bang! crash! the lightning flashed!! -- that's another story, nevermind, anyway!

[qingxinling]

Jiang Wanyin sweeps along the shores of the lake, glowering. This is not his beloved Lotus Pier. These waters are cold, foreign, uninviting. Clearly there's been some trap: he's been distracted by duty in this hunt, and when he followed the slight tug in his chest, he ended up getting pulled into unfamiliar territory.

No matter. He draws himself to full height, letting cool arrogance slip down his shoulders and suffuse him. Sandu is naked in one hand; Zidian crackles in the other. He can handle whatever monsters may arrive.

Comments

[summerdude]

Magnus doesn't really need whatever healing Lan Wangji is trying to push at him -- his own innate healing has already stopped the nosebleed, and he'll have a new tooth by the morning. But he has things of his own to get to, now that the shakiness of the panic and the Peace have faded, so he nods at Hanguang-jun.

"Good to see you again, Wei Wuxian," he says, politely, pulling away from Lan Wangji and stretching. "More cooking lessons soon? When you're feeling better?"

[qingxinling]

"Good," glaring at him for a moment before stomping striding away again.

[qingxinling]

That guy is also a cutsleeve? What, is it in the water here or something? Is there some kind of pollen that encourages men to lay with men? "The immortal cultivator?" he asks, to make sure.

[protagonisthalo]

"Yes, the immortal cultivator. He's a Peak Lord of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect." Obviously, since Jiang Wanyin is from the same world as Lan Wangji, and Lan Wangji is from the same world as Luo Binghe, he will have heard of Cang Qiong. Somehow, in the past three months, no one has given Luo Binghe any reason to believe otherwise.

[qingxinling]

"Never heard of it," Jiang Wanyin says, glibly. "Is it anywhere near Baoshan Sanren's mountain?"

[protagonisthalo]

He must come from the same remote region as Lan Wangji, where the news of Luo Binghe's rule has yet to reach. That's irritating, but Luo Binghe likes Jiang Wanyin enough that he'll generously forgive him for the slight. After all, Cang Qiong doesn't even exist anymore, and Shen Yuan doesn't need its prestige to impress. "No. What's that?"

[qingxinling]

"She's the only confirmed immortal I've ever heard of, until today," Jiang Wanyin says. If there's an odd tone to his voice, well. That's understandable and surely doesn't need to be explained to anyone here.

[protagonisthalo]

This strikes Luo Binghe as very odd. Immortality among cultivators is simply not that uncommon.¹ Cang Qiong Mountain has a number of immortals among its Peak Lords, and it is (was) only one of the three major sects. "I find that hard to believe. I myself could reach immortality easily, and likely will. Heavenly Demons can already live hundreds of years without cultivating at all."

¹Genre differences!

[futaille]

Grantaire nods with a grin. "Seemed appropriate for the place's first and most public defacement!"

[qingxinling]

Jiang Wanyin, who has opened his mouth to suggest that -- after meeting a bunch of weirdos from a bunch of different places here, and since he's also not particularly familiar with any emperors of three realms -- they might be from different places, stops so abruptly his mouth clicks audibly closed. "Heavenly... Demons?" he repeats.

[protagonisthalo]

Luo Binghe naturally assumes Jiang Wanyin is impressed. "The last of the line," he says, tossing his hair and smiling winsomely. "My mother was a human cultivator, but my father was the great demon king Tianlang-jun."

[qingxinling]

Jiang Wanyin, who has definitely absolutely never leapt to conclusions once in his entire life, does not leap immediately into attacking the demon in front of him, who so recently had seemed affable and amiable and a good sort of person to be around. A suspicion is dawning on him. "Are you in cahoots with Wei Wuxian?"

[qingxinling]

"What the fuck happened here," Jiang Wanyin asks, glowering at the frame and the words that it enshrines.

[protagonisthalo]

"Of course not. We've barely spoken."

[qingxinling]

Something rotten is afoot -- this doesn't follow. "A Heavenly Demon has barely spoken to the Yiling Laozu."

[peaklordshen]

"I told you," says Shen Yuan. "Lan Wangji defaced a wall. I think he might have been drunk?" he says, looking to Grantaire for confirmation; if he was, then that was at least one thing CQL had gotten right. Along with Jiang Cheng being so handsome.

[futaille]

"Very drunk, if his talent show performance had anything to say about it."

[qingxinling]

"Lan Wangji got drunk?!" Jiang Wanyin is frankly a little flummoxed by that one. "This array is so fucking weird."

[peaklordshen]

"Oh, there's no array," says Shen Yuan. "I mean. I'm pretty sure. It's not that type of magic. And I don't think Lan Wangji getting drunk had anything to do with magic at all, I think he just wanted to stake a claim to Wei Wuxian in front of everybody, because--" he's a yaoi Dom with overactive paranoia about everyone stealing his husband, even though everyone is happily ensconced in entirely separate yaoi dramas of their own? He rolls his eyes a little, meaningfully. "You know."

[protagonisthalo]

"Why should I speak to anyone?" Luo Binghe crosses his arms. "Explain yourself."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Good day, sir," Lancelot calls after him.

[qingxinling]

"Because he invented demonic cultivation?" Obviously.

[protagonisthalo]

Luo Binghe's face is almost still, but his eyebrows shoot all the way up. "He invented demonic cultivation? I would love to hear how. How he invented demonic cultivation."

[qingxinling]

Disgusting. Disgusting!! In a way, they deserve each other. "I know," Jiang Wanyin grumbles.

[qingxinling]

"I didn't fucking ask him," Jiang Wanyin snaps. He has, however, dealt with many copycats trying to emulate the stuff. "He did it during the Sunshot Campaign."