#zichen my beloved

[devoted-peanut]

Oh if only she knew how this was just the beginning of Song Lan's problems

[coulsandies]

mdzs headcanon of the day #215 !

when songxiao were in college together, their favorite way to pass time and de stress was to go stargazing and listen to old songs together

[krispycreamsicle]

傲雪凌霜

[heebiebeebies]

Modern AU Songxuexiao, but make it Heaven Has A Road

I made this little thing a week ago bc it’s been two whole years since I read Heaven Has A Road But No One Walks It, and it rewired my brain forever. After that, I created my accounts where I’d share doodles, which eventually turned into this.

So, first we have Xiao Xingchen with the hentie tee, -unaware of the tee someone selected for him- and a blindfold because I didn’t feel like drawing uncanny beauty XXC with his eyes attached to his skull. He’s blind though.

Then there’s Xue Yang with dark lipstick to leave kisses on his partners and the t-shirt that should read “he’s my cock”, obviously worn to match Song Lan’s. And yeah, he doesn’t have his right arm. Although the fic follows CQL canon, I wanted to give him bangs, like I usually do, and his fangs, which were considered for the drama but then discarded bc real life.

And finally, we can see our beloved Song Zichen with an undercut, (the only way I picture modern AU Song Lan tbh), being the pretty beefcake he is, wearing a tee clearly too small for his body that should read as “he’s my chick”. 

There’s a couple more Easter eggs hidden there, hopefully you’ll be able to see them.

Shoutout to my dear friend Ry, a total sweetheart who enables me, talks about silly and not so silly prompts with me, and gave me the idea of the matching tees and XXC’s that was not a part of that set, but fits the vibe. Heheheh.

Finally, I’d like to thank @silvysartfulness for coming up with a super long fic (gorgeous illustrations included) that changed my life forever. 

Anyways, go read Heaven Has A Road But No One Walks It. A beautiful 350k slow burn fic (still ongoing) where Xiao Xingchen is brought back to life.

[veliseraptor]

🪲 🌻 🐝 <- mini garden but also those questions

what a nice little garden, I love it

⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

He reached out to touch his shoulder, giving him a brief shake before withdrawing. Xingchen shuddered again, flinching from his touch, and Song Lan’s heart constricted. Nonetheless he prepared to do it again, but Xingchen woke on his own with a gasp, sitting bolt upright and breathing unsteadily. Song Lan shifted to alert Xingchen to his presence and Xingchen startled, then slumped.  “Zichen?” he said quietly. “Mm,” Song Lan said. Xingchen bowed his head and exhaled slow and long.  “Oh,” he said. “I’m…did I disturb you? I’m sorry.”  “Mm-mm,” Song Lan said in negation. He reached out to form the connection between them; it seemed to take a moment too long for Xingchen to respond accordingly. :It seemed like you were having a nightmare.: Xingchen dipped his chin in a nod. “Thank you for waking me,” he said, though his voice was dull.

⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis

too many people! but I think I'm going to give this one to @brawlite, whose writing and general vibes I really like but have been too nervous to actually talk to.

⇢ tag your biggest supporter(s) and say one nice thing about them

this is going to be corny, fair warning, but: @ameliarating, unquestionably my biggest supporter and beloved wife, I quite literally couldn't do it without you. your encouragement in addition to your tireless work not just editing but tolerating my many, many neuroses, as a writer and as a person, keeps me going, and has for as long as I've known you.

[stiltonbasket]

What is the Lord Mercy monastery like?

"Have you made plans for the sanctuary?" Ouyang Xingchen asked. He had Yao Lan standing close beside him, who as usual did not speak; but when Jin Yun laid out the blueprints, he approached the table and tapped the right side of the parchment.

"It is meet that the shrine should be towards the east,” he said. “Grandfather-in-law had the xi for daylight in his name, and the worship statue in his temple should face the morning sun. What of the chamber next to it?”

“That will be the infirmary. Yunmeng Jiang’s Pan-yisheng swears that the incense she burns for her Lord Mercy statue eases one’s breath and heartbeat, and the masons can cut windows in the wall between the two rooms so that the air will mingle between them. Xinhua-jun said he would build me a single-ventilated screen, to keep the contaminated air from flowing back into the temple.”

