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The Heaven Crossing Bridge stretched on and on, into the gape of eternity. To sew a stitch between the lands of men and the expanse of heaven—how truly massive must such a bridge be? Mu Qing was settled on Xie Lian’s back, his pride thrown behind them, lost somewhere in the oozing seas of lava below. With his divinity shackled and ability compromised, there was little else for Mu Qing to do but think, and observe the bridge Xie Lian and Feng Xin were attempting to cross. When he turned his head to look back at the path behind them, all he could see was a vast nothingness as eerie as the one ahead of them. 

Forwards or backwards made no difference. 

Mu Qing wondered if his companions had noted as much. Feng Xin was their guard, loathe though he was to admit it,and as such was focused on the movements of those lava creatures. Xie Lian was also occupied, less so with the extra weight of a grown man on his back, and more so with the harried worry that clung to him fiercely whenever his San Lang was gone. 

Before, Mu Qing had reviled the notion that the person fixed with Xie Lian’s sincere affection was Hua Cheng—a monstrous annoyance and unparalleled fiend. He had since settled into curiosity, spurred by Xe Lian’s refusal to waver. He had never seen Xie Lian in love before, but he had seen the determination which sparked in the man whenever he longed for something excellent—a rare weapon, a fascinating tome, or a precious gem of potential in a profoundly unassuming person—and that spark kindled into blazes when Xie Lian spoke of his San Lang. 

They moved forward. There was nothing else to do, Mu Qing supposed. Hours more, or minutes more, or days more, could have passed and no sign would indicate that time, save the ache in their bones. 

Feng Xin, still shielded in his own divinity with no cursed shackle and no extensive injuries, continued on as if they had only just started walking. Unaccustomed to the limits of a restrained body, however, Mu Qing had long fallen into a fit of exhaustion and pain, sensations which collided against each other and prevented relief from either. And Xie Lian, though he would never say so, was struggling. Mu Qing could feel it: the pulse rabbiting against his arms where they’d slung around Xie Lian’s neck, the sweat beading at both their temples, and the breath his friend had lost control over several paces back. He knew Xie Lian would not drop him, but feared what that resilience would cost.

“Xie Lian,” Mu Qing called out gently, not wanting to startle him and send them both tumbling. 

“Yes?”

Ahead of them, Feng Xin had knocked an arrow, or rather, a stick being used in place of an arrow, and peered over the edge of the bridge at a gaggle of corpses gathered in the pools beneath them. Mu Qing sighed, failing to catch it before it turned into a yawn. 

“We need to rest.”

Xie Lian’s hold on the crooks of Mu Qing’s knees tightened. 

“We can’t, we need to go—”

“Where? We don’t know where we are or where we’re going.”

Feng Xin abandoned his staring contest with those creatures below at the sound of their talking. 

“We’re going…forward.” Unsatisfied with his answer, Xie Lian huffed and shook his head a little, as if clearing his mind to think of something better. When at last he did, the subject was of no surprise. “We have to find San Lang.”

Mu Qing wanted to snap at him that Hua Cheng may very well have perished, but restrained himself. He couldn’t say such a thing out loud; the last time he’d alluded to the possibility that Xie Lian’s precious ghost had not survived he’d been shouted down by Feng Xin, and Xie Lian’s lost expression had done the rest to quell him.

“He may be alright,” Mu Qing started, generously, “but we won't be if we keep going at this pace.”

Xie Lian refused to hear it. “When we find him, then we can all rest.”

“And when will that be?” He tried to keep his tone disaffected, conscious that one toe over the line into brusqueness would set Feng Xin’s anger on him. “Xie Lian, you know he’s alright. You can check.”

Xie Lian slowed, but did not stop walking forward. He craned his head to stare at the string wrapped around his index finger, its brilliant red winking back at him. At last, he ceased moving. 

“Fine. I’ll count four hundred beats, and you can rest.”

Xie Lian said nothing else, kneeling down to ease Mu Qing’s dismount from his back. Sharp pain radiated up both of Mu Qing’s legs when they were tasked again to hold the weight of his body. He bit into his cheek to distract from the discomfort, trying not to cry out. 

Xie Lian jogged to catch up to Feng Xin, gesturing back at Mu Qing, who had taken to sitting without grace on the bridge floor. 

Feng Xin nodded—the short one that meant he was secretly relieved with the order he’d just received. Mu Qing rolled his eyes and shifted to improve what little comfort could be managed. 

Devoid of their immediate movement the atmosphere imbued them with a more profound sense of the gaping cavern around them. No true life remained in the pit of Wuyong’s ruins. Even the breath that left them, three living beings, was only enough to fill their lungs and expel, not abundant enough to be taken without thought. 

Feng Xin sat down beside Mu Qing, too caught up in whittling his stick-arrows to sharper points to make note of the odd proximity. Xie Lian took to muttering under his breath, counting beats of time, desperate to assure they did not stagnate for too long. 

A low, muted growl broke out into their tense quiet.

Mu Qing placed a hand to his stomach, and, as if prompted, the growl came again. 

“Mu Qing?” Xie Lian asked. His voice betrayed nothing, but his eyes crinkled at the corners. 

“I’m…hungry.”

Mu Qing hated being ill-prepared. Medicines, ingots, spare clothes, spare combs—any and everything could be found somewhere on his person. He kept a dagger in his left boot and a small gourd of medicinal wine strung to his belt. But never food. He did not cultivate a path which required abstinence from eating, but as an immortal he could spend months fasting before his body began to want for nourishment. Even then, it was not as though the body would die from a lack of food, rather that the endless, rapid cycles of maintenance and function would slow to the point that sustenance became appealing. 

However, with severe injuries demanding his body’s strained attention, Mu Qing had reverted back to a mortal state of hunger. After facing the brink of death, hunger sharpened its teeth and bit into him—starving. 

Xie Lian nodded and patted his own stomach. “Me too.”

Mu Qing waited for Xie Lian to produce something they both could eat, determined that he would act grateful instead of disgusted when the food in question was half-eaten and entirely stale. He drew the line at eating rotted produce, but otherwise…

Xie Lian did nothing. He sat down, cross-legged opposite Mu Qing, and made no move to improve their mutual need. 

“Well,” Mu Qing broke at last. “Do you have anything?”

Xie Lian’s nose scrunched. He’d tried to resume counting and was no doubt peeved to be interrupted. Typical of his courtesy, however, he made no complaint and answered Mu Qing directly: “Not this time.”

