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Chapter Text

For thirteen years, Lan Wangji has not lived.

He moves, still. He speaks, when it is absolutely necessary, although his voice grows rusty with disuse. He eats mechanically, and sleeps mechanically, long-ingrained habit dragging his body along. He looks after the juniors, sometimes, when it is asked of him; they remind him, every time, of the body he found at the Burial Mounds, the small still-warm thing he did not come in time to save. Sometimes, this makes his heart ache in a way that's almost bittersweet, a crack in the ice that falsely seems to herald a thaw. Sometimes, it makes their presence, noisy and living, almost unbearable.

He and his brother are not so close as they used to be. Not since his brother came to him during seclusion and tried, with the placating smile with which he'd take a grubby rock or a broken but beloved ink brush away from Lan Wangji as a child, to argue him out of his love for Wei Ying. But it is not something that they could bleed from him, and it is no object that his brother can pry, well-meaning, out of his clutching fingers. His brother went away unsatisfied; and why, after all, should he waste so much time on his mulish and endlessly grieving brother, when he is more and more warmly welcomed at Jinlintai as the years go on?

It is an unkind thought, but nobody can take Lan Wangji's unkind thoughts, either. He stacks them up like stones, until it feels like he will be crushed under the weight of them; then he spends hours in the cold spring, letting the numbness wipe them away. Sometimes, with his eyes closed and chill seeping into his bones, he imagines he is kneeling before a door. Waiting for it to open.

His uncle loses his temper at him one or twice, calling him childish and selfish. The words don't hold much meaning anymore. Lan Wangji could still recite the rules of the Gusu Lan with his eyes closed, but as time goes by those start to simply sound like words as well; sounds devoid of any meaning but what the listener ascribes, and Lan Wangji has no heart left to spare for them.

Thirteen years. Then, like something flashing by out of his eye—a feeling at the Mo family manor, a lick of familiar qi at the very edge of his senses. Familiar qi, and familiar... The smoky shudder of resentful energy seems deeper and stronger than before, but he knows it.

Familiar, too, is the way he and the juniors had discovered the Mo family. As Jingyi is sick into a bush, Lan Wangji can only stare at the bodies, the bloody wreck of them, the twisted talismans adorning the doors. He feels his heart quicken.

"We're too late," another of the juniors whispers. "It didn't sound like anything serious... what are we going to do?"

Lan Wangji swallows against the building, shivering pressure in his chest, and speaks in a level voice.

"You all, go back." He says. "Report to my brother. He'll decide who to send, to investigate."

He's already walking forward when Jingyi, somewhat recovered, calls, "What about you, Hanguang-jun?"

"I will go ahead. To see where... the person that did this has gone."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

Truly, he doesn't care. "It will be fine."

It's a little cruel, it occurs to him later, to leave them alone with the bodies. But it's no worse than what he'd seen many times in Sunshot; they'll be fine. Perhaps it's better for them to get used to them.

He hadn't been used to it, after all, in the start. He remembered—Wei Ying had looked so exhausted, sitting at the battlefield's edge, but the concern that had risen bright and beating in Lan Wangji's throat had come out all wrong. He had been distracted by the sight of the battlefield, the old-dead mixed in with the newly-dead and the still-moving, with twitches of life or resentful energy; the innumerable crows challenging each other for scraps of flesh. Wei Ying had laughed, low and raspy, and said, Do you like my friends, Lan Zhan? Aren't they helpful?

He'd rebuked him. Criticized him. Tried to press offers of help on him that sounded more like orders, no matter how they felt in his heart. And Wei Ying had turned away from him, eyes shuttering.

And in the end—

It didn't matter. If he had returned, in any way, in any shape, Lan Wangji wouldn't ever dare to reprimand him in such a manner. He wouldn't want to. All he wants is Wei Ying alive, breathing, his clever fingers moving on his flute again.

All he wants waits halfway up a nearby mountain. The boy sitting on a fallen log, playing a bamboo flute with dogged intensity, does not look like Wei Ying. Not very. If you let your eyes blur, half-closed or with tears, you could see a resemblance. He is still black-haired, still pale, still thin at wrist and waist; even more slender than before in the shoulders, shorter an inch or two of height. His face, wiped carelessly half-clean of makeup and blood, is hard to see, but the shape of it is wrong. He is younger, of course, than even Wei Ying was when he died. The body, Lan Wangji can guess, belongs to the missing mad boy from the Mo family. But the soul... the smoky energy swirling through the air, and the music drifting clear and coaxing from his flute...