“And your living quarters will be on the other side?” Xingchen frowned, poking at the floor plan of the monastery’s first level. “Where will the children stay?”

“On the west side, in the wing furthest from the sickroom. We will have a school there, and a library as soon as Lan-zongzhu can make a good copy of the Cloud Recesses’ library wards.”

At this, Xingchen mouthed the word Lan-zongzhu to himself and shook his head.

“I never thought I would hear my dajiu called thus,” he said quietly. “But now he has become Lan-zongzhu, and my cousin Siwen has been named heir to the Cloud Recesses. The place seems so foreign to me now that I have not dared go back there since the funeral.”

Jin Yun understood Xingchen’s feelings only too well, for he too could not bear to see the Cloud Recesses so changed after the death of its master. Lan Sizhui now held Zewu-jun’s old seat, and according to rumour, Hanguang-jun would soon resign from his post and abolish the title of Chief Cultivator. He and Xinhua-jun had largely withdrawn from public life, wishing to spend more time with Elder Lan Qiren and with their many grandchildren; and it was strange to see other faces holding court there, now that the elder generation had finally begun to tire.

“Things must change, whether we will it or no,” Yao Lan remarked, drawing Ouyang Xingchen close to his side. “Jiang Lianhua will soon be Jiang-zongzhu, and Nie-zongzhu’s heir has been governing on his behalf for nearly a year. But our beloved ones are still here, save for Xingchen’s grandfather, and he is surely still watching over Mother-in-law and Jueying-dajie. It is only that we cannot see him.”

Jin Yun put a hand to the middle of his forehead, where he used to wear the vermilion zhushazhi of his father’s clan, and thought that a great deal had indeed changed in the span of the last year. Jin Yun lost his hand and had it restored, and Lan Xichen had died and ascended; and then Jin Yun seceded from the Jin sect, though his going had broken his parents’ hearts.

“Visit Chan-shushu when you can,” Xingchen advised him. “You might have withdrawn from the sect, but the Lanling Jin are your family still, and they love you dearly.”

Jin Yun’s lip twitched. “Then perhaps I will go back in the spring, and find a new tiger cousin waiting for me. After all, Ling-shushu and my shenshen are no less smitten with each other now than they were when I was a child.”

All three of them laughed. “Perhaps you will,” Ouyang Xingchen said merrily. “But since you’re determined to stay here for now, we ought to mark out the foundation and begin building before the weather turns. Zichen and I will stay with you--there should be rooms in the village for all of us--and you will not be lonesome.”

He was not lonesome all through that winter, though the days were bitterly cold and the work grueling, even split among three strong cultivators; but their labor grew lighter when the snow melted in the month after the New Year, bringing drier ground and longer days, and then--at long last--the good weather allowed for the completion of the monastery, which took place early in the spring.

“What will you call it?” Yao Lan asked, when their work was finally finished. “Shall it be the Zewu Guan, after waigong?”

Jin Yun nodded. “He took the title ren ci in the heavenly court, but I think his living title is better for the monastery.”

So the temple became the Zewu Guan, and Xingchen and Yao Lan came to live there with him. Xingchen gave up his inheritance in doing so, passing it to his younger sister Xingtian; but Yao Lan had no affairs to put in order, having been an orphan for nearly all his life.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

WIP Wednesday

I know I've missed the last couple but honestly all I've been working on in my free time is the secret project, which (for reasons I feel like should be fairly obvious) I'm trying not to share in WIP Wednesday posts lol. But anyway I've also now started on Chapter 13 of Soldier, Poet, King, so here's a brief moment of A-Qing and Jin Guangyao talking about Xue Yang that I made myself laugh with a little bit

--//--

“Told you he’s feral,” young A-Qing mutters under her breath, sounding mutinous around the chak-chak-chak of chomping on her ever-present bubblegum.

“Yes dear we know he is, and something tells me that cracking open the brain of an interdimensional lovecraftian nightmare so he could try slurping the contents out like a slushee, metaphorically speaking, hasn’t improved things very much,” he replies and feels oddly vindicated when she snorts a laugh into the back of her hand.

