I'd say that's potentially difficult to balance, and the "You get a truce with a foreign realm" would possibly be less fun for the other realm if they don't particularly want said truce, though possibly something that could be done as a one-off event loosely inspired by history. I also sort of feel the Chinese Subjugation CB already covers the "Vassal grabs a bunch of territory from a rival realm (with some restrictions) nearby" situation to an extent, and the "He's doing too well; kill him before he becomes a problem!" thing can of course happen organically, though maybe a bit more could be done.
(I should perhaps note that Yue Fei himself is landed for a while from 1127.1.9, as it was difficult to find better vassals for Song, but that "story events" railroading history really aren't something I personally like, so I'm not interested in adding those; I'd potentially be open to someone else doing it, assuming they were reasonably balanced and that there was a game rule to disable it for anyone that doesn't want that sort of thing, but it'd still not be a priority)
I'm not extremely familiar with Journey to the West (I know some broad strokes), but it might be something that either could inspire something supernatural (locked behind that game rule) or that could be de-supernaturalified. Of course, it has the problem with assuming that the situation is historical enough that going to India isn't weird in the context in which it appears (e.g. a character ruling over India getting an event about someone wanting to travel abroad... to India would be silly), so it might need to be restricted to specific conditions or to be made more generic ("travel abroad" to an unspecific location).
I have some plans for Mount Penglai (primarily with supernatural events on, though maybe people could still try to go/send someone there without...), which feels like it might overlap; it's not quite the same, as best I can tell, but it's got the "mystical land" bit.
I'd have to look at things in some detail to determine if it's too powerful; too supernatural isn't a problem, considering the game rule (even if I hope to also add a good amount of non-supernatural flavour, particularly as not everyone is a fan of the supernatural stuff).
While how you play of course ultimately is up to you, the intended gameplay for bureaucracies is generally more towards the peaceful side, seeing as e.g. "China blobs everywhere, on its own or through its vassals" would be very ahistorical and thus isn't really something we want to encourage and the things we're doing thus generally are intended to make things more interesting in historical(ish) circumstances and ways (e.g. there were periods during which the eunuchs wielded a lot of influence and didn't necessarily use it for the good of the realm, and the next update should make that a bit more of a thing) instead.
I'm a bit unsure what you mean about "court events", and I don't want to be too specific (especially as some things are still very vague and even more concrete ideas might not pan out), but on the whole I'd say that various events (and other things) making the peaceful(ish) side of things more interesting is something to look at, both from the top liege's perspective and that of vassals (that might be unable to expand much), and that areas tied to stats other than Martial and PCS are what we should be trying to enhance the most for bureaucracies (e.g. realm management, scholarship, politicking).
Spoiler alert: The current plan is to significantly extend the Grace system and to make it usable by vassals (of a Chinese Imperial China), with some powers being added specifically for vassals (some of which could be used to grow your own power, some less useful for that); the specifics still need to be ironed out, but I've got enough of a plan that I'm prepared to say this much. This will not be an option for vassals of a pretender, as the Grace system can't really be expanded to be something that's available for all CI rulers(' vassals) due to how it is set up, but it'll at least make a difference in China itself.
It might be hard to implement something entirely similar to that, particularly for a courtier (and I'm unsure how interesting "This is a very powerful courtier!" is, considering that courtiers generally are less impactful than vassals in CK2, even if I'm not entirely opposed to making courtiers more impactful), but I have some ideas for making councillors and other important characters (e.g. spouses and high-ranking (ones with special honorary titles) consorts) potentially get more influence, whether for themselves or people they like (e.g. an ambitious consort that likes her father/brother/nephew might perhaps try to convince the emperor that the aforementioned relative deserves a title/money/Grace/a Favor/a council spot/etc., and might perhaps do something unwanted if the suggestion is refused).
I definitely agree it's not historical, but while it'd be very easy to implement a "No vassals on the council!" rule for Chinese Imperial rulers from a scripting standpoint it feels like it'd make things quite a bit worse for player vassals (who already are restricted based on skills), and I think this is a case of gameplay and (subjective) fun needing to take precedence over historical accuracy.
The amount of work still to be done on the mod is still quite significant, so it's possible to do a lot of work, and some specific things will require a lot of work. There's some lower limit to how much time/work I'd expect (for one thing, if someone works very slowly or spends very little time working, they can't really be given responsibility for anything that's large (or that needs to be done quickly), and while there occasionally is a bunch of smaller stuff to be done that's not necessarily a constant thing and those things aren't necessarily priorities), but I'm well aware everyone has other things they want or have to do as well, and I'd not say the bar is particularly high for "Contributes enough to be worth keeping on the team".
I will, however, note that working on Tianxia and playing with Tianxia active is not remotely the same thing, so someone whose interest in "development" could be summed up as "I want to play with new stuff sooner!" is not the kind of person we're looking for, and though there's certainly need for brainstorming from time to time we're looking for people that can (and want to) implement stuff rather than come up with things for others to implement; ideas are welcome, but they don't make the "Stuff to implement" pile any smaller.
Regarding how to become involved, I posted a bunch of questions that would be good for prospective Tianxia devs to answer here. If you're interested, PM me your answers to them; I'll then let you know whether I consider something a clear deal-breaker (if it's clear your overall vision for what the mod should be is vastly different, that cooperation would be very difficult for some reason, or the like, it's not going to work out, and it's easier for both of us if I refuse), a possible problem (in which case discussing it ahead of time to figure out whether it's likely to be an issue), or if I think it sounds good (most likely with some comment regarding what you wrote; I do get wordy from time to time...).
If there's no deal-breaker or major problem that seems difficult to resolve, I'll tell you that we're interested, wait for a few days in case something in my reply made you have second thoughts, and then (or upon receiving a reply along the lines of "Yes, I'm still interested") I'll let LumberKing know (he needs to handle dev Discord/GitHub repository invites, and also has the final say (even if I doubt he'll overrule me on "Hey, can you add [name] to the team? They seem like they'd be able to help out.")), and he'll most likely get in touch by PM before very long.
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