#lan fighting style

[korpikorppi]

You want to know what my favourite Lan Wangji sword move is?

This little thing here:

Lunge, place the sword against the enemy's throat - almost gently - then gracefully pivot back and pull.

Love it. It is so no nonsense and simple, yet very elegant... And deadly ❤.

It is also a move both of the Twin Jades use, here's Zewu-Jun going for it:

So it seems to be a part of the Lan sword fighting style, which (judged from the way these two fight) is characterised by large sweeping movements, twirls and pirouettes, elegance and airiness... Way cool.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 3: Enveloping Feelings.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 (soon))

[tiffanyachings]

Aes Sedai + Warders in battle

[rhymesswith]

Obsessed with him. 

[lesbianpegbar]

What are your thoughts on season 2 so far??? I’m still a bit worried about lg… but idc about that BECAUSE QIAO LING!!!!! WITH THE STEEL POLE!!!

yeah <3

[llycaons]

in hindsight I was extremely burned out on shonen in 2020 because when I watched cql I remember such intense relief that I wouldn’t have to sit through a training montage. like oh they’re already fully trained cultivators. thank god

[shanastoryteller]

Happy Pride! Untamed please!

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

 Lan Wangji is standing next to his brother as he makes small talk with Nie Mingjue – their closeness had never really recovered after the war, despite Xichen’s best efforts and Jin Guangyao’s lukewarm ones – when a Jin servant steps to his side and whispers, “Your wife is requesting your presence in Lady Jiang’s sitting room.”

Even as quietly as he’d spoken, Xichen and Nie Mingjue had obviously heard him. Xichen frowns. “Is she alright?”

Her injuries had been superficial and mostly healed. But Lan Wangji had seen the exhaustion that she didn’t want to admit to and said nothing, because they’d already gotten into one fight today and he understood pride well enough. Perhaps he should have insisted.

The servant lowers his eyes. “Apologies, Sect Leader Lan. I have only been instructed to escort Master Lan.”

“Excuse me,” he says, dipping his head to Nie Mingjue and falling into step with the servant. His pace is unhurried, which Lan Wangji tries to find reassuring. If something was wrong, surely they would be moving with more urgency.

He sees Jiang Cheng first and has to keep his lip from curling back in distaste. He’s ducked his head to speak with Jiang Yanli, the two of them standing outside of her rooms, but they both cut off their conversation when they see him. He bows shallowly to Jiang Yanli, ignoring Jiang Cheng completely. “Madame Jin. Is-“

“She’s fine,” she says, but the tension around her eyes and the strain in her smile tells a different story. “Please go in, Lan Wangji.”

He pushes the door open, closing it behind him, and at least he doesn’t have to look far for her. “Are you hurt?”

Xuanyu looks up at him, a faint redness in her eyes that speaks of tears. She’s dressed much like she was when he first met her, back in the Jin gold and cream and her hair turned sleek and pulled in hairstyle that’s half up in a braided bun on top of head and the rest of her hair flowing freely. It’s a Jiang hairstyle, one that Jiang Yanli used to wear when they were younger. The hair ornament in Xuanyu’s hair is Jiang Yanli’s as well.

The only Lan thing on her is her forehead ribbon, and it startles him with how out of place it looks, while Jiang and Jin seem to blend seamlessly. It causes something to twist uncomfortably in his chest, but he ignores it to repeat, “Are you hurt?”

“Sit down,” she says, gesturing to the place at the table across from her. He takes the seat next to her instead, looking her over for some sort of new injury or pain, but he can’t find anything amiss. “Ah, okay. Okay. So.”

He waits, but she just twists her hands together, occasionally reaching up to touch her hair and then realizing that with this new hair style it’s not where she expects it, and lowers her hands.

“Did something happen?” he asks.

She starts to shake her head then gives a jerky nod. “I – I – I’m. Yanli-jie’s healer came to see me.”

The stab of worry is almost becoming familiar when it comes to Xuanyu, but that doesn’t make it any more comfortable. “Are you ill? Have your injuries worsened?”

She shakes her head, and it should be a relief, but instead his worry just deepens. “No, no. It’s. Um. Not – I. It’s just that – well. You know. In the cold spring. And then the wall. And the bed.”

It takes him a moment but then heat flushes his cheeks. She is referring to when he became inebriated and took her. “Did I hurt you?”

She had said that it was not the type of hurt that was unwelcome or lingered and she’d never flinched away from him. But it was a first time for both of them and he barely remembers what he did and at the time he was significantly stronger than her and she was still injured from their spar. It’s entirely possible he harmed her in some way.

“No!” She bites her lip, staring at him with an intensity that he doesn’t understand. “Wangji, dammit, are you really going to make me say it?”

“If you wish me to understand, then you’re going to have to,” he says, worry and guilt pushing him to his own frustration.

Xuanyu blinks several times, and he’s about to apologize, but then she says, “I’m pregnant.”

He stares.

“From when we – you know – obviously,” she says. “So. Yeah.”

His eyes drop to her stomach. Several things snap into place at once but he can’t focus on any of them beyond the roar in his ears and the acid churning in his stomach.

He is no better than his father.

Xuanyu is his wife not by choice but circumstances out of her control and she had never wanted him and even if she enjoyed that night, he had lost his senses and demanded what she hadn’t offered freely, not even doing her the courtesy of taking the care to spill outside of her. Now his child grows inside her, pinning her in place and shackling her as his mother was shackled.

“Wangji?” she asks, voice concerningly high pitched. “Say something.”

“I’m sorry.”

She goes perfectly still except for where she’s gripping her robe above her knees. “Oh.”

“I never intended,” he starts but the lump in his throat makes it difficult to get anything else out. Instead he gets to his feet, bows to her, and is pushing out of the room as quickly as his feet can carry him.

Everything is too hot and too close and he can’t breathe. He needs to get outside. He needs to think.

“Hey!” Jiang Cheng shouts as he rushes past, but his voice softens as he says, “Oh, shit.”

It’s too bright and too close and too loud and he has no patience for Jiang Cheng even at his best and he just needs – he needs –

“Wangji?” Xichen grabs his elbow as he’s headed for the exit, eyes wide and concerned. “Is she – what’s wrong with Lady Xuanyu?”

“I,” he starts, and still can’t make himself speak. He pulls himself out of his grip and continues for the door. He hears his brother make his apologies to whoever he’d been speaking to and then his presense at his back, following him out.

He’ll probably be grateful for that when his head clears, but for now it’s too full of panic and shame and a bitter self hatred he hasn’t felt this intently since he’d lost Wei Wuxian.

“I know somewhere private,” Xichen says softly as soon as they’re outside, the lungful of fresh air not nearly as clarifying as he’d hoped it’d be. “Come.”

He follows his brother, focuses on breathing, and not why it feels like he can’t get enough air despite how greedily he sucks it in.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 40 part two

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)  (whole thing on AO3)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

What a Relief

After spending a few weeks in Gusu doing...stuff, our trio comes to Jinlintai for the discussion conference. Unusually for a CQL stair-climbing scene, nobody is planning to murder anyone once they get to the top.

Our crew walks up the stairs past 3 massive sculpted reliefs featuring Jin Guangyao.

First and most important, I have to point out that the sculpture version of Lan Xichen [edit: Nie Mingjue actually, whoops] is wearing a sash that looks like this:

*cough*

Meanwhile, for the picture with the sword and flames, qhanzi.com tells me that the written characters are 伏殺, fú shā; Google translate tells me this means "ambush." Specifically Fu=conceal, Sha=kill. Ballsy to have a monumental artwork on your front steps announcing that you're a backstabbing turncoat, Jin Guangyao.

Speaking of balls, Jiang Cheng jumps at the opportunity to bust some when the Lan bros arrive with Wei Wuxian in tow. He pretends not to know who Wei Wuxian is, but obviously does know something, given how bitchily he asks to be introduced. Lan Wangji continues his 13-year-long silent treatment of JC while Lan Xichen tries to figure out which bland smile he's meant to be deploying in this situation.

(more after the cut!)

They're all rescued by the appearance of Jin Guangyao 3.0, who has discarded his Nie braids and his Wen hotness in favor of Jin ostentatiousness.

He's no longer wearing the v-neck robe and topknot crown that we associate with the cultivation sects. Instead he's wearing a hat and a round-necked robe with a big embroidered design on the chest, that resembles the clothing style of a court official.

Some people see JGY's bureaucratic wardrobe as signaling that he's an unassuming administrator, someone who is not threatening to the power structure or is not ambitious. I see it more as conveying that his ambition reaches beyond the cultivation sects into the realm of dynastic/imperial politics.

Anyway, Jiang Cheng turns his ire towards his nephew, and Lan Xichen relaxes again. Possibly he is a little too relaxed, judging by how he's ogling Jiang Cheng.

I'm high as a kite, I just might stop to check you out

Party Monster

Fanfics are often accused of giving us an out-of-character (OOC) Wei Wuxian, but no fanfic Wei Wuxian is as OOC as the Wei Wuxian who attends this banquet. Normally Wei Wuxian is a mildly annoying flirt, but as soon as soon as he arrives in Koi tower he is (presumably) possessed by the spirit of Jin Guangshan, and becomes a gross sex pest.

He goes out of his way to hit on the wife of the clan leader and make googly eyes at all of the maids, whose social status doesn't allow them to be rude to him. And he does it in front of his date! What the hell, possessed Wei Wuxian.

While oblivious to Lan Wangji's jealousy, Wei Wuxian does check in with him to make sure it's ok to put on his "crazy Mo Xuanyu" act. LWJ replies with a certain amount of salt, but once Wei Wuxian makes it clear he's thinking about Lan Wangji's public face, LWJ chills out and answers him normally.

Side note: in no universe would this cute lil maid be making eyes at heavily-masked Mo Xuanyu when unmasked, radiant, filthy-rich Lan Wangji is right there to be smiled at.

Jin Guangyao greets everyone and some dancers start doing their thing; mercifully, possessed Wei Wuxian refrains from hitting on the dancers. As soon as Jin Guangyao starts to circulate through the room, Nie Huaisang has an epic nervous breakdown all over him, which is even better entertainment than the dancers.

This gives Wei Wuxian the cover he needs to slip out of the hall unnoticed. Well, as long as nobody notices Lan Wangji's obvious pining.

Fight Club

The prophecy foretells that into each generation of Jins will be born one douchebag cousin. Jin Chan is the douchebag cousin of his generation.

Jin Chan accuses "Mo Xuanyu" of being a sex pest, and Wei Wuxian suddenly understands why the plot made him act so OOC at the party. Mo Xuanyu wasn't really a sex pest; he was a regular pest, trying to get information out of Qin Su, not trying to seduce her. But he doesn't know that yet. In other adaptations Mo Xuanyu is gay, but CQL exists in a strange censorship-created realm in which gayness is pervasive but never mentioned, and therefore there is no homophobia. So nobody would care if Mo Xuanyu was gay.

When Wei Wuxian realizes what Mo Xuanyu did, he thinks "Mo Xuanyu, do you want to die?"

Nice choice of idiom, Wei Wuxian. I believe we have firmly established that yes, Mo Xuanyu absolutely did want to die.

The show is kind of vague, verbally, about whether Wei Wuxian 2.0 has a golden core. But there are a lot of moments that strongly suggest he does, at this point, have a functioning core.

This rock attack is, I hope, one of those moments, or else Jin Chan is a total pussy, getting knocked back by landscape gravel.

Next, Wei Wuxian shows Jin Ling the super-secret move known as "arm twisting," which Jin Ling, as an only child, has never encountered before.

Anyone with siblings is very familiar with this move.

Because this is The Untamed, this move should be executed with extra spinning whenever possible.

Jin Ling learns the move right away, and uses it to win the scuffle.

Avuncular

After the fight, Wei Wuxian sits with Jin Ling for a chat, and gives him the classic uncle advice "have as many fights as possible while you're young, because when you're older you'll have to be mature and get along with people."

I love Wei Wuxian so much.

For contrast, Jin Ling says that Jin Guangyao tells him not to get in fights. This makes Wei Wuxian seem like the cooler elder, but it also has a more sinister element, of Jin Guangyao holding Jin Ling back. Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian grew up constantly fighting with each other--sparring as well as informal fights, presumably. And their cultivation was super strong, partly as a result of that.

Wei Wuxian takes the opportunity to tell Jin Ling that he's not in love with Qin Su any more, because he's transferred his affections to someone else. Obviously Hanguang-Jun is the someone else, given that they've been inseparable for weeks. To keep Jin Ling from yelling while he explains, he clamps his hand over Jin Ling's mouth.

The thing is, in order to effectively clamp your hand over someone's mouth, there has to be something behind them--a wall, the mattress, your own torso, or something else solid. Otherwise they can just jerk their head backwards to get away from your hand. Or they can stand up and walk away, even.

Jin Ling, hilariously, does not realize this, and spends a ridiculously long time sitting still and making angry faces while Wei Wuxian rests his hand on his face.

Spy Game

Later that night, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji get ready for some shenanigans.

Not the sexy kind, alas, just some paperman snooping.

Wei Wuxian, because he's facing serious danger, is feeling extra playful and cute, and he takes time to goof around with Lan Wangji before getting down to business.

