So the cultivation world collectively reaches one conclusion:
Jin Ling is NOT dying.
Unfortunately for Jin Ling…this means he now has approximately seventeen overprotective relatives.
“I’m going night-hunting.”
“No.”
“I’m SEVENTEEN.”
“Exactly.”
“I’M A JIN SECT HEIR.”
“No.”
“I HAVE A SWORD.”
“Wonderful. Practice in the courtyard.”
“JIUJIU!”
“Don’t ‘Jiujiu’ me.”
Jin Ling has no idea why everyone has collectively lost their minds.
Jiang Cheng does.
Because the closer Jin Ling gets to the age he died in that first life the more Jiang Cheng remembers.
And history starts rhyming.
A temple.
Political unrest.
Old enemies gathering.
A choice Jiang Cheng recognizes seconds before it happens.
The world isn’t repeating itself exactly.
It can’t.
They changed too much.
But death seems determined to collect what it was promised.
So now they’re racing toward a date only Jiang Cheng remembers in fragments.
The day Jin Ling originally died.
And slowly… they realize the truth.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t cursed to die young because the ritual failed.
His deaths are the loop resetting.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Because the ritual has been trying to fulfill Jiang Cheng’s wish this entire time.
Give him back.
There is only one way to close the cycle.
Jin Ling must survive the age at which he originally died.
One day longer.
That’s all they need.
One day.
And if they fail?
Jiang Cheng will die.
Be born again.
Forget them.
And history will begin changing all over again.
Jin Ling looks at his uncle.
Really looks at him.
At the man who has apparently been dying for centuries because once in another world he couldn’t bear to lose him.
“…Jiujiu.”
Jiang Cheng immediately points at him. “No, you are not making this emotional.”
“I’m trying to say thank you!”
“Thank me by staying alive.”
“…That’s it?”
Jiang Cheng’s expression crumples for half a second. Then it’s gone. “That’s everything.”
And somewhere behind them…
Lan Xichen suddenly remembers dying with Jiang Cheng’s name on his lips in a lifetime neither of them remembers living.
Oh.
So that’s why finding Jiang Cheng has always felt less like meeting someone and more like coming home
#AllCheng / eventual #Xicheng Reincarnation AU
Jin Ling dies at Guanyin Temple.
And something inside Jiang Cheng finally breaks.
Because everyone he has ever loved has been taken from him.
He refuses to lose the last one to.
Wei Wuxian realizes what he’s planning first. “Jiang Cheng...”
“Don’t. Jiang Cheng doesn’t even look at him.
There are forbidden cultivation methods for calling back the dead.
Incomplete ones.
Dangerous ones.
Practices Jiang Cheng once would’ve condemned without hesitation.
Tonight?
He doesn’t care.
“Jiang Cheng, you don’t know what this will do.”
Finally, Jiang Cheng looks at Wei Wuxian. His nephew is cold in his arms . “You came back.”
Wei Wuxian goes silent
That is the only argument Jiang Cheng has. The only one he needs.
Wei Wuxian die and somehow he came back.
So why shouldn’t Jin Ling?
———
A life for a life.
A soul for a soul.
Fine.
Jiang Cheng has one left to give.
The ritual works.
Just not the way Jiang Cheng intended….
Jiang Cheng opens his eyes.
He’s five years old
“
The room is unfamiliar.
The people are unfamiliar.
Even the year is wrong.
Very wrong..
Because Jiang Cheng hasn’t traveled backward.
He has been born generations before he was ever supposed to exist.
Into the era of his ancestor Jiang Chi.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t remember Guanyin Temple. Doesn’t remember the ritual Doesn’t remember dying.
Not properly
He remembers fragments.
Lotus flowers.
Purple lightning.
A flute.
A woman making soup.
Fire swallowing a pier
And sometimes… a boy dressed in gold.
He never sees the boy’s face.
Only blood.
So much blood.
And his own hands desperately trying to stop it.
Jiang Cheng wakes from those dreams screaming one name.
“A-Ling!”
Nobody knows who A-Ling is. Neither does Jiang Cheng. So Jiang Cheng grows up.
Cultivates.
Makes friends.
Makes enemies.
Changes things he doesn’t even realize were supposed to happen differently.
He saves a cultivator who should have died. Teaches someone something they shouldn’t learn for another fifty years.
Prevents a feud that once lasted generations. History shifts around him. Quietly. Permanently And occasionally someone asks, “How did you know that?”
Jiang Cheng never has an answer.
He just…does.
Then before he ever reaches middle age Jiang Cheng dies.
And history continues without him
Decades later…another child is born.
His name is Jiang Cheng.
Different parents. Different circumstances. Same soul. Same violet eyes. Same terrible temper.
And somewhere…an old cultivator sees him for the first time
The cup slips from their han
“…”
“What’s your name?”
The child frowns. “Jiang Cheng.
Impossible.
Because they watched Jiang Cheng die twenty years ago. Now he’s standing in front of them again.
Eight years old.
Annoyed.
Alive.
Jiang Cheng remembers even less this time.
A sword he doesn’t own.
People without names.
A home he’s never visited.
And that boy.
Always that boy.
Gold robes.
Blood.
A hand slipping from his.
Sometimes Jiang Cheng wakes crying. He never knows why.
But everyone else?
They start noticing.
There are portraits. Old letters. Cultivation manuals annotated in handwriting identical to Jiang Cheng’s. Stories about a young cultivator who lived decades ago.
A young cultivator…who looked exactly like him.
Jiang Cheng: “…That’s unsettling.”
Everyone else: “…UNSETTLING?”
And this time…
Jiang Cheng is born into the generation of:
Jiang Fengmian.
Yu Ziyuan.
Cangse Sanren.
Wei Changze.
Lan Qiren.
Which would be manageable…if Jiang Cheng would stop knowing things he shouldn’t know.
“You’ve never been to Gusu.”
“I know.”
“Then how did you know that rule?”
“…Lucky guess?”
“You’ve never met him.”
“I KNOW.”
“Then why did you call him by his childhood name?”
“I DON’T KNOW.”
At some point, everyone stops asking Jiang Cheng. And starts investigating him
Nie Sect records.
Lan archives.
Jiang genealogies.
Old portraits.
Letters.
And slowly…
eddie hand feeding steve without prompting while they’re not even yet dating… steve licking eddie’s fingers and looking from underneath his lashes when he says ‘thank you’