#wen xiachen
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Lan Qiren is away for a Discussion Conference, Wuxian continues poking holes in his arguments.
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Wuxian plopped opposite of Lan Zhan and set his armful of reference books on the table between them. Lan-xiansheng had assigned them an essay for the time he’d be away at the discussion conference. Wuxian wanted at least an outline and his source list done before dinner. Then he could write the final essay at any given point, rather than scramble to get it all done during the last day before classes resumed. The topic was something shijie’d call sexist garbage, Why women are more likely to become ghosts? Discuss yin energy and the ease with which it gets corrupted.
Lan Zhan glanced at his reference books, and then did a double take.
“Like them?” Wuxian grinned. “I think most of the answers for xiansheng’s essay can be found in these.”
“Those are law books.”
“Yes, they are. And collected reports of your sect’s ghost hunts. I had no idea you kept such thorough records.”
“It’s an essay on yin energy.”
“No it’s not. The question is worded so that it leads the reader to think the only reason women become ghosts more often than men is that they are easier to corrupt, rather than asking why female ghost are more common. Have you ever talked to a minor government official who’s so puffed up on his own importance that he treats his underlings terribly? Or a poor farmer who seems like geniality personified, but whose wife and children flinch from him? Don’t answer that, of course you haven’t. My point is, men can be corrupted just as easily as women, but their corruption is more secular, and they more often than not get their burial rites. Women, on the other hand, are often treated like possessions, and in many cases do not get their burial rites. Being treated like a possession would create resentment in anyone, not just women. It’s why most of the male ghosts that do appear were slaves or prisoners, who also do not merit their rites. Or murder victims. So I am going to argue that yin energy is in fact not any more easily corruptible than yang energy, but the problem is how society treats women.” He grinned at the stunned Lan Zhan. “I hope your uncle keeps calming medicine nearby when he grades these.”
Wuxian started reading though his research material and absently noted the Lan Zhan started to read them too.
‘*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’
Wuxian grinned the whole time in class when Lan-xiansheng collected their essays. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when he read them!
And to think Lan Zhan had thought he might have a point! Of course, Wuxian hadn’t read Lan Zhan’s essay, and for all he knew, Lan Zhan had argued the exact opposite of his point, but they’d shared the source material AND a table the whole time they’d been working. Wuxian had also sent a copy of his essay back home for his cohort.
Wuxian pouted inwardly. Letters took so long to arrive. He wanted to know what shijie thought of his essay now, when it was still fresh, and not in a tenday’s time when his excitement had burnt out already. Someone really should do something about the slow communication between faraway places. The Jin butterfly messages hardly counted; they could only deliver a very short message.
He remembered the way shijie’s voice had been projected into the isolation chamber. Shijie called it a far speaker, but it only went one way for a short distance. What he wanted, was something that let him speak to shijie while still in Gusu and have shijie answer back immediately. In far speaker he already had the part that captured voice, and the part that released the voice, the speaker part. He just had to figure out the distance part of it.
He'd read what the Lan sect library had on space manipulation, like qiankun seals and hidden chambers. If… Maybe a qiankun space that could be opened in two places at once?
Drowning out Lan-xiansheng’s droning voice going on about the dangers of female cultivators (what was his problem with women anyway? Did he get rejected so badly he never recovered and now he hated the entire sex?), Wuxian sunk into thought, his eyes glazing over.
Lan Wangji couldn’t pay proper attention to his uncle, Wen Wuxian was very prettily framed by the window from his angle, even with his disgraceful posture.
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No waterborn abyss in Biling lake this time. There was some water ghouls, but Lan Xichen took care of those easily enough on his own.
@seafoamsandwhich you wanted to be tagged, right?
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#lan wangji#lan qiren#wen xiachen#cloud recesses#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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Wuxian’s first lesson with Lan Qiren. They do not get along.
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Wen Wuxian wondered which idiot got them the collective punishment of having to listen to Lan-xiansheng reading out the Lan sect’s three thousand rules to “make sure everyone knows if they are breaking rules.” To break the rules on the first day and to be caught! At least he couldn’t be blamed for this, he’d spent a very educational evening alone in his dorm.
The Lans didn’t think ignorance as sufficient enough reason for breaking their rules apparently. Shijie had given him a century old copy of the Lan rules found in the Wen library. At the time of scribing, the Lan sect had some 2100 rules which matched perfectly up to what Lan-xiansheng was still reading.
Wuxian started doodling on the paper he’s meant to be taking notes on. He drew quick caricatures of his classmates. He spied the boy in Nie colors hide a bird in his sleeve and try to share the secret with the huffy boy in Jiang purples. The Jin heir, whom Wuxian had had the dubious honor of meeting before (because he was shijie’s maternal cousin), was staring ahead with the glazed eyes of someone escaping reality. The only one paying attention was the beautiful Lan. He’d eavesdropped earlier on the Nie contingent and found out the boy was Lan Wangji, Lan-er-gongzi, and head of discipline.
Honestly, if xiansheng really wanted them to learn the rules, he wouldn’t be the one reading them aloud. If Wuxian was the one teaching, he’d have the students read one rule each in their turn, and then repeat the process, but in a different order so that the students would have to pay attention in case they were to read next. He’d also space it throughout the first tendays or so, because now none of the other sect disciples was going to remember a thing other than how bored they’d been.
Suddenly, xiansheng slammed a hand loudly on his desk, making several of Wuxian’s classmates jump. Wuxian himself was far too used to sudden noises to jump, but he deigned to give xiansheng his full attention now that he was demanding it.
“I see none of you feels the need to pay attention,” xiansheng complained. “Very well, let’s move onto something different. Wen Wuxian!”
How bold, Wuxian thought as he jumped up. “Here!” Is it because I’m the only Wen here, or because everyone else is gentry by birth?
“Let me ask you, are yao, demons, ghosts and monsters the same thing?”
“Not at all, xiansheng. Demons come from living humans, ghosts from dead humans, yao from living non-human beings and monsters from dead non-human beings,” Wuxian answered with a bright smile. And, because shijie had taught him to anticipate and answer the next question as well, he decided to add to his answer. “For example, if one were to torment a human long enough in a place filled with resentful energy, that human would eventually turn into a demon, but if the human, while still human, was removed from the vicinity of the resentful energy and then died of their torment, they’d very likely become a ghost. Or if you denied someone angry their burial rites. You’d get yao, if a living non-human being, like that tree in the courtyard over there, cultivated a consciousness. But if I took an axe and felled the tree, and the furniture carved from the tree trunk cultivated a consciousness, then that’d be a monster. Also, technically, advanced spirit animals are yao, but because they have cultivated in places with clean spiritual energy and have not internalized any resentful energy, they are benign rather than bloodthirsty, and even in death, rarely if ever become monsters.”
Xiansheng grit his teeth but took a deep breath and relaxed. "Let me ask you again," he started. "There is an executioner with parents, a wife, and children, but before he died, he executed more than one hundred people. He suddenly died in public and, to punish him for his deeds, he was left on the streets for seven days. With the repressed energy of resentment, he started to haunt and kill. What should be done?"
Wuxian grinned. The question was full of holes. He’d have fun filling them. “Well, first of all, the local sect should have provided him with identity concealing talismans for his government sanctioned job as an executioner. Secondly, he shouldn’t have been punished for doing his job, because if it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else. But, since the local sect has already failed in their job once and the public has once again created their own problem, they should try to liberate the poor sot by attempting to grant his last wish. If the wish is unobtainable or immoral, they should see if the spirit could be safely redirected to spend up his resentment and be liberated this way. If this is not possible, they should attempt suppression. If they can’t suppress the spirit, and only if that isn’t possible, should the spirit be exterminated, removing the possibility of reincarnation.”
Lan Qiren had been turning steadily redder as Wuxian spoke. “And where, exactly, would you redirect the spirit’s anger to make sure it didn’t hurt anyone in the process?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“I’ve found chopping wood to be very anger draining,” Wuxian quipped with a charming smile. “Get that aggression out with every swing.”
Not that Wuxian himself was prone to anger, but he’d seen Wen Ning go at it when Wen Chao’s comments got too far under his skin. After a good quarter shichen his gentle friend was back in control, and ready to prank the pants off Wen Chao.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#cloud recesses#lan qiren#lan wangji#nie huaisang#jiang cheng#jin zixuan#wen xiachen#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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Miscellaneous information for my Wen Xiachen AU.
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霞 – xia – red clouds 晨 – chén – morning, dawn, daybreak
霞晨 – Xiachen
为什么 – Wei Shen Me – why, for what reason (Wei Ying’s sword)
雯 – Wén – multi colored clouds, last name of Xiachen’s disciples
Fengmi – plentiful or abundant silk
Xilei – to admire thunder
Laniao - chattering bird
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Jin Laniao - mother of Wen Xiachen, concubine to Wen Ruohan, older shu sister of Jin Guangshan, died of complications during a miscarriage.
