#zhuzhi lang is there too but i still have a grudge against him

[devestatedutterlydevestated]

luo binghe makes shen qingqiu a fathers day gift nd sqq is absolutely mortified that after all theyve been through together lbh still thinks of him that way (but with all the shit binghe does he was also half expecting it ngl)

shang qinghua is absolutely devastated that his son didnt give him any gifts and is crying in the corner while his husband stands over him confused (and jealous) that his human wants gifts from junshang (later he appears in sqhs chambers w loads of gifts which sqh accepts after the screaming is over) (his king is so cute! but what are all the gifts for? oh well, qinghuas not one to look a gift horse in the mouth...mobei jun seems pleased anyway so he wouldnt want to ruin his kings good mood)

tianlang jun cant help but feel like something important is happening today but he cant be bothered to find out

[dragoncharming]

su xiyan lives au

doesn’t change much from shen qingqiu’s perspective until the immortal conference

su xiyan slips unconscious after ensuring luo binghe is safely away on his lil boat. she doesn’t die since the cold slows her heart rate enough, but she’s out of commission long enough to lose track of lbh. with keeping under the radar of haun hua palace and canvassing the whole riverbank, eventually she finds the fisherman who found him but they sent him off with a merchant who has a sister who wants a kid but by then he’s long gone. since she knows he’s safe, she realizes this is more of a marathon than a sprint and decides to get backup.

it’s hard not to hear the story of the entire cultivation world uniting against a horrific demon lord, so it’s very clear to her that she has very few options. she finds tianlang-jun after he’s been imprisoned for only about six months. the impression i get of su xiyan is that she’s not going to tell him everything at once, so it’s a while into the process of her getting him out that it even comes up that she was poisoned.

there are two ways she could get him out. 1) she spends months slowly unraveling the layers and layers keeping him imprisoned. maybe she trusts wu chen enough to ask for some advice. 2) she’s v familiar w bai lu and knows about the mushroom and grows both of them new bodies to give them new faces which also helps w the longer campaign. i think regardless of how she gets tianlang-jun out, we might as well say she makes herself a new face so she can operate.

to keep him distracted during this whole process, su xiyan asks tianlang-jun to start working on a piece of her longer plan: a romantic epic of their story w the serial numbers filed off. she needs to start seeding the downfall of the palace master and the tragedy of a beautiful princess who was lured away as her noble father set a trap for the man she loved. i have this image of tianlang-jun reciting his latest version and su xiyan edits a couple words while she’s directing zhuzhi-lang ‘just another step to the left. perfect.’

next step is starting her own sect. this lets her recruit people to her cause, siphon potential disciples from huan hua palace, travel around looking for promising young kids around the age lbh would be now. we know she doesn’t find him, but she definitely poaches gongyi xiao. (and if i am personally delighted by him being zhuzhi-lang’s shidi, that’s just a little treat for me.)

the first hint that sqq has that something is weird is around the immortal conference when he’s expecting to find gongyi xiao listed for huan hua palace, but instead it’s some podunk sect he’s never heard of. huan hua palace is still hosting the conference, but there’s a tone of them compensating. over a decade of sustained whisper campaigns has done damage to their reputation and they’re trying to cover by being generous~. what sqq does notice but doesn’t give any thought to is that small sect leader staring when she sees lbh. ofc. he’s the protagonist, every woman stares at him.

zhuzhi-lang still coordinates w mobei-jun to attack the conference to lure all the elders in, but su xiyan doesn’t harbor grudges against the young disciples so the monsters they bring in are specifically shock and awe that aren’t immediately lethal, creatures that trap and knock out people as well as large scary but slow creatures and her disciples protect the people too inexperienced to survive that basic threat while helping scare them more thoroughly to lure the seniors in.

this leads to a confrontation with the palace master. they’re surrounded by a crowd and in the midst of this as he’s turning around, making his case to the community at large he spots lbh, clearly now it’s not thru the crystals, and figures out who he is and tries to attack him. not sure on the specifics, but it ends up with lbh falling into the abyss and su xiyan shouting over her shoulder ‘i want his head myself when we get back!’ and jumping after him. tianlang-jun grabs palace master’s throat. ‘you heard my wife. there can’t be any doubt now about how he attacked an innocent boy. you all saw it yourself.’

shen qingqiu is So Confused. he has been mentally preparing to do something awful, going over the steps of the conference over and over in his mind and everything suddenly slipped out from under his feet. the system dings but doesn’t say anything for a second, as if it’s also confused, and that shakes him out of it. ‘No! he ended up in the abyss! that’s what the task was. you didn’t say i had to be the one who did it.’ which works.