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Chapter Text

The morning mist in Gusu was not quite like mist anywhere else. In Yunmeng, fog rolled in thick and low across the rivers, smelling of lilies and mud, humming with the promise of storms and stories. But here, in the mountains of the Lan, the mist hung high and quiet, suspended like memory, clean, pale, as if it had never touched the ground.

Wei Wuxian bounced on the balls of his feet as he walked, tipping his head up toward the looming peaks of Cloud Recesses. The stairs were long, absurdly long, in his opinion—but he was in too good a mood to complain. His travel pack swung behind him like a pendulum, and he hummed an off-key tune as he walked backward up the path, facing the other two behind him.

“Yanli-jie,” he said, grinning as he held out a hand toward his sister. “How many stairs left, do you think? One thousand? Ten thousand? Or do the Lan just keep adding more whenever they think someone’s having fun?”

Jiang Yanli laughed behind her sleeve. She had one hand tucked around the strap of her travel satchel, the other resting lightly on her brother Jiang Cheng’s arm. “Don’t be dramatic, A-Xian. You’ve barely broken a sweat.”

“Because I’m in my prime, Jie. The peak of human cultivation and spiritual innovation! You’re witnessing history in the making.”

“History’s about to trip and roll down five hundred stairs,” Jiang Cheng muttered.

Wei Wuxian turned to face forward again with a snort. “Your jealousy is showing, A-Cheng. Just say you’re proud of me and go.”

Jiang Cheng didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The silence between them was familiar, mocking, exasperated, warm underneath. He was walking a little faster than necessary, trying to pass Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian was purposely blocking him. They had been doing this for most of the climb.

Jiang Yanli, serene as a mountain river, let them bicker. She had arrived with them not as a student but as a sect ambassador, an observer on behalf of the Yunmeng Jiang. Her robes were a softer violet than usual, pinned with the delicate lotus crest of their sect, her hair arranged simply but with quiet elegance. There were letters of recommendation tucked into her sleeve and a satchel of herbal remedies at her waist—mostly for her brothers.

“Lan Zhan’s probably already meditating or sword dancing or writing poetry,” Wei Wuxian mused, watching the mist swirl around the far gates. “Or counting rules for fun. Do you think they do that here? Like, bingo cards—‘Ah yes, I’ve cited Rule Seventy-Two and Rule Four Hundred Six today, time for a snack.’”

“Lan Wangji probably doesn’t even snack,” Jiang Cheng said, finally pushing past him. “He probably photosynthesizes by moonlight or something.”

“That’s such a Lan thing to do. No offense.”

“All the offense.”

As they reached the top of the final stair, the stone gate of Cloud Recesses stood open, tall and pale, engraved with calligraphy that shimmered faintly in the low light. There were protective wards embedded in the threshold, humming with spiritual resonance. Wei Wuxian, naturally, wandered right up and pressed his hand against the stone.

The talisman crackled.

“A-Xian,” Jiang Yanli warned gently.

Wei Wuxian jerked his hand back with a hiss, shaking his fingers. “Jie, it bit me!”

“It’s a boundary seal. It didn’t bite you. It reminded you to behave.”

“It’s clearly defective.”

“Don’t touch it again.”

“No promises.”

Still grinning, Wei Wuxian skipped ahead through the gate. Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng followed at a more measured pace, stepping into the pristine courtyard beyond. The scent of sandalwood drifted on the air. A windchime in the distance rang with perfect clarity. Every stone, every tree, every breeze felt deliberate.

Cloud Recesses was a quiet place but not lifeless. There was an attentiveness to it, as if the very walls were listening. It was a place where thoughts echoed a little longer than they should. A place where you could lose your voice if you didn’t speak with intention.

Wei Wuxian inhaled deeply. “Ah, silence and repression. Must be the Lan.”

He didn’t realize until he turned that they were no longer alone.

A row of Lan disciples had assembled near the far edge of the courtyard, standing like brushstrokes in pale robes. In front of them were two elders one tall and graceful, the other with silver at his temples and an unimpressed expression— and a third figure, who stood apart from the others with a kind of effortless stillness.

Lan Wangji.

Even in the simplicity of sect robes, Lan Wangji stood out not by any dramatic gesture, but by the sheer precision of his presence. His hair was pulled back with a cloud-pattern forehead ribbon, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his eyes half-lowered but watchful.

Wei Wuxian’s gaze snagged on him instantly.

Not because he was beautiful (though, he was), or because he looked like someone who might stab you for smiling at the wrong time (also true) but because he looked like a still lake with something vast and unseen beneath.

Wei Wuxian’s grin returned, crooked and sharp. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said aloud.

Lan Wangji lifted his gaze. Their eyes met. He didn’t frown. He didn’t look away. He simply stared.

And Wei Wuxian, ridiculous, brilliant, and already bored of formality, offered him a wink.

Behind him, Jiang Cheng made a strangled noise.

Lan Qiren stepped forward at last, robes whispering across stone. His face was unreadable. His voice, however, was clear. “Disciples of Yunmeng Jiang,” he said. “Welcome. The lectures will begin at first light. You are expected to abide by all rules during your stay. Violations will be noted and punished accordingly.”

Wei Wuxian raised a hand. “Is there a syllabus? A rulebook I can study overnight and quote back to you tomorrow just to be annoying?”

There was silence. Several Lan disciples looked horrified.

Lan Qiren stared at him. And then, just barely, the corners of his mustache twitched.

Lan Xichen, who had not spoken a word yet, looked dangerously close to smiling.

Jiang Yanli stepped forward then, bowing gracefully. “Thank you for your hospitality, Elder Lan. We’re honored to be here.”

Lan Qiren inclined his head to her with far more warmth than he gave the others. “Lady Jiang. Welcome.”

Wei Wuxian gave her a sideways look. “Jie, how come you get all the respect?”

“Because I don’t wink at sect heirs during formal greetings,” she said, gently.

Lan Wangji, several paces away, still had not looked away.

Wei Wuxian straightened, slung his pack over one shoulder, and offered him a mock salute.

“Well then,” he said cheerfully. “Let the chaos begin.”

There were rules in Cloud Recesses.

One hundred and three (🙌🏻🙂‍↔️) of them, to be exact. Wei Wuxian knew this because he had read them. Not because he particularly cared about following them— no, that was Jiang Cheng’s job— but because he had planned to break them as creatively as possible.

“Rule Twenty-Two,” he whispered on their first morning, balancing a brush between two fingers as he leaned toward Jiang Cheng, “no speaking after the hour of hai. What do you think happens if I hum?”

“I think Lan Qiren will personally launch you into a mountain ravine,” Jiang Cheng muttered without looking up.

Wei Wuxian grinned, unfazed, and hummed anyway.

The morning lecture was on spiritual harmonics and talismanic resonance. Theoretically a dry subject. In practice, it involved Lan Qiren pacing beneath a sweeping scroll of musical notations, declaiming in a tone that made even the most arcane sect histories sound like a bedtime story. The rows of disciples sat as still as carved figures. No one dared fidget. No one spoke.

Except for Wei Wuxian.

He sat cross-legged with his sleeves falling back from his wrists, sketching what appeared to be a modified resonance array with annotations in bright red ink. His paper was already full of extra diagrams—some brilliant, some absurd, one that looked like a dancing rabbit and had no place in any formation whatsoever.

Lan Qiren paused mid-sentence.

“Wei Wuxian,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “You will not find the meaning of cultivation at the bottom of your ink pot.”

“Of course not, sir,” Wei Wuxian said cheerfully without looking up. “I already found it in the second resonance layer. I’m just adjusting for the directional charge.”

“You—” Lan Qiren visibly recalibrated his blood pressure. “What directional charge?”

Wei Wuxian spun his paper around with a flourish. “If you layer the spiritual input along a crescent arc, you can echo the array’s pulse into a second receiver talisman. It can’t hold long-term activation yet, it burns out after about ten minutes but I think if I anchor it with a jade chip, it might hold.”

The entire room was staring at him.

Lan Qiren stepped forward, examined the drawing. His frown deepened. “This… this is functional?”

“I’ve only blown up two trees with it so far!”

Lan Qiren stared at him. “Get up.”

“Eh?”

“Up. You’ll present your… creation after midday meal. Demonstrate it. If it works, it will be included in the lecture. If it doesn’t…” He trailed off.

“Then we’ll all know not to point it at trees,” Wei Wuxian finished helpfully.

From three rows over, Lan Wangji did not react outwardly. But Wei Wuxian could feel his gaze, cool and steady, pinned like a hair needle to the back of his neck.

When he turned around after class, he caught him still watching.

The training field was immaculate. The kind of place that seemed to repel dust by sheer spiritual discipline. The air smelled faintly of pine and incense, and the mountain wind carried with it the soft echo of string instruments from the practice halls beyond.

A group of disciples had gathered by the field’s edge, curious but cautious. The phrase “Wei Wuxian demonstration” had spread quickly and carried with it a reputation not unlike “unexpected fireworks.”

Wei Wuxian stood in the center of the stone platform, sleeves rolled up, a gleam in his eye. Beside him, Lan Qiren stood with arms crossed. Jiang Cheng had one hand on his sword and the other poised to shove his brother out of the blast radius. Jiang Yanli stood farther back, with a tin of burn salve and a hopeful expression.

Lan Wangji was standing very still. Watching. Always watching.

Wei Wuxian placed the small, palm-sized talisman disk at the center of the formation he’d drawn on the stones. It was etched with a spiral of runes and tiny embedded stones, nothing fancy, just jade and a little copper wiring.

“Ready?” he said brightly, looking up.

“No,” Jiang Cheng muttered.

“Yes,” Jiang Yanli said, because she was supportive like that.

“Proceed,” said Lan Qiren.

Wei Wuxian activated the array.

There was a quiet hiss of static. The jade chip flared briefly blue, then pulsed. Slowly, gently, the talisman rose into the air. It hovered a little unsteadily then began to drift in a slow circle, orbiting Wei Wuxian’s outstretched hand.

Several Lan disciples gasped. Someone dropped a flute.

Wei Wuxian beamed. “See? Directional movement based on spiritual signature. It’s following me, not a fixed path.”

He lifted his hand, and the talisman obediently floated higher. He rotated, and it spiraled with him, trailing silver light behind like a firefly.

Then it began to hum louder.

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian said, tilting his head. “Okay, maybe I over-amped the pulse array—”

The talisman shot across the platform, looped twice, and slammed directly into a training dummy. The dummy caught fire.

A heartbeat of silence.

Wei Wuxian coughed. “Improvement note: don’t bind it to emotional input.”

Jiang Cheng threw his hands up. “Why are you like this?!”

Lan Qiren pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered something that might have been a prayer.

Only Lan Wangji, calm as winter, stepped forward to examine the still-smoking disk.

“You used layered crescent resonance,” he said quietly, crouching to pick it up.

Wei Wuxian blinked. “You can tell that just from the scorch marks?”

Lan Wangji nodded. “You overpowered the third seal. But the concept is… sound.”

There was the faintest pause. “Brilliant,” he added.

Wei Wuxian stared at him.

Lan Wangji looked up. Their eyes met. For a moment, neither said anything.

Then Wei Wuxian’s lips quirked.

“Oh no,” he whispered, delighted. “You like it.”

Lan Wangji looked away. But not quickly enough.

That night, as the stars spun overhead and the clouds thinned like pulled silk, Wei Wuxian sat cross-legged in the guest quarters, scribbling adjustments on his talisman array while humming a tune he’d heard Lan Wangji playing once in the background.

Jiang Yanli appeared in the doorway with tea. “You’ll burn out your eyes.”

“They’ll be worth it,” he said with a grin, still sketching. “I think I can reverse the polarity with a mirror rune. Might even get it to hover longer.”

She sat beside him. For a long moment, they were quiet. Then, softly, she said, “He was impressed. I could tell.”

Wei Wuxian didn’t look up. “Who?”

She bumped her shoulder gently against his. “Wei Ying.”

“…He has very intense eyebrows,” Wei Wuxian said eventually.

She smiled into her cup.

Chapter Text

By the end of the first week, Cloud Recesses had not burned down.

Not for lack of trying.

Most of the Lan disciples had accepted that Wei Wuxian was… a problem. Not a malicious one, no he wasn’t cruel, nor even truly disrespectful. But he was uncontainable, the way wind is uncontainable. One moment he was arguing spiritedly with Lan Qiren over the nuance of seal binding theory; the next, he was hiding behind a peach tree with a flute and teaching a group of younger Lan juniors how to confuse tracking arrays using crushed moonberries and glittering ash.

His reputation grew rapidly and alarmingly.

And so, too, did Lan Qiren’s sense of doom.

