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Part 3 of Through Each Other (TEO-verse) , Part 1 of Rainbows (TEO-verse bright side) , Part 4 of Brushstrokes (art and art-related works)
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2021-07-02
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2021-09-14
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Four Treasures of the Scholar's Study

,

Summary:

A four (or possibly more) chapter fic about Burial Mounds Family feels, blatant symbolism, chosen family relationships, and hope.

Different characters get different chapters touching on aspects of their lives at the Burial Mounds and their interactions with Wei Wuxian.

Unlike other works in this series, especially the ones I am trying to get ready to post, this fic is and will remain family-focused and will not have explicit content.

Notes:

This is part of my canon divergence AU series but could roughly fit into canon as well.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Four Treasures: Writing Brush (A-Yuan)

Notes:

I hope that readers agree with me that A-Yuan is adorable and good.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The topic of trimming A-Yuan’s soft baby hair, now an unruly mop, is one that all his caregivers are reluctant to address. However, A-Yuan brings it up himself, in a sense, after he sees someone shearing goats in Yiling market.

The whole goat thing is amazing in its own right. A-Yuan is utterly fascinated, desperate to touch the soft downy underlayer and the rougher back hair. He makes a valiant attempt at imitating the animals’ noises. A-Yuan responds with an enormous smile and an exaggerated “Mmmm! Tasty!” when given a drink of goat’s milk; Wei Wuxian desperately hopes A-Yuan's young stomach won't make them all regret it later. The household of farmers and crafters who keep the goats are speakers of a dialect from somewhere to the northeast, and they come only occasionally to Yiling, as part of a rotating cycle of regional markets they visit to try to make ends meet. A-Yuan will surely be very disappointed if they aren’t there the next time he visits Yiling.

Preemptively, Wei Wuxian scans their display of hard and soft cheeses, goat’s milk soap, dried herb bundles, goat-wool yarn, knitted garments, and oddments for something small, something distinctly goat-themed, something inexpensive. His eye snags on a goat-hair writing brush.

All the way home, carried on Wei Wuxian’s back while Wen Ning drags the cart, A-Yuan keeps laughing and trailing the brush ticklishly over Wei Wuxian’s neck and ears. He’s speaking his own invented language again, the one he uses for play that he can only half-translate into words understandable by boring adults.

For the next several days, the goat-hair writing brush is A-Yuan’s favorite toy. He traces it over his own arms and his little nose, giggling at the soft feel of it. He sits quietly and well-behaved next to Wen Qing while she looks over the accounts, writing ‘characters’ that are basically scribbles with plain water poured into an inkstone instead of ink, so that his used sheets of paper can be dried out and reused over and over. He dips it in some mud, and paints his face and neck with messy smears. When Wen Qing rescues the brush to rinse it out and exasperatedly asks him why he thought it was a good idea to get so dirty, he insists he’s not dirty at all, he just looks like Ning-gege.

Day after day, Wei Wuxian wants to cry with how unbearably cute and sweet and good this child is.

And then A-Yuan sticks the brush handle in between a crack in two rocks of the foundation of his and Granny’s hut, and he snaps the brush in two trying to yank it out. He’s nearly inconsolable. Wei Wuxian rescues both halves of the brush and promises – swears on his life, his demonic cultivation, his anything – that he’ll fix the brush as good as new. Nonetheless, it takes a hasty summons for Wen Ning to come to pick up and cuddle A-Yuan before the little boy will stop sobbing.

Wei Wuxian puzzles over the damaged brush that night, uncertain as to how to rejoin the splintered wood of the shaft and as to whether it would be acceptable to replace it with a nice piece of hardened bamboo, of which, unlike properly seasoned wood, they have plenty. Wei Wuxian fixes it eventually. He salvages a section of the original wooden ‘trunk’, cut short and drilled into a peg shape, so the end of the brush is still the same; he keeps the undamaged hair of the pointed brush-tip, along with the still-intact little tube of bamboo that holds the hair by the ‘waist’ to keep it brush-tip-shaped; and he puts it all together, gluing carefully, with a new bamboo shaft that practically matches the size, shape, luster, and color of the original.

In the morning, it turns out that A-Yuan has sneakily taken a pair of scissors and hacked numerous chunks out of his own hair, tying some longish bits to a twig with string and attempting to use it for writing.

