#iild

in case you're wondering where exactly this fic takes place in present day, it's after the events of jingliu's companion mission in 1.4 - clouds leave no trace. this might change in the future cause i wasn't sure if i should include 1.5 which features huohuo, hanya and xueyi and what kind of roles should i give them.

please keep in mind that the first chapter and this was written prior to 2.4, i don't mind if theres some comments saying that some of the contents needs to be changed, but i will only correct minor stuff.

update: i have decided for the story to take place after amphoreus due to dan heng and march/evernight, but this will result in constant edits even when the chapter is released

in the beginning of the fic, you are introduced by what you might assume to be poetry:

Bequeathed Vidyadhara eggs, bestowing lunae with cleansing splendour. The vast and grand Ancient Sea, bestowing lunae to be rebirthed. Children of the Vidyadharas, to be raised and taught by our ancestors. Disciples of past reincarnations, teachers of next reincarnations. Towering and lofty Vidyadharas, cloudhymn and water dance. Blissful and soaring Azure Dragon, all shall return one day. Ageing Vidyadharas, treading alone admiring sceneries. Rippling crystalline lunae, pearls sinking in the deep sea.

they are actually from this amazing fan animation the heart of long, the heart of me by the talented toma movie! these verses are specifically from the scenes every time dan heng's past lives reincarnate!

although there are already translations provided in the animation, i decided to make my own translation and interpretation, which appeared to have some vast differences. both translations are not exactly accurate, but both work fine.

it still took me over an hour to translate just these verses because chinese poetries are usually in just 4 or 6 characters, which is significantly harder than english (also why i hate it and chinese idioms), and i tried to rhyme it like how english poetries are.

you can read the below if you're curious about what it originally was in chinese:

持明遗卵，浴月沐华。古海泱泱，浴月复生。 持明稚童，故人提执。前世贤契，来世蒙师。 持明俁俁，云吟水舞。苍龙于飞，各有所归。 持明其耋，独行景景。波月粼粼，沧海沉珠。

somewhere in the middle of the fic, you might remember this quote:

“Sinner Dan Feng, embracing evil to break the forbidden, desiring to seek immortality, inciting the calamity of war. Today, in light of past merit, spared from the death sentence, the sentence shall be instead shedding his scales to moulting rebirth, eternal banishment, and must not step foot on this realm ever again.”

this is also taken from the same fan animation at 5:57, which i again translated it myself. the below is the original in chinese:

罪人丹枫，拥贼犯禁，贪取不死，造作兵祸。今，念其旧功，免于大辟，蜕鳞轮回，流徙化外，凡所治处，不得履踏。

halfway writing this chapter, i discovered that the luofu actually lacked a high elder for 700 years after dan feng, but dan heng is actually only a few decades old since his growth was accelerated, so how long exactly does rebirth and incubation take? i decided to ignore this for now hahaha.

fortunately, the wikia is always helpful so i didn't have to crack my head open to figure out and write the timeline (especially when there are different time systems like trailblaze calendar and amber era, the xianzhou uses star calendar instead which has 8000+ years of history), but here's a brief timeline for this fic:

year 7279-<7379 (?): formation of the high-cloud quintet, which fell in less than a century

year 7379: baiheng sacrificed herself, prompting dan feng to commit "unpardonable sins" and undergo moulting rebirth, yingxing was involved and became immortal from being backfired (doesn't say when his banishment occurred), and the title of the sword champion (jingliu) has been vacant since due to her developing the mara from this incident

year 7380: jingliu succumbed to mara before escaping after being defeated by jing yuan (records about her were wiped from history after this, like dan feng)

year ?: teng xiao, previous arbiter-general of the luofu, stepped down and succeeded by jing yuan after the sedition of dan feng

year 8096: yanqing becomes cloud knight lieutenant

year 8100+: present time

dan feng underwent moulting rebirth in 7379 and the imbibitor lunae position was vacant for 700 years, until bailu was born (in 8000ish, unofficially?). it doesn't explain when dan heng and bailu were born either, so I tried winging it. since dan heng was only a few decades old when he was banished, i made bailu be born after he was gone.

i realized too late that since this makes bailu about 100 years old, this means that this would also make dan heng max 150 years old instead, despite my attempt to make him less than 100 years old (a few decades old + a decade spent around ipc spaceships). perhaps this should be reversed instead, since bailu's height/growth was actually stunted (maybe related to dan feng's moulting rebirth) and she should have hsr's girl model instead (based on this template). or they should be born at the same time, idk.

i will have to make changes regarding this in the future, either before or after the next instalment.

while reading the timeline, you might've thought: who is teng xiao and why is he relevant? i will talk about him more in a future post instead as he will make an appearance in the next installment!

the high-cloud quintet was formed for these (not in chronological order):

driving out the borisin (a humanoid species, distantly related to the foxians, and dominant race of the denizens of abundance) from invading thalassa (an oceanic planet with few islands, consisting of an amphibious aquatic humanoid race)

destroying the alliance between the houyhnhnms and the wingweavers in the abundance axis (no info yet)

rescuing the yuque from the denizens of abundance

defeating the living planet ketu mirage (no info yet)

i planned on using one of these events for when the express crew and others time-travelled, i easily chose the 3rd event since they're in the xianzhou. as of now, unfortunately, there isn't any in-depth info on what exactly happened in any of these events. this event doesn't need a lot of plotting since i decided to make the time-travellers aid the hcq in defeating the denizens of abundance.

according to the yuque's wikia page, during the resistance of the alliance against the denizens of abundance, the intelligentsia guild once dispatched a troop consisting of the learned (no info yet) to join the 2nd of the abundance wars in year 5749 star calendar. the troop helped in defeating shuhu, an abundance emanator that besieged the yuque. at some point in history, the xianzhou yuque was rescued by the hcq. it's not stated anywhere when exactly did the resistance and rescue happened.