#liu qing

[psychic-waffles]

i have never been so glad something was a fake out in my entire life 😭😭😭

[kaipanzero]

Ever Since We Love

万物生長 (2015)

[witchymoonart]

liu qing - poisoned - wolfsbane~ causes respiratory paralysis or heart failure

[soursoppi]

what wimmin, why walmon, who whoman...

[3kidsinacoat]

[purpleblch]

[oshikasa]

i finished svsss main story (almost done with all the extras) and hey hey!!! i feel bonkers!!

i really enjoyed it HAHA

i also have completed my collection of three cats . my favorite silly cats (mq, jc, and lqg)

[twelve-forfend]

Well, I did say this was a multi-fandom blog... Alright, let's do this.

The Qing Jing Peak Lord's Bamboo House

(and the symbolism therein, as recorded in the donghua)

I was snooping through the establishing shots of the Qing Jing Peak Lord's Bamboo House, and had to laugh as I always do at all the gay symbolism that managed to sneak its way inside. But then I looked a little closer, and was floored by just how much passive storytelling was packed into background assets. I talked about it at length over discord, and at the urging of others decided to make a shareable post on social media as well.

First, the shots which first piqued my interest in this topic years ago:

Shen Yuan transmigrates into the stallion-genre webnovel entitled 狂傲仙魔途 (translated as Proud Immortal Demon Way). The author's and his own usernames are dick jokes.

Notice the chrysanthemum vase, the cock vase, and the stallion statuette.

The stallion and cock are obvious nods to these jokes on their own, but for the uninitiated, the chrysanthemum is a symbol of gay sex between men, as the asshole itself is often euphemistically referred to as a chrysanthemum. This should have been Shen Yuan's first clue that not all is as it seems here! These are the personal quarters of Shen Jiu — the original Shen Qingqiu!

But let's move to the main room you first walk into upon entering the bamboo house.

There it is: the writing on the wall.

As the Peak Lord of strategy and the scholarly arts, Shen Qingqiu would naturally have calligraphy and paintings hanging everywhere! So let's break it down.

On the top we have 道㳒自然 ("Dao Follows Nature"), which comes from a Dao teaching by Laozi (founder of Daoism) meaning that life, death, the entire universe, the heavens and earth and everything outside and inbetween, all follow a set of laws referred to as the nature of things. Although unrelated to the Buddhist couplet below, it's certainly relevant!

Originally hanging in right-to-left order, I've arranged them to read left to right here to make things easier to keep track of. The calligraphy reads 西方竹葉千年翠；南海蓮九品香 and is a couplet commonly found in Guanyin temples. My classical chinese is not as strong as I'd like, but this translates roughly to "The bamboo leaves in Paradise are green for a thousand years / The fragrance of lotus flowers in the South China Sea is as thick as 9 sticks of incense."

The character 西 for West is used to denote the destination of enlightenment/purity: the buddhist Paradise (think Journey to the West). The South China Sea is where Guanyin was born. Upon the Lotus flowers is where Guanyin is commonly depicted as sitting. The "9 sticks of incense" though literal can also refer to the 9 tiers/grades of reincarnation lotuses with the 9th tier being the lowest, meant for those who in life committed the most evil of crimes — the 4 parajikas — and who can only manage a sincere Amitabha recitation 10 times and no more than this.

To put this in context with Shen Jiu (the same jiu as in 9/九), the 4 parajikas committed by the 9th Tier Lotuses Reborn (officially entitled the Lowest of the Low) are:

Sexual Intercourse

Stealing

Murder

Claiming attainments of stages of pure mental concentration that have not been achieved (in other words, rushing or lying about your cultivation/enlightenment, or maybe even becoming a Peak Lord without having formed a golden core beforehand).

From what we know in the context of the novel, Shen Jiu is innocent of at least the first of this parajikas, but the overall view of Shen Jiu in the eyes of others in the story is that he is guilty of them all. This calligraphy can be seen as a condemnation or a reminder for the character Shen Jiu, who even as the Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu is widely thought of as a scum villain and the lowest of the low.

Phew! That's a lot to unpack.

But if you turn your gaze to the original screenshot, you'll see to the right that there's a vase painted with a blue bird. This vase appears in several rooms of the bamboo house, and seems to be the image of a qingniao (青鸟; lit: Qing bird, wherein 青 can mean blue/green/clear-but-brackish black).