In paperman form, he's able to do some things that the censors overlook, including tugging on Lan Wangji's headband and apparently blowing him a kiss. In the book and the donghua, he catches onto Lan Wangji's lip on his way down his face, too.

One thing that's kind of muted in the live action as compared to the novel is how much Lan Wangji enjoys Wei Wuxian's childish and playful behavior. Lan Wangji never got to be playful as a child, but with Wei Wuxian he can cut loose--which he does mostly in the sack or when they're drinking together. But even when he stays in control of himself, he likes Wei Wuxian's silliness.

He tells Paper-Xian, tenderly, to be very careful, before he sends him on his way.

The Adventures of Paperman

The CGI department outdoes itself with paperman, making an animated character so adorable I'd be happy to watch a whole episode of him.

Paper-Xian sneaks into JGY's study and pokes around, finding an empty envelope. Then he listens and watches while Qin Su stumbles in, retching.

She's followed closely by Jin Guangyao; they proceed to have an absolutely fucking endless argument in which the words "sister," "brother," "incest" "rapist dad" are never said, instead using vagueburger phrasing like "this matter."

Jin Guangyao does freely admit to killing their kid, though, and wants to know who told Qin Su about it so he can kill them, too. She won't tell him, shockingly.

Jin Guangyao ends the fight by putting a paralysis spell on his wife and then making her go to sleep with another spell, which is the cultivator equivalent of saying "I've said what I had to say and I need some space."

He takes her into a secret room where he is also keeping a bunch of talisman-protected stuff and a shockingly small number of books.

Seriously, as a person who has way too many books, I am personally offended by the way Jin Guangyao wastes shelf space in his secret room.

As Paper-Xian sneaks around the room, Jin Guangyao helpfully pulls aside the curtain covering the shelf with Nie Mingjue's head on it, so he can grouse at NMJ for (figuratively) haunting him. Seriously? Dude, you keep a guy's head on your bookshelf, he gonna haunt ya.

The episode ends with Paper-Xian bowing (adorably) to Nie Mingjue, and then sitting laying on his face, which would make BOTH Lan brothers jealous if they found out.

Soundtrack: Ring the Alarm, by Beyonce; Blister in the Sun, by the Violent Femmes

[wangxianficfinder]

In the mood for...

~*~

1. Hi could you please suggest some

A) Omega Wei wuxian alpha lwj fanfics?

B) And fox wwx dragon lwj with good plot too @lostsoul234

1A)

A/B/O Comp

🧡 shoot your shot -- hot or knot by defractum (nyargles) (E, 51k, WangXian, Modern AU, A/B/O Dynamics, Reality Show, Hunger Games Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Extremely Dubious Consent, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Humor, Additional Warnings In Author's Notes) (link in #6) would probably work?

B)

@archeaologies said: re your latest 'im in the mood for' post, 1b (foxxian and dragonji fics): ive been slowly putting together a massive rec list on my sideblog (@lansyuan) of exactly this au - its currently sat in my drafts but if op wants to pm me on my sideblog then i can link them all the fics ive collected so far! 🥰

Shape-shifter AU Comp

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2. I was wondering if yall wouldn't mind reccing any favorite Chengxian canon Era fics? @dragonfairies

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3. Itmf for wangxian post canon where WWX is threatened to sacrifice himself for LWJ. It can be any case fiction with an interesting villain making their life hard. @paraffin22

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4. Hello, thank you for all your wonderful recommendations! Itmf LXC takes care of WWX

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5. Itmf omega WWX presenting for lwj

#2 in this fic finder might have a few you would enjoy

~*~

6. Itmf wangxian survival fics, like wilderness or cold, etc

and from our own/live to ourselves by betweentheheavesofstorm (M, 105k, wangxian, modern, fantasy, reality tv, angst w/ happy ending, survival, blood & gore, self-harm, animal death, slow burn) this might count?

🧡 shoot your shot -- hot or knot by defractum (nyargles) (E, 51k, WangXian, Modern AU, A/B/O Dynamics, Reality Show, Hunger Games Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Extremely Dubious Consent, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Humor, Additional Warnings In Author's Notes) would probably work?

The Edge of Night by Hobbsy3 (M, 277k, WangXian, XuanLi, Modern AU, Zombie Apocalypse, Yúnmèng Siblings Dynamics, Accidental Baby Acquisition During a Zombie Apocalypse, Junior Quartet, (except they’re all babies), Angst with a Happy Ending, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Ensemble Cast, Worst Zombie Fighting Team Ever, Found Family)

In The Dark Right Now by phnelt (T, 10k, wangxian, JC & LWJ, WWX & JC, graphic depictions of injuries, trapped in a cave, Near Death Experience, fatalistic thinking, established wangxian, Family Feels, mention of unnamed illness of an offscreen character, Nobody dies in this fic, Modern Setting, JC and WWX are caved in and LWJ talks to them through the radio, Hurt/Comfort)

~*~

7. itmf (self indulgent) wwx appreciation fic. have a good day.

Simping over WWX is my fave hobby Series by brrrrrRawr (T, 10k, WangXian, WWX's original body, Fluff, Pet Name,s Blushing, No Smut, Genius WWX, yunmeng bros reconciliation, endgame lotus pier, big bro wwx rights, also dad wwx rights, BAMF WWX, Bad Writing, Body Dysphoria So OOC, world building, cliff diving, corpse wrestling, OOC, Canon Divergence, god WWX, god WN, god WQ, child JL, teenager MXY, xuanli get resurrected, rip nmj tho, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, BAMF WWX, BAMF WN, BAMF WQ)

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8. papa-zhan fics please! a-yuan/sizhui calling him dad, a-die, baba, whatever. canon world or modern anything, just some baba lan wangji softness.

🧡 Yiling Salon: Hair, Nails and Piercing by TriviasFolly (T, 22k, WangXian, Modern AU, hairstylist AU, WWX owns a salon, Hairstylist WWX, 5+1 Things, Fluff, Experimental Style)

🧡 paint smears on sunny days by SnowshadowAO3 (E, 53k, WangXian, Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Everyone Is Alive, Modern AU, Dadji, Mutual Pining, Happy Ending, Brief Alcohol Mention, Masturbation, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Accidentally co-parenting with your son's art teacher, Fatherhood)

When You Wake, 怎能当梦一场 by acertainrogue (T, 39k, WangXian, WWX is in a coma, Angst with a Happy Ending, Modern AU, Single Dad LWJ, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Parenthood, YZY's A+ Parenting, JFM's A+ parenting, wangxian family) mind the tags pls

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9. hello! it is me that animal-whisperer lwj fic anon! thank you for recommending that, it was such a good read..

would it be fine to ask more of that kind? i cannot seem to get enough of that trope.

🧡 A Study in Fluff by WeaverOfTheNight (T, 29k, WangXian, Modern AU, Ghost bunnies, Vet LWJ, Architect WWX, Kid LSZ, Domestic fluff, Modern with Magic)

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10. This is more of a recommendation ask, does anyone know of any good canon compliant post last chapter fics? basically just more of lwj and wwx and the juniors etc just living their lives like the iron hook extra in the novels? Basically just any very canon post story stories people made i can’t get over the last chapter it was so cute with the lotuses and tipped boat help Sorry if that doesn’t really make sense THABK YOU TUMBLR!!!!!! @kaleajakic

🔒do not go gentle by RoseThorne (G, 684, WN & WQ, WN & WWX, LSZ & WQ, Canonical Character Death, Spirits, Ghosts, LWJ Plays Inquiry, Song: Inquiry, Protectiveness, Grief/Mourning, Love, Acceptance, Family, Angst, Post-Canon, POV Third Person, POV WN)

A More Practical Approach by Elhana (T,9k, WangXian, Canon Compliant Teacher WWX, Humour, POV Multiple, Implied Sexual Content, WWX is resourceful, wuxia magic shenanigans, Based on a Tumblr Post, Post-Canon)

It takes courage to pet a dog. by nenufares (T, 10k, WangXian, Post-Canon, a bit of canon-typical violence, past animal abandonment, Dogs, Fluff and Humor, Mild Hurt/Comfort) I'm not sure if they really count but they are post canon and I enjoyed reading them!

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11. itmf fic where wwx is cultivating the ghostly path like in the novel. i'd like recs for a cultivation that's more a compassion/empathy-based collaboration that results in the liberation of the resentful dead not an antihero necromancer forcing the dead to do his will for the greater good. thanks ❤️🩵

🔒 the thread may stretch or tangle but it will never break by RoseThorne (E, 91k, WIP, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Soulmates, Self-Esteem Issues, Fix-It, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, PTSD, Handfasting, Panic Attacks, Getting Together, First Time, Aftercare, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, /Referenced Torture, Scars, Chronic Pain, Golden Core Reveal, First Time, Switching, sex-related injury, LWJ Stays at the Burial Mounds, LSZ is a Wèi, Good Sibling JC, Dissociation, Burial Mounds Settlement Days)

A Life Without Regrets by naqaashi (M, 74k, wangxian, JFM & WWX, JC & WWX, WRH & WWX, LXC & LWJ, LQR & LWJ, LWJ & NHS, Canon Divergence, Time Travel Fix-It, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Crack Treated Seriously, musical cultivation, Slow Burn, Pining, Rogue Cultivator WWX, Murder Husbands, PTSD, BAMF WWX, Demonic Cultivation, POV WWX, Cultivation Sect Politics, Worldbuilding, No Yīn Iron, Genius WWX, Inventor WWX, Artist WWX, Musician WWX, Night Hunts, Fate & Destiny, Bad Parent JFM & YZY, Golden Core, Cultivation Theory, Sentient Burial Mounds, Father-Son Relationship, Dysfunctional Family, Grief/Mourning, Parent-Child Relationship, Angry WWX, Pining WWX, WWX is Not Okay, No Golden Core Transfer, BAMF LWJ, Pining LWJ, POV LWJ, Angry LWJ, One-Braincell Wangxian, Love Confessions, Idiots in Love, WIP)

Ad Oblivione by Baph, HikariNoHimeWriter (M, 70k, WangXian, Time Travel Fix-It, Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, POV Multiple, Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Identity Reveal, Golden Core Reveal, Cultivation World Critical, Not JC Friendly, Abusive YZY, Angst with a Happy Ending)  

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12. Hi! I was just wondering if you have any good, longer fluff pieces. They can have plot, but in general everyone is happy and no one gets hurt (unless it’s jgs). I know canon makes it a bit more difficult, but if you have any recs, that would be great! I’m just looking for fluff, humor, and plot

Thank you!

how to fall in love with a catfish: a guide by wei wuxian (disaster rat) by bwyn, Yuisaki (T, 54k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, Actors, Multimedia, Online Friendship, Drunken Shenanigans, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Underage Drinking, Drinking Games, Families of Choice, Ensemble Cast, Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn, Catfish AU) there's a bit of angst here

Meet Me Friday At Seven by craftyTrickster (luoxiaobai) (E, 128k, wangxian, modern, Fluff, Meet-Cute, Friends to Lovers, Blind Date, lots of texting, almost a chat fic, WC and WLJ aren’t evil but they are annoying, Kissing, Masturbation, Anal Sex, romantic sex, Bi WWX, bi nhs, Single Parent WWX, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator) just pure fluff

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13. Hi! I am looking for canon-divergent fics where people think WWX dies but he actually doesn’t? I then want a big reveal when people realize he is still alive/never actually died. Thank you so much!

ahhh I just sent in an itmf ask about WWX dying but not really? I meant to specify that I want him to be "dead" for a long period of time, not just a brief gimmick. Long enough that people mourn him or move on, and then he comes back years later like in canon. Thanks, and sorry for not putting this in the first ask!

