Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian was losing sleep. He could feel it as he browsed the street stall’s pins and combs. His eyes were glossed over, colors became blurs, and everything was too bright.
“I like this one.” He pointed to a wooden comb carved with some kind of floral design, though he couldn’t tell what exactly. They all looked the same to him.
Lan Wangji paid the vendor, then handed the comb to Wei Wuxian.
“Ah, thank you, Lan Zhan. But I think that’s the last time you’re going to spoil me for today.”
“For today,” Lan Wangji said. “How much longer will you be traveling?”
“Hmm, not sure. Maybe a few more days. Unless you want me to come back with you to Gusu?”
Lan Wangji shook his head. “My tasks there would only bore you. If there are still places you wish to visit here, then you should visit them.”
Wei Wuxian nodded. He flipped the comb over in his hand once, then twice.
“Will you visit Yunmeng?” Lan Wangji asked.
“Yunmeng? I would, but… I don’t think I want to be anywhere near Lotus Pier right now.”
“Jiang Wanyin?”
“You could say that.” There was more to it, though Wei Wuxian didn’t say what.
“Mn. Then it’s probably for the best.”
Wei Wuxian gave a nervous laugh. “Don’t think too poorly of him, alright? Probably best if you don’t think about him at all.”
Lan Wangji nodded. “Alright. Be safe while I’m gone.”
“I will,” Wei Wuxian said. “Just don’t miss me too much!”
Lan Wangji smiled, and held Wei Wuxian’s hand in his, right there on the street.
A week had passed since Lan Wangji’s return to Gusu. Wei Wuxian traveled alone, town to town, to see what had changed, and to see what had remained the same since his death.
In the evenings, Wei Wuxian dropped off Little Apple at the nearest stable, and afterward, he checked into the inn, using the money Lan Wangji had lent him. He was ready for bed at Hai, accustomed to the Lan schedule. He had also grown accustomed to Lan Wangji’s presence beside him in bed, which he sorely missed, but at least he wouldn’t bother Lan Wangji with his nightmares.
Sometimes, the two of them would tell each other their nightmares, and then they’d exchange soft touches and kisses until they forgot their nightmares completely.
But Wei Wuxian had not told Lan Wangji of the nightmares that began ever since they crossed the border of Hubei.
That night, Wei Wuxian dreamed he was back in Lotus Pier. It reeked of blood.
The bodies in the courtyard were fresh, cut down by sword wounds that tore through muscle and bone. Even in his dream, Wei Wuxian recognized their faces.
When he looked up, he saw someone standing at the entrance to the throne room.
“Jiang Cheng!”
Wei Wuxian sprinted towards where Jiang Cheng stood, though he had no idea why he needed to reach him, only that he had to, until he tripped over the corpse of one of his shidis and fell on the ground.
He got up on his elbows, and he saw his dead sister lying in front of him.
Wei Wuxian scrambled to his feet. He needed to reach Jiang Cheng—at least whatever it was that looked like Jiang Cheng—but he could not tear his gaze away from Jiang Yanli. Her eyes were open, terrified, and blood flowed freely from her throat. But she had not died at Lotus Pier. Her body should not be here.
He looked up again, and the dreamscape had changed to Nightless City.
All around him, cultivators waged war against a mob of fierce corpses. No one made a move to attack Wei Wuxian, as if he wasn’t there at all. Only one figure seemed to notice his presence; Jiang Cheng stood at the top of the stairs leading to the Scorching Sun Palace; and although it was hard to tell from such a distance, it looked like Jiang Cheng was staring back at him.
Wei Wuxian took one last glance at Jiang Yanli’s body before he began to ascend the stairs two steps at a time. When he reached the top, he was out of breath and had arrived just in time to see the doors to the palace close. When he pushed them back open, the dreamscape changed again.
The interior of the Scorching Sun Palace had become the ancestral hall of Lotus Pier. It looked the same as when he and Lan Wangji had visited a year ago. Jiang Cheng stood in front of the altar, facing away from him.
Wei Wuxian was about to call out Jiang Cheng’s name again, but he stopped short when the other suddenly turned around.
Jiang Cheng’s eyes were pitch black.
“What are you, and what do you want?” Wei Wuxian asked.
The form that looked like Jiang Cheng lowered its gaze as if it were guilty, or sad. A trick, Wei Wuxian thought. He instinctively reached for Chenqing, but it was missing from his belt. Then the ground beneath him split, and the ancestral hall collapsed into rubble and ash.