A-Qing is…unexpected. He’d heard her calling for Xue Yang to come upstairs that night he and Nie Huaisang had gone to see him at The Cockpit, though of course that evening he hadn’t known precisely who she was or why she felt she had the right to boss Xue Yang around. Finding out that she’s the once-wayward-child-turned-protegé of the Immortals (and that her ethics are significantly more dubious than her benefactors’) had been..a surprise, to put it mildly. Not that he thinks that Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen aren’t perfectly capable guardians, of course, but rather he’s surprised that two distinguished gentlemen such as themselves seem very fond of collecting people who could be reasonably compared to scrungly alley cats and ignoring all their mange and fleas in favor of cooing over how sweet and brilliant they are.

And they are (brilliant, at least, though not any given definition of  sweet to anyone except their ‘daozhangs’), but the contrasts at play in their little fucked up family of four are still a bit of a mystery to Jin Guangyao.

It had been A-Qing, apparently, who had hacked the CCTV and the ‘dome’s video feeds long enough to broadcast Jin Guangshan and Jin Zixun’s deaths straight to the communications tower, and as such Nie Mingjue has instructed that she give their security team an extremely thorough rundown of every breach in their defenses that she had exploited. Jin Guangyao still desperately wishes someone had thought to record Nie Mingjue’s reaction when the girl, -- standing no taller than his abs and thoroughly uncaring of the danger she was putting herself in -- had laughed in his face, popped her bubblegum, and told him that it had taken no longer than an hour that afternoon to get her hands on everything digital in the ‘dome, not just their camera feeds. He hasn’t seen his lover turn that shade of red in a very long time, nor ever seen him so clearly tempted to shout at someone younger than half his age.

Anyway — she’d taken a shine to Jin Guangyao within minutes of Lan Xichen ushering everyone into the ‘dome to avoid further scrutiny by the press, easily picking him out as the adult in the room besides her beloved daozhangs who would be most likely to indulge her quasi-legal and morally gray brand of ethics. So now here she sits, tinkering around with something Wei Wuxian had given her to turn into a signal jammer for anyone outside the ‘dome not on their frequencies, and Jin Guangyao has found himself on ersatz babysitting duty.

(She is also, according to Xiao Xingchen, worried about Xue Yang’s health and wouldn’t be able to focus well working somewhere she can’t keep an eye on his condition; an assessment which Jin Guangyao very politely and very secretly thinks is a load of horseshit.)

[veilchenjaeger]

Song Lan and Jiang Cheng for enrichment bingo!

I see you picked two narrative parallels. That's a very sexy choice. [points at them] They're the same character but also very much Not

Zichen first:

ZICHEN MY BELOVED! I love and adore him and would die for him. A true Blorbo. He's also so much fun to write; his brain is a very calming place to be in despite all his worries and guilt and phobias. I just love him so much.

I'm of the weird opinion that he didn't have enough screen time, but also... wasn't wasted or done dirty, per se? I wish we had seen more of him, but he's also a supporting character in a side plot, so I get why his screen time was limited. And I truly love how well he comes alive (lol) despite having, like, three lines. I always think it's impressive if a character who barely has any screen time is nonetheless well-rounded, and both MXTX and CQL/Li Bowen did such a good job with him.

Otherwise... uh, I don't talk about many of my Zichen opinions on main bc of the wasps' nest thing. Let's say that I strongly dislike his fanon and leave it at that.

The purple boy:

Everyone but me is wrong about Jiang Cheng not because I'm in any way knowledgeable about Jiang Cheng, but because everyone but like, three people is wrong about Jiang Cheng, period. Likewise, my opinions wouldn't be received as akin to hitting a wasps' nest with a baseball bat because I have particularly outrageous Jiang Cheng opinions, but because every opinion about Jiang Cheng would be received as akin to hitting a wasps' nest with a baseball bat. I've honestly never been this baffled by the discourse around a character before. Like??? He's not even evil. What is going on why is Jiang Cheng discourse like that why IS THERE Jiang Cheng discourse in the first place

Anyways, I really like Jiang Cheng! He's a great character with a great arc that addresses many very interesting themes! He just doesn't tickle my brain the way many other MDZS/CQL characters do, so I don't give him that much attention. That might have something to do with the only Jiang Cheng ship I actively ship being Chengning, which is such a rarepair for some reason? (The "The popular ships suck" square isn't fully accurate; I think they're valid and many of them have interesting aspects. I just personally like... one of them, which is Sangcheng, and I only ship that if it features them being sad 30somethings, which is not the vibe I'm getting from most Sangcheng stuff.)