At Mu Qing's side, Feng Xin started to rustle about his robes, as though looking for something. Being utterly disinterested in whatever Feng Xin was searching for, Mu Qing reclined fully against the bridge’s railing. The smell of burning wood stung him, but they were in no immediate danger. At least, no more than they had been all the while by virtue of their circumstances. His stomach hurt, though, empty with loss he’d forgotten the sensation of. A small wave of nausea crested at the base of his throat and, with nothing left to him, Mu Qing dared to grumble out loud. 

“Shut up,” Feng Xin said. It was rude on principle and rude in practice seeing as Mu Qing had yet to even say anything. Before he could clear his name, Feng Xin was prodding his arm. “Here.”

A radish, stark white in the gloom of their surroundings, was what Feng Xin used to poke him. Mu Qing stared at it, unable to reconcile its presence in Feng Xin’s hand. Impatient as ever, Feng Xin shoved the end of it into Mu Qing’s arm again. 

“You can eat it.”

Still bemused, Mu Qing accepted the radish and handled it with a light touch, wondering if the thing would vanish should he grasp too tightly. Once certain the radish was real and that the fumes of the lava had not eaten at his mind, Mu Qing took it more surely into his hold. It was coated near its leafy stem with soil, and it appeared fresh, feeling firm in his palms when they squeezed. 

He glanced back at Feng Xin, who was watching him handle the radish, expectant.

“Why.” It was a question, but Mu Qing did not speak it like one. 

Across from them, Xie Lian had paused his count once more, looking at the radish with his lips pursed. He said nothing, however, leaving Mu Qing to do the hard work of figuring out why Feng Xin had had a perfectly ripe radish kept on his person. Though, during his quick assessment of Xie Lian, Mu Qing could swear there was a flicker of recognition. 

Obtuse to his true intentions, Feng Xin answered a question he had not asked: “You're fucking hungry aren’t you? Why is my solution so suspicious to you? If you won’t eat it you can give it back!”

Perhaps it was Mu Qing’s fault for making the initial inquiry too vague. Conjuring the very limits of his patience, he tried again. “No, not ‘why have you given me a radish,' why do you have a radish to give? And what nonsense about solutions and suspicion. If your solution wasn’t so strange I’d have no reason to be suspicious!”

“Hush,” Xie Lian admonished. Twin looks of indignation were thrown at him but Xie Lian did not falter. “You two are going to agitate the corpses with your yelling. Worse, you’ll give me a headache.” 

He returned to counting while Mu Qing and Feng Xin were left to their own embarrassment. With a huff, Mu Qing lifted the radish and prepared to bite in. When the thing was raised to his eye-level he noticed a flaw so horrible and so insulting he yelled out, “Augh!”

Though he had not been the one to break first, Feng Xin gladly resumed his own grousing. “What is it now? What inane standards have I failed to consider this time?”

“You’ve already bitten into it! Look!” Mu Qing waved the gnawed radish in Feng Xin’s face, trying not to think about how close he’d come to biting into it himself. 

Feng Xin did not offer any defense from the accusation, staring at the radish like it had offended his sensibilities. Never one to miss a petty detail, Mu Qing noticed Xie Lian likewise regarding the radish with his eyes narrowed and bottom lip tucked away.

Recovering from his own disgust, Feng Xin pushed back against Mu Qing’s hand. “Then avoid that part.”

Before he could retort, his stomach betrayed him and all that sounded between them was its whining growl. Mu Qing wished then that the bridge would collapse completely and send him to the fiery death he’d narrowly escaped earlier. Not even as mortal had his body been so demanding! 

Face warm from a force much greater, and far more humiliating, than the heated air around them, Mu Qing lowered his head and brought the radish to his mouth. 

The first bite in was small, he clipped the end of the radish with his front teeth and tried not to gag. He remembered now, he’d never liked the taste of raw vegetables. The way the mush of them would stay heavy on the tongue, moving through the throat like sludge. When they could afford to, his mother liked to shroud them beneath hefty aromatics and shining sauces. As he chewed, the reminiscence dulled what irritation he felt for the radish. 

After managing to keep down another bite, Mu Qing lifted his head and held the radish out towards Xie Lian. 

“Here, you have some…” he trailed off, for there was no need to extend the courtesy. Xie Lian, head resting in the pillow of his arms, had fallen asleep mid-count. How long had he gone without rest? Mu Qing indulged the need to roll his eyes; of course the rhythm of counting had lulled. 

“Is he…?”

Mu Qing inclined his head.

“Should we wake him?” Feng Xin whispered.

If they wanted to avoid Xie Lian’s upset, it would indeed be a wiser course to nudge him awake. But the longer Mu Qing stared at Xie Lian—curled into himself, knees to chin—the more the risk seemed worth a moment of peace for his friend. He tried the word in his mind, ‘friend,’ and found an emergent fount of fondness. 

“Do you think Hua Cheng would wake him?”

It was an odd question, affirmed as such when Feng Xin scoffed, but he was curious. If the bond between Xie Lian and the crimson fiend was as true as they professed it to be, Mu Qing doubted Hua Cheng would mind if his beloved indulged in respite. 

Feng Xin came to a similar conclusion. “I doubt it. He would probably tell us to make ourselves useful and form a sleeping-bench.” 

“Unfortunate image.”

Feng Xin shrugged, and the unsaid agreement between them was set with the fall of his shoulders. They would not wake Xie Lian before the god’s body pulled him from rest on its own. In doing so, however, both of them were put in the precarious position of being alone with the other. 

In every other instance of being in each other’s sole company, it was better to stoke some fire of irritation to fill the void of uncertainty that always hung between them. Feng Xin had chipped a tooth during his prior stunt with the arrows, and generally that would work—Mu Qing could call him a reckless fool who’d sullied his smile, and Feng Xin would rise to the bait, not caring for the seeded implication—but he’d only sustained the imperfection after saving Mu Qing’s life. In that sense, it would not feel earned to demean him. There were other hurts, of course. Festering wounds that had opened the day Xie Lian ascended so many months ago, nearly septic from their continued need to tear into and gut one another. But Mu Qing could not summon the will to leverage any of them. For once, it felt better to be in the quiet with Feng Xin. For once, he could convince himself that Feng Xin would not be anticipating a fight. 

A conversation could work. In theory, they were capable of having them. When they’d conspired to assist Xie Lian as those little officials Nan Feng and Fu Yao, they’d managed a handful of conversations that did not devolve into argument. Brief, clipped exchanges, but still. 

Bearing through a dull pain that had settled in the back of his throat, Mu Qing prepared to speak. 

