A to Z: Nie Huaisang

 

    Again, probably not a surprise to anyone following my April A-to-Z journey who already knows Mo Dao Zu Shi.  (W will also not surprise you, in that case.  🤣)

    It's hard to know how to talk about Nie Huaisang, for spoiler reasons...which in itself is a spoiler because from his early appearances in Mo Dao Zu Shi you'd think it impossible that he could even tangentially be involved in anything that could conceivably be considered a spoiler.

    ...

    Somehow, that seems very like him.  😅  I'll just throw down a "read more" tag and get on with it, then, shall I?

    So...I know he's a divisive character among fans.  I even saw someone in the comments on the MDZS wiki describe him as a villain.  (They were wrong, btw.  A villain is working against the heroes.  He was working behind the scenes to support them.  In a manipulative way, yes, but they're still on the same side.  They all wanted to stop Jin Guangyao, only Nie Huaisang wanted it a bit more.  An "at any cost" kind of more.)

    However, I am extremely fond of him.  Partially because I saw the drama before I read the novel, so my first exposure to the character was through the drama, and he's just so squeezably adorable, like a helpless little kitten!  🥰  (Actually, an apt comparison, considering how viciously sharp little kitten teeth and claws are...)

Adorably pathetic(-seeming) Nie Huaisang (played by Ji Li)

    Given his ability to pull all the strings from behind the scenes, with even our supernaturally brilliant leads not realizing it until the end of the story, there is a tendency among some fanfic writers to make him too clever.  I have definitely had that problem.  In both my first two fics of any length ("The Way You Tease" and "A Hidden Road") he kind of just pops up whenever I need the leads to learn something they have no possible way or even reason to learn.  (Especially in "A Hidden Road.")  So I won't be talking about those two...except that I want to share this one moment from the final arc of "A Hidden Road" in which there's a long dinner scene between Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and the Nie brothers.  (The basic context is that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji rescued a small girl from the fierce corpses that used to be most of her family, and then brought her to the Unclean Realm so the Nie Clan could look after her.  There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but that's the gist of it.)  I was really pleased with the way I managed to capture their brotherly relationship, especially in this moment:

            One of the Nie disciples entered the room and bowed before Nie Mingjue.  “Zongzhu, the healers have finished looking over the girl Hanguang-jun brought,” he said.

            “And their consensus?”

            “She is weak from fear and lack of food, but seems uninjured.  However, she could not name any living relations except her abducted sisters.”

            Nie Mingjue frowned.  “I see.  We’ll keep her here for now, then.  If we can find her sisters and one of them is old enough to look after her, then that will take care of that.  If not…”  He shook his head.  “There must be families who would take her in.  We won’t waste time worrying about it until it happens.”

            “Yes, zongzhu.”

            “Even if her sisters are old enough to look after her, what good can they do her by themselves?” Huaisang asked.  “They must be teenagers if they’re unmarried but old enough that the bandits wanted to make off with them.  I’m sure they’ve been forced into their kidnappers’ beds by now, or sold off to a brothel somewhere.  They won’t have easy lives ahead of them, da-ge.”

            “What do you want me to do, then?” Nie Mingjue asked, his voice almost an accusation.

            “I don’t know!  But isn’t it our responsibility to look after them?  This happened within a day’s ride of here!  We’re supposed to be protecting the normal people in our territory, aren’t we?”

            “From yao beasts, ghosts and corpses, not from each other,” Nie Mingjue replied, scowling.

            “Da-ge!”  Huaisang slammed his fan shut, giving his brother a look of disapproval that honestly shocked Wei Wuxian.

            “What do you want from me?!” Nie Mingjue demanded, slamming one fist down on the table so hard that it cracked from the impact.  “I can’t be everywhere at once!  And you’re the one who insisted I shouldn’t go off to fight those fierce corpses!”

            “I want us to look after those girls and make sure they find husbands who won’t hold their suffering against them,” Huaisang insisted.  “No matter how old they turn out to be when we find them.”

            Nie Mingjue sighed.  “That is probably the honorable course,” he agreed.  “Fine.  We’ll do it.”