Jin Fengmi - Jin Laniao’s dowry servant, born into a long line of shu children and barely recognized as a member of the Jin clan, was almost wed to a non-cultivator but chose to disfigure herself instead, weak cultivation but manages to use hers in ways most cultivators don’t (assassin/spy)
Wen Xilei - Wen Xiachen’s guard and head of security, Wen Ruohan’s informant
A-Lin - one of the first five street kids thrown into Wen Xiachen’s isolation/sense deprivation cells, fanatically loyal
Zhao Zhuliu – 13 years older than WWX, married Wen Shao, very dry wit, extremely loyal
Wen Xiachen, shijie – 12 years older than WWX. Wen Xu almost managed to drown her just after Jin Laniao died, she was eight, he was five. Instead of death, she got the memories of a dead depressed millennial, and has been abusing the knowledge of the characters of MDZS, as well as the miscellaneous knowledge of the modern world
Wen Shao er-shijie – 11 years older than WWX – name means excellent, harmonious. Embroiders Xiachen’s clothes, married Zhao Zhuliu, pregnant with third child by canon, no humor, one of the second batch of street kids that experienced Wen Xiachen’s isolation/sense deprivation cells
Wen Tui san-shijie – 10 years older than WWX – name means to retreat, to withdraw. Cheat’s at weiqi, will have a wife at some point
Wen Pinde si-shixion – 8 years older than WWX – name means moral character. Patient until roused, extremely protective, married a mid-ranking Wen maiden
Wen Quwei wu-shijie – 7 years older than WWX – name means fun, interest, delight, taste, liking, preference. Plays every instrument, wants to figure out musical cultivation, no time for romance (ace), ran away from the brothel she was born to
Wen Zhu & Wen Ji liu-shijie and qi-shijie – 6 years older than WWX – Zhu and Ji both mean pearls. Zhu deals in poisons, Ji practices healing cultivation, their father died before they were born, they were a happy surprise to the family, hence pearls
Wen Lingchang, A-Hui ba-shixiong – 4 years older than WWX – name means live long and prosper. Sickly as a child, clumsy, knows fan dancing
Wen Wuxian, A-Ying jiu-shidi
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Jin Laniao’s dowry: Jin Fengmi, three tea farms, seven rice farms, one silk farm, a mountainous orchard, 100 cattle, 70 pigs, 40 horses, 200 chickens, 20 goats, 30 sheep, and enough jade and gold to shame an empress.
What Wen Xiachen inherited: Jin Fengmi, three tea farms, seven rice farms, one silk farm, a mountainous orchard, 60 cattle, 35 pigs, 50 horses, 170 chickens, 25 goats, 50 sheep, and enough jade and gold to shame an empress
What Wen Xiachen did with it: figured out smoked tea and bought more tea farms and a smokery, and fallow land for tree cultivation. Sent one of her “pets” to manage it, gets monthly reports. Started trying to increase the rice yield by cross breeding fat rice grain strain with numerous rice grain strain. It is slow going, but shows promise. Took one look at the silk manufacturing and commissioned a talisman that stopped live animals entering the mulberry grove to let the silkworms eat in peace. It tripled the silk output, and she buys new farms every so often. She has become the Lan sect’s main silk provider. The orchard was on the eastern end on Qinling mountain range and had mainly plum trees. Xiachen would have preferred apples or pears, but made do with plums, and started to cultivate sweeter plums. It was still a work in progress. The sheep and goats were taken to the tree cultivar areas and kept there to keep grass and hey down and to fertilize the soil, because they all had tag talismans that alerted one of the workers if they stepped outside the fenced area or were in any way injured, so there was no particular need to keep them where one could see them. And she started husbandry projects for all the animals, bigger and more milk for the cows, stronger bulls, speed and stamina for the horses rather than strength, size for the pigs and chickens, and finer hair for the sheep and goats. The tea business and silk farms were turning in a hefty profit by the time A-Ying was brought to the fold, so his impression of Xiachen’s finances is slightly screwed, she just doesn’t like shark fin and abalone and sees no point in hiring a seamstress to embroider her clothes when A-Shao would do it willingly. The chores are for character building and understanding the struggles of non-cultivators.
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Wuxian observes his classmates (and eventual enemies, if Wen Ruohan gets his war). And he listens to rumors in Caiyi.
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Cloud Recesses, while not fun, were eye opening.
Shijie had spoiled them with her discussion-based learning! Even the theory lessons in the lecture halls were more interactive than Lan Qiren’s lectures. The only entertainment in the whole place was Lan Zhan and trying to provoke a reaction, good or bad, out of him.
Being the only Wen in Cloud Recesses made Wuxian slightly paranoid, and he missed his cohort. He wanted to go home and shout at Tui-shijie for cheating at weiqi and snack on the roasted melon seeds only found in their common room and tell shijie of his day. And that’s without mentioning the ridiculous sleep schedule they were expected to adhere to. Shijie said the Lans’ sleep schedule was decided by the elders who naturally had an early bedtime and an early rising time, but that people younger than twenty naturally tended to stay up late and then sleep late. There were outliers in both groups, of course, but the majority followed this trend.
Wuxian listened with half-an-ear as he doodled on his notes, marking down what he noticed of the other students’ relationships.
Jin and Jiang, who on paper got along splendidly, what with the Jin heir being engaged to Jiang-guniang, clashed at every opportunity. The Jin heir was full of hot air and being egged on by his posse of daddy approved sycophants. He also desperately wanted a friend but was too socially inept to make one. And being kept intentionally isolated by his ambitious cousin.
The Jiang heir was breaking under the pressure placed on him and had no close friends even among his own sect and was too distrustful to accept the Nie spare’s overtures of friendship.
While the Nie sect seemed to respect Lan and Jiang, they as a collective loathed the Jin and hated the Wen. The Nie spare was useless, but he had that kind of twisted thinking Wuxian had seen in the older scholars and sect officials at Nightless Sky, the ones that knew who to bribe to get their ideas fast tracked. If he ever had the need to develop that twisted thinking into actual cunning, he might be a formidable opponent.
Most Lan disciples were of the hypocritical righteous kind, but the heir and the spare seemed like good, if overtly sheltered young men. Lan Zhan, for one, couldn’t seem to understand that outside of Cloud Recesses, the Lan sect’s rules mattered little if at all. But he was pretty enough to make up for his naivete.
Of his classmates, Nie Huaisang was the only one that couldn’t be allowed to live after the war. Of this Wuxian was certain. Nie Huaisang would pull some improbable scheme out of his ass, and because everyone would be so used to thinking of him as useless, he’d even get away with it. The Lans could be threatened into compliance. The Jiang… Jiang Wanyin would throw himself into the fighting and would die on the battlefield. Jin Zixuan would be assassinated by some power hungry relative if he developed morals or he’d be manipulated into being a puppet leader. His cousin on the other hand was the kind of stupid that could be useful, but most likely would get him killed if he was ever baited to the battlefield.
As for the minor sects… there was no one who stood out from their peers. They were all middling cultivators, not particularly bright, thumping each other’s backs for every petty achievement. Useful in the right hands, possibly leading to a mob mentality and death by a thousand cuts if turned against you.
When they had a day free of the lectures, Wuxian tagged along with a group of minor set disciples on their way to Caiyi. They were on the hunt for beautiful Gusu girls to flirt with. Wuxian, on the other hand, sought out the best tearoom in Caiyi and settled in with a book. He sharpened his hearing like Jin-laoshi had taught and started eavesdropping. Shijie really was right, tearooms really were the best place for gossip.
It didn’t take long to ascertain that the Lan really were content to sit on their mountain espousing their rules rather than adhering to their motto and be righteous. There was no Lan headed charity in Caiyi or any of the other nearby towns.
Aiyah, Lan Zhan, your sect disappoints me!
Lan Zhan, of course couldn’t see what he couldn’t see. A young master who had never lacked for money or education or medical care couldn’t know what they would mean to those who had gone without.
“-have a healing hall?” a voice in Qishan accent was asking, horrified, from a nearby table. “What are the Lan doing with their wealth then?”
“Oh? Are things so different in Qishan then? Do you have healing halls there?” the Caiyi native asked.
“Do we ever! Let me tell you! Some years ago we had bad case of fever, right, hundreds dead in the early spring when there was planting to be done. My wife’s sister had married a farmer close to Chang’an, and the whole family came down with it, to the smallest babe. Then they heard of the healing hall in Chang’an, organized by the Wen sect. Brother-in-law packed the whole family into their cart and headed there, because they really had nothing to lose. He’d heard of a neighboring farm losing three children, two farm hands and the husband to the fever not a week earlier, see? So they got there, thinking they’d maybe get some medicine and a debt, but instead they get ushered to a room with beds for all of them, them children being stacked on top of each other all handy like. They got clean clothes, congee, medicine and warm water for washing delivered to their room, like little lordlings. It took them some three days to start feeling better, but none of them died. Once they were on the mend, one of them nurses then told them about the importance of keeping all clean like, because miasma can cling to your skin if you’re close to sick people and infect you. And not just sick people! There’s miasma everywhere, but often it’s in such low amounts you don’t get sick! But better safe than sorry, so them nurses said to wash your hands before eating, preferably with water that’s been boiled and still warm. Soap is the best, but even just vigorous scrubbing helps.”
