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Chapter Text

I f you could do it all over again…

If you could save…

If you…

You.

~*~

Wei Wuxian is dying.

Has been dying for years in his broken, crumbling body held together by scar tissue and the resentment of the dead. Has died already because shijie is gone, gone, gone. Is dying the only way he knows how, with hands grabbing at his arms, his feet. Teeth in the soft warm pit of his belly, blood rushing from his heart to his lungs to the hungry mouths of a thousand thousand screaming, hungry ghosts, come for the feast he’s thrown for them. A feast of his body and of his soul, nourishment from the marrow of his bones and drink from his arteries split wide open from the clawing of Wen dogs and Jin dogs and Nie dogs and Yao dogs and Ouyang dogs and Qin dogs and dogs, dogs, dogs snuffling in his face, drooling hot and stinking into his eyes as he breathes in a gasp, he breathes and –

He stands in a dark alley. He can hear the whimpers of a dog, a Wen dog, a Jin dog, or just a dog, and he breathes and –

The corpses of his enemies might be dogs, but dogs don’t have fingers. Corpses and dogs are all the same to him, in this moment. Hungry, hungry for his soft, wet flesh and thirsty for his sweat and his drying tears. There’s a snout quivering at his throat and a rock under his hands. He doesn’t think, doesn’t look. He swings and swings again till he feels the warm gush of hot, red blood in his mouth and his eyes, and he breathes and –

He stands on a mountain of corpses that he made and he breathes and –

The scent of blood, the same now as it was before, as it will be hence, like rusted iron and uncooked meat, all over his hands and his legs and on his tongue. He bends over and vomits all over his feet, and he knows that whatever this is, it’s worse than dead.

He passes out and hopes that this time it sticks.

~*~

It doesn’t stick. He knows this even before he opens his eyes, from the distinct stink of piss and rotten food and the even more specific aroma of the cooled-off corpse that he’s been snuggled up to all night.

It’s cold and disgusting.

He cracks open an eye, and yes – he’s in the backalleys of Yiling, with his limbs far tinier than he remembers and the gnawing rasp of starvation caving in his gut, which he’s been intimately familiar with – so out of all the horrible things that come with being alive again, that’s the easiest part to deal with.

He’s lying next to the body of a demon from hell. Or a rabid mutt just as desperate for food as anything else that calls this place home – he shuts his eye tight again and rolls over to cough up whatever’s left in his stomach. Bile, bitter green and slimy, drips down his chin. He’s a mess. He’s always been a mess, troublesome even to himself, and isn’t this typical? A new lease on life, and here he is, beginning auspiciously with murder.

Just a hungry dog sniffing out an easy dinner, and Wei Wuxian knows a lot about how that feels. But he killed it anyway, because that’s who he is, and that’s who he’ll become, in this life or any other life.

It’s too much, the memories of a man of twenty-two stuffed into the head of a skinny nine-year-old rat. His gut heaves again, trying to reconcile the man and the boy and the years in-between where he was neither. It’s the in-between that saves him; he manages to get on his feet and away from the mutt. Out of the alley and to the well, deserted at this time of night, where there’s water, cold and fresh and it feels like life, really truly life, when shijie is dead and gone – and he runs, runs from the city, from the black wisps of power calling his name from the Burial Mounds, from Jiang Fengmian, who is out looking for him somewhere nearby. He runs sightless and directionless, like a hunted fox, thrashing deep into the forest, and he keeps running till his body gives up and he blacks out, not knowing where he is, and he hopes beyond hope that this time, it sticks.

~*~

It doesn’t stick this time either, because his luck is just that bad.

Waking up for the third time is suspiciously okay – there’s weak sunshine on his face, soft, dry leaves under his back, and the smell of a loquat tree nearby, so he’s forced to get up and confront reality, like the adult he pretends not to be.

Wei Wuxian is alive, not dead; nine, not twenty-two; in Yiling, not Qishan; and he certainly didn’t do this to himself despite his penchant for masochism, so the first and most important thing that pops up in his tired brain is obviously, who the fuck did this?

And second, what the fuck for?

And third, why the fuck am I nine years old again?

There are fourth and fifth and sixth questions following that train of panicked annoyance, but he shoves them all firmly behind a locked door – to be examined later when he’s less freaked out, and takes slow, grudging stock of his situation.

Somewhere, somehow, someone has seen fit to give him one more chance to fuck everything up again, and they’ve stuck him right at the beginning of the mess that his life is – was – about to become. So – excellent. The obvious, immediate solution is to stay far away from everything and everyone he loves – loved – will love? His brain threatens to break a little from the strain of keeping up with all the tense changes, which is a novel first for him – but he’s always been resilient, and a little setback like an unexpected resurrection isn’t about to defeat him, not when Wen Chao and the Burial Mounds couldn’t manage it.

Gods above and corpses below, he’s hungry. He can’t think when he’s hungry – or he can, but who wants to? So he wanders, sniffing out those loquats like the dog sniffed him out, and he feasts, washing down the taste of last night’s vomit and fear. He hasn’t had anything so good for so long, in this body or his last, only the memory of radishes and thin porridge burned into his tongue and – A-Yuan, where did he go?

The loquats, so sweet going in, are bitter and salty when they come back out, mixing with the snot and tears running down his face.

He can’t even try to hold it together – not in the face of A-Yuan, who trusted him, who trusted and loved Xian-gege, who was failed and failed again by everyone who should have kept him safe, was abandoned by Xian-gege, by Wei Wuxian, who kills everything he touches, like he killed Jin Zixuan, and Wen Ning, and Wen Qing, and shijie, and after all, he still managed to kill his own son too.

He stays bent over the stained leaves for a long time, feeling like the filth he’s wallowing in, the mess that seems to spill around his feet everywhere he goes. He wants to run – but he already ran once, twice, and last night, and he’s only nine years old, he wants his a-niang and his baba and he wants his child, his A-Yuan so, so much that his arms hurt with how empty and thin they are without a warm, sticky child clinging to them, like he was a warm, sticky child clinging to his baba, to his Jiang-shushu, to his shijie.

Is he a little boy?

Is he a man grown?

Is he a memory of both?

Is he a ghost come back to haunt himself?

Wei Wuxian cries himself to sleep, hugging himself with hands that feel like a child’s, shaking with grief that feels older than his soul.

Whatever he is, he’s cold, from the packed earth below and the whistling night wind above. He lets it seep into his bones, and hopes with knife-edged desperation that please, maybe, just for once, this last time it really will stick.

~*~

When he wakes up again, he’s still depressingly alive despite the bad luck of fours, and no closer to an answer than he was when he started.

Or maybe it’s exactly the bad luck of fours that’s keeping him stuck here, an impossibility in body and mind, an impossibility period.

Unbidden, or perhaps not, Jiang-shushu marches to the forefront of his thoughts, preaching about achieving the unachievable, and Wei Wuxian hates himself just a little bit more because why is he like this? He’s starting to get what Jiang Cheng used to go on about, maybe just a little bit.

He definitely didn’t inflict this on himself, so suicide’s out. If he ever does find who did this to him, he’s going to kill them and raise their corpse to ask questions later. What’s one more murder on his conscience, after he’s already caused everyone he loves to die? He skates on that thought, knowing it’s important, that he’ll come back to it.

For now, he’s had enough of lying around in his ejected filth – he was raised better, so he really has no excuse for carrying on this way. There’s water in these woods somewhere, so he sets off to find it on wobbly legs, weak with hunger and the fatigue of two lifetimes.

A dunking in swift-flowing, icy water goes a long way towards clearing his head. Food is easy – he remembers how to catch fish with his bare hands, how to gut and roast them on sticks. He eats slowly this time, the lessons of a lifetime ago filtering through the sharp cracks left by the shock of a cold bath, and begins to feel his humanity return to him with the slow warmth creeping up his limbs from the fire he’s got going. It’s been a long, long time since he’s  eaten this well or felt this clean in either life.

So you came full circle, he thinks, started a beggar and ended a beggar. There’s a certain poetic justice to it, and he finds himself laughing at his reflection in the stream. Poetic justice usually doesn’t come with second chances, though, and here he is, with the opportunity to repeat his sins – or to never make them again.

He’s here, in a body with the potential for everything that once could have made him great, with a mind that led him to damnation, a heart that can’t stop loving the people he hurt so badly, and the people who ruined him. He doesn’t know which of those things is the worst, but he knows what he has to work with. He catalogues his face, his body, the meagre inheritance of a street rat and the legacy of the Yiling Laozu jostling for space inside him. It’s all…whatever, he thinks, giggling a little maniacally. He looks like a kid again, so what. He has the brain of a twenty-two-year-old genius. He’ll figure something out. 

“Wei Wuxian, ah, Wei Wuxian. What are you going to do about it now?”

~*~

He camps out in the forest. It’s shudderingly close to the place where he once met the beginning of his end – or was that the Xuanwu of Slaughter? Neither recollection is pain-free, but one comes with nightmares of being hunted by the undead until he became the hunter, of rotting meat in his teeth, stringy and clotted with old blood, of pain that glued him together and a flute that screeched his vengeance on the world while leeching at his sanity. The other – the other comes with the memory of fever, and sun-bright eyes, a gentle hand in his hair and – do you like Mianmian? And oh, that hurts more, like a knife slipping through his ribs but just nicking his heart so he can feel it bleeding out.

There’s a name attached to those memories of a jade-faced boy who was always too good for him, who cast him aside and never let him go and confused him to death. Wei Wuxian very carefully locks that away in a mental box; very, very carefully refuses to even think of that boy’s name. The knife digs in a little deeper, slicing through his lungs in a single breath he refuses to acknowledge, a sigh that sounds like Lan Zhan, which very definitely did not come from his lips.

When he doesn’t dream of the Burial Mounds, he dreams of a man in black and a man in white and a grouchy donkey being dragged along for the ride. It feels prophetic and melancholic, but donkeys are something safe, worldly and accessible in a way that the rest of his life will never be.

He wants a donkey so bad.

Livestock costs money, though, even an animal with the sort of bad-tempered personality he’s looking for. It might come cheap, but he currently owns nothing except the rags on his back, stained with dirt and puke and gods only know what else. If he walks into town looking like this, he’ll get spat upon and kicked into the nearest rubbish-filled alley like he belongs in the refuse with all the other rejects of the world. So he needs a plan, which is great, because he’s shit at planning. Planning was always a Jiang Cheng thing, and the thought of his once-brother is the phantom pain of a sword in his gut and another in his back.

Enemy of the entire cultivation world, Jiang Cheng had called him. It hadn’t hurt, not more than a sting, until that same brother looked at A-Yuan, clinging to his leg, and decided he had a right to kill that too.

Jiang Cheng might never forgive him for shijie, which was fine. Wei Wuxian knows he’ll never forgive himself for that, either. But A-Yuan is different – A-Yuan should have been as beloved a nephew as Jin Ling. Instead, A-Yuan died in a haunted forest at the end of some cultivator’s sword, because Jiang Cheng didn’t think that Wei Wuxian’s son was worth protecting.

Wei Wuxian has to remind himself he’s only nine years old, because he doesn’t know how to forgive that, and it makes him want to scream and set fire to every last lotus in the lakes he once loved – that he still loves.

He considers his immediate options. Jiang Fengmian is out there hunting for him, arms akimbo, the wood-warm corridors of Lotus Pier opened in distinct unwelcome under Yu Ziyuan’s reign, if she has anything to say about it. And she’ll have plenty – her whip-sharp tongue hitting worse than Zidian. At least the physical pain could be eased away, but he’s had one lifetime of his mother being called a whore and his father a servant, and he doesn’t know if he can stand a second dose of love that feels like an electric burn on his skin and a mountain of unpayable debts on his shoulder.

Seventeen-year-old Wei Wuxian hadn’t minded giving up his future for his little brother, for Yu-furen’s final wish to see her children protected at any cost, even if that cost was himself.

Nine-and-twenty-two-year-old Wei Wuxian thinks about a little radish who was buried in the dirt and never got to grow big and strong, and he understands, he really does. But he can’t do it again. Not when the favour wasn’t reciprocated. Not when that little brother left his son to die.

Wen-dog.

Wei Wuxian shudders and thinks, nope.

Once upon a time, Lotus Pier represented shelter, security, home. He was happy there – now he thinks he was the only one. Jiang-shushu certainly wasn’t, with his head in a fog and no eyes for his children. Yu-furen wasn’t, not at all, with her barbs about bastards and jumped-up orphans who owed her everything she chose to take, be that the flesh from their backs, their sword hands, or even just their dignity. Jiang Cheng wasn’t, and how could he be, torn between his parents and Wei Wuxian like a wind-up toy going this way and that till they broke his spine. Shijie might have been, but he doesn’t want to think about her, or what’s left of his heart will shatter.

Yu-furen was right, and so was her son – he did bring ruin to their home and family – but it wasn’t when he defied Wen Chao. It was much, much earlier than that, when he rode in on Jiang-shushu’s shoulders and looked at them all and thought for the first time, this is mine.

Wei Wuxian refuses to do that to them again. Jiang Cheng deserves a home where he comes first, in his parents’ eyes and his disciples’ too. Shijie deserves to not be bludgeoned into oblivion, hidden behind a pot of soup as her sole accomplishment. He doesn’t think about what Yu-furen deserves, or Jiang-shushu – that’s for them to mend, or not, but either way, he won’t be responsible for it now.

And he deserves – the open road, just like his parents, and a golden core that no one – no one can lay claim to, save himself. It’s the best idea – it has to be, with the relief that’s settling around his shoulders now. It’s like he was holding up a rock, and now there’s a vaguely reassuring quilt.

~*~

So, first things first – he has to get the hell out of Yiling before his well-meaning shushu drags him to where he will bring doom on all their heads. Wei Wuxian is incapable of feeling bad about being himself, but being himself has, historically, not ended well.

He’s going to go be himself – somewhere else.

Where, though?

It hits him like that. A shopping list that starts with respectable clothes, features talisman paper and cinnabar, a decent sword which can’t be – will never be Suibian but will be a start, and has a wishful desire for a donkey tucked away somewhere near the bottom. A list that starts and ends at “money,” which is when he starts to hyperventilate, because his nine-year-old brain is not remotely equipped to deal with the practicalities of life as an enterprising vagrant.

Thankfully, his lunch stays where it belongs and he doesn’t faint a fifth time, because he’s decided that freaking out to the point of unconsciousness is so-last-night, and damn it all, it’s going to stay that way. He’s been an adult once, borne the responsibility for feeding and watering fifty hungry Wen mouths, including the world’s best little radish – strictly not for eating.

He can do it again, once he’s over his impromptu panic attack.

Being nine-and-twenty-two at the same time is hard. No one’s going to question an adult wandering the countryside, even if he looks like a beggar, which Wei Wuxian is not taking up as a career. Prostituting himself is right out as well. He’s a romantic, and he knows he’ll die pining away for a boy who never looked at him with anything but distaste and disapproval before he touches another human being so intimately. He can’t night-hunt without a golden core, and people will buy scrap paper from uneducated cons before they trust a child peddling legitimate talismans, even if he draws them in blood.

Especially if he draws them in blood.

Cultivating the ghost path was an interesting experience, and Wei Wuxian isn’t going to lie to himself and swear to never experiment with it again, not when it won him a war and kept him alive and is just. Plain useful. But he hopes – actually, he gets down on his knees and kowtows to whatever deity’s listening, that he won’t have to.

Was it the resentment of the dead that had finally driven him insane, or that of the living cultivators who kept grabbing for power, no matter what filth it came from? Not that Wei Wuxian ever believed it was filth – spiritual energy is energy, wherever it comes from. But he can appreciate dramatic irony when it literally gets him killed.

He thinks of Wen Ning, meek and gentle except for that one terrible moment when Wei Wuxian lost control and let his best friend kill his brother-in-law, and he thinks it wasn’t the ghosts that were the problem. They didn’t do that to Wen Ning.

He misses Wen Ning so, so much. Wen Ning, Wen Qing, and A-Yuan most of all – A-Yuan is a gaping hole that will never be filled, sorry and thank you be damned – and abruptly, Wei Wuxian knows he’s going to Dafan, where he can see with his own two eyes that his family is safe. That this time, they’ll get to stay safe, and A-Yuan will grow up loved and protected and free, as he should always have grown up.

He doesn’t think about what it’ll take to achieve that. Impossible. Or rather, not yet, so he shelves it and focuses on the things that hurt less. He failed everything and everyone in that first cursed life of debts and borrowed loves. In the end, the only thing he didn’t betray was the flute he carved from the hate-soaked bamboo of the Burial Mounds.

He misses Suibian like a lost limb, even in this body that has never known how it feels to clutch the hilt of a sword and send it dancing through the air. The Suibian-shaped hole in him feels like countless what-ifs and whys. He wonders how it’s possible to feel so much regret now, for a choice he made of his own free will, that he never wanted to take back even when it was killing him?

He’s only slightly horrified to find that he misses Chenqing just a teeny-tiny little bit more. And because he has no self-restraint, he spends the next day fashioning a plain bamboo flute and tells himself he can busk for coins. It’s not a bad way to make some money – in fact, it’s his only career option right now. He knows folk songs and bawdy ditties, because he once grew up in Yunmeng where people know how to party, and he can pull off an excellent repertoire of classics thanks to that year in Cloud Recesses, spent drinking and painting and exchanging music with Nie Huaisang when he wasn’t pestering – the locked box in his heart shakes, and he skitters away from those memories quicker than Yu-furen’s temper.

He forces himself to run through every song he knows and the ones he pilfered from the Lans, feeling viciously, deliciously petty about milking their hallowed archives for his daily dumplings, extra spicy please and thank you.

He plays them all, forcing his fingers through rusty patterns of memory, over and over till he grows blisters on his fingertips and the edges of his lips grow dry and rough.

There’s one last song in his repertoire. It’s been burned into his memory, but gently, like a warm fire on a cold night. A melody that doesn’t come from either Yunmeng or Gusu – the lilts and lifts and endless yearning of which is mapped into his soul. He doesn’t know where he heard it, but he knows that he’ll never, ever sell it for money.

That song feels like it’s the key to that box he’s so deliberately ignoring, terrified of what it’ll open. Of how it might break him, to acknowledge that in this life, he’ll probably never have the privilege of meeting –

Wei Wuxian sets his lips, and doesn’t play that song. And while he’s not playing it, he also manages to very definitely not think, even for a moment, about Lan Zhan.

~*~

Busking for his living has a strange attraction. He has no trouble finding an audience, with his cute little-boy face and his bright smile. He keeps them there with his music, and generally manages to make enough in the day to pay for decent food and, eventually, buy a clean set of cheap, plain robes. It helps that he doesn’t need to pay for housing – the forest near the Burial Mounds suits him fine. It’s almost familiar, so close to resentful energy but clean of it, and no one ventures there to disturb his little camp, not even bandits. For the first time in this life since his parents died, he feels almost, but not quite, okay.

There are bad days too, just as often as there are good ones. It can’t be helped, he knows. The jianghu runs strictly on natural selection, no matter how much philosophy anyone drills into their heirs and disciples, and Wei Wuxian is small and vulnerable, even though he’s not. When people are feeling cruel, they like to hurt children because they’re both those things, and there’s no cure for either except time and a golden core.

That particular problem is quicker to resolve than he thought it would be. Life in exile inured him to isolation, and the abundance of free time is poured easily into the repetition of the early training he had received as a Jiang disciple. Meditation isn’t so hard, with the wind in the trees and the quiet splish-splash of the stream keeping him company. It’s the work of weeks to untangle the threads of spiritual energy in his environment, to circulate them through meridians that he remembers being strong before they were empty, to make that energy his own and coalesce it into a small, perfect little sphere of white-hot magic and power.

Growing his golden core is the easiest thing he’s done, so simple it feels almost like an insult to the time he’d given it away. It’s a blessing he never thought he would experience again in his short first tenure on earth, and the acceptance of that decision washes away in the waves of qi flowing steady and strong through his body that feels young and old at the same time.

What’s left behind is only sorrow and regret. Wei Wuxian hadn’t allowed himself to feel either of those things when he gave Jiang Cheng the most precious gift anyone could think of, a tribute dearer than life itself. And now, when he jumps easily to the highest branches of the tallest tree in the forest, when he practises talismans he’d almost forgotten and makes himself a home that’s light, comfortable and safe from predators with his own magic, pulled from his own dantian, Wei Wuxian knows, with uncomfortable clarity, the extent of what he’d given up.

The shame of how little he received in return.

He goes to sleep furious as a devil on some nights, goes to the edge of the Burial Mounds and wreaks his old-new frustrations on the resentment oozing out of it. It’s an unusual training regime, but it pays off. He’s stronger, faster, better this time, and every time he reaches within to pull out a blast of pure, shiny-clean qi, he feels like weeping and killing and doesn’t know which is worse.

In consequence, he night-hunts a lot. Yiling has never been safer, no thanks to the Wen or the Jiang. He doesn’t spit when the wind blows in either direction – he simply goes out and finds something new to kill with just his talismans and his hands and comes back feeling like a monster soaked in blood. It’s a familiar sensation, and he wears it like a favourite cloak.

When he washes his hands later, he tries not to think of Suibian, tries to tell himself he doesn’t miss the thin, sharp keening of his sword cutting through imps and beasts in clean deep strokes, tries to be grateful that he has a core again, tries to think this is enough.

He fails, and when he’s done, he cries himself to sleep, feeling like a ship adrift on the lakes, its anchor left behind on the docks.

But he gets up every morning, grows his core a little more, plays his songs and earns his keep, and comes home to repeat it all over again, and again, and again.

And just like that, the moon turns twelve times, and Wei Wuxian turns ten.

~*~

Like a flower budding in the winter sun, taking its own sweet time to get there, Wei Wuxian learns to want things again.

Murderously spicy noodles from the chop shop run by the grumpy old popo who’s nothing like the smiling aunties of Lotus Pier, who always has something to bitch about – usually her daughter-in-law – but also always has extra meat dumplings for Wei Wuxian’s bowl.

Robes in practical black, but now lined with a deep crimson, the black blood of a yao mixing with the slanted bleed of the setting sun’s light across the evening sky.

A hut with four walls and a roof without gaps in it, a thick mattress stuffed with cotton that he bought secondhand, so he can go to sleep feeling like a king, under a blanket made of wool and no holes.

Cinnabar and fiddly little tools for working metal and wood, the joy of stretching out a new idea till it shapes into a solid, usable means of cultivation or just a better stool for his scrawny, growing butt when he takes his meals in bowls made of clay with real chopsticks.

Reams and reams of paper, ink and brushes traded for singing advertisements outside the shop, that he covers with notes about things he has to reinvent, things he wants to create now that he has the time.

If he covers the backs of some of those sheets with paintings of a kind-smiling girl, a toddler hugging disembodied legs, a woman with a sharp glare and sharper needles in her hands – that’s no one’s business, because who’s going to know?

He gives in to temptation once, or maybe twice, and his hands sketch the neat lines of a boy with a stern glare and a primly stunning face. The fire gets the first. The second, he keeps, like a guilty secret. 

Wei Wuxian used to be notorious for his terrible memory. He never told anyone it was a carefully-cultivated skill, to forget the things that hurt him, to keep the smile on his face through years of whippings and accusations of his parents’ imagined sins, the jealousy of a younger brother frustrated with his own inadequacies and his father’s neglect. He finds himself missing those days, when he could just choose to not remember, fiercely now. More fiercely than a fierce corpse. Something about being shoved back into himself when his brain was empty of everything save a terror of dogs and a yearning for home has shaken his memories loose. He remembers, without wanting to. Remembers without warning, people and events at a trick of the light, the passing of a shadow, the taste of a sweet treat, a short burst of song in the market square or a phrase he hasn’t heard since he was fourteen.

Wei Wuxian has lived through so much shit. But this child-body of his, this past-new self – it hasn’t experienced any of that, aside from his years on the streets. There’s room in his head now for everything he had pushed aside, or been too overwhelmed by his life to really register.

When the memories trickle back in, it surprises him how much of the good he had forgotten, along with most of the bad.

Yu-furen arguing with Jiang-shushu. Yu-furen drilling him over and over on the training grounds, till he was form-perfect.

Jiang-shushu smiling absently after he came home limping from a night hunt, never asking if he was all right. Jiang-shushu slyly passing him tanghulu after a visit to the market.

Jiang Cheng screaming in his face about the ruin of his family, his hands around his neck, fingers digging deep. Jiang Cheng teaching him to swim so he wouldn’t fall into the lake and drown the next time he ran away.

Shijie leaving him a bowl of soup and not even the promise of goodwill, displaying her wedding finery like a favour, marrying into a clan that wanted him dead. Shijie petting him to sleep, telling stories of maidens lost in the mountains and heroes who adventured to get them back.

A-Yuan throwing a tantrum at bedtime because they had to go to bed hungry. A-Yuan, sitting on his lap, learning the first strokes of the writing-brush.

Wen Qing nagging him about being drunk again. Wen Qing harassing him into helping her restock herbs after a bad night, after a failed experiment, after Jiang Cheng stabbed him, after Lan Zhan didn’t stay.

And Lan Zhan, who didn’t stay, who kept telling him to get lost, who was always angry with him, who didn’t fight injustice with him, who left him at the foot of the Burial Mounds without a goodbye or a promise. Who let him sleep in his lap in a cold, dark cave and killed a monster with him. Who dragged him back to safety after he massacred three thousand men. Who asked him to come back to Gusu, again and again and again. Who never besieged his family. Who scolded him and disapproved of him. Who never betrayed him. Who sang him a song, the song that breaks Wei Wuxian’s heart, the song that he can’t give up, nameless but theirs. Lan Zhan, who maybe told him he loved him, and Wei Wuxian told him to get lost right back.

And somehow, in the insanity of his own making, Wei Wuxian went and forgot all about it.

Wei Wuxian really doesn’t know how to deal with all these revelations. He’s only ten years old, he whines to himself, as though that’ll get him out of it. He can’t take responsibility for any of this just yet! Or ever, ideally.

Being ten-and-twenty-two is really, really hard.

He can’t even blame puberty for  the mish-mash of confused, chaotic feelings it rouses in him, remembering all the things Lan Zhan did do for him – he feels his face turning into a tomato every time he thinks of that soft, smooth voice begging him – I love you, please come back to Gusu with me, I love you, Wei Ying, Wei Ying, Wei Ying.

No one ever said his name quite like Lan Zhan did. Which is good, Wei Wuxian tells himself, because the only other person who called him Wei Ying was Jiang-shushu and he hopes Lan Zhan wouldn’t address him like a mildly indulgent uncle. 

The point is, he really doesn’t know what to do with himself after remembering things that have no business taking up space in his life anymore. And now that he has, it seems he can’t stop thinking about them.

About Lan Zhan especially, who’s a child locked away behind three thousand rules and a mountain’s worth of difference in status and life experience.

Wei Wuxian wants a lot of things these days, but most of all, he wants to get rip-roaring sloppy drunk. Now that he remembers where the nameless song of his heart came from, he can’t stop running it through his head – morning, noon, or night. He only plays it for himself on the worst nights though, when the urge to sit on a roof and guzzle jars of Emperor’s Smile gets overwhelming. Wei Wuxian knows he'll inevitably get to being a pathetic drunk, given his disregard for personal dignity. He should at least wait till he’s fifteen, the night he’s supposed to wind up in Cloud Recesses with the Jiang siblings.

He’s a natural disaster, so he’s probably not going to be able to resist breaking in and poking at Lan Zhan’s pretty face on a rooftop this time either, so he might as well make an occasion of losing his booze virginity.

All-in-all, between earning his living respectably and a golden core that’s growing faster than he dreamed, this second go-around is averaging out to semi-decent prospects, which is reassuring enough to keep him somewhat grounded while he works on his sanity and his to-do list.

He really, really wishes he had a donkey, though. He was happy on the back of a donkey once, when he had a mother and father to accompany him on his travels – no, it was the other way round. He accompanied them. In his new dreams, Lan Zhan’s holding the lead and not looking especially pleased about it, but Wei Wuxian has been seeing Lan Zhan in every trick of the light for years before he died, so he appreciates the view and focuses on achievable goals.

He wants a donkey so bad.

~*~

He finds a grumpy old goat instead.

He hears about it in a teahouse while he’s loitering over his breakfast. A xiezhi, of all things, turned from revered beast to vicious maneater. It can’t be - creatures committed to the deliverance of justice don’t just turn against their innate nature, and they definitely don’t devolve into people-eating frenzies. He thinks it’s a tall tale at first, but he’s a curious cat with a mouse it likes the scent of. So he tracks the story all the way from Yiling to the deep wilds of Qishan and finds a raging goat monster, exactly as advertised.

The xiezhi screams in rage and regret as he plays Clarity and Rest, Clarity and Rest in one endless loop till both songs have melded into a bloated song of please be at peace please be at peace please just shut up and go be at peace.

The destruction of something good and divine is a terrible thing to witness. Wei Wuxian is both witness and killer, but it is necessary to put down things that have been corrupted, no matter how much it hurts. He’s hurting plenty – he’s been through Empathy and a hard battle deep in the backhills of Qishan where no one ever goes, he’s only ten years old, and he doesn’t even have a spiritual weapon to his name.

But here he is, here the xiezhi is, and it’s never been in him to deliver cruelty to the undeserving, the good, the decent.

Lan Zhan’s come-back-to-Gusu face swims before him for just a split-second, and he has to scramble or get gutted by a very angry divine goat with a very sharp, very long horn that’s currently being aimed business-end at his liver. It seems to Wei Wuxian that the xiezhi’s gotten angrier somewhere in the last few seconds, like it can tell he’s being a hypocrite.

Wei Wuxian breaks his own heart a little bit, tells Lan Zhan to get lost, and concentrates on playing for his life. The trouble, he thinks with angry longing, is that it doesn’t matter how much he knows about cultivation, it doesn’t matter that he’s managed it again – a golden core, growing fast, growing strong. He’s only so much without a decent weapon, and the practice flutes he carves from bamboo and wood are – practice flutes.

Chenqing was special, its power coming from the sigils he had carved into it, but the resentment it soaked in before he hacked the bamboo from the ground was what made it strong enough to cross Bichen and not shatter. Wei Wuxian is already on his third flute, and he’s only been playing for upwards of a shichen. Chenqing would have made it easy, and now he has to play a game of endurance that he's too young for.

The good thing is, it’s a divine symbol of justice and purity, so even poisoned out of its intent by human greed and corruption, there’s not much it can do to him besides impale him on baseless charges of being a shady government tax collector or something.

So he throws talisman after talisman at it till he herds it into a holding array, and then he plays every song of cleansing and release that he can recall. He plays them again, and when he runs out, he simply plays as the magic of the fading xiezhi tells him to. It’s a good creature, innately honest, and it knows what it has become, where it must go now.

Still, he plays for two days and three nights before it’s dead, and he’s a ten-year-old who just destroyed a xiezhi. He spends more of that morning staring at the body, letting it sink in. It’s an ugly misshapen lump of matted fur and too-large bones, and a horn crusted over with gore.

“You,” he tells the carcass, feeling like it’s his responsibility to do something about a funeral. He’s not a master of rites yet, but he was once. “You were destined to become a monster. Some things just are.”

Like me, he thinks, and fuck it, because there’s no one else here. He killed a xiezhi. He owes it. He’s too tired to bury it, so he sets about figuring the logistics of a pyre that won’t involve lifting a giant mythological caprine.

“Like me,” he repeats aloud, once he’s made some progress on the woodpile. “I became a monster too. There wasn’t anything else left to do with my life, so I kept at that till it got me killed.”

He swallows, looks at the dead xiezhi and immediately feels guilty. “Okay. Fine. I got myself killed. On purpose. But not really. You see –”

It’s like pulling teeth, and he stops and stutters his way through it. He starts with dogs, and being terrified of dogs, and not actually being all that sorry that Jiang Cheng had to have his dogs taken away because of him. He talks about Yu-furen and devolves gradually into an expletive-filled rant against her, her husband, her children, and the debts of an orphan. He talks about Lan Zhan, and then he can’t stop, because Lan Zhan is his favourite subject of conversation ever, and there are at least five long years to go before he has any hope of seeing him again, and besides, the xiezhi deserves to hear about all the good things in his previous life too, because hearing only of the evils of men must get depressing. He talks about losing everything, by will or circumstance, and he talks about dying as he began – nothing, with nothing. Death behind him, death in front of him, and only a Jiang standing between the two.

The xiezhi can’t tell him whether he made the right choices, can’t kill him for making the wrong ones, because he got to it first. Wei Wuxian explains himself anyway, because it’s the only way he knows to atone for giving it peace and ridding the world of it in the same act.

It must be the right thing to do, because when he’s done, he feels done.

He has enough wood gathered to set the corpse alight. He looks at it for a long, final moment, marvelling and grieving at so much ruined magnificence. There’s blood matted in its fur, but in the silvery light it looks sleek, and the bone-white tips of its claws and horn glint with divine luminescence, even under the old blood.

He shivers and feels the wind lift the hair at the nape of his neck, cool and fervent. It feels right. The spoils of war. It is his right.

The pyre goes up a few minutes later, the fire deep and red and acrid with burning hair and bone. Wei Wuxian waits to gather the ashes carefully into his pack, to light a joss stick and complete the necessary steps of purification before he begins the long trek down the forest and to the farming settlements below. 

He takes the xiezhi’s horn too, wrapped carefully in his spare robe. He can feel it thrum and nudge at his back like an old master, forcing his spine a little straighter as he walks.

He has given his accounts, and he has not been found wanting.

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian walks away from a night hunt that should have killed him and throws himself at his ambitions with a vengeance that comes from total clarity.

To protect the weak, he must be strong.

To stand with justice, he must eliminate evil from the world.  

To live with no regrets, he must give the people he loves a better chance at happiness.

Then, he will be able to say that he’s lived a good life.

He may not have the resources of a privileged sect disciple, but Wei Wuxian is resourceful, and that’s just as valuable. He’s well-read and well-trained, a master of the six arts, learned in literature and poetry besides. He has been a soldier and also a strategist, and he has been the force that won a war. He has been a liar and a killing machine, and he has invented horrors that have been feared and coveted.

Given enough time, he can do anything.

He starts with a list of names.

Wen Ruohan. Wen Chao. Wen Xu. Jin Guangshan. Jin what’s-his-face.

At least a couple of those are cultivators an army might be unable to defeat, head-on. It had taken Nie Mingjue to lop Wen Xu’s head off last time, and only the unexpected betrayal of a sword from the back had killed Wen Ruohan. Wei Wuxian could enter the Wen court, make himself useful and indispensable till he got close enough to do something similar. But then he’ll end up no better than Wen Zhuliu.

Wen Zhuliu.

A just world cannot have a man like Wen Zhuliu in it.

Resolving to kill Wen Zhuliu and actually doing it are two entirely different items on the innkeeper’s menu. Wei Wuxian can do it – and he will – with ingenuity, with pluck, with well-honed skill and maybe a little luck, but before he gets there, he has a long road to walk. He’s barely eleven (and twenty-two!). Eleven-year-olds, even if they possess a golden core and enough skill to put down a xiezhi, can’t just go murdering adult cultivators on a whim. They can’t do it even on the back of careful planning.

And yet. Wei Wuxian doesn’t have much time before he has to cross off all the names on his list. Six years, maybe. So he’s got to get cracking. Gather gossip. Invent talismans. Turn his golden core into a fortress of power. Get far more money than he has now. Figure out an arsenal of tricks and devilry to beguile and bemuse and trip up cultivators used to danger and death lurking behind every corner, and murder them so deftly and quietly that no one will ever know who stole their breaths in the dead of night.

In short, it’s Yiling Patriarch out and Yiling Assassin in.

~*~

The talisman work is the easiest out of everything he has to do. Wei Wuxian invents as he breathes, ideas flitting in and out of his brain half-formed every time he encounters something new and interesting to his imagination, or an old problem that everyone works around like spring water flowing past boulders sticking out of the rocky bottom. Spells for heating, light, cold, and wind are things that he mastered long ago in both lives. He has as many spells for distraction as he can think up, and he's always thinking of more ways to make mischief. So that’s no problem. His biggest priority at the moment is talismans for transportation – he could make like any other competent cultivator and use arrays, but those are flashy, take up too much power, and can be easily interrupted if one’s pursuer is quick enough. With the kind of enemies he’s going to face, Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to take chances. Speed and stealth have always been his greatest physical strengths – it’s not a stretch to extend these qualities to his magic as well.

The answer comes to him with breakfast, taken at a noodle stall that day for a change. Wei Wuxian slurps down the spicy goodness, watching birds flit to and from branches, people moving in and out of doors. His peace is shattered by the dried meats vendor squawking outrage at a cat slinking under his cart and off into the tile-covered gutters, black fur blending in with black shadows till even his sharp, qi-enhanced vision can’t distinguish one from the other.

If it could only be that easy, he thinks. And then, why not?

Slipping in and out of the shadows with the grace and speed of a feline – there’s something rather skullduggery-ish about that whole aesthetic. It appeals to him enormously. That’s the answer, he thinks, even if he’s not clear on the specifics just now. He’ll figure those out. Ink and paper and a little experimenting next to the shadows of the Burial Mounds – easy and done!

He takes a break from his noodles to congratulate himself on his choice of abode. The Mounds might have been his nightmare and then his refuge in another life. In this one, they’re proving to be a font of immensely useful – and practical! – shortcuts to a minor cultivation revolution that Wei Wuxian is currently pioneering in secret. And secret is how it’s going to stay, he tells himself firmly. He can do without every single sect in the jianghu baying for blood on his doorstep again, thank you.

Seriously, if he gets killed off a second time because he decided to mess around openly with resentful energy, his ghost is going to be so mad. At himself, but it still counts. So far, he’s managed to tweak resentment to his needs here and there without calling up even the toenail of a corpse, and that’s how he would like it to stay.

In between the talisman experiments and array alterations, Wei Wuxian tackles the much larger problem of his lack of a spiritual weapon. The world he lives in values outward entrapments of power, he knows. As a sectless orphan of dubious antecedents, he’s already starting this life on the back foot. There’s no need to make things harder for himself by walking around with a golden core strong enough to fly him from one end of Yunmeng to the other of Qishan but no sword.

And yet.

And yet.

He can’t just go out there and replace Suibian.

He thought about it. Once. For an entire horrible half-second. It hurt worse than the shade of Lan Zhan begging him to come back to Gusu. Worse than shijie with a sword in her heart that was meant to spear his. Worse than Jiang Cheng walking away from him with a sneer on his face and Wei Wuxian’s golden core under his belly. Worse than –

Worse than all the rest of it, nearly.

He misses being able to fight. He misses it so much that every morning, he picks up a carved stick and puts himself through every sword form he once knew, again and again till he’s pitch-perfect. He pretends to himself that it’s his beloved Suibian he’s holding, and for as long as he’s moving, it’s enough. But once his muscles give out and he stands panting, thirsty, ready to flop face-first into the leaves underfoot, he finds that some of the sweat on his face drips into his mouth and tastes of salt.

He lets his gaze drift over the swords hanging in the weaponmaster’s display, the swords hanging from the walls of the blacksmith’s forge, the swords rusting in a basket before the pawnbroker’s door.

It’s so easy to turn away from them.

He isn’t entirely stupid, though. He does arm himself with a set of decent daggers, practices throwing knives and buys himself books on hand-to-hand fighting techniques to build on what he remembers from his last life.

But for all that, he can’t continue to walk around weaponless. For one thing – it’s suicidally stupid. For another, it’s extremely suicidally stupid. Wen Zhuliu’s hand won’t succumb to a dagger or a throwing knife. A talisman for blowing things up, maybe.

In fact, that’s not a half-bad idea. Wei Wuxian decides to get on that right away, alongside the transportation problem.

But Wen Zhuliu’s hands are an anthill compared to the force of nature that is his master. To kill Wen Ruohan, Wei Wuxian needs a weapon finer than singing steel, sharper than a tiger’s fangs, and truer than a hawk’s eye. It has to be his own – unwilling to be wielded by any other, even if torn from his hands. It has to be willing to return to him, even if stolen. It has to be unassailable – and as unobtrusive as it must be deadly.

He needs something capable of refining his qi in one breath and bending resentment to his will in the next. He needs something he can carry openly and with pride – yet capable of slipping between Wen Ruohan’s well-bastioned ribs without the man even knowing what’s been done to him.

Wei Wuxian has nothing even close to it, right now. But he could.

He’ll have to craft it himself, just as he’d made the last one. The milk-white horn of a divine beast tempered in resentment, stowed carefully away for all these months. He unwraps it on a pale morning towards the tail end of that winter. Runs a fingertip down it, root to tip.

Then he gets to work.

~*~

She emerges clear and firm in his hands, clever fingers soaked in magic as they whittle into the hollow bone.

Once upon a time, she had been carved from deadwood, hardened to rock-like consistency by the weight of a thousand years of resentment. Blood-drunk and full of lamentation, she had whined shrill and insistent through the air, an endless refrain that demanded to be heard. Her very existence subverted the natural order, and yet she was as traditional in form as he could make her. A single long piece of black bamboo, blowhole and finger holes equidistant as suited to an instrument that yearned to complement a zither.

Now she takes on a new shape; two short lengths of carved bone linked together with a joint of polished metal, and six traditional finger holes spaced to allow for playing in the equal temperament. Into her he etches arrays of containment, of amplification, of resonance and of harmonisation. Qi sparks brilliant and warm between his hands as he grinds and scales; the sharp splinters that break off the sink into the soft fleshy bits of his palms draw blood. Each drop burns as it leaves his body. It is an offering to everyone who died at the end of this horn - evildoers and innocents both, and their hate is congealed into the bone dust that rises in the air.

He finishes sanding off the edges of the mo kong, and lifts the blowhole to his lips. They’ve gone dry and chapped with the passing hours. His hands hurt, and he’s - not sad, exactly.

He plays a nothing tune, just long moments of sound in between rests, winding high and low around the treetops, like a soft summer breeze. She sounds different and still the same. Her song feels softer and deeper, like a chanted dirge, until it swells under his skin with a thumping vibration and raises the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. It’s still as sad and angry as he remembers.

Way less screechy though, which he approves of on aesthetic principles. 

An instrument capable of being heard for its own merits. It’s a lonely feeling, but not any more so than the first time he held her and named her.

Chenqing.

~*~

While he works on his cultivation, Wei Wuxian also finds ways to supplement his funds. It shocks him, how easy it is to earn money. After a life of selling stunted radishes and wheedling Jiang Cheng to line his pockets before that and begging for scraps in Yiling before that, it genuinely shakes him to the core just how easily money falls into his palms in this life.

There are villages dotting the edges of sect territories, where no affiliated cultivator goes because they’re too far from home. There are settlements nestled in the forests and the hills, hard to get to unless you’re a travelling merchant or a fleeing crook. There are border towns, ill-managed and neglected unless they facilitate trade. There are even places like Yiling, well-known but cursed, or disputed between two sects and hence left to their own devices by both.

If he looks carefully, there are so many places that rely entirely on the passing luck of rogue cultivators to rid themselves of hauntings and yao guai. Places rich with night-hunts for any willing and capable cultivator to sink his teeth into. Places desperate enough to accept the help of a child and pay him decently for his work and the corpses of the monsters he lays at their gates when he’s done.

Of course, it’s not that simple, not always. There’s always the magistrate who scoffs at the idea of a child knowing anything about fighting and killing beasts that have adult men terrified for their lives. There’s the headman who worries about shoving a boy into the path of danger that’s proved lethal to the people under his governance. The merchant who won’t pay fairly for the removal of the ghost of his mistress on the grounds of it being too easy, too obvious. The village bully who ran in fright from something in the woods and refuses to allow a kid to profit from the lack of that same fear.

In the end, they all give in. Wei Wuxian stands before them wearing the face of a child with eyes that have seen decades of horror; he wields a flute that keeps their inns merry by night and their streets safe by day; he fights with the best and the worst of them and always wins, and he doesn’t take no for an answer.

So they give in, and he walks away with his dinner secured for free, or a length of precious silk in his bag, or a pouch of honest coin, or herbs to treat wounds and burns. Sometimes, he walks away with nothing, when he can’t bear to take more from someone who’s lost too much, or when he’s decided to help someone who simply doesn’t care at all. But all-in-all, Wei Wuxian begins to make a name for himself as a rogue cultivator who can handle almost anything you throw at him, as a boy with strange eyes and a bright smile who will just as easily play a song for his dinner as he will kill for it.

And what songs he plays!

Night after night, street after street, inn after inn. The songs he practised in the forest trill out from his dizi with the rich, deep timbre of a fine-honed alto. He plays songs of longing and songs that make his audience get up and dance on drunken legs. Songs that set lovers to gazing into each other’s eyes with secret smiles. Songs that get an entire inn chanting bawdy lyrics to thumping feet.

Those nights don’t always pay well, but he takes the laughter and the company in lieu of the loneliness he carries in his soul, bartered away for a few hours of fun and frolic.

He plays the background airs to tragedies of war and comic skits at storyhouses, and he manages to get himself hired for the odd night accompanying qin players at the whorehouses. Wherever there can be music, Wei Wuxian finds a way to insert himself into the proceedings just like he does at night-hunts, and he leaves behind a crowd of listeners with tears in their eyes at the aching beauty of the sounds he produces from his dizi.

Those nights pay the best, but they leave him emptier than before, longing for things he dares not name. Dreaming of sun-bright eyes in a stern face, strong hands clasped on the hilt of a sword that was once his equal.

Comfortably full pockets, hollowed-out heart. It seems he can’t ever have everything.

Who cares, he tells himself on such nights. Falls asleep under the stars, ignoring the space by his side that wants to be filled by Lan Wangji, Lan Zhan, Lan-er-gege. It’s the life he dreamed of having, and he’s living it alone.

So what? He’s not crying.

~*~

Like this, another year passes. Wei Wuxian is discovering just how much one can do in a season, a month, a week, even a day given enough motivation – or desperation.

He wakes up on his twelfth birthday as he did on his eleventh and his tenth. Alone, but satisfied with his progress. Alone, missing the warmth of A-Yuan curled into his tummy, wishing for the solid presence of Lan Zhan at his back, which is weird because he’s never had the privilege of that experience. Nevertheless, he finds himself yearning for it with a hunger that gnaws as malignantly as starvation, burrowing so deep into him that he hurts all over with the loss of a phantom limb. It feels funny, like he wants to be held so badly that he’ll cry if it doesn’t happen right now, so he keeps his eyes shut tight and pretends very hard that it’s okay. That he can feel Lan Zhan behind him, all strong lean lines and a warm arm around him, pulling him against a heart that beats in sync with his own. He pretends and pretends, curls in on himself and wraps his quilt tighter so that he can tell himself it’s Lan Zhan’s warmth, and A-Yuan’s, and he’s not alone.

He has their memories, doesn’t he? Even if it’s not the same, even if what he remembers doesn’t line up with reality. So he’s not alone.

He lies like that for a long time, till he falls asleep again, snoozing in the patch of sunlight streaming in through the window of his hut. When he wakes again, there are the traces of dried tears on his cheeks, but he feels clean, and the day feels welcome.

One whole year, gone in a flurry of night-hunts, tavern-music, and travelling by the goodwill of strangers. It’s been a good year, he thinks, a surprisingly good year. He has accomplished much of what he set out to do – he’s stronger, he has friends in strange homes, and places where he’s greeted with a smile. He has a full money pouch and more to spare, five sets of clothes and warm boots. He can eat meat bought at a restaurant for lunch now, instead of hunting forest game. He has a good weapon, all his own, and a golden core to match – all his own.

He has so much, Wei Wuxian thinks. More than he had, once upon a time. More than he dreamed of having even in this life. It feels good to be twelve (and twenty-two).

And it’s been a good year.

He has five left. They stretch endlessly into the horizon, a long line of days, hours, minutes to spend on refining his plans, distilling his chosen poisons, perfecting the art of seamless murder.

Suddenly, he wants to celebrate. He’s home for a few weeks, and it’s been months since he set foot in Yiling, so why not? The markets should have something good – he thinks a new winter cloak might be nice, or a tassel for his dizi. Maybe both. He has the money. It feels so comfortable, having the money. Like a warm bowl of pork rib and lotus root soup sitting snug in his stomach. It hurts – because it’s a reminder of things he didn’t have before and also things he took for granted. It reminds him of all the potential he’d wasted in one life, frittered away on alcohol and secrets till he’d lost everything he once held dear.

In exchange, he got Wen Qing, Wen Ning, and A-Yuan. And fifty bedraggled refugees who called him their own, kept a place at the table for him every night, and bullied him into sitting there and drinking terrible radish soup.

Soup for lunch, he thinks. Wants. He can have it if he gets the hell out of his bed and this mood that’s dragging him down.

The restaurant in Yiling is the same as it was a lifetime ago, when he’d sat there with Lan Zhan and A-Yuan, and fake-treated them all to lunch. Wei Wuxian stands in the doorway, undecided. Long enough for a waiter to notice and call him to attention in rough-but-civil accents, because he’s a child alone, but well-dressed enough that he must belong to someone decent.

He’s been lost, remembering a day that had brightened his soul just as much as it had hurt in the end, when Lan Zhan left and never returned.

In the end, he steps in and commandeers a corner table by the window. It’s private, but it gives him a good view of the street and the restaurant in one. Wei Wuxian likes knowing where his next threat is coming from after having been caught unawares too many times. And in Yiling, he has learnt to be careful. It’s rare for sect cultivators to visit Yiling, but this is where Jiang-shushu had found him once. Wei Wuxian has so far made an art of avoiding any purple-robed people he sees in his peripheral vision, without even stopping to check if they’re Jiang disciples. He doesn’t want to become one in this life.

The easiest way to refuse an offer is to never stick around long enough for anyone to make you one. It’s a good, sound philosophy, and so far it’s served him well. Got him out of the clutches of more than one drunk man looking for more than a prostitute at the brothels where he sometimes plays. Got him away from more than one kind, grieving family who lost their child to some monster, and wanted to offer him a home in its stead when he got rid of it for them. They’re traps of very different kinds, but Wei Wuxian is excelling at keeping them from closing on his ankles. He’s a hunter, not a deer to be skinned for anyone’s momentary whims.

Yiling is full of traps.

Jiang disciples stay at the forefront of his mind whenever he sets foot in town – it’s the whole reason he began to travel further away from home to live as a rogue cultivator. He knows he’s been making a name for himself in some places – he’s a past master of teahouse gossip and with his current babyface, he can usually wheedle people into telling him anything.

The babyface is the problem, however. He’s too independent and too powerful – and he looks just eleven (and twenty-two) – now twelve (and twenty-two) years old.

He's weird. Wei Wuxian gets it, and he has absolutely no problem with it. He’s always been the odd one out, even when he had a sect to keep him in line and give him some semblance of structure and uniformity. He’s been so weird, in fact, that he got killed for it. Weirded himself right out of the bounds of polite society and made himself a pariah. A very dead pariah. So yeah, weirdness is in his blood. He can’t get rid of it any more than he could exorcise Lan Zhan from his heartbeats.

Attempting the impossible can go fuck itself.

But the fact stands. People remember him, the oddball little swordless rogue cultivator-cum-musician who comes by every few weeks, or comes by only once and leaves behind a story to tell and retell over tea and wine or lunch break in the fields on particularly boring days. 

And people talk.

People talking about how strange he is once got him killed – Wei Wuxian remembers that, too.

He doesn’t worry, not exactly. But he keeps his eyes wide open and his ears perked up extra sharp for the tell-tale sounds of a clarity bell or the arrogant swish of flame-patterned white silk. After all, it’s not just the Jiang who lay claim to Yiling.

Well. Technically. No one lays claim to Yiling. Yiling is really a bit like a tree stump, foxes circling it, waiting for a rabbit to emerge.

And that’s never going to happen. Wei Wuxian has spent far too long married to the place. There are bits of his bones crunched up between the teeth of the corpses that swarm the mountain, his blood soaking into the rocky ground, his soul lost somewhere in the tangle of dead foliage till he woke up nine years old and whole and hungry all over again.

And since then, he has spent nearly three years living on its edges, stealing a bit of its resentment when he needs to power a tricky containment or warding array that straddles the line between acceptable and not, when he needs to try out combinations of talismans that will sneakily distil pure magic from resentment and power a portal that will transport him a few dozen li in a single moment.

It's unthinkable, what he’s been doing. Stand any sect cultivator in front of an audience and the actual word they would use is insane. If they didn’t come screeching in a panic for his head first.

Suddenly, old goat-beard swims into his head, spluttering and gesticulating exactly like that, about heresy and dastardliness and whatnot. Wei Wuxian shudders, and opts to think of a much prettier, much nicer Lan instead. Well, not nice – Lan Zhan was never exactly nice to him. But he was always kind, and righteous, and worried, and worried for him, so – whatever. Nice. If Wei Wuxian wants to call Lan Zhan nice in his own head, he will. The nicest.

Not – somehow – unlike the Burial Mounds. That’s another weird thing - how cooperative and non-threatening it’s being to him. Wei Wuxian doesn’t think anyone else has gone and shacked up right next to the murder mountain of doom. Doesn’t think anyone would be that crazy or that eager to experiment with alternative cultivation.

The Burial Mounds is his. That’s all there is to it. He beat it into submission once upon a time, and for some unholy reason, it remembers.

So the Jiangs and the Wens can both go draw water from a dry well in summer, as far as the mountain is concerned. No one save Wei Wuxian will be able to make anything useful of the place.

It’s neither here, nor there, the question of Yiling.

But it is important that he not let his guard down, that he watch his step and be ready to turn a dark corner or walk into the next shop if it gets him out of sight of a purple robe or a red-and-white one. He doesn’t think either encounter is bound to go pleasantly. He doesn’t want to wait and find out.

The waiter interrupts his thoughts just then, setting down a plate of stir-fried beef gleaming red with chillies and a bowl of rice noodles in rich pork broth. There’s a longevity peach for dessert, sliced attractively on a plate and arranged to look like a flower. There are fried lotus stems tossed in spicy-sweet sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds for a side dish – his favourite snack, and Wei Wuxian seriously thinks of ordering wine to go with his meal – he doesn’t need to draw attention to himself, but also – what street kid doesn’t drink if they can get their hands on a jar?

He's not exactly a street kid, but he could be an errand boy for a well-off merchant. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know if those types drink, but in the end, he decides to not risk it. Not in Yiling.

Besides, if he’s breaking his booze melon, he’s doing it on Emperor’s Smile. Which will require a trip to Gusu – so. Wei Wuxian sadly resigns himself to teetotalling for a few more years, and digs into his birthday lunch. He keeps his chopsticks aimed at his mouth, and one eye firmly on his surroundings. A birthday meal is no excuse for going lax in security. Especially one spent without friends or family to serve as a buffer between him and the world, or a distraction from it.

Same thing, really. He stuffs down an extra-large bite of beef and glowers a little. It seems he can’t get away from maudlin what-ifs today. It’s a day for growing older, and growing older comes with remembrances and regrets. He pops a slice of peace into his mouth next.

It’s sweet. Not as sweet as shijie’s lotus-paste cakes. Definitely not as sweet as her osmanthus jelly cakes. It feels obscene, sinking his teeth into sweet, juicy peaches, silently toasting to his own old age – if he ever gets there – while his mind sees shijie, bleeding out in his arms.

It’s not the Wen he fears, really. Wen disciples, he can handle. It’s the sight of Jiang purple that makes his heart jackrabbit faster in his chest – with anticipation, with apprehension.

Today, however, seems a good day. There’s no one that he might need to worry about. Wei Wuxian scarfs down the rest of his lunch, pays his bill, and sets off towards the market stalls. It’s lively outside, good weather having brought out families with kids and gaggles of giggling maidens flitting like butterflies from combs to hairpins to strings of beads to tassels with cute charms being advertised as “real jade! Most precious and rare blushing jade from the north of Gusu!”

Lan Zhan, taut with embarrassment, his ears flushed red.

Wei Wuxian groans, and decides to forgo the tassels after all. Right opposite the tassel-seller of shady advertising, however, is a paint shop – he can see inks in different colours and brushes finer than the ones he’s using right now. It strikes him that he hasn’t really painted anything – anything good, pretty, a moment captured just for himself, or for passersby to see and praise – in a very long time. Since he was a student at Cloud Recesses, in fact.

He remembers soft, lazy, sunny days spent on the back hills with Nie Huaisang, painting the tall dark-green pines with misty tops, a house hidden away with blue-purple gentians growing wild all around it, competing to see who could better perfect the silvery flash of fish-scales seen through the water of the stream they often wound up picnicking at.

Fuck the cloak, he thinks. There’s time before winter will set in properly – he can buy a cloak another day, or get by with his old one, which is warm enough. Wei Wuxian wants to paint again – he wants the feel of a wet brush gliding smoothly on fine parchment, he wants to mix powders of yellow and blue and red and white and black and see what combinations of colours, what tints and shades he can get out of them. He wants to paint again. He wants to paper the walls of his hut with pretty pictures, and – practicality knocks him sharply in the temple – he thinks he’d like to sell them, if he can, for the joy of knowing that something he created was beautiful and good enough that it could hang in someone’s home. Give them the same joy when they look at it, as he feels when he creates it.

It would be nice to be known for bringing beauty into the world, instead of walking corpses and the choking miasma of hate-fuelled resentment.

It’s a little over half a shi when he walks out of the shop, clutching a precious bundle of paper scrolls, rich black ink and powered paints, fine-bristled brushes with bamboo handles – one of good quality weasel hair, another of thick wolf hair, and a thin one of rabbit hair for delicate detail work. He’s also purchased an easel, though he could easily make one – it’s his birthday, so he can splurge a little, he tells himself.

In the end, he’s spent too much to budget for a thick new cloak, so he cheerfully shelves that for later – it would have been an indulgence, anyway. Not that the painting accoutrements are a necessity – for his soul, maybe, but his body and mind have been doing just fine without them.

Whatever. He just wants to get home and find a pretty spot somewhere, perhaps the overlook by the rocks where there’s a good view of the sunset sparkling on the stream that runs by his hut. He might get to use all his colours, if he times it right – extravagant, but surely he’s allowed to be magnanimous today, if only with himself?

There’s more shopping to do before he can rush home and get to work – he’s outgrown his bracers, and his dizi needs a new cleaning rag and brush. He makes his way to the leatherworker next, and then turns into the alley where the music shops are lined up. There’s a particular one he favours – it’s tucked away in a quiet corner, but inside the owner sometimes holds little concerts for the qin, and occasionally the flutes. Wei Ying has been careful to never play in Yiling, where he cannot afford gossip to be spread about his abilities or his appearance, but he visits just to listen – and to memorise any new songs he hears so he can replicate them for his travelling patrons in the far towns.

He steps inside the cool, dark interior – the owner seems busy with a patron in the inner room, where he entertains richer clients, with space for a qin to be tested without disturbing the other shoppers. Wei Wuxian sticks to the main floor, browsing idly through the stacks of new music, looking for something that appeals, something soft and lilting for the brothel in Miao village, or maybe a rousing folk dance for the aunties from Fen village…

Distantly, he hears the owner thank the patron who’s kept him occupied, hears light footsteps behind him, that pause next to where he stands leafing through sheets of notes.

Purple, in the corner of his eye.

“Xiao gongzi?”

Purple, in the corner of his eye. A voice in his memories, long buried, long mourned.

The song of a pipa player who entertained a scholar bidding goodbye to his friend crumples in his fingers, as Wei Wuxian turns like a marionette on strings to look up at the man in rich purple silk, high-pointed collar circling his throat, violet sash with a lotus-carved clarity bell dangling from it. Silent, so silent – because why should his demons give him any warning before they sneak up on him?

Jiang Fengmian meets his eyes with the gaze of a hunting reptile. His kind, worried, relieved, disbelieving gaze, locked onto Wei Wuxian, keeping him pinned like a moth to an entomologist’s board.

“Wei Ying…?” he asks, in a hush, as though he’s unsure of the answer. As though he’s eager to ask, yet afraid to know. “It is Wei Ying, is it not?”

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian walks through the halls of Lotus Pier now, feeling like he’s forty feet underwater. There’s a sneak-attack behind every corner he turns – ugly truths in the shadows under the eaves, the laughter of his siblings in the sun-dappled swatches of lotus plants, the painful yearning in Jiang-shushu’s eyes, the unforgiving, blistering resentment that ices the air around Yu-furen when she realises who her husband has brought home.

Nothing has changed.

He finds himself grateful for the relentless press of one memory after another, pulling at his ankles like the sticky, soft mud of the riverbed. He feels like there’s a wall between him and everything else, like he’s hearing and seeing things through a curtain of water, dampening all noise and sensation so he can survive this without going mad.

Jiang-shushu – no, he can’t think of him like that, or it’ll come out through his mouth and then he’ll really be in trouble.

Jiang Fengmian gives him the grand tour – showing off, as he takes Wei Wuxian around the training fields, where once Wei Wuxian had outshone every disciple in the sect. Had earned the right to lead and instruct them, the privilege of protecting them all, from the littlest shidi to the eldest.

The covered walkways over the water, where Jiang Cheng once showed him every creaky board and stretches of nightingale floors to trap the unwary sneak.

The honey-hued wood that glows in the sunshine, rising out of the water like a sculpture crafted by a master’s hand. Shijie with her skirts trailing over the wood, the sun glinting off the pins in her hair, a basket of soup and baozi in her arms.

The lakes, awash with a sea of pink-and-purple lotuses, brilliant green seedpods, leaves thick and shiny with fish flitting between the stems, many-coloured fins flashing rainbows where the sun hits the water just right. Swimming with Jiang Cheng in the long summer afternoons, winding up with a picnic of roasted fish they’d caught with their own hands, making a competition of it.

Lotus Pier blooms, and Wei Wuxian is tempted to say “yes, please” when Jiang Fengmian asks him that all-important question of destiny. He knows he will be be asked – he knows why he has been brought here, why he is being shown the best of Lotus Pier like a maiden dressing up in her finest jewels.

He wonders why Jiang Fengmian wants him so badly. On the heels of that, is the darker, niggling doubt that he has refused to give voice in both lives, but which hounds him for attention anyway. Like a damn dog, it’s latched on to his sleeve and won’t let go.

Yiling belongs to Yunmeng. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know when Jiang Fengmian was told of his parents’ deaths – he knows it was soon enough that the sect leader spent at least two years searching for him.

Why did it take so long to find him? If Jiang Fengmian can recognise him on sight, why did it take him so long to visit Yiling, where his parents were last known to have vanished, where he spent months squatting next to the inn they had left him at? Why, when today is not the first time Jiang Fengmian has visited Yiling, and so it could not have been the first time he did so when Wei Wuxian was nine years old and starving for a home and a family?

Why did he bring him home, let him call him uncle – shushu – but never gave him the right to call Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli didi and a-jie? He knew the way his wife piled a mountain of unpayable debts on Wei Wuxian’s shoulders, from the moment she permitted her husband to keep him in her home – hers, whatever anyone else might think, Jiang Fengmian always bowed to his wife in all respects but one. Why did he keep Wei Wuxian so beholden to those loudly, publicly announced debts, in exchange for an orphan’s boon?

Why, when the Wens came, when he left them tied to a boat and set them adrift towards the jaws of war and devastation, did he tell his children he loved them, tell his children to stay safe – and tell Wei Wuxian to keep them so at any cost?

Wei Wuxian knows an order when he hears it. He knew it then, even if he never wanted to acknowledge that it was so.

Why does he not ask Wei Wuxian now, where his parents are? What he’s been doing alone in Yiling for so many years? Who keeps clothed and fed well enough that he no longer looks like a street rat?

Why did he never openly deny that Wei Wuxian was not his son, that Cangse Sanren never betrayed her husband for him?

Why did he never say, “Wei Changze was not my servant, and so his son is not the son of a servant”?

So many questions. Ugly, like leeches in the water that are found only when you come back home and strip your robes, and suddenly there’s a line of them sucking the blood from your thighs and your armpits. That’s when it hurts – when you see them with your own eyes and must acknowledge their existence. When you can’t pretend you made it out of the lake unscathed.

There’s a lot about his old life that doesn’t add up. There’s a lot about this life that doesn’t add up, either. He still doesn’t know how Jiang Fengmian recognised him. He didn’t question it in his first life, because he’s been a scared and desperate child, who had grown into a scared and desperate adult. The trouble with this life is that it has an overabundance of time in which to think about things. 

Wei Wuxian tries desperately to not look at it deeper, because the monsters lurking beneath the surface might ruin him. And it doesn’t matter now.

There are no answers. There may never be any answers, to all his hurts, all his doubts and hesitancies.

Jiang Fengmian never wanted another son. He wants Wei Changze, perhaps. Wants the shadow of his protector standing behind his own son, keeping a boy with a volatile temper and an inability to make friends on an even keel with the rest of the world.

Or perhaps Wei Wuxian’s reading too much evil into a man who was and who remains simply kind, but nothing more. Kind enough to offer a boy a home, but that’s all. Kind enough to give him a sword and a way of life, but not the love or protection of a father. Kind enough to praise his merits and indulge his mischiefs, but not protect him from the consequences of anything he does.

What is he meant to be here, he wonders, tired in body and soul. A whipping boy? A beloved nephew? A marker of a man’s guilt and longing?

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know.

He doesn’t want to find out, either. Whatever the truth is, it will hurt.

And he has the feeling that Jiang Fengmian is not a man given to telling the truth, in any case. Or, you know, he could have told his wife he loved her. That he loved their children. That he loved his heir, more than anything.

“What do you think?”

He blinks. Somehow, they have reached one of the outer pavilions of the sprawling compound. A cosy little sun-warmed deck looking out towards the setting sun, gentle ripples of water lapping at the polished planks. He knows this little corner, too. He knows all the corners and secrets hidden inside Lotus Pier.

Here, he had loved to spend winter mornings with Jiang Cheng and his shijie, painting the light on the water, shijie’s smile, his shidi’s frowns. Yu-furen had rarely come to these distant edges of her home, and here they could have peace after morning drills. In this little pavilion, Wei Wuxian had found it easiest to meditate, surrounded by everything he loved best.

He takes in a breath of warm, flower-scented air. He is no longer Wei Wuxian of Yunmeng Jiang, da-shixiong, shijie’s favourite. He never can be that again. It is the price of all his sins in his last life. This is what he gets, for losing control of himself, of Wen Ning, of the Yin Hufu.

That life is gone. He had killed it with his own two hands.

He is Wei Wuxian, son of Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren. Left motherless after his a-niang died in a night-hunt close to the Burial Mounds. Left orphaned after his baba succumbed to the injuries and the broken heart he had sustained in that same night-hunt. He is Wei Wuxian, who grew up in the middle of nowhere, with a father who trained him in swordplay and knife-throwing and the basics of cultivation. He is Wei Wuxian, alone with his back against the wall and the world standing wary and unwelcoming in front.

He is Wei Wuxian, who has regrets and slickly prepared lies tripping off the tip of his tongue.

“Lotus Pier is beautiful, Jiang-zongzhu. As lovely as baba always described it to me. I wish he could have seen it before he passed.”

“I see…it’s been a while, I gather?” Jiang Fengmian’s eyes are mild, but Wei Wuxian can feel the alligator, watching patiently through the reeds. Waiting for its prey to come close enough, so it can snap its jaws around his ankle.

“Long enough, sometimes. Not that long, sometimes.” He punctuates his answer with a too-bright smile, knowing it doesn’t come out quite right. He’s an accomplished liar, and this isn’t the first time he has lied about his so-called origins, in this life. But lying to a farmer in some far-flung village is not the same as lying to the man who was his father, in another life. Wei Wuxian is uncomfortable with this whole situation, and he can’t fully hide it.

But that’s useful in its own way – time the shrugs just right, deflect, deflect, smile and deflect like his life depends on it – he won’t fool Jiang Fengmian into thinking he’s all right, but he will fool him into thinking he’s troubled for all the wrong reasons.

“And did your…baba ever tell you about me?” Jiang Fengmian pauses on the word, a little smile stretching the corners of his mouth, like he’s amused at the rather childish way in which Wei Wuxian refers to his dead father. Amused, but indulgent. It’s a familiar expression on Jiang Fengmian’s face, and it makes the breath catch in Wei Wuxian’s throat. He nearly expects to feel a gentle hand smoothing down his hair before shooing him on his way.

It feels condescending as fuck, for some reason.

He realises that he’s let the silence drag out a little too long. “Baba said you were his old friend. He said he was a disciple here before he married a-niang.”

Jiang Fengmian waits for him to continue, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t trust himself with these lies, with this man, so he says nothing and watches disappointment drag down the corners of his once-uncle’s eyes, the corners of his mouth, till he looks like the defeated man he often was in the end. Something in him can’t bear that, so he leans forward a little, and shares a confidence – “He also said you were the kindest man he knew.”

That wins him a little smile – a sad one, but it’s better than whatever was going on with the other man’s face before.

“He never talked much. I don’t suppose his habits changed. You’re so like him in every way. From looks to comportment. You sitting here before me now, it feels almost like looking into the past. They seem to have raised you well, him and your a-niang.”

This is the first time in either life that Wei Wuxian has been told he resembles his father. Another uncomfortable shrug hunches his shoulders. “Baba did, mostly. A-niang passed when I was very little…I don’t remember her much. Baba never talked a lot about her, or anyone else. But he raised me with his best, and he was the best baba, so…,” he trails off, horrified to find tears in his eyes.

It’s a lie, of course. A bald-faced, shameless pack of seedy, pathetic falsehoods that he’s feeding this man, who has invited him into his house – for a meal, nothing else so far, but Wei Wuxian has lied enough, to enough Jiangs, in one life. He hates that this is how he’s beginning with them in this second chance too.

He swipes his sleeve across his eyes, furious with himself for getting caught in Yiling, where he had known to be careful – and yet. Furious at this whole uncomfortable situation, furious even at Jiang Fengmian for dragging him back here to relive his mistakes without a by-your-leave.

If he’s going to start asking him about his mother next, Wei Wuxian might just throw himself into the lakes and swim for it.

Everything about this – all of it – is so awkward. Hideously, horribly, hilariously – if he weren’t living through it right this moment – awkward.

Thankfully, they’re interrupted by the servants before the conversation can go down thornier paths. Trays piled with bowls of soup and bowls of rice, platters of braised pork and roasted lotus seeds are set out on a low table that one of the servants has carried in with the food. All faces he knows – knew, once upon a time, faces that smiled at him, indulged him with treats when Yu-furen wasn’t looking, names running higgledy-piggledy through his head, as he keeps his mouth buttoned up tight so he doesn’t give anything away.

He had loved these people, once. He had been willing to give up a hand to keep them safe from Wens, once, and he had taken a whipping from Zidian for that same reason – once.

And it hadn’t worked then.

So he sits and catalogues them silently, his once-beloved people, as they treat him like the young master he isn’t, once again, as they return his wide-eyed staring with smiles and leave behind a feast when they go.

Jiang Fengmian piles a bowl with food for him, and Wei Wuxian’s heart clenches so sharply in his chest that it might stop beating.

It tastes like the ashes of his home.

It tastes like coming home, but as a stranger.

They eat, and they talk about little things. Important things. Where he lives – here and there, nowhere, he likes to travel. What does he like – music, and painting, and helping people, and rabbits. Is he protected – very well! His baba taught him how to fight, he has good knives that throw true, his daggers are always sharp. What kind of music does he play – everything, anything, tunes that make people dance and make them sigh; he’s popular at taverns – Jiang Fengmian’s mouth turns down again at this, and Wei Wuxian curses himself for saying too much, letting his stupid mouth run away from him again, comforted by familiar food and the buzz of dragonflies over the flowers in the lake.

The scent of lotuses is everywhere, petals rotting in the muddy water and clean fresh air. It wraps around him like a grandmother’s hug, warm and well-known, well-loved as a matter of course. He feels drunk on simple pleasures. Feels the bite of danger at his heels.

Jiang Fengmian looks at him with eyes that go soft, and hard, and worried by turns. Those eyes don’t tell him what they want.

When lunch is finished, he invites Wei Wuxian to show him the talismans he’s invented, so he follows helplessly into the cool, airy study where the sect leader works at his papers and keeps his accounts, to show off what he’s learned, and what he’s improvised for himself. He tries keeping it simple, age-appropriate – he doesn’t show off the talisman he’s perfected for jumping a hundred li at a go, nor the one that lets him vanish into shadows like that thieving black cat from the market. The one that temporarily allows him to take over the will of another human, he definitely doesn’t dream of bringing out.

But he demonstrates the simpler ones – the one that helps keep his tea and his blanket warm, the one that bursts into a swarm of brightly-coloured butterflies, the one that keeps his fire burning without the expense of fuel. Simple, everyday talismans, but Jiang Fengmian’s eyes shine all the same, and Wei Wuxian’s shoulders straighten with pride even as his heart sinks to his boots.

If Jiang Fengmian wanted to offer him a home, family, a place to belong and people to love as his own, he wouldn’t need to drag it out like this. Would he?

He wouldn’t need to assess Wei Wuxian’s skills, his history and upbringing, as if he’s evaluating how much of an asset Wei Wuxian might be, or how much of a liability.

Would he?

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know.

He wishes he had a fan to snap open in front of his face. To flutter around and demur behind. To use as a pretence of uselessness. Maybe Nie Huaisang did know a thing or two.

The sun is beginning to sink low when Jiang Fengmian takes him to the training grounds again. The hour is quiet and soft, pink-violet sky above and water glimmering copper-orange all around. Jiang Fengmian continues his gentle but thorough interrogation as they make their way slowly under the broad colonnade that leads from the study to the wide, open-air fields where earlier that day, rows of disciples could be seen running through sword drills and archery stances.

Jiang Cheng had not been among them, and Wei Wuxian has been thanking all that stars in the sky for it. He can see the shadow of his martial siblings behind every pillar and post in this house of haunts. He is not yet ready to be confronted with their flesh and blood selves.

He is distracted by Jiang Fengmian wanting to know why he carries no sword – that’s an easy one, though it hurts like needles in his fingertips, to think of Suibian. Once his, lost forever. It’s easy to let that old grief suffuse his voice when he replies that his father’s sword was lost on the same night-hunt that took his mother. It is easy to elaborate, in response to further questioning, that he isn’t a complete heathen. That he does know sword forms, if only with a wooden practice sword. It’s easier still, to deflect by boasting a little of his skill with his daggers. To say he’s undefeated, so far.

It's true. He is undefeated, because the only things he’s fought against with his daggers are yao and corpses, which don’t usually come in the form of expert swordsmen.

There are few disciples out at this time of the evening, Wei Wuxian recognises the three who still remain as his most dedicated shidi, once upon a time. He carefully doesn’t repeat their names to himself, the better to pretend he doesn’t know them. The better to bow and smile his greetings when Jiang Fengmian introduces them to each other.

Li Feng. Zhai Qing. Deng Chao.

Wei Wuxian bows to them all, more deeply than he should. He remembers fighting with them by his side and at his back. He remembers Zhai Qing taking a sword to the gut meant for him. He remembers drinking with Li Feng in the aftermath of a terrible skirmish they’d nearly lost. He remembers Deng Chao, who was lost before the Sunshot Campaign even began, on the terrible day the Wen came to take Lotus Pier.

He remembers that Li Feng favours his left flank a little too much, that his footwork is solid but his hands just a little slow to catch up. He remembers that Zhai Qing is easy to rile up, that he prefers a whirling, fast, brutal barrage of attacks, but that he tires easily as a result. He remembers that Deng Chao is a steady fighter, able to spar for bout after bout without being winded, but unimaginative in his parries.

He remembers, and so he defeats them all soundly. With his daggers. With the wooden swords Jiang Fengmian digs up and has them all go rounds in turns. One-on-one. Two-on-one. Three-on-one. Back to one-on-one. 

It’s so easy.

He’s done all this before. He taught these boys once. He led them, once, on night-hunts and into battle. He was better than all of them when he was learning all this for the first time, and now he is a master.

It’s stupidly easy.

The end result is what it was always going to be – three winded Jiang disciples on their backs, staring at the street rat in shock and awe, rising to thump his back in congratulations, begging him to visit again, challenging him – they’ll win next time, he’ll see! – asking him to teach them that thing he did with his right wrist and that perfect swivel of his foot. 

Wei Wuxian wants to say yes. He wants to come back. Heavens help him, he might want to stay.

Because he knows that he has passed all of Jiang Fengmian’s tests.

Because he knows what he will be asked. Because he knows he’ll have to say no.

Wei Wuxian, ah, Wei Wuxian, he laments silently, seriously, what are you trying to do?

He doesn’t get a chance to find out.

“Well, well, well! A fine young master visits my home, beats my disciples, and doesn’t even bother to greet me?”

Yu-furen’s voice, when it cuts through the warm camaraderie of boys dusty and warm from a good fight, is like a bolt of lightning splitting the sky in half.

She calls him a fine young master with an inflection that is acid poison, sickly sweet but not quite. Violence skulking beneath a porcelain-thin veneer of civility.

He knows, and she knows – they all know, the mistress of Lotus Pier is not trying to be civil.

For a moment, Wei Wuxian’s back sizzles, with the echoes of a crackling whip on his flesh. For a moment, he can smell roasting meat.

In the next, he straightens his shoulders and slips on the thickest of his faces. His brightest, more carefree smile, and he bows. “Greetings, Yu-furen. I did not know you were at home. This one is Wei Wuxian. I believe you knew my parents.”

He doesn’t know what makes him say it. But he has. Thrown it down between them like a gauntlet. Maybe he’s curious, he wants to see what she’ll do with the weapons he’s just handed her.

He does not recommend death as a cure for masochism. It’s a total scam.

“Ziyuan,” Jiang Fengmian says from behind him. A hand comes to rest on his shoulder, steady and warm. “I found him in Yiling. After all these years, Ziyuan.”

Almost proprietary, and Yu Ziyuan notices.

“He looks well, does he not? And with his mother’s smile! What do you think?”

Wei Wuxian manages to keep his jaw glued shut, but it’s very touch-and-go. Of course, now he decides to talk about his mother. Jiang-shushu’s full of surprises today, isn’t he?

On one hand, Wei Wuxian appreciates all this random information about his parents. He really, truly does. Sometimes, Jiang Fengmian really is the best person.

On the other hand, if he’s trying to coax his wife into thinking kindly of him, Wei Wuxian can tell him right now, that boat’s sunk. Yu-furen has hated his mother since before he even existed. What on earth is Jiang Fengmian thinking, tackling his wife with such an absence of tact?

Wei Wuxian wants to laugh. Or cry. Possibly both. He might be feeling a little hysterical right now, which is on theme, because Yu-furen’s puffing up an extra inch with each word that comes out of her husband’s mouth. This won’t end well.

The three disciples have vanished, because they’ve got self-preservation instincts. He eyes their retreating backs wistfully.

“Cangse Sanren’s son, I presume.” She smiles at her husband and his hapless captive, who really doesn’t want to be here anymore. There’s nothing welcoming in that smile. It’s a slash of teeth and bloodied lips, a shark’s grin before it lunges for a bite. “Wei Changze’s son too, I presume?”

So that’s how it’s going to be. Not for the first time, Wei Wuxian wishes he had cultivated the power of disappearance instead.

He thinks about teleportation for a maybe solid ke before Yu-furen’s signature furious hisses wrench his attention right back.

“Fengmian!” she’s currently spitting, “you dare, in my own house, in front of a rat you picked off the street!” 

The sect leader’s hand tightens on his shoulder. “I found him in Yiling,” he returns mildly, slipping through the cracks of his wife’s anger like an eel. “So close…all this time, he was so close, and I only just found him. Ziyuan. He plays the dizi – he’s been taught well.”

“No doubt!”

“Wei Changze has raised his son well. He’s dead, Ziyuan.”

“And I suppose you can’t bear that. His son, who should have been your son. Now that he’s available for picking, I suppose you won’t stop at anything to make it so. After all, my son has never been enough for you.”

Wei Wuxian notices with a jolt that she hasn’t come alone. Her son stands behind her. Jiang Cheng stands behind her, and he looks – the same. The exact same, so much that Wei Wuxian forgets the argument going on above his head, forgets the sharp digs being thrown at his parentage, forgets the mess his presence has dragged in behind him. Forgets to breathe, as he takes in the boy. Sharp-chinned, sharp-eyed, suspicion in every line of his face and body. So quick to turn into resentment, that suspicion. So quick to anger, so quick to judge and nag and spit at him like an alley-cat.

It's funny, how he had once loved this boy so much, he had carved out the anchor to his own soul and given it to him, just to give him a future. This boy, who eyes him warily, his eyes flickering between his parents and the strange smiling boy they’re fighting over like he’s a piece of meat.

Their gazes catch, and Wei Wuxian recoils instinctively, expecting rage, hot vitriol caking his face and hands while he hurriedly wraps his secrets closer to his chest.

“Jiang Cheng…” It rushes out of him unbidden, a stream of excuses and apologies ready to fall off his lips. He clamps them shut before he can say something monumentally stupid and ruin things even further, but his casual use of her son’s name hasn’t escaped Yu Ziyuan’s attention.

“And this is an example of excellent child-rearing, Fengmian? No, don’t you dare – be quiet! You weren’t given leave to address my son with such familiarity, you brat! You’ll address him as Jiang-gongzi, or you’ll not speak to him at all.”

The force of her tirade, her outrage is such, that it infects her son, who raises his chin higher, offence sparking in those dark eyes. Infects the dog, hidden by flaring purple robes, that Wei Wuxian never noticed till now, when it steps forward, growling softly.

He manages not to scream, but he can’t help scrambling back in red-hazed panic, attempting to run away but unable to because of the iron grip on his shoulder, clawing at Jiang Fengmian’s sash and sleeves as he twists and hides behind his broad girth as a second resort.

“Get it away from me, please, get it away! Away! Please, get it away!”

His abruptly outlandish behaviour is the last straw for Jiang Cheng – no, Jiang-gongzi, who loses his temper and barks at him indignantly, “Jasmine’s not going to hurt you! She’s just a dog anyway, what are you acting so pathetically for?”

Wei Wuxian would like to tell him that Jasmine is a demon from hell and he can act even more pathetically than this if it gets that slobbering beast away from him, but all that comes out of his mouth is more begging and pleading to get that thing away from him, or to get him away from that thing, and there’s a scream bubbling in the back of his throat, kept tightly packed in there by the last of Wei Wuxian’s restraint, because he doesn’t want to give Yu-furen or her son more ammunition against him, but at this point he has very little face left to lose, so –

“It’s all right, Wuxian, the dog is gone, she’s in her kennel now. She’s locked away for the night, you won’t see her again today. It’s all right boy, breathe.”

He manages to hold it together, in the end. When the terror clears from his mind, he’s crouched in Jiang Fengmian’s arms, clinging to his sleeves and trying to use them as some kind of blanket-tent to protect himself with. The Jiang sect leader is bent over him, concern etched all over his face. Yu-furen is nowhere to be seen, having stormed off after a strident declaration that “the brat is not to be kept; he has a home, clearly, send him back to it, Fengmian,” but Jiang Cheng has returned, presumably from locking his dog up, and is eyeing Wei Wuxian with extreme disgust.

“Tch.” He sniffs and turns away, glaring, when he notices Wei Wuxian looking at him. “You heard father. Jasmine’s gone. She doesn’t want to be around you either, you crazy weirdo!”

In every life, it seems.

Wei Wuxian can’t help it. Maybe it’s the relief that floods through his limbs, making him loose and lax, or maybe he is just a crazy weirdo. He flops back on the ground, a bundle of helpless giggles and tears.

“I’m sorry!” he gasps. “I’m sorry! It’s just…there were dogs on the street sometimes, and they used to chase and bite me when I went to the market, and I…” Jiang Fengmian pats him consolingly, making understanding noises in his throat, and he giggles and sniffles some more till he finally calms down.

By the time he’s recovered enough to stand up on wobbly feet, Jiang Cheng has vanished too. Wei Wuxian doesn’t mind. He would have hated saying goodbye, anyway.

At the gates, Jiang Fengmian asks him to stay. Just for the night, because it’s late, because he hasn’t yet discovered where Wei Wuxian will go, a (twenty-two-year-old!) child walking out into the world, alone. Just for the night, and they can talk more in the morning – presumably about whether Wei Wuxian would like to stay forever.

He declines before he can consider it, and bows low to avoid seeing the man’s disappointment.

“Call me Jiang-shushu, at least, in your father’s memory,” he says when Wei Wuxian bows to thank Jiang-zongzhu for his kindness and hospitality. The request curls in his chest like a cat finding a comfortable lap to nap on, kneads into his heart with soft-furred paws and sharp claws, and he cannot bring himself to refuse such a simple binding.

“Write to me often. Once every two weeks, so I know you are safe,” he asks, and Wei Wuxian cannot refuse that either.

When he leaves at last, it feels like he is wading out of the belly of a great, tentacled beast as it slumbers around him, unwary of what has escaped its clutches.

It feels like relief.

~*~

It takes him a week to shed the bone-scraping awkwardness lingering from his nightmare visit to Lotus Pier.

All right, so it hadn’t been that bad. He’s still in one piece, isn’t he? No Zidian-induced scars, no sanity-scrambling meltdowns, and despite her magnificent disdain for him, Yu-furen hadn’t even dented his face a little bit! He’s heard much worse from her, after all. Once a woman’s threatened to cut your sword arm off, she has to work hard for her other threats to sound scary.

And after all that drama, in the end, Jiang-shushu hadn’t even tried very hard to make him stay.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how he feels about that. Doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to care, so he flings any and all Lotus Pier related twinges in his chest far away, out of sight and out of mind, till it’s time for his fortnightly update to the Jiang sect leader.

Having to write so many letters on the regular is uncomfortable, but he’s soothed by the fact that he’d escaped before Jiang-shushu thought to ask him for a return address. So at least he doesn’t have to deal with getting any mail back – not that a return address will matter when spring comes, because Wei Wuxian is planning to be on the move once again.

This will be his tenth winter without a proper home, without his parents, and his fourth without even the comfort of Lotus Pier to bolster him through the long days with little to do, the freezing windy nights. It sounds melancholic when he puts it that way, but a decade of hard living has inured him to ordinary comforts. He prepares for the coming season secure in the knowledge that at least he will be warmer and better fed than before, because of the talismans he has perfected to keep his cabin toasty and lay traps for the sparse game that populates the forest – his forest now, as he has come to think of it since no one else ventures there however desperate, due to its proximity to the Mounds.

Nevertheless, life will be easier if he can catch something bigger, salt and preserve it so he doesn’t have to rely on the bad luck of an unwary animal to feed himself properly. The paints took away most of his spare funds, but he has enough for a good quiver-full of arrows. 

He walks to Yiling basking in the crisp autumn morning like a cat, enjoying the sun on his face and the chill breeze ruffling his ponytail. The arrows are purchased and stowed away in his ratty old pack, and then he returns to the music store to buy cleaning things for his dizi, and maybe take another look at the song of the pipa player. He hadn’t had a chance to memorise it the last time, thanks to Jiang-shushu creeping up on him like a ghost.

The bit of silk and the long-handled brush also go into his pack, next to the arrows, and nearly slip out again, because the old thing is threadbare and full of holes now. Wei Wuxian is decent at needlework – has had to learn how to be, due to his long stretches of poverty in both lifetimes. But a new pack might be better than trying to patch this one up again for the umpteenth time. It might last him the winter, but it won’t do when he goes travelling again in the spring.

Mentally juggling his finances, he stops by the pawnbroker’s, because he can’t afford new anything right now. He can’t bring himself to regret splurging on the paints and the easel, however. It’s been mere days, but he’s already been up to the ridge to begin painting the view, and the peace it brings him is worth every bit of silver he’d forked out. He’ll have to work extra hard this spring, to make up for it.

The pawnbroker is well-stocked, as he always is right before winter. There’s more than one rogue cultivator or farmer in need of funds to see himself and his family through the season, and right before winter starts is a good time to go second-hand shopping, in Wei Wuxian’s experience.

He eyes the swords and a set of butterfly knives in the display window, before his attention is snagged by a set of longbows, surprisingly well-made with smooth, polished wood. He lifts one up and tests the give and the string – it really is a pretty good bow. He feels sorry for whoever was desperate enough to sell it. He wavers over it for a while, indecisive. He needs a new bow to go with his arrows; he’s growing fast in strength and height, and he’s already outgrown the bow he carved for himself the summer before last. He could do the same thing again – he’s a competent enough woodworker though he hates the slog of it, but a nice, strong bow like this one would last him years. It’s made for an adult, but that’s no problem to Wei Wuxian, who was a master archer once upon a time, and has re-honed those skills in his new-old body till he’s better than he used to be. He can adjust till he grows into its size, and it’ll be easier than spending weeks slaving over a log till he’s got himself something passable with his own hands.

He bounces into the shop, cheerfully waving a greeting to Gao Ronghui, who waves back from where he’s finishing up with a customer. “Xiao Wei! It’s been a while since you’ve shown this poor lonely grandpa your face. Do you have anything good to sell me, or are you buying?”

“I’m a customer today, lao ye, so what do you think?”

“Ah, but they’re all customers, you cheeky brat,” the old man lectures him, “whether they’re buying or selling. Now, what do you want?”

“You couldn’t afford the prices I’d charge you.” Wei Wuxian sticks out his tongue, and neatly dodges a whack from a rolled-up account-book. “Forgive me! Forgive me! I’ll behave, lao ye, so no one thinks you entertain miscreants in this respectable establishment!”

Gao Ronghui snorts, but lets it go. He likes Wei Wuxian, as do most of the shopkeepers in Yiling whom he deals with. He’s a sunny child, or he knows how to pretend to be one, and he learnt a long time ago that smiling faces net better luck than big, sad eyes and a beggar’s clawed hands.

“I’m looking for a new pack, do you see the state of mine? If I trapped a pheasant in here, away it would fly – in one hole, and out the other!”

“There’s a good haul of packs in the back corner there, go see what you like, and bring it up here. My back’s giving me hell this morning, I can’t bend over a crate for you. What I wouldn’t do for a good errand boy, I say.”

“I got some good tea for aches and pains when I was night-hunting in Jiayu this summer. I don’t really need it, Look how big and strong I am! I’ll bring it up for you next time I’m in town – it really works, yeye!”

“And how would you know, if you’re so big and strong that you don’t need it?” Gao Ronghui snorts. “Get yourself a decent pack, and get out of my shop, you with your tall tales. There’s even a qiankun bag in there, would you believe it? Some poor cultivator left behind a whole lot of good stuff – that’s his bow you were eyeing just now, don’t think I didn’t notice!”

A qiankun bag! If only – Wei Wuxian wishes for one with all his heart, every time he has to pack up his life and haul it around on his back for weeks at a time. A qiankun bag would make his life so much easier, and make him look like a more respectable cultivator – but he can see the shrewd glint in Gao Ronghui’s eyes – it won’t come cheap. The man might be kindly and given to a good laugh, but he knows the value of a good sale. 

So he tamps down his disappointment, and flashes a devil-may-care smile at the old man. “Gonna give it to me cheap? Because I’m poor just now, you should know. Why else would I come here?”

He has to dodge the account-book again for that, but he made the old man laugh, so it was worth it. He sorts through the crate of packs and finds one in good condition, with a few tears that he can easily sew up, Gao Ronghui will let him have it cheap for the damage. He can’t resist picking up the qiankun bag, however, reaching into it to test the magic, checking it from all angles to see if it’s the real thing. Can’t resist bringing it up to the counter, even though he knows he won’t be able to afford it.

“How much for this one, and this one too, lao ye?”

His heart sinks when he hears the prices. He can afford the plain pack, but not the other. He’d known this, but it’s hard to swallow his disappointment all the same. Gao Ronghui spots it, and crinkles his eyes at him, kind but firm.  

“I’d knock it down a few coins if it weren’t a rare item, Xiao Wei. But a qiankun bag doesn’t fall into my lap every year – there’s cultivators who’ll pay a good price for that one, and I’ve got grandkids to feed, thanks to my useless drunkard of a son.”

Everybody in Yiling knows about Gao Ronghui’s useless drunkard of a son, who has three children and no wife to help him raise them. 

Wei Wuxian sighs. “I get it, yeye. It’s fine – I was being too big for my boots anyway. How much for that bow? Since you’re ruining all my hopes and dreams over here, maybe you can give me that for a discount?”

Another snort, but the price the shopkeeper names isn’t that bad. He could buy the bow and the plain pack, and scrape by through the winter if he doesn’t buy anything else. Wei Wuxian thinks it over, considering, when an idea strikes him. 

“Say…lao ye. You said you wanted an errand boy.”

“I did. Know anyone wanting work?”

Wei Wuxian grins his most charming grin. “Me. How about I hire you my services for the winter, in exchange for this qiankun bag and that bow? That’s a good deal, what do you think?”

Gao Ronghui raises his eyebrows so high they nearly vanish into his wrinkly forehead. “And your so-called services are worth that much, you say? What do you think errand-boys get paid in, gold and silver?”

“Ah-ah-hah! Who said I’m your everyday, no-good, ordinary kind of errand boy? I’m a cultivator, lao ye! I’m good for more than hauling around your boxes and delivering orders. How about this? I’ll do all your running around for the winter, and I’ve got some talismans here – this one to keep your teapot warm, this one to sound an alarm if a thief tries to sneak into your shop, and this one in case someone tries to steal your fine goods from under your eye. I’ll power them myself, they’ll last for months at a time! And they work, I promise – I can show you right now if you like!”

He does, to an increasingly interested and delighted Gao Ronghui, who hems and haws and rubs his moustache, but in a way that Wei Wuxian can tell he’s already given in. When the old man finally speaks, he’s not disappointed.

“Thief-trapping talismans, you say? Boy, I’d have let you walk out with that bag for just these, and no labour – if you’d been smart enough to start and end right there. But you made your bargain – don’t you think about walking out of it now, eh?”

Wei Wuxian pouts at him, but he’s too happy with having secured himself an actual qiankun bag to feel too bad about apparently having oversold himself. “I won’t! I won’t!” he laughs and raises three fingers in a salute.

Gao Ronghui softens. “Here’s your first lesson in business – drive a harder bargain. You could sell those talismans to every shopkeeper in Yiling and beyond and make yourself a tidy profit for nothing. You cultivators think everything you can do is ordinary – it isn’t, to the likes of us, with our mundane lives and mundane problems. Remember that, next time.”

“I know that, lao ye. It’s magic, what we can do. But we do it to help people, not to get rich off their backs.”

“Tch. Out of my shop, rascal. Better show up sharp and early, tomorrow. I’ve got the winter inventorying to do.”

Wei Wuxian spends the night making a small stack of talismans to do as advertised, and shows up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for his first real job, in either life. The prospect of earning his living is something he had to grapple with only once, when he also had to think about feeding fifty hungry Wen mouths, and it had been an extremely unrewarding task to raise radishes from the Burial Mounds’ arid, polluted soil. Now though, he has the prospect of a lovely new bow and a qiankun bag to boost his spirits, and Gao Ronghui has promised to tell all the shopkeepers he knows about those talismans of his, if they hold through the winter, which will give him a nice bit of extra income.

The days that follow are busy but happy, as Wei Wuxian lugs around stacks of books – and copies the good ones to take home when Gao Ronghui isn’t looking, catalogues boxes and bundles of old clothes and sundry household items, repairs broken furniture and polishes it to look nearly as good as new again. He runs around Yiling and the villages nearby, delivering large or bulky orders that a customer can’t haul in themselves, and he paints his boss’s favourite teapot with a talisman to keep the contents just this side of too hot, which pleases the old man so immensely that he hands Wei Wuxian the longbow on the spot.

If he were to lose his golden core a second time – an unthinkable horror, but Wei Wuxian likes to prepare for the worst, so he forces himself to think of it anyway – there might be a decent way for him to make a living, after all. Wei Wuxian likes lazing around, but his mind works best when he’s busy. While he labours happily under Gao Ronghui’s orders, he mentally perfects half a dozen new arrays, and double that number of talismans in his head. Then he goes home, and tries them all out in the clearing behind his hut, laughing for joy when something works and working his brain double time next day when it doesn’t.

