shl/tyk/qy longfic recs

[deepestbluesky]

the latest installment of my extremely scattered fic rec posts is a rec list of what feel like longfics for SHL/TYK/QY. some people might disagree with me classifying some of these as longfics, but they’re not super plentiful in these fandoms, so i took anything over 30k that is plotty. as such, a lot of these are AUs! also, hilariously, i started this long enough ago that at least one of the fics i originally said was a WIP is now completed!

The winds of the heavens shift suddenly
UnrememberedSkies
35,907
Gu Xiang & Wen Kexing & Ye Baiyi, Ye Baiyi & Zhou Zishu

After a prophetic dream shows him the bloody battle over his disciple's legacy, Ye Baiyi makes the decision to repay his debt to the Zhen couple by rescuing their fifteen year old son from the Ghost Valley. Fate is unpredictable, he discovers, but Wen Kexing is even more so.

鬼狼: exit wounds
wolfpudding (suheafoams)
88,780
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

“Are you suspecting me of being the one who hurt you, A-Xu?” Wen Kexing says. “I would never. You’re too handsome to kill.” Zhou Zishu gapes at him, and Wen Kexing adds, “For legal reasons that is a jest. A mere jest.”
“You’re expecting me to put an enormous amount of faith in someone who can’t explain why he found my half lifeless body on the shore of a bay most people don’t have direct access to in the middle of the night.”
“Truth be told, A-Xu, I don’t sleep normal people hours,” Wen Kexing says. “Can you blame me for ending up in places most people don’t?”
(In an attempt to completely leave his past behind, Zhou Zishu stages a complicated escape from Tianchuang and retires from his profession as a killing machine of his own kind. He’s not expecting to be thrown into the enigma of Wen Kexing.)

The Parasol Tree
chiiyo86
118,767
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Gu Xiang & Wen Kexing, Wen Kexing & Zhang Chengling & Zhou Zishu

When Prince Jin sends Zhou Zishu to look for the Glazed Armor, Zhou Zishu's heart isn't in it but he is duty-bound to see this mission through to the end. But then his path crosses the one of Wen Kexing, a mercurial scholar with many secrets of his own, and things only get more complicated from there.

The Tiger and its Skin
manic_intent
100,230
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

The pale beauty on the bed swallowed the bowl of medicine without complaint and handed it silently to the eunuch by the bed. Leaning dizzily against the wall, Zhou Zishu fought yet another bout of nausea, trying to keep down the thin congee that he’d forced down his throat in the morning.
“Wangye,” the eunuch, Qiu Bin, said, sounding uncomfortable.
“Leave.” Zhou Zishu closed his eyes.
“Just… your bride should be on the way. Since the Emperor has refused to postpone the wedding—”

The golden robe.
orange_crushed
103,507
Xie Wang/Zhao Jing (Faraway Wanderers), Xie Wang & Ye Baiyi, Xie Wang/Ye Baiyi, Du Pu Sa & Xie Wang (Word of Honor), Xie Wang/Others (Arranged Marriage)

He lies in bed that night, staring at the silken canopy above him, the drawn curtains black and shapeless without light. He sleeps inside a void. Even the gold and silver dulls in the dark. Becomes only more thread.
[An au in which Xie'er becomes emperor after all.]

to harrow the woodland edge
gardencitymovements
37,665
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

The person flinches at the glare of the flashlight, flings his hands up into the air and freezes, a sway of leather over his back the only unregulated movement. In his lap, the baby’s head flops over the barrel of his thigh like a snapped branch, and the little thing starts howling again.
“I’m not security,” Wen Kexing blurts. “But put your hand back under that baby’s neck or I will call someone.”
-
the butterfly effect of retail apocalypse

Long Away and Far Apart
timetoboldlygo
117,711
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

Nobody said traveling through time would be easy — nothing Wen Kexing has done has ever been easy — but A-Xu was dying. He was going to die.
If Wen Kexing could not save his A-Xu in the life they shared together, he would save him elsewhere in the past. And then some other version of them could live on, while this A-Xu and this Wen Kexing would stop existing. Would become something that never existed at all. If Wen Kexing did this right, he would die one day after — and some twenty years earlier than — his husband.
Only, A-Xu died and Wen Kexing didn't stop existing.
(Only — maybe A-Xu didn't die.)

The Moonlight Flows Like Water
shatteredcrystalwings
64,769
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Minor or Background Relationship(s)

After escaping from a relationship built on violence and coercion, Zhou Zishu finds herself with a rather... enthusiastic new roommate. As she eases into her new life and her new job, she finds herself thrown into a corporate conspiracy two decades in the making—with Wen Kexing at its heart.

trembling on the branch, unfurl your petals and grow
minnabird
47,220
Wen Kexing & Zhang Chengling, Zhang Chengling & Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Zhang Chengling/Original Female Character

Ye Baiyi didn't wake Wen Kexing; Zhang Chengling lied to protect him and held the secret of Zhou Zishu's death in his heart; and life at Four Seasons Manor went on. Until, that is, Bi Xingming comes running up the road from the town and tells Zhang Chengling there's something he has to see.
“I brought him as fast as I could,” Bi Xingming said to the man. “I still don’t know why you had to be so secretive, shifu—”
Shifu.
Zhang Chengling’s heart fell like a stone, and he crashed to his knees beside the man, reaching up as if to sweep the hat off and stopping just short. The man lifted his hand, impatiently shaking his sleeve back in a gesture so familiar he was sure even before he recognized the hand, even before the hand tilted back the hat to reveal his master’s gentle smile.