“How are—”

“Were you really—”

Bastard! Mu Qing cut himself off, miffed that Feng Xin had really taken the exact moment as he to fill their silence. 

“What,” he said curtly. 

Undeterred and unaffected, Feng Xin barreled into his question as though it were a more worthwhile place for their conversation to start. “Were you really trying to save me?”

Mu Qing wished he could toss the question away and divert from it with some ridiculous comment like, ‘Save you? Would I bother the will of fate if it deemed your life complete? Fuck off,’ but he found himself reluctant. 

“Of course I was,” he said, refusing all pretense. 

“‘Of course,’” Feng Xin huffed. “Don’t act like it’s an obvious thing.”

It should have been. If in eight hundred years a murderous urge had not been satisfied, was it not fair to assume Mu Qing had never harbored one to begin with? He did not conceptualize himself as bound by the same virtue of character that Xie Lian excelled with and Feng Xin attempted; if he’d wanted to kill Feng Xin, he would have tried harder. 

“You think I want you dead?”

“I don’t think you care either way, you’re so indifferent,” Feng Xin answered quick, as though the assumption was so ingrained in him it had become belief. “Which is why you saving me, or, trying to, I guess, you weren’t very successful—”

“Fuck off—”

“Is not as apparent an outcome as you seem to think,” Feng Xin finished, ignoring Mu Qing’s rude interruption. 

Indifferent. Feng Xin thought he was indifferent, not swayed by concern or malice, but uncaring to its full extent. Mu Qing had wanted to be, from the moment they met in youth, with Xie Lian in between them—his highness acting as the only bridge that could have possibly hoped to connect them. But there had never been any resistance in him when it came to thinking about Feng Xin, whether to scrutinize, to assess, or to wonder. 

Indeed, he had been furious with Feng Xin for centuries, perplexed by how two people so fundamentally different could have such entangled destinies. His leading theory had been that their proximity was a consequence stemming from Xie Lian—that the crown prince had tempted fate by bringing them together and from then on it was their mutual misery to deal with. Mu Qing had not thought so for a while, however, losing the will to blame his highness some months prior. 

A trick of fate…he doubted it. They were meant to be at Xie Lian’s side, as the prince had longed for from their beginnings, and their terrible realities were a consequence of their own push against fate, abandoning Xie Lian at the cusp of their mortal lives. 

“So then, why did you?” Feng Xin pulled Mu Qing from his reflections, but he failed to respond before Feng Xin gave up. “Nevermind. It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?” 

He was relieved Feng Xin chose not to push. Mu Qing had no answer to give but the truth: that he tried saved Feng Xin because at that moment, there was nothing else to do. There were few people he owed anything to, and even fewer were those he would actually seek to fulfill. For all their eternity, he had never felt as though he owed Feng Xin anything. Except for the acknowledgement of their mortal lives, and the thread that had strung them together—by Xie Lian’s hand, or by the will of the heavens—for better and, certainly, for worse. He supposed he owed Feng Xin that history, and for that history he could never be indifferent, especially if Feng Xin faced death.  

“Why did you save me?” Mu Qing echoed his question. “If I am so obviously uncaring for your life, why would you guard mine?”

“Isn’t that what I do? Guard?”

Mu Qing pursed his lips. “Answer me.”

Against expectation, Feng Xin did not move to berate him, to resist Mu Qing’s prompting and yell something to the effect of ‘You didn’t fucking answer me, I have no reason to answer you. Also your hair looks ghastly, you will never be able to salvage it from the dirt, soot, and blood.” Well, that last bit may have been more a projection of Mu Qing’s own disgust, but the rest was plausible, which was why he felt so shaken when Feng Xin replied in earnest: 

“I’ve never wanted you to die.”

Surely, if he were not pinned to inaction by his injuries, Mu Qing would have found the will to slap Feng Xin across the face. He settled for the communicative power of a scowl. 

“Oh, fine! Don’t believe it, but it’s true,” Feng Xin insisted. “His highness would be heartbroken if you died.”

That addition did clear his initial confusion, but left behind only his anger. 

“Aren’t you so noble, general,” Mu Qing said. 

“And,” Feng Xin emphasized, remaining unbearably neutral to Mu Qing’s ire. “No matter how I’ve searched for a reason, no matter what I’ve said, I just don’t want you to. Die, I mean.”

The admission stood between them, a new point of connection he dared not comprehend. But if it was mutual, that neither had maintained any ardent desire for the other’s demise, what else could be true? What else could be hidden?

Mu Qing lowered his head, picking at his nails—a habit from childhood he had never abandoned. He spoke to his lap, so that he might pretend he wasn’t really speaking to Feng Xin. 

“When I’d fallen over that cliff, I thought about calling to you,” he said. Beside him, Feng Xin seemed to stop breathing. “But I didn’t know…how was I supposed to know? That you would answer?”

“I don’t know if I would have,” Feng Xin said, lowering his voice. “I was too shocked, I didn’t know what to do, or what you needed. I think I was really, actually, a bit scared. You’ve never been so vulnerable before and I…” He struggled for the words, and Mu Qing kept himself silent, anticipating the instant Feng Xin found them. At last: “I wouldn’t have been enough. You needed his highness.”

“But you were,” Mu Qing whispered. In the open space around them, his discretion proved futile. 

“What?” Feng Xin prodded. 

He had already humbled himself before Xie Lian, had he not? What right did Feng Xin have to ask more of him? Mu Qing conceded, though, that Feng Xin had no way of knowing how asking for an expansion to that statement, ‘you were,’ was akin to asking Mu Qing to expose his neck for the saber. He let the apprehension go, in the end more interested in maintaining their conversation. 

“I was going to end my own life, by my own hands, when the bridge split and tore me from Xie Lian.” Feng Xin tensed when Mu Qing called Xie Lian by name, but for once kept any disquiet to himself. Mu Qing continued: “There was nothing to do but die, one way or the other, and I thought it best for my own sake to leave the act to my will—not to those creatures.”

Life was hard to abandon; after eight hundred years of living, Mu Qing still had not tired of it. His own life was not always kind, and never gentle, but it was his. There was once a time when it was the one thing he owned without question or caveat.

“You saved me,” Mu Qing said. “In that situation, only you could have.” 

He found, despite himself, that it was not painful or humiliating to admit. Rather, relief coursed through him, unwinding the tension in his shoulders and letting him proclaim the truth as he understood it. As it was, he could not bring himself to resent it. 

