A Hidden Road 

Summary

    A canon divergence AU fanfiction (novel canon) in which the only way Lan Wangji can think of to protect Wei Wuxian from the consequences of his actions is to kidnap him and contain him within a remote area of Cloud Recesses.  (And then a lot of other things happen; the fic covers about three years.)  Starts just after Lan Wangji's visit to the Burial Mounds.

    The work is in three distinct parts, with rather awkward tone shifts between them.  (Especially between the first and second part.  The other two have less of a tone shift.)  There is a tiny amount of cross-over with Heaven Official's Blessing in it, but it's an AU version of Heaven Official's Blessing where the status quo at the end of the Banyue arc became the permanent status quo.  (Probably.  Technically, it's not really clear or even totally relevant exactly where things stalled out?  But as of the time of writing this parenthetical aside, the official translation is only up to volume 6 out of 8, so it's literally impossible for me to have it be post-canon for Heaven Official's Blessing, 'cause I don't know how it ends!  (And I do not want any more spoilers than I've already gotten from browsing Etsy...))

Warnings

    Content/Trigger Warnings:  mostly, anything and everything that's in the original novel will either show up or be referenced.  There is swearing, and while there isn't any smut, there are a few scenes that sort of flirt with the idea.  Fewer people die than in canon, but some do still die.  However, despite the way it sounds from the description, it's actually fairly fluffy overall, with a happy ending.  It's also very shallow, because I write for escapism, so my writing tends to shy away from anything too heavy, even when the subject matter really requires it.  (This is unfortunately a mental issue, so I don't think there's much I can do about it.)  The plot summary I originally posted to AO3 may have made it sound like this is a "dark Lan Zhan" fic, but it really isn't:  he's actually only a hair worse than in canon.
    Additional Warning:  I'm still trying to wrap my head around things like qi/spiritual energy and general cultivation magic, so some of it is likely deeply wrong.  Characterization is also likely off in many ways, especially for Wei Wuxian.  (Admittedly, there's a hefty chunk of part 1 where his characterization is even more off than in the rest of it, but that part is intentional and eventually explained.)  Also, I write in very close third person POV, so it's not uncommon for a chapter (or many chapters) to have an unreliable narrator.
    One last minor warning:  my use of transliterated Chinese relationship terms and their English equivalents may seem arbitrary at first, but I have been trying to use them in a consistent way.  Basically, whenever it's in the form of an address--any time when in English we might use the person's name (ie WWX addressing JYL as "shijie" or his POV saying things like "shijie smiled warmly") then I used the transliterated term, but if it's a case where we wouldn't use the name in English then I used the translated term (ie "I will ask my brother" not "I will ask my xiongzhang").  The major exception to this is where cousins are concerned:  there are way too many terms and I did not want to have to both figure out which term I needed and research what the term was.  (I mean, canon will have set up what level of cousins JZX and JZxun were, but as a non-Chinese speaker finding out what term was used in canon might be pretty difficult.  I was not putting in that kind of effort over JZxun.  Blecch.)  I've also largely preferred keeping honorifics as-is rather than using their English equivalent, even in cases where the official translation used the equivalent:  I prefer Lan-zongzhu to Sect Leader Lan.

↓IMPORTANT EDIT↓

    So, earlier today, I tied to go into Blogger to work on one of my April A-to-Z posts and it wouldn't/couldn't load any of my pages or posts on the back end.  It seemed like my blog was disabled, but my gmail was fine, and I spent forever like searching through all kinds of stuff because I couldn't even reach the appeal process, and...

    Then suddenly it came back up again.

    I have no idea what happened.

    I do know that if the blog were to be disabled, it would be because of this fic, since it skirts around some NSFW material.

    So I've disabled all the pages (well, returned them to draft), and will be posting it to AO3 after all.

    But it's late and I'm still sorta freaking out (I had to change the email account I had registered with a couple of different services, too, since they were on that gmail, so now I'm gonna have to log back in to those services on my phone and stuff with the new email, and...ugh...)

    So, if anyone was reading one of my April A-to-Z posts and wanted to read "A Hidden Road" and got to this page...sorry.  It'll be on AO3 starting tomorrow (may not get all the chapters up at once, but at least the first two or three will be there) so please check back then.

    Uh, or maybe follow the link on the post to my AO3 account and bookmark that, just in case my blog blinks out of existence by tomorrow. 😰