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No warnings.

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow
Chapter 25

Lan Sizhui had never seen Jin Ling in a fouler mood.

They had come out of the misty, grim streets of Yi City hours ago, and since then the Jin sect heir had done nothing but spit vitriol at whatever stood in his way. Pebbles on the path, the quality of the food at the inn they went back too. A patch of black-rotted wood on the wall. Lan Jingyi’s insistence to stay with them both rather than lie down and rest.

There was care there, of course—Sizhui was not so blind as not to notice the glaring crush that Jin Ling had sported for Jingyi for years now. But he thought, through his own worry, that the boy’s anger had more to do with other things for once.

Mo Xuanyu had yet to rejoin them, and Hanguang-Jun was nowhere to be found. Continue reading →

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NOTE: I’ve edited the story to replace the terms alpha/beta/omega with those used by Chinese authors of omegaverse fic. Alpha is now qianyuan, beta is zhongyong, and omega is kunze. I think it suits the story better 🙂

Warnings: sexual harassment of a minor, suicide, Jiang Cheng’s Very Bad Not Good Day.

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow
Interlude 3

When he still lived within the house of his ancestors, He Xiwang had heard of the forsaken kunze of Yiling. The teacher who came once every few days to teach him and the lone other inhabitant of the place informed them, with pinched and pale lips, of the one called Wei Wuxian; he warned them, in words heavy with disgust, that one day the Yiling Patriarch would come fetch them if ever they strayed out of path. Come and take their bodies and their souls.

Be obedient, she would say. Be virtuous, or he shall come for you. Continue reading →