Feng Xin did not appear to share the sentiment, his brows lifted and lips parted—prepared to speak words that would not come. 

Being the subject of a glare was one thing, he could handle animosity, but being the subject of surprise was another. Mu Qing shifted, letting his weight transfer from one wrist to the other. At last, Feng Xin shook his head, releasing Mu Qing from the pressure of his gaze.

“I think I get what you meant,” Feng Xin said. 

“Oh?” He bit his tongue to keep from augmenting his response with, ‘that would be a first for you.’ The rhythm of their conversation had not faltered to shouting, and the current of vulnerability swept in from some unknown vastness in the space between them had taken Mu Qing along with it. 

“En. ‘Of course,’ that’s what you said. I get it now,” Feng Xin paused, and again there was no pull in Mu Qing to exploit the moment of silence and insert insult. After collecting himself, Feng Xin continued: “When I saw you—no matter what I’d heard beforehand, or how in the aftermath I found myself judging your stupidity in a thousand ways—when I saw you summon a blast of spiritual power to—to—,” he cut himself off and breathed in deep. “In that moment, ‘of course’ I saved you. There was nothing to consider, or hold against you. Fuck, of course I did it! No matter what makes it noble, or anything else.”

Facing such blunt honesty, there was nothing Mu Qing could think to say. Beneath the skin of his cheeks, warmth pooled. The wetness that gathered in his eyes was surely due to the dry air, but, fearing what might meet him should he lose all control, Mu Qing bowed his head, feigning interest once more in the sight of his own lap.  

Xie Lian stirred, releasing them from the weight of their respective admissions. He was still asleep, murmuring incomprehensible words. Mu Qing dared to look up and watch the rise and fall of the prince’s shoulders. He was certain their decision to leave Xie Lian in such a brief moment of peace was correct, and certain Hua Cheng would not have despised them for doing so. 

A stray strand of hair fell from the ribbon Xie Lian used to tie it back, dancing in the air with each exhalation. Mu Qing’s own nose twitched on impulse, and he became excessively aware of how his own hair had come to a state of utter disaster. 

Content to have any sort of task, Mu Qing unbound what little of his hair had remained in place and let it all fall. The two plaits he liked to decorate his style with were troublesome to untangle, but once his hair was free he started the work of gathering it again. His palms were blistered, and bearing the weight of his hair while he spun it into a satisfactory knot was an exercise in endurance.

He could tell Feng Xin was watching him, but, considerate of the fact that the options for their idling were either to stare into the nothingness around them or watch each other’s movements, Mu Qing did not snap at him to stop. 

Before he could finish, Feng Xin gripped his right arm and tugged it away from where Mu Qing held it aloft. 

“What the fuck? What are you—”

He swallowed his own complaint upon realizing why Feng Xin had taken hold of him, suspending his forearm—bare as his sleeves had slid down into the crook of his elbow—between them. 

A black band wrapped itself tight around Mu Qing’s wrist, a lone shackle bound to his being by the power of their rotted heavenly emperor. Anticipating the same volatile suspicion that had come the first time his cursed shackle was brought to Feng Xin’s attention, Mu Qing tried to yank his arm back, but Feng Xin did not yield. 

“Let me go,” he said, baring his teeth. He slapped at Feng Xin’s own arm but the latter remained firm. 

He knew his immediate reaction conflicted with all they had said to one another only moments prior. Mu Qing had never doubted his defensiveness before, but as Feng Xin had yet to explain himself, and as his grasp, though strong, was not punitive or painful, it became evident his purpose was not to accuse. 

“What does it feel like?” Feng Xin asked. His eyes flitted to Xie Lian’s resting figure before returning to Mu Qing. 

It was not as though Mu Qing could not understand the curiosity. In those early days of Xie Lian’s first banishment, the prince had emphasized that the shackles felt like nothing at all, ‘And they certainly don’t hurt me.’ The promise that discomfort was absent, from a man who would use his own hand as kindling and insist it was no real trouble, had meant nothing to them, and had thoroughly failed to ease their worry. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. If he spent any length of time focused on other matters, he could forget the thing burdened him at all. “It’s weightless, as if it had been born into my skin.”

Feng Xin nodded, still holding onto Mu Qing, still enthralled by the cursed shackle. “It looks as though it would hurt, though. The skin around is pulled tight.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t.”

The pad of Feng Xin’s thumb pressed into his forearm and Mu Qing’s breath stuttered. He covered it with a cough, certain Feng Xin would not notice. Touch was rare to him, that was all. 

“Are you…” Feng Xin trailed off, at last freeing Mu Qing from his hold. 

“I’m not lying.”

“I didn’t say you were!”

As they were practically huddled together, Mu Qing did startle a bit when Feng Xin raised his voice. Curling his shoulders inward, Feng Xin tried again. 

“I meant, are you…” his brows furrowed. “Are you…alright? Even if it doesn’t hurt, are you, uhm—” Feng Xin coughed into his own fist. 

“Am I ‘alright’?” Mu Qing repeated, certain he’d misheard. He eyed Feng Xin, but the latter gave no indication of being misunderstood. The question left him stumped. How did Feng Xin qualify ‘alright’? What if he answered in one respect, but Feng Xin meant to ask for something else? He was alive, but not unscathed. Did that count? Or was Feng Xin seeking insight into his innermost thinking? Mu Qing stared without speaking. 

He thought he might be. Xie Lian no longer understood him the way one understood a shape by its shadow—warped, and in many ways inscrutable. To no longer be at odds with Xie Lian overwhelmed Mu Qing, and he had not yet picked through all that it meant. But all was right, as it had never been before. 

Then again, he supposed he might not be. The world he’d rooted himself within for eight centuries had fallen to fire, the heavenly capital rendered to no more than grand ruins on a grassy plain. It was absurd, but what vexed Mu Qing the most about the affair was the loss of a fine metal thimble he had kept in his residence since ascension. Amidst the rubble, it would have surely become nothing at all. Then, his legs had been burned, and the longer they sat the less his adrenaline could distract from their torment. All was disaster, as it had never been before.

Feng Xin had invited him to speak as much aloud, but could Mu Qing be certain the contradictions would be tolerated? Feng Xin did not like how his mind worked, had never approved of the paths his thoughts wound to become speech lilting out from the tip of his tongue. It was frustrating to operate under the assumption that the substance of what he said did not always matter. 

But Feng Xin had assured him thus far, had approached an attempt at understanding earlier, and had admitted ignorance to Mu Qing’s true intentions towards Xie Lian. Feng Xin had saved him. Feng Xin was the one asking: ‘Are you alright?’