“And what was the price of the care?” the Caiyi native asked.
“That’s the kicker, ain’t it? Nothing! It all comes from taxes! Both to the government and the Wen sect! I heard it’s Wen-guniang behind the whole scheme, ‘cause she’s the one to visit all them orphanages and schools too.”
“The Guanyin of Qishan? That Wen guniang?”
“You’ve heard of her?”
“Of course! One of my cousins lives in Tianshui, and his kids go to that school she founded. Hadn’t heard of the healing halls though, my cousin’s hardy stock.”
“My kids go to the school in Mianyang. We were all scared when the Wen sect just took over the Zhou sect, but it’s for the better. The Zhou weren’t bad, but they weren’t big enough to support Mianyang like the Wen sect can.”
Wuxian hummed in contentment. Others recognizing shijie’s hard work always warmed him. He let the merchant and his friend fade from his hearing as he concentrated on a young widow trying to sell her cooking skills to the owner of the tea house.
He drank the rest of his tea, put his book in a qiankun sachet on the inside of his sleeve, and went to offer the young widow a place in Nightless Sky’s kitchen.
Heavens know where she’d end up in Gusu.
He didn’t notice golden eyes watching him console the distraught woman and offer her hope of a better life in Qishan.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#cloud recesses#lan wangji#wen xiachen#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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There’s no place like home, and for Wuxian, it is the north-eastern wing of the Fire Palace.
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Arriving in Nightless Sky was a relief. Five days of travel, though two of them were spent at shijie’s Qinling orchard estate while a winter storm raged outside. Even though the Spring festival had passed, that did not mean it was in any way spring weather.
Registering his return with a quick qi imprint at the gate*, Wuxian headed home, calling out hellos to his friends and acquaintances in the outer city. As he passed, he nodded and waved at Wēn Xilei who was running half of shijie’s guard through their paces for the cold resistance training. A-Lin got a quick hello as he passed her in the front courtyard of the north-eastern wing of the palace.
Closing the temporary winter doors behind himself, Wuxian found his silk house slippers waiting for his return. He divested himself of his outermost layer of cloak and boots, leaving them to drip and dry on the rack so that the servants would have an easier time dealing with them. He could smell the familiar magnolia incense wafting through the palace.
There was noise coming from the common room, a child’s laughter the most prominent, so he headed there.
“I’m home!”
Shijie had a toddler on her lap, it must be xiao-Ren. Xiao-Lu isn’t in the room, she must’ve started at the sect creche. Shao-shijie has her third child, xiao-Lian, whom Wuxian has never seen before, in her arms, but she smiles at Wuxian.
Xiao-Ren was set gently on the floor, and shijie (oh, he’s taller than her now) hurried around the furniture, opening her arms for a hug.
He fell into it easily, relaxing completely for the first time in nearly a year. “Welcome home, A-Ying,” shijie whispered, rocking slightly from side to side. She pulled back slightly and pulled him deeper into the room. She returned to her seat, and Wuxian nabbed a plush pillow for himself.
Once he was comfortably settled, he lay his head on shijie’s knee and enjoyed her petting his hair as he talked. He had missed it, more than he’d thought he would. But he was back with his friends and family where he knew who would be hostile and how to deal with them. Here he would have more people to talk to than just Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan was nice, a joy to be around, but he couldn’t replace everyone. If Lan Zhan was in Nightless Sky, then everything would be perfect.
He may have mentioned as much, and about how lonely he’d been in Cloud Recesses, only to have xiao-Ren climb into his lap and call him sad-shishu.
He may have also fallen asleep there, having his hair petted and cradling a toddler.
Ꙭ
The official debriefing happened in shijie’s tearoom, like always.
He prepared the tea while shijie glanced over his notes and self-drawn maps.
“Let’s begin with the general sect relations. You wrote here that the Nie loathe the Jin and hate us. How did it manifest?”
“Mainly as subtle ridicule for the Jin, while I was treated like I wasn’t present at all. It led to several scuffles among the disciples when the Nie weren’t being as quiet as they thought, and the Jin took offence. Nie-er-gongzi, Nie Huaisang, seemed to accidentally orchestrate many of the Jins’ problems, with selling them porn and prompting his sect mates to issue dares during which only the Jin got caught.”
“And they didn’t engage with you at all?”
“Not after the first sparring session when I beat their best swordsman.”
Shijie pursed her lips, annoyed. “It is a strategy on its own, as you know, but only effective if you care about the person ignoring you, or they get everyone else to do it too, leaving you isolated.”
Wuxian nodded. Shijie used the tactic much more effectively. Nie Huaisang should have made sure he got the other sects to partake in his sect’s attempt at isolating him. But then, the Lan literally couldn’t do it during the lectures since he was already there, the Jin wanted to maintain at least cordial relations with the Wēn and shunning Wuxian wouldn’t do that, and most minor sects would suck up to anyone more powerful than themselves. The only one they might have managed to convince to ignore him were the Jiang, and they were very much ignoring everybody already.
“And did the Lan treat you well? You wrote that Lan Qiren often picked you first to answer question on material you hadn’t yet covered.”
“Lan-xiansheng had a problem with me. I’m not sure why? He never elaborated if it was just ideological or because I was a Wēn or because I wasn’t born to gentry, or all of them at once. I met Zewu-jun only a few times, but while he was cordial, he wasn’t exactly welcoming. Lan Zhan’s just really introverted, and once he got to know me, he was nice. The other disciples were polite but distant with everyone.”
“And the Jiang?”
“They were insular almost to the point of rudeness, but with the way Jiang Wanyin was acting, it was most likely out of self-defense. Jiang Wanyin couldn’t irreparably damage sect relations if he didn’t interact with other sects’ disciples.”
“What are the local non-cultivators’ thoughts on their sect?”
“The Lan are respected, almost revered, but not loved. They only descend their mountain for two things: night hunts and when they need something. Because their rules forbid things like drinking and excess eating and talking during meals, even when they are in the nearby towns, they don’t particularly endear themselves to the locals. The most charity they offer is donating old disciple robes to the homeless once a year before winter. No schools, no medicine, no orphanages. During environmental catastrophes like floods or droughts, they offer the basic assistance of food and clothing, but aren’t particularly proactive in laying the souls of any possible victims to rest.”
Shijie nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve been meaning to instigate a program that offers soul calming ceremonies for non-cultivators. If we had less night hunts, we’d have more time to dedicate to discovering the secrets of the world.”
Wuxian tilted his head. “But wouldn’t that make cultivators unnecessary?”
Shijie snorted. “If the only thing cultivators do is hunt ghosts and walking corpses, they don’t deserve to be called cultivators. They should find out what happens when qi is introduced to different plants or invent talismans or create living paintings. On a very basic level, cultivation is about creating something, cultivating something to be better, cultivating yourself to be better, cultivating the world to be a better place. Most cultivators just happen to do so by pruning the rotting parts away instead of aiding in growth.” **
Of course shijie thought of cultivation like that, she always encouraged everyone in the cohort to find something they were interested in and then pursue it. Pinde-shixiong with his meticulousness found fulfillment in order, numbers and bookkeeping and thorough records, going so far as to create a clear categorizing system for the texts in the sect library. Tui-shijie loved plants and walks in the garden, so shijie let her have free reign of the north-eastern wing’s gardens. Shao-shijie loved needlework and being practical, so embroidered talismans suited her perfectly. Zhu-shijie and Ji-shijie were interested in poisons and medicines, but not enough to pursue them as a career. Instead, they were interested in clothes, jewelry, hair care, and makeup so shijie let them design, care for and choose her clothes and jewelry, and help her get ready in the mornings. Lingchang-shixiong didn’t have such clear interests, so shijie had Jin-laoshi take him under her wing for intense spy work training, and his penchant for gossip led him to being a very dedicated information gatherer. Quwei-shijie obviously had her music and uncovering the secrets of musical cultivation. Shijie most enjoyed painting and calligraphy and knowing things. And she’d supported Wuxian in his interest in painting and the talismanic arts even when she stopped being helpful as anything other than inspiration when Wuxian was thirteen and his knowledge surpassed hers. Even Zhuliu-shixiong had found an interest in carving and sculpting, even if his rudimentary attempts were rather strange. His latest attempt at sculpting was a twisted branch, now dried, with night pearls fused in places leaves once sprouted from. Tui-shijie had incorporated it in one of the gardens with water features.
“Back to your report. Did you count the steps…”
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*the beginnings of a surveillance state
** This is a very English interpretation of the word “cultivate”. I do not have the background or linguistic knowledge to understand every aspect of the Chinese word that is translated as cultivation, so I probably missed some very important aspects ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#mo dao zu shi#grandmaster of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#wen wuxian#wen xiachen#owe it all 'verse#ocs galore
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Wuxian arrives at Could Recesses - and has a very important lesson imparted on him.
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Wen Wuxian followed shijie up the path to Cloud Recesses.
Once they reached the gate, they were met with a gaggle of young Jiang cultivators clamoring to get inside, but they had apparently forgotten their invite somewhere along the way. Wuxian watched them curiously but didn’t break formation with his cohort.