Wei Ying locks eyes with Wen Qing and they realize it’s time. As gently and solemnly as if it had been done at the proper time in his babyhood, Wen Qing trims A-Yuan’s hair. Wen Ning distracts A-Yuan with stories and gives him a spoonful of precious honey to eat. Granny gathers up the hair-clippings, tucking them away in a small box that was made at the Burial Mounds, but holds a tiny precious scrap of the red baby blanket woven for A-Yuan by Granny’s lost youngest girl, A-Yuan’s mother. And with the tuft of hair that Granny hands him, Wei Ying makes A-Yuan’s first proper writing brush, the talisman-less good-luck magic that will give him every blessing that love can bestow when he has to write for a significant examination someday.

A-Yuan learns to write his name with the special new brush, but he still prefers playing with the repaired goat-hair brush. That’s all right. He should be playful at this age, not charged with solemnly caring for precious things.

His whole life is yet to be written.

Notes:

Revision Dates: Posted chapters 1-4 around ~7/4/2021. Tweaks, 7/11/2021. Tweaks: 12/18/2022.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Other people have written versions of ‘A-Yuan’s first hair-cut,’ before me, and their fic helped make me aware that this is a Thing. Other people have also written ‘A-Yuan decorates himself to match Wen Ning’s black neck veins’ and it makes me cry every time, so I couldn’t NOT include it. If you wrote one of these, I’m happy to link your fic as an inspiration, just let me know.

ALT VERSION: The full version of the first paragraph didn’t make it in because it doesn’t fit the overall soft tone of this fic, but in case, like me, you prefer some KNIVES OF ANGST in your fluff, it’s in the comments. Feel free to skip.

INSPIRATION: I drew inspiration for this fic from various fandom-specific tropes and real-world traditions, but I’m making no attempt at reliable sources or authenticity. But if you want some background reading anyway, here you go:
LINKS:
The Four Treasures of the Scholar’s Study:
https://gwongzaukungfu.com/en/chinese-calligraphy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Treasures_of_the_Study
https://www.learnshodo.com/shodo-tools-guide
Type of writing brush:
https://gwongzaukungfu.com/en/the-ink-brush/
http://www.historyofpencils.com/writing-instruments-history/ink-brush-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_brush
Writing brushes made from hair, including goat:
https://www.inkston.com/stories/guides/xuan-brushes/
http://art-virtue.com/principles/p1-brush.htm
Goat-keeping and farmer’s markets:
https://livinghomegrown.com/the-truth-about-keeping-backyard-goats/
https://modernfarmer.com/2016/05/lessons-from-raising-goats/
https://www.maplebrookfarmstead.com/farm-news/category/Goats
https://good-fibrations.com/pages/good-fibrations-farm
First Hair Cut / Baby Hair Brush
http://www.plan-the-perfect-baby-shower.com/chinese-baby-customs.html https://www.awayinstyle.com/babys-first-haircut-turn-chinese-calligraphy-brush-at-the-mandarin-barber/
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/hk-magazine/article/2037755/winnie-chui-makes-calligraphy-brushes-infant-hair

Also, I don’t know if anyone needed to know this, but. I have a small paintbrush I made from my own (adult) hair and some flat pieces of thin wood, held together with thread, beeswax, and glue. It’s not a *great* brush but certainly usable. (I like weird crafts.) So giving WWX the skills to make or fix a brush, given that he made Chenqing in canon and is also a master calligrapher by way of his talisman work, isn’t a big reach.

Chapter 2: Four Treasures: Ink (Wen Qing)

Summary:

Wen Qing, Wei Wuxian, and a disagreement over some ink.

Notes:

This is short, but hopefully you can see that I love and admire Wen Qing.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian buys cinnabar-based ink for talisman writing in Yiling.

Wen Qing confiscates it.

“Were you aware that this is poisonous?” she hisses.

“What?” Wei Wuxian says, bewildered. “I’ve used it for years.”

“First of all, that was when you had a golden core. One of the basic functions of a golden core is to filter diseases and negative influences out of the physical as well as spiritual body. You can poison yourself all day and with a strong golden core you’ll never notice it. That’s why you’ve got food allergies now! You probably always have, and your body just never noticed!”