He meets new people all the time but doesn’t expect to see any faces he might know well, so when he staggers towards the shop one afternoon, weighed down under a crate of pottery from a merchant’s house, he doesn’t expect to bump right into Jiang-shushu, of all people. Sect leaders wandering down a pawnbroker’s alley are an unusual sight, so Gao Ronghui rushes out to help relieve some of his burden, all deep bows and welcoming smiles.

Jiang-shushu ignores him. He’s staring at Wei Ying, aghast or dismayed or something along those lines – but not surprised, which Wei Wuxian notes and files away. So he’s here because someone told him where to find Wei Wuxian, and he came to confirm – or deny the information.

Why he looks so devastated, though, Wei Wuxian can’t imagine. He wants this disturbance gone as soon as possible, though, so he sets down his load and bows a quick greeting to the sect leader. “Jiang-shushu! What are you doing in Yiling? Are you shopping for music again?” He’s two streets away from the music store, Wei Wuxian doesn’t add.

“Wuxian…Wuxian, what are you doing here? Is this how you – did Changze leave you nothing, that you have to take up work like this, to support yourself?”

Wow, Wei Wuxian thinks, and his face must be showing his disbelief, because the sect leader’s mien softens, and he backs off, coughing in embarrassment.

“That is. Pardon me, of course that isn’t how I meant it. But Wuxian, if you need money, why didn’t you come to me? After all, I am your shushu, didn’t we agree on that?”

“You are. But forgive me, shushu – we only just met, and I’m used to making my own way. That’s how baba raised me – to never ask for anything, and I certainly couldn’t come begging to you for help when I have two good strong arms and working legs to carry me through!”

His answer doesn’t comfort the man – if anything, Jiang Fengmian looks even more discomfited. And a little lost, a little sad. He hides it well; if Wei Wuxian didn’t have years of practice reading his shushu’s moods, he would think the sect leader was only being contemplative.

“He didn’t send you to me.” It’s not a question, but Jiang-shushu looks like he very much wants to ask.

Wei Wuxian answers him anyway. He doesn’t like this, the frown on his uncle’s brow, nor the way he looks betrayed at his friend’s lack of faith in him. “I’m meant for life on the road. It was my mother’s dream, you know. Baba, me, and a donkey, travelling everywhere, seeing everything.” His breath hitches. He hates these lies, but they’re necessary, so he ploughs on. “They’re not here anymore, but that’s how I want to go on, to honour their memory. And I might not have a donkey, but I’m doing fine. Promise! Look, shushu! My boots are thick and my clothes don’t have a single hole in them, and my cloak is sturdy. I know how to protect myself, and I know how to earn my meals – I’m doing pretty well for a kid, aren’t I?”

He smiles brightly, all teeth and dimples and three fingers raised in his trademark salute for when he’s half-joking.

It works a little bit, because Jiang-shushu smiles back, indulgently. But not completely, because he also asks, “And if you could be doing better? I know – you said you want to honour your parents by living as a rogue cultivator. But –”

“It got them killed,” Wei Wuxian supplies helpfully, like a brat.

Jiang-shushu winces. “You can return to that life someday when you’re older. Many cultivators travel and night-hunt often – I won’t stop you. But wouldn’t you like to come back with me to Lotus Pier? You could be a Jiang disciple. You’d make a fine disciple, and…your father was once my right hand. You could be my son’s right hand, his best friend.”

He doesn’t say, his brother.

Wei Wuxian wonders if he can hear himself. How is someone supposed to be the right hand of a sect leader’s heir, and also aspire to be a rogue cultivator? The two things don’t match, like oil and water.

His silence must be interpreted as consideration, because Jiang-shushu tries to sweeten the pot. “You wouldn’t have to work for your food and shelter like this, either. You could spend everyday cultivating, growing stronger. My son needs good friends by his side and I – I would like my own friend’s son to live where I can see that he is well-fed, well taken care of. Where he doesn’t need or want for anything.”

Wei Wuxian smiles at him and bows in gratitude, because it is a good offer. For anyone else, it would be the offer of a lifetime, to be taken off the streets and into the protection of a Great Sect. To be offered a home, and a ready-made friend and companion in no less than the heir of that sect. But Wei Wuxian has felt the love and hatred of Lotus Pier in all their intensity, and in this life, he is content to love it from afar, without inviting its rage and censure onto his head.

If he goes back now, he’ll be bound to all those rules and rigid expectations again, be obliged to put himself forward to protect Jiang Cheng from his own worst impulses, to throw the first punch so that Jiang Cheng doesn’t, to take Zidian on his back and sully his own mother’s reputation.

Wei Wuxian wants freedom, and Jiang Cheng deserves to grow up knowing that he is his father’s priority, always.

“You’re so kind to me, shushu! You don’t even know me – I might be a rotten egg, you know, and spoil your disciples with my unruly ways. And I’m troublesome – I don’t want to be, but I get into trouble wherever I go anyway, and that would bring shame upon your sect. You’re the kindest, but I can’t come with you.”

There’s honest hurt in the sect leader’s eyes, at being rejected out of hand by a twelve-(and twenty-two)-year-old kid from nowhere, with nothing.

“And you shouldn’t worry about me so much! I’m not running my feet off for Gao ye because I need food or a roof over my head or any of that! We have a bargain for the winter, that’s all. He has something I want, and I’m working for him so he’ll give it to me.”

“Oh?” The sect leader turns sharp, suspicious eyes on the poor pawnbroker, who is eavesdropping from the safety of his shop. “And what could a man like him possibly have that a child might want so badly?”

“Nothing, nothing like you’re thinking, zongzhu!” Gao Ronghui finally pokes his head out, scenting danger. “Xiao Wei here wants a qiankun bag, and I’ve had one recently sold to me – he’s agreed to be my errand boy for the winter in exchange for that, and a longbow. That’s all!”

“Indeed?” Jiang-shushu’s politeness doesn’t waver, but his voice is still sword-edged. “I didn’t know that errand boys earned enough in a year, let alone a season, to afford the value of a second-hand qiankun bag.”

Gao Ronghui scratches the back of his head, sheepishly. “Ah, well. It’s not just errands. He’s also made me some talismans to protect the shop from thieves and pilferers. And something to keep my tea warm so these old bones don’t suffer too much from the cold. It’s good work, too, zongzhu! Would you want to take a look at it?”

“Hmm. Show me.” And Jiang-shushu steps into the shop behind a suddenly-enthusiastic Gao ye, who proudly shows off the security improvements to his establishment, while singing Wei Wuxian’s praises in loud, jovial tones.

Wei Wuxian wisely stays out of it, busying himself with sorting through the pottery he had carted in earlier. The merchant’s wife was selling these to add to her redecoration budget, so they’re in better condition than they might be otherwise.

Some time passes before the tell-tale stride of Jiang-shushu’s boots stop by his side. He looks up to find the bag he wanted being thrust into his face.

“Um?” he manages, intelligently.

“Those talismans you put up for him were enough to get you half the goods in his shop,” is all Jiang-shushu tells him. “Don’t let yourself be cheated like this again.”

“I…Jiang-shushu…I promised Gao ye I’d help him out this winter. He really does need an assistant, you know. His back hurts all the time and he can’t do much by himself anymore.”

“So help him if you want, but this belongs to you. And there’s no need to use a second-hand bow; who knows what weaknesses hide under a thick coat of polish? I’ll bring you a better one when I see you next. Remember to pick up my letter here in another weeks’ time – you never left me your direction, but I assume I can find you here if I need to.”

And with that he’s gone, purple silk swirling around his ankles as he rises into the air on his sword, shoulders stiff in dejected outrage. Wei Wuxian stares after him stupidly, then at the bag in his hands, then back again at his tiny figure high above.

Then he starts laughing, and laughs until his stomach hurts, to hide the fact that really, he’s crying.

~*~

And so it begins, a weird little routine of Jiang-shushu waylaying him on the streets of Yiling, and leaving him behind with little riches every time. A beautifully-carved bow of polished, dark wood follows, just as he promised, and a fresh quiver of arrows fletched in varied feathers and shapes. A thick woollen cloak with a furred hood comes next. Bracers in sleek, flexible leather for his arms. A silver guan for his ponytail. Sheets of music, and after an afternoon of being put through his paces by Jiang-shushu, who wants to hear and see everything he can do with his dizi, advanced volumes on musical cultivation that he must have somehow wrangled from the Lan sect or something, because Wei Wuxian knows the Lotus Pier library didn’t have anything on the subject beyond the basics.

In exchange, Wei Wuxian has nothing better to offer than his paintings of the woods, the sunset, and the everyday lives of the townspeople, and a few hours of his company over lunch or breakfast. They usually fill the time with Jiang-shushu grilling him on his cultivation, eyes filled with pride in his friend’s brilliant son, but shoulders slumped in disappointment at the loss of such a promising, talented disciple.

Wei Wuxian is happy, at the almost-fatherly attention from a man he has only ever loved and respected. And yet it niggles at him like a mosquito that finds his blood especially juicy. The ambivalence in Jiang-shushu’s gentle affection. The obvious desire to add him as a disciple, the endless parade of gifts that he always refuses but is compelled to accept, with assurances that they come with no debts, no expectations. That Jiang Fengmian is only doing the best he can for his old, cherished friend’s son, and nothing more.

It feels wrong, even as it fills a hole in Wei Wuxian’s starved, lonely heart.

Not to mention, it’s getting ridiculous. It seems like every shopkeeper in Yiling has been informed that the boy they call Xiao Wei is under Jiang-zongzhu’s protection. Wherever Wei Wuxian goes, he has people tripping over themselves to make nice with him, even if they hadn’t had the time of day to give before. His little cabin is too humble and cramped to afford the steady stream of gifts that the sect leader produces from his sleeves like some kind of magician, watching eagerly to see how each is received by the high-spirited yet reticent boy he covets and is clearly beginning to adore, in equal measure.

The bottom line is, Wei Wuxian can’t stand this anymore.

It’s too much. It’s too awkward. It makes him want to throw himself facedown on the street and wail about how it’s just not fair.

So he treats the problem as he does every other problem he can’t solve immediately, and isn’t named Wen.

He decides to run away. Just for a little while, till all of this, whatever this is, calms the fuck down.

The weather has turned properly cold and frost crunches under his boots now, but the thought of staying cooped up near Yiling and constantly tripping over Jiang-shushu, who has started hanging out regularly in town, is too alarming to live with.

Besides, Wei Wuxian has discovered that travelling and makeshift spaces in other people’s homes appeals to him more than coming back to his own little cabin, which is not empty of creature comforts, but has nothing else to welcome him in. The constant yammering of ghosts from the Burial Mounds hits harder in the winter, with its longer nights and dreary afternoons. So he packs up his bedroll, a couple spare sets of study robes, talisman paper and cinnabar, and his new paints. He slips his dizi and daggers into his belt and lines his sleeves with small knives and talismans to scare away wild animals and wild men, fits his boots snugly over his feet and his warm cloak around his shoulders, and makes off in the direction of Qishan.

He'll still write to Jiang-shushu. He just needs to put a little distance between himself and all that smothering, before it drives him completely crazy. 

He has gone this way before. The Wen sect is complacent about their reach and their rule; the border towns under their supervision are usually a smouldering mess of hauntings and monsters lurking off-road, so he can count on some good money night-hunting, and there are inns he played at during the summer that might be glad to have him back by their winter hearths. At least half a dozen innkeepers had made him promise to return in spring, like a wandering thrush returning to a comfortable perch – “your flute must be magic, xiao gongzi, the way these people flock to listen to it sing, are you sure your name shouldn’t be Huamei?” He’ll just surprise them all with his face a few months early, is all! There are the new songs he’s gathered in Yiling over the last few weeks, and he’s been experimenting with his old repertoire – mixing and matching melodies, merging harmonies together into new songs stitched together from old favourites. He’s itching to try them out on an actual audience.

It's an eventful, action-packed winter.

He begins with a stop in Dangjia, where the owner of the largest tavern has invited him to play again when he returns in the spring. He’s surprised to see Wei Wuxian early, but pleasantly so. He sends out a couple of criers to make an announcement in the market, and the crowd that collects that evening in the tavern’s great room is a comfortable jostling of elbows and knees and too little space. Wei Wuxian tries out a medley of their favourites that he’s improved on, and they go down so well that he follows up with a couple of his own compositions, that bring to mind warm hearths and happy times with family. After the merry gathering breaks up late in the night, the barman slips him a pouch of money, while the uncles lingering by the next table tell him about a wishing well just outside town that grants the opposite of what someone wishes.

After he has cleaned up that mess, Wei Wuxian plays love songs at the wedding of sweethearts brought together by a wish gone awry. Then he moves onto the road leading west, where there is nothing for long days, till he finally winds up, exhausted, in a village called Tai’an. It’s too small for an inn, so he puts up with a farmer’s family, and at the dinner table he hears of a woman haunted by her own twin.

Intrigued, Wei Wuxian inquires at the house next morning and gets a grudging reception. Odd, he thinks – he looks young, he knows, but he radiates power when he needs to impress people, and it usually opens doors faster than this, especially when they’re being hounded by an angry ghost and the sect cultivators are nowhere to be seen.

The lack of enthusiasm is made clear when he finds out that dead twin was murdered by the living one, so she could get married in her place to the man they had both loved, but who had loved only her sister.

After the woman has been hauled off to the magistrate’s office, three towns over, Wei Wuxian rouses the village to a night of dances round the fire, trying to wash away the guilt of bringing a murder to justice and destroying a family in process. When morning comes, he steals away without payment, desperate for the clean air of the open road, and the prospect of another, possibly less tragic curse to solve.

He finds it in Gejizhen, where an entire neighbourhood is cursed to get up from their beds and dance in the middle of the street, at Yin shi every night.

Wei Wuxian plays for them to dance to something other than the sound of their feet slapping against the stones, and then he plays so brilliantly that the spirit itself emerges to dance with them, dances the night away and vanishes with the dawn. Freed from their nighttime revels, the villagers are so grateful that they pay him a little more than he asked for, and tell him to head to Zhongdong, where there’s a storyhouse. Storyhouses mean an audience, and audiences mean money.

So, he returns to the road and turns northward into Qishan. He takes a couple small night-hunts on the way, because he’s getting to practise his new cultivation technique a little more. His flute pulls in the resentment of the yao he tangles with, and his golden core welcomes it in with a song, absorbing it into the tightly coiled ball of qi spinning at the centre of it. He can feel his core growing stronger and brighter with each breath. It surprises him every time he notices it, which is at least once per ke. He feels like he’s floating on clouds. Higher than Cloud Recesses. The buoyancy of his steps feels unreal, and yet the warmth in his belly sits very, very solidly.

All in all, Wei Wuxian is happy to be back in action, gathering his power and honing his cultivation, but he could use a break.

The storyhouse at Zhongdong is full of news. Wei Wuxian hears about Jin Guangshan’s latest act of public indecency in Laoling, and about a mysterious musician from the Lan sect. A veiled gentleman - or lady - the storyteller can’t make up his mind - going by the stunningly pretentiously poetic name of Wushan Youqin. It’s so utterly, mind-bogglingly obnoxiously Lan, Wei Wuxian can’t get over it. In fact, the Lan sect is bursting with activity, it seems - the storyteller goes on to wax poetic about the second young master of the Lan sect, Lan-er-gongzi, rumoured to be beautiful as jade, though no one’s ever seen him, and how he is already top among the young masters of his generation is swordplay. How he is already an expert player of every score in the Lan archives.

Considering the sheer history and scope of the Lan archives, Wei Wuxian thinks that’s highly unlikely. Lan Zhan had been a genius at orthodox and musical cultivation, all right, but even geniuses need time to become masters. Look at himself, only just barely beginning to feel his way to another path of cultivation, something between the living and the dead, yang and yin.

Still, it’s nice to hear about Lan Zhan, even if it’s a pack of tall tales that the storyteller seems to have cooked up – or at least is wikdly exaggerating – on account of his own name being Hao Wenling. The pun potential is immense, really, so Wei Wuxian can’t blame the man for capitalising on a fate-gifted opportunity. And really, his tales aren’t all that tall. Lan Zhan truly is as beautiful as a ray of spun moonlight on a single dewdrop on a blooming tan hua. As prickly as one too, actually, though Hao enling has no way of knowing it. It’s a very good comparison; Wei Wuxian promptly decides the storyteller knows what he’s about, after all, and that this sounds like a good place to rest his feet for a while.

He finds the owner, who’s sceptical at being confronted by a boy so young and fresh-faced, but he convinces the storyteller to give him a chance. The draw that night is barely respectable, but the next night the walls are bursting with people, word having spread of the xiao gongzi who touches people’s hearts more deeply with his dizi than the narrator’s dramatic rises and falls and big eyebrows have ever managed.

Him being an actual cultivator is an added lure to their curiosity, so the owner, Xia Zixin, presses him into staying two more weeks. The pay offered is decent. Good enough that Wei Wuxian can’t afford to turn it down, so he agrees.

So he plays, night after night, to a captive audience, who begin to call him Xiao Huamei, because the name has spread even here for some reason that he can’t place. Gossip, probably.

By day, he is besieged by grannies looking for evil-eye-repelling talismans for their little ones, purification requests for various family shrines, and farmers looking for good luck charms due to scanty produce from the orchards Zhongdong is known for. It’s a lazy interlude, until a farmer comes by, whose cherry trees have somehow transformed into plum trees overnight.

Wei Wuxian uncovers the pranksters who managed this singular feat – a family of mischievous boys and girls who turn out to be nephews and nieces of the farmer, left orphaned after their parents died of illness the previous winter. After dinner that night, he plays songs of mourning that soften their uncle’s rich, miserly heart, till he weeps in sorrow and offers his home to the children he had once refused to take in.

When Wei Wuxian returns to the road, he feels heartsore and heart-full in equal measures. The wild beast that resides in his chest is soothed by the knowledge that there are four children in this world who will not grow up wanting for a place to belong, unlike him. But even as his steps feel light, he wonders, who will take on the debts he has incurred on their behalf?

Troubled, but still somehow satisfied with the resolution he wrought, he stops at an inn by the wayside, where the keeper has been expecting him a few months hence, and welcomes him with good cheer and a comfortable room now. His audience here is transients like himself, travellers who will be gone the next morning, families sightseeing and merchants transporting goods to and from Yunmeng. The money here isn’t excellent, but it’s sufficient to cover a night’s playing, and his room is clean, his blankets thick and the brazier stocked with coals enough to last the night. More importantly, there’s plenty of gossip to be had in a place like this, with people gathered from all directions.

Wei Wuxian hears of a bull yao in Wangtang, and of a bookseller in Cuiheng, who opened his shop one day to find that the ink has vanished from every volume in his shop, dripped off the pages and pooled on the floor like a large puddle that stains his feet when he steps into it, and won’t come off.

Wangtang doesn’t interest him; he’s been there before and they really should take better care when sacrificing their cattle to ensure a good harvest. Wei Wuxian doesn’t have patience for people who slaughter innocent creatures for their own gain, but Cuiheng…has he been there before? He doesn’t think so. He might check that out.

But first, he thinks, he’ll go to Taishi, where apparently every newlywed is cursed to die if they consummate their marriage.

Why on earth they just…don’t…do the deed, so to speak, and so stay safe, Wi Wuxian doesn’t know. But it’s an interesting case, and a pressing one – people are being killed, so off he goes, through a rocky valley and a narrow mountain pass, till he reaches the town of ill-fated honeymooners.

After he lifts the curse, Wei Wuxian is invited to play at no less than four weddings across Taishi and Xiqi, which is a few miles down the road – an inauspicious number, but he cheerfully accepts the invitations and the sets of fine robes commissioned by his hosts. He walks with at least two bridal processions and stays three weeks to feast on rich wedding food and enjoy the company of gossipy aunties who want to tweak his ears and pass him extra sweets. He leaves Taishi with his pack bulging with snacks, a roll of extremely lifelike scenes carefully painted on his best paper, and his money pouch filled with gold.

In Xiqi, however, he gets held up by one of the wedding guests. A merchant whose youngest daughter died in childbirth and now haunts the homes of her sisters, possessing their children and ratting out embarrassing secrets in front of visitors.

It’s petty revenge for petty slights that snowballed into an out-of-control mess of jealousy and sibling rivalry, and dealing with it exhausts him in a way that makes him feel like he’s spent the last week dodging Jiang Cheng’s temper and his demands for Wei Wuxian to do this, not do that, explain himself, and whatnot.

In a fit of spite, Wei Wuxian turns the whole thing into a joke and sets a rollicking, merry tune to it, and more than one wayside inn is entertained by the tale of vicious, petty jealousy, and the dastardly things kids can be bribed to say. For what is a joke, when no one is around to laugh at it? What is drama, if no one known enough of it to turn it into a scandal? What is the tragedy of a family gone wrong, if it can’t be laughed at, mouths hidden behind hands?

It's deep winter, when he finally makes it to Cuiheng. He almost doesn’t go, because surely someone has solved the beleaguered bookseller’s problem by now, but it turns out the Wen are remiss in everything but flaunting their own power. So he rolls up his sleeves and gets out his flute, and gets to work. It’s a petty curse, because it seems winter brings out all kinds of tiresome little malignancies in people, but it requires careful unravelling, or poor Deng Zhu will end up with an army treatise where Chu Ci should be inscribed.

When the ink has been restored to the paper precisely where it belongs, Wei Wuxian walks away with three volumes of rare music for his dizi. Unbeknownst to Deng Zhu, he has also copied every useful volume on musical cultivation his shop had to offer, and several pieces of literature besides, with the help of a talisman that reproduces any book he sets it to exactly.

It’s the same one he used in Gao ye’s pawnshop – it’s coming in so handy that Wei Wuxian thinks he might sneak into a well-stocked library – wherever he can find one – and make away with copies of everything fun and interesting inside. It’s free entertainment, and no one gets hurt, and it’s not stealing, exactly, so who’s to say it’s even wrong in the first place?

He moves on to Nanjie, where he has a standing engagement to play once a season, when the weather is good. His patron is delighted to see him early, and Wei Wuxian received both a warm welcome and a warmer ovation that night, after he runs through his repertoire of love songs and folk ballads at a rich man’s party.

But under cover of his lilting music, the mood is dark, almost salacious. Wei Wuxian asks around, and finds out that the eldest women of Nanjie are cursed to stand in the square every market day, and loudly proclaim their darkest secrets to all and sundry – it seems there are cheaters, looters, murderers, rapists, and gamblers hiding in the sleepy town, masquerading as respectable old popos and ayis.

Wei Wuxan lifts the curse, but can’t bear to leave the square tainted like this, with long-buried, terrible secrets, so he spends an evening playing the best songs he knows, the happiest and most charming ones, for extra coins, and also to erase the memory of those ugly old women and their even uglier deeds.

Then he leaves Nanjie, making no promises to return anytime soon. Perhaps he’ll come back in the summer, when bellies are full and wine flows cool and refreshing, and people seem happy with their lots, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to see the face of such ugliness again, until he’s exorcised it from his system.

Perhaps his worst night-hunt is In Shangfeng, where he isn’t even engaged to play, has just decided to pass the night. The next morning, a group of old friends is found dead after an evening of drinking and mahjong, each having bitten off his own tongue.

Wei Wuxian uncovers their secret – the body of a young girl they had used, abused, and buried out in the forest. He leaves the issue of the dead to their respective families, but gives the child, barely older than him, a proper burial. Half the village attends the funeral, whispering in scandalised undertones till he shuts them up with a slow, dignified dirge that brings tears to their eyes instead.

And so it goes, town after village, inn after tavern. He hunts the dead and plagues the living, and when he’s done he still has songs to entertain them with, keep them enraptured and intrigued by the xiao gongzi who leaves them with the truth on their lips and music in their hearts.

Xiao Huamei, they go on calling him, as he moves from place to place, a song on his lips wherever he goes. The laughing thrush that sings, for his ever-present cheer, for his kind, bright smiles, and the happiness he breathes into the air with his flute. Xiao Huamei, the little thrush who sings to the beat of solitary footsteps on the long road west, because he never stays no matter what is offered to him, always with his feet turned outward, always looking for an excuse to leave.

And so, the winter passes, with Wei Wuxian’s heart humming an old tune. One he’s taken to sometimes playing for himself, but only when he’s alone. In the middle of the night, on a rooftop, with snow falling soft and cold against his cheeks, the air crisp in his lungs with each breath. He lets his qi blend with each note, sending out waves of yearning, wanting, longing into the air, casting a spell over wherever he’s staying the night.

When the morning comes, the people wake with unspoken dreams in their eyes, stumble around in dazed, muted desire for things they can’t name. He’s ensorcelling them, and it’s a bad habit to act like the ghosts he exorcises, but he can’t help it. Music comes to him easier than killing, even though he knows he can destroy – or raise – armies with it if he has to. And when he plays, he can’t help weaving his spiritual energy into his songs, a little here to raise flagging spirits after a hard day’s work, a little there to soothe the sorrows of the living after the dead have been lain to rest.

It starts like that, and it grows, till he walks a new path again, and is forced to acknowledge after Cuiheng that he is walking the same broad path as his favourite Lan once did – is learning to walk in this life too. That musical cultivation is in his soul, and how could it not be, when the primary spiritual weapon he has carved for himself from a xiezhi’s horn is a dizi so similar to the one that saved him from the ghouls of the Burial Mounds and helped him win a war, a lifetime ago?

Similar, but not the same. His new flute may bear the same name, but this one has touched his golden core, where Chenqing from his last life had known only resentment and a yawning emptiness in his lower dantian.

This one is bone-white, where that one was darkest black.

But the runes and arrays he has carved into it are the same – some of them, anyway. Others are new, because this flute is built to help cultivate his core and channel resentment when he needs it to – it is the weapon-companion that should always have been his, but in his last life, he hadn’t had the option.

It’s nice, being able to cultivate with his dizi if he wants, or just make music without imbuing it with anything if he wants, and not have people try to murder him because they think he’s poisoning their souls or worse, calling up the corpses of their ancestors.

His wanderlust doesn’t abate as winter wanes and the ground thaws with new green shoots springing up under his feet. He has kept in touch with Jiang-shushu as he promised to, has sent letters when he remembered to do so, or there was a post-carrier available. He has received nothing back, of course, with no fixed address for his uncle to send replies to. But this one-sided relationship suits him, for now. He’s still unsettled in his skin, even as he grows taller, stronger, faster on his feet, more powerful with his flute.

Perhaps the violent vagaries of two lives, interluded by death, have taken their pound of flesh from him, in the way he responds to people. He had loved it once – attention, affection. He still does, or he wouldn’t be playing merrily to crowds of people hanging off the end of his flute half the nights of the week, lapping up their attention and transforming it into unnoticeable tendrils of comfort and well-being that mesh with their own energies, so they walk away with the feeling that they have experienced something special, a feeling that lasts as long as the strength of his qi can make it.

As far as experiments go, it’s turning out to be resoundingly successful. Not a single person so far has been able to tell when he’s simply playing music, or when he has imbued it with his qi to affect them in myriad ways. He has tried it on all kinds of audiences by now – mundane, mostly, some more spiritually sensitive than others, even a few rogue cultivators, his heart hammering so hard it’s a miracle his notes didn’t waver on such nights.

But no one has noticed, which means that Wei Wuxian is pleased with his progress, and the potential he has uncovered.

Briefly, he entertains the idea of taking a long detour to Cloud Recesses and showing off his new skills to Lan Qiren, imagines the constipated horror on the man’s face as he works out the frankly scary implications of being able to mess with a person’s qi or their temperament without them even knowing it.

Step one on his totally-not-gonna-wing-it plan to become a fearsomely sinister assassin - done.

It’s good to have a sense of accomplishment, of tangible progress towards a weapon far worse and more effective than his old Yin Hufu. It feels nostalgic, really. Back then, he hadn’t had anyone to celebrate with either. At least now he has the open sky above him to bear witness, and the gentle breeze cooling his sweat as he wanders and feels his way towards yet another new style of cultivation. When he compares it to the grimy, stinking environment of the Burial Mounds where he had refined his gui dao, he feels that this life is already looking up in so many ways.

It has been months now since he saw the inside of his cabin – he toys with the idea of going back for a while, before discarding it. Yiling is what he calls home, but it doesn’t feel like it, not truly, when everything important he owns – his flute, his cultivation manuals, his daggers and bow, his paints and talismans and cinnabar – are all in his qiankun bag or on his back.

Still.

His heart is restless to belong, and he doesn’t want to go home. There aren’t really any places he can go where the people feel like his, where he might feel like theirs.

Except.

It’s a foolish idea even before he articulates it to himself. Foolish and foolhardy – they wouldn’t know him, a stranger with a strange flute and strange ideas plopping in the middle of their peaceful village to raise hell, no doubt, because he won’t be able to leave them to their potentially ghastly fate in this life either.

In this life, especially. And yet. He can’t help thinking about it, obsessing in his mind as he tucks himself into his blankets at a cosy inn, arguing fiercely for and against when he washes his face into wakefulness by a stream and refills his water flask.

It has been so very long since he saw them. So very long since sorry and thank you.

He hates that that’s how it ended, after everything. Even though they had all expected to die, he still hates it. Hates himself, for not having done more.

Now, though, he has the time. Perhaps. He might end up with needles in his eyes, but –

Sorry. And thank you.

Wei Wuxian turns his feet south-west, and takes the road to Dafan.

Chapter Text

Like so many events in his life, he kicks a pebble, sets off a landslide five li^[1] away, and gets found out after the fact.

It might have something to do with how he rarely stops to think before he acts, never considers consequences beyond the immediate before he makes up his mind and follows it down a path of doom. Like the decision to visit Dafan, hungry for a sight of Wen-popo and Si-shu, Wen Qing and Wen Ning. And most of all, so desperately his teeth ache with the need to see him alive – safe, plump, well-dressed and living – A-Yuan. His precious, precious baby boy, that he’d been able to borrow for just twenty-two measly months before they took him away.

Ah, this new-and-improved memory of his is something else, isn’t it? He doesn’t want to think about A-Yuan dead. His tiny, scurvied bones crunched under golden-laced boots. His guts spilling out of his tummy and fouling the ground under his defenceless little body. But the thought wormed its way into his head almost from the moment he returned, and he simply can’t get rid of it. There aren’t any convenient gaps in his memory anymore. He remembers. May even Guanyin never forgive him, but now he knows that he left A-Yuan. Stuffed him in a rotting tree and left him to die – actually to die, because he wasn’t ever coming back from the bloodlust Jin Guangshan had unleashed against him.

Not even in a comfortable inn, with food and lodgings paid for in advance, at least till the money ran out. Not even by chance. Abandoned, on purpose, and with no hope of being saved – he had as good as murdered him with his own two hands, hadn’t he? His A-Yuan, whom he can’t bear to give up in his heart even though he failed at the one job they all had.

A-Yuan must not die.

He dreams, often, of A-Yuan’s corpse tumbling out of the deadwood, his merry brown eyes filmed over with cataracts, his fingers stiff and so easily reinforced to punch into a grown man’s chest and crush his lungs to dust. He hates that dream.

It doesn’t matter that A-Yuan will not be even the whisper of a thought for many years longer. It doesn’t matter that this time, his true parents will not die – Wei Wuxian simply refuses to let his little boy be orphaned a second time. A-Yuan is the only son he ever wants, and he’ll go on loving him just the same, even if he has no right to, really.

At the very least, he’s going to be an honorary uncle. The favourite honorary uncle. Wen Ning can go kiss a radish. As long as it isn’t Wei Wuxian’s baby radish.

Considering Wen Qing’s infamous prickliness, however, he’d better make a head start on ingratiating himself to the Dafan Wen while he’s still young and cute. Puffy cheeks and pouty eyes – no woman from Yiling to Youyu can resist. Wen-popo won’t know what hit her.

He wants the people he thinks of as something like family, so he walks off to find their echoes in this rocky, sun-drenched land, convinced that he’ll find them and get them to love him the same as before.

Instead, he finds – well, something close to what his heart desires. A tiny but prosperous village in a valley, populated with healers and craftsmen, and the odd, middling cultivator. Their homes are well-built, with carved wood and embroidered, quilted silks hanging in the doorways. Their robes well-made and well-kept, with the sheen of good silk. The flames embroidered on the edges of their wide sleeves and rustling hems shimmer in the sun.

The Dafan Wen lack for nothing; and yet no matter how hard he looks, nowhere in the village can he find a single child.

No Wen Qing, her stiff little spine mighty as she’d no doubt give him the stink eye of death while stuffing him full of needles to make sure he hadn’t pulled a ligament somewhere. No Wen Ning, practicing archery in secret groves and hitting bullseye seven times out of ten.

No hordes of little cousins tearing about the main street raising – probably civilised – havoc with the stalls. Not the whisper of a boy or a girl anywhere, of any age, at all!

Wen-popo’s familiar face is creased in welcome when he presents himself to her and begs permission to stay and rest, or nighthunt in the area. But he doesn’t miss the troubled glance she shares with Sishu, even as they ply him with sweet tea and spicy dumplings – all things he likes, even though he’s a stranger to them.

He also doesn’t miss the way they try to hurry him along – not forward, but back on the road to Yunmeng. They’re good at subtlety, these Wens – have to be to live semi-peacefully under Wen Ruohan. But the tension in the air at every meal is thick as sticky rice and sharp as green chillies from southernmost Yunmeng.

He is welcome, but he is not wanted.

Now that he looks closer, the population of the village seems to be made almost exclusively of the old and the unremarkable. Cultivators of no real potential or talent, many not cultivators at all. It doesn’t make sense – the comfortable lives and evidence of brighter days, contrasted with the lack of almost anyone under the age of forty.

Well, he reasons, tyrants aren’t made in a day. Unless you were Yu-furen; he honestly thinks she was born that way.

The whole indoctrination stunt was Wen Ruohan going out of his way to prove that he was entirely willing to use children as hostages. How had he known it would work so well with the sects, if he hadn’t already tried it out and found out how far a parent would bend for their child? This is where he must have begun testing his mad ideals of dictatorship – this is where he refined his army – by stealing his own people’s children and putting them to work for it.

What must his clansmen feel, watching their children’s talents be corrupted towards violence and torture, and the inevitable transformation of their characters to match the skills they were being influenced to hone?

Like Wen Qing, brilliant, ruthless, incisive Wen Qing, whose talents must have been twisted inside out, to make her invent a procedure to transfer golden cores. Wei Wuxian will always owe her a debt of gratitude, because that one act saved Yunmeng Jiang and let it rise from the ashes like a phoenix.

What a brilliant medical mind she had been – and what a miserable failure of a doctor!

Cultivating his core for the second time is turning out to be simultaneously the best and worst experience of his life. Knowing that he needs to be exponentially stronger than the first time, he has taken everything he knows of the foundations of cultivation – theory and practice – apart brick by brick. He is only now beginning to accept that he has always had a special knack for cultivation that goes far beyond the norm. In his last life, he had not thought how extraordinary it was for him to match Lan Wangji in the speed and power of his strikes. Now he knows that he had had something truly special, and he’d just handed it off.

He doesn’t regret that, even now – but he regrets that he never appreciated what he was going to lose. It might have prepared him better for the loss, if he had known just what he was giving up.

He had been one of those rare blessed children of the heavens. He could have been immortal.

He wonders if everything that followed was the gods’ way of telling him how displeased they were at the way he had trashed the potential they had gifted him with. He’s under no illusions about Jiang Cheng’s ability to cultivate that high – he doesn’t have it.

He wonders if he had doomed Wen Qing with him, or if he had been the instrument of her doom since the very beginning?

What would the gods think of a human who dares to steal something so precious? In dissecting cultivation theory, he had also been forced to examine what had been done to him, and the aftermath.

Golden core transfer. It sounds clinical and sterile. Unthreatening. There is no physical act of destruction here, just a simple moving of an object from one place of storage to another.

In the context of him and Jiang Cheng, it had felt like it was an equation between two vessels, of which only one could be full.

“A-Xian, just take the rice from that clay pot, and move it to the stone one for me, will you?”

That didn’t sound so bad.

But when he looks at the parts that made up the process now¸ he finds his breath taken away more than once at the undertones of violence in it that the word “transfer” masked so efficiently.

Essentially, Wen Qing had invented two things.

First, how to remove a golden core from a living human, with only the core’s survival being the goal, not necessarily the human’s. Second, how to induce one person’s meridians to accept and assimilate power taken from another person.

Take power. Receive power.

Nowhere in there was any mention of healing.

He thinks that it’s obvious why Wen Qing might have come up with the idea, fiercely protective of her kin as she was. With Wen Zhuliu running around, was anyone in Qishan safe from having their cultivation destroyed in one unlucky moment?

Considering the vile things he himself has invented out of desperation, Wei Wuxian understands why Wen Qing’s ingenuity would have bent that way. They were startlingly alike, she and he. The way they thought was not like anyone else; in Wen Qing Wei Wuxian had discovered a likeness such that he had seriously wondered sometimes what it would have been like to grow up with a twin. She would have been a good sister to him, he knows. She was a wonderful one to Wen Ning.

As their doctor, however…he finds himself shaking his head over it often, feeling the disapproval in his bones.

Wen Qing is under her uncle’s thumb right now, being made to see and hear things that will make her wonder how far across the line she can go to heal someone. But is it truly healing, to take someone’s healthy core, from their healthy bodies, and give it to someone else? It is possible to live without a core – don’t commoners do it all the time?

What if Wen Ruohan had discovered what his niece had created? He thinks of Wen Qing being forced to steal the cores from the old and the dying, giving their power to her master to feed on.

She had left it on a shelf in her study. It had taken Wei Wuxian, a complete stranger, weak from strangulation and whipping, nearly mad with grief, less than one morning to find it. It wasn’t even hidden properly; just stuck inside a book and forgotten there like a place-marker. The most dangerous medical procedure in the world, left lying around, with no failsafes, no treatment for recovery, no aftercare for either patient.

He thinks now that it is possible he could have cultivated another core after all. Despite Wen Zhuliu’s ability to destroy a person’s cultivation base, it couldn’t have been irreparable if Jiang Cheng successfully cultivated with Wei Wuxian’s core all through the war. And his own cultivation base had never been touched. For Wen Qing to send him on his way in his weakened condition, without even attempting to heal his neck and back first, without even giving him the hope of recovery nor any instructions on how to care for himself as a commoner –

What had she been thinking, he wonders, serious and troubled. Was she trying to invent something for healing, or for torture? And under whose influence? Had she been just like him, idly contemplating forbidden techniques as a thought exercise, never truly considering the full implications, or had the things she had seen and experienced in her sect informed her creation?

He won’t let that happen this time. He wants Wen Qing to be known as the greatest healer in the jianghu^[2], her brilliance brought to its full potential. He wants her to have the chance to learn how to truly help people, how to consider the long-term wellbeing of her patients instead of patching up the current problem and leaving them to fend for themselves. He wants her to learn the proper bedside manner expected of a doctor, wants her to know things beyond her skill with needles and a scalpel.

He wants her to experience all the things she can never have as long as she lives under Wen Ruohan’s thumb.

He thinks of Wen-popo’s tired eyes, searching for her family in her big, empty house. He thinks of how badly it would break her heart to know the kind of doctor her grandniece is even now maturing into, somewhere far away. But of course she must already know – she’s an old woman who has spent most of her life being ruled by a tyrant.

How long will her people have to wait for their sons and daughters, who left with their wives and husbands and children? Will they even return, having become monsters of one kind or another in that city where nothing sleeps and nightmares walk the halls?

Wei Wuxian himself must have taken some of those children’s lives during the war and turned them into a different kind of monster. He has never regretted the massacres he committed for victory – he can’t, after what this clan ripped away from him. He never apologised to Wen Qing for how many of her relatives he must have killed – and he never, ever will, even in his thoughts. But it would be nice if he didn’t have to do it again. These people don’t deserve it, and his own soul –

There are only so many sins he wants to carry.

Wei Wuxian is only a strange child to these people – someone to be protected, whose safety matters – someone they clearly want to keep away from Buyetian. It’s a warm, wonderful feeling, to have the people he once died for worry over him in turn, and already he wants to steal them away somewhere he can keep them safe forever.

But he’s only twelve, not that he was able to pull that off successfully even when he had been twenty-two. No, the only proper way to keep these people safe, to give them back their families, is to behead Wen Ruohan before he commits them all to a war he won’t win, and in so doing marries them to the scaffold.

He won’t win, because Wei Wuxian is here, and Wei Wuxian will not let him.

He manages to crawl into Wen-popo’s lap enough that she lets him spend a whole month in sleepy little Dafan, running his legs ragged for Sishu and the other aunties and uncles. The thought of A-Yuan’s parents, trapped in Buyetian, dogs every step he takes in this valley. He misses his little boy so much that he nearly cries over his soup, at the same time feeling guilty as hell about it, because if everything goes right, this time, A-Yuan will grow up with both his parents. Will grow up cherished and protected, but won’t really ever be his.

When he gets to missing A-Yuan and Wen Qing and Wen Ning so much he can’t stand it, Wei Wuxian takes off for the nearby towns and villages. A couple days at a time, just to clear his head and take out his frustrations on a few monsters, since he can’t do anything about the real ones perched plump and comfortable on their fancy thrones in Buyetian; in Lanling.

And that, in the end, is only part of the real problem.

Not his inability to sit still through dinner. Not his inability to let go of an injustice, however small. Not his inability to not save someone he thinks deserves to be saved.

It’s his inability to love silently, in the shadows, without letting that love explode out of him in ways that get him – or the people he loves – killed.

Wei Wuxian has been called arrogant a lot. He used to be proud as they come, back then, full of his own shining potential and the unexpectedly privileged upbringing the Jiang clan gave him. He’d been beautiful and well-dressed and charming, and a master of the six arts, and everything about him had screamed Look At Me. In all those respects, he had been like any other gongzi of his age – they were all turned out from the same mould, with minor variations across the sects. Snobbery came with the territory, as did an excess of personal ego.

But that was forgivable. What wasn’t, was beating them all at it.

And here he is, doing the same thing all over again. Barely twelve (and twenty-two, but he supposes that doesn’t count if no one else knows) and in his desire to flee from the Jiangs he loves and the Wens he loves, he has gone and turned himself into a legend.

He blinks up at the very superior-looking Wen lackey who has interrupted their breakfast to wave a scroll and a jade token under Wen-popo’s nose in her own receiving room. A scroll, addressed to Piao Peng Huamei^[4] – it takes him a moment or six to register that it refers to him, and then he nearly cackles in the lackey’s self-important nose.

The wandering thrush? Fields of lotus pods, swaying in the wind? Sweet, sweet birdsong, to gird the weary traveller's steps?

He’s not complaining about the aesthetic that evokes, truly.

But truly, only a Jin could have been more in-your-face pretentious - or openly insulting - about it.

Wei Wuxian thinks about the ridiculous name he's being bestowed. Next, he considers the existence of Wen Xu – who broke Lan Zhan’s leg and burnt down the Lan library of all things – and Wen Chao, who’s a walking nightmare in any life. He comes to the conclusion that Wen Ruohan really just has no taste at all, and a penchant for poking needles at people just because he can, or maybe because he wants to see what they'll do. Where does he get it from? Wei Wuxian's fairly certain he never read about Wen Mao being actually insane. 

He bitches snootily about Wen Ruohan’s evidently deficient ancestors for almost half the length of an incense stick before he realises that he’s being summoned.

That Wen Ruohan – Wen Ruohan – knows who he is. By fame, if not by name.

What has he been thinking?! Prancing his way across Qishan, playing hero, playing bard?

He hasn’t been. Empty lies his head, stuffed full of chaff and ashes and petals upon the wind and other useless things. And now he has to march his empty, fool head – plus attached body – all the way to the Palace of Sun and Flames, because Wen Ruohan said so, and Wei Wuxian is standing, like a prized moron, on the Xiandu’s lands, so he can’t not do as the Xiandu says.

It has all the flavour of trouble brewing like tea in a kettle. Wei Wuxian can feel it in his bones – and he has great faith in his bones. His nose scents blood; the promise of an enemy, and the darkness that has lain coiled and simmering deep in his guts, forever, forever, sniffs at the air hungrily.

Resigned to his fate, he hoofs it to the palace of his actual nightmares as fast as his twelve (and-sadly-not-twenty-two) year old legs can take him. It takes a while, because he can’t fly without a sword and he still hasn’t managed to find the right donkey.

He could use a transportation talisman – but that’s a secret assassin trick he’s working on that’s going to stay up his sleeve, where no Wen can get their grubby, greedy hands all over it.

Dafan is all the way at the other end of Qishan from Buyetian, so he takes just over three weeks to get there by foot, which is time enough for bad dreams and crack-of-dawn musings about its ruler. As he gets closer to Buyetian, his curiosity builds into a crescendo, occupying his thoughts at all hours. After all, he never met Wen Ruohan back when he was laying waste to his armies. Wei Wuxian had fought in Yiling, in Langya, in Jiangling, and on the outskirts of Buyetian. Wen Ruohan had died before ever leaving it.

He tries to gather the scraps of everything he knows about the man who wants to be king. It’s frighteningly little. A paranoid megalomaniac who doesn’t like the word “no.”

Wei Wuxian does not think the Chief Cultivator will find him congenial, nor vice versa.

He’s forced to think of Jin Guangshan who is distinct from Wen Ruohan in that he is a greedy lecher, but power-hungry madmen are what they are. His heart sinks the more he contemplates the invitation that grants him safe passage to Wen Ruohan’s palace.

But in the jianghu, violence is never far away, so he steels his spine and twirls his flute, and walks steadily on to the city he once washed in blood, wondering – watching.

~*~

Everything about Wen Ruohan is…too much. His presence is like a hammer striking a deep gong from within the belly of a beast. Towering in stature and sharply, decadently handsome, with his quick-darting eyes and the weighty gestures of his hands when he talks, the man is overwhelming physically and psychologically. Wei Wuxian’s excellent, for his age – in fact he’s an undisputable genius, especially with the experience of one failed life and death behind him – but walking into the range of the Chief Cultivator’s qi at his peak is like facing a thunderstorm at the edge of a cliff.

Not where anyone sane wants to be, but Wei Wuxian’s equilibrium is a little shaky and no one asked him what he wants, anyway. Even if they had, he suspects his answer by now would be a resounding yes, please, because by now he’s had enough time to stew over the invitation, and he’s simply dying of curiosity. He’s always been catlike, that way. Wanting to prod and poke and peek at a thing till he’s made sense of it, or decided to ignore it.

Lan Zhan has been the only exception in his life, where he couldn’t manage either. He doesn’t know if he’ll be so blessed as to meet Lan Zhan and win his regard again in this life, and with it the chance to try and figure him out, but he desperately waits for the day the opportunity falls into his lap. It must, because surely the gods won’t be so cruel as to make him live through this bullshit a second time and deprive him of the best, loveliest part of it. He knows he’s smiling a little, but it’s hard not to when his head’s flooded with Lan Zhan.

The image of Lan Zhan dissolves as he walks towards the Chief Cultivator’s throne. A quick glance around confirms the absence of his second-favourite Wens, and disappointment itches under his skin, making it hard to keep his steps light, his smile bright and deferential.

He very carefully does not look at the heavy-browed, lean arrow of a man standing straight-backed and chin-up behind the throne like a well-trained dog.

Wen Zhuliu.

The first man he will kill, in this life.

All of the jianghu once rallied to denounce him as evil for manipulating resentful energy. Wei Wuxian thinks that this is the true face of evil in their world. A man with the power to crush a cultivator’s lifelong work, their potential, and their chance at immortality, all the days they could have spent with their loved ones, who will be forced to carry on to greatness without them. That is the real evil that plagues the jianghu. That is the evil that must not be permitted to exist.

Especially now that Wen Ruohan has gone and weaponised it.

The Xiandu has to die for the jianghu to know lasting peace. His ambitions are too endless to be left unchecked – his thirst for conquest would have ruined him someday, against a larger and better trained army, even if they had failed to shoot down the sun.

But Wen Zhuliu must die first, for the absolute devastation he wreaks, without honour, compassion, or mercy. Wen Zhuliu, Wei Wuxian judges from under his eyelashes, is not a decent man. Is barely human, if he can wreck the very foundation of their society.

So, he has to die first.

The judgement is pronounced; the noose prepared, without a single glance at the accused.

If Wei Wuxian looks at Wen Zhuliu, he will remember how the terrifying, fearsome man of darkling legend was in the end, just a sack of meat. A big, fleshy tumour, with other fleshy bits sloshing around inside, that Wei Wuxian can rip tear rend devour turn inside out and bite with the gnawgnawgnaw of rats cut off his cock and rip open his belly and shove it right in his precious golden core the golden core he ate he took he stole he will take it again again and again send the bones of his feet walking to his throat and choke spit bleed try to beg try to bed it might save you it won’t save you but you’ll beg beg begbegbegbleedbegdie –

– if he looks at Wen Zhuliu, the pathetic little monster will see the demon walking towards him, teeth aimed at his jugular.

Forewarned is forearmed, and that won’t do at all, so Wei Wuxian stamps on his own insanity, the baying of his blood for the hot fresh beating lifepulse of his prey standing so, so tantalisingly within reach.

He does not look at Wen Zhuliu.

Up close, Wen Ruohan appears…the same, honestly. A man with every limb weighed down by too much power.

Wei Wuxian is reminded of the Xuanwu that he and Lan Zhan killed in this man’s own backyard – and he thinks, you’re no gathering storm. Nevertheless, he keeps to strict decorum and form, correct in his bearing and his bows, and when Wen Ruohan offers him tea, Wei Wuxian can see his own curiosity reflected in the heavy gaze that never twitches away from him.

So it’s going to be a catfight, he thinks. A great big tiger out to get all the little cubs like me because he doesn’t like sharing. But I’m not a cub, Xiandu, I’m barely even a housecat at this point!

But Wen Ruohan isn’t Lan Zhan, potentially willing to be whined at. What he is, is asking questions, without even waiting to be bowed and scraped to.

“Xiao gongzi. I am told you carved that dizi yourself, after you laid to rest a xiezhi^[3] desecrated by resentment, and you did this in my mountains, where my cultivators failed.”

He ruthlessly shoves Lan Zhan to stage left. Wen Ruohan’s glinting, rapacious mug needs attention.

“So this one^[5] did, Xiandu.” He slips it out of his belt and bows the correct degree for the Chief Cultivator, holding his flute horizontal to his body, as he would have held Suibian. If only. “This humble student calls it Chenqing, after a poem once read years ago that this one could not forget, having not encountered too many such works then.”

Wen Ruohan holds out an imperious hand, and Wei Wuxian tamps down his irritation at the high-handed posturing as he hands his weapon off to the lackey who materialises as if by talisman. He mentally sighs at the reminder, and makes a note to bump that one to the top of his workbox.

“Chenqing,” repeats Wen Ruohan, sceptical but entranced. Wei Wuxian has taken care to make her what she should have always been. She is beautiful and well-kept, with the lustre of polished bone. When the sun’s rays catch on the intersections of the sigils he spent weeks perfecting, the flute looks almost otherworldly – a spiritual weapon to be coveted.

Wen Ruohan looks almost like a brat with a shiny new toy. Wei Wuxian can see where Wen Chao gets it from. He almost feels a tiny smudge of pity for the poor bastard; with a father like this, had he ever stood a chance?

How bored is Wen Ruohan, if he’s fantasising about stealing from children? The man can cultivate to immortality if he keeps going – doesn’t he want to do more with his life than sit on an uncomfortably ornate chair? The world’s so vast and mesmerising, and there’s so much to do – how can he possibly stand to chain himself like this, with all his potential and his power?

He realises with a jolt of amusement that the entire court is staring at him, and he’s meant to explain himself. Hopefully they’ll put his wool-gathering down to nervous fright at being in the Xiandu’s magnificent presence?

Firming his voice to suit the sepulchral yet airily elegant lamentations of Qu Yuan, he recites, "I wished to set forth my thoughts and explain my actions: I little dreamed that this would be held a crime."

“Well, well, xiao gongzi. For such a young person, you know how to use some very old words.” Wen Ruohan’s gaze hasn’t lost the intrigued bent, but it has grown sharp like a pin aiming for a moth. Wei Wuxian’s survival-senses jangle in warning. “Someone has taught you well. Not your parents, surely, seeing as how they’re both dead.”

So he knows who Wei Wuxian is. That’s just fine.

It’s not as if he has tried to keep his name a secret at all, because who in this life has any reason to fear it? He has night-hunted at the edges of at least two major and several minor sects’ territories, skirting their authority but making no effort to conceal the fact that he is helping those they think are too unimportant to be saved. He has been filling the gaps they leave, and it’s not his fault if the sum of his parts is made out to be greater than it is.

Even if he had tried to hide, he doesn’t think he’d have succeeded very well. Wei Wuxian has always been a show-off, for the pure pleasure of displaying his skills, and also because, well, why shouldn’t he be? He can’t help being better than these people, just like they can’t help being richer or better-born than him.

Cultivators are voracious gossips. He’s a dramatic asshole even when he’s not trying to be one and he’s never been able to live with restraint. He attracts attention like honey beckons flies. In his first life he hadn’t known what to do with this gift and so it had become an easily exploited weakness.

And now he’s on the verge of reliving his curse, despite thinking that this time, he would conduct himself differently. Stay away from the sects and help the common people like he had always wanted to.

He laughs when folks call him Xiao Huamei, from blushing girls in gauzy robes to farmers in rough, undyed homespun linen. The little songbird who hopefully brightens their days a little when he happens to pass by. It’s such a harmless name, sweet and domestic and evocative of sunny gardens in quiet courtyards, the scent of ripe fruit and the indolence of summer.

And now – Piao Peng Huamei. 

The wandering thrush of the lotus fields, who follows where the wind blows?

He was happy to be a humble roadside thrush, when it was just a nickname – little bird, little bird, it’s a hot day, so play me something while I hoe these potatoes. Now Wen Ruohan has taken it and turned it into an obnoxiously lofty line from some half-baked bit of verse. Obviously created to flatter and inflate a young boy’s fledgling ego, while insulting him, his parentage, and his way of life, all in one apparently distinguished name. 

The spike of rage is so violent that deep underground, where the dungeons of the Fire Palace stretch in a catacombs under Buyetian, a few dozen dead sit up and take an interested whiff.

Some of them feel familiar. They must have fought in his army before; long-gone ghosts still seething with resentment a decade into the future. For now, he lets them rest, and in soothing them calms down himself. Just as well. Efficient as it would have been to wake up the roiling mass of bloody vengeful murder and throw it at Wen Ruohan’s head, Wei Wuxian wants to be ideally, notorious for something other than his beloved gui dao, which these poorly-educated fools persisted in calling mo dao.

A life of infamy seems to be his fate. That’s never a bad thing – Wei Wuxian likes putting a bit of bad-boy flair around himself, but he had thought that this time, he would be able to choose its direction.

He likes being Xiao Huamei, anonymous yet always welcomed.

Now, it is reduced to being merely the first thing that the Wens are taking from him in this life. The nondescript songbird has been gilded by the Xiandu’s attention – and here in Buyetian, accolades are favours that do not come for free.

He thinks of the servitude Wen Zhuliu bound himself so loyally to that he had destroyed entire clans – and their children – with dispassionate and disciplined cruelty, and feels suddenly nauseous.

Wen Ruohan sprawls in state on his glittering, flame-crowned throne, rolling Wei Wuxian’s spiritual weapon between his fingers, and in the touch of his hands is the brand of ownership. His gaze lands heavy on Wei Wuxian, covetous and confident.

He feels unclean. He wants a bath, right now. Soft soap scented with sandalwood oil so he can smell like clean, upright, honest things. Good things.

It’s his own fault for thinking that Wen Ruohan was a lesser evil than literally everyone else in the jianghu. All because he’s avoiding Jiang Fengmian.

Wei Wuxian has learnt to take things more seriously after his previous spectacular failure at life, but there are times when he just knows why Jiang Cheng was so ready to jump on the first opportunity to really, properly stab him.

But also – reasonably, what is he supposed to do? Give up everything he loves and takes pleasure in, and run off to seclude himself on some mountain like Baoshan Sanren? All he’s done is loaf around, hunt creatures, play his flute and sell his paintings. It should have been safe. He should have been safe.

He feels abruptly very small and very alone in the world, standing in the eyeline of so many salivating beasts.

He’s had enough of feeling so exposed and vulnerable, like a suckling pig for these fat animals to gorge themselves on. They all inevitably want something from him – his potential to cause destruction, mostly – and if they can’t get it, they won’t let anyone else have it either.

It. He might as well be a puppet himself, sat on a shelf to gather dust till needed.

Well, he remained upright then, and he won’t bend his waist now.

“This one’s honoured parents have indeed crossed Naihe Bridge,” he says mildly, hoping he’s humbling himself appropriately. He knows he should be quicker to respond, but visibly taking his time to compose his answers to the most important man in the jianghu…it’s not a bad thing. To every eye present, he probably looks like a somewhat overwhelmed child instead of a dangerous prodigy. “For Xiandu to say they raised me well – this son is grateful that he has been able to follow in their footsteps, though he has a long way to catch up.”

“They definitely taught you how to talk,” Wen Ruohan says, and there’s a glint in his eye that forebodes malice. He must have expected Wei Wuxian’s knees to buckle under the scrutiny of his courtiers and senior disciples and the reminder of his orphaned, unprotected state.

He needs to take a few lessons from Yu-furen, Wei Wuxian opines, oscillating between wanting to roll his eyes and rip the Xiandu’s halls to shreds from the foundations up. Which he can do in about half a dozen whistles, he estimates. He reminds himself that Wen Ruohan’s stupid, smug, smirking face is – nominally – in charge here, and that wholesale public massacres are out of the question unless absolutely necessary.

Tragically, the Xiandu is restricting himself to lounging around and manhandling Chenqing – seriously, he’s going to peel that man’s fingernails off one by one – and making amused eyes at him, like he’s a travelling one-man circus.

That’s useful – Wei Wuxian can work with it. It could also be dangerous, so he’ll have to step carefully. He doesn’t know if he’s about to be interrogated or invited into the sect so publicly as to make it near impossible to refuse. Wen Ruohan’s infamously unpredictable temper could swing it either way.

He does briefly toy with the idea – it could be useful, working on the inside. He’d have easy access to all his targets, to begin with. The only problem is, while assassins are kind of cool, in a sinister, amoral way that perfectly fits his whole everything, he doesn’t want to become a rat, eating its master’s grain while spreading the plague through his home. He hates disloyalty in any form, and though he has broken almost every vow he took, he did it without betraying anyone, and because he was forced to, mostly.

He never had any good choices in that old life. Being his own master has opened his eyes wide to the way he had once been utterly beholden to someone or other. His life was never his own, so he had given it away in bits of reputation and body parts. Given and given, till nothing was left for A-Yuan on that final terrible day.

Why, why, why hadn’t he simply taken his boy and run? Far away from the jianghu, across the sea?

For the same reason he’s still here, in the hall of his enemy, when he could have been eating cherry blossom sweets under the gently quivering trees of the manicured stone gardens of Dongying, lush with spring bounty.

Like hell is this unimaginative, overpowered fool looting his choices in this life.

Come, the thumping beat of his heart snarls, feral and ready for war.

“I hear Yiling grows prosperous these days. Jiang Fengmian’s generosity knows no bounds, and so the residents flourish.”

“Jiang-zongzhu has shown this humble student great kindness, because I am my father’s son.”

He wants to punch his own face. He’s supposed to be wriggling out of this mess, not handing the Xiandu more ammunition! He needs to reign in his rage, lock away the fantasies of murdering every single disciple in this hall for when he doesn’t have Wen fucking Ruohan staring down at him from on high. Efface yourself properly, idiot! he snarls at himself, remembering he isn’t actually the bane of the jianghu yet, and hoping his lapse gets excused as the result of being orphaned young.

No such luck. Since Wei Wuxian has generously rolled out the carpet, the Xiandu must deign to walk on it.

“You must be your father’s son, indeed. I hear Jiang Fengmian’s wife’s delighted with him for acknowledging your existence.”

If Wen Ruohan’s looking for a reaction, it’s Wei Wuxian’s pleasure to disappoint him. He’s had enough people make digs at his background under far more uncomfortable awnings. He’ll say it again – Wen Ruohan has nothing on Yu-furen in a snit.

He makes himself look appropriately brave and tragic. It’s not hard; he’s a plucky orphan, so he’s by definition a pathetic figure, meant to be booted about by life. He suspects he doesn’t manage to slink that low, but in this life, he doesn’t have to.

His grief over returning too late to save his parents is very real, regardless, and he lets the Xiandu see it, to make his act convincing. “Jiang-zongzhu honours this one’s father, Xiandu. He talks often about how this one’s father used to stand at his shoulder, as head disciple for Yunmeng Jiang. Perhaps this humble student simply reminds him of those days.”

There. Let Wen Ruohan’s imagination fill in the blanks, or not. In this life, no one will imply his mother was a home-breaking whore, if he can help it. Of course, if they now start making up rumours about Jiang Fengmian and his father, well. What’s he supposed to do about it?

“And yet, you don’t aspire to the same life? I’ve heard he’s been practically begging you to join his sect. And you’ve been refusing.”

Oh, wow. How deprived for fun is Wen Ruohan, if he’s taken to tittering about other sect leaders for cheap entertainment? Or is this his way of extending an invitation to join the Wen?

Having to guess what goes on in Wen Ruohan’s megalomaniac head is the worst. Wei Wuxian would like to not have to deal with this.

“Jiang-zongzhu honours this humble wanderer with his attention,” he bows again, to make it extra fuck-you and all. Let no one say his parents didn’t teach him any manners. “But this one’s honoured parents chose to live as rogue cultivators, and Fuqin used to say, all the time, that Muqin felt I was made to fly free, just like her.” Another slip up; he really needs to work on his forms of address at some point, but he honestly can’t give a shit right now. His tolerance is running low.

“That attitude got her killed.”

Wen Ruohan’s attitude is going to get him killed, Wei Wuxian would like to note. He loses about half the deference at once. “This son has been told that his honoured mother died as she wanted to live. Everyone dies, Xiandu. It’s the first rule of the road.”

The Chief Cultivator’s eyebrow twitches up. “That so? You are a dedicated student of this wandering lifestyle, indeed. What else has the road taught you, Wei xiao gongzi?”

Oh, this he can do. Wei Wuxian paints his politest go-to-hell smile on his face – the one that only idiots like Yao-zongzhu can’t tell means go-to-hell because it’s demure and humble and everything he isn’t.

Once, he’d worn a version of this smile, and recited the Lan sect rules to Wen Chaos’ face, standing outside this very palace.

“Live simply and live well. Keep your precious things close, and your precious ones closer. Sharpen your weapons and your wits. Eat well when you can, and never drink on an empty stomach. An honest shoulder earns an honest friend. Smile at everyone you can, and remember the good they do for you; forget what you do for them.”

When he finishes, there is silence in the court, but he can’t tell the flavour of it.

“That is the way in which this one’s family lived, Xiandu. And that is the way this humble student vowed to continue living, without regrets.”

The look Wen Ruohan gives him is full of consideration. It’s so startlingly astute and measured that Wei Wuxian thinks for a moment that this is the real man. Whoever Wen Ruohan had been before his power outgrew his wisdom – that man may not have been a terror to pledge oneself to.

In a way, it’s a pity.

“And this is that life that trained you to be capable of claiming victory over a xiezhi, is it? You seek to live only for glory, and ignore all other worldly pursuits.”

Wei Wuxian makes his eyes round and innocent. “Begging your pardon, Xiandu – this student is inexperienced. This one only lives how he was taught to, and because it matches this one’s sense of right and wrong, of black and white.” He pauses for long enough to convey a sense of befuddlement and bashfulness. “Maybe that means this student has learned enough about some things and can kill monsters easier than some people – but killing things isn’t that great a skill, is it? At the end of the day, isn’t that what every cultivator is good at? This one’s parents were just…his parents. Right or wrong, this son will do his best to meet their expectations, so that they can be proud even in their next life.”

The flare of irritation in Wen Ruohan’s eyes lasts just long enough for Wei Wuxian to catch it. He’s basically pissed all over Wen Ruohan’s nefarious intentions of (probably) annexing him – even the Xiandu can’t go trampling on a filial son’s chosen life-path, as laid out by his deceased parents.

Really, he thinks, you’d have to be a monster.

“And yet your father couldn’t get you a decent sword.” Wen Ruohan gestures dismissively to his empty sash. He has to take the no, since Wei Wuxian hasn’t given him a choice, but this man’s a sorer loser than Jiang Cheng. “Did he die first?”

Rude, Wei Wuxian mutters to himself. Out loud – “Yes, Xiandu.”

And nothing else, because he’s a little shit.

For some reason, Wen Ruohan finds this funny, too. “My niece will like you,” he says apropos of nothing, with a toothy grin that’s there and gone so fast that Wei Wuxian thinks he dreamed it up. He wishes the man would pick a mood and stick to it. Or, alternately, that Wen Qing would indeed pop up as though summoned by the utterance of her name, just to stick her needles into her uncle.They’re good for stabilising qi, right?

Since Wei Wuxian hasn’t seen hem nor hairpin of Wen Qing since he got here, he continues to pretend he has no idea she exists, and keeps his face impassively curious. It’s the right expression for the son of a pair of rogue cultivators who is trying very, very hard to keep Wen Ruohan’s claws out of his back, while appearing like he’s doing it unwittingly.

Wen Ruohan looks at him for a long moment more. Then he leans forward and tosses his flute back at him. “Play.”

Chenqing curves towards him in a high, wide arc, a shimmering length of captured moonlight that gleams with pinkish, opalescent hues in the red glow of the lamps in the Palace of Sun and Flames. He snaps it out of the air between two slim fingers, arm stretched straight above. For just the blink of an eye, the light from the late afternoon sun catches on the hieroglyphics carved into the bone. It refracts into a hundred tiny rainbows and the dizi blazes like a victory torch held aloft by a young general.

Wei Wuxian flicks it with a deft twist of his wrist to lie horizontal against his lips, and plays.

Chenqing weaves her spell with songs of war and songs of glory, the sweet reunion of childhood lovers and the bitter parting of good friends. The atmosphere of Buyetian is heavy, as if unable to bear the weight of her ruler’s immense core, but Wei Wuxian has tricks Wen Ruohan can’t even dream of. His qi suffuses the hall with the deep, lilting tones of his dizi, rising and falling with each melody till it has spread to fill all the spaces in between.

He knows when the last empty in-between space in the vast room holds a drop of his own essence. Knows when eyes droop and shoulders slump, when people begin to settle a little more comfortably against their cushioned seats. Pure yang qi, cultivated in harmony with the lakes and the sky on the open road, aiming only to soothe and smoothen, to lift its listeners up with itself – higher, higher, higher.

When he stops, even Wen Ruohan looks like a man not immediately inclined to bloodshed. The general quality of the attention direction at him is altered now.

Wen Ruohan likes things that torture, things that ruin.

Here in the Xiandu’s halls, with simple songs from his dizi, Wei Wuxian only brings peace and purity.

Who else can say they have achieved such a thing? It sounds like a tall tale to his own ears. And yet, he knows this story will spread – the gossips and dignitaries of Qishan who gathered to witness the possible birth of the next Wen Zhuliu will now go home with tales of an artistic boy more suited to life in a temple.

It’s a little austere for his taste, but it’s better than being known as a mass-murdering monster. Wei Wuxian intends to guard his reputation with all his considerable ingenuity, this time. He’s finding that it’s infinitely easier to do so when he’s not constantly obligated to head off Jiang Cheng’s uncivilised outbursts. But this? Wen Ruohan’s been kind enough to invite the Yiling Laozu right into his home and hand him an opportunity with his own two so-important hands. Wei Wuxian cannot be blamed for exploiting it to extract every possible advantage.

The vague disappointment on Wen Ruohan’s face says that Xiandu has lost – but does he know what? Wei Wuxian doesn’t think so, nor does he expect Wen Ruohan to let him go so easily.

For the next shichen, he plays every song Wen Ruohan throws at him. Then he gets treated to a rapid-fire quiz on night-hunting, on history, on San Li and Wujing. He doesn’t get told to get up and run through sword forms – not today, and perhaps not ever, if he keeps repeating today’s performance up and down the jianghu – which he absolutely plans to continue.

He suspects that it’ll be unavoidable at some point, but he also wonders if it’s something he has to worry about. He’s already twelve and hasn’t truly fought with a cultivator’s blade in years. Never, in this body. Despite the regular practice with a wooden training weapon, he doubts he’ll be as good as he once was. Certainly, he doubts he’ll be good enough to impress. Not with the likes of Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng around. His shidi had only escaped being known as brilliant because Wei Wuxian had blasted through that ceiling already. The night-hunts in Yunmeng that once won Wei Wuxian fame will be led by Jiang Cheng in this life – he hopes Yu-furen and her son will be happy when he has all the attention that he deserves, this time.

When Wen Ruohan’s done with him, he has yet another sharply-uniformed lackey – there seems to be no dearth of lackeys in this thrice-damned sect – bring forth a book of music Wei Wuxian can cultivate to, and a token of rare reddish jade carved in the shape of a sun.

“Not everyone can play the songs in that book, noble little songbird. Come again next winter, and play for me.”

So the Xiandu wants to keep an eye on him. Fair – and frankly, he’s getting off much easier than he expected to, so he has no complaints. Lots of whining, which he will absolutely subject Lan Zhan’s portrait to whenever he gets back home to it, but all-in-all, this is more than okay.

Direct access into Wen Ruohan’s over-large palace? Other would-be assassins can only dream.

~*~

If his visit to Buyetian was a landslide, what he’s standing in now is very much the eye of a total shitstorm.

Someday, Wei Wuxian promises himself, one of these very-soon days, he’s going to stop running from his problems. Not his other problems – those lumped under Save The Jianghu are the one thing he can solve, and he will. They’re his responsibility, and Wei Wuxian has never, not once in this life or the last, shirked his duties.

It has to be why he’s received the blessing of this second chance. It’s the only virtue he doesn’t hesitate to ascribe to himself. Wei Wuxian is a liar, a sneak, a troublemaker; he has stolen and conned and mass-murdered his way through one life already, and he’s more-or-less doing it all over again, except with more skulduggery and less open murder. Hopefully. But. He’s honoured all his debts and his obligations, he’s pretty damned sure of that much. And that’s the only reason he’s been able to think up that justifies the very grand mercy of this second life.

That doesn’t mean he’s suddenly going to turn into a well-behaved young man who won’t whine and bitch and moan about not receiving some teeny-tiny mercies to go along with the big, super-important one.

Jin Guangshan wants him for dinner.

It’s not worded exactly like that – the very shiny-looking Jin disciple who’s delivered the invitation, which is – again – really a summons, has more propriety than that. But Wei Wuxian has heard of Jin Guangshan, maybe just a little bit, and ugh.

That’s it, his brain has no other input.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

So perhaps leaving Qishan via its shared borders with Lanling so he can continue avoiding Jiang Fengmian had been a very stupid idea, and Wei Wuxian is a very stupid little twelve-year-old boy whose creepy-old-man senses are going haywire and he doesn’t wanna. The part of his brain that’s twenty-two has unfortunately shut down for a bit, because that’s the part that informed the rest of him what Jin Guangshan was likely to get up to during a private meal where he wants to “make the acquaintance” of a “rising young talent who even caught the Xiandu’s eye.”

So this is going to be gross.

Three weeks later, he’s in a village near Shangqiu, still shaking off the heebie-jeebies. If he never lays eyes on Jin Guangshan again, he’ll consider himself extra blessed. Jin Zixuan doesn’t improve on acquaintance, either – he’s the most awkwardly high-strung teenager Wei Wuxian’s ever met, and he has experienced the disputable joys of growing up with Jiang Cheng – so. A repeat performance with his former brother-in-law is out of the question. It’s so out of the question it’s not even in the lesson plan.

The trouble is, he’s going to have to go back eventually because the three whole days he spent dodging Jin Guangshan’s figurative clutches were enough to inspire seething revulsion but alas and alack, not even a halfway progressive murder plot.

Ughhhhhhhh, he whines liberally to himself. He’s only twelve (and twenty-two)! He so doesn’t want to deal with any of this.

His shield of rogue cultivator anonymity has been well and truly trashed. As he had predicted, he barely managed to leave Qishan before everyone and their third aunt had heard of him. Not of Wei Wuxian, no – what’s in a name, to people who only care about the trappings of their appearances and not the person wearing the clothes?

Piao Peng Huamei. The crown Wen Ruohan seems to want him to wear, the golden perch he’s now stuck with, like the nightingale who sang for the emperor.

Convincing people to stop calling him that is only half of a lost cause. The ones with sense - or spine - are happy to default to Xiao Huamei, the ones who don't mind offending Yunmeng Jiang but do care about pissing off Wen Ruohan do not, but he’s charmed even some of those types into indulging his childish whims.

Why shouldn’t he be a little thrush, instead of a mighty one? He’s only twelve, after all, he pouts and whinges. It usually works.

Now that he’s played for the Chief Cultivator’s ears, every rich asshole in the jianghu wants to engage him for a banquet, or a wedding, or just-like-that a-la Jin Guangshan, because sect leaders tend to be Like That about status symbols.

Part of Wei Wuxian marvels at the tight control Wen Ruohan has over his own court, because if it had been the Jin, the inevitable gossip about that disastrous who’s-your-daddy moment would have absolutely overshadowed anything else he did, cultivation-feat-wise. The result would undoubtedly have been Yu-furen hunting him down with intent to kill. But because Wen Ruohan and his court care only about power in its purest form, he’s gotten away with just being famous for his cultivation and his music, instead of his parentage.

Sometimes he wonders if he should be surprised at all. Maybe no one actually cares that much where he came from – few enough are concerned with his actual name even now. Perhaps his parentage was only such an issue last time because Yu-furen made it one in her household and her attitude infected her son, who proceeded to blast it publicly every time he suffered an emotion. One more thing to hold over Wei Wuxian’s head, to tie him tighter to Jiang Cheng’s belt.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how to feel about it, that his brother had perhaps loved him so much that he had tried every dirty trick in the book to keep him close, doesn’t know how to feel about the way that love turned into anger and resentment so quickly at any sign of being thwarted.

In any case, he finds it can be convenient, when people only know the legend and not the one who makes it. He can find anonymity when he craves it, after all, simply by using his name and keeping Chenqing out of sight.

He thinks of all the ways this semi-notoriety could be useful. He can totally be a famous musician who moonlights as a feared assassin. The dashingly mysterious aesthetic sings to his soul.

But he has three years or so to figure that part out. The outward trappings can wait – he won’t be any good as an assassin if he can’t kill undetected – which brings him back to his current problem.

It’s easy to murder with music. He has gotten rid of more than one screaming spirit that way, and well – look at the Lans, with their Chord Assassination technique. It’s even in the name, for Guanyin’s sake, so obviously at least one cultivator of note has considered it a decent idea, and convinced an entire clan of self-righteous bullshitters to adopt it as a secret technique.

He flashes back to the Xuanwu’s cave. Lan Zhan, hands scraped raw by the bowstrings he clutched tight, pulling on them for hours while Wei Wuxian de-fanged the murder turtle of its resentment. Lan Zhan giving him all the credit for a job well done, and done together. Lan Zhan letting him lay his head on his lap, petting him gently through fever and delirium, humming that song – which Wei Wuxian still can’t remember the name of.

Ah, Lan Zhan, he thinks fondly. So beautiful, so deadly, so perfect. Why aren’t you here, why won’t you show up and sweep me away to Gusu like you promised, so I don’t have to deal with any of this, anymore?

And why would he? Wei Wuxian answers himself, with startling and cutting clarity, because Lan Zhan is a thirteen-year-old child living peacefully behind three thousand rules, on a mist-wrapped mountain in Gusu. And that is where he’s going to stay.

There will be no meeting under the moonlight, swords flashing with the ardour of youth. No play-fighting over contraband alcohol. There will be precisely nothing between them, in this life, because Wei Wuxian will not have the privilege of an invitation to Gusu Lan’s lectures. Even if he did – he would meet Lan Zhan at the gates like every other civilised invitee, because he’s a rogue cultivator with no sect to back him, and he would mind his own business, because he’s an adult man even if he looks like a child.

He feels like Jiang Cheng just shoved him into the lake in the middle of winter.

Lan Zhan – Lan Zhan is just a child. A real child, not a masquerading undead scorpion.

In this life, if they ever meet, it will be because they crossed paths on a night-hunt, like shooting stars across the sky. There for a moment, then gone forever.

In this life, it’s entirely likely that Lan Zhan will never fall in love with him. Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to believe that, wants to place his faith in those long-ago “I love you”s when he was catatonic and devastated. He wants to believe he can win Lan Zhan’s regard once again, wants to indulge in all those fantasies this child-body of his has been cooking up, of what will happen if or when he meets Lan Zhan.

He wonders if he’ll be able to let it go and walk away from Lan Zhan with greetings exchanged like gracious strangers, if their new lives intersect. He wonders if Lan Zhan will break his heart again by accepting that and walking away too. He’ll be able to handle it, though. He has plenty of practice in ignoring these old hurts. The er-gongzi of Gusu Lan has only ever chosen to walk away from the servant’s son each and every time they’ve met; he doesn’t know why he’s even entertaining the dream that it might be different now.

Lan Zhan’s regard, nebulous though it had been, feels like too heavy a price to pay for this second chance, but it is nevertheless exactly right in balance – Wei Wuxian already has his freedom to wander and night-hunt. He shouldn’t get to have everything, after he ruined his sister’s life, after he massacred Wens and then moved on to killing Jins and Yaos and Changs and Ouyangs and Lans and Nies, this time to save the last Wens, like a hypocrite.

He feels like the world’s most pitiable lucky fool.

A despondent sigh escapes him while he wonders where to go next.

He’s going to have to deal with sects both major and minor wherever he goes. They see a strange child who fills their homes with serenity and uplifts their spirits and welcome him in with smiles and gifts. They don’t know that they’re doing all this for Wei Wuxian, their once-benefactor and terror both. That he won them a war and then lost one to them in turn.

It's inconsequential, regardless. He hopes to never be that kind of monster again. With Chenqing mournful and uncompromising in his hands, and Wen Ruohan himself bestowing a title on him, he’s somebody to be noticed in other ways.

He buys stir fried beef over rice from a street vendor and picks at it moodily as he devolves into a solid mope. His life would have been so much simpler if he had just taken up farming. But he hadn’t been able to give up cultivation, no matter what he said to Wen Qing about who-the-hell-cares-about-my-core.

He could always go back to camping in the woods, where there are still plenty of monsters to kill, hiding in the deep dark. Night-hunting doesn’t have to involve teahouses, markets, gossiping and egging the local kids into outrageous behaviour – witness the peerless Lan Wangji and his unwelcoming, ascetic ways. But Wei Wuxian likes people, likes helping them and saving their hides, and he gets stir-crazy if he holes himself up in suspicious-looking caves without proper furniture.

Cultivators, now – that’s the problem. He can’t stand most of them, but they’re also still people.

He hates Lanling. Staring at all these pinch-eyed, greedy-fingered faces and wondering. Did you kill me, or did I kill you first?

He’s already tired at the prospect of doing it all over again. Sometimes he genuinely does feel like a child, but his soul sings a song far older. He feels aged by war, by having been a hero and then the common enemy. Some days, when he feels especially small and sniffly and bunny-like, he wonders if this isn’t his fourth or maybe his fifth go-around, because the weight of his soul threatens to crush his organs. Because it wasn’t just the war. It was everything else, too.

The Wens and the Jins are only the start of it. Wherever he goes he’ll see the same faces, and remember them contorted with killing intent, stained with blood and the ash of a turned battlefield.

In the end, Lan Zhan was the only one who didn’t point a sword at him.

It doesn’t matter where he runs. He’ll run out of jianghu eventually, and it’s not really Lanling or Gusu or even Yunmeng he’s avoiding. Meeting Jin Zixuan, so painfully young – Wei Wuxian can think of him without the overlay of a hole in his chest now, but after Lanling he can no longer avoid thinking about Shijie, widowed and wasted. Just for his sake.

In the end, she chose him. She may have married into the clan that wanted his inventions and his power at any cost, was ready to kill him for that power, but despite that lapse she always chose him – he understands now. Loving him as wholeheartedly and openly as she had done, in defiance of her mother’s hatred and her brother’s jealousy and her father’s stunning lack of emotional comprehension – it should have been an impossible thing.

Attempt the impossible. Wei Wuxian got that from her, whatever Yu-furen wanted to think.

Ah, Shijie, he thinks with all his love and so, so, so much regret. It’s really her face he can’t get away from, the only face he remembers clearly from everyone who died, who wasn’t A-Yuan. The second time he ever got to see her in red, she’d been bleeding out all over him. It broke him completely then, and it still breaks his brain a little now.

He can’t let it happen. He will not allow it to happen again.

It crashes onto his head like an avalanche. The gravity of this second life and what an inconceivably valuable gift it is. In this entire world, he is the only person with the knowledge to stop everything from going to hell. He is the only one who can dam the river flowing swiftly to the edge of the cliff and hurtling over it into disaster. He has to build that dam with his own two hands, brick by brick, without consultation or assistance.

He can save everyone.

He will have to do it alone.

The avalanche lands with the shock of an ice-bath. It leaves him stupefied, shaking suddenly over his beef and rice like a leaf in a gale.

But as storms do, it passes. Wei Wuxian surveys the damage and heaps it into neatly organised piles, tucks away his food and dusts off the debris of his lives.

Then he turns his feet back towards Yiling, where his work awaits him.

~*~

How does a boy kill the jianghu’s most powerful cultivator, and get away with it?

It’s a tricky question with an impossible answer. Wei Wuxian’s lucky – impossible is his bitch.

He’s doing nothing in particular – lying back on his bed with a haul of stolen lotus pods and divesting them of their sweet cargo – with his mind hopping rooftops. Talismans to sell in Yiling now that Gao-ye’s created a market for his inventions. Fine-tuned adjustments to the Compass of Evil. Shijie’s pork rib hot-pot. Shooting a pheasant for dinner. A-Yuan, cuddling up to him on cold nights and asking for stories. Darning a hole in the sleeve of his third-favourite robe. Lan Zhan decapitating a humongous, homicidal reptile with sweat on his face, blood dripping down his wrists, with a broken leg and a heart full of determination.

It's wonderful, he muses, how Lan Zhan turns everything into an instrument of death. Bowstrings. Pithy words. Blank stare. Soul-melting music.

Hmm.

He keeps circling back to music as an instrument of violence. It’s what comes easiest, after years of being the Yiling Laozu. Nothing he did with Chenqing in his last life can be called gentle and nourishing, unless he counts taming the resentment in the soil of the Burial Mounds so they could farm it. In this life, he uses music to entertain and to calm, but also to destroy monsters and ghouls and ghosts of varying types.

So, why stop there?

He can be murderously musical if he wants. Wen Ruohan already expects him back in Qishan to play for him. The vague fantasies he’s had so far about stabbing the Xiandu in the neck – and not getting away with it, because he’s realistic about his chances – vanish, to be replaced by the germ of an idea that potentially – if he gets it right – might just work.

He thinks back to all the times he has infused his playing with his qi – his audiences tend to love it, because he leaves them feeling lighter, calmer, better about life in general. It’s a technique ripped off straight from the Lans, but – if music can be used to heal the living, he’s sure the opposite must be true as well.

It’s practical. It’s easily workable.

It doesn’t sit right.

The kind of cultivation he would have to practise to poison a living person’s qi – isn’t that closer to demonic cultivation than helping some pissed-off ghosts release their resentment?

He has never regretted creating the path of gui dao. Someday, in the far future – if – when the killing's done and he has had decades of a respectable life behind him, he thinks he’ll introduce it to the jianghu again. It’s so beautifully efficient and the things common people could do with it! The sects will hate it, of course – the idea of mundane folk preserving themselves without the trouble of growing golden cores.

But the point of orthodox cultivation is the jindan. They cultivate for long, youthful lives, for immortality and then a chance at godhood. Cultivators cultivate to ascend. Common people do not. Cultivators will continue to ascend – can continue to aim for it, even if their mundane neighbours use similar tricks to live more comfortable lives. The only difference will be that they’ll age and die sooner.

But cultivators, as a whole, are stingy and selfish, undesirous of seeing others go further, because then they might feel left behind. Wei Wuxian doesn’t entirely blame his fellows for being this way – how is he any different, when he wants the same shining eternity?

He just thinks it’s easier to move forward when everyone does it together. Momentum is a beautiful thing, once it’s built up.

One day the world will be ready for his gui dao. He’s happy to wait until then.

But gui dao is not mo dao. Despite the illiterates who can’t parse the difference between a ghost and a monster and an imp, he knows, and he has never stooped so low.

He imagines telling Lan Zhan – Lan Wangji – Hanguang-Jun! – that he twisted his clan’s manner of cultivation to actively ruin people.

He’ll be lucky – and Lan Zhan insane – if he gets a “come back to Gusu.”

He’ll be especially lucky – and Lan Zhan more than especially insane – if “come back to Gusu” isn’t followed by “and stay locked up in our housing for insane criminals for the rest of your life so you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else, you evil moron.”

But in like 4 syllables, because it’s Lan Zhan.

If Wei Wuxian stops caring about himself, he could easily murder the men on his list. If he acts as the Yiling Laozu, cloaks himself in resentment and calls on every ghost in Qishan and Lanling to exact their due – it’ll be done in a single night, as he had done to Wen Chao and his horrible woman.

It’ll also be messy, and loud, and horrific, and traumatising for the survivors and the cleaning maids, and he’ll be absolutely done for. He doesn’t – doesn’t want the life of an outcast.

But how else is going to do this? Wen Ruohan’s palace was absolutely stuffed with his qi. The Xiandu was able to wage war on all of them not only because of his teeming armies – the Jin have men in overabundance too. It was the Xiandu’s personal power, his strong, nearly-immortal core, his near-close agelessness though the peers of his generation have gone grey. Cultivators fear him with reason – you can’t win against a man that powerful, because your own core will simply not hold up to it.

Meng Yao had to stab him in the back.

Wei Wuxian – now – has the core of an adult cultivator. Having excelled already at orthodox cultivation once despite not taking it very seriously, he has surpassed his own expectations with what he has achieved. He had believed it would be hard work to keep the strength of his qi concealed from Wen Ruohan – but the man’s spiritual energy is so monstrously strong that Wei Wuxian had felt like a flickering candleflame next to a forest fire.

Wen Ruohan’s qi was on the verge of raging out of control.

That must be why he valued Wen Qing so highly. And as for himself – Wei Wuxian realises with a snort of amusement that lifts the edges of the paper he’s doodling on – well, to be lumped in with Wen Ruohan’s healers is infinitely better than standing next to the Core-Melting Catastrophe.

Power, power, power.

He needs a disgusting amount of power, in impossibly little time.

Unfortunately, the only source of it that’s remotely sufficient – and accessible – is the Burial Mounds, and the power it holds is of the wrong kind.

The exact opposite kind.

He might as well dual-cultivate with a corpse.

And now he’ll probably have nightmares about that, tonight.

~*~

He bolts up from his bed in the middle of the night, halfway to the table and his scattered notes, before he realises that he’s awake. Sweaty and shaking with excitement – an idea, an absolutely brilliant idea that must have percolated in his dreams, because it’s perfect.

He’s not going to dual-cultivate with anything dead, but – it’s brilliant, isn’t it?

Yin to yang, yang to yin.

In all three and a half years of his second life, he hasn’t questioned his need to stay in Yiling. Almost anywhere else might have been better – but Yiling is where he chose to stay without even thinking about it. Chose to flee, truthfully – he cringes when he remembers those first few days of confusion and nausea and wrong-rightness, and how he couldn’t breathe till he reached the Burial Mounds.

He has never wondered why he can live in their shade, cradled in their resentment, and feel protected.

Now, staring at the ink dripping off his brush and staining the paper underneath, he wonders why he continues to stay here, when it’s grown uncomfortable and even inconvenient. When it’s too close to Lotus Pier, too close to his own past failures and the memories of the worst times of his life.

Him and his A-Yuan, they both died here once.

This is his home. He’s not going to be driven off it, he realises now – he staked a claim here when Wen Chao threw him in to die and he walked out on his own two feet – the only person to do so, ever.

Didn’t this place give him life – once, and twice, when he brought the Wens here? Hadn’t they been safe, till his dreams of keeping his ties to his shijie and little Jin Ling had ruined all that?

You build a home somewhere, you farm radishes on its land, you raise a child and you die. What else do you call that place?

He drops his brush, ignoring the clatter as it rolls off the table and out of sight. His feet lead him outside, away from the hut and into the trees, where it’s only silent if you’re not Wei Wuxian, if the dead don’t speak to you.

My home, he thinks, and lets it settle. Breathes in the faint stench of corpse-dust, tastes the metal of blood soaked right into the bedrock. My home.

Look at the state of it.

Once upon a time, he had tried to beautify it with the laughter of a child playing in a lotus pond. But the child was gone before the flowers could bloom, and that dream never came to be.

His mind’s alive and thrumming with enthusiasm, the realisation that he can do something about this. That he can clean it up and put things right.  He should go back to his table and write it down – but he’s already here, and –

– he holds his hand out and invites the resentment in.

It comes easily – sniffing at his fingers before deciding yes, he is theirs and they are his. It enters his meridians curiously, their broad open pathways soothing to energy that knows only despair, that has forgotten what warmth feels like and so seeks to tear it apart.

It won’t hurt him, because his warmth is familiar, has been nurtured by this same resentment once, in another life. Whoever else forgets, here is proof that the dead never do.

He draws his yang qi into his core, clearing the way inch by inch for the resentment to progress towards it. Then it hurts – it feels like a serrated knife in his gut and he falls to his knees, gasping for air past the agony. It can’t stop here, or he’ll qi deviate. He breathes – more of the dead in his lungs, more remembered torture from his broken former-future body – and keeps the way open still, lets the resentment coil and curl around his core and follow the motion of his yang qi till it begins, finally, to spin.

Yin to yang, yang to yin.

Traditional cultivation is built on absorbing neutral, natural qi from one’s surroundings – the earth, the streams, the trees and the animals. Disciples meditate and practise sword formations – or healing – or music – to broaden their meridians, to circulate natural spiritual energy through their bodies till it spins and spins and spins into fine threads of gold – pure yang qi.

No one really ever thinks about the yin. They make all sorts of noises about how women never grow into very powerful cultivators – ignoring the evidence of their own eyes. He’d like to see anyone call Yu-furen weak to her face.

Watching her whip the Wang woman had been one of the highlights of Wei Wuxian’s entire life.

He thinks about Jin-furen. About Wen Qing. About the rumours surrounding his own mother. About Baoshan Sanren, the only living immortal.

Hogshit, he thinks. Whatever these cultivators think about yin energy – it’s all made-up horseshit. And bullshit. And rabbitshit. And birdshit. And also – he takes a deep breath, keeps the resentment spinning – and levels the worst insult he can think of – it’s complete dogshit.

Yin energy isn’t some mystical spiritual poison lurking in graveyards and haunted houses and – apparently – the meridians of all their mothers and sisters. It’s in all of them – it’s in everything.

Resentment is only yin that has been corrupted. And what do they call yang qi that has been corrupted?

Qi deviation. A symptom, an illness, an effect, because of course they won’t give it a name and demonise it, when it’s the basis of their lifestyles. No actual word exists to encompass the entire idea of corrupted yang qi – only what happens as a consequence.

Cultivators really are the worst at logic. There’s a whole sect that exists to purify resentment – to heal the nastiness and corruption until it grows neutral and disperses into the surrounding natural energies. And someday, a neat row of toddling disciples tied up with tiny white ribbons will soak in that same energy, which used to once be resentment, and refine it into an equivalent row of tiny, preciously pure golden cores.

Even now, the small amount of resentment in his body is spinning, purifying into neutrality – it hurts less now, his chest feels looser, and his core spins faster.

If someone ever connects the dots later, they’re going to be so mad they didn’t think it up themselves.

He settles back on his haunches to try and meditate – sadly, meditation really does work like magic, though it’s the most boring waste of time ever – and the resentment-turned-qi spins and spins and spins through his body till it compacts and begins to shine.

He goes home and falls straight into bed, his meridians thrumming and sated, obnoxiously pleased with himself.

~*~

In the crisp clear light of morning, practicalities come knocking.

He wakes up feeling energised and raring to go – which is great – till he examines his core over breakfast and realises that his power hasn’t in fact grown with any significance. Hours of meditation and purification to distil a handful of resentment – here’s an immediate problem to be tackled.

Cultivation in its orthodox form is the zenith of hard work and clear thinking – it takes decades of dedicated cultivating to become what Wen Ruohan has. Wei Wuxian needs a shortcut – it sounds easy, but there are geniuses who lived and died more renowned than he ever was, and they had to take the long route too.

He needs a conductor of some kind – a way to filter resentment and let the energy flow clear – a tea-strainer, obviously, but he can’t think of any single object other than the Xuanwu’s sword, which might stand up the Burial Mounds and not crumble into dust. And for many, excellent reasons, that sword is out of the question. Someday, he’ll dig it up and seal it away somewhere far, far away from everyone he loves. But till then, it can stay inside the murder turtle, where it belongs.

He doesn’t even bother to entertain the idea of talismans. He knows his ingenuity with them is peerless, but he also thinks that’s because he seems to be the only orthodox cultivator in the jianghu who appreciates the vast, vast opportunities talismans afford, if you get just a little creative. For him, even before they became a necessity, talismans had been an eccentric indulgence.

He strokes with one fond finger the length of the talisman painted into the wood to act as a warming stand for his teacup. A tiny, unending piece of magic, and he made it with less than six strokes etched with cinnabar.

If his esteemed fellows were all just a little less obsessed with stabby things, they’d get it.

Fortunately, the merchants and householders of Yiling are far more appreciative of the possibilities of talismans. Wei Wuxian’s been making a tidy little sum off his sales there, but it seems his tendency to wander off has caused inconvenience to more than one of his regular customers, and many more prospects. He has his hands full with commissions – some standard, some customised – for the next few days. He’s delivering a stack of drying talismans for the headman’s laundry, when he stops by to greet the furen and finds her embroidering a tapestry of interlinked knots in a graceful pattern that looks more complicated than it is, at first glance.

Shu-furen is immensely pleased when he points it out to her – she likes talking only when it’s about her beloved embroidery. If he had her skills, he would be selling his work. It’s a pretty and unusual design, picked out in blues and violets and silvers, and it stays in his mind’s eye the rest of that morning, like a windchime catching the breeze and calling attention to itself every now and then. He wonders idly if he should paint it when he returns home, not on paper – perhaps the door? And if he replaces the border with characters for discovery and trap and freezing, he could maybe –

– he could maybe –

Now why didn’t he think of an array?

He races home so fast that he’s sweaty and out of breath when he plunks his backside down at the table and sketches a rough diamond on the back of a half-scribbled page of useless notes – they’re all useless, he’s such an idiot, but never mind, a ring for purity here, in the centre maybe – or no, he needs to pick this character apart, he needs only half the strokes –

He emerges, blinking, well past twilight, when the moon is just beginning its upward arc through the sky. He’s starving and his hands are so cramped from pages and pages of tightly-scribbled notes and diagrams that he doesn’t think he can manage more than hard-boiled eggs. He has some powdered dipping chillies he had bought in Qishan to try with them, there are four kinds of peppers in it, and sesame and tsao-ko and other toothsomely fragrant things, besides. Boiled eggs don’t sound so bad after all.

He's happy as he munches on his simple dinner and washes the yolk and spice down with sweet flowering chrysanthemum tea from Lanling. A half-dozen ideas flit through his mind while he washes up and banks the fire. He even goes to bed Lannishly early, so he can wake up with the sun and try out all six at once.

The next morning, he begins with a quick look at his notes over leftover eggs, crusted liberally with the chillies. He needs to buy more of this stuff, or make some – it can’t be that hard, if he finds the dried spices. He can pound away with a mortal and pestle, imagining he’s pounding Wen Ruohan’s arrogant head into pulp. It sounds therapeutic; he’s going to have a look around the market later this week.

He pulls out the first sheet and runs a contemplative thumb over the characters at the top. He always begins with an account of the problem he’s trying to solve, so he doesn’t forget what he really needs to do when his mind inevitably jumps off on a dozen different tangents.