“Jiang Cheng!” Wei Wuxian screamed.
And he was buried alive in his dream.
The next morning, when Wei Wuxian woke up, he was certain he was dying: his heart was beating way too fast, and he had never felt his body ache so much in his entire life—but the pain only lasted for a few seconds. He would have fallen asleep again, but then he noticed the walls of his inn room strangely looked a lot like the architecture of Lotus Pier.
And the strangest thing of all, Wei Wuxian realized, was that he had a golden core.
* * *
The kitchens of Lotus Pier were, technically speaking, open to anyone who knew how to use them. There were designated cooks to feed the disciples living there, though the disciples could prepare their own meals whenever they were in the mood.
Lu Xiuying was currently in that mood, and she would dare say that this was her best batch of congee yet.
“Try it!” she said, smiling, and offered a spoonful to her twin brother.
Lu Huiying made a face.
“I promise you I didn’t put fish in it this time,” Xiuying said.
“I like fish,” Huiying corrected. “It’s just that the fish you put in last time was bad fish.”
“Well, this time I put in chicken, and I checked to make sure it wasn’t bad before I put it in. Come on, try it!”
Huiying carefully took the spoon in his hand and blew on it. He tasted the congee, and then his eyes lit up, before a frown formed on his face.
“I mean.” Huiying smacked his lips. “I guess it’s… not terrible. What did you put in it?”
“Other than the chicken, which I shredded this morning, I put in some ginger, garlic chives, a little bit of white pepper, and probably a couple of other things, but I forgot what they were.”
“You had time to prepare all that?”
“Everything besides the chicken was already prepared by the cooks yesterday. And I used a recipe I found on one of the tables.”
“Oh,” Huiying said. “Well, that explains a lot. Maybe you should stick to following recipes from now on.”
Xiuying grimaced. “Probably.” She had not done so for her last batch of congee, which had resulted in a culinary disaster of a foul, salty smell, and of watery rice spilled onto the floor.
They sampled a few more spoonfuls of the congee, then left the kitchens to return to the disciples’ quarters. The others would likely be waking up about now, judging by the sun’s position just above the distant mountains. Xiuying liked to imagine that, once everyone was properly dressed, they would all head back to the kitchens to share the congee, then fight over any leftover meat buns from the day before. She couldn’t imagine a meat bun not worth fighting over, unless you had let it spoil.
The other thing on Xiuying’s mind was sword forms. It had become routine to go through the drills in her head during the walks from one building of Lotus Pier to the other, and sometimes she went through the drills in bed at night, and then again in the early mornings.
That is what distracted her when she and her brother bumped straight into Jiang-zongzhu, who looked like he had just emerged from his own quarters: his hair was not tied properly in its usual bun, and he looked confused, like he couldn’t remember what he was doing or where he was supposed to go.
“Jiang-zongzhu!” Xiuying exclaimed. “Sorry, we… didn’t see you there.” What she really wanted to say was, Why do you look like that? But that would have been rude, and too vague, and then Jiang-zongzhu would be mad.
Jiang-zongzhu stared at them, as if they were complete strangers. “It’s… fine.”
The twins exchanged a look. Then they continued walking towards the disciples’ quarters.
“Hey, wait.”
They paused, and turned around.
“What day is it?” Jiang-zongzhu asked.
Xiuying hesitated, then told him.
“Alright.” Jiang-zongzhu clapped his hands together once, and bounced on the balls of his feet, both of which were highly uncharacteristic of him to do so; and then he said in a loud, enthusiastic voice, “Well, I’m going to be off for the next, say, four hours or so, so you kids hold the fort while I’m gone, I’m sure you’ll all do a great job, don’t drown in the lake, and keep your heads out of trouble, okay, good talk, bye!”
The twins watched with wide eyes, dumbfounded, as Jiang-zongzhu ran straight towards the woods.
“Did he just… compliment us?” Huiying asked.
Xiuying was speechless.
* * *
Wei Wuxian would have liked to stay at Lotus Pier to fool around with Jiang Cheng’s body. In fact, one of the first things he had done after he woke up was find the nearest lotus pond, look at his reflection in the water, hold his hair in two ponytails on the sides of his head, and make funny faces.
