dot your j's and cross your t's

Xie Lian really humored these three.

Hua Cheng is the least offensive of these three. He’s not really actively trying to hide his identity per se. I imagine that he didn’t want to straight up lie to Xie Lian, which is why he only disguised his appearance and then proceeded to be the weirdest person ever. Like mans lowkey waltzed up to Xie Lian and said “Hey bestie, I’m just a good old normal, 100% average teenager who is most definitely not a ghost king or anything like that! Look, I can breathe!“ and then proceeded to info dump a shit ton of information about gods and shit like he’s Wikipedia which a normal, 100% average teenager who is most definitely not a ghost king would most positively not know.

However, our other two offenders actually thought they were fooling Xie Lian, whom may I remind you, is legit their childhood friend. They swapped color pallets and called it a day. And not only did they not try to not act like their selfs in the personality sense in their disguises, they also were just so bad at pretending not to be themselves. Like, someone says “General” in the cave where all the travelers were hiding and they both respond like it’s them being addressed. Idiots.

Also, the three of them just bicker half the time. Mu Qing and Feng Xin just kept yelling that this random nepo-baby Xie Lian picked up was so sus and trying to prove it to him while Xie Lian sits there and tells them to go for it while he snickers internally, knowing the identity of every single disguised person in the room.

These three legit had an argument about whether or not this “San Lang” could drink water. That’s just so fucking funny to me.

Honorable mentions in this arc is Feng Xin getting the shit beat out of him by Windmaster because he somehow was unaware that they swapped gendered forms (which btw, how the fuck did he not know this)?! Also, He Xuan and Hua Cheng just seeing each other in disguises because I wish I got their internal monologues for that.