🔒Brotherhood by LtLJ (G, 10k, JC & WWX, CQL canon, Canon Divergence, Yunmeng Brothers Reconciliation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, BAMF WWX, BAMF JC, breaks from canon during the time skip, YLLZ WWX)

WWX and JYL run away by shanastoryteller (WangXian, XuanLi, JYL and JZX lives, JYL and WWX raise JL and LSZ, Fake Character Death)

Something From Nothing by sami (E, 55k, WangXian, XianLi, Minor QingLi, XiCheng, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Character Resurrection, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Assassin's Creed Fusion, Kinda, Assassin's Creed Vibes, Wangxian is endgame, Slow Burn, specifically for wangxian, no infidelity, no partner betrayal, Angst with a Happy Ending) This has canon divergence and wwx being dead long enough for people to move on plus hey he's alive reveal but not exactly the way requester described

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14. hii! I'm sorry to bother you! i was hoping you could rec me some dark lwj, or dark gusu lan fics? them being more manipulative or possessive? thank you so much in advance<3

A Matter of Time by mrcformoso (M, 40k, wangxian, time travel fix-it, graphic depictions of violence, underage, LWJ pov, JC pov, dark LWJ, manipulation, grooming, teen body adult mind for LWJ, happy ending for wangxian, problematic consensual underage sex, blood & violence, insane LWJ, manic LWJ)

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15. hello!!! hehe would just like to ask if you have any fics where lsz is referenced as the lan heir? thank you! 💕

anyway, here's wuji by kakikaeru (T, 18k, ZhuiYi, WangXian, LingZhen, Post-Canon)

❤️ A Civil Combpaign by Ariaste (M, 12k, zhuiling, wangxian, arranged marriage, combs, courting, awkward teenagers, teenage drama, humor, feelings, fluff)

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16. Heyy ! I am in the mood for your favourite nightmares fic (Wangxian if possible). Thxx ! @sebyyw

#FreePalestine | hold me close by gentil-minou (Flyingsuits) (E, 13k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Porn with Feelings, Emotional Sex, Grief, Mental Health Issues, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, tender husbands being tender, Character Study, Masturbation, Oral Sex ,Anal Sex, Working Through Grief With Sex, Grieving Your Husband While Fucking Him, Depressed LWJ) I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but lwj has a nightmare in one scene in my fic here

hunters seeking solid ground by Attila (E, 23k, wangxian, Canon Compliant, discussion of canon character death, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, bed sharing, Getting Together, Yearning, Literal Sleeping Together, Really Excessive Amounts of Hurt/Comfort)

Feathers On My Breath by Sweetlittlevampire (T, 3k, wangxian, Cloud Recesses Study Arc, Teen Crush, Pre-Relationship, Panic Attacks, LWJ Has A Panic Attack, Nightmare, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Past Character Death, Mentions of Dying Linked To The Panic Attack, Sharing a Bed)

a needle, a whisper, an insidious dream by pale_and_tragic (M, 19k, wangxian, WWX & WQ & LWJ, post-canon, fix-it of sorts, case fic, horror elements, nightmares, hallucinations, pining, hurt LWJ, aroace WQ, platonic relationships, suicidal thoughts, angst w/ happy ending, hurt/comfort, sleeping beauty)

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17. Me again, back to pester you all w/ an ITMF ask! Thank you so much for all you do! I have read (and re-read) An Elegant Solution and also Things to Do with a Flute During Wartime, and they have put me in the mood for NMJ-centric stories where he is a fully robust, complex, interesting character. Any ship is okay, and modern AUs welcome, but pref. no MCD. &lt;;3 @kimboo-york

🔒 Audience of One by WinterDreams (T, 181k, XiCheng, WangXian, XuanLi, mentioned SongXiao, implied MingYao, Modern AU, Celebrities, Inspired by 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Singer LXC, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Swearing, Slow Burn, Family Feels, Family Bonding, childhood crushes, past emotional abuse, Post-Betrayal, Venerated Triad Feels, Yunmeng Duo Feels, Nightmares, Fluff and Angst, hand holding, Babysitter Ā-Qìng, Domestic Fluff, Soft XiCheng, Eventual Happy Ending)

🔒 shades of grey spill from my veins (bleeding ink all over the page) by Reverie (cl410) (M, 58k, LXC/NMJ, wangxian, NHS/WN, POV NMJ, Canon Divergence, WWX raised by the Nie Sec, Mentions of WWX's life on the streets, Hurt/Comfort, Accidental Sibling Acquisition, Single Dad NMJ, NHS & WWX Friendship, Fluff, Humor, Happy Ending, Everyone Lives AU, Protective NMJ, a plot showed up, Sunshot Campaign, Some angst, Blood and Injury, Kidnapping, Protective Siblings, Found Family) more canon

found in translation by sysrae (E, 12k, LXC/NMJ, wangxian, Modern Cultivation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, my extremely justified hatred of LQR, Meddling brothers, Coming Out, Loss of Virginity, Under-negotiated Kink, slight breathplay, Light Dom/sub, Aftercare, Angst with a Happy Ending) a modern AU

~*~

If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack, whatever - it’s all good!***

[wangxianficrecs]

💙 Away from Trouble by Ilona22

💙 Away from Trouble

by Ilona22

M, 15k, Wangxian

Summary: An overheard conversation changes the way Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian part before he ascends Baoshan Sangren's mountain. From that point onwards, things go differently. Kay's comments: The story that made me fall in love with Ilona22 as a writer! I was immediately gone, the story was just too much to my liking. I'm just so weak for stories where Wei Wuxian thrives outside of the cultvation sects. Here, he leaves after the Golden Core transfer, because Jiang Cheng told him to get lost. Luckily, he soon finds his footing again without a trip to the Burial Mounds, since he didn't wait around for Jiang Cheng. Thanks to Wen Qing, he even has the hope to cultivate a new golden core, but for now, he finds a new profession, as a travelling painter. Meanwhile, Lan Wangji pines. I loved how the canon divergence played out in this story and just the found family vibes of it all. Excerpt: The during their conversation, they had all introduced themselves, too. The monk was Lu Lei, the other man was Lu Zhao. The later was an artist and calligrapher of some renown, Wei Ying had admired one of his paintings on Jiang-Zongzhu’s wall in his study. Lu Lei was the abbot of his monastery. The two of them new each other for a long time, and Lu Zhao had painted for the other on several occasions. Though he was more known for his paintings of plants and scenery. Lu Lei was highly skilled in the healing arts. And unwilling to let his patient escape, especially as he had saved both of them. As Wei Ying had guessed, neither was even slightly skilled at fighting. And so, Wei Ying agreed to travel with them. It turned out to be a good decision. Over the next two weeks, he rested and recovered, spending a lot of time talking with the two men. It were long conversations, often about heavy topics, as Wei Ying finally had the time to grieve the friends he had lost during the fall of Lotus Pier, and to adjust to the changes his life had gone through in such a short time. But they also had a lot of fun discussing art styles and philosophy. Lu Lei and him had several long talks about cultivation, and it was fascinating to learn more about the non-martial styles practiced by monks. Lu Lei was interested in his thoughts about talismans. The first time someone was so willing to talk about the branch of cultivation Wei Ying had always quietly hoped to be able to eventually gain his mastery in. In Lotus Pier, that would have been difficult. But now, he had realized during those conversations, there was no reason not to pursue that path. And so, slowly, he had come to look forward to this new chapter in his life.

pov alternating, canon divergence, wei wuxian leaves the yunmeng jiang sect, wen remants live, wen remants deserve better, families of choice, artist wei wuxian, rogue cultivator wei wuxian, golden core transfer fix-it, lan wangji/wei wuxian get a happy ending, mutual pining, developing relationship, not jiang cheng friendly, genius wei wuxian, inventor wei wuxian, sunshot campaign, love confessions

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

[bluesdesk]

Hello and sorry again for being late! Here's round 11, with only 6 games left! We can say these are for sure the best Zelda games, they're all almost equally good and the choice depends on personal likings, for example Wind Waker vs Twilight princess for colors and art style! Or Breath of the Wild vs Skyward Sword for fighting style and story! Though Ghirahim is the best villain ever. Fight me.

As for Minish Cap, I'm so glad it reached this poit. I loved it. As I said, maybe not as much as albw but the art style is really gorgeous! And we have one of the few games in which Link and Zelda are childhood friends and close! It gets better in the italian translation because they're not only friends but also related, Smith there is both the uncle of Link and Zelda! Of course worldwide Smith is known as Link's grandpa so maybe he's Zelda's great-uncle!

Back to the poll, remember to vote the game you think is the worst out of these in the list! Please don't vote a game if you don't know it! Knowing means having played the game (even not completed), watched a gameplay, read the wiki! Having read the manga is ok too, I can't think of any other things rn but I hope you got what I mean :D

Reblogs are appreciated, since for obvious reasons I won't tag this as Linked Universe, but the majority of my interactions come from that fandom!

<< Previous round

Rankings under the cut!

The CDIs

Triforce Heroes

Zelda 2

Hyrule Warriors / Legends / Definitive

Cadence of Hyrule

Zelda 1

Four Swords Adventures

Four Swords

Oracle of Seasons/Ages

Age of Calamity

Phantom Hourglass

Link's awakening/LANS

Spirit Tracks

Tears of the Kingdom

A link to the Past

A link between worlds

The Minish Cap

[korpikorppi]

Some impressions of the Yunmeng Jiang fighting style (and some of the others, too)

This comment by @mylittleponygrrl

My one wish (regret) about the series is that we never got to see the Yunmeng Jiang fighting forms. What a wasted opportunity that we never got to see Wei Wuxian, their first disciple, actually sword fight 🥺

on this post about my favourite LWJ sword technique got me thinking. While I agree that There Should Have Been More!, we actually do see Wei Wuxian sword fight and we do also see the Yunmeng Jiang fighting style 🙂. Let's see...

We do, of course, have The Moonlight Duel™️. Wei Wuxian does not, as we know, draw Suibian, but he uses the sword in it's scabbard to parry Lan Wangji's attacks, using defence techniques we can safely assume to be part of the Yunmeng Jiang fighting style. And he fights Lan Wangji to a standstill, so they appear to be quite effective.

The occasion where we see the best glimpses of Wei Wuxian fighting with a sword (even if the sword is not, unfortunately, Suibian) is the fight against the Wen in the cave of the Xuanwu, which is actually a really nice show of the various fighting styles. It is (also unfortunately) almost impossible to get good screencaps of him: he is a flurry of motion, twirling in tight circles (rather similar to the moves he uses when casting his talismans, come to think of it, so that is perhaps something typical for him), performing fast parries and strikes with relatively small movements, skillfully wreaking havoc as he goes.

In this fight, Wei Wuxian also performs a neck slice, basically the same technique as my LWJ favourite (caps here), but the execution is more straight forward with him moving in after a nice little parry, keeping his body straight, barely leaning in, before pulling the blade back.

Moving on... Wei Wuxian actually wields Suibian during the fight on the Jinlintai stairs! Even if he has not been using a sword for a long time, even if he no longer has his golden core nor a reservoir of spiritual energy, he's doing... quite ok, relying at this point (I imagine) on his reflexes and muscle memory from his years of training.

And of course, regarding the Yunmeng Jiang fighting style, we must not forget Jiang Cheng. As the Young Master of the Jiang Clan he's sure to have received as thorough and rigorous a training in the Yunmeng Jiang sword techniques as Wei Wuxian, and we see him fighting both in the Xuanwu cave...

...and during the Sunshot Campaign.

Based on how the Yunmeng Shuangjie fight, I get an impression that where the Lan (or at least the Twin Jades) like to keep their enemies at a distance to employ their large, graceful sweeps and swirls, the Yunmeng Jiang seem to go by the principle of "keep your friends close and your enemies closer", also in practise.

Both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng perform their parries relatively close to their bodies (as can be seen in some of the images above), keeping their movements precise, fast and economical. And even when thrusting and striking out, they do not seem to reach very far or lean in but keep their bodies straight and their weapons closer to their bodies than the Lan, who always seem to go for range, to bend and stretch (check out the contrast between Jiang Cheng above and Lan Wangji below). I also have a feeling that compared to the Lan, more emphasis is placed on defensive techniques in the Jiang style, which would make sense considering the above-mentioned difference in their "range of engagement".

Also, the Yunmeng Jiang characteristic of fighting at a relatively close range allows Wei Wuxian to more easily adapt his sword style to fighting with Chenqing when he uses his flute (much shorter than a jian) as a melee weapon. Quite handy.

To end this, I also have to mention that I absolutely love the way Jin Zixuan fights! If the Lan favour engaging at a long range and the Jiang at a relatively short range, Jin Zixuan seems to settle somewhere in between. His techniques are not as graceful as those of the Lan nor as fast as those of the Jiang, but they are very powerful and well grounded. And while all of the young masters are quite adept at unarmed combat (look at the fight in the Xuanwu cave!), Jin Zixuan strikes me as being the most comfortable with it. So are those things representative of the Jin fighting style? Probably, but it is pretty much impossibe to say to what extent, because we do not see anyone else really use it (and Jin Ling for sure had not been taught proper unarmed combat).

And oh, talking about the fight in the Xuanwu cave! It is also interesting to see Lan Wangji fight the Wen: his injured leg prevents him from moving much so he needs to adapt his preferred fighting style. Pretty cool!

And the Nie style? Beats me. There are sure to be clear differences compared to the rest of the great sects, stemming from the difference in their weapon to begin with, but the only Nie representative we really see fighting is Nie Mingjue. And I strongly suspect no one else fights like Nie Mingjue.

[drama--universe]

Learning cultures

Requested by anonymous: Hello! How are you? Your writing is divine, just...wow, speechless! Can I request a oneshot for LXC? The reader is a cultivator from a completely different country, she has different customs, different fighting style, different weapons, different magic... she traveled all the clans, Nie, Jiang, Jin and even Lan, in every clan everyone liked her even though she had different customs, she was kind and accommodating to everyone, forming strong friendships with JGY and NHS. Then she runs into LXC during one of the walks, literally slamming into him when she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. Of course, LXC didn't get mad, he made sure the reader was okay and went on his way. JGY sees all this and then teases the reader when he saw her blush😂 NHS then becomes something of a messenger as he passes letters from LXC and the reader to the other one 😂I don't know, somehow the request came to me, I hope it's cool, I don't ask for requests too much😄 take care and thank you!👋

Pairing: Lan Xichen x fem!foreigner!reader

Word Count: 2.9k words

You never really expected to find another country, you honestly just wanted to leave your home for awhile. You had set sail on the shores of your home country and now you found yourself on the shore of another. Your boat was wrecked and you went under, only to wash ashore later on while trying to not inhale the salty water. The sun shine down from it's spot up in the sky, making the sand beneath your hands burning hot and the air around you dry. You could practically feel the taunt from the sun as it challenged you, but you could care less. Your weapons felt heavy, the spear on you back was pulling you down back into the water due to it's weight and the twin daggers didn't help you out much either. Your bag was floating somewhere in the water and you didn't even want to think about where all your food went, probably already taken by the sea like your ship.