These qing-coloured birds are messengers and foragers of the Goddess-Mother of Paradise (Xiwang-mu 西王母, the "west/paradise" character from before, lit West-King(unisex)-Mother). They're a highly intelligent species who are exceptional in song (a good representative for Qing Jing's scholarly arts and pursuit of qin!), and the older ones might learn to speak human tongue. As a subspecies of luanniao (鸾鸟 lit: luan bird), they're thought to be related to The Phoenix and indeed thought to be the lifetime/samsara just before being reborn as a Phoenix.

If given to a "master" they don't like, the qingniao may refuse to pass messages or sing until they're set free, but if they do get along with you then they're loyal to the end.

As a point of interest, the Qing generation of Peak Lords uses the character 清, which is 青 ("colour of nature; brackish black, blue, green; young) + the radical for "water," resulting in the meaning of clear (as in water or heart; see-through); distinct; quiet (as in still); just and honest; pure; to settle or clear up; to clean up, expunge, or purge.

And as a bit of trivia, Liu Qingge's sword Cheng Luan 乘鸾 means "to ride the luan, take flight on the back of a luan." (Relevant, because the qingniao is considered a subspecies of luanniao).

With the Lords of both Qing Jing and Bai Zhan referencing this bird, I really wonder about its significance! It's spawning plenty of theories and headcanons for me.

Heading back outside for a moment, you'll find that in the Quiet Pool (清静小池 qingjing xiaochi (yes, the same Qing Jing the peak is named for)), there are lotuses, and on land there are flower shrubs which are either wide-petaled chrysanthemums (gay bottom jokes ahoy), or a type of peony, the king of flowers demarcating wealth and prosperity. Either way, a blossom fitting of our Qing Jing Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu!

My one regret is that I cannot get a clear shot of the fan hanging on the wall to try and translate the calligraphy on it. If anyone can snag one, please tag me! I also couldn't translate the paintings with poems hanging in Shen Qingqiu's bedroom (it's just too small and blurry for my bad eyes to make out). If I make another post attempting these things, I'll append them to this initial post in an edit afterwards.

[wishfulsketching]

Kinda the korra meme. Wanted to draw Liu Qingge and it turned to this

Bingaboo and Anger Management will never get along

EXTRA :

[cloudyysworld]

Xiao Lanhua and Liu Susu:

The "How I turned the stoned-cold war criminal into a malewife and saved everyone's ass" Girl squad

[suibianne]

The GusuLan Sect had always been known for nurturing a lot of handsome men, especially the two jades of the clan's current generation. 

[mylittleponygrrl]

Twin Jades of Gusu Lan modern au

[beefdogcoffee]

i need everyone to see my vision

[fun-mxtx-polls]

(The various Jin half-siblings are not included, because then we would run out of slots, but you are welcome to vote other on their behalf)

[viterbofangirllovestheuntamed]

So.

According to @demiace-wen-ning​‘s iconic post, every MXTX novel has:

A red/black, morally ambiguous, all-powerful bastard man

A fan wielder who is much more than meets the eye

And a fucking Jiang Cheng

Now we, as a collective fandom, have decided with our communal braincell that in SVSSS, the “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ character is Liu Qingge. And on the surface, this seems Right and Good:

HOWEVER! I posit that these aspects are only the most superficial and external aspects of the vast and multi-layered Dagwood sandwich that is fundamental “fucking Jiang Cheng”™yness. “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ has LAYERS. And for all that I love Liu Qingge, I love him in the same way I love the Sonic franchise’s Knuckles the Echidna:

This is emphatically NOT how I love Jiang Cheng. Furthermore, this is demonstrably NOT the sort of character that a fandom becomes viciously divisive about. This is the sort of character you either like or dislike and move on with your life because he is not deep and complex enough to Die On This Hill for defending. (This is a Feng Xin or Nie Mingjue sort of character.)

So what makes for a “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ character? What are the quintessential “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ characteristics that result in a complex and divisive character? I propose:

ambiguous/unexplained actions

refusal to explain motives

canon selfless actions missed or negatively interpreted

socially over-conscious while still socially detested

harsh and contemptuous outward behavior

honestly, naturally is an asshole, but holds back just enough to get away with it

hard-working but overshadowed by upstart prodigy

childhood trauma that fundamentally affected behavioral patterns

aggressively focused on their cultivation and consequent social status

secretly heartbroken about a perceived betrayal regarding the protagonist

yay, war crimes!

These attributes all describe Jiang Cheng. All but the last one describe Mu Qing, with the second-to-last applying in a way where HE is perceived as the betrayer. None of these attributes describe Liu Qingge. But you know who they DO describe in SVSSS?

Shen Jiu.

The ORIGINAL Shen Qingqiu.