But yeah. Love the boy, but not feeling the Blorbo Emotions.

[minnarr]

daemon quiz: trembling on the branch edition

because a twitter friend was doing the daemon quiz (main quiz / links to secondary quizzes) with fictional characters i got the itch to do it with the characters of trembling on the branch. under the cut: zzs, wkx, and chengling so they aren’t left out; bi xingming and cheng zichen, my versions; then OCs feng yan, ma tingqian, and yun shuying

zhou zishu

honestly yeah 10/10

wen kexing

i’m not as 100% on this but i did get ferret twice when i took the mustelid quiz, so

zhang chengling

:’) my son

bi xingming

i am honestly so charmed that he’s a snake but a different vibe one than zzs. also, accurate!

cheng zichen

stubborn gruff boy

feng yan

i took the raptor quiz a few times and almost went back to the main quiz to reassess but then i hit this one and. yeah. (it’s harder to answer these quiz questions with the ocs who aren’t there as much bc they’re less fleshed out? so i let myself have a few possible options on these)

ma tingqian

ma tingqian beloved i need to write you more

yun shuying

hands down the hardest one and the only one i went back and retook the main quiz for. i think this hits her vibe pretty well, though!

[sunriseverse]

consider: hypersexual xue yang vs. sex-averse song lan. both of their relationships with sex are horrible. song lan’s tried multiple times and he just can’t. he’s embarrassed about it. it makes him feel bad. in his mind he’s an adult and this is something he should able to do because that’s what he’s always been told. right? right? xue yang thinks song lan can’t possibly like him if he won’t even touch him. all of his previous relationships were primarily about the sex. in his mind relationships = having sex. he’s just used to having a lot of sex in general because it’s his body and he can have a lot of sex if he wants to. he likes sex! so what? (he does not want to think about any other possible reasons he might be so obsessed with sex.) this is the source of A LOT of fighting. xue yang is so in the wrong here but he literally just can’t comprehend it and it hurts him so bad. he already can’t shake the feeling that song lan thinks he’s disgusting (even though it’s just song lan’s ocd and he cannot help it) and now this. song lan also ends up feeling like shit because shouldn’t be able to give his partner that? and what about xiao xingchen? does he feel that way? does he think it and not say it?

and then xxc comes in like, have you heard of exhibitionism? just because he doesn’t like participating doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to watch. but it sort of turns out that xue yang doesn’t like being watched, at least not when it’s phrased like that, and also xiao xingchen’s getting tired of being the peacekeeper here.

(in this particular scenario, i imagine they’re boyfriends but kind of mad about it. but they actually do like each other. they smile and laugh and joke and make each other feel nice. but also really bad sometimes. but they want xxc to be happy. and they’re already around each other so much, it’s kind of hard to avoid being relationship-y sometimes)

literally. okay. taking a moment to press my face into my hands and scream silently. how do you once again. know EXACTLY what vague thoughts have been percolating in my head. what witchcraft. what sorcery.

yeahhhhhh yeah yeah like. they both have. fucking terrible relationships with sex but they Refuse to Think About It in like. opposite directions. xy is like im normal this is normal everything is totally normal and fine! (its. so very very not. sobs quietly.) and sl is like clearly i am wrong and broken and i need to Try Harder even if it makes me feel Fucking Miserable And Bad (also wrong. so wrong. oh zichen please let me cradle you like a beloved ccat and whisper endearments and press little kisses to the top of your head.) and so they wind up in this situation where like. they’re both trying to do what they think they Should Do even when like. it makes them both feel Bad (in similar but differing flavours). and like. xy’s rejection sensitive dysphoria plus literally every other fucking thing he’s got going on that makes him prone to and paranoid about sl hating him just going fucking BONKERS every time sl withdraws and turns in on himself. and sl grappling with this horrible conviction that maybe they both kind of secretly hate him because he can’t do this ONE fucking Normal Thing. delicious. i’m chewing on it.

and you’re right xxc IS tired and like. he doesn’t deserve to constantly play mediator!!!!! that’s not a fair role to him or anyone else involved here!!!!!!!!! what they NEED is to sit down and talk shit out and come prepared with prewritten lists of their concerns and wants and dislikes and so forth. bangs my gavel on the table RELATIONSHIP NEGOTIATION!!!!!! NEOW!!!!!!!!!!!