Still, privately, only privately, Lan Qiren began to annotate his lecture scrolls more thoroughly. Because despite everything, despite the irreverence and the ink on his sleeves and the way he sometimes set off experimental talismans beneath his own seat, Wei Wuxian was brilliant. Not simply clever, not just fast, but unorthodox in a way that forced others to rethink what was possible. He listened differently. He learned sideways. He made mistakes as if they were stepping stones.

Lan Qiren didn’t like it. But he respected it.

In the Lecture Halls. The halls of Cloud Recesses were made to carry sound softly: voices dissipated before they echoed, footsteps seemed to vanish the moment they touched the ground. The stillness was a kind of discipline. A place where breath and intention had weight.

Wei Wuxian disrupted that by existing.

It wasn’t that he shouted— though he sometimes did. It wasn’t even that he was constantly talking—though that was also true. It was that his presence filled the air the way incense did: persistent, fragrant, impossible to ignore.

One morning, during a lecture on ancient cultivation ethics, Lan Qiren wrote the word discipline on the board in large, calligraphic strokes. He turned to the class.

“Wei Wuxian,” he said slowly, “perhaps you would care to explain the core principle of this word as understood by the founder of your own sect.”

Wei Wuxian straightened from his relaxed sprawl and raised a brow.

“Discipline?” he said brightly. “Well, Madam Yu always said it meant ‘sit down, shut up, and stop trying to recreate the cleansing bell using explosive talismans.’”

There was a choked cough from someone in the back. Possibly Jiang Cheng. Possibly Lan Sizhui, who was starting to hero-worship Wei Wuxian in ways that concerned everyone.

Lan Qiren closed his eyes. “And the founder’s interpretation?”

Wei Wuxian gave him an easy smile. “Cultivation requires the discipline of heart, not just body. Self-governance, not blind obedience. One must know when to kneel—but also when not to.”

Silence.

Lan Qiren opened his eyes. “…Well,” he muttered. “At least you read the texts.”

In the Courtyard. Wei Wuxian discovered the outer courtyard pond by accident—and declared it his new invention workshop within ten minutes.

“This spot has the best sunlight,” he said, arms wide. “And more importantly—fewer rule enforcers.”

Jiang Cheng, who had followed only to drag him back to the lecture he was already late for, stared at the clutter on the wooden deck: talismans, jade chips, formation scrolls, a teacup he had definitely stolen from the kitchen, and a half-assembled ribbon-borne mechanism that looked like a windchime crossed with a weapon.

“What is that.”

“An emotional resonance reader.”

“A what.”

Wei Wuxian wiggled his fingers dramatically. “A talisman that reacts to the spiritual mood of the wielder! It can hum, shift color, release defensive bursts based on fluctuations in inner energy. I think I can turn it into a music-based weapon.”

“…Why.”

“Because it’s romantic,” Wei Wuxian said, scandalized.

Jiang Cheng threw his hands up and walked away.

Five minutes later, Lan Wangji arrived. He stood for several seconds at the edge of the courtyard, just watching.

“I see you found my lab,” Wei Wuxian said, gesturing proudly to the cluttered chaos. “Isn’t it magnificent?”

“It’s… not a lab,” Lan Wangji said slowly, stepping forward.

“It is if you squint hard enough.”

Lan Wangji crouched beside the windchime weapon, fingers brushing the jade anchors. “These symbols—they’re inverted.”

“Exactly!” Wei Wuxian beamed. “Counter-pulse logic. That way, the spiritual current feeds backward through the array and balances emotional instability.”

“You tested this?”

“…On a frog,” Wei Wuxian admitted.

Lan Wangji blinked.

“It glowed for a few seconds, then croaked very sincerely and ran away.”

Lan Wangji didn’t laugh. He rarely did. But Wei Wuxian caught it anyway—a brief twitch at the corner of his mouth. A breath that sounded suspiciously like amusement.

He looked at Wei Wuxian for a long moment, then said, “You’re not what I expected.”

Wei Wuxian tilted his head. “And what did you expect, Lan Zhan?”

“Noise,” Lan Wangji said, simply.

Wei Wuxian leaned forward, elbow on his knee, chin in palm.

“And now?”

Lan Wangji looked away, but not before Wei Wuxian caught the answer—not in words, but in the quiet stillness that settled between them. As if something had clicked into place. As if his presence, once disruptive, had become… familiar.

Not noise. Pattern.

Meanwhile, in the Kitchen

Jiang Yanli had, to her mild horror and quiet delight, been adopted by the Gusu Lan kitchen staff.

Her calm voice, graceful poise, and constant willingness to lend a hand with chopping herbs or brewing stomach-settling tea had earned her respect even faster than her surname. By the third day, she had her own tea blend drying in a warm box near the stove. By the fifth, disciples were seeking her advice on balancing medicinal teas with meditation schedules.

Lan Xichen was the first of the Lan to strike up a real conversation with her.

He came bearing a tray of spring-green cups and an apology for his brother’s silence.

“I assure you, Wangji’s quietness isn’t disapproval,” he said, sitting beside her with a composed smile. “He simply… hasn’t learned how to speak with someone who shines as loudly as Wei-gongzi does.”

Jiang Yanli smiled gently. “He doesn’t need to. A-Xian shines enough for two.”

“I’m not sure that’s a comfort.”

They shared tea in the quiet. Lan Xichen brought her special leaves in little bundles. She returned the favor by slipping him lotus root soup when the kitchen master wasn’t looking. Their friendship bloomed slowly, softly, like tea unfolding in water.

And together, they began what Wei Wuxian would later call “The First United Front Against Wei Ying’s Unsupervised Brain.”

Cloud Recesses was a place made for restraint. For stillness. For silences that stretched like silk between breaths. It was the opposite of Yunmeng in almost every way—no scent of mud and jasmine, no chorus of frogs after rain, no thunder that rolled across the lakes like drums.

But Jiang Yanli thrived here.

Not in the obvious way that Wei Wuxian did, bouncing from one innovation to the next with wild joy, or in the defensive, tight-lipped pride Jiang Cheng carried around like armor. No—her presence worked quietly, like sunlight on a still pond. Unassuming, but irresistible. In a place where everything was controlled, Jiang Yanli was gentle in a way the Lan could not help but admire.

She asked questions—not loudly, but earnestly. She listened to answers. She praised the kitchen’s dried plum tea and offered subtle suggestions for adjusting the lotus root stew so it didn’t clash with cooling tonics. She helped a junior bandage a burnt fingertip and passed around cooling powder when the weather turned too warm for their heavy robes.

By the end of her second week, she had somehow acquired:

Her own set of tea utensils in the kitchen,

A handwritten scroll from Lan Xichen with spiritual-acupuncture pressure points for fatigue,

And three different Lan disciples who followed her around like ducklings.

But more importantly, she had gained Lan Xichen’s full and genuine friendship.

It began with tea. It often did.

An Unexpected Alliance

“I’ve read about the lotus wines of Yunmeng,” Lan Xichen said one morning, seated beneath the painted awning of the eastern pavilion, where the breeze moved gently through the curtains. “But I’ve never tasted one. Are they truly as delicate as the stories say?”

Jiang Yanli smiled over her teacup. “Not all of them are delicate. Some are bold. The trick is in the fermentation time—and in the balance between bitterness and bloom.”

“A difficult balance.”

She looked at him with a glimmer of mischief. “Much like some people.”

Lan Xichen chuckled quietly. “You speak of Wei-gongzi?”

“I speak of many,” she said. “But yes, A-Xian most of all.”

He leaned forward slightly, placing his cup down. “He is… unlike anyone I’ve met.”

“That’s because no one ever told him not to be.” Her voice was soft, but sure. “He doesn’t come from a world where quietness was safety. He grew up loved and wild.”

“And clever.”

“Oh, dangerously so.”

Lan Xichen watched her a moment, his gaze thoughtful. “And Wangji?”

Jiang Yanli folded her hands. “I don’t presume to speak for him. But I’ve seen how he listens when A-Xian speaks. Not with judgment. With curiosity.”

Lan Xichen nodded slowly.

Then he reached into his sleeve and pulled out a small pouch.

“For Wei-gongzi,” he said. “Sweet spring blend. He burns his spiritual energy too fast, and I noticed he’s been skipping midday meals to test his inventions.”

Jiang Yanli accepted the pouch with both hands, bowing slightly. “You’ve noticed a lot.”

“I have a brother,” Lan Xichen said with a gentle smile. “It’s my job.”

Jiang Yanli returned it. “And I have two. So consider me a co-conspirator.”

Operation Wei Ying Hydration Commences

It began with tea.

It expanded into what Wei Wuxian would later describe as “a deeply suspicious campaign of love and nutrients.”

Every few days, his storage pouch was mysteriously filled with carefully packaged herbal teas—some cooling, some energizing, all perfectly suited to his mood. He began finding soup tucked into his compartments. Someone left his favorite inkstone by his door when his cracked. His burned sleeves were mended before he even noticed they had torn.

Wei Wuxian, naturally, assumed it was Jiang Yanli.

He was only half right.

Lan Xichen, subtle and composed, began forwarding relevant texts to Lan Qiren—anonymous recommendations about cultivation theory essays that would “appeal to creative students.” Those essays inevitably included case studies from unorthodox innovators. Coincidentally, they matched whatever Wei Wuxian had just proposed in class the day before.

Lan Qiren, for his part, continued muttering about headaches and soul imbalance but made no further protest.

Even Lan Wangji adjusted.

It was barely perceptible—at first.

He no longer moved away when Wei Wuxian sat beside him during evening meditation. His posture relaxed by the smallest fraction. When Wei Wuxian spoke, he no longer interrupted to correct him. And sometimes—only sometimes—he answered.

Not much. Not deeply. But enough.

And Jiang Yanli saw it all.

She watched the way her little brother’s eyes lit up whenever Lan Wangji approached. She saw how carefully Lan Wangji handled the talismans Wei Wuxian passed him during project rotations. How he didn’t so much tolerate the chaos as… learn to move within it. Like someone learning to dance by listening to laughter instead of music.

She saw, and she didn’t push.

Love, she believed, bloomed most brightly when it was not rushed.

Lan Xichen paused outside the meditation hall one afternoon, finding Lan Wangji seated alone on the stone steps beneath the cherry tree—its blossoms pale, ghostlike in the mountain air.

“You’ve been quiet,” he said, sitting beside him.

Lan Wangji glanced at him. “I’m always quiet.”

Lan Xichen smiled. “Yes. But this silence feels… watchful.”

Lan Wangji didn’t answer.

They sat in stillness for a moment.

Then Lan Wangji spoke, barely audible. “He is… disorderly.”

“Yes.”

“And alive,” he added softly, as if the word had a weight to it.

Lan Xichen looked at him gently. “Yes.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers rested on the edge of a scroll he had not opened.

“He smiles at me,” he murmured. “Even when I say nothing. Even when I—have done nothing.”

Lan Xichen’s expression softened. “You’ve never had to do anything to be worthy of someone’s smile, Wangji.”

“I don’t understand him.”

“You don’t need to. You only need to care.”

A pause.

“I don’t know if I do,” Lan Wangji said quietly.

Lan Xichen nodded. “Then keep walking. If it is something true, it will meet you halfway.”

Chapter Text

It was late in the day when Meng Yao arrived at Cloud Recesses.

He did not announce himself with fanfare—he didn’t need to. His clothes were impeccable, robes crisp and tailored slightly more elegantly than protocol required. His hair ribbon was tied with ceremonial precision, and his bearing exuded a practiced softness, the sort that came from years of being seen but never truly known.

He bowed with perfect grace at the gate and introduced himself as a guest cultivator affiliated with the Nie. A recommendation scroll tucked inside his sleeve bore Nie Mingjue’s seal—begrudging, but real. The disciples accepted it and led him in, unaware that with his smile came a weather pattern of calculated ambition.

To most, he appeared harmless. Even kind.

But Jiang Yanli noticed the way his eyes slid across every courtyard they passed. Not observing, but evaluating. As though measuring influence by footsteps. As though he were taking the pulse of something invisible and sharpening it behind his eyes.

It made her uncomfortable. She smiled politely anyway.

Wei Wuxian was reclining beneath the east pavilion when Meng Yao approached. There was a diagram half-finished in front of him and a discarded flute talisman humming low under his foot. He looked tired, a little soot-streaked, and completely content.

Jiang Yanli sat nearby, needle in hand, embroidering a lotus motif into the edge of a handkerchief. Her sleeves caught the wind like poetry. She had just handed Wei Wuxian a cup of tea laced with calming herbs, and he was in the middle of making exaggerated sounds of spiritual rejuvenation when Meng Yao’s shadow fell across the floor.