An undeniable asshole who nevertheless gets punished for every good deed he ever did, who clawed and scraped his way to the top of the cultivation world and ensured he stayed there no matter how many bridges he had to burn or enemies he had to make along the way, who acts like a bitter tsundere to the person who matters most to him because said person broke their promise and never explained why, whose childhood was a never-ending parade of trauma and abuse that molded him into a harsh and suspicious individual, who (though we don’t find out until the extras) shows no sexual interest in anyone, whose own path to cultivation was so difficult and traumatic that they could not stop themselves from jealously lashing out at the heaven-blessed prodigy standing right next to them.

Shen Jiu is the TRUE “fucking Jiang Cheng”™ of SVSSS, and I cordially invite any haters to bring it on because this is My Hill and I am ready to fight for it.

[itsthislake]

Shen Yuan transmigrated as a Spirit Cat AU

Shen Yuan had only just finished processing the fact that he had reincarnated-slash-transmigrated at all after his death, never mind into a cat’s body, when he was forced to confront the equally insane reality that was this new world that he had ended up in.

A place that resembled ancient China, but where people didn’t bat an eye at seeing someone literally flying on a sword. A place where cultivation and immortality were very much real and attainable. A Xianxia world, basically. Like the setting for Proud Immortal Demon’s Way, the novel he had literally died cursing.

Shen Yuan had read enough novels in his life to, upon concluding this was in fact real and not just a very vivid hallucination, make the safe choice to send a very quick but genuinely heartfelt prayer to whatever deities were listening that he hadn’t somehow transmigrated into the world of Proud Immortal Demon’s Way.

God, he really hoped this wasn’t Proud Immortal Demon’s Way.

Anyway.

Getting used to being a cat after a lifetime of opposable thumbs and no tail wasn’t as hard as he imagined it’d be. His body seemed to know how to move even if he didn’t, and the new instincts and different senses were easy enough to get used to.

The hardest aspect of his new life was actually finding food, given how a vast majority of the people from the small village he’d woken up in seemed perfectly happy to ignore or even chase him out no matter how cute he acted. The rest were all small children, who at best could give him some sweets, and the two old ladies that lived a little up the hill and occasionally confused him for their own cat, Baobao.

So, naturally, he had taken to stealing from the bastards that annoyed him the most as a form of payback. They should’ve thought twice before throwing rocks at him if they didn’t want their food stolen. Shen Yuan had gotten pretty good at sneaking in and avoiding traps out of sheer pettiness in recent times.

…Perhaps he had gotten a little too good, actually.

Really, why else would the village chief decide to call for help catching him? Also! How could he have known they’d call a whole-ass cultivator to deal with him?! Wasn’t he just a normal (if smarter than average) cat?! Why were these people calling cultivators to deal with their day-to-day problems?! Wasn’t that just lazy?! Wasn’t it overkill?! What’s up with that?!

Shen Yuan hissed and attempted to scratch the hand that had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and held him up in the air. The owner of the hand, a cultivator with a truly beautiful face, stared back at him utterly unimpressed.

“Stop that,” the cultivator said.

Shen Yuan hissed at him, but ultimately stopped struggling. He had given a good fight, even managing to scratch the man in the face before he was caught (something he was very proud of, despite the cultivator healing it with his qi almost immediately) but even he knew when to call it quits. He would just have to wait for the man to lower his guard before trying to escape again.

The cultivator huffed, then turned around to inform the village chief of his capture. Shen Yuan sullenly endured the whole song and dance, hissing at any bastard that looked too smug on the way. It was only as they were walking out of the village that the cultivator lifted Shen Yuan up to eye level and stared.

“How did a creature like you even end up in this place?” he suddenly asked, eyes narrowed with a level of suspicion that was, frankly, uncalled for. “Your kind isn’t from this area.”

What kind! What creature! He was just a normal cat! Shen Yuan had seen plenty of them around the village, had gotten into fights with old strays for some food more than once. He had convinced little Baobao to not attack him on sight even!

“I’m taking you back to my sect. Will you attack me if I try to hold you properly?”

Yes, Shen Yuan meowled viciously.

As if he understood anything, the cultivator nodded once and unsheathed his sword. Then he stood on it and took up flight holy fucking shit—

Shen Yuan made an alarmed sound, holding on for dear life the moment the cultivator moved him close to his chest. He sunk his claws deep on the silver robes, not wanting to find out if cats truly had nine lives in this world or if he’d survive a fall this high, and glared viciously at the man.

The cultivator had the gall to look amused.

 ---

The moment they landed, Shen Yuan wasted no time jumping away. Unfortunately, the man’s reflexes were faster than him and he managed to catch Shen Yuan before his paws could even graze the ground.

Shen Yuan meowled pitifully, turning big sad eyes that had occasionally gotten him free food in his direction. He even heard a number of young kids in the background stop and coo at him.

