Pairing: A free-spirited, domineering, beautiful and tragic sect leader uke x a mad, defeated, touch-starved younger ghost king seme
(Pseudo-incest, pseudo-coercion, both virgins, happy ending)
Jiang Liyan, a major figure in the immortal sects, was so rebellious that no one dared cross him.
One day, he had a mishap and was captured by the ghost ruler Wei Yuan, who imprisoned him in his bedchamber.
The cultivators sneered that an Immortal Venerable of his generation had become a plaything of the wicked path.
The ghosts, however, said that the ghost ruler had imprisoned a troublesome ancestor.
After all, Jiang Liyan was Wei Yuan's fake older brother and real enemy.
Wei Yuan hated him for leaving him to suffer alone as a child, and for making him a scapegoat.
Most of all, he hated that when he died, Jiang Liyan was busy saving another man!
Claws dug into Jiang Liyan's neck as Wei Yuan said, word by word:
"You saved me, and you killed me. I could never repay what I owe you, not even in three lifetimes."
Jiang Liyan held a gilded tobacco pipe. Thin smoke drifted past his languid, smiling eyes like a mist:
"A Yuan, you were much cuter as a child than you are now."
The cool fragrance of the medicated smoke left the decisive ghost ruler dizzy and disoriented. Every day, he was torn between "I'll kill him so he can come down here and keep me company" and "I'll make him explain himself."
But Wei Yuan didn't know.
After his death, it was the very older brother he both hated and loved imperfectly who risked everything to drag him back from hell.
He sacrificed one of his souls to obtain Jiang Liyan's memories. Those memories became a gu, imprisoning immortals and demons alike, and gradually tore open the mysteries of antiquity.
It turned out Jiang Liyan was neither a monster nor an aberration.
It turned out the person he had hated all these years was the one who had been wronged.
Jiang Liyan's version:
Jiang Liyan had been raised at the bottom of the Lanyuan Sea since birth. His only companion was the Holy Maiden Ran Peiyi. During the more than ten years he was trapped beneath the sea, the only way he learned about the world above was through letter butterflies that his "younger brother" Wei Yuan sent to his mother.
After the Holy Maiden died, he found Wei Yuan and announced:
"A Yuan, Mother has passed away. As your elder brother, I must take her place and discipline you from now on."
Wei Yuan: ???
Jiang Liyan sensed that the boy inexplicably hated him, but it didn't matter. He would just toughen the kid up, the way the Holy Maiden had raised him.
But after disciplining him for a while, he began to feel that his younger brother's eyes held a strange affection for him.
Jiang Liyan: ???
Content warnings:
Lots of original worldbuilding, not conventional xianxia, three ancient races.
Written for the author's personal preferences.
Deeply tragic romance + love and hate + angst before sweetness + pseudo wall-papering + pseudo-incest + both physically and emotionally faithful + happy ending.
The uke has to burn medicated tobacco in a gilded pipe due to his health.
Both the seme and the uke have people who like them, but they remain physically and emotionally faithful to each other from beginning to end. Their love and hatred are mutual.
The characters are imperfect. The uke has some self-destructive tendencies, and the seme is vindictive.
The viewpoint shifts as the story requires. Some side plots include disturbing and mildly horror-like scenes.
I love passionate love and hate, and want to give the characters I love an intense life and intense emotions. Some parts are angsty, but the source of the angst is love.
This isn't a wish-fulfillment novel or a sweet, simple romance. It focuses on a vast world and a serious, dramatic pace, with an emphasis on foreshadowing and human nature.
To conceal the central plot twist, the present and past are interwoven rather than told in chronological order.
I only write the stories I want to write. I don't accept writing advice and won't change the established characters, plot, or ending.
I hope this story finds its readers. Thank you.
Theme: The moon in my heart does not shine on me, so I gather it into the river of stars