There were many things Mu Qing wished to say to Feng Xin, a thousand ways he wanted to be understood. Not all were complimentary, or fair, or kind. He sighed. 

“If I can live beyond this, I will be.”

“You think we’re going to die?”

“I didn’t say that. Why are you asking me if I think something I didn’t even say?” 

“How else am I supposed to know what you think? You speak one thing and think six other conflicting things at the same time,” Feng Xin grumbled. “You think you’re going to die, then? Just you?”

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. “My luck was never exceptional, but as of late my misfortune has been lethal.”

First, to run into Feng Xin in the ruins of Wuyong after failing to get him out of the heavenly capital, with no excuse but the wave of shame that had washed over him when the Lady Jian Lan came upon them. Second, to vanish from that wretched armory when suspicions were at their peak, and spat out in a long corridor, deteriorated by millennia of heat and ash. Then, to fall over the cliff of a river whose streams bore lava instead of water. Even in the moment he’d decided to unburden Xie Lian of his dead weight, attempting to make his last moments defiant by splitting the bridge between them and facing death with nothing but his own might, Mu Qing had been disrupted and carried off by Feng Xin like some hapless maiden. 

And now he was the worst among them—injured, bound by a cursed shackle, and unable to guard himself. 

“Oh, bullshit.”

Mu Qing bristled. “Excuse me?”

“You should have died several times along our journey, and yet you’ve escaped and sit beside us still. Your luck is fine.”

“Is that how you understand it?”

“That’s how it is,” Feng Xin insisted. “You think your luck is so terrible? His highness is separated from his beloved.”

Well, as if it was his fault he had no beloved to be separated from! It was a ridiculous thought, but Mu Qing gave into his indignation anyway:

“And your dear one is so desperate to escape you she refused to save you! Or how else could you have wound up here? You’re right, my luck is boundless compared to yours.”

Feng Xin reeled back as though Mu Qing had punched him. “Why would you say that? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

‘Many trite and indelicate things,’ he wanted to say. Eight centuries of being alone, and knowing it was his own doing. Being with Feng Xin, who had known him longer than anyone else in the arc of his eternal life, and hating Feng Xin all the while. They could not go to blows, and so every word between them would have to be accounted for. Why would he say such a thing? Why would he take the care to understand Feng Xin’s grief, only to exploit it in an argument? They had not even been arguing, not at first. 

To be betrayed by a coward may have pulled some semblance of sorrow from Xianle, but to be humiliated by a coward, to realize so much of his faith had once been placed in a pathetic man, a fragile man, a cruel man…

“I—”

He did not know how to mend the wounds he inflicted. He did not enjoy hurting Feng Xin, and he did not believe Feng Xin necessarily sought to hurt him. Rather, there had always been a satisfaction in meeting each other in the pits of misery and finding ways to dig deeper, pulling both of them down. If their crown prince, if their Xie Lian was cast from the heavens to the earth, they could always find ways to stay beneath him regardless. In character, and in virtue. 

“Be cruel,” Mu Qing demanded. “Say whatever you want back.” 

It was all he could offer when apology was unknowable to their patterns. 

Yet, the singular time he’d been invited to speak without consideration, to be ungenerous and spiteful, Feng Xin remained silent. Mu Qing frowned. 

“Go on. Tell me how I’m insensible, a bastard who could never hope to understand the attachment that tethers you to her or Xie Lian to his San Lang. Tell me to fuck off, tell me I think too much, tell me—” he lost control of his breath, flustered by Feng Xin allowing him to blather for so long without interruption. “Just tell me you regret saving my life, or tell me to jump from the bridge, or—”

Have you always lacked? First status, then respect, and always love…it is a shame Xianle grew to despise you. But you hated him first; it is hateful to bite into a blessed hand and spit it out like poison. 

“I know I’m hateful!” 

He was caught in a fit as his fresh guilt for speaking crassly towards Feng Xin enfolded itself into buried guilts, bringing to the surface that which he had managed to ignore in the rush of danger and action after heaven’s devastation. 

‘Mu Qing?’

Torn from his ensuing despair, Mu Qing slapped a hand to his temple. What his body understood made up for what his conscience could not, and he knew that Feng Xin had accessed their private communication array. 

Ling Wen had collapsed the primary arrays when she absconded from heaven, but she did not control the channels each official kept for themselves. So long as one knew the password of the god they wished to contact, it was no issue to reach out. 

‘Mu Qing? Oh, fuck, does this not work? Does the cursed shackle—oh why am I asking that, if it didn’t work you wouldn’t know I was asking. But—’

‘Do not use my mind to ramble!’

Outside of their heads, Feng Xin sighed contentedly, as though a troublesome problem had been solved. 

‘Good, it still works.’

The simple wash of relief from someone else speaking over the tumult of his mind, drowning out the voice of venom that had pierced him, was enough to steady Mu Qing. 

‘Mu Qing,’ Feng Xin concentrated, keeping the resonance of his words in check. The care with which he tempered his own power in their array was near gentle. ‘You think too much.’

“Are you fucking seri—”

‘We’re not talking aloud right now. Be quiet; you’ll disturb his highness.’

The singular reason grounding Mu Qing and preventing him from spiting his injuries and his exhaustion to bowl Feng Xin over was that, though those sentiments were familiar, the way in which Feng Xin said them was not. The soft cadence of his voice and the absence of mockery made it sound as though Feng Xin were only teasing him. He had not been aware Feng Xin could manage a thing as frivolous as teasing. Mu Qing set his mouth in a firm line and acquiesced. 

‘Fine.’

It would be easier to converse if he didn’t have to speak to do so. What he transmitted through the array did not feel as though it had to be ripped from where pride and reticence lay in the back of his throat. 

‘I should not have said what I did.’

Though he managed to communicate as much, Mu Qing could not help the way his face twisted. 

‘Oh? You say too many things at once for me to know what you mean. Just let it go.’

Did Feng Xin operate in such a way that moving on from what weighed upon one’s heart was a choice one made? 

‘I don’t understand you. You’re very strange.’

Feng Xin snorted. ‘Says you.’

A round of wailing from the spirits below captured their attention, and Mu Qing decided that if Xie Lian had not awoken by the next instance of those awful cries, they would finally wake him themselves. It was nearly time to move forward. 

‘I want to ask you something,’ Feng Xin said in their array. ‘You won’t want to answer, but you don’t have to say it out loud.’

