Thread by @CultivateSpite

Please consider #WordOfHonor AU where Zhou Zishu runs into Bureau of the Unfaithful pre-canon and accidentally teams up with them out of "fuckit, may as well" energy.

just bear with me: ZZS intervenes in a guy being a Huge Fucking Asshole (bc he's interfering w/his drinking)

Beauty Ghost was on her way to pick up HFAssole bc he was on her list of dudes to collect for the next funeral marriage and ZZS clocks her as using disguise techniques from 4seasons manor and is like "unfortunately, my only weakness: a mystery about my old sect"

There's a brief verbal non-confrontation bc these two are currently in disguise master mode, which results in ZZS tailing Beauty Ghost back to the Luo manor and just...aggressively spying bc again, this dude has not met a mystery he could actually just leave be

Shenanigans happen, ZZS and Tragicomic Ghost wind up w/ a mutual "Fighting with you would be mutually destructive, i trust you zero percent, but also i respect the heck out of you and you don't seem to have bad intentions, wanna drink and hang out" mutual defense pact

Once Again someone thinks they're doing a great job of keeping secrets from ZZS (still in full beggar disguise), who has in fact figured quite a lot of their shit out in 10 minutes and simply did choose to share that info or react to it in any way

Definitely somewhere in there a convo of like "so, betrayed any lovers" & ZZS returns w/ "never had any", "okay well, betrayed anything you loved" and ZZS, w/o emotion "i kept every promise i made, and in doing so betrayed the only people who mattered to me [thousand yard stare"

ZZS leaves his carefully built spynetwork/assassination network and immediately falls in with.....a spynetwork and plots. This Might As Well Happen, he's dead in three years anyways, might as well watch the show and they seem nice enough, probably gonna get merits helping them