Thread by @luuuunadiane

Aunt Jiang Cheng and NIECE Jin Ling......Jiang Cheng at 110% protecc at all times for her precious baby niece

Even as a daughter, the first child of Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, the first grandchild of Jin Guangshan, receives an extravagant, lavish first month celebration. The Sunshot Campaign is but a memory, the righteous have triumphed, the war heroes have been crowned. It is a time

for merriment and joy, a time for Lanling Jin to demonstrate its power and wealth as the new jewel of the cultivation world, the largest and richest.

Jiang Cheng's niece and Jie's precious first baby is swaddled in a golden blanket. The infant unfortunately has the peacock's

face, but little Jin Ling opens her eyes coloured Jie's brilliant amber, inherited from Jiang Cheng's grandmother.

The usual whispers chase the happy celebration - congratulations to the happy couple, but wishes for a son, soon, to carry on the line of Lanling Jin, disguised

among the customary well-wishes of a fertile marriage with bountiful children. Jiang Cheng rolls her eyes, but her fearsome scowl soon melts away as she gently strokes the soft cheeks of her adorable baby niece, who gurgles in response, a beautiful, peaceful dream soon shattered.

The threads of Fate soon bind Jiang Cheng to Time's turning wheel, when Jin Zixuan is killed, Jie dies in her arms, and Wei Wuxian is ripped apart by his own resentful corpses. All that is left is a barely reconstructed Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng's shattered heart, and Jin Ling.

Jin Ling is Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli's only child. Jin Ling is Jin Guangshan's first granchild. Jin Ling is a girl.

And once Jin Guangyao marries Qin Su and produces a son - the heir to Lanling Jin, Jin Rusong, Jin Ling is nearly forgotten.

Of course, she will always be treasured by Madame Jin, the only remnant of her beloved son and daughter-in-law, but all it takes is Jiang Cheng marching up to Carp Tower and demanding custody of the only family she has left. Madame Jin is a formidable woman still, but-

-all Jiang Cheng has are painful shards where a heart once stood and more agony to last a lifetime, and she will not let her beloved A-Ling go. "Jin Ling is my niece, and I will raise her," not by disinterested tutors or indulgent nursemaids, left to grow up in glided decadence

that would rot the heart of A-Jie's precious daughter and turn her into a spoiled, useless ornament. A-Jie's kindness and Niang's strength and determination, this is the blood that A-Ling carries, and unworthy as she is, Jiang Cheng will do right by her.

It both pleases and disgusts her how quickly Jin Ling is placed in her arms, once Madame Jin relents. She has her precious infant niece with her, and she is never letting go, but Lanling Jin has never particularly valued its women, especially with someone like Jin Guangshan on

the Peony Throne, and it shows.

Any who remembered the Violet Spider would have seen her reborn - as the Violet Spider had cradled her daughters, so did Sect Leader Jiang, carrying a gold-swaddled baby with an unyielding posture and a stony expression of determination.

A-Ling has lost her mother and her father, just like Jiang Cheng has - has lost all her siblings, her clan, the sect she now heads filled with new, unfamiliar faces - but A-Ling still has her aunt, will grow up not to be bowed by the demeaning criticisms of her gender,

not swayed into the helplessness and submission of a wife, but instead to stand tall and strong, to wield the power latent within her all along, and, with the blood of a Jiang, to weather the harshest storms. This, Jiang Cheng promises, with a kiss to her darling niece.