FUCK OKAY xicheng is just going to have to wait because I need to get this out of my system NOW

to all 25 sangcheng shippers reading my thread, this is for you

SANGCHENG + fem!Jiang Cheng divergence, THREAD:

As the child of a Sect Leader, as a child yearning desperately for the affection of her parents, a child considered too prickly and bad-tempered who tried so hard not to seem like a weak little girl, Jiang Cheng has never had many friends. Wei Wuxian may have been the one to

add the flamboyant Young Master Nie into their group, yet again stoking the embers of resentment and abandonment that lay in her heart, but over time, Jiang Cheng could not deny that she and Nie Huaisang had become friends, as starkly different as they were.

A too-harsh girl almost always in the boyish Jiang Sect disciple uniform besting other male cultivators, and an effeminate aesthete who could hardly pick up his saber content to hide behind fans and paintings.

Or perhaps the misplaced yin and yang made them a perfect match.

They ran about like the children they were in the Cloud Recesses, Jiang Cheng begrudgingly dragged into Huaisang's attempts to evade his aggressive older brother, Huaisang throwing trinkets at her and laughing as she growled at being called Maiden Jiang.

Jiang Cheng completed her studies at the Cloud Recesses with good - but not top - marks, as Wei Wuxian read her desire to punch Jin Zixuan for dismissing their older sister and delivered the blow himself, directing the ire onto himself, and was sent home with Jiang Cheng in tow.

Madam Yu raged and scolded Jiang Cheng for not surpassing her shixiong, Jiang Fengmian turned away, Jiang Yanli soothed in her quiet, gentle way, and Jiang Cheng stood with her head bows and fists clenched - a return to the usual routine in Lotus Pier.

But the fires of war were starting to ignite, first the Wen training camp, where Jiang Cheng had to go, daughter or not, and Wei Wuxian insisted on his shimei escaping the cave they were trapped in with the Xuanwu of Slaughter despite her attempts to bring him along in escape,

her own brother - she leads the other cultivators out of the cave and spends days awake traveling back home for help, and traveling back to rescue an unconscious Wei Wuxian, love and worry drowning out Madam Yu's disapproval

In the years between the end of their classes in Cloud Recesses and the lead-up to the Sunshot Campaign, Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng exchange letters and become penpals, Huaisang's first letter bemoaning his second year at the Cloud Recesses, having failed his exams in his first

how boring all the lectures are, especially now without Wei Wuxian or her (she tries to ignore that irrational little spark of jealousy at putting her shixiong before her name, and tries to tell herself she's being paranoid, now) and she writes back a cutting letter telling him

he's a devious little snake under those folds of silk, and he could do it if he wanted to ('Again, you sound like my Da-ge, and I don't see the point in learning all 3000 rules of Lan, they're not even my Sect')

Madam Yu eventually finds out about their correpondence,

a calculating look on her face as she states that it's merely part of Jiang Cheng's duties as sect heir to network with others her station, and Wei Wuxian immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion and starts demanding to know if the two are courting

she throws brush at his face

The Wens take the credit for killing the Xuanwu of Slaughter, even though Jiang Cheng knows that it was her shixiong (and Lan Wangji, whatever) who killed the beast, the cultivation world unsettled by this clear show of power by One of the Great Five Sects

To sort of Yanli-jie's precarious engagement to Jin Zixuan, she's set to Lanling Jin, and the Wens take the next step as the cultivation world shuffles back

Lotus Pier burns

Mother hugs Jiang Cheng for the first time she can remember, out of her early childhood, and tells her

she is a good child, and that she will show the entire world one day,

and a single stroke to the neck has Jiang Cheng crumpling into unconsciousness, waking up in a boat hours, days later with a grim Wei Wuxian, far away from their burning home

They have to go back, they have to go save Mother and Father, and Wei Wuxian has to hold her back as she screams and thrashes and cries and pushes away the thought that Father and Mother would have come for them by now, if they were still alive - and that they can't be-

He relents, and they go back to Lotus Pier, finding it in cinders, crawling with the Wen, and uncover remnants of her parents, the last tatter of her childhood, and she turns on Wei Wuxian, for destroying their family and home, for leading the Wens to them, spitting vitriol

and he takes it all, grim and silent, until she falls to her knees, a child screaming for their parents