            “Thank you, da-ge!”  Huaisang smiled brightly, back to his normal self.

    (I should admit, of course, that I got part of my concept of how to express their relationship from watching the drama's spin-off movie Fatal Journey.  Which was half brilliant character moments between the Nie brothers and half nonsense. 😅)

    In my "wreck everything" fic "To Walk This Earth With You Again," I think I did a better job of getting him at just the right level of manipulative...unfortunately, I did so in his death scene. 😭  (Technically it's a bit out of character for Lan Wangji to hold the dying man in his arms, given his aversion to touching people, but...this is a version of Lan Wangji who has now been bereaved of Wei Wuxian for more than twenty years, so...somehow that's made him slightly more willing to touch others.  Particularly dying others who need his assistance so that maybe they won't die.)

            A horse stood on the road, nudging something lying in the nearby grass.  The sound of a groan set Lan Wangji running over.  Kneeling, he found not only a badly injured man, but one he recognized.
            “What happened?” he asked, gingerly lifting Nie Huaisang into his arms.
            “Su…”
            “Su?” Lan Wangji repeated.
            “Su Minshan…attacked…took over the…the whole sect…”
             Lan Wangji had long known that the Su would eventually prove troublesome, but he had never imagined they might do something so vile.  “Did no one come to your aid?”
            “No one…no one helped us…no one…”  A miserable chuckle.  “He waited…for me to be without…without…er-ge was sick…Jiang Cheng was away…you were away…so no one…no one would help me…”
            “Surely Jin Guangyao would have sent aid.  His oath to your brother—”
             Nie Huaisang laughed, though it quickly left him coughing up blood, its fresh red color lost as it hit the massive blood stains that already covered his torso.  “He’s the one who killed my brother!”
            “How?”
            “Distorted music…caused the qi deviation…instead of delaying it…”
            Lan Wangji stared at him with a renewed horror.  “Why did you never tell anyone?”
            “I couldn’t prove it!” Nie Huaisang wailed, causing his body to be wracked by another set of spasming, bloody coughs.  “No one would have…who would believe me over him?”
             Unable to find anything to say, Lan Wangji just held him and passed qi energy into his body, trying to help him survive his massive wounds.
            “If…it’s all my fault…” Nie Huaisang said, trembling.  “If I had just…if only I had found a way…to revive him…”
            “Revive…?”
             “No one else I’ve ever known…I’ve never known anyone as reckless…impulsive…and compassionate as he was…no one else would have taken up my cause…avenged my brother for me…”  One of his hands clenched around Lan Wangji’s robes, almost convulsively.  “If only I could have brought Wei Wuxian back!”

    That felt very true to the character:  even as he's dying, the only thing that matters is making sure someone will avenge his brother, and he knows how Lan Wangji feels about Wei Wuxian, so he knows mentioning him like that will guarantee than Lan Wangji will move mountains to accomplish the task in question.

    But that's super-depressing, so let's move on.  In the massive, gonna-take-me-almost-as-long-to-edit-it-as-it-did-to-write-it fic that I spent almost a year on, I think I may have really hit the sweet spot of how to handle a Nie Huaisang who is not currently motivated by revenge, as his brother is still alive and well.

    In that fic, his primary goal is to keep on living the sweet, idle life he's led so far.  Thus, after the Sunshot Campaign is over, he gains a new goal in life:  get his brother married off to some worthy young woman in order to produce an heir who is not Nie Huaisang, so he'll never have to start seriously cultivating.  😅

            After a few words of farewell for Nie Mingjue, they left the room together, and Huaisang began strolling along idly, as if he was just giving Wei Wuxian a tour of the Unclean Realm.

            Only once they had come to a small courtyard where a few elegantly-trimmed plants were growing did either of them say anything meaningful.  “This is one of my private gardens,” Huaisang explained, taking a seat on one of the benches in the garden.  “No one comes here without my permission.”

            “I didn’t know your brother allowed you that much power, Huaisang-xiong,” Wei Wuxian commented, approaching a different bench.  He wasn’t sure if he should sit or not.  He wasn’t really looking for a long chat with Huaisang—that could go on half the night or longer, if he wasn’t careful!—but he didn’t want to be rude, either.