“Second, before you say ‘but I used this as a kid!’, no, you didn’t. High-quality talisman ink is cultivationally sealed vermilion, which still has the poisonous elements but won’t release them -- except directly into prepared talisman paper -- any more than it would if sealed behind glass. Or, it is imported shades-of-scarlet ink made from insects and plants that aren’t as poisonous. I doubt Lotus Pier bought anything but the best for their inner disciples; even the Dafan Wen had safe talisman ink, and I don’t think I saw anything else in Nightless City ever.”

She tilts the little glass sample jar of pre-made ink back and forth in her hand, contemplatively looking at it slosh.

“This? This is crap.”

She makes it vanish into her robes, along with the pile of dry ink sticks.

“I’ll dispose of these. Probably by selling them on, unless I run across a cultivation manual with directions for how to turn these into safety-sealed ink.”

“You, Wei Wuxian - stop buying things without asking.”

“Yes, Qing-jie – I mean – yes, Wen-daifu,” Wei Wuxian says, obediently.

That seems like the conclusion of the conversation, but it isn’t, quite.

When Wen Ning comes up to the Demon Slaughtering Cave that evening, he’s carrying three ink-sticks for Wei Wuxian from Wen Qing’s personal medical-cultivation supplies, of good-quality safety-sealed vermilion ink.

Wei Wuxian writes Wen Qing a very large batch of focused light talismans for task lighting and patient examinations, rather than get scoffed at for saying ‘thank you.’

Notes:

1. Ancient China had synthetic vermilion and Ancient Rome knew cinnabar was toxic, so xianxia world gets to have cultivator-developed synthetically toxin-buffered vermillion. Think about treating old buildings to seal the asbestos, or drinking chalk to protect your intestines from something toxic after accidental ingestion, or laminating/coating a piece of paper so stuff doesn’t smear off, but it’s magically applied to the ink itself.

2. Wei Wuxian is allergic to eggplant. No other nightshades, fortunately, given his fondness for hot spice and for potatoes, just eggplant.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: All the women of MDZS deserve to be systematically un-fridged and un-ignored in fanfic. Thank you to everyone else out there writing any version of Awesome Wen Qing.

INSPIRATION: I drew inspiration for this fic from various fandom-specific tropes and real-world traditions, but I’m making no attempt at reliable sources or authenticity. But if you want some background reading anyway, here you go:
LINKS:
Four Treasures:
https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/culture/four-treasures-of-the-study.htm

Red ink and natural red pigments
https://www.liveabout.com/color-theory-know-your-reds-2578051
Toxic red pigment(s):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion
Less-toxic options:
Madder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia
Annatto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annatto
Cochineal / Carmine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal

Seals (often used with red ink):
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/heirloom-seal-0012904
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)

Xianxia Tropes (e.g. talismans):
https://immortalmountain.wordpress.com/glossary/wuxia-xianxia-xuanhuan-terms/#cultivation

Real World Red Ink Talismans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulu
https://benebellwen.com/the-tao-of-craft/fu-talisman-instructables/

Comments are always incredibly welcome!

Chapter 3: Four Treasures: Inkstone (Wen Ning)

Summary:

Wei Wuxian needs help to get all his wild thoughts written down.

Wen Ning finds a way to be useful.

Over time, this leaves an impression on both of them.

Notes:

I have so many feelings about acts of service and forms of love that are neither necessarily romantic nor inherently platonic, folks. And about inkstones/ink/writing as symbolism.

Bonus Tags for this chapter:
Caregiving
Neurodivergence
Disability
ADHD Wei Wuxian
Physically Disabled Wen Ning
Embodiment
Literally Mixing Metaphors
Implied Romantic Tension

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Wen Ning often grinds and mixes ink on an inkstone for Wei Wuxian. It’s not simply an act of humble service, whatever someone else might read into it; it’s not a jesting flirtation, as it would be if Wei Ying had made the offer to grind ink for someone. It’s a practical, routine thing, rooted in physical necessity.

Wei Ying’s mind runs away with him, until his body can’t begin to keep up. Wen Ning’s mind does not, but his body is stiffly uncooperative. Wei Ying needs someone to help him get his wild ideas written down as much as he needs someone just to talk to. Any task that can be taken off his hands frees him to exist in the trance state of characters fountaining from his creative impulse, descriptive words and potent sigils falling of themselves directly onto the talisman paper without any conscious awareness of the role of eye and hand in mediating the movement from mind to writing surface.