“Lady Jiang,” came the voice—gentle, fluid. “May I join you?”

Jiang Yanli looked up, not startled but cautious.

“You may,” she said, after a moment’s pause. Her tone was warm but distant. She did not gesture for him to sit.

“I’ve heard much about your sect,” he said as he lowered himself with practiced delicacy onto the bench beside her. “And more still about your generosity. The Lotus Pier is famed not only for its hospitality, but for the refinement of its heir.”

Jiang Yanli inclined her head. “You’re kind to say so.”

“I’m only truthful.”

Her smile did not deepen. Wei Wuxian, to his credit, tried to keep a straight face. Tried.

But the tone, the silky flattery, the far-too-smooth compliments—it was like perfume poured over spoiled milk.

And worse, Meng Yao had turned his attention toward him now.

“And this,” Meng Yao continued, gesturing toward the chaotic talisman schematic at Wei Wuxian’s feet, “must be one of the famed inventions I’ve heard whispered about. You’ve quite the reputation, Wei-gongzi.”

“Ah?” Wei Wuxian drawled, resting his chin in his palm. “Whispered where? Down the mountain? In your dreams?”

Meng Yao’s smile twitched. “At Nightless City. Jin Guangshan takes note of promising young minds.”

“So he’s finally figured out what one looks like?”

That earned a very quiet laugh from Jiang Yanli, quickly hidden by a cough.

Meng Yao persisted. “The cultivation world needs innovators. Visionaries. Those who rise not because of bloodline, but brilliance.”

“Mm,” Wei Wuxian said, examining a smudge on his thumb. “Funny. I was just thinking the cultivation world needs better flattery. Yours sounds like it’s been tested on six sect heirs and a mirror.”

Meng Yao’s smile faltered. It lasted a second. Barely perceptible. But it was there.

He turned, recovering, to Jiang Yanli. “Lady Jiang, I would be honored to know more of your sect. Perhaps we could walk the gardens one evening? Or share tea—”

“No, thank you,” she said, softly but firmly.

Meng Yao blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You are very courteous,” she continued, folding her embroidery with deliberate calm. “But I’ve grown tired of being praised for my poise when the compliments carry questions beneath them.”

Wei Wuxian was grinning now, openly, like someone watching a soft breeze become a sharp wind.

Meng Yao bowed again, lower this time. “Of course. Forgive me. I meant no—”

“You meant to charm,” Jiang Yanli said gently, rising. “And you might have, had you tried honesty first.”

He was still mid-bow when she turned and walked toward the inner quarters, graceful as a falling petal, unshaken.

Wei Wuxian stayed behind.

“So,” he said after a moment, legs kicked lazily over the bench arm, “what do you want, really?”

Meng Yao stood straight again. His eyes cooled a fraction.

“Only to offer respect where it’s due.”

“Well, don’t,” Wei Wuxian said, smiling too widely now. “It doesn’t look good on you.”

Meng Yao didn’t reply.

He inclined his head once more and turned away. He left the courtyard with footsteps a little too measured, back straight, pride intact—but no further invitation offered.

The story of Meng Yao’s failed flattery made quiet rounds between courtyards. Not loudly, not cruelly. But whispers have a shape in Cloud Recesses, and his name no longer stirred interest—only shrugs and quiet distrust.

He did not approach Jiang Yanli again.
He did not attempt a conversation with Wei Wuxian.
He lingered only a few more days in Cloud Recesses before requesting leave.

No one stopped him.

Later that evening, as twilight turned the stone paths blue and gold, Wei Wuxian found Lan Wangji seated by the koi pond, expression calm as moonlight.

He sat beside him in silence for a while. Finally, he asked, “Did you meet him?”

Lan Wangji nodded. “Briefly.”

“And?”

Lan Wangji’s gaze did not move from the water. “He speaks with too many smiles.”

Wei Wuxian huffed. “You think I smile too much too.”

“You smile like the wind,” Lan Wangji said without hesitation. “He smiles like a shadow.”

Wei Wuxian went quiet. For once, no witty response came.

The koi swam in gentle circles, lanterns flickered in the distance, and somewhere, someone began to play guqin—one slow note at a time.

Wei Wuxian tilted his head toward Lan Wangji, grinning softly. “So… you were paying attention.”

Lan Wangji did not look at him. But he stayed until the song ended.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

It happened quietly.

There was no spark, no thunderclap. No talisman flaring in recognition or celestial sign etched across the sky. Just the hush of wind through leaves, the faint tremble of a tea cup in a too-still hand, and the moment when someone looked too long, and the other forgot to look away.

It began like many things do, not with declaration, but with silence.

A different kind of silence.

Not the type the Lan imposed, heavy and ceremonial, wrapped in rules and enforced by gazes too sharp for their age.

No, this silence was the kind that unfolded on its own. Soft. Spacious. A silence that waited, not demanded. The kind you stepped into without realizing you’d crossed a threshold.

Wei Wuxian didn’t often seek solitude. He liked people. He liked the noise, the energy, the way ideas collided in midair like sparking flint. But there were afternoons even for him when the weight of discipline and the sting of reprimands wore him down to something slower.

That day, he found himself wandering toward the bamboo pavilion tucked beyond the east bridge, where fewer disciples lingered. The wind there spoke through rustling leaves, and the shade was softer, tinged green from the light overhead. It smelled of ink, moss, and growing things.

He didn’t expect anyone to be there.

So when he stepped past the low stone steps and found Lan Wangji already seated, a guqin before him, he paused mid-step and blinked.

Lan Wangji didn’t turn his head. He merely looked up through his lashes, fingers still resting lightly against the strings.

Wei Wuxian tilted his head. “I didn’t know this spot was claimed.”

“It isn’t.”

There was no invitation in his tone. But no refusal either.

And so Wei Wuxian sat. Not beside him, that felt like too much but across the small platform, legs drawn up, back to the bamboo pillar, posture looser than etiquette would allow. The guqin sat between them like a quiet river.

“You play,” Wei Wuxian said after a beat, “as if the air might break if you touch it wrong.”

Lan Wangji didn’t respond.

Wei Wuxian watched him for a moment longer, then added more softly, “But it doesn’t. Break, I mean.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers pressed lightly on the strings. Just one chord, barely audible. It hummed like breath over still water. “…You listen.”

“Of course I do. What kind of inventor would I be if I didn’t pay attention?”

Lan Wangji looked at him then. It was brief, only a glance. But Wei Wuxian felt it like a brush of calligraphy across skin—measured, deliberate, full of hidden meaning.

He looked away first. That didn’t happen often.

The next day, Wei Wuxian returned to the same pavilion. He didn’t admit to himself that he was hoping Lan Wangji would be there again.

He was.

This time, the guqin was closed, wrapped in its silk cloth. Lan Wangji was reading. His posture, as always, was too upright to be comfortable, yet he seemed entirely at ease in it.

Wei Wuxian hesitated in the archway.

“You can sit,” Lan Wangji said, without looking up.

Wei Wuxian did. He sat the way only someone raised by rivers could, informally, folding one leg under the other, half-leaning into the curve of the pillar behind him. “What are you reading?”

Lan Wangji turned the scroll slightly, revealing an elegant Lan script. “Treatise on Sect Stewardship.”

“Sounds excruciating.”

“It is.”

Wei Wuxian grinned. “So why read it?”

“…Necessary.”

He waited, but Lan Wangji offered nothing more.

So Wei Wuxian pulled out a small box of gears and copper coils from his sleeve and began assembling a talisman-powered ink brush, the tip designed to adjust according to spiritual pressure. It had no practical use except writing calligraphy with flair.

He didn’t expect Lan Wangji to say anything.

So when the other boy finally asked, “What is its function?” Wei Wuxian looked up in surprise.

“It doesn’t have one,” he admitted, a little sheepish. “It just… looks nice when it moves.”

Lan Wangji considered that. Then, softly: “That is a function.”

It became a pattern after that. Afternoons, sometimes late mornings, sometimes twilight, neither scheduled nor agreed upon, yet it happened anyway. The quiet meeting in the bamboo pavilion.

They rarely spoke at length. Not the way Wei Wuxian was used to. No clever repartee. No jokes. Sometimes he would say something ridiculous just to see if he could get a reaction, and Lan Wangji would raise a brow in a way that felt like the quietest form of indulgence.

But mostly, they just… coexisted.

Wei Wuxian thought that was the strangest part of all.

He’d never felt like that before. Like his silence wasn’t something that had to be filled, but something someone else could carry with him.

He never said it aloud.

Lan Wangji never asked.

But one afternoon, when Wei Wuxian dropped a small jar of conductive ash and cursed under his breath, Lan Wangji reached out without hesitation to catch it mid-roll before it hit the water.

He handed it back silently.

Wei Wuxian took it and said, “Thanks.”

Lan Wangji only nodded—but he didn’t move away.

During evening meditation that week, Lan Qiren observed something with narrowed eyes: Lan Wangji, though still silent and immaculately postured, now sat exactly one and a half paces closer to Wei Wuxian than before.

Wei Wuxian sat precisely one pace farther back than the rest of the students, body angled toward the courtyard moonlight, pretending to behave.

Neither of them acknowledged the shift.

But it was there. A strange kind of gravity. Unwritten. Unspoken. Unbreaking.

Two days later, Lan Wangji received a letter scroll tucked inside his notebook.

The characters were familiar—fast, sharp, and dramatic, with too many loops. Wei Wuxian’s handwriting.

Lan Zhan,
Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re watching my talismans like they’re misbehaving children. If you’re that curious, you could just say so. Or come test one. I promise it won’t explode (probably).
Also, do you ever laugh? Or do you just stare people into behaving?
Sincerely,
Your Local Innovator (and maybe a little bit of a menace)

Lan Wangji read it. Folded it. Did not respond. But the next day, during their talismanic theory seminar, he chose to sit beside Wei Wuxian. When their hands brushed while passing a brush between them, neither pulled away. Not even when Lan Qiren glared.

Chapter Text

It began with ink and impulse.

Summer had reached its full bloom in Yunmeng—thick with golden heat, the scent of lotus pollen, and dragonflies stitching the sky above water-filled paddies. The Jiang family household was alive with the sound of cicadas and disciples clanging practice swords against training poles. Fishermen shouted cheerful insults over the lake. Wei Wuxian, however, was indoors, halfway beneath a table, elbow-deep in the guts of a talisman-powered wind compass that had unfortunately caught fire two days earlier.

He smelled faintly of scorched sandalwood. And ink. And crushed plum blossoms, because he’d accidentally stepped on a basket Jiang Yanli had set aside for tea blends.

Which gave him an idea.

It was late afternoon—just after the worst heat of the day had passed and the shadows of the screen windows began to soften. Wei Wuxian snatched a clean scroll and sprawled across his desk, hair tied loosely at the nape of his neck, still damp from a hasty rinse. Sunlight glinted across the gold threading on his inner robes, making them shimmer like the surface of a lotus pond.

He dipped his brush in ink and began writing with all the unfiltered momentum of someone who thought a little too fast to edit anything before sending it.

Lan Zhan,

Remember that compass I bragged about? I may have set it on fire. I still think the fire-resistant array was sound, but maybe the vinegar wasn’t a good grounding agent after all. (Don’t tell Jiang Cheng I admitted that. He already glared me halfway to reincarnation.)

Anyway, I rebuilt it! Sort of. Half. I’m including diagrams! The paper’s a little stained because someone (me) dropped it into plum flower mash, but you can still read it, right? Right. You always squint like you’re decoding ancient prophecy anyway.

Come to Yunmeng. The lotus are blooming. The wind smells like rain and summer. I’ll show you the new voice kite. It sings badly. You’ll love it.

Yours in genius (and mild chaos),
Wei Wuxian

He stared at the letter for half a second, then added a doodle of a duck and a stick-figure with Lan Wangji’s forehead ribbon. Because it was tradition now.

He rolled the scroll, tucked it into a sleeve of waxed lotus paper, and tied it shut with red string—twice-knotted, in case it exploded mid-travel. Then he ran barefoot through the house and launched it directly into the arms of a passing courier disciple, shouting instructions over his shoulder as he vanished back inside.

The next three days crawled. He waited without waiting, tried not to hope too loudly.

Until Jiang Yanli found him in the kitchen one morning, hair still damp, leaning into a bamboo steamer trying to steal extra pork buns before the disciples arrived.

She held out a scroll. “Your reply,” she said.

Wei Wuxian blinked. “My what?” He recognized the seal before she even passed it over—simple, unembellished, Lan-style. Barely a scent. Crisp paper. Tidy ribbon.

He snatched it with one hand and shoved a whole pork bun into his mouth with the other.