But even while nearly drowning, you were painfully aware of the eyes on you. Two curious eyes that made you wonder why they were not even in view.

Then you spotted it, a child staring straight at you with big eyes full of curiosity, almost sparkling as they spotted you. The kid wasn't tall, slightly on the thinner side if you'd compare with the children from your country, and you guessed that he'd been an early teenager. He was hidden behind a tree, eyes barely visible as he tried his best to stay hidden. The man behind him, you assumed it was an adult anyway, didn't share that thought as he casually strolled forward out of the woods. He seemed surprised by you and you were just as surprised, he looked quite different from you or anyone you had ever seen before today. He was a bit paler than you, silky black hair and thinner slanted eyes. The grey robes he wore were also unique looking to you, looking nothing like your clothes in the slightest. He spoke, the language unfamiliar to you and not even sounding like anything at first. You held up your hand for him to pause, getting up before focusing your energy to him. He spoke again and this time you understood him fine, thanks to some quick spell.

"Are you alright?" He repeated his question again as he held out one of his hands, which you quickly took with a thanks as you focused your spell to make him understand your words.

"Fine, fine... Could be worse." "Worse than drowning?" He asked and you opened your mouth to retort his statement, but closed your mouth again when you realized he was right. Not much worse than almost dying...

"May I ask who you are?" "Right! The name's (Y/n), pleasure to meet you!" You smiled brightly as you held out your hand to shake, surprised as he just bowed his head while revealing himself to be Meng Yao. The boy from behind the trees had also decided to join you, standing behind Meng Yao while sending you a bright and yet shy smile and introducing himself as Nie Huaisang. The conversation quickly moved on to your place of origin and how toy actually got here, which was then followed by Huaisang offering you a place to stay. You could hardly ignore the kid or his request, so you agreed.

Thus you found yourself on the grounds of the Qinghe Nie clan, meeting Nie Mingjue and being absolutely terrified of the man as he reluctantly agreed to let you stay thanks to Huaisang's pleading look. He reminded you much of your little brother, a cute boy who knew how to get what he wants. Although difficult, you tried to adapt as much as possible to their culture. Huaisang was quick to guide you through everything, starting with giving you a hanfu to wear. It was beautiful, a soft material used instead of the rough fabrics that you were more used to, and details were so difficult to catch that you could spend hours just looking. Then he and Meng Yao taught you some of their customs before explaining that every clan had different ones. It took you a couple of weeks to get the basics of the Nie clan before you set off to the next.

First the Lanling Jin clan, where some disciplines were kind enough to tell you a bit before you set of again thanks to the arrogant teenager(s) that kept mocking you. The second clan you went to was the Yunmeng Jiang clan, where you were taught by the daughter of the head of the clan. Jiang Yanli was the sweetest, never getting annoyed or angry as she taught you everything you needed or wanted to know. Wuxian, her adoptive brother, was even more excited to teach you things (pranks mostly) and he was always present when Yanli taught you. You only saw Jiang Cheng a few times, but you could tell that he was a nice person as well, just not visibly showing it to others. You stayed with them for 3 months, then you moved again to the final clan.

Gusu Lan, one know for it's strictness and their many rules to follow. You didn't really know what to expect from them, so having the kids from Yunmeng and from Qinghe join you for a sort of school was kind of exciting. You were just glad that you were allowed to join them, Meng Yao had sent you a letter saying that he got permission to take you as a Nie representative.

You actually enjoyed the trip up the mountain, unlike the others, as the view as astounding to see and the fresh air instantly woke you up from your drowsiness. Once past the gate, you could only marvel at the structures that were build in between the mountain. Of course you loved all the other clan buildings, but this one had a massive library that you just couldn't ignore. You just wanted to find out what kind of information the books in there had, what kind of knowledge you could possible gain you. Then you were inside, greeted by a man that you could only stare at. All the previous people you had met were attractive, both men and women, but this man was different. Maybe it was because of the confidence that he had or maybe just something else, but he looked dazzling. You almost thought you reached the heavens, the white and blue robes didn't make that thought any better. You also noticed the ribbon weaved through his hair to rest on his forehead, a cloud symbol laying between his eyebrows. It looked intricate and you wondered if you could take a closer look at it in some period of time later on.

You joined Yanli and some other girls to a dorm, settling in quickly after a short introduction. The robes on your bed were soft, feeling almost as soft as the clouds that were painted on the bottom of the robe and you were almost afraid of how quickly you would dirty the white and light blue colors.

A woman entered not much later after you got dresses, her robes a darker blue than you had seen others wear, and she asked everyone to follow her before pausing on you. You expected a mocking comment or something along those lines, the girls from Lanling hadn't been to quiet with their insults, but she just walked closer to you and pulled your belt up a bit before pulling your robes a bit down to make it lay flatter than it had before. You thanked her, bowing your head before following her out like everyone else. You entered a lecture hall, the men were all present already and you quickly joined Huaisang and Meng Yao before looking around. Two men entered, one an elder man that you assumed was the head of the clan when you saw his clothes and the other was the angelic man from the front gate. He was smiling slightly this time, mostly aimed at a younger boy in the front that looked very similar to him. The elder man spoke first, but you hadn't expected him to start rules. At first, you were carefully listening to his words but that changed around the 30th rule or so.

"How many more do we have to listen to?" "There are 3,000 rules in total, all of them are equally important. I do admit their wording could be shorter." You flinched as someone actually answered your question, turning your head slightly to see the angelic man. After blinking a few times, you nodded to acknowledge his words before turning to face the front again. Huaisang, who had heard of the number of rules, was already laying face down on the table and you couldn't help but do the same. It was only at the 580th rule that you shut off your brain, letting go of the translation spell that made you understand the elder and instead trying to push back your growing headache. It was like someone was pushing your head together at the temples, knives pushing into your skull and turning around once inside. It was painful, so much so that you just wanted to lay down and sleep right in this room. You couldn't, obviously, but you opted to just close your eyes instead in hopes that it would lessen slightly by doing so. So you closed your eyes, hoping that you would be left alone as the elder still listed the rules, you assumed he was anyway.

When you opened your eyes again, because of course you had fallen asleep, everyone else was getting ready to leave. You just followed, you didn't want to stay longer at the moment. Your headache, although lessened, was still killing you and you had some medicine in your bag that could help. You didn't wait for anyone, you just want to the dorm and shoved the medicine down with some water. Then you laid down to sleep, quickly moving on to the dream world.

Although it was early in the morning, you were wide awake and bringing with energy. You were the only person, beside the Lan disciplines, that seemed happy to be out for a walk. You didn't know why Huaisang looked so glum, the sights were beautiful and the cold breeze could easily wake up anyone from their slumber. Nonetheless, you talked him through the walk as you walked, a happy skip in your step and a big smile on your face. Your eyes weren't really focused on the road ahead of you, they remained on Huaisang during your conversation. Unfortunately, that also meant that you didn't see that everyone else had stopped. The result? You were abruptly stopped when you slammed into someone's chest, stumbling backwards until the person caught you. You looked up and we're surprised to see Lan Xichen before you, giving you a smile like you hadn't just bumped him.

"Are you alright?" He let go of your waist and you straightened your robes out before nodding at him, trying to ignore the way that your heart skipped a beat and how your face heated up.

"Please be mindful of your surroundings." He said before turning around and walking away, leaving you standing in the same spot with a look of surprise. Yet you couldn't help but smile a bit.

"You're so in love with him." Meng Yao speaks loud enough for anyone to hear as he passes by you, smirking at you before speeding up a bit as you kicked your leg at him. This action earned a disapproving look from Lan Qiren while Xichen just chuckled softly, which made your face heat up even more. Luckily, the rest of the walk was without you slamming into someone else again. However, you also noticed that Xichen lingered near you as you walked, almost like he was ready to catch you if you tripped again or something along those lines. Not that he made that clear, he just walked beside you at a decent distance, which only made Meng Yao raise his eyebrows at you suggestively once more. You ignored him without hesitation, instead focusing on the road and those interesting pebbles on the ground.

You didn't know how you ended up in this situation, sitting across Xichen while drinking tea and talking. But you also didn't really care about how you got here, you were too busy trying to keep your face neutral enough and not to just smile like an idiot. Xichen was explaining some stuff about the clan, the reasons for their colors and how their rules came into place, but you could only stare at him. More specifically at the cloud symbol on his forehead, which he hadn't noticed and if he had, he was kind enough to not point it out.

"Why do you wear that?" You blurted out in the middle of his sentence, realizing how rude this probably was and quickly apologizing after. Xichen paid no mind to this and kindly started to explain instead.

"It is a metaphor, it shows that we restrain ourselves." The explanation was simple, you were sure that he oversimplified the actual meaning, and Xichen was also quick to add that it wasn't something that just anyone could touch.

"Only close family members are allowed to touch the headbands. When we marry, our wife and future kids are also allowed." Xichen says and you felt a wave of disappointment wash over you, unsure of the reason for those feelings. The conversation moved on to other subjects, but somehow the thought of marrying Xichen had entered your mind and it wouldn't leave. You could only try to hide the slight blush on your face until you could excuse yourself to go to your class.

You never went to that class. and the thoughts of marrying Xichen turned into hopeful dreams that revealed your true feelings of the man.

The first letter you sent to Xichen was after your leave of the Gusu Lan clan. You added it to your letter to Huaisang, the paper folded neatly with Xichen's name on it. Xichen answered not much later, his response folded into the letter that Huaisang send you back. You didn't miss Huaisang's teasing in his own letter, you had no doubt that the boy had peaked into your letter. However, you first focused on Xichen's letter, because the man had called you his dear friend and you took a few minutes to just process that.

A dear friend was a start, maybe someday it say dear lover.

The second conversation was started by Xichen, asking you where you were traveling this time. You answered him, sticking in a small note of thanks to Huaisang that he helped you deliver the letters to Xichen. You received no you're welcome back, but you did get another letter. One that only made your heart ache as Xichen spoke of marriage, but he was to be clan leader after all and neither of you were still really young. But still with all that, you wished that he would chose you and not some clan's daughter that was chosen for him. Luckily, he didn't seem to mention his future marriage in any way, so you didn't see need to worry yet. Even though you were glad, you couldn't help yourself from asking if he had plans to marry. The letter was sent before you could actually control your actions, embarrassment entering much later and when it was too late to get the letter back.

You waited for two weeks for any kind of response from Xichen, but you got a very good response. You got Xichen in front of you, his angelic smile aimed to you and a letter in his hand. You took it with confusion, reading it's contents carefully.

Right at the bottom, written in the neatest letters stood a sentence that made your heart stop.

'I hope that we might marry someday.'

You were ready to faint at this point, not being able to control your magic as you made the letter go up in flames thanks to the sparks from your fingers. You only stared at the ashes before apologizing to Xichen, but he was just smiling at you like it was nothing. Then again, you had explained your powers to him or at least to some extent.

"I presume that to be a yes?" He asked and you nodded slowly, not really knowing what you were supposed to say to his proposal. You'd figure it out later, however, because you just wanted to hug him right now. So you did, embracing him and toying with the back of his belt as he threw his arms around your shoulders.

"How'd you know?" You dare to ask him, looking up to him with curious eyes as you awaited his answer.

"You often think out loud." Cue your face heating up as you hid your face in his chest, only making the man chuckle softly while parting your head.

You received one more letter later on from Huaisang, asking if the proposal went well. You burned that one as well.

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 28

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

———————————————————————-

Wen Ruohan had long since passed the point of ever admitting that he was afraid.

His vanity would simply not permit it. After all, he was Wen Ruohan, the sect leader of the mighty Qishan Wen, the near-god, the would-be tyrannical ruler of the cultivation world. He had outstripped all others, his cultivation perfected far beyond what any of the rest could achieve. Perhaps it might have once been acceptable to be afraid when he was younger, when he was just one among many jockeying for position and leadership, but once he’d passed his first lifetime, he’d left such petty human things as fear far behind. Such feelings were as far beneath him as ants to a giant.

He would, however, admit to having some…concern regarding the upcoming battle with Qingheng-jun.

Other people might be able to comfort themselves with the presence of an army at their command, thinking to themselves that they would be able to simply overcome their enemy through force of numbers, but Wen Ruohan did not permit himself any such illusions. Qingheng-jun might be insane, Wen Ruohan had no doubt about that, but he was still immensely clever: he would not let himself be caught out in a bad position like that, taken by surprise.

He’d find a way to force a one-on-one fight.

And given Wen Ruohan’s current condition, it would be a fair fight, the likes of which Wen Ruohan hadn’t known in decades.

Qingheng-jun was after all an accomplished cultivator, talented and promising, and unlike the majority of such cultivators, who got weighed down with the worldly concerns of night-hunting and sect business and married life, he had spent ten solid years in seclusion focusing on nothing but growing his power and refining his techniques. He was much younger and less experienced than Wen Ruohan, to be sure, with much less time to have built up his power and knowledge –  but Wen Ruohan, for all his own immense innate talent, was one of those cultivators that devoted much of his time to worldly affairs. He had always cared very much about making sure his sect took its rightful position as first in the world, and furthermore he had used up too much of his spiritual energy fighting the landslide; although the level of his internal strength had not been damaged, it would be months before he recovered enough qi to make proper use of much of it.