They're fugitives now, their home and Sect destroyed, and the only place they can go to is MeishanYu with their grandmother, where Jie must also have been summoned

And as they're sneaking around another village, hiding in the shadows of the back alleys, they encounter several Wen soldiers ganging up against the local town crier, for announcing Sect Leader Nie's edict that the children of the Jiang Sect are welcome to seek refuge at Qinghe

The edict is a direct defiance of Qishan Wen's authority, and the town crier begs for mercy as the Wen soldiers unsheathe their swords, his life at risk for merely doing his job, and Jiang Cheng knows that look in Wei Wuxian's eyes, the spark that follows his idiotic heroism

He can't, they can't save this innocent man, as much as Jiang Cheng wishes they could, they're completely outnumbered in every way, their deaths mean the slim chance of the resurrection of the Jiang Sect become even thinner

Yet as much as they try to sneak away unnoticed, an errant noise draws the attention of the Wen soldiers, and pure icy fear fills Jiang Cheng's heart-

They run, but they're soon surrounded, Wei Wuxian refusing to leave

She has worth as a pure-blooded Jiang, Wei Wuxian does not

They'll kill him if they get their hands on him, and she pushes him out of the way - "Run! GO!" She screams at her shixiong, "THIS IS AN ORDER!"

She can see the fear and the rage in his silver eyes as he stumbles and the soldiers grab her, and

she only remembers to struggle after Wei Wuxian reluctantly leaves, fleeing from Wen soldiers pursuing him - she cannot lose him as well-

They drag her back to the ruins of Lotus Pier and push her to kneel, in front of Wen Chao lounging on the Jiang Sect Throne

"Child of Jiang Fengmian." He sneers, that whore Wang LingJiao clinging onto him and sneering at her like she has any right to, and Jiang Cheng glares, and hates,

but she's bound, completely powerless, and all the hate in the world is overpowered by her desperate fear as

the blows and torture descend, and Wen Zhuliu melts her golden core, her screams ringing in the air as a vital part of her is ripped out and obliterated

"You are nothing more than the dirt on my heel." Wen Chao sneers. "A female cultivator? A female Sect heir?"

"You're good for nothing more as a whore, now." He leers, and a fear Jiang Cheng has never felt starts to trickle down her spine

And she'd never thought she would feel anything buy contempt for Wang LingJiao, yet the woman squawks and slaps the arm of her master

and whines that she's the one supposed to be Wen Chao's favourite, not "someone as ugly as the Jiang brat," the only time Jiang Cheng prays to be abhorrent and unnoticeable, prays that her blood and mud-soaked self is offputting enough

and she's never been so relieved to be disgusting and ugly when Wen Chao decides to placate his mistress and decides that Jiang Cheng isn't worth the effort, barking at his subordinates to dump her in a ditch somewhere, bury her alive, he could care less.

Until the Wen soldiers tasked with disposing of her grab her hair and pull it back, once they're outside of the main hall, sneering about how a woman is still a woman, and Jiang Cheng struggles wide-eyed against her bonds, no, please, no, anything but this

"What are you all doing, wasting time like this?!" A woman's voice suddenly barks out, and Jiang Cheng twists her head toward the sound, another Wen-dog like the rest, but she hopes against hopes that she will be saved this time-

"Piss off, woman." The male soldiers hiss at her

The Wen woman stands her ground, peering at Jiang Cheng. "Wen Zhuliu's just melted her golden core, hasn't he? I need her for research. You can go find something else to entertain yourselves with." She commands.

The men try to argue, but the Wen woman glares back.

Eventually, Jiang Cheng is hauled to the makeshift medicinal wing, the torture and destruction of her golden core making her black in and out of consciousness. If she is to be a experimental subject - so be it.

She wakes up in fresh clothes, still weakened from her golden core being extinguished, saved by a Wen - Wen Qing, the woman curtly introduces herself as, part of the healer branch of the Wen main family.

"What do you want from me, now?" Jiang Cheng wants to growl, but it only comes out as a rasp from her parched throat, all the old hate resurfacing - a Wen dog is still a Wen dog, after all. "Aren't you going to use me in your experiments?"

