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Chapter Text

It is most probably known that babies do not have their full cognitive function at birth. For this reason, I didn’t realize I was Wei Wuxian until I was four years old. 

Perhaps I could have known sooner if I didn’t know my parents as just “Mama” and “Baba” or if they referred to each other outside of sweet nicknames. However, I didn’t know who my parents were until we reached the edge of the Yunmeng territory, bumping into those whom I now recognize as Jiang disciples. 

“It’s Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren!” one senior disciple called to another. The men were grown, though with older cultivators, it was difficult to tell specific ages. 

I looked around, surprised and excited to see who had been named after characters from a novel I loved in my past life. Then, when I found nobody else, I realized they were referring to my parents.

But surely, my parents were not like them? Wei Wuxian’s parents brought him all over China on just a donkey to do night hunts! That’s a very particular upbringing!

The family donkey that we traveled on brayed in agreement from behind us.

I nodded my tiny head.

That would never happen!

…

Wait.

Family donkey?

That was the day I realized my Mama and Baba had a death timer over their heads. Within the next five years, they would die. Before that, even. They could even die as soon as next year.

Quite embarrassingly, this was too much for my four-year-old mind to handle (or so I would say to anyone judging), and I began to cry. My parents couldn’t properly greet the cultivators because they were too busy dealing with their baby’s first tantrum years too late.

When I calmed down, I focused harder on the cultivation lessons that Mama gave. Baba educated me on other matters, such as household chores and the Six Arts. They thought their little Ying er was a genius with how fast I was learning everything. Well, everything except rites, that is. 

“Ying er, can you tell me how one is supposed to eat?” asked Baba, as I stabbed my food with my chopsticks and shoved it in one bite, almost choking on the mass of noodles. 

I cleared my throat and looked up to answer, opening my mouth with an entirely blank look. “Um…” I tilted my head, sneaking a sip of the broth next. “I wasn’t eating with my hands this time, Baba!” I blinked up at him with false innocence.

Wei Changze sighed the sigh of a man tired of explaining the same thing again. It was a good sigh because it meant he’d stop trying to teach me gentlemanly behavior. 

Mama laughed as she walked in from her shopping trip. She held a jug of alcohol in her hands that she wouldn’t let me try. In my past life, I didn’t really drink, so it was a wonder that I got reincarnated into the body of the Jianghu’s biggest alcoholic. I guess I’ll see how I feel about wine in the future. “A-Ze,” Mama said, “let Ying er be. It’s just us in here! He’s my perfect little gentleman either way.”

“A-Se,” Baba pouted minutely. “He will choke if he eats incorrectly. Or what if this becomes a habit in the company of guests?”

She set the jar down, along with the rest of the supplies that would tide us over into the next town. “Aw, don’t make that face, Changze!”

Baba continued to frown.

“Oh, Ying er, listen to your Baba so that he doesn’t look so sad all the time!”

Amusedly, I looked at Baba’s face. His lips were just slightly pressed down at the corners, but the rest of his face remained unmoved. He’s so unexpressive, I thought, just like Lan Zhan! Maybe Freud’s theory is right. The idea made me giggle.

Baba’s bottom lip jutted out for a second, and he chided, “Wei Ying.”

Uh oh, he full-named me. “Yes, Baba,” I acquiesced and attempted to remember the proper etiquette for eating.

Chapter Text

The first time I tried to change something was on a whim. Now, I hear what you’re saying: Wei Wuxian, you’re getting impulsive in your newfound youth! But there was no way that I could have prepared for the news I had gotten on the donkey that evening.

“The next town we’re going to is called Yunping.”

“Yunping!” I shot up from my slumped posture in Baba’s lap, almost slamming into his chin and making him bite his own tongue off.

“Yes?” Mama asked.

“That’s in Yunmeng!” I shouted as both a cover and a clarification.

Baba chuckled. “Yes, Ying er, we’ve been in Yunmeng for at least five towns now.” 

“Oh! And they both start with a yun!”

“Yes, they even begin with the same written character. I can show you how to write it once we settle.” Mama offered.

Baba interjected, “Actually, A-Se, I think by then it will be bedtime for Xiao Ying. Maybe tomorrow?”

I frowned. “That’s not fair, Baba! Xiao Ying is not so little that I cannot learn one single character before bed! Mama, teach me! Please!”

Baba smiled as he kissed my head. “Okay, Ying er. One character.”

After learning the character (It’s written as such: 雲!), I pretended to get sleepy. I was put to bed, and that’s when I gained the skill of sneaking out at night, a skill I knew I would utilize thoroughly in the future. I went and crouched in dark corners to listen until I heard a man say he was going to the brothel. Then, I followed him until I saw him enter a building that had many candles lit despite the late hour. I didn’t follow him any further and instead looked for backdoors and windows. I had a goal, and I was doggedly making my way towards it.