‘Yes, I know how this array works.’ Mu Qing evaded the point to veil a twinge of nervousness within him at Feng Xin’s preamble. 

‘What was it Jun Wu asked of you?’

Mu Qing’s fists tightened where they had come to rest upon his legs, and his knuckles cracked. The question was not incendiary, and it carried no stain of suspicion, but it irked him nonetheless. When he remembered the proceedings of his meeting with Jun Wu; when he thought of the grandeur of the Great Martial Hall, a grandeur he had gladly accepted a place within for centuries, cast then in a vile subversion of its purpose; when he thought of what had been said…

He breathed in deep, the bite of the air around them making his nose sting. 

‘To hurt Xie Lian, what else? To kill you, take the entirety of the south, and hurt Xie Lian in his grief. To–’

It was difficult to articulate past his own revulsion. 

‘He has methods to make Xie Lian weak. To ruin him.’

Feng Xin broke their confidence to exclaim. “What fucking creature is he? To want his highness dead—what has his highness ever done to deserve it?”

“Bai Wuxiang,” Mu Qing murmured. 

“It’s not fair!” Feng Xin pressed, though the desperation behind his words indicated he did not speak to argue, but to affirm. In a rare instance of fierce agreement, Mu Qing let him curse Jun Wun in a dozen unique shows of loathing. 

After he’d satisfied his own temper, Feng Xin returned to their array. ‘Why would he ask you to kill us?’

Mu Qing knew that answer, he could recite in sleep for how it pervaded him. ‘Because I am a base, spineless man eager to advance my position at the expense of anyone, even those from my mortal life. I connive beyond my station and grasp to the fleeting generosity of fate, eager to tear down all those in positions ahead of me. I bite blessed hands and spit them out like poison.’

Jun Wu had attempted to court the favor of the man he believed Mu Qing to be, appealing to every despicable rumor that had plagued Mu Qing since ascension. Perhaps he did not view them as similar in aim, but he presumed to understand them as similar in cruelty. 

Once released, the things kept within him could not be retrieved and hidden away again. ‘I’m a trinket with rustic charm, a servant confused by the favor of such a kind master. I’ve never been a good person, I’m tolerable to a point, and who knows where I would be without the outstretched hand of his royal highness the crown prince, Xie Lian? I’m desperate to prove myself the superior of my superior, a cold person who cares for nothing but my own gain. I stand where I shouldn’t and take space where I ought to leave room. I cross every line. I am despicable, disrespectful, and refuse to remember where I come from and who the fuck I am!’

He lost control of his volume, his own voice blaring in his head, drowning out all else around them. When his recount became ranting, the accusations against his character were not those Jun Wu had spun, but older words that had haunted him across the span of immortality. 

Betraying his own sense, Mu Qing snuck a glance to Feng Xin, curious if he had caught on. Feng Xin’s eyes were wide, a hand suspended near his ear where he must have tried to quiet the reverberations of Mu Qing’s voice in their array. Feng Xin did not remember. 

“You think all of that?” He asked. 

“Has it ever mattered what I think? Has it ever mattered that I—” Mu Qing broke on the syllable. “I wouldn’t have done it. I’ve never wanted to hurt Xie Lian, even though I know I have, I know, I—” He could not stand the unguarded desperation in his tone. ‘I would not have done it. I could not. I have never wanted to.’

For his part, Feng Xin remained quiet. He did not reject Mu Qing’s lamentations, or his claims, nor did he offer false assurance. He was not comforting in the way of the hearth, but steady like stone. No matter what was hurled or how heavy one leaned, Feng Xin would not falter. 

“I would not have done it,” Mu Qing repeated. “Could you believe me?”

It took eight beats for him to answer; Mu Qing counted each one. 

“I think so.” His brow furrowed. “I mean, I do. I believe you.”

Mu Qing supposed it would make sense to be relieved. After centuries of scorning Feng Xin’s hypocritical disregard of him and his intentions, to hear that, for once, Feng Xin trusted he was not capable of such terrible deeds was remarkable. There was something roused within him from the phrase— I believe you —but relief was not the word. Rather, hope. Against reason and precedent, for the sake of a sentiment so fragile in its betrayal of expectation, Mu Qing could not help but hope. 

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Whatever I’ve said in the past,” Feng Xin began in a rush. “Just stop minding it. You know I don’t think–”

“Sure, I know that.”

Feng Xin rolled his eyes, leaving Mu Qing almost winded in the process. “Shut up. I meant, I don’t always think through what I say, and you know that. You need to stop being weird, that’s all.”

Though fumbling his point, Mu Qing bit back from discrediting it entirely. Feng Xin called him weird, which was a pot-kettle mistake, but he’d also revealed in earnest that what he said was not always what he thought and, well, Mu Qing had been waiting the better part of forever for Feng Xin to admit that. 

“And I…” he wanted to offer an admission in exchange, but found it hard to narrow down his many points of error. “I know I reserve too much, and I know I’m. Difficult.” Feng Xin snorted, but, valiantly, Mu Qing pushed on. “It’s easy to defend the insult with insult, and easy to crash if I know I can take you down with me. It’s easy to be awful, and awful to be good.”

Xie Lian was his primary example. No man could match him in virtue, no gentleman could hope to compare. And yet. 

Before Feng Xin could find fault in his shitty attitude, Mu Qing amended: “But I want to be something else. Something more. I want…I would like to be good. To say sensible things.”

Mu Qing wondered if the admissions went too far, for all Feng Xin had confessed was that he often spoke carelessly. A want to be good, while noble, seemed an embarrassing thing for a man of Mu Qing’s power and age to desire.

‘Generous, and kind.’ Feng Xin’s voice sounded in their array. It should have been dizzying to switch between modes of conversations with very little warning, but since Feng Xin’s voice had become as prominent in his mind as his own thoughts, Mu Qing found it no trouble at all to adapt. 

‘Hm?’

‘I’ve always wondered why a subset of your believers choose to characterize you that way. Generous and kind. You understand—to me, it makes no sense at all.’

Mu Qing’s face pinched together and he refused to look at Feng Xin any longer. 

‘I have thought, always, that I know you. I know you as you are petty, and spiteful, and suspicious. I know you as mild-mannered, but cold. I know your left hand punches better than your right, and I know it’s because your mother taught you to sew with the right and your wrist gets too tired too easily. I know this because you told his highness, and I listen. I know you think I don’t. I know you think I’m unfair, and mean, and foolish. I know you by your shadow and by that irritating way your voice pitches up when you’re being sarcastic.’