While shijie was handling their entrance permits, a lone Lan walked past the visiting cultivators. Wuxian was quite taken aback by the boy’s beauty. He knew he was handsome himself, but the other should have his beauty immortalized in a painting.
Wuxian’s eyes followed the white figure until he disappeared behind a bend in the path, before shaking himself back to reality.
Aiyah, his lips looked cherry blossom pink!
‘*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’
Wuxian sat across from shijie in the guest house the Lans had given over to shijie’s use. Wuxian had set up his things in his guest disciple dorm, but since was still a shichen until dinner, he’d decided to check on his cohort. Shijie had been set up in the courtyard under a magnificent, flowering pear tree with some tea and a scroll, while the others were setting up the house to their standards with shijie’s preferred magnolia incense and the less expensive travel art. Wuxian had intended to join them, but instead shijie had put down her scroll and had gestured him to sit.
“I think this is the time for a rather important lesson,” she said. “It is not considered… hmm… civilized, to talk of it with people other than one’s parents, spouse, and adult children, but I think it should be talked about before teenagers do anything stupid. The human sexuality and how reproduction works is a big topic, but given how you looked at the Lan boy, one I feel is necessary.”
Wuxian felt his face heating up in embarrassment. It was going to be a long afternoon.
‘*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’
It felt like very eye in the large communal dining hall was on Wuxian as he followed shijie to their assigned tables. Did they know Wuxian had just had his three world views shattered? Did they know men could love men as men loved women? Or that women could love women too? Or that there was a section of people who could love both men and women equally? Or that there were people who didn’t consider celibacy as giving anything up because they wanted none of it anyway?
Before the talk with his shijie, Wuxian’s spring dreams had been of soft touches and maybe a stolen kiss or an illicit glimpse of bare feet. He hadn’t – he didn’t – he hadn’t even taken – taken himself in hand and – pleasured himself – before shijie’s talk, not ever. Lingchang-shixiong was right on the other side of the privacy screen!
Now there isn’t, whispered a curious voice inside him. You’re not sharing your room with anyone.
Trying to distract himself from his thoughts, he let his eyes wander around, looking at the disciples gathered for dinner.
And landed on the beautiful Lan from earlier. His golden eyes were looking down at his food with concentration. His eating was elegant and reminded Wuxian strongly of shijie’s advice on making tea, Slow does not equal elegance, but it is hard to be quick and elegant, A-Ying, and while serving tea, the goal is to be elegant. It was like the Lan was that lesson brought to life.
“-shidi? Hello? Wuxian-shidi? Are you going to sit down?”
Wuxian forced his attention back to his cohort, only to find them all sitting already, smiling and chuckling at him. Face burning, he sat down next to Ji-shijie, back to the hall and the Lan boy.
He wondered what kissing felt like.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#wen xiachen#cloud recesses#lan wangji#ocs galore#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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Xiachen starts ramping up her game. It really helps knowing the location of a legendary beast.
And Wuxian deals with a realization.
-
Wuxian looked at the trashing creature caught in the talismans shijie asked him to develop. Its snake-like head was pinned to the cave floor with the talisman shijie wielded. Zhuliu-shixiong and Tui-shijie had the front limbs taken care of, making sure the creature couldn’t move. Early in the fight Wuxian had shot its eyes out, enraging it beyond all reason, but also limiting its perception of their movements further.
It was the only success they had at first, since the creature’s skin was too thick for their swords to pierce. They nearly lost Pinde-shixiong when the creature managed to hit him, flinging him to the cave wall. Ji-shijie had been on him in an instant, administering first aid and getting him out of the thick of fighting.
Then Zhuliu-shixiong managed to capture the right fore limb, severely limiting the creature’s movements. After that, it was over quickly.
“Well then, shall we?” shijie asked, and manipulated Mingyùn to point straight at the creatures ruined eye socket.
Everyone capable mimicked her, and on signal, every sword shot through the eyes and into the creature’s brain, killing it instantly.
How such a creature had managed to survive so close to the Wen sect, Wuxian would never know. Even now it still reeked of resentful energy. He’d been able to sense it from some three or four li away, it was so potent. It didn’t really dissipate either. The sect would have a lot of work to do to cleanse the cave and the surroundings of the creature’s resentment.
“We’ll camp outside for the night and return home tomorrow with our spoils,” shijie said. “I’ll go check on A-Fu, and if he needs it, take him home early for medical treatment. A-Tui, Zhuliu-ge, look after the others while you deal with the sealing and begin purification, okay?”
“Of course, shijie.” “Understood, Xiachen-guniang.”
Wuxian inched closer to the carcass. It was disgusting, but also… it felt like it was meant for more.
“I think it’s the Xuanwu of Slaughter,” Tui-shijie mused aloud.
“The corrupted Xuanwu from some centuries ago?”
“Very good, Wuxian-shidi. Yes, I mean exactly that.”
Wuxian looked at the beast with new eyes. It was something past cultivators had struggled to bring down and kill. It was something that had almost been divine.
He wondered what kinds of things could be made from it. Would the skin… he looked at it more closely. Not skin, scales. Would the scales be useful for something? Livers were usually useful in medicine, if they could be extracted whole from a yao. Or the pancreas. The shell would probably be given to zongzhu as tribute. What about the bones? Would they be reduced to bonemeal, or could they be treated like ivory and carved into art or jewelry.
Of course, all that was for after purification, because if it wasn’t, they’d only be making cursed items or poisons.
“It’s a lot bigger and more malevolent than what we normally purify,” Lingchang-shixiong muttered.
Which was true. But the Wen sect was known for their purifying techniques. The only time they’ve failed in purifying before was the burial mounds. And it was the burial mounds.
‘*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’
Wuxian sat across from shijie, biting on his brush handle in thought.
“I mean, I’ve thought about it, and even talked with Wen-laoshi about it, but I don’t even have a working prototype yet. Attracting resentful energy is easy in theory, but one wouldn’t want to attract everything indiscriminately. And something powerful enough to attract a water born abyss would attract a lot of other resentful entities.”
Shijie sighed. “I wish I could help you more with this. Talismans were never my passion, so I know how to use and copy them, but making new ones just… escapes me.”
“Why are we working on this anyway?”
“Wen Xu is getting impatient with the abyss in Hanshui river. Knowing him, he’ll eventually drive it east to Lan territory. And I don’t want you to suffer there because of something stupid Wen Xu did.”
“So you’re coming with me to Gusu for the first week to use the Cloud Recesses’ library to do research on Water born abysses.”
“And take stock of their wards for father.”
Wuxian cocked his head. “Jin-laoshi’s coming too?”
“En. Her spiritual sensitivity and experience still eclipses mine.”
Jin-laoshi wasn’t a strong cultivator, but her practical if unconventional education in Koi Tower meant she could get more bang per buck from her spiritual energy when compared to others. The fact she was still alive, twenty-eight years after following Concubine Jin to Nightless Sky was impressive, given the rate women and servants dropped dead there. She’d been born as the shu daughter of a long line of shu sons and had permanently scarred her own face to get out of an arranged marriage to a non-cultivating noble nearly thrice her age. Even now, the scar ran across her face, all the way from forehead across her nose and down to her chin. Wuxian had liked wondering what ferocious beast had done it until he learned the truth recently. Then he went on a research binge on laws concerning women and had come to the horrible conclusion that women were their father’s (or brother’s or grandfather’s or uncle’s or cousin’s) or husband’s property. Only women with dead husbands and grown sons could in any way be considered free. Even if the woman in question was a cultivator. The only truly free woman he knew of was the Immortal Baoshan Sanren, and she was immortal and had secluded herself on a mountain away from society!
Jin-laoshi’s choice had been between two kinds of slavery, and she’d chosen the one where she wasn’t expected to let someone else use her body for their own pleasure. Of course she had been bound to Concubine Jin and with her death, to shijie, but she was a respected teacher to the cohort and a close advisor to shijie.
And when Wuxian tried to apply the same knowledge to shijie, his brain just broke. That zongzhu had arranged two marriages for shijie spoke of his power over her. It did not fit in with Wuxian’s understanding of the world. Shijie was the wisest, most powerful being in the world, obviously, but… Wuxian had taken a closer look at shijie’s family tree. She had her father and brothers, obviously, but she had no uncles. Wen Ruohan had killed all his brothers in the years before and after his ascension to sect leader. And his father had done the same, except for a brother who’d been the same age as the toddler Wen Ruohan. That toddler had been brought up by his concubine mother in the village of Dafan, because that was where she was from. A-Ning and his sister Wen Qing were his children.
So, in case shijie’s immediate family died, the custody of shijie would fall to A-Ning, but it could be contested by Jin-zongzhu as her maternal uncle. The only thing that would save her was either being Wen-zongzhu herself or having adult sons. On that the Wen sect’s by-laws were clear. A female zongzhu was her own master, needing no familial guardian.
It had been like everything about shijie made sense with the revelation.
Of course shijie was aiming to be Wen-zongzhu one day. That way, no one could tell her what to do, and she’d only have four equals in the eyes of the world.