Absorb resentment from the burial mounds and purify it into pure yin qi.

Absorb neutral spiritual energy from the surroundings to provide an existing foundation of yang qi to weave in with the yin.

Filter yin qi till it becomes one with the neutral spiritual energy.

Refine till yin spins around yang spins around yin becomes yang becomes yin becomes golden power.

Absorb the power into my own jindan without exploding.

That last one sticks out. He can work out everything else, but he’ll just end up with a concentrated mass of power that will incinerate him from the inside out if he tries to weather it with the dantian and meridians of a teenager.

No, his own body will need to be a part of the process – his meridians must be widened with the natural flow of qi, his jindan must grow in increments – he must cultivate this power himself, the orthodox way. A golden core grows when it spins – the physical act is necessary and un-negatable.

Well, at least the way is clear. Di. An array to collect and cleanse the qi. Er. A connector to link the array to himself and feed all that spiritual energy into his meridians. San. His golden core, to spin and weave it into threads of power.

Easy, if he works out the risks of qi deviation and worse. Easy, if his core spins harder, faster, and better than every other core in existence.

That’s a lot of things to get wrong – and he has only one core to risk. He can’t lose it again – he cannot.

He wants eternity. He wants to see how far he can go. He wants to know the pinnacle of his own potential. He wants to live, like he wishes A-Yuan would have lived. Like he now knows – hopes – that his parents would have wanted him to.

He wants to avenge himself and cut off his enemies’ feet before they can turn in his direction. But he doesn’t want it badly enough to risk losing everything a second time.

He has time on his side, to work out the right array and training regimen. There’s nothing to stop him, if he works fast enough till he gets lucky.

If he fails –

– the world is a large place, and there are many forms of exile. He has already tasted one; what’s another?

~*~

Wei Wuxian expects to spend weeks, maybe months on failed trials till he achieves the correct design for the array. His body has no reason to wait – it must be put through its paces to be ready for the massive influx of energy from the Mounds.

Every day, he goes into the forest of dead trees and dead bodies, and gathers as much resentment into himself as his meridians and core can hold. It comes easily and as painlessly as it can, and for the rest of the day as he tests his arrays and adds to his notes, he does it through the constant stabbing of ice-hot needles into his dantian. He always absorbs enough to last for a single day, so that he can go to sleep stronger, and it begins to pay off soon. He’s able to absorb more with each day, and the pain lurks under his skin like an itch. Sometimes there’s no ignoring it, but most of the time, if he thinks about something else, he can barely feel it. He genuinely doesn’t know if it’s because the Burial Mounds are working with him on his – he is their master – or if this body remembers the former one’s pain tolerance.

He’s growing stronger fast – but still too slowly. His core is scary-efficient right now, but that isn’t enough. What is required of it is nearly inhuman.

He judges with dawning horror as the days pass that he has to commit to the kind of regimented, unforgiving slog that only Lans excel at; dedication, discipline, and the joys of deprivation must be bred into those generations of orderly little disciples. And orderly-est of them all, their precious little Second Cabbage. What must he have been like as a child? Solemn, chubby-cheeked, unfriendly and driving everyone around to distraction with his icy cuteness that disapproved of pinched cheeks and booped nose, no doubt.

Wei Wuxian ends up thinking a lot about Lan Zhan that year. When he wakes up at dawn and goes to bed by early moonlight over failed array draft number forty-two, what else is there to think about? The beauty of the forest in the early mornings catches his painter’s eye, but the view is infinitely more palatable when he sticks the image of Lan Zhan in there. When he meditates, Lan Zhan accompanies him in lotus pose with fingers curled gently on his knees, his breathing even and silent.

Sometimes Wei Wuxian talks to him, flinging a whining complaint at his serene eyebrows about the early morning hour, the weather, the dreams, the boiled eggs and jerky for quick breakfasts, the itchy collar of his new summer robes, the lack of bite in his new bottle of chilli oil from Qin territory. No matter what Wei Wuxian grouses about, he doesn’t react, which is fine. He would be worried if this imaginary Lan Zhan began talking back at him. He’s fairly sure that’s one of the signs of insanity.

More importantly, he doesn’t actually have any idea what the hell the real Lan Zhan might say to him. It’s not like they ever had long conversations into the night over jars of wine and tea. He doesn’t know what talking to Lan Zhan is like, without a war or his cultivation between them. He doesn’t even know why Lan Zhan loved him, or said he did, when he’d spent all their time telling him to get lost.

It was practically a deathbed confession, in fact – pulled out of Lan Zhan when there was absolutely zero chance left of Wei Wuxian being in any state to appreciate the gift he was being given. Why hadn’t Lan Zhan told him sooner, when it would have mattered? When it might have saved his soul from dropping all the way off a cliff? Do deathbed confessions even count? Wei Wuxian has always believed they’re only meant to send the dying person off peacefully, just a pack of kind lies. Perhaps spoken in desperation by a man who was simply trying to keep another person alive in the face of doomed odds. People might say or do anything, in such a situation. Wei Wuxian himself has been the literal poster child for such questionable behaviour.

So Lan Wangji never lies, maybe, but he doesn’t make a whole lot of actual sense either.

And hence, imaginary Lan Zhan remains inscrutably mum, when he isn’t telling Wei Wuxian that he’s ridiculous and shameless for complaining about having to invent an entirely new way of cultivation for the second time in as many lives.

Wei Wuxian’s problems are just that complicated. He feels very sorry for himself.

This is the first year he has spent entirely near Yiling in a while. Jiang Fengmian is delighted to have him within reach. Due to the vast difference in their status and Jiang Fengmian’s insistence on maintaining a familial-ish relationship, it’s impossible for him to decline all the sect leader’s invitations to join him and his children for a meal, or to join his disciples for kite-shooting, or to tag along on this or that night-hunt, because “it’s shushu’s responsibility to see that Changze’s son gets in plenty of (supervised) experience.”

Which is frankly a whole barrel of stinky tofu, because they both know Wei Wuxian can out-shoot, out-fight, and out-manoeuvre every single disciple in Yunmeng Jiang. Jiang-shushu simply likes the prestige of having a famous young rogue cultivator accompanying his junior disciples and doling out all kinds of useful tips and talismans. Wei Wuxian thinks that he also simply likes his company, and that – it’s not his fault, he tried, he can’t help it.

He thinks Jiang Fengmian atoned to his wife by giving her unrestrained freedom in how she chose to deal with him. During those two years with the Wens, he had often dandled A-Yuan on his knee, teaching him numbers and shapes by tracing in the dirt with a stick. A-Yuan, tiny and trusting and good, would feel like a warm bunny being snuggling contentedly in his lap. He would reach out with his own stick, to copy the strokes Wei Wuxian drew, his eyes bright and eager to learn. He would have made a good disciple to some sect, some day. A worthy cultivator, kind and courageous. Wei Wuxian would have made sure – he would have raised A-Yuan with all the love he felt.

On such mornings, when he would be blinking away hot, hopeful tears that someday, this nightmare would be over, someday, they would have a good harvest and full bellies, someday, A-Yuan would be as tall as him and strap Suibian onto his belt, promising his old baba to be safe on his first solo night-hunt – on such mornings, immediately afterwards, he would wonder how Jiang-shushu could bear to not protect him.

He can’t even imagine A-Yuan being whipped by Zidian, Jiang Cheng cracking the whip with the same expression of disgust that his mother always levelled at Wei Wuxian. He can’t – he doesn’t want to think about his little boy being hurt like that. He remembers the way Jiang Cheng had looked at the toddling child when A-Yuan made the mistake of grabbing his leg. He remembers Jiang Cheng’s mouth twisted with distaste as he looked down and said, “It.”

It had been very easy to ignore the possibility of his brother hurting A-Yuan back then. Jiang Cheng hadn’t done anything truly out of form, and his bark had always been worse than his bite. It was something Wei Wuxian had known about his brother – or thought he did.

Now – now – he doesn’t know. He remembers vaguely that his brother led the siege. Even after his memory filled out, he doesn’t remember much else from that day, from stuffing A-Yuan in that tree until deciding to kill himself. A part of him never, ever wants to know, just who finally ran their sword through A-Yuan.

He finds it darkly hilarious that he’s the one disappointing Jiang Fengmian’s expectations in this life. No matter what Jiang-zongzhu tries, he finds it near-impossible to get Wei Wuxian and his son in the same room.

But he is Jiang-zongzhu and has to set a good example to his disciples plus live up to his illustrious ancestors, so like an absolute buffoon, he continues to attempt the impossible, in full view of his entire sect – especially including his wife.

The whole experience feels like pulling teeth. Or what he supposes pulling teeth might feel like; he’s never had to go to a tooth-drawer in either life. Thank fuck for the wonders of cultivation. Wei Wuxian will never take his golden core for granted again.

Jiang Fengmian greets tales of Wei Wuxian’s night-hunts with excited praise, and looks prouder every time he sees how much more powerful Chenqing has grown. Some version of his stunt with Wen Ruohan makes it back to Lotus Pier – and while Jiang-zongzhu rejoices in the success of his dead friend’s child, the lady of his sect watches her husband, and the way she eyes Wei Wuxian makes his skin crawl.

This feeling…it usually precedes a whipping.

But the days pass, and Yu-furen glares murder at him from the shadowed recesses of her home, but she never raises a hand to him – never speaks directly to him again, in fact.

Slowly - he doesn’t stop bracing himself for a blow – doesn’t ever really stop expecting lightning to seize his muscles till he loses control of his bladder and pisses himself – but he does begin to remember outside context.

The one thing Yu-furen cares for more than her children is her face.

But of course, she has no right to touch him. Minutely aware of social intricacies, Yu-furen knows that she is not Wei Wuxian’s master, nor his relative. The office of a sect madam does not dignify her with the power to touch rogue cultivators, less so anyone who lives only nominally on her territory.

It begins to occur to Wei Wuxian, along with his other heart-rending realisations about the Burial Mounds, just how protected he has been without knowing it. In his relief that Jiang Fengmian hadn’t simply forced him into the sect on some pile of well-meant nonsense about filial duty and whatnot, he had never stopped to wonder why the man gave up so easily.

Why, in a whole year, he has not once asked Wei Wuxian where he lives. As though the question of Wei Wuxian’s residence is of no consequence. As though it simply has never occurred to him to wonder how it could be safe enough for a child to live and prosper within the bounds of broken, battered Yiling.

Him and the whole cultivation world, really. Wei Wuxian has to sit down for an incense stick when it fully strikes him just how well-shielded he has been, and by what.

Now that he knows there’s strange magic woven around him, it’s easy to pick up on the signs he had never thought to question because he’d been too relieved about people not questioning him more closely about where he lives and what he eats. Why he doesn’t carry his father’s sword, or his mother’s, if he can’t afford his own. Where he keeps his little hoard of gold and silver and useful, valuable gifts. Why none of Yiling’s hooligans stalk him out of town, imagining him an easy target.

Of course, once he knows, he can’t resist poking at it. Protection is only as useful as its limits, so he tests them deliberately, feeling for the edges. Brings up the subject of home to acquaintances and strangers both, only to end up invited to their homes instead. Tries to reveal little, inconsequential secrets about his hut, and fails even at that much. It simply doesn’t take. If he tries, the other party’s attention slides right over his head, like he’s one of those beads of oiled jade they use for stone massage up north near Qinghe. Of course, he doesn’t truly want any of these people to know anything about him that might be a weakness, and with resentment from the Mounds feeding into his meridians every day, he cannot hide what he feels from the mountain. He probably has never been able to, and he doesn’t bother to examine the origins of this mutual awareness too closely.

It could have happened in his last life, when he was thrown in. Or it could have happened during the two years he farmed and purified some of the land. Or it could have happened now. Or – he thinks it equally likely as the other possibilities – the Burial Mounds got its hooks in him when he was an orphan in Yiling for the first time.

His steps were waylaid by resentment several times before he succumbed to using it for practical purposes, in his first life. There had been the sword in the Xuanwu’s cave, which called only to him and could not be pried away till he let it go on his own. There had been his ideas for the use of resentment even before he went to study in Gusu, which he certainly did not get out of anything in Lotus Pier’s library. There had been death, for the very first time, when his body hit the trees and every bone shattered until the shards pierced his organs – until every fragment had inched back to its proper place under the force of the rage that was the only thing remaining of him, and stayed there. Mostly. And then he had crawled. And then he had walked.

He never had the time to question what his parents were doing in Yiling to begin with. In the presence of the Mounds, no other predator dares show its face here, for the Mounds are dangerous even to other monsters.

All, except one, named Wei Wuxian.

In this life, with the long empty days of doing nothing on the road, he has had the time to ponder the mystery around their death. The lack of bodies and any personal effects. The vanishing of their swords. The nothing that remained, after they were gone. The resentment that seems to have always had an attraction towards and for him, coming to his rescue at the lowest points of his life. He has, some time ago, come to the conclusion that his parents probably got themselves killed trying to hunt something inside the Burial Mounds.

In light of recent revelations, he wonders how fucked up it would be to pretend that it’s the memory of his parents, consumed by the Mounds, that’s keeping him safe now. It’s definitely not the most fucked-up thing he’s thought of, or done. Making that Wang woman stuff a broken chair leg down her throat was somewhere in the top three. Making Wen Chao eat his own fingers is his personal second-favourite. Turning Wen Ning into a sentient zombie, he’s kind of iffy on – Wen Qing’s joy at not losing her last near family entirely had shone brighter than the sun. Eating dead people to survive in the Mounds definitely tops the list, though. Not his favourite. At least, after a while, he’d figured out how to light a fire without a flint. Cooked human tasted much less rotten.

Sometimes, he really wonders what in Diyu’s name is wrong with him, that he can still bear to eat meat. That he craves it even, the succulent give of braised pig, the rich smokiness of roasted fish, the satisfaction of chewing on a choice cut of beef. But then, he has starved so often and for so long that he feels like an eternally hungry beast. A bottomless pit in his belly, sucking in every good thing he encounters.

He considers carefully, and puts calling the Burial Mounds “A-niang” somewhere at number six. Give or take.

Whether right or wrong, the confidence his make-believing brings him is something else.

And when Wei Wuxian gets confident, he gets into trouble.

~*~

Wei Wuxian is aware that he’s working on something of a deadline. He will need to travel to Buyetian again in less than a year’s time; it’s safer to be turned away at the door than to ignore the Xiandu’s summons. He doesn’t want anyone sniffing too close to Yiling, this soon. Bloodshed with the Wen is inevitable, but this time it must be on his terms.

Refining the array takes up the lion’s share of his time in the first months. He had been looking forward to the thawing of the frost this year, was daydreaming of making a series of paintings of local flora and fauna to sell. All those plans evaporate like dew with this new, pressing puzzle to solve. He stays with his nose practically glued to his notes that whole spring, looking up only to go deep into the Mounds to test, experiment, and collect resentment.

He loves it.

He forgets there’s a spring at all. The huamei comes to shame him for stealing its name, and its song falls on deaf ears instead of being eagerly copied. The grass springs up in crisp tufts and is immediately flattened under impatient feet. The flowers riot, that spring, and Wei Wuxian never notices.

The work absorbs every drop of his formidable reserves of focused ingenuity. He has to treat this like the creation of a puzzle box that only unlocks when its pieces fall into a unique pattern, able to hold the qi of a single person – himself. He forgets to eat and sleep, and the haggardness of his skin takes him by surprise when he’s bathing at the stream one day, but the sheer fun he’s getting out of this makes him not care one bit. There will be plenty of time to take care of himself later – now is the time to make magic.

A lot of magic.

He needs arrays within arrays, as he discovers some weeks in. A singular array cannot contain the complexity of interlocking strokes needed to collect and filter two different kinds of qi.

No – he needs one array to collect resentment from the Burial Mounds, and a second to collect natural ambient spiritual energy from the blooming growth all around.

A third, an array woven with the notes of Cleansing woven into the radicals, to purify the resentment-entwined qi.

A fourth, painted in his blood mixed with ashy soil from the Mounds and clean water from the stream, to connect the array to his spiritual pathways and let all that energy rush rush in like the great rivers of Yunmeng.

A fifth, miniscule and intricate, at the very centre of the maze taking shape under his brush, to keep the flow of the qi steady as it catches on the edges of his core and spins and spins like the watermills lining the banks, till the water-woven silk turns thin and bright with a satiny sheen.

And then, when he thinks he has the whole mess put in order, it destabilises and nearly sends him into deviation, and only the certainty that he was once an undead creature like any other who crawled out of the Burial Mounds and can therefore do it again keeps him sane long enough to snuff out the arrays and stop the flow of qi. He spends two days in bed, shivering and begging for Shijie, who isn’t coming, ever, in this life, and then he sleeps for another two. When he wakes, it’s his other sister he remembers and longs for and conveys mental gratitude to, as he gets out his supply of medicines and needles and proceeds to get his meridians back in order.

So a sixth array is added, for stability. And then a seventh, when it strikes him that he may want to cut off the connection when he’s in Qishan, or night-hunting, or otherwise doing something that necessitates the use of his core. It is an unfortunate side effect of cultivating his core at the speed he has opted to – he simply can’t do anything else with it except actively cultivate. He ends up reverting to talismans for most of his magical needs, but otherwise finds it strangely nostalgic to be living as though he’s coreless again.

The pain levels are what really sells it; he feels like his lungs can’t pull in enough air, like his vision’s always a little blurry at the edges. He wakes up in the middle of the night with needles borrowing under the soles of his feet or somewhere else equally undesirable. Food tastes just a little off, and the voices swelling in his head hurt so much, constantly, that he’s glad he lives alone after the third time the contents of his table get flung at the walls and his teacup shatters to bits. He even begins to miss the Yin Hufu, just a little. It really had been beyond useful in getting the voices to shut up, please and thank you, till after he’s done balancing metaphysical equations and is guaranteed to not blow himself up.

Seven arrays is a bad number, terribly unlucky – so the final array he adds, though it isn’t truly necessary given the layers of protection already present and provided by the Burial Mounds, is for concealment and fortification of the whole framework of interconnected pathways, forming a stunning helix that loops in on itself, and like a weaver woman’s wheel in fairy stories, creates riches from refuse.

When the shade of green on the trees deepens and their branches grow heavy with fruit, it is complete. Eight arrays, evens on evens. It’s laid out in concentric rings and diamonds and stars – a work of art as much as a miracle of magic. Once it’s perfect on paper, he spends weeks painstakingly tattooing it on the skin right over his golden core. It is so small and intricate that he cannot do it by eye; he ends up having to stall for a fortnight while he develops a magnifying talisman to make the job possible at all.

The magic settles into its flow by the time summer is half underway, and if he can’t walk completely painlessly, he can at least breathe through it and endure.

With all his time now freed up, Wei Wuxian begins to visit the town again, often loitering in the market till late in the evening. There’s news to catch up on – he’s missed at least two weddings and a birth; and he begins planning a series of paintings of summer flora instead.

He consults at the bookseller and the art shop – both owners think it’ll sell well and add a few suggestions for particular patrons^[6] – so he buys more sticks of tinted mineral and a new grinding stone with the money from the sale of his magnifying talisman. The jeweller’s eyes light up when Wei Wuxian demonstrates its use, and on a hunch, he tries it on the bookseller too – with even better success. He’s so pleased with his profits that he throws in quick-drying talismans to dry ink, for free. Guaranteed to not set the paper on fire, this time.

Then he makes the mistake of mentioning his good fortune to Jiang-shushu, who promptly commissions a set of studies of lake flora for his office. And horror of horrors, tries to insist on paying for it. Wei Wuxian nearly loses half the hair on his scalp trying to explain the concept of filial respect to his own uncle. Meanwhile, said uncle’s pride and joy, heir to his sect, his son, glares murder at Wei Wuxian from his place on the opposite side of the table, where he’s been assigned to read through trade contracts.

If his plans get ruined by baby Jiang Cheng shanking him in a dark alley, Wei Wuxian is going to haunt Jiang Fengmian through the next seven lifetimes. Times seven. He’ll get his ghost brides to sit the man down for some prenuptial advice to guarantee conjugal joy every single lifetime too, they'll love it.

Can the man truly not perceive his own boy?!

The tension between the three of them is thick as molasses. If Wei Wuxian can sense the agitated sparking of Jiang Cheng’s qi, why can’t his father? Jiang-shushu’s core is stronger than his, and this is his son, whom he should know, because Wei Wuxian wasn’t around to fuck things up between father and son in their own home, this time.

Yet he’s managed to do it anyway.

He truly begins to wonder if you can fight fate.

The moment passes, and the sect heir returns to his studies. Wei Wuxian observes his diligently bowed head in genuine bafflement.

Trade contracts. And Jiang Cheng’s gobbling them up like they’re tangyuan. He tries to imagine himself in those stiff, extravagantly embroidered robes, wasting his life poring over fine print, and doesn’t manage to suppress a full-body shudder.

Why on earth Yu-furen ever imagined that Wei Wuxian would bother to saddle himself with this boring-as-Lan-Qiren mess, he cannot fathom. He can forgive her for thinking so in this life; she doesn’t have the benefit of handling the aftermath of his antics on a daily basis, and so, she doesn’t know that he’s really a hedonistic layabout at heart. But the last time? His brain simply can’t process the flights of logic – or fancy – required to take Wei-Wuxian-The-Usurping-Bastard-Who-Loves-Paperwork-and-Politicking seriously as a concept.

He can see Nie Huaisang trying to play it off as an elaborate joke on some stuffed-up Jin, but Yu-furen, really?

Not for the first time, he wonders what is wrong with her.

Perhaps she’s a masochist?

But she’s also fairly sadistic – is there a word for people who are both? Wei Wuxian ponders the conundrum that is Yu-furen, and narrowly avoids greeting her too late when she stalks into the office. The baby hairs on the nape of his neck save him; when they go stiff and stand straight out in that way, he can practically smell the ozone approaching. It’s an instinct honed exclusively against one person, after years of trying to avoid each other in the same house.

Of course, Jiang-shushu, being the self-sabotaging blind bat that he is, begins to crow over his paintings before Wei Wuxian’s even seen a single lotus. Yu-furen hears him out with a frigid demeanour that grows icier when her husband asks her to give Wei Wuxian a bolt of the finest lotus silk from their treasury, to execute the paintings on.

Ouch. Poor Yu-furen. He tries to aver, saying that paper is good enough, to spare her the indignity. But then she turns around and starts carping at him about does-he-think-he’s-too-good-to-paint-on-their-silk.

He has the feeling that she’s mistaken his humility for nervousness, and plans to enjoy watching him fail. In person. Ordinarily, he would make ink-and-paper sketches of his subjects, labelling the colours neatly in. The final, true artwork would be executed at his own home, at his ease.

Such an important commission, with such precious materials, Yu-furen declares, however – why, it wouldn’t do for Wei Wuxian to trudge all the way back to Yiling on foot, to do his work, at his own expense. Will Jiang-zongzhu only provide the silk, and not the paints too?

“Yes,” Jiang-zongzhu answers, completely missing his wife’s sarcasm, and sealing his nephew’s fate.

It’s incredibly lucky, Wei Wuxian mutters darkly to himself when he’s back in Yiling to pack for an extended stay at his personal haunted house of nightmares, that he managed to figure out his cultivation problem before Jiang-shushu so considerately put Wei Wuxian’s entire time at his disposal.

Wei Wuxian is pissed.

He does not want to go to Lotus Pier, where he will be forced to live in close proximity with Jiang Cheng’s dogs, even if they’re going to be locked up in their kennels. He doesn’t want to endure frosty meals with Jiang Fengmian’s wife and children for days on end. He does not want to see the jealous downturn of Jiang Cheng’s lips grow permanent as Jiang-shushu spends half the meal speaking only to Wei Wuxian, like there are no other children in the room. He most especially does not want to eat his shijie’s damned lotus root and pork rib soup.

How the hell is he supposed to do it without dripping tears and snot all over his bowl? It will happen, because he won’t be able to control himself, and then he’ll have to pretend to be a lunatic or something, who grows fragile at the taste of homemade soup. How will he explain that it’s the most precious bowl of food in the world, to him?

Once he arrives with his bags, he takes the excuse of work to spend as much time as he can on the lakeshore or in the town, taking rapid-fire studies of anything and everything that catches his fancy. Quick charcoal sketches of the ocean of pink and green on the still water, the cranes standing one-legged among the reeds, and the many-coloured algae turning the lakebeds murky and slippery. Spending all morning in the warm sun with the soft, cool water lapping against his skin feels heavenly – no, better than. He feels like a boy again, a kid experiencing the joys of a Yunmeng summer, where the sweet scent of lotuses mixes with the fried deliciousness of spicy snacks to create a flavour in the air that coats the back of his mouth and lingers on his tongue when he works feverishly through the nights to finish up faster and get the hell out of here.

Thus preoccupied, it’s several days before he notices his shadow. It’s several more before he grows aware enough of its nature to be disturbed by it.

Since that shattering insight about the mental difference between him and Lan Zhan, it hasn’t escaped his logic that Jiang Cheng is also a child. A real little boy, and especially young and insecure in his heart. His emotions are frantic and exaggerated, his reasoning faulty and entirely devoid of logic. He is exactly as he should be, a fine cultivator and dedicated student for his age. Without Wei Wuxian constantly around to undermine his existence, he carries himself differently, the set of his shoulders more confident in the authority of his position as sect heir. The head disciple is a senior cultivator closer to Jiang-shushu’s age than his son’s – and what a difference it seems to have made in Jiang Cheng, to not feel like he needs to reach an impossible position when the foundations of his cultivation have barely set in!

And yet – and yet.

Some things, it seems, never change.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know if it’s only Yu-furen’s jealousy that is amplified in her son – he hopes it’s just that. That as Jiang Cheng grows into a man and sees how his position is unassailable, he’ll get over it. What reason would there be, when he’s the one representing Yunmeng Jiang at tournaments and conferences, to be envious of an orphaned rogue cultivator anymore?

Four weeks of Wei Wuxian living in his home should not have changed this trajectory. But it does, with Jiang Cheng seething quietly in a way that Wei Wuxian has never, ever seen him do, even against the Wens. The irritated frustration and resentment that underpinned their relationship the last time is gone, replaced by an emotion more unfriendly and sinister, one which Wei Wuxian hesitates to call only hatred, it worries him so much. There is a wild sort of despair in the way Jiang Cheng looks at him now. Like he knows why his father is so taken with Wei Wuxian. It’s something that neither of them had been able to understand in his last life.

In this one, it’s just obvious.

They’re not neck-and-neck anymore. Jiang Cheng is a twelve-year-old boy learning the basics of hunting and ruling. An intermediate archer, best swordsman in his class of junior disciples, well-versed in history and economics, utterly indifferent to talismans. His golden core is just as strong as Wei Wuxian remembers, too. Strong enough for a twelve-year-old who would one day be ranked fifth among the most desirable young masters of his generation.

He’s pretty good, for his age.

Wei Wuxian, however, is a comet blazing a trail across the heavens.

How much of his current level of accomplishment is the result of his extra years, and how much is that he isn’t holding back, even he doesn’t know. The truth is, in this life he has never had to. Raising himself has had the side effect of sharpening his wits to an unusual degree in practical matters, especially so in every other way. Wei Wuxian has never bothered to monitor his skill and keep it at a similar level to his brother’s in this life; why would he have? To soothe whose ego?

He honestly tries to pull back a little, to be accommodating to his former shidi’s insecurities. It doesn’t work. For one, he’s severely out of practice at looking like a fool. For two, he so far outstrips the sect heir that he would have to give himself minor brain damage to convincingly sell himself short at this point.

Naturally, the boy’s father prefers Wei Wuxian; he can talk to the man almost like another adult!

For some people, the evidence of such a natural and insurmountable difference between two people would stop at admiration. For Yu-furen and her son, there is only envy. And if Wei Wuxian’s being honest, he doesn’t know how much he can blame them.

He has wrangled more than one junior disciple who was killing themselves over jealousy that a friend was suddenly doing better, or had grown taller, or was being approached by the girl they liked, or – or – or – the list of petty vanities exploding between even fledgling cultivators was long. The seed of envy has to come from somewhere, but if carefully pruned and guided, it can grow into the desire to work hard, competitiveness, even sportsmanship, where one desires their opponent to do better, so they can then beat that fucker into the ground and prove themselves even more so.

But when it’s impossible to catch up, you have to let them go, because you are no longer walking one path.

With Yu-furen and Jiang Cheng, the seed has been allowed to grow unchecked – Wei Wuxian would go as far as to accuse Jiang-shushu of feeding it all the wrong manure and overwatering it till the weeds have overrun their minds.

Yu-furen hates that he’s everything she wants her son to be. He wonders why the hell she insisted on keeping him here when she can’t stand the sight of him. Her displeasure permeates throughout Lotus Pier so tangibly that the disciples tip-toe through the corridors like Lans to avoid setting her off. His presence hurts her and her son – and as for her daughter.

Well.

It isn’t surprising at all, that the only time he sees Jiang Yanli is when they eat. Yu-furen makes her eat separately oftener than not, and has gone so far as to have Jinzhu chaperone her daughter even in the kitchens. It’s as if she considers Wei Wuxian’s very presence in her home to be contaminating. Jiang-shushu has had more than one argument with her over it; but Wei Wuxian never expects him to actually overrule his wife on whom their daughter interacts with.

This was always going to be the worst part of staying here. He knows that despite his growing personal fame, to someone like Yu-furen, he will never be more than the son of a servant. The treatment he’s getting – being permitted to hang around the fringes of their family and sect – is reflective of this. She can’t entirely shun him as a servant, because he isn’t one, but neither will she view him as respectable company for her children. She wouldn’t even if he wasn’t the child of Cangse Sanren.

Nevertheless, he’s offended by it. All of it. The oblique and unmentioned, but always present assumption that his father was a servant – as if serving someone loyally and well is shameful. It wouldn’t be shameful if his father had been a servant, but a sect disciple is not that.

A disciple who has left his sect is most certainly not that.

He’s only now beginning to realise what a difference it has made in himself, to live on his own. To not hear his mother’s character being insulted in front of his face. To not hear his father’s entire life be reduced to an anonymous label. Yu-furen could do it then, because it was her roof that sheltered him, her food he ate, her money he spent.

She can’t do anything to him now, and that makes it easy for him to see how much she fears him. Jiang-shushu’s obvious preference for his company makes him an active threat to her son in her mind. Wei Wuxian doesn’t find this unreasonable, but the way she takes every opportunity to accuse him of wheedling his way into her husband’s affections grates on his nerves more than he thought possible.

He's not a damned child to be hectored and insulted, even if he looks like one. He’s a grown man, and his temper eventually flares enough that he gives up on trying to please or placate.

There will never be peace in this household, no matter what he does or doesn’t force himself to become, and he cannot afford to twist himself into a knot for Yunmeng Jiang’s sake anymore. He has the whole jianghu to save, and besides, he refuses to stretch himself needlessly to spare the delicate feelings of the woman to whom he cannot pay proper respect without dishonouring his parents, whom she insults and calls horrible names. Nor does he care that much, he realises, about the boy who could have saved A-Yuan. But who called A-Yuan an it and didn’t.

He'll always love this family. But he has nothing left that he can bring himself to give them.

He gave them everything once and Yu-furen told him she hated him, Jiang Cheng told everyone that he was the jianghu’s enemy, and Shijie brought him her wedding finery to ogle, while planning to marry into the sect that was out for his blood.

Where was their loyalty to him?

And what the hell was wrong with him, that he dug himself and the Wens into a worse hole than they already occupied, to try and spare Jiang Cheng and Shijie some…what? Unsavoury gossip? Trouble with the Jins? Trouble with the Jins was coming anyway, with every other sect in their debt for rebuilding expenses. Why the hell had Shijie married into them?! She had known Jin Guangshan was doing his best to make Jiang Cheng subordinate to him, that he was a greedy fucking lecher and a coward, who never came to help them despite the longstanding relationship between their sects. She was there at the Baifengshan hunt. She saw the way the Jins used people for target practice. She knew what she and Jiang Cheng owed the Wens; that without Wen Ning the bodies of their parents would have been left hanging on Lotus Pier’s walls to rot. There would have been no funeral rites to perform, no way to mourn them properly, no way at all to send them on their way to reincarnation with their regrets cleansed.

And for whom had she ignored it all?! A man who was brave enough to fight a necessary war, yes, but who had treated her like absolute shit her whole life – publicly humiliated her more than once despite her status as his social equal – a daughter of one of the Great sects. Wei Wuxian has wondered why she got herself killed to save himself, when he had widowed her and destroyed that fairytale life she had finally achieved. Perhaps she had finally realised the position she had put her brothers in when she decided to fuck every norm of decency and marry into the Jins. Or perhaps she’d gone mad with grief. He doesn’t know why she chose him, in the end. He just can’t make sense of it, and right now he doesn’t want to.

Trouble with the Lans? Fuck those self-righteous assholes, fuck Lan Xichen, best friend to the biggest hypocrite in the jianghu, and fuck Lan Qiren especially.

Trouble with the Nies? Wei Wuxian could have told the world about the increasing levels of resentful energy choking Nie Mingjue’s meridians as the war progressed. When that lofty hypocrite Nie Mingjue participated in besieging him, Wei Wuxian could have snapped his fingers and taken full control of Chifeng-Pillar-Of-Righteousness-Zun like that, and exposed him to the entire jianghu for the fraud he and his entire sect of apparently demonic cultivators were.

Who’s he fooling? No one would have believed him, except perhaps Lan Zhan. Despite their constant fighting, Lan Zhan had never once questioned his version of events at Qiongqi Path.

He will always love this family, and their home, and their sect.

But every single test of real morality and grit that life threw their way, they failed. The adults disrespected the memory of their dead friends and destroyed their own children. The children were coddled and selfish, did not stand with righteousness, and never acknowledged nor paid their debts.

What a pack of honourless oafs, he can’t help but think, somewhere in the darkest recesses of his soul, where he’s allowed to be truthful and ungrateful. Can’t help the faint derision underscoring his opinions, can’t help but be a little repulsed at knowing just how little they can be counted on under any circumstance.

They’re not his business anymore; they can’t be, he doesn’t have room and it makes him feel vaguely dirty to be associated with such people. It hurts to look at them from the outside in and see with clarity all the ways in which they’re just ordinary people whom he had put on a pedestal because he was warm and well-fed and – cared for, yes, in many ways. They’re a little worse than ordinary, in fact – no better than any Yao or Ouyang, if he’s being honest – not that he thinks an Ouyang is any worse than a Nie or a He. Heaps more annoying, sure. But not any worse as people.

What in the name of good sense is he doing, bending backwards to see the differences between the old pattern and the new one, trying to figure out where he fits in? He’s met corpses who were less brain-dead.

The next time Jiang-shushu invites him to go night-hunting, Wei Wuxian doesn’t bother holding back.

It’s over in less than a shichen, and Yu-furen’s face when the junior disciples trudge in behind her husband, all of them wearing the same stunned expression like they’ve been clobbered around the head, nearly sends him into fits.

If she’s determined to burn, she won’t lack for fuel.

For the rest of his time at Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian does his absolute best at everything he touches, the way he always prefers to be, giving each small chore, each physical feat, each intellectual exercise the fullest application of his skill. He shoots the highest kites every time, swims the fastest laps, holds his breath the longest, outfoxes them all in the interpretation of poetry and literature, sits and moves and speaks with every ounce of the elegance that Yu-furen herself once drummed into him and feels no shame at all about turning the tables on her like this.

The imp in him is very much alive and ready for a little payback. More importantly, she’s his best chance of staying out of this mess. The brighter he shines, the less likely it becomes that she’ll allow Jiang-shushu to bring him in even as an outer disciple.

It’s hilarious at first, how the heightening spire of her rage drives her to the absolute brink of civility. It comes to a point where Jiang-shushu begins to take his meals alone in his office, often inviting Wei Wuxian to join him. Jiang Cheng is invited less and less often to join them, till Yu-furen intervenes on her son’s behalf, as she always has to. Then he sits at the table, miserably stabbing his food with his chopsticks and glaring at Wei Wuxian like he’d prefer to stab him instead.

Since the actual twelve-year-old in this tug-of-war between three adults shouldn’t be getting pulled to pieces, Wei Wuxian does exert every effort to direct Jiang-Fengmian’s attention to his heir. He’s only half-successful, because by then he is being invited to join the senior disciple’s hunts. The sect leader participates in these more frequently, leaving his son even more isolated among the juniors.

Wei Wuxian realises that the lid of this simmering pot is about to blow through the roof when Yu-furen’s anger begins to wear the face of defeat, when her shoulders begin to droop just slightly when she meets his eyes. She’s beginning to despair – soon, he hopes, he’ll be done with his last painting and she’ll make sure he’s never invited back.

Jiang-shushu will submit to her wishes, as he always has done. As he should, since he married her and had children with her.

Wei Wuxian had never entertained the idea of being in love with anyone back then, because he had known he would not be able to offer them the loyalty they deserved. Now – now he’s free.

He can’t imagine falling in love with anyone except Lan Zhan, though, which is an unsolvable problem and not currently on his to-do list.

What is, is stopping this hell-beast of a taotie^[7] from gobbling Jiang fucking Cheng in one bite, because the little idiot’s sneaked along on a night-hunt he has no business being anywhere in the vicinity of.

Fucking hell, this brat is going to die on his watch again, and then what will he do?

In the little fool’s defence, even the head disciple wasn’t aware they’d be dealing with a taotie, of all the improbable things to pop up in Yunmeng. Where the hell had it even come from? No one’s seen one for decades! He’s fairly sure this hadn’t happened in his last life. He would have known if Jiang-shushu had taken the seniors off to investigate a yao and come back having felled a taotie, because literally everyone would have known. You can’t survive a fight with a taotie and not become famous. Once the things begin eating, they don’t stop.

And they eat everything.

He watches in horror as the great fanged head of the beast snaps towards Yan Shihong, tearing his leg off at the thigh. Blood fountains out of the wound, spraying all over the taotie’s jaws and tongue, as it crunches down the bones and laps greedily at the stump. Yan-xiong tries weakly to shove it off him, but he’s dying fast and not fast enough. Why the hell doesn’t someone distract the beast?

He aims a fire talisman at the taoitie’s feet to do it himself, when there’s a flash of something small and purple and gold next to him – ahead of him – that fucking little fool what’s he doing what the hell is he doing? Wei Wuxian leaps forward faster than he’s moved in either life to snatch Jiang Cheng away, but he’s too fucking far and he’s going to be too fucking late – he flings the talisman at the taotie’s flank and it doesn’t even flinch, stalking in to pen Jiang Cheng in between its massive clawed feet. There’s a flash of light and a – that can’t be a scream, surely no one human can make a sound like that – and then he has one of Jiang Cheng’s hands and Jiang-shushu has the other, and they’re dragging him back as one while Mao Liwei and four other seniors aim desperate blows at the creature’s back, drawing it away from the child and towards them.

“Stay with him!” Jiang-shushu screams at him, frothing and frantic, before diving back into the fight.

But the taotie is not so easily deterred. It can’t be reasoned with, they’re failing to overpower it, they can’t even injure it in any meaningful way – and it keeps coming for Jiang Cheng.

There must be something about him – he’s only a child, in body as well as spirit, unlike the rest of them here. There’s something about him that’s making the taotie mad with hunger and desperation. Wei Wuxian can feel the beast’s energy and the way it reaches towards the boy, yearning and wanting and slavering with near-starvation. It wants Jiang Cheng. It wants something he has – something that tastes sweet and delicate and fresh and clean, like nothing else does except the flesh of babies. It got to have a taste – just a taste, just a bite, just a lick, just one and it wants the rest. It won’t stop until it gets the rest.

But Jiang Cheng’s body, as far as Wei Wuxian can tell, in the dark and the chaos, is intact. He runs his hands quickly all over the boy’s limbs anyway, to make sure, and not even a finger is out of place, thank Guanyin for her mercy.

Mercy alone won’t spare Jiang Cheng though. Wei Wuxian checks quickly – the rest of their party is occupied with the beast, but no one’s gaining an inch of ground. He drags the unconscious sect heir out of the way and sets up wards that’ll take more than a taotie to break through.

Then he enters the fight.

Four blank talismans are all he needs – four holding talismans that slice through the air and anchor themselves along the cardinal directions on each side of the beast. Glowing lines of power connect the talismans when they lock into position, flaring with qi that he’d pre-loaded into the talismans, to form a cage.

It won’t last, he knows. The taotie is too powerful, with its endless appetite. No one really knows what makes a taotie – there are stories of dragons who ate themselves, and ancient guardians, and so on and so forth. Impossibly rare and ancient, a taotie is one of the Four Perils – really, where in hell did this one crawl out from?

It’s a mystery to solve after they’ve won.

He lifts Chenqing to his mouth. There’s no song hiding in the resentment filling the taotie – it’s just an empty, bottomless hole that will take in whatever it encounters, and never feel full. Tortured every moment of its long existence, cramped with hunger and missing all the pieces that make a thing truly alive – the screaming of the void inside it is echoed in Chenqing’s song, which is less music and more a series of deep, discordant thrums and clicks that echo eerily through the trees.

Before everyone’s shell-shocked eyes, the taotie begins to unravel.

Deep as the pit inside it is, it’s not as deep as what lives inside the Burial Mounds. Wei Wuxian picks at its threads and directs them into the empty talismans to replace all that qi, filling them up with the taotie’s power instead.

It takes hours and hours, a song for unmaking and under that, the notes of Cleansing, inserted at intervals to form a harmony in the background. Two songs, to kill and to cleanse, that Wei Wuxian slots together on the fly like interlocking puzzle-pieces. He’s done this more than once with Cleansing now – so often, in fact, that with all his improvements and modifications to the song, he really shouldn’t be calling it by that name anymore.

The talismans begin to burn eventually, with a low blue-black flame that glows like stars under the dark canopy of the moonless night. He wiggles a frantic eyebrow at Mao-xiong, the head disciple, hoping the man gets the message, otherwise they’re all fucked.

He does, bless his sensible head, and steps close to dig through Wei Wuxian’s left sleeve, trying his best to not jostle his elbow and so break the melody. The stack of blank holders are right up there at the front, and Mao-xiong flicks four into place just as the first set burn through completely, leaving behind small patches of charred grass.

The head disciple doesn’t move away from him, however, seeming to have inferred that the talismans will need constant replacing. Wei Wuxian is starting to see the downsides of a spiritual weapon that requires two hands to wield properly. A small, relieved corner of his mind latches onto this new idea and immediately begins breaking it down into component parts. This is how his brain works – there’s always something going on at the back, something practical and necessary, to help him remember that the sky goes up and the ground goes below, even if it feels like the whole world has turned upside down.

Wei Wuxian plays until dawn bleeds red over the horizon, matching the blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. The tattoo over his dantian feels icy and inflamed at the same time, but it’s held up perfectly tonight, keeping the external flow of qi suspended while the hunt was on.

But then it’s over; it’s done.

In the end, the only thing left is a disintegrating carcass, and the last four talismans burn with so much heat that Mao-xiong directs a pair of seniors to stay behind and cleanse the area after they’ve burnt out. Behind him, Jiang-shushu stumbles forward and gathers up his son.

Wei Wuxian, standing two feet away, sees the exact moment the man lifts his son’s wrist and tries to transfer the boy his qi.

Tries.

Fails.

~*~

The aftermath is a disaster.

Wei Wuxian feels like he’s moving through sludge, half blind and deaf to everything, able to see only the face of the boy who only ever wanted a shining future.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Wei Wuxian had a plan. It was going well. Everything was fine. Wen Zhuliu was going to be dead long before he had the chance to destroy Jiang Cheng’s core. Wen Zhuliu was the only thing that was ever supposed to threaten that precious, golden-bright core.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Where the fuck did that taotie come from? Why the fuck did it have to eat Jiang Cheng’s golden core?!

He bends over again and retches violently. He feels disgusting, a mess of tears and snot and bile-flecked vomit, currently being cossetted and patted and soothed by Mao-xiong and Yan-xiong, whose white, pinched faces mark the catastrophe that has struck their sect.

“He has to go! I want him gone, do you hear me, Fengmian? I won’t wring his little throat, is that enough gratitude for you, you pathetic failure of a man! A failure of a father! How dare you!” Yu-furen is screaming, somewhere beyond the door where Jiang Cheng lies still and pallid while the healers work frantically over him.

Yes, Wei Wuxian thinks, trying to breathe through the clawing horror and the mucus clogging his throat. Yes, I don’t belong here. Let me go.

There had never been a taotie in his last life. He had never heard of one in Yunmeng, nor anywhere else in the jianghu. If any sect had successfully hunted and destroyed one, they would have broadcast it throughout the cultivation world on flying banners. There would have been parades and cleansing ceremonies and market festivals.

When he restored Jiang Cheng’s core back then, had he truly offended some law of reality so badly that it’s exacting the price even now, when time has been rewound?

Or has it always been Jiang Cheng’s fate to lose the one purpose of his life?

He doesn’t know.

He feels small and helpless, a child of seventeen again, coming home from kite-shooting one day to the end of the world. He should get up, he should fix this, somehow, the way he’s supposed to fix everything, isn’t that the whole point of this second life he’s been granted?

Did the gods grant him this as a blessing, or is it a divine punishment?

And on whom, exactly?

He’s not the one truly suffering here. Jiang Cheng is still a baby, he’s practically three years old! He hasn’t even done anything to invite this kind of misfortune – not yet, not in this life, and Wei Wuxian was supposed to ensure he never had to.

He’s lost. They’re all lost, and the world doesn’t make sense at all.

Somewhere beyond the door, Jiang Fengmian is urging in low, angry tones for his wife to see reason.

“He saved our son, Ziyuan,” Wei Wuxian hears – but I didn’t! – he wants to barge in there and wail at them. I fucking didn’t save him, he’s doomed now as he was doomed before, and maybe if you two useless excuses for parents paid more attention to him than your own selves, he wouldn’t have tried to earn your love this way!

He keeps his mouth shut, and his legs aren’t working anyway. He has no right to speak in this house tonight.

“My son,” Yu-furen hisses, with such intense venom that even Mao-xiong jerks back in shock. His arms tighten around Wei Wuxian, who is extremely grateful for the support right now. Mao-xiong had been kind to him always, comforting him after hard discipline, looking out for him and the juniors like an elder sect brother should. He feels like it’s safe to be a child again for just a little bit, while he’s shielded between the solid bulks of the senior disciples boxing him into a human cocoon.

“San-niang.”

“My son, Jiang Fengmian. My son, because I’m the only one who cares what becomes of him. While you! Go dig up that slut’s corpse and bed it, if you want a son off her loins so badly!”

“Ziyuan!”

“I will cut my hair,^[8] you pathetic, disloyal bastard. I will cut my hair, and I will take my son and leave, do you understand?”

The world stops for one horrible, screechingly silent moment.

Then sight and sound and colour rush back into him with a crash of cymbals, and he heaves again through a dry, scratchy throat. He feels a beefy lump of knuckles and callouses gently thumping between his shoulders – Yan-xiong, probably. He doesn’t dare look up to see their faces. He can imagine what must be on his.

Jiang Fengmian finally speaks, cold enough to freeze the lake. “You may cut whatever you wish to, madam, and return to your clan, but my heir remains with me.”

Yu-fren gasps, a low pained intake of breath.

The door opens with the soft slide and click of polished wood in well-worn grooves. Footsteps, and then –

“Wei Ying. Forgive me.”

He shakes his head so hard he nearly gives himself whiplash. What is Jiang-shushu apologising for to him? He should be grovelling at Yu-furen’s feet, after the unthinkable thing she’s threatened him with.

He should throw Wei Wuxian out, please, already.

“You have to go.”

Ah, at last, we come to this, as we were always meant to.

“Liwei, take him back to his room. Make sure he gets some food – and sleep. The junior healers should have something for him.”

“For us too, hopefully,” Yan-xiong mutters under his breath as the two men lead him through the corridors, practically holding up his weight for him. “Poor kid’s had a bad shock, and no wonder.”

They bundle him into a bath and then into bed with the brisk efficiency of men used to caring for hordes of children, and he’s so grateful for it that he lets them coax him into taking a sleeping draft and a few sips of broth to settle his stomach.

He sleeps dreamlessly.

~*~

Jiang-shushu is waiting for him at the gate. It’s so early that he must have never gone to sleep. Yu-furen is still with the healers.

“Did he – wake up?” Wei Wuxian whispers at the man’s boots.

There’s a long silence.

“I will see you off,” is all Jiang Fengmian says. “But first, come.” Then he turns and walks into the sect grounds, leaving Wei Wuxian to scramble after him.

He takes Wei Wuxian to the smithy, where Deng Qiqiang has forged generations of swords for Jiang disciples.

No, Wei Wuxian thinks. Not like this.

The nameless sword gleams in the silvery dawn light like a distant star. It sings to Wei Wuxian, a song of longing, of mine, of you and I and master.

“I had thought, since you don’t use Changze’s sword, that I would provide you with one. It’s hard to get by as a cultivator in this world, without a respectable sword,” says Jiang Fengmian.

Wei Wuxian looks at it, mute with denial and desperate yearning.

“I don’t deserve it,” he manages to choke out at last, meeting the sect leader’s gaze for the first time.

Jiang Fengmian looks like he’s aged twenty years overnight. There’s infinite grief in his haggard eyes, but no blame.

“You killed a taotie to save my son. My son – mine, too. You deserve it. I say you deserve it, as the man who owes you his son’s life. Take it for the sake of my debt, if you cannot accept it otherwise.”

He doesn’t say anything. What can he say now, with such words being thrown at him?

Debts, obligations, the eternal balancing of books.

Why the fuck can’t this family think about anything else? Why must they weigh and measure everything against what is owed and what must be taken?

“A cultivator’s sword should not be nameless,” Jiang Fengmian prompts, when he continues to squint at him.

Name it whatever, goes the script.

Name it whatever you like; I don’t care, he wants to say.

Suibian.

But the moment is wrong, the time is cursed, and a gift is now a transaction.

He can’t think. He wants to get out of here.

“I can’t think,” he blurts, loud and sudden. Jiang Fengmian takes a startled step back. “I mean, I can’t…with everything that happened, I don’t have a name. Maybe….maybe it’s better for this sword to not have a name.”

“Wei Ying,” says the man, and he sounds so fatherly that Wei Wuxian wants to claw his eardrums out.

“I don’t have anything,” he repeats. “You decide.”

“All right then. If you’ve got nothing.” There’s an odd quirk to the sect leader’s lips. He disappears into the forge, and Wei Wuxian shuts out the quiet murmuring over the sound of the bellows. He takes a long look at everything within sight; once he leaves he won’t return. For Jiang Cheng’s sake – for Yu-furen’s dignity – for his own sanity.

He breathes in the scent of wooden beams polished with lemon oil, and the savoury-spicy odours of breakfast from the kitchens. It’s a smell uniquely of Lotus Pier. No other place he’s been to uses lemon oil to shine their wood, nor the exact combination of spicy peppers that mean Jiang Yanli is in the kitchen today.

She must have left the sickroom to cook breakfast for her parents. Her family’s in deep distress, so of course, she would cook for them and make sure they’re not suffering on empty stomachs.

A rattle of something metallic announces Jiang Fengmian a moment before the man emerges from within. Something gleams along one side of the polished black sheath – its name.

He reaches out reflexively to take it before he realises what his hands are doing, and by then it’s too late.

Suibian.

No.

The characters are less complex, with fewer strokes. Not Suibian, then.

He takes a deep breath to fortify himself, and then he looks.

Wu Ye. ^[9]

The bark of laughter that escapes is raspy and shocking, ill-fitting the shattered mood of this morning. But for a brief moment, Jiang-shushu grins back, friendly and affectionate, before the grief settles back over his face.

“I’m sorry,” he stammers, dreadfully ashamed of himself, but the sect leader waves it off.

“No, laughter is good for you. You’re too young to wear such a face, Xiao-Xian. Let us elders carry the sadness for you, yes?”

“I – ” He looks away.

“This sword…I think you understand that it will be my last gift to you. Use it to bring honour to your parents.”

There’s another long moment of silence, and then Jiang Fengmian leads him back to the gate without further ceremony.

“Live well, Wei Ying.”

“I will,” he promises, and drops to his knees to execute a full kowtow.^[10]

When he raises his head after the last bow is completed, the gates have already shut, and he is alone.

~*~

Wei Wuxian goes home with Chengqing in his sash and Wu Ye in his hands.

There’s no more reason to run around wasting his time, when he thinks about it. No reason to run himself ragged running up and down the jianghu killing monsters, when the ugliest things happen inside civilised walls.

He just wants to save these people and be done with it.

He’s going to cultivate his core, and he’s going to save everybody, and then he’s going to turn in the opposite direction and walk till he reaches the edge of the world, and he’ll find a farm or dig one out himself, and there he’ll remain.

If he had spent more time on figuring out his cultivation problems than playing bard, he might have been able to act quicker.

He doesn’t know who’s responsible for the destruction of Jiang Cheng’s core this time. He thinks it’s all of them – each bearing an equal share of the sin.

All of them, including himself, arrogant, deluded fools. Always, always, unprepared.

If only he had been able to act quicker. If only – if only, like everything else in his life.

In his first life, the destruction of Jiang Cheng’s core had been the true beginning of the end, for him personally. That one event, which was just another traumatic war experience for Jiang Cheng, ended up taking everything from Wei Wuxian.

So he’s fucking terrified.

He doesn’t want to go back out there.

And he doesn’t need to, does he, when he has real, actual work to do here, in the Burial Mounds? When he needs to grow a golden core in his body so powerful that it lets him match Wen Ruohan – and beat him.

There’s a boy lying feverish and ill in Yunmeng, who would give anything for this chance. This weird and wonderful chance that Wei Wuxian has worked out for himself – and just like everything else precious in his life, hasn’t appreciated enough till it was almost too late.

For Jiang Cheng, it is too late. Jiang Cheng, who once again lost the irretrievable just to impress his foolish, self-absorbed parents.

In the end, that’s all it comes down to. He and his brother have never been that different, it seems. They’re both orphans, even though one still has a living family.

He will lose nothing else, Wei Wuxian vows. Even if he only gets to live sixty years, he’ll live them all.

But for that to happen, Wei Wuxian must get straight back to work.

~*~

The next morning, he plays a song on his dizi, and walks deep into the Burial Mounds to activate all his arrays at once.

A day later, the barrier goes up, sealing the vast arid expanse away from everyone and everything.

A day after that, Wei Wuxian, with his core thrumming and spinning so rapidly he has to stay rooted in place or shake apart into a thousand little fragments of power, kneels in the centre of his hut, where he is now bound to live for as long as it takes for his core to grow.

Here he’ll stay, with his own kind. Till they let him out, or he’s ready to leave.

In front of him is a pair of rough tablets carved in the same black bamboo he had once used to make Chenqing.

Wei Changze, says one.

Cangse Sanren, says the other.

“Ma. Baba.” He stops. Swallows nervously. “It’s me, Wei Ying.”

~*~

Act I: Fin.

~*~

Chapter Text

At the tender age of thirteen, Lán Wàngjī takes a good, long look at the boulder on which the three thousand rules that control how he walks, eats, sleeps, speaks – breathes – sit, and decides that it simply will not do.

Less than a kè[1] later, the wall of rules is dust, and Shūfù is screaming at him about what-is-wrong-with-him (plenty), what-was-he-thinking (that it was an egregious misuse of a perfectly all right boulder) and so on and so forth.

“Nonsense,” is what he actually comes out and says, which, combined with his barefaced shamelessness, is enough to send his uncle into absolute fits of apoplexy.

“You cannot understand! You do not know – ! You are thirteen years old!” Shūfù screeches, breaching new barriers of sound.

“And yet,” Lán Wàngjī returns, serene – well, monotonous. His uncle knows damn well he’s being mocked, though. It’s the killer instinct of a man who deals with the antics of several dozen schoolchildren on the daily.

The ‘and yet’ hangs between them, an awkward and ugly acknowledgement that Lán Wàngjī can – in all likelihood – desecrate their sect’s ruling principles and get away with it. He’s too young – and far, far too precious – to be punished in accordance with the gravity of his crimes.

If crimes they will be called, at all. Lán Wàngjī takes in the faces of the elders who have gathered to witness the aftermath of his act of rebellion, and also the sight of Lán Qǐrén losing his mind and dignity in public. There is speculation in the eyes of the younger elders, the ones who have been elevated so recently that they don’t even show the beginnings of grey in their hair nor a wrinkle in their faces.  

That speculation means a divide.

Good.

His intention is complete. The seeds of strife that he has sown today sprouted roots a long time ago. They have only been waiting for fertile soil in which to be buried, so they can grow. What the clan puts in the official records now, doesn’t matter to him. Records, he knows, are a matter of whose influence weighs heaviest on that particular day, at that hour.

He will have to watch for the ones who acknowledge the truth of what they believe. The truth, as Wàngjī has learnt through bitter experience, has as many faces as there are men and women to speak it. The only one that matters is his truth, and it is a precious, dangerous secret that he carries close to his soul. 

It’s unnerving how, at age thirteen, he can get away with antics that would have had him crippled for life twice over, if not outright executed, when he had been twice that. He has nothing to say, so he coats his being in the unnerving stillness he has carried over from another lifetime, and simply absorbs the sights and sounds of Shūfù’s emasculated fury.

Because really, what right does Shūfù have, what right do any of the elders have now, to scream at him about the sanctity of those rules?

The simple, irrefutable fact – is this: the wall cannot be broken.

The Rules of Gūsū Lán cannot be broken. It is one of those folktales that float around in the jiānghú, of how terrible things happen to the ones who break the rules of Gūsū Lán, of how the rules cannot be broken.

Only Wèi Yīng had questioned the cannot – “Why not must not, Lán Zhàn?” he had laughed, “Isn’t there a rule about semantics up on your precious wall, too?”

Leave it to Wèi Yīng to ask all the right questions, and not come within a hair of the true answer.

The rules may be broken – and appropriate consequences are then doled out – but the wall on which they are inscribed is the bedrock on which Gūsū Lán was founded. It is what they have built upon and grown around – even if their sect falls, as long as their clan stands, so does that rock.

Wēn Xù had tried to break it down to humiliate them after he had already defeated them, a lifetime ago. He had failed, and broken Lán Wàngjī’s leg instead to compensate himself for the disappointment.

Lán Wàngjī has achieved the impossible today.

He feels a fierce stab of joy at having done something Wèi Yīng would do. At having lived up to Wèi Yīng’s motto.

The stab of injustice, of wrongs left unaddressed, stabs deeper and more viciously than the joy. Wèi Yīng had achieved the impossible too – once, twice, so many times, and he had paid dearly each time.

He had survived whatever Wēn Cháo and Wēn Zhúliú had done to him – and harnessed a new source of power so he could have his revenge.

He had fought a war without a sword, and won it for them.

He had killed more Wēns than any other cultivator – and had also thrown away his life to save the last of them.

Wèi Yīng had done the right thing, every time, and all it got him was a grisly, un-mourned death.

Lán Wàngjī is only borrowing the corpse to resurrect the soul.[2] He is doing the right thing today, and he will get away with it.

Some of the elders will let him get away with it just because they believe that if he had truly committed a crime, he would have been struck down the moment it was done. Some others will let him get away with it because he is thirteen years old, and he should not have been able to break down the wall unless he was fated to. And others will let him get away with it because they are young and chafing under the weight of three thousand rules themselves. There will even be those who wish him sentenced to death for what he’s done, but will stay their hand out of fear of what – or who – he is. And then, those who will hate him, but support him simply to dredge power away from his uncle, who holds the sect together by slender threads of conformity and rigidity, and who has been stretching them until they’re ready to snap.

Whatever anyone’s reasons, Lán Wàngjī will get away with it, because he has achieved the impossible and done the unthinkable – just like Wèi Yīng.

What kind of thirteen-year-old, they will discuss and deliberate and despair at, has the power to achieve the impossible – just like they had once spoken about Wèi Yīng.

And they will call it fate, or prophecy, or something else to make his actions align with reality, just because his crime has been committed with the power of a golden core, and not that of the dead.

The elders are – largely – old and they look it; mediocre excuses for cultivators who cling to their precious rules because it is literally the only thing giving them a reason to feel superior to the rest of the jiānghú[3].

What can they possibly say to the child who represents their only real hope of true greatness – of true immortality?

With what face?

Look at Shūfù’s, all red and puffy and spraying sour spittle in every direction as he splutters and shrieks. So elegant. Lán Wàngjī feels a brief spike of mean-spirited amusement at his uncle’s expense, then mutes both the cacophony and the man producing it from his mental soundscape. He turns his attention back to the heap of stone-dust and shards that used to be three thousand unshakeable, unbreakable disciplines. Behind the shattering pain and pride of Wèi Yīng, Wèi Yīng, Wèi Yīng, he feels only the bone-deep satisfaction of a job well done.

All in all, Lán Wàngjī concludes, this second childhood’s working out just fine.

~*~

It begins like this: with the matter of a little jailbreak.

In the third year of Wèi Yīng’s death, the last year of Lán Wàngjī’s imprisonment – though he does not know it then.

He doesn’t even truly know how much time has passed. It is not something anyone will inform him about until much, much later. He has lost so many days in a haze of shadows and screams, never sure if the voices he hears come from the throats of the Wēns Wèi Yīng was protecting, or if it is his own voice, crying for someone he does not have the right to call. He has lost even more nights trembling like a panicked rabbit in the dark recesses of his mind, his body paralysed by the scorching agony of lashes carved bone-deep into his back and shoulders.

His heart and body have hurt so much, and for so long, that he can never be quite certain when he began to grow desensitised to the pain. When did pain begin to feel like nothing – ?

He does not have the answers. He will never know.

He only knows that this is, somehow, worse.   

Pain has been his constant companion, tangible and easily felt; so easily drowned and wallowed in. In pain, he could be a pig rolling around in the mud, and not care for anything above wallowing. To have a chasm in his being where the pain filled him up and anchored him to life is worse than losing Wèi Yīng once. Now, he can no longer feel the loss. He cannot feel anything at all.

He has lost Wèi Yīng, again.

He has lost himself – he does not know who he is to be, without Wèi Yīng alive in the world, alive and precious and dearest – he does not want to be.

So time keeps passing on by, without him noticing.

Someone else notices, however; someone who cares about him enough that they cannot let him go in peace – or someone who cares about their own conscience enough to not want him gone.

Lán Xīchén brings A-Yuàn to him, hoping the child will crack him open and force him to live. Lán Xīchén hopes the child will make him care.

Will make him forgive.

It is a negotiation held hostage – the message loud and clear: I have your son, so pardon my crimes.

Lán Wàngjī has lost this war before he could even prepare to fight it.

He had lost it when he had lost Wèi Yīng. No – he had lost it when he had kept barking at Wèi Yīng, come back to Gūsū, come back to Gūsū, when he should have asked – begged on bended knees – let me walk with you.   

He had lost his way, even with three thousand rules to guide him. He had lost his way because of three thousand rules, dragging his feet this way and that, looping his steps back onto themselves till he walked the trail of a labyrinth and found himself at a dead end. No way out, and the monster –

The monster didn’t eat him. It went looking for Wèi Yīng, for Wèi Yīng’s people.

Now it is here, in Lán Wàngjī’s home. It has come for Wèi Yīng’s son.

And Lán Wàngjī is a defeated man. He cannot win against it.  

Crippled and disgraced, he is in no position to fight without losing complete access to the child. So he keeps losing what little he had hoped for. His rights are denied to him one by one, and he lets it happen, just so he will not lose the one thing that matters. The only thing that matters – that they let him continue to see A-Yuàn in some way, any way.

Thus it comes to be, that his uncle orders that A-Yuàn cannot call him father, and his brother delivers the message.  

Thus it comes to be, that his uncle orders that A-Yuàn could not see him more than once a month during his imprisonment, and his brother delivers the message. 

Thus it comes to be, that his uncle orders that A-Yuàn could not live with him in the Jìngshì, and his brother delivers the message. 

Thus it comes to be, thus it comes to be, and thus it comes to be – the head of his clan gives the orders, and the head of his sect carries them out.

They do not leave him with anywhere to go, nor anyone to turn to.

They do not even let him have his son.

He has failed. He has failed – or have they made him a failure? He cannot win against them, so he loses and loses – and what man will not hate the victors of his spoils?

A-Yuàn is his, and they do not even allow Lán Wàngjī to meet him unsupervised.

So this is how it begins: with a little jailbreak. A little sneaking around in the middle of the night, because Lán Wàngjī is making it his personal act of revolution to sneak into A-Yuàn’s room every night and leave behind a good night kiss on his forehead, above his ribbon that only Lán Wàngjī should have the right to touch, and a good-night story in his little ears.

This is his little boy. His child. Wèi Yīng’s – and his.

He should be living with Lán Wàngjī, who will give him the love of two fathers, who will not let Wèi Yīng’s memory die with the fever, who will raise this child with kindness and care and so, so, so much love. All the love in the world.

But his brother has claimed A-Yuàn, instead, and has not even had the decency to do so as a father. Only a war orphan. Only a ward. A dependent, with many duties and few rights.

His brother is kind enough to children, but Lán Wàngjī does not trust him to give A-Yuàn love, when he has already separated the toddler from two parents, and refuses to even let A-yuan call him bofu.

No. Love, he reserves for himself, shoring up the long hours between his sanctioned appointments with his son – ward, his uncle will snap, if he hears – with all the love he feels for the boy, and then he spends just as many hours doubling it, because he has to carry Wèi Yīng’s share too.

A-Yuàn must be loved enough to account for two parents. It is a rule in Lán Wàngjī’s heart, even if it will never be inscribed on the wall.

A-Yuàn is loved enough to account for two parents – but what good is feeling a love Lán Wàngjī is incapable of expressing?

It will not do at all. A-yuan must know, beyond all doubt and all acid admonishments from their family, that Lán Wàngjī loves him. Loves him the most, loves him the best, in a world that has left them both cold and alone. 

Hence, the sneaking about after hours, which, really, he half-expects to get caught sooner or later. He is prepared for the punishment – they have already crippled him, what does it matter if they beat him more? His brother wants him alive, for whatever reason, and his brother knows that Lán Wàngjī will not survive his whipping if they restrict him any more from A-yuan than they already have.  

He will die, if they take A-Yuàn from him entirely. He will not convalesce – he will choose death. He has made that perfectly clear to his family.  

What he doesn’t expect is to be the one doing the catching. That is a responsibility he no longer possesses – does not even want to.

But what does Jīn Guāngyáo want with the library, in the middle of the night, when Lán Xīchén will hand him the treasury if he asks in broad daylight?

The obvious answer is also the one Lán Wàngjī wants least to be true. He cannot say with any certainty what the exact nature of his brother’s relationship with Jīn Guāngyáo is. He knows that Lán Xīchén and Niè Míngjué are close. Niè Míngjué and his brother had attended the lectures together, but Lán Wàngjī does not know if they had ever meant anything more to each other than dear friends. Free though he is with his smiles, Xiōngzhǎng tends to keep his emotions close to his chest.

And in the same vein, Lán Wàngjī does not know if his brother and Jīn Guāngyáo are lovers, or just – really close friends. So close that Xiōngzhǎng had engineered a sworn brotherhood to raise the man’s station in life even though Niè Míngjué had not wanted it. So close that Xiōngzhǎng chose to believe him over the words of everyone else, including Lán Wàngjī’s, though he knew his younger brother never, ever, ever told lies. So close, that Jīn Guāngyáo possessed a freehand token of entry into their home, unbarred and unquestioned.

So close, that Jīn Guāngyáo might have been coming back from an assignation?

Where, then, is Xiōngzhǎng? Why is he not with his lover – if lovers they are?

And why would they wish to conduct their affair in the library, where the night patrol could easily catch them fragrantly dishonouring themselves despite the existence of Qín Sù? Why, when Jīn Guāngyáo could simply stay late in the Hánshì with Xiōngzhǎng, where they can do whatever they want, their privacy unthreatened and undisturbed?

For a while, Lán Wàngjī seriously considers if it’s a sex thing. Not that he knows all that much about sex, outside of what the confiscated stacks of porn from bygone lectures tell him. He finds them stashed away in a neglected corner of the library, and rifles through the books with a burning face, like some kind of miscreant. The porn leaves him perplexed rather than well-informed, in the end. He isn’t sure some of those positions are possible for the human body to contort itself into.

Still, for one excruciating, terribly embarrassing week, he contemplates the state of his brother’s virginity and his brother’s possible kink for public sex – which leads to him having to confront his own fantasies of pinning Wèi Yīng down in the library – and other places where someone might walk in on them – and –

- and that kiss, that one, stupid, stolen, illicit, out-of-control kiss that he had pressed onto Wèi Yīng – and Wèi Yīng hadn’t even cared, because he was an expert at kissing people. Went about kissing people left, right, and centre, because he was just that kissable. Hadn’t he boasted about how he was used to easy affection and admiration?

Who wouldn’t want to kiss Wèi Yīng, if Wèi Yīng offered? Lán Wàngjī had done it when he wasn’t even offering. He had shamed himself with that one kiss and would live with it for the rest of his life, because he didn’t want anyone but Wèi Yīng, and Wèi Yīng –

Why would Wèi Yīng want him? Wèi Yīng had had dozens of options. The pick of the jiānghú. He had told Lán Wàngjī so himself.

Lán Wàngjī doesn’t know how to want anyone else. He has always been fiercely possessive with his love – he gives it all when he does give it, and he is too used to losing the people he loves, to give it away freely. He had never even considered love or companionship as possibilities in his life until Wèi Yīng – it feels like his life began and ended with Wèi Yīng – and he cannot imagine disgracing the depth of his feelings by trying to divert them elsewhere.

Could you be someone’s soulmate, if you were capable of loving anyone else? He wonders about this often, during that week.

He knows some people are made that way – but he himself decidedly is not – and so he cannot make out the true shape of what is hidden under the nebulous shadows of his brother’s relationships. Láns who love tend to love once. Perhaps Lán Xīchén loves one or both of his sworn brothers, perhaps he does not, or perhaps the love he feels is purely platonic.

Lán Wàngjī doesn’t know which way his brother’s winds blow, and comes to the conclusion that it isn’t his place to care. No matter how much it stings – now matter how much it hurts and pinches and burns, to see his brother happy in Jīn Guāngyáo’s company, after they’ve both killed Lán Wàngjī’s joy.

But not caring still doesn’t explain what the man was doing in the library, alone, like a thief or –

 – or a spy, sowing discord in the enemy’s ranks,[4] like he had been during the war.

He had successfully fooled Wēn Ruòhán, hadn’t he, while stealing secrets and information for their side?

The question bothers Lán Wàngjī for days, which stretch into weeks, which extend to months, and it feels like his mind won’t let it go simply because the mystery distracts it from all the other, much worse things it has to care about.  

And then Niè Míngjué turns up dead.

~*~

There’s no use in going to Lán Xīchén, so he opts to befriend a distant state instead.[5]

He sends for Niè Huáisāng. From there, everything becomes hideously clear.

And with clarity, comes rage.

Lán Wàngjī’s rage, like Niè Huáisāng's, manifests first against Jīn Guāngyáo. Jīn Guāngyáo, Mèng Yáo, his Xiōngzhǎng’s precious perfect A-Yáo, who has helped his father to destroy everything Lán Wàngjī holds dear. They killed Wèi Yīng, and ripped away Lán Wàngjī’s one hope of lasting joy and companionship.

What did it matter if Wèi Yīng could not or would not love him? As long as Wèi Yīng lived, Lán Wàngjī would have found a way to win back his only friend.

Wèi Yīng had taken up all the spaces in Lán Wàngjī’s life that, for most others, are filled by half-a-dozen special faces: his first friend, his best friend, his first crush, his only love, his equal in cultivation, his inspiration in morality.

His only friend, and only love. Then. Now. Forever.

He finds out that it was Jīn Guāngyáo – who had known what Jīn Guāngshàn was planning, and who had helped his father destroy a war hero and the refugees he was protecting, instead of coming to his sworn brothers and begging them for help. Telling them the truth. Doing something that meant innocent people did not have to lose their lives. And lose them how – ! Cruelly, ignominiously. By humiliating Wèi Yīng and disgracing his name, by turning him into a hunted animal and then a monster. By trapping him, and watching him squirm and struggle to free himself like a butterfly on a pin. By massacring his people and leaving him to a death so terrible and painful that it had torn Wèi Yīng’s soul apart entirely, and left behind nothing. Not even a whisper of awareness to answer the steel-trap summons of Inquiry.

Jīn Guāngshàn had nurtured the evil ambition of conquest in his heart – and unfortunately for him, he had not discovered how the echo of it rings louder, clearer, deeper, in Jīn Guāngyáo’s veins.

Niè Huáisāng puts his people to work, and within months, discovers – so much.

It is Jīn Guāngyáo, who had helped Jīn Zixūn set up that fatal ambush that got Jīn Zixuān killed and signed Wèi Yīng’s death sentence in the same move.

Jīn Guāngyáo, whose brilliant, foetid mind had schemed and plotted and murdered for a position of power. Who continued to murder even when he had attained the highest seat in the jiānghú, and the title of Xiāndū[6].

Jīn Guāngshàn made his son a monster and became one of his victims too, in the end. Perhaps that was his heaven-sent fate for the crimes committed against the He sect, which he and his son had killed down to the last child, for speaking out against the Jīns’ desire for domination.  

Jīn Guāngyáo had had him raped to death by women who were themselves victims of the same act they were being forced to perform, and who were then impelled to commit necrophilia with his corpse. And their reward for the violation of their sanity and sanctity of self – death. 

He should have stopped there.

He could have stopped there.

No one save perhaps Jīn-fūrén would have blamed him for murdering his father. He could have come to his sworn brothers for mercy, for help, to confess his crimes and clear the names of those he had helped Jīn Guāngshàn destroy.

He could have also done nothing. He could have let sleeping dragons lie undisturbed, and his personal crimes would have gone undetected, or at least examined with the consideration that filial duty would have pressed him into doing as he was told, to maintain his position.

That is the way of their world, to sacrifice the plum tree in order to preserve the peach.[7]

Lán Wàngjī does not know if he ought to be glad that Jīn Guāngyáo had not stopped there. Had kept going and going, instead, till he had left himself vulnerable, his secrets known to more people than just himself.

If Niè Huáisāng's network of improbable spies is to be believed, Jīn Guāngyáo had not stopped at helping destroy Wèi Yīng, nor at outright destroying Niè Míngjué. He had gone so far as to poison his son, and used his death as an excuse to massacre yet another minor cultivation clan, razing their name and territory to rubble.

His son.

His own son, who was also his nephew.

As he listens, Lán Wàngjī tries, just once, to imagine putting his own hands around A-Yuàn’s neck, and squeezing. In the next moment, he rolls over to his side and vomits his lunch out onto the floor of the Jìngshì, pale, shaking, revolted.

His mind whirls in dizzying, nauseating circles, flitting between Jīn and Lán, Lán and Jīn.

Jīn Guāngshàn, who lusted for power, and created monsters.

Jīn Guāngyáo, who hid knives behind his smiles[8], and valued his position so much that he was willing to sacrifice anyone – everyone – to keep it.

And to get more.

Had every crime that benefited Jīn Guāngshàn, not been ruthlessly exploited by his smiling, simpering son?

Jīn Guāngshàn is dead, long past any vengeance or justice that Lán Wàngjī and Niè Huáisāng can exact. What’s left is Jīn Guāngyáo.

Jīn Guāngyáo, whose smiles have wreaked havoc on their lives.  

And Lán Xīchén, who has laid out a path of roses for him to walk, while lining theirs with thorns.

Lán Xīchén, who has made him untouchable.

Lán Xīchén, who refuses to hear a word against his character or his motives.

Lán Xīchén, who trusts his eternally smiling A-Yáo more than he had trusted Niè Míngjué, with whom he had cultivated all his life.

It is Lán Xīchén, who has chosen to trust Jīn Guāngyáo more than his own brother. Lán Xīchén, who has shown Jīn Guāngyáo more mercy and grace than to his own brother. Lán Xīchén, who has stood by and let Jīn Guāngyáo actively instigate the death of a good man, an innocent man, the man Lán Wàngjī loves.

Jīn Guāngyáo had needed Wèi Yīng dead, because his father demanded it. And Lán Xīchén had smoothed his way to that end, by refusing to voice a single opinion that went against the Jīns, by refusing to investigate or even attempt to see evidence that might cast a bad light on his dear A-Yáo or his sect.

Had Xīchén gone blind, deaf, and – literally as well as figuratively – dumb, the day the Jīns brought out those Wēns and paraded them as target practice, during the Bǎifèngshān[9] Hunt?

Jīn Guāngyáo has done plenty wrong, under his father’s name and then his own – but it is Lán Xīchén –

It is Lán Xīchén, and not Jīn Guāngyáo, who has betrayed Lán Wàngjī.

His anger is towards Jīn Guāngyáo. His hatred, he reserves for his brother.

~*~

The creativity of a pair of desperate, revenge-obsessed men is, truly, something to behold.

Lán Wàngjī honestly doesn’t believe he’ll ever reach similar heights of genius. For that to happen, he would have to grow up suffocating under the weight of three thousand impossible-to-follow rules, disappoint his uncle’s hopes by falling in love with a badly-behaved brat from Yúnmèng, fight and win a war with said brat and then lose him to demonic cultivation and his brother’s friend’s scheming, then lose his rights to his dead love’s son, too, and finally be confronted with the breadth and depth of the treachery his brother had well-meaningly enabled – all over again.

It’s highly unlikely he’ll be called upon to confront that specific set of circumstances twice.

He and Niè Huáisāng exhaust every avenue of justice, of shaking the truth out into the air like a feather mattress bursting open. Niè Huáisāng is a known to be a public disgrace, and Lán Wàngjī is known to be as politically naïve as he is morally righteous.

The one man who has the influence to help them, is their enemy’s greatest champion. They are alone, and powerless despite their positions, and they can do nothing.

Like a pair of broken birds resting their clipped wings, they take to speaking only in what-ifs.

What if they had noticed –

What if they had acted –

What if they had been more –

What if they had done more –

What if – what if – what if –

They have frittered away their golden days on the wings of pride and privilege. When they had had power, they spat on it and turned it from their doors.

Now they remain, one with a Great Sect and no reputation to power it with, the other with a great reputation that lends power to the very sect that has ruined him.

They have sinned, he and Huaisang, by refusing to care for the people they love until it was too late, by not putting their shoulders to their loved ones’ burdens to share the load and the consequences.

Now they remain, and the ones they love are dead, and all they have is a desperate, wishful what-if:

What if we could change everything?

~*~

Lán Wàngjī is twenty-eight years old and full of regrets, when he commits suicide under Niè Huáisāng's careful supervision.

~*~

The boy is ten years old and brilliant with potential, when he forms his golden core.

It is, perhaps, the most profound and profoundly personal moment of a cultivator’s life – the long moment of stillness when the coiling, circling qì in his dāntián[10] coalesces into a shimmering golden bead of distilled power. His own power, painstakingly woven in threads of gold from the raw, unrefined energy of the world.

No one talks about the experience, but they all remember it. The waterfall-rush of power and magic thrumming in their veins; their very own, to do with as they please. Most cultivators do please.

When the boy is ten years old, it happens, like it has already happened once, a long time ago. Magic, quick, fire-bright and just as scalding. A spark of flame shooting to life under his belly, igniting a hunger within him for more.

Or so it’s supposed to go.

What actually happens is this: his first and only coherent thought is that something feels – out of place. His next is obliterated in painpainpainpain so acute that he can’t breathe, can’t scream, can’t do anything but experience it in its exquisite totality. Magic licks up his veins, not a spark but a roiling inferno too huge to be contained in his tiny, ten-year-old body. It belongs to him, it is his own, so it roots around in his belly with hungry, eager claws and bullies its way through his meridians, ripping him open from the inside out.

It hurts, and it hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts, the storm of flames burning him clean and washing away everything that was. Everything he was. What’s left is –

What’s left behind is a boy who used to be ten years old, but is now ten-and-twenty-eight, with the fate of the world held between his fingertips.

~*~

Who am I, he wonders, blinking at the ceiling through painfully crusted lids. And then, wrong question.

But why?

Isn’t he Lán Wàngjī, ten years old and golden with power, who will one day be the Second Jade of Lán, who will fall in love with a disgraced demonic cultivator, who will steal another man’s son for himself and then have the audacity to –

To fuck it up, he bites out at himself. There’s no rule against swearing at oneself. Bile floods his mouth. He’s so small, and so tired, out of time and out of place. How will he ever make it right?

It had seemed easy when considered in the abstract from a lifetime away. Turn back time, Lán Zhàn. Fix your fuck-ups, Lán Zhàn. Save the world, Lán Zhàn. Save Wèi Yīng, Lán Zhàn, save his son. Save your –

He splices that thought before it takes root. He isn’t A-Yuàn’s father.

He doesn’t deserve to be called A-Yuàn’s father.

A low, aching moan rises in his chest and struggles to escape. By the time it reaches his lips, it’s just a small, hurt sound – the sound of a heartbroken child, a little boy in pain, lost and confused, and it sounds so much like his A-Yuàn that he barely has time to roll onto his side before he’s vomiting all that bitter, bitter bile out in thick, acid-yellow strings of mucus.

He feels disgusting. He can’t believe the fate of – everything, everyone, Wèi Yīng – rests on his broken, bowed shoulders.

Wèi Yīng, he thinks past the stabbing hurt in his lungs, trying to breathe through it. Wèi Yīng. Wèi Yīng. Wèi Yīng.

A-Yuàn.

Wèi Yīng.

He must pull himself together. For Wèi Yīng. For A-Yuàn. If he doesn’t – if he’s found like this, sick and volatile and out of control from the weight of inexplicable grief, they’ll lock him away like they locked his mother away. He has less than minutes before the sickroom is invaded, and he cannot meet his family as Lán Zhàn, little A-Zhàn, with the dodgy mother and sinful father and questionable qì surging in his too-young meridians.

He drags himself upright and forces his hands and feet to move, to get away from the bed and the mess of vomit and tears and sweat soaking into it. He’s in one of the sickrooms reserved for the inner clan and family. Serene, secluded, and generally high on privacy. He manages to get out the door and into the courtyard, where a lone plum tree stands bare of flowers, this late into summer.

That’s okay. He just needs a place to park his backside and meditate, quick-fast. By the time he collapses under the meagre shade of its barren limbs, his internal clock has recalibrated and he has the time to breathe a sigh of relief that he woke when he did. The sect will be eating the midday meal now, which gives him longer than an incense stick of time to make himself presentable.

He pulls and pushes at his legs and hips and waist till he’s more or less managed to arrange himself in some semblance of the lotus pose, and closing his eyes, begins to take categorical stock of the state of his being.

Hmm. Needs work.

His limbs are too thin and short, ungainly and far too spindly. His joints feel like they’re situated a chǐ away from where they’re supposed to be. His vision feels like it’s being squeezed through a narrow tunnel, like he’s viewing the world from one end of a kaleidoscope. Everything at the other end is topsy-turvy – too high, or too large, or too wide. The space between him and the world feels at once too vast to be bridged, yet not large enough to hold all the shattered pieces of him that just want to curl up in the patch of sunshine under the plum tree. He could do that; he could pretend to be a cat and ignore the world till it goes away.

He could – “Get lost!” someone screams at him, shockingly loud. His heart stutters in his chest – who could have said that? Who knows?

He whips his head around as he frantically tries to look in every direction at once. He is alone, and it’s quiet.

Is he going mad? He can’t tell. The voice had sounded like his own, like Wèi Yīng’s, like his mother’s, like no one’s and everyone’s. Perhaps he’s already mad, he reasons. Only a madman as he had been, desperate as he had been, would throw away everything on the slim hope of turning back time.

For the first time, Lán Wàngjī is forced to confront the fact that he had not truly expected to succeed.

But succeed he has, which means he’s a dead man walking, with a vow to keep and a job to do. So he closes his eyes and ears to any presence, imagined or real, and begins the laborious process of putting himself back together. He collects all the pieces of himself, ignoring the way his fingers bleed and stain the memories – his mother’s death, his uncle’s teachings, his brother’s falseness, Wèi Yīng’s destruction. The burning of his home, Wēn Xù’s vicious leering, a broken leg and public degradation. War – stalking, hunting, killing. Stalking, hunting, more killing. Get lost, get lost, get lost; him to Wèi Yīng, Wèi Yīng to him. A-Yuàn, small, sad, and far too subdued.

He bleeds, but he has bled worse. He bleeds, but he is Lán Wàngjī, who has survived thirty-three lashes that carved him open from his neck to his thighs, so he grits his teeth and ignores the hurts of all his failures, big and little, pretending that they’re just more lashes of the discipline whip. Just more punishment to be endured and overcome. The pain is deserved, and he has already known the worst of pain. Pain, he breathes, circulates his qì and remembers, is an old, old friend.

He is Lán Wàngjī, premier of his generation in matters of orthodox and musical cultivation. He is Lán Wàngjī, beloved of the people of Gūsū and protector of its land. He is Lán Wàngjī, who does not lie. He has promises to keep and wrongs to right, people to protect and injustice to avenge.

He is Lán Wàngjī, so he pieces himself together till his twenty-eight-year-old soul, with its memories and golden core, is wrapped up neat and tight inside his ten-year-old body and he feels fully himself again.

He is Lán Zhàn, Lán Wàngjī, breathing, meditating, hurting, cultivating, and when he opens his eyes to the dumbstruck faces of his uncle, brother and half-a-dozen elders, Hánguāng-jūn looks out.

~*~

The first thing Lán Wàngjī does when he is finally left alone, after his qì has been tested and re-tested and re-re-tested, and all the elders have retired to collectively lose their minds over it, is pretend to meditate.

Meditating is a very useful way to get people to leave him alone, and a skill he had perfected to an art form in his first life. Being ten (and twenty-eight) years old is no hindrance. If anything, being small helps. No one disturbs him; it’s not dignified to be glared at disdainfully by someone young enough to be your grandchild.

Lán Wàngjī foresees himself doing a lot of meditating, this go around.

What he’s actually doing, besides being passively repellent, is cataloguing his sins.

Where to begin, he wonders. At the start? But the start is so very far back, and rooted in other people’s sins instead of his own.

The first sin, he thinks, began with the wall of rules. All his sins, and his brother’s, and his uncle’s, and the elders’; their whole clan’s every sin began with the wall of rules.

Three thousand rules to keep us steady. And even with them we have proved to be merely civilised animals.

Those rules are an excellent smokescreen for the lack of real grit and integrity in the hearts of Láns. He has been convinced of this since the day he saw Xiōngzhǎng comforting himself with Jīn Guāngyáo’s company, while Niè Huáisāng grieved in the Jìngshì, shattered over his brother’s murder.

A murder that Lán Xīchén never became aware of, despite having contributed at least half the work of bringing it about.

Do not impart knowledge to the wrong people. Do not associate with evil. Exercise proper judgement. Be impartial.  

What use were any of those rules? What use were any of their rules? Their rules have never prevented them from sinning, only seen them punished for it.

And the murder itself –

Lán Wàngjī had expected to feel something about the brutal killing of a man he had respected and been fond of since childhood. Niè Míngjué had been like another elder brother to him. But now, despite knowing how he had been killed, how he must have suffered, Lán Wàngjī cannot feel even a lick of sorrow, nor any feeling of injustice.

Niè Huáisāng has had to tell him everything – everything – every last dirty secret his sect of self-righteous, blood-soaked, demonic cultivating hypocrites had been keeping tucked away near Xinglu Ridge for the entire period of their existence.

Lán Wàngjī frankly thinks that as terrible as Niè Míngjué’s death must have been, he had it coming. He had it coming, once, twice, thrice over.

And what about his own brother, he wonders bitterly. Xiōngzhǎng, who must have known. Who had to have known. How could Lán Xīchén not know that his closest friend in life cultivated the resentful energy of beasts?

To have known, and still allowed Wèi Yīng to die…

How could it be that his brother was ignorant?

And equally, how could it be that his brother was ignorant, and still allowed Wèi Yīng to die, just because it was the easy thing to do?

Where did three thousand rules go, on the day the Jīns used people as archery targets, and Xiōngzhǎng did not even say a word?

Where did three thousand rules go, when he begged and begged Xiōngzhǎng to be fair and impartial, to make the effort to go to the Qióngqí Path and Yílíng, and judge for himself?

Where did three thousand rules go, when Shūfù took out his hatred of a dead woman on her innocent son?

Where did three thousand useless, idiotic, regressive, nonsensical rules go, when Lán Wàngjī too stood back with all the rest and watched Wèi Yīng die, instead of giving him the respect and honour he deserved, the love he deserved, by walking the single-plank bridge with him?

Hánguāng-jūn, he muses bitterly. I was lofty and full of false pride, thinking three thousand rules had taught me the key to life so I chose to be called the bearer of light. I should have picked ‘Mièguāng-jūn’ instead.[11]

Get lost. Get lost. Get lost.

The words ricochet around the empty corridors of his brain, not in Wèi Yīng’s mellow tenor. No, the voice is one he knows even more intimately than Wèi Yīng’s. It is his own.

He’d started it, hadn’t he? With his constant rebuffing of Wèi Yīng’s offers of friendship. The disproportionate vindictiveness with which he had got Wèi Yīng punished for as many fractions as he could pin him down for.

He had been following the rules, as he had been raised and moulded to do, with strict, ungentle hands.

All the rules.

Every last contradictory one of them.

And it wasn’t himself he had torn apart by trying to run in three thousand directions at once.

It was Wèi Yīng.

Always Wèi Yīng, paying the price for everyone’s sins.

~*~

The main trouble is this: Lán Wàngjī believes in rules.

The idea of a code of morality and conduct to live and swear by is something he personally and wholeheartedly swears by, for many, well-considered reasons. Chief of them is Wèi Yīng himself, who remained unswerving in his ideals no matter how they tore his life apart. Lán Wàngjī doesn’t know why Wèi Yīng made some of the choices he did, but with the benefit of maturity, fatherhood, and hindsight, he can see the gaping holes in his perception of the events that guided Wèi Yīng’s choices and actions.

Like the belatedly obvious fact that there had been something wrong with Wèi Yīng’s golden core. Belatedly obvious only because somehow – somehow, and Lán Wàngjī truly can’t explain even his own stupidity in the matter, considering how relieved Shūfù had been that Wēn Xù had come alone to Cloud Recesses – they had all completely forgotten the existence of Wēn Zhúliú and the utter devastation he could wreak on a cultivator’s life.

Of course they had heard how Jiāng Wǎnyín’s core had been melted. Ruined. Every Wēn troop they had skirmished with in those long months of preparing for total war, while searching for Wèi Yīng, had crowed about it. Lán Wàngjī had been present himself for most of the leering, pitying, raucously taunting provocation that was levelled at Jiāng Wǎnyín before Zǐdiàn burned their tongues out of their mouths.

They never thought that maybe the Wēns had had the wrong name. That it hadn’t been Yúnmèng Jiāng’s heir who was brought to his knees, but its head disciple, who was any day a far more credible threat than his ostensible superior.

Lán Wàngjī feels so foolish.

Of course no one turned to demonic cultivation unless they had to. Of course Wèi Yīng, who had loved his sword, loved talismans, loved night-hunting, flying, leaping over walls and all the other little, mundane things cultivators did easy as breathing, wouldn’t have chosen to fight a war with a flute instead of his beloved sword.

Unless Suíbiàn was lost to him. Unless – unless – and how it hurtshurtshurts to realise the depths of destruction Wèi Yīng must have faced, alone.

How ridiculous Lán Wàngjī must have seemed to him! How condescending and cowardly, insultingly well-fed and safe in his clan silks and conviction of his own superiority of method, while Wèi Yīng starved and bled and chose exile to save innocent lives. How completely unwelcoming and hostile he must have seemed to them all, with his constant badgering about Wèi Yīng’s lack of sword and general cultivation choices.

And how utterly idiotic he must have seemed to Wèi Yīng, when he begged him to come to Gūsū, where Wèi Yīng had been beaten and punished and reviled, because of Lán Wàngjī’s open antagonism towards him. Wèi Yīng must have thought he was being dragged back for more punishment – and –

Would it have been any different?

Would Shūfù have truly let Lán Wàngjī harbour and protect Wèi Yīng inside the hallowed grounds of Gūsū Lán, or would he have had Wèi Yīng imprisoned, if not executed?

Would Xiōngzhǎng have stood firm in his moral fibre for once in his life, or would he have sold Wèi Yīng to the Jīns with a gently benevolent smile on his face?

Could anyone in Gūsū Lán, including himself, have been trusted to do the right thing?

In the end, Wèi Yīng had won them a war with his demonic cultivation, saved so many lives, saved A-yuan, and did nothing worse than try to grow radishes on a field of bones.

In the end, they who walked the broad, righteous, golden road, were the true evil in the world.

In the end, none of them had done the right thing. Only Wèi Yīng, who never followed any arbitrary rules except for the ones that made sense to him. Only Wèi Yīng, and what more is to be said, really?

The evidence is in excess. The wall of rules is a useless artefact and a moral handicap. It’s worse than useless; it’s actively harmful, stunting their ability to think for themselves, clouding their judgement along straight black and white lines that reflect nothing of the real world at all.

It will have to go.

Lán Wàngjī puts that on his to-do list. His to-do list is, quite frankly, excessive. No matter how many times he goes over it, the bottom line stays the same.

In summation: his sect needs a complete rehaul.

~*~

So much is the same; actually, everything’s the same. But Lán Wàngjī is no longer who he once was, and so everything is different, too. He has been washed anew. Physically, mentally, emotionally. To change his sect, he has to first reconcile the changes within himself.

His body is the easiest to grow accustomed to. His skin is soft and plump, his arms and cheeks pudgy still with baby fat. Like the disciples who are his physical peers, he began meditating spiritually and attending classes several years ago. He had outstripped them easily in his first life, but in this one, with his adult knowledge and outsized golden core, they cannot even dream of touching him. Their instructors cannot dream of touching him – and the uproar this causes in the sect is enough that in other places, people would be worrying about civil unrest.

No one knows what the hell to do with him. Good, that was the plan, to deceive the heavens to cross the sea.[12]

He needs them all to leave him to his own devices – any extended time spent with him will make it clear that something is wrong with his soul. Of course, they already know it some level, even if their thoughts have taken the opposite turn from the truth. Every inch of him has been examined, inside and out, but since his knowledge of his own history is perfect, and his qì too, is his own and perfectly balanced, even the sceptics have to keep their mouths shut.

But that only covers the people who don’t matter. Outer disciples, distant relatives, elders. Well, the elders do matter, in the sense that dealing with them and their outsize influence in clan and sect matters is definitely in the top ten items of his to-do list. In the present they have been, predictably, too preoccupied with the sudden reality of having a potential immortal in their midst to care about who or what that budding bodhisattva[13] is.

The transfer of his power had been an intentional act, one that had taken him and Huáisāng weeks to weave into the array that they had used to sacrifice his first life so he could live it again. They had both calculated that he would need his cultivation, for their own reasons. Niè Huáisāng's were political – he had assessed quite frankly that the strength of Lán Wàngjī’s golden core played as much part towards his public reputation as what he used it for. Hánguāng-jūn was known to bring order out of chaos and aid the unaided, yes – but he was also known as the most powerful cultivator of their generation, having left even his elder brother far behind.

Of course he had, Lán Wàngjī had retorted back. There hadn’t been much else to do, since he had been whipped, save cultivate his core enough that the punishment only kept him bedridden for a few years as opposed to a lifetime.

That was truly when he had mastered the art of meditation.

Lán Wàngjī’s own concerns about his core had been of the practical variety; he had been occupied with the need to deal with Wēn Ruòhán and his sons before they could cause real damage.

Now, he has years to prepare to face Wēn Ruòhán – a few short years that will have to be enough, that he plans to use to cultivate as high as he can manage. Wēn Ruòhán may house the inferno of Qíshān’s volcanos within his dāntián, but Lán Wàngjī plans to reach the sun.  

Against an enemy so fearsomely destructive, he thinks he’s allowed a little head start, and feels a familiar shivery thrill at breaking a rule. Do not cheat at tests.

There’s no rule about not cheating at life or death, though, so perhaps no rules have been broken, which is a prospect that bums him out almost to the point of wanting to sulk about it.