            Huaisang fanned himself almost proudly.  “Of course!”  Then he let out a nervous laugh.  “At least, I have a few spaces like this, anyway.”  He closed his fan pointedly.  “But I wanted to ask you something, Wei-xiong.”

            Since Huaisang sounded almost serious, Wei Wuxian sat down.  “Of course.  What is it?”

            “Xichen-ge wrote to da-ge about how you and Lan-xiong are actually married now,” he said.  “What…what is it like?  Being ‘in love’ and all that?”

            Wei Wuxian could only stare at him in confusion.  “What’s it like?” he repeated.  “It’s…just…uh…really hard to explain?”  He shook his head.  “You’ll know it when you feel it, Huaisang-xiong.  Don’t bother worrying about it until then.”

            “I wonder if I will?” Huaisang sighed, tapping his lips with his closed fan.  “I don’t think I’ll ever feel it, so of course I’m curious.”

            “That’s an awful thing to think.”

            “Is it?”  Huaisang tilted his head to one side, a perplexed look on his face.  “Why is it awful?”

            “I know you’re not as big and impressive as your brother, and you’re not a fighter like most of the other cultivators in our generation, but that doesn’t mean you’ll never find a woman—or man—who could love and appreciate you.”

            Huaisang laughed, shaking his head.  “No, that wasn’t what I meant at all, Wei-xiong,” he said.  “I’m sure if I wanted to get married, I could do so without any trouble.  But I don’t think I’ll ever want to.  I can’t imagine feeling so attached to anyone other than my brother.”  He laughed again, more nervously.  “Not that I’d ever feel about da-ge the way you do about Lan-xiong!”

            “I certainly hope not!” Wei Wuxian agreed, laughing.  “But I wouldn’t worry about it, if I was you.  You’ll feel it when the time—and the person—is right.”

            Frowning, Huaisang shook his head.  “I don’t think I will.  But that’s all right.  I’m more worried about da-ge.”

            “What worries could you possibly have about him?” Wei Wuxian asked.  “He’s all but indestructible!”

            A morose sigh.  “Surely you know my father died when da-ge was only nineteen,” Huaisang said.

            “Of course, it’s well known,” Wei Wuxian said.  “Though the cause wasn’t entirely clear from what Jiang-shushu told me at the time.  It sounded like he died in bed, but it was also somehow Wen Ruohan’s fault?”

            Huaisang nodded.  “It was a delayed qi deviation, because Wen Ruohan had insulted and broken his saber.”  He frowned.  “Sort of.”  Another somber sigh.  “Father’s death came a little earlier than most, but Nie Clan cultivators don’t usually live long, because our methods are a bit different from everyone else’s.  More dangerous.”

            “And you think even your brother will succumb to whatever those dangers are?”

            “There’s not much hope of him escaping that fate,” Huaisang said sadly.  “I’ve been looking for a way, but…”

            “And you were hoping I could help you find one?”

            “It would be wonderful if you could, but I was more hoping you could help me find a wife for da-ge so he’ll have children before…”  Huaisang trembled slightly.  “I don’t want to have to inherit the clan!”

            “Ah.”  That was no doubt foremost among Nie Mingjue’s worries as well.  “He must be actively looking for a bride already, though,” Wei Wuxian said.

            “He doesn’t seem to care about producing heirs at all,” Huaisang said, shaking his head.  “It’s as though da-ge is resigned to forcing me to take his place.  He’s so set on it that I had to form a golden core or I was afraid of what he might do!”

            “Wait.  You mean you hadn’t even tried yet?”

            Huaisang laughed nervously, and hid half his face behind his fan.  “I don’t know what you mean, Wei-xiong.”

            Of all the irresponsible…!  “Anyway, I’m glad to hear you finally have a core,” Wei Wuxian said.  No point in dwelling on something that had been done purposefully.  Huaisang had his own reasons, after all, even if they were selfish even by Wei Wuxian’s standards.

    And later on... (The cousin in question in the following quote is an OC, as is Hao Shun, who is the eldest of the orphans that Jiang Cheng was pressured into accepting as disciples in the long quote on the A-to-Z post about Jiang Cheng.)