Lan Wangji comes to a halt, heart pounding as if it is trying to rip its way out of his chest, fling itself bloody and steaming at Wei Ying's feet. He is still yards away, but he can't imagine Wei Ying hasn't noticed him; he isn't trying to hide, and the white of his robes stands out like a slash of lightning against the mossy scrub of the mountain's side. Still, for a few long moments, Wei Ying keeps playing. The music aches, yearns. Calling. But it seems to slip past Lan Wangji, drift out into the air behind him. It's not meant for him.

Then, finally, the music stops. Then, finally, Wei Ying lowers his flute and opens his eyes, and Lan Wangji's chest clenches. They're the same bloodied brown they'd become at the end of the Sunshot Campaign; the look in them is almost as bleak as his face at Nightless City.

He looks Lan Wangji up and down, and laughs softly under his breath. "Hanguang-jun," he says; sweet, mocking.

"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji says, with the last breath he has.

Wei Ying frowns. Lan Wangji thinks he'll ask questions. Instead, abruptly, he stands, and bows mockingly.

"What a lucky encounter," he says. "What a blessing to such a wretch as me. But I'm afraid I have business."

He turns and begins to walk away.

Lan Wangji's lungs seize. His vision starts to grey before he gets his breath again. "Wait."

Wei Ying doesn't even look back. "Didn't you hear me?" his voice drifts back. "I've got business. You're not what I was trying to summon."

He starts after him, trying one last time. "Wei Ying, I—"

Wei Ying finally turns, but his eyes are sharp, hostile. "I'll have to be rude, then?" he says. "Get lost!"

The words sink into Lan Wangji's flesh, needlepricks of pain feathering along the outlines of his scars. Wei Ying doesn't wait for a response. He just turns and walks away again, humming some new tune.

Lan Wangji hesitates; for only a moment. He can't even pretend he looks back.

He follows Wei Ying in silence.

It doesn't take him long to realize they're heading in the direction of Yiling and the Burial Mounds. His heart seizes up in his chest, but he does not yet have the voice to say wait, Wei Ying. Don't. Isn't sure if he'd be listened to. And after all, didn't Wei Ying have a right to return there, a right to see what had happened?

He's just... worried about the consequences.

But it's a long journey, without sword or carriage. Lan Wangji is contemplating whether he can offer the service of his own sword when Wei Ying finally comes to a halt. Looking to the left. Lan Wangji follows his gaze, and sees a small farmhouse in the distance. A few figures working outside.

Wei Ying, says, in a somewhat confused tone, "I'm hungry." As if hunger had become foreign to him.

Lan Wangji takes the steps to come up to his side; reaches silently inside his robes. Wei Ying's eyes dart toward him, still strange in that other boy's face, but all Lan Wangji is doing is pulling out the bag he keeps money in. Sturdy silk. No longer redolent of the herbs it had once held, but still one of his only keepsakes.

It's impossible to tell whether Wei Ying recognizes it.

Lan Wangji offers it to him, silently, and Wei Ying takes it with a bemused face. Weighs it in his hand, and finally laughs.

"Are you trying to bribe me not to hurt anyone, Hanguang-jun?" he asks.

Lan Wangji says, "No."

"What, then would you stand by if I did decide to hurt them? If I killed everyone in that house?"

Lan Wangji's pulse thuds unevenly. "Wei Ying has no reason to hurt them."

"Maybe I don't need a reason."

He hesitates, trying to find the right words. He is still unaccustomed to asking for anything.

"Please," he says, "don't."

Wei Ying blinks at him, slowly, his expression chillingly flat, before it breaks and blooms into confused laughter. "What are you playing at," he says, "pretending you wouldn't fight me? Why otherwise would you be following me, if not to stop me from hurting anyone?" Before Lan Wangji can even try to correct him, he turns away, tossing the coin purse in his hand. "But it doesn't matter, I'm not going to kill anyone. I just want food, and some gossip."

Lan Wangji's chest expands in relief.

Riding in its wake is a twitch of foreboding. The sensation that this might be the last time he's relieved for some time.

He watches from a distance as Wei Ying chats with two of the women working, bright and laughing. Anyone else would be hard pressed to see the off-kilter quality to his smiles, his gestures, but Lan Wangji sees. Like the day that Wei Ying had appeared again, out of the Burial Mounds, with ghosts in his eyes.

The Burial Mounds is shrouded in shadow, in resentful fog, ghosts weeping and muttering around the remains of protective barriers long since shattered. Wei Ying sets a foot within the boundary without even flinching, and hands snatch at his ankles, twine up his legs. He ignores even that; it's only when they begin plucking at his sleeves, weighing down his shoulders, that he lifts his makeshift flute to his lips and plays. A gentle thing, this time, a lullaby.