Phases of the Moon | 陰晴圓缺
synesthesia (starjay)
43,354
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Background Jing Beiyuan/Wu Xi, background Rong Changqing/Ye Baiyi
NOTE: first in a currently unfinished series

When martial god Zhou Zishu descends to the mortal realm during the Zhongyuan Festival, he expects to make quick work of capturing rogue ghosts and returning them to the underworld. Instead, he meets a self-proclaimed scholar who hides his dangerous smile behind paper fans, and finds himself challenging the laws of nature and binding his fate to another's for lifetimes to come.
If gods cannot be just all the time, then it is imperative for all ghosts to be evil?

ask the sword, ask the knife
foreverstudent
61,104
Zhang Chengling & Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing & Zhang Chengling, Wen Kexing & Zhang Chengling & Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing & Zhou Zishu

Ten years after Prince Jin is incapacitated by Zhou Zishu, the Window of Heaven comes knocking at the gates of Four Seasons Manor once again—only this time, it is Chengling who answers.
A master’s duty may be to protect their disciple; but a dutiful disciple knows that a day will come when it may be the other way around.
A post-canon story.

From Halfway Along
Lelek
65,334
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

After dedicating years to the service of an empire, Zhou Zishu has walked away to spend what's left of his life wandering the galaxy. And if that freedom has come at a cost . . . doesn't everything?
His plans did not include getting entangled with a dangerous man on a mission of his own. A man who not only looks at him, but sees.

forget the horror here
thusly
36,674
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

“You saved his life and now you want to brush your hands off the responsibility,” Wen Kexing says. “Don’t worry, I’m not judging you. But dying alone in the jungle won’t make you feel less guilty.”
“I don’t feel guilty,” Zhou Xu says. His smile is patronising, one eyebrow raised, and he could have most people fooled—except Wen Kexing feels like he’s looking into a mirror. “We’re all dying on this island. Wherever I go, it’s no concern of yours.”
“But you’re wrong, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing says, after another couple of steps, letting his silence lure Zhou Xu into a false sense of an argument won. “If we’re all dying here, of course it matters to me—where you go.”
-
A deadly plane crash leaves 29 survivors stranded on a haunted island.

within us an orchard
mintyfish
47,918
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

On a visit to the capital, the Valley Master happens upon the garden of a man who has nothing left to live for.

fuori dal mondo
bladedweaponsandswishycoats
55,161
Jing Beiyuan/Wu Xi, Wu Xi & Zhou Zishu, Jing Beiyuan & Zhou Zishu, Jing Beiyuan/Zhou Zishu, Jing Beiyuan & Wu Xi & Zhou Zishu

“Don’t be afraid, it’s nothing to do with you. Go back!” Wu Xi urged him.
But something was happening to Jing Beiyuan, something he didn’t quite comprehend. The arm—it was his own arm—that Wu Xi was tugging on seemed to shift, lengthening and going almost boneless. He expected to feel the sharp pang of a dislocated shoulder, but then it…didn’t happen. The very texture of his arm was changing, the muscles stretching out like putty and rendering the joint that he feared damaged superfluous.
Or:
Sometimes found family is a jianghu nobody turned budding spymaster, a war hostage with a fondness for venomous creatures, and a prince of the realm (who is only sometimes an eldritch horror) trying to plot a path to survival (and happiness).

Spare Me
staringatstars
156,832
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

Wen Kexing knows Zhou Zishu. He is not known, in turn, but that has never stopped him before.

Murder Will Out
Zelos
NOTE: currently a WIP (3/4 chapters)
34,610
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing & Zhang Chengling & Zhou Zishu, Cao Weining/Gu Xiang

“Wen-xiong.” Cao Weining’s voice was shaking. His entire body was shaking, violent tremors wracking his frame; he’d aged ten years since he left. He stopped a sword-length from Wen Kexing, his sword anchoring his left hand, the book in his right. “Wen-xiong, please…explain.”
“Explain what?” It came out hollow, trembling. A-Xu darted him a look that Wen Kexing ignored. His entire body had calcified, fissures forming.
Cao Weining lifted his right hand. The book of ghosts fluttered open, his fingers marking the page. Wen Kexing’s ink-stained portrait stared back, a rending.
The book of ghosts was dispersed faster than expected, and the road to hell is paved with its pages.
A story about love and choices.
Canon divergence from episode 23, before GX and CWN leaves for Qingfeng Sword Sect.

歃血; blood oath
yiqie
NOTE: currently a WIP (3/7 chapters)
33,638
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

It was inevitable, the smell—it hung around every Yujian Bang assassin and spy like a damp robe, trailing out behind them in ribbons. Prostitutes and brothel workers always smelled of flowers and tea, scholars smelled of ink and incense, and upstanding martial warriors smelled of the wind and the loam. The bottoms of ponds and rivers. Mulch. Yujian Bang, the Jade Sword Gang, smelled of blood—of animals, of Blood Prisoners, of their own.

Come hell or high water
NOTE: currently a WIP (8/? chapters)
softiejace
37,878
Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing & Zhou Zishu

All Zhou Zishu wants is a mundane job in a city where no one knows who he is or what he's done, though this new life of his is not so much a fresh start as a self-imposed purgatory.
But misery loves company, and company in this case goes by the name of Wen Kexing.
Excerpt:
"I see that I have much to learn from you, Lao Wen," he says dryly. "I should count myself lucky."
Wen Kexing gives him another one of those smiles, and now Zhou Zishu realizes what confused him about it before - there's something conspiratorial, tongue-in-cheek about it, as though they're sharing a private joke.
"You're welcome."
"Do you offer your invaluable advice to all newcomers?"
Wen Kexing crushes the empty paper cup in his fist and stands.
"Only if I like their shoulder blades."

Comments

[minnarr]

all the ones i know on this list are such bangers, i can't believe how many of these i still haven't read yet. to do list for 2024!! (also ty for the trembling inclusion <3)