Then he realized that somewhere out there, Jiang Cheng was probably stuck in Wei Wuxian’s own body, and that he was—at best—extremely furious, and—at worst—looking for the least painful way to chop off Wei Wuxian’s balls.
Wei Wuxian did not feel the presence of another soul in Jiang Cheng’s body. So, unless Jiang Cheng’s soul had been utterly obliterated like Mo Xuanyu’s, it should be safely throwing a fit inside Wei Wuxian’s own body, somewhere near the inn he had stayed at last night. (He really hoped it wasn’t the same case as Mo Xuanyu, or he would never forgive himself for biting his lip suggestively at his reflection in the pond.)
When Wei Wuxian ran into the two Jiang disciples, his suspicions were confirmed: it was indeed the next day, and it was not a dream, and it was perhaps the strangest thing that had ever happened to him.
He stopped running when he arrived at a secluded part of the woods, just on the outskirts of Lotus Pier. There was one last thing he had to do to make sure his conclusion was right: he willed Zidian to life, and whipped himself on his left arm.
Nothing happened. Possession was out of the question. He winced from the searing pain, though it did not hurt as badly as the last time he was struck by it when he had his own coreless body.
That was another thing. He did not want to dwell on the fact that he had his core back. He wouldn’t have it for long, anyway.
But the only way to reach Jiang Cheng was by sword. He needed a core to do that.
Wei Wuxian had grabbed Sandu on the way out of Jiang Cheng’s quarters, and now he unsheathed it. He had wielded it a few times as a kid, back when he and Jiang Cheng sometimes traded swords for fun. It had been years since he last wielded Suibian, but the process of mounting Sandu was easy, and familiar, and it felt like coming home.
“I’m coming to find you as fast as I can, Jiang Cheng. Please don’t be too mad at me.”
Wei Wuxian steadied his balance, and took off to the skies.
* * *
“I have never been more mad at that Wei Wuxian ever in my life.”
Little Apple grunted in response.
“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng said, in Wei Wuxian’s body and voice. He shook the apple-tied-to-a-stick in front of the donkey’s face. “And walk faster! How does he even put up with you? And what was he doing so close to Yunmeng?”
Little Apple aimed its mouth for the apple and missed.
“I had plans today, you know? I have responsibilities, unlike that idiot who gets to galavant wherever he wants. I bet he was all like”—Jiang Cheng raised his voice in a mock imitation of Wei Wuxian’s voice, which, in hindsight, did not make sense because his current voice was Wei Wuxian’s voice—“‘Lan Zhan! Guess what? I invented a talisman for soul swapping! Isn’t that so cool?’”
He shook his head, then continued normally, “Ugh, who am I kidding. He’s not that stupid. Unless… he tried to soul swap with Lan Wangji, and it somehow backfired—” He gagged. “Nope. Gross. No way. Not thinking about that. Where is Lan Wangji, anyway…? Whatever. Who knows? It could be worse than that, because it could always be worse. What if it was a curse that somehow entered our minds? Could it be a curse? That dream last night…”
He sighed loudly. “Well, I guess none of it really matters in the end, because here I am, stuck in Wei Wuxian’s body, talking to a literal fucking donkey.”
Suddenly, Little Apple snagged the apple with its teeth.
Jiang Cheng froze. He tugged on the stick, hoping the apple would slip out of the donkey’s mouth; but then the string broke, and Little Apple came to a halt in the middle of the road as it chomped down on the fruit.
Jiang Cheng tightened his grip on the stick until it threatened to break. Then he held both ends of the stick, and really did break it into two even halves.
“Fuck”—he tossed one end of the stick into the bushes—“you!”—and tossed the other end right afterwards.
Onlookers passed him on the road with wary looks on their faces.
“That’s it,” Jiang Cheng seethed, pointing down at Little Apple. “I don’t care what Wei Wuxian thinks, I am going to sell you off to the first person I see willing to buy you for whatever price I can get, and I am replacing you with an actual horse.”
Little Apple snorted.
Jiang Cheng groaned and gripped his hair. Then he remembered he was technically gripping Wei Wuxian’s hair, and wondered if he should just pull it out entirely.
Maybe, he thought, he should run all the way back to Lotus Pier. But that was impossible. The town he had woken up in was at least a hundred li away, and he had traveled only ten so far.
Why did Wei Wuxian have to make his life so difficult?