The prospect of such a duel would have been different if Wen Ruohan was still at the height of his own power, capable of miracles. If that were the case, even Qingheng-jun with his ten years of unbroken seclusion would pose no real threat to him. But as it was, there was every chance, in his weakened state, that the two of them would balance out in terms of strength. Nor did Wen Ruohan have any advantage in terms of temperament: they were both ruthless, both cruel, even vicious, meaning that false appeals to morality would be insufficient to distract Qingheng-jun long enough to win an advantage, the way they might if used against others.

A fair fight indeed.

Wisdom and experience against youth and promising talent – that was always a tricky match-up. Only fate could say who would come out ahead in the end.

This particular match-up was also particularly pernicious to Wen Ruohan. As a master of arrays, he relied more on having spiritual energy in his fighting style than most cultivators, since arrays and talismans both required ample spiritual energy to use effectively. In contrast, Qingheng-jun was a cultivator that specialized in the sword; while swordplay benefited from the use of spiritual energy, it was in the end a sword – failing everything else, it could always be used simply to stab one’s opponent.

Wen Ruohan could use a sword, of course. What cultivator couldn’t? But it wasn’t his preference, and he was a Wen, innately self-absorbed and self-indulgent – although he didn’t completely neglect his swordplay, he hardly trained in it with the consistency that Lan Qiren did, as reliable as any clock even with his second choice in weapon. On the contrary, Wen Ruohan always played to his strengths: whenever possible, he would much rather use his arrays, relying on his brilliance and his techniques, refined over the years to near perfection, than anything else.

Only this time, he couldn’t.

Wen Ruohan’s most powerful weapon, the black sun, was absolutely out of the question at the moment. It was an immense power, but an equally immense drain, and it fought against him as much as it did the rest of the world that it so thoroughly scorned. If he tried to summon it now, when the question of who would win that battle was murky and unclear, he would only be risking his own doom, and quite possibly that of the entire world. Naturally that was unacceptable – Wen Ruohan might be ruthless and tyrannical, but he wanted to rule the world, not destroy it. Moreover, he was an orthodox cultivator, not some sort of demonic cultivator that fueled their own power upon the deaths of others; carelessness, or even recklessness, with the state of the world would only damage his cultivation and make the bad result he feared even more likely.

Of course, the black sun was far from being his only weapon. He had his usual arrays, and plenty of less usual ones, but even with those, he would need to be measured with their use in a way he’d long since grown unaccustomed to. With limited spiritual energy available, he would have to dole them out sparingly, wisely, and supplement them with his sword – an unfortunate combination that pitted his weakness against Qinhgeng-jun’s strength.

In other words, a match against Qingheng-jun would be like fighting with one hand tied behind his back.

As a result, Wen Ruohan was…appropriately cautious. Not afraid, of course, but wary, vigilant, concerned. Presupposing nothing, not even victory.

He was less concerned now, after last night.

Lan Qiren had been – magnificent.

It was only to be expected, naturally, as no one that Wen Ruohan had chosen to give his heart to would be anything less. And yet, even with that in mind, he could safely say that his expectations, already high, had nevertheless been surpassed in every possible respect. Even Wen Ruohan with all of his many years of experience could definitively say that he had never experienced anything like that before.

It wasn’t just the sex, though that had been excellent as always, or even the unusual intimacy of bedding someone he felt he could genuinely trust and who genuinely trusted him – even if he just focused purely on the practical, the results of their dual cultivation had vastly exceeded anything Wen Ruohan might have anticipated. Lan Qiren had tackled dual cultivation with the same facility with steep learning curves that he’d applied to learning about politics or sex, and as a result, the power they’d been able to generate from it, the power they’d both shared…! Their cultivation techniques were not the most naturally compatible, but they had made it work, and oh, how very well it had worked!

Wen Ruohan was certainly nowhere near to being back to where he had been before he had blown all his spiritual energy on destroying the landslide, but he was confident that Cangse Sanren’s estimate of half a year or more to regain his power had been reduced considerably, and all over the course of a single, highly enjoyable evening. An evening that could be repeated in the future, both before he regained his power and yet again afterwards, finally giving him a chance to see if Lan Qiren’s exceptionally pure golden core would have any sort of effect on increasing his own power beyond the point that he had managed to get by himself…

The simple fact of the matter was that Wen Ruohan loved power, and always had. He had many times been accused of loving it more than anything else, whether wives or children or even sect, and he had to admit, though never aloud, that there might be a grain of truth in that accusation. To have two things he loved together, power and Lan Qiren both…it was as heady an aphrodisiac as he could imagine.

(Also, Lan Qiren’s reaction to finding his own power so substantially increased had been just as funny as Wen Ruohan had been anticipating. He had no regrets about sharing the power equally between them, and nothing would change that, no matter how many complaints of But it was supposed to go to you! or Surely you know I do not have a need for it or even the plaintive But how do I make the glowing stop?! Lan Qiren made.)

Even the song Lan Qiren had written for him had been beyond anything Wen Ruohan had anticipated.

The sound of it had been nothing like anything he was expecting, to the extent he’d expected anything. He’d assumed, he supposed, that the music Lan Qiren wrote with him in mind would be much like his reputation: intense but gloomy, moody and temperamental, unstable and vicious, possibly even somewhat discordant, the lurking insanity slipping its leash and showing its face to the world. Only it had slipped his mind that Lan Qiren, perhaps alone in the world, did not see him that way – and so the song was something else entirely.

It had been intense, to be sure. But it had been striking and grandiose rather than miserable, the music immediately and immensely compelling, extremely complicated in a way that made it impossible to pay attention to anything else, music that thrummed beneath the skin and swept the listener away with its enthusiasm. It was powerful and moving, it filled the ear with joy and sped the pulse with excitement. Listening to it evoked the feeling of being on top of the world – of being the best, of knowing you were the best, of being unrestrained by fear and doubt. Of being free of all the shackles of the world and knowing yourself to be capable of miracles.

It was Wen Ruohan’s beloved Wen sect’s self-esteem – many would say self-love – distilled into its purest form.

But it wasn’t just that. Underneath that exuberance and enthusiasm, the music had a foundation as steady as Lan Qiren’s unshakable principles, turning self-regard into self-assurance, into a bone-deep understanding that in the end you were purely yourself, nothing more nor less, and could be nothing else – and that that was all that you needed to be.

It married irrepressible confidence in the self to implacable surety of the self, and turned them together into power. Into impossible, unstoppable force, which broke down all barriers in its path.

Just like the two of them.

Wen Ruohan had never been the most musically inclined. He’d had a gentleman’s training, of course, and knew both how to appreciate good music and play an instrument if he were called upon to do so. Given his innate brilliance and quick learning capacity, he could even pull off a few tricks of musical cultivation if he really needed to. But it had never been a strength, and with art just as with cultivation, Wen Ruohan always played to his strengths. As a result, music had never been more to him than an enjoyable pastime at best. It had never made its way into his heart, never seized hold of it, the way it seemed to do for musicians.

He’d assumed it never would.

Well: he was wrong.

He could admit it, and joyfully, because what he’d gotten in return was so much better than being right.

Ah, Lan Qiren – Lan Qiren – Lan Qiren, who loved him, who trusted him, who saw him and saw everything he liked about himself, and who in return asked only to be treated with equal regard, to be loved as he loved, as if Wen Ruohan would ever have been able to do anything less –

“Someone’s in a good mood.”

For once, Wen Ruohan did not startle or lash out in paranoiac terror in response to someone having snuck up on him without him noticing – but only due to years of experience at being snuck up on by this particular person.

“And I suppose you, Lao Nie, are here to be irritating,” he remarked, much as he always did, turning his head slowly to regard his…former lover, he supposed.

There was a sharp stabbing pain in his chest when he looked at Lao Nie now, even though the man had exchanged the stormy expression of the discussion conference in favor of his usual relaxed grin, going back to being carefree and careless the way he always was. There was no sign of the emotional turbulence that had put him in such a bad mood, every indication wiped away and hidden, Lao Nie going back to pretending that nothing was wrong and never had been because that was how he had always dealt with the knowledge of his impending untimely death.

But Wen Ruohan knew the truth. He knew what was coming, and how much sooner than expected it was due, even though Lao Nie hadn’t shared that information with him. It hurt him to know it. Not as much as it hurt Lao Nie, who was the one actually dying, he knew that, but it was still pain nonetheless, and as a narcissist Wen Ruohan admittedly tended to rate his own pain as being more important than others.

Seeing Lao Nie here, now, brought up all sorts of uncomfortable feelings.

Seeing him now, here…

Wen Ruohan abruptly frowned. “Why are you here? Did Cangse Sanren reach you so quickly?”

That seemed temporally implausible, if not completely impossible. Qinghe was far too far away – no one could fly that fast, not even him.

“No, I was on my way to Lanling already,” Lao Nie said cheerfully, which made a great deal more sense. “I bumped into Cangse Sanren while she was on her way out of the city and I was on my way in. Don’t worry, we swapped tokens: she gave me her pass to get through your army and into the city, and I gave her my sect leader’s sigil so that she’ll be able to order everyone back at home to collect those cursed coins in my stead. There’s no problem with your plan.”

It was annoying how reliable Lao Nie could be when he wanted to, Wen Ruohan reflected. That was the deceptively alluring part of him. He just knew Wen Ruohan so well – he could tell at a glance exactly what his concerns were and immediately speak to alleviate them.

He made everything easy.

“I’m here to help you find Qingheng-jun,” Lao Nie continued, his smile fading into seriousness. “If he’s trapped in Lanling City, he’s definitely going to go to ground somewhere difficult to reach with multiple people, try to force you into a one-on-one fight that would be more to his advantage. You and I are the only ones I can think of that would be strong enough to match him like that without getting slaughtered. With me here, we can check the possible places twice as fast.”

Like he’d said: with Lao Nie, everything was easy.

It had always been so easy.Easy, easy, easy – right until it was so difficult as to be impossible.

Like winning Lao Nie’s heart, or his loyalty, or his trust, or becoming anything more than just a casual friend that sometimes shared his bed. And not because of any lack on Wen Ruohan’s own part, any paucity or failure in his own feelings or even actions, but simply because Lao Nie simply lacked the capacity to be more than a friend to anyone.

Except maybe his saber.

Wen Ruohan didn’t even pretend to begin to understand how that worked.

“That’s right,” he said, and picked the easier path of not saying anything just yet. Lan Qiren was the one who always chose the harsher and more virtuous path, not Wen Ruohan. He’d wait until Lan Qiren was back and let him raise the difficult subject with Lao Nie, and then, if he had to, he would step in and forcethe man to let them help. “You are very welcome. Do you want to start on the west side of the city or the east?”

“The north, of course, while you take the south. You’re remarkably accommodating today, Hanhan; normally you’re much more possessive about these things! Here I thought I’d have to fight you first just to get a chance to help. Qiren must have put you in a really good mood.”

Not a good enough mood to deal with this.

“I sent Qiren away to Gusu Lan to deal with the coins, and I want to get this finished before he returns,” Wen Ruohan said shortly, and Lao Nie’s growing smirk disappeared at once, meaning that he understood the implication. Which meant that Wen Ruohan didn’t need to explain, but he did anyway, just to make sure that the message had been fully made clear: “The last time they met, Qingheng-jun decided that the taboo against personally murdering blood relatives was beneath him. He tried to kill Qiren. That will not happen again.”

No mercy this time.

“Understood,” Lao Nie said, solemn and serious as he so rarely was. “Understood and agreed. Don’t worry, Hanhan, you can count on me. The Nie sect’s motto is Do not tolerate evil no matter where, remember? Same thing applies when it’s who.”

Wen Ruohan inclined his head in agreement. If there was one thing that could be said for Lao Nie, it was that he was a consummate member of his sect. No evil meant no evil, no matter where, no matter who – just as he had been willing to turn against Wen Ruohan when he’d thought him beyond the point of saving, so too would he turn himself against Qingheng-jun, who had once been his friend.

His friend, and his source of guilt.

Lao Nie was as ruthless and careless with himself and his own heart as he was with anyone else’s, that much was true. Somehow that fact did not help in the slightest.

“Happy hunting,” Wen Ruohan said, and even meant it. Perhaps abiding by his sect’s principles would help Lao Nie the way abiding by his sect’s rules did Lan Qiren.

As for Wen Ruohan, he didn’t bother with such things. Rules and principles were both equally overrated – he didn’t need anyone else’s guidance, only his own; he would make his way in the world through the path he forged himself, and never doubt it for a moment. He mounted his sword and flew off to the south of Lanling City to begin surveying the possible places Qingheng-jun could be hiding.

The number of places was naturally limited, both by his (and Lao Nie’s) guess that Qingheng-jun would look for a place that would allow him a one-on-one fight and by Wen Ruohan’s own army, currently marching through the city and investigating every nook and cranny for those cursed coins. They had all been instructed to light flares if they saw any sign of Qingheng-jun, or alternatively if any number of their squads were drawn off and killed unexpectedly – that would be the first sign of him, more than likely, unless Wen Ruohan happened to get lucky and find him first.