It was the longest he had heard Feng Xin speak in one go without insulting him the entire time, and Mu Qing was rendered mute, waiting for the point of Feng Xin’s revelations. 

‘I know I know you, and I know you know me. I’ve known no one as long. But, Mu Qing, I have never understood you. I’ve never thought of wanting to.’ 

‘And so?’  Mu Qing asked, a strange tightness in his throat making the array his safest option. 

‘And so now, I think—I think I’ll try to understand. For your sake and mine.’

Well, what was he supposed to say to that? After centuries of being the most uncommunicative bastard Mu Qing had ever known, it was in such dire moments Feng Xin chose to upend that established pattern. Mu Qing let Feng Xin’s words seep into the space between them, where, perhaps, they could begin to bridge. 

‘But you have to stop being so weird. Please.’

With that final obnoxious addendum, Mu Qing finally had something he could say:

‘Fuck off.’

Whether by the forces of exhaustion, or by the emergence of newfound connection, neither were compelled to stoke an argument. Feng Xin laughed first, an airy exhalation that became a wheeze when he could no longer constrain it, and Mu Qing followed suit. His laugh was stilted, and unsure, but a laugh all the same. Soon enough they were in hysterics, trying very hard to keep said laughter quiet. 

When had they last laughed together? Had they ever? Mu Qing bore the consequence of humor—a smile, light, but present all the same. When had Feng Xin last made him smile? Had he ever? Mu Qing shook his head, winding down. 

“I want to ask you about something, it’s bothered me for years,” he said. 

Feng Xin, tempering the last of his amusement, nodded. “Fine, ask.”

Though given permission, Mu Qing held back as long as he could stand. He knew his question was not one Feng Xin would gladly answer, but that was not enough, and had never been enough, to prevent him from wondering. 

“When you left,” he said, pausing to assess Feng Xin’s reactions. Tensed jaw, fists clenched. But no yelling—that was a start. “Why did you?”

“Are you fucking—”

“Don’t fall back on anger, please,” Mu Qing interjected, trying to eclipse the enmity in Feng Xin’s tone with sincerity. “I’m not asking to taunt you, or because I truly think you left for the reasons I did.” It was hard to admit, and worse for being true. He breathed in deep, and let go. “I want to understand, too.”

Though no stranger to the avoidant joys of hypocrisy, Feng Xin’s eyes widened, and the succession of shouting that may have previously ensued after such a question never came to pass. 

It was a while still before Feng Xin responded.

“I’ll tell you, then. I don’t think I could tell it more than once, and I don’t think I could do it in more than one go, so. Listen.”

Initially, listening was no different than waiting. Mu Qing knew Feng Xin’s mind was working—that ever-furrowed brow was in position and his hands were clasped together—and so he was willing to wait, believing eventually he would be given the chance to listen. 

“The night Xianle fell, you remember?” Feng Xin spoke at last.

Mu Qing nodded. 

“I went to his highness that night, leaving you to prepare their majesties. I have never seen him scared, not really. Not even, hm. You remember, thunderstorms made him skittish, but not because of the thunder—”

“Because of the wind.”

“Right,” Feng Xin smiled, though whether it was for Mu Qing’s correct recollection, or for the memory itself, was not self-evident. “But even so, the things that made him nervous made him brave. When I first met him, I was fourteen, I think, and all I knew of the aristocracy were the accounts my tutor had given me.”

Mu Qing stretched the recesses of his mind for anything he knew of Feng Xin’s childhood, and was disappointed to realize he had nothing at all to call upon. 

“But that’s … well. That night, when word came of Yong’an and its allies successfully breaking our city-walls, I found him in his room, grinding ink. I’ve never known why …” Feng Xin shook his head. “I couldn’t believe it, even in such a situation, though nervous, he was not scared. At least, he didn’t seem so.”

What Mu Qing remembered of the night they fled Xianle was a blur of motion—moving trunks and books and whatever money remained in the palace they took flight from. He remembered the men who aided their escape, and remembered Feng Xin, tasked alongside him to sit outside of the carriage and guide them out. He remembered his own distress, eager to flee and assist Xie Lian, but frightened of what would become of his own mother. To serve his rootless family or to serve his gracious lord—at that time it could not be both. He remembered the fury. 

“And I held onto that, certain that if his highness could stand firm, the least I could do was stand with him. When we spurned certain work, and refused your pleas to debase ourselves, I thought: what does it matter if we have to suffer now? His highness is his highness, a noble gentleman of unquestionable virtue whose suffering will come to glory in the end. I couldn’t stand that you didn't—” Feng Xin’s breath was coming too fast, and any retort Mu Qing had conjured up for those last remarks vanished. He waited. “I have always believed in him. As the Flower Crowned martial god; as his highness, the crown prince of Xianle; as Xie—”

Feng Xin cut himself off and turned his head away, perhaps shocked at how near he’d come to slipping. Mu Qing was surprised, too, but did not wish to say something wrong, did not wish to breathe lest Feng Xin retract back into himself and confine the answers Mu Qing had sought across centuries. 

“I believed him. Always.” Feng Xin sighed. “When you left, the second time, we were more lost than we ever had been. Did you know, one day, I found his highness wandering the streets, face in full view, dazed as though he’d just come into being. I—” with a hitch in his voice Feng Xin stifled his recount. The interim before he continued was so vast Mu Qing wondered if what Feng Xin had said was all he would say, but then: “I struck him. Never once when training had a blow from me landed, and never once had I meant them to.” He stopped again. Breathed. “What pittance I was making from busking was split three ways between their majesties’ medical expenses, food, and Jian—” Mu Qing did not fault him for his frequent pauses, he only worried each might signal the last Feng Xin would say. Still, he waited. “And Lady Jian Lan. To spend time with her, and to give her regardless for her own saving. She undercharged but I overpaid, see.”

Three primary expenses, and any additional folly, would have been impossible to maintain even with a consistent wage. Mu Qing remembered what Jian Lan had hurled against Feng Xin’s grating honesty that night outside Qi Ring’s ghostly inn. He remembered most vividly the vile wash of vindication that had come over him, thinking at the time he’d finally discovered why Feng Xin had abandoned Xie Lian all those years ago. 

After their argument on the mountain, however, after what Feng Xin had said at the time … Mu Qing shook his head free of the distracting ways his mind meandered, returning to the present. 

“I still thought I believed in him, and his ideals. I thought, if we must continue to suffer, one day we would come to a brighter end. If I could keep everything in balance while his highness cultivated, if I could manage the earth while he sought the heavens, then surely it would all be for something. Virtue and nobility would not go unrewarded, or unappreciated.”