Jiang Cheng stared at the sky, as if the answers were hidden in the clouds. But there were no clouds, nor answers, and it was getting very hot. He uncapped the water jug tied to Little Apple, took a nice, long swig, and watched a cultivator clad in purple flying on a sword barrel into a flock of birds.
Jiang Cheng choked on his water.
Wei Wuxian—who now had Jiang Cheng’s own body—landed on the ground using Jiang Cheng’s own sword, and brushed bird feathers out of Jiang Cheng’s own hair, and approached him with a grin that was so Wei Wuxian it looked unnatural on Jiang Cheng’s own face.
“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said, in Jiang Cheng’s own voice.
“Wei…”
Wei Wuxian stopped in his tracks, and his smile faltered.
Belatedly, Jiang Cheng realized he was scowling. There was nothing he could do but scowl.
“Before you say anything,” Wei Wuxian began, with his hands raised, “I need you to know that—why are your robes wet?”
Jiang Cheng glanced down at the spilled water on his front, and murmured, “Technically, they’re your robes.”
“Umm, sure, but anyways, that’s not important. What I was going to say is, I need you to know that I had nothing to do with this.”
Jiang Cheng stared at him blankly.
“And I know you’re probably really upset,” Wei Wuxian continued, “especially by something like this, but I promise I will help fix it, and then everything will go back to normal. You’ll get your body back, and I’ll have mine back. And then we can forget this ever happened at all.”
Silence. Then Jiang Cheng dismounted Little Apple, walked up to Wei Wuxian so they were face-to-face, took a deep breath, and said, “You… are so lucky I can’t throttle you because you’re in my body.”
“…”
“Do you have any idea how bad this is? That we’ve fallen under some—some curse?”
“We can’t be certain it’s a curse,” Wei Wuxian said.
“Then what is it?” Jiang Cheng asked.
“I don’t know.” Wei Wuxian paused. “Yeah, it’s probably a curse.”
“A curse you’re unfamiliar with.”
“More or less.”
“You… I can’t believe you…”
“Jiang Cheng, I already told you I didn’t—”
“What, you didn’t do it? Convince me. When has it ever not been your fault?”
Wei Wuxian went quiet. The longer he went quiet, the more Jiang Cheng wished he could take it back.
Eventually, Wei Wuxian gave a resigned sigh, as if he had expected this. “We should go.”
“Go where?” Jiang Cheng asked dumbly.
“To Lotus Pier. On your sword. We can’t leave your ducklings all alone, can we?”
Jiang Cheng glanced at Sandu in Wei Wuxian’s hand. He had known he was missing a core ever since he woke up in Wei Wuxian’s body, but to know that core was, in a twisted way, returned to its rightful owner…
“Right,” Jiang Cheng said. “What about—what about the donkey?”
“Oh.” Wei Wuxian approached Little Apple and tugged on its reins. When it didn’t move, he drew an array around it, and a protective barrier formed. “That should do the trick.”
“It’s blocking the middle of the road,” Jiang Cheng protested.
“People can walk around it,” Wei Wuxian dismissed with a wave of his hand. “And we can always send someone to come fetch it later.”
“Or we could just leave it and never deal with it again.”
Wei Wuxian gasped. “You can’t say that about my Little Apple! At least not when you have my body and voice. It’s too unnatural.”
“Not any more unnatural than me seeing you with my body and voice,” Jiang Cheng murmured.
“Whatever. We can argue about this later.” Wei Wuxian unsheathed Sandu, mounted it, and offered his hand to Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng hesitated.
“I’m not going to drop you,” Wei Wuxian said.
“Okay? It would be hard for you to do that if I’m behind you.”
“I just don’t want you to feel scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Alright.”
Jiang Cheng did not take Wei Wuxian’s hand. He mounted the sword and held onto the other’s shoulders from behind, and told himself he was absolutely not scared.
“You might want to hold on tighter than that,” Wei Wuxian said, right before they launched into the air.
The only reason why they didn’t immediately fall and crash was because Jiang Cheng had enough sense to not flail his limbs, and instead wrapped his arms around Wei Wuxian’s midsection, and did not look down at the ground.
Jiang Cheng closed his eyes. He remembered the moments before his first core melted, and the waking moments afterwards, but not much during. It may have been the shock that had caused those memories to blur, but he had clearly understood what had happened. His core had been reduced to nothing. Jiang Cheng amounted to nothing.