There are portions of a talisman structure that can be pre-written without any direct use of cultivated or innate spiritual energy or summoned resentful energy. As long as the paper and the ink are properly prepared, they readily unite into the final structure of a handwritten, as opposed to sketched-in-qi, talisman when the last central character is added and the talisman is activated. A non-cultivator could do it, and in theory so could a fierce corpse, except that the undead are also fiercely clumsy.

Wen Ning can write, but only just. He needs a larger brush, a more structured script, and a paper propped and pinned at an easy angle, in order to produce legible words. He’s distressed by it, feels stupid and inept as well as physically limited. Even if he wanted to try, talismans require the most fluid and flawless of calligraphy to be fully effective.

Paper rips in his hands. Energy refuses to flow for him. The blood in his veins, the essential ink of the most powerful characters, is congealed and rotten.

But an inkstone is solid and hard to break, and a snapped ink-stick is still usable, and a misplaced drip of water or a splash of half-mixed ink is hardly harmful. Wen Ning can’t quite manage the smooth circling motion that’s ideal, but he can grind the ink stick back and forth for approximately the same result, once he gets Wei Ying a decent inkstone.

So Wen Ning grinds ink for Wei Ying, and listens attentively to his leaping and swerving thoughts, and reminds Wei Ying to stop long enough to eat food and drink water. Wei Ying takes the ink that Wen Ning mixes, and produces talismans that are unique and innovative and terrifying and hopeful.

And sometimes when they are about to stop for the night, Wei Ying will gently put his hand over Wen Ning’s hand on the inkstone, and look at him softly, and smile.

Notes:

So at this point you’re expecting the disclaimer and you’re ready for the wall of links, right? LINKS:
How to use and care for an inkstone:
https://www.inkdancechinesepaintings.com/china-painting-knowledge/the-ink-stone-the-ink-stick.html
(It’s good all-around advice, really. Don’t let sticky substances get all dried out, unattended, on your fierce corpse or your necromancer, either.)
Picture: Diagram of an inkstone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkstone#/media/File:East_Asian_calligraphy_scheme_01-en.svg
Inkstone basics and well-known subtypes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkstone
Video: A modern master craftsman creating and using an inkstone:
https://www.japanmade.co/others/inkstone-takashi-aoyagi1-2/
Inkstone use as meditation:
https://www.drue.net/sumi-e-inkstone
Q&A with the author of a book on the social role of inkstones:
https://uwpressblog.com/2017/05/10/asian-pacific-american-inkstones-qa/
If anyone has a source for meta explaining the trope of ‘can I grind your ink, gege?’ being a CLASSIC flirtation, I’d love to link it here; I’ve absorbed the concept via fandom osmosis.
[placeholder]

Comments so very much welcome!

Chapter 4: Four Treasures: Paper (Wei Wuxian)

Summary:

Wei Wuxian reflects on himself and his Burial Mounds family, and thinks about paper.

Notes:

This one is even more on the poetry side and less of a slice-of-life than the other chapters. I’ve written a coda, to be posted soon, that hopefully makes up for that.

ETA: I wrote two separate codas that turned into entire other fics. You can read Wei Wuxian accidentally cursing himself here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/32411410
and Wei Wuxian having a great day with major gender feelings here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/32448793/
but alas, this fic is still waiting on me to finish writing and editing one of the draft codas, probably the one about Granny Wen.

I don’t know that if Wei Wuxian would be emotionally able to count *himself* as one of the treasures of his chosen family, but I’m doing it on his behalf, because he deserves it.

Chapter Content Warning: for a little bit of Wei Wuxian's canonical sense of being mentally unstable/fragile/incomplete.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

On some days, Wei Wuxian feels as thin and ready to rip as low-grade paper.

Rain could soak through him, drift him apart from himself. Mice and moths could nibble at his edges, unnoticed. He could lie as dry as dust in a neglected place for a decade, gradually disintegrating.

His family, his mismatched gathering of chosen loved ones, reminds him that he is stronger than that.

