six balls

I just came up with this, but listen what if Xue Meng was raised in Guyueyue, and since he was going to inherit the sect one day, he pursued the medicine path like both of his parents (Jiang Xi, Madam Wang) and what if the leader of Tianyin pavilion died very early (before any cannibalism occurred) and Hua Gui ends up taking over the pavilion for now, and the pavilion becomes a safe place for the bbbf. What if Guyueyue still uses bbbf for pill refinement and so on, so Hua Gui proposes a fake arranged marriage proposal thing to strengthen the bond between the two sects (or more specifically, to gain their trust and make it easier for them to save any bbbf behind guyueyue's back. When that's achieved they could just cancel the proposal)

Maybe the proposed marriage is like. Xue Meng and Mu Yanli. Now Mu Yanli knows that this whole proposal is fake and why they're doing it so she agrees to play along for now. Xue Meng is clueless and he hates the idea of getting married so he basically just ignores her and vents his annoyance all day. But when he met Mu Yanli, he has also met the entire family, this includes Mu Yanli's younger half brother, Shi Mei

Both Xue Meng (or Jiang Meng) and Shi Mei (or Hua Binan) absolutely hate each other. Hua Binan may have not witnessed cannibalism first hand, but he knows that he's bbbf, how they're treated, and has seen the survivors down in Tianyin pavilion so he naturally despised the way humans treated bbbf, especially how they were being treated at Guyueye. And Xue Meng (who doesn't know that Hua Binan is a bbbf) wouldn't know any better since Guyueye medicine practice was all he knew at the time, would also view bbbf as resources to make pills. And also Xue Meng doesn't want to marry and he'd vent his annoyance out on Hua Binan as well, so both of them hate each other and it's a haters/enemies to lovers type of thing

Hua Binan would also somehow be better at certain aspects of medicine than Xue Meng, which would only fuel his jealousy and hatred further.