He opened the scroll with flour-dusted fingers. Inside: no greeting. No drawing. But across the edge of the schematics he had sent, in fine, immaculate calligraphy, someone had written:

Wei Ying,

Your sealwork is imprecise. Consider tightening the outer ring with dual-resonant qi to stabilize polarity.

Plum flower residue has made ink unreadable. Please send a cleaner copy.

— Lan Wangji

Wei Wuxian grinned. He kept reading. At the bottom, there was one pressed flower. Pale violet.

And below it, barely noticeable, Yunmeng is warm this time of year.

He grinned wider. “He’s coming.”

Somewhere in Gusu…

Lan Xichen glanced up from his correspondence when Lan Wangji emerged from his quarters already dressed for travel, a scroll pouch neatly slung over his shoulder.

“You’re leaving?”

Lan Wangji paused. “Three days.”

Xichen raised a brow. “Not for official duties?”

“No.”

“…Ah.” Lan Xichen’s eyes glimmered. “Will you bring back plum blossoms?”

“They are out of season.”

“And yet,” Xichen said, “I have the distinct impression you’ll find some anyway.”

Lan Wangji said nothing. But he did leave with Wei Wuxian’s original diagram rolled carefully into the inner sleeve of his robes, ink stains and all.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The day Lan Wangji arrived in Yunmeng, the sky was the color of lotus milk.

Clouds hung soft and full above the lake, promising evening rain. The breeze was thick with summer fragrant with blooming lotus, water moss, and the distant scent of peach pastries baking in town. Yunmeng was alive in a way Gusu would never be. Loud. Warm. Messy. Familiar.

Children raced barefoot along the training yard walkways, disciples laughed through drills, and down by the pier, two elderly fishermen were debating whether the lotus seeds had grown sweeter this year or if their teeth had simply gone dull.

Lan Wangji stepped off the ferry into this noise and light like a painting carved into stillness.

His robes were pristine white linen trimmed with pale blue, his travel satchel strapped precisely at his side. A guqin case rested over one shoulder, and his expression, as always, betrayed nothing.

Except, maybe, a quiet kind of intent.

He didn’t look lost. He looked like he had arrived exactly where he meant to be.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The Welcoming Committee (Chaos Edition)

“LAN ZHAN!!!”

The greeting came in the form of a shout then a blur of black and red robes that barreled down the pier so fast it knocked over a broom, startled a duck, and nearly tripped over a fishnet.

Wei Wuxian skidded to a stop in front of him, panting and smiling like a boy who hadn’t changed at all, even if he was already halfway to manhood. His hair was tied sloppily in a half-knot, face streaked with ink, and his left sleeve was smoking faintly.

“You actually came,” he breathed, half in disbelief, half delighted.

“You invited me,” Lan Wangji replied, eyes softening.

“I invite a lot of people to Yunmeng. You’re the only one who took it as a command.”

At that moment, a sharp voice echoed from across the courtyard steps. “What’s all this racket? A-Li, did one of the disciples set off another firework array—”

Madam Yu appeared on the upper terrace, sharp and regal in a deep violet robe trimmed with silver thread. Her eyes landed on Lan Wangji and narrowed.

She descended slowly, expression unreadable, like a general appraising a foreign envoy at the palace gate. “We weren’t told we’d be hosting one of the Gusu Lan,” she said, voice calm but cool.

Lan Wangji bowed immediately. “Madam Yu. Thank you for receiving me.”

Wei Wuxian leapt in, hands raised like a peace banner. “It’s just a visit! Not official sect business or anything! Just some summer rest and research, you know? Sharing techniques, comparing notes, maybe exchanging… talismans.”

Madam Yu crossed her arms. “So we’re housing scholarly exchanges now?”

“He brought his guqin,” Wei Wuxian added. “That counts as diplomacy.”

Before she could retort, a loud crash came from the side walkway and a man stumbled in, carrying a tray of mango pudding and a ribbon caught in his hair.

“A-Ying!! You didn’t tell me our future son-in-law was arriving today!!”

Wei Wuxian turned red. “A-Die!!”

Wei Changze had the aura of a man who had napped too long in the sun and woke up in the middle of a romantic opera. His robe was askew, his hair a gentle mess, and his smile wide enough to rival the riverbanks.

He rushed forward and clasped Lan Wangji’s hands. “You’re even more solemn than I imagined! And taller! Welcome! Welcome to Yunmeng! Come, come, don’t be shy, do you eat mango pudding? You’ll eat mango pudding now.”

Lan Wangji blinked once, deeply overwhelmed but very polite. “I—thank you.”

Madam Yu groaned. “Wei Changze, he’s not our son-in-law.”

“Not yet!” Wei Changze sang. “But I’ve been preparing emotionally since A-Ying was thirteen! I always said, "My child deserves someone who looks like they walked out of an ancient jade carving!”

Wei Wuxian tried to melt into the pier. “I’m never writing you another letter again,” he muttered.

Lan Wangji, through it all, stood calmly, listening, taking in the household dynamics with a gaze that didn’t flinch once. He bowed once more to Madam Yu, then to Wei Changze, then turned back to Wei Wuxian. “…Where should I put my things?”

“In the guest courtyard!” Jiang Yanli’s voice called from behind a row of lotus screens. She stepped out with a serene smile, soft pink robes fluttering, and a woven basket of fresh herbs on her arm.

“I prepared the room myself,” she said. “It faces the lake and the moon.”

Lan Wangji nodded in appreciation. “Thank you.”

“A-Xian will show you.”

Wei Wuxian brightened. “Come on, Lan Zhan! I’ll give you the full tour. Just don’t trip over the duck he’s possessed.”

Jiang Yanli hadn’t been exaggerating.

The guest room was peaceful, with smooth wood floors and an open wall facing the lotus lake. A round moon window let in light filtered through flowering trees. The air smelled faintly of jasmine and lake mist.

There was a small tea set waiting on the corner table. And tucked beneath the edge of the mat was a folded towel and a packet of stomach-soothing tea leaves.

Wei Wuxian stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching Lan Wangji examine the space.

“She even put a flower there,” he said. “That’s A-Jie for you. Soft sabotage. You’ll fall in love just from the scent.”

Lan Wangji turned to him slowly. “…It is very quiet here.”

“You mean for once, I am quiet,” Wei Wuxian grinned.

They stood there in the silence for a moment longer.

Then Wei Wuxian gestured. “Come on. You haven’t even seen the training field I rigged with directional mist arrays. You can throw a talisman and it’ll come back to you like a spiritual boomerang.”

Lan Wangji followed without a word.

Outside, Wei Changze peeked around the corner of the hallway, grinning.

“They’re walking side by side already,” he whispered. “Progress!”

Madam Yu rolled her eyes, but her voice was softer when she replied, “They better not walk off into the woods unsupervised.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Afternoon light settled thick and drowsy over Lotus Pier.

It was the kind of heat that slowed everything except Wei Wuxian’s voice.

By the time Lan Wangji had been in Yunmeng a full day, he had been dragged through every hallway of the Jiang household, each corridor narrated with inappropriate anecdotes, historical inaccuracies, and half-finished jokes.

“This part of the courtyard used to be the old kitchen, before I—uh—accidentally set it on fire. A-Jie says it was a 'spontaneous alchemical miscalculation.’ I call it creative freedom.”

Lan Wangji nodded solemnly.

“And here’s the pond where I once tried to create a self-cleaning fish array. Jiang Cheng still doesn’t trust me with anything water-related.”

Again, a silent nod.

They walked the shaded walkways as the sun melted lazily into the lake. Crickets stirred in the reeds. A distant disciple shouted about someone stealing his sandals. The air was thick with the smell of crushed lotus petals, sweat, and curiously ginger simmering over fire.

Wei Wuxian inhaled deeply.

“Smells like lotus-root soup. That means A-Jie is cooking. You’re about to witness her seduction method. Don’t be fooled. It always begins with soup.”

Lan Wangji turned his head slightly. “Seduction?”

Wei Wuxian waggled his brows. “How else do you think she’s planning to trap you?”

“…With soup?”

Wei Wuxian patted his arm. “With soup, tea, and quiet smiles. She’s going to make it impossible for you to leave.”

Dinner was served on the shaded upper veranda— long cushions, open air, bowls of lotus-root soup, steamed buns, pickled vegetables, and grilled river fish on a floating tray of bamboo leaves.

Wei Changze sat at the head of the table with an apron still half-tied around his waist, eating like he hadn’t tasted food in years.

“Zhan-er, eat more fish!” he cried, passing over the tray enthusiastically. “A-Ying caught it this morning!”

“I was chasing a duck, not fishing,” Wei Wuxian muttered. “It just happened to jump into my arms.”

Madam Yu stared at him over her wine cup.

Lan Wangji accepted the tray, served himself exactly one modest portion, and said, “Thank you.”

“You’re too polite,” Jiang Yanli said gently. She placed a second helping in his bowl without asking. “Eat well tonight. Yunmeng welcomes guests with full stomachs.”

“And matchmaking,” Wei Wuxian muttered under his breath.

Jiang Yanli smiled serenely and said nothing.

Madam Yu, however, fixed her eldest son with a shrewd look. “Are you trying to scare him off?”

“Maybe,” Wei Wuxian said. “He’s seen me at my worst. I need to test his limits.”

“Your worst,” Lan Wangji said quietly, “was that duck incident.”

Wei Wuxian paused. Then laughed. “So you do have a sense of humor! I knew you were hiding it.”

“I am not hiding anything.”

Wei Changze nodded sagely. “That’s the sound of someone trying very hard not to say: ‘I like your son.’”

Lan Wangji choked on soup for the first time in recorded history. Wei Wuxian nearly fell over in delight.

After dinner, Jiang Yanli led Lan Wangji to the garden while Wei Wuxian remained inside to help Wei Changze clean—mostly by standing nearby and eating leftover buns.

Lan Wangji stood among flowering osmanthus, pale blossoms falling around his shoulders in the breeze. His white robes glowed under the paper lanterns.

“I hope it’s not too loud here,” Jiang Yanli said, softly brushing petals off a bench. “Gusu seems so quiet. Serene.”

“It is quiet,” Lan Wangji replied. “But not always peaceful.”

“You like it here?”

“I do.”

She offered him a cup of tea—warm, honey-sweetened, calming herbs layered gently with plum blossom. Hand-blended. Subtle. She’d spent the morning measuring it carefully.

“I used to make this for A-Xian when he was little,” she said. “He couldn’t sleep sometimes. I’d brew this for him, tell him stories until he stopped pretending he wasn’t crying.”

Lan Wangji held the cup with both hands. “He still cannot sleep easily.”

Jiang Yanli smiled faintly. “He trusts you.”

Lan Wangji said nothing. He lowered his gaze.

“Do you trust him?”

After a pause: “I do.”

“Then let him see you,” she said gently. “Not the Hanguang-jun everyone thinks you are. Just… you.”

She rose to return to the kitchen, leaving the tea behind.

Before she reached the door, she paused and glanced back.

“Oh—and smile more, Lan-gongzi. A-Xian loses his mind when you do.”

Chapter Text

By the third morning of Lan Wangji’s stay, peace had settled over Lotus Pier like mist—golden mornings, late breakfasts, Jiang Yanli’s soft laughter echoing through the hallways, and Wei Changze trying to pass off increasingly obvious marriage hints as casual conversation.

And then, the Jin arrived.

Or more accurately, Jin Zixuan did, armed with eight embroidered satchels, three hair oils, two matching attendants, and absolutely no emotional preparation.

He disembarked with the dignity of a prince and the expression of someone deeply betrayed by the humidity.

“This air is wet,” he muttered to no one, fanning himself with a golden talisman. “How does anyone live like this?”

A disciple came to greet him with a polite bow.

“Jin-gongzi, welcome to Yunmeng. May I take your bags?”

Jin Zixuan recoiled. “These satchels are embroidered with thread imported from Shu! Just—just be careful.”

The poor disciple blinked. “Of course.”

He turned, and the lotus board beneath his foot gave a dramatic squelch. Jin Zixuan slipped, flailed, and landed squarely on his silk-clad backside in a puddle of lotus-water.

The silence that followed was so complete it could have frozen time.

And then, from the upper pavilion, “Oh no,” Wei Wuxian said, loudly, already doubled over in laughter. “We haven’t even served lunch yet!”

Jiang Cheng coughed into his sleeve to hide a smile.
Jiang Yanli hurried forward, ever the peacemaker.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, kneeling beside Jin Zixuan, whose hair was beginning to come loose from the fall. “The humidity warps the boards sometimes. Let me help—”

Jin Zixuan, soaked and humiliated, opened his mouth. His voice cracked like a drying squash leaf. “Y-you… you look different from your portrait.”

