Our first completed project of 2025 goes to these soulmates! We initially made Hualian a few years ago though with Xie Lian's white robe, but I've dreamt to see my own soulmate in his Crown Prince glory and we also remade Hua Cheng to match. We’re excited about this new MXTX set, especially since I was the one who got Mei into danmei which always surprises people since everyone thinks it's the other way around. 😂

These are our own original designs inspired by the donghua/manhua, we also took inspirations from xianxia and added fantastical elements to them.

Crown Prince Xie Lian
We used hanfu patterns that we'd drafted before for our other danmei/hanfu-based cosplays and made alterations to them for this project. We manually patterned the hanfu belt piece and the rest of the skirts/tails. We modeled his crown and the belt brooch with a flower and a sword to symbolize Flower-Crowned Martial God and printed them along with other accessories with PLA. We made 50+ individual feathers (some are embroidered patches, some are sheer fabric with satin stitch detail) for the bodice, the shoulder pieces, and the sleeves. The details on his sleeves and skirt are manual applique, machine embroidery, rhinestones, lace applique fabric, resin, and PLA. We made one of the trims by creating a leafy border that we designed ourselves with machine embroidery and then hand stitching and gluing rhinestone beaded chain trim. A character detail we incorporated is the quote "身在无间, 心在桃源" (“Body in the abyss, heart in paradise”) on the front skirt panel which we hand painted with gold relief paint.

Hua Cheng
We drafted his patterns on mock fabric and modified them further to get the silhouette we want before we traced them onto tracing paper. We used EVA foam to make his bracers and shoulder armor pieces. We modeled his accessories (necklace, brooch, eyepatch detail, and cape pieces) with his iconic butterfly motifs and printed with PLA and also attached crystals on them. We used pleather materials for his belt piece and some of the other strap details. His cape has a couple layers with a dark red base and sheer black fabric. Most of his details are manual applique, machine embroidery, rhinestones, resin, and PLA.

What we enjoyed the most about this project is coming up with our own original take on this couple, we love the fantastical elements of xianxia and designing them was so much fun. Since all our cosplays come as a set of two, we love making them match as much as possible so that they look like a pair. For this project, we used the same red fabric for both Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, the same resin mixture for the red colors and matching skirt panel vibes.