In preparing their ambush, the Jin sect was careful to get rid of all the human corpses at the Qiongqi Path - They forgot that the reason the path got its name was that, many years ago, Wen Mao killed the great beast, the Qiongi - and when Wei Wuxian started playing, he noticed that there was still some dead thing, deep beneath the ground...

A man who binds himself with so many rules is afraid of what he will do without them. When all his righteousness is not enough and his little brother is killed by one he trusted, Nie Mingjue casts aside all restraint and principle. He travels to the Burial Mounds, his brother's corpse cradled in his arms, and kneels before the Yiling Patriarch, begging him to bring his brother back - And then he goes to seek an accounting. No matter what the cost.

The Nie sect’s ancestors were butchers; that lowly heritage is well known and widely celebrated, much to the not-entirely-concealed disdain of some of the more refined, gentlemanly sects. Butchers at home and butchers at war – everyone knows that. What’s rather less well known is that the third sect leader, colloquially known among his descendants as ‘that idiot’, rather heroically saved an imperial princess in battle and then – and this was why he was that idiot – married her. She was a proper princess, too, the true-born daughter of the emperor; other sects might see that as a good thing, since for all that cultivation sects saw themselves as being above petty things like the politics of the common folk, a princess was still a princess. The Nie did not. The reason for this was quite simple. What does a cultivation style that already incorporates an increased chance of death through anger most assuredly does not need? The blood of the eight-clawed dragon, that’s what.

Wei Wuxian was fully prepared to be rejected – no matter what Jiang Cheng said about the Sunshot Campaign caring more about defeating the Wens than anything else, the fact remained that his cultivation was most decidedly abnormal and unorthodox, the sort of thing the cultivation world most scorned. He’d already decided that if they did that, he would return to his previous approach of stalking the Wens from the shadows, fighting them in his own way, on his own. Instead, he walked into the command tent, Chenqing gripped tightly in his hand, and Nie Mingjue didn’t so much as blink, just said, “Can you do anything but ambushes?” and the next thing he knew, it was three shichen later, he’d shared far more than he’d meant to about his new cultivation style, and there were eight different plans of attack that would greatly increase his effectiveness on the battlefield. It was – exhilarating, actually. (in which Nie Mingjue and Wei Wuxian become sworn brothers)

There was no way the old contract Jiang Cheng found arranging a marriage between the direct disciples of the Nie and Jiang sects was, as Jiang Cheng insisted, the way to solve the problem of the Yiling Patriarch - if only because there was no way the Nie sect would agree to it. Except - they did. And now they're coming to discuss terms. With Lan Wangji as the official chaperone.

Possibly some of these will become longer, but not yet. Currently featuring (among others): - child!Jin Ling gets himself kidnapped by a well-meaning Wen Ning - truth serum trope - Nie Huaisang steals the Ghost General - Nie sect adopts the Yiling Patriarch - a variety of arranged marriages - crossover (Leverage, Naruto, Legends of Tomorrow) - dragons dragons everywhere - unintentional black widow WWX - Jiang Cheng is thrown into the burial mounds - NHS wields a fan as a weapon - JC interferes with the events on the Qiongqi Path - Lan Sizhui is Wen Ruohan's son and meets him unknowingly - WWX is named chief cultivator - Jiang Yanli's spirit responds to Lan Wangji's constant playing of Inquiry - WWX & LWJ locked away behind the Wall - LWJ stays in the burial mounds but it affects him - JC does impossible things

Nie Mingjue leaves his first Discussion Conference as a Sect Leader early, desperately needing to find some fresh air and possibly something to hit. Instead he finds a small, dirty child that reminds him of his brother, cowering away from some dogs - Maybe he should take him home.

Once upon a time in Yiling, a rumor started about the Yiling Patriarch having started to collect a harem of beautiful young men from a variety of sects. (it was Nie Huaisang's fault) (to be fair, the porn didn't help)

Nie Mingjue would be the very first to admit that devious plotting was not his strong suit – but if it meant he could make things better, make it so that his brother never had to dirty his hands to avenge him, he would do his best. His best, in this instance, was a forbidden ritual that sent him back in time to before their father had died, before Wen Ruohan's perfidy was revealed, before Meng Yao was twisted by the world's cruelty, before Wei Wuxian was orphaned... Nie Mingjue had a lot to do and very little time in which to do it. Best to get started right away.