With Wen Ning, he has the resilient toughness of long-pounded bamboo paper. Long tough fibers of mutual regard and attention coil within the hard-beaten structure of their current relationship, preventing tearing. Surface smoothness is present, but the inward complexity, the underlying tensile strength, is what resists creasing and crumpling, mold and corrosion.

With Wen Qing, he has the luster and smooth finish of high-grade sandalwood paper. He is infused with medicine that defends against decay. He is encouraged to sparkle brightly with scintillating flecks of sharply witty conversation. He is brought to a defensive high gloss that resists easy marking.

With A-Yuan, he has the absorptive quality of minimally-processed mulberry paper. Every day when Wei Wuxian spends time with the little boy, observing his curiosity and his laughter, something soaks into Wei Ying that isn’t the resentment of the Burial Mounds. Like a flowering tree, A-Yuan unfolds new capabilities daily, racing the sap-flow of springtime to grow into the person he will be the next day, the next month, the next decade. Wei Ying spins himself a cocoon of soft stories about the remarkable young man A-Yuan will become, and feasts on the berry-bright sweetness of the present moment as he jiggles a grass butterfly for A-Yuan, or lifts a spoon to feed A-Yuan his supper.

The resentful energy of the Burial Mounds tries every day to stain Wei Wuxian beyond salvage, but the time he spends with the Wen villagers, all of them, helps him remember that that isn’t the story he has to set down in ink.

Some days, even with all the pain and worry, Wei Ying feels like fine talisman paper lovingly infused with energy, and he is almost eager to start writing.

Notes:

Edit to Add: THERE IS ANOTHER CODA TO THIS FIC!!! Besides the one I'm still writing! If you're okay with less fluff and more gore in your slice-of-life, head over to https://archiveofourown.org/works/32411410 to read about Wei Wuxian accidentally cursing himself just a tad.

Are you here for the links? Yes? No? Too bad, here they are anyways.

LINKS:
History of Paper in China
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1120/paper-in-ancient-china/
More History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Paper_in_China
Types of Xuan Paper
https://www.chinatravel.com/facts/traditional-handicrafts-of-making-xuan-paper.htm
…
Qing Tan aka Blue Sandalwood aka Tara wingceltis, an essential fiber source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteroceltis
(I swear the ‘Qing’ common name of the tree was pure serendipity!)
Sandalwood & Rice Straw Xuan Paper
https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/traditional-handicrafts-of-making-xuan-paper-00201
…
Mulberry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morus_%28plant%29
Mulberry Xuan Paper
https://www.asianbrushpainter.com/products/red-star-mulberry-unsized-single-shuen-paper
“This unique consistency makes the paper more tenacious and resilient than standard Xuan Paper.”
…
Bamboo
http://blog.dassousa.com/characteristics-of-bamboo/
“In general bamboo is very durable. The outer layer of the stem is quite dense and strong. Bamboo is both flexible and elastic. As a result items made from bamboo tend to be very resilient and resist breaking when placed under stress.”
https://makawear.com/blog/things-you-didnt-know-about-bamboo-strength/
“The tensile strength of plaited bamboo cables is as strong as or stronger than a steel cable of the same size.”

Chapter 5: Further Treasures: The Cat in the Corner (Wen Ning & Wei Wuxian)

Summary:

Wen Ning is sneaky...but not really.

Notes:

Content Warnings: No major warnings. This fic implicitly references, in an AU fashion, a moment of canon (chapter 90 of the novel) that some may find mildly uncomfortable, and borrows a little dialogue from there.

Content Notes: Bonus Tags: ADHD Wei Wuxian, Oblivious Wei Wuxian, Sneaky Wen Ning, but not really, Fierce Corpse Wen Ning, Gentle Wen Ning, Humor.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“Aughhh! Why are you here! Wen Ning, you must move like a cat!”

Wen Ning tilts his head, looking at Wei Wuxian. “Not especially…”

“You snuck up on me!” Wei Wuxian accuses him.

Wei Wuxian had been sitting at the low, rough rock slab table in his cave, feet curled up on a straw mat, writing talismans and humming to himself. Then he’d turned around to look for more talisman paper and – surprise! There was Wen Ning, long black robes and pale black-veined skin and messy hair, looming over him from a few paces away! Wei Wuxian can feel his scalp tingling from startlement.

“…I don’t move particularly quietly, Wei-gongzi.”