It had to be the years of sneaking out to see A-Yuàn on the sly. Leave it to Wèi Yīng’s son to turn him into a late-stage rebel.

He misses A-yuan like a missing limb. Like someone has looked inside the pitted hollow of him, seen what little was left behind by the loss of Wèi Yīng, and scraped it out raw and bloody.

He hates thinking about his son, so of course he thinks about his son all the time. His son. Wèi Yīng’s son.

My son too, please, Guānyīn.[14]

He hadn’t done right by A-Yuàn. He hadn’t been able to do right by A-Yuàn. Children should not be raised half in the dark, forced to tell lies to keep time spent with a parent secret from their own family.

Lán Wàngjī has been missing his son for so, so long. He has had little but A-Yuàn on his mind before he came back, A-Yuàn who was the sum total of all his mistakes made flesh. A-Yuàn, who suffered because Lán Wàngjī could not do the right thing early enough to save him pain.

He misses his baby boy even more than he misses Wèi Yīng, whom he had never had, to begin with. He misses him so much that he somehow also misses the fact that he, too, is someone’s son.

That he is, in fact, someone’s favourite son.

~*~

Between then and now, this remains the same, and oh – how it hurts.

Lán Qǐrén doesn’t know what to make of him anymore. Again, for the second time. These are waters that Lán Wàngjī has already navigated; he knows the precise location of the rock that sank their relationship. Before he died to live again, he had been convinced that keeping his Shūfù’s nose out of his business would be child’s play.

And so it is. Shūfù is alternately baffled and bedazzled by him. Baffled by his coldness, the stiff monosyllabic conversation, the avoidance of eyes and therefore also the soul. Bedazzled enough by the continuous display of his advanced cultivation, his unerring calligraphy, his genius at music, his mastery of rites and proper conduct, to ask no probing questions that might shatter reality and reveal an illusion.

As if to compensate for the part of him that cannot help but be bewitched by Lán Wàngjī’s aptitude at cultivation, however, Lán Qǐrén is always watching. Half-suspiciously, half like he can’t believe his good luck at producing such an exemplary nephew and student.

In the first weeks of his return, Lán Wàngjī knows no peace nor privacy. As in his first life, he lives in the Hánshì, which is currently his uncle’s home, with his family of three. He is observed eating, sleeping, meditating, bathing, and even using the privy, with his Shūfù’s characteristic lack of subtlety. That’s a good thing; it lets him know where the man is at all hours, what he’s thinking. Where to veer filial, and where to take an about turn into uncharted seas. He is careful to not put a toe out of orthodoxy, while his uncle labours to catch him out.[15]

The trouble is his imagination, which reacts to the constant scrutiny by dreaming up ridiculous scenarios that consistently and predictably find their climax in Shūfù’s undignified death via: drowning, lightning strike, hurricane, shipwreck, sharks, stinging jellyfish, monster crabs, sea-serpents, pissed-off dragons (because surely Lán Qǐrén could be trusted to find a way to piss off a dragon), jiāorén[16] moonlighting as part-time pirates, actual pirates –

His imagination is fertile and his ire with his uncle immense. As it should be – he is the prodigal son, why should his resentment be other than prodigious, too?

Shūfù, or Yìfù[17]. He has never really known what to call Lán Qǐrén. It has always been ‘uncle’ out loud, and ‘father’ in his heart.

But his father took that heart, and killed it. Murdered it along with the fifty scorned lives that it was shielding. Tried to take that heart’s son from him. And Lán Wàngjī had been left parentless, and nearly childless.

He had expected to find dealing with his family difficult. He had known they would be alarmed and inquisitive about the overnight change in him. He had known that for his brother and uncle, the potential of his immortality would come after the problem of his person.

He considers that he still has the physical brain of a ten-year-old, and concludes that he’s handling things as well as can be expected.

~**~

Lán Wàngjī is not, in fact, handling it. The ‘it’ is his brother.

Xīchén is so young. He hasn’t even received his courtesy name yet, and it astounds Lán Wàngjī just how childish his brother really is. To a ten-year-old A-Zhàn, his Huàn-gē had stood tall and all-encompassing, holding all the kindness and love and human connection the rest of his clan did not supply.

To ten (and twenty-eight) year old Lán Wàngjī, A-Huàn is a rather sorry excuse for a child. Over-burdened. Strangely dichotomous with maturity beyond his years and the painful degree of naivete he had persisted in showing as an adult. Xīchén is a puzzle that confounds and worries Lán Wàngjī, and he observes his now-younger brother like he would examine the juniors given into his care during the night-hunts he was tasked with overseeing.  

It's worrying.

It’s very worrying, and it’s worse because Lán Wàngjī truly can’t bring himself to care much for his brother’s fate. He knows that this Xīchén hasn’t harmed him yet, hasn’t taken Wèi Yīng from him, hasn’t helped sentence 50 harmless, largely innocent women and men to death, along with the lone light of Lán Wàngjī’s life.

All for a pretty, pathetic smile.

All for Jīn Guāngyáo, whom Lán Xīchén held so dear that he wouldn’t allow an unfit word to be spoken about the wretch. His brother’s friend, who somehow managed to go from being an unfavoured bastard son to Jīn-zongzhu and Xiāndū in five short years, having somehow managed to get rid of three cultivators in their prime on his way to the top – without being questioned even once. How?

Because of Lán Xīchén, of course. Lán Xīchén’s easy trust and wholehearted support. Lán Xīchén, known to be a beacon of morality and correct behaviour, but who was content to let the last of the Wēns die without dignity or mercy. Was it because he loved Jīn Guāngyáo more than he loved anyone else, or had he too, carried in his heart, a hatred against every Wēn, for what Wēn Xù had done to their home?

He had never truly tried to dissuade Niè Míngjué’s extreme hatred of Wēns. Had never argued reason or moderation to Niè Míngjué – or to Jīn Guāngyáo, in fact.

The realisation disturbs Lán Wàngjī, enough to make him cast a closer eye on his brother’s relationship with Niè Míngjué. Xīchén is friendly with everyone he meets, but Mingjue-xiong used to be his only friend, until he met Mèng Yáo.

Is, Lán Wàngjī reminds himself, not was.

He comes often, with his father, visiting for clan business.

Saving Niè-zongzhu wasn’t part of the plan, by Niè Huáisāng's own admission. Who will believe Lán Wàngjī, if he tries to warn a clan leader that his sword will be shattered, and his mind along with it? He may be Gūsū Lán’s only living hope of attaining an immortal disciple, but outside of his sect he is still a child, as far as anyone knows. He will be called insane and outrageous; his words may be considered a lie, or a curse or a prophecy, a threat all on their own. Worse – if Niè-zongzhu listens to his warning but does not heed it, it might spark war between Gūsū Lán and Qīnghé Niè when tragedy eventually befalls the doomed clan leader.

“Let’s not complicate your life unnecessarily,” Huáisāng had said, his eyes glittering like diamonds, hard and uncompromising. To Huaisang, only his brother’s life was non-negotiable.

Lán Wàngjī says nothing to anyone, recognising a futile course of action when it’s slapping him in the face, but it is not in his character or training to let someone die if a fit word or action can stop the destruction of a life. It is a hard-learned lesson, one that sunk in only after he lost Wèi Yīng. So he waits and watches from afar, hoping for an opportunity to save Niè-zongzhu anyway.

It’s impossible to watch the man without also observing his son.

It is strange to see Niè Míngjué alive again, and so young. He’s only fifteen years old, physically healthy but already showing the signs of stress on his qì. His golden core is devastatingly powerful – or had been, when Lán Wàngjī had been just A-Zhàn. Now, it’s like a candle to the inferno blazing in Lán Wàngjī’s gut.

Niè Míngjué is at the age when he will soon begin his year of study at Cloud Recesses, with the others peers of his generation. Lán Xīchén, whose cultivation is years in advance of his age and who can match Niè Míngjué blow for blow, will join them. Lán Wàngjī knows that Shūfù has argued against it, not wanting Xīchén to be overburdened by having to compete with cultivators who are two to three years his seniors, but he has been overruled by the council of elders, who want their First Jade to shine.

Consequently, Xīchén spends his days studying and cultivating like he’s being pursued by the vengeful ghost of Lán Yì herself. He’s determined to justify the elders’ faith in him – and even more determined to impress Niè Míngjué, with whom he is clearly, openly taken.

Their friendship pleases the elders. It only worries Lán Wàngjī, who can see the way his brother is already learning to adjust, to make way for louder voices and stronger conviction, already learning to compromise and settle for less, so he doesn’t have to lose an inch of good opinion from anyone at all.

Xīchén tries so very hard to please, and Lán Wàngjī watches and worries.

Is this how his brother was corrupted, he wonders now. Is that what he’s watching? The annihilation of his brother’s character, starting here and now? Or did it begin a long time ago, and is it only now that Lán Wàngjī can recognise what he is seeing?

Compromises, compromises, more compromises.

Was this the foundation on which Wèi Yīng’s life had been bartered and discarded?

Was this the weakness that would one day cause Xīchén to stand back, as people were murdered left, right, and centre by one of his sworn brothers?

Was this how Niè Míngjué would die, one day? By the belated force of the elders’ will, by the demands of his own character, which had collectively pushed Xīchén towards too many compromises?

Is that why Xīchén had turned towards Jīn Guāngyáo’s smiling face, because it never demanded, only made pitiful eyes and oblique hints, indirectly asking and therefore being given?

Your A-Yáo murdered your Dà-gē. Only the Jade Emperor knows what he did to his body.

A lifetime ago, Lán Wàngjī had wanted so much to rip his brother’s smug, self-satisfied skin open and find out exactly what manner of rot lurked beneath. 

But first, your A-Yao drove him mad.

Would Xīchén have lost his mind too, if he had known that?

A lifetime ago, Lán Wàngjī had wanted to find out.

Your precious A-Yáo murdered your precious Dà-gē, and you let him.

Would Xīchén have lost himself in his smiles and gone laughing mad, braying his never-ending cheer to the rocks and the air? Or would he have locked himself away, like their father?

Now, Lán Wàngjī will never know.

It’s his job to make sure he never has to know. Jīn Guāngyáo will die before he gets a chance to weave his nets of devastation and greed – Wèi Yīng will live unmolested and unthreatened, and Niè Míngjué –

If he dies because demonic cultivation drives him mad, it’ll be his own fault.

Lán Wàngjī doesn’t care about the fate of a man who thinks his demonic cultivation is righteous because he torments beasts rather than humans for power. The respect and affection he had once held for Niè Míngjué evaporated when the man sent his soldiers to the Burial Mounds to besiege Wèi Yīng, when Wèi Yīng had done nothing to him, ever.

Then he found out just what lurked within Baxia, and the memory of a man he had once considered close to family grew tainted with revulsion.

Even Huáisāng had not attempted to defend his brother for that.

Lán Wàngjī watches his brother bend for the friendship of a man like Niè Míngjué, and doesn’t know how to feel.

These are the men who killed Wèi Yīng.

Not this Xīchén, not A-Huàn¸ he tries to remind himself. It makes no difference. He feels disconnected from the thought even though it’s his own mind forming it, ruminating over it. Where his Xiōngzhǎng used to be, is just an empty space. It doesn’t hurt, which is good. It doesn’t feel like anything, which is all kinds of problematic.

He’s afraid of hurting the child his brother is with his indifference, or worse, lash out with all the resentment he feels. He knows he is a grown-up now, an adult in truth if not in appearance, but it simply doesn’t matter. This strange old-new child-body of his comes with its own rules. Lán Wàngjī looks at his big brother with A-Zhàn’s eyes, and still feels the absolute aversion of betrayal. It cannot be reasoned with, nor beaten into compliance, so the next best thing is to ignore it.

So he spends a lot of time avoiding his Xiōngzhǎng.

Of course, he then has to deal with Xīchén’s own hurt and confusion at the way his baby brother seems not so babyish, nor very brother-ish, anymore.  

There is no envy in him at the knowledge that he will never, ever be able to touch Lán Wàngjī’s cultivation, that his brother’s core formed brilliant and bright and as fully developed as though he had been cultivating it for years.

A generational miracle, they all believe, and A-Huàn believes in it the hardest. He’s so proud that it would break Lán Wàngjī’s heart, how little he himself is affected – if he could feel anything at all towards his brother.

But he simply can’t separate A-Huàn from Xīchén.

He feels strange. Disjointed and displaced, stuck somewhere in the dreamscape between impossibly young and improbably old. He feels like A-Zhàn, overwhelmed and alone in a world that looms far too large over his short little shoulders, that assails his ears with noises they can’t comprehend and makes him stumble on unbalanced feet. He feels also like Lán Wàngjī, who has won a war and lost his love, who has embraced a son and failed to keep him, who has sacrificed his future to rectify every mistake of his past.

A-Zhàn wants his brother, but Lán Wàngjī can’t stand his. He doesn’t know how to reconcile these wildly extreme desires, and so is shamefully relieved when they eventually cancel each other out into blissful, simple nothing.

His relationship with his brother has always been the least complicated one he has.

~*~

His relationship with his uncle gives him nothing but trouble.

Shūfù is the only one who doesn’t entirely trust what’s happened to him, who seems to know that the ice in him comes from wounds far deeper and older than his mother’s currently-recent death.

Lán Wàngjī is furious rather than mourning, and while he can easily conceal it from a brother who has never truly understood the depths of him, hiding from the man who has always, in his heart, been his true father –

It’s impossible.

It’s impossible, so he doesn’t try. He wants his uncle to see his rage. Want him to feel the uncomfortable prickling of a hundred thousand thorns of contempt under his skin when Lán Wàngjī looks at him. He wants his uncle lying awake at night, worrying over the resentment only he is allowed to see in Lán Wàngjī’s eyes.  

Not that he gets to see it often. Lán Wàngjī estimates he has about six years before he must leave, and set fire to Wēn Ruòhán’s halls before the Xiāndū turns his eyes on them.

Wēn Xù will go first, for his crimes against Lán Wàngjī’s home.

Wēn Zhúliú must go next, for the terrible threat he represents.

Wēn Cháo will follow, his extermination expedient.

Then, then, Wēn Ruòhán, who will know what it is to be massacred by a mob.

Lán Wàngjī has returned to do many things, but killing Wēn Ruòhán is the most important of them. Without Wēn Ruòhán, without war and burned sects, what could possibly harm Wèi Yīng? Without Wēn Ruòhán, Wèi Yīng will never have to turn to demonic cultivation, will never have to be hated, will never be in a position where Jīn Guāngshàn and his dirty, rotten son can get their disgusting, greedy paws on him.

He's going to kill Jīn Guāngshàn and Mèng Yáo anyway, just to make sure it absolutely never happens.

Wēn Xù, Wēn Zhúliú, Wen Chao, Wēn Ruòhán, Mèng Yáo, Jīn Guāngshàn.

Niè Huáisāng had wanted Mèng Yáo to go last. He had wanted Mèng Yáo to suffer torments that make Lán Wàngjī faintly queasy to remember. Did Huáisāng have to take the whole butchery thing so seriously?

Lán Wàngjī had won the argument in the end, positing that as the designated murderer, his vote carried more weight. With an eel as slippery as Jīn Guāngyáo, a fast, efficient death would be the safest option.

He’s still going to chop the horrible little man’s head off, just to be properly thorough.

Huáisāng had sulked for days before relenting and helping put the rest of his list in order. “A string of assassinations,” he had called it.

Lán Wàngjī likes to call a murder a murder.

He has to become good at murder. He refuses to use the usual tricks and deceptions employed by true assassins to weaken their targets.

His cultivation, however, is an armoury he will keep well-stocked.

He begins on a course of cultivation he has designed himself, considering the needs of his ten-year-old body and twenty-eight-year-old core in tandem. He has six, perhaps seven years before he must surpass Wēn Ruòhán. He’ll have to work fast, and he’ll have to work hard.

On the bright side, cultivating non-stop will keep Shūfù out of his hair. Shūfù loves watching his students slog.

In the mornings, Lán Wàngjī slips into meditation so deep it would be dangerous to wake him from it before his senses are ready to emerge, his core spinning like a star in his old-new body. It feels like lava in his abdomen, yet cauterises like ice flowing through his meridians. He burns as he beats it into submission, and dazzles his watchers with the sun-bright glow of his qì on fire.

In the afternoons, he joins the ranks of disciples learning the motions of drawing a blade, dancing with it, killing with it. Bìchén is granted to him earlier than in his first life, and it sings with familiar joy as he speeds through the basic and intermediate classes before slowing down in the advanced levels, hampered only by the limits of his child-body’s shorter limbs and lower stamina.   

In the evenings, he hoards texts from the library, making sure he is seen flipping through their pages like the wind is at his fingertips, to explain away his prodigious knowledge and fool the elders Shūfù assigns to spy on him.

And in the nights, his gǔqín sings songs of yearning that curl gently around the spired rooves of Gūsū like mist embracing the mountain. Those who can hear it down in Cǎiyī huddle around the brazier in their homes, shivering with inexplicable tears in their eyes, and begin to call him Wùshān Yōuqín.[18]

He lives over his old childhood in months, his days regimented to the fēn[19], his meals eaten rabbit-fast and lessons repeated till his body begins to grow strong beyond its years, to keep up with the tidal waves of qì breaking against his meridians.

He lives over years in weeks, and weeks in days, to explain it all away and make it look sane, to daze and beguile and fool – and he fools everyone; everyone but his Shūfù, his baba, his killer, who sees him and knows – that he isn’t who he says he is.

~*~

Lán Wàngjī has been counting the days till he will meet Wèi Yīng in this life. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, of course, besides get his heart broken all over again.

He hopes that Wèi Yīng will try to befriend him. He hopes that doesn’t change. If – when – if – Wèi Yīng comes to him, he will receive him warmly, politely, and issue an invitation in return.

He will – he will, he promises himself – win Wèi Yīng’s friendship. If Wèi Yīng won’t come to him, he’ll go to Wèi Yīng.

He’ll do anything, whatever it takes, to win Wèi Yīng’s friendship. This time, it will be something real and tangible, an acknowledged and spoken-of thing, beyond public or private doubt. This time, he will not pretend he is too good, too righteous, too disciplined for Wèi Yīng. This time, he will not –

This time, he will treat Wèi Yīng well.

Their friendship will not be a nebulous affair of arguments and distrust, given wholeheartedly by Wèi Yīng and matched only half-heartedly by Lán Wàngjī.

Once, he had cared too much about getting hurt, so he had refused to give Wèi Yīng anything more than the bare minimum of himself. Once, he had worried more about the rules Wèi Yīng broke, than why. Once, he could not have Wèi Yīng’s love, so he had not truly returned Wèi Yīng’s friendship, and he will never be convinced that it did not play a part in killing Wèi Yīng.

He cannot forgive himself for that.

When he should have offered himself to Wèi Yīng, he had demanded, instead, that Wèi Yīng give himself to him. Now he knows what selfishness that had been, what arrogance and delusion. He could never have kept Wèi Yīng safe – and why would Wèi Yīng believe in his assurances, when he had spent their entire time together getting Wèi Yīng into as much trouble with Cloud Recesses’s authorities as he possibly could? Had there been a single infraction Wèi Yīng committed at the lectures that Lán Wàngjī had not seen him punished for?

Why, because Wèi Yīng had bothered him? Because he had not liked being singled out, not liked being pestered – with what? – a beautiful boy’s offer of complete admiration and companionship?

He had hated and loved Wèi Yīng in equal measure, in that first year. He had hated Wèi Yīng’s flippancy, he had hated being harassed and hated the way Wèi Yīng desecrated his forehead ribbon in public, in front of the entire jiānghú.

That was the first time Wèi Yīng had broken his heart.

It would not be the last time, either – but had anything Wèi Yīng had done to Lán Wàngjī been worse than Lán Wàngjī’s betrayal of him?  

Could anything be less inexplicable or more unforgiveable than not standing with the one you love, until there was no way out for them but to die?

And even in that, he had failed Wèi Yīng. He had left Wèi Yīng to die alone, because he had gone and got himself whipped into paralysis, because he had been stupid enough to go back to Gūsū after carrying the Yílíng Lǎozǔ away from a massacre.

If he had stayed – if he had gone with Wèi Yīng to Qióngqí Path, to Yílíng, to the Burial Mounds, at any time at all, then perhaps Wèi Yīng would not have had to die alone. Not alone, and perhaps not even so terribly, without any human dignity or grace given to his life or person.

Such a terrible, lonely death he had had, that not enough of his soul had been left intact to even answer the steel-trap summons of Inquiry.

If they had died together, at least, then – perhaps –  

– perhaps then, they could have had a chance.

It’s a silly little superstition he holds fast to – if you die together, you reincarnate together.

But Wèi Yīng was gone; his soul had shattered entirely.

And Lán Wàngjī’s heart is doomed to forever be broken, because while Wèi Yīng lives again, while he can and will earn Wèi Yīng’s friendship –

– he will never know Wèi Yīng’s love.

Wèi Yīng is a child. He will come as a child, a boy of only fifteen, to Lán Wàngjī, who has already lived one lifetime more than most people get. Wèi Yīng will be bright and curious and mischievous, unrestrained, untamed – and Lán Wàngjī already feels like an old, tired warhorse, whose legs march on through desert sands through force of habit alone, accustomed to searching for peace.

One-two step.

One-two step.

Turn, and find yourself back where you began.

Lán Wàngjī turns, and finds himself staring at a boulder hewn from the ancient mountain on which their sect stands tall, carved with three thousand precisely-etched precepts that form the guiding principles of the path his first life had taken.

The are the foundation of his soul.

They are the beginning of the end.

He has made so many mistakes. Nothing but mistakes, in his first life. Now his mistakes have led him here, where he can look at them with his own eyes, count them with his fingertips tracing over their characters.

He does not want it to happen again. He does not even want the possibility of it ever happening again.

His core spins with the thought, faster and faster till it grows into conviction.

It will not happen again.

The rules of Lán Ān'’s clan have become a chokehold around the souls of his descendants. The rules don’t allow them to think, let alone act. What manner of evil have they not committed, individually and collectively, under the banner and protection of Gūsū Lán’s rules?

They have beaten the children of other sects and homes, for transgressions their parents would not touch them for. They have sullied the name and character of anyone who has deviated from their narrow confines of philosophy. They have dismissed and reviled, they have displayed arrogance and a lack of caring for their fellow men.

They have permitted genocide, under these rules.

They have committed murder, because of these rules.

So many unforgiveable crimes, so much death – and for what? Three thousand lies? Three thousand ridiculous, arbitrary laws that no one person could follow without hopelessly compromising himself from the very start? How could any place have three thousand rules governing it, without one half conflicting with the other? Lán Wàngjī knows for a fact that the rules can be cherry-picked to suit a situation, that not even his uncle attempts to follow all three thousand.

It's impossible.

How is it impossible? rings in his head, in Wèi Yīng’s contradictory, teasing tones. You’re just removing the firewood from under the pot[20], how hard can it be? You can do it, Lán Zhàn. Lán Zhàn!

If it for Wèi Yīng, nothing is impossible.

Power explodes from his centre, rushing outward in a wide arc, like a chord of assassination. The blade of qì mows down whatever stands in its way, taking the tops off the tall silver grass and hacking trees in half, till it crashes against the wall of rock carved with the Gūsū Lán precepts.

Lán Wàngjī’s qì thrums, a deep, insistent note like a hammer against an anvil.

The mountain listens and trembles, trembles until it breaks, breaks into three thousand thousand pieces, no bigger than grains of sand to the naked eye. Where the rules that held up his clan once stood, now stands nothing. A strange shimmer hangs in the air, rubble choking the lungs of anyone who comes wandering too close to the clouds of dust obscuring the epicentre of the blast from view.

What can they hide behind, without the rules?

What will compel them towards cowardice, without the rules?

Who can they punish and beat, without the rules?

Who are they, without the rules?

Who is he?

~*~

Shūfù comes to find him with the last words a teenaged boy – or young man – wants to hear from anyone, ever:

“We need to talk.”

Lán Wangi never wants to talk. It’s his least favourite activity, ever.

But he’s on thin ice at the moment, could-be-immortal golden core notwithstanding. By the laws of his clan, he has committed an unthinkable crime. On the other hand, half the reason it’s unthinkable is because no one had ever actually considered it could happen.

Consequently, there are not actually any rules going do not break down the wall of rules.

Which means, technically, he hasn’t done anything anyone can punish him for.

There will be some form of retribution coming, of course. He knows how vindictive his clan can be. But his golden core is keeping the elders stymied – he cannot be whipped, or imprisoned, or otherwise physically or mentally harmed. Not when he could take them to the pinnacle of cultivation, giving them the supreme edge over the rest of the jiānghú.

Lán Wàngjī himself is not keen to be on the receiving end of whatever nonsense they come up with. They will want to place him under supervision, at the very least – a leash around his ankles, in the form of a minder, or watcher – and spy.

That, he decides, is a burden he can do without. Proactively, he says, “No need to talk. I will go into seclusion.”

Seclusion is unheard of for a cultivator so young. On the other hand, his antics are also unheard of, in cultivators of any age at all. there is an advantage here that he can make use of, despite the lurking danger. Seclusion will give him time to cultivate, unhindered and uninterrupted.

His uncle stares at him. He had been angry before; explosively furious, in fact. The anger seems to have burned itself out, and the way his uncle looks at him now makes him think of a lamp with its wick charred to ash. There’s something disquieting about such a gaze, like looking into a shadow and finding a screen, and a face peeking from behind the screen.

There is knowledge there that makes Lán Wàngjī’s hackles rise, and he steels himself for – everything but what actually comes out of his uncle’s mouth:

“There are strange rumours coming out of Yúnmèng.”

Lán Wàngjī’s plan to deflect via imitating brick walls smashes headlong into one and comes to a screeching halt. He gapes at his uncle, decorum tossed right off the mountain.

Strange rumours out of Yúnmèng? Strange rumours out of Yúnmèng?!

There hadn’t been anything strange in or out of Yúnmèng in his first life, ever.

Every newly-sprouted hair on Lán Wàngjī’s body stands straight up and prepares to freak out.

“That’s news to you,” Shūfù remarks, dry as the northern desert. He’s strangely calm for a man who was spraying saliva in all directions not two shíchen[21] ago, mourning the loss of his beloved rules. Now he sits with a tired face and sloping shoulders, and no anger at all. Nor even any surprise. “I wonder why.”

Lán Wàngjī stares at the ruins of his own façade and performs some emergency masonry. Shūfù can keep on wondering, though he clearly isn’t, too busy fishing[22]. And successfully, though Lán Wàngjī can’t be bothered to shore himself up just now. He has bigger problems to worry about, like what’s strange about Yúnmèng and also please do not say Wèi Yīng, please do not say Wèi Yīng, please do not say Wèi Yīng.

“So Jiāng Fēngmián’s heir did not lose his core, back then?”

Lán Wàngjī’s hastily repaired poker face really is not up to taking this size of battering ram, but he manages. Just about. His mind runs a lǐ[23] in a fēn, cataloguing everything wrong with his uncle’s statement – which tallies up to – well, everything.

What is he supposed to say?

No, I don’t know what you’re talking about?                                                         

Or no, I don’t know what you’re talking about, though I very much do?

It’s not as if he hasn’t expected this conversation to be thrust upon him. He’s spent the last six years avoiding his uncle. Avoiding this very conversation.

But this added complication about Jiāng Wǎnyín’s core – he notices that his uncle never spoke the boy’s name, and his blood pulls away from his fingers and toes, leaving him frozen with terror. He has to know – he doesn’t care what Shūfù extracts from this, but he has to know it isn’t –

“The boy’s name?” he asks, but it emerges as a demand.

He knows he sounds wrong. He’s the unparalleled genius of Gūsū Lán, twice over in as many lives; how can he miss the depth of urgency in his own tones, or the way his voice rings, like it’s used to being obeyed?

Shūfù notices, of course. “Just a boy to you, then?” Shūfù taught him to play the qín; of course he notices everything. He smells information. Knowledge. With the ruthless curiosity of a bloodhound hot upon the scent of prey, he follows the trail. “This boy…is it one who means nothing, or one who means everything?”

Thirty-three strikes of the discipline whip had hurt less.

For a moment, Lán Wàngjī simply looks at his uncle – only looks – but with all the things he had never quite summoned the viciousness to say. He lets them swim up to the surface of his soul now, like sharks in the water. Lets them circle behind his eyes and observe every twitch of his uncle’s face, every bead of sweat forming on his skin.

He’s incandescent with rage. He’s always been angry with his uncle, since before he ever got here. But it’s been an anger that lurks in the shadows of their home. Unspoken and left to its own devices. They both know it’s there, waiting, watching, always ready to lunge and bite. But they’ve ignored it and pretended it hasn’t been looming over every cup of tea and bowl of rice they’ve shared, every single day for three years.

And here Shūfù is, taunting it.

Lán Wàngjī is so tired of this. “Give me his name, or leave me be.” He’ll find out himself.

“You destroyed our clan’s foundations, and then you disrespect me over some boy you’ve never even heard of. Do you think I’ll keep on standing for this?”

“There are many things you stand for that I never considered you would stoop towards.”

“Wàngjī!”

He stands to leave.

“You owe me answers!” His uncle looks furious again, furious and frustrated.

Lán Wàngjī sees the upset hurt lurking beneath the anger – his uncle has always hated being shut out. The sight of his vulnerability pricks at that well of vindictive rage, and he lashes out hard.

“I owe you? This Wàngjī? Owes you? What can I owe you that you did not already take from me?”

He regrets it almost as soon as he says it. Not because it’s a lie, nor because he wants to spare his uncle’s feelings, but because –

“So you have lived this before. You…came back.”

Yes, he did; he’s the one living this wearing, boring, ridiculously restricted life all over again, surrounded by people he can’t stand, so why does Shūfù sound so done?

That he knows – has somehow guessed enough to deduce that Lán Wàngjī has already lived these days once – is of small concern. He can’t prove anything that Lán Wàngjī chooses not to admit. He and his pet flock of elders have already tried to find something wrong with him, and failed.

Nevertheless, Lán Wàngjī makes one thing clear. “Tell who you like, you will make no difference.”

His uncle has never enjoyed being challenged. He arches a fine, manicured brow now, openly sarcastic. “Oh? Did I end up of so little consequence, then?”

Lán Wàngjī shrugs. They had planned for – not this, but something like it, too. “If I cannot do what I must, here, I will go elsewhere.”

He will. He has not loved his sect for a very long time, and even less so his clan. He does not think they have ever loved him – him, and not whatever he adds to their influence. He stays in Gūsū now because it is convenient, not because he needs to. He has committed to memory every text in the library and most of the Forbidden Section. He knows every song the Lán have ever composed, spiritual or otherwise. He can teach them things about cultivation that he has invented himself – what does he need them for, save a roof over his head and a peaceful place in which to grow his power till the time comes to act, to save the world and Wèi Yīng?

“I will leave, if you make it difficult for me to stay.”

He has never lied, so when he speaks, his words carry the gravitas of an idea made reality. A fact which will come to be, if yet it has not. His uncle must see that tranquil certainty, that surety of truth, in his face and hear it in his voice. His blood recedes from his face, and he sits breathing in shallow, shocked gasps, looking as old as Lán Wàngjī feels.

Perhaps it is the truth he hears that leads him to ask, in a way he has never unbent before, “Wàngjī, what has happened between us? Who has caused this – this chasm, between us?”

He asks Lán Wàngjī this, a father asking his son, why don’t you love me anymore.

Lán Wàngjī wants to lash out and hurt.

The truth is doing that for him. It is a fine weapon. He mulls over his answer before he brings it into existence and formalises the contract of disownment that has been slowly writing itself between them, with every act of rebellion, every unjust punishment.

“You did it yourself,” he says, the marrow of his belief in every word. “You created fissures, deep as canyons, and then you made them wider. I could feel my blood, rushing through at the bottom, exposed. Oxidising, calcifying. Rot spreading down from the sky.”

His uncle stares at him, ashen. He finds he cannot stop.

“You took my will. You took my potential. You took my autonomy and my dignity. You talk now of things owed and things stood for, when you have already betrayed me and left me with less than nothing. You crippled me with your own hands. You exacted your retribution from me thirty-three times with the discipline whip…and when I still lived – ”

The final, unforgiveable truth:

“ – when I still lived, you took our forces, and went to murder the man I love.”

~*~

He goes into seclusion, and the rock stays down.

He also comes out of seclusion barely three months after entering it, but the rock continues to stay down.

It seems he has already gained a reputation greater than the sum of its parts.

Of course he knows what they call him down in Cǎiyī. There is not a man, woman, nor child on the mountain who has not heard Lán Wàngjī’s qín singing of magic and melancholy deep into the night, every night. The merchants who pass through for the season’s trading have heard it. The sect leaders who visit Gūsū to meet Lán Qǐrén stay a night or two extra for the pleasure of hearing it. The disciples from the premier sects of the jiānghú who come for the lectures carry home tales of the mysterious Lán-er-gōngzi, who is unseen but never unheard.

Now he’s famous.

It is an unintentional side effect of a practical necessity. Talent at music is half genius, half practice. A library’s worth of music filed by year, composer, and intention in his mind cannot – will never – make up for simple muscle memory. His soul may know the songs of Gūsū, and over half those of the jiānghú, but knowing will be useless in a real fight if his fingers can’t keep up with the notes in his head. Lán Wàngjī spends every spare kè of every single day doing nothing but honing his musical cultivation.

He was unsurpassed at music in his first life, even with stiff shoulders and arms weakened by thirty-three lashes. This old-new body of his, unencumbered and scarless, is a boon beyond compare – what can he not achieve in this body, if he just works at it hard enough?

So he works, and works, to become better than the best. To be more now than he had been at twenty-eight.

He knows every spiritual song created by every Lán, through all of time, and he makes his hands re-learn them all. His fingers are too short, his calluses are missing, and his palms not wide enough, so he learns to compensate for his physical limitations with speed, and precision. He learns to play lightning-quick, his fingertips whizzing over Wàngjī’s strings like fluttery, quicksilver fish darting through the reeds in Biling Lake, until they are blistered with friction and stained with the blood of a hundred fine cuts.  

After he has mastered his old repertoire again to his own satisfaction, he turns his attention outward.

Every song he can get his hands on passes under his fingers. Every song, but one.

If he will ever play it again, it will be for Wèi Yīng’s ears. And if Wèi Yīng does not want to hear it, he will go silent, forever.

There are whispers among the disciples that he is the reincarnation of Lán Yì, or perhaps Lán Ān himself. How else could he know of songs he is far too young to have been taught? How could he know of their battle songs, their songs of healing and liberation, of cleansing and exorcising, of suppression and destruction? How could he know of their love songs and songs of marriage, songs of birth and elegies all? He has not lived long enough to experience them all. How is it possible that he can know the Chord of Assassination?

Lán Qǐrén’s lacklustre interrogation in the matter should have been an early indicator that the man knew he had a time-traveller on his hands. His uncle had never been a fool.

These days, however, he seems surprised not at what Lán Wàngjī knows, but rather, how well he knew it. Ten-year-old A-Zhàn’s training was already intense before his soul had taken over itself, which should have prepared Lán Qǐrén for the breadth of skill displayed by the grown-up soul inside his nephew’s young self.  He is shocked anyway, by the evidence of how greatly his best pupil has surpassed him. Has surpassed all of them, when it comes to expertise in the songs of Gūsū Lán.

That expertise is what makes him untouchable, after he has gone and shattered the foundation of their sect.

The possible second coming of Lán Ān, apparently, is not worth pissing off.

It is a pity that Niè Huáisāng, as he had known him, is no more. Lán Wangi thinks his friend would have absolutely revelled in the social and political possibilities of this elevated reputation. He is suddenly reminded of Wèi Yīng and Huáisāng as students at Cloud Recesses. The way they used to huddle in corners giggling over the latest gossip – or pornography – like middle-aged aunties at the market, with ugly husbands and daughters to marry off.

Wèi Yīng’s Niè Huáisāng had not been the same as Lán Wàngjī’s Niè Huáisāng. Lán Wàngjī had finally made another friend, because of Wèi Yīng, but Wèi Yīng had not been there at all.  

His oldest friend is not Wèi Yīng. It is grief; grief is his first soulmate, a companion who holds on to him with steel claws and a lover who wraps its fingers around his throat and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes the life out of him. It came to him with his mother’s death; it has never left, and when Wèi Yīng died, Lán Wàngjī knew it would stay, forever.

He will meet Wèi Yīng again, he knows this. He will meet Wèi Yīng, and this Wèi Yīng will be his friend – but the Wèi Yīng who died – how will he ever stop grieving that Wèi Yīng?

Even if Wèi Yīng never suffers again, it does not change that he suffered once, he died once.  

The grief, if he lets it, will paralyse Lán Wàngjī. He has to move, faster, harder, stronger than any other cultivator alive. He has to speed ahead faster than sound, faster than light, faster than time, hurtling forward under the power of his own momentum.

He cannot stop.

So he keeps going. He keeps going, and going, fighting, cultivating, excelling, until they create legends in his name and disperse it to the four corners of the jiānghú.

And just like that, the guest becomes the host.[24]

He can get away with whatever he wants, because what if – they whisper – what if he is Lán Ān, sent to them from heaven itself, to correct their course?

It’s the elders’ own fault. There isn’t a toe in Cloud Recesses they haven’t stepped on. Not a disciple who hasn’t felt the humiliation of a rod, or of simple public castigation, for something as stupid, as mundane and trite as walking too fast, laughing out of turn, asking the wrong question, eating too much food.

They’re rich; what does it matter if anyone wants to stuff their stomachs to bursting? Aren’t empty bellies meant to be filled?

Wèi Yīng in Yílíng, skin-and-bones, clearly starving – and Lán Wàngjī had not even offered to buy him food.

He does not know why he did not give Wèi Yīng his money pouch, or even just a few bags of rice. Why did he leave, after a half-eaten lunch and a single, cheap, grass butterfly? What had he been conflicted by? Why can he not remember? It couldn’t have been anything important, if he can’t even recall it.

He had felt guilty then, about being well-fed and well-clothed when Wèi Yīng was clearly living in need. He had despaired, wondering how he could get Wèi Yīng to agree to being sheltered in Gūsū, how to convince the elders and Shūfù to follow suit, how to get his brother’s support.

He should have known there would be no one on his side. He should have been thinking about how to help Wèi Yīng right then and there, in the immediate and tangible, instead of the abstract, conditional future.

If Wèi Yīng did not wish to accept his help in Gūsū, Lán Wàngjī should have offered it in Yílíng instead.

Why had he not?

Whenever he thinks of these things, all the small and large ways in which he failed Wèi Yīng, he feels ashamed – of himself, of his paltry, feeble love that only knew –

He had only known to love, but now how to. He had not known how to protect, support, or cherish the one he loved. He had not even known how to give that love in a form that might be welcome – or even acceptable.

He had been such a foolish, foolish boy – and he is a foolish boy still; an even more foolish man, because he can’t stop dreaming, hoping, planning for Wèi Yīng’s return to his life.

Now that there is no rule against it, Láns gossip.

Their tongues are loose, and loud; loud enough to penetrate the haze of music and memories that surrounds Lán Wàngjī day and night, offering a slice of reality for a change.

The stories that travel up the mountain from Cǎiyī don’t make any sense.

The jiānghú is awash with tales of an orphan boy, a wild boy, an impossible boy – a boy who is the son of Cángsè Sànrén and Wèi Chángzé – a boy from everywhere and nowhere at all.

No one knows where he comes from, only that he never stays anywhere long. His feet have walked the borders of sects great and small, leaving behind a trail of music for the people, by one just like them. But how can he be just like everyone else, when he is the son of an immortal’s disciple?

No one knows who taught him, but they speak of his mastery of the arts, his paintings that hang in the homes of wealthy merchants and peasant farmers both, and his talismans that intuit the magic of the world in ways so far not invented, unable to be copied or replicated except by the hand of the master.

Half his songs are nameless, but the name of his flute cleaves Lán Wàngjī’s heart in two with hope and terror, because his flute is named Chénqíng – Chénqíng, which Wèi Yīng had not possessed till he had to win a war – Chénqíng, which Wèi Yīng had used to cover up the fact that he was clearly having trouble with his golden core – Wèi Yīng’s dark companion, right up to his death. But they say it glitters bone-white, a shaft of moonlight instead of shadow; they also say it carries the power to silence Wēn Ruòhán’s court.

How can this be?

How can Wèi Yīng be alone in the world, wandering by himself, responsible for providing his own food, clothing, and shelter – how? He is supposed to be in Yúnmèng, Jiāng Fēngmián’s prized Head Disciple.

He is alone, and unlike Lán Wàngjī, he is a child. A child who has no home, no family. A child who has caught Wēn Ruòhán’s greedy, covetous eye. A child, who rumour says has destroyed a taotie on the same night Jiāng Fēngmián’s heir lost his core to one.

Just a child, who has – they say – everyone says – been exiled from Lotus Pier, after saving the life of its heir.

There are no more stories.

~*~

The terror of not knowing what has changed – or why – makes Lán Wàngjī frantic. Something has gone terribly awry if the trajectory of Wèi Yīng’s life has changed, and so much more drastically than that of Lán Wàngjī’s own.

The array was never meant to affect anyone but Lán Wàngjī – even Niè Huáisāng was left behind.

But the base of the array – the foundation on which they had built, to get Lán Wàngjī here – that foundation was Wèi Yīng’s.

Could that be why? Had the array pulled its first and primary creator back, too, when Lán Wàngjī had activated it with his life? But how could that be possible, when Wèi Yīng had been dead for years by then?

He had been thinking of Wèi Yīng and A-Yuàn when he bled out on the floor, his body disintegrating under the piercing glow of sigils traced in cinnabar. There had been nothing else on his mind, except the two people he loved most in the world –

But could it be that it meant something more, something magical, his soul calling to its mate? How had he succeeded in death, when a living, laughing Wèi Yīng had never been his?

And what does this mean for A-Yuàn, who hasn’t even been born yet?

Every possibility is horrifying and hope-bringing in equal opportunity. To have Wèi Yīng – the one he knows, the one who would remember, who would be like him – an object out of time – would it be a miracle, or a curse? Would Wèi Yīng hate him for dragging him back into the world? Would he hate Lán Wàngjī for inadvertently forcing him into a life where he is worse than only orphaned? He is all alone, with no one and nothing to his name, not even the dubious protection of Yúnmèng Jiāng – will he not resent how Lán Wàngjī has inadvertently made his life even harder?

What does it matter that he never intended to hurt Wèi Yīng? He manages to succeed at little else, it seems, in this life as in the last.

Guilt crushes his heart. Not knowing for sure terrifies it till it crawls back into its cave, shrieking and trembling with dread.

How can he keep Wèi Yīng safe, if he doesn’t even know where Wèi Yīng is?

Forget that – he doesn’t even know who or what Wèi Yīng is.

Two lifetimes, and no more rules, and he’s still a foolish little boy who knows nothing at all.

So he breaks out of Gusu, and goes to find out.

~*~

The search begins, and ends fruitlessly. He knows this within the first month.

He actually knows it within the first week.

He knows Wèi Yīng. He knows Wèi Yīng. So when he hears how Wèi Yīng disappeared in Yílíng, he also knows exactly where to look.

He goes straight to the Burial Mounds.

The song of the mountain tells him everything – and nothing at all.

Wèi Yīng is here. He can feel it in his deepest heart, the curdling dregs of his gut tell him that Wèi Yīng – his Wèi Yīng, is somehow here. No one else could have tamed the Burial Mounds – for tamed the mountain is, its song is a dirge woven with infinite care into a barrier of protection and concealment so subtle, so insidious, that Lán Wàngjī remains unaffected only because his knowledge comes not from this world.

He still cannot get in, however. He has been shut out – the whole world has been cordoned off from this place of death – this place of Wèi Yīng’s death – so why had he come back?

Why, why, why had he come back here – and locked himself away inside?

The mountain’s song speaks of safety, of seclusion – seclusion?! he wonders, and worries. What is Wèi Yīng doing? Is he preparing for the future – or hiding from the devastation it might bring to his life – again?

Will he hear Lán Wàngjī, if Lán Wàngjī calls to him?

There is a song he knows, which is only meant for Wèi Yīng’s ear. He played it to Wei Ying in a cave, once upon a time, because Wei Ying asked for comfort in the form of music. If he plays it here again, will Wèi Yīng finally hear him?

Will he listen?

Will he let Lán Wàngjī in?

He is kneeling before he knows that he has bent. Wàngjī materialises in his lap, and his fingers pick out the melody of the song his heart has woven for only one other, now, then, forever. He goes hesitantly at first, scared of making a mistake, of being somehow, not perfect. He has not played this song in years – years, years.

His heart has yearned for it.

His lungs have wanted to scream it from the mountain. Every mountain, everywhere.

Now he’s here, on one, and a precious opportunity has been granted to him. The moment is just right.

Lán Wàngjī settles down, and begins to play.

~*~

He comes back every month. Then he comes back every week. He realises it’s easier to stay out of Cloud Recesses than waste precious time flying to Yílíng and back, so he learns to live on the road, coming and going from his home like he no longer fully belongs there. His uncle lets him go unhindered. Lán Wàngjī does not ask what he has inferred, nor is any opinion offered to him.

It’s strange, how they understand each other perfectly now.

The days in between are spent travelling, always taking the slow, meandering road, which Wèi Yīng has populated with tales of his kindness and courage, his helping hand and his trouble-making tricks. He has left traces of his genius behind in every village and town Lán Wàngjī visits. He is in people’s homes, lightening the household cares of harried fūréns with talismans to find lost things, and the worries of farmers’ wives with talismans to repel rodents from their vegetable gardens. In a dusty, dry village in the nowhereland between Qíshān and Qīnghé, an array pulls just enough water from the ground that no one will die of thirst. In Xiǎogǎng there are fishermen whose nets never tangle nor break, no matter what sharp edges snag them in the bedrock lining the river-bottom. In the courtyards of village schools up and down the borders there are children who can be found burping bubbles from empty throats, and chasing glittering, multi-coloured butterflies that flit over their heads, just out of reach. The sound of their laughter curls around the base of Lán Wàngjī’s heart, and settles like a warm blanket.

Xiǎo Huàméi has left his mark in every place his wings have found a resting perch, and his songs are still played in taverns and around fires, long into summer evenings and winter nights.

People miss him, and they like to talk about him. Some call him Xiǎo Huàméi, others call him Piāo Péng Huàméi.[25] The strange, orphan xiǎo-gōngzi who had a famous mother, who had charmed Wēn Ruòhán, who was free with his help and his smiles, a free bird who could not be caged.

Until one terrible night at Lotus Pier, and then he had vanished.

No one knows where he is, now, though many have searched. Lán Wàngjī hoards his secret knowledge close, and finds relief in knowing that Wèi Yīng was loved and respected, even if he was alone.

He still has not let Lán Wàngjī in, but it does not matter. Lán Wàngjī will keep playing, and waiting, till he comes out.

In the meantime, he follows his heart, and follows chaos, from one town to another far afield from home. There is nothing tying him to Gūsū, so he wanders wherever the wind takes him, and finds himself sitting down for dinner in the homes of farmers, merchants, teachers, artists, landlords, sect leaders and rogue cultivators.

They are delighted to meet Lán-er-gōngzi, who was once so elusive, and now seems to be everywhere. Their wives ply him with food, and their children ask shamelessly for his songs.

He plays for everyone who asks, and plays even when he is not being asked. There is also, one notable occasion, a mathematician who hated noise in any fashion and was still stuck listening to Wàngjī wailing into the night till past zǐ shí[26], because Lán Wàngjī hasn’t forgotten his primary mission just because he’s taken to cultivating on the road.

He still needs to match Wēn Ruòhán in strength, and surpass him in skill.

~*~

Like this, three years pass.

It would seem like forever, if not for the way Lán Wàngjī’s priorities begin to take shape, under the application of skill and hard work. With his cultivation well in hand, and little to do save roam the land in pursuit of chaos, he takes on the second-most important item on his agenda: the fortification of Cloud Recesses’s barriers.

He is not Wèi Yīng; does not have his love’s natural genius at applied talisman theory, nor even a smidgen of Wèi Yīng’s boundless creativity. His own natural genius lies in the exacting paths he has been bred to walk. He is unmatched at orthodox cultivation, and unequalled with a gǔqín. He is strong; better than that – he has a nobleman’s education, and keen intelligence that has been tempered by violent experience, telling him where and how to apply his power and knowledge. He has to work hard and smart both - there is no way for him to augment the existing wards overnight, the way Wei Ying had fortified the Burial Mounds in two lifetimes. He will have to brute-force it instead, repairing what is broken before beginning the arduous work of thickening the shields. 

It takes him less than half of the first year to travel the breadth of Gūsū and catalogue every flaw in the wards guarding their lands and their home. He spends the rest of that year coming up with a solution for each threadbare patch in the fabric, and finalises the layers and layers of protection to be added into it, weaving it into a double-thickness quilt before stuffing it with pure qì, condensed and ready to blow outward. Anyone who breaches those wards with ill intent must pay for it on the spot. Nothing less will ensure the safety of his people. 

Some of the work for this massive undertaking, he had done in his first life, when he and Huaisang had still been planning how he would approach his second chance. He carries in his memory pages and pages of music for raising barriers that he has scoured their library for, and just as many pages that he has composed himself. He has kept the burning of his home in mind, and his intention to ward against flame and ill intent are imbued within the careful, precise arrangements of melodies along with their harmonies.

Steadily, unceasingly, the wards go up, and up.

Shūfù is the only one who notices. He says nothing, but his gaze lands heavy and disquieted on Lán Wàngjī’s face, reading the warning that Lán Wàngjī does not need to speak aloud for it to be taken seriously.

Over the weeks that follow, the private curriculum of their own disciples changes, with an emphasis on the tactics of war.

It is strange, how well Shūfù understands him, now.

He never speaks a word to Lán Wàngjī, not even to ask who they will be defending themselves against even as he quietly assists in Lán Wàngjī’s preparations for war. But asking would be stupid, and Shūfù doesn’t like unnecessary speech – he’s aware, as is most of the jiānghú, that Wen Ruohan has already begun his gradual consumption of the smaller sects surrounding Qishan, absorbing them into the Wēn sect – by their will or not.

Lán Wàngjī hopes that in this lifetime, war will not be necessary. He hopes he will have killed – “Assassinated!” Niè Huáisāng’s indignant face pops up in his head and out of it again – Wēn Ruòhán before the Xiāndū’s Indoctrination takes place. Unnecessary or not, however, he isn’t willing to take any chances with his home.

For two years after that, he patrols the borders of Gūsū when he is away, and those of Cloud Recesses when he visits home, raising their walls to formidable heights.

Seasons come and go, and with them, disciples from all over the jiānghú. Before he knows it, the year of Wèi Yīng’s attendance is upon them. Lán Wàngjī makes himself available at Cloud Recesses, for once. He is not expecting Wèi Yīng to turn up suddenly; it hasn’t even been three days since he was banging his metaphorical gǔqín against the barrier in Yílíng, wondering how long Wèi Yīng would keep himself sealed away.

He is, however, interested in kindling a new friendship with Niè Huáisāng.

He had promised he would.

It proves to be surprisingly difficult. He had truly forgotten how badly the very sight of him used to terrify Huaisang, when they had been teenagers. Huáisāng is a complete degenerate as to morals and work ethic, with even less propensity to follow the rules than Wèi Yīng – Lán Wàngjī now knows for a fact who was really instigating most of the trouble Wèi Yīng got into back then.

He isn’t their disciplinarian in this life. He makes it clear he will take no such position – not that one is even possible, while the issue of their rules remains unresolved. Lán Wàngjī has no qualms at all about leaning into the entire reincarnation angle if it gets him what he needs.

He does cause another sect-shaking incident when he burns all the discipline rods and whips, two nights before the visiting disciples are due. The timing is intentional – no one will dare raise a finger in his direction with half the jiānghú’s nobility in residence, ready and willing to carry Gūsū Lán’s shame back to their homes.

The Niè Huáisāng of his first life has coached him well to point at the mulberry tree while cursing the locust tree.[27] When the hasty – pointless – gathering of elders is convened, Lán Wàngjī prepares his arguments well, and peppers them with the passion of a man who had been a devoted, dedicated teacher of their juniors, in his first life.

It goes easier this time.

He has had time on his side – time, which has turned the simmering inferno in his meridians to a volcano ready to erupt. Time, which has made him tall and matured his face. Time, which has allowed his soul to settle back into his body, so he carries the weight of his lives in his eyes. Time, which has made him Wùshān Yōuqín, beloved helper of the people who took over protecting them when Xiǎo Huàméi was driven from the world.

He gets away with it, again, and greets his old peers with satisfaction in his heart, knowing that no one will ever be whipped again in these halls.

It doesn’t get him any closer to any of them, though.

If they had been intimidated by the Second Jade of Lán in his first life, Wùshān Yōuqín awes and terrifies them. He is far beyond their wildest imaginings, and they show it, like the excitable, untested children they currently are.

Jīn Zixuān is such a peacock. Lán Wàngjī totally gets it, now.

Jīn Zixūn should frankly have been drowned at birth. Lán Wàngjī has never met such an irredeemable brat – here’s a fool even the best teacher in the world could not transform into a gentleman. May Guanyin spare his uncle’s reputation.

Luó Qīngyáng is…she is. Lán Wàngjī tries his utmost not to think about do you like Miánmián, and consequently ends up ignoring the girl’s existence with violent determination. She makes him so wild with jealousy every time he looks at her that he actually feels like a teenager for the first time since he was actually fifteen.

Huáisāng is – young and frightened and slier than he seems at first glance. There is no steel in him now, except where Lán Wàngjī knows to look – in his refusal to cultivate the sabre path that is slowly killing his brother.

Sū Mǐnshàn hangs about them all, acting like a practiced creep. Lán Wàngjī has not forgotten how he had turned traitor to the Wēns and left Cloud Recesses open to be burned. He judges that he has waited long enough that the boy has begun irrevocably to show his true character, and informs his uncle about the necessity of expelling him. How it will be done is his uncle's problem; he does not doubt for a moment that it will be done.  

The Jiāng delegation arrive late, after the rest have already settled in. Whispers precede their arrival, and the gossip afterwards is almost out of hand. Jiāng Yànlí stands at the head of her disciples. Jiāng Wǎnyín lies in a litter behind her, looking the worse for weeks of hard travel from Yúnmèng to Gūsū. They have come by horse and cart to account for Jiāng-gōngzi’s poor health, and the ignominy being unable to fly follows his footsteps from his very first step into Cloud Recesses.

Lán Wàngjī remembers the stories about Jiāng Wǎnyín, from his first life. They said he murdered Wèi Yīng. That it was Sāndú, that struck the final blow. That he kept seeking out demonic cultivators, real or imagined, and subjecting them to brutal torture, because killing Wèi Yīng once hadn’t been enough for him.  

Lán Wàngjī loathes him.

But he sees the Jiāng sect heir holding himself up with fierce pride in his eyes even though he can barely lift his sword long enough to last a spar against Niè Huáisāng.

They say it’s impossible to cultivate a golden core, once it is lost.

Achieve the impossible.

Jiāng Wǎnyín has.

He may be feeble and useless in a fight, he might have less power in his entire body than the youngest disciple in Gūsū Lán, but he is still the only person alive, ever, to have recultivated his core.

Who cares if it’s weak? his eyes challenge everyone who looks him insolently in the face, until their gaze is averted. Who cares if this is all I’ll ever be?

He never mentions anyone called Wèi Wúxiàn.

Lán Wàngjī knows, even through his hatred, that Wèi Yīng would be proud of him anyway. Wèi Yīng had always been the best of them. Lán Wàngjī, alone in Gūsū, feels like he’s exactly where he belongs – with the worst.

Another year passes, and the ghosts populating his home go back to their own hearths. And still, Wèi Yīng does not let Lán Wàngjī in, nor does he come out. Lán Wàngjī doesn’t even know if Wèi Yīng can hear his song, but he goes to Yílíng to play it for him anyway. He has to. He has waited for Wèi Yīng for so long – against hope, against despair, against the whole world. 

He can wait as long as it takes.

In fact, he is in the far north of Qīnghé, undoing a nasty curse on a potter’s grandmother, when the news finally comes of Wèi Yīng’s return to the world.

~*~

“Great news! Simply great news!”

“Oh? Something good must have happened, the way you’re waving your hands around.”

“It is! It’s the best – it’s unbelievable, I tell you!”

“Go on, then, tell us what you heard!”

“It’s the Burial Mounds! Someone has purified the Burial Mounds!”

“Not just someone! Wèi Wúxiàn has purified the Burial Mounds!”

“Did I hear someone say Wèi Wúxiàn? Isn’t he that huàméi fellow? He used to come by the village twenty lǐ south every spring, with that dízi of his.”

“Huàméi? Xiǎo-Huàméi? I remember him! He disappeared some years ago…someone in my village swore he was dead. He’s alive, you say?”

“Of course! Didn’t I say it’s great news? Wèi Wúxiàn is indeed alive – and he has indeed purified the Burial Mounds!”

~*~

~*~

~*~

Glossary of Terms

[1] Unit of time equalling 14 minutes and 24 seconds

[2] Borrow a corpse to resurrect the soul (借屍還魂, Jiè shī huán hún) - Take an institution, a technology, a method, or even an ideology that has been forgotten or discarded and appropriate it for one's own purposes. One of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, a Chinese essay on war and politics. You will see a liberal use of these stratagems through this chapter, to emphasise LWJ's mindset, and touch on his (and at one point, Wei Wuxian's) education/war veteran status a bit too. I got these from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems, if you want to read further about them.

[3] Literal meaning – rivers and lakes. Refers to the general environs in which historical fantasies tend to be set. You can read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jianghu

[4] Let the enemy's own spy sow discord in the enemy camp (反間計, Fǎn jiàn jì) – Undermine the enemy's ability to fight by secretly causing discord between them and their friends, allies, advisors, family, commanders, soldiers, and population. While they are preoccupied with settling internal disputes, their ability to attack or defend is compromised.

[5] Befriend a distant state and strike a neighbouring one (遠交近攻, Yuǎn jiāo jìn gōng) – Invading nations close to oneself carries a higher chance of success. The battlefields are close to one's domain and as such is easier for one's troops to receive supplies and defend the conquered land. Make allies with nations far away from oneself, as it is unwise to invade them.

[6] Chief cultivator

[7] Sacrifice the plum tree to preserve the peach tree (李代桃僵, Lǐ dài táo jiāng) – There are circumstances where short-term objectives must be sacrificed in order to gain the long-term goal. This is the scapegoat strategy where someone suffers the consequences so that the rest do not.

[8] Hide a knife behind a smile (笑裏藏刀, Xiào lǐ cáng dāo) – Charm and ingratiate oneself with the enemy. When their trust is gained, move against them in secret.

[9] Phoenix Mountain

[10] Centre of energy where qi coalesces. Literally, a sea of qi. You can read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dantian

[11] 滅光君 – Miè guāng jūn – Extinguisher of light

[12] Deceive the heavens to cross the sea (瞞天過海, Mán tiān guò hǎi) – Mask one's real goals from those in authority who lack vision by not alerting them to one's movements or any part of one's plan.

[13] Someone who is on the path towards Buddhahood. You can read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva

[14] Goddess of mercy

[15] Wait at leisure while the enemy labors (以逸待勞, Yǐ yì dài láo) – It is advantageous to choose the time and place for battle while the enemy does not. Encourage the enemy to expend their energy in futile quests while one conserves their strength. When the enemy is exhausted and confused, attack with energy and purpose.

[16] Chinese mermaids, translated as flood dragon people, or shark people. You can read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merfolk#Jiaoren

[17] Adoptive father

[18] 霧山幽琴 – Eerie nighttime qin from the misty mountains

[19] Unit of time, measuring 14.4 seconds

[20] Remove the firewood from under the pot (釜底抽薪, Fǔ dǐ chōu xīn) - Take out the leading argument or asset of someone; "steal someone's thunder". This is the essence of the indirect approach: instead of attacking enemy's fighting forces, direct attacks against their ability to wage war. Literally, take the fuel out of the fire.

[21] Two hour period of time. A day was divided into 12 shichen, and 24 xiǎoshí (small hour).

[22] Disturb the water and catch a fish (渾水摸魚／混水摸魚, Hùn shuǐ mō yú)

Create confusion and exploit it to further one's own goals.

[23] Unit of distance, measuring 576 metres.

[24] Make the host and the guest exchange roles (反客為主, Fǎn kè wéi zhǔ) - Usurp leadership in a situation where one is normally subordinate. Infiltrate one's target. Initially, pretend to be a guest to be accepted, but develop from inside and become the owner later.

[25] 飃蓬畫眉 – Piāo péng huàméi. 飃蓬 (piāo péng) comes from an idiom that describes travellers, people who travel and don't settle in one place. Piāo means to flutter in the wind, or to follow the way the wind blows. Péng is a type of grass, but generally can be used for a lot of plants, but lotus pods are actually called "lian peng" (literally lian = lotus, peng = pod). So not only does this describe a traveller on the road, it also happens to work very well for someone who came from a town surrounded by lotus pods. Huàméi, as explained in the last chapter, refers to the Chinese laughingthrush, one of the top Chinese songbirds.

This is one of the sections I urge you to re-read, from Chapter 4, because the context around the name has changed and I’ve made some edits to the relevant sections there.

[26] Starts at 11 p.m. and lasts till 1 a.m.

[27] Point at the mulberry tree while cursing the locust tree (指桑罵槐, Zhǐ sāng mà huái) – To discipline, control, or warn others whose status or position excludes them from direct confrontation; use analogy and innuendo. Without directly naming names, those accused cannot retaliate without revealing their complicity.

Chapter Text

~*~

Somewhere in the jianghu, 239 days before Wen Ruohan’s Big Bash

Wei Wuxian ascends

“A-jie, it’s time. Let’s get ready.”

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 236 days before Wen Ruohan’s Big Bash

Wei Wuxian goes to town

The second Wei Wuxian sets foot in Yiling, he causes chaos.

He maintains, however, on that day and ever afterwards, that he can’t be held responsible for any of what immediately followed, given that he’d had no idea he had ascended to immortality until Wang Popo collapsed in front of him, hand clutched to her chest and Guanyin’s name on her lips.

He panics hard.

And he does something. He’s not quite sure what, exactly, but not even a full minute later Wang Popo’s looking spry as a gambolling lamb, even if she’s also busy having a heart attack for entirely different reasons than a mere resurrection from (presumed, never confirmed) death.

What he doesn’t know is that not two days ago, when the last corpse littering the Burial Mounds had been packed neatly away to the afterlife, ghostly contents attached, he crossed the barrier and ascended.

To the residents of Yiling, used only to the dark emissions of the Mounds, the flood of blazing qi radiating from within the innermost heart of the cursed mountain meant only one thing – terror.

At once, messengers were dispatched to Yunmeng and Qishan on the swiftest horses that could be found within the town. They weren’t very fast, given Yiling’s abject and perpetual poverty, which had been interrupted only once for a few brief shining years, by the young musician called Xiao Huamei. As far as anyone knew, he had passed long since into fond remembrance.

So when he turns up to buy potatoes from old Wang Popo at her usual corner outside the teahouse, he nearly starts a riot.

He panics harder and hotfoots it back home without paying for his potatoes, leaving behind a storm of rumours and fact jumbled up into one unavoidable whole: Xiao Huamei descending the mountain like a newborn god, burning with power such that he glows from the inside; Xiao Huamei, miraculously come back to life, who lives on the mountain that once synonymised death and is now purified land.

He doesn’t even have time to feel guilty about any of it, because he’s just looked – properly looked – within himself and come to the same vast, horrifying, terrifying realisation all at once.

Well, fuck.

~*~
~*~

Yunmeng, 214 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Rumours fly

The storm in Yunmeng cannot be contained.

For the first time since their son’s injury the master of Lotus Pier and his lady find themselves, once again, at odds over the question of Wei Wuxian. For the first time in so many years, Jiang Fengmian is unwilling to give way to his wife.

Consumed by the guilt of unfulfilled obligations, he has lived for years in a state almost of purgatory, his thoughts never straying far from the question of the child he had lost so easily.

Think of his children, Yu Ziyuan shrieks at him, as though he has been doing nothing else for five years. As though he hasn’t poured his entire being and all their sect’s resources into searching for a cure for his son, in improving his daughter’s cultivation and making her fit to be his heir.

He wants his children to be healthy and safe before he wants them to do well in this life.

His wife, he thinks bitterly but does not say aloud for the sake of their fragile marital harmony, would have Yanli shipped off to Jin Guangshan’s clutches, apparently wilfully unaware of the man’s proclivities and utter disregard for a woman’s consent. And yet! His wife wants to send their precious daughter to live under the power of such a man, married to his arrogant bastard of a son who somehow thinks himself above the entire world despite having such a human disgrace for a father!

If Yanli leaves for another home, who will lead Yunmeng? Certainly, A-Cheng will never be able to carry the burden alone. No, he has already decided, his daughter will marry a boy from a minor Yunmeng sect, or one of the outer Jiang cousins. The future of Yunmeng Jiang hangs on it, unless a miracle restores A-Cheng’s health.

He does not think about his children now. A-Cheng is settled into his studies of core cultivation, determined to grow the miniscule, leftover seed of his core into something that lets him walk upright like a man. Yanli is with her instructors, being trained in Yunmeng’s economics, as any good leader needs to know the workings of her own sect to the last tael[1].

His children are already doing well – why should he worry about them, and not the one he had so carelessly let go? If he doesn’t at least find out the truth of Wei Ying’s existence now, how will he face Wei Changze in the afterlife? How will he face Cangse Sanren? Won’t their spirits rip him to pieces for his neglect and abandonment of their child?

When he knows, knows down to his very marrow, that if A-Cheng and Yanli had been left orphaned, his friends would have changed their entire way of living before they left the children unprotected.

How will he face them, after leaving their son to grow up alone in the Burial Mounds? Why had he done it? Had he thought there was no other place in the world for him? Had Wei Ying become a true immortal or a demon?

Jiang Fengmian frets over all these matters and more, while he waits for Mao Liwei to return from Yiling with facts. No matter what it may turn out to be, he thinks, he will give Wei Ying a place here if he wants it.

If his wife objects…well.

He carefully doesn’t think about that.

No doubt she’ll take her woes to Jin-furen soon enough, uncaring of what other ears her words might fall – or be fed – into. He’ll worry about it then, and not a moment before.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 194 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The sects arrive

The road to Yiling has never been so travelled.

Within weeks, rumour becomes fact becomes action, as anyone and everyone with a sense of importance in the jianghu’s playing fields prepares to come and see for themselves.

An immortal – hah! They’ll hunt it out, tear it to pieces, and if it survives, they’ll perhaps believe it’s real.

An immortal – hah! When the combined might of Jiang and Wen could not purify the hellhole of the Burial Mounds, could an untutored boy do it?

An immortal, they say? Who says, they all ask, and make haste to Yiling to find out.

In a great procession from Qinghe they travel from the north – the Nie, joined by the Lan, and soon, the Wen. In barges large and numerous enough to clog the waterways they travel from the south, from Ezhou to Baling to Yunmeng and up, up the river to Yiling.

~*~

Nie Mingjue is irritated. He does not wish to be here, has no desire to chase after fool tales of a genius child, a new godling, an immortal or whatever he calls himself.

Lies, all of it, no doubt. Lies and trickery, no doubt backed by a cabal of elders and adults, using a weak face and form to deflect from their true means and motives.

Purify the Burial Mounds? If it could be done, it would have been done already. Such is the way of the world.

~*~

Jin Guangshan lounges in his carriage like the women he so loves to pamper. It is a warm afternoon, and promises to be a stifling week coming.

He suspects little but knows enough to be sly. His vulpine gaze seeks only entertainment; in fact, he’s randy for it.

~*~

Wen Ruohan burns with envy and severe resentment at the world as well as himself for leaving a path unrealised, an ambition as yet unfulfilled.

How long ago had it been, since he had truly cultivated? Not the cultivation of daily wear, suitable for night-hunts, war, and rending traitors’ limbs from their bodies before feeding them to Zhuliu. True cultivation of the mind and body, in refinement of the qi circulating through his meridians. How long had it been?

That he cannot recall frightens him; the sensation racks up as yet another affront to his pride. His pride had always been the worst of his faults. Was that not why he had let his long dream, the true dream, slip from his sight to dedicate himself to the art of war instead?

Now he finds himself paying for it, in the years that feel wasted. If he had focused, could he too have reached immortality by now?

That the vagrant son of a pair of respectable nobodies managed to beat him at the true game – to tolerate such a thing feels the same as tolerating another man’s advances on his wife.

He couldn’t tolerate it, so he had killed her himself.

And so it goes, he thinks, his hawk-eyed gaze fixed on the deep horizon where the Burial Mounds loom large and ugly, bathed in a forcefield of qi so powerful it sends the hair on his arms standing straight up even at this distance.

And so it goes…

~*~

~*~

Northern Qinghe, 187 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Lan Wangji collects his correspondence

Lan Wangji races to the Unclean Realm on swift winds, his heart trying to vomit itself out of his mouth the entire way. Despite his great speed, and the distraction of Qinghe’s rocky, mountainous terrain unmarred by clouds below, he has enough time to work himself into a near-panic by the time the great, looming walls of Nie Mingjue’s stronghold curve into the horizon.

He had almost turned to Yiling, the instincts of a nineteen-year-old body taking over for one moment of terrible judgement, before the experience of a thirty-seven-year-old soul commanded better sense. When night-hunting, always better to go in with a plan. Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.

Unfortunately, a few hours of uneventful flight are enough to emotionally backtrack – where Wei Ying is concerned, Lan Wangji’s brain has commanded his heart so often that he wonders if keeping to the pattern isn’t indicative of failure, already. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.[2]

That’s nonsense, and he knows it; he does. But – there’s always a but, with Wei Ying, with the cultivation world. He needs to know what he’ll find in Yiling, so that he doesn’t walk into a bad situation and make it worse.

He had been in the extreme north of Qinghe when he had heard the outrageous rumours about Wei Ying having purified the Burial Mounds. If stories of such nature have reached so far where no news travels and which, even in his last life, the Sunshot campaign had not come close to touching, it is a given that these rumours aren’t just stories, but rather indicators of something that must have shaken the entire jianghu.

If these people have heard of it, there is almost certainly a letter from his uncle waiting for him in the offices of Qinghe Nie’s sect leader. A far quicker and more reliable way of getting news without haring off to Yiling blind to everything but rumours that would inevitably change from town to vale to hamlet.

When he alights on the wall, he finds it strangely – worryingly – bare of soldiers. Every other sect has cultivators. Since Nie Mingjue’s father was murdered by Wen Ruohan, Qinghe has only had soldiers. No one hinders him beyond polite greetings as he makes his way deep into the castle where the sect leader’s private office is. No one seems on edge, but there is a definite atmosphere of heightened tension – almost anticipation, that makes the heavy, dark hallways of the fortress feel frosted over, and every footfall feels like the shattering of a war-hammer on stone.

It doesn’t feel like bloodlust, but Lan Wangji does not like it.

He likes even less the idea of having to confront – deal with, but it is impossible for Lan Wangji to think of his encounters with his most dangerous target as anything but confrontations, given that he loathes the – boy.

It seems some things in life – this one, the last, or even the next, in all probability, some things are fated to be, like his brother meeting Meng Yao and immediately falling over himself to become his saviour. And some things are not, like Wei Ying flashing up on a wall, glowing in the moonlight with his brazen, friendly smile and his sneaky haul of booze, almost beating him in a duel one-handed.

Lan Wangji does not know when the first divergence began, or what started it. Things have changed so much already from his first life that he no longer knows what to expect.

Six years ago, when he had first discovered that Wei Ying had never belonged to the Jiang in this life, it had come with so many other, brutal discoveries that it had taken him a long time to work through the true extent of how this life is just not the same.

At first, it had seemed like the taotie that attacked Yunmeng was the biggest and first divergence, simply because the events of that night-hunt were so shocking and brutal in the retelling that reached the ears of the cultivation world. But of course, that could not be it – it must have started much, much before that, if this many people’s lives have been turning out so very differently.

As time has gone by, even with Wei Ying having spent the last five years locked away in the Burial Mounds, things have irrevocably changed.

Some deviations are small – Jiang-guniang is still affianced to Jin Zixuan, but there has not yet been a wedding. Considering that the inheritance of Yunmeng still hangs by a sword’s edge over the heads of both of Jiang Fengmian’s children, that is unsurprising. Jiang Wanyin has proven able to cultivate, a miracle on its own that none of Wen Zhuliu’s victims have been known to achieve. His cultivation keeps him alive, but his body remains so weak that he must be carried in a litter or carriage; he certainly isn’t up to any sparring and taking him on a night-hunt would be an act of premeditated murder.

With her brother so ill that he cannot be named his father’s heir, Jiang-guniang has been forced to cultivate, lest a branch family take over the Jiang sect – even Lan Wangji has heard of the Violet Spider’s reaction to that. While it is well-known that she will never cultivate beyond mediocrity, it is equally known that most healers don’t need to be powerhouses. They just need to know how to use what they have, with pinpoint precision. That can be learnt, and so Jiang Yanli has spent a significant portion of the previous years at Gusu Lan, training in the path of medical cultivation.

Perhaps most significantly, Jiang-guniang has also spent a single season in Nightless City, studying medicine under Wen Qing – and if she happened to come into frequent contact with Wen Ruohan’s elder son, Lan Wangji can only imagine for whose ears such stories would have been circulated, and by whom.

Jin Zixuan’s extreme dissatisfaction with his betrothed has grown so vocally pronounced that Lan Wangji wonders why the infamously proud Violet Spider has not demanded better respect for her daughter – and Yunmeng Jiang by extension. At every gathering where the two are forced to come together – which is every single important wedding and inter-sect event, every year – opinions that grow more shamelessly vocal are split down the middle as to whether the Jiang look weak, or the Jins look frankly horrible.

It's a ridiculous situation. The engagement must inevitably be broken if Jiang-guniang is to preserve her father’s lineage’s possession of the throne. She’ll need to marry a son of a minor sect, in all likelihood. One who’ll be happy to concede his name and rights to his child and live as her consort, in exchange for the munificence such a connection would bring to his natal sect.

Why the entire unfortunate affair is being drawn out when it seems like it’s torturing both parties at the centre of it is anyone’s guess. Either way, they seem to be stuck with each other, barring the miracle of Wei Ying. Jiang Yanli really should have been thanking her adopted brother for the favours he did her every time he’d punched some manners into Jin Zixuan.

Lan Wangji feels bad whenever he thinks about it – he had always thought of Jiang Yanli as overwhelmingly kind, despite her lack of personal power as well as political agency. He had wondered, briefly, why she married Jin Zixuan when it was evident that his father was out for Wei Ying’s blood one way or another. But she had looked so radiantly happy next to her husband on her wedding day even through the veil, that the question answered itself. And then during her son’s hundred-day celebration, she had looked like the perfect picture of a happy young wife and mother. Not being able to control whom you love, Lan Wangji can understand.

And at the end – he remembers, how right to the very end, she had been his only ally left in the world. Luo Qingyang had left in disgust at them all, never to return. No one would speak for Wei Ying – save himself, and Jiang Yanli.

When even Lan Wangji was forced to shut up out of respect for the deceased Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli continued to defend him, and defend him, and went on doing it till it literally got her killed. He thinks of her relentless faith in her brother, even though Wei Ying was not a Jiang. Some bitter corner of his soul shies away from thinking of Lan Xichen for – days – afterwards.

Not so strange, that she should have been the reason why her brothers were so vulnerable and cornered, with Jin Guangshan dangling her future in their faces like the unspoken carrot-and-stick of doom.

He knows with hindsight that Wei Ying had been completely out of his mind after that horrible massacre at the Nightless City. Whatever sanity remained had not survived his sister’s death. When she was dead only because she had loved him that much.

Why had she left her baby to run into a battlefield, for Wei Ying? Is that not something you would only do for your child, or the person you love most in the world? 

Lan Wangji has never been able to understand just what happened on the day, on that battlefield, other than that it was madness and tragedy. But every time he sees Jiang Yanli in this life, looking small and lonely and hunched into herself, still unfailingly kind and courteous, he understands that the loss of Wei Ying’s presence in her life has worsened it, at least thus far.

He supposes Jiang Wanyin isn’t having a good time either, but whatever.

If only the changes were confined to the borders of Yunmeng. But the balance of the cultivation world has shifted twice, already – once with the weakening of Yunmeng Jiang, and the second time, with the strengthening of Gusu Lan.

Wen Ruohan had sent his waterborne abyss, and it had not made it past the barriers that Lan Wangji has spent the better part of this life building around his homeland. For once in their misbegotten lives, the Wens have had to clean up their own mess, and they came out of it temporarily weakened.

In this lifetime, the Discussion Conference at Nightless City never happened; the Jin took their turn early and Wen Ruohan spent the conference at home, purportedly licking his wounds.

That terrible day of fire and blood has come and gone, but Cloud Recesses has not yet burned.

The Sunshot Campaign has already been delayed by two years; now Lan Wangji wonders if it’ll ever happen.

So many things are different, now.

And yet in some ways, some things seem to be fated, like his brother and whatever he has going on with Meng Yao. And some things, he reflects with sadness that sits behind his breast like an old, chronic ache, are maybe just not fated, like him and Wei Ying.

Then he’s forced to think about something else, because Nie Huaisang is fluttering in his face, flapping his fan in a tizzy as usual and making a bright, airy spectacle of himself. Nie Zhonghui stands at his back, loyal and steady as ever.

“Da-ge’s away, so you’ll have to make do with me,” Huaisang natters at him, leading him away from his brother’s rooms and towards his own, much airier ones. “Can you believe it? The whole world’s having a circus in Yiling, and here are you and I, stuck up here where nothing ever happens!”

He doesn’t sound like he’s feeling particularly left out, despite the wheedling tone.

“Any letters for me?” Lan Wangji asks, silently parsing through the wealth of information Huaisang has just handed him.

“Sure,” Huaisang replies easily. “Your uncle’s sent a few. But they’ll be far out of date. If it’s news you’re after, Lan-xiong, you should just stay the afternoon and have lunch with me.”

Lan Wangji considers it. “Is there likelihood of violence?”

“In Yiling? Don’t think so – or at least, Meng Yao doesn’t think so, and he’s been pretty regular about his updates.”

Meng Yao. Lan Wangji’s face hurts from the effort of not twitching into a grimace. Well then, the information must be accurate, and recent. Lan Wangji can afford to stay for lunch.

He reminds himself – again, as he does every time he hears that name – that the boy has not yet done anything to warrant being chopped up how the Huaisang of his last lifetime had so dearly wanted him to end up.

Somehow, mired in their mutual hatred of the man in that life, they had both failed to consider that the Meng Yao Lan Wangji would encounter – and must kill before he became dangerous – would be only barely out of his teens.

Lan Wangji is technically old enough to be Meng Yao’s father, even if he looks nineteen. Meng Yao looks to him like a gangly, yearning child, trying desperately to hide how eagerly he wants things, wants more. Just a greedy, untutored boy who hasn’t even grown into all his angles yet.

Lan Wangji has contemplated the idea of murdering him as he is. He cannot – he cannot kill Meng Yao, who is just a boy. Who is young enough still to be considered someone’s son. Every time he considers it in any detail, he sees only A-Yuan, being cut down without a chance to restructure his life.

Unfortunately, sometime in the last two years, since Lan Wangji began spending more and more time night-hunting in the wilds of Qinghe and Gusu and the borders between sects that Xiao Huamei helped keep safe, Nie Huaisang has lost his fear of him and extended that automatically to familiarity. It’s enough that he notes the increased iciness of Lan Wangji’s demeanour, and shakes his head in disappointment.

“Lan-xiong, Lan-xiong, why must you be like everyone else, when it comes to Yao-ge?” he laments, but Lan Wangji feels the underlying rebuke. They’ve been growing sharper, of late. But of course they have – the Huaisang of this time sees Meng Yao as someone to be pitied and admired in equal measure.

Meng Yao, the eternal victim, Lan Wangji thinks bitterly, not quite managing to keep it off his face. He knows he shouldn’t indulge in such thoughts here, where Meng Yao is cherished and protected and wholeheartedly trusted. But it grates on all the wounded edges of his soul, to have his last remaining ally set himself on the side of the enemy, just because he doesn’t know better.

He does not want to be at odds with this Nie brother. Huaisang is his friend, and Huaisang is also a dangerous enemy to have.

Perhaps that conflict also shows on his face – he really needs to control himself better, but there’s enough unknown about whatever’s shaken up the jianghu to leave Lan Wangji without the luxury of any sort of pretence, today. Whatever it is, it makes Nie Huaisang soften and retreat, taking refuge in the distraction of the arrival of servants with food and tea, Qinghe specialities made vegetarian in honour of Lan Wangji’s visit.

They sit silently till the servants go, each troubled in his own way over one person. Lan Wangji can be relied upon to never break a silence if he can help it, so eventually Huaisang gives in and comes back to worry at the issue.

“Look, Lan-xiong, I’ll make you a deal,” he begins abruptly, unusually direct. But then, he has learnt to be generally direct with Lan Wangji – Huaisang enjoys playing around and being useless, which is something everybody knows, but it is a choice, which Lan Wangji knows, and doesn’t pretend not to, which drives Nie Huaisang absolutely wild with frustration.

Now, Lan Wangji is reminded that if he is a hunter of one kind, Nie Huaisang is one of quite another.

“I’ll tell you everything I know about Yiling – I don’t know why you’re suddenly interested in the jianghu’s affairs, but you did come tearing up here demanding news from home as soon as you heard, I’m guessing – but of course even those living lumps of rock up in Xiqi must have heard something by now. But! You’re not getting anything from me for free – and don’t try the no-speaking-while-eating nonsense here, we’re in Qinghe. So, will you pay, or will you take your uncle’s letters and leave?”

He begins setting out the various dishes, piling two bowls high with rice and vegetables, and rice and meat respectively, continuing blithely on. “After lunch, though, Xia Kang will be heartbroken if you don’t try that beetroot dish. He roasted them in plant ash and salt, and stir-fried half with spinach and rice vinegar. You’ll have to tell me if you like it, he’ll want to know for the next time Xichen-ge comes visiting.”

He wags his chopsticks at Lan Wangji, who only tilts his head in assent before picking up his own bowl and tucking in. The beetroot is indeed very good. Sharp and savoury and smoky. He scarfs down some more, nodding faintly in approval.

He supposes they were bound to have this conversation sooner or later. Now, with both Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao out of the way and privacy guaranteed, might be the best time after all.

“You have concerns about Meng Yao,” Nie Huaisang states. “I frankly didn’t take you or the type, Lan-xiong, to question a man’s worth due to his parentage.”

Lan Wangji thinks carefully before he speaks, and prepares to do so through the entire conversation.

“As you say. It is not, however, the provenance of Meng-gongzi’s mother that concerns me.”

That appears to shock Huaisang. “Not his – then what – you don’t say?!”

Lan Wangji simply lifts his left shoulder a precise inch, in a shrug that says and why is that a surprise, everyone knows Jin Guangshan is a walking disgrace to the concepts of morality, fidelity, and righteous conduct.

Nuwa preserve Huaisang, he gets the gist of it without Lan Wangji having to actually say any of that out loud.

“Huhhhhh,” he drawls, chewing slowly on his heavily-sauced pork belly. “I suppose – hah. Well. I hadn’t considered that angle, you know. Not till now.”

And that honestly surprises Lan Wangji. Why should it matter who Meng Yao’s mother was, whether she was a princess or a prostitute, when his father was Jin Guangshan, a man whom only the morally bankrupt could respect?

Huaisang’s going back and forth on the matter, however. “But really – I don’t know. I don’t know, Lan-xiong, should it still matter who his parents were? Are? Anyone might argue that his father has no hold on him at all, that he’s made his own way in the world independent of his father’s influence – surely it doesn’t matter? It’s not like anyone goes around calling Jin Zixuan a degenerate or anything!”

Ah – and here is the tricky part. The part that is impossible to argue without sounding unpardonably prejudiced – or paranoid. If Lan Wangji outlines exactly how far Meng Yao has been proven to go for his father, he’ll sound worse than Shufu used to when raving about a fifteen-year-old Wei Ying, whose worst crime back then was that he liked making mischief where he could.

And Huaisang’s clever – as well as imaginative.

Fortunately, Lan Wangji was trained in the art of handling Nie Huaisang by none other than Nie Huaisang. So he swallows down his nerves, and reminds himself that they anticipated – not this, exactly, because Meng Yao was ideally supposed to have been dead by now. But a worst-case scenario, where somehow Meng Yao found himself in the Nie household anyway, with supporters ready to defend him.

He finishes his bowl, and reaches out to ladle more soup into it, then drinks that too, composing the words as he takes the time to think back.

“It is not a question of what he has done. Nor even what he might do. As you say, each man walks his own path.”

He pauses to think through his next words, and Nie Huaisang takes the moment to interject – “So you don’t hate him because he’s the so-called son of a whore, even if said whore is Jin Guangshan. But something bothers you anyway.”

Lan Wangji hesitates, then nods once, firmly. There’s no use hiding this – and he needs Huaisang to take him seriously.

He needs an ally.

“Jin Guangshan,” he begins carefully, measuring every word out like a farmer’s wife counting out pennies at the market, “is not unique in his conduct. Riches and power corrupt easily. He is certainly not the only man in our world, or our history, who has made a habit of adultery in all its forms.”

“So – you know something like this has happened before?”

“Mn. You have not heard of it. It is a tale lost to time, the names of its actors no longer in living memory.”

“Except yours, evidently,” Huaisang points out, wry. “Did you get this out of a book, Lan-xiong? Are you selling me a fairy story? You don’t seem the type…”

“Not a story. I do not lie.” Lan Wangji states those as facts, because they are.

“But you can’t tell me their names? Or won’t? Is it some secret Lan sect scandal? Some deep disgrace locked away in your treasure vaults?”

Lan Wangji simply glares at him till he subsides. “All right, all right. What happened, in this secret scandalous affair you won’t tell me anything important about?”

“There was a man of means and influence. I will not say whether he was a civilian or a cultivator; it is irrelevant. Only that he was much like Jin Guangshan in character and habits.”

“By habits, you mean, left bastards lying around the countryside like he was distributing gold and silver?”

Lan Wangji glares at him again. There’s no call to be so crude.

Nie Huaisang wilts at once. “All right! All right! Please stop that, it’s like being glared at by three Lan Qirens, two Yu Ziyuans, plus half-a-dozen Da-ges all at once and it’s really making me quite uncomfortable, you know!”

“Precisely such habits, including a son who grew up at a brothel,” Lan Wangji bites out, and Huaisang has the grace to look abashed. 

“I take it things went badly, in this story of yours?” he asks, almost timidly, making himself look small and pathetic for effect.

Lan Wangji thinks of Meng Yao being tossed down a thousand stairs by his own father, in two lifetimes, and wants to say twice, but settles for – “Yes.”

“The child had been raised by a mother who was literate enough to dream of a better life, and encouraged to find his father once she died. He was rejected out of hand.”

“Just like Yao-ge,” Huaisang murmurs. “His mother – you wouldn’t know this, you never stick around at conferences long enough to hear anything really juicy – but she was apparently pretty well educated. He hates playing the qin – they insult him to his face, saying how he looks like her when he plays. She was – reportedly – skilled. And – she definitely raised him with a whole lot of nonsense fairytales about his wonderful, powerful father and how he just had to try and become a Jin.”

By the time he winds down, it’s as though he’s switched to talking to himself, and he looks up to meet Lan Wangji’s eyes with an expression like disturbed waters, that hadn’t been there before.

“Lan-xiong, do you think that’s – going to be a problem?” He fiddles with his teacup. Lifts it, takes a sip, plunks it back down almost angrily. “No! That’s exactly the kind of prejudice I’ve been…” he trails off, the turmoil not leaving his face. “But as you say, his father’s Jin Guangshan…but surely that doesn’t matter any more, Lan-xiong? However the boy in your story was rejected, it couldn’t have been as bad as what happened to Yao-ge! To be thrown down the stairs of Jinlintai like – like he was some common sneak or beggar! Like he was some nobody, or worse than nobody, instead of Jin Guangshan’s own flesh and blood! I was there, Lan-xiong. You hate parties, you never go to these things, but the rest of us were right there and we saw it happen! Me and Xichen-ge and Da-ge and everybody else! It was horrible. The worst spectacle I’ve ever seen, and – I think we all felt the humiliation of it secondhand.”

His fingers twist in his sleeves, worrying at the embroidered swallows winging around the hems, his distress so palpable that Lan Wangji is reminded of how young and untested this Huaisang is, as well. He’s right – Lan Wangji had not been there to see Meng Yao’s shameful treatment at his father’s hands, in either lifetime. But he has lived through a war and worse – he has been humiliated in his own home by Wen Xu; he can imagine the scene well enough. To a boy as sheltered as Huaisang, it must have indeed been one of the worst things he witnessed in his entire life, up to that point. Lan Wangji feels the sudden urge to soothe him, as he would soothe one of his junior disciples on their first night-hunt.

And he knows something about yearning for a father’s love and approval.

“It must seem natural, for such a thing to kill any semblance of filial affection. But you must remember that a parent’s regard is not so easily discarded. A father may abuse his child, yet the child will come running to no one else, when it needs shelter and comfort. This, I have witnessed personally.”

“I suppose you see all sorts of things, with the amount of night-hunting you do.” Huaisang’s voice is subdued, but calmer. “I haven’t seen anything like it myself, believe it or not, even discounting Da-ge’s temper. His bark’s always been worse than his bite; you know that. But I hear things. People don’t care what they say when they’re drunk…nothing in detail, really…but I have heard a few things. I believe you, when you say there may be a chance Yao-ge might go running back to his father. Because that’s really what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?”

Lan Wangji looks down.

“What happened to the boy in your story, Lan-xiong?”

“He made a name for himself, independent of his ancestry, and won his father’s acceptance for a time. The source of my information did not include details of what may or may not have occurred behind closed doors. Only that somehow, against all odds, this publicly disfavoured son somehow managed to go from nobody, to the head of his clan. For this to happen, three adult men in their prime had to die of unnatural causes – and so they apparently did. It was later discovered that he had murdered his own father, and speculated that he influenced the death of the direct heirs in line before him.”

Nie Huaisang pales. “You cannot mean that Yao-ge would – !”

Lan Wangji waits long enough to be sure that he will not be interrupting if he speaks. When he does, he tries to make himself as gentle as he knows to be. Huaisang is like a spooked rabbit, quivering with tension and ready to flee from unwelcome, threatening, upsetting things, like Lan Wangji dropping by unannounced to tilt his axis.

“Nie-gongzi, I will not trouble you to imagine needless atrocities. I only entreat you to consider the kind of man Jin Guangshan is, and what you know about the depth of Meng-gongzi’s desire for acceptance by his father.”

He pauses, considers his next words very, very carefully, and says them anyway. “It is good to be optimistic about the future, but stories involving such men rarely turn out well, Nie-gongzi.”

There is a long, long silence after that, punctured only by the quiet clacking of chopsticks against porcelain. Nie Huaisang’s head remains bent over his food as he picks at individual grains of rice, eating with deliberation. Lan Wangji begins to worry that he has caused true offence, gone too far, tried to tip the scales too firmly against Meng Yao. The afternoon is no longer lively but weighted down with grim shadows of portent curling around the edges of their time together, the balance of qi in the air shifting this way and that with each rise and fall of Huaisang’s chopsticks from his bowl to his mouth and back.

At last, he lifts his head, and the way he squares his shoulders tells Lan Wangji that he finds this unpleasant and unwelcome, but necessary.

He looks – disturbed.

“You don’t gossip, and you’re never unkind, if you aren’t friendly. I know you have nothing against prostitutes, I heard all about you exorcising some brothel in Shangba, how you played there for a whole night and day to purify the place. I’ve always known that it couldn’t have been simple prejudice against his birth, for why you always disliked him so. But – he really does worry you, doesn’t he, Lan-xiong. You never gossip. So this isn’t you gossiping, either. Is it? You wouldn’t be sitting here, telling me these things, if you weren’t seriously worried.”

He shakes his head, as if trying to shake himself awake, and not succeeding. “And see – that. That worries me. So, I’ll think about this.”

It feels like there were bands of iron around Lan Wangji’s chest, before this moment, that he hadn’t even noticed. Squeezing him tight, suffocating his ribs, shortening his breath. Huaisang's promise feels like release, relief, and air rushing into his lungs. He can breathe.

He has an ally. He has his ally. At last, he can breathe.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 179 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Lan Qiren awaits a visitor

Yiling swells with self-importance and self-consciousness in equal measure. At the centre of a wide circle of white-and-blue tents, in quarters fit for a clan and sect leader, Lan Qiren waits for his nephew to arrive, for he surely must be speeding his way to Yiling from the wilds of Qinghe by now.

As he waits, he keeps only half an eye on the flux and flow of the immortal’s qi suffusing the air of Yiling even this far from the epicentre of his rising. That such a being has emerged once gain in their world centuries after Baoshan Sanren weathered her heavenly trial is under no doubt.

Nor, unusually, is the identity of the young cultivator who achieved the impossible and tamed the Burial Mounds, under dispute. He wonders briefly if the mountain will retain that moniker now that it stands proud and purified, humming with qi so much like lightning that it may only belong to a force beyond man and nature – a wandering, musical boy who invented his own heavenly trial and persevered through five years to win it.

The young immortal, Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian, whom his nephew calls with familiar longing and grief, Wei Ying.

Wei Ying. It is a name Lan Qiren knows and remembers; Wei Ying, son of his once-known not-quite-friends. Wei Ying, son of Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren. Lost once, lost twice and finally found, an orphaned son of two geniuses, with an immortal for a grandmaster.

Trust Cangse Sanren’s son to audaciously lay down his path to immortality before he ought to even know the meaning of the word, Lan Qiren gripes somewhat sourly, then shakes himself out of it before Wangji returns and throws a fit at having his precious Wei Ying even slightly maligned.

How could it ever have been otherwise? Lan Qiren doesn’t actually wonder for very long. He can see perfectly well how such a boy might grow into an immortal or a demon, given the slightest twists of fate. But Wangji insists that a demon he never was nor is capable of being, and Lan Qiren –

Lan Qiren has had enough of watching his grown-up nephew acting like he’s been widowed even when trapped in the body of a child for the last nine years, hiding his grief from the world but not his rage. He has had enough, quite enough, of watching the agony of this man he must have raised with his own two hands, in a different life.  

Not again, he has already decided, and if Wangji’s fate is tangled up with Wei Wuxian’s, then whatever the boy is or will be, the Lan clan’s fate is bound to him too.

The breeze picks up, bringing the scent of osmanthus and lilies into the camp to cut through the chatter and squawk of several hundred elite cultivators, all awaiting Wei Wuxian to, hopefully, at some point, get off his mountain and grace them with his honoured presence.

The idea of bowing and scraping to a half-baked 18-year-old! Lan Qiren sniffs in disapproval. A genius at cultivation the boy must certainly be, given his obvious ability, but does he have the basics right? To anyone’s precise knowledge, he has never had a formal education. Certainly, Lan Qiren has heard more than enough about Jiang Fengmian’s failure to recruit his own former subordinate’s son. The entire jianghu’s heard of it, thanks to the well-travelled gossip of Jin Guangshan’s court. Really, what must Jiang-zongzhu be thinking, to permit such an obvious crack in the defences of his home?

Lan Qiren doesn’t know and truly doesn’t want to care, but given that he’s stuck here due to the very vagaries of that dastardly institution called marriage, he has no better options.

Thus, the other half of his attention, he devotes wholly to the politics of the jianghu. Within the fragile patchwork of careful non-alliances, the ill-advised childhood betrothal between the Jin boy and Jiang girl already caused much upset by opening the waterways of Yunmeng to Jin Guangshan’s greedy clutches in a way that guarantees the rest of them will be permanently deprived of any such advantage unless the Jiang boy marries Nie Huaisang – laughable idea, Lan Wangji – the very idea, or some Wen – surely Jiang Wanyin doesn’t deserve to suffer more in his unfortunate life?

