rolling up to the sword conference and calling Shen Qiao 师弟 shidi, in front of everyone's salads - all of my favorite Yu Shengyan moments are of him being a fool apparently, but he's a fool in most of his scenes and I love him despite that (because of it? unclear). Anyway I lost it when I read this scene because at this point, Yu Shengyan has been absent for like, a solid eighty chapters and then he just strolls up to a very tense sword conference rife with jianghu politics, trampling blithely over everything and everyone to make a bee-line for Shen Qiao and repeatedly calling him shidi before illustrious jianghu figures like Yi Pichen, Zhao Chiyin, Gu Hengbo, and everyone else's salads. It gets even funnier because as the scene progresses, it's quite obvious that Yu Shengyan has no idea what he's doing here, shizun just told him to show up and help Shen-daozhang so Yu Shengyan is here, helping Shen-daozhang as best as he can, wait, what do you mean you're not gunning for the position as head of the alliance, what else am I supposed to help you with???

basically I think every day about someone asking Ke Muqing in the audiodrama season 2 完结FT why he likes Yu Shengyan as a character, and Ke Muqing, the literal director of the audiodrama and voice of Yu Shengyan, goes "I like him because... though he has his moments of small cleverness sometimes, he truly is just a 小憨憨" (而我也是...一个小憨憨 Ke Muqing PLEASE）

honorable mention goes to the first time Bian Yanmei meets Shen Qiao, shortly after Shen Qiao has straight up Killed A Man outside Chang'an (it's okay, Bian Yanmei also wanted to kill said man and didn't mind that Shen Qiao did the work for him), because Yan Wushi has done his level best to give Bian Yanmei the wrong impression of their relationship, and Bian Yanmei is a smart cookie and has been staying tuned to jianghu gossip so internally he's like could the rumors be true??? has Shen Qiao really become shizun's bedwarmer??? but then he and Shen Qiao talk for like three minutes and Bian Yanmei is savvy enough to deduce his way to the correct conclusion (unlike his 憨憨 shidi) while making very courteous conversation

anyway I love the Huanyue disciples with my entire heart