For the second time, he did not have a golden core.
He was not scared.
“How long did it take you to find me?” Jiang Cheng asked. Anything to distract him from his thoughts.
“Not too long,” Wei Wuxian yelled over the sound of the wind whipping past them. “If I had to guess, I’d say no more than one incense time.”
They flew between the forested mountains, but never high enough to fly above them. Jiang Cheng was still refusing to look down, though he knew there was a small stream below that led to the main river. He tightened his hold on Wei Wuxian and looked straight ahead.
“We need to figure out how we’re going to explain why you’re bringing me to Lotus Pier.”
“Huh?” Wei Wuxian said. “Oh, you mean why I—er, my body, I guess—why we’re bringing my body to Lotus Pier?”
“You say ‘body’ as if you’re referring to your corpse,” Jiang Cheng murmured. “Found floating down the river.”
“How else do you want me to say it?” Wei Wuxian asked sarcastically. “Form? Appearance?”
“On second thought… we’re not explaining this to anyone.”
“You mean you want to keep this a secret?”
“Yes. If anyone asks, which they will, we can say your—your person, or whatever—is here for a reason that’s confidential, and that we have things to discuss that don’t concern them. Which isn’t entirely untrue.”
“But will your disciples believe it?”
“They don’t have to believe it. If I say so, they’ll listen to me.”
“Technically,” Wei Wuxian said, and Jiang Cheng could hear his smile, “now they’re going to listen to me.”
“Will you take this seriously? This is probably still a curse we’re dealing with.”
“But it is kind of funny.”
“Only to you,” Jiang Cheng muttered. “Well, whatever it is, we need to fix it quickly.”
“Right. Then we’ll divide our attention between running Lotus Pier and solving the curse.”
Jiang Cheng stared at him.
“What?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“You. Running Lotus Pier.”
“With you, of course. We’re the Twin Prides of Yunmeng.”
You are not of Yunmeng Jiang anymore, Jiang Cheng thought, but he did not say it. It felt wrong.
“You don’t know how to run a sect,” he said instead.
“Hey, you’re the one who wants to keep this soul swapping a secret. So, if I have your body, we need to act natural so we don’t look suspicious. Or, better yet, let’s just tell your disciples what happened so we don’t have to worry about—”
“No.”
“Why not?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“B-Because…”
“Because it’s embarrassing?”
“So what if it is?!”
Wei Wuxian laughed. “Alright, we won’t tell anyone.”
There was a lull in the conversation. Jiang Cheng could see the main river up ahead, which would guide them all the way back to Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian flew them directly above it. Occasionally, Jiang Cheng glanced down as they passed over boats on the water, but he never did so for long.
“By the way, what were you doing so close to Yunmeng? I thought you were staying in Gusu.”
“I was, but you know Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian replied. “He likes to go where there’s trouble, so I went with him. It’s been a lot of fun traveling together. We get to help out the common folk where we can, do some sightseeing along the way, all that stuff. We arrived in the Hubei region a few days ago, but Lan Zhan had to return to Gusu for sect matters.”
“And you stayed behind?”
“Wasn’t done sightseeing.”
“I’m amazed you two are able to stay apart for more than a day,” Jiang Cheng muttered dryly.
“I am, too, to be honest.” Wei Wuxian paused. “Speaking of which… should we tell Lan—”
“No.”
Wei Wuxian sighed. “Unfortunately, I agree.”
“He hates me,” Jiang Cheng added.
“Hey, it’s not that Lan Zhan hates—”
“Whatever. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. And can you stop calling him that?”
“Lan Zhan? I call him that all the time.”
“Yeah, but not with my voice and face, you idiot.”
“Oh.”
Jiang Cheng restrained himself from facepalming, lest he let go and fall hundreds of meters from the air. He had been initially perturbed by the relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, but had learned to accept that it was the least of his problems. Now, the thought of Lan Wangji seeing them like this made him want to jump in the river and never swim back out.
“Just… I don’t know,” Jiang Cheng said. “Call him Hanguang-jun, or Lan Wangji, or in literally any other normal way, or I will qi deviate.”
“Okay, okay! I get it. Anyways, you’re right. I don’t want to bother him so soon while he’s busy, since he’d… probably freak out. If we ever really need his help, we’ll send a message to him then.”
“Fine.”
They flew the rest of the way to Lotus Pier in silence.