The man, apparently heartless, only raised an eyebrow.

Shen Yuan sighed and resigned himself to his fate for the foreseeable future. Settling down on the man’s arms (they were unexpectedly comfortable and warm, okay?), he watched idly as people hurried about, barely stopping to bow in the cultivator’s direction and glance curiously at Shen Yuan before continuing on their ways.

Eventually they reached what was definitely some kind of doctor’s office and the cultivator barged in like he owned the place. Shen Yuan could’ve believed that, if it weren’t for the real owner of the office looking up sharply from behind the cluttered desk at their entrance.

“Liu-shixiong!” The poor doctor looked genuinely startled, understandably so, as he reflexively stood up. He hadn’t even seemed to notice Shen Yuan yet. “How may this shidi help you?”

In response, the cultivator —Liu?— shifted Shen Yuan in his arm so he was more visible while still keeping a tight hold on him. Not like there was anywhere for him to run, mind you, seeing as all entrances to the office were firmly shut.

The doctor blinked and adjusted his glasses, peering closely at Shen Yuan.

“Is… that a Colored Claw Spirit Cat?” the doctor asked slowly, and for some reason he looked just as baffled as Shen Yuan abruptly felt.

Excuse me? I’m a what now?

“En,” the cultivator confirmed. “I found him terrorizing a village near Huan Hua Palace. With Lan Qingyi in seclusion, I thought you could give him a check-up.”

‘Terrorizing’ was too strong a word for what he’d been doing, in Shen Yuan’s honest opinion. He was only trying to eat! It was everyone else that overreacted to his presence! Also, Huan Hua Palace? Why did that sound familiar? Did he hear of it somewhere in the village?

“Hmm. I agree that Lan-shijie would be best for this. I don’t think anyone else at her peak has even seen a Colored Claw Spirit Cat in person before, given how rare they are,” the doctor agreed, rummaging through drawers for this and that. “Alright. Set him on the table, please. This shidi will see what he can do.”

“He’ll attack you,” the cultivator warned as he gently set him down on the table, one arm posed to catch him were he to try and get away. Shen Yuan stared at him deadpan. Again, there was nowhere for him to run unless someone were to open the door for him.

The doctor settled a couple of items down on the table next to him and smiled wearily at the cultivator.

“Ah, how much does shixiong know about Spirit Cats?”

“I know they have the capacity to cultivate a human form, as well as achieve immortality. Though it’s extremely rare.”

Shen Yuan… had not known any of that. In fact, up until a couple minutes ago, he was convinced he was just a normal cat. It’s not like he had any other frame of reference to work with here. All the little kids at the village called him a cat and rural villages from Xianxia worlds were hardly overflowing with mirrors. He couldn’t have possibly known if there was anything special about his appearance that gave him away as not-a-normal-cat.

But this… wasn’t this kind of cool actually? He could become an immortal master! And get back his human form! And have opposable thumbs again! God, did he miss those.

Unaware of Shen Yuan’s growing excitement, the doctor nodded at the cultivator’s words.

“Shixiong is correct. Furthermore, Spirit Cats tend to have a level of sentience on par with humans long before acquiring a human form themselves. One can usually tell their age just by how much they’re able to understand, since even young ones are somewhat intelligent. This one certainly seems to understand us just fine. Isn’t that right, esteemed spirit?”

Not expecting to be addressed so suddenly, or at all, Shen Yuan gave the doctor a somewhat startled meow, tail twitching.

“See? This one must be a teenager on the cusp of adulthood. His growth phase must not be long now.”

Growth phase? Shen Yuan wondered, then filed it away for later thought, alongside all that information about Spirit Cats.

The cultivator grunted, eyeing Shen Yuan for a moment before finally stepping back, seemingly deciding that Shen Yuan wasn’t about to run for the hills if he let down his guard. Shen Yuan, no longer worried about acting out of character for a normal cat, pointedly rolled his eyes at him.

An odd noise drew his gaze back to the doctor, who quickly schooled his expression back to a mask of pleasant neutrality.

“Esteemed spirit, this Mu Qingfang will examine you now and narrate what he is doing. Would that be acceptable?”

Shen Yuan meowed an affirmation, something about that sentence tickling at the back of his mind, and the doctor finally got started.

It was only a moment later that the realization hit him in full.

Mu Qingfang, a healer. ‘Liu-shixiong,’ who flew them all the way here and up a mountain. Even the off-handed mention of goddamn Huan Hua Palace.

Oh fuck.

He’s inside of Proud Immortal Demon’s Way.

---

Next Chapter.