            “Just what did you do when you were alone with my cousin all that time?!” Jiang Cheng demanded, rounding on Nie Huaisang furiously.  “She’s never made eyes at a man in her life, but here she is fawning over you as if you were—as if you were—just what kind of advances did you make on her!?”

            Nie Huaisang’s eyes widened so much that it looked painful, and the fan nearly fell from his fingers.  “Jiang-xiong, I swear to you, I did nothing of the sort!”

            “Why else would she be acting like that if you didn’t try to take advantage of all that time you spent alone with her?”

            “Oh, but we were never alone!” Nie Huaisang insisted.  “Hao Shun was there with us at every moment.  You can ask him if you don’t believe me.”

            “I will,” Jiang Cheng threatened.  ‘Friend’ or not, he wasn’t going to let anyone get away with trying to put the moves on his cousin!  “Meanwhile, don’t you dare do anything else to seduce her.”

            “I would never do that,” Nie Huaisang claimed.  “It would be completely counterproductive,” he added, fanning himself again.

            “Counterproductive?” Jiang Cheng repeated.  “What’s that supposed to mean?  What are you scheming?”

            “Scheming?”  Those dippy features showed a deep hurt, as if he couldn’t imagine anyone ever thinking he was less than a perfect idiot.  Which, admittedly, he was, but…even idiots could scheme if they really put their hearts in it.  “I would never!”  Nie Huaisang shook his head.  “I was just hoping to convince Yu-guniang to marry da-ge, that’s all.”

            “…”  How was Jiang Cheng supposed to reply to that?  What kind of idiot could attempt to win a bride for his brother and end up accidentally winning her heart for himself instead?  

    Eventually, Nie Huaisang's wish is granted, and Nie Mingjue ends up marrying one of the granddaughters of the head of the Yu Clan, and the wedding is actually a crucial plot event leading into the final sequence of the fic.  As guests are arriving for the wedding, we're in Nie Huaisang's POV, giving another close look at how I've characterized him.  [EDIT:  ...and I'm only a few chapters into the new volume of The Husky and His White Cat Shizun (which revolves around the big wedding of a cultivation sect's heir) and I'm already seeing just how many abominable mistakes I made in treating the events surrounding the wedding.  In terms of the following quote, there are already some big errors showing, especially in the sense of when people would be arriving for the wedding...😰  Which is of course one of many reasons I don't post an unedited fic.  So, just a reminder not to take anything in the quotes from the unedited fic too seriously, because they obviously need massive amounts of work...]

            Nie Huaisang had never seen quite so many guests come to stay at the Unclean Realm.  The leaders of more than half the clans in the cultivation world had arrived by two days before the wedding.  Rude of them, really, but da-ge didn’t seem to care.  He seemed to be deeply regretting having agreed to the marriage at all.  Nie Huaisang could understand that completely, but he wasn’t about to find a way to break it off.  Da-ge just had to get a son on her, and then he could ignore her completely.  Surely that wouldn’t be so hard.  After all, she seemed quite smitten, so she would probably be pushing quite eagerly.  Though getting her to back off again once she had a child might be difficult…but that was something Nie Huaisang was sure he would be able to assist with.  By imposing physical impediments, if necessary.

            Despite everyone else’s misgivings, da-ge had trusted Nie Huaisang to be in charge of handling the guests from the other clans.  (At least one of his men had joked that he had done so in the hopes that he would bungle it so badly that the wedding would be called off.)  Finding enough housing for so many clan leaders was a difficult proposition, especially since too many of them had come too early.  Some of them were being considerate enough to stay in inns in Qinghe itself, but many were not.
            The arrival of the Lan Clan delegation had seemed like a blessing:  Lan Xichen’s presence would be a balm to da-ge that nothing else could match.  And yet Nie Huaisang had no sooner gotten the Lans settled than he was given the horrifying news that the Yu Clan had arrived a day early.  Da-ge was still speaking with Lan Xichen, and Nie Huaisang was not going to allow them to be interrupted for anything, so the only thing he could do to lessen the horror of facing the Yu Clan was to grab the Jiang siblings to help act as a buffer for their prickly relatives.