He would prefer, if at all possible, to get lucky. His soldiers might not mean as much to him as his precious sect disciples, who in turn were not as important as his even more valuable family, but they were still his, and everything that was his was better than everything that wasn’t. Everything good under the sun should belong to him.

Now: where could Qingheng-jun be…?

Wen Ruohan could create a tracking array, look for any sort of bolt-hole where there were restrictions on entry. But who knew how many such places existed in Lanling City? Lanling Jin was full of rats that thought themselves vipers; every sub-branch probably had a secret treasure room and a secret armory and whatnot – and Qingheng-jun wouldn’t go find one of those, anyway.

No, he had too much dignity for that.

Wen Ruohan could understand that. Who wanted to risk losing your life in some stupid pointless little treasure room?

In fact, it occurred to him that he was thinking too small. Why search for him building-by-building like some common person? Let him use that same logic: where would Qingheng-jun be willing to have some sort of climactic final battle?

Qingheng-jun was remarkably similar to Wen Ruohan in many ways. He had a profound sense of his own dignity, enough that others would call it vanity, and he would never be willing to associate his name, whether in victory or defeat, with somewhere tawdry – and Jinlin Tower was full from head to toe of all that was gaudy and tawdry.

Especially to someone with a Gusu Lan sensibility.

After all, like it or not, hate it or not, Qingheng-jun had been born and raised in the Gusu Lan sect. Even when he turned against it, despised it, thought he had abjured it in every respect, he had still been shaped by it. Despite everything, he was unable to wholly give up the mindset it had inculcated in him, the principles it had taught him. If he had, he wouldn’t have been so concerned about seeking to implement a fitting punishment for all those he blamed for his wife’s death, rather than merely getting revenge – and he wouldn’t have been so invested in seeking to reform the sect in his own image, rather than destroying it. To implement new rules over the old, rather than to truly break free of the notion of rules entirely.

Gusu Lan, and Wen Ruohan: those two things together formed a very particular personality, with very particular preferences. So…where would Qingheng-jun go? Where would someone accustomed to the clean, gentle lines of the Cloud Recesses voluntarily choose to hide when trapped in this filthy pit of gold and greed?

Ah, of course.

The gardens.

Wen Ruohan might not the most devoted swordsman, might not be particularly notable as a musician, but he vastly preferred either of those subjects over the discussion of things like flowers – and yet, despite that, he had somehow spent a not-inconsiderable portion of his time over the past hundred years listening to the endless rounds of debate between Lanling Jin and Gusu Lan regarding whether gardens ought to retain their natural wild and austere beauty or be tamed into gorgeous wanton snarls of petals and color pieced together by human ingenuity. His Nightless City had established several gardens of each type just to avoid having that particular debate come up ever again, but the other sects still persisted in defending their preferences.

In a fit of completely characteristic pettiness, the Jin sect leader of several generations back – further back than Wen Ruohan could recall, which was saying something – had set up a single garden in Lanling City that was modeled after Gusu Lan’s preferred style, presumably to make the point that no one would possibly choose such a thing if they had the lush gardens of Jinlin Tower as an alternative option. The people of Lanling City had fulfilled this particular sect leader’s desire, leaving that particular park largely abandoned, although whether the people’s preference was a genuine aesthetic choice or merely the wisdom of not disagreeing with their local overlord had always been an open question.

It had been named, very snidely, the Paired Birds Promenade.

Yes: Wen Ruohan could see Qingheng-jun going there.

It would be just right for someone as self-important and overly dramatic as him.

(It wasn’t hypocrisy to say as much, Wen Ruohan informed the rather rudely goggling Lan Qiren in his mind. He’d never denied his flaws – he merely did not acknowledge them to be flaws when they were his own.)

And because Wen Ruohan was unquestionably brilliant, he found Qingheng-jun exactly where he expected to.

“I find it difficult to say whether it should be called vanity or arrogance,” Qingheng-jun said, almost as if he were continuing the conversation Wen Ruohan had been having in his own mind. He was standing on a lonesome hill towards the eastern end of the gardens, shaded by a scholar tree – he had a particularly heroic bearing at the moment, his pale blue robes and his hair lightly ruffled by the wind as he gazed out into the distance. “Coming here by yourself, I mean.”

“Did I rob you of the chance to show off your talisman work?” Wen Ruohan asked idly, stepping off his sword and onto the ground, feeling the circle of restriction that he’d expected to find snap immediately into effect, keeping anyone from joining them and making it an unbalanced fight. It was a good one, irritatingly enough. As he’d expected, he would find no obvious weaknesses here. “I’m not inclined to waste my soldiers for such a purpose.”

Qingheng-jun turned to regard him, his expression cold and indifferent. His face was oddly dissimilar from Lan Qiren’s, despite the strong resemblance of their features, both classic exemplars of the Lan style – Lan Qiren’s expression was often neutral, often flat, but rarely cold, and never indifferent. He was warm beneath his seemingly remote façade, the heat from his fiery temper and passionate heart always present even when he tried to suppress them. Qingheng-jun, by contrast…

There was nothing there.

“I would have thought that you’d think it a worthwhile trade if it meant wearing me down before we fought,” Qingheng-jun said, his logic pristine and ruthless, cold as any mountain snow. “Soldiers’ lives are meant for spending.”

His lip curled up in a sneer. “Or is it that my younger brother would disapprove of such a maneuver that now restrains you…?”

“Wrong on all counts. As much as I respect Qiren, for once his opinion was irrelevant to my consideration,” Wen Ruohan said, enjoying the way Qingheng-jun’s eyes narrowed at the praise of his brother. “You forget: my soldiers are mine, and are therefore more valuable than anyone who isn’t. Their lives may be for spending – but you think too much of yourself if you think I would bother to spend them on you.”

Qingheng-jun pressed his lips together briefly, but did not lose his temper.

“Tell me,” he said instead, voice slow and thoughtful. “What is it about him?”

Wen Ruohan arched his eyebrows, even as he waved his hand, letting his sword leap into his hand. “You mean Lan Qiren?”

Qingheng-jun inclined his head in agreement.

“You shall have to clarify. What about him?”

“You said that you…respect him.” Qingheng-jun sneered once again, the expression twisting his otherwise handsome face. “The so-great Wen Ruohan – I hadn’t realized that you respected anyone but yourself.”

“Myself and my family,” Wen Ruohan corrected. He’d always been quite clear about his partiality to his own clan. Like any good descendant of Wen Mao, he rated his clan above the rest: the sun in the sky above all had been his ancestor’s motto, proud and arrogant, and Wen Ruohan was only the most successful of his descendants, not necessarily the most ambitious. They were all like that.

“Yourself and your family – and my brother. Apparently.”

“And your brother,” Wen Ruohan said agreeably. “Apparently.”

He chuckled at the aggravation on Qingheng-jun’s face and meandered forward, his pace slow and steady, as if he were merely here to stroll in the park. Even his sword dangled from his hand, lazy and bored – apathy and indolence incarnate, his sloth simultaneously genuine and a deliberate insult to anyone he was facing.

“Does it really bother you so much?” he asked, though he knew it did.

“I merely wish to understand,” Qingheng-jun said. That was a lie, and they both knew it – do not tell lies, but of course Qingheng-jun considered himself above such things. “Only…why him?”

It was a good question.

Good, and also incredibly stupid.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Wen Ruohan admitted freely. “But that’s not how love works. Don’t you know that best of all…?”

He saw from the look on Qingheng-jun’s face that that strike had hit true.

“Or maybe I’m mistaken, perhaps you don’t,” Wen Ruohan concluded, a smirk curving his lips. “After all, from what I understand from Qiren, you couldn’t even live up to the lowest of his expectations for a son of Gusu Lan.”

Qingheng-jun scoffed. He was still pretending that he had the upper hand in their conversation, that he felt secure in his superiority over Wen Ruohan’s temporary weakness – but where his cleverness and ruthlessness might have worked time and again against Lan Qiren, with one very notable exception, it was nothing against Wen Ruohan.

Wen Ruohan knew him.

Not because he’d ever bothered to get to know Qingheng-jun personally. But rather because in Qingheng-jun, Wen Ruohan could see himself, and Wen Ruohan knew himself very well indeed.

“My brother does not set the standards of Gusu Lan,” Qingheng-jun said. “He is not sect leader. I am.”

Now it was Wen Ruohan’s turn to scoff.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked. “A name does not make a thing. Intent is meaningless in the face of action; the only thing that has ever mattered, in any context, is who actually does the work. It’s as true for sect leadership as it is for anything else – a sect leader is the one who leads the sect. A father is the one who molds the children. A husband…”

He laughed.

“Never mind. You wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.”

Qingheng-jun’s expression was ugly. “You mock me!”

“Have you only just now noticed?” Wen Ruohan said, now taunting openly. “And people say Qiren is bad at understanding others…of course I’m mocking you. Should I respect you? You? You, who are only here to die? You, who couldn’t even pull off a simple plan like kill them all properly…?”

Qingheng-jun drew his sword.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t be able to guess at once what you were doing?” Wen Ruohan asked him. “Me? The only difference between the two of us is that you are pathetic.”

“You know nothing about me,” Qingheng-jun said, voice cold as always, and attacked.

Wen Ruohan immediately lifted his own sword to block that first shatteringly powerful blow, feeling the cold of Qingheng-jun’s frost echo through his blade as he did. He brought his other hand up, summoning the array he’d kept dancing at the tips of his fingers and casting it into Qingheng-jun’s face.

As he’d expected, Qingheng-jun was too clever to fall for that – he’d known some sort of attack like that was coming and he countered immediately, casting a handful of talismans out and activating them at once, letting them take the hit that had been aimed at him, and following that action up with another strike of his sword.

His swordsmanship really was beautiful.

Such a waste.

Wen Ruohan was forced onto the defensive, using his sword to block the blows that were coming fast and hard, Qingheng-jun’s surprisingly vivid blue crackling against his own black.

“Foolish,” Wen Ruohan said, despite that. He’d been in far too many battles, and under worse circumstances, to let a strong opening unnerve him. “I am the only one who knows you. The only one who can know you.”

He meant it, too.

Wen Ruohan had been where Qingheng-jun was now. He’d fallen to the lowest point a man could go – he had lost everything, he had lost everyone. He had been tormented by the losses that had been caused by his own hand as well as those of others. He had been overwhelmed by suffering, suffused by it, drowned in it, and as a result, quite logically, he had gone insane. For all that his own isolation had been social rather than literal, as Qingheng-jun’s had been, Wen Ruohan too had found himself alone for far too long, painfully and completely alone. Of the people who had filled his life and his heart as a young man, there was not a single one left…

Like Qingheng-jun, Wen Ruohan had been a selfish man to start with. Being alone, being in pain – it had twisted him, made him cruel, made him indifferent, made him lash out at those around him, those reminders that life somehow went on even when his own felt as though it had stopped. His apathy had grown by the year, eclipsing everything else, eating away at his memories of joy and of excitement, until all those things that had once made life worth living were long forgotten. Until the only thing that could bring him pleasure was sating his sadism, making others hurt to see how they struggled and yearned to live, warming himself with that echo of feeling.

Oh yes – Wen Ruohan knew all too well what Qingheng-jun was going through.

He knew also that many of Qingheng-jun’s grievances and resentments were justified, or at least justifiable, whether they were against his sect, against the world, against uncaring fate and luck itself. He knew, because he had felt that way, too. He, and he alone, could understand.

He could sympathize, he could empathize.

He just didn’t care.

Wen Ruohan had been in Qingheng-jun’s position, yes. But he’d made it out again on the other side, because he was better.

“Did you do it?” Qingheng-jun asked him, casting out his sword in a gorgeous move, surrounded by swirls of spiritual energy that were as lovely as they were deadly, dancing around him like eddies of wind – Wen Ruohan was forced to dodge, retreating to the side before lunging forward, trying for a counterattack that Qingheng-jun deflected.

Not easily, Wen Ruohan could see Qingheng-jun’s arm shaking with the force that Wen Ruohan could put behind his blows, but successfully nonetheless.

Wen Ruohan quickened his pace, trying a different style of attack, fast rather than powerful, but Qingheng-jun met him head-on, his sword moving just as fast as Wen Ruohan’s, his steps just as sure.

The cold wind at the top of the mountain, blowing around every obstacle.

Lovely.

Such a waste, such a waste…

“Did I try to kill everyone, you mean?” Wen Ruohan asked, twisting the fingers of his free hand into a series of hand seals, setting up another array even as his sword clashed with Qingheng-jun’s. “Of course not. If I had, you would know. Or not, as it might be – you would be just as dead as the rest.”

“Not that.” Qingheng-jun bared his teeth at him. “Did you murder your first family?”

He matched the words with a pointed strike, all of his power behind it.

Wen Ruohan reached out and caught the blow with his free hand, redirecting the spiritual energy he’d been using to set up the array into the power he needed to protect his flesh from Qingheng-jun’s steel.

The way nothing would protect him from Qingheng-jun’s words.

“Yes,” he said, wrapping his hand around the sword to hold it, and Qingheng-jun, in place. “Though I did not mean to.”

He brought the array that he’d been working on earlier up all at once, forcing it into existence, and Qingheng-jun let out an involuntary shout as it opened up beneath his feet.

Now it was his turn to have no choice but to dodge, redirecting his own spiritual energy as a defense, pulling his sword out of Wen Ruohan’s grasp and leaping backwards into the air.