Wen Qing regards her with sharp eyes that soften slightly, but still hold firm. "I have always stood by my family's creed to never do harm."
Jiang Cheng scoffs. "The Wen creed? As if-"
"The healer branch of the Wens." Wen Qing corrects bluntly.

She sighs. "You need to rest," and turns around, "do not leave this room," and the conversation is over, letting silence descend upon Jiang Cheng and all her unbidden thoughts crawl out

She no longer has a core, she can no longer cultivate, she can't lead the Jiang Sect, uSELESS

Another Wen dog comes into her room, a boy, and Jiang Cheng is ready to attack him with her bare hands, injures be damned, but he flinches at her abrupt shift and Wei Wuxian clambers inside via the window, pale and thin and dark undereye circles, relief in his voice "meimei..."

and Jiang Cheng can barely hold herself together as she cries in relief that he is not dead, for the loss of her golden core, the impossibility of resurrecting the Jiang Sect, their utterly wretched situation, and Wei Wuxian holds her and lets her hit him with her fists

'attempt the impossible', the Jiang creed claims, and Wei Wuxian, raised by the Jiang, manages to find the location of the immortal Baoshan Sanren, who restores Jiang Cheng's golden core, and she knows the weight of rebuilding her YunMeng Jiang lies on her shoulders now

Wei Wuxian is gone after she comes back from the mountains, and the sick feeling of fear, now so familiar, claw her way into her heart once more.

Jie is in Lanling, she prays that Wei Wuxian is not captured and killed, she is alone without ally

She could always go to MeishanYu, but doing so would need her to pass through YunMeng, which is crawling with Wens, and the only other option-

-is QingheNie.

Young Mistress Jiang arrives at the doorstep of the Unclean Realm pale and sallow and unrecognizable to Nie Huaisang, whose stomach sinks at the sight of Jiang Cheng brought so low after once being so proud and strong.

She salutes Sect Leader Nie solemnly and bows low,

declaring her debt to him and thanking him for his kindness to shelter her. Nie Mingjue urges the girl to sit and tell him her account of all that's happened, and Huaisang hides his disapproval behind his fan. It's best to find information through the primary source,

but from the way Jiang Cheng trembles, the account is going to further hurt her. She haltingly describes the Wens' assault of Lotus Pier, her mother sending her away with Wei Wuxian, both of them hearing of Sect Leader Nie's proclamation, and her eventual capture. The melting and

restoration of her golden core, which the Nies look disbelievingly at her. "I didn't think it was possible at first, but Wei Wuxian found Baoshan Sanren. As an immortal, she must have been able to find a way to restore my golden core in her cultivation." Jiang Cheng murmurs.

She leaves out the details of what happened to her during her capture at the hands of the Wens, but a look of fury crosses Nie Mingjue's face. "This is unforgivable." He snarls, hand on the hilt of his saber "The Wen cannot be allowed to do as they please any longer."

Wei Wuxian is still missing - Jiang Cheng refuses to believe that he might be dead. QingheNie has incurred QishanWen's fury by sheltering the remnants of the Jiang Sect, and Nie Mingjue doesn't have to say it, but they all know it means war.

"Take care of Young Mistress Jiang," Nie Mingjue says, headed for his War Room, and Huaisang only nods, gently steering Jiang Cheng, whose energy is beginning to falter once more, to a guest room to rest.

It might have been a dream, but before she slips into unconsciousness,

she hears Huaisang mumble something about how he's glad Da-ge listened to his plea to shelter the Jiangs, after hearing of the destruction of Lotus Pier.

Huaisang wakes up the next day to see Jiang Cheng already out on the training grounds, a lone Jiang moving through her sword forms in the YunMeng Jiang style. "What are you doing up so early?" He asks.

"What are you doing up so late?" She replies curtly.

Her back is straight, arm perfectly perpendicular, long hair in a tight bun with Sandu held aloft. "War against the Wens is inevitable." She says, and Jiang Cheng was always the more serious one in their trio, but he's never heard such her adopt such a tone before,

severe and clipped as befits a soldier. "Shouldn't you be resting?" Huaisang tries again, fluttering his fan, and her eyes remain straight. "I'm fine. I need to train so I can rebuild my Sect."

