Kitachett

My crack-ish headcanon is that heavenly tribulations have to be done in a certain way - like if you manage to kill a powerful ghost but do it by burning down the village you're supposed to be protecting, that kinda goes against what the heavens had in mind, right? So imagine Xie Lian saves a village from a powerful ghost and everyone crowds around, thanking Daozhang for his help, and he just gets this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he really messed up this time.

And so, he sighs heavily and squares his shoulders. He lightly punches a random grandpa. Gently elbows a lady in the face. Steals a mantou from a child right in front of the parents. Yells random swear words at everyone. And just bolts for the treeline, stolen mantou stuffed in his mouth, screaming apologies the whole way.

He's left about 30 villages with weird stories like this not even a decade into his banishment. He's not even sure that's actually how these things work but he's NOT risking passing a heavenly tribulation no matter how many years pass so he keeps doing this shit just in case.

Then eventually the heavens get tired and go "Oh for fucks sake, fine! You're ascending for uhhh... scrap collecting. Yup. You're just so good at it. There."

Available as a print!! I'm happy with how the symbolism turned out, their relationship is so complicated it's hard to describe with one drawing lol. I redrew the water like 4 times and He Xuan's hair like 3 times so in total this took me over 30 hours. The hair probably took up half that time oof (it was relaxing though, other than the headache of figuring out lighting). I'm not totally happy with the fabric shading but I couldn't figure out how to make it better :c