Nie Huaisang meant for it to be a surprise. Learning the Song of Clarity for his brother, so that he wouldn't need to feel bad about his sworn brothers travelling all the way to Qinghe for him - it would be the perfect birthday gift. Obviously he can't just ask someone to teach him, since they would just tell his brother about it, but that's fine; Nie Huaisang knows of a place where he can sit and listen in secret - he'll just pick it up that way. Except something must have gone wrong, because he's started coughing up blood...

In which Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen discover something very interesting about the Nie sect, and what exactly a "qi deviation" means when it comes to the main Nie clan. ...also, tigers.

“It’s not wrong if you write it down,” Mo Xuanyu muttered to himself like a mantra as he scribbled down a rough explanation of what he was going to do. “If you write it down, it’s just an experiment, and that makes it okay.” That’s what they used to say back at Koi Tower, back when they were doing all those bad things. They also said that you’re supposed to try stuff out before you do the real thing, because practice makes perfect. And anyway, surely it wouldn't hurt to put the cat in the middle of the body-sacrificing array before he put himself in - the array ran on resentment, on revenge, and how much resentment could a cat possibly have?

When Lan Wangji ran away from the jingshi to look for himself, his back still raw, and on Yiling he found only a small child, feverish but still capable of a little bit of babbling, still able to tell the story of what had happened – when he found the traces of blood on the ground, Wei Wuxian’s from when his power had backlashed on him – when he saw the bodies in the blood pool, already rotting – For the first time in his life, Lan Wangji didn’t want to go home. (what if he had another option?)

Nie Mingjue and Baxia have always been close. Maybe a little too close. (Nie Mingjue watched as his body leaped to the side, avoiding the beast’s charge – the movements were a little jerky, he thought, and Baxia sent some frustration back that he thought might roughly translate to listen it’s a new body and I’m trying here if she were capable of speech – and then spinning around, leaping up, and then bringing him - Nie-Mingjue-the-saber, that is - down on the beast.)

Figuring out that the second daughter of the Jiang clan was, in fact, their son and heir - if you look at it by Qinghe standards - when no one else in Yunmeng had yet figured it out caused Nie Mingjue enough of a headache, and it must have given him a bit of a reputation for sticking his nose into other people's business. That must be the reason that Jiang Cheng would come to him of all people after the fall of the Lotus Pier, hand a little too low down on his stomach for the problem to be food poisoning, to ask for advice - or maybe it was only that he had nobody else to turn to.

“I didn’t know Mistress Jiang’s expertise extended to medicine,” Lan Xichen commented, a little breathless from the pain of his injury. Jiang Yanli smiled up at him – kind and gentle and just a little mischievous – and suddenly he was a little more breathless than before. How had he never spent time with this remarkable woman before?

There was another boy there at the base of the balcony outside of Meng Shi's window, where Meng Yao liked to sit: a boy few years older than him, taller, in finely made clothing that would normally make Meng Yao itch all over in futile envy, but the other boy’s eyes were white around the edges in a way that was immediately, painfully familiar. “Someone’s chasing you?” Meng Yao asked, and the boy’s eyes widened even further, surprised, but he nodded in confirmation. “There’s a trellis around the left side – can you climb up? I'll hide you.” "Thanks," the boy said, later, once the man he called Wen Ruohan had left. "My name is Nie Mingjue. What's yours?"

Meng Yao had finally achieved the pinnacle of power: he was the viceroy of Emperor Wen Ruohan, who conquered the cultivation world years ago - the Nie sect heirs having disappeared without a trace, the Jin compromised, the Lan crushed, the Jiang destroyed - and the Emperor had left him in complete charge in his absence. Unfortunately, complete charge meant a complete headache. How was he supposed to get anything done when everyone else was scheming against him all the time? He needed help, and good help was so hard to find. "Hold this," he said to a passing guard - something of a giant, with a tall frame, strong back, and broad shoulders, and handsome features to boot; just Meng Yao’s type. "It’s not that difficult. I only need your arms, not your brain, so just – do it. Whatever your name is!” “A-Jue,” the guard said. “I mostly get called A-Jue.”

When Nie Mingjue turned sixteen years old, he was alone. He had taken nothing with him but his saber, Baxia. He had hugged his brother maybe-goodbye, and then he had gone down into the saber tombs to wait to see if this was the year he was going to go insane. (a fairytale)

“Sect Leader Lan,” he said. “Please help me.” Lan Qiren stared down at him in horror, quickly crouching to pull Nie Mingjue up again. “Me? You can’t be serious!” “It has to be you,” Nie Mingjue said. “Sect Leader Lan, please. Please. It can’t be Wen Ruohan. It can’t.”