And of course, the two clans not bound in alliance to the Jiang and Jin would end up irrevocably out in the cold, growing poorer and more subordinate to Jin gold all the while.

Foolish idea, that betrothal, Lan Qiren reflects with a sniff and a shake of his head. Foolish indeed, given the central participants’ own well-publicised apathy to their union.

Very foolish to keep the betrothal intact after Jiang Yanli’s promotion to the position of sect heiress, given that if she does marry Jian Zixuan now, Yunmeng Jiang will end up as a subsidiary sect of Lanling Jin if it doesn’t go to a branch family first. No one knows whether Jiang Wanyin is capable of siring a child, and one cannot stake the future of a Great Sect on such things.  

Suicidally foolish to do so under Wen Ruohan’s nose, who has cottoned on to the idea that wars of attrition can be won just as effectively via marriage as bloodshed. Even more troublingly, Wen Ruohan has no dearth of marriageable young male relatives. Starting with his own heir, each one is several degrees more eligible than Jin Zixuan, whose achievements amount only to a considerable degree of personal beauty and arrogance.

And because Wen Ruohan is not a graceful loser, Yu-furen will be practically obligated to break off her daughter’s incumbent engagement and marry her off to either Wen Xu or whichever Wen cousin he tosses at her for consideration.

Lan Qiren is busy guesstimating the total contents and value therein of the cartloads of blatant courting gifts no doubt flowing at this moment from the Wen camp to that of the Jiang, whiling away an otherwise tedious afternoon with idle musings on matrimony and the rituals thereof.

This is absolutely indulging in gossip, Xichen would say, which is true. It is equally true that there are no more rules to stop Lan Qiren from doing whatever he pleases – within his own head.

The act of drifting away in his own thoughts is meditative, the world reducing to his own noise, when the air shudders rapidly and goes so still that it feels like he’s being encased in stone for a single moment – a moment not quite quicksilver, not quite infinite but something suspended in between the two – he can’t breathe.

It stretches for a brief eternity, pressing down upon his chest. It constricts his lungs like a coiling python, and holds, then a bright, clean flash of qi floods the entire settlement of Yiling, like a shock of cool water sluiced over one’s face on a hot summer’s afternoon. Outside, all sound ceases so abruptly that the silence that falls is just as weighty as the clamour it replaced, and the air rushes back into his chest and ears with a faint ringing, like that of distant chimes.

Moments later, Wangji walks in.

“Shufu,” he greets, folding his arms into a smooth bow and taking a seat across the low, carved kang table where Lan Qiren has been enjoying his tea in formerly uninterrupted peace. He glares at the boy,[3] but not too hard. He can’t help the crushing force of his power, after having worked endlessly over the last nine years to break every barrier of cultivation – save the last.

They had all been so certain that Wangji would be the first of this – of many generations – to achieve immortality. Even Wen Ruohan has not come so far, for his qi has long since been polluted by the heart demons he must have surely collected over decades with his greed for power, his dead wife, his increasing bloodlust and extreme pride. Wangji shines with qi so pure and bracing that he may well be an anthropomorphisation of the Song of Clarity.

Coming into his nephew’s presence is rather like being scrubbed clean under the thousandforce pressure of a waterfall swollen with icy water tumbling straight from the peaks of Kunlun Shan.[4] Intensely uncomfortable, and briefly panic-inducing, but effective.

Somewhat amusingly, this is also a frequent complaint of those travelling in and out of Gusu, for Wangji’s barrier has made all unauthorised passage through their lands impossible. They have had to employ a system of entries and checkpoints to maintain trade and travel – an added expense, but one they can bear well. Add revenue from road taxes and toll fares, and the Lan have plenty of money to keep it up for as long as the barrier remains.

Lan Qiren knows what he owes to his nephew’s barrier – no, all of Gusu knows what they owe the second young master of their ruling sect. Wangji is treated like a prince within the borders of their home, and deservedly so, after his barrier prevented Wen Ruohan from sending a Waterborne Abyss down the waterways to Biling Lake.

Gusu is safer now, and better-trafficked, than anywhere else in all of the jianghu. The Lan have grown rich to match the Jin due to the increase in trade along their routes secured against banditry by desperate peasants as well as greedy sect officials. No one dares disrespect a Lan cultivator, no matter where they might go.

Lan Wangji singlehandedly saved the economy of Caiyi and their sect. Both townspeople and clansmen will never forget it. Gusu is a land of quiet folk with long memories.

And his nephew has the longest memory of all, so long that it stretches back into a life that none other can recall, not having lived it. It is stranger than strange, to look at him not as he should be at nineteen, on the cusp where boyhood unravels itself to reveal a man, but something definably more. It jars, to see a soul not much younger than Lan Qiren himself, staring out of the tall, strong frame shrouded in pristine white.

How is it that Wei Wuxian is alive, and yet his nephew still mourns the man who was lost even as he works to better the future of the boy that remains? And what is it costing Wangji, he frets now as he has so many, many times over this long decade of estrangement and resentment between them. Wangji – Wangji the man inhabiting the body of Lan Qiren’s child – has grown into a hard, ungentle man. Difficult to please, impossible to know.

He speaks to Lan Qiren because he must, and only because Lan Qiren has placed himself in the position of Wangji’s first general in the war with the Wen that they have been preparing for, for nine years. They, much as Wangji might have preferred to accomplish his task alone, because a child in body if not truth does not have the same access to the corridors of power that Lan Qiren does.

Xichen would offer himself up to be used thus in a heartbeat, but Wangji will never go to his brother. Des not trust, like, or respect his elder brother, who is no longer so.

Lan Qiren gets a headache every time he thinks about the fact that Wangji is thirty-seven years old.

Thirty-seven, to the sect-heir’s callow twenty-one! Thirty-seven, a man who has weathered wars, fatherhood, loss and –

Lan Qiren knows everything now, has gone down on bended knees and back to beg his nephew’s confidence if not his forgiveness. He knows how Wangji got here – knows already that life has changed for them all from the paths they might otherwise have taken. He knows, and yet cringes away from knowing that Wangji had had to take Bichen to his own neck to get here.

The headache pounds, and pounds.

There are days when he hates what he knows – of others, of himself, of the world to come. There are other days, like today, when he is profoundly grateful for the burden. For Wangji to be solitary in his knowledge would have been disastrous, faced with a situation as unprecedented as the rise of an immortal. One glance at his nephew’s face tells Lan Qiren that even Wangji has not predicted this, that he is not happy or grateful or proud, to know that the beloved he yearns for is alive and more then well, if the rumours blazing their way out of Yiling and to the four corners of the jianghu for the past weeks are to be given credence.

No, Wangji is – frightened.

The face that looks back at Lan Qiren is the dearest in the world to him, carved in the image of a soft, mantou-cheeked boy that Lan Qiren thought once to love and raise into his own shadow. Right now it is paler than the white jade Wangji’s admirers call him to be, and a terrible fright swims under the solid walls of gold that meet Lan Qiren’s gaze squarely. Wangji is afraid, but will not balk at showing Lan Qiren his fear.

I am afraid, but you need not fear me, those eyes tell Lan Qiren, mocking him for having a brother who would act atrocities on his beloved out of fear, mocking him for thinking Wangji might turn out to be the same, sneering at him for ruining Wangji’s life.

How had he raised such an honest man, Lan Qiren wonders? Honest to a fault, honest to his very bone marrow. It is devastating to know what such honesty had cost.

At least, he reflects wryly, he doesn’t need to worry about Wangji stealing this Wei Wuxian away from his mountain and locking him away in Gusu. No, far likelier that he’ll lose Wangji to the immortal’s mountain instead, though it will break Xichen’s already bruised heart.

“You brother is with Nie Mingjue,” he informs Wangji, remembering that Wangji will not let his guard down by even a cun[5] if Xichen is in the vicinity. He suppresses a sigh, trying to not let his aching heart or head show. But just as Wangji is an open book to him, so goes it both ways. His nephew’s mouth pinches and he sets down his teacup with a decided clack, to indicate that he was already done with the conversation they must necessarily have – for the fifty-eleventh time.

“He may be younger than you are now, Wangji, but to the world he is not only your elder brother and therefore worthy of your filial respect, but also your future sect leader,” Lan Qiren points out, and hastens to disclaim, because talking to a stone-faced overgrown teenager is exhausting, “not that it makes any difference to you, I am aware. But perhaps it will, when I tell you that by ignoring your filial duties in this way you leave your brother open to the very influences that cost you him, before. For your own sake, Wangji, can you not lay his sins to rest?”

He knows at once that he has overcorrected and said the wrong thing. Wangji is not welcoming of sympathy shown to Xichen and shows no interest in empathising with his brother’s position. It is not an easy one, Lan Qiren is painfully aware. Xichen is by birth and training in line to be Lan-zonghzu, but it is a known fact that Gusu Lan runs on the say-so of the second young master, who is never refused nor gainsaid, not even by the elders, not even after he blew the foundational teachings of his own sect to dust.

If not for the immensity of his golden core –

If not for their meteoric rise to great wealth and greater influence –

If not for that thrice-damned, thrice-blessed, thrice-enforced barrier –

Lan Qiren shudders to think of the consequences that would have befallen Wangji and then Gusu Lan, the loss of face along with the loss of their second heir would have finished the sect off –

If not for Wangji dragging them, brooking neither kicking nor screaming, to the peak of the mountain and showing them the true lay of the land bordering their seclusion.

Seclusion – what a mistake! What a terrible, ill-advised error of morality and judgement, the self-imposed, self-gratulating seclusion they all retreat to for one reason or other, each believing this withdrawal from the world to be justified, fair, and righteous instead of careless, ignorant, and negligent!

Terrible mistakes have been made by the Lan, and the culminative product of them all is Xichen.

“I do not forgive you,” says Wangji, with his characteristic quiet finality.

Lan Qiren knows this, but it smarts. He doesn’t manage to keep that off his face either, because Wangji grows, not gentle, but more willing to express himself.

“I made peace with you for two reasons. The first is that you acted consistently in accordance with your oft-stated beliefs. I was not surprised at your disapproval or disavowal of me. You never led me to expect anything more or less.”

“The Xichen who did not, exists no more, Wangji. Even in the absence of rules -” he can’t help but add the tart aside; Wangji’s first atrocity still rankles.

“Shoulder the weight of morality,” Wangji practically snaps at his throat, blatantly interrupting to show precisely what he thinks of Lan Qiren’s precious rules.

“Shoulder the weight of morality,” Wangji says again, with biting emphasis that makes the words drop from his lips and into Lan Qiren’s lap like the first rocks rolling downhill before the landslide commences thundering down.

“Was that not among the foremost of our rules? I have done so. Xiongzhang knew well, that I do not and had never lied for any reason, often to my own and others’ detriment. For that, he owed me the courtesy of visiting Yiling and seeing for himself the state of the prisoners Wei Ying had liberated. He did not do so. You did not raise him with different values than mine. He only thought it was more important to support Meng Yao’s rise to power.”

Meng Yao is spat out like crashing lightning – if Wangji could scorch the boy alive with the intonation of his name alone, he would have managed it right then.

Well, then. Meng Yao, unfortunately, is the wedge between brothers that Lan Qiren cannot solve. It seems that in the end it was Xichen – free, easy-going, gentle-to-a-fault Xichen – who repeated his father’s sin, and not Wangji despite all his intensity of thought and feeling. Lan Qiren despairs that the inevitability of some fates has already set Meng Yao onto Xichen’s path and captured him like a butterfly under an entomologist’s pin.

It is useless to inform Wangji that Xichen dares not show too great a partiality for anyone not his brother, afraid of losing Wangji entirely. Xichen does not know why the precious little brother he worshipped simply began to look at him with different eyes once day, but something in his soul was shaken and has not yet settled.

He pays Meng Yao only friendly courtesy for now – but if this continues…as a parent, Lan Qiren worries.

He knows that Wangji had once briefly embraced fatherhood, though he has never spoken of the child beyond that one cursory recounting of the past, years ago when Lan Qiren had first cornered him and made him talk. He appeals now to the parent instead of the brother, but to no avail. Wangji is adamant.

“Meng Yao exploits sympathy to forge paths to victory. Seeks benefit at the expense of others.[6] Clever and insidious. Xiongzhang is unworldly, particularly susceptible to the tricks one learns in a pleasure-house. I do not blame Xiongzhang’s ignorance, nor, as his elder in this life, do I wish him to grow familiar with the ways of such men,”

“As his elder, you call yourself. So you acknowledge it. As you are an esteemed elder, does forgiveness not fall to your lot? I will correct Xichen’s ignorance in such matters myself. I have begun the work already, though you stubbornly refuse to make yourself aware of it.” I could use your help, Lan Qiren implies, but does not say.

Lan Wangji grows quiet for a time, busying himself with the simple mechanics of making a fresh pot of tea. Lan Qiren notes the selection – Da Hong Pao, which requires care and time to brew. It is a childhood habit of his nephew’s, whenever he wishes to gather his thoughts before speaking.

Selecting the tea took a few minutes, picking the right teapot takes several more. The Lan are not fond of darker, richer teas, but for Da Hong Pao, Lan Qiren keeps an array of fine Yixing ware from Jiangsu.[7] It is one of these that Wangji eventually returns with – a small squat teapot with a carved leaf for a handle. Another childhood favourite. Wangji must be deeply affected.

His nephew’s motions are precise and imbued with the grace of long habit. It is a pleasure to watch Wangji make tea, Lan Qiren thinks. In this, at least, he has taught the boy well, if the man still carries the imprint of those lessons learned at the age of six.

Carefully, he grinds the leaves while the water boils, measures the correct amount and sets the tea to steep once, throws it away and rinses the cups twice, then throws that away and rinses again. Finally, after the third steeping, when the fragrance of orchids has risen into the air and suffused the room with the heraldry of spring, the tea is ready to drink and Wangji, to speak.

If only he did not look outwardly so young, Lan Qiren could almost abide this situation. He pulls himself out of memory and into the present, paying attention.

“I do not doubt that the withdrawal of his support would have cost Meng Yao something in prestige and position, given Jin Guangshan’s character. I do not consider that man’s enforced acceptance of his own son to be goods of sufficient value to have bartered fifty lives for. It troubles me that once again, after knowing of Meng Yao’s public humiliation, Xiongzhang does not join Nie Mingjue’s efforts to steer him away from Lanling. He considers Jin Guangshan’s trust and approval to be worthy goals for Meng Yao to strive towards, and forget integrity so as to achieve gain.[8] Such notions in our sect leader cannot be tolerated.”

After taking the time to pour a second cup for them both, he adds, evidently trying to compromise, “There will be no public trouble.”

Only private strife then, Lan Qiren laments.

“Xichen does not have your experience of the world. He has grown up in cleanliness and innocence, Wangji. He does not know, nor understand men like Jin Guangshan. I have never wanted him to,” Lan Qiren says, but inwardly, he is troubled. There is nothing unreasonable in the doubts that Wangji raises against Xichen’s character and disposition. Quite the contrary.

It appears that even given two lifetimes, Lan Qiren is incapable of raising that child well.

“Xiongzhang cannot decide how many ornaments he may wear on his belt without instruction,” Lan Wangji retorts, and Lan Qiren knows that will remain that.

For now. Whatever his nephew thinks about himself, he came by his obstinacy honestly. 

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to run off now, to this Wei Ying of yours,” Lan Qiren gripes. He has never been a graceful loser, a fault he has had to confront with great frequency since Wangji tore the rules down.

But Wangji indicates otherwise. “First seek truth from facts.”[9]

Lan Qiren hides a smile. At least this one grew into the perfect gentleman. “Very well, take your notes.”

They speak until well into the afternoon, and by the end of it, Lan Wangji doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What he does do is send prayers to every deity listening for blessing him with a face thick enough to smash the fist of anyone trying to break its composure.

Shufu is certainly having the time of his life here.

Unfortunately, Lan Wangji can’t even bring himself to begrudge his uncle the day’s entertainment.

Wei Ying’s antics, he bemoans. Why did he have to go and fall in love with an idiot?

Only Wei Ying. Only Wei Ying.

He conceals a sigh. This explains so much about everything he’s been hearing over the few weeks while racing southwards.

He had better set off to find Wei Ying at once, he supposes. Evidently, Wei Ying cannot be left to his own devices for one moment longer than absolutely necessary. Wangji knows now who is currently in Yiling and what they intend to do about Wei Ying, so his course has already been decided for him.

He bows to take his uncle’s leave, and makes it as far as the tent-flap before the question stops him cold.

“What are your intentions?”

Lan Wangji pauses. He already knows the answer, but he wishes nevertheless to once more give the question the deep consideration it deserves, given that it is truly about Wei Ying’s well-being. Wants to be sure that he is being honest and true, that he will not compound his former mistakes, nor repeat his father’s.

He is Wei Ying’s elder in this life. He has seen Wei Ying live once without adequate guidance and worse than no protection. Rather, he was thrown to the dogs time and again, by his own sect leader, and after having won them the war. Any man might have gone mad under such trials of faith, but Wei Wuxian persevered until it killed him.

Now there are rumours again, about Wei Ying. A blaze created by a single spark.[10] The miraculous things they say he can do – how long before their admiration turns to scrutiny, till they find or invent something they will collectively refuse to abide? How long before miracles turn into curses? Will his fate in this life be to lock himself away on his mountain in the way of his grandmaster?

He wants to ask his uncle, you knew his parents – is that the life they would have wanted for their son?

His intentions are to give Wei Wuxian the life he would have wanted for A-Yuan. If Lan Wangji could not do it for either of them in that life, it was because he was both cowardly and incapable. Now he is neither. He is not afraid of loving Wei Ying well, even if it must necessarily only be the love of an elder and a dear friend. It would not be appropriate to permit himself more, given their ages and Wei Ying’s ignorance of the past.

The last, he repeats to himself, knowing that his uncle would disagree if he spoke the words aloud. Lan Qiren, believes that Wei Ying may not be as ignorant as Lan Wangji believes. Not when he has locked himself away on his own mountain to turn it into a place of consecration rather than curses. Not when he has stayed studiously apart from Yunmeng Jiang, where he once met his ruin. Not when so, so very much – everything, in fact, is different about the life Wei Ying is living in this world.

It makes sense, and yet it does not. How could it be, Lan Wangji has wondered often, when nothing he knows of can resurrect the dead in this manner, with form and memory intact? When he knows what the ritual he and Huaisang created was capable of, and what it wasn’t? If he could have brought Wei Ying back to life as he had been, memories and all, they would not have decided to burn incense in the wrong direction. 

If Wei Wuxian came back in time, it cannot be due to anything Lan Wangji has done, and therefore, he refuses to hang his hopes on it.

In any case, Wei Ying has not come to him. Will not open the wards to him.

What is likelier, he wonders, that Wei Ying hates him more than he hates even Wen Ruohan, whose summons he did not ignore? Lan Wangji knows that no force on earth could have dragged Wei Ying there if he himself had not wished to go.

No, far more probable that Wei Ying does not know, but it is possible that his actions are driven by some primal instincts embedded in his soul. Ones he may possibly not be aware of himself. In his last nine years of study, this is the only reasonable explanation Wangji can accept.

He dares not let himself hope or think otherwise. Not after years of playing their song outside Wei Ying’s wards, without a single flutter of a leaf in response. His Wei Ying would have known, would have emerged to yell at him to get lost, but would never have ignored him thus.

Although, one never really knew with Wei Ying and his moods.

Foolish, this hoping. Wangji lets the hope in briefly and deeply enough to permit the stab to his heart so that when it broke and died, it would take the knife with it.

And Wei Ying would be safe. From the world and himself.

To his uncle, he only says, “I shall be content with what I have.”[11]

Outside is organised chaos. Lan Wangji leaves the orderly, concentric rows of Lan tents, noting the quality of the canvas, the cerulean and cloud-blue silk hangings rippling in the breeze like a mountain stream, silver tassels tinkling like water splashing gently against smooth pebbled banks.

He basks in the warm glow of prosperity, letting it comfort him gently. Whatever must be faced in the days to come, his clan is ready for it.

Servants in fine but plain linen bustle quietly between the tents, making comfortable quarters for the cultivators milling about in embroidered white silk, aware of the beautiful show they’re making for idle passersby.

Not that there are many of those. The Lan came later, the Jiang and Jin having got here first, the former from a sense of great urgency and the latter from a sense of urgent greed, no doubt. Shufu has mentioned seeing Jiang Fengmian patrolling the borders of the Jiang camp with some frequency, as though he can barely restrain himself from marching up to the mountain and demanding Wei Wuxian present himself – but to what end, is all a matter of great speculation.

Rumours flying everywhere once again. Rumours, rumours, always gossip and rumours, with Wei Ying. Wangji hates this.

He returns with swift courtesy the bows directed at him. No one among his own sect disturbs him, having learnt to measure his mood by his gait. Right now he has somewhere to be.

Outside the protective embrace of Gusu Lan’s camp, is a crowd of gawkers gathered to witness – what, who knows? Wangji ignores them all, whether they’ve come in anticipation of his glory or imagined humiliation at having been surpassed by an orphaned nobody.

Little do they know, and little does Wangji care.

The Jin camp is practically empty, having gathered instead to gossip and point in snickering tones at the carts of Wen-branded gifts collected where the Jiang camp spreads out like a lake at twilight, all dusky purples and violets, cultivators in robes glimmering with inset silver and jade like the night sky reflected on its surface.

Interesting, Lan Wangji thinks, and alarming. He does not know which way the winds may blow when it comes to relations between them and the Wen. Without Wei Ying present to antagonise the Wen, they may yet succeed in pressuring the Jiang into breaking ties with the Jin. 

On the other hand, such a marriage cannot be permitted to happen, lest Yunmeng, weak in heirs as it is, fall entirely to Wen rule.

As he passes by, he hears some fairly ugly gossip about how if Yu-furen had been a wise mother, she would have done better by her children[12], or at least devoted her energies to bearing her husband a second son. He glares at the miscreants to send them scattering, and bows to Jiang-zongzhu, who remains focused on the mountain with a worried face.

“Wushan Youqin,” the man greets, “they say we have a new immortal.”

Of course they do. That’s the whole reason any of them is here, and they both know it. Truly, the jianghu never changes in its pursuit of the wondrous and exciting.

Wangji says nothing, content to let the man speak at his own pace. He does not know what to think of Jiang-zongzhu. It occurs to him that he might ask, but he cannot find a way to phrase himself that would not be unforgivably discourteous. He may be in possession of the second-or third-most-powerful golden core in the Jianghu at the moment, depending on where Wen Ruohan stood, but Jiang Fengmian was still of the older generation.

Nominally.

In truth, Lan Wangji doesn’t know if he even wants to know the man. He knows only that this is the one who raised Wei Ying to be self-sacrificing to his own detriment and did not try to correct such blatant self-destructive tendencies in a child under his sole guardianship. He is not, therefore, inclined to think too well of Jiang Fengmian.

“So you too have come to see him?” Jiang Fengmian follows up.

Lan Wangji nods. It’s true. He has not only come to see Wei Ying, but that is where he plans to start.

“We might all be out of luck,” his companion goes on, peacably. “It seems he came down once, and promptly got scared off. Hasn’t shown anyone his face since.”

Lan Wangji snorts. Why is he in love with an idiot, again?

Unbidden, they both exchange a glance of shared wryness, as if saying, trust Wei Ying to do something like this. Then Jiang-zongzhu pulls back, startled.

“Do you know him?”

Wangji shakes his head. He does not, in fact, know this Wei Ying. However – “Conduct yourself like a gentleman,” he intones, deliberately mocking, and lets his companion laugh.

Wangji finds himself somewhat pleased. Jiang-zongzhu is kind of nice to be around. Doesn’t ask difficult questions, doesn’t take offense. It is easier to communicate with him than with others. Wangji can see himself loving such a man, if he had not had the overly-thorough care of his uncle as his own point of reference.

“Well, go on then, Lan-er-gongzi. Age knows better than to try stopping the youth. If you can find out whether he is – all right. Will you let me know?”

Wangji considers him for a long moment. Then he nods in assent, and makes his way silently into the shadows bordering the Burial Mounds. Wei Ying’s wards are well-known to him after all these years. He knows that they are impenetrable, that he will not be allowed in unless Wei Ying himself agrees.

But now that he knows Wei Ying is alive and – reasonably – well, or must be, all reports from Yiling spoke uniformly of a shining entity descending to market to haggle over potatoes and giving cranky old Wang Popo a stroke, then promptly healing her and fleeing for the literal hills he’d come from in the first place.

Lan Wangji loves an idiot.

Wang Popo, he has been informed reliably, used to be hunched and doddering, and is currently still hunched, but spry and fuller of energy than her own granddaughter-in-law, with a heart in no danger of giving out anytime soon.

He briefly wonders if the granddaughter-in-law is thanking or cursing Wei Yng’s name at this moment.

The point is, the wards shall not let him in, and Wei Ying has no way of knowing he’s out here, and he refuses to play Wangxian with half the jianghu listening out there. No, he will not do this anywhere close to prying eyes or ears.

He therefore makes his way deep into the forests that have sprouted along the foothills almost overnight, and then high up via a secret pass that he knows only because he has mapped every cun of the ward line, time and time over, looking for a way in to Wei Ying and then looking for any weakness that might need to be repaired from the outside so that no one may get in to harm Wei Ying.

He waits till he is certain of solitude before he dares knock, only once, with a sharp burst of qi. He does not expect to be successful on the first try[13], but the ward splinters open at once to let him fall straight through.

~*~

Cleanliness, is his first impression.

The Burial Mounds have been scrubbed clean.

Power, is the next.

So immense and incomprehensible, Lan Wangji feels like a pebble rolling next to a boulder, or a boulder resting at the foot of a vast, high mountain. He is a rill in the river, one bird among the entire flock, a single worm in the deep, dark ground, enveloped in cool, refreshing, life-giving qi that eclipses his own.

Here is an ocean; he is only a lake, suspended in its centre.[14] 

What’s not here, however, is Wei Ying.

Odd.

Does he want Lan Wangji to find him? Is this his idea of a reunion? Some game of hide and seek – but no, Wei Ying does not know him in this life. Then, is he wary of being attacked?

Lan Wangji takes a moment to recall Wei Ying’s title and calls, “Greetings to Wei Wuxian, Xiao Huamei.” He hopes he got that right. They had called Wei Ying a thrush, had they not?

Crickets chirp.

“I am Lan Wangji, Lan-er-gongzi. I come in peace,“ he tries again.

Still nothing.

With nothing further to do, he continues down the winding, rocky pass until he reaches the Burial Mounds proper and emerges into a clearing roughly the size of three archery arenas lined up.

They will have to name it something else, he thinks, and then all thought ceases to be, confronted with the misty, mossy meadow stretching into the distance. Lush foliage of trees frames the sky and filters the late afternoon sun into gentle beams that slant against the new growth of flowers and fruit.

Slowly, he turns in a complete circle, and then again, and again, awe rising within with every pass of his feet to the left, every whistle of the wind between his fingertips.

He feels one with the sunbeams that seem more and more like they caress the rounded ripe pulp; he tilts his head just so and spins again in the scented wind, under the flower petals that fall like snowflakes.[15] The sunlight falls into dew as he watches with wondering eyes, refracting into a hundred tiny rainbows that scatter the meadow in blue-violet light.

He feels washed in bright, clean moonlight, and he spins again, letting himself experience the joy of watching an unfolded miracle.

Again, again, again –

“Lan Zhan?!”

~*~

Wei Ying shines with an inner light. The boundaries of his form are both sharpened and blurred, giving the impression of a great, benevolent spirit come to earth, before he moves and his edges come into sharp relief. He resembles nothing human so much as an eagle or a tiger moving through the wilderness, half-hidden and half-seen.

It’s true then. He has achieved the impossible. The jianghu will find itself shamed, after this.

He is here at last, and even though he shimmers with qi as clear and sparkling as the water in the sacred mountain springs of Gusu, the face and form that confront Lan Wangji are as familiar and dear as ever – only more so.

Everything about Wei Ying is more, now. He is greater than he has ever been. He is the greatest of them all.

~*~

Lan Zhan, here.

Wei Wuxian can actually not believe what he’s seeing.

Lan Zhan, gleaming in white like a moonbeam captured in a ray of sunlight, all contradictory images and impressions between the Lan Zhan he knew and the radiant young master dancing on light feet through his home, having shattered through his unbreakable wards. Lan Zhan who looks like a familiar stranger – dancing?!

He has never seen Lan Zhan so full of joy that he has to physically let it out, never so free or so unconcerned with who might be watching. That Wei Wuxian might be watching.

Lan Zhan has grown…extremely beautiful.[16]

~*~

“Wei Ying,” he whispers, so faint it gets lost in the few breaths of air between them. Shared breaths, shared space, and memories of a shared time spinning into whirlwind existence between them, bringing to life the single unavoidable truth –

Wei Wuxian lives – his Wei Ying lives.

“Wei Ying,” he says again, like a benediction prayed for, now come true.

~*~

Wei Ying, carried by the breeze like a kiss, fluttering past death, past all his defences and lodging straight into his heart like an arrow that had once aimed to take his life.

Wei Ying, a name he had never thought to hear again from these lips, that perfect mouth set in a perfect face. This view of the ideal man[17] – he finds he can’t take it, simply cannot stand having his composure so ruffled by the mere sight and sound of his beloved, his soulmate whom he thought was lost to him forever.

He needs to return the favour, like, right the hell now. So he opens his big fat mouth and speaks those fateful words, always hanging between them – 

“Did you come to ask me back to Gusu again?”

~*~

Come back to Gusu with me, he almost blurts, almost before Wei Ying is finished speaking. He catches himself just in time; does not want to drive that wedge between them again, even if Gusu is finally a fit place for Wei Ying to set foot in.

He doesn’t know what to say. Can’t speak, can’t leave Wei Ying hanging awkwardly for an answer that refuses to come, a voice that refuses to obey its master.

So he shakes his head, and again, and again, like a child. Like six-year-old Lan Zhan, waiting for his mother, like twenty-two-year-old Lan Wangji, begging his heart to go on beating for A-Yuan’s sake.

The memory of their son brings with it shame that blinds and deafens him to all else but grief, his old and only companion for so long.

He has failed to do the most important thing – why did he think he had the right to face Wei Ying?

So he simply stands there full of denial, unable to even explain himself or beg for forgiveness.

Wei Ying will not forgive him. Wei Ying looks like he never expected Lan Wangji to turn up here. Wei Wuxian is alive; his Wei Ying – but not his¸ no, alive, yes, not his, no, no, no, but alive, alive is good, alive is –

“Good,” he chokes out, suddenly, the word ripped from his lips like a leech with its teeth sunk in deep, that needed to be removed.

~*~

Lan Zhan looks devastated, and Wei Wuxian can’t understand why. Can’t keep up with these quicksilver shifts of mood, feels like he’s watching some alien creature.

Since when does Lan Zhan know how to emote?

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know where he learnt these things, to let his feelings shade his eyes and shape his mouth. He knows only that his thoughtlessly spoken words have caused Lan Zhan great distress.

Lan Zhan looks worse than heartbroken, he looks utterly desolate, and Wei Wuxian can’t stand this either.

“What’s good, Lan Zhan?” he asks as gently as he dares. “Whatever it is, you can tell me, all right? I won’t mind, even if you do tell me to come to Gusu. I want to - ! Lan Zhan!”

~*~

Not a few minutes since Lan Wangji met Wei Ying again, and already he is back to his old ways of causing Wei Ying distress.

Is Wei Ying furious with him? Does he resent Lan Wangji now, for breaking his careful wards and interrupting his peace and not saving him in the first place, but it is all right, even if Wei Ying gets angry. After all, if he is here to be angry, he is –

“Alive,” Lan Wangji manages, and then the great fat lump of grief that’s been sitting in his belly like the lodestone of his existence rises into his throat all at once, and spills out in heaving, wailing sobs that bring him to his hands and knees at Wei Ying’s feet.

~*~

Lan Wangji is hunched over into a keening pile of white silk, staining quickly with tears that seem to drag themselves out by force, from the innermost heart of him. Before he knows it, Wei Wuxian has his arms around the other man, has hauled him up and away to his little house and is holding him tightly curled up on the floor as he weeps like a bereaved child.

Are all these tears for him, he wonders, and wondering, can’t help but press kisses all over Lan Zhan’s bent head. The man doesn’t even realise it, but goes on crying, half-screaming as though he’s been in absolute agony this whole time. Like he’s finally received permission to lance the boil.

~*~

When awareness returns, it is in increments.

Sound is the first, always, to a master of music. The soft susurration of cloth against skin, a breath going in, going out, a gentle voice humming their song slowly, carefully, as though afraid of getting a single note wrong.

Touch is the next, to a man who lives and cultivates by the work of his hands. Fingers carding through his hair, his face resting against something both hard and soft, draped in rough cotton. A thigh, well-muscled and full of strength under his head that shifts, then fingers tattooing a quick little beat to add tempo and flair to the music.

It feels like a dream too wonderful to have come true. Lan Wangji doesn’t bother opening his eyes to ruin it. He turns instead, cuddling into the tight curve of Wei Ying’s belly, nuzzles into his body and wraps his arms around his waist and hips to squeeze tight. He breathes deeply in the clean scent of warm human and the minty sharpness of boundless qi, takes it all in, in, in.

He doesn’t let go, nor does Wei Ying ask him to.

No one speaks. There is no need for words.

~*~

It takes Lan Zhan a long time to return to himself. When he does, he still refuses to let Wei Wuxian go, latching onto him like an extra-large, particularly beautiful barnacle. It’s sad and funny and so, so cute that Wei Wuxian can’t help himself.

He bullies Lan Zhan’s face up to look at him and bites his nose.

The look he gets in return is so deadly blank that he’s sure he’s about to get punched the very next moment.

He doesn’t though, maybe because he’s crying too now. Crying as he remembers the time in the cave, when Lan Zhan bit him and never explained why. It feels like he’s taken revenge for that long-ago wound and the path it set them both on.

This time, it’s he who gets gently folded into Lan Zhan’s embrace. This time, their hands steal up around each other, stroking, caressing, touching for the sheer joy of finding themselves in each other’s presence again.

He’s crying, but he also wants to laugh.

Why is he so happy, and yet so sad?

He doesn’t fully understand[18], but it occurs to him that some things may remain a mystery, if he has Lan Zhan here to share them with.

~*~

By the time Lan Wangji feels ready to separate Wei Ying even a hands-breadth from his own body, the sun hangs low in the sky. He steps back just enough to let himself look at Wei Ying. Looks his fill, letting the burn of his gaze sear Wei Ying top to toe, toe to top, feels the same sizzling of nerves in turn as Wei Ying mirrors him.

Wei Ying has never had any trouble keeping up with him. Quite the other way round – he has always been Lan Wangji’s better.

Wei Ying – Wei Wuxian – stands at his full height, just an inch below Lan Wangji’s own. His shoulders are broad and his waist slender, his body lithe and graceful like a dancer’s. His hair hangs below his waist, one half caught up behind his head in a messy knot, the rest swishing around the tops of his thighs and clinging to his hips like a lover’s hands.

His face is the same as ever, if ever was a painting that captured the radiance of the sun and softness of the moon within its frame. Eyebrows straight as arrows, a gaze lively and wise in equitable, a smooth curve of cheeks tapering to a firm chin under a good-humoured mouth.

He is a shining miracle of man and divinity both, his power stretching beyond the confines of Lan Wangji’s arms, and out across the entirety of the Burial Mounds and Yiling, the essence of the divine distilled and drenching the land for miles in each direction.

One of a kind.[19]

How could anyone not see what Wei Ying is, who he has become?

He wants to fall at Wei Ying’s feet again, but this time in honour and worship.

~*~

Lan Zhan has never looked at him like this. Wei Wuxian has no idea what do with him.

Such intense scrutiny, he’s used to, but to not be found wanting in the looker’s eyes is something he has no experience with at all. Not a single person he has known in either life has ever looked at him like this.

He is the sun and the sky it hangs in. He is birdsong and the breeze it travels upon. He is the caress of butterfly wings against soft cheeks, he is the warmth of a hearth on a cold, hungry night. He is madness and music, mindful and mindless, a masterclass in togethernesses made up of contradictions

He is everything, and he can do anything.

When Lan Zhan looks at him like this, he feels –

He dares not put a name to it himself –

Not yet, not now, when Lan Zhan is both old and new, when he doesn’t know where Lan Zhan learnt to show his feelings plain as day, where he learnt to cry and talk like anyone else.

He knows everything of Lan Zhan before, and nothing at all about the Lan Zhan of now, who is also somehow the same Lan Zhan. Before he knows what this is, he dares not even dream of all the mores that are already lining up in his heart – more, more, more.

He wants it.

But it’s too soon. He can’t allow himself to do more than let this faint hope inside, that Lan Zhan truly does –

He wants it.

But not yet.

Just a little while, he thinks, let me get used to this, to you, to me, to us, then – then - !

Then, he wants it all.

“So, you broke into my house,” he laughs, soft and bitter-sweet, begging Lan Zhan to understand, to allow him this deflection. “Was it revenge for way back when?”

~*~

Wangji understands. Sees, and is willing to give Wei Ying everything he asks for, is ready also to withhold what is not welcome.

So he lets Wei Ying steer them away from the cliff’s edge, takes two steps back himself. “Mn.”

“You broke into my house!” Wei Ying laughs again, bright with relief and an old ache he doesn’t even try to hide.

“You did not come to see me,” Lan Wangji retorts. 

“What – so this is what you do now? Just go around breaking people’s wards, walking right into their homes smart as you please -” Wei Ying looks like he’s working up to a nice solid rant, like he’s enjoying himself entirely too much.

Lan Wangji is willing to indulge him. “I knocked at your door for five years. Not my fault you did not listen.”

“Oh great gods above and below, that was you????!!!!” Wei Ying looks flabbergasted, like there’s someone else lining up to serenade him on a monthly basis.

Wangji decides this really is going too far. “Does Wei Ying know someone else who wrote a song for him?”

“YOU wrote that song?”

~*~

Wei Wuxian forgets to breathe for a moment, his entire worldview rearranging itself on the fly. Again.

Lan Zhan wrote him a song.

Lan Zhan wrote him a song.

Lan Zhan wrote him that song.

Lan Zhan is also eyeing him with the you’re-an-idiot face again.

Ah, good old times. Wei Wuxian hadn’t realised how much he missed this face too.

“What?” he grins. “Did you? Was it really you?”

“Were you expecting someone else?” Lan Zhan is studiously polite, and supremely bitchy.

Well.

Put that way.

No, no he wasn’t.

Put that way, who else could there be for him, really?

Who else, for Wei Ying, if not Lan Zhan? Who else for Lan Zhan, if not Wei Ying?

No one else, he thinks, so what does it matter, now or later? Today or tomorrow? He is with Lan Zhan now, wants to always be with Lan Zhan wherever he goes, so does when truly matter?

Hasn’t he wanted this? To sleep and eat and walk and breathe and cultivate with Lan Zhan?

The next breath he takes catches on the way down, clogging his throat, killing him sweetly. And he throws himself into Lan Zhan’s arms, yelling for the entire world to hear –

“LAN-ER-GEGE! I REALLY WANT TO DUAL CULTIVATE WITH YOU!”

~*~

“Lan-er-gege! I really want to dual cultivate with you!”

Down below, standing guard at the pass, Jiang Fengmian doesn’t choke on his own spit, but it’s a pretty close thing. Whatever else he’d been expecting to hear when Lan-er-gongzi made his way up into the Mounds and did not reappear for hours, this was –

Suddenly, he remembers a pretty young woman with sparkling eyes, screaming at his dearest friend, Wei-gege, I only want to cultivate with you – no one else at all! and finds himself dissolving into helpless fits of laughter.

Of course, Wei Ying takes after his mother in that way. Why would he not? He had been borne with great love by his parents, and it is perhaps the greatest tragedy in this world that he had had to walk all this way by himself, without the guidance of their footsteps behind him.

When he manages to unbend, there are tears blurring around the edges of his vision that he blinks away, not easily, but not as hard as he had once needed to. If Wei Ying has found his person, he will be all right.

Jiang Fengmian will watch from behind on behalf of his parents, and ensure it.

A short while later, a surprising sight – Lan-er-gongzi returns. Jiang Fengmian takes in the vision of the Lan boy they call Wushan Youqin for the beauty of his song, and the White Jade for the unique[20] loveliness of his face and form. Certainly, he is a good-looking child, and has nothing concerning about him save a definite reputation for not taking any shit from anyone.

And being the jianghu’s resident expert at barriers, given that no one else has managed to get past Wei Ying’s protections till now.

A pair who has already learnt to achieve the impossible. Even without seeing them together, Jiang Fengmian thinks they must be well-matched.

He thinks of his own children and his heart hurts. A-Cheng and A-Li have lived up to that motto in their own unique ways, but as a parent, he would be damned if he did not feel at least one stab of covetous envy at the idea of having these two to call his own as well.

He finds himself gladder than envious, however. Wei Ying will not be alone like his grandmaster has been left behind. If there is anyone in the jianghu capable of attaining immortality, it would be Lan Wangji. The boy is close to the barrier. Anyone and everyone who has come within a li of him has felt it, and knows it.

This will drive Wen Ruohan insane, washes over him like an icy bath in deep winter. Unwanted. Dreadful. Inevitable.

He shoves away the reminder of the obvious courting gifts sent for his daughter’s hand – as if he would entrust his precious child to Wen Xu! Lan-er-gongzi is close enough to hear him, and must certainly have seen him by now, but he doesn’t stop. Because, Fengmian realises with burgeoning hilarity, he’s stalking towards Yiling with the gobsmacked expression of a repressed-as-fuck man who’s just received a highly indecent – and abrupt – proposal of marriage. It’s a sight he’s witnessed once before with great enjoyment, and it’s no less entertaining this second time around.

Chortling to himself, he settles in to indulge in the age-old occupation of a self-appointed elder who wishes to know when the younger generation will settle down and present him with grandchildren. 

He doesn’t have to wait long. Lan Wangji returns in record time, bearing only himself and two bottles of – is that Emperor’s Smile, my, my – and he can’t resist teasing the young man, who finally notices him and stops short. Neither his face nor body give away a single iota of face-loss, and his bow is impeccable as ever, but Jiang Fengmian has the distinct impression that he’s utterly mortified.

Well, well, what are uncles-by-marriage for?

“Drinking tonight?” he asks, nodding genially at the wine, as though he never attended Cloud Recesses in his youth and is therefore somehow blissfully unaware that alcohol is verboten for Lans because not a single sorry one of them can handle their booze. Unfortunately for Lan Wangji, he attended Cloud Recesses along Cangse Sanren. He knows things that Lan Qiren probably curses him for even to this day.

The boy shakes his head and indicates the bag of food concealed in his sleeve. “For Wei Ying.”

Oh-ho, so it’s Wei Ying already, is it? Jiang Fengmian knows how this goes. He grins and waves the boy on.

“Go on then.” And adds, just for the pleasure of watching the young Lan squirm, “I’ll let your uncle know to not expect you back tonight.”

But to his surprise, Lan-er-gongzi shows neither embarrassment nor hesitation. “Mn,” he nods once, regally, then sweeps past and back up the way he’d come, like a shining moonbeam travelling up to the clouds.

Jiang Fengmian watches him go with a smile.

Yes, Wei Ying will be all right.

He makes for Lan Qiren’s tent, whistling as he anticipates the stodgy old fart’s reaction to his news.

~*~

Before he leaves – or is made to leave – Lan Zhan says, “Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian’s hands have not stopped carding through his hair. “Mmm?”

He gathers all his courage in both hands, and professes himself at last. “I love you.”

“Do you?”

Wei Wuxian does not mean to say that – does not intend to reject Lan Wangji’s feelings, nor cause further harm, but the words slip out of his mouth without any input from his brain.

“You do not believe me,” Lan Zhan nods, like this is an expected, accepted fact of life.

Wei Wuxian can’t let him go on thinking it, when it’s not true. 

“No, I do. Lan Zhan doesn’t lie – everyone knows that. I just.” He scrubs a hand over his face, suddenly feeling frustrated and uncomfortable. Love stories should stay safe and snug inside rolled-up scrolls of gentle verses, stacked in neat, orderly lines. He doesn’t like the reality of it, how it prickles in the soft flesh of his pits and his belly, like a burr caught in his clothes. Doesn’t like these rapid shifts of emotion, making him swing this way and that like a bluebell caught in the wind.

Yet, wasn’t it himself who started this? Hasn’t he dreamed of this very moment for years? Then why can’t he accept Lan Zhan’s words?

“I just,” he tries again, in the face of Lan Zhan’s frown, the hurt in his sunshine eyes. “I don’t get why.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t look like he understands, so Wei Wuxian presses on. “It’s easy to see why I love you. It always has been.” And that’s true, he realises, even though he’s saying these things in anger. “I’ve spent every spare shun[21] I had chasing after you, I’ve made an absolute fool of myself trying to get you to just look at me.”

Memory and with it, belated humiliation, spikes sharp and painful in his belly, pushing outward. He moves with it, wanting to spread it out, suddenly consumed with the urge to inflict damage.

“Even before I knew what I was doing, that it was possible to do those things for a man, I did them anyway.”

He hadn’t stopped, even when he had been publicly recalled to propriety by Jiang Cheng. He doesn’t stop now.

“I showed you I wanted to be your friend in every way I knew how. I gave you gifts, I teased you and praised you and – and you.”

He can’t stop. Knows what’s coming, and takes a sick sort of pleasure in spitting it out at Lan Zhan’s feet, an ugly ball of all the unspoken, broken expectations between them.

“You only ever told me to go away.”

Yet, once again, Lan Zhan catches him with gentle hands. “Then, shall I leave?”

But he doesn’t want that – and yet he does. The conflict plays out plainly on his face like a war between vicious factions, and Lan Zhan understands. He just needs a little time to gather the cracking pieces of himself and glue them back together.

“I shall return. Then, I will explain. If you want to listen, let me in.”

~*~

Wei Wuxian looks at Lan Zhan with Emperor’s Smile in his hands and a question in his eyes. So unusual, this indulgence from his Lan Zhan – but everything about Lan Zhan is strange now. His stern, sharp lines have softened, his shoulders loose and his face more open than Wei Wuxian has ever seen it. Such consideration – such fondness! – such glimpses of affection lurking at the corners of his mouth!

Looking at Lan Zhan so undone, Wei Wuxian wants to reach out with his finger and poke his nose. Wants to muddy these clear waters with gentle waves fanning out from his feet, dipped into the stream and taking root like lotuses.

This old tendency of his to cause trouble – it makes him want to mess Lan Zhan up a little bit more. He thinks Lan Zhan will let him; will allow him to prod at his soft underbelly and lay him bare. Just a little bit more.

All the same, he’s careful, striving for casual disregard as he comments on the feast spread before him. Just for him. “Did you take up all my vices when I was gone, Lan Zhan? A man can’t complain, but you can forgive a man his curiosity, can’t you?

The look he gets in return tells him that he’s not fooling anybody. Somewhere, sometime, even though he wasn’t around, Lan Zhan has learnt to read him as easily as a sheet of music.

How strange. Under that quietly intent gaze, he’s the one who feels stripped naked.

He lifts the jar of wine and chugs down a few gulps to cover his embarrassment and his blush. It’s messy, uncoordinated. Wine slips down his throat, tasting of spring flowers. A few drops dribble down his chin, and Lan Zhan tracks their progress down his neck as he swallows, a little too loudly, and under the collar of his robes.

He stares at Wei Wuxian for a long time, long enough for the sandalwood incense he’s brought back, to burn low. He says nothing to give his thoughts away, only watches as Wei Wuxian drinks with careless abandon and grows damp and sticky with sweet liquor.

The wine is cool, and yet there’s a sheen of sweat on Wei Wuxian’s temples and at the base of his neck.

He wants Lan Zhan to look at him like that for the rest of his life.

He puts down the empty jar, and the clink of porcelain on wood breaks the spell enough for Lan Zhan to look away, jaw tight with tension and all the secret confessions unspoken between them.

“My mother,” he says, throat working, “was a prisoner in her own home.”

Where the hell did that come from, Wei Wuxian wonders, but is wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

“It should never have been her home,” Lan Zhan continues, gaze trained on the rustling leaves of young bamboo outside the window.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t like that. If they’re going to talk about the deep, dark secrets of their lives, it shouldn’t be aimed at the walls. He reaches out to take Lan Zhan’s hand in both his own. It’s large and warm and not too soft, callouses from years of swordplay and the guqin roughening the skin. A nice, firm hand, solid and good to hold; Wei Wuxian likes it a lot.

His little act of shamelessness does the trick; Lan Zhan looks at him now, wide-eyed and vulnerable. Wei Wuxian squeezes his fingers encouragingly, but also for the pleasure of being permitted to do it.

“Mothers are difficult,” Wei Wuxian says simply. The miniscule lift of Lan Zhan’s eyebrow tells him that Lan Zhan understands, and agrees.

He pours more wine for Wei Wuxian, keeping his cup filled as he spills the first tragedy of his life. It’s a terrible, grotesque tale of horror – a woman captured and kept, against her will, punished for a crime that was never explained, turned into an example to her own sons.

At the end of it, Wei Wuxian thinks he understands – a little, maybe a lot. He can’t help the smile that quirks his lips, or the teasing in his voice as he asks, “Lan Zhan, is that why you never tied me up by the wrists and carted me off to Gusu over your shoulders?”

Lan Zhan looks a little relieved, like he didn’t expect Wei Wuxian to get to the heart of the matter so easily, and a lot ashamed, like he just got caught committing a cardinal sin. Looking at him like this – his shoulders slumped, his lower lip trembling in a faint pout, his eyes so large and tragic in his face – Wei Wuxian has to laugh. Laugh and cup his cheeks with both hands, squishing a little. He can’t help it; despite the horrible history of his parents and the hypocritical mockery of justice by his sect, Lan Zhan is adorable.

“Ridiculous,” Wei Wuxian huffs, and gives in to the urge to tweak that cute, faintly rounded nose. He gets a half-hearted glare in response.

“Forgiven!” he announces, with one last squish to Lan Zhan’s cheeks, and sits back against his pillows, waving a hand to indicate he wants more wine poured. Lan Zhan doesn’t move. He looks dazed, like someone clubbed him over the head with a blunt sword.

“What? Did you think I was going to declare a feud against your ancestors? For the grave sin of abandoning me?” Wei Wuxian laughs softly, but he doesn’t miss the way Lan Zhan draws into himself, in his version of a flinch. “But you didn’t abandon me. Never. Not once. Not in that life, nor in this. I remember, Lan Zhan.”

He leans forward, capturing Lan Zhan’s hand again, rubbing his thumbs over the back of it. Lan Zhan looks like he doesn’t believe what Wei Wuxian’s telling him. Like he doesn’t deserve to hear it – like he deserves something entirely different.

Something like get lost, maybe.

Wei Wuxian will never forgive himself for that.

“I had a shit memory back then,” he says slowly, picking his words with care. How long has Lan Zhan carried this guilt inside him? How close has he come to shattering from the weight of it? One lifetime, then two – how much does Lan Zhan care, about someone as careless and unworthy as him?

“I didn’t remember – not at first, and not back then. Shijie was dead, I had lost, and everything was going, or gone. Slipping through my fingers like ink. My hands were black with the blood of everyone I loved. I had nothing left” – he tilts his head to catch Lan Zhan’s eyes, to smile into them though he feels close to tears – “I couldn’t believe I still had you.”

“Wei Ying,” says Lan Zhan, packing a world of regret and hurt in two syllables.  

“Whatever,” Wei Wuxian cuts through his self-recrimination ruthlessly. “So you weren’t perfect. How could anyone expect you to be? I remember now, Lan Zhan. Everything you did. Everything you said.”

Lan Zhan is frozen in his hands, living up to his moniker of the White Jade of Lan. This is what Lan Zhan looks like when he’s afraid to hope, Wei Wuxian realises, and it breaks his heart all the way through.

His eyes start watering again. He smiles through the tears anyway, because Lan Zhan deserves joy. Lan Zhan deserves flowers and poetry and silk and everything Wei Wuxian doesn’t have right now – at the very least, he deserves happiness, when he’s being confessed to.

“You told me you loved me – I’m telling you now. I love you too.”

It’s not enough. He can see that – Lan Zhan doesn’t believe him, is pulling away from him already, believes something stupid and incorrect that’s making him look like he wants to crawl into his blankets and ugly-cry in the dark.

It won’t do.

“I mean it,” Wei Wuxian insists. “I love you now. I loved you then. I love you forever. I want you. I think about you, your face, your voice, your body, when I take my dick into my hands. When I come, I think that I want you inside me. But that’s not all I want. I want more. I want everything. I want to eat every meal with you. I want to drink this wine every night with you, while you drink tea. I want to paint you a thousand different ways, a new way everyday. I want to run away with you and see the world. I want to talk to you all day long, about everything under the sun,[22] and I want to hear you say mn in response. I want to night-hunt with you for the rest of my life. I want you however you want me – every way you want me, every day that you want me. I want everything. I want it with you. It can’t be anyone else, if it’s not you.”

He stops, breathless, flushed, shameless and unashamed. Lan Zhan is staring at him. Gaping at him, in fact. Like it’s his turn to not believe it. Like he wants to believe it, given the chance.

Wei Wuxian squeezes his hand, still held between his own. He squeezes it so hard that he might be cutting off the blood supply to Lan Zhan’s fingers, but he needs Lan Zhan to listen.  

“I want you for the rest of my life. For all my everydays. Only you. Only you. So – tell me that you want me back. Tell me again that you love me, and I’ll believe you. I want to be together forever, Lan Zhan.[23] Say it just like that, please?”

~*~

“Wei Ying.”

“Mmm?”

“I love you.”

“Of course you do.”

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 175 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Wei Wuxian stays put

Inside his tent hung with silk the colour of congealed blood, Wen Ruohan paces. A rapacious, voracious tiger, creature of flame and marrow, ready to spill blood to quench its appetite or boredom by turns.

Total conquest, so close to hand, has been snatched from him at the edge of glory, on the cusp on battle before it can be fought. In increments and then in chunks, it has been stolen from him – he paces, going slowly mad with rising fury.

First, that Wei boy, daring to defy him not once, when he refused adoption into the Wen; not twice, when he did not turn up that winter with a face full of contrition and a flute full of song; nor even thrice, when he dared achieve immortality so arrogantly at the age of mere eighteen – but a fourth time now.

A fourth time, and the final time, Wen Ruohan vows, that the boy has defied him. Refusing to leave his mountain – his mountain? Hah! – even knowing who waited at the foothills to receive him.

Immortal or not, the boy will be made to pay his dues. Wen Ruohan will extract every ounce of blood, of prestige, of land and wealth and influence that he has lost – is losing, and will go on so – now that there is a new immortal among them all.

Wen Ruohan prefers chaos only when it is of his own making. The ascendance of Wei Wuxian has caused a chain reaction spreading outward from Yiling, capturing the hopes and imaginations of every man, woman, and child who hears of it. It is news that cannot be contained, a miracle that cannot be concealed, a depth of power and breadth of influence that even the Xiandu cannot command.

Folk remember the boy who enchanted them with his songs and his goodness – goodness, bah! – before vanishing into the Burial Mounds, of all the accursed places in the world. Gossip had been at an all-time high back then – Xiao Huamei had gone mad, Xiao Huamei had killed himself, Xiao Huamei had vanished from the earth, never to return.

Because Wen Ruohan had scared him off, with his summons to court, with the order to sing for his courtiers, with the pressure of intention towards assimilation. Perhaps it was true, perhaps not. It mattered little; three men make a tiger[24] and vastly more than three men have spread the tale around.

Lies or not, this is now an accepted fact, underscored by Wei Wuxian’s refusal to come and meet them after his first brief foray outside his wards.

Wards that could not be broken by man nor beast all these years, and yet, that Lan Wangji shows up and manages to get himself invited to stay the night.

Rumour? Fact?

No one can say, and the Lan will not.

Lan Wangji.

First that great wall of qi erected over every cun[25] of Gusu’s borders. The Nie sect leader was the first casualty in Wen Ruohan’s war; Gusu was meant to be the next.

But for that damned, damned, damned, damned barrier.

Wen Ruohan had never planned for his own people to deal with the Waterborne Abyss. Why should he, when he had created it for the express purpose of inflicting it onto Gusu Lan, to block their waterways and leave Yunmeng open as the greatest prize of the jianghu with its open rivers and trade routes just waiting to be snatched up. 

He would have succeeded, but for Lan Wangji.

And now he tears down the immortal’s walls like they’re made of rice paper! Where no one in the jianghu dared interfere with an immortal’s seclusion, in walked Lan Wangji and won the prize of the day, to hear the gossip circulating through the camps.

He’ll make the boy pay for that too, he vows, slanting a look at Wen Zhuliu, assessing. Silent and dark as a panther without and within, his greatest prize and weapon stands to his left and back, awaiting only permission to feed.

But not yet.

Quickness is the essence of war, but only he wins, who knows when to fight.[26]

Not yet, he thinks. But soon. Yes, soon.

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.[27] If Yunmeng can no longer be won by force, it might yet be subjugated through persuasion. War or women, it makes no difference. He turns his attention to the matter of heirs, weddings, and inconvenient childhood engagements, planning with pleasure the dismantling of it all.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 173 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Wei Wuxian dreams of something new

“I have relayed your message via Shufu. Wei Ying, you are sure you will not go to see them?”

Wei Wuxian lies sprawled across his beloved’s lap in their little mountain hut, entirely too content with himself, his companion, and the world cocooning them at this moment. Why ruin it with the mention of those men waiting at the foot of his mountain to drag him down to their level, instead of striving to reach for his?

The way is open now, isn’t it? He hasn’t replaced his wards. So why do they not come to see him? Why demand he present himself, like a child who needs his elders’ approval before he can be permitted to exist in peace?

He thinks of his mother’s master, wonders if she too experienced this. If this is why she abandons her children and their families to terrible fates.

So no, he doesn’t really want to go see any of those murderous, greedy fuckers down below. Heaven is within his embrace; let them stay in hell, where they belong.

He shakes his head at Lan Zhan. He grins, but it is no longer so carefree as it once used to be. Wei Wuxian’s smiles have changed twice. Once before his death, and once after his ascendance. Once, he thought he knew everything. Now, he knows that it is in the knowing of nothing that everything belongs.

He is river that shapes the stone, and the stone that cleaves the river. He is the fire that burns the corpse, and the earth that nourishes itself from the ashes. He is the tree that breaks the axe, and the axe that does not remember why. He is above and below at all times, one foot in life and the other in the grave, and so he exists in neither.

He can’t pin down the exact moment it happened – so much was happening then, in the deepest heart of Luanzang Gang. He hadn’t a moment to breathe in leisure, so he hadn’t even realised just when he had crossed the barrier. He only knows that the limits of his awareness began to expand, to include all things living and dead in his vicinity, that he could hear and see farther than even the master cultivators he had once learnt from, that his body felt like it was made of life-giving, death-seeking aether, an instrument of perfect balance between the yin and the yang.

The colours he sees are of a spectrum hitherto unknown, that makes him despair of ever finding the right paints to accurately depict the beauty of the world. Every sound has a rhythm, an underlying beat that moves to its own measure. The smell of food sets him starving, and every touch feels twice as intense.

In short, immortality is awesome, though he hadn’t planned on ending up like this. All he had wanted was enough power to destroy his enemies and protect his loved ones.

In Lan Wangji’s arms, he loses himself in the warm glide of fingers against the curve of his cheek, the back of his ear, the shivery, ticklish spot at the nape of his neck that makes him arch and want more.

Why would he want to be anywhere else?

Tears spring to his eyes once more – Wei Wuxian can’t believe how weepy he’s being. After that first leeching of grief, Lan Wangji has been composed as ever, if more open to communicating like a human than he was previously.

It makes him curious – and a curious Wei Wuxian is like a cat, worrying and tugging and playing with the mystery until it unspools within his hands.

Lan Zhan, beautiful beyond compare, powerful beyond measure.

Lan Zhan, prepared to meet him alive – and yet surprised to find him all the same.

Lan Zhan, who could always keep up with him, whether he wanted him to or not. Lan Zhan, who would most certainly have gone to gather his notes and inventions, if only to destroy them before the Jin got their hands on them. Lan Zhan, who protected him and never hated him, and loves him with a depth of emotion that Wei Wuxian can physically sense every time the man is near him, looking at him, thinking about him.

Which is all the time.

Lan Zhan, who looks at him with eyes that change from happy, to heartbroken, to happy, to heartbroken again, like he knows a secret or two that he isn’t telling, for Wei Wuxian’s own good.

From there, it’s so easy that he only needs confirmation of the truth. He’s not aiming to be cruel, though he knows he’s going to poke and prod at memories of a life so terrible that Lan Zhan had seen no way forward – only back. So he says nothing for the moment, only pulls his love closer, wrapping an arm around Lan Zhan’s waist, nuzzling into the soft skin at the base of his neck. He hasn’t kissed Lan Zhan properly yet; Lan Zhan hasn’t made a move either.

Wei Wuxian likes this. Is enjoying the slow, meandering progression of their courting, so in contrast to its rambunctious beginning. He’d been such a fool back then, he thinks. Acting before thinking, never thinking, actually. Or he would have recognised his own pigtail-pulling for what it was. And perhaps they would have ended up somewhere different –

But no, who would have permitted that?

In that life, as long as Wei Wuxian lived as an orphan of dubious ancestry, owing a benefactive’s debt to his own family, this thing between them could only have ended in one tragedy or another. They might have rushed it, taken their joy before the inevitable parting.

Now that he is free of debts, he wants to take his time with his chosen lover. Wants to learn every inch of Lan Wangji – body, heart, soul – even if it takes eternity to do it. He rather looks forward to it being a never-ending source of joy, so long as Lan Zhan hurries up and crosses the barrier into immortality too.

~*~
~*~

Yiling; 172 days before Wen Ruohan’s Big Bash

The sect leaders hold an emergency discussion conference

Among the great events of the jianghu’s cultural and political landscape, the ninety-nine-day celebration thrown in the newly-ascended immortal’s honour and glory, would indeed be counted as historic, for more reasons than just the grandeur of the festivities and illustriousness of the guests.

But long before things get to the point where history is written, or rewritten, a pig-brained, greedy lecher by name of Jin Guangshan sets fate walking down that path by daring to say, in Wen Ruohan’s hearing, that the Lanling Jin would be happy to commence the welcoming of the great immortal with a thirty-day feast, capped off with a night-hunt to end all night-hunts.

Where and how the Jin might arrange such a thing without offending literally everyone and their grandmothers by the end of it, no one knows nor cares, save only that it must not happen.

The very idea of Jin Guangshan defiling such a sacred, auspicious event when his inevitable horde of brothel dancers descends upon the feast! No, the jianghu’s elite think collectively with extreme panic. Searching for a saviour – unscandalous, sober, and above all, respectable ­– they turn their heads with the abject relief of a drowning man finding a stray log floating downriver, towards Lan Qiren and not the Xiandu.

Flattering one man while mortally insulting the infinitely more murderous one – Lan Qiren, meanwhile, is wondering fervently if the sins of his past life were truly so great that he deserves to be thrown so unceremoniously into Wen Ruohan’s sights. Doesn’t everyone remember what he did to Nie Jianhong[28] simply for having a blade more renowned than his own?

He demurs at once and hands the responsibility – and headache – where it rightfully belongs, in the Xiandu’s grasping hands.

He rather thinks he might tighten security around the camp until this whole mess blows over and they can all go home.

~*~

Wei Wuxian laughs loud and long when he hears of the atrocity of performative benevolence no doubt being planned in his dubious honour right that minute.

Lan Wangji basks in the rich, mellow sound. For so long, he had heard this man laugh only in dreams that could more accurately be called nightmares, where he smiled and teased and mocked, always ending with get lost.

There’s none of that old ache now in his chest, but there is a new and tender one in its place. The hurt of new hope after sixteen years of mourning – sometimes it felt as though his heart couldn’t take this sprouting of joy.

It hurts especially when he reminds himself that it won’t last, that the hope rises only to be brutally killed the moment Wei Ying finds out about A-Yuan, and how badly Lan Wangji failed their son – no, not theirs, how could he even dare to claim A-Yuan in front of his true father? And Wei Ying will find out, he knows, because he’ll tell the man himself.

He knows Wei Ying can be cruel, knows that Wei Ying will most likely end him on the spot for daring to touch him at all knowing the depth and ugliness of his failure and his sin, even if he has exercised the utmost discipline to stay the hell away from claiming Wei Ying’s lips, from letting his hands do more than hold Wei Ying and stroke his hair.

He dares not take what he doesn’t deserve. He did that once already, and look how it all turned out.

Preoccupied with political matters, Wei Wuxian doesn’t notice a thing. “I guess he’ll send me some gold-plated invite, summoning me to Buyetian in due time,” he snorts with absolutely no elegance at all. “He’s probably going to lay it on till I have no way to refuse adoption without starting a war. Filial piety be damned in the face of the Xiandu’s desires, I suppose!”

"There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed[29],” his companion intones serenely, with not a twitch in posture or gesture to indicate the tempest roiling within. Lan Wangji is too well-trained, his qi too closely controlled, to let slip the state of his mind so easily. To know him, one has to really look.

Wei Wuxian looks up, interested at this evidence of rebelliousness. “Oh? Should I not go, then?”

Lan Wangji shakes his head. “Go. Then kill.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, then sees that Lan Wangji is deadly serious. He sits up at once, the rough wooden slats of his bedframe creaking under him. “Who first?”

“Wen Xu. Wen Chao. Wen Zhuliu. Meng Yao. Jin Guangshan.“

Wei Wuxian can’t help but raise his brows as high as they’ll go. “Why stop there?” He keeps his tone light, flippant, but he is worried now.

What the hell happened to you, Lan Zhan, he wonders uneasily. Since when does Lan Wangji have a hit-list?

And who the hell is Meng Yao?

He can’t hold it in any longer. With Wen Ruohan’s history of violence against any slight suffered unto him, Wei Wuxian dares not delay his plans for joy of Lan Zhan’s company alone. They cannot afford the luxury of time where there is work to do, and Wei Wuxian is growing painfully aware of the limited scope of his knowledge. Even in his previous life, he had been isolated from the world, had had no idea what was going on outside his wards. Here he is, in life number two, and caught out in the very same trap.

Something must have happened, he has already judged for himself. He has refrained from asking in the few short days since their meeting, but with Wen Ruohan no doubt planning retaliation, there is no choice left, but to ask he hardest question of them all.

“What happened after I died?”

~*~

Everything went wrong. Nothing went right.

A-Yuan. A-Yuan. A-Yuan, Wei Wuxian keens, grieved, joyful, grieved again as he realises what he had lost, how terrible his final failure of judgement had been.

He hadn’t even thought to check and see for himself whether A-Yuan had survived. To see if he lived.

He’d just assumed. Just assumed¸ and actually left his boy all alone in a world that would hate him until the end of his days. Alone, unprotected, orphaned, just like himself.

Just like a part of him couldn’t forgive his own parents for leaving him behind – could A-Yuan ever forgive him?

A-Yuan, he weeps brokenly in Lan Wangji’s arms, over and over like a desperate prayer for forgiveness that will never come, what have I done? What have I done? Just what the fuck did I do? I should have taken you and run away. Run far, far away and died a farmer in a distant land, before I left you alone like that. A-Yuan, A-Yuan!

Only days later does he remember that Lan Zhan had held him through his grieving, had taken his tears and his silence without a word of reproach or remorse, sparing Wei Wuxian the burden of forgiveness or understanding. Giving only love and an open heart in return.

Forgiveness, Wei Wuxian laughs without laughing, smiles without smiling. Ah, what should I forgive you for, Lan Zhan? For remembering I had a son, when I myself did not?  

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 173 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Meng Yao advances

Meng Yao folds his body into a full kowtow before Nie Mingjue, and begs for his freedom.

Why, the Nie sect leader wishes to know, surprised and disturbed.

So I can make my name better than respectable, the seneschal answers with perfect honesty, so that my name will be one that even my father can no longer refuse me.

And how will you do this, the Nie sect leader asks, intrigued despite himself. What makes you think a man like Wen Ruohan will give you even half a glance, considering who and what you are?

What am I, the boy thinks bitterly. I am what you all make me. In this world where I have nothing and no one, what else can I be?

Instead of saying any of this out loud, he instead hands over a paper folded in three. Nie Mingjue takes it silently, glances through it once and then reads it again carefully. It contains the plan for a great event, a celebration such as never held before in the jianghu, festivities to succour prosperity and peace across the land over a number of days.

When he looks up, his face is unreadable. “I hope you know what you are doing. Wen Ruohan has no loyal seneschal save Wen Zhuliu, not because there is no one of ability in Qishan.”

Meng Yao appears to think for a long moment. In reality, he has already made up his mind, be there danger or none. But his sect leader has been good to him, so he must considering again, for his sake.

“I am sure,” he decides at last. 

Nie Mingjue lets his man go without a further word.

That same night, Meng Yao enters the service of Wen Ruohan.

~*~

Wei Wuxian bounces back, as he always does.

Enough weeping, he thinks. I wasn’t given this life so I could while it away in an endless sea of tears.

He commences his good intentions as judge and jury against himself, deciding to leave the executing to better men.

“A real father,” he announces, therefore, meandering out the back of the hut to find Lan Zhan in the bamboo forest that is their backyard, “A real father would have cared more about keeping his child alive, than killing his enemies.”

He laughs at Lan Wangji’s wide-eyed look; he appears so very much like a hunted deer in that moment. It is obvious that Lan-er-gongzi has no idea what to do or how to respond to such a declaration after days and nights of holding a sobbing Wei Wuxian to sleep.

So he ramps it up a notch. “Basically, I was a crap dad.”

“You were not,” Lan Wangji protests, goaded into defending Wei Wuxian from his tendency to self-recriminate.

“Sure was. What kind of man ruins his own kid’s life just for the chance to hold someone else’s child for a day?”

Wangji remains silent, not knowing how to respond to such phrasing. Someone else’s child, Wei Ying calls his beloved Shijie’s son. Formerly beloved? He wonders privately, but doesn’t know how to ask.

Fortunately, he doesn’t need to. Wei Wuxian understands, without either of them needing to speak such things aloud. These moments are growing together in clutches like hens’ eggs, closer and faster with each day that passes now.

He smiles, and doesn’t. “She knew Jin Guangshan had it out for me, Lan Zhan. She was never so sheltered as all that; her mother wouldn’t permit it. She still went and married his son.”

“…no accounting for taste,” Lan Wangji says, startling a true laugh out of his partner. After a moment, he adds half-ruefully, “Xiongzhang had Meng Yao.”

Amazingly, Wei Wuxian draws a blank. “Who?”

“Jin Guangyao.”

“Ooohhhhhh!”

Lan Wangji tosses him a look, prompting another genuine laugh. He’s not finding Wei Wuxian’s terrible memory for names and faces all that amusing just now; Meng Yao had ruined all their lives. Something of that must show on his face, because Wei Wuxian sobers quickly.

“They won’t get away in this life, Lan Zhan. Not one of them.”

“Mn.”

“But let’s not talk about that today?” Wei Wuxian turns a pleading face at him. “Tell me about our son, Lan Zhan. Tell me everything I missed.”

But Lan Wangji looks away, every line of his body wretched and taut with guilt and grief of his own, which he has been left to tend without anyone to hold him, because Wei Wuxian is that selfish, and couldn’t see how badly his beloved has been hurting.

This hurt too, Wei Wuxian lays at his own feet. Twisting his body, he cups his partner’s face in his hands, refuses to let those golden eyes wander far from his own.

“You know that…you have far more right to grieve him than I do, don’t you, Lan Zhan?” he implores, begging the other man to understand just what a debt Wei Wuxian owes him. “You kept him alive, Lan Zhan, when I left him to die. You looked for him, without caring about anything or anyone else. You came to find him, you tended to his needs with your own hands, even if they didn’t allow you to. Didn’t you? Don’t try to tell me otherwise – I know you! You did! And here I am, weeping and wailing over my crimes when I should be bent over at your feet, thanking you for everything you did. You were much more his father than I can claim to be.”

Lan Wangji can’t endure it. “Don’t thank me,” he begs. “I should have done more. Earlier.”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head, refusing to let him get away with it. Lan Zhan deserves to know how good he is, he thinks wildly, wondering how to impress it upon him.

“No thank yous between us,” Lan Wangji pleads once more, afraid he’ll break down himself if Wei Ying doesn’t stop showing him with kindnesses. “I also left him behind. If you sinned once, I doubled it.”

Unfortunately, he has a point. Once, Wei Wuxian would have disputed fact, preferred fiction. But as he is now, with his new awareness of the balance of the world, he cannot deny Lan Wangji’s truth any more than he can deny his own.

Because of Lan Wangji, A-Yuan may not even come to exist. A war-orphan to begin with, would his parents even have cause to meet and marry, in this time? Wei Wuxian remembers looking for them in Dafan and finding only an empty village full of lonely elders.

If they married, could anyone ask them to give up their beloved child for someone else’s sake?

No, he thinks – that is the irrefutable truth. Our son is gone, lost forever, because of the choices we made.

They did not make them together, he thinks, but they can carry the burden hand-in-hand now. If A-Yuan comes to be, they can make this world a fit place for him to grow up in. If he does not – there are other children in this world who also deserve the same. Nothing changes, he tells himself, and almost believes it.

“Can you forgive me, Wei Ying?”

“For what?” he asks, heartsore and tender. “My own mistakes? I’d have to forgive myself first, Lan Zhan. Perhaps there will be no mercy for either of us, in this matter. We’ll simply have to endure it.”

“Together?”

“Always. From now on, let there be no more sorries between us, okay?”

“Nor thanks.”

“Done,” Wei Wuxian smiles and seals it with a kiss pressed carefully against the soft insides of Lan Wangji’s wrists.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 169 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Everyone leaves

From the top of his mountain, Wei Wuxian watches them go with satisfaction and a rising hunger. Lan Wangji stands at his side, holding his hand.

Now, they think in tandem, the real work begins.

~*~

~*~

Yiling; 144 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

An invitation is delivered

The invitation is delivered with full pomp and splendour by a gallery of attendants bearing expensive gifts of silk, ornaments for the belt and the hair, precious scrolls on cultivation and rare medicinal herbs to grow on the purified mountain.

At their head is a tall young master who stands very straight, his head perched on his neck with bird-like alertness. He has a gentle face, all soft curves and no harsh angles.

“Wei-gongzi,” he bows formally, but can’t hide the familiarity in his gaze to someone who had once owned part of his soul, nor the shy, always shy grin spreading all over his face, “my name is -”

“Wen Ning!” Wei Wuxian screams, nearly tearing his throat open with joy, with relief, with a sudden cold shock of knowledge that here, at last, was a sin undone which he is now unburdened of. He throws himself at the younger man – boy – whatever he is, catching him around the neck with the crook of his elbow and shoving his fist into his head in an excessively aggressive display of joyful affection.

Behind him, a pointed cough.

He ignores it, hiding a look of glee. Lan Zhan’s so cute when he gets jealous.

But to be jealous of Wen Ning! The very idea!

“You’re alive you’re alive you’re alive you’re alive,” Wei Wuxian chants on, delightedly mussing the poor thing up everywhere he can reach. “Wen Ning!” He laughs and laughs, noting the baffled stares he was earning them from the rest of the Wen contingent of retainers. Something would have to be done about that, he thinks idly with fingers tapping against Chenqing and then lets it go as a for-later problem, far too happy just now to let anything spoil this for him.

Wen Ning. Alive. Here. His Wen Ning, his friend and brother and servant and tool in one. Did people think he had wrought an entire conscious human being without paying any price for it reversing the rule of heaven in such a way?

He had had to give up part of his very soul for it.

That part, he realises, is what must have dragged Wen Ning back here along with himself and Lan Wangji – but, he wonders then, with a sudden flash of rage – does this mean that Wen Ning had never been destroyed after all?

Had Jin fucking Guangshan lied?

The answer to that would be yes, he supposes grimly. And I’ll make him fucking pay.

~*~

Wen Ning is different.

The boy Wei Wuxian remembers carried himself with an excess of diffidence that thrust him straight into the role of perpetual victim. He had made himself appear small and weak, easy to abuse – easily put to use, as if he had no more worth than livestock reared to feed the owner.

The Wen Ning who comes to Wei Wuxian with his hands full of gifts and a mouth even fuller with good news – the best news – has grown up wearing his skin like it fits him so well he could never be anyone or anything else. He walks with the light feet and steady shoulders of an expert archer, he has learnt somehow to gesture with his hands instead of twisting his fingers together like a nervous child, and he is dressed richly in flame-red silk embroidered in precious thread, like a wealthy, confident young master of a Great Sect.

Wei Wuxian is bursting with happiness to see that in this life, Wen Ning has grown up well. Of course he knows that Wen Ning can’t be much younger than him, not if he was still alive when Lan Zhan and Nie Huaisang dragged the future back into the past. In fact, he might even be a little older.

But he can’t help it; to an elder sibling, little brothers will always remain just that. They are not allowed to grow up, Wei Wuxian insists; lest they do terrible things like fall in love with atrocious Jin boys and marry them.

Shijie hadn’t been younger than him, but by the end of it all, he’d felt so old, and so used to protecting her instead of the other way around, that it might as well have been that way after all.

All of that is unimportant, however, in the face of the greatest gift Wen Ning has for them – knowledge that Wen Qing is alive and well, that everyone is alive and well, that A-Yuan’s parents live! Not only that – they are courting, and expect to marry next year.

“On the thirty-sixth day,” Wen Ning informs them. “It’s already been decided who will be ordained marriages on that day – and who will not.” A flash of deep amusement alters his expression as he says it, baring a glimpse of quiet and controlled, yet absolute fury.

“Wen Ning…,” Wei Wuxian begins, not knowing where to go, but quietens at a touch of Lan Wangji’s hand to his own.

Wen Nin shakes his head at him, slanting a look of gratitude towards Lan Wangji instead. “Don’t even start, Wei-gongzi -”

“Again with the gongzi! I’ll beat you up, Wen Ning!”

“…don’t even start, Wei-ge[30],” Wen Ning rearranges himself primly, looking for a moment so like his sister that it makes Wei Wuxian’s breath catch with how much he misses Wen Qing’s company. “They burnt A-Jie alive, because she refused to help them use me, even when they threatened to destroy me before her eyes if she didn’t comply. They burnt her alive for that, Wei-ge, or they would have kept her locked down there with me, and we might have had a chance to escape someday.”

And what about the things they did to you, Wei Wuxian wants to ask, but Wen Ning has never thought about himself when he could be worrying about others.

In that way, they are all so very alike – him, Lan Zhan, Wen Ning, Wen Qing. Each willing, when the point of pressure bears down upon their backs, to bend and take in all the pain, carve out chunks of themselves to appease the bloodlust of those who would rather watch them break, if only it would save someone else.

Wei Wuxian gave away his golden core to keep his sect leader and brother alive.

Lan Wangji gave away his unmarred reputation and pristine body to keep A-Yuan safe.

Wen Ning and Wen Qing gave away their lives twice – first to save Wei Wuxian’s family from their own sect, and then to save him alone from his own family.

When it comes down to it, he thinks, the family he has chosen for himself – they are all so very much the same type of person. Perhaps that’s why only they can understand him well enough to love him without considering it a burden.

He finds himself awash with gratitude for such tender blessings. In his last life, he had not been capable of recognising the good things he had. Now, he knows to appreciate them and keep them close and safe next to his heart, where they belong.

There are so many things he wants to know about everyone he once lost, that he takes Wen Ning up the mountain and keeps him there until it is too late for him to even return to Yiling for the night, only stopping when he is satisfied with his wealth of information.

Wen Qing doesn’t remember a thing. His heart doesn’t break, surprisingly. In fact, he finds himself relieved about it. To remember that kind of death – he wouldn’t wish it on anyone, let alone his saviour and sister both.

The next morning, he refuses to let Wen Ning go anywhere but to collect his things from the inn and come right back.

There’s so much work to do.

It so turns out that they owe Wen Ning’s presence in Yiling almost entirely to Meng Yao. Accurately, to Meng Yao fucking up.

“He overreached himself,” is all Wen Ning says, and refuses to explain further in words. Instead, he hands over the invitation, bidding them to see for themselves.

Wei Wuxian reads through the list of planned munificence once, then twice, then a third time, before raising his head only to gape in appalled silence.

For once, he’s been struck completely dumb.

It’s Lan Wangji, with his experience as spare heir of a Great Sect, who sees through the heart of the matter.

“Ruinous,” is all he states, but the single word is effective enough to convey the depth of folly being arranged to celebrate what should be – nothing worse nor better than a small corner of the vast universe finding harmony with itself once again. The Burial Mounds, in the grand scheme of things, are not that vast a property. Wei Wuxian is only an immortal, he hasn’t even managed to make it as a minor god.

“Uh-huh,” Wen Ning snickers. “He outdid himself a little too well. You should have seen uncle’s face when I told him what it would cost.”

Wei Wuxian exchanges a significant glance with Lan Wangji, at what Wen Ning isn’t saying about his current position within Qishan Wen, but trusts them to understand perfectly.

“I advised him to simply hold the feast on double second;[31] we already have half the materials for the festivities prepared in any case. But it’ll still nearly bankrupt us, if we’re lucky,” Wen Ning goes on cheerfully, as though he isn’t speaking of the sustained implosion of his own sect. “Serves them right.”

“Who?” Wei Wuxian asks, wondering wildly if he’s about to get handed another hit-list, if everyone who remembers the old world came out the other end completely psychotic.

He knows he did.

“Oh! That fool Meng Yao, who else? And my uncle. Zongzhu doesn’t find him so very shiny and pretty to look at now. I don’t know why he thought employing Jin Guangshan’s bastard in the first place was a good idea, let alone that one. I suppose he thought it’d be funny to play these games.” Wen Ning pauses, then adds thoughtfully. “It mostly is, I suppose, but it does serve them both right. Now they’ve trapped each other in this dance. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll tear each other apart and save us the trouble.”

Wei Wuxian is perfectly okay with that. It would save a lot of trouble, he admits privately and to Lan Zhan with another shared glance.

More than that, it seems to him more and more that he doesn’t want to fight. He’s tired of war, exhausted at the very idea of it.

If they could somehow gain victory without fighting a hundred battles, wouldn’t it be great? There is victory in subduing your enemy without fighting at all, he thinks, and plans to dedicate himself to the art of silent murder with renewed enthusiasm.[32]

Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning insist that Wen Zhuliu must be the first to go – and of course, Lan Wangji has to know why.

And he refuses to budge on that, because he’s just like that. Like a deerhound, with his nose hot on the scented trail and refusing to be drawn away.

As he prepares to confess the worst secret of his old life, Wei Wuxian wonders miserably if this is how Lan Zhan had felt when he told him about A-Yuan. In some ways, Wei Wuxian feels very much like he’s about to confess to some sort of immutable sin that cannot be washed off.

Wen Ning attempts to give them privacy, but Wei Wuxian begs him to stay so earnestly and Lan Wangji appears so worried, that he recognises he would be of better help here in the hut than outside, sight-seeing.

And thus, a long overdue conversation begins.

~*~

What this really is, Wen Ning realises before they even begin – is a dissection of choices. Primarily, those made by Wei-ge and A-Jie. And himself, for all that he’d been nearly the same age as Wei-ge, he’d been in no position to influence or control his betters.

This might yet turn out to be a disaster, but he has faith in Lan-er-gongzi’s immense attunement towards the care of Wei Wuxian. In the matter of a lover, at least, his Wei-ge has good taste.

But he might have to weather the man’s wrath first. Having died, and lived on as a dead thing, Wen Ning knows better perhaps than even Wei Wuxian what a grave sin they had committed, the three of them. Lan Wangji, upright, righteous, pure and orthodox to the near-extreme in both habit and training – what would he make of it?

Wen Ning carefully holds in his mind the truth that he knows, due to being an inner member of the Wen clan – how Wen Zhuliu eats. Brutally and totally, but swiftly. There is no cruelty in the man save where it must necessarily be perpetrated. And yet, who other than an immeasurably cruel man would have learnt such tricks in the first place?

In comparison to that, what A-Jie had done; was it any worse or was it any better?

They’d tortured Wei-ge for two days. He’d been out of his mind with grief, physical and emotional pain, and guilt when he had begged A-Jie to do the unthinkable, when he’d sworn he could bear the unbearable.

And they’d agreed, and then they had tortured him. For two days.

It dawns on him that perhaps Wei-ge shouldn’t have to tell this story. He had lived it once already, wasn’t that enough?

“Hold him,” he orders Lan Wangji. Surprised but willing, the man obeys at once, gathering Wei Wuxian into his lap and bundling him up close. “And I will tell you how it went.”

~*~

After, he leaves them to talk it out.

Somewhere along the way, the two men have changed positions, for now it is Lan Wangji who shakes with horror in Wei Wuxian’s arms, as the other man tries desperately to provide comfort that the other cannot yet bring himself to accept.

Here, now, experiencing the depths of Lan Wangji’s rage and revulsion, the absoluteness of his anguish, Wei Wuxian looks back at himself in an entirely new light.

Fool that he had been – he knows that now, of course. He’s known since he came back to life that he had made no good choices in his first life. He was aware, or he thought he had been aware, of the extent of his fuck-ups.

The process of ascending, and then the act thereof, had brought him a new degree of clarity. Encompassing not only the micro but the macro, his vision is now opened to the criss-cross map of hundreds and thousands of paths laid out to him that would have likely ended also in tragedy – but in most of them neither he nor his people would have suffered as long or as terribly as they really had.

He had only ever considered the question of his golden core with regard to his own cultivation – it was his to give away, he had reasoned, and no one but the Jiang who might lay equal claim to it. They had given him the water that let the seed of cultivation in his dantian sprout and bear fruit – why should they not have a right to harvest it? Whether it was done over a lifetime in the form of daily labour as head disciple or in one go with a simple operation, what difference did it make?

Or so he had thought.

He knows better now, with an eternity churning deep in his guts, in his thundering blood, in the air swelling his lungs and the very make-up of his marrow.

A golden core is only the pathway to immortality and also the barrier keeping it at bay. To be immortal, the core must shatter, and be assimilated entirely within the body and being of the cultivator who dares endure the trial of Yudi.[33]

He has broken his own gathered power and turned it to stardust, before consuming in all in great gaping handfuls, shoving it all down his maw in an attempt to retain himself to himself, to not scatter apart across the three planes of existence.[34]

Ascending, after that, had been both a mercy and an atrocity.

And it had been a complete accident. He hadn’t even known what it was he’d done, at the time. All he knew was that he had to hold onto himself by any means necessary, or be blasted into oblivion.

So now he knows, what sin he had committed when he gave up the opportunity of receiving both the blessing and the curse of his potential and his ultimate place in the world.

He has the feeling that there is nothing he can say that will help Lan Zhan accept what he considers to be unacceptable.[35] But he clutches the other man close and presses kisses to his temple and cheeks and hair, and tries his hardest to explain anyway in the best words he can find. Pours out his heart to Lan Zhan, to make him understand – to beg forgiveness, perhaps, for what even he doesn’t know.

It isn’t, he thinks with a brief flare of resentment, as though he’d hurt Lan Zhan by what he’d done – but no, guilt comes charging in to stomp all over his ego and make him focus only on the shuddering inhales of the body he’s holding, the way Lan Zhan’s back rises and falls. He’s trembling like a leaf in winter wind, and jerking every now and then like he’s holding back the urge to vomit.

“Lan Zhan, say something,” Wei Wuxian begs at last, unable to bear this a moment more.

At once, he’s shoved away from his partner, who turns a truly vicious glare on him. “How could you.”

Ah, so it’s going to be like that. Wei Wuxian does not wince. He’d known Lan Zhan would be upset, hadn’t he? Cursing Wen Ning for being so thorough in his telling, he tries to grab Lan Zhan’s hands again, but is shaken off.

“Ah Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan – must you be this way, love? I’m telling you now, it will never happen again. It is impossible, and in any case, we’re going to kill Wen Zhuliu before he ruins someone else’s life.”

Lan Wangji is too angry to tolerate attempts at placation.

“It should not have happened at all. Wei Ying – why did you never say? How could you keep such a secret – didn’t you think for one moment that perhaps it might have been better for you to look weak than become a universal target?”

Wei Wuxian stares at him.

All the things he had expected Lan Wangji to throw at his head – deviance from orthodoxy, corruption of the body and soul, breaking of the natural order, and so on and so forth, an endless well of anticipated preaching – it all goes up in a flashbang of an emotion so light and sharp that it feels like a needle thrust straight through his heart.

Oh, he thinks and otherwise draws a blank, awestruck now that he finally knows the scope of Lan Wangji’s care and worry for him.

He’s not mad about me doing something wrong – he’s mad because I hurt myself, and then like a fool, compounded my self-inflicted damage by not seeking to heal.

It is an astonishing thing to know and articulate to himself, without Lan Wangji having to spell it out for him, for once. He doesn’t have to – his misery is acute and written in every tense line of his body, the bowed curve of his lips and the ferocious furrow of his brows.

He tries a different way to make Lan Zhan feel better. “Ah, Lan Zhan. Would you believe that at the time it hurt less to give it away than to tolerate all the crimes and debts Jiang Cheng was laying at my feet? I was half-mad already after Lotus Pier…I truly didn’t care then as much as I do now, myself. I thought it was a gift they gave me, so I just gave it back with interest.” Wei Ying’s smile is bright and sharp as ever.

To Lan Wangji, it looks patently fake. He hates the sight of it, but the reminder that his suffering comes with a cost, and the cost is Wei Ying’s joyfulness, helps calm him where begging and pleading could not.

“Liar,” he points out, but softly now. “You cared very much. You carried it around in secret until it killed you.”

Wei Wuxian bows his head, tucking away a teary smile at this new evidence of love and care.

“I honestly couldn’t see what else to do, Lan Zhan. In hindsight, I suppose I could have pretended that what happened to Jiang Cheng in reality had happened to me instead. No one would have, or could have known otherwise. Perhaps you’re right – I should have chosen to be pitied instead of feared, but ah, Lan Zhan, after they threw me in here, there really was no hope for me at all. In fact,” he leans forward now, every inch of his face imploring his partner to understand, “I’m pretty sure being coreless kept me alive. If I’d fallen into the Mounds with my core still where it belonged, the energies here…”

He trails off, letting his companion pick up the thread. Lan Wangji thinks it over, considering every angle he knows of regarding the theory and practice of cultivation, before coming to the only possible conclusion.

“You would have turned into a demon,” he completes, seeing at last, but thinking all the same that it is still Wei Wuxian who does not understand what was so wrong about the picture he and Wen Ning have painted. He lets himself lean against his partner at last, rests his forehead against the side of Wei Ying’s neck and breathes the scent of him in once, twice, thrice.

“Wei Ying,” he mutters into the man’s skin, just for the pleasure of feeling him hiss and squirm. Then he bites, and sits back a little more satisfied with his revenge.

Outraged, Wei Wuxian squawks at him some nonsense about dogs like he had in the Tulu Xuanwu’s cave so long ago. Lan Wangji, however, isn’t feeling merciful.

“Did you expect A-Yuan to repay you that way?” he asks flatly, and brings Wei Wuxian’s world to a screeching halt.

Of course he had not.

Of course, he had not.

Some paternal instinct in him wants to automatically lash out with violence at even the suggestion of such a monstrous thing. But Wei Wuxian is no longer a boy, nor even just a man.

He pulls himself back, furious. His anger is not aimed at Lan Zhan, or even at himself. He retains enough sense to recognise that he must give himself time, to parse through what his soulmate is really asking him to reflect upon – his own treatment at the hands of his family.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 99 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The first great benevolence:

Abolish all taxes in Qishan for 99 days, abolish all tithes paid to Qishan by subsidiary sects for 99 days

Perhaps it is always in Wen Ruohan’s fate to be betrayed, Wei Wuxian considers as he studies the wealth of material Wen Ning has procured for them, all of it concentrated on the history and cultivation of one man – Wen Zhuliu.

Wen Ning has managed to get himself appointed as Wen Ruohan’s official to the Yiling Laozu, as they are already beginning to call him.

The first time he had heard that title in this life, uttered by some Yiling townsman with a sense of total ownership and pride, Wei Wuxian had laughed until he’d had no choice but to cry.

To hear that name in veneration and not spat out like some curse – he doesn’t know what to do with the universal adulation he receives whenever he goes to the market to buy food and other necessities, so he opts largely to stay on his mountain.

His mountain now, he relishes in the feeling of true ownership, knowing that nothing and no one can break the ties between him and this now-sacred land. We have shaped each other. It will always be mine.

His mountain, as he had explained to Lan Wangji late one balmy night on the tiny porch bordering the eastern wall of their hut. One had wine, the other had tea, and their talk was fast and furious, a rapid-fire exchange of ideas and melodies, the expertise of two master cultivators coming to the fore and making them lively.

The question had, of course, turned to Wei Wuxian’s current state, and he had found himself compelled to explain –

The mountain is whatever he needs it to be, a place stuffed full of magic, ebbing and flowing in different rhythms and rivulets, like music, like water. There are places where the magic is wild and unpredictable, where the mountain changes shape with the seasons. Places that feel stable and serene and unchanging. There are places so strangely intricate they seem made for luxury, for a king, and some so simple and rough it feels like a new world under their feet, as well as a very ancient one.

It is good land, fertile and ready for new crops. Wei Wuxian wants to cover the entire place in good things and pretty things and useful things.

He had spoken at length about wanting to farm potatoes and berries and peaches, he had emphasised with a flirtatious, licentious wink at Lan Zhan.

He had gone on to add how he also wants to grow flowers of all kinds. Had rattled off a list of every flower he knows until Lan Zhan requested quietly to save him a plot for gentians. Then Wei Wuxian could only smile and nod helplessly, so full of love his heart wanted to burst with it.

He had even told a little of one of his dreams, that he wants to travel the world, all over every inch of Zhongguo[36] and beyond, wants to come back with rare plants from which to grow living memories of days and nights spent in other places, perhaps doing good deeds – Lan Zhan had nodded approvingly – perhaps causing mischief – Lan Zhan had shaken his head, amused.

“And absolutely NO radishes,” Wei Wuxian had announced with a final dramatic flourish of his hand, and he has gone on saying it every chance he gets since then, like a private joke. He knows that Lan Zhan knows that there is a top-secret, little hidden patch of radishes that is both the first crop Wei Wuxian planted here and the most carefully tended-to place on the entire mountain. He lets Wei Wuxian have the lie, but they both know what he doesn’t say by the way his eyes go from burnished gold to soft sunset blinks, accompanied by a gentle kiss on the forehead, every single time Wei Wuxian brings it up.

For now, he turns his entire attention to the question of Wen Zhuliu, and exactly what is to be done about him.

Born Zhao Zhuliu of a clan so minor they had not even a territory to claim as their own, and lived as outer disciples of Qishan Wen, he had shown early on, a great promise for cultivation and thus, caught the sect leader’s eye. An ambitious child with no prospects but those found at Wen Ruohan’s side, he decided early on to absorb power by any means possible and dedicate the life he earned in return, to his master’s service.

A loyal dog indeed, Wei Wuxian sneers to Lan Wangji, and goes on reading. As his eyes move down each row of characters in the neatly-scribed report, the scorn turns to something else.

Every sect has its own secret techniques for cultivation, some more advanced than others, some open only to the disciples with the most potential. Wei Wuxian himself had been the recipient of such an education, if only up to the point which Yu-furen permitted. No doubt Lan Zhan too was trained in this manner, with even greater resources at hand for refining his cultivation.

Wen Zhuliu too had had such access, and he had failed to live up to his promise. The trouble with such techniques is that failure to master them can mean death or worse – impairment to one’s cultivation.

Wen Zhuliu’s core had been turned inside out. The only way for him to survive was to feed, like a hungry beast, on other people’s cultivation. Qi that was already refined and stored for usage, safe in the lower dantian. Safe, until Wen Zhuliu needed to nourish himself and replenish his qi.