Nie disciples, carrying their bulky sabers, watch the girl train approvingly.

With her sword, she's lighter and faster in the Jiang style than the Nie, which favours overpoweringly brute strength above anything else, yet she carries the same air as them. After all, he cannot expect her to remain the same after all that has happened to her.

Huaisang thinks about all the robes in his closet, the dresses she could have worn, that he'd wanted - liked to see her in, and realizes his foolishness. The sun of their childhood has set, replaced by the scorching sun of the Wen clan seeking to dominate the cultivation world.

His Da-ge watched Jiang Cheng train and spar and smiled in pride, taking her under his wing, and traces of the carefree times of past surfaced now and then, when Da-ge sicced Jiang Cheng on him to drag him into training, and he ran as fast as he could away from the Young Mistress

Huaisang begging for mercy as she chased after him and yelled at him to stop being so lazy, a rare smile on her lips, which now were always held in a taut line, and she must have remembered the good times as well

Jiang Cheng sparred against Nie Minjue, and sent out missives for the remnants of the Jiang clan, and any who wanted to join the rebuilding Jiang Sect, to congregate at QingheNie, yet Huaisang was still never really expected to train as much as the nie disciples preparing for war

and he realized it was because they never took him seriously as a fighter at all when Da-ge sat him down and told him that he was being sent to the Cloud Recesses for his own safety. "And what about Jiang Cheng?" He blurted out, even if he knew the answer instantly

There was pride in Da-ge's eyes. "She's leading the Jiang contingent, of course."

And Nie Huaisang he found himself heedlessly wishing that she would go along with him and be safe from the war, despite knowing that Jiang Cheng had poured her blood and sweat into training, that she was, and always had been, stronger than him, that she had a Sect to rebuild.

The Nies prize strength above all else, female cultivators a mundane sight in QingheNie, yet Jiang Cheng is aware what it looks like when Sect Leader Nie agrees to shelter her. She is Sect Leader Jiang now, girl or not, and sits down with Sect Leader Nie to discuss,

the tense atmosphere of a Discussion Conference blanketing her. Nie Mingjue may act like an older brother, but he is still leader of his own Sect. "I am grateful to all the kindness you've shown to me and my sect," she salutes, "but I still intend to rebuild YunMeng Jiang."

"Naturally," he says. "anyway, we need all the forces we can get against the Wens. They have greater numbers." He readily agrees to allow her recruitment efforts, and for that she is grateful.

Once the war actually begins, and they must travel out of Qinghe,

the expected gossip swirls up once again. To the rest of the world, there was only one reason why QingheNie would have taken her in - to marry her to the useless Young Master Nie, and secure the Nie line. She was just a girl, and it was a pity Wei Wuxian was dead, tossed into the

Burial Mounds - he was at least talented and skilled enough to step up as Sect Leader, having been adopted by the late Jiang Fengmian. What a shame the great YunMeng Jiang had to suffer such a undignified end. Jiang Cheng grits her teeth, wearing Jiang purple that allies from

MeishanYu - her family - had sent to her in secret, and aggressively refuted any and all claims regarding the death of Wei Wuxian or YunMeng Jiang. Wei Wuxian was alive, she was certain, and as Sect Leader Jiang, she would rebuild the clan with her bare hands if she needed to.

Some cultivators scorned the Jiang recruitment efforts, unwilling to follow a female authority, but many joined, rogue cultivators and people who had never cultivated at all - and Jiang Cheng ran them all through the sword styles she'd committed to memory.

Slowly, the war turns against the Wens as the other four Great Sects unite and push them back, and Wei Wuxian rises - from the dead, with the dead, resentful energy swirling around him as he directs corpses with the ghastly peal of a flute. Demonic cultivation be damned,

Jiang Cheng is so happy that her shixiong is alive, that she has him back. They're hardened and dangerous, the Yiling Patriarch and Sect Leader of Jiang - Sandu Shengshou, they're calling her, the way Zidian flickers and sparks as she dismembers Wen soldiers in her path.