(and yes that’s literally the perfect thing i think like. they’re not exactly together in the “normal” way but also like they’re not NOT together. but they make each other happy!!!! and also sad and hurt and angry!!!!! and safe!!!!!!! and they live together and they’re dating the same person so tjeyre like. doing couple things. and it’s nice!!!!!!!! they’re just also both trying Really Hard to not think about it because that way lies madness.)

[sunshine304]

It's been forever, I'm very sorry, I know I said fifty times that this post would happen soon, soo uhhh...

Let’s go! - So, the eunuch Chu Tianyu (yes, I yet again had to look up his name) has killed Huo Lintao and is now fighting with my beloved Mu Xiaoqiao. Even though Mu Xiaoqiao is a swishy king, eunuch still manages to steal the seal from him, boooo! >:-( But what we learn is that MXQ’s fighting style is detrimental to his health.

- Chen Zichen is useless as always and has to be rescued by A’Fei and Xie Yun. *heavysigh* But Zichen at least has good taste and makes heart eyes at her. XY is not impressed.

Yin Pei is there?!?! Chuchu recognizes him but he doesn’t do anything about it, he only wants to find Ding Kui. Okay then.

Chu Tianyu now confronts A’Fei and Xie Yun and blabs about the Bone Piercing Blue, because of course he does. He loves to gloat. That actor sure is good at being smarmy. And of course Chen Zichen arrives too… OMG that kid is so superfluous most of the time…

Anyway, fighting ensues! The editing in this ep is really really bad. Half the time I don't even know where the people they seem to be fighting are coming from because they sure as hell weren't there in the wide shot we just saw etc. Oh boy.

Aw fuck, XY unlocks his internal force to help A’Fei which, as we all know, is very very bad for him.

But then Ying Hecong arrives to finally take revenge on Disha and he poisons Chu Tianyu. Muahahaha good riddance! But couldn’t you have arrived a bit earlier for fuck’s sake?

Soooo .. we don’t get to see the fight between Ding Kui and Madam Nichang nor between Ding Kui and Yin Pei. That just happened off screen I guess? ding Kui is now dead? I guess? Oooookay…

Ying Hecong is unfortunately not very helpful while XY is yet again dying. :( Wang Yibo sure has a lot of suffering scenes to do in this drama when he’s not smirking or flirting. XD

Oh no we now have a reverse piggyback scene with A’Fei carrying XY and it’s very sad. T_T It also lasts for an eternity.

- XY has lots of feelings rn. T_T It’s all very very sad as he tells A’Fei that he doesn’t want to be emperor, that he just wants to return with her to 48 Strongholds and be at her side because she has his heart. T_T

- He’s also talking about his fate being pre-determined but A’Fei is angry and isn’t having it. She’s refusing to accept that he’s dying on her. - In his head, XY promises her that though they are parting now, he’ll come back to her in 20 years. T_T A’Fei is exhausted and can’t carry him anymore as he slips off and is, I presume, dead? Or very close to it? It is very very sad. T_T

- Hard scene cut and A’Fei wakes up on a boat steered by an old Buddhist master, Tongming. He talks to her, trying to give her direction in her despair, and reminds her why she practices martial arts in the first place. She decides that she wants to return home and he reveals to her that he’s also got XY on his boat, who is after all not yet dead? I guess, because A’Fei is happy that XY is there and seems to have some hope again.

- Tongming reveals that he used to be XY’s master after all that drama/war went down. Convenient that he showed up there when XY was dying, huh. Anyway, we learn that Xie Yun’s courtesy name is Anzhi (I think we learn it here, I don’t remember if this has been mentioned before, it felt like a big reveal).

- Flashback time! Child!XY doesn’t want to be a prince, he instead wants to be a waiter, a worker, basically anything else. XD Tongming explains to him that these people have to deal with their own hardships, though they are different from those of a prince, and that these people want to be born a prince, so XY, what can we learn from that? A bit of a downer episode I guess. XD Also, the worst editing of fight scenes yet; everything still at the Huo Fort is so disjointed, IDK what happened during the editing process here. Very weird.