There was a pause.

Wei Wuxian turned very slowly, expression gleaming with malicious joy. “Oh really?”

Jiang Yanli tilted her head and smiled like sunshine filtered through fog. “Portraits rarely capture everything, Jin-gongzi,” she said gently.

Jin Zixuan turned red from throat to ears.

Later that afternoon, the Jiang household attempted to host a refined tea reception to formally welcome Jin Zixuan. Jiang Yanli had prepared herbal infusions and a variety of delicate sweets. Wei Changze suggested arranging the teacakes in the shape of lotus petals. Madam Yu pretended not to care but arranged the seating so her daughter’s robes caught the light perfectly.

Lan Wangji sat quietly at the side, observing.

Jin Zixuan, still recovering from the puddle incident, tried to regain his composure.

“It’s very… uh, verdant here,” he told Jiang Yanli. “The lake is charming. Not—not as charming as Koi Tower, of course, but, ah—bucolic.”

Jiang Yanli sipped her tea. “Thank you.”

“Not that it’s simple. I don’t mean simple. I mean pleasantly unsophisticated— I mean—”

And that was when the bee landed in his teacup. He screamed. He actually screamed.

Wei Wuxian spat his tea. Jiang Cheng dropped a bun. Nie Huaisang, who had just arrived and was midway through sketching a pinecone, fell off the bench.

Jin Zixuan flailed so dramatically that he knocked the tray of teacakes into the air. One lodged in his hair.

Jiang Yanli caught one before it could fall and placed it neatly back on the table. “Would you like a cool cloth, Jin-gongzi?” she asked, not a hint of mockery in her voice.

Jin Zixuan stared at her, shell-shocked. “Yes,” he whispered.

She handed it over. Their fingers brushed.

He blushed.

Wei Wuxian groaned into both hands. “He’s so pathetic I think I actually support him now.”

Later That Night…

Lan Wangji found Wei Wuxian sitting at the edge of the pier, kicking his feet over the water.

“Did you see his face when the bee landed?” Wei Wuxian said, voice wheezy from laughing. “He looked like he was going to declare war on it.”

Lan Wangji sat beside him.

The sky above Yunmeng was darkening—stars winking into view, the moon soft and round over the lake.

“She was kind to him,” Lan Wangji said quietly.

“She’s kind to everyone. Even Meng Yao, and he gives me hives.” Wei Wuxian fell silent for a while, then added, “But… she’s different with Jin Zixuan, isn’t she?”

Lan Wangji didn’t answer.

Wei Wuxian leaned back on his elbows, stargazing. “I hope he learns how to be good enough for her.”

Lan Wangji glanced at him. “And you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“What do you hope for?”

Wei Wuxian smiled up at the moon. “…I hope I keep making you laugh.”

Lan Wangji said nothing.

But the next morning, Wei Wuxian found a pressed white tea flower tucked inside the edge of his tool kit.

He never mentioned it.
He didn’t have to.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

By the fourth day of Lan Wangji’s visit, the air in Lotus Pier had shifted.

Not that anyone said anything out loud.

The disciples still ran drills. Wei Wuxian still set off the occasional minor talisman explosion. Jiang Cheng still scowled and scolded, but only when no one was watching him do something thoughtful, like setting out a second water jar in the sun for Lan Wangji’s tea preference. Even Madam Yu, though she never stopped looking like she was evaluating everyone for spiritual weakness, didn’t interfere with the way Wei Wuxian always found himself in Lan Wangji’s orbit.

Something had simply... softened.

And in that space between the blooming lotus, pressed flowers, and quiet glances Jiang Yanli launched her plan.

A-Li’s Grand Summer Contest of Cultivation and Creativity

She announced it in the main courtyard, sweetly and without preamble, one morning after breakfast while everyone was still finishing their second cup of tea.

“I’ve decided,” she said, with that gentle air of absolute authority she wielded like a celestial whip, “that it’s time for some summer fun.”

Nie Huaisang looked up from where he was carving ducks into his fan. “Summer… fun?”

“It will be a competition,” she said calmly. “Each participant will present a cultivational invention or creative improvement—something innovative, helpful, or beautifully made. The prize…” She paused, eyes flicking meaningfully toward the guest courtyard, “…will be a smile.”

Lan Wangji, sipping tea in quiet dignity, blinked once.

Wei Wuxian almost dropped his bun. “A-A-Jie,” he stammered, “what do you mean a smile?”

Jiang Yanli folded her hands serenely. “A personal smile. From Hanguang-jun.”

Everyone turned.

Lan Wangji didn’t object. He didn’t say yes either, but he also didn’t leave the room, which, in Wei Wuxian’s mind, practically counted as a signed contract.

Jiang Cheng muttered, “You’re actually encouraging them?”

Jiang Yanli tilted her head. “I think we all know A-Xian will win. It’s more fun if there’s some suspense.”

The Invention Chaos Begins

By noon, the courtyard had become a small disaster zone.

Disciples from all over Yunmeng were suddenly discovering “ideas” they’d had for years—water-resistant talismans that accidentally electrocuted a tree, a spirit broom that tried to fly but instead screamed when you touched it, and a flurry of musical guqin mods that made Lan Wangji visibly suffer. Someone tried to enchant a melon to cool itself, only for it to explode dramatically.

Jiang Cheng had prepared a genuinely clever rotating seal array that expanded protective barriers—quiet, elegant, extremely Lan, and Wei Wuxian, while leaning on Lan Wangji’s shoulder to judge someone else’s flying rice paddle, whispered, “Don’t say it out loud, but A-Cheng is kind of a genius.”

Lan Wangji nodded. “He is.”

Wei Wuxian smiled. Lan Wangji looked away.

Then came Jin Zixuan, who proudly unveiled an automatic incense burner that filled the entire courtyard with “the scent of Jinlin Tower” in less than thirty seconds.

Nie Huaisang collapsed. “I can taste the power imbalance,” he gagged, fanning himself wildly. “It smells like gold leaf and father issues.”

Jiang Yanli was polite. “It’s… very strong, Zixuan-gongzi.”

Jin Zixuan, preening, missed the subtle emphasis on “very.”

Wei Wuxian snorted so loudly he had to fake a coughing fit.

And then, finally, Wei Wuxian stepped forward with something rolled up in a bamboo mat. He had waited, deliberately, until the sun hit the courtyard just right—lantern light dappling across the lake in the distance, the air golden with pollen and heat.

“I present,” he declared with a flourish, “the Resonant Reed Array.”

He unrolled the mat, revealing a delicate weave of golden reeds, spiritual thread, and floating talismans that hummed faintly even before they were activated.

“What does it do?” asked Jiang Cheng, suspicious.

Wei Wuxian grinned. “When spiritual energy is poured through the center sigil, the wind passes through the reeds, creating sound according to ambient qi. It plays music tuned to emotion.”

“…Emotion?” Lan Wangji asked, quietly.

Wei Wuxian nodded. “It’s not a battle tool. It’s for… remembering someone’s presence.”

He crouched beside it, pressed two fingers to the array, and channeled a single breath of golden spiritual energy.

The reeds fluttered. The talismans sparked. And music—low, haunting, pure—rose from the mat like wind chimes made of memory. Not loud, not perfect. Just a soft harmony, rising and falling, like someone whispering across water.

Everyone stilled.

Lan Wangji, for a moment, stopped breathing. Jiang Yanli placed her hand on her heart. Wei Wuxian sat back on his heels and said nothing.

The music faded. The air felt heavier for its absence.

And across the courtyard, Lan Wangji… smiled. Just once. Just for him. Not a large smile. Not something loud or showy. But real. Slight, certain. Soft.

Wei Wuxian blinked, stunned.

Jiang Yanli clapped once and declared, “We have a winner.”

Wei Wuxian didn’t even care. His ears were ringing. He had never won anything worth more.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The invention contest ended with Wei Wuxian dramatically sprawled across the lotus walkway, fanning himself with a wet scroll and pretending to faint from success.

Lan Wangji stood five steps away, holding the faintest smile like a secret coin.

Jiang Yanli was already orchestrating tea for everyone in celebration. Jin Zixuan sulked quietly over his incense burner, which had been exiled to a corner and sealed in a ward bubble. Nie Huaisang was congratulating Wei Wuxian while sketching poetic ducks on the bottom of a discarded contest flyer.

And then—chaos.

“IT WON’T LET GO!”

Everyone turned.

Nie Huaisang was staggering toward them, one sandal missing, both sleeves torn, and a single very determined duck attached to the bottom hem of his robe.

A spirit duck.

Wei Wuxian blinked. “Why is that duck glowing?”

“I—I DON’T KNOW!” Huaisang wailed. “I was sketching it! I made a duck-shaped talisman for fun—just for fun! I only chanted the anchor incantation once! Maybe twice! Now it thinks I’m itsmother!!”

The duck honked affectionately. A soft light pulsed through its feathers.

“…You bound it,” Jiang Cheng said flatly.

“I accidentally bound it!”

Lan Wangji stepped forward, crouched to examine the glow. “The binding is attuned to your core. It’s stable but… incomplete.”

“Then break it!” Nie Huaisang shrieked.

“I can’t,” Lan Wangji said serenely. “It would cause backlash.”

The duck pecked lovingly at Huaisang’s foot. “Help,” he whispered, collapsing to the ground, “I don’t want to be a father.”

Wei Wuxian eventually set up a makeshift talisman breaker using lotus stems, a thread-etched jade shard, and Lan Wangji’s guqin as a grounding tool. They worked in tandem under the shade of the eastern archway while Nie Huaisang was forcibly soothed with pastries and sobbed into a hand towel embroidered with mandarin ducks.

It was delicate work.

“Hold it there,” Wei Wuxian said, crouched close to Lan Wangji, fingers brushing his as he adjusted the spiritual array. “Don’t let the current shift too fast.”

Lan Wangji didn’t speak. His hands were steady, long fingers wrapped around the edge of the jade piece with perfect precision.

Wei Wuxian looked up—too close, again. His breath caught.

For one suspended moment, they weren’t fixing anything. They were just looking.

Wei Wuxian swallowed. “Thanks for… letting me win,” he said, low. “For smiling.”

“You earned it.” A pause. Then, soft as dusk settling over the water, “I do not smile for everyone.”

Wei Wuxian turned his head away too quickly. “Yeah,” he said, heart stuttering. “I figured.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The lanterns at Lotus Pier glowed gold that evening, casting dappled light across the garden courtyards. The air smelled of steamed rice, sweet lotus pastries, and the faint cooling of early twilight—the kind of breeze that promised comfort rather than rain.

It was a rare moment of quiet.

Most of the guests and disciples had wandered off to their rooms or the waterfront pavilions. Nie Huaisang had fallen asleep on the veranda, curled under a patterned cloth that Jiang Yanli had tucked around his shoulders with maternal precision. Jin Zixuan was helping fold streamers, surprisingly obedient under her direction, only grumbling once when she adjusted the collar of his robe.

Wei Wuxian had escaped the dining hall some time ago, using the pretense of needing to check a malfunctioning lantern array—which everyone knew was a lie—and had not yet returned.

Lan Wangji remained.

Still, serene, and seated politely on the garden’s side bench, hands folded over a cup of tea he had not yet finished. His posture was perfect, but his gaze lingered toward the moonlit corridor—toward wherever Wei Wuxian had vanished.

He was waiting.

Everyone knew. But no one said it aloud.

Not until Cangse Sanren stepped into the garden.

She moved like drifting wind, quiet, soft-footed, utterly at ease in a place where everyone else still seemed to walk with formality. Her robes were white and lilac trim in dusty blossom pink, her hair tied back in a loose braid threaded with a red ribbon. Her sleeves were lightly stained with flour from helping the kitchen staff prepare dumplings; she’d insisted on pitching in despite their protests.

She had that timeless beauty, not because of cosmetics or grace, but because of the way she carried memory in her eyes— kindness, mischief, a thousand unspoken things softened with age and never bitter.

When she entered, Lan Wangji stood immediately and bowed.

She waved him back down with a flick of her fingers. “No need for all that, Lan-er. We’re family here.”

Lan Wangji hesitated. “…Madam—”

“A-yi will do,” she interrupted. “Unless you’d prefer ‘A-Niang’ to match the way my husband keeps referring to you as our son-in-law.”

Lan Wangji blinked, just once.

From somewhere behind the garden wall, a loud crash sounded. “I HEARD THAT!” Wei Wuxian’s voice shouted.

Cangse Sanren’s lips curved into a serene smile. “Good,” she murmured. “Let him suffer.”

Lan Wangji, still standing perfectly straight, did not laugh. But something in his expression lightened, just a breath of fondness around the edges of his reserve.

