So, after watching Season 5 (which has devastated me, by the way - completely and utterly destroyed me), I was inspired to incorporate a certain character into the Queen of the Mountain Universe and tie together the AUs tied to the games. (Excluding the A/B/O AU, Fae AU, and the Imperial Harem AU.)
This technically isn't a fic spoiler since I won't be adding any of this into the main fic itself, mind you. I already have too much planned in Acts II and III to include the new revelations, but I'm writing my ideas here. (May consider writing some oneshots set post-QotM.)
Warning: Spoilers for LMK Season 5 below!
We all knew it was Xiangliu. This snake man has a grip on me that only happened once before when Season 1 Macaque sashayed into my life. Holy hell, he's the definition of chaotic neutral. Also, the hints of lore he dropped before casually moving on because he thought it wasn't important? Drove me insane. What do you mean you and Wukong used to be friends? What do you mean Macaque made a deal? What do you mean be "he's winning"?! Who's he?!
I have no idea what LMK has planned for him (or if he's even going to come back in the future seasons), but I know what plans I have for him now.
To be honest, Xiangliu (the Nine-Headed Demon who nearly scammed Ao Guang and his ilk in Chapter 16) wasn't supposed to be significant in the Queen of the Mountain universe. But with how Season 5 ended up, I made him into a more important player.
Just like the LMK world, I'd like to think that the QotM world also experiences a similar "cycle" in the form of "resets." It would make sense, right? As In the Sun's Embrace and Sunchaser are games that encourages reloads and resets to explore different routes, it's not too far-fetched to think that the world itself experiences something similar.
I've always had a fondness of Time Loops in stories, especially with at least one person remembering every loop. Xiangliu would be that person in this case. Somehow, he became aware of what was happening and yearned for an escape from this constant resetting of the world.
(He must've gone insane gaining and losing friends, lovers, and enemies, doomed to repeat the same song and dance again except his bonds would never be the same since he's always changing and always growing while everyone else regresses every time.)
Eventually, he removed himself from the living world all together and replaced one of the Ten Kings of the Underworld to find a way out. Still, he'd pop up here and then to maybe make some interventions or watch when something new played out.
While a lot of the diverging AUs are mostly due to the different choices made by individuals, I'd like to think that Xiangliu made some of them possible. Notably, Warlord Shanzha AU, Withered Grave Flowers AU, Detoxify AU, and Extra Pilgrim AU.
Well, you noticed how LBD seems to be absent in those AUs, right? How Yue magically comes out of things alive and unpossessed by her into the modern era? Well, the answer in Xiangliu. He doesn't do this in every cycle, but he sometimes has the heart to spare Yue from her canon fate. Making her fate better always seems to give happier endings to all of the celestial monkeys. Not perfect, but happier.
(And, because it would be so funny to me, I'd like to think he at least hooked up with every member of the celestial monkey poly occasionally in between cycles. So he has a history with all of them which I may expand on in another post if anyone's interested.)
So, there you have it. A way for all of these AUs to technically be canon. (Thank you, Season 5.)
As for what Xiangliu is doing during Queen of the Mountain, he's doing nothing. For the first time, he didn't have to do anything to make a drastic change to the usual script. For the first time, he's interested to see how things turn out. Because of a certain six-eared baby monkey yaoguai who ended up in the palanquin.
