i'm so weak for time travel aus so have another one for me:
the xianle trio all individually are sent back to the time immediately after xie lian's second banishment
mu qing and feng xin both quickly find out that the other remembers, and they come to a temporary truce, in order to find xie lian as quick as possible. it's too late for them to avoid all the pain they had caused him, but the least they can do is to make sure he doesn't have to spend the next 800 years alone. and of course, they plan to try and find a way to get him together with hua cheng as soon as possible. they may not like the bastard, but they see how much he loves xie lian, and how happy he makes xie lian, and that's all that matters to them in the end.
hua cheng manages to break out of the kiln faster this time around, because after getting a taste of happiness at xie lian's side, he's even more desperate to find him as soon as possible. by the time he does find him though, he learns that mu qing and feng xin had found him within a decade of being back in the past, and that they haven't left his side since, except to report back to the heavens to avoid arousing suspicion with jun wu. together, the three of them have already come up with a tentative plan to take down jun wu with as little risk as possible.
hua cheng is a little resentful at first, that they had found xie lian so much quicker than he had, but he finds he can't hold onto his hatred of mu qing and feng xin no matter how hard he tries. not after he sees the way they look at xie lian. and not after he sees the way xie lian relaxes around them, revealing a carefree, boyish side to him that even hua cheng had never seen before. and at the end of the day, isn't it a good thing for xie lian to be surrounded by more people who adore him as much as he deserves? isn't it better for him to have more people to protect him and be by his side when hua cheng couldn't? it pokes and prods at hua cheng's possessive side, but he tries to ignore that. eventually, he and those two idiot martial gods of the south fall into a tense equilibrium which somehow, unexpectedly, turns into a genuine (begrudging) friendship when he isn't paying attention