The ghosts sigh and sink around him. Lan Wangji is able to follow a few paces behind, only occasionally pushing his qi outward to dissuade a particularly clingy spirit. Wei Ying has shown no sign that he knows he's there since the farm, but he hasn't given back the money pouch, either. Lan Wangji doesn't know if that's a good sign.

He knows that what waits for them is nothing good.

The houses look even more meager, more pathetic, half-broken and burned. The scraps of field have long since grown over. Wei Ying stands at the edge of the clearing, for a long moment. His shoulders begin to tremble. But before Lan Wangji can even think about reaching out, the trembling changes to movement. Wei Ying plunges forward, runs for the most intact of the houses. Vanishes inside, appears a moment later. Shoved a dissolving cloth out of the way to look inside another. Lan Wangji's breath claws at his chest.

When Wei Ying turns to the Demon Suppressing Cave, he finally follows, not willing to let him so far out of sight. Afraid of what Wei Ying might find. He remembers, fogged and feverish, the stink of blood rising up from it with even more intensity, in the days after the siege that had broken and turned into a massacre the moment Wei Ying breathed his last.

Now he was breathing again, but for everyone else... it was far too late.

He silently helps Wei Ying turn over broken furniture and peer into corners, looking for bodies. Wei Ying's notes and diagrams are thoroughly gone—stripped and stolen by one or more of the sects that had come to kill him. Some broken bones are littered around, but Wei Ying barely glances at them before dismissing them. "From minor corpses," he says, distractedly. "I had a few in with me, when I..."

He trails off, then spins toward Lan Wangji.

"Where the fuck are they?" he demands. "Were any of them taken hostage?" His voice cracks; hope that can't bear to be hope. His eyes dim as Lan Wangji shakes his head.

"None of them," Lan Wangji says. "I was not there. But to my knowledge, no hostages were taken. No bodies removed."

Wei Ying stands there for a moment more. He raises and tugs at handfuls of his hair, for a moment, with an expression of overwhelming pain. His eyes look right past Lan Wangji. After a moment, he looses his hold. Snatches his flute from his belt again, and begins to play. Wild, searching notes. Beckoning and commanding. 

When the first hand breaks the surface of the Blood Pool, his playing falters.

But a minute after it sinks back in, he puts his mouth back to his flute. Keeps playing, eyes wide and staring, even as Lan Wangji instinctively takes a step back, falling in beside him. All that changes is the music, shrieking higher and higher, like a screaming voice. Lan Wangji's stomach churns.

The remnants of the Wen who had once inhabited the Burial Mounds crawl slowly out of the red water, rising unsteadily to their feet. Rotten flesh dripping from their bones in places, but the general shape still clear. A tall girl. An old, stooped woman. A man with a bad leg. They move with a bizarre humanity; perhaps something in the water had preserved more of their intelligence than the average fierce corpse, and their limbs have not had a chance to freeze in rigor mortis. They stoop, straighten, reach out to help one another up the rocky bank. Assemble in front of Wei Ying in a loose group, more like a greeting party than a regimented line.

The flute music stutters, spurts. Pain squeezes Lan Wangji's chest as he looks to the side, takes in Wei Ying dropping the flute from his mouth, sobbing music becoming sobbing gasps of breath. He pushes Lan Wangji's tentatively extended arm aside without seeming to see it, walks the few steps forward to the group of corpses. His harsh, tearful breaths fragment further, mixing with a hysterical giggle. "I'm back," he says to them, as they look at him sadly with empty eye sockets, as one or two of them reach out halfway. "I've come back."

He turns his head, looking around the group, and freezes. Looks more carefully, and spins to face Lan Wangji. There's a raw look on his face, almost hope. "A-Yuan," he says. "A-Yuan isn't—"

But even if he can't read many of Lan Wangji's expressions, he must be able to read this one. His eyes darken. "Where is he?"

"I came too late," Lan Wangji says simply. Emotion claws at the inside of his throat in a sick lump, stopping his words for a moment; he can almost feel the slight weight in his arms. "I buried him properly."

He'd buried the child with his few toys, the wood and paper butterfly he'd loved so much, in the clean soil of Cloud Recesses, and Lan Xichen, seeing the look on his face, hadn't tried to stop him. Even so, the child been buried in strange soil, after an ugly death, far from wherever his family lay; it would have made sense for his spirit to be restless. But Lan Wangji had played him songs of rest, ignoring how it pulled at his barely healing wounds, and A-Yuan had been a sweet-tempered and brave child to the last. He'd gone on to whatever awaited him after, his ghost never rising to cry and complain.