"Where did you go to, after- after Baoshan Sanren-" Wei Wuxian asks, and Jiang Cheng, holding onto him like he'll disappear if she doesn't, smiles for what feels like the first time in ages, "To QingheNie, Nie Huaisang and Mingjue-xiong helped the Jiang rebuild-"

"Hold on," Wei Wuxian says, the offended look in his eyes reminiscent his more mischievous, carefree days, "Are you really calling Sect Leader Nie Mingjue-xiong in front of your own gege?"
Jiang Cheng rolls her eyes. "He took me under his wing-"

"That's not important - well it is, but! I'm supposed to be your only gege!" Wei Wuxian insists, and Jiang Cheng yells at him for being an idiot, and her shixiong is pale and thin and his eyes flit about like a wild animal's but for a moment, it's like nothing bad ever happened.

With Wei Wuxian's return, doubt is once more cast upon the succession of Jiang Sect leadership, and both of them glare at the naysayers as Wei Wuxian pointedly addresses Jiang Cheng as 'Sect Leader Jiang' in a strategy meeting, and the waters are muddied, now that he is a demonic

cultivator - perhaps, people murmur, a woman is better to lead a Great Sect than a demonic cultivator. Again, like so many things, Jiang Cheng feels like she's swallowing barbs coated in honey, backhanded praise that is also an insult, praise that comes from pushing another lower

and for a brief period of time, after the grief and the horror that came from the burning of lotus pier, their torment at the hands of Wens, Jiang Cheng feels hope for the future, even, on a few days, indulges in feeling invincible, riding high on the side of the righteous,

the war is over and they return to Lotus Pier to rebuild, Jie's wedding to Jin Zixuan in the works, but Wei Wuxian seems distant, distracted -

and he defects from the Jiang Sect, remaining in Yiling, where he wants to protect the Wen remnants-

She goes with him to Yiling to see the Wen remnants - but a handful of people, women, elderly, even a young child attached to her shixiong, Wen Qing and her brother Wen Ning, who saved them from the Wens, who protected Jiang Cheng's chastity during the worst moments of her life

There is always collateral in a war, Jiang Cheng has come to know, and these people - Wen dogs, her mind whispers poisonously, but among them Wens to whom she owes everything - will be condemned for the misfortune of their family name.

It is Wen Qing's turn to be helped, but even as a Sect Leader, Jiang Cheng knows she cannot do anything. Lotus Pier is still in ruins, YunMeng Jiang is so precarious, her sect cannot do anything to risk its own survival. To take them in would be to side with the Wens, which

this entire war was spent opposing, and to give the other Sects a reason to extinguish and absorb them once more. Wei Wuxian will not move away from the remnants, staking his life and his safety for the sake of heroism, and abandoning her - abandoning YunMeng Jiang.

It's more than that, a gentle voice that sounds suspiciously like Yanli-jie whispers, there is a child there that even Jiang Cheng can see, these are innocents, these are good people. "I don't know what to do." She says miserably to Nie Huaisang, and he looks contemplative.

He, surprisingly, seems hardly suspicious of the Wen remnants, as compared to Mingjue-xiong, whose cry of "death to the wen-dogs!" might have replaced his own sect motto at this point. "Wei-ge isn't going to stop protecting the Wen remnants." He muses.

"But YunMeng Jiang is in too fragile a position to take them in, even though the Jiang Sect needs all the people they can get." He flutters his fan, frowning. "I think...I have an idea. Even if Da-ge is going to kill me for it."

Unsurprisingly, his idea is to ask Mingjue-xiong

to step in and shelter the remnants like the Jiang Sect was sheltered, and Jiang Cheng could roll her eyes if Mingjue-xiong didn't suddenly unsheathe his saber and threaten his own brother with it, eyes bloodshot as he claimed Huaisang a traitor. The younger Nie has never looked

more afraid. "Sect Leader Nie!" Jiang Cheng approaches, unflinching when Baxia is then pointed at her. "Mingjue-xiong." She tries, gentler this time. "Don't be angry at your younger brother. It was my idea." She admits. "My brother - Wei Wuxian - is protecting the remnants."