As it should be.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#wen xiachen#wen zhuliu#xuanwu of slaughter#ocs galore#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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A-Ying turns thirteen and gets his courtesy name.
-
Since Pinde-shixiong had gotten married, A-Ying shared the room only with Lingchang-shixiong.
“What was it like, getting your courtesy name?” he asked the morning of his thirteenth birthday.
Lingchang-shixiong hummed. “You were in class then, right? You hadn’t started skipping the morning lectures yet.”
A-Ying laughed. He’d only started skipping class when he had a friend to do so with, and Wen Ning had moved to Nightless Sky when he was eleven.
“Anyway, shijie received me in the private tearoom, and she had laid out everything needed for a tea ceremony. As I prepared the tea, shijie talked to me about what she hoped for me, which was long life and prosperity.” Lingchang-shixiong smiled and looked at his right hand. He spread his fingers out in a strange way, keeping the front- and middle finger and ring- and little fingers together. He held it up to A-Ying. “Live long and prosper.”
“It sounds like a farewell,” A-Ying said, mimicking the hand sign with great difficulty. His middle- and ring fingers didn’t like the stretch between them. “Or a well-wishing on a parting.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“Do you know what shijie told Pinde-shixiong?”
“Something about demons running when good men go to war, which, do you remember what happened to Wen Zhigan? Yeah, Pinde-shixiong can be scary.”
A-Ying snorted. Pinde-shixiong was a very patient man who had a long fuse. But when his anger was roused, he was near impossible to placate until his anger had run its course.
‘*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’*’
Shijie’s private tearoom was the first room on the second floor. It was the east-southern corner of the second floor, overlooking covered bridge from the Sun Palace, and beyond that, the rest of the Nightless Sky. It was meant for entertaining visiting family members, and was therefore not as formal as the public tearoom on the first floor where shijie could receive sect officials or visiting sect dignitaries. But since zongzhu was zongzhu and therefore busy, the two Wen gongzi were who they were, and Madam Wen and the concubines never visited shijie, only the cohort and A-Lin were permitted inside. Shijie had arranged her private lessons for the cohort there for as long as A-Ying knew. In the corner was a small stage for a personal musician to play on if shijie wanted music during the hypothetical visits from family. Quwei-shijie played there whenever it was one of their cohort’s birthdays and shijie hosted a party for them.
A-Ying stood at the top of the stairs, looking over all the ceramics shijie had acquired over the years. Serving dishes, tea sets, vases, incense burners, brush holders, all of them works of art. Many were commissions from renown artisans, while others were older, inherited or bought from antiques stores in Chang’an. The most valuable, A-Ying knew, were kept in shijie’s treasure room
And yet, the tea set on the table was one shijie loved the most, a subtle pink one where the cups were shaped like flowers. The flower arrangement on the table was suitably autumnal, blood red maple leaves still hanging on a branch, some moss and pine cones that had long since released their seeds. There was also a small serving dish of A-Ying’s favorite roasted and spiced melon seeds.
“Please prepare the tea, A-Ying,” shijie said.
Instinct kicked in and A-Ying got to work. On the first sniff of the tea he felt tears start to gather in his eyes. It was his favorite Lapsang Souchong, smoked with pine and the unusable slivers of sandalwood still clinging to sapwood. It was tea he’d never buy on his own, he’d make do with the less expensive Lapsang Souchong smoked with whatever, but it was his absolute favorite tea in the known world. There was just something about the lightest hint of sandalwood that relaxed A-Ying, which was silly, because the tea was the only time A-Ying had anything to do with sandalwood. Shijie herself preferred teas smoked with plum tree with the blossoms intact but had chosen A-Ying’s favorite tea anyway.
Smoking tea was one of shijie’s ideas, and one of her business enterprises. Her mother had had some tea farms as dowry, so she already had that going for her. She also owned approximately one twentieth of the silk production in the known world, which also started with her mother’s dowry and a commissioned talisman. Shijie’s personal wealth was staggering, probably the largest in Jianghu, but the sects each had their own source of wealth, like the Jiang dyes, Wen gold and jade mines, Jin trading fleet, Nie steel, and Lan had their salt trade.
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” shijie said as the water was heating. “I’m never quite sure which of these fits you best, A-Ying. Your innate potential says you were born great, your genius says you’ll achieve greatness, and your kind heart says you’ll have greatness thrust upon you. Kind hearts rarely make a good story, or grab glory, because they don’t have the kind of initiative needed. But you, my A-Ying, have the kind heart and the initiative to either make a great story or a terrible tragedy. So far, I have tried to teach you the skills to avoid a tragedy, but I suppose, you never know what the Heavens have in store for you.”
Shijie paused and A-Ying served the tea.
His hands shook despite his best efforts. Shijie rarely explained how she saw the world, and now she was talking about how she saw A-Ying, saw his potential.
“I gave A-Fu the name Pinde to remind him to stay good and moral no matter what life threw at him. You do not need that kind of reminder. A-Hui got the name Lingchang because he was sickly as a child, and he is still frailer than his agemates. A-Ying has always been very healthy and does not need that kind of blessing.
“Instead, I want to give you a description of you. You have no need to envy others for their talents, for you have plenty of your own. Your heart does not need to envy others for their bonds and relationships, for you easily make your own. And you do not need to envy others their gold, for you could invent a thousand different methods to ease non-cultivators’ life that they would pay handsomely for.
“So I would call you Wuxian, for you have no envy to tie you down. You will soar like a falcon free of the envies of the world.”
Wuxian.
The name echoed in A-Ying’s mind. No envies.
He liked the sound of it.
“Wen Wuxian,” he tried. “Wuxian-shidi. A-Xian. Wuxian-xiong.”
He really liked it.
Wuxian smiled at shijie. “Shijiie of course has to still call this Wuxian A-Ying.”
Shijie shed the seriousness of earlier and smiled. “This Xiachen worked hard to come up with a good name for Wen Wuxian, and he doesn’t want me to use it? For shame, A-Ying!”
A burst of happiness warmed Wuxian’s chest. He didn’t know what character his parents had intended for his ying, but shijie had written it down as falcon in his paperwork. But now he had a name he knew was meant for him, and he knew how it was written from the beginning.
“On that note, your birthday present is in the aviary,” shijie said, setting her empty cup on the table.
“Wait, aviary? No, did you get me a falcon!?”
“Hatched this summer.”
“You’re the best!”
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#wen xiachen#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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A-Ying is very aghast talismanic arts aren’t more popular.
And every Wen-laoshi is called Wen-laoshi, Wen Jinjiu doesn’t give a fuck of how confusing it is to the disciples.
-
A-Ying could barely contain his excitement. He’d aced the introduction to talismanic arts lecture series everyone had to attend and had chosen to continue learning about talismans in an elective course. A-Ning had taken another healing course of course, he wanted to be a healer like his sister Wen Qing. Lingchang-shixiong had taken a course on fan dancing, because he said he felt like he wasn’t elegant enough to accompany shijie to discussion conferences. He’d become more graceful, A-Ying had to admit, but he was still A-Ying’s clumsy shixiong. Pinde-shixiong had chosen an administration focused course, and now did most of shijie’s bookkeeping.
But A-Ying wanted to study talismans. They were like longer lasting spells. Something even non-cultivators could use. And A-Ying already had a perfect project in mind.
He was going to design a laundry talisman. Out of all his chores, he hated laundry the most, and he pitied the laundresses who had to do it every day. So he was going solve their problem with a talisman. If he could develop a talisman that cleaned either dirt and dust or sweat, he’d already save the laundresses a third of their time.
The classroom was nearly empty when A-Ying entered. There were a few older junior cultivators and a senior cultivator missing his leg. Where were the rest? Granted, the room itself was small and only had a handful of desks, but surely there were more people interested in talismans than this?
“Will you move, brat? We’re about to begin,” a voice said behind him.
“Oh! Sorry!” A-Ying yelped and rushed to the closest free desk.
The man that entered after him marched to the desk at the front. “Welcome to intermediary talisman theory. Here you will learn to copy existing talismans. In the introduction course you’ve hopefully learned to recognize and use already existing talismans. If you insist on learning more about talismans, that’s what advanced studies are for. I am Wen Jinjiu, you may call me Wen-laoshi. Yes, I know your every other teacher is also called Wen-laoshi, I don’t care.” He passed out a small stack of talismans, instructing everyone to take one. “Who can tell me what this talisman does?”
A-Ying had never paid such rapt attention in class.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#wen xiachen#ocs galore#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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Wen Ning has entered stage left. He was meant to be part of the stage crew and shift around some props, but A-Ying pulled him into the lime light.
And a cursory look at how the Wen sect works.
There was a new boy in A-Ying’s class. It took A-Ying a few days to notice him at all, he was such a quiet, shy little presence in the back, but A-Ying was perceptive.
The boy’s name was Wen Ning and he was from the Dafan branch of the Wen, and he stuttered quite badly. A-Ying had to use every patience trick he knew to let Wen Ning speak instead of speaking over him when his answers took too long to form. But the longer he let Wen Ning speak without rushing him, the less he stuttered.