[stolligaseptember]

i HATE that he kept his word

[coulsandies]

mdzs headcanon of the day #248 !

one time songxiao broke the bed frame, not because of what people were thinking but because there was a BIG ASS bug on the ceiling that they needed to kill so they had to jump on the bed while also trying to kill the bug. there’s a small blood stain on the ceiling from how hard xxc whacked it with a book. there’s also a slight indent in the ceiling because he hit it so hard with said book

(also i’d like to note that i’ve done something similar to this, but instead of breaking the bed frame i almost put a hole in the wall after throwing a big ass stack of flash cards at a bug full force)

[krispycreamsicle]

Zichen

bingo! song-daozhang my beloved(derogatory). i'm obsessed with him and i adore him so so much. this is a song lan love zone <3

the biting and killing and maiming is mostly because i think it'd make xy happy <3 but also fierce corpse!song lan is my absolute favorite song lan and you can't get there without a little killing and maiming.

but also holy fuck he gets zero screen time! give me more of the near decade he spent living as a fierce corpse in yi city with a very mentally unstable xy please please please i will give my left kidney as compensation

[robininthelabyrinth]

For @kitsunesongs who asked for time travel XXC

-

Someone must have wanted me to come back to life very badly, Xiao Xingchen thought as he made his way down the mountain after leaving his first-year offering at the gate he could no longer cross.

He’d woken up – disoriented and confused – in the little shrine, the only physical marker of Baoshan Sanren’s presence; if it hadn’t been for each year calling for a different type of offering, he wouldn’t have been able to place the year.

(He hadn’t made any offerings after losing his eyes. Even if he could have found the way, he hadn’t thought he was worthy.)

If he’d come back earlier, he might have not gone down the mountain at all. But someone, maybe more than one, had poured their heart and soul into wishing him back, and he couldn’t disgrace their wishes like that. He had to live.

He had to do better this time.

He had to pretend to smile when Song Lan – wonderful Song Zichen, his beloved friend and not yet another victim of Xiao Xingchen’s own stupidity, serious as always – brought him news that there was a cultivator on the loose, suspected of demonic cultivation and even murder, and his name was Xue Yang. He had to agree to go after him, despite knowing what would come, because he had no way to explain to Song Lan what he knew; he could only try to change the events as they came.

He would have to –

“Wait,” he said, staring at the illustration Song Lan offered. “That’s not Xue Yang? He’s too old.”

The features were right, but this man was in his twenties, skinny but handsome – the familiar lines of a face he had never seen at this age, having lost his eyes when the Xue Yang he had known was still young and gawky and cruel despite his teenage years.

“No, that’s him,” Song Lan disagreed. “He’s one of Wen Ruohan’s retainers.”

“Wen…Ruohan?” Xiao Xingchen said slowly. That made even less sense: Wen Ruohan was dead by the time he descended from the mountain. The Sunshot Campaign was over, Wei Wuxian had been killed (and that had been a pity, he remembered thinking at the time, he would have liked to have met his shijie’s son), and Xue Yang had been working for the Jin sect – never the Wen sect.

“Yes. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve heard rumors that the Chief Cultivator is planning something – maybe with the Yin Metal. It would explain why he took on one of Xue Chonghai’s descendants as a retainer.”

Xue Yang was no one’s descendant. He was a delinquent, picked up from the streets – vicious and savage with it, but desperately in need of kindness, only the first people who had offered him kindness had made him dirty himself with atrocities in return for it. He had never gone into detail, and of course Xiao Xingchen hadn’t known who he was until just before the end, but in retrospect it was clear he meant the Jin sect and their demonic cultivation experiments.

Also…what in the world was Yin Metal?

He’d never even heard of such a thing before, but Song Lan said it as if it were obvious.

I thought I was reborn, Xiao Xingchen thought, starting to feel the first creeping chill of horror. I thought I went back to the past of my time…but it seems I’ve ended up somewhere else instead. Somewhere that is like, but also unlike, my own timeline. Similar in some ways, different in others…

But how can I stop the future if I don’t know what it will be?

