We all already know that renheng is danmei coded as fuck but then I got back into MDZS and went hm.
Anyway Fierce corpse!blade and righteous cultivator (or at least he thinks he is) Dan Heng
Much like canon, Yingxing and Dan Feng were doing their fluffy gross old married couple thing. Except Yingxing is a weak cultivator, more of a crafter than a fighter, and as a result very squishy. He ends up dying, and Dan Feng copes with this Very Poorly.
The preceptors in this case are basically just a darker version of the Lan sect from MDZS. All preaching on rules and righteousness, but then not really following through on it.
Anyway, Dan Feng dips into demonic cultivation to bring Yingxing back, except Yingxing comes back a bit wrong. For one, he's missing a good chunk of his memories. Two, his personality is all sorts of fucked up now too- matching the one we see in canon!blade.
To make things worse, Dan Feng gets caught for demonic cultivation, and taken off to be sentenced, leaving Yingxing/Blade trapped behind in whatever dingy cave it was that they were holed up in. Blade gets hit with the full shot feelings of betrayal and abandonment when Dan Feng fails to return.
Dan Feng, meanwhile, is set to be executed. Jingyuan manages to talk his sentence down to a memory wipe, stripping him of his name, and an exile. Fast forwards a year or two later and Dan Feng has become Dan Heng, completely devoid of Dan Feng's memories, and promptly booted out of Scalegourge waterscape with only his bracers and spear, which Jingyuan had to smuggle out for him.
Anyway, now we have an amnesiac Dan Heng wandering the countryside doing his best to avoid the gaze of preceptors, but then a random conscious fierce corpse starts following him around. He's justifiably freaked out at first, seeing as how their first encounter involved said fierce corpse trying to kill him, but after Dan Heng nearly dies on a night hunt, that same fierce corpse completely changes its tune and ends up becoming Dan Heng's body guard.
Anyway after that Dan Heng is just perpetually confused. He goes on night hunts and is like: yeah, don't worry about the fierce corpse. He's mostly friendly and seems intent on protecting me for some reason? I promise he won't hurt you. probably." And Blade's just standing over his shoulder being all broody.
Blade's had an entire character arc in the background, unbeknownst to Dan Heng. The pipeline being something like "Dan Feng must die for cursing Yingxing" -> "Dan Feng is good as dead. What's the point?" -> "Dan Heng should live. He is too weak. Therefore I should follow him around and watch over him." and effectively talked himself into having a purpose for living. though, yeah, Blade's not escaping the stalker allegations with this one again.
Not quite sure if either of them will every remember the past in this AU, but eventually they do talk things out and Dan Heng finally manages to have his own character arc of accepting the past and all that. He has a teensy little morality crisis when the whole "Dan Feng was actually technically a demonic cultivator" thing gets revealed, but he comes out the other end mostly okay.
Happy Ending is where the preceptors finally stop giving a fuck about the two of them and they get to live their merry rogue cultivator lives for the rest of time.