He hadn’t managed to spend much time with him outside class, because most of his free time was taken up by his cohort, and Wen Ning was not part of that. Could never be part of it, it turned out. Wen Ning was actually rather high born and would lead his own cohort once he was a senior disciple. A-Ying would never lead a cohort, but if he did well, he might lead night hunts or teach junior disciples. Being part of a cohort made him a rather high-ranking disciple, and if he married and had kids, one of his kids might lead a cohort one day. Provided his wife was Wen by blood. If not, then his children would just be part of shijie’s cohort, Like Shao-shijie’s kids.
Shao-shijie had married Zhao Zhuliu just after shijie’s second wedding, thus folding the Core Melting Hand into shijie’s cohort rather than leaving him to flounder to the general forces. It was not a great love story, but the two got along and agreed on many moral issues. They didn’t really have a humorous bone between them, but it didn’t seem to bother them. Who was A-Ying to judge. Shijie tried to give them a siheyuan of their own, but Shao-shijie protested, and as a compromise, the newly weds had moved to a set of cojoined rooms. Most of Shao-shijie’s duties shifted to Tui-shijie, but that just meant Shao-shijie had the time to embroider more. A-Ying would have doubted Shao-shijie moved at all from her window seat in the common room if he hadn’t caught her with damp hair once. Then she got pregnant.
There was another slight problem with Wen Ning, other than the time A-Ying wasn’t spending with his new friend. And that was Wen Ning’s sister Wen Qing, who was added to Wen zongzhu’s cohort. Zongzhu was shijie’s father, but they wanted different things for the Wen. Zongzhu was aiming for a war within the decade, shijie thought war was a waste of resources. Him and Wen Ning? They were in different camps, so to speak.
But Wen Ning was his friend. And shijie encouraged him to spend time with Wen Ning anyway.
Wen Ning always went along with what A-Ying wanted, never voicing a differing opinion. Some things he liked, like when they skived class and practiced archery instead. Some things he didn’t, like when they went hunting, even though it involved archery. But Wen Ning got even more quiet than usual when he didn’t like something, and A-Ying, who had been trying to get Wen Ning to open up, noticed quickly.
“Aiyah! You should have said something if you didn’t like my suggestion!” he’d chide Wen Ning every time he noticed his friend’s discomfort. It took months before Wen Ning suggested anything, even with prompting from A-Ying. It took even longer for him to volunteer a preference, but A-Ying persevered and got A-Ning to admit a preference for the more sedate, helpful activities like gardening, preparing medicines and the tranquility of practicing archery. Why A-Ning preferred practicing a skill he had no wish to make actual use of was beyond comprehension for A-Ying, but he loved archery himself, and they challenged each other to more and more ridiculous competitions when it came to archery. Eventually it got to the point they were doing trick shots from swordback. A-Ying liked imagining sweeping down from the heights like his namesakes and striking at prey, whether with arrows or something else.
And wasn’t that a doozy. Shènme wasn’t very good at staying still, like A-Ying himself, but they learned together how to anticipate gusts that would affect the arrow’s flight, what angle they should be in for cleanest hits, how to stalk from air. They learned quickly Shènme was faster without A-Ying riding on her, was faster than A-Ying in free fall. They practiced A-Ying jumping off Shènme and then Shènme moving to where A-Ying had jumped to catch him. The first few times they messed up and A-Ying had an impromptu bath in the small lake they’d decided to practice at. Wen Ning was watching from the shore, having declined the invitation to participate. They’d skipped out on the morning history lesson to be there, but dutiful Wen Ning was reviewing their history scroll anyway. A-Ying had read the lesson material already, and he’d read Lingchang-shixiong’s notes too, so he wasn’t too worried if Wen-laoshi had a surprise exam on the subject the next time they had a history lesson.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wei wuxian#wen ning#wen xiachen#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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A-Ying wakes up from his nap to his new shixiongs, who take him to bathe and then to meet his other martial siblings.
Chapter 1, part 2
A-Ying woke up in a bed. His view of the room was obscured by a folding screen depicting a very nice arrangement of flowers. He closed his eyes and remembered shijie holding him in her lap, feeding him good food and occasionally petting his hair.
He must’ve made some noise because an older boy peaked from behind the screen and grinned. “You’re awake! Shixiong, shidi is awake!”
A-Ying pushed himself up and rubbed his sleep crusted eyes. “What’s shixiong’s names? This one is A-Ying.”
“I’m A-Hui,” the shixiong he could see said. “Shijie found me in Pingliang three years ago.”
“And I’m Wen Pinde,” the other shixiong said as he came from behind the screen. He was even older than A-Hui. “Shijie found me in Chang’an five years ago. You may call me Pinde-si-shixiong.”
A-Ying’s eyes were wide. “Shijie found you too?” he asked, amazed at shijie’s kindness.
Wen Pinde nodded. “Shijie heads the Wen sect’s charity program of giving street rats like us a better future. Sometimes, just sometimes, one of us does so well that she keeps us herself rather than letting us go to the sect as a whole.” Wen Pinde sounded very proud of having been picked by shijie, and A-Ying felt answering pride swelling in his chest. Shijie picked him too after all. “You’re the first since A-Hui was picked.”
A-Ying beamed and scratched his head.
A-Hui saw it and exclaimed: “We should get you to the bathroom!”
In short order A-Ying had been shuffled through a courtyard into the strangest room he’d ever seen. First thing that hit him was the moisture in the air. It was like the room was perpetually in the muggiest season of the year. Once A-Ying got used to the moisture, he could turn his attention to the room itself. In the middle was a large stone basin filled with clear water, and he could see benches hewn into the basin’s sides, so that people could sit in the water. By the left and right wall were vats full of water, small wooden basins and small wooden chairs. They stood on a wooden platform half-a-chi off the slightly slanted cobbled stone floor.
Pinde-si-shixiong turned A-Ying around and started taking off his clothes. A-Ying noticed A-Hui was already bare and had a small basket of jars, bottles, a plain wooden comb and rough cloth in his hands.
What followed was a bath unlike any A-Ying had ever experienced. There was enough warm water for all three of them, he was scrubbed from head to toe with the rough cloth, his hair was dunked in water and rinsed multiple times, and then they were allowed to sit in the big basin in the middle. Pinde-si-shixiong said the water was from deep underground, close to the volcano that Nightless sky was built on, and mixed with rain water to cool it down from boiling. The Yang nature of the volcanic water and the yin nature of the rain water mixed into a harmonious natural energy that helped cultivation. Everyone of their cohort was to bathe in it at least once every tendays. Then they got out of the bath, and A-Ying’s hair was subjected to oiling and combing. He quite liked it.
Once they were dried and dressed in fresh clothes, A-Ying was taken to meet the rest of their cohort.
Shijie was there, playing weiqi with a girls a few years her junior. Two other girls were reading a little to the side, while a fourth girl was playing an instrument similar to a pipa. A fifth girl was embroidering what looked like a sheer silk robe the color of red maple leaves. A-Ying was the youngest person present.
“Wen-guniang, we’re brought Ying-shidi,” Pinde-si-shixiong said with a formal bow. A-Hui-shixiong also bowed, so A-Ying mimicked them to the best of his ability.
Shijie smiled at them. “Thank you, A-Fu, A-Hui. A-Ying, come here, I want to introduce you to the rest of your cohort.”
“Shijie! The bath was amazing!” he said excitedly as he hurried over. Shijie picked him up and sat him beside her on the day bed.
“I’m glad you liked it,” she said and pet his hair. Then she gestured to the girl she was playing with. “This is your Tui-san-shijie.”
Tui-san-shijie gave him a distracted smile and a quiet “Nice to meet you, Ying-jiu-shidi,” before turning her attention back to the game.
“Shao-er-shijie is the one who’s embroidering in the corner,” shije continued. “It’s better not bother her right now, she’ll be cross if we interrupt her while she’s in the flow. Quwei-wu-shijie is playing the qinqin for us.”
Quwei-wu-shijie smiled and nodded to A-Ying but didn’t say anything or pause in her playing. A-Ying smiled and waved back.
“And in the other corner doing homework are Zhu-liu-shije and Ji-qi-shijie, they’ll come over once they’ve finished their assigned reading.” The two girls in the corner were twins, and only one of them raised a hand in hello.
Pinde-si-shixiong and A-Hui-ba-shixiong found their own quiet tasks and A’Ying was provided a brush, some ink, paper and easy characters to copy. Shijie continued her game and quietly told A-Ying what each character meant as he copied them.
At some point Zhu-liu-shijie and Ji-qi-shijie finished their reading and came over to meet A-Ying properly, and the general chatter level started to rise.
“Finished!” Shao-er-shijie announced loudly, holding out embroidered robe. But the embroidery wasn’t like anything A-Ying had seen before: there were no plants or animals, not natural world depicted in a picturesque scene. Instead, there were complicated characters and symbols and intertwining circles. “Shijie, it’s finished! It now filters resentment from the air around you!”