Wei Ying was still breathing in those deep, hysterical sobs, knuckles pressed to his mouth. The corpses pat unsteadily at his shoulders, dark wafts of spirit wind around his ankles, but he doesn't seem to notice any of it.

Lan Wangji says, "I'm sorry." His voice comes out flat. He doesn't really blame Wei Ying for starting, looking at him in dawning fury.

"I'm sorry? You couldn't even save one child, and you dare tell me I'm sorry?" Wei Ying's arm shoots out, pointing toward the cave mouth. "Fuck. Off."

Lan Wangji stands frozen for a moment, heartbeat throbbing in his throat, but then—thankfully, blessedly—Wei Ying adds, "If you want to do something useful, dig more graves," before turning his back.

So he isn't ordering him fully away. Lan Wangji doesn't know what he'll do if he does; he doesn't want to ignore anything he says, but he can't leave. He'd sooner cut his own throat than walk away from Wei Ying, in this place where disaster could so easily find him again.

He goes outside the cave, and he tries to dig some graves. He'd only done it once before, and he hadn't even done the whole job—Lan Xichen had forced help on him when he'd seen the blood seeping through the back of his robes. If there were any tools left in the wreckage of the homes, they were well buried; after searching for a little while, he resigns himself to using Bichen. The blade is strong; it's lasted through generations of his family, it can withstand a little rough use. The soil hisses faintly as he sinks it in, the evil permeating the soil recoiling from its brightness, but over time the sound lessens. Either the earth has become cleansed, or Bichen momentarily resigned to its task.

After a few hours, as dusk is falling, Wei Ying finally emerges from the cave. He stops and stares.

Lan Wangji, straightening up, says, "I have completed five."

Wei Ying looks at him like he's about to burst into laughter, or tears, or say what the hell is wrong with you. At the last, he just slowly shakes his head. "You really did it," he said faintly.

Lan Wangji, still knee-deep in the current grave, says, "You asked me to."

Wei Ying shakes his head again. "You're really sticking to this? There's still time to run down the mountain before nightfall. You can't leave after that. The ghosts get bold."

"I want to stay."

Wei Ying says, "Suit yourself." He studies the graves; he looks almost touched, but what he says is, "Wen Ning was quicker. We'll need a lot more than those."

Lan Wangji climbs out, and is about to sink Bichen into fresh soil when Wei Ying says, "Quit it. The light's fading, we'll pick it up tomorrow. Sleep, if you're going to stay, Hanguang-jun. Tomorrow's going to be worse."

He vanishes back inside the cave.

Lan Wangji has the feeling that if he goes back into the cave Wei Ying is going to tell him to fuck off again, so instead he cleans up the most semi-intact of the nearby huts, makes a pillow of some ancient fabric, lies down at nine as rote weariness rises up to claim him. Dirt finds its way through his robes to his skin, itching hideously in its rough texture, and sleeping in his robes feels almost equally wrong, but neither of those things are enough to keep him awake.

He sleeps. But he sleeps fitfully, starting awake every hour or two, panicked at thinking he might be waking from a dream. It's only when the wild, yearning strains of flute music reach his ears that he relaxes; at least, relaxes into the knowledge that Wei Ying is still, impossibly, alive.

He can't fully relax, listening to that beckoning music, even as he knows it's not meant for him. You're not what I was trying to summon.

Lan Wangji can guess who he as trying to summon now, who he was still trying to summon, despite the certainty that the man was dead twice over.

He feels suddenly, irrationally jealous of Wen Ning.

Chapter Text

Over the next week, Wei Ying raises the dead and puts them to sleep. Lan Wangji digs graves.

The dead Wei Ying drag up, as he perches playing his high wild songs at the edge of the clearing on a pile of stones, are at first ancient; bones strung together with will, desiccated flesh ready to crumble to dust, old battle dead. But over the days, Lan Wangji sees fresher dead join the rambling masses around the camp, fading in and out of the shadowed trees without noticeable regimen. Men and women with flesh newly rotting on their bones, or almost fresh, similar to the living except for their swift animal shamble and the haunted darkness of their eyes.

The remnants of the Wen, Wei Ying commits one by one to the graves. He helps them in with a tenderness he shows to nothing else, giving his hand to the twisted remains of an old woman as if he's her devoted grandson, putting a supportive arm under a younger man's half-decayed shoulders as he stumbles. They sink down gratefully or reluctantly, and then Wei Ying puts his flute to his lips and plays music as gentle as his other songs are wild, until the animation fades from the corpse and leaves it at peace.

Then Lan Wangji fills in the grave. This work between him and Wei Ying is conducted in almost total silence, after the first negotiations. He doesn't ask about the restless dead either, although Wei Ying keeps giving him sharp-eyed, defiant glances as he stalks to his post in the mornings, like he's daring him to.