Wen Ruohan went after him.

“My first wife betrayed me,” he said, settling into what had once been his preferred fighting style, attacking with both hands in turn, array in one and weapon in the other. “And I betrayed her in turn, one after the other until there was nothing left between us but loss. In time, the two of us destroyed everything that we had ever made together.”

Even their children.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t meant for that to happen. He didn’t think his wife had, either, though of course by that point she had lost too much of her reason to really understand the depths of what they had lost – he’d done that to her, however accidentally. That was the cost of betrayal, the greatest cost. Losing his family had always been the one consequence that he had never been able to forgive himself for causing. The cost of his betrayal.

Just as his betrayal had also cost him Wen Ruoyu, the brother he had loved so much.

Wen Ruoyu had been the only sibling Wen Ruohan had ever really cared about – and he’d had many, brothers and sisters both. Wen Ruoyu was the one younger brother who had genuinely seemed to like Wen Ruohan, who had followed him voluntarily, the one who Wen Ruohan had permitted to follow him, however unwise it had seemed to be at the time. Wen Ruoyu had tagged along in his every step, had adored him and supported him and who Wen Ruohan had adored and supported in turn. As they had grown older, grown stronger, they had challenged each other to surpass their limits, and they had done so marvelously, exceptionally, unexpectedly. The two of them together had been unstoppable: able to overturn every obstacle in their path, blazing through the skies like twin suns, burning away the haze of the world.

If only Wen Ruohan had believed in him as fully as Wen Ruoyu had believed in him – if only he hadn’t let himself be blinded by his ambition, led into folly through his own weakness – if only he hadn’t lost track of what really mattered – if only, if only, if only!

“And then I went mad, of course,” he added matter-of-factly. “There is a point after which it is by far the most straightforward option.”

It was only very recently that he had been able to crawl out of the pit he’d fallen into.

Lao Nie had been the first to help him find his way. Fight evil no matter where, in his own inimitable style, though perhaps Lao Nie had not thought of it that way, driven as he was by his own self-destructive attraction to everything that could bring him harm, wrestling with the knowledge of his sect’s poisonous self-sacrifice and his own impending premature death. Whatever his motivations, he had forced himself into Wen Ruohan’s increasingly empty life, with his intriguing mixture of ruthlessness and joy, supreme selfishness and selflessness in one, his irrepressible humor and charm. He had coaxed Wen Ruohan first into curiosity, and from curiosity into enjoyment. He had shown him the way forward. No, more than that – he had pushed him down the first step on the road of having to actually live rather than merely survive, and for that, Wen Ruohan owed him.

Before Lao Nie, Wen Ruohan had very nearly let go of everything. His apathy had grown to such an extent that not even anger or pain could move him – as best exemplified by his new marriages, bloodless and political, nothing more than a means of getting him closer to his goal of ruling the world, of putting his sect above the rest. After his family had died, he had refused to remarry for so many years, for decades. He had even declared the subject of them taboo, and brutally executed anyone who so much as mentioned them, however obliquely.

And then he’d just…forgotten.

Those cousins of his who had hoped to take advantage of his unmarried state had all grown old and died, waiting for their turn; their children, his new advisors, had not known anything but his never-ending rule, as endless as the blazing light that filled his Nightless City at every hour. They had suggested that he marry in order to consolidate his power, and not seeing any reason not to, he had done so – not once, but twice. He had promised his wives sons and positions of power, and he had delivered on his promises. And then he had looked away from those sons, unable to look to closely at them lest he see the shadows of the ones who had preceded them. He had justified it by telling himself that he would make it up when they were older, when they were interesting, when they were grown men and fully formed people and like him. He had treated them as either prospective enemies, to be held distant for lack of trust, or else as extensions of himself, limiting himself to loving them as he loved himself, a safe and complete love. He hadn’t been able to do anything more.

He had been, though living, more dead than alive.

Lao Nie had been the first step on the road back to himself, but he hadn’t been enough. He hadn’t been willing to step onto the road with Wen Ruohan, to walk alongside him for that whole journey, the two of them together side-by-side, equal in their commitment to each other. He hadn’t been willing to go so far as to pledge loyalty and fidelity and trust. It hadn’t been his fault: Wen Ruohan, as he had been when Lao Nie had first encountered him, had not been worthy of trust, benumbed and accustomed as he was to treachery; he had expected it in everyone and far too often found himself justified, and he responded by being even more treacherous in turn. It would have been a very bad idea for Lao Nie to have trusted in him back then.

And yet…it had changed, in time. He had changed. He had started to find his way back, to rebuild the human that he had once been out of the god he’d nearly become, had changed into something different, into someone who wanted more. Someone who wanted those things, love and trust and the harsh pains of those emotions just as much as their easy joys.

But he hadn’t told Lao Nie about it. He hadn’t ever asked the other man for what he wanted.

He hadn’t wanted to be told no.

Just as Lan Qiren wasn’t a man made for lust, Lao Nie wasn’t a man made for love. He loved, yes, but only as a friend loved, not as a lover did. Not for him were the exquisite agonies and ecstasies of that type of love, a complete and consuming love, viciously possessive and exclusive of others, as much mutual obsession as anything else.

And yet Wen Ruohan hungered for exactly that type of love. For love, and faith, and trust – and then he’d found it, however unexpectedly, in Lan Qiren. Who was, no matter what his brother tried to claim, the purest example of a Lan of Gusu Lan, a man who always strove to live up to that which his sect aspired to.

Rules and righteousness, and a madman’s loving heart beating steadily behind it all: that was Lan Qiren from beginning to end.

And Qingheng-jun had asked Wen Ruohan to explain.

As if such things could be explained.

Wen Ruohan sneered and lifted his sword, bringing it down in a strike of his own, his spiritual energy blisteringly hot, the power of it seething and boiling with fury.

Qingheng-jun threw himself to the side to avoid it.

“Well done, Sect Leader Wen,” he said, after, glancing back at the devastation that had been left in the wake of Wen Ruohan’s blow, the furrows in the earth and the blackened corpses of flowers and bushes that had caught fire. He had a swordsman’s appreciation for the art, if nothing else, and beneath all that madness, he really was a consummate gentleman: he would not withhold his praise when it was justly earned. “It seems you retained more of your power than I had heard.”

“Retained? Regained.” Wen Ruohan laughed. “Thank your brother for that!”

Qingheng-jun’s brow furrowed.

“He hates you, you know,” Wen Ruohan told him, relishing the words. The Lan Qiren that existed purely in Gusu Lan had barely been able to admit that fact to himself, however true it had been; his Lan Qiren, in contrast, had accepted it and moved past it. He was far better a man than either Wen Ruohan or Qingheng-jun could ever be. “You pushed him too far this time. There is no coming back from this, no peace to be had, no compromise possible. The two of you can no longer exist under the same sky…I’m here for him, not for you. I am the instrument of his will.”

“Will is will, power is power. As you yourself said, intent is not action.”

“No, but intent gives rise to action.” Wen Ruohan smirked. “Come now, you’re far from young and naive. Gusu Lan may be full of prudes, but even Qiren had heard of dual cultivation before.”

“You…” Qingheng-jun’s eyes almost bulged. “With him?!”

Such a reaction was strange, and perhaps a little sad, Wen Ruohan reflected. He himself had wanted to dual cultivate with Lan Qiren and yet had nearly discounted the possibility, so certain was he that Lan Qiren would refuse to do such a thing with him. And yet here was Lan Qiren’s own brother, his own flesh and blood, the Wen Ruohan to Lan Qiren’s Wen Ruoyu, and he thought that Wen Ruohan ought to have been the one reluctant to dual cultivate with Lan Qiren.

“I did,” he confirmed, and nearly laughed again at the puckered expression of distaste and disapproval on Qingheng-jun’s face. Now there was one who wouldn’t have done such a thing even if his wife had liked him enough to agree. He clearly couldn’t even conceive of rendering himself so vulnerable to another person, to give himself to another without reserve. “It was glorious, just as he is.”

Qingheng-jun’s expression of distaste did not change.

Unfortunately, the perfection of his sword forms did not falter, either, and he really was a better swordsman than Wen Ruohan. Wen Ruohan was keeping up, the arrays he could summon his best weapon as always, supported by his experience in fights such as these, but he wasn’t winning. There was a reason he kept up the conversation, goading and hunting for weaknesses, looking for a way to throw Qingheng-jun off his equilibrium, and they both knew it.

Well, if such a way existed, Wen Ruohan hadn’t found it yet.

He knew that Qingheng-jun hated Lan Qiren, hated the Lan sect, but it wasn’t enough. Lan Qiren, simply by virtue of being himself, could cause far more damage to his brother’s psyche than Wen Ruohan could with all his taunts and jabs. He’d explained the full circumstances of their conversation to Wen Ruohan before he’d left, hoping to arm him with everything he could, and it had been all that Wen Ruohan could do to keep from laughing out loud when he’d realized that it had been Lan Qiren’s misplaced empathy that Qingheng-jun hadn’t been able to tolerate. Pity from a hated enemy, condescending comments from someone you thought had won over you, someone you thought was rubbing their victory in your face…

Amazing.

Completely accidental, of course, but amazing.

Was there any way he could use that?

“Tell me,” he drawled. “Do you really think of Lan Qiren as some sort of – ”

What had been the term Cangse Sanren had used?

“– some sort of seductive vixen?”

Qingheng-jun’s next blow went wide. Wen Ruohan took advantage at once, pulling back to catch his breath and take stock of his reserves – arrays required more energy than swordsmanship, and doing both was taxing. He’d recovered quite a lot from where he had been, but he was far from his peak; he needed to conserve his strength where he could.

“I really have to wonder about that. I mean, have you met him?” Wen Ruohan shook his head pityingly. “He is rather dreadfully boring, isn’t he?”

That was part of the wonder of him. Lan Qiren was boring, a rule-abiding stickler, a stern moralist, a monotonous old teacher despite his relative youth, but that wasn’t all he was. He was passionate and complicated, a mix of contradictions, a war within himself, all things within himself.

Even the boring parts of him were interesting.

“Quite good in bed, though. I assume it’s a natural gift, that ability to steeply climb learning curves and gain mastery over a subject…especially since it was quite evident that he came to my bed a virgin.”

Another strike that didn’t quite reach where Qingheng-jun wanted it to.

Because, of course, Lan Qiren coming to Wen Ruohan untouched meant that he really hadn’t done what Qingheng-jun had thought he had, his younger brother betraying him in bed with his wife, replacing him after he’d made such sacrifices – such unasked-for sacrifices, though it was clear Qingheng-jun had never thought of them that way. Everyone always saw themselves as the hero in their own story.

Only it was getting harder and harder for Qingheng-jun to pretend, even to himself, that he was anything but the villain here.

Wen Ruohan was getting close, he could feel it. Qingheng-jun’s swordsmanship was good, exceptionally good, and if he were anyone else, anyone other than the man who had hurt Lan Qiren, then Wen Ruohan might have entertained thoughts of trying to recruit him. He’d always valued talent, had always appreciated art no matter what form it was in, regardless of being its target. He was even willing to forgive terrible crimes for it, heedless of the cost – but only when the cost was to himself, or to his sect, or to the world.

Not to Lan Qiren.

No, there would be no way out of this for Qingheng-jun. Wen Ruohan was not going to hold back his blows, wasn’t going to try to recruit him, wasn’t going to show him any way out.

He was going to kill him.

Just as soon as he could figure out how.

He just needed a little bit more –

“He wrote me a song, you know,” Wen Ruohan said suddenly, motivated by some unknown instinct. His memory of little Lan Wangji’s face, maybe, all screwed up in distaste as he reluctantly made the suggestion, or else Lan Xichen looking so childishly appalled at the idea of such a thing, ameliorated only reluctantly when Lan Wangji had reminded him that they were already married – Gusu Lan were such musicians, really. Though he wasn’t sure whether such a thing would make an impact on a swordsman like Qingheng-jun…

“He what?!”

Apparently it would.

“How dare he – he wrote you a song – ”

Qingheng-jun’s blows were getting wilder and wilder. More powerful, but that had always been the risk of the game Wen Ruohan was playing. Qingheng-jun had been keeping him mostly on the defensive, or else letting him have openings that he then closed immediately – Wen Ruohan’s current approach was simply not working. He knew it, he accepted it, and he wasn’t so prideful that he would resist change just for the sake of doing so.

He needed to get Qingheng-jun off-balance just long enough to figure out something new.

“Of course he did,” he said, keeping his tone light and casual, echoing Lao Nie at his most unbelievably irritating. “Isn’t that what musical cultivators like him do? Write songs? I wouldn’t think it was that unusual – ”

“Why does he get to have a song?!” Qingheng-jun shouted, and –

Ah.

So that’s what it was.

“He’s never been my equal, never,” Qingheng-jun spat out, and Wen Ruohan could see the madness in his rage-reddened eyes now. “He was just an afterthought, a left-behind, a remnant – he shouldn’t have even existed! I had two younger brothers before him, only a few years younger than me, both of them talented and good, and they were all the sect elders needed, spares just in case something happened to me. If only they hadn’t died! If they had lived, my parents would never have felt obligated to try again for another, and Qiren would never have been born. My mother wouldn’t have needed to take medicine to have him, wouldn’t have weakened her health for him, wouldn’t have ripped herself apart at the birthing bed and gotten sick and died because of him – ”

“Blame your sect for that,” Wen Ruohan said. “Oh, wait. You already do.”