Of course, Wen Zhuliu is paying a price; he looks older than his peers already, and will never achieve the long life of a master cultivator, though he is one himself. Power like his comes with consequences.  

Wei Wuxian knows that he’s more or less cheated his way to immortality by creating the shortcut tattooed over his navel even now. He has worked hard, he knows, but nowhere as hard as Lan Zhan must have slaved and slaved for 9 years, building his core up without any external help at all. Certainly, he has had no conveniently cursed mountain at hand whose power he could distil and absorb and thus march a thousand li[37] in a day where another man would only manage a hundred.

Lan Zhan is close to breaking the barrier and he has managed it entirely on his own.

Which of them is the more magnificent, Wei Wuxian wants to know?

Which of them will Wen Zhuliu consider the delicacy, and which the feast?

“I remember saying to Jiang Cheng once that people would eat anything if they were hungry enough,” he speaks apropos of nothing, breaking the appalled silence that has fallen between them.

Then, a terrible confession that adds context – “I’ve eaten people, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji takes in this new information without judgement, only perhaps burgeoning pity for the life Wei Ying had once been forced into. Of course he had eaten the only edible thing to be found within the Burial Mounds. It was eat or die, die or become a demon, become a demon or take revenge against those who put him there, take revenge or roll over and die – he could do none of it or all of it, and in the end the result would be the same.

Once a man walks into the Burial Mounds, he doesn’t ever truly leave.

However – “Do not draw unnecessary parallels,” he admonishes. “Wei Ying is Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian sees, lets a smile bloom into a laugh. “You’re right, Lan Zhan. I did what I did and I paid plenty for it. I wouldn’t do this. This…to die a man would indeed be better than to live like a demon of such fashioning.”

After a while of reading idly through the remaining papers, he wonders, “How is it that he has not been exterminated by now? the Core-Melting Hand is well-renowned.”

La Wangji frowns down at the sheaf in his own hands. He has pondered this himself. To those of his own generation, the name of Wen Zhuliu had meant nothing much, really. To their elders, it must have meant something entirely different – but why indeed had no one removed the man’s life when he first time dared to steal – or as far as anyone not a high-ranking inner clan Wen knew – destroy someone’s cultivation?

In Qishan, he can understand why not. But what, he wants to know, was wrong with the rest of them, knowing even as he asks that the answer is everything. Had his elders had anything to their name save mediocre lives conducted with callous grace, ending in shallow graves?

Regardless of past errors, he is now completely in agreement with Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning.

Wen Zhuliu must die first.

Then, they can begin on the rest.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 90 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The second great benevolence:

Hold tournaments for the youth to prove themselves and win a shining future

“First he abolishes taxes, and now this. Is the enemy trying to bankrupt himself before we get a chance at him, Lan Zhan? Is this a kindness or a special kind of divine punishment, do you think?”

Wei Wuxian rolls about on the bed next to Lan Wangji, whining liberally but really revelling in the soft cotton-and-goosefeather stuffed mattress on the new arhat bed Lan Zhan has added to their home. His head knocks against his companion’s thigh, and he takes the opportunity to press a kiss into the toned muscles before rolling away in the other direction. The scent of sandalwood wafts about him as he stirs the air with his movement, and he feels light-hearted. Impossible to annoy him today, disregarding the theatrics. It is a lazy afternoon in the Burial Mounds. There’s nothing to do save read Wen Ning’s latest report, compose music, and revel in each other’s company.

In many ways, despite his distinct inclination towards unorthodoxy, Wei Wuxian is a deeply traditional man. He thinks that even if he had not been trained in orthodox attitudes and cultivation by Yu-furen, he would still have turned out this way. There are certain fundamentals of the world and ethics of life that Wei Wuxian characteristically believes in and practices – between intent and action there must be harmony, or the entire song will be discordant and hair-raising.

It is that part of him which understands what Wen Ruohan is doing and why. At the same time, knowing that the intent does not match the action, he finds his respect for tradition to be deeply disturbed.

He has never counted modesty among his virtues, and doesn’t intend to start now. Purifying the Burial Mounds in the way he had – he had poured blood, sweat, and tears into the work. Day and night for five years he had laboured with only vengeful ghosts for company, who did not often care that he was their master and friend and servant all, trying only to help them return to the cycle of reincarnation to make up for having once put them to use at war.

It is the auspicious event of the century – of several centuries, he admits. I really outdid myself, huh.

A laugh bubbles in his chest and up his throat; he sets it free with abandon. Of course Wen Ruohan was having to put on a grand old show – the grandest ever seen!

Wei Wuxian has achieved the impossible once again, twice again. Who knows what next, he muses idly, picking at a long, silken lock of Lan Wangji’s hair, rubbing the shiny strands between his fingers, feeling the soft texture and not resisting the urge to stick it between his lips and suck.

It occurs to him that he wants to kiss Lan Wangji, very, very badly.

It occurs to him that Lan Wangji might not object if he tried.

He tries to imagine how it would be, the slide of lips against lips – would there be tongue? What did it feel like? Did Lan Zhan know? He tamps down a blaze of horrible burning jealousy at the idea of Lan Wangji daring to want anyone else.

Then he comes to his senses, and remembers who Lan Wangji is. He wouldn’t – simply couldn’t. This, Wei Wuxian knew, just as he knew also that his own heart had awoken only at the sight of that jadelike, furious beauty in the moonlight and it would sleep forever more if he ever lost Lan Wangji’s light.

He’s distracted away from his train of reflection by a firm pair of fingers gripping his chin and tilting it towards Lan Wangji. It takes only a moment – only a single look, for Lan Zhan to read the want written plain as day on his face, the shy smile lurking at the corners of his mouth.

Only a single burning look, and then Lan Zhan tips his face low and slants his mouth right over Wei Wuxian’s.

His first impressions are warm, soft, dry. A gentle buzz starts up under his skin where Lan Zhan’s fingers press against his cheeks, his lips begin to tingle and move experimentally of their own accord. He’s a little clumsy, and Lan Zhan overly careful, at first.

Then someone’s mouth opens, and it fits, there is a slight wetness and a glide and soft slick sounds that draw all sorts of shivery, sizzling sensations down his spine and straight into a part of him that’s been dormant for far too long. He tangles his hands deep in Lan Zhan’s hair, lets them run freely across the breadth of his strong, straight shoulders, the tightening curve of his waist and abdomen, the small of his back and lower.

Lan Zhan makes a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl, bearing down upon him almost fully, his kiss growing harder, his lips moving against Wei Wuxian’s more urgently, seeking –

Then Lan Zhan gets his tongue into his mouth, and Wei Wuxian’s dick snaps up so fast it almost hurts.

He moans in relief or torment, he doesn’t know which. He’s losing his mind entirely in Lan Zhan’s kiss, he clutches tighter and presses Lan Zhan’s hips against his own as close as he can manage, searching for a similar hardness.

The shock of pleasure when he finds it, presses his dick against Lan Zhan’s erection, is so deep and sweet it aches, making him gasp and arch. Groaning low in his throat, he flips them over and grinds urgently against that wonderfully hard, thick length. Rubs himself against Lan Zhan through their clothes, too far gone to bother with them, wanting only release from this wonderful, dreadful tension that Lan Zhan’s awakened in him.

Beneath him, Lan Zhan looks gone. His eyes are glazed over with the same pleasure coursing through Wei Wuxian’s veins, his hands tug uselessly at Wei Wuxian’s waist, trying to pull him even closer, make him move faster, harder.

He gasps when Lan Zhan jerks his hips up, thrusting quick and rough. He rolls them over again, wanting to be blanketed and held, wanting more kisses. He tilts his head and Lan Zhan obliges, slicking rough, open-mouthed impressions of his mouth against Wei Wuxian’s neck, pulling his collar down so he can continue down the curve of his shoulder and down his chest till his mouth latches over one stiff, peaking nipple and oh, Wei Wuxian feels his very toes curl with the hot, sweet pleasure of it.

He spreads his legs instinctively, wanting more, seeking something better than this torment that only stokes the fire in his bones hotter, making him want more and more till he flies apart into an entirely new plane of existence beyond even immortality.

Taking the straightforward invitation, Lan Zhan slots himself between Wei Wuxian’s legs easily. There’s the sound of rending cloth, cool air against his crotch, and then his mind goes completely blank because Lan Zhan gets his big, warm, hand around the both of them, and begins to stroke.

Oh, he’s good at this, Wei Wuxian thinks and moans over and over – good, good, so good, more, more, more. Lan Zhan responds meanly, stopping to rub the calloused pad of his thumb over both their tips, spreading wetness around, creating a slippery sort of friction that makes the slide of their cocks against each other, the glide of Lan Zhan’s deft fingers against the smooth hard flesh feel that much better, more intense than before.

Lan Zhan pants against his mouth, hot, open, sloppy, thrusting and rubbing, plying Wei Wuxian with pleasure till he feels he has to do something about it or he’ll just die. So he does the only thing that comes to mind when every nerve-ending is alight with passion and the endless, rhythmic motion of Lan Zhan’s hand is driving him mad. Drags his fingers up Lan Zhan’s back to his head and mashes his lips together in a deep, hungry kiss that makes him groan and then – he finds himself without warning at the edge of a great, unseen, unknown cliff, and tips over into an orgasm that makes anything his own hands had produced appear in his memories only as a pale imitation of the word.

It lasts forever, and for no time at all, but when he comes back somewhat to his senses, half-dizzy with leftover desire still, he feels as though he’s already lived one eternity in a moment.

Afterwards, curled together in a sticky-sweet heap on the new bed, a mess of robes and papers strewn around their bodies, sweat cooling on heated skin, Wei Wuxian remembers what brought them here and can’t help but laugh.

At his lover’s gently questioning look, he brushes another kiss against that soft, swollen mouth. Bites down a little, nipping away just to feel Lan Zhan tremble with desire that had yet to be entirely banked.

“Tournaments,” he explains, sparking similar amusement in the other man.

“What do you think, Lan Zhan – who won this round?”

Lan Wangji pretends to think about it for a minute. Then – “Wei Ying,” he replies decisively, and flips them over once again to kiss Wei Wuxian right into oblivion.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 81 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The third great benevolence:

Distribute congee and mantou to feed the poor, that no one may go hungry

Yiling gets regular visits by storytellers[38] now, all looking for new tidbits of information on Wei Wuxian while bringing in news from all over the jianghu – first from Qishan.

Wei Wuxian listens to one of them making the announcement right on schedule to the sound of cheers and stamping feet, and barely keeps his face from twisting into a sneer that would ruin his reputation on the spot, immortality notwithstanding.

It isn’t that he objects to all this charity – he’s more than fine with anything that bankrupts Wen Ruohan so beautifully and gently.

Poverty through excess munificence.

He thinks of starving for years because of the actions of that man, and then his own excess of munificence to that same man’s last living relatives.

Irony at its finest.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 72 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The fourth great benevolence:

72 days of service by monks from the Baixue Temple, to earn merits for the empire via good deeds

Wen Ning delivers his next report in person, mouth grim and eyes aimed straight at Lan Wangji, as though impressing something of grave importance onto the man’s psyche. Lan Wangji is similarly focused on the younger man, his expression going taut with grave displeasure when Wen Ning speaks the name of Baixue Temple.

Wei Wuxian may as well not exist for all the attention he’s getting from Lan Zhan. He scowls, hating it, and flicks a lotus seed – there are lotuses growing in at least one pond on the mountain now – right at the tip of his lover’s nose. It is caught and flicked right back at his face at the expected moment, but the man still doesn’t look his way.

Wen Ning notes with amusement his brother’s jealousy – he’s just as bad as Lan-er-gongzi in these matters, though he doesn’t seem to realise it. At least the Lan cultivator appears to be self-aware enough to slant the occasional awkwardly apologetic look at Wen Ning in between all the glaring, when his emotions begin to veer a little too much towards the petty and unwelcoming.

“Right,” Wei Wuxian throws himself bodily between the two of them, upsetting the table and all the tea things on it, fed up of being ignored. “Just what the hell do the two of you know, that you’re not telling me?”

And so he finds out about the terrible sordid history of a pair of young cultivators named Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen – his martial uncle ­­– and the evils they suffered at the hands of yet another monster cultivated by Jin Guangshan. Xue Yang.

Lan Wangji speaks first, then Wen Ning. They are each aware of one side of the story – Lan Wangji knows what happened outside the sphere or Lanling while Wen Ning supplements the gaps with secrets overheard and seen in Jin Guangshan’s dungeons.

After finishing, they both stare at him like they’re expecting some volcanic burst of anger. But he has turned inward instead, a little sad and a lot angry – yes, but not for the reasons they might be expecting.

Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan, Xue Yang. All three of them had been younger than eighteen when their lives had gone so terribly awry.

At the age of thirty-one, Wei Wuxian can easily draw the parallels between himself and Xiao Xingchen, himself and Xue Yang. Just so the same with Jiang Cheng and Song Lan, Lan Wangji and Song Lan.

It seemed that those three had been fated to destroy each other in the same terrible push and pull of neglected or abused pride that had torn the older generation apart.

“Any of us could have turned out like that,” is all he will say, when asked. Thankfully, at least for Lan Zhan, that seems to be explanation enough.

Wei Wuxian goes outside then to work in the garden, wanting peace and solitude. Inside, he can hear the faint murmur of conversation between his lover and his brother. He could listen easily, but he chooses not to eavesdrop, trusting in the judgement of the men he loves beyond measure.

~*~

~*~

Yunping, 63 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The fourth great benevolence:

Provide clothing for summer and winter to the poor

Lan Wangji’s idea of courting is old fashioned, thorough, and most importantly, extravagant.

To him, there is this simple truth – he wants to be allowed to spoil Wei Ying from now until the end of time. He knows the gift Wei Ying wants most is the acknowledged fact of his immortality rather than a mere promise of that goal being fulfilled someday.

He is working diligently towards that already. Already his core sits heavy and low in his abdomen, sinking like a stone thrown into a broad, gushing river that he knows now to be the flow of energies making up the fabric of the world.

The barrier is close. He can feel it beginning to loom over him when he looks into the horizon with his senses stretched out as far as they will reach.

Until then, however, there are material gifts that he wishes to shower on Wei Ying. He already has them mentally organised into categories and sub-categories; under them, numbered lists of items that Wei Ying needs, wants, might need, may want, would certainly freak out at being given, and so on and so forth.

It’s a lot. This fact pleases Lan Wangji very much, as he rolls up his sleeves and prepares for a pleasant afternoon of shopping for his beloved.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 54 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The fifth great benevolence:

Earn merits for the empire by pardoning 54 criminals who were sentenced to death

Lan Wangji looks up from reading the new report from Qishan, deeply troubled in mind and heart. Of all things he had expected from Meng Yao, this –

He remembers abruptly the lesson he had absorbed in Qinghe, and realises he needs Wei Wuxian’s advice. In fact, he wants desperately to know what his beloved thinks. He hands over the letter and waits patiently for Wei Ying to finish reading, who then looks up only with raised eyebrows and an expansive gesture to continue with whatever dilemma was eating him up.

“So he’s got a heart. Or he’s got an agenda. So what? I’m not letting him off, Lan Zhan.”

But Lan Wangji remains unconvinced, caught in the thrall of his old dilemma. “Not that.”

Wei Wuxian turns to face him fully, gentle taking both his hands and pressing his fingertips to the centres of Lan Wangji’s palms. “Then what’s the matter, my heart? You hate the man – it’s the one thing you can never shut up about, in this life. What troubles you, then?”

“Only a boy.”

Ah, it hits Wei Wuxian then, an ethical problem he hadn’t even considered. But of course, Lan Zhan had been a teacher, had raised A-Yuan with his own hands for years, long enough for some paternal motivation to permanently burrow under his flesh and make a home there. A teacher for one day, a father for a lifetime.[39] Lan Zhan could never hurt a child.

Wei Wuxian, in favour of bloody revenge as he’s always been, makes no pretensions to any such goodness of heart or purity of intent. He wants his enemies dead, where they can’t harm him or the ones he loves anymore. But the question of criminals like Meng Yao, like Xue Yang – hadn’t he felt his own compassion stirring in that case? And yet, Xue Yang hadn’t committed any atrocities that Meng Yao did not then compound in some way or other – so which one of them was truly worse, and which the more pitiable?

If one had grown up abused and orphaned on the streets, the other had done the same in a pleasure-house. In the end, all either of them had wanted was a place in this world – hadn’t he too, wanted it so badly he’d lost everything for it and died?

 He understands, finally, why Lan Zhan hesitates over Meng Yao, even as he detests his lies, his lack of loyalty and extreme tendency to self-serve at the cost of others. Lan Zhan may hate a person or thing, but he will still judge it fairly.

No problem, he thinks, and bumps a cheery shoulder against Lan Zhan’s. “Guess we’ll just have to leave it to him, then. But if he goes wrong, Lan Zhan…”

“He dies,” Lan Wangji agrees.  The words fall between them with the weight of a coffin dropping into a grave.  

~*~

~*~

Qishan, 45 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The sixth great benevolence:

Earn merits for the people by freeing captured beasts or birds

Wen Ning is enjoying himself.

First, Meng Yao has managed to get himself into Wen Ruohan’s crosshairs again without even realising how slender a thread he’s hanging from.

Second, it’s been two full months since anyone’s seen or heard from Wen Chao. It’s a mark of how utterly regrettable the man’s existence is that even his father doesn’t ask when he’s planning to return – or if.

“Forty-five birds? Isn’t that trying to insult the honour and glory of Qishan?” he’d boasted and blasted when Wen Ning had suggested they undercut any further extravagance by releasing 45 huamei in the sky above Yiling, to commemorate the great immortal’s ascendance without incurring a truly ridiculous cost for buying and releasing dozens of horses or thousands of fish or anything else actually useful.

Besides, he had a feeling Wei Wuxian would have enjoyed the imagery.

But no, Wen Chao had had to go and open his big fat mouth, going on about the honour and glory of Qishan at length and did they not deserve the blessings of thrushes flying free over their palace?

And of course, Meng Yao had just had to chime in, eternal bootlicker that he was, and assert that wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could release nine flocks of forty-five huamei each, to mark the forty-fifth day of the celebration for the cleansing of the Burial Mounds.

Where on this earth they were going to find that many huamei in the wild was anyone’s guess. Where on earth Wen Ruohan was going to find the money for them if they must be purchased was also anyone’s guess. After no taxes, no tithes, no road or river tolls, jianghu-wide tournaments, and an endless well of charitable deeds, Qishan Wen’s coffers were rapidly emptying.

Specifically, it was Wen Chao’s guess, because Wen Ning wasn’t about to pass up any opportunity the universe offered to make his cousin’s life just that much more of a living hell.

So now ChaoChao is somewhere upriver in the dark forests of Qishan that even Wen Ruohan has not mapped every corner of, trying desperately to collect not forty-five, nor four-hundred-and-forty-five, but precisely four-hundred-and-five huamei – not one more or one less, or so help him, while his father rages about the economy far away in Buyetian.

Yes, Wen Ning is enjoying life to the fullest.

It's the least he could do for his Wei-ge.[40]

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 36 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The seventh great benevolence:

Adopt 36 orphans into each sect and raise them with honour

When Wei Wuxian had first read about it in Wen Ning’s report, he’d nearly split himself – one half feeling pure rage for the child he’d been twice over, the other half plain sickened by the hypocrisy of the sects. Now, weeks later, when Wen Ruohan’s latest bout of mandatory charity is officially announced for the entire jianghu to hear and praise, the sickness melts away and leaves only the rage.

An immortal’s wrath is a great and terrible thing. To avoid harming the world, there is only one thing to do. He drags Lan Wangji out to the meadow where they’d first met, and demands a spar.

Losing himself in Lan Zhan is easy. Easier still, with the flash of Wuye against Bichen sending the early morning sunshine scattering, each dappled fleck of dissipating light bringing back memories of their first meeting, and their last, and all the others in between and since. As he thrusts and parries, their dance grows closer, more intimate, their bodies turning in tighter curves, breath rising faster with every push and pull of momentum behind their blades. Faster, faster, harder, higher – it occurs to him that dual cultivation might be something very like this.

The thought of taking this dance back to their bed, letting the glide of flesh replace the ringing of their swords’ edges takes over entirely. Yet, unwilling to lose even after weeks of sparring with this man, he keeps their battle going until he successfully disarms his lover and they collapse on the grass, limbs spread out to feel the refreshing coolness of dew against flushed, heated skin.

The only saving grace of this entire debacle, he thinks, is that Meng Yao has somehow managed to locate several of his fellow bastard siblings and ensured they found their way into Lanling Jin, at great cost to Jin Guangshan’s face.

Apparently Jin-furen has left Lanling and gone back to her natal sect, unable to bear it anymore. They say she left her son behind, but Wei Wuxian thinks it far likelier that the peacock simply refused to leave and give up his birthright.

Whatever, he tries to tell himself. The jianghu and its hypocrisy regarding orphaned children are no longer his concern. Except –

He sits up suddenly, earning a look of concern that warms him to his very toes.

“Lan Zhan, can you find out if there’s any way to ensure no one mistreats those kids? They call them lucky children now, treat them like omens of good fortune – but isn’t that too much, for a kid who comes from nothing, has nothing but what’s given them by their benefactors?”

Lan Wangji nods besides him, not happy either. “Such children are easily abused.”

Wei Wuxian nods vigorously. “Exactly! The first time one of them fucks up – they’re kids, they will make mischief and mistakes both – how much understanding will there be for any of that? Lan Zhan, ZhanZhan. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

That same evening, Lan Wangji writes to his uncle a cordial missive of his own accord, to entreat his uncle to take up the mantle of supervising the overall well-being of these children, regardless of sect affiliations. He requests specifically for the Lan to take in an orphaned street child named Xue Yang, whom Wen Ning will bring to Gusu shortly, should his uncle agree.

For the very first time in this life, he asks for something instead of taking or demanding it.

As it turns out, just asking is enough.

~*~

~*~

Yiling, 27 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The eighth great benevolence:

Ordain 27 lucky marriages and wish the newlyweds a long and joyous future

Wei Wuxian nearly laughs himself sick when he hears that Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan have not been ordained a lucky marriage.

A lucky engagement, though, that one, since it’s the only thing keeping her out of – hmm, he doesn’t actually know who on earth Wen Ruohan would select to marry her. Wen Xu, probably. Wen Chao is out of the question, he has a wife and a rotating quota of mistresses that evinces nothing save for truly atrocious taste in women.

Even the thought of Wang Lingjiao anywhere near his former Shijie makes him want to splinter something, though in this life no one’s heard of the woman. According to Wen Ning, Wen Chao got bored of her when left to his own devices, and packed her off back home, once she’d gotten pregnant with his child.

“If that Jin Guangshan can do it, why can’t I?” had reportedly been given as the justification for this behaviour. And Yu-furen wants to give her daughter into such a man’s keeping, Wei Wuxian wonders with deepening disgust.

He hopes to hell that the ideal candidate is not Wen Ning. He wouldn’t wish Yu-furen on anyone he loves. In fact, he immediately sends a message to Wen Ning, admonishing him on no account to accept any proposals of marriage, from anyone, ever, without passing it by Wei Wuxian first.

Wen Ning secured, he returns his attention to the matter of elder siblings’ matrimonial harmony. It seems his former sister is not fated to have a good marriage in any life. No matter what anyone wishes or doesn’t, now that Wen Ruohan has made his opinion clear by deliberately omitting their marriage from the “lucky” list. If the Jiang and Jin do unite, the union will be cursed as unfortunate even before the ping jin has been presented.[41]

“It makes me just a leetle sad, you know,” he says out loud. It’s true – he’s not overly fussed about Jiang Yanli’s life, outside of not wanting her to end up with a terrible fate unnecessarily.

Lan Wangji arches a brow at him, questioning why he need bother at all. He has sympathy for Jiang-guniang, but the lady has her family to look after her interests, or she can make her own choices and take the consequences, because one way or another, there will be some.

Wei Wuxian conceals a sigh; Lan Zhan’s ongoing estrangement from his own brother is also an ongoing topic of contention between them, though Wei Wuxian knows he doesn’t have even half a leg to stand on as far as reconciliation with family goes.

He only says, “Weakness isn’t necessarily a moral failing, Lan Zhan. She never mistreated me or directly hurt me, you know. It doesn’t seem fair that out of everyone back then who betrayed me for Jin Guangshan’s gold, she’s the one who had to suffer the most. She really did want to marry the peacock you know, for her own reasons. It was all she’d been taught to expect from life.”

Lan Wangji picks up on what he isn’t saying. “Xiongzhang is different,” is his only comment, and he refuses all further attempts to be drawn into discussion about it.

~*~

~*~

Qishan, 18 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The ninth great benevolence:

Give all servants a holiday, let masters serve themselves

Wen Ning is not a servant, but today, he makes his sister rest while he takes over the care and tending of her and her duties, letting her direct him as one would a personal attendant.

It is the greatest joy in life, he reflects, to be able to do things for the people he loves and wishes to protect. He hopes he can go on doing it for a long, long time to come.

~*~

~*~

Qishan, 9 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

9 days of feasting and celebrating begin

The nine-day feast in Wei Wuxian’s honour commences in the manner of all great feasts – with the arrival of sects Great and minor. From all corners of the jianghu, they stream in to the Nightless City on horses saddled with silk finer than the cloth their servants wear, each bearing a retinue of top disciples, important retainers, eligible young women, and their servants carring baskets upon baskets of precious gifts and treasures from the four corners of the world.

Only half of these are for the Xiandu, and that the half which must be prepared by rote. The other half is for the reclusive new immortal, Yiling Laozu Wei Wuxian.

Some arrive with joy, others with scepticism, yet still others with embers of discontent burning in their innermost hearts.

Some do not wish to be here at all, but still, they come.

~*~

Far away in Yiling, the last haunting strains of melody as yet unheard by anyone else, save the two playing it, float away into the dusk and vanish into the echoing birdcalls. Across from Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian lowers his flute from his lips and lets them stretch into a deep, brilliant smile.

Their song is complete.

He looks deep into his companion’s eyes and finds his resolve mirrored and reflected from within those that golden gaze that is now alight with the purest refinement of qi.

Now, we go to war.   

~*~

The guests settle into their seats, food and wine served before them, and the first toast is raised.

On a throne situated high above them all, Wen Ruohan listens with a heart full of malice and bloody ambition. He raises his cup and drinks deep every time, waiting impatiently for the architect of his doom.

~*~

~*~

Qishan, 5 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

Wei Wuxian takes a detour

Five years have changed the entire landscape.

Wei Wuxian weaves through blue-white clouds with grey shadows underneath. The wind whistles in his ears, he is drenched in warm sunshine and the scent of ozone and rainwater. He is also flying outside the Burial Mounds for the first time since receiving his sword.

He finds to his pleasure that he is neither out of practice nor losing stamina, able to keep pace with Lan Wangji easily. He had been a little worried about vertigo from the height despite having practised plenty within the airspace of the Mounds.

Below, the earth is patterned in rough squares and rectangles of varying shades of green, with new growths of rice pushing through the waterlogged mud. They are close enough to the border between Qishan and Gusu now that between the spaces of green, he can see a vast, towering wall of qi rising high, higher than the clouds, higher than any cultivator is known to fly, too high for breathing, or for sanity to survive if one looked down.

The Great Barrier of Gusu is every bit as magnificent as advertised. Not by Lan Wangji – no, his Lan Zhan is far too modest to speak much of his own achievements. But a truly impenetrable barrier is at once a marvellous feat of cultivation and a highly precise work of art. Looking at the shimmering waves pulsing in oscillating motions, a wave so solidly woven it bears the weight of a physical object of immense size and shape, he sees a true wonder of the world.

Then he turns his gaze to its architect, and feels a rush of pride so strong it nearly disbalances him. How had he managed to deserve such a man? Surely, with such an achievement to his name, it could not be long before Lan Wangji reached the same peak as he had.

Full of love and longing, missing the person even though he was right next to him, Wei Wuxian dances through the air, looping rings around Lan Wangji to work his excitement off, before being able to take it no more and flinging himself off his sword, yelling, “Lan Zhan, catch me!”

For taking such risks, a moment later he is caught, and held close, and bullied into a punishing kiss by his furious lover. He laughs into it, welcoming the slick soft heat of Lan Wangji’s mouth moving urgently, bruisingly against his own, and gives in entirely to the love bursting forth in his heart for this man.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” he starts playfully, fizzing over with delight, “If I ask you for something, will you give it to me?”

“Ask,” his lover agrees with a look full of agreement and promise.

“Then, will you be mine?”

“Mn.”

“Will you tie yourself to me?”

“Mn.”

“You’ll give me forever, be together for our whole lives?”[42]

“Mn.”

Wei Wuxian’s smile goes soft and dim with sudden tears, and he leans up a little in Lan Wangji’s rms to brush a tender kiss against the man’s forehead, then his nose, then his cheek and his chin and a row of soft, peppery little kisses all along the arching column of his throat until he reaches cloth and collar and must stop, or strip Lan Zhan naked mid-air.

Well. He has plans for that, but that would involve –

“Then, Lan Zhan, wanna get married?”

~*~

That night, under the stars

Oh.

Oh-ho ho ho ho!

Sex. Is. Fantastic.

They’re gonna do it every day.

~*~

The next morning, in the bushes

“Lan-er-gege, wake up. Wake up, wake up, husband. Wake up and let me fuck you, my husband – you will, won’t you? I really wanna fuck you this time. You made me feel so good all night, Lan Zhan! I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it as good for you as you did for me, but I promise I’ll try…if you’ll let me.”

“Mn. Every day is every day.”

~*~

~*~

Qishan, 4 days before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The Yiling Laozu arrives

The Yiling Laozu arrives in robes of black silk edged in carmine, the colour of coagulating blood. Silver glints at his belt and in his hair, his boots are of supple sheepskin leather, lined with quilted silk inside. He carries Chenqing at his waist and Wuye in his hands, both weapons glowing from within as though built from the embers of a banked flame.

He comes to them like a young god or a great warrior. He comes on the day of death as the harbinger of their destruction. They rise as one to bend ninety degrees with folded arms and toast him in ardent welcome –

“Welcoming the Yiling Laozu! Welcoming Wei Wuxian! Welcoming to this auspicious gathering in his honour! All bless the great, the merciful, the generous Yiling Laozu! A thousand, thousand blessings to Xiandu, benevolent and serene, munificent, and gracious! Ten thousand, thousand blessings to Yiling Laozu, magnificent and glorious, compassionate, and unworldly! A hundred thousand blessings to all!”

~*~

~*~

~*~

Footnotes

[1] A unit of weight, roughly 50 grams. Used historically in China as a standard unit for payment/determining the value of currency. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tael

[2] “Strategy without tactics is the slowest rout to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – from The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

[3] Yes, I know he’s nearly 40, but to Qiren the kid will always be a kid XD

[4] The Kunlun mountain range in Asia, sometimes mythologically considered the origin point of the Yellow River. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunlun_Mountains

[5] Unit of length, approximately equal to a centimetre. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cun_(unit)

[6]  损人利己 (sǔn rén lì jǐ): “to seek benefit at the expense of others”. A chengyu (4-character-idiom).

[7] Da Hong Pao – a very famous green tea from China, one of the rarest and highest quality (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Hong_Pao). Yixing ware, or purple clay teapots, are a type of teaware best suited to darker teas, normally, but apparently Da Hong Pao is an exception due to its strong taste (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yixing_clay_teapot).

[8] 见利忘义 (jiàn lì wàng yì): “to forget integrity so as to achieve gain”. A chengyu.

[9] A famous Chinese idiom. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seek_truth_from_facts. Lan Wangji is both requesting Qiren for information. Whether he’s employing subtle flattery to get Qiren to spill the deets or warning his uncle to conceal nothing…that’s anyone’s guess. XD

[10] 星火燎原 (xīng huǒ liáo yuán): “a single spark creates a blaze. A chengyu.

[11] 知足常乐 (zhī zú cháng lè): “to be content with what you have”. A chengyu.

[12] 孟母三迁 (mèng mǔ sān qiān): “a wise mother works to find a healthy educational environment for her children”. A chengyu.

[13] 一蹴而就 (yī cù’ér jiù): “to be successful on the first try” – A chengyu.

[14] Imagery from the Faroe Islands. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8rv%C3%A1gsvatn

[15] 落英缤纷 (luò yīng bīn fēn): “flower petals that fall like snowflakes”. A chengyu.

[16] 沉鱼落雁 (chén yú luò yàn): “extremely beautiful”. A chengyu.

[17] 数一数二 (shǔ yī shǔ’èr): “the best; considered among the best”. A chengyu.

[18] 似懂非懂 (sì dǒng fēi dǒng): “to not fully understand”. A chengyu.

[19] 绝无仅有 (jué wú jǐn yǒu): “one of a kind; unique”. A chengyu.

[20] 独一无二 (dú yī wú’èr): “unique”. A chengyu. Why is everyone in this story an over-learned mofo? T.T

[21] shùn or shùnqǐng (瞬頃; 'blink moment')

[22] 无所不谈 (wú suǒ bù tán): “to talk about everything under the sun”. A chengyu.

[23] 厮守终生 (sīshǒu zhōngshēng): “to be together forever”. A chengyu.

[24] A very famous, classic chengyu, meaning rumour becomes fact if repeated often enough. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger

[25] Approximately a centimetre. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cun_(unit)

[26] This is me bastardising two separate quotations from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. The first is: Quickness is the essence of the war. The second is: He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

[27] From The Art of War by Sun Tzu

[28] Jianhong (健宏). 健 (jiàn) meaning "build, establish" combined with 宏 (hóng) meaning "wide, spacious, great, vast". This name can also be formed from other character combinations. Source: https://www.behindthename.com/names/gender/masculine/usage/chinese

[29] From The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

[30] Wen Ning is absolutely being a little shit here, since he is now mentally about thirty-five and therefore older than Wei Ying by 3-4 years.

[31] Double-second festival, or Longtaitou, celebrated on the second day of the second month in the Chinese calendar. It’s name means “Dragon raising its head”, which symbolises rain, agriculture, and the arrival of spring. As Wei Wuxian’s purification of the Burial Mounds effectively brought it back to life, I felt that this date would be the most auspicious and on-theme. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longtaitou_Festival

[32] There is no victory in winning a hundred battles. There is victory in subduing your enemy without fighting at all. – Sun Zi, Spring and Autumn Period

[33] Another name for the Jade Emperor, ruler of heaven and hence presumably in charge of all heavenly trials that cultivators must endure and resist in order to reach immortality and/or godhood. A common trope in wuxia and xianxia novels, also in ancient Chinese mythology. Additional reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Emperor

[34] Tian (heaven), Di (earth), Diyu (underworld)

[35] 不以为然 (bù yǐ wéi rán): “to consider something unacceptable”. A chengyu.

[36] The historical name for the country of China. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_China

[37] Chinese mile, equivalent to about half a kilometre. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(unit)

[38] As explained in Chapter 3, in ancient China, storytellers were also responsible for acting as town criers and newsmen.

[39] 一日为师，终身为父 (yī rì wèi shī, zhōngshēn wèi fù): “teacher for a day, father for a lifetime”.

[40] Even if he is technically older now, Wen Ning always feels like he’s Wei Wuxian’s younger brother.

[41] Bride price, delivered in red envelopes. A part of Chinese pre-wedding customs. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pre-wedding_customs

[42] 厮守终身 (sīshǒu zhōngshēn): “to be together for one’s whole life”. A chengyu, because trust Wei Wuxian’s over-educated ass to propose to his beloved in idioms. Don’t worry, Lan Wangji is Extremely Turned On by this.  

Chapter Text

~*~

~*~

The Sun Palace, 4 days before Wen Ruohan's big bash

The Yiling Laozu arrives in robes of black silk edged in carmine, the colour of coagulating blood. Silver glints at his belt and in his hair, his boots are of supple sheepskin leather, lined with quilted silk. He carries Chenqing at his waist and Wuye in his hands, both weapons glowing from within as though built from the embers of a banked flame.

He comes to them like a young god or a great warrior. He comes on the day of death as the harbinger of their destruction. Ignorant and eager, they rise as one to bend ninety degrees with folded arms and toast him in ardent welcome –

“Welcoming the Yiling Laozu! Welcoming Wei Wuxian! Welcoming him to this auspicious gathering in his honour! All bless the great, the merciful, the generous Yiling Laozu! A thousand, thousand blessings to Xiandu, benevolent and serene, munificent, and gracious! Ten thousand, thousand blessings to Yiling Laozu, magnificent and glorious, compassionate, and unworldly! A hundred thousand blessings to all!”

~*~

~*~

The Sun Palace, 3 days before Wen Ruohan's big bash

When Wei Wuxian arrives, Wen Qing sees him only at a distance, and then briefly for a moment during the formal greetings with the family.

The welcoming ceremonies rush past so that she has no time, in between the endless bowing and toasting, to observe him up close. In fact, she entirely misses the moment when he first sees her. By the time she gets to greet him properly, he has already pasted a mask of genteel courtesy on his face that feels so wrong that she wants to immediately rip it off with a violence that surprises even her.

The rest of the night goes by in a blur; she is tired from the constant work of the last three months. They have all been labouring tirelessly in Qishan to keep up with the responsibility of hosting the festivities in honour of the Yiling Laozu’s ascension after passing his heavenly trial and purifying the Burial Mounds. It’s been a thankless, joyless time for the residents of the Sun Palace,[1] even if everyone outside it has the freedom to be openly happy about something good finally happening in the jianghu.

Yet, she understands the necessity for all this pomp and show, and also why it must be the Wen who act as hosts. If they don’t weaken the sect internally, Uncle will lead them straight into violent disaster. Wen Qing does not want to burn to death; she wants even less to see the last of her family fall to the jianghu’s collective fury because no one can or will stop her uncle before he goes too far.

The next morning, she wakes early. Even on feast days – or especially on feast days, the work doesn’t end. Medical cultivation, unlike other forms, is not a vocation or even a job. It is a lifestyle of its own kind, for the work never ends and one is never on holiday or free of duty and responsibility. Unlike others, medical cultivators do not get drunk or otherwise intoxicated, nor do they eat richly and to excess. With their lovers, they practice a form of dual cultivation that is structured towards refining the quality of balance in their qi, uniting yin and yang together, instead of gathering only the pure force of yang qi like all cultivators except the Nie.

The Nie, as every inner member of the Wen clan knows, are special. A special type of hypocrite, that is, sentencing themselves and their best disciples to early and agonising deaths instead of doing the truly righteous thing.

Do they think no one is aware of the resentment they cultivate in their swords?

The Xiandu certainly knows. He has even exploited it to his gain, knowing that Nie Mingjue would rather preserve his father’s reputation than avenge his life. What else could be expected from such an orthodox, filial son?

Wen Qing does not approve of either the Nie way of cultivation or the ham-fisted way in which her uncle delivered chastisement. She is a healer, and she knows not how to be a killer.

This has not always been true.  

Growing up, Wen Qing had imagined many things about Wei Wuxian. What he would look like, how he would speak and move, the way he would conduct himself. It had been necessary to; ever since her little brother had woken up one morning with a soul that was both his, and not yet his, inhabiting his body.

Such a thing couldn’t be hidden when one was a member of the Dafan Wen medical clan. Wen Ning’s secret had soon been discovered, and Wen Qing had gone from A-jie to A-mei practically overnight. Not in public, it wouldn’t do to have anyone outside their immediate family find out. Not even really in private, because she hadn’t been able to hide her feelings about the changes in her brother adequately, and so he had taken it upon himself to ensure that the established balance between them never shifted.

Just like a grown-up.

After the initial shock wore off, however, she began to find herself somehow unaccountably relieved. A-Ning, newly turned eight, had been an extremely timid child. She had loved him with her whole heart, but tied up in the love was the constant compulsion to wrap him up in soft quilted blankets and lock him away someplace he’d come to no harm. He had been like a little mouse – easily stepped on if one wasn’t looking carefully. To their cousins, he’d been a toy to be batted about at whim.

Twenty-six-year-old Wen Ning was so different. His soul was out of alignment, for one, in ways that gave her father sleepless nights and kept her mother close to home, doting on her children instead of healing others. This was not something that Wen Qing, then only sixteen, was supposed to know. But she had always had her own way of getting around rules, limitations, direct orders, or even suggestions that didn’t perfectly translate to her own desires.

She had always been sure that that was what set her apart from her brother the most, aside from his lack of boldness. He had never had a problem with aptitude, only the application of it. Now, here he was, proving himself a genius at archery, competent at medicine, knowledgeable in herbs and surprisingly, the care of non-cultivators.

It was this last observation that had finally prompted her to corner him directly instead of spying around corners.

It’s been nearly ten years since then. She’s turned twenty-five already and earned a reputation as the foremost healer of Qishan Wen. She has become the apple of her uncle’s rather terrifying eye, and even Wen Chao keeps himself in line around her. Yet all these years later, the memory of A-Ning’s patiently amused air of I-was-only-waiting-for-you-to-ask still rankles.

No one likes being condescended to by their little brother. She’d taken the advantage of greater size and a stronger golden core to pin him down and tickle him stupid till he’d begged for mercy, and then she’d kept him pinned till he spilled every last drop of rotten milk in his belly.

Then she had promptly turned around and vomited all over his feet, making him take care of her when he had been the one who – died. After she had heaved enough that not even bile would emerge, she had made herself stop her own whirling thoughts. Had washed her face and A-Ning’s feet, all the while forcing herself to say the word over and over, till it sank into her consciousness like a pre-established fact of the world. She was a practical girl, necessary for training to be a doctor who had already begun to care for the dying.

A-Ning had died.

It was important that she be able to carry this burden for her own brother, or she would not be able to help him or heal him in the future. Because of course he needed healing. He didn’t say much about his own feelings on everything that had happened to him – all of them – in his previous life. But Wen Qing had always been a prodigy, a tiny adult by the time she was ten years old. She could handle another child who was just like her.

But A-Ning was not exactly like her, was he? Even then, she had chastised herself first before thinking of anything else.

A-Ning had died. Her uncle’s ambition had started them down the road that would lead to A-Ning’s death, but it was Jin Guangshan’s people who had dragged him over the line. It was terrible enough, to hear of A-Ning coming to such an end. But that had not been enough, not the true end.

A-Ning had died, and then instead of being allowed to move on and find peace or reincarnate, he had been forced back into his own body, because of her. He had lived for years as a dead-but-not-quite-dead thing. Not quite a person, not at all a beast, but something in between. In possession of himself, but possessed by someone else – a master.

Because she had been too selfish and too attached, like a mother unable to let go of her child, or a child unable to let go of her favourite doll. Which had it been? Which was it now that might lead her to make the same mistakes twice?

It was not appropriate. She had understood this much. Though she had never been very powerful, she was nevertheless an expert cultivator even as a teenager, in complete control of her own qi and that of any patient she was treating. She had been trained thoroughly in how to use this qi for the benefit of others. Therefore, she knew well that there were lines that were drawn especially for medical cultivators, rules about things they could not do and things they should not do.

Wen Qing had, truthfully, never paid attention to these things. Had considered them to be stupid, useless restrictions and never sought to attain any deep understanding of medical ethics.

Ethics, she had always avowed, did not help save lives. But she had always been secure, because of the talent that was almost divine, of succeeding at any procedure she attempted at first try. Healing was easy – so easy that she had begun to grow impatient though she hadn’t yet been fully qualified as a master. Already, she had started to invent shortcuts, faster and newer ways of treating patients, focusing always on healing the wounded body in front of her.

Only after hearing A-Ning’s story had she understood that she had lost sight of the most important thing a healer should keep in mind when doing their work – the patient’s well-being in the long term, the scars borne after the wound healed, the care of their body and mind after physical ailments were cured.

He did not say as much to her, but even at sixteen she’d been advanced enough to comprehend the scope of her mistakes – no, truthfully, they should be called crimes – in full.

The name of her victim was Wei Wuxian. The very same Wei Wuxian who had later gone on to save them, believing he owed her a debt. She had taken his golden core from him.

At her present age she of course understands fully why her brother had told her the unvarnished truth back then despite her being only sixteen. Without this knowledge, she would never have understood why she needed to be deeply grateful to Wei Wuxian instead of resenting him for equalling – if not supplanting – her place in A-Ning’s esteem.

Without the consequent guilt, she would certainly have refused to give her word that never in this lifetime or any other would she perpetuate the Golden Core Transfer Theory or anything like it, ever again.

Eventually, when she was able to keep the sick feeling at bay long enough to retain some objectivity, she asked to know more about Wei Wuxian. The story Wen Ning had told her had been long enough without him painting a detailed portrait of every character with a playing part, let alone the starring role, for all that he seemed to be made of literally everything amazing and utterly wonderful, to hear A-Ning tell it.

He made it sound like Wei Wuxian was the centre of gravity around which everything revolved. She had remarked so to him, and he had only laughed and told her that Wei Wuxian tended to create his own gravity, if the forces in control of where he was didn’t work to his liking.

She has therefore been expecting someone loud and brash, who acts for attention and revels in it. Someone arrogant. Yet he must be righteous and kind, too, given everything Wen Ning has told her about their years in the Burial Mounds together with a few other straggling remnants of a clan that currently outnumbers every other twice or even thrice over.

But the portrait has always been incomplete. It doesn’t seem possible such that such a wealth of contradictions could be real, or form a complete person.

She’s not sure if she’s anticipating their meeting this morning or dreading it. For so long, she’s lived with the awareness that she owes her present comfortable circumstances to whatever changes Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have been working behind the scenes of their society. According to A-Ning, they have accomplished this not with political trickery nor any back-door deals, but solely through acts of cultivation both small and great.

From erecting a barrier that can repel a Waterborne Abyss, to purifying the Burial Mounds, to just going out into the world and protecting the common people – how only these few things can write such sweeping changes into existence, Wen Qing doesn’t know. But she acknowledges that it is impressive. She does not need to speculate on the personal power both men carry – their qi crashes and roars around the entire city, a swirling hurricane of energies locked in an intricate dance of dominance and submission invisible to anyone but an expert healer.

The path over the 9-turn bridge[2] to their quarters is long and twisting. Wushang Sheng Hall[3], designated for guests that require the Xiandu’s particular attention, is situated at the far end of the Sun Palace, between orchards still heavy with late persimmons, bordering the gardens of Baosheng Hall[4] where the healers are already at work.

It is a pleasant walk even early in the bracing springtime air. From the grounds, the wind carries the herby, earthy scent of harvested ginseng and ripened goji berries to lull the unwary visitor into a false sense of security and harmony.

Wen Ning is waiting for her at the heavy gates made of the native elm found in Qishan[5], stained dark and bound in wrought-iron painted black and gold. She follows him into the courtyard stocked artfully with exotic trees and flowering shrubs from Tianzhu and Nanyang – the citrus bloom of mango and oranges blends in luscious harmony with the rich, heavy aromas of white jasmine and yellow tuberose.[6] The benches and tables scattered under the most picturesque spots are of dark red sandalwood[7], the light sweetness cutting a refreshing contrast to the otherwise heavily-scented flora.

She has had half a lifetime to prepare for this meeting. Like any good doctor, it is not in her nature to delay the inevitable. She takes a single deep breath and crosses the threshold, entering at last the personage of the Yiling Laozu and his companion, Wushan Youqin.

Wei Wuxian is resplendent in dark blue silk this morning, edged with the same congealed-blood red for his underlayers and the lining of his fluttering sleeves as he’d worn the previous night, decked out with silver and jade ornaments once again. His mouth is curved in a restrained, friendly grin that appears like a mask, for his features carry a natural ebullience that can’t be hidden. No matter where this man goes, she feels instinctively that he will draw all ears and eyes, inviting lively controversy.

He is far lovelier in appearance than she had imagined, and yet his beauty does not lie in the delicate sharpness of his face or the carefree grace of his gestures when he moves to greet her. It is something undefinable, perhaps held in the way he slants his eyes with a stunning depth of affection at Lan-er-gongzi, with whom he had arrived hand-in-hand, and sly mischief at everyone else. Or perhaps it’s in those clear eyes which sparkle with a suggestion of secrets known and not told.

A calamitous beauty indeed, she thinks wryly. So, this is what A-Ning meant.

She’s hard pressed not to be consumed by jealousy. Even in his looks he manages to outdo her; why wouldn’t A-Ning want this magnificent specimen of humanity as his sibling? It’s a wonder he hasn’t latched onto Lan Wangji too, who is equally stunning, albeit in a more ethereal way.

The immensity of Wei Wuxian’s qi is such that she can sense the forcefield of it stretching across the entirety of Buyetian, suffusing the palace and the city beyond with a perfectly balanced blend of yin pushing against yang, yang pushing against yin – an oscillation that she diagnoses is likely to continue till he himself reaches a hand in and breaks its rhythm.

By simply standing here with his refined ocean-ful of energy unleashed instead of tightly bound within the physical contours of his body, he is doing more for the city and its inhabitants than she has managed in her entire lifetime.

With envy firmly locked out of the way, what’s left in her heart should humble her. The guilt that she has carried around on her back like a pack animal should be weighing her down till she has no choice but to bend over in supplication and beg his forgiveness for everything she did to him – or would have done to him if he had not changed both their destinies.

Instead, completely fed up for some totally inexplicable reason, she snaps, “Wei Wuxian, you idiot!” before catching herself, horrified.

He stares and stares, before asking, in a voice that sounds like music itself – why is that, she despairs – “And you don’t remember a thing, do you?”

She chances a look at A-Ning, who’s apparently been learning the art of stone-facedness from Lan Wangji, for all the help he gives her. Left to her own devices, she simply nods. And then snaps again, apropos of abso-fucking-lutely nothing, “Do I need to remember to know what a moron you are? It’s written all over your face.”

She draws back even more, even more horrified at herself. What is happening. WHY is it happening.

Fortunately for her frayed nerves, Wei Wuxian bursts out laughing right into her startled face. Not so fortunately, he keeps at it till she’s genuinely afraid he’ll choke on his own lack of breath. The idiot.

Again? Where is that coming from?

Wei Wuxian is still laughing himself sick. She wants to hit him, and she has no idea why all three men present find it top-notch hilarious that she apparently was born with an instinct to (metaphorically) skewer the first and only immortal to appear in the jianghu since Baoshan Sanren.

Or maybe she’d been born with a special urge to (metaphorically) skewer Wei Wuxian specifically, who’s still going on, the fucking hyena.

Wen Qing is also breaking her personal record for swearing this morning, thanks to the moron, she thinks resentfully, giving in to whatever madness has taken hold of her.

“Ah, Wen Qing, never change,” Wei Wuxian chortles, finally sitting up straight. He brushes tears out of the corners of his phoenix-tilted eyes and his laugh softens into a proper grin, wide and deliberately beguiling. It suits him far better. She much prefers it when he looks at her this way, like she’s the supposed elder sister he’s supposedly supposed to be terrified of, instead of some stranger he needs to be polite with.

Xiwangmu above and Yan Wang below, she’s never even met the man before now. What is wrong with her? It occurs to her that she might get answers if she bothered to get them out of her head instead of freaking out semi-privately.

“What’s wrong with me?” she demands, therefore, of all three idiots. “I don’t know you” – she points at Wei Wuxian – “or you.” Her finger moves towards Lan Wangji, who hasn’t broken his blank face yet, which her elder sibling instincts take as a surefire sign that he too is laughing at her wholesale on the inside. “So why am I acting like I do?”

Wei Wuxian finally sobers a little, though the smile refuses to leave his face. “Ah, who knows, Wen Qing? I’ve gotten into the habit of not questioning my blessings, you know?”

“You’re a blessing?” she asks tartly. She can’t see the benefit here; if she’s seen or overheard acting overly familiar with the Yiling Laozu in this place, her uncle will have her drowned in a pig pen.

Wei Wuxian laughs again, and even Lan Wangji’s face finally cracks to reveal the slightest curve of lips.

Once again, Wen Qing is slapped in the face by breathtaking beauty. It’s getting irritating, but also a little funny the longer this goes on. She finds to her surprise that she’s almost having fun, even if her heart is drumming loud enough to be heard outside her chest.

“Ah, A-jie, you were always like this with him, you know?” A-Ning finally chimes in with misty eyes, as though he’s seeing a favourite play that had been lost to time. It occurs to her that perhaps that isn’t far from the truth.

She shakes her head in denial, clinging to propriety and dignity with fingers curved into talons. “It is not appropriate for me to behave in this way.”

“And why not? Even if we just met, Wen Ning is like my little brother, you know! Which makes you Qing-jie!” Wei Wuxian cajoles. He’s very tempting; Wen Qing can almost see herself ordering him around to do this or that, to take better care of himself, to feed him medicine and chase him with her needles so she can ensure he’s healthy from head to toe.

She shakes herself out of it. This boy – no, a man, she reminds herself that he must be mentally in his thirties by now – has been a victim of hers. She cannot let this continue until he has received acknowledgement of that fact, even if he seems to have entirely forgotten about it. A-Ning had warned her that Wei Wuxian rarely bore grudges and never over offences against himself. But that still doesn’t make what she did right.

Instead of answering straightforwardly, she lifts her arms and bends over till her forehead sinks into the lush pile of Anxi[8] carpet that covers the polished hardwood. Across the perfumed zitan kang table, she can hear but not see Wei Wuxian’s body shifting, the silk of his robes rustling like soft leaves in a summer breeze, can sense his alarm before he opens his mouth.

This one really needed a firm hand, she sighs, and decides to indeed go on as she’d begun. “I need to apologise, and you need to hear it. So you’re going to shut up and listen, all right?” she says – or orders – still bent over in a kowtow.

“…fine, butgetthefuckupalready, get up, get up, I can’t bear to watch this, I’ll actually walk out,” Wei Wuxian protests in such obvious panic that she’s forced to unbend herself and get back up to deal with him directly.

Damn it. Apologies are far easier to give when one isn’t looking one’s victim in the eye.

“You’ll stay here, and you’ll keep your mouth shut till I’m done,” she threatens him, straightening her sleeves.

It’s Lan Wangji who answers, opening his mouth for the first time today. “He will.” And then he buttons back up, only this time his hand rests firmly over Wei Wuxian’s thigh, as though pinning him in place like a bug on a stick.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian gasps, theatricality oozing from every pore. “Betrayed by my own husband -!”

Wen Qing chokes.

Husband?

Husband??!!

When had THAT happened?

And why hadn’t A-Ning told her that Wei Wuxian was in fact a complete, uncontrollable menace?

She can recognise little brothers deflecting when she sees it happening right under her nose, however, and refuses to get distracted, fouling all of his plans. It gives her great pleasure to discomfit him so, which is also not appropriate when the discussion at hand is the systematic destruction of a human being that she set into motion.

She steers them back firmly. “Leave your husband alone, Wei Wuxian.”

It’s his turn to choke on his own bullshit now, which she also ignores. “I will speak to you as though you are someone I have always known, even if my knowledge only comes from A-Ning’s memories of a time I have never experienced.”

To her relief he finally subsides and nods gravely, though he appears uncomfortable still.

She’s prepared well for this day, for of course she knew it was long coming. A-Ning wouldn’t have countenanced otherwise. Her little brother has grown into a man who keeps all his loved ones very, very close.

It feels strange to deliver an apology for something she has done and yet has not done. Since she herself carries no memory of the events, she has had to rely solely on her brother’s retelling to piece the facts together in her head and to imagine what she must have been thinking or feeling. But she can’t be sure of guessing correctly, as she has never had to live through such circumstances.

Additionally, she has never been a well-spoken woman, always too blunt and impatient with people who can’t keep up with her or annoy her. Hence, Wen Qing took the time to write out what she wants to say. It’s this paper she now slips out of her sleeve and unrolls, and begins to read –

“I will harken back to the words of Wen Mao, founder of Qishan Wen, father of all Wen. Wen Mao declared that all those who oppress others and do evil relying on the power of their house should be killed. Not only that, they should be beheaded for tens of thousands to revile so that those to come would beware.

I am a doctor of Qishan Wen, and I have done evil. Using the power and education given to me by my clan, I cut the golden core out of a living young man, and gave it away to his brother.

Arrogant in the gifts given to me by my ancestors, I believed that only half a chance of succeeding was worth risking the lives of two young men who, if they had fallen under my knife, would have taken the end of Yunmeng Jiang with them.

Secure in the future bestowed upon me by my uncle, resenting that his enemy had come to my gates for shelter, I acted out of self-interest instead of working for my patient’s well-being once I had accepted him into my care.

I am ashamed to use that word. I did not care enough to check him for other injuries, though he’d been whipped and strangled. I did not care enough to tell him how to look after his body without his former strength. I did not care enough to tell him that he would live for a vastly shorter and more painful time. I did not care enough to send word to those who cared for him that I had known of his fate.

I did not care enough to even consider whether a living human should have to endure a torment I cannot imagine for two days and nights, though I was the one to inflict it upon him myself.

A young man, tired and broken and bleeding came to me, a doctor, for help, and I repaid him by harming him further and taking away his only source of strength. I will name this young man who is – has been – the victim of my crimes and my negligence. His name is Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian of Yiling. I wished to apologise, and to ask for forgiveness, but on recounting my crimes, I find that I am not worthy of your mercy. To Wei Wuxian, my life is yours – from this day onward tell me what to do and I will obey without question, if you wish to give me mercy.

To Wei Wuxian, if you think I cannot be forgiven, I beg you to heed my ancestor’s words and cut off my head, so that tens of thousands may know the evil they must not commit.

To Wei Wuxian, finally, if the burden of executing me is not something you wish to carry, cut off my hands, so that they may never again do evil in this life.”

~*~

Wei Wuxian has heard enough. Take a slave, cut off a head, cut off hands?

“And how is any of that supposed to help?” he wonders. “Can I just execute the favourite niece of Wen Ruohan in her own home, no matter who I am? Can I just take your hands and leave you worse than crippled – leave you utterly useless to save me or anyone else if there is a need for the best doctor in the jianghu? All the lives you’ll never be able to save – am I to carry that sin for you now?”

Wen Qing startles, as though she’d never considered any of that while busily telling him what she thought was the best course of the future for them all. He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or indulge in anger – she is very much as she’d always been. Arrogant, assured of herself and the supremacy of her own judgement even when flying in the face of all common sense.

Not that different from Jiang Cheng and Yu-furen, if he’s being honest. Perhaps that was why he’d gravitated towards her and Wen Ning in the first place, because they reminded him of home, but with fewer thorns.

Wen Qing, meanwhile, bows her head in shame. “Forgive me,” she begs. “I’m always forcing you to carry my sins for me, am I not? How come you don’t hate me already?”

Wei Wuxian sends an astonished look towards Wen Ning, who returns it with a calm face, as though nothing unexpected is happening. “Always forcing me? Wen Ning, just what the hell have you been telling her?”

It’s Wen Qing who answers him. “It isn’t just what I did to you, Yiling Laozu. It’s also what I made you do.”

This revert to a more formal distance and form of address – Wei Wuxian hates it, is already confused and gets even more upset. “Stop calling me that! And you didn’t make me do anything – no one makes me -”

She brings him up short with one word. One name. “Wen Ning.”

He goes still as frozen water, not expecting her to bring up that. He feels suddenly fragile, like a single wrong step will make him crack and splinter. Only Lan Zhan’s warm presence by his side, his hand on his thigh and qi curling protectively, possessively around him like the heavy coils of a Bashe.[9] Lan Zhan squeezes him gently, just enough to make him feel cocooned and safe.

With her extraordinary sensitivity to the movement of qi, Wen Qing senses what is happening at once, though she carefully keeps it off her face. Now is not the time or place.

“I am speaking about A-Ning,” she repeats, a little hoarse with either emotion, or already having spoken more than usual this morning. “I have been informed that I begged you to bring him back. No, Yiling Laozu. Wei Wuxian. There are some questions that should not be asked in the first place.”

Lan Wangji stops him before he can protest. “Wen-guniang is correct.”

Wei Wuxian winces. Even Wen Ning raises his eyebrows, though he continues to watch quietly, not interfering. By not addressing Wen Qing as a doctor, Lan Wangi is indirectly saying that he does not consider her qualified to be one.

Wen Qing latches onto this with relief, however. “You understand. It was unpardonably selfish.”

Lan Wangji agrees. “Harmed many people.”

“It was completely insane. It sounds completely insane!”

Lan Wangji only hums in further assent.

“Oi!” Wei Wuxian finally breaks in, displeased. He jabs at Lan Wangji’s ribs with a pointy finger. Don’t ignore me. It is promptly caught, brought to his lips, and kissed softly on the tip, making him squeak and blush and hide his face for a moment before Lan Wangji recalls him to the table and the rather serious conversation they’re having.

Wen Qing looks faintly appalled at having to witness all this sugar-syrup sweetness, while Wen Ning – where is Wen Ning?

Oh, in the corner again with his face turned heavenward, pretending he’s achieved enlightenment. For some reason, this feels like a familiar scene to Wei Wuxian, though he can say with full certainty that it’s never happened before.

Wei Wuxian scowls, blushing harder than before, and gets up to bodily drag the man back and shove him down onto his seat. “Stay!” he mutters in embarrassment, before turning huffily to the other two – “And what’s all this bullshit about Wen Qing, Lan Zhan? What life did she ruin, exactly? Jin Zixuan’s? Shijie’s? Yours? My own? No matter what, it was my choice to do it or not!”

His gaze hardens then, but his voice remains gentle, even containing a hint of a plea, to understand something one has never themselves experienced. “You’ve never had a younger brother or sister, Lan Zhan. You don’t know what it’s like, to be a parent in absentia for someone who is both like your child and your best friend and your worst enemy, all bundled into one cute little package that runs around pestering you, calling you jiejie or gege! Not that Jiang Cheng ever called me gege, but that’s exactly how it is. Wen Qing – you shouldn’t have asked, but I’m the one who agreed.”

Lan Wangji does not understand, and has been too angry ever since he found out that Wen Qing had cut out Wei Ying’s core and given it to Jiang Wanyin. “Foolish,” he glares at the two of them, refusing to be budged.

What he knows, they do not.

Perhaps Wen Ning is aware as well, because he does not make a single motion or whisper to protect either of his siblings.

Instead, he speaks in support of Lan Wangji. “He’s right. The two of you were incredibly stupid. You have no idea – you were both dead. Deader than I, how could there be such a thing? And yet, it was and wasn’t. Do you know, Wei-ge, that ever since you brought me back, I was always aware of your golden core?”

The information lands between the four of them like a thunderclap on a sunny afternoon, and has much the same effect.

“Do you know what Jiang Wanyin did with it?”

Wei Wuxian finally goes quiet, as though silenced into behaving by the booming of a gong at a state funeral.

Wen Ning does not stop, knowing that he is bound to deliver pain. Though he is not a doctor, he knows that when you amputate a limb, you do it quickly and cleanly. “The harm done to Wei-ge’s reputation, Jin Zixuan and his family, we already know. We are not going to dispute it. I do not know how you died, Wei-ge. The rumours all said that Jiang Wanyin killed you.”

“He never refuted it,” Lan Wangji interjects here.

“He didn’t,” Wei Wuxian corrects. “He led the siege that day, I think he felt obligated to. Even without obligation he was mad enough after Shijie…anyway. He didn’t kill me, whatever you heard. If he didn’t refute it, perhaps he felt guilty. That would be his way.”

Lan Wangji notes what he doesn’t say and lets it go, his eyes promising later reckoning.

Wen Ning goes on, unaware of this brief byplay. “Perhaps, or perhaps he enjoyed the glory and prestige of being known as your vanquisher. People hated you for what happened at Qiongqi Path, Wei-ge. No one blamed me. When they held me and experimented on me, I was just a thing. they heaped all the blame squarely on you.”

“Jiang Wanyin had many recruits after the siege. Yunmeng Jiang was built upon your remains,” Lan Wangji adds, taking over. “He swore he would eradicate demonic cultivation. He tried his best.”

Wen Ning picks up the thread and continues sawing. “He tortured people, Wei-ge. Some of them were demonic cultivators, seeking to bring you back or to become you, and they definitely deserved to die, if not like that. But most of them were just people. I saw all, I heard all, I felt everything. Half my consciousness in my body, the other half seeking what it knew to be most familiar. Something which once belonged to you. Back then, we both know that you were my master just as much as you were – and are – my brother.

“I felt Jiang Wanyin’s pleasure, his rage and how much he enjoyed wreaking it, how strong he felt when he could fantasise that he had killed you again, and again, and again. He saw you in every peasant wearing black, or skilled with a flute, every rogue cultivator who relied on talismans because they couldn’t afford a sword. He hunted them down, and he killed them all in all the ways he wanted to kill you, but you weren’t there. They were. He wasn’t eradicating anything save the memory of you in his own head.

“A-jie. Wei-ge. Wei Wuxian. Do you still not understand what it is the two of you really did? There are some laws of nature and man that should not be broken. Wei-ge, you’ve always been strong even without a golden core. You have never understood that a golden core means power, not simple magic. Did you stop to think for one moment what kind of person Jiang Wanyin was, before you decided to take all your power and give it to him?

“Not only that, you then didn’t impress upon him the weight of your sacrifice and the debt he, his sister, and his entire sect owed you. And us.  

“You let him off free of charge after giving him everything, and let him use it any way he pleased instead of controlling him enough to at least enforce common decency, even when it would have saved our lives. So what if he’d had to live with the shame of what you’d done? As long as we could also live alongside, wasn’t the sacrifice of his reputation worth it?

“Instead of teaching him better, you let him go on thinking he was allowed to exist in this world without repaying his debts or fulfilling his obligations. We betrayed our own sect, threw away all of our filial obligations to our families and our ancestors when I saved you two and your sect leaders’ bodies and brought you to my sister, whatever else happened afterwards. We became traitors for you! Jiang Wanyin and Jiang Yanli – they owed us.

“And you just let them slither out of their debt after taking so much care to repay – what? A debt owed for food and clothing and basic education? All the things you yourself gave A-Yuan, on top of kindness and the love of a father? Why is it that all gifts flowed only one way, Wei-ge? At what point does selflessness become selfishness?  

“You let Jiang Wanyin live in ignorance so he could do whatever he wanted while you carried his burden alone, and then you decided to add A-jie’s insane demands to that. What dead thing wants to be alive, Wei-ge? Even angry ghosts only resent the living. Look where it got all of us!”

Wen Ning trails off, breathing hard.

Wei Wuxian slumps like a marionette with its strings cut. Lan Wangji catches and wraps his arms around him, a grounding weight.  

“I…” His throat works around it, but no other sound emerges.

He doesn’t know what to say. What he can say, let alone what he should. He doesn’t even know what kind of face he’s making. He’s been stunned stupid; he feels like a doll stuffed with cottonwool or straw. A dry husk of a thing. Easily put to fire, easily blown away with the wind.

“Out,” he hears Lan Wangji command. The rustle of clothing, shuffling steps and a door creaking open, then knocking back into place and the soft zing of silencing talismans reactivating.

Lan Zhan doesn’t ask him to speak. Simply holds him down, close, and blankets his qi over them both until warm comfort sinks into Wei Wuxian’s skin, his flesh and finally, his bones. Then he feels real again, a participant of the world once more instead of something make-believe.

“Ah, Lan Zhan, I really did fuck things up, no?” he laughs wetly and realises only then that he’s close to tears. “Ah, fuck. I wasn’t expected to get yelled at today. Not by Wen Ning, anyway.”

Lan Wangji says nothing, only hugs him tighter, but Wei Wuxian can guess at what he’s being too nice to say out loud.

“You agree with him.” He sighs. “Of course you do. To be honest, so do I. I had no right to drag him back to his body and trap him there. His will was his own only so long as I didn’t need to use his body as my weapon or shield. And his body - ! He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, didn’t need to breathe unless he needed to also speak.”

He shudders all over as the true horror of what he’d done to Wen Ning seeps into his bones and leaves them frozen, limbs locked into place even as he trembles, his vivid mind easily imagining the same fate being visited upon himself.

“A sentient fierce corpse. The fuck was I thinking? It’s torture, Lan Zhan! I’m going to have to apologise to him,” he mutters, and finds relief and support in Lan Wangji’s low hum of agreement.

Lan Zhan never lies to him nor tries to coddle him, but is always there to catch him even when he falls.

Wei Wuxian stays in his husband’s arms a while longer, seeking comfort, trying to come to terms with what he’s just realised. He had never considered morality when the time had come to decide what to do about Jiang Cheng’s ruined cultivation. Had only felt fingers digging into his neck, his breath being squeezed out of his body. Panicking at the thought of more of the same, cringing like a small rodent at the idea of being whipped again by Zidian, though it had no wielder.

No, he hadn’t considered morality. If he’s honest with himself – and in this life he tries his utmost to be – he doesn’t think he would have considered it ever, when it came to Jiang Cheng’s life or cultivation. He simply hadn’t known what else to do – Jiang Cheng had been his to protect by order of his sect leader, and he’d been harmed under his watch. It had been Wei Wuxian’s responsibility to fix it, he’d thought. That was the true debt he owed.

Today is a serendipitous day. His mind wanders to Wen Qing, then drifts to the ways in which she is both similar to and different from Jiang Cheng. Then he thinks of something else, and sits up properly, frowning.

“Lan Zhan,” he asks slowly. “Did you kick them out because I threw a fit? You bad boy!” He takes the time to drop a quick kiss onto his husband’s nose, then his lips, before yelling, “Wen Ning, get back in here so I can apologise to you!”

Wen Ning bursts in before he can get the first “I’m sorry” out fully.

“Don’t bother,” the other man says. “If you really want to apologise to me, Wei-ge, do as I say and live for your own sake this time, all right?”

Behind him, his sister trails in, shamefaced. “I’m sorry,” she says simply. “It’s what I should have said earlier. The two most important words anyone can say -”

“- sorry and thank you,” Wei Wuxian finishes for her, a small smile blooming across his lips. “You told me that once before, in another life.”

“Then let me say it now, Wei Wuxian.” She bows, formal and sincere, without any of the deliberately ceremonial formality with which she’d conducted herself earlier. “I am sorry for – for everything.  And thank you…also, for everything.” She smiles, and it transforms her whole face into something warm and open, a look that he’s seen before directed only at A-Yuan.

His heart feels so full he might burst out crying again, or he might laugh. He does neither, instead opting to pull brother and sister into each arm, hugging them close and whispering back –

“I’m sorry too, and thank you.”

~*~

After everyone calms down, Wen Ning takes them through the agenda of the final days of feasting. Though Wei Wuxian knows it already from his reports, all four present are aware that events like these have a way of taking on a life of their own.

It takes as little as one guest with a bent towards strife or chaos for things to go awry, and here some of the most vicious troublemakers in the jianghu are in attendance. No doubt after days of only each other’s over-familiar company, everyone is ripe for some trouble, even if they must invent it themselves. And there is more than one person at this gathering with little to no love lost for him.

Today, he is expected to watch the winners of the jianghu-wide tournament show off their talent in the arts of painting, music, and poetry. Later, there is a variety of entertainments arranged for the revellers. An opera and a theatre, before the evening feast begins.

The afternoon passes by pleasantly enough in watching the showcases, all the talented youths living up to their professed skills, before everyone leaves to their respective quarters to rest. 

Between the packed schedule and late nights, Wei Wuxian expects to be left alone for few short hours remaining before the feast that evening. Consequently, he is rather surprised to find Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen standing outside their courtyard, awaiting permission to enter.

Caught helpless, he doesn’t what to do other than wave them in and invite them to have tea.

Bringing them inside, he promptly leaves them to Lan Wangji’s tender hospitality while retreating to the bedroom to freak out. Not much; just a little bit, though he thinks he’s allowed a very large freakout at having to encounter all these old and known faces after avoiding them for almost a decade.

What if they hate me? he wonders unbidden, and then wants to know why the hell he should want anyone’s approval. The answer makes itself known almost instantly – because they are Lan Zhan’s family. He must at least try to make a good impression, even if Lan Zhan won’t care. Or perhaps that’s exactly why he ought to put in an effort.

His fit of anxiety over, he checks his appearance in the mirror to ensure nothing’s out of order, and saunters out to meet his in-laws. Seeing the open doors and windows, he goes to shut them first in order to activate the silencing talismans he’s pasted around the frames – the limitations of working within the dimensions of someone else’s home.

Then he turns to greet the men who, in another life, helped murder him. He is not left to do it alone. Before he can sweep into a bow, his arm is clasped within Lan Wangji’s who then slides that same arm around his waist and turns to face his uncle and brother.

“Shufu, Xiongzhang,” he greets quietly. “We married yesterday.”

Wei Wuxian wants to throw a guqin at his head. Way to make your uncle like me, Lan Zhan! Surreptitiously, he pinches his husband’s side, getting absolutely no reaction at all. Mean!

Surprisingly, it’s Lan Xichen who opens his mouth as though he’s about to explode, though at a touch from his uncle’s finger, he subsides. Lan Qiren’s eyes have zeroed in on Wei Wuxian’s fingers pinching his nephew’s waist like a hawk’s. He then lifts his gaze to meet his eyes evenly, but something about the set of his mouth and shoulders suggests simply that he is exhausted.

“You did not bow to your family, Wangji,” is all he says. “That was amiss of you. We must rectify it soon. Aside from that, of course, I welcome you into our clan and family,” this last is addressed to Wei Wuxian.

At once, there are three sets of eyes staring at the man in incredulity.

That’s it? Where did all his fire go?

Lan Qiren only shifts his shoulders, so infinitesimally it could hardly be called a shrug and yet nevertheless gave that impression. “Did you expect me to turn you away, when it means Wangji would never return home if I did?”

He even sounds tired, Wei Wuxian thinks, frowning as he takes in the full appearance of the two men in front of him. As he looks, a memory of how they used to be superimposes on their current forms. The mismatch in posture and demeanour is so great it puts him at a loss for anything to say, leaving them all standing around in awkward silence, since Lan Wangji refuses to break it, and his uncle has clearly said his piece already.

Lan Xichen, wonder of wonders, appears actually hesitant to speak. More than that – he appears as though he is watching a half-stranger when he looks at Lan Wangji, treating him with a strange mixture of awe and wariness like he’s in the vicinity of a wild dragon. Behind, Wei Wuxian can see a child’s longing for something they have been told they never can have, but not why.

All this is troubling, worse than troubling, to Wei Wuxian. To see these three who used to be of one mind, motive, and heart, so divided and distant, almost causes him physical hurt for reasons he can’t yet define. Moreover, he doesn’t even know if it’s his place to try and fix it.

He wonders wildly if this is how it’s going to be till Wen Ning shows up eventually to fetch them for the evening feast. The four of them standing around in the receiving room, staring at each other like lost chickens. He decides he’d rather go bust than deal with that, or worse, Lan Xichen if he starts to cry, though he looks like he’s making a valiant attempt to fight away the tears obviously making his eyes blur and glimmer.

Wei Wuxian tries to imagine Wen Ning hating and resenting him for the things he did, and winces. Ah, here is something he can do for his husband and their family, then.

“You know,” he says, nodding towards Lan Qiren, who cautiously nods once in confirmation.

“And he doesn’t,” pointing at Lan Xichen this time, who just looks confused. Lan Qiren nods again.

“Right.” Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath and turns to Lan Wangji. Holds his hands to pass over strength, and to keep him calm. “Claim him as your brother or don’t. But tell him why.”

“Wei Ying.” His husband is surprised and displeased, but Wei Wuxian has learnt too many valuable lessons as an elder brother himself recently to let this slide.

“Wen Ning,” is all he says, and watches understanding, then reluctance fight a pitched battle in his beloved’s gaze, before they reach a compromise – resignation.

~*~

Since the day his little brother irrevocably changed, Xichen has become familiar with the sensation of being in a controlled freefall. Controlled only because he doesn’t scream from terror, rage, or even sheer confusion, but simply tolerates the never-ending pit in his stomach. It is the near-constant anxiety of ever having to deal with his brother along with excitement in anticipation of the same event.

Lan Xichen has never stopping loving his little brother or worrying over him, even though he knows very well by now that his brother doesn’t care for him. What he has never understood was why? He had been only twelve years old when he had done something to earn Wangji’s eternal hatred, but what?

He has never been able to find out. He knows there is something wrong at Cloud Recesses; Wangji couldn’t have changed so utterly otherwise. He doesn’t have his brother’s level of genius, but at twenty-one, Lan Xichen is already considered to be a master cultivator. In hindsight, he can see all the things that were odd about the way in which his brother’s golden core had formed, combined with the instantaneous personality change.

He has never believed for a moment that Wangji is the reincarnation of Lan Yi or that he’s been possessed by her ghost.

But something had happened, and both Wangji and Shufu have been extremely careful to never let him find out a single detail. Only forced him to swallow one sweeping alteration in their sect after another. All conducted without his input or permission, of course, and he might never have even been aware until after the fact if Shufu had not put his foot down about maintaining at least the semblance of proper hierarchy.

His little brother has gone and got married.

To an immortal.

Eloped, like father! But with an immortal, which is probably the only reason Shufu hasn’t said a word except in acceptance.

Of course Lan Xichen will not let a single chastisement cross his lips either. It isn’t appropriate to disagree with his elder openly, even though privately he feels like railing and screaming at the injustice of not even being given the courtesy of receiving Wangji and his husband’s bows.

His old wish, wanting to freeze himself and Wangji together forever in the happy, uncomplicated times of before, begins to grow smaller and smaller, receding into the distant past. It has never been possible to freeze time.

Now is my chance. If Wangji is finally ready to make peace at the behest of this strange young man he’s married, Lan Xichen is more than willing to let the past rest in the past.

Then Lan Wangji begins speaking, and Lan Xichen’s world grinds to a halt and shatters until only particles of dust remain.

~*~

What he learns is this –

Meng Yao becomes Jin Guangyao before he can destroy Nie Mingjue.

Lan Xichen only needs to remain himself to ruin all his brothers.

~*~

Afterwards, staggering away from Wushang Sheng Hall on numbed feet, he runs into A-Yao – no, Jin Guangyao – no, Meng Yao, who immediately rushes to put an arm around him, dainty, dimpled face scribbled all over with concern.

Am I dreaming, or are you real?

Lan Xichen flinches away instinctively, unwilling to let the hands of – of – of a – a killer, but no, killer is too mild a word for the brutality this man had wreaked – no, had and had not wreaked, was capable of wreaking – a murderer. The hands of a murderer cannot touch him.

Meng Yao steps back at once, the concerned expression melting away to be replaced so completely by one of deep hurt and injury, that it looks like one mask sliding out of place to be replaced by another – like a play.

Theatrics. A fine actor. Or are you mediocre and I am just a fool, since you fool no one else?

“Lan-xiong – no, forgive me,” Meng Yao appears as though he’s trying to compose himself with limited success, “Lan-gongzi, are you well?”

Am I well? Lan Xichen feels hysterical. How can I be well, when I am in your company?

A fool and a traitor standing in a corridor. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

Am I the fool or the traitor?

He laughs, sounding panicked and breathless to his own ears. “Well!” is all he manages, before his mouth clamps shut. Dangerous.

Meng Yao awaits his answer, now truly concerned. “Shall I fetch someone? Or no – you must not be seen publicly in such distress. Come, Jingsheng Hall[10] is not far and we can -”

Lan Xichen cringes so hard that Meng Yao is forced to let the offer stand awkwardly incomplete, drawing attention to them. Aware that he is giving insult, that his behaviour is distressing and alarming and may yet cause a public scene, he tries to pull himself together, grasping for something – anything to explain his state. He just needs to get away from this man.

“Marriage!” he gasps finally, hardly knowing what he’s saying or who might be nearby, listening. “Wangji. Wei Wuxian. They eloped! Excuse me, I must -“

Taking advantage of Meng Yao’s gobsmacked expression, he rushes off to his assigned courtyard, a storm of whispers and speculation trailing behind him as he goes.

~*~

Despite being an adult twice over, Wen Ning is the best child, so naturally, by the time Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji reach Zhongyang Sheng Hall[11], they are more than adequately prepared to be grilled like freshly-caught fish on a campfire.

They attract attention even before they walk in; the combined force of their qi, even bound within the confines of their bodies as it is currently, is enough to raise gooseflesh on every present cultivator’s arms.

Then they enter, and all eyes are drawn, gasping, not to Wei Wuxian, despite his beauty of face and form, but to Lan Wangji, who is wearing not his customary white, but a set of deep midnight coloured baoyi bodai[12] robes with wide, trailing sleeves embroidered with sweeping, curling motifs of plants and leaves picked out in silver. At his belted waist, Bichen hangs from a jade belt-hook, and he wears a single other ornament of precious lavender jade bound in beds of red agate; around his bound hair is a guan of silver and jade, not dissimilar to the one sported by Wei Wuxian himself.

He looks like one of a matched set with the Yiling Laozu, instead of the Lan everyone knows him undisputably to be.

Like a pebble has been thrown into the festive waters, a ripple of shock goes through the room, ending at the foot of the dais where Wen Ruohan looms over everyone.

What is this if not confirmation of the rumours that have been wracking not only the palace, but the entire city since that afternoon, after Lan Xichen's frantically muttered words as he fled to hide his face?

A cut-sleeve marriage! Between an eighteen-year-old immortal and the White Jade of Lan!

As one, half the entire slavering body of wolves turns towards the Lan, while the other half turns to eye the nuptial pair. Different expressions can be seen on different faces.  Jiang Fengmian looks delighted while his wife seems torn between apoplexy and utter disdain. Nie Mingjue appears vaguely amused while Nie Huaisang hides behind his fan, seeming delighted and scandalised in equal measure. Wen Xu and Wen Chao have identical sneers on their faces, and Jin-furen looks unimpressed, while Jin Guangshan leers so heavily that no one wants to look at him at all.

Almost everyone present remembers, or knows of, Wen Ruohan’s last and only encounter with the Yiling Laozu – and who had won that round.

Yet, no one speaks of it. Even Yao-zonghzu dares not start a dispute[13] when Wen Ruohan himself has not spoken. The Xiandu does not open his mouth at all, and after a short pause, the banquet resumes, but with a tension that had hitherto been absent.  

At last, Jin Guangshan dares, sly and needling as ever, to propose a toast to Lan Qiren, indirectly bringing up the fact that Wei Wuxian had studiously refused to join any sect, and yet he was, married to a Lan.

Still, Wen Ruohan says not a word, but he eats and drinks with gusto and the atmosphere gradually grows lively again. Hours later, the feast begins to wind down, the guests ready to leave for their beds but not quite willing all the same, sensing the theatre has not yet come to an end. Wen Ruohan is not known for his patience; whatever retaliation comes will be now, or soon after.

Now, Wen Ruohan speaks. “Piao Peng Huamei,” he begins, “You have not yet told us what title you will take. You may take this one; I once bestowed it on you and you have yet to accept it.”

Wei Wuxian has been waiting, like a self-satisfied cat. His belly is full, but he still wants to play. He bows deeply enough to make people wonder if the immortal is trying to deliver insult, before straightening his expression and his back.

“Forgive me, Xiandu, this one dares not accept it. After all, I’m only eighteen and a rogue cultivator, not even a gongzi.” He wants to make it very clear, before Yu-furen stops trying to burn a hole in his head with the power of her glare alone and actually skewers him in public, that he is not now, nor ever intends to be, a young master from a sect – especially not Yunmeng Jiang.

“No?” Something he said has sparked Wen Ruohan’s amusement. He refuses to let it go easily, of course. “But you married one, didn’t you?”

Wei Wuxian only smiles, wide and true, embers sparking deep in his eyes. “Love at first sight.”[14]

And what can anyone say to that?

Yu-furen can, it seems, scoff loud enough to wake the sleeping dead. He turns a polite smile on her, with teeth.

“Separated as we are, thousands of miles apart, we come together as if by destiny,” he quotes[15]. “One who has experienced it, knows what it is. As for my name…the common folk I play for call me huamei, the wandering thrush who makes music for them. I don’t object to it. My parents might have liked that; Baba certainly would have laughed and laughed.” The lie about his father chafes at his soul. It’s been years since he’s had to invent the personality of a falsehood.

He undercuts any sting with a bright laugh himself, deliberately leeching some of the yin in the room into himself, refining it and releasing back pure yang. It clears heads and straightens spines; more people look alert and interested, but with perfect equanimity.

“Huamei, the wanderer,” Lan Qiren interjects here, evidently trying to help by drawing a clear line between him and the Lan sect while yet providing public support to his nephew-in-law. “A most filial pursuit.” He nods approvingly, and others follow suit.

“I like it!” Wei Wuxian exclaims, deliberately exuberant, projecting with all his considerable skill the picture of an over-enthusiastic, somewhat naïve boy who has stumbled upon a power he knows not, and hence rejects the prestige that comes with it.

But sensible observers remember the simplicity of his mother’s title, and his mother’s master’s title.

They see, they understand, and they approve. Almost instantly, new allies are born that Wei Wuxian does not even know about. He’s too busy deflecting Wen Ruohan’s attention.

“I like it!” he says again, bouncing a little in place. “Baba would have liked it too!”

He bows deeply to Lan Qiren, and then even more deeply to Wen Ruohan. “This one humble accepts being called Huamei Sanren by all present.”

“And what,” Wen Ruohan leans forward, hawkish, “of the Yiling Laozu? Have you claimed my city, then, Sanren?”

His city? Wei Wuxian wants to laugh. So that’s what his problem is. Injured pride, like before.

He shrugs, easy as can be. “Yiling is Yiling, and its people are its people. They were kind to me when I had no one, so I didn’t bother to correct them, not thinking anyone would take it seriously. I am only a wanderer, after all!”

Wen Ruohan doesn’t seem entirely mollified, but Wei Wuxian is not precisely looking to ameliorate the man’s ego. “But the mountain, of course, is mine. It is the place of my heavenly trial and also the subject of it.”

In short, the Burial Mounds are his, and if Yiling belongs to the Burial Mounds, Yiling is also his.  

“So you are claiming Yiling. What do you plan to do then, raise a sect?” Wen Ruohan asks, missing nothing.

Wei Wuxian shakes his head decisively. “What need has a wanderer of a sect? No, the mountain is mine, in the way that the earth belongs to living creatures, and water belongs to rivers, and birds belong to the sky. That is the way of the world. Begging pardon, Xiandu, I mean no offense or encroachment. I only wish to live in peace, without disturbance.”[16]

Or, back off, loser.

Wen Ruohan seems to recognise that he can’t argue the mechanics of immortality, after all. Doing so would only show his talent is of little account in front of a true expert on the material.[17] He sits back, but the dangerous glint in his eye says that simple fact has been catalogued as offence, and will be repaid in kind at a later date.

Yu-furen breaks in here, in her direct, abrupt way. “Speak plainly, then. Yiling is yours, but is not yours, is that what you are trying to say? Do we look like fools to you? Your mother was just the same, running off with a servant -”

Wei Wuxian has had enough of her already. Enough for two lifetimes.

He cracks a smile sharper than anyone in that room has ever seen before. A smile cold enough to freeze the blood and cause gazes to lower. A smile with a dagger hidden within.[18]  

“Perhaps,” he oozes the kind of charm that prefaces a knife coming at your neck, “the qualities aren’t at the level of the aspirations.”[19]

He bows towards Wen Ruohan again, pointedly, before turning back to a seething Yu-furen. “Only the wise one appears stupid. Honoured Xiandu understands, then who are you to question me?”[20]

Her face purple as her robes, with nothing to her name save two failures for children, the madam of Yunmeng Jiang subsides. What can she say to that?

What can anyone say to that?

Nothing.

He notices this in her silence – Yu Ziyuan is young. Barely forty, and in the prime of health and cultivation, she looks, still, like she must have as a young bride. Almost, if not for the clear marks of motherhood and two decades of night-hunting vicious beasts in Yunmeng like she was one herself – she holds herself straight as an arrow, the cant of her head fitting the iron-fisted queen she rules as.

But she is, despite all the hallmarks of maturity, just so young. Wei Wuxian has weathered two wars, neither of which she fought in, because she’d been dead. Dead, and blind to the gravity of danger like the utter innocent she is. The worst thing she ever did was whip a child. The worst thing Wei Wuxian has ever done is turn Wen Ning into a fierce corpse.

Thus, perspective.

He’s also thirty years old himself, in his mind and heart if not his body, his glorious, new-old, strong, powerful body that does precisely what he wants it to, when he wants it to, and how he wants it to. Thirty, and he has won his first war, lost his second, and here he is, readying himself for his third.

He looks her in the eye with full recognition of the unruly, arrogant child she truly is at heart, resentful over a decades-old love-affair-that-wasn’t. He looks at her like the warlord he is; she flinches and lowers her gaze. Just for a moment, before she rallies, looking disbelieving at herself.

So transparent.

“Apologise,” he orders, raising gasps across the room at his audacity. “For likening my husband to a servant. We are rogue cultivators, but we are honourable and we work to uphold righteousness the same as you. Who among you has done more for the common people than Wushan Youqin?”

Too furious to heed her husband’s placating hand on her arm, Yu-furen opens her mouth to say – something, no one knows what, because Lan Qiren takes a stand as well.

“He’s right. Apologise to my nephew and his husband, Yu-furen. Though he will naturally join Huamei Sanren in his wandering, by his birth and his name he is still Lan-er-gongzi.”

Thus, another announcement is made that rocks the jianghu on its axis. Not only is Lan Wangji confirmed to have eloped, but he is also – nominally – leaving his sect to live on the immortal’s mountain, where his cultivation can only benefit by being in such proximity to an immortal’s qi.

At once, the envy in the room rises by several degrees. Now, when they look at Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen, all amusing scenes of the afternoon are forgotten. They think only, how clever! and wish they’d thought of it themselves.

Humiliated, Yu-furen is forced to bow in apology – but the offence is too great, and her husband compels her to raise a toast. The Lan are no longer a sect to be taken lightly or laughed at for their overly-particular ways. Lan Wangji has made them the most powerful in this world. With her own prestige within her sect no longer being what it once was, she is forced to comply. “A toast to Yiling Laozu, in that case,” she chokes out, still managing to avoid calling him by his preferred name. “To your immortality, and your…marriage.”

Wei Wuxian accepts, draining his cup and tilting it outward to show that not a drop remained.

At least the exchange seems to have brought some good humour back into Wen Ruohan’s demeanour. Having witnessed a good show, the mood in the room is largely buoyant now, and someone from a minor sect eventually clamours for tales of Wei Wuxian’s heavenly trial.

Given that no one in living memory has seen one, and the only other immortal remains secluded on her mountain, Wei Wuxian cannot refuse.

He finds himself somewhat relieved. Here, at least, he can tell the uncomplicated truth.

“I dug up their bodies and pieced together the ones that needed it, then I gave them all their final rites,” he says simply, lifting a shoulder as if modestly shrugging off the immensity of the task. “And then I played for their souls to find peace. Every last one.” A flash of humour transforms his face into an even more breathtaking beauty. “Not as glamourous as it sounds, is it? Call it five years of cold hard labour in the bloodied mud, at all hours of the day and night. I had no rest nor peace, just the whispers and screams of those mad people, for they were people, or they had been once. I only sent them off where they should have always gone – into Yan Wang’s[21] care. If the heavens consider me worthy of their blessings for it, I can only thank them with all my heart.”

There is stunned silence, and then –

“No wonder the folk of Yiling want to claim him!”

“He’s the Yiling Laozu, indeed!”

“As expected of a true immortal!”

“A toast to the Yiling Laozu!”

“A toast! A toast!”

Blessing after blessing full of good wishes and cheer is heaped upon Wei Wuxian, who does not know what to do with so much love and adulation from people who, in the before¸ as he’s come to think of his last life, had screamed for his blood and died by his hand.

As always, it’s his husband who finally comes to his rescue.

“Call it Yiran Shan.”

The hall quietens once more, people straining to hear these pearls of wisdom from a twenty-year-old boy.

“Eh? What’s that, Lan Zhan?”

“We cannot continue calling your mountain the Burial Mounds. No more bodies.” His eyes spark with banked humour that only Wei Wuxian can see, and he does not resist the urge to plant a smacking kiss on his beloved husband’s forehead right in front of the entire jianghu’s cultivation elite.

“Yiran Shan![22] Of course, of course! So right you are, my love, as you inevitably always are!” He turns to Wen Ruohan, the picture of innocent, eager youth once again with this new shift in the winds. “Does Xiandu not agree? Is my husband not wonderful?”

Wen Ruohan looks like he abjectly disagrees, though on which subject, no one will ever know, for he does no more than raise his cup to Wei Wuxian and drink.

The Yiling Laozu chooses to take it as a quiet victory.

But Wen Ruohan has the last word. Just before Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are exiting Zhongyang Sheng Hall, he calls, “Sanren. You still owe me a song.”

Wei Wuxian turns, more interested in than apprehensive about the latest move in this game of go he is engaged in with the Xiandu. “That I do, Xiandu. Then, I and my husband shall play for you a song we have composed ourselves, before these celebrations end.”

~*~

~*~

The Sun Palace, the day before Wen Ruohan’s big bash

The next day is a disaster for anyone not bearing the banners of Jin or Jiang.

The day starts out pleasantly enough, albeit early, with organized displays of the prowess of each sect’s top disciples, along with – apparently friendly – tournaments for archery and charioteering.

As before, Wen strength lies in numbers instead of skill; Wen Xu is soundly defeated by Nie Mingjue in the chariot races, while Lan Xichen handily takes the prize for archery over him as well as Jin Zixuan, and Wen Chao is not even a contender. Nie Huaisang makes a name for himself by presenting Wei Wuxian with a highly skilled, near-lifelike painting of the landscape surrounding Yiling, while the Yu disciples make an impressive display of whip work, their bodies lithe and movement as coordinated as a dancer’s.

Yunmeng Jiang shows off its disciples’ skills at knife-throwing, but given the absence of Jiang Wanyin and Jiang Yanli’s well-known inability to cultivate well, no one expects much from them, and their loss of face is near-total.

It is perhaps the Lan who complete the humiliation of the Wens in totality, because Lan Qiren decides to go all out on Lan Wangji’s advice, and organizes a mini-concerto of thirty-three Lan zithers and flutes. Songs of healing, songs for cleansings, songs to promote clarity of mind and ease of heart – one after another they play on to a rapt audience for close to a shichen. The harmonising of this many instruments sounds not unlike the crashing of a thunderstorm, albeit a particularly melodious one. Wei Wuxian is sure that nothing like it has been heard by anyone who was not born and raised in Cloud Recesses during the era of great night hunts, when sect leaders chased corrupted divine beasts across borders.

It's a hit with everyone save their host.

As before, Wen Ruohan takes his perceived losses with terrible grace and is seen no more for the remainder of the day, ignoring all his guests and dignitaries.

Wei Wuxian reveals nothing, but observes it all and shares his thoughts in silent looks with Lan Wangji, who seems to have gone still and silent as stone at the reminder of that fateful discussion conference, where it had been they who had delivered the Wens their crushing humiliation on the field.

And now, Wen Ruohan, incapable of handling himself like a man, Wen Ruohan, who throws tantrums like a child when he doesn’t get his way, wants a song from them. Has demanded it.   

Somewhere above, or underneath, or perhaps it’s been inside him all along, Wei Wuxian senses an approaching tempest.

Now all that’s left to do, is let it wreak its havoc.

~*~

~*~

The Sun Palace, the day of Wen Ruohan's big bash

Zhishang Sheng Hall[23], the private courtyard of the Wen sect leader, is tucked away deep in the heart of the Sun Palace. All corridors of the palace lead here when traced back along the winding turns that easily get visitors confused, like sunrays radiating outward from a central source of authority.

Within, the environment is of highly organized busy-ness. Wen Ruohan sits in state behind his desk in the front rooms. Meng Yao is by his side at a low table, taking dictation, writing notes and passing messages to the officials who come by to receive their marching orders. The Xiandu and his seneschal have their hands full this morning, with servants – better known as spies – running to and from Zhishang Sheng Hall and the courtyards where the more prominent of their guests were staying.

It is astonishing, master and servant think in tandem unknown to each other, how much one can glean by the method of simple observation and eavesdropping. Even sect leaders forgo basic silencing talismans these days, far too secure in the false belief that no one is watching or listening – that no one would dare.

If only someone had realized that that was precisely why Wen Ruohan does dare. A little because he was told a long time ago that it simply wasn’t done to be spying on one’s own guests on the advent of a great occasion, lest you get found out and fuck up the proceedings yourself. But mostly, because the grandiose fools think themselves far too lofty to be the targets of such pedestrian violations of privacy.