Only once does Lan Wangji say to him, "People will notice. They will come again."

Wei Ying only says, with a mad little grin, "I know."

Foreboding weighs more and more heavily on Lan Wangji's neck, until he carries it like an ox's yoke as he goes about any kind of work. But through it all, Wei Ying is alive. He is alive, he is really alive again, his chest heaving with regular breath, the boy's unfamiliar features seeming to find ease with his expressions as the days pass. And so Lan Wangji bears his yoke, and grits back pain, and washes the dirt from his robes in the clearest part of the nearby river before going back to dirty them again, digging another grave. It's the only thing he can think of to try, to convince Wei Ying of his sincerity. To banish the wary mistrust and confusion that he still watches Lan Wangji with. To hear him someday say Lan Zhan again.

When that happens, Lan Wangji will be alive again as well.

The first time cultivators come up the mountain, on a day when the dead are quieter than usual, Wei Ying senses it before they come into view. He'd been lax about raising the dead that morning, seeming almost in a good mood in the early bright sunlight; he smelled less of alcohol than usual, and he'd eaten one of the buns left from the last time Lan Wangji had ventured down the mountain to the nearby town. He sat on his pile of rocks with his cheek leaned on his fist, eyes closed, dirty hair falling loose around his face. Lan Wangji, watching him, feels his heart swell and expand inside his chest until he can barely breathe.

Then Wei Ying's eyes cracked open, reddened with lack of sleep. His pupils twitch to the side, to the foggy woods. "We have guests," he murmurs. "Just a small party, so far. Odd."

Lan Wangji, getting to his feet, says, "They think you are a normal demonic cultivator."

Wei Ying laughs a little. "I still have imitators?"

"Yes."

Wei Ying slides down and wanders over to the top of the rocky half-path leading through the forest, down the mountain. Lan Wangji joins him. After a few minutes, flashes of color show between the trees, glints of light off sword-blades, and there's the faraway wail of spirits driven back. Wei Ying raises his flute lazily to his lips, then pauses. Smiles, like an idea has occurred to him, and turns to Lan Wangji.

"Good Hanguang-jun," he says, voice sharp and sweet, "since you've been so helpful, why don't you kill them for me?"

His eyes are vicious, wet, at violent odds with his voice. He must think that this, at last, Lan Wangji will draw the line at; that he'll recoil, or step away.

Lan Wangji checks the color coming up through the trees again. Purple and blue. Jiang sect.

It's hardly the worst thing he's ever done.

The last thing he sees before descending, quick enough that the first man won't have time to know what killed him, is the widening of Wei Ying's eyes as he unsheathes his sword.

When he's done, his arm is trembling a little. He's chagrined, but perhaps it's only to be expected; as much as he dislikes Jiang Cheng, you could not say that his disciples were weak or untrained. Blood dyes his robes at the hem, extends in a long splatter up one thigh, lingers wet over the bridge of his nose and his cheek.

Wei Ying comes down to him, then, as he leans on his sword, and for the first time reaches out to him. Fingers brushing the line of Lan Wangji's jaw, exploratory and wondering.

"Hanguang-jun," Wei Ying croons, his reddened eyes stark and bloody in his pale face as he leans in. He wipes a spatter of blood off Lan Wangji's face with his thumb, and Lan Wangji closes his eyes in overwhelmed acceptance. "I didn't expect you to really do it. Look at you! The pure Second Jade drenched in blood."

"I said," Lan Wangji said, then has to pause, struggling for words. "I said. I wanted to help you. I meant it."

Wei Ying's mouth twitches in a bemused smile. He caresses Lan Wangji's cheek with his knuckles for a long moment, and watches Lan Wangji lean into it; then, sudden as a flame touched to kindling, anger blossoms in his eyes. He takes his hand away.

"Too little, too late, isn't it?" he asked. "After all, I'm already dead."

Lan Wangji closes his eyes for a moment as Wei Ying laughs at his own—joke, although it's not really a joke. "I'm sorry," he says again, simply. "What do you want me to do?"

"I'm sorry," Wei Ying mimics, anger thick in his voice. "Saying those words like they matter... What do you want, Lan Wangji? Why are you still here?"

But he turns on his heel and leaves, stalking up the path to the ruined encampment again, before Lan Wangji can find the right words.

He doesn't come out again, even as the night falls and Lan Wangji watches the men he killed get up and join the ranks of wandering dead. Lan Wangji resigns himself to another night of uneasy sleep, but instead is awakened by a faceful of rainwater. The sky roils, low clouds mingling with the fog of the woods until it's all a solid wall of gray, and the rain goes from drizzling to pelting in a manner of seconds.