Qingheng-jun wasn’t even listening. “When she died, she took my father with her. It was only a living corpse that remained sect leader after that. All the burden came to me. All the responsibility, all the expectations, everything, and all the while Qiren could go on untroubled, dull and slow and fumbling and boring and nothing. Nothing worthy of that sacrifice, of either of their sacrifices. And yet…”

“And yet he gets to have the song,” Wen Ruohan said knowingly. “He gets to have that once-in-a-lifetime love, the type of love that haunts you and possesses you and drives you to extremes of destruction and creation both. The love you never had.”

Qingheng-jun’s next blow left nothing but wreckage in its wake, but Wen Ruohan was already long gone.

“It’s only to be expected from him, really,” he said, and let his voice drip with pity thick as syrup, as much of it as he could conjure. It wasn’t for nothing that Lan Qiren had dubbed him the second most obnoxious man in the world. “After all, Lan Qiren is everything that he should be – a true Lan of Gusu Lan.”

And that was it, that was the difference.

Not the difference between Qingheng-jun and Lan Qiren. Wen Ruohan wasn’t the sort of person who thought that everyone ought to follow their sect mottos blindly, thinking that there was only one way to live up to what they were meant to be; such an idea was restrictive and ridiculous. He himself was far from the true ideal of Qishan Wen, with his quixotic focus on arrays instead of swordsmanship or medicine, though he was still his sect’s true-born son, just as ambitious as anyone in his family, as arrogant. It had been Wen Ruoyu who had been the real outlier: possessive but willing to share, a collector of trinkets and people rather than strength or influence, sociable and generous rather than standoffish and arrogant, a spearman rather than a swordsman, lacking even the slightest traces of medical talent, disdainful of the trappings of duty or the temptations of power, lacking ambition for himself but avidly loyal to those he loved.

By any family standard, Wen Ruoyu had been completely unfit for the proud surname Wen.

Yet Wen Ruohan would have killed anyone who said that, anyone who might have suggested that his differences meant Wen Ruoyu wasn’t among the best their sect had ever produced. Not only would he kill over such an insult, he had, and often enough, too.

No, it wasn’t the difference between Lan Qiren and Qingheng-jun: it was the difference between Qingheng-jun and Wen Ruohan.

They’d both gone mad, after all. They’d both turned cruel and vicious, lashing out at the world that had robbed them of their rightful due, that had turned against them after all they had done for it. They’d both been driven by somewhat justified grievances until they’d gone too far and committed crimes with their own hands, both of them having fallen into the pit of despair, of apathy and malice and madness.

But where Qingheng-jun had thrown away everything that mattered, rejected family, friends, sect, wife, and even principle, Wen Ruohan was different.

Wen Ruohan, even when he had had nothing else, had always had his sect.

Even when he’d lost everything else, even when he’d forgotten the reason for his own existence, even when he longed to destroy everything around him just to make it all go away, he hadn’t actually taken that final step. He’d been Sect Leader Wen by then, and he’d always taken that seriously. His actions reflected on his sect, his actions defined his sect: all boats were lifted by the same tide, and sunk by the same hurricane.

If he led them to victory, they would benefit. If he led them to ruin, they would suffer.

His sect was his responsibility.

His sect was his.

All good things in the world ought to be his, the world ought to be his – and that meant he owed it a duty of care in return.

Wen Ruohan loved himself. He was vain, narcissistic, self-absorbed. He saw his sect as an extension of himself, and just as he knew himself to be the best, the finest cultivator in the cultivation world, nearly a god, so too did he know that his sect was the best. The facts did not matter, the truth did not matter, nothing mattered, nothing but his certainty of that fact.

He knew his sect was the best – and if they weren’t, it was his duty to make it true.

No matter the method, as Wen Ruoyu had always said with a grin. As long as you win, no matter the method…

No matter the method.

That was it.

That was it.

What was he doing?

Wen Ruohan spared a moment to shake his head at his own foolishness. Going up against Qingheng-jun sword against sword – he’d known he wouldn’t be able to win that way, but he’d been reckless as always, arrogant as always, counting on his arrays to carry him to victory as they always had. But he wasn’t as strong as he’d been, wasn’t able to fight with just arrays rather than with array and sword both, and he wasn’t as practiced at fighting from a position of weakness as he had once been, either. He had grown lazy in his apathy, sitting back and letting his power do the fighting for him, letting his army or his influence or his control of so many sects move the pieces for him.

He'd need to fix that, going forward. He should spar more often, with Lao Nie and Lan Qiren and others; he should bind his own power, cut off his own excessively strong cultivation, and practice fighting that way, to make sure he gave himself a real challenge.

There was no way for him to win like this.

So…why fight like this?

Just because it was expected? Because it was convention?

Does the sun care for the expectations of the earth? Wen Ruohan had asked Yu Ziyuan, laughing at her. I have never restricted myself for the sake of others. Why would I start now?

They’d been talking about marriage, but what was true for the marital was just as true for the martial.

Wen Ruohan laughed out loud.

Qingheng-jun startled at the sound of it, pulling back warily – thinking that Wen Ruohan was up to something, no doubt, and he’d be right to think so, too.

Wen Ruohan contemptuously threw aside his sword, letting it clatter to the ground. And in its place, he summoned another weapon entirely.

“A spear?” Qingheng-jun asked, clearly surprised. “Since when do the Wen fight with a spear?”

Wen Ruohan spun the spear around in his hand, and found it as warm and welcoming to him as it had ever been, without the slightest hint of rancor or anger despite how long it had been since he’d wielded it. The spear was called Zhencang, and it had been Wen Ruoyu’s spiritual weapon, the one he had made his name with all those years ago. It had been because of this spear that he had begged and bullied and bribed Wen Ruohan into learning how to use a spear at all, pestering him every morning and every evening until he begrudgingly agreed to practice with him.

More than practice – to adjust his own style, his footwork and his reach and his thinking, to match it.

There were many similarities, he’d found, between arrays and spears. Both were weapons of longer distance, excelling in middle-range attacks with greater reach and greater leverage rather than close melee that was the domain of the sword, and both could be used to devastating effect against those who were less familiar with them.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t used Zhencang since the day his brother had died, but neither had he left it behind. It had been habit more than anything else to bring it with him, the remnants of a long-ago vow that he had once made to himself. His brother had been alive and free, never confined, and so too would his spiritual weapon be – not for his brother’s spear was the lonesome fate of the cold treasury room, not ever, not even if Wen Ruohan never wielded it again in his life.

He’d forgotten.

He remembered now.

“Since always,” Wen Ruohan said with a savage grin. “Learn your history, will you?”

He lunged forward.

As he’d expected, Qingheng-jun did not have much experience in fighting against a spear. A spear was a soldier’s weapon, not a gentleman’s. The Lan sect prided itself on elegance, and its disciples followed their sect, alternating between the beautiful sword forms of which both Lan Qiren and Qingheng-jun were masters and the underestimated but no less potent power of their music. The spear, in contrast, was a utilitarian weapon, meant to fight horses or enemy soldiers, meant to stretch out one’s power onto others. And although it, too, could be elegant, in Wen Ruohan’s hands, it was all aggression.

Array in one hand, weapon in the other – yes, this was his preferred fighting style.

He attacked.

Now it was Qingheng-jun who found himself on the defensive. Now it was he who had to dodge, he who had to speed up, who had to block time and time again, receiving the blows instead of striking them.

Now it was Qingheng-jun who was going to lose.

They both knew it.

It was a shared understanding between them, shared in their eyes as they gazed at each other, in the growing smirk on Wen Ruohan’s face and the growing scowl on Qingheng-jun, in the increased desperation of his movements, in the way he spent his spiritual energy recklessly, frantically, but to no avail. He couldn’t find any openings, Wen Ruohan beating him down with spear and arrays both, using his sword only to fly and barely even for that. He couldn’t find a way out.

Wen Ruohan wasn’t going to leave him a way out.

Qingheng-jun’s fate was sealed, and they both knew it. He was going to die. He was going die, and his crimes were going to be covered up for the sake of the Lan sect and his sons, for the sake of letting Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji grow up as the sons of that brilliant but tragic swordsman that Wen Ruohan would have loved to have recruited and not of the murderous madman he’d turned into instead. He was going to die and be erased, be replaced by Lan Qiren first and by Lan Xichen and by Lan Wangji later, and there was nothing he could do about it.

It was just a matter of time, now.

He was going to die –

“No,” Qingheng-jun spat. “No! I refuse – I surrender.”

Wen Ruohan’s hand froze.

“You what?”

He must not have heard correctly.

“I surrender,” Qingheng-jun said, and threw down his sword. It clattered onto the ground, its beautiful tassel becoming stained by the mud of the earth they had churned up with their violence. “You heard me. I surrender myself to you. I request punishment for my crime – adjudicated punishment, and the chance to atone.”

“Why in the world would I grant that to you?” Wen Ruohan wondered. “Have you mistaken who I am? My Wen sect doesn’t have such beliefs.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Qingheng-jun agreed, and then he smiled, a cold nasty sort of smile. “But Qiren does.”

Qiren does.

He was right.

Qingheng-jun was right, damn him. Lan Qiren had said it himself, when they’d been talking about Wang Liu: What do you mean, what do I want to do with him? Naturally he must be given a fair trial and a fair sentence, a fair punishment. It’s different, once he’s been taken into custody: before, he was an enemy, and now he is a prisoner.

And I, at least, do not mistreat prisoners.

If Wen Ruohan killed Qingheng-jun now, after he had voluntarily surrendered, he would be executing a prisoner, not defeating an enemy.

He could still do it. He was a Wen, not a Lan. He wasn’t bound by Lan Qiren’s multitude of rules, he wasn’t bound by Lan Qiren’s conscience…but Lan Qiren was, and Lan Qiren would disapprove.

More than disapprove. He would feel guilty.

Complicit.

Wen Ruohan had himself said that he was here to act as the instrument of Lan Qiren’s will, and he had meant it. But if that was his purpose here, he had to decide whether he was going to follow that will to the end, whether to obey it over the dictates of his own inclinations. He had to decide if he was going to handle this the way Lan Qiren would have wanted him to, or ignore it and forge his own path the way he always had.

Whether he would do things in Lan Qiren’s name that Lan Qiren would never have wanted.

Wen Ruohan could kill him and then lie, of course. There was no one here but the two of them, no one here to see Qingheng-jun’s surrender – Wen Ruohan was a cultivator just like any other. He could kill the man and banish his spirit before anyone would think to question him, covering it up just as thoroughly as the mine had been covered up, as thoroughly as Qingheng-jun’s attempted massacre had been covered up. He could tell Lan Qiren that he’d killed his brother in fair battle, could bear the secret himself, relieve Lan Qiren of the guilt of knowing it wasn’t true.

He could lie.

But – if he lied about something like this…wasn’t he undermining the trust Lan Qiren put in him?

This is my promise to you, he’d said to him, and he had meant it. This is my oath that I will trust in you in the future, and be someone whom you can trust in, in turn, someone worthy of your trust. My promise is this: that everything I do in the future, I will do with thoughts of you.

Do not tell lies.

He’d said it, and he’d meant it.

That meant he couldn’t lie.

And if he couldn’t lie – then he couldn’t kill Qingheng-jun.

So, despite everything, despite Qingheng-jun’s victorious smirk that he itched to beat off his face –

Wen Ruohan held back his hand.

“Well,” he said, meaning shit and fuck you and fuck me and a thousand other curses that all wanted to come pouring out of his mouth all at once, none of them finding purchase over the others. “Well, then.”

Qingheng-jun laughed.

It was a desolate sound.

[rhymesswith]

POV they’re coming for your ass

[carrot-felisidad]

It's crazy how the juniors just accepted Mo Xuanyu after a few times of meeting him. In their eyes, Mo Xuanyu has this bad reputation (though I'm still not sure if they were true, or made up rumors, or exaggerated) to the point that he was exiled, but they easily acknowledged his skills.

And didn't the elders wonder how this secluded gay emo suddenly became competent in decision-making and dark arts??? They just listen to his investigations, but if it was me--a similar secluded gay emo--I wouldn't be given the time of the day. We could also blame it on Wei Wuxian's natural charm and confidence, but still. Imagine you have a weird cousin who flirts at everyone and is quite loose in the head, then suddenly he knows how to play violin and Zac Efron or Harry Styles or Jungkook (whichever poor male usual Wattpad protagonist you could think of) starts protecting him.

And he's suddenly hanging around the venerable Hanguang Jun because he mentioned he likes him (in animation at least) and Lan Wangji just... let's him??? There's something gay going on here.

And Jinling, the kid who got the Jiang's temper and the Jin's elitist attitude, starts seeing him as a proper uncle who taught him how to fight. Awwww. Finally, he got an emotionally supportive uncle for once in his life with the many uncles he has. But Mo Xuanyu was the most distant uncle, living in Mo village and all. I mean, how did he process that?

And the rest of the juniors, Lan Jingyi, Lan Shizui, and Ouyang Zizhen, just decided to follow him like ducklings.

My point is...

How did the cultivation world process Mo Xuanyu in their heads?