"He will not move if the Wen remnants are not helped." She continues. "Everyone is aware of what the Wen clan has done to the Jiang, but -" She swallows. "These are innocents, people who have helped me in my hour of need. As my shixiong, I need Wei Wuxian at my side." She pleads.

As the war drew to a close, Mingjue-xiong's temper grew worse and worse. His face contorts into a snarl. "And so he would abandon the Sect that raised him and abandon his responsibilities to cavort with the enemy?" He growls. "Good riddance. What could be expected of

a demonic cultivator, if not this?"

Mingjue-xiong had vehemently opposed Wei Wuxian, with only the fact that he stood against the Wens preventing him from running Wei Wuxian through with his sword. Jiang Cheng gulps. She has never been skilled at diplomacy.

"If they really were good people, they should have defected once the Wens began their slaughter." Nie Mingjue scoffs, and Jiang Cheng shoots Nie Huaisang a helpless look. This conversation is over.

"If only the YunMeng Jiang weren't still rebuilding!" Jiang Cheng curses, wearing circles into the floor where she paces. "I can't lose Wei Wuxian - if I have to take in those Wens, fine, but the Sect-"

"The Jiang needs to build alliances, if they are to do this." Huaisang muses

"The backing of a more powerful Sect, in case the others move to attack in this time of weakness." His expression is oddly solemn. Jiang Cheng stares at him.

"You're saying...could the Nie ally with the Jiang?"

"Of course." Nie Huaisang says lightly, fluttering his fan. But if Mingjue-xiong figures out the motive behind the alliance, he'd never agree to a diplomatic one."

He sighs. "Da-ge always believes in being direct and straightforward. He really will kill me for this one."

Jiang Cheng stares at him. "What do you mean?"

"We could propose a formal alliance, then you can take the remnants in. But the instant you do that, Da-ge will break it off. We need something stronger-"

A stronger alliance that can't be broken off, Jiang Cheng thinks.

And then she freezes.

Judging from the expression on Huaisang's face, he's arrived at the exact same conclusion she has.

"Are we - are we really doing this?" She chokes out.

"I...if it's to stop something like this...I don't mind." He murmurs, eyes wide in shock.

Huaisang is...not a bad choice. He's proven himself to be a true friend, a treasure of an ally. Everything lines up politically. Mingjue-xiong had supported the rebuilding of the Jiang Sect even before the Sunshot Campaign, so he wouldn't oppose its continuation, either.

As a child of her parents, Jiang Cheng had always wished for a better marriage in her future, and she'd heard about how MeishanYu forced her father's hand, but - Huaisang and her aren't like her parents. He'd - He'd even agreed himself, when she asked.

"Okay...let's do this."

A letter arrived for Wei Wuxian in the Yiling Burial Mounds, written on thick, expensive paper and tied in a purple ribbon. His sister's writing claimed he would always be part of YunMeng Jiang no matter what he tried to pull, and that the Jiang Sect would be sheltering the Wens.

"Jiang Cheng..." Wei Wuxian whispered in horror. This was political suicide, he had to stop this foolish decision before it became public knowledge. He then read the rest of the letter.
"YunMeng Jiang will be taking them in, but not yet."
"WAIT." was encircled repeatedly.

"Keep them safe."

"Mingjue-xiong is going to kill us both when he finds out." Jiang Cheng had whispered to Huaisang. Mingjue had been overjoyed to hear the news, a welcome change from his building rage, and announced that preparations had to start immediately.

Behind the first letter Wei Wuxian received was an invitation - a scroll of red and gold, announcing the wedding of Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang.

"Oh, meimei." Wei Wuxian murmured.

[SANGCHENG THREAD END: FOR NOW????]

ok i might be the only one who cares but like!!! Jiang Cheng did all this so that Wei Wuxian would stay with her as her brother!! it's sangcheng endgame but like!! FUCK that kind of familial devotion gets me every time

i might have said sangcheng endgame but what really got me during this thread is brotherly nie mingjue believing wholeheartedly in jiang cheng, wei wuxian's fucking gege complex, and jiang cheng marrying strategically just to help wei wuxian shelter the wen remnants

also, right after this thread ends wei wuxian curses his lack of golden core because it's time for gege to go give nie huaisang the shovel talk