Shijie took the offered garment, inspecting the needlework and checking the arrays for any mistakes. “A-Shao, it’s lovely! You’ve improved on the stitching tremendously!” She beamed at Shao-er-shijie, and A-Ying wanted her to look at him like that too. “Do you feel ready to try stitching qiankun seals?”
Shao-shijie shook her head and pursed her lips in a pout. “Not yet, shijie, I’m gonna try preserving talismans first.”
“Take your time, A-Shao, there is no hurry,” shijie said gently. Then her smile changed. “Now that A-Shao is done, shall we play a game of charades?”
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wen xiachen#wei wuxian#ocs galore#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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Let’s have a different point of view on Xiachen, shall we? This part delves a little more into Xiachen’s personal history from the point of her father. They’re both terrible human beings.
Prologue, part 2
Wen Ruohan didn’t look up from the expense report when his oldest daughter entered his public study and saluted.
“What is it, Chen’re?”
“The disciple of the Immortal Baoshan Sanren, Cangse Sanren, and her husband Wei Changze, are the latest rouge cultivators to be confirmed dead. Their son Wei Ying is missing.”
Chen’er always went to the point. He could see Chen’er was preparing to ask for the boy to be added to her personal retinue.
“Cangse Sanren has died, eh? She was exceptionally powerful, wasn’t she? And her husband must’ve had some power in him to get her pregnant at all, I suppose. If they managed to procreate a child with no immediately detectable defects, his potential would be immense indeed.”
For all that Chen’er tried to remain expressionless, he could see the slight tensing of her body. He had hit the nail on the head. Chen’er was ambitious in a way Xu’er and Chao’er just weren’t. He’d been able to tell it from a young age, seeing a similarity to himself, a hunger for more. More what, he wasn’t quite sure, but power and recognition weren’t what Chen’re hungered for. Maybe freedom. Or just… being remembered. Chen’er’s mother had been a shu daughter of the previous Jin Zongzhu foisted on him before he was strong enough to decline. Jin Lanian hadn’t been shrewd enough to survive his backyard politics. He knew from Wen Xilei that she had complained to Chen’er often about how it was a pity Chen’er wasn’t a boy, because Chen’er could have been Wen Ruohan’s oldest son. Jin Lanian had never understood that while most of the Wen Sect leaders had been eldest sons following their father, there had been a few exceptions where a daughter or a younger son had eclipsed the heir presumptive in talent and charisma needed by a sect leader. Chen’er had a vision for the Wen sect, and her time would come. After Wen Ruohan had molded the Cultivation world in his image.
“The son of Cangse Sanren would make a good Wen,” Wen Ruohan allowed. If Chen’er managed to hone the boy’s talent and to win his loyalty like she seemed to win the loyalty of her other little pets, he’d make her a good asset. And it would keep him away from the other sects. Jiang Fengmian would probably take the boy, but Yu Ziyuan would resent his presence. Wen Ruohan had seen what kind of devotion that kind of treatment could create in person. It was better to keep the boy away from them. Lan Qiren, for all his huffing and denials, would also take the boy, but the Lan sect would stifle any brilliance the boy had inherited from his mother in the name of their ridiculous rules. The boy would be a dime-a-dozen Lan disciple. The Jin wouldn’t take the boy, of that Wen Ruohan was certain. The Nie might take the boy, make him incredibly dangerous, but burn him out in short order. A Jiang or Nie grown Wei Ying would be dangerous, a Jin or Lan grown Wei Ying would be a waste. No, only in the Wen sect would he flourish.
“Do you plan to get him now?” he asked.
Chen’er shook her head. “It would make him feel too special. And a winter on the streets will be a good contrast for whatever we give him. Every trial will be preferable to being back on the streets.”
“You always were ruthless,” Wen Ruohan nodded approvingly. That had been made abundantly clear when she’d arranged for the death of one of his concubines who’d tried to poison her, and then framed his wife for it. The only reason he even knew it was her, was Wen Xilei’s report. There had been no evidence to implicate Chen’er in any of it. And her little project on loyalty conditioning that had produced her little pets. He’d never thought to use isolation at the beginning. It wasn’t suitable for large scale use, and he would die rather than initiate the bond in the way Chen’er did, but the results spoke for themselves. He hadn’t been able to break the loyalty of the one that went “missing” two years ago, and it hadn’t even been a cultivator. He’d had to dispose it off rather than make a use of it for his own plans. It was the first time he’d thought about making Chen’er his heir.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#wen xiachen#wen ruohan#fanfic#owe it all 'verse#wen wuxian
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My Wen SI/OC ‘verse
I have read (almost) all MDZS self-insert stories, and I love a few of them, but none of them have really delved into topics I thought should have been delved into. Like, what if the SI was a Wen, for example. Kind of a Shen Yuan-ish like experience, condemned by the plot but privileged in the setting.
So I started writing on it, and now I have 20k of different beginnings for this verse, except they’re all so freaking different they aren’t even playing the same sport. It’s all outsider POV, who do not know SI/OC is a transmigrator, because the SI/OC’s thoughts are a dark place full of human rights violations.
Because she’s actually a person with just the memories of modern life without the emotions attached. For example, her reason for founding schools is to spread propaganda.
This is literally a piece of trash in which I try to imagine the worst ways to utilize modern knowledge while still appearing somewhat benevolent.
Enjoy!
Prologue, part 1
Wen Xiachen paused in her calligraphy practice when A-Lin, one of her personal maids, entered with the weekly report of Jianghu’s recent gossip.
A-Lin gave a brief salute. “It has happened, xiao guniang. Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren have been reported dead,” she said and handed the scroll to her mistress. She didn’t acknowledge A-Shao embroidering in the corner. A-shao was lucky, being able to cultivate and therefore being xiao guniang’s personal aid rather than just a maid, and able to spend more time basking their Mistress’ presence. “There is conflicting information as to where it happened.”
It was known that the ghosts had been particularly violent during the last Zhongyuan. Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren were just the latest rouge cultivators among dozens to be reported dead during the past lunar cycle. The Wen sect had lost a dozen cultivators themselves, so it was reasonable to assume other sects had lost disciples too.
“What about their son?” xiao guniang asked, setting her brush aside. She took the scroll A-Lin presented her.
A-Lin shivered under her mistress’ gaze. It wasn’t fear, xiao guniang was a good and kind mistress who’d kept A-Lin even when it was revealed she didn’t have cultivation potential rather than return her to the gutter she’d been found in. Jin Fengmi, xiao guniang’s senior maid, had trained her to the pinnacle of her abilities and taught her to utilize her meager spiritual energy in ways that made her useful to xiao guniang, even if she’d never be able to wield a sword or create a talisman.
“Disappeared into thin air. No credible sightings of Wei Ying have been made since Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren were seen in Jingzhou with him for Duanwu*.” And now it seemed xiao guniang was going to pick up another child from the gutter and give their life meaning. Just one more added to the twenty or so children xiao guniang had personally saved, rather than the few hundred the Wen sect as a whole had saved since A-Lin’s arrival six years earlier.
A-Shao had stopped embroidering and was instead packing everything in her qiankun sleeves, sword clutched, ready to follow xiao guniang.
Wen Xiachen stood up. “A-Lin, clean up here.”
A-Lin bowed and stayed that way until xiao guniang and A-Shao were out of the room. Then she got to work on cleaning xiao guniang’s brushes. And drank the tea kept warm by a talisman. Xiao guniang always deserved fresh tea, but it’d be a pity to just toss the old tea. And washing one more cup wasn’t that much more work anyway.
*dragon boat festival
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#fanfic#wen xiachen#ocs galore#wen wuxian#owe it all 'verse
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Wuxian and Xiachen discuss the future while things are happening in the room next door.
Warning: implied non-con, implied prostate milking, implied rape, off-screen a slightly older lesbian character collects sperm from a barely legal adult in a situation where the barely legal male is killed very soon after
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Wuxian stared at the closed door.
Tui-shijie was inside with Jiang Wanyin and a vial enchanted with preservation charms.
“Why Tui-shijie?” he thought aloud.
Shijie didn’t look up from her scroll. “A-Tui isn’t interested in men at all*. She will get through it as fast as possible so she can stop touching Jiang Wanyin.”
Wuxian nodded in understanding. “I’m interested in men, and I wouldn’t touch Jiang Wanyin.”
“That’s because A-Ying is in love with Lan Wangji,” shijie teased, glancing up from her reading.
“Wh-what? Shijie! No!” Wuxian whined, his face heating in embarrassment. “He’s just – Lan Zhan – pretty – Lan Zhan’s just – pretty!”
“Just pretty? A-Ying, you can do better than that.”
Wuxian quieted down and remembered the last time he’d seen Lan Zhan.
He’d been – haggard? Worn down? Chubby? Intensely searching Wuxian’s gaze when he’d practically begged them to stay put in Fojiao town. His hair had been a mess from hanging upside down, and his forehead ribbon had been askew.
“Lan Zhan… Lan Zhan tries to be a good person,” admitted Wuxian. “He is open to new information. He loves learning. He’s so controlled I just want to see him ease up a little, maybe get him to smile.” He smiled wryly. “That, of course, might be impossible now that we’re on opposing sides of a war.”