It occurs to Lan Wangji that Wei Ying has not recently told him to get out of the cave.

It's dry inside, and soft sounds are leaking down the long passage, echoing off the walls until they become indistinct, almost lost under the rain. Lan Wangji hesitates, but curiosity finally drags him forward. Down the main turning hall, past the entrance to the Blood Pool room; there's another, smaller chamber split off, a handful of yards down. By the time Lan Wangji can see the opening of it, the noises have become distinguishable, and a strange heat has begun to hang heavy in his belly.

Soft sounds echo from the dim doorway, moans and sighs. Wei Ying's voice, rising before it breaks over a laugh or a sob. Lan Wangji stands with his throat tight, a low ugly pulse tightening his thighs and filling his cock, an emotion that isn't quite anger scraping the interior of his chest clean, clean and empty until he can't remember any reason to hang back in the shadows. He approaches the doorway, and looks in.

Wei Ying is utterly glorious in debauchery. In ruin. His robes, torn open to hang loosely from elbow and knee and half the curve of a hip, make the slashes of his pale skin more salacious than full nakedness. He's flushed from cheek to collarbone, lips rosy and kiss-swollen, wet enough to shine in the dim light. He's smiling. He looks like he's about to cry. He's not alone.

He's cradled in the lap, in the opening of thick strong thighs, of a fierce corpse; hands still stained with grave-dirt tug at Wei Ying's robes, squeeze his thighs, pull his hips back. When Wei Ying moans loudly at that, throat tipping back, Lan Wangji's eyes sink as if dragged, and confirm a dreamy suspicion. The corpse must be rather fresh, because its cock is fat and a little flushed, almost like a living man's, in the glimpse Lan Wangji gets of it. It's big, too, and Lan Wangji thinks first; is that what Wei Ying likes, would Lan Wangji please him in such a way?

He wonders, more distantly, afterward, who the body belonged to. Whose corpse Wei Ying was desecrating.

The woman kneeling in front of him... She looks enough like one of the girls that had thrown Lan Wangji flowers, so long ago, as to be one of them. Her hair gleams like a blade in the low light, sliding loose over her back, her red robes a slick smear of blood. Her hands are delicate and precise as she pinches Wei Ying's nipples ruddy, slides her touch downward to wrap a hand around his cock. When Wei Ying, panting, drags her into a biting kiss, she digs her sharp nails into his thigh until blood trickles down. Wei Ying just moans louder, and the corpse behind him growls in response, the slow pump of its hips growing gradually faster.

For a moment the tableau blurs before Lan Wangji's eyes. The woman in red, with her clever hands; the dead man gripping Wei Ying like something precious, fucking him so devotedly—

For a moment, all he can see is the sister and brother who had gone to their first and second deaths, trying to preserve Wei Ying's life.

He should be shocked by the obscenity of the thought, but instead his chest just aches more hollowly. Is he failing to replace not one person, but two? The woman in red is kissing his throat, now. The dead man's thrusts are clearly pushing him to the edge; Wei Ying gasps, moans again and again, the sounds rising and growing more breathless.

It's at that moment his hazy eyes open again, and his gaze lands on Lan Wangji.

His mouth falls open.

Before he can say anything, before his eyes have a chance to sink from Lan Wangji's stricken face, find the place where his lust might already be showing through his robes—Lan Wangji finds his feet dragging him one step, then another, backward. Again, more swiftly. Then he turns, and for the first time in his life Lan Wangji flees.

Behind him, Wei Ying doesn't shout in indignation—it's worse.

Lan Wangji leaves the cave with Wei Ying's laughter ringing in his ears.

The next day, Lan Wangji is tired to the bone and spends half the day in inner layers, trying to dry out his outer robes over a fire without singing the fabric. He watches the cave mouth for hours out of the corner of his eye, but Wei Ying doesn't emerge. And when he finally does, stretching and yawning sometime in the late afternoon, he doesn't even look in Lan Wangji's direction. Like he'd forgotten all about the night before.

Red marks linger on his neck and wrists. Lan Wangji bites his lip bloody, wanting to touch them. 

The rain has turned the latest graves he's dug—the last two they'll need, and Lan Wangji feels apprehensive about what will happen once all the Wen are laid to rest, but doesn't know what to be afraid of—into a shallow slurry of mud. Putting on his damp outer robes just to dirty them again seems wasteful, and too tiring for the moment; Wei Ying doesn't seem to be paying attention to him, so after a long half hour of agonizing Lan Wangji takes the makeshift shovel he'd made out of an old board and does the heavy scraping work of pushing the mud out and back with only his inner robes on. It's shameful, but there's not as much sting in that these days. It's against the rules, but he hasn't cared about those for a while.