It’s true. Wen Ning is capable of speed and grace, but it draws down his resentful energy reserves to move quickly outside a combat situation that resupplies the missing energy via the outpouring of chaos, blood, and negative emotion. His default walking pace is slow and dragging, and makes a shuffling noise with his feet. In the Burial Mounds, where they spend most of their time, he can speed up without serious consequences, and recover via his immersion in the ambient resentment; elsewhere, trying to move lightly or quickly without sustenance wouldn’t exhaust him, exactly, but it would make him incrementally less powerful, less resistant to damage, until and unless Wei Wuxian played for him. Wen Ning goes blurry-fast for A-Yuan sometimes, to make him laugh, but he most often moves at the speed of a person slowed by age or disability around the rest of them who are similarly hampered. And his heavy footfalls are not quiet.

Therefore, he had not in fact been stealthy like a cat; Wei Wuxian just hadn’t heard him.

“Also,” Wen Ning continues, “I’ve been here the whole time.”

“What?” Wei Wuxian asks. “I didn’t notice you!”

“…but Wei-gongzi…you can sense resentful energy. Especially mine. Right?” Wen Ning says, a bit bewildered.

“Right,” says Wei Wuxian. He rubs his nose, embarrassed.

“You’re not getting sick, are you?” Wen Ning reaches for Wei Wuxian’s wrist, as if to check his pulse, and Wei Wuxian snatches it out of the way.

“I am not getting sick,” Wei Wuxian says, teeth gritting. “I am not feeling any serious pain. I remembered to eat breakfast. I just didn’t notice you, because I was thinking about something.”

Wen Ning lets his hand drop. “Okay, Wei-gongzi,” he says. Placidly accepting.

“That’s it?” Wei Wuxian asks. “Just, ‘oops,’ and then you’re fine with it that I didn’t even notice you there for at least a quarter shichen?”

Deliberately, Wen Ning shrugs.

“I don’t think you noticed you were there, you were concentrating so hard on writing,” he tells Wei Wuxian.

And, well. That’s a fair point.

Notes:

The title refers to what I thought was a well-known English proverb, but can't find in this exact form via Google:

"The cat in the corner, makes a house a home."

In other words, the beloved people and animals you live with make a place worth living in.

The chapter referenced, in one of the more widely-accessed fan translations (which I read), is here: Chapter 90.

I've made the characters marginally more self-aware here ... but only marginally.

Also, a small HC that hasn't worked its way into a fic yet: Wen Ning has sufficiently dulled perceptions of touch that he shouldn't be able to feel the tiny pressure changes of someone's heartbeat. However, as a doctor it's SO automatic to him to do pulse diagnosis, that he just started doing it, and it took him a half-dozen successes to realize he was doing it mainly via fierce corpse perception of life-energy, subconsciously translated, rather than the combination of sensitive touch and qi-sensing he was used to.

Notes:

The Treasures so far...
Brush (A-Yuan)
Ink (Wen Qing)
Inkstone (Wen Ning)
Paper (Wei Wuxian)
>
Further Treasures...
Cat

The Great Wall of Tags was getting too tall even for me so I yoinked some of them. Here are bonus tags:
Rituals
Cute Kids
Domestic Fluff
Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn Has No Golden Core
remember to practice safer cultivation
Wen Qing has custody of the braincell
Mental Instability
Wei Wuxian's Canonical Self-Negativity
the symbolism becomes even more blatant
prose poetry
the author is incredibly self-indulgent writing these
excessive research links
mostly just skimmed the research though

hr />

Reminders:
1. I write a fanon-influenced smoothie blend of mostly live action and book canons.
2. This is an snippet from a larger story, in an AU that is very much a work in progress. The overall AU contains angst, dark themes, violence, sexual violence, dubious consent, characters who may not deserve it getting a happy ending, and multiple less-popular ships.
3. I am a white USAian who does not speak Chinese, writing an AU of fantasy-China characters created by a Chinese author. I will definitely consider feedback on language, culture, or other issues, but I do not expect anyone to fix my mistakes for me. Read if you like, comment if you want, leave if you prefer.
4. I welcome comments, whether a single emoji or a detailed response. I'm looking for constructive criticism. Pointing out tyoops is always welcome.

Revision Dates: I'm not actually sure when I started this one! Chapter 5 Posted: 9/15/2021.