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Midsummer fog enshrouded Cloud Recesses, hiding it deep within the snow-y peaks of Mt. Gusu, the only geographic feature in the region that still retained its original name.
The year was 2019 in the Gregorian Calendar. The modern age below had long moved on, leaving tales of ghouls, demons and spirits in the past and between pages of fairy-tales. Hidden from society, the cultivation realm moved forward, carried by the flow of time and rapids of human advancement. Within Gusu, the elegant aesthetics of the old - pavilions of marble and shingle, lecture halls of wood and stone - were preserved in its ancient glory by the magic that never left this land. Augmenting it now, however, was a network of elegant modern architecture, fortified by bulletproof glass, stainless steel and electricity.
In the dormitories, junior disciples typed away on their sect-issued devices, hurrying to make the 9:00pm deadline for their history essay. The topic: critical analysis of the cause and resolution of one major intersect conflict.
Many students chose the Sunshot Campaign, partly because it was by far the most interesting, but also because it was one of the most famous and hence well-studied. Despite the tragedy which initiated the campaign, the successful resolution of this conflict had led to generations of peace and hundreds of years prosperity.
One particular student, an eighteen year old named Lan Reihan, had not procrastinated this assignment and was done ahead of time. This meant that he had about an hour before curfew to savour some much needed tv time. With that in mind, he signed onto Netflix.
Technically Netflix was forbidden in Cloud Recesses - since pop cultural was seen as distracting from cultivation - but most of the students had bribed - erm charmed - their way into the IT department and gotten themselves VPNs.
The administration probably knew, but… meh. That rule was hardly enforceable if most of the senior disciples were closeted Game of Thrones fans and had subscribed to HBO even though the current Grand Master explicitly forbade it. (Season 8 was a strictly off-limit topic. Season 8 does not exist).
Netflix Trending Now: The Untamed.
…
What?
No.
Fuck no.
She didn't even change the name!!! Oh my god, I’m gonna die…
"Oh fuck me -" His despairing cry echoed throughout the common room that he shared with his dorm-mates. Seven other pairs of eyes - three male and four female - turned to Lan Reihan who looked increasingly pale as the second ticked on.
The swear tally installed by the door next to thermometer peeped and the count went up by one. The other disciples glared. At this rate, they were gonna end up on kitchen duty again.
"I - I'm so fucked. I'm gonna get expelled."
The swear tally peeped again.
"Man, stop swearing, holy sh - je - son of monotheistic god from Bethlehem!" One disciple threw up his hand and called out in frustration. "I'm trying to finish the essay here."
"Yo - what did you do?" Without leaving her seat, Lan Yuwan wheeled her chair over and cranked her neck to peek at his screen. "Seriously, Netflix? You're done the essay? How??"
"That's not the problem!! I - it - oh heavens, oh heavens…oh my god!"
"Okay, you need to seriously chillax. Remember Sect Rule #4235. Use your words. Communicate."
"I made a terrible mistake. I didn't think it was gonna get this out of hand, I swear to god!!!"
The hesitance and desperation in his tone gave everyone pause. The other disciples who were previously focused on their own work gradually gave up on pretending not to eavesdrop and migrated toward him.
Watching his friends watching him with confusion, interest, and worry mixed with just a little bit of shit-face glee (in case this turned into another funny shenanigan), Lan Reihan took a deep breath, submitted to the inevitable, and confessed.
"Okay so remember how two years ago, after we got back from our first night hunt, Xue Xiao and I sneaked out for a drink -"
Xue Xiao grimaced. He remembered. It was a fucking miracle no one found out.
His peers nodded.
"So I got a fake ID and got into a bar. Just a regular bar, nothing weird. I was honestly just gonna get a beer and go, but then the house special was on discount, and you all know how expensive Emperor's Smile is nowadays. My great-aunt at New Year once -"
"Reihan, you're digressing. Focus!"
"Right - right, so I got a shot of Emperor's Smile. I honestly didn't feel anything initially, so I -"
"- oh no -" Several people groaned. Here we go.
"- I ordered 3 more shots, and I'm pretty sure I got plastered afterwards."
"You did. I had to haul your as - butt - back by myself."
"As if you were any better. I had to watch you flirt with any and every muggle that walked into that bar!"
Muggle. Not strictly speaking a term the seniors at Gusu condoned, but after Harry Potter got too popular to be controlled, they kind of just let that one go.
"Okay, okay, what happened next?" The other disciples urged him to go on.
"So I got to chatting with this lady next to me, who told me she was an aspiring screenwriter. I honestly don't remember much of what I said until I got a text from her the next day -"
"She's a screenwriter?!" This did not bode well. Not well at all.