“But after war comes peace,” shijie pointed out. “It’s not unheard of ending a peace negotiation with a marriage. Should Lan Wangji happen to be captured alive, I’ll make sure to keep him that way for A-Ying, hmm?”
Wuxian bit his lip. “But I don’t want it to be forced.”
“Would you rather Lan Wangji die?”
“No! Of course not! I’d just -! Aiyah, shijie! Have mercy on this Wuxian!”
“Well, there are three ways I see this ending. In scenario one, Lan Wangji dies honorably on the battlefield. But as we’ve already established, you don’t want that. In scenario two, Lan Wangji is captured alive and after the war, held hostage for his sect’s good behavior. He will be fitted with a cultivation suppressing collar and be banned from having access to any musical instrument, confined to a courtyard. In scenario three, he is captured, held in isolation at your disposal, and after the war, he marries you as a free individual*. He takes up a post in Nightless Sky as an ambassador for the Lan, maybe takes over the management of the library, and you can night hunt together whenever the urge hits.”
The picture shijie painted with a few sentences filled Wuxian with such longing he doubted he’d ever felt the likes of before.
Of course, he’d daydreamed of marrying Lan Zhan before, but they’d always stopped after the wedding night. He’d never managed to imagine what living with Lan Zhan might be like. Where they’d live (Nightless Sky, obviously, he would stick out at Cloud Recesses even worse than Lan Zhan in Nightless Sky), what they’d do, what Lan Zhan’s position would be. But here shijie was, offering him possibilities he hadn’t even known to dream of. Because of course the Lan would need some representation in Nightless Sky after the war! And it’d be better if he had something to bind him to Nightless Sky!
“He’d need a proper residence though,” shijie mused. “You wouldn’t be able to just pick rooms in eastern Hearth palace. So would you, come to think of it.”
Wuxian jerked up. “What? Why?”
“Well, the leader of Nightless Sky’s talismanic studies branch might have to entertain sect officials in his home from time to time.”
“Is this about the university you wanted to establish?”
“Mn. Wēn Qing would oversee the medical branch. I suppose Wēn Ning might suit to teach others to teach. His empathy would make him phenomenal at it.”
“And I’d be in charge of talismanic studies?”
“Unless you know someone else as brilliant as you in talisman making?”
Before Wuxian had a chance to answer, Tui-shijie exited the room they were waiting outside of. She had a pinched expression on her face, and a vial in her hand. “Shijie, please never ask me to do anything like that again.”
-
*she’s gay af.
*Wuxian doesn’t consider the isolation anything beyond normal, he does it nearly every year and shijie wouldn’t hurt him without cause. Yes, he knows it makes adjustments to his behavior, but how else would he learn?
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#wei wuxian#wen wuxian#wen xiachen#owe it all 'verse
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After the sack of Lotus Pier, Wuxian needs some comfort. Xiachen provides.
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Shijie’s fingers ran through A-Ying’s hair in a rhythmic pattern.
A-Ying sat at shijie’s feet, head pillowed on her knees, as she administered the cleanup and organization of Lotus Pier from the Lotus throne.
He knew he was needy, he knew no one else in his cohort had shijie pet their hair like this, but he couldn’t help it.
A-Ying was the youngest of his generation of the cohort, and shijie had always babied him a little more than the others. No one else got a kiss on their forehead every night. No one else sat by shijie’s feet in the common room during evenings. No one else got their hair petted as frequently, even if head pats were common.
The other Wēn coming and going were giving him strange looks, but A-Ying couldn’t bring himself to care when shijie’s nails scraped his scalp just – like – that.
Shijie’s hand in his hair quieted his thoughts in a way only staring at Lan Zhan compared. Shijie petting his hair meant everything was alright, A-Ying was safe, A-Ying had food and warmth and shijie and his cohort. It meant shijie would take care of everything, A-Ying just had to continue being petted.
The Lotus Cove magistrate had been brought before shijie for her leisurely breakfast after a few hours of sleep. A-Ying had vaguely paid attention to the conversation between shijie and Magistrate Li between the bits shijie fed him, about how things were going to from then on. About the school, the healing hall, the soup kitchen, the orphanage, and so on. It was clear shijie had had the same conversation over and over with the non-cultivator leaders of the areas the Wēn took over and was quite bored with it already.
Lingchang-shixiong had appeared out of the ether that morning soon after the Magistrate had left. He reported on the locals’ sentiments about everything. A-Ying learned he’d been traveling around Yunmeng and Jiangling, gathering and planting rumors as he saw fit for months. Now, he was just looking forward to a few days of rest to recover his nerves of being behind the enemy lines without support or a way to contact help. Distantly A-Ying remembered doing the same thing after his year in Cloud Recesses.
He wondered how Lan Zhan was doing.
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#wei wuxian#wen wuxian#wen xiachen#owe it all 'verse
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The second part of the sack of Lotus Pier. Warnings for straight up murder and mutilation.
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The Wēn casualties numbered in a few hundred dead and the same number of wounded. Wēn Qing would have her hands full once she made berth.
The Jiang casualties were well over a thousand, and Wuxian knew he was responsible for thirty-seven confirmed deaths and sixty-three assists where someone on the ground finished the job.
Sect leader Jiang had flown in from the north with a small squad of the Jiang elites while the fighting was the fiercest, when the youngest or most unskilled had already died. He’d arrived just in time to have his golden core melted instead of his wife, who lost her right arm immediately after.
Wuxian stood respectfully behind shijie as the two Jiang leaders were forced to kneel before her. Madam Yu was obviously spitting mad and seemed to be cursing shijie up to the high heavens, but she’d been hit with a complete silencing talisman. Jiang Fengmian was more dazed, the loss of his golden core leaving him in shock. But every few minutes he’d glance at Wuxian, and look betrayed every time when Wuxian failed to act in any way.
Was he expecting Wuxian to betray shijie for some man who said he’d been friends with Wuxian’s long dead parents? Was he addled?
Turning his attention to their surroundings, Wuxian ignored what shijie was saying, because she sounded like she was making a rehearsed speech she’d done a dozen times already. Which she very well may have.
Something pinged on the edge of Wuxian’s senses.
“A-Ying, slit Madam Yu’s throat,” shijie ordered.
A quick salute later, he drew Shénme, and for the first time that night, it stained red. Madam Yu remained upright for a moment, glaring hatefully at him, spat blood on him, and collapsed sideways onto her husband.
The something was moving closer, and with surprise, Wuxian realized it was Jiang Wanyin approaching Lotus Pier by river.
A wave of relief swept over him.
It made ignoring the Jiang sect leader easy, as he monitored Jiang Wanyin’s location.
A quick flare of his qi burned off the blood from Shénme, and he sheathed her.
He signaled shijie there was something he’d found and would take care of when Jiang Wanyin approached the central square of Lotus Pier, and melted into the shadows.
A silencing and a light-weight spell later, he stalked Jiang Wanyin and one Jiang disciple from the roof. The two were trying to be quiet, but whatever emotional damage seeing their home in the state it was now caused, made them clumsy. The disciple followed Jiang Wanyin from a healthy distance, and Wuxian heard his terrified whispered begging for Jiang Wanyin to not go further, to turn around and head to Meishan to find Jiang-shijie. Wuxian also heard Jiang Wanyin’s hissed orders to shut up. He was still fat, Wuxian was glad to see, and his breathing was labored. The drug cocktail Zhu-shijie and Wēn Qing had created had really packed on the pounds for the sect heirs.
When they were hidden between the main receiving hall and the administration building on the corner of the central square, Wuxian struck.
He dropped behind the Jiang disciple, hit him with a silencing talisman and snapped his neck. No need to keep him alive, he’d be just one more mouth to feed in prison. Jiang Wanyin, the main target, got a temporary paralysis poison needle in his neck. Wuxian had him in a headlock before he head time to realize what was happening, and despite his thrashing, managed to hold him down until the poison took effect.
Jiang Wanyin was picked up like a sack of rice, and Wuxian made his way back to shijie.
Someone, probably Ji-shijie going by her drawn and bloody sword, had killed Jiang Fengmian while he’d been hunting.
Wuxian unceremoniously dumped Jiang Wanyin off his shoulder and knelt. “One alive Jiang Wanyin, as ordered.”
Shijie’s slow, content smile made the whole horrible night worth it. “Thank you, A-Ying, you’ve made me proud. You’ve erased a part of your shame.” Shijie gestured to Jiang Wanyin. “Hold him up for me.”
Wuxian took a hold of Jiang Wanyin’s hair which had spilled out of his covered top knot while he thrashed in Wuxian’s headlock. He forced Jiang Wanyin’s face up and to look at shijie standing where Jiang-zongzhu probably stood to welcome guests and new batches of disciples.
“Welcome back home, Jiang-zongzhu.”
#mo dao zu shi#grand master of demonic cultivation#wei wuxian#wen wuxian#wen xiachen#madam yu#jiang fengmian#jiang cheng#death#murder#owe it all 'verse
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