#minglang

svsss soulmates au where there are different kinds of soulmates. Some have tattoos of the first sentence the sm ever tells them, some have moving tattoos of their soulmates true nature, some have plain ol boring strings. Ming Fan has a tattoo. It’s a very ominous sentence along the lines of “Are you here to laugh at an old man, little cultivator?”

It implies a lot of things about his soulmate he’d rather not know. It makes Ming Fan prepare a whole lecture about why you shouldn’t greet people rudely or say ominous things the first time you see them because it could lead to their own family beginning to think their son’s gonna marry a demon one day. It’s also the reason his parents send him to Cang Qiong.

so the plot happens, and everything’s fine, and Ming Fan, as the head disciple, is assigned a mission to go get tlj’s soul back into his real body because the plant one collapsed and his soul was kinda just floating around over it until Mu Qingfang put it in a bottle.

so Ming Fan takes the bottle to the mountain, and puts it into the old body. He goes to check on tlj the next day or so because he was told the soul was in shock and would need some time to regain consciousness.

so when he’s in that cave, guess what tlj says. Guess what’s the first thing leaving that man’s lips directed at ming fan.

so the kid freezes. Forgets his entire lecture.

ming fan takes a step back. Then another. And another.

he starts pacing, frowning, muttering to himself with some curse words he learned from either Xiang Fei or shen yuan mixed into his nonsensical rambling.

he stops at some point, stares tlj directly in the eyes from a safe distance away and goes, “Are you fucking serious?”

I need y’all to hear me out here. I fell down the rarepair rabbit hole and this is where I ended up: tlj and mf. And I mean, Ming Fan. Little mini Shen Jiu Ming Fan. And Binghe’s dad.

Yes, I absolutely do mean this. I am dead serious. This is not a “haha funny pair lbh’s ex bully is making out with lbh’s dad ahaha” ship. I mean it could be, but then there’s the angst potential.

Like. Imagine. Ming Fan is this scrappy, somewhat ordinary-looking kid (he grows out of the baby fat and gorgeous tho trust me bro just look at the official art in the book that stuff is too pretty) with a distant family, a distant shizun/dad-figure and maybe 3 crushes (I go with Nyy, Gyx/Yyx and lbh because I like the idea of mf being emotionally useless and mistaking a fucking crush for abyss-deep hatred) which all quietly failed when they ran off and got married to someone not named Ming Fan. He probably has abandonment and neglect issues huge enough to pass as mountains. He always feels like he’s not good enough because he’s surrounded by prodigies, fucking heaven-sent geniuses and immortals but at the same time he feels like he has to take care of everyone and everything because if not him, then who? His shizun works two jobs, one of which empress, and he was absent for years, mf definitely took over one or two peak lord duties. All the disciples are younger than him, he’s their dashixiong, they rely on him. He can’t trust Bai Zhan because Qing Jing peak hates Bai Zhan. He’s got a difficult personality so he has a hard time making friends. His family is slowly aging towards the day he’ll be standing at their graves, not looking a single day older than 27 or 30 while his siblings and parents are six feet under. He’s on his own. And he gets good at it. He starts lying to people about his workload, he starts hiding his insecurities, his troubles, his qi deviations, everything. He’s the perfect, if a little grumpy, head disciple. And he’s so fucking young.

Enter Tlj. He takes one look at this kid and decides he does not give a shit. Man has issues. He isn’t looking for a boyfriend, he just wants quiet after all that bullshit he went through. And mf’s just an ordinary cultivator, maybe a bit more hardworking than usual, but what about it? Not enough for tlj to care. So, tlj breaks into the qing jing library and just. Refuses to leave. Because of the yaoi slop that shen yuan’s been hiding in there. (Yes Shen Yuan’s a fujo in this one. It’s not gay if he’s not the one doing it. It’s either him or Nyy.)

and ming fan is in that library trying to learn, trying to do his documents and definitely NOT prepared for some fuckass demon to waltz in and start reading smut five meters away in the corner. And bringing snacks into the library. SNACKS. IN THE HOLY QING JING LIBRARY. Ming Fan’s retreat. The one place on Qing Jing he can still work at (he got kicked out of his office for working himself into passing out. Shen Yuan does not know this because he’s busy being married).

so they kinda start talking and mf is just annoyed and tired and every time he’s polite you just KNOW it’s insincere. He has mastered the ways of obviously insincere politeness to a degree even Shen Jiu would be proud of. tlj is just kinda amused. Like he starts out seeing mf as this weird, kinda funny kid, but not really as a person, more as some weird funny animal to pass time watching. and then Ming Fan starts being stupid. And hiding all the shit he does for the people around him. And he gets him a special corner in the library he can eat snacks at without the librarian trying to kill him for dirtying her sacred space. And he has qi deviations. And some fucker is trying to flirt with him and mf pretends he doesn’t know because that fucker is the crush of some friend/shimei/shidi of his. And he tries to do everything alone. And he never asks for help. And holy shit tlj is CONCERNED.

like, not romantically. Definitely not. He’s not betraying xiyan like that. But it can’t hurt to drag one stupid disciple on mandatory holiday… right?

anyway ming fan latches onto that tiny bit of concern like it’s a lifeline. Like? Positive attention?? Someone is considering him a priority??? And he lets him trash talk about everyone and everything? And he agrees that Huan Hua is the worst place ever and, aside from gyx, should be thrown into a bug nest for being peacocks and stupid and trying to hurt shizun and that entire fake trial and imprisonment thing they pulled? He is starving for that. All of that.

Flash forward, they are both screaming in their heads while tlj is flirting and mf is slowly learning how to flirt back in a way that makes the other guy shut up. Both are just yelling WHY YOU WHY THE FUCK IS IT THAT GUY IT COULD HAVE BEEN ANYONE LITERALLY FUCKING ANYONE WHY HIM. this is worse for tlj because of the sxy thing.

Ming Fan is so insecure and he feels like tlj’s out of his league so he doesn’t even try to take it seriously and tlj stares at mf desperately trying to tell himself that he is not falling for some random, stupid kid with a martyr complex. And beats himself up for “betraying” sxy. Again.

And they go on some kind of epic holiday quest all the while. They can have their bi crisis on the road, preferably while mf’s trying to paint something to sell for travelling funds. That sounds like the perfect time to be having an emotional crisis.