"You gave a muggle your phone number??!" All cultivators had special designated numbers, not the same arrangement as the muggle ones at all. The government was very clear about this. Certain nations were less stringent with their offical secrets, but most developed nations with organized clans and schools had kept their cultivators - referred to by many different names in different cultures - as deeply protected secrets from their mortal citizens.
"Stop judging me! I was drunk!" He cried. "So apparently, in my drunken state, I had - had told her about our realm."
Several people gasped.
Someone had to sit down.
To put it simply, this was the Harry Potter equivalent of breaking the Statute of Secrecy. Yeah, if this got out Lan Reihan was undoubtedly screwed.
"Okay, okay but think about it this way," Lan Yuwan, one of the more level-headed ones of the group, tried to find the silver lining. "There's a lot of wuxia stories and tv shows these days. She probably just thought you were a drunken idiot trying to impress her with a story. I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's been two years, nothing ever came from it."
"No, that's the problem! She didn't take me seriously! She really thought I was just drunk and telling a story, because she texted me the next day to thank me for regaling her with one of the most heart-wrenching love stories she's ever heard."
"What? What did you tell her?"
"I told her…told her about Hanguang-jun and Yiling Laozu."
His friends looked confused. "Yeah but their story wasn't that sad though? He was only 'fake dead' for a year and they got married and adopted a son."
"See, about that… so I didn't exactly tell her the real version of the story. I- I - ah fuck me, what the hell." Lan Reihan swerved back to his laptop and opened the "Writing" folder in his documents.
The swear tally peeped twice.
"Dude!"
Lan Reihan ignored the angry exclaims and clicked on a word file named FF_Master of Demonic Cultivation.docx
"So uhm… don't judge me too hard, but I kind of write fanfiction. I post them online for fun."
Leaning over his shoulder to read the first paragraph, Xue Xiao realized immediately. "Oh my god, you wrote a fanfic about Yiling Laozu. Bro, why??"
"Yeah… I never posted this one anywhere, because I was too afraid to get into trouble if it ever got too popular or something. I made it really sad. Like really sad."
Lan Yuwan, a speed reader, began to scroll down, "Wei Wuxian resurrected as Mo Xuanyu???? Is this what you told that screenwriter?"
One disciple whispered to another, "Who's Mo Xuanyu again?"
"Oh that's the former name of Jin Ziyu before his brother Jin Zixuan legitimized him. It's in Cultivation: A Golden Age, section 1 chapter 6."
"Oh riiight. Yeah, my bad. I just read my sister's short notes for that chapter. I still passed the test though."
Lan Reihan hung his head in despair. "Good news is I'm pretty sure I only told her the fanfic version. Bad News is she really liked it. Worse news is… they've made a tv show from it. It…It's on Netflix." He pointed to the screen where Wang Yibo, dressed in white, could be seen half carrying an injured Xiao Zhan, clad in black.
"WHAT?"
"YO!!"
"LAN REIHAN."
"Woah, but how did this pass the Censorship Board?!"
"Maybe there is some weight to those rumours that the government will finally reintroduce cultivators to the world."
"I can't believe they kept all the original names."
Lan Reihan looked at his best friends and swallowed nervously. "I'm gonna be okay right?"
Xue Xiao and Lan Yuwan grimaced and shook their heads silently. Who knows.
"So…" Someone spoke up after a moment. "Where did you start deviating from history?"
"After the burning of Lotus Pier and the death of Jiang Fengmian and Lady Yu. Yunmeng is not going to be happy when they find out what I did to their beloved ancestor Jiang Yanli. And Jiang Wanyin. Oh my god, the Wens!! I totally wrote them out. This is it. I'm gonna die. I'm a dead man."
His friends groaned, silently praying for his sake because a big storm was certainly coming for him.
"Yeah bro, you're - sorry guys - totally fucked."
The tally beeped. No one said a thing.
But someone was still holding out hope. "It turned out okay for Hogwarts, maybe it'll be okay for us too?"
"Yeah, but at least JK Rowling changed the character names! It was government and ministry approved! Not to mention, it was more or less accurate."
There was silence after that, the eight junior disciples all lost in their own thoughts, until someone sniffed guiltily and said,
"So...if we're all done the essay, does anyone wanna watch The Untamed?"
There was a chorus of enthusiatic agreements. Many Lan teenagers were secret wyb and xx stans.
It just goes to show that history truly was written by the winners. But not perhaps, always for the better.
So put away your tears readers, for the real story went something like this…