Mu Qing bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood.

“And then, the day I left.” He straightened up, perhaps relieved to finally be at the crux of his tale. “Three sacks full of riches, five of millet, two more of clothes. Fresh undergarments and fine-spun outerwear. His highness had stolen them from some minorly affluent manor in the town we lived aside.”

It was a shame he missed it, Mu Qing mused, he might have helped Xie Lian with taking even more. Feng Xin, he knew, would not have entertained the same thought. 

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? If we have none, and they have all, why not take a share? I know it makes sense. I had occasionally thought …” Feng Xin shook his head. “But if it makes sense, why weren’t we doing so from the start?”

Mu Qing knew, and, for the first time, it occurred to him that Feng Xin did too. They’d just handled the notion differently. 

“His highness is noble, and kind. He is never afraid, what makes him nervous makes him brave. He is one who may toil, but emerges victorious. He is a god, our god, and if I might be a note in his story, if I might be a beam within his greatness, what else could I ask for? And so tell me. How does that man become someone else? How does he, who would not steal when the coffers emptied, who would not kneel to lowly work, who would not falter when betrayed—how does he give it up? How does he finally turn away? I didn’t know… I knew he was seeing Bai Wuxiang again, but I didn’t—” Tears had gathered in Feng Xin’s eyes, and Mu Qing looked down to give him the chance to wipe them away. “Had he given up a month prior, would Jian Lan have told me a wealthy lord wished to take her into his household? Would she have lied, if his highness and I had long since tarnished ourselves on the wealth of others? Would that child, our son…?” He drifted off once more, but even if Mu Qing could stand to speak into their silence, no words came to him. 

Feng Xin shifted in place, no longer caring if his shoulders sagged and guard collapsed. “You ask why it is I left, you’ve assumed and you’ve accused, but now that you’ve asked, it’s—”

‘Because,’ Feng Xin’s voice sounded in their array. Mu Qing startled at the reverberation in his own mind, but collected himself with haste. ‘I no longer believed. In the Flower Crowned martial god, or in his highness, the crown prince of Xianle. I will always believe in Xie Lian, who is kind, and strong. Truly noble, and truly brave. But when I left him, when he told me to go and I finally did so, I realized he, too, was a man. He, too, was human.’

All between them fell into silence. It was not tense, nor awaiting, but complete. 

Mu Qing curled his hands into fists, unable to think too long about what he sought to do. A finger at a time he unwound his right hand and, without consulting his own good sense, reached out to brush Feng Xin’s own where it had come to rest upon the bridge floor. He did not dare to blink lest the moment shatter. Generous as he was, Mu Qing chose to interpret Feng Xin’s hitched gasp as a simple inhalation. Feng Xin did not pull his hand away, and did not ask for explanation, and so they could sit—at last—together. 

“It’s odd,” Feng Xin said after some time, keeping his hand in place beneath Mu Qing’s. “I used to think it was a trick, a punishment, or a twist of divinity that had left me in eternity with no one but you. To take a person from my mortal life with me across the expanse of time, and have it be you. And don’t make a fuss, I’m almost certain you’ve thought the same.”

Well, Mu Qing couldn’t fault him for being right. 

“But it’s not a trick,” Feng Xin continued, gathering a conviction his prior confessions had not allowed for. “After all you’ve said, and after all this time, it’s not. Do you know? It’s no trick at all. I have never known eternity without you there—”

‘So tell me!’ Feng Xin blared into their array, using its privacy to shout freely. ‘What eternity is there without you? It has been no trick. It is as it is. If you are someone who irks me, dislikes me, and fights with me like no other, then you are also someone who has tried to save me, who walks beside me, and who knows me like no other.’

Mu Qing thought he might cry, but he could not turn away.

“I really don’t mind it,” Feng Xin concluded, this time in a whisper. “From now on, I don’t mind it at all.”

They will never believe you, even if you posture and try to act noble. They will kill you if they suspect you, and what else is there to do but suspect you? If you are as smart as you believe yourself to be, submit to the man who can give you power, not those who have never deemed you worthy—to ascend, or to befriend.

It was humorous, really, how wrong the heavenly emperor had been in the end. Mu Qing lifted his head, preparing to speak, when a yawn sounded across from them. 

Xie Lian had awoken. 

In a hurry, as though they were at risk of being caught doing something unseemly, both Feng Xin and Mu Qing retracted their hands. 

“Feng Xin?” Xie Lian called, sleep clinging to the edge of his speech. “Mu Qing? Why do you both look as though you’ve been crying?” He frowned. “Were you fighting again?”

If only it had been so simple. 

With his eyes still lidded, Xie Lian covered his mouth with a sleeve to mask a second yawn. “I hope that was enough for you two, I lost count,” he said, sheepish. Then, all else fled from his face but panic and he checked the red thread bound around his finger, relaxing when he saw it was still present. “We have to keep moving. Feng Xin, will you carry Mu Qing?”

Feng Xin nodded, not daring to look Mu Qing’s way. When both Feng Xin and Xie Lian were on their feet, Feng Xin bent down again before Mu Qing, aiding his mount with no commentary. 

Once secure, Mu Qing’s arms hung around Feng Xin’s neck, and he felt no need to perform reluctance. He leaned into Feng Xin, letting the other carry his weight entirely. Though Feng Xin smelled of smoke and sweat, Mu Qing did not find it difficult to be so near him, not after all they’d revealed to one another. And, truly, not after all they’d been through across their long, long lives. 

‘Feng Xin,’ he said into the array. 

‘Hm?’

Ahead of them, Xie Lian had no way of knowing his two friends, so persistently at odds, were conversing without him. 

‘Try to live, alright? I have something else to say to you.’ He resisted as well as he could before adding: ‘What I think of you, and how I feel … well. It’s not just hatred, and it’s not just anger. Or spite.’

‘Annoyance, then?’

‘Always.’ He smiled, for what the gesture was worth. ‘But not just that, either.’

The hold Feng Xin had on his legs tightened. ‘Then what?’

‘I already told you, try to live. If you manage that, I’ll tell you.’

It was a ridiculous condition, born of ridiculous circumstances, for the most ridiculous man Mu Qing had ever known. 

‘Fine, then. I’ll live. I’ll wait.’

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. How long had they been waiting, anyway?

‘Good. And Feng Xin?’

‘What?’

‘I don’t mind it either.’

Though walking into nothingness, still, they walked together.