Cangse stepped closer, placed a small paper-wrapped bundle beside his teacup. “Candied ginger. You strike me as someone who forgets to eat when he studies too long.”

“Thank you,” Lan Wangji said quietly.

“Mn. My son’s the same.” She sat beside him without invitation, folding one leg beneath her robes. “He gets it from me, I suppose. A little too much soul, not enough sense of time. And if you tell him I said that, I’ll deny it and blame the talismans.”

A soft footfall behind them signaled another arrival. Jiang Fengmian stepped into view, robes of muted violet falling in still, impeccable lines. His expression was calm, unreadable, and his movements unhurried. Without a word, he set down a lacquered tray bearing a second teapot and three finely-crafted cups, the quiet clink of porcelain the only sound he made

“You forgot the honey,” Cangse said, accepting the tray anyway.

“You prefer the bitterness,” he replied mildly.

“I prefer control over my sweetness.”

Jiang Fengmian’s eyes crinkled faintly at the corners, a subtle expression that passed like a ripple across still water. He turned to Lan Wangji and offered a slow, respectful nod.

“Wangji,” he said, voice low and composed. “It is good to see you again. Your presence honors our home.”

Lan Wangji returned the bow with equal formality. “Uncle Jiang. I am grateful for your hospitality.”

Jiang Fengmian poured the tea with unhurried grace, each motion precise and ceremonial. The faint steam curled between them like breath held between words.

“It has been many years,” Jiang Fengmian said quietly, “since your father and I stood side by side in the discussion halls. He was always the mountain—unyielding, immovable.”

He glanced at Lan Wangji, something pensive flickering in his gaze. “You are the river,” he continued, “carving your path quietly, yet with persistence. Steady. And when needed, unstoppable.”

Lan Wangji inclined his head. “…My father holds great respect for you.”

“As I do him,” Jiang Fengmian replied, setting the teapot down with a deliberate softness. “I see much of his strength in you. But not only his. There is something else in your presence. Something quieter… a reflection of your mother’s spirit, perhaps.”

A brief silence followed, filled only by the soft rustle of lotus leaves beyond the courtyard.

“I’m glad our paths cross now,” Jiang Fengmian said at last. “With fewer shadows between us.”

Lan Wangji did not speak, but the quiet weight of his presence held the shape of gratitude.

Then, suddenly—a thunderous clatter.

From the side path came a voice: “Where’s my glorious heir of the house of us?! Where is my future son-in-law?!”

Wei Changze. There was no stopping him once he started.

He arrived in full dramatic flourish, waving a fan (that didn’t belong to him), his hair slightly windblown and eyes sparkling with pride.

Lan Wangji’s spine straightened.

Cangse exhaled through her nose. “Changze,” she said flatly, “do not start.”

“Start? I never stopped! Lan-er is here. Look at him! Glowing like a moonstone. Drinking our tea like a man ready to be married. Did you see how he caught our son before he tripped on the sparring mats earlier? Reflexes of a devoted husband!”

“Lan Zhan didn’t catch me!” came Wei Wuxian’s indignant yell from behind the rockery. “I tripped and he was in the way!”

“You landed in his arms!” Changze shouted back. “That’s fate!”

Cangse sipped her tea. Jiang Fengmian watched with a long-suffering patience that only came from twenty five of friendship with this particular madman.

“Let him wear himself out,” Cangse murmured to Lan Wangji. “He’ll propose on your behalf next.”

“I already did!” Wei Changze said proudly, popping back into view. “Red paper! Gold calligraphy! Double happiness symbol shaped like rabbits!”

“Stop encouraging him!” Wei Wuxian wailed.

“Too late!” Changze chirped.

Lan Wangji, remarkably, did not flinch. Instead, he turned slightly toward Cangse Sanren and Jiang Fengmian. “May I ask… how do you endure this?”

Cangse smiled. “With wine.”

Jiang Fengmian added mildly, “And patience.”

Cangse set down her teacup, her gaze softening under the weight of memory. “The truth is, Wangji… we’ve known each other a long time—the four of us. After Changze and I married, we stayed at Lotus Pier. Ziyuan insisted on it said it wouldn’t be home without us. She and Changze were close from their youth— chaotic, impossible, always dragging each other into trouble.”

She let out a quiet laugh, eyes flicking toward the courtyard where lotus leaves swayed in the breeze. “Fengmian and I were the unlucky ones, always stuck holding their swords during sparring breaks, trying to keep things from catching fire—sometimes literally.”

Jiang Fengmian nodded, his voice low and even. “By then, Ziyuan and I were already married. It… made sense, in its own way. Somehow, we all ended up under one roof. And despite everything, we remained.”

“Unusual,” Cangse said with a wry tilt of her head. “But not unwelcome.”

A rare smile passed through Jiang Fengmian’s expression, flickering like a ripple on still water. “And still,” he said softly, glancing toward her, “we chose each other. Over and over.”

Cangse’s voice gentled, her fingers brushing the rim of her cup. “Because we believed in our children. And because family isn’t just blood. It’s every moment someone chooses to stay.”

She looked Lan Wangji full in the face then, her tone turning light again. “And you—well. You’ve stayed this long, haven’t you?”

He met her eyes, calm but sincere. “I am not leaving.”

Wei Wuxian, walking in with a tray of cold fruit, froze halfway through the arch. “…Oh,” he said, stupidly.

Cangse raised a brow.

Changze, triumphantly, pointed with both hands. “I told you!”

Lan Wangji stood slowly and walked toward Wei Wuxian, not hurried, not hesitant. He took one piece of fruit from the tray—then pressed his fingers briefly over Wei Wuxian’s, steady and deliberate.

No words passed between them. But they didn’t need them.

Because every parent on that terrace already understood.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

That night, long after the duck had been safely released into a warded pond (Jiang Yanli had quietly placed a shielding array around it “just in case” Nie Huaisang accidentally summoned another one), and long after Wei Changze had finally stopped handing out symbolic wedding cookies, the garden finally quieted.

The lanterns burned lower. The wind softened.

And Wei Wuxian found himself walking the long outer path back toward the veranda—feet bare, robe loose, the air still warm from the heat of the day.

His parents had stayed behind, sipping tea with Madam Yu and Uncle Jiang, swapping old stories about sword duels and baby baths and every embarrassing detail in between. He’d slipped out with a red face and a full stomach, telling himself he wasn’t hiding. Not exactly.

The truth was, he’d felt too full—not just from food or wine, but from something he didn’t know how to hold. Something too warm, too heavy. Like affection he hadn’t asked for but had somehow been given in spades.

So when he saw Lan Wangji sitting alone by the far end of the outer garden, under the wide-armed osmanthus tree, it didn’t surprise him. Not really.

The moonlight bathed the entire space in pale silver. The lotus pond glistened with still water and firefly glimmers. The guqin rested across Lan Wangji’s knees, untouched but steady, his white sleeves trailing faintly with the shimmer of nighttime qi.

“You’re still up,” Wei Wuxian said quietly, walking toward him. His voice came softer than he expected.

“I could not sleep,” Lan Wangji answered.

Wei Wuxian didn’t ask why.

He sat beside him without asking.

The silence that settled between them wasn’t awkward—not anymore. It was the kind of quiet he had always wished he could share with someone else: not the absence of words, but the presence of being known. It wrapped around them like the warmth of tea steam on a cold morning.

Still, Wei Wuxian, being himself, filled the space anyway.

“I keep thinking,” he murmured, looking toward the water, “about how weird this all is.”

Lan Wangji turned slightly, watching him.

“You, here,” Wei Wuxian continued. “Not glaring at me across a scroll table. Not reciting sect rules or reporting me to Lan Qiren for criminal levels of footwork.”

“You were barefoot on the roof,” Lan Wangji replied.

Wei Wuxian’s eyes crinkled. “It was hot!”

There was the smallest flicker—barely even a movement—but Lan Wangji’s mouth softened at the corner.

That alone felt like victory.

Wei Wuxian tilted his head back, eyes on the sky. “I was always loud as a kid,” he said, almost wistfully. “Mama used to say I was like a bell in a quiet temple. Couldn’t help ringing, even when I shouldn’t.”

He laughed softly. “I used to imagine this perfect friend. Someone who’d let me be annoying but wouldn’t make me feel like I had to apologize for it. Someone who wouldn’t leave when I got too much. Who wouldn’t ask me to explain myself when I didn’t have words yet.”

He looked at Lan Wangji then. Really looked. “I think you might be that person.”

Lan Wangji didn’t move. But something in his expression wavered—only slightly, like moonlight shifting on still water.

Wei Wuxian leaned back on his hands, fingers splayed against the wood, his smile flickering. “…Even if you do ruin everything by being so pretty it gives me headaches.”

Lan Wangji turned his head sharply.

Wei Wuxian smiled wider—but there was something behind it. A quiver in the fingers that dug into the veranda’s edge. A nervous flutter in his chest that had nothing to do with teasing.

He felt exposed. Not in the dramatic, performative way—but in the real way. The terrifyingly honest way.

And Lan Wangji, as he always did, answered not with words—but with presence.

He did not laugh.
He did not flinch.
He simply sat there, steady beside him.

Long after Wei Wuxian had gone to bed—robe rumpled, hair damp from moonlight, heart thudding too loud—Lan Wangji remained.

He set the guqin in front of him and wrote a poem. He wrote it slowly, carefully, like a prayer made of ink and breath and longing.

Then he burned it—quietly, deliberately—over the guqin’s soft-pulsed fire.

The ash scattered over the garden stones and smelled faintly of pressed lotus and osmanthus bloom.

It was not a confession. Not yet.

But it was something close. And it was his.

Chapter Text

Flashback – “Lan Zhan, Right?”

It hadn’t been an important trip. Not on paper, anyway.

Just a minor diplomatic visit from Yunmeng to Gusu, an exchange of harvest blessings, a discussion of cultivation discipline schedules, some perfunctory words about collaboration between sect juniors.

Madam Yu had attended out of obligation, Jiang Fengmian out of principle. Wei Wuxian had come only because he had begged to, and Jiang Cheng had followed because someone needed to keep him from falling into a pond. In the meantime, Wei Changze and his wife, Cangse Sanren, remained at Lotus Pier to oversee things while the others were away at the Gusu Lan Sect.

They had arrived during twilight, when the sky spilled ink across the mountains and the lanterns in Cloud Recesses began to glow like pearls cupped in silence. The halls were mostly empty— too late for lectures, too early for curfews. The delegation was led to the guest quarters. Formalities were exchanged. Wei Wuxian, predictably, vanished within twenty minutes.

“I’m going to observe the resonance wards,” he had declared, already halfway out the sliding screen door. “Purely for educational purposes.”

Jiang Cheng shouted after him that if he got arrested by Lan sect security again, he wouldn’t be coming to bail him out this time.

And so, barefoot and curious, hair half-tied and sleeves ink-smudged from his travel sketches, Wei Wuxian wandered into the outer gardens of Gusu.

The wind in Cloud Recesses was different from Yunmeng’s, less wild, more precise. It whispered instead of shouted. Even the crickets sang in tuned harmony.

Wei Wuxian was chasing a particularly unusual moth— its wings glowed faintly silver in the moonlight when he turned a corner too fast and slammed full-force into a figure dressed in white.

The impact was not dramatic. It was humiliating.

Wei Wuxian fell backwards in a tangle of limbs and laughter, landing hard on his back in a bed of ornamental moss. His forehead ribbon slipped over one eye.

The person he collided with didn’t fall. Didn’t even stumble.

He simply stood there poised, composed, looking down at him with an expression of distant confusion, as if someone had dropped a flute into his lap and expected him to dance with it.

“Wow,” Wei Wuxian said from the ground, blinking up. “You’re very… solid.”

The boy, he couldn’t have been much older than Wei Wuxian himself tilted his head ever so slightly. He was already dressed in formal inner robes, white and pale blue embroidered with faint cloud motifs. His hands were tucked into his sleeves. His expression didn’t shift, but his brow creased faintly, as if processing a math equation that had suddenly tripped and landed at his feet.

Wei Wuxian squinted. “Wait. I know you. Don’t tell me…” There was no answer.

Wei Wuxian sat up and pointed. “You’re that Lan boy. You live here, obviously. With the forehead ribbon and the face like a scroll no one’s allowed to draw on. What’s your name again?”

A beat of silence. Then, flatly: “Lan Zhan, Wangji.”

“Right, right, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian grinned. “But they call you Lan Wangji, don’t they? That’s your courtesy name.”

“…Yes.”

“Well, Lan Wangji,” he said, brushing moss from his shoulder, “you’ve just been hit by the future most brilliant talisman cultivator in the history of the realms. Lucky you.”