Everyone suspects poison, and thinks to check for nothing else. They believe their lives are the greatest thing of value they have.  Wen Ruohan disagrees.

Secrets, was the correct answer. Know a man’s secret and you have him by the balls, as Jin Guangshan used to be so fond of saying back in Cloud Recesses during their shared year of lectures. It is just as dangerous to be a guest in Lanling as it is to find oneself inside the Sun Palace, at Wen Ruohan’s mercy. Only the nature of secrets they deal in is different.

Like a spider he weaves his great web, drawing on each thread of information as it is brought to him and assimilating until he has a complete picture.

In Yisheng Hall[24], Jiang Fengmian frets over the fate of a child not his own, but that he probably wishes he had brought into the fold when such a thing was still possible. To lose out on such a talent – an immortal at barely nineteen! – to appease the whims of some woman who couldn’t even be bothered to take the clan name?

What an abject fool, Wen Ruohan thinks contemptuously. Xu-er was, at this very moment, paying court to Jiang Yanli, taking blatant advantage of the Jin brat’s lack of interest to position himself as the only viable contender for her hand when that other arrangement inevitably came to an end. With her hand came the wealth of Yunmeng and all the trading potential of its waterways, which currently Jiang Fengmian was not utilising to the fullest.

He then goes through the report on the Nie brothers, currently residing in Dasheng Hall[25], two lefts and a right from the Jiang courtyard. Nothing to note of interest there; there never was. Predictable as the Nie tended to be, the elder Nie boy was busy grinding his teeth over having to endure the hospitality of his father’s murderer. Wen Ruohan holds no doubts about Nie Mingjue’s desire to remove his head from his neck. It amuses him to be so intensely aware of the boy’s hatred while forcing him to eat at his table and toast with the finest of his wines, as though he is an ordinary guest and not a mortal enemy.

He does not think of the younger Nie boy at all. Useless. Worse than useless, even. There had been a time Wen Ruohan had feared Ning-er would turn out just the same. But that child had truly blossomed once he’d been removed from his backwater village of healers and brought to Buyetian, where he’d had the advantage of proper instruction for the first time in his life.

The Nie settled and dismissed from his mind, he attends to the minor sects and their petty squabbling for a time, before finding the report on the Jin.

There is something odd here, he muses, scanning the report once, twice, thrice. Should it be this bare of incriminating detail? Jin Guangshan, he knows from experience, is only this innocent when he’s got half-a-dozen tricks up each sleeve. Wen Ruohan slants a sharp, assessing look at his seneschal.

Does he trust Meng Yao or does he not? He does not know himself yet which one it is. Certainly the boy is capable, or he would have been gutted for daring to beg employment from the Xiandu after abandoning his first sect.  What was it about this child that inspired confidence? Was it his definite ability? He suppresses a scoff. That ability has been costing him in gold and silver taels by the cartload this year.

Wen Ruohan has always rewarded ability and loyalty and Meng Yao has been no exception. But now, he looks at the suspiciously empty report on the boy’s father, and begins to wonder what other abilities or motives Meng Yao may be hiding. It cannot be simple acceptance, he thinks. Even after accepting all his other bastards Jin Guangshan continues to disclaim this one.

So what can it be? I will find out, boy, and for your own sake it had better be nothing.

The Lan – he snorts. Another boring bunch of old fucks drunk on their own regurgitated bullshit. Or they would have been, if not for that young scion of theirs.

Lan Wangji.

So close to immortality that Wen Ruohan can practically taste it in his qi. Blazing, brilliant, incandescent – would the boy not resemble the flames of the very sun if he were to reach the summit?

No one will ever know, because Wen Ruohan has already decided that it cannot – will not – be allowed to happen.

~*~

In in the healing pavilions of Baosheng Hall, Wen Qing works tirelessly, roughing her hands to the bone to keep from worrying, worrying, and ever more worrying.

Tonight –

She takes a deep breath, steels herself, and calls in her next patient.

Tonight.

~*~

One of the side effects of becoming a master cultivator – a true master and not just one in name – is the cessation of rage. No one with fury burning in their breast like an eternal flame can embrace eternity of another kind.

Within the darkened interiors of Wushang Sheng Hall, Wei Wuxian, absolved of the fury that had taken up residence within his heart for so long, watches over his sleeping husband and worries. If he hoped that making him reveal the truth of the past to Lan Xichen would help repair what is broken between brothers, those hopes are yet to sprout and push their way above the soil.

Will they ever bear fruit? he wonders, and is immediately ashamed of himself for doubting the man he adores. Of course it will bear out – it is Lan Zhan, always striving to be right and righteous. He will learn to work through his resentment towards his brother. Or so Wei Wuxian hopes, aware that it may be a futile wish. He himself cannot find forgiveness for Jiang Wanyin, and Jiang Wanyin had never been in a position to control the life of their son.

As with so many other things, it comes down to A-Yuan. Lan Wangji’s fatherhood continues to dictate how he handles brotherhood. Wei Wuxian can say nothing, not having been the kind of father who had to fear that his own family would take his son away.

It is that fury, after all, that drove Lan Zhan to do whatever it was he’d done to come back here. Wei Wuxian knows by now that his own presence in this timeline is an accidental side effect of the magic Lan Wangji and Nie Huaisang worked. He can also guess, through his expertise on sacrificial arrays and Lan Wangji’s refusal to provide details, on how the magic was released and forced into the shape of this world.

Blood.

A good man’s blood, staining his own hands. A darling, wonderful man’s blood, staining both their hands.

Wei Wuxian feels his heart squeeze and give, aching with grief for a death that he was never aware of and which has since been negated. It does not matter that Lan Zhan was simply stepping out of his body and into the same body at another point in time.

He died to live again. For everyone who also died to live again.

Wei Wuxian does not know how, or when, he can repay such a sacrifice – but he’ll figure it out.

He always does.   

~*~

Zhongyang Sheng Hall is abuzz with the light of a thousand paper lanterns and an atmosphere of anticipation as the jianghu’s top cultivators prepare to witness the performance of a lifetime. While the haunting strains of Lan Wangji’s guqin are known to some of them – sect leaders and students who have been fortunate enough to visit Gusu while he was in residence – Wei Wuxian has never played for the gentry save on one notable occasion, here, in this very court.

And when he was done, he vanished, only to reappear an immortal.

Speculation runs rampant through the full court. The White Jade of Lan is known – or was known, before Wei Wuxian’s ascendance – as the foremost of three generations. An untouchable beauty and an unparalleled musician, said to know the entire Lan repertoire, reaching back centuries. A master builder of barriers and shields that cannot be broken, tunnelled under, or flown over.

It is said that this rare genius will be the next immortal within their lifetimes, that he carries so much influence within Gusu that even the Lan council of elders will make no decision without his input. That he abolished their crazy system of rules to govern every second of every day and every life – and they let him.

Eager to pay court to the currently most powerful and wealthy clan in the jianghu, the attendees heap ever more extravagant praises on the absent Lan Wangji, until someone from the Jin contingent, evidently jealous, is heard muttering, “Why don’t you say he seeded the earth and populated the heavens with all the stars, too?”

The complaint is met with laughter and even more anticipatory guesswork. Who will be the better musician, everyone wonders. Each hastens to put forward his or her own opinion.

One thing everyone agrees on – the Lan must be wild for Lan Wangji to prove himself after some upstart orphan stole their thunder by playing the entirety of the cursed Burial Mounds into an era of peace and abundance.

Whispered exchanges, the lively chatter of women and boisterous laughter of happy men; Wen Ning, present in the family seats close to Wen Ruohan, reflects that the Sun Palace has rarely witnessed such joy within its walls. No one knows whether his uncle too thinks the same, but he is calm and his gaze even, when he ascends the dais to his throne.

Excitement reaches a fever pitch just when Wushan Youqin and Huamei Sanren walk in. The pair of lovers are decked out tonight in the finest white silk from Gusu for their topmost layers, so translucent it appears gauzelike. Through it, middle layers of varying midnight hues decorated with embroidered cranes and clouds across the hems and sleeves can be seen. Underlayers and sashes of blue and red, respectively, complete their outfits. On their heads are tall guan of carved silver, at their waists hang jade ornaments and belt hooks holding their swords, white and black.

A well-matched set, indeed.  

Lan Wangji’s guqin is still secreted away within his qiankun sleeves. Wei Wuxian carries Chenqing in his hand. After bowing to the Xiandu and the various dignitaries present, they take their places on a central platform of dark carved wood, decorated with peonies and other flowers in season. Lan Wangji removes his guqin from his sleeve and sets it across his knees.

A hush falls over the hall.

Wei Wuxian smiles, lifts his flute to his lips, and begins to play.

The flute begins on a long, shivering note that trails off into a series of breathy, thumping beats that are more an effect of sound than true music. In the spaces between breaths, Lan Wangji’s guqin picks up a melody and begins weaving it around and under the flute, cocooning it, coaxing it out.

Like an enchanted young maiden, the flute follows the guqin, braiding a harmony into the melody, the two instruments dancing around and with each other until a song is woven like a tapestry coming to life.

Gradually, at the third pass of the music, qi begins to filter through, blending into the sound and filling it up till it swells and swells and swells, covering the whole length and breadth of Zhongyang Sheng Hall with a hurricane of sound that rises and falls like the thundering of a cavalry march, or a storm of crashing cymbals, or both, straining against the listeners’ ears and bodies, until something within them gives, and lets it all in – the music, the qi, the wonder and healing beauty of it all – lets it carve them out and scrape their bones clean.

On the platform, Wei Wuxian dips and sways and twirls this way and that, flirting with the air, the audience, and his husband by turns, or all three together when he feels like it, or when it feels right. He lets his qi dance and flow around his husband, around the attendees, around every Wen present, even Wen Ruohan, snuffing out any resistance with the sheer volume and weight of every particle of energy held within his body.

Like a burning star fallen to earth, he punches a crater of sheer sound through the fabric of reality, and then he fills the hollow up with qi of the utmost purity and refinement, taken from himself and every single other human being within the hall. Lan Wangji surrounds this enormous amalgamation of energies with a barrier of his own qi, layering music onto it until it grows thick enough to be tangible to human touch.

Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian plays on and on, weaving harmony into whatever melody Lan Wangji leads for him, synthesising the energy of everyone present till it becomes as pure and clear as the waters of Tuotuo[26]. Then, and only then, does he release his hold on it and the music both, letting it all flow back, back, back to where it all belongs.

As the final refrain of the music fades away, he lowers Chenqing from his lips, knowing what no one else present will ever imagine – that in the heavy stillness that follows death waits for three men, for the sins of their past cannot be cleansed.

~*~

~*~

Four days later

The news shakes the entire jianghu from Qinghe, to Yiling, to Baling.

Wen Ruohan’s sons lie gravely ill – then they are dying – finally, they are dead.

~*~

~*~

Six days later

Wei-ge, something has gone wrong. Wen Zhuliu is still alive.

~*~

~*~

One day later

Who can it be, if not you?

A question to which there was no answer.

Is this the end, Meng Yao asks the heavens or himself, not knowing where one begins and the other ends. His body lies broken and bleeding on the dirt and straw littering the floor of a dungeon in the Fire Palace.

He does not know it, will never know it, but once he had presided over this very place, and used his genius for torture to claw his way up the ranks to Wen Ruohan’s side. Now, he lies here wracked with the results of cruelty inflicted even after days of swearing he knew nothing, knows nothing, could have known nothing at all.

Karma, he thinks, close to death and not knowing how much so. This is my karma for the good deeds I’ve done.

He should never have left Nie Mingjue’s side. Should never have even entertained the thought of stealing that list of ideas for the celebration from Nie Huaisang and using it to promote himself.

He curses himself once, twice, thrice, knowing nothing can save him now.

He had not realised how much it would cost. Had not known how expensive such events could be, or should be. Had overshot himself and yet been allowed to stay here and work himself to ruin – why?

Because of my father.

Of course. Of course it was that. His cursed bastard of a father whose acceptance he had thrown away a man like Nie Mingjue for! His cursed bastard of a father, who must have wanted Wen Ruohan destroyed, or at least so weakened that the Wen could no longer be true contenders in the power-play of the jianghu unless Wen Ruohan reached immortality.

His bastard of a father, who must have poisoned both of Wen Ruohan’s sons and left him behind, as always, to take the fall.

Who can it be, if not you?

A question to which Meng Yao has no answer.

The true crime for which he must die. Will die, alone and unwanted and entirely unloved, at Wen Ruohan’s hands.

And so, it is as it should be. But why? Why?! I don’t wish to die, not like this, oh, not like this. Mother – save me – Mother!

In the dark shadows of the Fire Palace, Meng Yao raves to himself, with no one to hear his words nor care, not even himself. By the time he is executed for the murder of Wen Xu and Wen Chao, Meg Yao has gone completely mad.

~*~

~*~

Lanling, three weeks later

The ignorant are fearless.

Jin Guangshan, utterly innocent for once in his long and misbegotten life, sprawls in his bed exhausted after an energetic night, entirely unaware of the five thousand Wen marching through Qionqi Path that very moment, their feet stepping quick and steady in a two-beat rhythm as they march towards Koi Tower.

At their head rides Wen Zhuliu, his meridians emptied in preparation for the feast he knows he is expected to gorge himself on tonight. Far above then, Wen Ruohan has mounted his sword and flies on ahead to the city to scout the walls.

Silently following their sect leader, the great host marches through the night to reach the great capital city of Lanling Jin just before the rising of the dawn crier; just in time to slay the dozing sentries at the gates before the alarm can be sounded; just in time to enter Koi Tower on stealthy legs and drag the sect leader and his horde of children from their beds and out into the open in whatever state they were found, to face punishment.

“Wen Ruohan!” the man roars, furious and frightened, not knowing how or why he ended up here. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

Did Jin Guangshan think that he would permit him to get away with it by simply taking the life of one unwanted bastard son?

No. No, Guangshan. You will pay. You and the nine generations of your entire clan – they will all pay.

So bereft with grief he dares not face it but must hide away in a black, murderous rage to preserve himself, Wen Ruohan trembles as he stares down at the man he believes to be a mortal enemy, a sinner against his clan and his blood – the murderer of his sons.

Who else would dare? Who else was ambitious enough, greedy enough, foolish enough to strike too early, too quickly because he thought Qishan Wen to be too weak and strapped for cash to retaliate?

“Jin Guangshan, who can it be if not you?”

The man so addressed huddles in naked terror on the ground, seeing only madness in Wen Ruohan’s eyes; madness and no mercy.

He screams for the guards – once – before We Ruohan cuts him off with a sharp laugh, and an even sharper slice of a sword to his tongue.

Just like that, Jin Guangshan is silenced.

“No one’s coming, Guangshan,” the Wen sect leader might be laughing, or he might be roaring with fury. His face twists, his voice grows hoarse and shrill as he raves through the sounds of pitched battle and the screaming of terrified women and children rending the night air. “They’re dying in their beds, Guangshan – dying like you sentenced my sons to die – my sons, Jin Guangshan!”

“For that, nine generations of Lanling Jin will pay!” He stops, breathing heavily.

The Jin sect leader is concerned only for himself and the life of his lone, legitimate son. He throws himself forward, grabbing Wen Ruohan by the leg – not to try and take him down, but to cling and beg, moaning around the bleeding stump of his tongue as he tries to make something resembling words.

Wen Ruohan lets him cling. His men are searching – Jin Zixuan has not been found yet, but he will be. Jin Guangshan will make for excellent entertainment while he waits.

Jin Zixuan is discovered within a shichen, leading a terrified Jiang Yanli and her brother to safety through the catacombs under the city.

~*~

Is this how everything ends?

Jiang Yanli kneels before Wen Ruohan, head and back bowed. To her left is Jin Zixuan, trying his best to appear defiant and proud but leaking fear. With her right arm, she supports her brother, her hand clapped over his mouth.

She’s seen what they’ve done to Jin Guangshan, and A-Cheng had never had any self-control. So she clamps her hand more firmly over his lips, not caring if he suffocates to death as long as he doesn’t make the situation worse.

But how could it be any worse? She has known that continuing her engagement was a terrible idea for some time now. She knows that she should have begged her mother to dissolve it, to allow her to regain her dignity and standing in society instead of uselessly chasing after someone who seemed to have the potential to be everything and the desire to be nothing.

Now here they are, Lanling under attack with Wen Ruohan looking for blood and perfectly aware that her family had not wished for her to marry his son.  

How will he make us pay, she wonders and tries to keep from shaking. To show fear is to show weakness, but who in their right minds would not be out of their mind at a moment like this?

“Collusion,” the Xiandu hisses, maddened by what he thinks to be new evidence of a conspiracy against him. “Collusion and treason!”

Jiang Yanli’s heart sinks. So it’s going to be bad. She had heard the Wen soldiers – for this is war, she abruptly realises – the violence that began in Qishan and found its way here will lead to open and total war. What happens here tonight will be answered, like for like – and she is the only one here whom she trusts to mitigate the damage.

Jin Zixuan is useless, frozen at the sight of his dead father and half siblings, mangled bits of their bodies scattering the courtyard, every inch of ground slick with their blood.

A-Cheng – A-Cheng is furious, she can tell by the stiffness of his shoulders and the way he’s biting into her hand – he wants her to let go, he wants to let it all out. She does not let go. She has lost Jin Zixuan already – this she understands and knows as an inevitability. She will not lose her brother.

Above her, she hears a new voice, “Zongzhu, the madam is indeed not in residence. No other children, and the elders have been disposed of.”

She chances a glance up, sees the dark-featured man who had been pointed out to her at the feast as Wen Ruohan’s most fearsome weapon. Wen Zhuliu, the Core-Melting Hand.

Wen Ruohan only grunts, “Still hungry?”

Wen Zhuliu bows and responds in a voice as even as though he were discussing the weather that morning, “If zongzhu commands it, I am.”

Her spine freezes.

No.

But denial has no place in Koi Tower that night. Before the thought is completed, Wen Zhuliu has already touched Jin Zixuan’s dantian with his hand.

She does not know it then, but his scream will haunt her nightmares for years to come. It goes on, and on, and on, a shrill, squealing, mewling keen – he sounds not human, but like an animal caught in a trap and flailing to get free. She does not look – cannot ­look – shuts her eyes tight against the furnace-like glow of qi emanating from Jin Zixuan’s dantian. But she cannot shut her ears too; she hears it all, the long wail of agony that tears her fiancé’s throat open and doesn’t end even after Wen Zhuliu finally removes his hand.

At last Jin Zixuan slumps over, maybe alive or maybe dead. She doesn’t know and doesn’t dare to check, doesn’t wish to touch his body and find it cooling and stiff against her fingers. She looks at Wen Zhuliu instead, noticing how his face, previously sallow and sunken, appears plump and glowing now.  

Jin Zixuan’s golden core. He absorbed it all. He ate it.

So this, Jiang Yanli finally understands, is what the Core-Melting Hand can do.

He turns his attention to her brother. “What of this one, zongzhu?”

The ice in her blood finally cracks and begins to flow again. She drags her brother forward and throws them both to the floor almost flat, never letting go of his mouth. But he is silent too now, with terror and the memory of the taotie – he had not shut his eyes. He had seen it all, and now he shakes in her arms, his teeth chattering like a child’s rattle.

“Begging Xiandu – we knew nothing of this! Please believe me! We knew nothing, my father knows nothing of this or he would not have sent us here! I dare not beg forgiveness, but I offer restitution! Begging Xiandu to give us mercy!”

Something she says lances through Wen Ruohan’s grief and anger, and catches his interest.

“Restitution?” he whispers, dangerous, a predator on the hunt who has caught the scent of a sure kill. “You will give anything?”

She does not stop to wonder what anything might be. Anything – she has no choice but to agree, or A-Cheng - !

She can risk anything, except for inflicting Wen Zhuliu on her family.

“Anything,” she begs desperately. “My father will not object to anything you ask that proves our innocence, I know it. I am his heir; I am qualified to speak on his behalf. Begging Xiandu, restitution and mercy!”

He will ask for money, she thinks wildly, or trade concessions so ruinous they will bankrupt her sect, but these things can be built up. Anything will be fine, she hopes and prays to any gods listening, so long as it keeps Wen Zhuliu far away from her people.

So naturally, the Xiandu’s next words wrap around her chest and squeeze like a vice-trap she cannot get out of. The harbingers of a terrible mistake made in the naive belief that to die is to lose everything; that so long as life is preserved, anything can be tolerated –

“Then, you will marry my man here, and return with him to your thrice damned home, and tell your thrice damned father – from this day onwards, Yunmeng belongs to ME!”

~*~

~*~

~*~

Footnotes

[1] The name I’ve decided to give to the Wen palace, since I couldn’t find its actual name online. If anyone knows what it is, please let me know!

[2] An architectural feature of Chinese gardens. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-turn_bridge

[3] 无上 – wú shàng – supreme

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/206373/%E6%97%A0%E4%B8%8A

It also means the following, depending on the characters used, and is part of 2 idioms, neither of which is very flattering and could be taken as stealthy insults and/or threats:

误伤 – wù shāng – to injure accidentally; accidental injury

无伤大雅 – wú shāng dà yǎ – (of a defect etc) to be of no great matter (idiom); harmless

误上贼船 – wù shàng zéi chuán – (lit.) to mistakenly board a pirate ship; to embark on a hopeless adventure

晟 – sheng – brightness of sun; splendour

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/178059/%E6%99%9F

Basically, Wen Ruohan puts people he wants to specifically insult and/or threaten in this place xD

[4] The medical pavilion.

保 – bǎo – to protect; to defend; to guard; to keep; to maintain; to conserve; to preserve; to guarantee; to ensure; to insure; guarantor

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/99585/%E4%BF%9D

晟 – sheng – brightness of sun; splendour

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/178059/%E6%99%9F

[5] Yumu or northern elm, an expensive type of timber wood native to Shaanxi province, where Qishan is located. Source: https://www.yesterday-once-again.net/content/9843/a-short-guide-to-wood-materials-in-chinese-furniture

[6] Tianzhu was the ancient Chinese name for India (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianzhu_(India)) and Nanyang was the ancient Chinese name for South-East Asia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanyang_(region)).  

[7] Zitan wood, or purple/red sandalwood, a highly prized timber wood that was imported from India and hence exorbitantly expensive. Source: https://www.yesterday-once-again.net/content/9843/a-short-guide-to-wood-materials-in-chinese-furniture

[8] The ancient Chinese name for Persia. I am not sure if this still applied by the time MDZS takes place, but it’s the best I could find. Source: https://china.mfa.gov.ir/en/viewpage/10217/persia-sino-relations

[9] A mythical snake capable of swallowing an elephant. Is probably an alternative Chinese name for pythons. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashe

[10] The courtyard assigned to the Lan contingent.

静 - jìng – still; calm; quiet; not moving

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/288399/%E9%9D%99

晟 – sheng – brightness of sun; splendour

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/178059/%E6%99%9F

[11] 中央 – zhōng yang – central; middle; center; central authorities (of a state)

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/91463/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%AE

晟 – sheng – brightness of sun; splendour

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/178059/%E6%99%9F

Zhonghua is also an alternative formal name for (modern) China, so this is a hint towards Wen Ruohan’s ambitions to become dictator/emperor. Source: https://app.ninchanese.com/word/91937/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E

[12] A style of hanfu. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paofu

[13] 惹是生非 (rě shì shēng fēi): “to start a dispute; begin a conflict”. A chengyu.

[14] Yijian zhongqing – Love at first sight. A chengyu. Source: https://chinese4kids.net/chinese-proverbs-on-love/

[15] You yuan qian li lai xianghui. A proverb on love and fated meetings. Source: https://chinese4kids.net/chinese-proverbs-on-love/

[16] 安居乐业 (ān jū lè yè): “to live in peace, without disturbance”. A chengyu.

[17] 班门弄斧 (bān mén nòng fǔ): “to show your talent is of little account in front of a true expert on the material”. A chengyu.

[18] 笑里藏刀 (xiào lǐ cáng dāo): “a dagger hidden behind a smile”. A chengyu.

[19] 力不从心 (Lì bù cóng xīn): “the qualities aren’t at the level of the aspirations. A chengyu

[20] 大智若愚 (dà zhì ruò yú): “the wise one appears stupid”. A chengyu.

[21] Ruler of the underworld, which is called Diyu. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Yan

[22] Means calm, happy mountain. XD A bit on the nose, but this is from the guy who calls his guqin by his own name. I got the Chinese characters and their meanings from: 夷然 – yí rán – calm. The character for Yi here is the same one as used in Yiling. If you change the character for Yi, but use the same pronunciation, it means happy and joyful. Source: https://app.ninchanese.com/word/136493/%E5%A4%B7%E7%84%B6 and https://app.ninchanese.com/word/157265/%E6%80%A1%E7%84%B6

[23] 至上 – zhì shàng – supreme; paramount; above all else

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/244533/%E8%87%B3%E4%B8%8A

晟 – sheng – brightness of sun; splendour

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/178059/%E6%99%9F

Note the difference in nuance between Zhishang and Wushang – Wen Ruohan is very much sending a message about just who is top dog in the jianghu.

[24] 燡 – yì – blazing; radiant

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/208635/%E7%87%A1

晟 – sheng – brightness of sun; splendour

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/178059/%E6%99%9F

[25] 大 – dà – big; large; graphic and meaning component (person, big, adult); old; great; heavy (rain, etc); strong (wind, etc); loud; general; main; major; eldest

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/5989/%E5%A4%A7

晟 – sheng – brightness of sun; splendour

https://app.ninchanese.com/word/178059/%E6%99%9F

[26] Source of the Yangtze river, which is one of the “4 waters” of China. Also known as Ulan Moron river. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulan_Moron

Chapter Text

~*~
~*~

Jiang Yanli had never expected to marry without her parents in attendance, no robes of red nor any of the usual auspicious rituals and festivities – nor even the ghost of a feast.

Wen Zhuliu had never expected to marry at all, his life bound to Wen Ruohan in willing service. If anyone had asked him about his preferences, he would have chosen a non-cultivator, someone who did not have to worry whether he might not destroy her entire life’s work and potential with a single touch. He has never wanted to be a figure of menace in his own home.

Yet, because his master commands it, he bows three times, to the heavens, to his ancestors, and then to the twenty-one-year-old chit he must now and forevermore think of as his woman.

Jiang Yanli.

He knows very little of her – that she is foolish, naïve, and foolhardy in equal measures. That she deeply loves her family, or at least her little brother, enough to throw away her life for them. But then, would not many other women do the same, or more?

This much is enough. Those who love are easily controlled through that very love. Jiang Yanli may count herself fortunate – she will have the opportunity to explain her altered circumstances as well as their own, to her family, before she is taken from them and will see them no more in this lifetime. Her own life, preserved upon their good behaviour.

Of course, Jiang Fengmian might choose to throw his daughter away. But the man Wen Zhuliu remembers from their youth was not so careless or devaluing of his family.

~*~

~*~

Jiang Yanli does not know whether she ought to be grateful or apprehensive that her new husband does not wish to consummate their marriage. On the one hand, she has no particular desire to be a Wen bride after a lifetime of imagining Jin Zixuan by her side and in her bed. On the other hand, she knows what this is and what she is – a hostage for her family’s compliance. But with a consummated marriage, she would also be in a position to influence Wen Zhuliu somewhat on matters pertaining to the rule of Yunmeng.

Perhaps it is not surprising why he refuses to touch her more than strictly necessary. Perhaps he senses the danger, or perhaps he has been ordered not to. It matters little; a bride does not usually live in her natal home after marriage, so Wen Zhuliu has every right to send her to his own home in Buyetian, whether he chooses to live with her there or not.

She does know to be grateful for the opportunity of being allowed this final goodbye, even if it burns her lungs like she’s drowning, when she thinks of the force of thousands at her back, of her father when he realises what A-Niang’s obstinacy regarding her betrothal has wrought.

They’ve lost Yunmeng. The have lost their home. Just like that, because Jiang Yanli happened to be in a place she should never have visited, not after the first time Jian Zixuan insulted her qualifications to be his wife. If her own mother had valued her more than she had valued a connection with Lanling Jin, the engagement would have been broken off. Even if it had marred her reputation, they could have dealt equal damage to Jin Zixuan’s thanks to his public abuse and private avoidance of her.

If she had been truly valued, she would have been the heir in truth since birth, and not just a spare who had to be used because her brother could not cultivate properly any more. She would never have been affianced to marry out of her sect – she would never have been in Koi Tower, trying to save a failing alliance, when Wen Ruohan came calling for bloody revenge.

Most of her heart is still caught in the vice-grip of terror. She does not know whether Wen Zhuliu has his own house; she has only heard of him being seen in the Xiandu’s immediate company, or guarding one of his sons. At the reminder of those dead men, she shivers, her mind’s eye superimposing the image of Wen Xu, whose arrogance did not preclude him being civil to a fault in stark contrast to Jin Zixuan, over the images of the mangled bodies of Jin Guangshan’s children.

Had he too, looked like that, parts of his body strewn across his courtyard, his guts spilling out onto the pavement? No one knows how the two Wen scions had died, nor why so soon after such an auspicious event. None of it makes any sense, save assassination. Had Jin Guangshan truly dared?

For a time, lulled by the wind rustling through the clothes of the soldiers escorting them in the air and the clipclop drumbeat of horses’ hooves following below, she ponders the fate of Lanling and its inhabitants. Had Wen Ruohan killed everybody in Koi Tower, or would he leave some of the servants and officials alive to help re-settle the city with Wen might? And who would he send there to rule in his stead, with both his heirs dead and Wen Zhuliu consigned to Yunmeng?

At any rate, she takes comfort in knowing that she would not have to share a living space with Wen Chao. To be even in the same place as that man – even if she had been on the other side of the Sun Palace from him, it would not have been far enough.

She considers carefully what life in Buyetian might be like, where she and A-Cheng would be valuable hostages who must be kept safe from harm. When she recalls that her mother will remain helpless in Lotus Pier, unable to interfere with her life anymore, Jiang Yanli begins to think that perhaps this marriage would not be so bad.

~*~

~*~

When the sentries first come speeding into the central hall to report a great host of Wen in military livery being sighted riding up the road to Yunmeng, instead of approaching properly by boat had they been on legitimate business, Jiang Fengmian knows at once that he is facing war – or total annihilation – and has time only to feel relief that his children are safe in Lanling.

Why the Xiandu should target Yunmeng of all places, Jiang Fengmian cannot fathom. Of course, the great river and its tributaries form the most important trading delta in the jianghu, but he expected Wen Ruohan to continue attempting to acquire them the old-fashioned way – trade rights through marriage. He is abruptly even gladder that Yanli is nowhere near Lotus Pier right now.

Defences raised, he steps out to meet the Wen on equal ground and sees a slender figure in the familiar shade of violet favoured only by two people in all of Yunmeng, and one of those two is currently waiting inside the main hall, her whip coiled and ready to lash out.

So this can only be –

Yanli.

He staggers, and only knows it because Mao Liwei is at once by his side instead of at his back, steadying him that he might not show any further open weakness. But how can he not, when his only daughter, his heir, stands at the head of a Wen army large enough to decimate them all, and by her side is the Core-Melting Hand, Wen Zhuliu?

~*~

~*~

Yu Ziyuan comes within a hairsbreadth of losing her golden core, before her daughter throws herself at Wen Zhuliu’s feet, finding herself once again in the ignominious position of having to bargain for mercy towards a member of her family.

“It will kill her,” the young woman begs, trying to preserve her mother’s life.

Begs – Yu Ziyuan eyes her daughter with deep disdain, thinking that she would rather sacrifice her cultivation than lose her pride in such a fashion. One does not need a golden core to fight or to kill, one needs to know only where the knife should strike, and how deep.

But she cannot say so aloud – she kneels, bound and silenced for her defiance on the orders of her own daughter, for even Jiang Fengmian holds no more power in Lotus Pier.

“Insubordination cannot and will not be countenanced,” is all Wen Zhuliu says, his eyes narrowed but considering his new wife carefully. Despite being forced to marry, he has no desire to displease or distress her as the first act of marital harmony. Not when he must share quarters with her until his death. To do so with one who hates you – Wen Zhuliu knows what it is like to be so loathed, and no desire at all to live with such danger day and night.

So he chooses – not mercy, for the Wen are not merciful. But something as close to it as he is permitted to get. He offers Jiang Yanli a choice as well – “Her right hand. Or her golden core. I will have one or the other for my master; you may decide which.”

The next morning, Jiang Yanli departs for Buyetian, under the guard of a thousand Wen cultivators, bearing precious gifts – tributes – for the chief cultivator.

Within her person rests the authority and right to hold Yunmeng Jiang.

Without, she carries a box containing a slender white hand, its wrist circled by a sparkling bracelet that had once showcased the deadliest whip-dance in the entire jianghu – Zidian.

~*~

~*~

“Lan Zhan, what have we done?”

Wei Wuxian surveys the carnage littering the streets of Lanling from a bird’s-eye view on the tallest watchtower of the city, at the very centre of Koi Tower. Behind him, Lan Wangji is a steady, comforting presence, radiating heat.

He listens to Wei Wuxian’s voice, picks out the horror and revulsion easily, and places a hand on his husband’s back, between his shoulder blades. Sends a jolt of soothing qi through the other man’s meridians, washing away the excess of self-reproach. No one could have foreseen this. Especially not Wei Ying, who had expected retaliation from Wen Ruohan, yes, but not in this direction.  

“Should we have killed him first? Even if we weren’t likely to succeed – should we have tried anyway, Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji shook his head, an infinitesimal movement. “His golden core is too powerful. He would have noticed, we would have failed, and violence in Buyetian with all the clans gathered would have been disastrous for the jianghu. Wei Ying, we had good reasons for our course of action.”

The decision to take out Wen Ruohan’s three pillars of immediate support – his heirs and his greatest weapon – had been a strategic one. Or so Wei Wuxian had thought. With a limitation of three targets to kill through their song, they had chosen the ones who had caused the most direct chaos in their last life. Back then, Wen Ruohan had not taken to the battlefield himself until the Sunshot Campaign was well underway, while Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu had wreaked tragedy after tragedy, unchecked.

So how had it all gone so wrong? Wen Zhuliu was still alive, the song having had no effect on him at all, and Wen Ruohan – “How the hell did he come to the conclusion that Jin Guangshan was out to fuck him over? Didn’t he realise the bastard would never have let himself get caught out like that?” Wei Wuxian can’t and will not let it go, neither does Lan Wangji expect him to. The vengeance Wen Ruohan incorrectly wrought on the Jin is total and absolute.

Nine generations, wiped out in a single night.

What both men do expect, however, is for Wen Qionglin to have answers. It is his reports they have trusted, his advice they have followed, and his information on the Wens’ habits that have informed every move they have made.

Wen Ning comes up behind them. He looks pale, but calm. It occurs to Lan Wangji that perhaps Wen Ning has excellent reasons to not feel distress at the sight of so many dead Jin. Not that he has any love lost for them either, but they were expecting something like this to come towards Yunmeng. For Wen Ruohan to prioritise taking control of the river as he had in his last life.

And in any case, they had not anticipated any movement in any direction for several months to come. The mourning period for Wen Ruohan’s sons had barely begun; assured in the Wen tendency to be just as heavy sticklers for tradition as the Lan, Wen Ning had not imagined that his uncle would not wait before seeking revenge.

So instead, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji had received a flare talisman in the middle of the night, Wen Ning’s voice urging them to forget about everything else and come to Lanling at once.

Wei Wuxian is conflicted, torn between staying here to help the survivors left behind in the city which is currently being settled by the auxiliary force Wen Ning brought with him from Qishan, and haring off to Yunmeng at once, to save the Jiang from the consequences of their own folly. Trying to rekindle an engagement in Koi Tower not even two weeks after the Xiandu’s sons were both killed – what had they been thinking, the immortal wonders, sick at heart at the way things have turned out.

At least Jiang Yanli will be safe, under Wen Qing’s watch and protection.

He finds strength and comfort in that thought, blessing the young woman’s common sense after hearing of how she negotiated for her family’s lives and safety while at the same time overcome with horror at her fate.

To be married to the Core-Melting Hand and to know that should anything go wrong, he would be the weapon used to destroy her own people! Wei Wuxian thinks of his former Shijie living in such dangerous circumstances and worries nonetheless about the long-term consequences of Jiang Yanli’s decisions, especially if the marriage has been consummated.

Thinking of marriage reminds him of other people and other concerns. “How is Jin Zixuan?”

Wen Ning shakes his head. “As you’d expect. Only time will tell if he can find the strength to pull through. If he does, he will live. If he gives up…he should roll over and die now rather than waste away slowly. About the other things…” he trails off, looking unsure.

Wei Wuxian sighs, clapping a hand over his brother’s shoulder and squeezing. “I’m not saying it’s your fault alone. But we screwed up. Collectively, the three of us. We fucked something up – starting with Wen Zhuliu. Why didn’t he die? I know the poison I created; compounded in threes, three should have died. He should not have been able to survive that song that we played. With that power of his, he may be the most dangerous man in our world, even more so than your uncle. The whole idea was to remove his pillars of support in one shot. One arrow, three kills. I don’t like the thought of his attack dog alive and walking, Wen Ning.”

“I don’t know, Wei-ge. I truly don’t. The records are correct; I copied them myself from the papers hidden in uncle’s study, and very few people have access to those rooms. Certainly none others who would dare to hold any interest in the Core-Melting Hand. That’s the quickest way to losing your own,” Wen Ning shudders, prompting Wei Wuxian to wonder just how many people’s cultivation has fallen victim to Wen Zhuliu in the first place.

Had they all been Wen themselves? But something Wen Ning says strikes him differently; he shakes his head, angry with himself and his brother too.

“Wen Ning! Didn’t I say not to take stupid risks like that?! We only have this one life left to live, what am I going to do if you get hurt again? Have you thought of that?”

Lan Wangji has been ignoring this byplay, deep in thought. He speaks up now – “Obfuscation.”

Wei Wuxian turns to him, wide-eyed. “You mean the papers lied?”

Lan Wangji nods, curling an arm around him. “It is not an uncommon way to draw out potential threats.”

“…they probably weren’t expecting anything like us when they planned against potential assassination attempts,” Wei Wuxian says wryly.

Wen Ning shakes his head again. “Probably not. No offense, Wei-ge, but who would believe that a song for healing could kill?”

“Meng Yao” – his brothers chorus as one, prompting a short laugh from him.

“Well, Meng Yao’s dead. Hopefully he and his bastard father are clawing each other open in Diyu this very moment,” Wen Ning shoots back at them, not hiding his deep satisfaction. “Forgive me, Wei-ge, Lan-ge. But I can’t find it in me to feel the way you two do. A world without Jin Guangshan and his cursed progeny? I’ll take it.”

Lan Wangji tilts his head slightly, not disagreeing.

Wei Wuxian snorts at them both. “Well, you’re not getting it, as long as Jin Zixuan survives the Core-Melting Hand’s tender ministrations. And we’d better make sure he does, Wen Ning, or you and I will never be able to wipe our slate clean where he’s concerned.” He turns to Lan Wangji, feeling helpless and guilty. “The real question is – what do we do now?”

“Whatever it is, I will assist you,” his husband announces, earning a brilliant smile and a squeeze, and also a roll of Wen Ning’s eyes.  

“What will you do?” Wen Ning is anxious. “You’re not going to run off to Yunmeng to wage bloody war, are you? It’s peaceful enough there for now, unless Yu-furen tries to start another riot. In which case she’ll probably lose her other hand. Let’s hope,” he mutters the last bit, half-expecting to be cuffed around the ears for disrespect.

Wei Wuxian is sorely tempted, but refrains. It has taken him months, and nights upon nights of Lan Wangji’s gentle, straightforward care, to acknowledge that his treatment at the hands of Lotus Pier’s mistress had been beyond every standard of decency. Leaving aside the constant insults to the characters of his dead parents, the physical abuse he had suffered, the near-loss of his hand and that final, dreadful whipping – Lan Wangji had only to ask him to think of A-Yuan in such a life for Wei Wuxian to finally, finally see the light.

For him to look back at the child he’d been, and permit himself to feel true anger, unforgiving, on behalf of that child.

He doesn’t know what to think, or feel, at the news that Yu-furen lost her own right hand and her prized spiritual weapon to appease the Wen. At the news that it was none other than Jiang Yanli who’d made the choice and given the order.

He supposes it’s better to lose a hand than to lose a golden core or even a life – but he also knows Yu-furen. Knows her pride and understands it too, the way she prefers to break rather than bend. He got that part of himself from her, though she’d never cared to acknowledge it.

A nudge from Lan Wangji makes him realise that he has drifted off and Wen Ning is still waiting for his answer, watching him with very large eyes that look faintly pleading.

Like an owl. A cute, ruffled, very tall baby owl.

“I checked a few of the ledgers, Wei-ge. This place is a mess. I don’t even know where to begin sorting it out, or how to do it without a civil war breaking out.”

Wei Wuxian sighs.

“Fine, we’ll stay here and help,” he decides. “What do you think, Lan Zhan? Is that wise? Do you want to go make sure everything’s safe in Gusu first?”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji declines. “The barrier will hold. Gusu is safe. Be of better use here.”

So that’s settled, Wei Wuxian thinks, and settles in for long days to come, of helping restore peace in a region torn apart by a massacre overnight.

~*~

~*~

That night, Wei Wuxian lies wide-awake in his husband’s arms, his quick, alert mind refusing to let it go. He knows himself intensely well, knows the precise limitations of his intellectual capabilities and understanding of the world. He knows he is clever, a genius at cultivation and practical mechanics, a better-than-competent farmer, and an excellent judge of people.

What he is not capable of, has never been capable of understanding, is politics.

It might even be considered his fatal flaw, seeing as how this lack of ability in one sphere has gotten him killed once already. He has the distinct suspicion that he is missing Wen Ruohan’s reasons for decimating the Jins because they are mired in politics. His husband is of no help here, being not useless at politics, but utterly uncaring of them. Lan Zhan has never needed to care about politics, and so he has never bothered to learn.

He shifts restlessly, wrapping and unwrapping loops of his husband’s hair around his fingers. Lan Zhan lies awake too, but silently, letting Wei Wuxian have all the quiet thinking time he wants. Wei Wuxian turns to press an appreciative kiss against his husband’s smooth cheek and gets distracted nuzzling into it for a while, nipping his way down to the ridges of Lan Wangji’s collarbones, where his husband is just faintly ticklish.

“Wei Ying.” Lan Wangji finally breaks the silence, correctly assuming that Wei Wuxian has come to the end of his deliberations and has a solution.

“You’re not gonna like it, love.”

Wei Ying is wrong, Lan Wangji thinks, and says only, “I like everything about you.”

He gets a shove and a kiss for flirting at such a time.

“We need your uncle,” Wei Wuxian tells him bluntly. “The last time, you people were the only ones who came out of the Sunshot Campaign more or less intact and with cordial relations with every single sect around. We’re missing something here. Maybe we’re idiots, but we need your uncle, Lan Zhan. Putting the past aside, I trust my old teacher to tell me the truth about matters as he sees them. And putting myself aside entirely, I trust your uncle to guide you well.”

“You are right. Others should not pay for our ignorance.”

Lan Wangji gets up at once and shoots off a messenger crane, which Wei Wuxian claims might be a blatant rip-off of the Jin butterflies, but – as he vigorously maintains – are faster, safer, way prettier, and all-round better than their gaudy gold originators.  

Lan Wangji agrees wholeheartedly. For one, the Jin butterflies only carry messages and take time to travel to the receiver; they cannot be used to conduct long-distance conversations on the fly, instantaneously, which Wei Ying’s cranes enable them to do with some expenditure of spiritual energy as the price.

He wonders if Wei Ying realises yet that this will revolutionise the jianghu when he finally works out the kinks and releases this to the public, as he is bound to do sooner or later; Wei Ying has never been able to keep from sharing the good things he comes up with.

He adds only one caveat – that if they are to consult his uncle they must also consult, in equal measure and with equivalent authority, Nie Huaisang.

~*~

~*~

Lan Xichen hears of Meng Yao’s death, and where there should be grief and horror, there is only a sense of weight gone from his shoulders, like he’s free. Like he’s avoided a terrible fate.

He’s in the middle of confiding as much to his uncle – who looks openly relieved, which frankly doesn’t help his emotional situation – when one of the messenger cranes his brother-in-law had handed them before leaving Qishan lit up and started zipping through the air around Lan Qiren’s head, clearly demanding attention.

To say he is surprised is an understatement. A message so late at night? Lan Xichen knows he is breaking curfew himself, but the rules have been relaxed enough, and their late-night chats grown so frequent, that his uncle simply lets it slide these days. Still, a message from his brother, at this hour?

He fears it can’t be anything good, and is proved absolutely right, when Wei Wuxian’s voice filters through the air and relates to them the happenings of the previous night and day, the consequences of which, Lan Xichen knows immediately, will either be subjugation to the Wen, or total violence upon the Wen by the other sects, including his own. To annihilate a Great Sect overnight and annex another?

Even if the Lan wish to stay neutral, Nie Mingjue will jump on this excuse to start the war he’s been wanting for years. He feels almost faint as he thinks of the letters that will need to be written, the supplies that will have to be readied, and the cultivators who will have to be trained to fight as soldiers, including himself.  

“ – let us worry about the Nie,” his brother-in-law’s voice recalls him to the present, “Lan Zhan is speaking to Nie Huaisang this very moment, giving him the news.”

He finds himself abjectly grateful for the reprieve. Not that he balks at speaking to Nie Mingjue. It is only –

Because of him, Nie Mingjue had died in their original lives. Might have died again, because of his stubborn refusal to give up Meng Yao. The thought of Meng Yao is a knife to the chest, but coming with enough warning that he can shift aside and let it only nick his heart instead of stabbing it clean through.

That privilege, he has found, he cannot bear to give anyone save his brother.

Wangji – or Xiongzhang. His baby brother who is an adult vastly more experienced in years than himself. Lan Xichen doesn’t know what to call him anymore. Finds that Wangji feels no longer appropriate, but he has always been Xiongzhang. He doesn’t know how to call his once-little brother by a name that belongs to himself.

For that matter, he doesn’t even know if he is permitted to call Lan Wangji his brother at all. Doesn’t know where they stand with each other, if they ever stood together at all. Yet, if they did not, it is his own fault. The results of his own past actions as he’s been told, for all that he hasn’t yet been given the opportunity to commit them.

His heart aches, and he lets it. Shoulder the weight of morality. Something he must learn to do, along with rooting out his other moral and ethical failings, and rectify them all.

How strange is it, he thinks, that the brother who destroyed their wall of rules should be the one who embodied those rules most thoroughly? Doesn’t that mean there is some value to them after all?

One day, he thinks, he might gather enough courage to ask. Perhaps then, they may finally begin forging a new relationship.

~*~

~*~

Nie Huaisang is painting a landscape of mountains and waterfalls on a new silk fan when an odd-looking paper crane materialises before his eyes in a shower of red sparks. It seems to almost be sentient by the manner in which it stalks him and then demands his attention when he, paranoid at first, refuses to touch it at all.

As it turns out, his friend has gone and married a genius.

As it also turns out, he might have fucked up very, very badly when he had decided to bait Meng Yao into choosing between his master and his father. But then, he had not dreamed that Yao-ge would be so fickle as to forget all the thousand and one kindnesses Da-ge had bestowed upon him just for the vague ghost of a chance to show off in front of his father.

Even so, when Yao-ge left, he had expected that he would go to Jin Guangshan, since anyone who was everyone knew that the Jin sect leader had not been pleased to lose out on the clout of hosting the festivities for the Yiling Laozu. He’d thought that Yao-ge would take that list to his father, get laughed out of Koi Tower again, and come back with his tail permanently between his legs and apologies dropping from his lips, never to leave again.

He’d never, in his wildest fantasies, imagined that Yao-ge would go straight to Wen Ruohan.

It would be all right, he had thought. Yao-ge would get more than his ego kicked for wasting the Xiandu’s time and come back to Qinghe for good, one way or another. Who knew that Wen Ruohan would take that damned piece of paper seriously, and then bankrupt himself trying to fulfil it to the letter?

But he should have known – he should have known that was how it would go. Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan – greedy, self-conscious, proud monsters both – Nie Huaisang looks at the past year through the eyes of hindsight and finds himself compelled to admit that he should have seen this coming.

Wen Ruohan, with his sights on Yunmeng at a minimum, the rest of the jianghu at worst. Wen Ruohan, who had been angling for years now to get the engagement between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan broken off, so much so that he’d dangled his firstborn, his heir, in front of her. Wen Ruohan, who took triple the offense to any slight and had practically declared the marriage verboten. Wen Ruohan, who repays every hurt sevenfold. Wen Ruohan, who’d lost both his sons at a time when one of Jin Guangshan’s illegitimate children was right there.

Did Jin Guangshan truly go that far, Nie Huaisang ponders deeply. He doubts it very much; the late Jin sect leader was known to be a wily fox of a man, excellent at covering the tracks of his misdeeds and keeping the hounds of the jianghu at bay. He wouldn’t have been so careless as to provoke Wen Ruohan more than he thought he could get away with – and the entire cultivation world had known how far he’d been pushing it with that engagement that his son refused to properly honour, despite Jiang Yanli holding the keys to Yunmeng.

Then who killed them?

He does not question the timing of the assassination; if he’d had to plan something like it, he would have chosen a similar event himself. Easy to cover your tracks in the chaos of that many guests and servants milling about, everyone drunk to the gills for half of each day.

He does not question the why of it either. Wen Ruohan has been mad for power long enough; Nie Huaisang has already lost a father and a brother to that monster. Da-ge might technically still live, but what kind of life could it be called when he was so consumed with rage every minute of every day that he was in danger of a qi deviation already? If someone wished to undercut the monster by removing his line of succession, Huaisang could not bring himself to blame them.

Them.

He sighs, thinking he should stop beating around the bush in his own head, and simply accept the inevitable. It’s perhaps a little obvious just who is behind all this. Who else but an immortal and an almost-immortal would have the skill to pull it off? Lan Wangji is not nearly as subtle as he believes himself to be; someone should really warn him about that.

The entire jianghu knows by now that Lan Wangji and his husband are utterly mad for each other. And Wen Ruohan had decided he wanted to poke that tiger in the eye, for reasons best known to himself but which likely weren’t too far away from plain old greed. Frankly, Nie Huaisang might have murdered his kids too, if he’d had a husband like – well, either of that pair really, to protect against him.

But no – nothing about that chain of reasoning feels right. Lan Wangji has always been far too much of a stick in the mud to tolerate anything so underhand as unprovoked assassination, even on behalf of the greater good. Especially not when his own lands and people are safe from invasion.

Double-especially not considering he’s a born and raised Lan, trained from birth to avoid wasting life. There is a reason they do not kill within Cloud Recesses even after the dismantling of their (in)famous rules – Gusu Lan has always favoured lifelong imprisonment for its worst criminals, instead of capital punishment.

Thus, despite knowing his reasoning is sound, he can’t reconcile the image of Lan Wangji with that of an amoral killer, at least not for the reasons listed. No matter how he looks at it, none of it makes any sense at all – and for once in his life he knows nothing, absolutely nothing!

~*~

~*~

Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and Wen Ning sit back after their round of late-night consultations, dazed with the sheer amount of information on everything they had missed, overlooked, or simply not even considered as a factor to begin with.

They had been too preoccupied with the immediate – the need to remove Wen Zhuliu from the playing field – to keep in mind all the other pies Wen Ruohan was itching to get his fingers into. Everything they have been told by Lan Qiren and Nie Huaisang is about facts they were already aware of, at least vaguely. That Wen Ruohan badly wanted to get his hands on Yunmeng. That he wanted one of his sons to marry Jiang Yanli. That he was left significantly, almost dangerously, poorer by the excess of festivities he had been obligated to put on in honour of Yiran Shan’s cleansing. These were all things they had known.

They’d simply failed to string all these beads of information into a single chain of events that would lead, one after the other, to the very disaster that had befallen Lanling Jin.

“Is this their karma?” Wen Ning asks.    

Wei Wuxian shrugs, not really knowing what else made sense. “Maybe? Probably.”

“Do not absolve ourselves of responsibility,” Lan Wangji tells them both quietly, but without a single jin[1] of judgement or admonishment in it. It has escaped none of the three that Lanling Jin’s fate has inadvertently mirrored their own past endings in eerily similar ways.

Framed for killing a sect leader’s heirs when they were innocent – just like they’d done to Wei Wuxian.

Eradicated to almost the last man, including those who could not and should not be held responsible for a sect leader’s actions – just like they’d done to the remnants and civilians of the Wen.

Jin Guangshan and his people gutted without any dignity after being used by the Wen cultivators as playthings – just like they’d done to Wen Ning.

Only Jin Zixuan left alive – just like A-Yuan.

Wei Wuxian reaches a hand out to his husband, and another to his brother. Both are clasped and held in strong, firm grips – one lending support and the other seeking it.

“Let’s do what we decided and fix this shitshow of a place,” he tells them both. “And then let’s get the hell away from here.”

Wen Ning answers, nodding, “Perhaps that is not considered adequately taking responsibility for everyone who’s died here, but I’m past concerning myself over people who wouldn’t – didn’t – think twice before killing me.”

“The women and children too?” Wei Wuxian asks him, chilled.

“Of course not! Wei-ge, I didn’t want anyone save Jin Guangshan and Jin Zixun dead. Not even those men who guarded us at the camp in Qiongqi pass – why should I? Hadn’t you helped me take my revenge immediately back then? I just…I feel nothing towards Jins – not anger, not disgust, not anything save indifference and perhaps the acknowledgement that I will never mourn one.” He pauses, composing himself, for he has remembered things that grieve him more than words can express.

“Did they stop, before they killed our women and children? Our civilians?” He takes a deep, shuddering breath, but looks Wei Wuxian in the eye. “No, Wei-ge. I’ll drag this place up by its collar till it can stand on its own feet again, but when I am done I shall leave like you say, and never seek to return.”

“Who will you leave in charge? Who can you trust to keep peace here and not start another war that none of us can afford to fight?” Wei Wuxian wants to know. “Jin Zixuan may not be able to take back authority. Difficult to enforce it without a golden core. Unless you’re me, heh.” He grins, obviously pleased with his past self.

Wen Ning shares a meaningful glance with Lan Wangji, then looks at him evenly.

“Qin Su. Rather, Jin Su.”

~*~

~*~

For the remainder of the mourning period for Wen Ruohan’s sons, there is peace. Unable to do anything about Yunmeng without potentially setting off a chain of even worse violence in unpredictable directions, Wei Wuxian opts instead to throw himself wholeheartedly into the work of repairing Lanling. The architecture of the capital city is barely intact; the civilian population took a fair bit of damage too and is in urgent need of rehabilitation.

Koi Tower itself requires urgent repairs and money, of which there is none left, because Wen Ruohan looted the place almost down to scraps and carted off all the valuables to refill his empty coffers with.

Wei Wuxian avoids thinking about that as often as he can, which means of course that he spends almost all his time fretting over it, till his husband practically drags him outside to where he can be of actual use.

And useful he is. Taking one look at the state of the city and its people galvanises him – the sight of many of Wen Ning’s relatives from Dafan coming in a long procession to help in the work of rebuilding takes it to another level, unlocking the genius that so far had been used primarily to improve its bearer’s cultivation.

Now, Wei Wuxian turns his mind to what comes to him most naturally – the betterment of others. To solve the problem of Lanling without a single silver tael to spare, he needs magic. To ensure that the magic can be performed by any worker, cultivator or not, he needs arrays and talismans, devices designed for specific tasks. The latter come afterward; first, he begins with arrays and talismans which can be powered even by commoners with a little drop of blood, just as he’d done for himself in his first life.

His experience then comes in handy now. Idea after idea begins to root, sprout, and grow into saplings which will one day become mighty trees, entire schools of study in and of themselves.

He creates entire construction systems with talismans to help lift heavy weights. Ventilation systems made of talismans to reverse and control the direction of wind. Talismans for lighting that rely on ambient qi to keep going, to help the bookkeepers, and his old talisman for copying books for the librarians and censors. Arrays buried deep in the soil to promote the faster growth of certain types of radishes and potatoes like he had done in the Burial Mounds of before, and other arrays carved into wells to purify the water where corpses had fallen in and spoilt it – in short, spells for everything he can think of.

Before the mourning period of the Jin remnants ends, the streets of Lanling have been cleaned and repaired. The homes are lit brightly each night to welcome the workers back after a hard days’ labour. On their tables there is food enough to fill their bellies, plain but adequate in nourishment. And on their lips, Wei Wuxian’s name, uttered with awe and gratitude. 

Centuries later, cultivators around the world will know him as the father of the jianghu’s very first technological revolution.

But the Wei Wuxian of now knows nothing of this. He only works, tirelessly, with the hands and brains given to him by his parents and the gods.  Trying every day to improve just a single life at a time, Wei Wuxian hurtles towards his destiny like a comet flying towards the stars.

~*~

~*~

Somehow, with time and patience, Jiang Fengmian manages to get a single good cultivator outside the walls of Lotus Pier and away from the eyes of Wen Zhuliu. A woman, a senior disciple chosen for her strength, stealth, and ability to go unnoticed by most male cultivators.

She has one mission – to fly to Qinghe with all speed, and beg the aid of Nie Mingjue to liberate Yunmeng from Wen Zhuliu’s stranglehold.

She is to return with an army at her back – or she needs not return at all.

~*~

~*~

In the darkened interior of his bedroom, Jin Zixuan lies wrapped in bandages. He is in pain so severe that he thinks waking was not a mercy at all, but he cannot go back to sleep, so he endures. There is a yawning hollow in his gut where his golden core should be – how should it be? he wonders, and is horrified – then panicked – to realise that he can’t remember how he felt when he had been – normal. ­

That it is this easy for his body to forget that it ever had a golden core.

He breathes hard and fast but can’t get enough air in his lungs. He panics. Pants in great heaving inhales that let in no air at all, thinks he might suffocate to death right here in his bed, thinks he might die a shame and a disgrace, that dying is more undignified than he’d thought, that everything hurts please make it stop already –

Then a worried face appears above his wide-open unseeing gaze. Something equally heavy and warm, like a weighted blanket, falls over him and dampens every sensation in his body and quiets every thought in his mind, till he can drift and drift along a great wide sea of nothingness, until he arrives at shore and finds only regrets waiting for him.

If only, the first one begins, and once the torrent is unleashed it does not stop.

If only I had been a filial son –

If only I had married Jiang Yanli –

If only my mother hadn’t decided for me –

If only I had married her –

If only my mother hadn’t chosen for, perhaps I would have chosen her –

If only I had chosen her –

If only I hadn’t been so proud –

If only I had married her as I was supposed to, years ago –

None of it would have happened.

Distantly, he hears a voice command him to breathe, then again, this time with directions to inhale and exhale that he is able to follow, faltering at first, then more easily, and then suddenly the air is back and he can breathe.

He lies unmoving save for the rise and fall of his chest and he takes in great gulps of air. Then the voice comes again, demanding attention in a way that indicates the speaker is used to being heard and obeyed without fuss.

“Aiyah! Don’t start hyperventilating now, the air won’t run away, you know.”

He opens his eyes to see a youthful visage, extremely handsome and sharp-featured. A familiar face, but not too much so.

“I’m Wei Wuxian,” the face tells him, and everything comes rushing back. The nine days’ feast. The tournaments and concerts, the music, the immortal. “I’m not working for Wen Ruohan,” the immortal adds.

Oh. Well. Good.

Wei Sanren? Huamei something? Yiling Laozu? What is he supposed to call him?

“What do I call you?” he mumbles, painfully and slowly, but he gets it out, and immediately feels more like a human being now that he knows he is capable of communicating with words instead of screaming himself hoarse – again. “Too many names.”

The immortal laughs, like he’s said something hilarious. Maybe he has, or maybe the man’s mad. You’d have to be, right? To go achieve immortality before the age of twenty?

Good heavens, this immortal is younger than him.

“Call me whatever you like,” he says. “I told you my name, call me that, or call me Huamei Sanren. It makes no difference to me.” He’s shining, gleaming, glowing with power that Jin Zixuan realises he will never have. Never. Well, it’s not like he had much hope of achieving immortality before, but now he knows it’s not a possibility. Ever.

Tears well up and he blinks them away. He will not cry like a baby about it. The servants manage fine and they didn’t even have cores to begin with, did they?

“’s m’own fault an’way,” he slurs, finding it a relief to confess it. With the words out in the open, it feels as though the pressure in his mind releases all at once, leaving him eager to talk now that he’s begun.  

Yiling Laozu – Wei Wuxian – looks at him in shock that can be seen clearly even through the gloom. “How can it be your fault, Jin-gongzi? You didn’t do this to yourself.”

He shakes his head. “Did too. Should’ve married her.”

There is a long pause. Then Wei Wuxian asks carefully, “Jiang Yanli?”

He nods.

Another long pause. “Why didn’t you?”

It’s his turn to be surprised. Wei Wuxian looks genuinely curious and concerned, like he wants to know. It makes Jin Zixuan want to tell him.

“Didn’t choose her. Mother did, y’know. I just wanted…a choice…” he trails off, and casts his gaze down his body to his navel.  “No more choices now.”

“Says who?” the other man responds easily. He actually looks like he means it too, which makes Jin Zixuan scoff. He adds that to his list of regrets immediately; it just made everything hurt worse. “No, really,” Wei Wuxian insists. “I heard you’re the third-ranked young master in the jianghu – don’t you have to be skilled at the six arts for that? You were also your father’s heir. Aren’t you trained in politics, history, and economics? Or is cultivating the only thing you know how to do?”

Huh. That’s…true, he supposes. He was always decent at his studies and rather enjoys the economics of business. He likes painting…when he wants to put in the effort. He loves charioteering, working with horses and training them. He’s good at calligraphy; the Jin sect library is – was – one of the few places his father never ventured, and consequently he and Mianmian had spent a lot of time in it.

He is abruptly very glad that Mianmian had been among the female disciples who chose to leave Lanling Jin with his mother. Without her protection, they would have been far more vulnerable against his father.

At the time, he had felt betrayed and abandoned. Now he feels only gratitude that she has been spared from the carnage that took almost his entire living family and left him alone in the world. Alone, even including his mother, for of course she cannot come to him now without risking a second round of retaliation from Wen Ruohan.

Yet –

“Mother,” he gasps, hoarse and desperate, begging Wei Wuxian to understand.

“Still safe in Meishan,” Wei Wuxian promises. “She sent letters but you were not well enough to receive them; Wen Ning will bring them by later.”

He doesn’t know what to think about the Wen scion who currently rules Lanling. Jin Zixuan is aware that he has been kept alive only because, well, he can’t think of any reason why other than Wen Ning – he honestly can’t think of him as Wen Qionglin, not when he’s so atrociously nice, being a fundamentally decent human being despite having been brought up by Wen Ruohan.

He’d said as much to the other young man one morning, when Wen Ning had come by per usual to change his dressings and do something with his needles to Jin Zixuan’s ruptured meridians that makes him feel like his body is back in alignment just enough to prevent him from going completely mad.  

“Well, that wasn’t the half that took,” Wen Ning had snorted, prompting Jin Zixuan to ask which other half he was talking about.

That was how he’d heard about Wen Qing, before the talk turned to sisters in general and then, specifically, to Qin Su.

~*~

~*~

Jiang Yanli’s life in the Sun Palace runs along more or less the same lines as it did when she had been a guest here, spending a summer learning medicine from the unparalleled healer, Wen Qing. Now too, despite being a married woman, she is put explicitly under the other woman’s care – and guard, it goes without saying.

Once she is settled, her days begin on the same pattern. She wakes, breakfasts alone in Wen Zhuliu’s courtyard within the inner palace – hers too, now. Dresses and joins Wen Qing in the infirmary over at Baosheng Hall. Changes bandages, reads the flow of qi and diagnoses basic illnesses, prescribes medicine, re-aligns faulty meridians.

Same old, same old. Wen Qing is kind as always, if also brusque as ever, which somehow brings Jiang Yanli comfort. It is a reminder of her brother, who has been removed to rooms in Baosheng Hall devoted to the care of long-term patients. It is not an environment she enjoys visiting, if she’s honest with herself – and she does try to be. Gloomy and depressing, with the inhabitants drooping in their beds as though waiting for death, as though wondering why they were denied mercy.

It makes her shudder in horror and faint revulsion every time she encounters it, so she goes there as little as possible, preferring to sit outside near the medicinal herb gardens with A-Cheng instead. Here, under Wen Qing’s expert care, he finally begins to show true improvement, finally able to sit up for prolonged periods without pain in his abdomen and spine. His temper, however, remains sullen and silent as it has been since his ill-fated nighthunt, and he isn’t very good company after long hours of hustling on her feet for her patients.

Her days, thus, are all the same. The only difference, she finds, are in her nights, which she spends in her husband’s home, acutely aware of the empty space next to her on the bed. Still unsure of herself and what she wants – or may expect – out of this marriage. She comforts herself that at least Wen Zhuliu has not been cruel so far – she had once heard her mother speak of Zhao Zhuliu with tones approaching respect, and she wonders.

Perhaps she wonders too openly, or perhaps seeking joy in this city is forbidden, for Wen Qing takes in her stated hopes for her marriage with a face so unreadable it can only be from disapproval. She is compelled to in inquire what is wrong, for she seeks to understand.

Wen Qing is quiet for a long while, either unwilling to speak, or unwilling to be rushed. Jiang Yanli remains comfortable in silence, giving her all the time she wants. At last, the other woman asks gravely, as though the answer matters, “Do you think you’ve married a good man?”

Jiang Yanli scoffs. She can’t help it. A good man – what a luxury. She had never even considered Jin Zixuan as such.

Wen Qing looks surprised at her reaction, as if she’s expected something else. Castles in the air, perhaps, dreams destined to crumble apart like wet clay. “I think I’ve married a man who gave me his word he wouldn’t harm my family if I handed everything I own – and am – to him. So far, he has kept that word. Does that make him a good man, or me a good woman?”

Wen Qing looks down at her tea, then flicks her gaze back up. She is a direct woman, which Jiang Yanli appreciates. “You know what he does? What he’s capable of?”

Jin Zixuan, squealing like a tortured rodent. “I have some idea.”

Wen Qing nods, sharply. “Then you should also know that most of the patients in the long-term ward are your husband’s victims. From tomorrow, you will be taking over their care. Consider it a gift.”

A gift?

Jiang Yanli is appalled. She knows what she has married, knows also that making the best of things is her special strength – but this – “No,” she chokes out. “This is cruel, you cannot -”

“I am a Wen in Qishan, I can do whatever I like,” Wen Qing cuts her off ruthlessly. “But it is a gift, Jiang Yanli. I have studied Wen Zhuliu’s methods and his victims for years. No one knows more about it than I do – and perhaps…” she trails off with a significant look.

Then, she understands, and something like relief, or excitement, or the unnatural calm before battle, or all three, takes hold of her. She feels numb, at her feet is a crossroads turning two ways. She has a choice to make here, an important one.

Wen Qing is not offering freedom or revenge or any guarantees. Only a chance. A chance at studying Wen Zhuliu, at finding a weakness that might be exploited.

Yanli is a Jiang. A chance is all she needs.

~*~

~*~

Nie Mingjue is in the garrison of his great fortress when a lone Jiang ranger disguised in drab colours lands outside the gates of Qinghe Nie, half-collapsing with fatigue and near-total qi depletion. Her intention originally was to call upon Nie Mingjue for military aid against the occupation of Yunmeng; on the way here she has seen something that blew every other thought out of her mind save this –

“War,” she warns with a shaking voice, terror in every line of her body. “Wen Ruohan – at least ten thousand men marching from Qishan – it is war. And it is coming – we can’t stop it, we cannot stop it!” And she faints dead away, her body giving way to its needs.

The Nie sect leader had been readying for war already, but a different kind, where he would meet the enemy on an open battlefield. Confronted with a host ten thousand strong marching on his stronghold, and knowing he has only a little over half that many fighters to call upon immediately, he has no other choice but to batten down his hatches for a long, hard siege instead. Knowing, all the while, that they have very little chance of surviving it through to the end.

~*~

~*~

Nie Huaisang is frightened. Today, it seems to him as if the spectres of his family’s past, present, and future have all come to loom over his shoulders together, unintelligible whispers weighted with unknown secrets falling into his ears. Half-remembered conversations, whispered rumours and old wives’ tales.

He has no time to make sense of it just now. To do that would need prolonged meditation and recovery of memories from when he was too young to understand much of anything. There is an army of bloodthirsty Wen coming to their doorstep right now; and his fool brother will end up meeting his death on Wen Ruohan’s sword sooner or later. He knows this, just as he knows this is not the first member of his family to fall to Wen Ruohan.

He has lost his father, has no mother either. He does not wish to lose his brother and be left alone in the world.

Abruptly, the decision is made. He will not lose his brother. Not to Wen fucking Ruohan.

He has that one precious crane talisman still with him, carefully secreted away in a section of his workroom that even the servants cannot touch to tidy up. He takes it out now, composing carefully in his mind exactly what he must say and in how many words, to make his friend come running as soon as possible to save them all, immortal husband in tow.

~*~

~*~

Wei Wuxian flicks away the messenger crane after finishing his conversation with Nie Huaisang, letting it dissolve in a small shower of silver and red sparks. “Wen Ruohan’s attacking the Unclean Realm. What a shitshow, Lan Zhan. I’m so tired of fighting.”

He’s aware that he’s whining, and also that it’s most inappropriate when the Unclean Realm is in mortal danger. But, he argues, it isn’t in dire straits yet, so he’s allowed.

In an ironic twist of fate, he’s been having fun in Lanling, surrounded by so many people from the Dafan Wen he loves and the tenacious, driven remnants of the Jin, whom he has been coming to appreciate. If you had asked him in his last life if he would ever be willingly sharing jokes and laughter with people in Koi Tower, making free use of its hallways and rooms to set up whatever new system of talismans he wants to test before unleashing it on the – originally unsuspecting and now anticipatory – public of the city.

It’s been nice. To see Wen and Jin cultivators mixing at the same cookfires, eating at the same table from the same pot. To see the Wen earn good karma for helping the ones who, in another time, had been their killers. To look at those same killers and know that here was some capacity for humanity hitherto undiscovered and now brought to bloom by necessity.

To stand firm and face trouble unflinchingly – this too is a sign of good character. He has been learning that perhaps the world is not as terrible as he once believed it to be, and he has been enjoying himself while he works and learns.

And now he has to drop it all and go off again to engage in violence because Wen Ruohan simply doesn’t know when enough is enough.

He’s so fed up. And someone, he thinks grimly, is going to pay for ruining his mood.

~*~

~*~

One week later

Wei Wuxian makes no effort to conceal his approach as he and Lan Wangji close in on the vast force of Wen camped outside the Unclean Realm. From below, he sees Wen cultivators look up and point at the sky, faces ranging from shock, to wonder, to terror. Only the gods know what they are thinking – Wei Wuxian certainly does not care.

He slams down into the centre of the camp with the force of a large meteorite striking, releasing a shockwave of energy that shoots through the camp, sending everything within a li flying with explosive force. Horses, men, and supplies go soaring through the air, their screaming muffled as sound seems to compress, then explode in a second wave that acts like a physical blow, flattening tents, breaking bones and snapping necks as it fans outward in wide, arcing ripples.

His enemy is nowhere to be seen; hiding, the cowardly rat. He refuses to let this delay him.

“WEN RUOHAN.”

He lets his voice project through the broken remains of the camp and its men. If the chief cultivator will not come to fight of his own accord, he will be made to.

“There’s no limit to your greed, is there? After all the blood you drank in Lanling, I thought you would have had enough. Since you haven’t, here I am, to fulfil your desires. You want a good fight? You want Qinghe? You want the whole world? You can have it – if you win. Now come and take it.”

~*~

~*~

Wei Wuxian is still a thousand li away when Wen Ruohan first senses a stirring, then a stillness of the air that speaks of a great disturbance coming – an approaching tempest and before it, the deadly quiet that lulls men into thinking they have just enough time to run and hide before it breaks upon their heads.

Wen Ruohan is no exception. He can guess at what – or who – is speeding his way here. A surprise? Perhaps, perhaps not – he knows that the young immortal has been spending time in Lanling, helping Ning-er rebuild the city and make it fit for habitation once more. So the question is – the incoming threat of destruction – is it aimed at himself or at Nie Mingjue?

Taking a chance to find out, he steals out of his tent and away from the camp, seeking shelter in a high spot among the foothills guarding the back of the Unclean Realm’s fortress.

Just in time.

The young immortal arrives like a shooting star, falling to the earth with the same force of gravity as a celestial object interrupted in its trajectory and seething mad about it. A mushroom-cloud of dust and rocks flies into the air, jettisoning every object in its radius upwards, shredding it all mercilessly on the way down.

Far away, Wen Ruohan watches helplessly as half his army falls prey to the wrath of an immortal fully unleashed, and begins to feel within himself an answering, simmering rage unlike anything he has known before.

What a showy display. Wen Ruohan has attempted the same in his misspent youth, when he had too much pride to bend, and wanted to smash his mark into the world rather than merely ‘make it’.

In many ways, he is still the same as he ever was. And at the moment, he is not impressed.

Power? Is that all you have, boy?

From the distance, he hears a call of his name – so the arrogant child presumes to summon him – him! To battle! As if he were hiding like a mouse in a hole, trembling in his boots with terror at the sight of so much raw force! Wen Ruohan has force aplenty to spare. More than that, he has decades behind him – what does this boy think he’s trying to prove?

He steps forward and makes a giant leap of his own, rocketing through the air towards the decimated camp, rallying the soldiers who’d managed to survive that first devastating blow.

“Here I am, boy,” he says simply, keeping his qi tightly leashed and deliberately making no effort to impress the boy with his strength. He knows how this appears – condescending, like he doesn’t consider an immortal worthy of his full attention, and expects the boy to bristle at once. “So you want to fight me? Do you think you can win?”

“I want to kill you, actually. Aren’t you satisfied after what you did to Lanling?”

Surprising. How is the boy so steady already, at his age? If only he wasn’t such a stubborn child. Wen Ruohan thinks he might have elevated the boy to the status of being a Wen not only in name but also inheritance, if only the boy had discarded these foolish notions of independence. And now, outright rebellion.

But he has been asked a question – is he satisfied? Wen Ruohan has never conceived of this concept. “Who said anything about satisfaction? Vengeance is mine, for the lives of my sons; I want –”

But he never gets to complete the sentence.

“I killed your sons,” Wei Wuxian cuts him off ruthlessly. Cuts the strings out from under his arms and legs. Cuts off the air from his lungs, the blood pumping from his heart to his extremities and keeping him tethered to himself.

For a long moment, or several, there is nothing in his mind but a buzzing like that of a swarm of bees rising in the air, drowning out every thought, every sensation, every emotion, save pure bewilderment and disbelief.

He…what? “…how.” He feels his mouth open and shape the word – he does not even know if he begged or commanded, because he cannot hear his own voice, cannot hear anything but that incessant, angry buzzing.

“Does it matter?”

Sound finally returns with the boy’s voice – that voice he once thought might be pleasant to hear sing in his court and now can only detest – does it matter?

No.

No, he supposes it doesn’t. The end will be the same – Wei Wuxian’s head on a pike in front of the gates of Buyetian for the entire world to gawk at. He flicks his sword an inch out of its sheath – but doesn’t yet draw it fully. He’s never yet lost his reason to pain, physical or psychological.

The deaths of his children go to join that of his wife’s, in the same locked cabinet he rarely touches. They will keep for afterwards. Now, here is the enemy whose blood must be spilled before he takes the whole world.

Take it – yes, he shall.

“Rules,” he grits out, darting a look at the Lan boy who stands behind his….husband. Like some sort of guardian, or merely a devoted shadow. Wen Ruohan can’t tell which and doesn’t care. He thinks only of how Wei Wuxian must treasure this one, to elevate him to the position of his consort. Even if it is fleeting affection driven by youth and lust, while those motivators are in effect they are powerful indeed.

Wen Ruohan wants Lan Wangji’s life. Wants it for his own sake, to avenge himself for the insult of that barrier and the debacle of the Waterborne Abyss, but mainly to inflict the same kind of pain upon Wei Wuxian before rending his limbs from his torso one by one.

But Wei Wuxian only laughs. “There are no rules, Xiandu. If you kill me, I will do my best to ensure I weaken you so that my husband will finish the job easily. You won’t survive this day, no matter how you play this. But all right, I did kill your sons, right under your nose. Guess I owe you for that. Name your terms.”

Rage spikes. First this upstart destroys his bloodline and now this defiance?

Wen Ruohan unclenches the vice-grip he’s had on his qi and lets it blast the insolent brat full in the face, to give him a taste of the fury coming his way. He is foiled almost immediately – that Lan brat pulls his zither out of his sleeve and thrums a singular, deep note that slams a barrier into place just in time to meet Wen Ruohan’s first strike.

So, they fight as a team. Good, the first step is to separate them, and go from there.

“First. You and I, swords only. I won’t have you or him playing your damned musical tricks on me.” For of course that’s how they must have done it, with their interminable playing in various courtyards and gardens in the spaces between events for those fateful final days of the feast. If you can kill beasts with music, why not humans? He should have known.

“Done.” The boy shrugs, like this it is no big ask to meet the chief cultivator in a pitched battle to the death with nothing but the meagre skills he must have accumulated over less than twenty years of life.

Well. If he wants to die, after achieving the guarantee of the exact opposite, Wen Ruohan will oblige him.

“Second, the result is final and will not be contested. That means, immortal, when I kill you, your damned husband is not entitled to do anything save wrap your body in a shroud and be exiled from these lands forever, or kneel and join you in the afterlife.”

Wei Wuxian tightens his mouth; this displeases him. Good.

“Or?” he snaps. Clever enough to sense the lurking threat, then. Clever and cunning. Wen Ruohan keeps on taking the measure of his enemy, a fact added to his lexicon for Wei Wuxian with every new exchange of words and gestures.

The battle has already begun. By the time the brat realises it, it will be too late for him.

“That Jiang girl only negotiated for the safety of her family. Her people are still at Wen Zhuliu’s mercy – my people now, and therefore at my mercy. When I win, there will be none.” He bares his teeth at the boy. “Or.”

Wei Wuxian goes quiet and grim at last, turns to exchange a long, silent look with Lan Wangji. Wen Ruohan cannot parse the meaning of that look, but when Wei Wuxian turns back to face him, he appears resolved as though about to commit himself to some distasteful task. “Done,” he spits, finally appearing rattled, and slides his sword out of its sheath.

“Anything else?”

As a response, Wen Ruohan slips his own sword the rest of the way out and goes into an opening stance.

Good.

Time to fight. Time to kill.

~*~

~*~

It is an old and familiar dance – thrust, parry, parry, thrust. He falls into it with the ease of long muscle memory from countless battles fought and won, countless beasts and enemies subdued forever.

The Wen fighting style is aggressive and allows no quarter for the opponent to move from a defensive position to an attacking one. Wen Ruohan decides to evaluate the boy’s skills first, while he decides just how he’s going to end his misbegotten life – and how much he’ll make it hurt.

He moves his body in wide twists and arcs, slashing outward with his sword as he spins, forcing Wei Wuxian to duck and fly back, back, and back to avoid the arcing blades of qi taking off his head. Eventually the boy grows tired of the game and brings his sword up in a short motion to send his qi slicing forward and through Wen Ruohan’s attacks, meeting the Xiandu’s blow with a parry that Wen Ruohan deems adequate – huh, he thinks. But this exchange had been a question of strength, not skill. He had merely wanted to confirm what he had already guessed – Wei Wuxian’s qi must be leagues more powerful than his own, as a factor of his immortality.

Then, experience and skill would win the day.

Whatever Wei Wuxian makes of his formidable strength, Wen Ruohan knows there is no way this child has ever killed a man before he did his demon-magic on his sons – has certainly never met a man in a duel to the death like this and survived. He would have heard, if such a thing had happened anywhere in the jianghu.

He abandons the idea of forcing his way to victory and, with a massive effort of will, leashes his qi again, a tightly and efficiently harnessed steed ready for the long haul. Then he pelts forward at full speed, smashing his sword hilt-first into the boy’s soft tissue, sending him careening into the boulders dotting the landscape. Wei Wuxian crashes against one hard, his entire body jolting from the impact. A loud CRACK is heard, and the stone breaks in half.

But not the boy.

Hm. Very strong then, but as yet, no skill to display. Without leaving his opponent any time to recover, he moves into a series of intricate loops and curves, throwing his body forward, left and right, slashing his sword down with each forward step of his feet. Like this, he harries Wei Wuxian this way and that, noting where the boy struggles to meet blow for blow, noting where the boy brings his qi to bear to avoid the full force of Wen Ruohan’s attacks.

Wen Ruohan wants to laugh – or scream with rage. This one who can barely keep up with him – does he think he can win like this?

Wen Ruohan decides to draw it out for his own amusement. It would be good to teach the immortal brat a lesson before dispatching him to the afterlife. Perhaps in his next life he’ll reincarnate into a pig and be gutted for someone’s lunch.

He does as he intends with pleasure, delivering fearsome punishment on the upstart child who had dared – dared ­– to harm what Wen Ruohan considers his own. Useless or not, Xu-er and Chao-er were his. His to raise, his to ruin, his to love or enshroud as he pleased.

His. And this little rat had stolen them, taken them – Wen Ruohan feels himself finally arrive at the breaking point of his rage.

“You end here, immortal,” he growls, mocking, preparing himself for the final strike, the blow meant to cleave head from torso.

He reaches back, then moves lightning-quick, high and fast, bearing down on Wei Wuxian with every ounce of speed and strength within. Through the red haze of bloodlust that has taken over his body and being, he counts down the steps from here to the boy’s neck. The steps to victory.

Ten. Step forward twice.

Nine.  Duck to the right, slash.

Eight. Parry once, block and thrust.

Seven and duck.

Six and five to the left.

Four, block.

Three – reach and slash to feint.

Two – stab.

One –

Pain, deep, sharp and urgent, blossoming between the resting and starting beats of his heart.

It takes him a while to realise what it means – what it is.

He looks down.

A slender blade in his chest, straight through his heart.

He thinks it got him in the left lung too.

How….?

He lifts his eyes, disbelieving, in denial, to the boy – to Wei Wuxian’s face. That perfect, furious face, unblemished but for a lone scratch stretching across the curve of one high cheekbone.

How.

Wei Wuxian, otherwise uninjured, barely even flushed with exertion. The only thing to show for Wen Ruohan’s prowess, his library of lived experiences and supremacy of skill – that one, single scratch.

HOWhowhowhow howho ow ho w h –

Then – nothing.

~*~

~*~

Wei Wuxian straightens, pulling Wuye out of Wen Ruohan’s chest and watching in silence as the chief cultivator slides off like a marionette with its strings snipped off.

He knows that the man had expected to win; it’s precisely what he had wanted Wen Ruohan to think. There is an easy way to finish a fight and one not, and Wei Wuxian is long since done with fighting his battles the hard way.

Obliterating a cultivator of the calibre of Wen Ruohan in a single blow would have been a near-impossibility, even for someone like him, and he did not flatter himself that having spent the better part of both his lives without a sword, he would be able to deal Wen Ruohan a death-blow just like that.

What he could do – was survive. He has always had a natural gift for getting out of almost any fight unscathed, and he had more than once managed it successfully against thousands of cultivators in his last life.

But Wen Ruohan had no way of knowing that. No way of knowing that he looks twenty but is thirty-one. That he has fought and won a war against Wen Ruohan already, that he once killed the most Wens out of any other man in the jianghu. That he carries within him the sense-memory of every single spirit and corpse he cleared out of the Burial Mounds – ten thousand people, some of whom had been warriors beyond compare.

All that skill and power at his disposal, for the purpose of killing this man. 

He looks down at the corpse. A mad animal, a beast to be hunted down. Just another dead sack of meat in the end. He could make it dance all the way to Yiling, if he wanted to.  

No, when you need to take down a mad animal, you tire it out first. Wei Wuxian had set himself the long, hard slog of doing exactly that, matching Wen Ruohan blow-for-blow with exactly the right amount of speed and skill to make it seem like he could be tossed around as the late Xiandu pleased.

And then – well. Tired animals are easy to kill.

~*~

~*~

It is not that Nie Mingjue is ungrateful to Wei Wuxian for saving him and his sect from near-certain annihilation, if not a slow and ignoble death by starvation. It is only that he doesn’t understand how the newly dubbed Yiling Laozu got here when all reports say he’s firmly ensconced in Koi Tower, rebuilding the city with the might of magic alone.

Nor does he truly understand why. Lan Wangji, yes – he and Huaisang are old friends, and if Huaisang had written to ask for help, it would make sense for Lan Wangji to show up with a cohort of Lan warriors in tow.

But to show up alone and in a hurry like they had been called and sped to Qinghe with mere days to spare? How could any letter even cover so much distance in such a short time? Even Jin butterflies do not do so. Why would Wei Wuxian even bother to come and personally kill Wen Ruohan in the first place, after declaring in front of the entire cultivation world that he had no desire to participate in the jianghu’s power games.

How did he know he would succeed? Arrogance, or not?

Was this true altruism, or something else? 

How, what, why, he wonders, and goes to fetch his brother for answers, already feeling a headache building.

~*~

~*~

Wen Zhuliu speeds towards Qinghe on the swiftest winds he can find. He has but one task in mind – to collect his master’s body and enact revenge on his behalf.

Then – only then, he will be free. It is a concept he does not truly comprehend after too many years lived as a glorified – and entirely willing – slave. For the first time in a very long time, he feels something other than the bonds of duty; he feels excitement and anticipation, feels the beginnings of life stirring in his gut.

Freedom, what a thing. Perhaps, after today, he will even be able to experience it.

But first, he has work to do – an immortal to dispatch, and his husband, rumoured to be nearly as invincible. These men – no, one man only – have killed his master, the greatest cultivator in the land. Wen Zhuliu does not make the fatal mistake of underestimating someone who considers themselves worthy of meeting the chief cultivator on the battlefield without an army to provide support and fodder for Wen Ruohan’s sword.

This Wei Wuxian must be far more capable than they had judged. Must have some fearsome technique at his disposal, or a natural genius that could not be matched even with experience, if he has managed to kill Wen Ruohan.

Wen Zhuliu knows his own capabilities and how far they stretch. To consume an immortal’s golden core, he will first need to get close enough. He does not doubt that he will not be given the chance, unless he creates it by force.

He needs power to accomplish his task. He cannot hope to match an immortal’s cultivation, so he must do the opposite, and match him in resentment instead. He adds a burst of speed, uncaring of depleting his qi. Soon enough, what’s in his meridians won’t matter. He’ll have what he needs, instead.

In the far horizon, Xinglu Ridge comes into view.

~*~

~*~

Nie Huaisang only wants his brother to live. If only Da-ge would realise it, instead of staring at him like he’s a stranger. Some unknown quantity that must be evaluated from every angle; if not a threat, then something very close to it.

It is precisely the reaction he’s always feared inviting if Da-ge were to ever find out his true character. That he only pretends to know nothing, that he’s sneaky and underhanded unlike any Nie, that he prefers to shank his enemy in the back from far, far away instead of facing him openly and honestly. No, not even that – he preferred above all else to lead his enemy down a garden path ending in thorns, and letting him rot there if he could not claw himself out.

He is, by now, fully aware of what it is he has inadvertently done to Meng Yao. Ruined a man. Not a good man, not yet a bad one. Only a fickle man, swayed easily by wealth and power, swayed even easier by even the most lacklustre hope of a father’s acceptance.

It had infuriated him to have such a disloyal man be the apple of his own brother’s eye. If it had not been that, Nie Huaisang would have been content with ensuring Meng Yao only left Qinghe Nie. But he had wanted to test his loyalty in the matter of Da-ge versus Jin Guangshan, just to see who would win Meng Yao’s heart.

The heart never chooses a lie. Meng Yao had flown like an arrow, straight to ruin and shortly after, damnation, and Nie Huaisang has reached a place where he feels not a single speck of guilt or remorse over it. Something about the calculated way in which Meng Yao had approached the entire situation has sat colder and colder in his belly the more he’s thought about it, and the final result is that he’s absolutely sure – with the kind of audacity and gumption he’d displayed in taking that list to Wen Ruohan, Meng Yao would indeed have stopped at nothing to gain his father’s admiration, and such a man could never be trusted to have anyone’s good in his heart except his own.

And now, Da-ge will know – knows – that there is something seriously wrong with Huaisang, if he is incapable of showing even the most basic of human emotions after taking a human life by sheer accident, simply as a byproduct of testing one man’s moral mettle.

“There was a man of means and influence. I will not say whether he was a civilian or a cultivator; it is irrelevant. Only that he was much like Jin Guangshan in character and habits…

“…including a son who grew up at a brothel…

“The child had been raised by a mother who was literate enough to dream of a better life, and encouraged to find his father once she died. He was rejected out of hand…

“It must seem natural, for such a thing to kill any semblance of filial affection. But you must remember that a parent’s regard is not so easily discarded. A father may abuse his child, yet the child will come running to no one else, when it needs shelter and comfort. This, I have witnessed personally…

“He made a name for himself, independent of his ancestry, and won his father’s acceptance for a time. The source of my information did not include details of what may or may not have occurred behind closed doors. Only that somehow, against all odds, this publicly disfavoured son somehow managed to go from nobody, to the head of his clan. For this to happen, three adult men in their prime had to die of unnatural causes – and so they apparently did. It was later discovered that he had murdered his own father, and speculated that he influenced the death of the direct heirs in line before him…

“…stories involving such men rarely turn out well.”

Indeed, why not?

He knows nothing for certain, but he has guessed at plenty in the past two weeks. He thinks he might be seven-to-eight-tenths right, even. He has always been good at guessing games, and there are too many things about Lan Wangji – his general conduct, his surprise elopement, his recent doings, and the story he had told about the orphan suspiciously like Meng Yao – that do not add up to a linear whole.

On the other hand – if you break the line, and loop it back around…

Just a little extra time would explain so many things, so Nie Huaisang has made what he thinks are reasonable suppositions about what Lan Wangji and that immortal husband of his are up to, against whom, and why.

He has always wondered why Lan Wangji chose to befriend someone like him – a nobody’s nobody amongst the illustrious cultivation gentry. A professed fool and fritterer, a lover of the arts and the arts only, foppish to a fault. He has also wondered why Lan Wangji came to warn him and not Da-ge about Meng Yao.

He can’t think of an adequate reason stemming from anything he’s done in this life, so naturally, it must be a different one. A different life already lived – once he grasped that golden thread of enlightenment, the rest had unravelled easily.

He ignores his furious, disappointed brother now. Directs all the considerable heft of his attention solely at Lan Wangji instead.

Friend? Saviour? Ally? Perhaps all three – Nie Huaisang doesn’t know and it’s doesn’t matter which Lan Wangji is and isn’t. He trusts the man, and has been trusted in return. That is what matters. 

In those honest golden eyes, he sees no recrimination, only a profound sympathy. Relief spreads through him, loosening a tension he hadn’t even realised he was holding. He makes a quick decision to take a vast risk.

“So, are you going to tell me the rest of what you know, Lan Wangji? Or, is there something else I must do to earn it?”

Da-ge looks between them, confused out of anger for a moment. “Do something? What do you mean, Huaisang? What has Lan Wangji made you do?”

“Oh, he’s made me do nothing. No one makes me do anything, Da-ge. Haven’t you learnt that by now?” He cuts a sharp smile at his brother, challenging. “No, I did him a favour. Didn’t I?” He directs this last to the man under discussion.

Said man only bows – in assent or gratitude or both. It’s unclear.  

After a moment, seeing that something more is expected of him, he adds, “Mn.”

What an asshole.

“What favour?” Da-ge asks, suspicious but calmer. Pity that won’t last beyond – “Ruining Meng Yao was this -”

“Yes.” And he leaves it there for his brother to chew over. Let him question Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian if he dares, after they’ve gone and offed his mortal enemy for him and saved his dignity to boot.

~*~

~*~

Nie Mingjue is thoroughly bewildered now. It makes no sense to him that a random orphan would take so much interest in the matters of the jianghu as to kill the chief cultivator and half of his army. Even for love of a spouse Nie Mingjue would not have gone to such lengths – so it cannot be for Lan Wangji’s sake, especially when Lan Wangji did not come to face Wen Ruohan for the sake of Gusu, which remains unharmed and untouchable behind its great wall.

And to destroy Meng Yao makes no sense at all, not even for Lan Wangji. Why should he care about one of Jin Guangshan’s illegitimate children to the point of asking Huaisang to help get rid of him? Or no – not asked. Huaisang says he has acted of his own accord. Because he thought it would be helpful.

In doing what?

Unable to brook the uncertainty, he demands plain speaking and straight answers from the two who came to save them, feeling the discomfort of questioning a benefactor but pushing through for the sake of his little brother’s moral standing.

In response to his – even to his own ears, presumptuous – questioning, Wei Wuxian only shrugs.

“Let’s say I owed a filial duty to eradicate Wen Ruohan’s line. Since I don’t wish to start a war, I’ll stop here.”

A filial duty – he couldn’t be accusing Wen Ruohan of having murdered his parents, could he? But why not? Wen Ruohan had killed Nie Mingjue’s father, he naturally wouldn’t have drawn the line at an unprotected pair of rogue cultivators. And Wei Wuxian’s mother had been an immortal’s disciple herself. Probably not the kind of woman who would bow her head before someone like Wen Ruohan.

So, Wei Wuxian did perhaps have a reason for his enmity. Nie Mingjue hears the message – and the threat within – loud and clear. I have taken my vengeance, the young immortal is saying without saying. I’ll stop here, unless you don’t let me.

Nie Mingjue has no intention of provoking an immortal’s wrath. He is more than happy to live with Wen Ruohan and his sons being dead, but he cannot – will not – let the matter of Meng Yao go so easily.

~*~

~*~

Wen Zhuliu suspects that breaking into the ancestral tombs of the Nie is not supposed to be this easy. However, that supposition precludes being in possession of all the facts relating to Nie cultivation and its pitfalls. Specifically, a story from the most secret and forbidden texts within the Wen sect leader’s personal library about the effect of their cultivation on their sabres, and the fate of these sabres after the masters are no longer alive to regulate their fury.

Generations upon generations of sabres – hundreds of them – dating back to the founding of the Nie clan, long before the founding of their sect, for the cultivation of each clan has always been peculiar to them. Even now, in each sect there are certain techniques available only to those of the right bloodlines, and no one else. 

And here is the true treasury of Qinghe Nie – a vast reservoir of resentment, it is true, but resentment is also power. At the end of the day, Wen-zongzhu had taught him to always remember – power is power.

It does not matter where it comes from, or its purity. Only purity of intent matters, and Wen Zhuliu’s intent is clear all the way through. A singularity of purpose resonates within him, connecting mind, body, and soul into one unified whole. He knows he can and will survive the process of absorption.

Thus resolved, he sets his teeth together, and begins.

~*~

~*~

The Nie sect leader is not going to let the matter of Meng Yao go so easily. Lan Wangji can see it, and a glance at Wei Wuxian confirms that his husband knows it too – and is at a loss for words to explain it, without revealing the specifics of time travel to an audience not known for being receptive to fanciful stories.

So he does the smart thing and looks to Nie Huaisang for help. After all, it’s at his friend’s original behest that they’re in this mess, so his friend can get them out of it too. Different lives and memories notwithstanding, he knows Huaisang well enough to surmise that the other young man would have made his guesses and has been merely keeping his own counsel. Certainly, Huaisang has not been shy about hinting just now that Lan Wangji knows much more than he’s letting on.

The younger Nie thankfully picks up on his pleading face – which truthfully isn’t all that different from his normal face.

“He had…a vision,” the younger Nie selects his words carefully, knowing exactly how far he can and can’t go. “Meng Yao did something bad.”

“And what was this bad thing he did? Details, Huaisang,” his brother demands, glaring.

He shrugs as insouciantly as he can, Lan Wangji suspects, which is still considerably. “Can’t say, privacy and all that. It’s his dream!” He passes the baton right back to the perpetrator, pleased with the opening he’s just given him.