[silvysartfulness]

xiao xingchen's mental state is So Terrible

Request: Can we see Xiao Xingchen’s thoughts on near suicide? Abandonment? Betrayal? He’s defined himself by other people for most of his life - his master, his totally-not-soulmate Song Lan, and his murder-soulmate Xue Yang. To be left by one person and then to be betrayed by another must be … a lot. Does Xingchen think he betrayed Song Lan because Xue Yang killed Song Lan’s people?  He hasn’t had any time to deal with it, because he’s been playing babysitter… and then saving his pet murderer, too.  Because I’ve put a lot of thought into this, but my writing skills are about 0, and you are so good at angst.

Okay! I’ll just… stream of consciousness on this. Because there is a lot to say about Xiao Xingchen’s mental state, his sacrifices, his losses and his choices.

There’s definitely a lot of touching on these issues currently in Heaven Has A Road. The callback to Xiao Xingchen’s suicide, and the way both Xue Yang and Song Lan fear the worst when he takes off on his own.

The kicker is that Xiao Xingchen himself doesn’t realize. Doesn’t realize that they worry about that, or why they would. He may still be very much prone to self-sacrificial and reckless decisions for the sake of others, but he’s not actively suicidal or seeking to self-harm now, at least not in such a direct and physical way.

But of course it’s a theme very much hanging in the air.

To look back at canon; Xiao Xingchen is, I think, naive even by Celestial Mountain standards. The previous two of Baoshan Sanren’s disciples who left the mountain either went dark (it’s just vaguely hinted at, but clearly it Was Not Pretty) or was a rather mischievous trickster (shaving off Lan Qiren’s beard for being a rule-obsessed square).

There is a spiritual concept of “going into the world” or “leaving the world” respectively - leaving is what Baoshan Sanren did, letting go of attachment to worldly matters to retreat to her unnamed mountain and cultivate immortality. What Xiao Xingchen does is the opposite - he chooses to “enter the world”, to leave that detached existence behind to get involved in earthly matters - beautifully alluded to by the “chen” in his name, meaning (worldly) dust. (That choice is what Xue Yang curses him for during their confrontation that last day - “If you don’t understand the world, you shouldn’t have come! Why didn’t you stay on your mountain?!” )

But he makes that choice. He wants to help people, make a difference, and so he leaves his family behind, makes that sacrifice even knowing that it means he won’t ever see his home again, and descends into the world.

Xiao Xingchen is described as gentle but determined, not only physically fighting and vanquishing evil, but helping people with any ”difficult matter” they bring before him, never refusing anyone. He wants to do good; what’s good for any humble person, not just the mighty few. And for all that he is naive, Xiao Xingchen is also self-assured and uncompromising. He knows what he is striving for, and he doesn’t hesitate when it comes to putting thought into action.

And down in the world, he finds someone else who puts those ideals over the blood ties of the mighty clans - Song Lan. Zichen. They grow close, they talk about starting a sect together – between the lines that means spending the rest of their lives together, living for those shared ideals. They grow so close, people always mention them together.

And then Xue Yang happens. Something so corrupted and grisly, it shakes even this extremely powerful young cultivator.

Whether you go by novel or series canon, the way the rest of the world handles the aftermath of the Chang massacre, it clearly dents Xiao Xingchen’s trust in the sects, in society and its concept of ”justice” quite badly.

And then Baixue happens, as a direct consequence of them capturing and making enemies with Xue Yang. Xue Yang specifically tells Song Lan, ”Tell Xiao Xingchen this is a gift for him!”

So yes, I think Xiao Xingchen takes the full blame of the Baixue massacre upon himself, because Xue Yang was out to hurt him. But because he and his immortal master were out of reach, Baixue paid the price. Song Lan paid the price.

So he broke his vow never to return home, and he gave up his eyes, in a hopeless bid to repair some modicum of the damage he’d caused, to at least give Song Lan his sight back, if not his home, his family, his ideals and beliefs and and hope.

At some point in that aftermath, Song Lan did blame Xiao Xingchen and told him they should never meet again, and he took that to heart, too. Of course Song Lan wouldn’t want to see him again – what is he now, but a reminder of those losses? The losses his own hubris caused?