By the time he's done he's almost forgotten how he looks; it's only when he climbs slowly from the grave, aching for a wash in the tiny brackish stream, that his neck prickles with a rush of self-consciousness. He looks up, and finds Wei Ying has descended from his perch, leaning instead against one of the nearby half-burnt posts, arms folded. His expression is complicated, but when he sees Lan Wangji looking it transforms into a sharp smile.

Lan Wangji's skin prickles all over. He's terribly aware, now, of the dirty water soaking through half his robe, making it cling to his body; not a pleasing or erotic effect, he imagines, but a painfully revealing one. Outlining the shape of a thigh, the curve of his chest. He puts his hand to his chest, to see if the brand is obscured, but he doesn't turn away. He wants Wei Ying to speak, to give context to his examination. He wants to know if it's something he wanted to see.

Wei Ying doesn't say anything. He turns and goes into the cave, and after a while Lan Wangji makes his way to the stream. He watches the black mud dissolve into the water, but no matter how many times he rinses and wrings out his inner robe it can't seem to get clean. It's a dirty, pale grey still when he hangs it up to dry.

He wears his slightly damp outer robes over bare skin, and is grateful that it doesn't rain again, and when morning returns he watches Wei Ying commit the last two Wen to their graves. Out of the corner of his eye, the nearly dry inner robe flutters in the breeze, shadowy and aimless as a ghost.

Wei Ying does not come out of his cave for two days afterward, except to play the dead a perfunctory tune at morning and night—presumably to keep them in line. He throws an empty jar at Lan Wangji when he tries to enter the cave to see if he's all right, so Lan Wangji just goes down to the nearby town—which has been growing emptier, and more and more paranoid, with every disappearance of a corpse and rumor of restless darkness nearby—and manages to buy food and wine, which he leaves just inside the opening. The wine disappears quickly. The food doesn't, but enough vanishes that Lan Wangji can still breathe.

In the early morning of the third day, Lan Wangji has barely risen when he hears a cold, flat voice address him.

"Lan Wangji." Wei Ying leans against the sorry door frame; the last jar of wine dangles from his hand, but in the dim light he looks sober, if exhausted. "There's some idiot coming up the mountain. Go take care of it."

He vanishes before Lan Wangji can respond, but after all… it's not necessary to. Lan Wangji dresses, and takes Bichen, and goes in the direction the corpses seem most restless.

When he finds the trespasser, far down the mountain and surrounded by a circle of lightning-licked destruction, corpses split in pieces that clung to each other by threads and stank of burnt flesh, his hand tightens on Bichen's hilt. When he comes to a halt a little ways up the path, and the man looks up, his hostility is reflected back tenfold.

Jiang Wanyin draws Zidian back to his hand but doesn't dismiss it, holding the loop of searing purple light around his fist like he's ready to deploy it again at the next moment. He studies Lan Wangji with a tightly drawn brow and a mouth working to settle between a frown and a snarl. Finally, his lips pull back from his teeth, and he grits out, "He's back, isn't he?"

Lan Wangji contemplates. Wei Ying might not want him dead; or, conversely, he might want to see to his death himself. Besides, a fight between them would be risky. Lan Wangji's confident of winning, but not of winning without damage.

He settles for saying, "Get lost."

Jiang Wanyin's eyes seem to glow; wild hunger, vicious rage, the vibrant glitter of unshed tears. He extends his hand, pointing the threatening coil of Zidian toward Lan Wangji. "Is he up there? Have you seen him? If you're hiding him from me—"

Lan Wangji's tired of hearing him talk already; he cuts him off with a flat statement. "Come up any further, and you'll die."

He finds himself despising the turmoil of Jiang Wanyin's expression. Lan Wangji had not been at the siege of the Burial Mounds when it mattered, but he has heard the stories. And while it might be true that Wei Ying was victim to his own power, in the end… It seems compelling that Jiang Wanyin had struck the final blow. He had chosen to lead the charge against his shixiong, after all. Even if he hadn't ended Wei Ying's life with his own hand, he'd seen it end, and spent the intervening years from then to now hunting down anyone who followed his path of cultivation. What right did he have to stand there red-eyed, hand trembling as he spat, "Are you saying you'll stop me?"

Lan Wangji hears a faint noise behind him. He turns his head; there's shadows, stumbling between the trees. Some slinking, more graceful, but most of the dead down here are low-level. Up higher, however…

"You cannot reach the top," he says, looking back at Jiang Wanyin. "If I do not kill you, they will. If you leave, I will let you leave. Make your choice."

