Curate, connect, and discover
using this as an opportunity to say that the hatred can be resolved SO easily because mu qing does not deserve most of the shit he gets. my boy tries so hard to be perfect and is almost always misunderstood i'm :((((( the fact that he only ever wanted hua cheng to stay alive because he KNEW the conditions hua cheng came from but couldn't bear to see him die because somewhere in there he saw his own past. jealousy didn't even cross his mind. the fact that he always, ALWAYS, admired xie lian to the point of doing anything for him, even when he thought xie lian hated him. he only left xie lian because of sheer desperation, and even then he hesitated. he came back. never once while reading tgcf did i get the impression that he was anything short of grateful to xie lian which makes him a better person than i would be if i had to consistently chalk up my achievements to someone who "allowed me to cultivate" (love you xie lian but just. no.)
the two solid reasons hua cheng hates him have a basis in misconceptions and it really fucks with my brain.
hualian is great but huaqing. ohhhh huaqing. two bastards with equally sharp tongues who will give as good as they get. but also if you dig a little deeper into their mutual dislike it's like. oh fuck they're so similar that it's easier for them to "hate" each other than admit the deeply ingrained insecurities they have.
i like the whole devoted aspect of hualian but if you shift canon a little and make it so that mu qing is the one who caught hong-er you get to see hua cheng watch someone who was born into the same situations as him, who was consistently ridiculed and treated as inferior, grow to be a fiercely powerful and loyal individual. it's not just god x devotee anymore, you've given it a raw humanizing aspect because mu qing CLAWED his way to where he is, and so did hua cheng.
even without changing canon you can see that hua cheng went down the path of surviving because gege became his reason FOR living, but mu qing has always been willing to keep himself and others afloat even as they kick and scream and beg to drown.
there's just this desperation mu qing carries in everything he does and to see that blend with hua cheng's uncaring or even disdainful attitude towards others is something that i think would be beautiful. like they balance out each other's most hidden and scarred parts so easily.
they're so similar yet so different it's like they're dancing around each other oh my fucking god i just. the parallels and possibilities huaqing has make me violently ill.