So he wrapped up Shuanghua and went nameless into the world, avoiding attachments, described as wandering aimlessly from place to place to offer help and then move on, to make sure no one else would be hurt because of him. (That Xue Yang wouldn’t hurt anyone else because of him.)

I wrote a passage about him thinking back on this in an upcoming chapter;

I tried being no one, he thought, unbecomingly bitter and hurting. To make sure people wouldn’t get hurt because of me again. I thought I succeeded, but I ended up hurting people, killing people with my own hands instead.

He studiously tried tuning out the somewhat uneven footfalls behind them, focused wholly on the hand in his.

I tried being nothing, after that, after learning the truth.

But people had died because of him all the same, even then, even with him gone. The last survivors of the Chang, the people of Yi City, all those nameless victims whose blood had paid for the spells to drag him back into the world of the living… A-Qing.

I won’t hide away again, he thought, setting his jaw. I have to try… Try to be something. To do something. To leave a legacy better than this. To make it all worth it, make sure all this suffering wasn’t for nothing.

It was a bitterness that his hopes of doing that, the chance to realize the purpose he so desperately clung to… came at the hands of the man whose shadow had haunted him into nameless exile and caused all that grief and death in the first place.

How much time Xiao Xingchen had to think about all this varies wildly between CQL-canon and MDZS-canon – in the novel, not a whole lot of time passes between the Baixue massacre and Xiao Xingchen meeting a-Qing and eventually Xue Yang. But in CQL, the Baixue massacre takes place before Sunshot, before Yiling Laozu claims the Burial Mounds, before Nightless City and Wei Wuxian’s death… it’s been years of wandering alone before Xiao Xingchen meets a-Qing, and then Xue Yang. I’m not sure if it’s stated how long the Sunshot war is in CQL-canon, but even only going by the things we do know – Yanli having a child, Wei Wuxian having been dead for 16 years at the end of the Yi City arc where the main events took place 10 years ago, it’s anywhere between seven to some ten years.

So I think he has had a lot of time to reflect on all that grief from the past, but that it’s really just been spirals of hopelessness, never really processing or moving on from it. Shuanghua is still wrapped up when he meets a-Qing. He doesn’t introduce himself by name. It’s her shameless happiness, her choice to seek out his company – oh, how he’s ached for connection! - that finally gets him smiling again.

And once he makes friends with the odd stranger whose life he saves… He smiles. He laughs. They all build a home together. Shuanghua is no longer hidden. At the market, the stranger casually calls him by his name.

I think it’s only once they settle down in Yi City that he really begins healing from the horrors of the past. Dares start to build something new, in a tiny little backwater at the very edge of the map. Surely Xue Yang’s shadow won’t reach him, and this humble little existence he’s building here?

So of course it utterly breaks him when the truth comes out. Not just one, but awful truth after awful truth, tearing apart everything he’s built, everything he thought he had – everything he’s done.

A-Qing lied to him about being blind. His ”friend” was Xue Yang all along. He’s been tricked into killing people. He was tricked into killing Song Lan.

The character songs of the Yi City arc lean very heavily into Buddhist rather than Daoist themes – which is super interesting! - but especially the concept of karmic justice. No matter how unaware Xiao Xingchen was of it, he has killed. Not only did he turn away from cultivating immortality a long time ago – his soul is tainted forever. Gu Cheng speaks of ”debts” that can’t be repaid, falling into karmic sin. This isn’t just about tricking him into doing nasty things which leaves him horrified – he has been spiritually destroyed, and he didn’t even know.

The line of Gu Cheng that cuts the deepest is perhaps ”it was not your fault”/ ”The guilt doesn’t lie with you.”

Because that, I think, is at the core of things when Xiao Xingchen reaches for Shuanghua that day in Yi City - that he feels that it does. That it’s all his fault.

He has lost everything. He let down and/or was betrayed by everyone he knew. Killed his beloved soulmate. He himself is tainted and ruined beyond all salvation, because of what he’s done. And so he doesn’t just kill himself, he destroys himself, kills his body and shatters his soul, beyond all hope for reincarnation and rebirth. He utterly and completely ends himself, ends everything that is and was Xiao Xingchen.

Which is heartbreaking beyond words, and also why Heaven Has A Road clearly needed to happen. D:

…

I hope this was at least in the ballpark of the kind of rambling you were hoping for. XD