From here on, only Lan Wangji knows what to say.

“A…vision.” Nie Mingjue is skeptical.

He nods. “When I formed my golden core. I did not know then what it meant.” He is not lying; in this life he had indeed, technically, gained knowledge of the future at that precise moment. He does not wait to be asked to elaborate, knowing fully what explosive revelations he’s about to drop into everyone’s laps save Wei Ying’s, whom he has told the truth to already. “I saw a man in Jin attire, calling himself Jin Guangyao, as Xiongzhang’s closest confidant. Xiongzhang taught him the Song of Clarity to treat you. He used it somehow to accelerate your qi deviation instead. I do not know why; I only knew him later as Meng Yao.”

He adds, knowing his tone has gone a touch dry, “When Xiongzhang persisted in his friendship, I thought it prudent to confide in Nie-xiong.” He does not say what he confided to the younger Nie. He never lies, but then, obscuring facts words better to conceal the truth than any spoken lie. This, any Lan with common sense learns fairly quickly. It does not matter now, anyway. Nie Huaisang needs to know the full extent of Meng Yao’s capacity for treachery so that he doesn’t spend even a moment of his life needlessly beating himself up.

And Nie Mingjue needs a reality check.

He hopes that the elder Nie gets the message he will not speak aloud. He knows that Nie Huaisang, at least, has got it. Don’t trust my brother. He’d have treated you himself if he truly cared.

He reckons not with what else Nie Huaisang might latch on to, what other kernels of knowledge he might glean. It has never occurred to him that Nie Huaisang has absolutely no idea that his brother is at risk of qi deviation, or why. He is such a weak cultivator himself that he has no idea at all that his sect cultivates by separating the resentful energy of beasts from the yang qi they carry, with the yang qi entering their dantians and the resentful energy entering their swords. Has no idea at all of the dangers of this method of cultivation.

It must be something he had come to know only after – or perhaps as a consequence of – his brother’s death.

~*~

~*~

Pain.

His body is sliced to ribbons by several hundred furious sabres having discovered the one living human among the dead they were supposed to eternally fight.

He endures, and survives.

Pain.

His soul is torn apart by blade-edged tendrils of resentment that dig, dig, dig deep within and carve out the facts that make him himself, one by one.

He endures that too, and survives.

Pain.

His mind is shredded by agony, by the weight of this world and the space in-between to the next, not meant to be comprehended by a human mind, so he must twist into someone else, something else. He does, with a screeching of bone against bone, screams like a tortured animal wracking the body he still recognises as his own only because it burns with the hunger that had once simmered in his meridians and settled in his bones.

Burns burns burns hungry

He wants food. Wants to eat. Wants to – needs to – set his teeth into the meat of something soft and squishy and juicy-plump with blood, needs to chew, chew, chew, and swallow it all down. Bite after bite like that, slow and savouring and crunching and so so hungry hungry so hungryhungryhungryhungry

~*~

~*~

The hypocrisy of it stuns Nie Huaisang stone-cold.

His brother, the Most Righteous Cultivator In The Realm, to hear him tell it morning, noon, and night – his brother, barely a step above a demonic cultivator.

Baxia. Famed, indomitable, righteous. A demonic sabre.

He wants to cry. Scream. Throw something. Dig his brother’s eyeballs out with a spoon the way his heart feels carved out and hollow right now, for what use is vision to the congenitally blind?

All his life he has heard himself called lazy and good-for-nothing, and his brother righteous.

Is it lazy and good-for-nothing to avoid a path leading to near-certain deviation and untimely death, or is it lazy and good-for-nothing to perpetuate that same path amongst innocent, unwary children, twisting their meridians and lives in the opposite direction from which they ought to go?

Which one of them embodies true evil?

Him with his laziness and dependence on others, or the righteous?

Before he can ask – before he can demand to know what the fuck his brother thinks he’s been doing – an explosion shakes the very foundations of the Unclean Realm and rocks them on their feet. The furniture rattles against the walls, bits of priceless pottery crashing to the floor, and in his ears there is a strange pressure, like they’ve been stuffed quiet with giant fingers.

He picks himself off the floor, avoiding shards of a broken vase – thankfully not a favourite. Where did that come from, he wonders, not realising he has spoken aloud. His own voice sounds strange, muffled, and he hears his brother say, with dread such as he has never dreamed of hearing – “Xinglu Ridge.”

~*~

~*~

Nie Mingjue wants to leave at once, and refuses to say why. Wei Wuxian, in turn, refuses to let him. He will not walk into a situation blindly again, certainly not at the behest of any sect leader. This is a lesson he has learnt the very hard way.

Hence, before he agrees to let anyone in the room take even a step towards the north-east, he flicks his qi into a barrier around the place, holding all four occupants within until he gets answers. He feels Lan Wangji fold his own qi into the ward, turning it from stone to a thick sheet of metal. Now, no one may leave.

Thus, he demands answers – and gets them, thanks to a furious and disgusted Nie Huaisang backing him up. The tale that unfolds stuns him to silence at first. Then he wants to laugh himself sick, right before he punches Nie Mingjue’s pig-headed face right into the back of his skull.

The fucking hypocrite.

Of course, he had already known that there was something very, very off-key about the Nie school of cultivation. Tracing the trails of resentment between them and their sabres had been an act second to breathing, in his last life. In this one too, he has discovered no differently, which means that it was not some technique invented for the Sunshot Campaign and discarded thereafter. They cultivate this way by choice. By tradition.

And yet, Nie Mingjue had the gall to participate in a siege against him.

What, he wants to know, is Nie Mingjue protecting, that justifies the use of borderline demonic cultivation?

The Nie sect leader acts as though he has never considered the question. As though all his grandstanding about righteousness and the broad, straight, golden path hasn’t been anything but lies, lies, lies.

The bastard, Wei Wuxian thinks, and lets it show plainly on his face for Nie Mingjue to see.

The other man doesn’t respond to such provocation; he has other worries at the moment. Wanting to be off to the source of the trouble as soon as possible, worried about an attack from some unknown enemy, worried even more about his family’s dirty laundry being revealed to the world. The taboo that has been broken and the shame that has been spoken, and which must – will – spread out beyond these walls to lower his head before the entire cultivation world.

He falls to his knees before the incensed immortal, begging to be let off. Begging for mercy. Begging to be allowed to leave for Xinglu Ridge without more delay. Just begging. Wei Wuxian doesn’t seem inclined to oblige, until his husband and Nie Huaisang both reach out to him, one in support and the other in supplication.

“Wei Ying.”

“Wei Wuxian, I don’t know you, but I’m begging you – I’m with you! I’m angry too! This secret that we’ve been carrying, it’s horrible! It’s repulsive! We’ve committed evil, knowingly and unknowingly, and ruined lives. For that, you’re right – we’ll pay. Some of us have done so already – I’m pretty sure this is how father got killed, what a fucking fool you are, Da-ge, did you think such things remain secret forever? Wen Ruohan must have known – but can’t we sort this out later? Xinglu Ridge…we don’t even know what awaits us there!”

Wei Wuxian raises a cool eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “You mean you don’t know what’s waiting. My guess?” He smiles grimly. “Wen Ruohan wasn’t the only Wen who knew your filthy little secret. If I am not mistaken, it will be Wen Zhuliu that we find there.”

~*~

~*~

Xinglu Ridge is a maelstrom of resentful energy. A large domed structure of stone set out like a maze must be the ancestral tomb. It lies broken open, a tornado of black energy whipping up through the destroyed roof, up and up, a horrific, deadly storm of sabres seeking the blood of anything living, and the ichor of anything dead, that lay in its path.

At its centre, a lone human figure. Upright. Grinning madly, bloodied fangs in a mouth like a cavern, black eyes like –

A demon’s.

As one, the entire force of Nie cultivators comes to a halt with their commander, frozen in terror or disbelief, or perhaps both.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t wait for them to rouse themselves; he hurtles forward, Chenqing already aloft at his lips, and Lan Wangji’s heart stops.

Wen Zhuliu, man turned demon, corrupted by resentment powerful enough to perhaps match an immortal. Wen Zhuliu, who was sucking in the tornado of resentment like he couldn’t get enough of it, like he was starving for it. Wen Zhuliu, who ate golden cores and had eaten Wei Ying’s future once already.

He has a split-second to make a decision, less than the moment of a blink, which means the decision is already made – all that must be done is act.

He moves faster than he has ever moved, faster than he has ever needed to move. Fast enough to outpace Wei Wuxian at his peak. Fast enough to slam down a barrier of pure qi so powerful it looked like molten metal. Fast enough to trap himself with the demon – and save Wei Ying.

~*~

~*~

Wei Wuxian screams in agony, his heart rending in two when the barrier slams into place, a barrier he knows from sense alone is unbreakable unless he wants to cause grave harm to his beloved.

“Lan Zhan!”

The cry tears his throat open, he jerks and coughs up blood, and is supported by Nie Huaisang coming up from behind to steady him.

“Hold it together, Wei Wuxian,” the younger Nie says tersely. “We may have need of you yet.”

He carefully doesn’t mention Lan Wangji by name, perhaps realising that the way in which it would set the immortal off wouldn’t be pretty. Danger rises in the air like ozone, raising the hair on the men’s arms. They all take a wary step back; no one says a word at all.

~*~

~*~

Dodging a murderous swarm of sabres and a crazed, corrupted shell of a human being at the same time, Lan Wangji sheds some serious doubts about his ability to survive the incoming fight at all, let alone unscathed. He does not doubt that he can defeat Wen Zhuliu – he is fast enough to beat Wei Ying once in a while, so he is more than sufficiently swift on his feet to dodge any attempts at taking his golden core.

He won’t put Wei Ying, or himself, through that.

The shrieking, rageful winds of resentment buffeting both him and Wen Zhuliu are another matter entirely. Hundreds – there surely must be hundreds – of sabres slash this way and that, harrying him from one edge of his barrier to another, doing their best to break through and turning on him when that doesn’t work.

Sentience in resentment-cloaked deadly weapons doesn’t bode well.

Wen Zhuliu makes no effort to avoid the sabres even as they carve bits off his flesh off; what cuts away is replaced by a pulsing well of black energy that stretches over the gaps in his body and fills them up, like a straw puppet being hastily repaired. He is taking everything he can, growing fat and bloated on the energy he is consuming.

Out of control. If not already, then soon.

Lan Wangji realises he has little time in hand. When the demon is done feeding, it will notice him. If it’s ripped apart by the very energy it’s trying to eat, that energy will then turn on him with double its current ferocity.

In short, he has no good options here, only a question of which battle must be fought first.

~*~

~*~

Wei Wuxian waits, caught on the other side of the barrier for once, understanding at last the torment he must have visited on Lan Wangji over the years. Seeing, finally, the depths of devotion that kept that same man coming back to try again and again and again, week after week, year after year, lifetime after lifetime.

He waits helpless, almost witless, knowing what it is to be truly loved, knowing also the terrible fear of it being taken away in a heartbeat.

~*~

~*~

It is not honourable, but clinging to honour in the face of such a fight is a notion that will get him killed, so Lan Wangji swiftly abandons all other principles save that of survival – practicality.

Take the opportunity to pilfer a goat and loot a burning house[2] while you’re at it – while Wen Zhuliu feeds, there is a window of opportunity he would be remiss to neglect.

Having got the measure of the situation and the danger he’s in, he unsheathes Bichen with his qi and directs the sword towards Wen Zhuliu, attacking the demon from the back while he remains distracted. With his hands on his guqin, he begins to manipulate the resentment-soaked sabres, strumming beat after beat of Calming and Cleansing, weaving the two songs together on the fly, using his knowledge of musical incantations and notations to ensure he doesn’t make a fatal mistake.

The fight that follows takes everything he has – Wen Zhuliu finally notices him, and then he’s dodging death on two fronts at once, his qi swirling in tight curves and loops around him, protecting him from attacks both physical and spiritual. He spins and whirls and ducks, letting Bichen take all the power of the offensive, focusing on defence with his qin, for while the demon can be held at bay, the swarm is another quality of entity entirely.

Drenched in the resentment of centuries, the mad, murderous rage of each Nie sect leader who’d fought and killed with a sabre, and the despair of those whose corpses were buried in this cursed place, to fight the sabres as a form of eternal damnation. Their combined fury has grown into a monster on its own, refusing to be reasoned with or placated.

Yet, he must, or he’ll die and leave Wei Ying alone.

Thinking of Wei Ying – what would Wei Ying do, he wonders, and the strains of cleansing music cease at once to pick up another thread – Inquiry.  

Pain. Rage. Despair. A question, that begs to be answered, that is met with silence and screams.

Why?

Why indeed?

To appease the bloodlust of the gentry? To wash clean their sin? To give them back their honour? To protect the fragile illusion of righteousness?

Why?

Tell us, Lan who is young who is old who is here who is ours who is alive who is dead who we want who we’ll have tell us tell us tell us tell us tell us –

A thousand voices crash into his mind at once, cymbals of pure sound crushing every thought, every idea, almost crushing his sense of self if not for the one thread that cannot be touched even by the worst of evil in this world –

Wei Ying.

What is here is only half evil. The spirits trapped here to battle sabres are not all those of criminals or degenerates – and some may be called by that moniker only by the barest standards. Their stories play out inside his head, a superimposition of memories that threatens to choke his soul within his own body, but for –

Wei Ying.

He plays faster than he has ever played in either of his lives, more desperately than he had played against Wens and once against Wei Ying too, at that terrible massacre in Nightless City. He plays so his fingers begin to bleed, the strings cutting deep furrows into his flesh. He plays and plays, till the strings grind against his bones, till his fingers have nearly been cut clean through. Plays and listens and understands the stories of every single spirit, sabres and victims both. He assimilates them all within himself, accepting their memories and their resentment, letting them subsume the rage he has carried in his own heart all this time. The rage that would now be food for the needy, the hungry and the wanting spirits, if not for –

Wei Ying.

Here I am, he tells them all. Have me, if you will or if you can, he tells them. My will is yours if you can bend it to your desires – but what good will that do you? Let me help you. Let me help you, and you help me in turn.

Rage, feeding on rage, cancelling each other out till a tempest calms to swift winds, till a forest fire dims to banked embers under which simmers the seed of new growth.

One by one, the sabres fall to the ground, the metal twisting and crunching, curling in on itself as the weapons release their bloodlust and the spirits they have been fighting take it all – and give it to Lan Wangji.

Somewhere ahead of him, tangled with Bichen, Wen Zhuliu screams in agony, the deep gorge of resentment that was keeping him alive rapidly emptying.

It gives Lan Wangji a new understanding of the state of Wei Ying’s body in their last life. What he must have endured.

He plays on, until the resentment has emptied from the demon, until the man who was once human falls to the ground and goes still, his body breaking into pieces smaller than a handspan from the injuries he’d sustained from the sabres.  

But his task is not done. Deprived of the creature keeping the worst of it at bay, the storm of resentful sabres now turns on him with renewed fury, bearing down upon his spirit with black tentacles that whizz and flash through the air, whipping out like lethal talons to catch him and rip him in half.

Still, Lan Wangji plays on, inviting the pain and despair in, listening – and as he listens, as the storm rises and lulls by turns, he begins to infuse Inquiry with the patterns of qi he uses when playing Cleansing. An alteration so subtle and insidious that the sabre spirits do not notice, until they are caught in the trap, until the healing, purifying energy surrounds them and uses them to weave a ward stronger than stone or metal, stronger even than the one that protects Gusu.

As one, the sabres turn outward and, following his direction, arrange themselves in a circle around the great mausoleum of death and resentment. The land upon which it stands, the forest itself is soaked with blood and hatred, enough to form a second Burial Mounds if left to continue like this much longer.

With a deep, twanging thrum of Lan Wangji’s qin, the sabres slam deep into the ground, crunching through dirt and stone till they reach bedrock. The ward he has woven settles into place around the tomb.

And deep inside him, in the pit of his dantian, his golden core shatters.

~*~

~*~

Outside the barrier, all that can be seen is a golden glow of light so pure and piercing that the waiting host of cultivators shuts their eyes instinctively against it, afraid of being blinded.

All except Wei Wuxian, who refuses to look away, his gaze protected by his own qi against the sunburst glare radiating from inside the barrier which, even now, stands tall and strong.

Just like Lan Wangji, who is at this very moment facing his heavenly trial, without Wei Wuxian there to hold his hand through it.

He does not know whether to be relieved to have confirmation of his husband’s survival, or if he’s to attain new heights of terror. He remembers his own trial – how he had not realised what was happening, how he had been forced to consume his own energy to keep his body and soul together. Thinks with dread unspooling in his belly that Lan Wangji is surely too innately good to realise what it is he has to do, or too upright to do it if he does figure it out.

To find balance, one must embrace one’s darkest parts, by acting like an animal to survive the trial first.

And Lan Wangji – Wei Wuxian has not yet had time enough with his husband to know exactly what he is and isn’t capable of doing to survive.

He knows only that if Lan Wangji’s light goes out here, if his light goes out here, the world may end alongside them both.

~*~

~*~

The light grows and swells, brighter and brighter, till the barrier cannot contain it any longer and breaks at last. The blistering glow begins to fade, and the men open their eyes, blinking spots from their vision.

From the mausoleum, a man comes forward, his figure distinguishable as humanoid only because it shines like the centre of a star, rays like those of sunlight receding into his form. He bears the light within as he walks and a deep stillness falls over the forest, blanketed in that otherworldly glow like it has a tangible presence that demands they bend their backs in reverence.

Where there was a raging storm amid the darkest night, is now only peace and the stirrings of hope, for Lan Wangji brings the dawn with him.

From the back, someone shouts in wonder – a word or name. The cry is heard and taken up by the Nie as a victory chant, their blood singing with the purity of qi rushing into their meridians and soothing the rage within –

“–guang-Jun! Hanguang-Jun! Hanguang-Jun!”

~*~

~*~

~*~

Footnotes

[1] 500 grams. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement

[2] From the Thirty Six Stratagems.

Take the opportunity to pilfer a goat: take advantage of any opportunity that offers itself, however small

Loot a burning house: Attack your enemy without mercy when they are weak and/or preoccupied with something else

Chapter Text

In the aftermath, Wei Wuxian is inconsolable.

“What were you thinking, Lan Zhan?” he sobs, face smushed into his husband’s neck, arms wrapped around that same neck in a stranglehold.

He still can’t believe it. Lan Zhan, immortal.

He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to believe, given that he’s handily accomplished the feat himself. It somehow is so, he can’t help feeling the way he feels, especially minutes after thinking he’d lost the love of his life for good.

Some of the tears he sheds are pure rage – how dare Lan Zhan put him through this? – but the remainder are pure relief and gratitude that he hadn’t lost his entire universe that night. All because he’d been foolhardy and pelted straight into danger without first stopping to discuss it with Lan Zhan.

Well, if Lan Wangji had wanted to make a point, he’d done it. A sharp one it was, too.

Still, Wei Wuxian is too mad to be reasonable right now, so he goes on weeping and wailing into Lan Wangji’s neck, while the two hundred Nie cultivators accompanying them mill about uselessly, twiddling their thumbs and failing to act nonchalant about the domestic disturbance they’re being forced to witness.

From somewhere behind, Nie Mingjue, beaming broadly at Lan Wangji with a professional elder-brother’s shit-eating grin, rolls his eyes so loudly it pierces even Wei Wuxian’s thick face, and he is forced to untangle himself from his husband.

But first he gives him an absolutely filthy kiss, tongue and teeth included, not caring who’s gawking.

“I’m going to go beat some sense into my husband. You all find your own way back,” he announces without preamble, grabs hold of Lan Zhan, who doesn’t resist one bit, and speeds back to the Unclean Realm without further theatrics.

He waits till they land to ask again, this time seriously, “What were you thinking, Lan Zhan? I know I should have discussed it with you first, but don’t you know me better by now? I wouldn’t have gone charging in if I wasn’t sure I’d be completely safe. But you – you had none of that guarantee! And. You. Still. Went.” He shoves the point of his finger into Lan Zhan’s chest once, twice, four times in emphasis as he rattles off his woes.

His husband is stubborn as ever, refusing to listen to reason. “How would you be any safer than I? Wei Ying, you are immortal -”

“So are you, now.” Joy suffuses him as he speaks the words aloud, making it seem a little more real. But he stays on point, refusing to be distracted. “And so am I. Exactly. What made you think I couldn’t handle him? I had more power then than you did.”

“Thought he would feed on you next.” Lan Wangji is terse and abrupt, the way he gets when putting forth upsetting information.

Oh, Wei Wuxian thinks, I hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Wen Zhuliu fed on golden cores,” he begins slowly. “We don’t have those, Lan Zhan…” He trails off, unsure for the first time.

Wen Zhuliu had managed to absorb so much raw resentment into his golden core that he’d turned into a demon. It should have been impossible for someone who could reportedly only absorb the refined yang qi stored in golden cores, but his remaining alive was also an impossibility that had already come true, so why not another? It is evident by now that Wen Ning’s stolen wealth of information on Wen Zhuliu had not been correct or accurate. They should have probably taken its very availability as a sign that it had already been obscured to foil spies and traitors like him to begin with.

“Still,” he argues, “you weren’t in any less danger than I. If anything, Lan Zhan! Have you considered what I’d do if I lost you?”

“You did not lose me,” Lan Wangji points out, dry and infuriating.

“But I could have!” Wei Wuxian is yelling again. “I’m sorry! Okay? Okay?! I won’t do it again, just please, please don’t take such stupid fucking risks, I’m sorry-”

He’s caught and wrapped up tight in warm arms before he can get himself more worked up.

“Wei Ying. Wei Ying, I am sorry too. I was not trying to punish you. Wei Ying. Look at me.” Lan Zhan bullies his face out of his neck and up so they’re eye-to-eye, not caring that he’s wet with tears. “I am sorry. I only thought of the past. I did not want you near Wen Zhuliu, that is all.”

Wei Wuxian sniffles. “So…you basically went charging in without thinking…like me?”

Lan Wangji averts his eyes for a moment, then meets his gaze squarely.

His heart might break all over again. He pulls himself together and presses soft kisses all over Lan Zhan’s face, then can’t help himself and chomps down on one cheek, gnawing like a child with his lips between his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m so sorry, Lan Zhan. I’ve put you through hell, haven’t I?”

Lan Wangji shakes his head carefully, cheek still caught between Wei Wuxian’s lips. “It is you who went through hell to survive.”

Wei Wuxian is quiet for a long moment, basking in the simple fact of Lan Zhan being a living, breathing entity in his arms. “I would have survived anyway,” he says at last. “I want you to know that, right now, in advance for if we ever face such a situation again. Lan Zhan, my darlingest, sweetest husband, you’re going to kill me one of these days with the way you love me, you know?”

He sniffles again. “But remember this – peerless though you might be at orthodoxy, I invented resentful cultivation and ghost cultivation, I am the grandmaster of both styles. My paths haven’t failed me once, Lan Zhan. If things got hairy, I’d use one or the other to preserve myself and escape.”

He is prepared for Lan Wangji to freeze in his arms, to pull back and grasp his shoulders tight with rising anger, rising desperation. “Wei Ying, resentment harms the body and mind. You know this, after what we saw in Qinghe. You are immortal; you do not have need of it any longer. You should not.”

Wei Wuxian is implacable on this point, and well-ready for this talk. He’d always known it was coming, and has prepared what he wants to say long ago. “Resentment harms the body and mind, it is true. But does resentful cultivation truly harm the body and mind, in the way Nie cultivation does? Cultivating resentment doesn’t actually require the user to store the energy within their body – I was the exception. You know that Wen Chao threw me into the Burial Mounds. I don’t actually know if I survived that fall or if I was a dead man walking. I only know that the resentment kept me glued together and preserved my body in the absence of refined yang qi. That absence is likely why I didn’t turn into a demon like Wen Zhuliu. Or perhaps I had become one, and didn’t realise it at first since it took the Jin pushing me towards disaster for me to finally lose control over my cultivation.

“Of course I needed to store it within my body to continue on – and after three months in there, I am not sure you could have separated me from resentment at all, not without possibly killing me. But that is a matter separate from the path of resentful cultivation. You only need to direct resentment with music using my path, and I can tell you with certainty that Chenqing did not store resentment – it housed clean, refined yin qi only. A-Yuan -” his breath hitches, but he soldiers on, “- A-Yuan used to chew on it all the time when he was teething. You don’t think he was a demonic baby, do you?”

Lan Wangji looks away again, unable to refute his words, but needing to be convinced more.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, serious as he never has been, “I will not give up my paths. I may not have gone about them the right way, last time, but that doesn’t mean I got everything wrong. There’s merit to them both – they can succeed where orthodox cultivation fails. The world is made up of yin and yang, Lan Zhan. You know that now, or you would have died instead of ascending. Yin qi isn’t evil. Corruption of that energy – that’s what orthodox cultivation exists to cleanse and eliminate, and believe it or not, resentful cultivation actually cleanses corrupted yin qi more quickly due to affinity between similarities.

“Useful? In communicating with the dead, it has use. In reaching them from the inside, preventing them from causing harm, it has use. In tracking curses and the source of monsters, it has invaluable use. In fighting mo, yao, gui and guai with their own weapons turned against them, it is unbeatable. And for those who cannot cultivate golden cores, it’s the only tool of defence that doesn’t need to come pre-powered by a regular cultivator like us. Someday, I’ll refine it into what it should be. It’s my path, Lan Zhan…I believe in it. How could I ever give it up?”

“You have used it already in this time.”

How his husband managed to pull that out as his takeaway, Wei Wuxian will never know. But this is also why Lan Wangji is so amazing to him – there’s no getting ahead of that man.

“So what?” he shrugs and laughs, but there’s little humour in it. “Lan Wangji, do you really think that I, a lone human, managed to dig up ten thousand corpses with just my own hands and what? A shovel?” He scoffs, a sharp sound like a knife cutting through soft flesh. “Of course I made them help.”

He thinks for a moment, and then grows wicked. “As for ghost cultivation, where do I even begin? Or perhaps you should begin.”

His husband gives him a nonplussed, unamused look, which he grins at cheekily, but then turns serious again.

“I’m not kidding, love. What the hell do you think Inquiry is, if not the most rudimentary form of ghost cultivation? You speak directly to the dead, Lan Zhan. You compel them to answer with the truth and only the truth. Technically – and I’m forever gonna hold this over your uncle’s head – you Lans invented this path. I just completed the journey your ancestors began.”

Lan Zhan looks at his upturned, coaxing expression and sighs. Drops a helpless kiss on that pouting mouth. Then he nods, a quick downtick of his head. “I do not promise to agree, but I will think more on this. Until then, I shall be your first disciple on these paths. Let me learn for myself if what you say stands the test of time. If I may walk behind, protecting you, you may continue,” he says, and Wei Wuxian’s entire being melts into a puddle of warm syrup.

“No more ‘come back to Gusu’, eh?” he says softly. “You’ll really follow me anywhere? Kiss me if you mean it – no, fuck me right now, Lan Zhan, or I might actually die.”

His husband of course obliges, all the way until next morning.

~*~

~*~

There is the problem of Nie Mingjue and his sect’s decidedly unorthodox method of cultivation to resolve. Wei Wuxian is aware that he and Lan Wangji are the two people best placed in the jianghu to demand changes. After killing Wen Ruohan and Wen Zhuliu, not to mention saving the entirety of Qinghe from the backlash of their ancestral tomb exploding, the sect leader is in no position to refuse anything they might ask.

Consequently, they meet the next morning for a long talk that turns into a debate by turns, as Wei Wuxian demands that an entire way of life come to an end. He is supported in his endeavour by Nie Huaisang, who looks like he’s been on a bender the whole night, instead of sleeping safe and snug in his bed like the pampered young master he both is and pretends to be by turns.  

“It is not the unorthodoxy of your cultivation that bothers me, Nie-zongzhu,” Wei Wuxian is explaining, but Nie Mingjue has so far been averse to the very idea that his cultivation is at all unorthodox, simply because it synthesises only yang qi in the cultivator’s core, while siphoning the resentment elsewhere.

Which explains so much about Wei Wuxian’s last life, really. 

Orthodoxy doesn’t concern itself with true morality, only the correct appearance of it. It doesn’t follow the spirit of the law, only the letter.

Beside him, Lan Wangji sits stiff and unyielding in silent support, like a boulder dropped into the middle of Nie Mingjue’s office. He chooses to interject at last, fed up with the conversation going in circles.

“You are preying on children and ruining lives. It is immoral.” He lets his gaze rest upon Nie Mingjue for a long time. It is weighty with the possession of all of Qinghe Nie’s secrets. The sect leader turns his face away, unable to meet that grave, knowing stare for very long.

At last, Nie Mingjue is shamed into hearing the objective truth of his way of life.

“You take children and set them upon this path, knowing that the best of them will die young instead of attaining our expected lifespan. Do you inform them first? Do you ask?”

Nie Mingjue has no answer to that. Nor does Lan Wangji expect one. Of course he would not be asking anyone such questions; very likely no one had ever mentioned a choice to him either. If you live in Qinghe, you cultivate the Nie way or you leave the realm entirely. That is how it is for the Nie – and for everyone else from every other province, too.

Of everyone who had the misfortune of being born in Qinghe, the sect leader’s heir would have had the least choice of all.

La Wangji suppresses a sigh, knowing that his husband will have noticed anyway. It is the old problem he keeps facing here time and again – everyone’s youth and lack of hardening experience. They are such soft children, and he is a hard man.

Remembering himself as he was at fifteen, then at eighteen and again at twenty-one, even after living through war and deprivation, he had not changed his ways. Even when confronted with the physical and mental deterioration of the man he loves, he had not changed his ways. It had taken Wei Ying’s death to galvanise him into evolving.

Nie Mingjue, more set in his ways than most and traumatised from his father’s murder, is naturally slower to contend with the idea of betraying his ancestors by embracing near-total change.

But of course, that is what is needed. Wei Wuxian has known this before he left the warmth of his husband’s arms that morning. He had said as much to Lan Wangji, who had only hummed and not appeared unduly worried, which means he surely has something up those wide, fluttering sleeves of his.

Wei Wuxian has begun to recognise the signs of a sneaky husband. It pleases him immensely that he is allowed to be so close to Lan Wangji in this life, to learn all his little ways and foibles and be learned in return.

In the end, they bring to bear the full heft of their titles and influence, and Nie Mingjue gets tired of stalling against his new reality. The fact is that he cannot continue to cultivate the way he has been, nor expect his disciples to either. After the stunt Wen Zhuliu pulled last night, stories are already flying far afield and the atmosphere of the fortress has grown unsettled, a strange unspoken stalemate between a respectable sect leader and his devoted disciples, all of whom are now uncertain of their places and their very lives.

Then there is the matter of their ancestral tomb no longer belonging to them. It is the site of Lan Wangji’s ascension, now tied to him intrinsically. He has the power to deny them access to their own roots, a threat that does not need to be spoken – especially when he has no intention of doing any such thing – but he lets it hang over their heads all the same to speed things along.

Nie Huaisang, meanwhile, is concerned foremost with his brother’s life and the fear of qi deviation. It is he who finally puts his foot down and insists his brother obey the dictates of the two immortals who had just saved his life and his sect twice over, or else he would leave rather than be shamed by their ancestral legacy.  

Only Lan Wangji is unmoved at this declaration; he knows the lengths to which Nie Huaisang can go when properly motivated. To Nie Mingjue – even to Wei Wuxian, Huaisang doing such a thing is unthinkable. It quickly brings the discussion to a point.

The problem, as Nie Huaisang points out, is one of practicality. A cultivation sect must cultivate. If they can no longer continue the old way, they must either find a way to make it safe, or invent a new path. And while each Nie brother is many things, geniuses at cultivation and healing they are not. He looks at Lan Wangji as he lays this out, correctly guessing who holds the answer in the palm of his hand.

Three days later, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji fly southwest. In Lan Wangji’s qiankun pouch is a carefully worded letter addressed from Nie Huaisang to Wen Qing, inviting the famed healer – and expert on golden cores – to work together towards a more peaceful future for both sects.  

~*~

~*~

Somehow, impossibly, by the time they reach Buyetian, news of what they’ve done has travelled ahead already, and they are greeted with the reverence normally reserved for deities.

Evidently Nie Huaisang has been hard at work.

It also brings to light just what kind of terror the people of Qishan had been living under, for them to be so openly relieved and grateful at the news that their sect leader and his guard dog are both dead. Normally, Wei Wuxian reflects, news like this is answered with the declaration of war, not an immediate clamour to fetch Wen Ning back from Lanling so they could finally answer to someone sane.

Wei Wuxian couldn’t be prouder. Wen Qing, on the other hand, looks like the lifelong headache she’s about to be saddled with is just beginning.

They find Jiang Yanli there as well, in perfect spirits, and ready to fall on her forehead at the sight of them both, thanking them profusely for liberating her and her sect. She invites them to join her personal escort to Yunmeng, and from there on to Qinghe to deliver Wen Qing, so that Yunmeng may greet its saviours with open arms for at least three days and nights of celebration. She may have decided to make the best of her marriage, for she has never been the type to wallow in misery, but that does not mean she will wear mourning for Wen Zhuliu, she declares to them all.

Wen Qing is invited along too. Somewhere along the line, a great respect has welled up between the two women. It both surprises and doesn’t surprise Wei Wuxian. He has lately been having an inkling that his Shijie would have been a most capable woman if she’d only been given the chance to stand on her own feet instead of being coddled by both her brothers.

The basis for this lies in the facts of her choices when faced by the threat of Wen Ruohan directly, her sacrifice of her future for her brother, and the manner in which she has lived since – all delivered dryly between the pages of Wen Qing’s letters to her brother and relayed to them second-hand, but irrefutable as the morning sun.

Wei Wuxian has begun to think that perhaps he did a great disservice when he had not given Jiang Yanli the opportunity to help him and Jiang Cheng in their previous life. Perhaps, if he had turned to her to lead Yunmeng, so much of what happened later could have been averted. Why hadn’t he, he wonders about himself, and finds plenty to work on when it comes to assumptions about people and his tendency to save them without being asked to.  

He should have insisted she shoulder her responsibilities instead of letting her languish over the cookfires. He should have insisted on equality for them all, knowing what it was like to be treated as less than due to outward trappings. But then, in his last life he too had placed undue importance on the ability to cultivate the warrior’s path, and the warrior’s path only.

He has been left with tears in his eyes upon seeing Jiang Yanli cheerfully bustling about Baosheng Hall, caring for her patients with competence and contentment on her face despite her circumstances.

He feels less optimistic about Jiang Cheng. The boy looks ill and sullen in equal measure. It’s hard to think of him as a fellow adult when he very much bears the marks of childhood still, visible even through the gauntness of his face and figure. He doesn’t speak much to anyone; the warm and devoted relationship he’d shared with his sister in his last life is less so this time.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t like this proof of his former brother’s inability to cope with personal misfortune or a break in his cultivation. Even Jin Zixuan has earned his respect with the brave and straightforward way in which he’s confronted his new status as a common man, when it has been mere months for him.

Meanwhile, Jiang Cheng was injured in childhood and is yet to recover mentally, although he has made great strides as far as his physical condition goes. Wen Qing is truly a miracle-worker, Wei Wuxian thinks, as he observes the boy gradually re-learn walking on his own feet, pushing a chair in front for stability. In time, he will need a cane, but mobility, at least, should not be a hindrance. He is even able to cultivate a little again through the remnant seed of his core, though it is yet unknown –unlikely, Wen Qing does not openly report, but implies with her look – whether he will ever reach his full potential.

Still, it’s so much more than he’s had for the last eight years. So, so much more than Jin Zixuan and Wen Zhuliu’s victims will ever have in this life. Wei Wuxian can’t understand the sulky, withdrawn attitude at all.

It does, however, underscore to him that if he hadn’t given Jiang Cheng his golden core, he really would have wasted away and died within days. He feels troubled and sad when he confides this to Lan Wangji, for he has been spending a lot of time thinking about that fateful choice and everything it had cost him.

Lan Wangji, as expected, remains adamant that it could never have been the right choice. Wei Wuxian has come to this conclusion on his own, years ago. But this new evidence of his former shidi’s frailty of character throws him for a loop. He has always believed that if one could save a life, one must – but his new learnings about the care and preservation of the self do not wholly conjoin with that philosophy.

He spends a great deal of time puzzling over it, curled up in Lan Wangji’s lap after long days of travel in the direction of Yunmeng. They must necessarily go slowly over land to the nearest port, and then by river, since neither Jiang Cheng nor Jiang Yanli are strong enough to fly so far, despite the latter’s recent acquisition of skill. Jiang Cheng flatly refuses to be carried on a sword, so they resign themselves to weeks of travel instead of days.

Once they get to the river and get on a barge, Wei Wuxian totally plans to cheat via liberal use of his wind-directing talismans, but he doesn’t tell anyone that, yet.

Reactions are so much more fun when people aren’t expecting that kind of magic. Jiang Yanli’s is appropriately gratifying, and even Wen Qing looks impressed. Both women immediately wish to engage in some kind of agreement with him to come teach their disciples, for of course it is not done to talk business with an immortal as though he were a common aristocrat. By the gleam in Lan Zhan’s eyes, Wei Wuxian suspects that his husband disagrees and will drive a hard bargain in addition to securing him the right to host classes.

These negotiations, however, are shelved for later – with the threat of war gone before it could become a reality, and Lanling almost fully rebuilt under the watch of a Wen and two immortals, they expect peace to reign for decades to come, at least.

This time, no one will get the chance to persecute or annihilate anyone – the Jin sect massacre notwithstanding.

Jin Zixuan has taken the news of his extant half-sister with an equanimity that is not surprising when one recalls that he is entirely without family now, other than his mother. Wei Wuxian knows from Wen Ning’s letters that she has already left Meishan for Lanling to take over the reins from Wen Ning and hand them over to Jin Su, whose father has thankfully agreed to let her take up the Jin name in exchange for heavy economic concessions to the Qin sect.

They have also located a boy by name of Mo Yu, somehow overlooked during Meng Yao’s hunt – probably because his mother had been put to work as a servant in her own household, and she was too young to attract the attention of a man Jin Guangshan’s age anyway – or she should have been. He will be named Jin Ziyu and take his place in the line of succession; Jin Zixuan has been strangely adamant about that, Wen Ning writes.

Wen Ning and Jin Zixuan, fast friends. It’s a concept that doesn’t bear thinking about, so Wei Wuxian carefully doesn’t contemplate it for any length of time, lest he sprain something in his brain.

The debate over Jiang Cheng is put on hold as they travel by barges in close quarters with the rest of their party. There are the Jiang siblings, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, Wen Qing, and a small retinue of assistant healers, servants, and bodyguards going on with her to Qinghe. Wei Wuxian’s attention is instead taken up by the imminent visit to Lotus Pier – where reside two things he decidedly doesn’t wish to encounter – Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Cheng’s dogs. He feels more ambivalent about Jiang Fengmian, having learnt to miss the man again during those years in the Burial Mounds, but also wary of trusting him emotionally beyond a point.

Still, he’s confident he can handle everything but the dogs, even the idea of which sets him shivering. Apparently, immortality hasn’t made him immune to that fear. He’s forced to confide in his husband as Lotus Pier gets closer and he grows noticeably tense. Everyone else puts it down to his apprehension at dealing with Yu-furen again, after her unpardonable conduct towards him at the nine day’s feast. Lan Zhan knows him more deeply, however, and takes him to the air on their swords one night to fly loop-the-loops around each other till he feels ready to talk.

Lan Zhan takes the information in as calmly as expected – and considers the problem from angles Wei Wuxian has not even considered.

For instance, he did not know that such fears were not uncommon among those who had faced similar trauma, nor that Gusu Lan had a dedicated medical wing to caring for such patients. He had not even known that this is something that could be treated, that he did not have to live with looking over one shoulder for the sight of a wagging tail and keeping one ear open for the sound of barking.

He knows, of course, what a grave liability his fear is. Is incredibly grateful that amid all his other bad luck, at least he’s avoided the fate of anyone discovering this fear and using it against him. But he has more than himself to think of now – he cannot and will not risk being put into a position that might cause him to be used against his husband.

So, before they reach Lotus Pier, Lan Wangji has a quiet word with Jiang Yanli about keeping Jiang Cheng’s dogs away from Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian quietly makes up his mind to go to Gusu with Lan Zhan after all.

~*~

~*~

It is strange to live in a Gusu that welcomes him with open arms and warm hearts. A Gusu without three-thousand-and-counting rules to govern every living, breathing act by a human being. A Gusu where Lan Qiren regularly invites him to take tea in the evenings, consults him about talismans and arrays and better ways to teach foundational cultivation, and tests him on his theoretical knowledge, attempting to fill gaps wherever they can be found. Like this, teaching and being taught in return, Wei Wuxian begins to forge a new relationship with his old nemesis.

Perhaps strangest of all is the way Lan Xichen takes to him like a duck meeting water. Wei Wuxian gains a new shadow almost the moment after he sets foot in his husband’s ancestral home. It surprises and amuses him to have Lan Xichen traipse behind him eagerly absorbing titbits of conversation like rice soaking up soup.

Eventually, he begins to notice other things. That Lan Xichen may be trying to get close to him, but the one his eyes always follow is Lan Zhan. That he shows great respect for anything Wei Wuxian says, but any hero-worship is reserved for when he looks at his brother.

It’s both a little sad and a little funny, and it goes on so long that Wei Wuxian finally takes matters in both hands and sits Lan Zhan down for a long due chat about the state of his relationship with his family. It has improved by leaps, at least where his uncle is concerned – Lan Qiren has proven to have a surprisingly flexible mind when properly motivated. Wei Wuxian reflects on how ironic it is that it is his love for his nephew that had originally wrecked their relationship, and that same love now knits it back, one stitch at a time.  

Most of all, it is the extreme care with which Lan Qiren has been governing the well-being of the orphans adopted into the sects during the ninety-nine-days’ celebration that is winning Lan Zhan’s trust over, and his own.

However, matters between his husband and Lan Xichen continue to remain distant, if civil.

It is a quiet night not long into their first year in Gusu, with rain falling gently outside, making music on the roof tiles. Wei Wuxian is inspired and brings out his painting kit for the first time since receiving his sword. It takes him a while to find the satchel in which he keeps his papers and precious coloured inksticks and he tips them out onto the low table, memories flitting through his mind as he examines one old painting after another.

Here is the very first picture he had painted with ink and brushes bought from his own earnings, a sunset in shades of indigo and red mixed to make the varying hues of dusk. Here again is an ink-sketch of the gnarled shrubbery that used to border Yiran Shan when it had still been known as the Burial Mounds. Here is a portrait of the old doctor’s wife, which he’d drawn in quick strokes of black ink during a morning spent idling in her courtyard, telling her of the new songs he’d learnt on his travels that summer.

And then, there is Lan Zhan.

How had he forgotten? Picture after picture of his husband, depicted in turns as Wei Wuxian remembered him and fantasised about him. Lan Zhan in every known mood and attitude, and several imagined ones – glaring, sulking, ignoring him, smiling without moving his lips, softly holding a bunny, concentrating over a qin, concentrating over a qin without the top half of his robes –

Lan Zhan plucks the paper out of his hand and examines it thoroughly, before raising a single eyebrow by half a notch.

“These are mine?”

Wei Wuxian doesn’t quite know what to say, feeling extremely caught out and for some reason, guilty. He carefully doesn’t think about all the times he fantasised about Lan Zhan looking like this. And because he’s carefully not thinking about it, of course it shows all over his face, causing the eyebrow to raise half a notch higher.

“Hiding gifts from me?”

“Ehhhh?” Wei Wuxian is goaded into opening his mouth after all. “Who said these are for you anyway? They’re mine!”

His husband simply reaches out an implacable hand, and after as much muttering and grumbling as he can get away with, Wei Wuxian lets go of the rest of his contraband.

Lan Zhan leafs through the artwork one by one, lifting each piece of old paper with reverence and examining it thoroughly before setting it aside and moving to the next painting. His intense focus makes Wei Wuxian self-conscious. Instead of fidgeting like a teenager, he busies himself with setting out his paper, water-cup, and inkstones and grinding some new ink for present use, carefully adding only a drop or two of water at a time.

The silence goes on so long that he’s finally compelled to look up.

Lan Zhan is staring at him, rapt – or rather, at his hands, which are still moving in smooth, steady circles over the inkstone. The deep satisfaction in that gaze makes Wei Wuxian blush and want to hold his cheeks, but with his hands occupied, he can only determinedly look down at his task instead.

Finally, his husband speaks. “I have always loved the look of your hands. They have worked hard for the good of this world.”

He suddenly picks up that hand, inkstick and all, and lifts it to his lips for a warm, gentle kiss, adding a flicker of tongue at the end just to be a menace.

Wei Wuxian snatches it back at once, cherry-red and suffering from heart palpitations. He seriously can’t handle this, what the fuck. “Your uncle’s hands have worked hard too – they’re working hard right now, in fact! Why don’t you go kiss them a few times? Maybe he’ll qi deviate and die, it’ll be so great,” he grouses, too flustered to know what he’s saying.

Lan Zhan gives his hands another long, considering look, like he’s imagining them doing unspeakable things to unmentionable body parts. “If they were attached to you, I would.”

Wei Wuxian can’t help himself. He absolutely loses it. “What the hell?! Is that a line?! Is this your idea of flirting?! Lan-er-gege, who taught you this, huh? Did you believe them when they told you this actually works?”

It’s totally working for him, unfortunately – or fortunately, seeing as how he’s married to the impossible man. That makes him smile more softly and sweetly. “I’m so happy, Lan Zhan!”

“I, too.” His husband taps one of the portraits of a fifteen-year-old Lan Wangji who’s glaring at the viewer. “Here, I was not.”

He looks down at it for a moment. “I was so angry,” he says so quietly that Wei Wuxian only knows he’s meant to listen because Lan Zhan never voices a thought he doesn’t want heard.

He feels compelled to point out, “Aren’t you still angry?”

Lan Zhan looks at him, surprised, so he has to clarify – “with your brother, Lan Zhan.”

If anything, Lan Zhan looks even more surprised at this. “I am not angry with Xiongzhang anymore. Do I appear so?”

“You seem to want nothing to do with him,” Wei Wuxian points out. “Lan Zhan, love, I’m not going to force you to make nice with him if you hate the idea so much, but it’s gone far enough that Lan-shufu had a word with me about it. Why do you avoid him so thoroughly when you’ve forgiven your uncle?”

Lan Zhan sighs deeply, which is to say, he exhales visibly. The truth, Wei Wuxian suspects, is – “I do not know myself.”

“He’s been working hard to improve himself. He’s been reading more – he asks me to chat all the time, he’s spending less time with the elders and taking on more nighthunts. You can’t ask for more unless you give something back, you know.”

Lan Zhan frowns. “That may be the trouble. He is not doing it for its own sake, so how can it be sincere?”

“Is love insincere?” Wei Wuxian wants to know. “What about all the things, good and bad, that you’ve done because you love me, Lan Zhan?” At his husband’s nonplussed look, he elaborates, thinking perhaps it’s the right time to bring up something that’s been weighing on him for a few months now.

“I know what magic you must have used to get here. It was one of my own arrays, wasn’t it? Between you and Huaisang, you’re both clever enough to figure out how to make it work. I never imagined it would have a use; I was just dicking around that day, indulging in wishful thinking. What if I could change the world? What if I could turn back time and make sure Jin Zixuan didn’t die? But – Lan Zhan – I never thought I had the right to do that. To shift the course of so many people’s lives, to end the course of the world and make it something different – who knows what the world will look like a thousand years from now? It won’t be what it was originally going to be, anyway. Lan Zhan, I know what kind of sacrifice such magic demands. More than anyone, I know. Was it your own sword you took to your neck? Because you love me?”

He pauses for a breath, somehow having worked himself up into a gentle rant. “Is love insincere, if that’s the only reason for doing something?”

“Not just love,” his husband counters. “You were…the main reason. But you were not the only person whose life the Jin had destroyed. There are the ones you know, and more you do not know of yet – two sects razed to the last child over ambition and greed. They destroyed the He sect over imaginary accusations of dissent, and Jin Guangyao had his own son murdered to gain an excuse to eradicate the Rong sect. It was our conjecture that he also aimed to conceal any evidence of the child’s origins, which may have become evident if Jin Rusong had lived to adulthood.”

Wei Wuxian listens to all this, appalled. He had indeed not known how bad it had gotten.

“Nie Huaisang did not agree with their fates. Nor did I. The world deserved better than to have its destiny cut short and twisted to the advantage of Jin Guangyao only.”

He catches Wei Wuxian’s hand again and gives it another soft kiss. “Love, but not just love, Wei Ying. I regret nothing.”

Wei Wuxian keeps his mouth shut, sensing he isn’t done.

“Xiongzhang…Wei Ying…”

It’s his turn to hold Lan Zhan’s hand now. He abandons the idea of painting tonight and trundles around the table to flop into his husband’s lap and makes himself comfortable. “Tell me, Lan Zhan. You can tell me anything.”

Lan Zhan seems to almost curl in on himself like a child. When he speaks, it is with a child’s cadence, showing deep hurt. “I never lied. I do not lie. He did not believe me even once. You know that the elders had me punished with the discipline whip, because they too did not believe me when I told them you had done no wrong in rescuing those Wens. It came to violence between us after Nightless City, and he approved it without even speaking to me. Did you know that he encouraged my affection for you in the first place, knowing how our family loves?”

And to this, what can Wei Wuxian say? If Lan Xichen had broken faith with his brother so badly, there’s nothing he can say that will convince Lan Wangji to make himself vulnerable to someone who damaged him so deeply.

Nor would it be the right thing to do.

His own heart hurts, thinking of his beloved so lonely and abandoned despite being the scion of a Great Sect. Of being whipped for doing the right thing in an impossible situation. It’s a punishment he’s intimately familiar with, and it enrages him every time he thinks about how it had been inflicted on his husband too. At least Yu-furen had never made a pretence of caring for him.  

If Lan Zhan wants his distance from Lan Xichen, he can have it.

~*~

~*~

Lan Xichen slinks quietly back up the path from the Jingshi to the main family compound. He has heard enough to have some questions answered and many others raised. He will get no answers from the two inside that home, so he takes his troubled heart and goes straight to his uncle. Lan Qiren receives him with concern after taking one look at his face, and sits him down with tea that he brews himself, not letting Lan Xichen do the work. He has always been the opposite of his brother, he reflects gloomily as he watches his uncle bustling about. Wangji found comfort in doing things for others, while he needed to be coddled and taken care of.

For the first time, he sees that it is an undesirable quality in a sect leader. Thinks of his own father, still locked away in seclusion because he too was unable to face reality and responsibility. He thinks of taking over the brewing but sees it is too late – his uncle is already pouring it out into cups, fragrant and hot.

That done, Lan Qiren sits back and examines his first nephew – the world elder does not feel wholly appropriate knowing that Wangi is mentally closer to his age than Xichen’s. Xichen looks half-guilty and very much shaken, as though he has heard something unwelcome. Lan Qiren does as he always does and waits his nephew out in silence.

Sure enough, after two cups of tea, Lan Xichen gathers his courage and begins, “Shufu, about the past…Wangji has told you everything, hasn’t he?”

Lan Qiren nods in assent.

“Then, is there something he did not say in Qishan, that I should know?”

His uncle considers. “There is much that he did not speak of in Qishan. Likely he did not wish to risk being overheard even with silencing talismans in place. You will have to be more specific.”

Lan Xichen hesitates again, then gets it out in a rush. “Why does he refuse to forgive me? Meng Yao is gone, and I’m trying, but he won’t even be in the same room with me if he can avoid it.”

Lan Qiren sighs. This, then. He has been waiting for one or the other of them to breach the subject of his own accord, but it is a pity that it should be Xichen. There are things Wangji will not appreciate him telling his brother. But there is something Lan Qiren can give Xichen.

He calculates his words carefully. “Among the Wens Wei Wuxian was protecting was a child, some three or four years old. It is to my understanding that first Wei Wuxian, then Wangji, adopted this child as their own and attempted to raise him. Of course, neither succeeded.”

Because of who, Lan Qiren does not say, but he does not need to. His nephew understands at once, as only an orphan can, the pain of losing family. Loving parents. The absence of a father, for his own remains unavailable to him and Wangji even though the latter has attained immortality.

“Because of me,” he whispers. “because I did not believe Wangji, Wei Wuxian’s child grew up half orphaned and – and Wangji had to leave him behind too, to change the world.” A thought strikes him, and he turns a desperate, pleading face to his uncle. “Shufu – this child, does he live? Is he – alive?” He makes himself say the word, though he does not want to vocalise the full idea, so dreadful does he find it.

Of course, with the world so changed from the one Wangji told them of, is there any guarantee the child will be born? If he is born, will he not have a living, loving mother and father? Lan Qiren explains, and Lan Xichen listens.

“I see,” he says, numb. He does see. His brother’s refusal to see his face. The banked distaste every time he inflicts his company on the immortal pair – yes, he tells himself half-hysterically, that’s what I’ve been doing, inflicting myself on them.

He wonders that Wei Wuxian is still so kind to him, so accommodating and cordial. That he never turns him away or says he is too busy for tea.

I have to be better, he realises, and the first true seedling of change takes root deep in his soul. Not only a better brother – for Wangji’s sake and Wuxian’s sake, I must learn to be a better human and a competent sect leader. If they adopt a child in this life, that one should not suffer because of me.

~*~

~*~

On the anniversary of Wei Wuxian’s death, Lan Wangji finally asks him how it happened. As the fateful date approaches, Wei Wuxian finds himself growing quieter and more sombre than he used to be in the years he was alone.

He senses a need to talk, but he has also never, not once, actually sat and thought about the way he died. His mind, probably in an effort to preserve its sanity, had simply buried the entire experience deep within and refused to examine it again. Not being dead – but how he got there.

So a part of him is relieved when his husband picks up on the thread of distress and where it originates, and tugs on it to unravel the past a little more. The telling, however, leaves him shivering and then numb; even as he talks about destroying the Yin Hufu and being eaten by his own corpses, his unblemished body tries to obey his subconscious mind and forget that it had ever happened.

Afterwards, Lan Zhan lays him out on their bed and, heating some oil that he infuses with his own qi, gently rubs sensation back into his skin. He is slow and careful, not missing a single spot, until Wei Wuxian feels weighed down by this kind of love, tangible once more. Something alive, not dead.

I am alive, I am here, and I am happy, he thinks as he drifts off into a deep, dreamless sleep under the steady, rhythmic ministrations of Lan Zhan’s hands.

The next morning, he wakes with a sense of having been renewed, the darknesses of his past wiped away clean as though in a blink. He has so far, he realises, mostly just been existing and surviving. One day and one step forward at a time, he was working only towards the goal of bringing peace to the jianghu.

Now, he feels ready to discover life, every single day, for every day to come.

~*~

~*~

~*~

Epilogue I:

Achieving the impossible

“Who are you writing to?”

Jiang Yanli looks up from her letter to her brother, lounging gracelessly against the doorframe with his expression for once relaxed and neutral, not pulled into a scowl.

She wonders if her answer will change that, and is extremely surprised to find how little she cares if it upsets A-Cheng. “Jin Zixuan.”

Instead of frowning, however, he looks at her with surprise edging towards shock. “That peacock? He’s still alive?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

Her brother doesn’t reply immediately. She knows what the answer will be, but she wants him to hear himself say it. Ugly truths land best when brought into the open gently instead of being forced out.

She busies herself with her correspondence once more after gesturing towards him to sit next to her and help himself to the snacks arranged neatly on a plate within easy reach. He hobbles over with the help of his cane and lowers himself gingerly. She watches from the corner of an eye as he wolfs down two lotus seed paste cakes, then starts picking at a third, which is when she knows he’s finally ready to talk about it.

“I wanted to die. Doesn’t he?”

She sets down her brush, glad for his innate bluntness of thought and speech. He’s always been far too straightforward – never able to conceal his true slant of mind. In many ways it is a detrimental quality but at times like now, she’s grateful for his complete lack of delicacy or tact around sensitive matters.

“Why should he want to die, just because he lost his golden core? With treatment he will live an average life, it is true, but so does every common man and woman not fortunate enough to be a cultivator. The silk for your clothes, the embroidery on my robes, the woodwork in these halls, the food we are eating right now – they were all produced by non-cultivators. Do they have meaningless lives?”

He looks at her, startled, as though this thought has never occurred to him. She is not surprised at this either; her brother has always been too much like their mother. Deeply involved with and absorbed by their own selves, blind to the facts of other people’s lives unless it directly affects them in some negative way. Her mother nighthunted for personal glory only. A-Cheng, due to never having gone on nighthunts, has never had a reason to think of anyone outside the boundary of the piers at all.

Perhaps it’s time he began, she thinks. He’s still young and so immature in his mental and emotional capacities that she sees only a rough foundation that must be scrubbed clean and rebuilt. It’s possible, she thinks, if he’s open to this idea she has just presented.

“Jin Zixuan is skilled at many things. Cultivation was only one of them. He is skilled at mathematics, economics, calligraphy, and possibly a few other things; these are the ones I know of for now. He is intensely interested in politics and is a good correspondent though he is not a good speaker. Did you want to know what he’s doing now?”

Her brother scoffs, but doesn’t heave himself up to stalk off, which she takes as an encouraging sign. “Why’s he writing to you anyway? What business are you of his?”

“I am a female sect heir to a Great Sect with some years of experience, and he is a former sect heir who is currently advising his sister on the rebuilding of their sect. Why should he not write to me, if he wants to talk?” She lets humour soften her face, because it is a little funny, and A-Cheng’s reaction, she predicts, will be suitably entertaining. “I am good with people, you know. But since you asked, it seems he’s finally woken up to the fact that he can’t do much better than me, when it comes to marriage.”

She lets it sink in with low satisfaction, completely prepared for the barrage of cursing that follows once A-Cheng figures out what she’s saying. She lets him go on about inappropriateness and audacity and how-dare-he for a while, till he’s let the worst of his indignation out, then brings him back to the ground with two taps of her brush on his wrist.

“That’s enough now, don’t be that way. No one in this jianghu will marry Wen Zhuliu’s widow, and I will need a husband willing to give up his rights to his own sect and be adopted into ours instead of me following him. Who other than Jin Zixuan fits that description, and will not bring his own vested interests to the marriage? He needs to cut ties with the Jin entirely once Jin Su is established, or they will never fully accept her rule. He also needs to retain a position of some power and influence after he does, so that he can continue to support her from a distance. And I need a capable husband to help me run this sect.”

A-Cheng blisters at that, of course. “A-jie! How can you say that?! Don’t you have me, and -”

He stops at once, stricken. Jiang Yanli knows who he was about to mention. But their mother has ironically retreated into seclusion in Meishan with her natal clan, unable to live In Lotus Pier anymore, after the humiliations she had been forced to bear thanks to her own insistence on continuing the engagement with the Jin.

A-Cheng has been feeling particularly abandoned ever since A-niang left. No one had ever cared about him as much as A-niang, and to be left behind by her has left him both bitter and bewildered. But it has also left him, for the first time in his life, open and vulnerable, his soft, rotten sides showing and ready to be scraped away to make way for new, clean growth.

She takes advantage of his unspoken anguish now, and digs the scalpel further in. To heal, often you must first excise. “It’s true I have father,” she says, deliberately misunderstanding, “for as long as he lives unless he chooses to pass the title to me before that happens. Do I have you? A-Cheng, name for me three things you have done for this sect or our disciples.”

When he is silent, unable to list even one thing, she continues, just as blunt as him but careful to be kind at the same time. “Even if you were the greatest help ever, I would still marry, A-Cheng. I want a husband and children. And who I marry is under my say – mine only. After what I have endured to save us, none of you have the right to tell me who I can and cannot tie myself to.” On this matter, she is firm.

He lowers his head in guilt, his face coloured with shame. “I’m sorry, A-jie, I’m useless. I -”

“If you were useful, you’d have lost your golden core with Jin Zixuan that night, no matter what I offered Wen Ruohan,” Jiang Yanli interrupts before he can get the self-pity going. “You do not even realise that he spared you only because of your present state – he didn’t see you as a threat. And A-Cheng, being underestimated is not a bad thing, especially once you learn to use it to your advantage.”

She leans forward and takes both of his hands in her own, squeezing tight, lavishing affection only in the way a Jiang can, carefree as they are – or are supposed to be. Will be again, one day, she vows.

“Think about it, all right?” she asks, and if he doesn’t seem entirely enthused, he at least promises to give the idea due consideration.

~*~

~*~

Quite unexpectedly, Lan Xichen finds himself conducting a somewhat regular correspondence with Wen-zongzhu; or as he insists on being addressed, Wen Qionglin. “You can call me Wen Ning, if you like,” the man had shrugged when he’d had the opportunity to meet him in person at last. He’d been visiting Cloud Recesses as a detour on his way to Lanling further south, to visit his sister, who could not be spared from her duties currently.

He had struck Lan Xichen at once as a strange combination of diffidence and confidence; Wen Qionglin was entirely respectful of himself as well as Lan Xichen when he’d invited the latter to use his milk name so shamelessly. He’d often heard his brother-in-law call the young man Wen Ning, of course, but the idea of being so familiar himself had almost made him break out in a sweat.

So, Wen Qionglin it has been since then, and is.

The newly crowned sect leader of Qishan Wen fascinates Lan Xichen. He is not the only one who does – Lan Xichen is aware, through his recent political lessons with Shufu, that currently all the Great Sects save the Nie are being managed by heirs or sect leaders who had never been expected to take the throne. Jiang Yanli in Yunmeng, Wen Qionglin in Qishan, Jin Su in Lanling, which was the scandal of the century that finally eclipsed the furore about Lan Wangji ascending to immortality so soon after his professed soulmate.

Of these people, however, it is still Wen Qionglin who captures his interest the most, because he had only been a favoured member of the clan, but so far down the line of succession that many unthinkable things had had to happen before he could be first in line to the throne of Qishan. Jiang Yanli and Jin Su had both grown up as members of their respective main families, raised with the care and strictness afforded to princesses. Wen Qionglin, on the other hand, had grown up in a more-or-less ordinary household and had been a working official of Wen Ruohan’s staff, just like any other branch family cultivator of good standing.    

And yet, he is proving to be both personable and competent, leagues ahead of any sect leader from the previous generation, except perhaps Jiang Fengmian, who looks poised to emerge from the debacle of the previous two years as the only viable candidate for Chief Cultivator, unless the jianghu wants to put Yu-zongzhu in charge. Nie Mingjue, unfortunately, no longer qualifies on account of his sect having been thoroughly disgraced since Wen Zhuliu destroyed their ancestral tomb.

Lan Xichen has spent every day and night since his resolution thinking of little else other than the ethics and responsibilities of leadership and impartial government. Such a thing is, of course, impossible, but an idea has been gently, gradually formulating inside. Just a vague notion, that perhaps the power of the Chief Cultivator shouldn’t rest in the hands of one person alone, and certainly not on the basis of superior age only.

The exact future shape of this idea, he cannot tell as of yet, but he knows instinctively that it will take all of them to bring it to fair fruition.  

Presently he is reading a letter from Wen Qionglin, who is also a prolific correspondent. In fact it is almost a report on his brothers’ activities, for Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are two of the busiest people in the jianghu these days, dividing their time between Yiling, Gusu, and Qinghe. Since Wen Qionglin probably exchanges double the quantity of letters with his sister as he does with anyone else, he is the most reliable source for news on his brothers.

Wen Qing has quickly gained renown beyond Qishan for her medical skills. Lan Xichen knows that she spends most of her time in Lanling, working on Jin Zixuan, who is not yet well enough to be moved to Wen Qing’s personal hospital for Wen Zhuliu’s victims in Qishan.

It has been an extremely sobering thing to know that such a place existed – that it needed to exist at all. Wen Zhuliu had truly been a monster.

The other person he exchanges regular letters with is Nie Mingjue. With the knowledge of his old friend’s folly had come the capacity to forgive himself for crimes not yet aided and abetted. He had reached out first; Nie Mingjue had responded with the kind of blustering relief that held secret vulnerability, and they had gone on from there.

He knows also that his brothers have compelled – no, forced – Nie Mingjue to finally lay down his blood feud against the Wens. It had been Wei Wuxian’s demanded tribute for killing Wen Ruohan when he had come to attack the Unclean Realm, and Nie Mingjue had been shamed enough by the events of Xinglu Ridge since then that he did not dare to refuse.

Even Huaisang had banded forces with them, he’d groused in a letter that had left Lan Xichen grinning. In many ways, he can see now, the Nie sect leader is an overgrown child. Much like he himself had been, viewing the world only in monochrome and clinging naively to dangerous philosophies of trust and tolerance. Still, he considers it an excellent sign for the future that Nie Mingjue has followed through on his promise and is receiving treatment from Wen Qing to repair his meridians and remove the possibility of qi deviation in the future, while gradually steering his sect onto the path of regular sword cultivation.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji seem to prefer spending time in Qinghe now that Lanling has been stabilised under the new Jin regime, and Jin Su and Jin Zixuan have sent them off with full honours. Wei Wuxian’s talisman work in the city is proving to be truly revolutionary. It is currently gaining renown as one of the most convenient and advanced places to live, where even commoners, with some regular maintenance and upkeep by cultivators, can use simple magic through talismans and arrays etched into the very buildings.

Those same innovations, and more, have of course infiltrated Gusu and Yiling as well. Cloud Recesses and Yiran Shan both contain workshops where Wei Wuxian produces ways for commoners and cultivators to use qi at a schematic level to make their daily lives easier. His ideas are implemented with caution in Gusu and freely in Yiling, which is rapidly growing large and prosperous, a hotbed of fresh scholarly and commercial activity as cultivators and artists from all over the jianghu come to experience and study his methods. Already he has received request after request for taking on disciples, but he refuses them all, directing the individuals to visit Gusu for the lectures instead.

The lectures, too, have not escaped his manic energy.

Lan Xichen laughs when he thinks of them, and the way his brother-in-law has torn down the entire system Shufu has been running for over two decades, pointing out all the ways in which it was rigid and actively hindered the absorption of knowledge – even the desire to gain it.

There has been a lot of ranting about “damned stupid useless rules” even though they do not exist anymore – officially. Unofficially, the rules have been entirely relaxed and no more punishments are meted out for minor infractions. The boulder might have been destroyed but the piles and piles of copied out rules still exist in the library. In earlier years, Lan Xichen had wondered often why his brother had not set fire to them. Knowing what he does now, that Cloud Recesses has burnt in another time, that their library was put to fire by Wen Xu, he understands why.

But despite the general easing of standards, life in Cloud Recesses has continued in much the same lanes. Only happier and more free for every disciple, something which can be seen and heard in their open smiles and laughter, in the chattering of children, now permitted, and the intermingling of sexes, also now permitted. Thus proving Wei Wuxian’s point.

Wei Wuxian and Shufu have nearly come to blows several times over the lectures, which are gradually being reshaped into something that actually makes sense for a horde of visiting gentry from a dozen different schools of cultivation.

And that was before he’d breached the topic of opening the lectures to any cultivator who qualified, skill-wise, to attend, be they rogue or sect-affiliated. The arguments over that, Lan Xichen suspects, will go down in Cloud Recesses history as legendary.

Still, Wei Wuxian never takes it too far, and Shufu’s way of assuaging any hurt feelings is to tell Wei Wuxian stories about his parents, which the man seems to lap up like a hungry kitten.

If nothing else, it is bringing the two of them closer, and Wei Wuxian firmly into the fold of their family.

That makes Lan Xichen the only outsider. Shufu is always there for him, and Wei Wuxian is inestimably cordial in manner, but Lan Xichen knows he has not yet been forgiven by his brother, and that he might never be – unless a certain event takes place.

He is learning to be all right with it.

But every night, he lights special incense for good luck, and prays to any god listening to bring them a small miracle, one that might finally heal Wangji’s heart.

~*~

~*~

Jiang Yanli has lost the habit of letting the river take its own course. When her brother doesn’t seek her out himself in a few weeks’ time, she goes to track him down instead. One can be a ranger even if one doesn’t go out on nighthunts.

She finds him brooding by the backwaters, where the lakers are dense and green with algae. He greets her with a tired nod; in his hands is a half-finished letter. To whom, she does not need to ask. What she wants to know instead is, “Why do you keep writing to her? She’s never coming back, you know.”

“A-jie!” he bristles at once, always ready to defend the one in their family most like himself.

She only raises an eyebrow until he subsides. Her brief marriage to Wen Zhuliu has left her with many blessings, such as her father finally taking her seriously as his heir and her brother realising he has lost the right to complain to her about her conduct and opinions on anything at all.

She has already been so unfilial as to establish her seniority in the household after having her own mother’s hand chopped off. What more is left to say?

“She did not care for us, only what prestige we might have brought to her. If she loved us, she would not have spent our entire lives chasing after rumours of someone else’s child,” she points out to A-Cheng, and watches him turn his face away to glare at the horizon with his jaw clenched so tight she can hear his teeth grinding. It only fuels her exasperation and determination to get this over with; if A-Cheng wants to waste energy writing letter after letter to Meishan that will never be answered, he’s welcome to. “What have you thought, then?” she barrels onward. “Have you considered what you want to do with your life?”

To no surprise, his temper snaps even further – what is shocking, however, is the source of his frustration – “I’ve thought about it. I’ve done nothing else but, after you as good as told me you wouldn’t tolerate my idle hands any longer. I just.” He pauses, his throat working and fingers twisting the hems of his sleeves. She lets him wrestle with it till he confesses shamefacedly, “I don’t know what to do, A-jie.”

Now that the dam has broken, his feelings begin to flood forth. “A-niang only cared about cultivation, you know that, and I’m shit at that stuff. What use is it to cultivate if I’ll never be powerful, never go on nighthunts? If I can’t even light a lamp by myself because everything I have is only capable of keeping me upright on my own feet? You said – you said Jin Zixuan has half-a-dozen things he can do well. Well, I don’t! Mother never cared to teach me anything important, even when I wanted to study! I can write well, but that’s all I can do! I can’t paint, or compose poetry,” he spits the word like it's something offensive, “or help run a sect. I couldn’t even run a single department, I’m more useless than the littlest shidi. So, you wanted me to think about it. I thought about it. You tell me.”

He flings it all at her like it’s mud, but all she hears is the pitiful story of a wasted life and squandered potential. A fine brain left to rot in ignorance and boredom, given no stimulation to distract from worrying over its ills. She remembered when A-Cheng had been the most capable of the little disciples, until he’d lost everything because he’d borrowed their mother’s jealousy over Wei Wuxian.

At least, she thinks, he’s grown out of that, after she’d once reminded him in very flat terms that no one had made him sneak out after their father on a dangerous nighthunt.

But he has raised a very fair point, one she hadn’t considered. In that, she realises, she’s been unfair, because it’s unfortunately true that A-Cheng has been most ill-equipped for life as a capable human being. It is a sobering thought.

But it is not all bad, she thinks, and when she speaks, is careful to keep her tone cheery and matter-of-fact. “Well, so you’ve found out what’s wrong with you, and it’s something as simple as ignorance. That is the easiest thing in the world to fix, A-Cheng. If you don’t know what suits you, we will get you teachers who will educate you in whatever you desire until you do find something.”

His head snaps up and he practically gapes at her, mouth falling open. “It’s that easy?”

She can’t help but laugh – it’s sad, really, but also funny how much of a child he still is, how little he knows of the way the world works. He must be made to learn better. She silently assigns herself the task of bringing up the matter of his education with their father first thing the next morning. Perhaps, she thinks, she might write to Cloud Recesses to ask Lan Xichen for advice. His uncle is known as one of the foremost teachers in the jianghu; there exists hardly a top sect cultivator who has not studied under the man at some point. And it could only be good for inter-sect relations.

Cloud Recesses reminds her of the immortals who live there for part of the year, and who had already promised to teach a course of talismans and arrays at Lotus Pier. She thinks of what she knows eats at A-Cheng the most – his inability to do anything useful or practical with his cultivation. Perhaps he can sit through the course, if it interests him to learn alternative ways to use qi. As for practical uses of both cultivation and people – she has spent the last few weeks thinking it over herself. As future sect leader, it will be her responsibility to find respectable employment for her family members and disciples, and she believes in beginning the day early.  

“Perhaps, when you are ready, I shall want you to travel. I will need an envoy to the other sects, to go there on official business and be my words and my hands. Someone trustworthy, who will care for the sect’s needs as though they are his own.”

“Won’t you have the peacock for all that?” A-Cheng mutters, reverting to sullen.

“Not for this.” She is firm on this point. “He was born and raised a Jin, he will not understand our ways or how we conduct ourselves. You are a Jiang of Yunmeng. You will be of use to your sect, and do full justice to being a son of Lotus Pier. A-Cheng,” she reaches out with an imploring face and gentle hands, “do not forget that we have a father to think of as well. He’s not perfect, I know, but he has never abandoned us.”

Later that evening, as she prepares for bed, she remembers with satisfaction the way her brother’s eyes had lit up, for the first time in years, with something akin to hope.

A little hope, she thinks, is all you need to achieve the impossible.

~*~

~*~

The thaw comes when least anticipated; in deep winter.

On the thirteenth morning of the first month of the new year, he goes to the mess hall for breakfast as usual, expecting nothing out of the ordinary at all. Only to be halted in his tracks, thunderstruck, when Wangji, passing by on his way back after an even earlier breakfast, actually pauses to greet him – greet him! – borderline cordially! – before proceeding on his way.

Lan Xichen is left so flabbergasted by the alien encounter that he forgets about breakfast entirely.

Perhaps, he thinks sadly, he accidentally met his brother in an exceptionally good mood. No doubt they will return to the distant, frosty civility that characterises their relationship by the evening meal.

He does not see Wangji again that day, but the next morning the encounter repeats itself, leaving him rooted to the spot in a most undignified manner for so long that he misses breakfast again and has to go beg the kitchen aunties to feed him, please.

The next morning, it happens a third time. Then a fourth, and a fifth, and then daily, till it finally strikes him that it is deliberate.

Wangji is finally beginning to soften towards him – and he wants him to know it, or he would not make himself so obvious that even Lan Xichen has deciphered what he’s up to.

Of course he realises at once what must have happened. The only thing that could possibly make Wangji reach out like this…the miracle he has been waiting for – praying for – must have occurred at last.

He wastes no time in writing to Wen Qionglin for confirmation of his guess, not caring how strange it might seem to the other man. He has to know. He has to know.

Fortunately, thanks to Wei Wuxian’s revolutionary crane messengers, he can get answers at once. He sends one off, and gets Wen Qionglin’s clear, steady voice saying that his youngest aunt has had a son named A-Yuan, and in the next breath, challenging him – “And what do you plan to do about it, Lan Xichen?”

He senses that there is a right answer, and a wrong answer. He hopes beyond hope that the plan he is about to propose falls into the former category.

There is no way to ethically remove a child from living, loving parents, of course, nor does he wish to commit any such atrocity in this life. He can guess, drawing on his own childhood experience as a functional orphan with a living father, the effect that it has on Wangji to have his son so near, and yet wholly a stranger with no chance of greater familiarity.

Yet, while a child may not be separated from its parents, mother and father are not the only guardians a child may have throughout its growing years. The most important role fulfilled, after all, is that of a teacher.

One who is a teacher for a day, will be a father for a lifetime.[1]

And when the teachers are a pair of immortals, what parent will refuse to let their child learn from the best of the very best? A proposal is therefore made, encouraged and facilitated by Wen Qionglin, and duly accepted, though not without much confusion and wonder on his aunt’s behalf, the other sect leader reports.

He comes to deliver the news in person and break the surprise to Wangji and Wuxian. Lan Xichen, suddenly terrified of what he has done, afraid of having been overzealous, declines to be present and requests Wen Qionglin to keep his mouth shut about his involvement.  

Wen Qionglin – Wen Ning – doesn’t. Keep his big mouth shut, that is. And consequently, that evening, Lan Xichen is finally invited to tea in the Jingshi. An offer of reconciliation, and new beginnings.

He accepts, and when he takes the first unfamiliar steps on the path from his home to that of his brothers’, he does so with his heart bursting with hope for the future.

~*~

~*~

~*~

Epilogue II:

Ever after

Dappled sunlight filtering through the trees shimmers silver-bright on a fresh snowfall that crunches underfoot, and the fragrance of winter berries and persimmons wafts down on the breeze. Making his way down the curving path to the kitchens to pick up breakfast (if you were to ask Wei-baba) or an early lunch (if you were to ask Lan-baba), Wen Sizhui takes a moment to pause and sniff at the air hungrily, suddenly craving dried fruit candy. Perhaps, if he hurries, he’ll get to the – very not-aptly-named – Ningjing[2] Courtyard before Wei-baba wakes up, which means he’ll be able to wheedle a treat or two from Lan-baba, who’s always good for sweets.

He reaches the gently curving series of stairs down to the main compound of the sect and takes them two at a time, racing around the gardens and reaching the kitchens just as the forenoon bustle is about to begin. Used to the ways of his shifus, the aunties just point him towards a covered box of inlaid lacquer waiting at one side, gentle heat wafting from it and the aroma of stewed mushrooms making his mouth water.

Picking it up carefully, he wavers between making his way back up the mountain at a more sedate pace, and just taking his sword and being done with it. With the promise of dried persimmons lurking hopefully in the near future, he decides that the sword it is.

Lifting up, he skims lightly over the tops of the gingko trees and crab apples scattered across the mountainside, their branches currently bowed under the heavy fall of snow from the previous night. If Wei-baba wanted, he could keep the frost from ever touching the mountain, but he insists on letting nature have its way here, saying it won’t do for Yiran Sect’s disciples to go out there unable to deal with reality.

On this, Song-ge always agrees with him in that firm, emphatic way of his, slanting a look at Xiao-ge that honestly says everything without a word needing to be spoken. There is the infamous story that everyone knows, of how Xiao-ge had descended from Baoshan Sanren’s mountain completely unprepared for the world that awaited him outside the confines of her august protection. He’d nearly been murdered by bandits – bandits! – because he simply had had no idea at all what lengths people could go to for survival, or sport.

The account of how Song-ge saved him, and their ensuing partnership, is nearly as legendary and well-beloved as the tale of his own shifus’ whirlwind romance, which is admittedly still giggled over in taverns and storyhouses alike. Not that Sizhui would know anything about taverns – or at least, he wouldn’t if not for Lan Jingyi, who must be the Least Lannish Lan to ever Lan, in Wei-baba’s words.

Sizhui loves his best friend, but truer words were never spoken. Watching Lan-shugong cope with the heir to Gusu Lan being that child is one of the highlights of Wei-baba’s life, and he makes sure everyone knows it too.

As he gets higher the air grows frigid and by the time he alights at the gate of Ningjing Courtyard, he’s long since resorted to using his qi to keep himself and his cargo comfortably warm.

He thinks it’s just as well that they’re not starting for Qishan until the sun’s high up, because he doesn’t look forward to braving the no doubt atrocious winds Lan-baba will make them ride just because it’s “good for the cultivation” or some such healthful nonsense.

Lan-baba really is a holy terror sometimes, he is. It’s adorable.

Icy-cold airways notwithstanding, Sizhui is looking forward to the trip. They’ll be flying on to Qinghe after their business in Qishan is concluded, because Lan-baba insists on this pilgrimage to Xinglu Ridge every year come sun, snow, or storm so he can survey the site of his ascension and assure himself that all is well and the Nie haven’t gone and started up another semi-suicidal cult behind his back or something.

Fat chance of that ever happening, what with Qing-jiejie in semi-permanent residence at the Unclean Realm, where she runs one of the largest medical cultivation centres in the jianghu. Under her steely-eyed watch, such a thing would never be allowed. 

A visit to Xinglu Ridge is never complete without an extended stay at the Nie fortress, and Sizhui is already anticipating long afternoons filled with birds and painting and the most fascinating new music that Huaisang-shushu will no doubt have collected to show off to them, as he does every winter, hoarding his year’s findings for their visit. Thinking about it, a part of Sizhui is eager to get going already.

Nevertheless, it is fortunate that Wei-baba refuses to be seen in public before wu shi,[3] because at least it means they aren’t up and at it by the crack of dawn. Sizhui likes his mornings early – but not that early.

He spots Lan-baba puttering about in the garden in his usual measured way, his movements at once economical and meditative as he weeds and prunes the flowerbeds bordering the courtyard. The man looks up at once, the sharp, beautiful lines of his face softening with affection when he sees who it is, and Sizhui basks in the warm sunshine glow of his regard.

For reasons pertaining ostensibly to immortality – but mostly everyone’s collective sleep and sanity – Wei-baba and Lan-baba live in their own private meadow hidden deep in the interior of Yiran Shan, at an altitude high enough to deter mischief-makers but not so high as to be inaccessible to anyone who actually needs to go talk to them, though for the most part they prefer to swan about as idolised elders and teachers instead of making themselves useful and helping out with the administrative drudgery of running a Great Sect.

Song-ge’s words, not Sizhui’s, he would like to point out.

Not that Song-ge’s wrong.

Before he can put down his box of food to unlatch the gate, Lan-baba is already there, nudging it open and motioning him in. “Lan-baaa!” Sizhui greets him, extra-sweet. “Is Wei-baba up yet?”

Lan-baba slants an amused look towards him, as though he knows perfectly well what Sizhui’s getting at. He probably does, seeing as how he had more of a hand in raising Sizhui than his own parents on most days. A graceful hand disappears inside a sleeve and when it emerges, two pieces of sweet dried persimmon are pressed gently into Sizhui’s free hand.

Grinning, he pops them into his mouth, cheeks bulging as he munches away.

Lan-baba helps him set up their lunch on the wide, open porch running around the main house, and they wait together in companionable silence for Wei-baba to show up. There’s three different kinds of mushrooms stir-fried with vegetables today, stuffed baozi, and mushroom oil with a separate serving for Wei-baba, inhumanly spicy. The scent of warm soup and spices rises and curls around him and Sizhui grows impatient with hunger. Deciding his snoozing shifu could use a prod, he sketches a small wind talisman into the air, using it to waft a very cold gust in the direction of the open bedroom window.

Lan-baba quirks a brow at this display of mischief, saying nothing but watching with laughing eyes. He never says no to harmless pranks against his husband, and he’s probably too eager to get going himself to tolerate Wei-baba’s malingering today.

Sure enough, Wei-baba comes stumbling out in short order with a grumpy face, scratching at his sides and his hair all over the place. Sizhui spots a line of love bites down the side of his neck and only rolls his eyes, long since used to such shameless displays of affection between his shifus. Ignoring it, he simply begins piling one bowl with rice and mushrooms for the man and filling another with the hot soup.

“Ahh, A-Yuan, the best boy, really,” Wei-baba mumbles forgivingly, rubbing at his eyes. “What did we ever do to deserve this one, Lan Zhan?”

Sizhui doesn’t even blush, long used to his Wei-baba’s ways. “A lot of good deeds, I imagine. Eat up, or Lan-baba will drag you out as you are and then you’ll complain about being rushed the entire way.”

“Your Lan-baba’s crazy,” Wei-baba says flatly. “Making us fly out to Qinghe in this weather, bah.”

“No speaking while eating,” Lan Wangji interjects at this point, having had enough of the teasing. It only sends the other two into a fit of giggles. They both know this trip was really Sizhui’s idea, given life by his shifus.

They are going to Qinghe to fulfil Lan-baba’s obligations, it is true. But before that they are going to Qishan – not Buyetian to hang out with Ning-gege, but to Muxi Shan, where resides the legendary Xuanwu of Slaughter.

A mockery of a divine beast, corrupted into becoming a demonic entity.

Prey, for Lan Sizhui’s sword, his guqin, and his wits.

It is a rare nighthunt that Wei-baba has been keeping for him for years. Sizhui still remembers the day he had first heard the story of how the Tulu Xuanwu came to be hidden deep inside a mountain in Qishan. It had been followed immediately by a pronouncement that Ning-gege, his shifus and his zonghzhus would go in a contingent to hunt it down.

A great nighthunt, Wei-baba had called it. A nighthunt that would put their names down in history if they weren’t there already.

Twelve-year-old A-yuan had heard the entire thing, and then thrown himself at his shifu’s feet and begged to be given the privilege instead.

Nineteen-year-old Sizhui still doesn’t know what possessed him to do that, or what possessed Wei-baba to agree. But the arrow had been shot, and couldn’t be recalled to the bowstring. From that day on, his training had taken on new levels of intensity, his tests growing in difficulty and trickery by several degrees almost at once, so that he would have to use every ounce of strength and skill to barely scrape passing marks.

Today, he’s finally been judged ready by the men he looks up to as his teachers and surrogate fathers both. If they believe in him, he believes in himself. Still, he doesn’t delude himself – it’ll be the test of his life – with just that hanging in the balance, for he has made his shifus swear they will not step in unless absolutely necessary.

By the time they both recover from their fit of mirth, Sizhui feels sober, and Wei-baba appears far more alert and like himself than before, when he’d been sleep-sloppy and groggy-eyed. The softness in his face when he looks at Sizhui doesn’t change, however, and the strength of love behind it makes Sizhui feels warm from head to toe.

He won’t let Wei-baba down. He swears it silently, but something in his face must give him away, for the older man’s gaze grows impossibly sweet, a swift grin curling his lips and vanishing – a secret little knowing smile just for Sizhui. The same look and the same smile he’d given him the first time they had met, right here on this mountain.

~*~

~*~

It is A-Yuan’s sixth birthday, and he is on the most important journey of his life. He does not truly have any concept of what a journey is, and he certainly doesn’t need to undertake it himself, since he has his A-die and A-niang there to carry him whenever his short little legs grow tired, which they do often enough on the long path winding up the mountain.

It’s a beautiful day today, and they are in Yiling, on the road to Yiran Sect. It’s windy too, blowing leaves left and right on the path in front of them, but A-Yuan is bundled up in warm new clothes and barely feels anything except for the cold air against his little nose. He can smell persimmons above in the trees lining the path, and hopes that means there will be dried persimmon candy in his future.

As far as A-Yuan knows, today is important only because he turns into a big boy, and he gets to meet the men he’s been told about since before he could talk – the great immortals Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. A-yuan doesn’t know what immortal means, but he knows it means that they’re special and important men who do special and important things like killing monsters and helping people. And the best part is, they’re going to teach him how to fly on swords, make magic spells, and play the most wonderful music on the qin or the flute or the qin and the flute if he wants.

He knows all this will happen because Ning-gege has been promising him since he could walk and talk in complete sentences. Today he gets to actually meet them! And after that, he’ll belong to them forever and ever, just as he belongs to his parents.

A little way behind, his parents and Ning-gege are talking quietly about their living arrangements in Yiran Sect, and A-Yuan’s little heart is filled with excitement. Trying to behave himself and make a good impression, he listens carefully to the adults talk.

A-niang wants to know what Yiran Sect is like, since it’s so very new, and A-die wants to know if they will have to travel to some place called Cloud Recesses with A-Yuan every summer for “the lectures” or if they can stay behind while A-Yuan goes alone with his shifus. A-Niang says, better Gusu than Qinghe, which means absolutely nothing to A-Yuan, who’s busy soaking in everything he sees and hears, all sorts of sights and sounds and smells jumbling up in his head to form confused impressions of a bright and lively place.

Ning-gege is more than happy to tell them stories about Yiran Sect as they walk, and about two men called Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze, and Distant Snow and Frost who are its sect leaders. A-Yuan is to call them Xiao-zongzhu and Song-zongzhu, and mind his manners in front of them. Since none of that means anything to him, he only thinks that Moon-gege sounds sweet, but Snow-gege sounds a little scary.

A-Yuan’s shifus sound like they’re the best, though, because in all of Ning-gege’s stories they go around helping people who need it, and they have a whole field of bunnies at home!

A-Yuan doesn’t exactly understand what a shifu is, only that it means they will be his teachers and also like a pair of extra dads who will love him and let him bother them with all the questions A-die can’t answer.

Like this, the time passes quickly and before A-Yuan knows it, they turn a corner and find themselves in a wide meadow ringed with trees with leaves all red and orange, and a gate standing open just behind it.

In front of the gate are two men, one dressed in dark blue and white, the other dressed in dark blue and red.

They’re both very tall and their faces are soft and welcoming, and full of something that makes A-Yuan want to run up and latch on. So he does, pelting towards the one in blue and red with the face that’s all over smiles and sparkly eyes, and wraps himself tight around the man’s leg.

“Hello, I’m A-yuan,” he informs the man. “You’re very tall and you smile a lot, so you must be my Wei -baba.”

Behind him, he can hear his mother trying not to have a fit at his behaviour, but he doesn’t care. The man – Wei-baba, he just knows that this is Wei-baba – stares at him, then laughs and laughs, but his face –

“Why do you want to cry?” A-Yuan demands. “Is A-Yuan not good?”

“No! No!” Wei-baba denies at once, resting a large, warm hand over A-Yuan’s head. It makes him feel at once safe and loved, like he belongs. “I’m crying because I’m happy, sometimes people do that. A-Yuan is the best. The very best little radish!”

A-Yuan wrinkles his nose. “Not a radish. Ning-gege says you have bunnies. Can I be a bunny?”

Wei-baba looks like he’s going to cry while laughing again, so Lan-baba answers him instead. “You can be whatever you want, A-Yuan. If you like, we two will help you find out what that is to be.” He looks away from A-Yuan and at A-niang, as though asking for her permission.

A-Yuan doesn’t wait for her to give it. He never wants to leave these men again. He reaches out with a chubby arm and wraps it around Lan-baba’s leg too. “Yes, please!” he beams, bursting with happiness. “Yes, please, A-niang!” And he turns the biggest pouty face he can manage onto her, the one she never ever says no to.

Sure enough, she agrees, laughing, though she looks a little red in the face, like when she wants to scold him for saying something weird in front of people. But she doesn’t actually scold him, so A-Yuan thinks it’s just fine.

Taking Lan-baba’s hand in his left and Wei-baba’s hand in his right, he lifts his head towards first one and then the other, meeting both men’s eyes for a final piece of reassurance. Held carefully between them like he’s a precious treasure, A-Yuan walks towards the future.

~*~

~*~

Thirteen years have passed since that day, and little A-Yuan has grown up into the foremost young master of his generation, to this day the only private disciple of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. They have other students, of course, whom they teach at Gusu Lan during the months that Lan-baba moves there to assist with the sect – Lan Jingyi and Chengmei-ge stand chief among the lot, and then there’s Jiang Ling and Ouyang Zizhen leading the mob of kids from Yunmeng, Nie Hongjing[4] at the head of the pack in Qinghe and Ziyu-ge from Lanling, all of whom pride themselves on the special attention they receive from the immortals.

And there are scores of students in their own sect, each of whom goes through their loving tutelage before being turned out to wreak havoc onto the world – as Lan-shugong puts it. Right to their faces. It’s funny to watch them try to deny it, but as the de facto leader of the Wei-Wuxian-and-Lan-Wangji brand of chaos-wreaking-and-wrangling, Sizhui himself doesn’t have the thickness of face required to do that. He just accepts it all with the serene, fuck-you smile he’s borrowed from Ning-gege, because it’s honestly funnier to watch Lan-shugong’s face go red and white by turns before he gives up and just rolls with the insanity.

But even among all of their special ducklings, Sizhui is unique, for the entirety of his education was conducted by the immortals themselves, though his parents had taught him to read, write and figure before he came to them. Even his siblings have not had the privilege of the same kind of focused attention he receives – after all, it feels like he’s just as much their son as he is his parents’.

But he suspects that’s by his A-niang’s design. “You were always theirs,” she’s often told him after he grew up enough to understand these things. “Ever since you could walk and talk, and you heard about them from Wen-zongzhu, you wanted to meet them. He encouraged it – had been encouraging it since you were born, actually. I never understood it, but sometimes that man would have a way of doing things that made you think he just knew what the future would hold.

“We didn’t understand it then, even though we agreed to let you be their disciple when you were just a baby. They were immortal, no one in their right mind would have refused, whether they understood why or not. But when we saw how you took to them later, we knew then. That you were theirs, really, more than you were ours. You knew it too – I still remember Wei-sanren’s face when you hugged his leg and called him baba! That man was never so surprised before or after by anything in his life, I’ll bet. And look how well it all turned out!”

She always laughs when she recalls this story, her face both fond and bittersweet. Sizhui knows that she’s proud of him as much as she misses him, for he began quartering with his shifus after he received his courtesy name.

That old promise of Lan-baba’s has certainly come true, Sizhui reflects, lost in memories still.

Everything he knows, he has learnt from these men.

He has imbibed the six arts of music, calligraphy, archery, mathematics, chariotry, and rites. He has learnt how to cut down any enemy with his sword, and how to help anyone in need with his magic. He has been made to perfect the art of spellbinding a crowd with the sound of his qin, and how to make them dance or make them cry with a simple melody. He has been taught how to be clever and cunning both, to value good people and nurture them, and to meet the world with an open heart and faith in himself. But most importantly, he thinks, he has learnt from them how to be a good man before he aims to become a great one.  

Now at last, he's ready to find that greatness within himself.

Ning-gege had been right about many things, but this most of all – that his shifus are the two best men in existence, even including Sizhui’s own father, whom he loves and respects very much, just as he loves his A-niang. But he adores his shifus, for they have stood in for his parents and siblings and even his friends when needed, guiding him gently but firmly through a world that has been in flux for the majority of his life.

A gentle finger flicks against his forehead, bringing him back to the present and he blinks, cross-eyed, at Wei-baba’s questioning look.

He really hasn’t changed a bit since the day they first met. The same stunningly beautiful face, full of encouragement and love, making you feel like you could tell it anything and all would be well.

And yet, Wei-baba looks different too, from that day. Somehow even lovelier. Happier.

What Sizhui wants most of all in this life is to walk behind his shifus and soak up every crumb of knowledge and wisdom till he is capable of walking beside them on their path as their friend and protector as much as he is their child, finally able to return some of the care and love they’ve shown him over the years in like measure.

And with these men standing behind him, guiding him towards whatever heights he wants to achieve, steering him away from the ones they think would not be good for him, how could he fail?

Today is the first test. He will not fail.

The world has always been at his feet, happiness ready for his asking – and today he’s going to reach out and grab it tight with both hands.

They finish up lunch and Wei-baba gets ready while Sizhui helps Lan-baba tidy the porch and gather their qiankun pouches. Then, it’s time to go.

The journey down the mountain is quiet and portentous, with danger looming ahead. Suddenly, Sizhui finds his right hand taken by Wei-baba and his left by Lan-baba, in a mirror reflection of the very first time he’d walked up this path with them. That had been an important journey, and so is this one; he needs the reassurance. How did they even know? But they always do, even before he speaks.

He meets his shifus’ gazes, and finds what he is looking for – a promise of greatness at the journey’s end. With an answering smile in his eyes, Sizhui lifts his head and walks towards his destiny with confidence.

~*~

~*~

~*~

Footnotes

[1] 一日为师，终身为父 (yī rì wèi shī, zhōngshēn wèi fù): “teacher for a day, father for a lifetime”. A chengyu. Source for this and many of the other chengyu quoted throughout this fic: https://www.saporedicina.com/english/list-chengyu/

[2] Ningjing (宁静) means – tranquil, tranquility, serenity. Wei Wuxian was 100% having a laugh at his husband’s expense when he pulled this one.

It is also part of an idiom: 宁静致远 (níng jìng zhì yuan) which means ‘tranquility yields transcendence (idiom); quiet life of profound study; still waters run deep’ which I personally liked and felt fit their characters.

Source: https://app.ninchanese.com/word/143709/%E5%AE%81%E9%9D%99

[3] 11:00 AM to 1:00 P.M. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping

[4] Hongjing (宏精) – Nie Mingjue’s son. With whom, you guys decide. XD My personal favourite candidate is Wen Qing. I formed the name using the characters for hong and jing, the meanings of which are as follows:

宏 (hóng) –  wide, spacious, great, vast. This is the same hong used in the Nie brothers’ father’s name (Nie Jianhong, Chapter 6). Source - https://www.behindthename.com/element/ho10ng-4

精 (jīng) – essence, spirit. Source - https://www.behindthename.com/element/ji23ng-2

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