At least, I was focused until I heard a child’s voice whisper directly into my ear, “Who are you?”

“AHHHHH!”

I whipped around to see a panicked boy in cheaply made but well-tailored clothing desperately trying to shush my situationally unaware self. 

“Who are you?!”

“Please be quiet! You don’t want the customers to notice you!” He whisper-yelled at me, then remembered his manners. “This one is Meng Yao.” He bowed politely. “I am six years old.”

I gasped. This was who I was looking for. “No way! Me too! I’m Wei Ying!” I hastily bowed before grabbing his arm. “Let’s play!” I pulled him away from the brothel quickly, toward the way I came. 

However, I had to stop two turns in. I quickly realized I had forgotten where my parents were staying. Whoops. 

I looked back at Meng Yao with a guilty smile. “Um, I forgot where I was going…”

Meng Yao had looked at me with wide eyes this entire forced adoption (read: kidnapping), but when I spoke, irritation flashed in his young eyes. It was gone as soon as I finished speaking, replaced with mild exasperation and a faint people-pleasing grin. He exhaled through his nose. “Where were you going?”

I pouted. “To my Mama and Baba…”

“Why are you even so far from your Mama?”

I pouted harder and whined, “I was looking for a friend to play with!”

Meng Yao huffed through his nose again. “Well, you found one.” His grin ticked wider. “Now what?”

“Lost in one place, gained in another!” [1] I grasped Meng Yao’s arm tighter because he was trying to relax it out of my grip. “But what if I never see Mama and Baba again!” My eyes stung in the cold night’s wind, giving them a teary look. “A-Yao, what if I become an orphan because I left Mama and Baba to find a friend!”

A-Yao’s eyebrows went up slightly as his grin widened again. “I’m sure that will not happen overnight.” You’d be surprised, A-Yao. He took my hand and pried it off his arm into his own. “Come, let’s walk this way. I happen to know there’s an inn here that travelers stay in.”

He led me away as I blubbered my thanks.

“Thanks so much, A-Yao!” I sniffed, recognizing the inn in front of me where my parents were harriedly talking to the innkeeper at the front door.

Mama gasped when she heard me. “Ying er!” She came the closest a human could to flying without a sword as she zoomed over to pick me up into a hug. 

Baba approached with a furious pinch around his eyes. “Wei Ying. I am glad you are safe.” Uh oh. It seems like I’ll be reciting rites as long as we’re in Yunping.

“Mama! Baba! I found you!” I hugged Mama back, and when she finally let me down, I grabbed Meng Yao’s hand from where he was trying to walk away and pulled him to meet my parents. “A-Yao! Meet Mama and Baba! Mama, Baba, this is A-Yao!”

Mama looked positively tickled by this development now that she had gotten the hugging out of her system, while Baba serenely acknowledged A-Yao’s polite bow with one of his own. “This one is Wei Hui, courtesy Changze.” [2]

“This one is Wei Cangse, a wandering cultivator.” [3]

At this, Meng Yao’s eyes sharpened. “You are a cultivator?” he asked.

“Yes, my husband and I are both cultivators! We travel with Ying er, who is learning to cultivate like we do.”

Meng Yao bowed even deeper than he did before. “Please teach me.” He kowtowed. “Honored teacher, please allow this one to learn cultivation from you.”

Chapter Text

Have I doomed a baby Meng Yao to being a destitute orphan earlier in life on a whim? Maybe. Do I regret it? A little.

The problem with Meng Yao is that he is the definition of a snake in the grass. Yeah, he probably won’t bite you if you don’t bother him, but you never know when you might accidentally step on him. 

I feared he might bite my parents. I never noticed how much my mother made fun of the gentry until she started badmouthing Jin Guangshan in front of A-Yao.

“-nd never trust a man who doesn’t treat women well,” Mama continued, “like that Jin Sect Leader!”

Meng Yao’s head always whips away, like he could pretend he wasn’t listening if he didn’t make eye contact. I was the only one watching him in those moments, so nobody ever noticed. 

“What a piece of-” She went on and on about how she scared him away during her time at Cloud Recesses. A-Yao’s minute twitching suddenly reminded me of the phrase: ‘a ticking time bomb.’

“A-Yao, let’s play outside.”

“No, Wei Ying.” Baba reminded, “You are still under punishment for sneaking out at night.”

“How much longer?” I whined, making sad eyes at Mama and pulling on her robes.

Interrupted, she looked down at my face. “Aw, Ying er! Don’t look at me like that!”

“Pleeeeeease!”

“Listen to your Baba.”

“No!” I stumbled back into Meng Yao, looking at him. “A-Yao! Save me from this tyranny!”

