#suxue

And imo this is one of the few places you could start from (when they're young enough that both of them are a little more flexible and less cemented in their roles, sms having just left the Lan and xy having not killed the Chang sect yet) that I could see it working without some mitigating force in there to keep them from killing each other long enough to bond, but the reason I'm still writing the fic at all is that I think it can work.

Imo the key to it is that past their initial impressions rubbing each other the wrong way, they have remarkably similar values (i've said suxue is wangxian to the extreme left 😂) they both think the cultivation gentry are hypocrites and there's something wrong with the world! they're both fans of intense, some would say disproportionate, personal revenge! they're both later involved with different ends of nonconventional cultivation, sms reviving the ancient and xy on the cutting edge of the new, so we know they both have that instinct to push past the norm.

While Xue Yang comes off as arrogant and rude, past that initial impression he's definitely not the kind of arrogance that sms specifies he hates--xy is the opposite of a man born into advantage throwing his weight around and looking down on people. (The rude thing he just has to get used to.) And while sms, especially in his youth, comes off as a whiny coward timid, thin-skinned, and hypocritical (oooh you don't like people who were born into privilege? mr had a roof over his head as a child? mr trained at one of the great sects?) I think xy realizing that he's really down with murder, inventive murder, and also hey maybe isn't as much of a coward as you initially assumed, would make him warm up.