Lan Wangji’s eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction. “You are… Wei Wuxian.”

“That’s me! The scandal of Yunmeng. The headache of every teacher I’ve ever had.” He held out a hand, still seated on the ground. “You’re not going to help me up?”

Lan Wangji hesitated. Then, as if weighed down by some invisible moral code of manners, he reached out.

Their hands met.

Wei Wuxian’s palm was ink-smudged, warm, a little scratched from the moss. Lan Wangji’s was cool, calloused, steady.

He helped Wei Wuxian to his feet in one pull. Wei Wuxian didn’t let go right away. He stared at the other boy, eyes wide and shining with that endless, incorrigible curiosity.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Are you always this tall, or is it the forehead ribbon adding extra height?”

Lan Wangji said nothing.

Wei Wuxian leaned forward, squinting. “Wow. Your eyebrows are so intense. Do you sleep with them still furrowed? Or do they relax at midnight like some spiritual array?”

Lan Wangji did not flinch. “You are very loud.”

Wei Wuxian beamed. “And you’re not running away. That means I like you already.”

Lan Wangji blinked.

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly. Just strange. Balanced. The garden seemed to hush around them.

Wei Wuxian tilted his head and pointed to the guqin case slung neatly over Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “You play?”

“Yes.”

“Well then,” he said, crossing his arms, “since you almost stepped on me, you owe me a song.”

“I did not—”

“Lan Wangji,” Wei Wuxian interrupted sweetly, already walking past him toward the inner gardens, “I’m bleeding from pride and minor moss trauma. The least you can do is show me the legendary koi pond and prove you’re not secretly a statue carved from ice and etiquette.”

He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Lan Wangji stared at him a moment longer. His posture remained rigid, unreadable. Then— He followed.

They walked in silence after that. Side by side, Wei Wuxian narrating the shape of the clouds and the flaws in Lan ward placement (“Too symmetrical. No mystery.”), and Lan Wangji saying absolutely nothing.

But he listened.

And when Wei Wuxian called him Lan Zhan, it sounded as natural as a breath.

It would not be the last time. But it was the first.

And for Wei Wuxian, somehow—it already felt like a beginning.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

If one were to ask later how the alliance began, no one would quite remember the same version.

Some would say it started with a poorly shielded perimeter ward and a pack of rabbits that stole Nie Huaisang’s fan.

Some would insist it was the moment Jiang Yanli brought out her first tray of soft-lotus buns and six juniors from four sects sat down together, not as diplomats or disciples, but simply as friends.

But if one had to name a moment with precision, it was likely this:

A sweltering summer afternoon at the Gusu Lan guest pavilions, with sect heirs sprawled beneath the shade of a weeping willow and absolutely no intention of following the meditation schedule posted in delicate gold script beside the gate.

Wei Wuxian lay flat on his back, robes rumpled, arms behind his head, watching cloud shapes with a talisman over his eyes like a makeshift sunshade. He was humming to himself, tapping his foot against Jiang Cheng’s ankle just to annoy him.

Jiang Cheng, trying very hard to maintain his dignity and not retaliate with a foot in the ribs, glared over the top of his scroll. “Stop that.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I’m trying to map our next rotation and you're vibrating like a mosquito.”

“That’s just my natural genius trying to escape.”

Across from them, Jin Zixuan sat with the posture of someone regretting every life choice that led to his presence in this specific patch of grass. “Your genius has terrible timing.”

Wei Wuxian tilted his head lazily. “Oh? Would you like to contribute something to our completely unsanctioned multi-sect lunch gathering, Young Master Jin?”

“I brought the cold tea,” Jin Zixuan muttered.

“And we’re grateful,” Jiang Yanli said kindly, pouring it with quiet hands and the kind of smile that disarmed even the stiffest egos.

Nie Huaisang, fanning himself theatrically, leaned over to reach for another plum bun. “You know, if we weren’t all technically supposed to be doing scrollwork right now, this would be charming.”

“We are building relations between sects,” Wei Wuxian declared. “This is diplomacy. Enlightenment. Peaceful innovation.”

“You’re lying in the grass like you’re on holiday.”

“Exactly.”

It was Huaisang who said it first, half-laughing: “We’re basically our own little sect now. A secret alliance. The Sect of Sighing Juniors.”

Wei Wuxian perked up. “Ooh, that has potential. Maybe we'll get matching talismans?”

“No,” said Jiang Cheng flatly.

“Absolutely,” Wei Wuxian beamed.

Nie Huaisang clapped. “We can have robes! A group name! Weekly debriefing dinners! And no morning lectures.”

“None of this is regulation,” Jin Zixuan said, but without real bite. His cup had already been refilled, and he was beginning to recline slightly against the slope of the hill.

Lan Wangji, sitting at the far edge of the shade with his spine straight and his guqin case beside him, said nothing at all. He had not yet spoken that afternoon—but his gaze flicked toward Wei Wuxian often, subtly, as if checking his presence like one might check a compass for true north.

He had not left the circle. That, in itself, was a declaration.

The Pact Is Formed

“Should we name it?” Wei Wuxian asked later that day, idly carving a charm seal into a thin piece of scrap wood.

“The Not-Very-Official Sect?” Jiang Cheng offered dryly.

“The Unofficial Sect Alliance,” said Jiang Yanli, dimpling. “Sounds less incriminating.”

“That makes it sound real,” Nie Huaisang said, delighted.

Jin Zixuan arched his brow. “Will there be rules?”

“No betrayal. No Meng Yaos,” Wei Wuxian said at once. Everyone froze briefly.

Jiang Yanli cleared her throat and adjusted her sleeve. “I... will allow that.”

“I will celebrate that,” Jiang Cheng muttered.

Nie Huaisang snorted into his sleeve. “We should commemorate this moment.”

And Wei Wuxian did what he always did when his heart was full of too many things to name. He created.

Within two days, he had a prototype: six spirit-linked talismans that activated when imbued with the holder’s qi, humming or glowing depending on urgency. Each talisman was sealed with a unique frequency thread.

Lan Wangji had helped refine the stability, quietly threading Gusu-style harmonics into the woven seals.

Jiang Yanli embroidered the corners with delicate lotus blossoms for “grace and protection.”

Nie Huaisang added a cartoon duck to his.

Jin Zixuan refused decoration. “Function over form,” he insisted.

Jiang Cheng secretly reinforced his with storm-dampening wards and never told anyone.

Wei Wuxian’s glowed brighter than the rest—chaotic but joyful, humming like it was always on the verge of laughter.

When he handed Lan Wangji his charm, he smiled softly. “For emergencies,” he said.

Lan Wangji accepted it with both hands, reverent. “I will answer every call.”

Wei Wuxian’s heart skipped. He laughed it off. “Even if it’s about runaway rabbits?”

“Especially then.”

The Pact Is Sealed. That evening, beneath paper lanterns and the faint smell of evening mist, the six of them sat together in a half-circle of friendship and unspoken understanding.

Wei Wuxian stood, theatrically solemn.

“I propose that we, cultivators of varying backgrounds, declare this circle one of loyalty, mischief, shared invention, and mutual preservation.”

“No betrayal,” said Jin Zixuan.
“No boring lectures,” added Huaisang.
“No Meng Yao,” muttered Jiang Cheng.
“No regrets,” said Jiang Yanli, eyes gentle.

Lan Wangji stood without speaking. And extended his talisman to the center.

One by one, the others joined, weaving the charms together with a thin strand of red thread. It shimmered briefly— spiritual light echoing in soft warmth—and then faded.

But the bond held.
Not forged by blood.
Forged by friendship.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The clouds over Gusu hung low that evening, painted with lavender dusk and a spill of gold that made the mountain ridges look like calligraphy strokes drawn in slow reverence. The air, ever-temperate in Cloud Recesses, carried the scent of pine and fresh parchment.

In the east pavilion of the inner Lan residence—a quiet alcove curtained with pale silk and guarded by koi pools and medicinal herb beds—Madam Lan was pouring tea as if it were a formal ceremony. Every motion was graceful, deliberate. Every curve of her wrist said she had never known the taste of chaos in her life.

Which was, of course, a well-practiced lie.

She knew exactly what chaos looked like. It was currently taking the form of her younger son, who had returned from Yunmeng after a “brief summer visit” looking like someone who had come back with the beginnings of a love bond and a smile he didn’t know he was wearing.

Lan Xichen arrived at the pavilion with quiet footsteps, brushing aside a trailing curtain of bamboo leaves. “You called for me?” he asked, voice polite.

“Sit,” his mother said, not looking up from the teapot. “We’re discussing your brother’s heart.”

Lan Xichen blinked. “I… see.”

Qingheng-Jun was already seated on the far side of the table, long sleeves folded over his knees, expression calm. Too calm.

“Did something happen?” Lan Xichen asked, though he had a strong suspicion he already knew.

“Oh, nothing catastrophic,” Madam Lan said airily. “No surprise injuries, no fainting spells, no family scandals involving mystical birds or forbidden talismans. Unless, of course, you count the fact that your brother is now emotionally compromised by a boy who treats rules like polite suggestions.”

Lan Xichen barely stopped himself from choking on the breath he hadn’t quite taken. He sat down carefully. “You mean… Wei Wuxian.”

Madam Lan offered him a cup of tea like she was handing over a sealed scroll of divine revelation. “I mean A-Zhan’s Wei Wuxian, yes.”

Qingheng-Jun hummed, a thoughtful sound that rustled deeper than the wind. “He called him that. Not just by name. By knowing.”

“He’s known him by name since he was fifteen,” Lan Xichen murmured, taking the cup. “They met before the lectures, once, in the gardens. A moment, but… it stayed.”

“Yes,” Madam Lan said. “And he’s never stopped calling him Lan Zhan.” Her eyes glinted, sharp as a quill under lamplight. “Which means we are long overdue for planning.”

“Planning what?” Lan Xichen asked, though dread had already begun to blossom in his chest like a very polite, elegant vine.

Madam Lan sipped her tea. “A future.”

Qingheng-Jun set his cup down. “One in which our son does not accidentally repress himself into a spiritual coma.”

“You know he will,” Madam Lan added. “He’s inherited your stubbornness, Husband.”

“And your taste for subtle dramatics,” Qingheng-Jun replied mildly.

“Please don’t say things like that while I’m holding hot tea,” Lan Xichen said, very softly.

His mother waved her hand. “He came back with a pressed plum blossom in his sleeve and a new rhythm to his silence. He is… changing.”

Qingheng-Jun nodded. “And he has not spoken a word about it.”

“He never does,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”

She leaned forward slightly. “Tell me everything.”

Lan Xichen gave her a helpless look. “Mother—”

“Don’t mother me, A-Huan. I have waited long years for that boy to look at someone the way he looks at Wei Wuxian. I watched him spend his entire childhood staring out the window like he was waiting for a dream he didn’t believe in. Then suddenly, there he is—smiling, playing guqin with flair, touching talismans as if they’re meant to be shared instead of safeguarded. And all because a boy from Yunmeng writes him letters with drawings of ducks in them.”

Lan Xichen placed his forehead gently in one palm. “I told Wuxian not to send the duck drawing.”

“I framed it,” Madam Lan said proudly. “It’s adorable.”

Qingheng-Jun cleared his throat again—more pointedly this time. “His posture has shifted,” he said, tone clinical. “His silence no longer pushes people away. It listens.”

Lan Xichen looked up, startled.

“He sat with me yesterday,” Qingheng-Jun added. “Did not speak for half an hour. But the quiet was not lonely.”

Madam Lan exhaled like someone releasing an entire bouquet of long-held breath. “Then it’s worse than I thought. He’s already in love.”

“Mother—”

“And what do we know about Wei Wuxian?” she pressed. “Brilliant. Loud. Curious. A magnetic disaster wrapped in laughter. He’ll never realize it unless we lightly nudge him.”

“Lightly,” Lan Xichen repeated, warily.

“I’m thinking… a matchmaking talisman.”

“Mother.”

“One that doesn’t activate until both parties admit emotional resonance,” she added. “We’ll call it the Affection-Acknowledgment Array. I’ll embroider it onto a handkerchief.”

Qingheng-Jun sipped his tea again, this time with just the faintest twinkle in his eyes. “Make it lotus-scented. A-Zhan likes lotus tea now.”

“Oh, I knew it,” she said, triumphant. “He drank two cups during the last clan banquet and didn’t complain once. And that boy—Wei Wuxian—he brews it the same way I used to, with plum shavings. It’s destiny.”

Lan Xichen set his cup down with a resigned clink. “You’re serious about this.”

