#ouyang xingchen

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Ouyang xingchen is trying to eat a worm? His dad is :O, a-Qing is sort of meh.

A-Qing gets around this by just...lying to her child. She tells him that if he eats worms, all of the little worms bits will turn into full-grown worms in his stomach, and then he won't have any room left for actual food. This scares OYXC so much that he insists on having his dad check all his apples for him, just in case there are worms inside.

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BFFs Jin An and Ouyang xingchen get up to lots of shenanigans together? Since ouxc is such a drama llama, Jin an is often the straight man.

Jin An is OYXC's favorite partner in crime, and was eventually pressganged into helping Ouyang Xingchen and Yao Lan carry on a relationship in secret at the temple where Yao Lan was raised. (He slipped up once and got both of them kicked out, but he still counts the mission as a success because his friends got to get married in the end. 😤)

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Ouyang xingchen and Jiang Bohai are buddies? They’re both bard-carrying members of the respecting-women, momma’s awesome, kick ass club. Also snacking and cuddles.

Anon, I know you meant card-carrying, but I can't help imagining baos Bohai and Xingchen marching across the Jianghu having adventures, carrying a very tired bard who composes songs about their Valiant Feats while said feats are taking place. XD

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the spiritual kitties that followed a-Qing to Baling meet ouyang xingchen and they're !!!! Tiny didi! Must protect! Must care for! they snuggle him and bring him dead mice and lick him. He's being spoiled by humans and kitties!

Three weeks before he was born, A-Qing actually went to inspect the cradle her in-laws commissioned and then told them that it had to be enlarged to fit baby Xingchen + at least two cats. Sect Leader Ouyang was very puzzled by the notion that his grandson's cradle might require extra space for cats, but he took it in stride and made the cradle a little longer.

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tiny ouyang zingchen is as much of a drama llama as his mom and auntie? He's going around looking for Justice and Causes? He's also as much of a romantic as his dad. It's kind of adorable.

Ouyang Zizhen, age 15: I just met the love of my life. Dad, is eighteen too soon to get married?

SLO: Y-yes?? At least wait until you're twenty-one????

*27 years later*

Ouyang Xingchen, age 18: Dad, I just got kicked out of school for breaking my vows...but I really love Zichen, so can't we just get married? I mean, I am of age. :>

OYZZ, a stressed (but proud) father:

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Ouyang Xingchen (age 6) is busily gege-ing? He's got two younger siblings and he's doing his best!

He has one meimei who's toddling after him like a little shadow, and another who's finally old enough to start eating solids! It's a very exciting time for gege Xingchen.

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Baby ouyang xngchen loves grabbing beards? It’s a bit annoying for both lqr and sect leader ouyang.

They spend most of his babyhood beardless, which would have been fine if not for a Certain Individual who put Lan Qiren's name back onto the Handsome Bachelor list.

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What is the Lord Mercy monastery like?

"Have you made plans for the sanctuary?" Ouyang Xingchen asked. He had Yao Lan standing close beside him, who as usual did not speak; but when Jin Yun laid out the blueprints, he approached the table and tapped the right side of the parchment.

"It is meet that the shrine should be towards the east,” he said. “Grandfather-in-law had the xi for daylight in his name, and the worship statue in his temple should face the morning sun. What of the chamber next to it?”

“That will be the infirmary. Yunmeng Jiang’s Pan-yisheng swears that the incense she burns for her Lord Mercy statue eases one’s breath and heartbeat, and the masons can cut windows in the wall between the two rooms so that the air will mingle between them. Xinhua-jun said he would build me a single-ventilated screen, to keep the contaminated air from flowing back into the temple.”

“And your living quarters will be on the other side?” Xingchen frowned, poking at the floor plan of the monastery’s first level. “Where will the children stay?”

“On the west side, in the wing furthest from the sickroom. We will have a school there, and a library as soon as Lan-zongzhu can make a good copy of the Cloud Recesses’ library wards.”

At this, Xingchen mouthed the word Lan-zongzhu to himself and shook his head.

“I never thought I would hear my dajiu called thus,” he said quietly. “But now he has become Lan-zongzhu, and my cousin Siwen has been named heir to the Cloud Recesses. The place seems so foreign to me now that I have not dared go back there since the funeral.”

Jin Yun understood Xingchen’s feelings only too well, for he too could not bear to see the Cloud Recesses so changed after the death of its master. Lan Sizhui now held Zewu-jun’s old seat, and according to rumour, Hanguang-jun would soon resign from his post and abolish the title of Chief Cultivator. He and Xinhua-jun had largely withdrawn from public life, wishing to spend more time with Elder Lan Qiren and with their many grandchildren; and it was strange to see other faces holding court there, now that the elder generation had finally begun to tire.

“Things must change, whether we will it or no,” Yao Lan remarked, drawing Ouyang Xingchen close to his side. “Jiang Lianhua will soon be Jiang-zongzhu, and Nie-zongzhu’s heir has been governing on his behalf for nearly a year. But our beloved ones are still here, save for Xingchen’s grandfather, and he is surely still watching over Mother-in-law and Jueying-dajie. It is only that we cannot see him.”

Jin Yun put a hand to the middle of his forehead, where he used to wear the vermilion zhushazhi of his father’s clan, and thought that a great deal had indeed changed in the span of the last year. Jin Yun lost his hand and had it restored, and Lan Xichen had died and ascended; and then Jin Yun seceded from the Jin sect, though his going had broken his parents’ hearts.

“Visit Chan-shushu when you can,” Xingchen advised him. “You might have withdrawn from the sect, but the Lanling Jin are your family still, and they love you dearly.”

Jin Yun’s lip twitched. “Then perhaps I will go back in the spring, and find a new tiger cousin waiting for me. After all, Ling-shushu and my shenshen are no less smitten with each other now than they were when I was a child.”

All three of them laughed. “Perhaps you will,” Ouyang Xingchen said merrily. “But since you’re determined to stay here for now, we ought to mark out the foundation and begin building before the weather turns. Zichen and I will stay with you--there should be rooms in the village for all of us--and you will not be lonesome.”

He was not lonesome all through that winter, though the days were bitterly cold and the work grueling, even split among three strong cultivators; but their labor grew lighter when the snow melted in the month after the New Year, bringing drier ground and longer days, and then--at long last--the good weather allowed for the completion of the monastery, which took place early in the spring.

“What will you call it?” Yao Lan asked, when their work was finally finished. “Shall it be the Zewu Guan, after waigong?”

Jin Yun nodded. “He took the title ren ci in the heavenly court, but I think his living title is better for the monastery.”

So the temple became the Zewu Guan, and Xingchen and Yao Lan came to live there with him. Xingchen gave up his inheritance in doing so, passing it to his younger sister Xingtian; but Yao Lan had no affairs to put in order, having been an orphan for nearly all his life.