Actual humor glinted in A-Yao’s face, though his mask looked grave. “Don’t be unfilial, shidi.”

“Shidi!” I squawked, genuinely caught off guard. “Who’s your shidi! I’m older!”

Baba shook his head. “Meng Yao is older than you, Ying er. He was born in the Spring season. You were born in early Winter, late Fall.”

“Fine! You can call me shidi, but I’m not calling you shixiong, A-Yao! A-Yao is A-Yao!”

A-Yao pasted his smile back on. “That’s fine with me.” Another bomb defused.

We were already on our donkey before my parents said the four of us were headed to Yiling. The first few times they’d tried to go there, they told me where we were going the town beforehand, but I had always been able to redirect us.

They’d noticed. Of course, they did. So this time, they only told me when we were a day’s ride away.

“Shidi,” Meng Yao got my attention from behind me. With the four of us, A-Yao and I always sit between Mama and Baba, with the two switching the driver periodically. “Why do you not like Yiling?”

Mama stopped playing her dizi, which she was using to fill the silence.

I frowned. I’d have to be careful how I went about responding, and I needed to decide on an approach. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You always try to avoid it, and I’m sure you’ve never been there. I asked. So why?”

“I-” I took a moment to think. “You’ll think it’s silly.”

Mama cut in. “It’s okay to not like things, Wei Ying. You won’t get in trouble for having a silly opinion. The worst thing saying something silly can do is make someone laugh, and laughter is a good thing, Ying er. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do.” I twisted my mouth before untwisting it to lie: “I just get a…bad…feeling whenever someone brings Yiling up. It’s like, mean.”

“What’s mean?” A-Yao asked.

“The feeling. It makes me feel, like, mean.”

Baba inhaled sharply. Mama spoke: “A-Ying, this is important. Does this mean feeling make you want to hurt people?”

I made myself snort. “Well, yeah, duh, that’s what being mean is!”

“Oh dear.”

“See why we can’t go there? Reroute! I don’t want to go to a mean place!”

“We cannot reroute,” Baba said.

“Baba!” I shrieked in the way only a frustrated child can. “You’re not listening to me?!”

“We are here already.”

We had arrived at Yiling, home of the Burial Mounds. It was the place where I suspected my parents would die.

In the original novel, it was only stated that Wei Wuxian’s parents died in a night hunt. However, his mother was also described as an astoundingly strong cultivator, the disciple of an immortal. How could such a strong cultivator die in a random night hunt, with her husband watching her back at all times?

My theory was simple. They had surely died facing a problem that nobody had invented a solution for yet. The Wei parents died in the very Burial Mounds that Wei Wuxian would later tame. Of course, this is just a popular headcanon. Perhaps I had changed so much that they’d never die and we’d all cultivate immortality, even A-Yao now that he had the chance to form a golden core at a young age, as a family!

Or maybe the headcanon isn’t right, and they’re destined to die on an unremarkable, random night hunt. 

They likely wouldn’t die so soon. I’m only seven. Wei Wuxian gets adopted by the Jiangs at nine, certainly, he didn’t spend his life on the streets for two whole years, right?

I was definitely overthinking.

So why did saying goodnight also feel like saying goodbye?

Chapter Text

I was crying.

Gasps filled the air as my lungs emptied themselves, and I shouted for help.

“Why?!”

I was an idiot. That’s why I’m crying. 

In an attempt not to develop a fear of dogs, I tried to tame a puppy. I gave it food and affection. I really cared about it for days. Then, the puppy’s mother found me.

“Wei Ying, try and circulate your spiritual energy,” A-Yao instructed. “I will give you some extra, and your bites will hopefully heal.”

“I think I need medicine,” I whimpered. “Please, Yao-ge.”

Meng Yao’s fingers tightened on my meridians. “You will be okay,” he promised.

After leaving us in the inn, Mama and Baba never came back. We got kicked out when it was clear nobody was coming back to pay the innkeeper.

A few weeks later, I tried to approach the Burial Mounds. 

Not to look for Mama and Baba, like I told A-Yao. 

It was just to see what it’s like. After all, it was where I’d live a decade or so from now. 

But I couldn’t even get close.

I started to shiver uncontrollably the first time and had to walk away. 

The second time, I got even closer before I lost my nerve and came back with a fever. 

The third, I passed out to a question whispered in my ear: D■ yo■ ■a■■ ■■■■■■■?

So it turns out I was not lying to my family when I feigned a sensitivity to resentful energy! The more you know…

After I passed out, A-Yao thoroughly berated me next to the soft pile of dirty, old, and torn clothes we had begun to collect for the future. I’d grown weary enough to heed his warning and never went near the Mound again, at least for this arc.