Jiang Wanyin has been looking past him, eyes narrowing as he takes in the movement through the trees. His eyes might be mad, but he seems to be thinking clearly enough to realize his disadvantage; his mouth works, his brows draw even tighter, but after a moment Zidian slithers back into its ring. Jiang Wanyin's thumb works over it in a desperate, rough fidget as he levels a searing glare at Lan Wangji.

"Take a message to him."

He'd rather not, but Lan Wangji stays silent and inclines his head. Wei Ying might want to hear it.

"Tell him—" and Jiang Wanyin breaks off, and for a long moment he's silent, his eyes almost lost. Finally, he seems to regain the anchor of his anger; his shoulders square, and he says in a cold voice, "Tell him that if he comes to me at Lotus Pier, I might spare him. If he does not come within a week, I'll be back to drag him out of his hiding place."

Within a week, Lan Wangji thinks, a great deal may have changed.

"I'll tell him," he says. "Go."

Jiang Wanyin leaves reluctantly, with dragging feet and backward glances, almost seeming to start back up the mountain once or twice. But, in the end, he's gone. Lan Wangji lets out a slow breath, and closes his eyes. Jiang Wanyin was merely the forerunner, he knows this. Tracking the deaths of his disciples like a bloodhound to the prey he most desired. But now that the mountain has resisted the Yunmeng Jiang, the other sects will surely take notice.

He wonders when the Gusu Lan might appear.

He turns and goes back up the mountain.

Wei Ying is lounging on a pile of debris that he's cushioned with dry grass and cloth, taking in the weak sunlight with closed eyes, when Lan Wangji returns. He cracks an eye open and observes, in a curious voice, "No blood."

Lan Wangji comes to a halt before him. "Jiang Wanyin."

Wei Ying's eyes open, his face darkening. He sits up. "Really. And what did he want?"

"He asks you to come to Lotus Pier in a week, or he'll return with force."

Wei Ying's eyes go even darker, his mouth twitching in a humorless smile. "Come back to Lotus Pier…" he says softly. "Now, how am I supposed to do that?" He looks up at Lan Wangji, after a moment. "I imagine it's not a very friendly place for demonic creatures, these days."

Lan Wangji inclines his head. "The Jiang sect hunts demonic cultivators." He hesitates, then decides the extra information is important. "Tortures them. Often executes. Even those captured outside their land."

Wei Ying gives a harsh little laugh. He gets up, turning his back to Lan Wangji as he stretches; when he turns back around, his smile is brighter and colder, his eyes less dark. "Well, it's about what I expected. Why should I go, then? Jiang Cheng already saw me die one time, he'll have to be satisfied with that."

Lan Wangji hadn't truly been expecting him to go, but… His shoulders relax. Wei Ying's eyes track the motion, and his smile gains a strange edge. He cocks his head to the side, looking at Lan Wangji through lowered lashes.

"Hanguang-jun…" He draws out the title, mocking. "Were you worried about him getting his hands on me? Or angry, maybe?" He steps closer, tilting back his head; in this boy's body, he's far shorter than his previous life, but he doesn't seem intimidated by that at all. His voice purrs. "Jealous?"

Lan Wangji's shoulders grow tenser than before.

"I did see you, you know." Wei Ying reaches out, idly plucks a lock of Lan Wangji's hair that's slipped over his shoulder and plays with it, twining it around his fingers. "And I didn't forget. It just wasn't the time to address it." His smile grows wider, more sly. "But now…"

Lan Wangji says, "Wei Ying," but all other words stick in his throat. What excuse could he pull out, what explanation? He swallows, and lowers his eyes.

"Just think," Wei Ying murmurs, his voice sweet and cruel, "the noble Hanguang-jun, motivated by something so base. Were all our arguments, in the past, just a sign of this feeling? Getting angry and chasing me around—and all the while, you just wanted to…"

Lan Wangji looks at him, heart in his throat and chest aching violently. His words continue to stick like unformed clay to the chambers of his mind. Wei Ying raises his eyebrows when he doesn't speak, and lifts a hand to put it on Lan Wangji's cheek. The thin clever fingers, the dry palm, scorches. Lan Wangji exhales sharply.

"Or do you think it will cure me?" Wei Ying asks, cocking his head to the side. "Like those dirty books where dual cultivation with a pure maiden fixes everything… do you want to fuck the evil out of me, Lan Wangji? Do you think your virtuous body will exorcise my hatred?"

Lan Wangji wants to deny it, but he can't answer, just breathes harshly through his nose. Wei Ying takes his hand away and stretches, turning toward the cave.

His voice is casual as he says, "Come on. We might as well test that, hm?"