The Suitors

"Li Yu was a little hesitant, but Prince Jing was smilling as he walked up to him. He patted Li Yu on the head, pulled out a white jade hairpin shaped like a fish, and carefully put it in Li Yu's hair."

One of my favorite things about mxtx couples being put in a modern/no magic AU setting is how absolutely unhinged their actions would be considered

Hualian consists of some guy that was famous as a child/young adult before falling off hard and some guy that idolized him as a 10 year old only to start stalking and pining for him from afar for years afterwards. The stalker manages to score a friendship with this guy, constantly hangs around him and helps him, and once his red flags are discovered the guy is so chill about it. Even into it

Wangxian starts off more normal. Two guys that are sort of frenemies in high school with one being the suppressed good boy type and the other being your typical troublemaker. The troublemaker goes from being a bad influence to a straight up war criminal even if he’s lowkey in the right for it. Whenever he gets out of jail he goes right back to doing war crimes and instead of stopping him, the good boy protects and even joins him in his war crimes

Bingqiu is this teenager with a massive crush on his fresh out of college, no idea what he’s doing, teacher who was never really supposed to be a teacher, he just ended up here. Everything is chill until the week of final exams he gets expelled from school or something because of this teacher and goes through the worst trauma of his life trying to pull his life back together and survive. Years later he’s the equivalent of a gang leader and meets his teacher, who’s now terrified of him. He starts stalking him and trying to get with him because man he really just wants to be called a good boy

Aftermath

Junmei art I forgot to post, I hate gay people

shen yuan being animal obsessed to the point he starts trying to take everything remotely friendly home with him so one day returns with the xianxia equivalent of a scraggly possom that hisses at everyone it sees and that is definitely poisonous while still insisting its a little baby that needs a home

airplane never really expanded on the common creature worldbuilding in pidw like pigeons and cats and rabbits and raccoons, so shen yuan started filling in the blanks himself and oh boy did he fill it wrong. he pets a fox-like creature the size of a cow with horns and hooves like it's a horse not knowing that would be like trying to pet a grizzly bear. he coos over the owl-cats that live under overhangs and in dusty attics and really really wants one until liu qingge has to drag him away because they're some of the most awful aggressive pests you can have that swoop down on people and claw their faces open when they're mildly displeased.

one time he walked onto his peak with a six-legged spotted weasel in his sleeve bc it's so cute he just couldn't leave it!! not knowing said weasel is known as one of the most vicious predators because they tear through the calf muscles to cripple prey ten times their size and then eat them alive

however, because shen yuan has the disney princess subclass with a +7 proficiency in animal handling, it never goes wrong. he pets the fox-stag without an issue and it even allows him to climb onto its back. the owl-cats love him and happily play with his robes and fetch things for him. the six legged weasel lazes around the bamboo house all day and loves to be pet. the scaggly possom hisses at and hates everyone except shen yuan.

every other animal had to leave, except the possom. that is a fight they did not win. yue qingyuan only has so much strength and those teary eyes are lethal

This was my contribution to the second volume of MDZS's French publication! Thank you so much to Éditions Bookmark for inviting me back!

Xue Yang: Why won’t you love me, Xiao Xingchen? I’ll be anything you want me to be! Xiao Xingchen: I WANT YOU TO BE DEAD!

you could stain your hands the deepest scarlet, and I'd wash them clean for you.

800 years later but some things don't change 😭