[snipping most of the scene here, including a confrontational conversation that ended with the Fatal Journey-introduced character Nie Zonghui 'rescuing' Nie Huaisang with the message that he's needed at the front gate]

            “Thank you.”  He sighed, shaking his head.  “Am I needed at the front gate?” he asked, wondering if he was free to go find some of his friends and seek a little sympathy that was less likely to turn into a lecture if he said the wrong thing.

            “By now, likely so,” Zonghui chuckled.  “There has been a steady stream of arrivals all day, after all.”

            A bit of a whimper escaped his lips against Nie Huaisang’s will.  As pleased as he was that da-ge was trusting him with a bit of responsibility that didn’t depend on skills he neither had nor wanted, it turned out that actually dealing with that responsibility was somewhat less than entertaining.  But that, of course, was why he was going so far to make sure there would soon be a new heir and he could remain an idle young master who didn’t actually need to learn the saber or cultivate or end up suffering a qi deviation and dying horribly like everyone else in their family.  Far better to be a painter or a poet than a dead cultivator!

            When they reached the front gates, Nie Huaisang was not surprised to see that there was indeed a new arrival there, but he was surprised to see that the new arrival was Yao-zongzhu.  Pingyang wasn’t so far from Qinghe, after all, so surely Yao-zongzhu could have simply come in the morning, without needing to spend a night away from home.  “Welcome, Yao-zongzhu,” Nie Huaisang said, bowing to him.  “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

            “Ah, well, I didn’t want to risk missing anything!”  Was it Nie Huaisang’s imagination, or was there something almost nervous about Yao-zongzhu?

            As he led the older man to one of the smaller available guest houses, Nie Huaisang turned the notion over in his head.  Yao-zongzhu had a habit of depending on the larger clans for everything and anything, and was known to be reckless in speaking spitefully of the same clans he was always turning to for help.  Was that why he seemed nervous?  Had he been caught insulting some benefactor?

            Or was there more to it than that…?

            Given the secret plans for the wedding banquet, that could be the case.  But Nie Huaisang was technically not supposed to know about that, so if he said anything it might wreck all his attempts to present himself as a clueless fool…and once he had to stop pretending to be an idiot, people might start expecting him to work…

            That would not do.

            And he’d been doing too good of a job at this task so far…

            He turned his steps in the direction of one of the first guest houses to be assigned.  If he ‘accidentally’ took Yao-zongzhu to an already-occupied guest house, then no one would ask him to handle important functions again, and he could continue doing his own thing instead of trying and failing to act like a proper heir.  And since Yao-zongzhu was something of a waste of life, better to insult him than any of the other guests…

    I think approaching the character as "wanting to avoid all unnecessary work" is a good plan, at least for the version of him while his brother is alive.  His motivations change dramatically once his brother is gone.

    I know fans like to ship him with Jiang Cheng, but I don't really see it.  I guess the appeal is that their personalities and personal goals are so contrasting that they play off each other well--plus Jiang Cheng is so predictable that he's actually pretty easy for others to manipulate--but to me that's never felt like enough reason to ship characters together.  Besides, I tend to view Nie Huaisang as pretty aroace, as in the quote above.  In fact, in all the future fic plans I have, in only two does he get involved with anyone, and one of those is the post-canon opening of a time loop fic, in which he's married to one of Jiang Cheng's cousins in the Yu Clan, because she can act remarkably like Jiang Yanli (who she probably also physically resembles), so Nie Huaisang had married her specifically in the hopes that her similarity to his long-gone shijie would make Wei Wuxian forgive Nie Huaisang for everything he had done.  (It doesn't work, of course, but that's okay, because it's a time loop fic, so by the end of the fic, none of the tragic deaths will have happened. (Uh, okay, not totally true:  some characters will still die, but the rest of the tragic deaths won't happen.  And being Jiang Cheng's time loop, obviously preventing his sister's death is his biggest priority!))

    Anyway, running out of things to say, so...you can find my MDZS fanfic here on AO3.