I was having the shittiest day since I’d become an orphan. A-Yao was busy looking for honest work even though nobody in Yiling had the kindness in their hearts to hire “dirty street rats” like us, so I had no protection from the dogs. They ripped up my winter robes that we had so painstakingly stitched together.

Still, I had a moment to myself. I took it upon myself to draw in the snow with my finger.

I heard a drumming noise from afar.

“There’s Mama and Baba,” I drew. I labeled them with the correct characters but couldn’t remember the stroke order. Baba would scold me if he were here. “There’s A-Yao and the donkey.”

The drumming increased.

“And the last one here, Wei Ying!” I pointed to myself after making myself the smallest figure in the snow. I knew I would probably grow taller than Meng Yao eventually, but currently, he looked older than we were.

The drumming had grown until it was right in front of me.

I looked up to see a chubby-cheeked little boy in mourning white with a ribbon on his forehead.

How cute! I smiled.

The boy held out a rattle drum towards me, the source of all the noise.

“Thanks, Rich-gege!” I said for the purposes of TikTok-style subtle foreshadowing: my evil plan to make Lan Zhan think of me when he meets our son. 

Because I was looking, I saw the boy’s ears grow pink. My eyes crinkled. 

See you again in nine years, Lan Zhan.

Chapter Text

When temperatures rose to signal the end of my ninth winter, I rejoiced. A-Yao didn’t think my behavior was odd; he was right there with me. He didn’t know what I knew. This year, I thought, was the year we would get off the streets.

I skipped through the markets with Meng Yao walking briskly behind me, singing an English song from my past life: “The sun will come out, tomorrow!” [1]

“Tomorrow…” came A-Yao’s voice from behind me.

I stopped in front of him, wide-eyed, inadvertently ramming into him. “How do you know the lyrics to this song?” My heart was beating fast before he even replied.

Meng Yao’s face was irritated, although he pushed the irritation aside in favor of confusion. “You sang it last winter.”

My eyebrows furrowed. “When?”

“The day you decided to sing a lullaby after I said I didn’t want one,” he responded dryly.

Oh! I remembered that day. So this was just his perfect memory at play. “I don’t remember that,” I pouted. “Why would I do something A-Yao doesn’t want?” My pout twisted into a mischievous grin, and I turned around to continue skipping through the market. “This Ying er is filial to his gege! Always listens!”

I heard a huff behind me, which I so graciously decided to interpret as amused rather than frustrated. 

I giggled, eyes closing, my mouth stretched wide in joy as I bumped into an adult in purple robes. I kept the smile on my face as I exclaimed, “Ah! Sorry, qianbei!” [2] I stopped again.

This time, A-Yao was not caught off guard. Instead, he pulled me behind him and bowed. “Apologies, qianbei. A-Ying does not look where he is going.” He waited, bowed, so I let the smile diminish as I bowed next to him. 

“No offence was taken,” the man in purple said with a kind smile. We let ourselves rise at his cue. “What did you say your name was?”

I smiled at him again. “This one is Wei Ying! And this is A-Yao! Say, mister, are you here to buy noodles from the market? I want noodles!”

The verbal onslaught brought me not one, but two raised eyebrows. “Wei…”

“Shidi?” A-Yao took the man’s minute daze to whisper in my ear, gesturing with his eyes that we should leave soon. 

“You would like noodles, right, Wei Ying? Come, I’ll buy you some.” The man gestured for me to follow, pulling a pouch from his sleeve on the opposite side from where he had a sword sheathed.

I smirked at Meng Yao. “Let’s go!” I took his hand and pulled him along, ignoring the alarm in his eyes.

We all arrived at a noodle stall, where I gleefully picked out all my favorite toppings. The only thing it was missing was cheese! I miss cheese so much! [3]

“Yummmm!” I ate enthusiastically. “A-Yao, try!” I raised the chopsticks to A-Yao’s lips.

He obediently opened his mouth for me to feed him, though his eyes stayed on the purple man the whole time. After he swallowed, he asked, “Who are you, qianbei?” He pointedly did not thank him for the meal, since he probably counted it as payment for bumping into me (even though I was the one who bumped into him). 

“Wei Ying,” he addressed, bypassing any conversation with A-Yao again. “Do you know who your parents were?”

My mouth was full as I answered. “W- Cha-ze -n- -n-se!”

Meng Yao translated for me. “His parents were Wei Changze and Wei Cangse. They were also my teachers in cultivation.”

I had swallowed my last bite to say. “Yes! A-Yao was their disciple, and Ying er learned from Mama and Baba too!” At this, the man finally acknowledged A-Yao, looking at him with a discerning eye.

“My name is Jiang Fengmian, the sect leader of the Jiang Clan, but Wei Ying can call me Jiang-shushu. I was very close to your parents before they began to travel. Would you like to live in my sect?”