Madam Lan folded her hands. “Of course I am. We missed the opportunity to set you up with that lovely cultivator from Qinghe because you kept quoting poetry instead of flirting. I will not make that mistake again.”

“I wasn’t flirting,” Lan Xichen said, horrified.

“Exactly,” his mother said. “Which is why you are not currently handfasted and blissfully in love beside a pine grove. But it’s fine. Because now I have a new mission.”

She turned to her husband. “Husband, be honest. Wouldn’t you like to see our son… happy?”

Qingheng-Jun’s eyes softened—not visibly, but inwardly. The way old stone softens when moss finally grows across it. “I would like to see him living.”

There was a beat of stillness, reverent and aching.

Lan Xichen looked between them his mother’s spark, his father’s gravity and felt, for the first time, a weight not pressing on him, but rising with him. “You’ll support them?” he asked.

Madam Lan nodded. “If he chooses him.”

“He already has,” Qingheng-Jun said simply.

Lan Xichen closed his eyes for a moment. Then smiled. “In that case,” he said, reaching for the teapot to refill their cups, “we should prepare.”

“For what?” his mother asked, already leaning forward like a strategist in full war paint.

“For the moment Wei Wuxian realizes,” Lan Xichen replied, “that the boy he’s been writing poems about under the guise of experimental talisman notes is already in love with him.”

“And then what?” she asked.

Lan Xichen smiled. “Then we let the ducks handle it.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The idea for the array was born, as most Wei Wuxian inventions were, somewhere between inspired genius and absolute nonsense.

They were resting after an exhausting three-hour spiritual barrier drill, half their group collapsed across a training field littered with discarded talismans, training swords, and a single duck Nie Huaisang insisted had followed him “all the way from Lotus Pier.”

Wei Wuxian lay on his stomach, using Jiang Cheng’s foot as a paperweight, scribbling notes onto a talisman sheet with his brush clenched between his teeth.

Lan Wangji, ever silent, ever watchful, sat with perfect posture not far from him, observing without interruption. His guqin case rested beside him unopened. His eyes, however, had begun to flicker toward Wei Wuxian more often than toward the sky.

“The barrier we practiced earlier,” Wei Wuxian said through his brush, “it was good. Effective. Boring.”

Jiang Cheng groaned. “Not this again.”

“No, no, listen—what if we added intent to the response mechanism?”

“Intent,” said Jin Zixuan, dryly, “is subjective.”

“Exactly! But that’s what makes it interesting. What if an array could respond to emotion, not just input? What if anger strengthened the outer shields and joy lifted the inner ring?”

Nie Huaisang blinked from behind his fan. “You want to make a formation that works better the happier you are?”

“Or more chaotic! Or—more attuned.”

Wei Wuxian turned over, brush tapping against his chin now. “What if we train a formation to sync with multiple spiritual cores—each one acting like a thread in a woven net. You step, it responds. You breathe, it pulses. You fight—it sings.”

Jiang Yanli tilted her head. “That would require perfect spiritual alignment between cultivators.”

Wei Wuxian beamed. “Exactly.”

Nie Huaisang fanned himself lazily. “Sounds romantic.”

Wei Wuxian ignored that. “It’s practical!”

Lan Wangji said, “It’s possible.” Everyone looked at him. Lan Wangji met Wei Wuxian’s gaze steadily. “If the cores are compatible.”

Wei Wuxian’s smile faltered. Then it deepened.

They started the next day.

Lan Wangji offered a training hall with high walls and untouched floors. Jiang Yanli brought tea and warming talismans. Nie Huaisang drew fake instruction scrolls and immediately got told off by Jin Zixuan, who ended up supervising the grounding lines.

Wei Wuxian chalked formation circles by hand, his sleeves pushed up, hair half-unbound and shining in the morning light. Lan Wangji followed behind him, quietly correcting arcane curves and adding anchoring symbols with exacting precision.

They worked without speaking.

And yet, every time Wei Wuxian shifted, Lan Wangji mirrored him with such quiet immediacy that their movements began to form a rhythm.

By the second hour, Wei Wuxian had stopped thinking of the array as a solo project.

It was theirs.

Test One: The Failure
Jin Zixuan played the first music pulse.

His flute sounded clear, elegant, and completely incompatible.

The array sparked, surged too fast, then spat out the talismans like a disapproving spiritual toad.

Wei Wuxian clapped once. “All right! Not everything is made for classical structure.”

Jin Zixuan glared. “My form is flawless.”

“It is,” said Jiang Yanli diplomatically. “But this array may require… less elegance.”

“More chaos,” Nie Huaisang supplied helpfully.

“I vote for Wei Wuxian to play next,” Jiang Cheng muttered.

“Why not you?”

“I don’t play.”

Wei Wuxian turned to Lan Wangji. “How about—”

Lan Wangji was already setting down his guqin case.

Test Two: The Connection
When Lan Wangji began to play, the air changed.

The notes weren’t loud or showy. They flowed like water over stone subtle, sure, unwavering. He played a harmonic scale, then a single, unfinished phrase. A melody waiting to be answered.

Wei Wuxian stepped into the formation ring. He didn’t speak. Didn’t gesture. He just moved. One step soft but swift. Then another, gliding through the ring as if the array were a stage and Lan Wangji’s music the cue.

The talismans pulsed. Not in defense, but in recognition.

As Wei Wuxian’s motion synced with the guqin’s song, spiritual light wove between each rune like thread pulled through fabric soft arcs of gold and silver glowing underfoot.

And when Wei Wuxian reached the center and turned— Lan Wangji met his eyes.

The formation sang.

The music trembled and rose, catching on their combined qi like wind in a kite. A low hum echoed through the chamber, not from the guqin, but from the spiritual formation itself.

Nie Huaisang gasped.
Jin Zixuan stared.
Jiang Yanli’s hand touched her chest.
Jiang Cheng scowled. “That’s not normal.”
Wei Wuxian, breathing a little too fast, whispered, “No. It’s perfect.”

After: Unspoken Realizations
That night, after the others had dispersed, Lan Wangji lingered.

Wei Wuxian approached with two cups of tea and an uncertain smile. “We make a good team.”

Lan Wangji didn’t answer immediately. But he took the tea. Held it between both hands. Then quietly, he said “Yes.”

Wei Wuxian’s fingers brushed his briefly, unthinking. Lan Wangji didn’t pull away. Neither of them said what was hovering between their breaths.

But the array behind them still pulsed, very faintly, soft as the beat of two hearts that had, perhaps, begun to remember the same rhythm.

Chapter Text

Flashback – “Lan Zhan, Right?”

It hadn’t been an important trip. Not on paper, anyway.

Just a minor diplomatic visit from Yunmeng to Gusu, an exchange of harvest blessings, a discussion of cultivation discipline schedules, some perfunctory words about collaboration between sect juniors.

Madam Yu had attended out of obligation, Jiang Fengmian out of principle. Wei Wuxian had come only because he had begged to, and Jiang Cheng had followed because someone needed to keep him from falling into a pond. In the meantime, Wei Changze and his wife, Cangse Sanren, remained at Lotus Pier to oversee things while the others were away at the Gusu Lan Sect.

They had arrived during twilight, when the sky spilled ink across the mountains and the lanterns in Cloud Recesses began to glow like pearls cupped in silence. The halls were mostly empty— too late for lectures, too early for curfews. The delegation was led to the guest quarters. Formalities were exchanged. Wei Wuxian, predictably, vanished within twenty minutes.

“I’m going to observe the resonance wards,” he had declared, already halfway out the sliding screen door. “Purely for educational purposes.”

Jiang Cheng shouted after him that if he got arrested by Lan sect security again, he wouldn’t be coming to bail him out this time.

And so, barefoot and curious, hair half-tied and sleeves ink-smudged from his travel sketches, Wei Wuxian wandered into the outer gardens of Gusu.

The wind in Cloud Recesses was different from Yunmeng’s, less wild, more precise. It whispered instead of shouted. Even the crickets sang in tuned harmony.

Wei Wuxian was chasing a particularly unusual moth— its wings glowed faintly silver in the moonlight when he turned a corner too fast and slammed full-force into a figure dressed in white.

The impact was not dramatic. It was humiliating.

Wei Wuxian fell backwards in a tangle of limbs and laughter, landing hard on his back in a bed of ornamental moss. His forehead ribbon slipped over one eye.

The person he collided with didn’t fall. Didn’t even stumble.

He simply stood there poised, composed, looking down at him with an expression of distant confusion, as if someone had dropped a flute into his lap and expected him to dance with it.

“Wow,” Wei Wuxian said from the ground, blinking up. “You’re very… solid.”

The boy, he couldn’t have been much older than Wei Wuxian himself tilted his head ever so slightly. He was already dressed in formal inner robes, white and pale blue embroidered with faint cloud motifs. His hands were tucked into his sleeves. His expression didn’t shift, but his brow creased faintly, as if processing a math equation that had suddenly tripped and landed at his feet.

Wei Wuxian squinted. “Wait. I know you. Don’t tell me…” There was no answer.

Wei Wuxian sat up and pointed. “You’re that Lan boy. You live here, obviously. With the forehead ribbon and the face like a scroll no one’s allowed to draw on. What’s your name again?”

A beat of silence. Then, flatly: “Lan Zhan, Wangji.”

“Right, right, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian grinned. “But they call you Lan Wangji, don’t they? That’s your courtesy name.”

“…Yes.”

“Well, Lan Wangji,” he said, brushing moss from his shoulder, “you’ve just been hit by the future most brilliant talisman cultivator in the history of the realms. Lucky you.”

Lan Wangji’s eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction. “You are… Wei Wuxian.”

“That’s me! The scandal of Yunmeng. The headache of every teacher I’ve ever had.” He held out a hand, still seated on the ground. “You’re not going to help me up?”

Lan Wangji hesitated. Then, as if weighed down by some invisible moral code of manners, he reached out.

Their hands met.

Wei Wuxian’s palm was ink-smudged, warm, a little scratched from the moss. Lan Wangji’s was cool, calloused, steady.

He helped Wei Wuxian to his feet in one pull. Wei Wuxian didn’t let go right away. He stared at the other boy, eyes wide and shining with that endless, incorrigible curiosity.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Are you always this tall, or is it the forehead ribbon adding extra height?”

Lan Wangji said nothing.

Wei Wuxian leaned forward, squinting. “Wow. Your eyebrows are so intense. Do you sleep with them still furrowed? Or do they relax at midnight like some spiritual array?”

Lan Wangji did not flinch. “You are very loud.”

Wei Wuxian beamed. “And you’re not running away. That means I like you already.”

Lan Wangji blinked.

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly. Just strange. Balanced. The garden seemed to hush around them.

Wei Wuxian tilted his head and pointed to the guqin case slung neatly over Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “You play?”

“Yes.”

“Well then,” he said, crossing his arms, “since you almost stepped on me, you owe me a song.”

“I did not—”

“Lan Wangji,” Wei Wuxian interrupted sweetly, already walking past him toward the inner gardens, “I’m bleeding from pride and minor moss trauma. The least you can do is show me the legendary koi pond and prove you’re not secretly a statue carved from ice and etiquette.”

He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Lan Wangji stared at him a moment longer. His posture remained rigid, unreadable. Then— He followed.

They walked in silence after that. Side by side, Wei Wuxian narrating the shape of the clouds and the flaws in Lan ward placement (“Too symmetrical. No mystery.”), and Lan Wangji saying absolutely nothing.

But he listened.

And when Wei Wuxian called him Lan Zhan, it sounded as natural as a breath.

It would not be the last time. But it was the first.

And for Wei Wuxian, somehow—it already felt like a beginning.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

If one were to ask later how the alliance began, no one would quite remember the same version.

Some would say it started with a poorly shielded perimeter ward and a pack of rabbits that stole Nie Huaisang’s fan.

Some would insist it was the moment Jiang Yanli brought out her first tray of soft-lotus buns and six juniors from four sects sat down together, not as diplomats or disciples, but simply as friends.

But if one had to name a moment with precision, it was likely this:

A sweltering summer afternoon at the Gusu Lan guest pavilions, with sect heirs sprawled beneath the shade of a weeping willow and absolutely no intention of following the meditation schedule posted in delicate gold script beside the gate.

Wei Wuxian lay flat on his back, robes rumpled, arms behind his head, watching cloud shapes with a talisman over his eyes like a makeshift sunshade. He was humming to himself, tapping his foot against Jiang Cheng’s ankle just to annoy him.

Jiang Cheng, trying very hard to maintain his dignity and not retaliate with a foot in the ribs, glared over the top of his scroll. “Stop that.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I’m trying to map our next rotation and you're vibrating like a mosquito.”

“That’s just my natural genius trying to escape.”

Across from them, Jin Zixuan sat with the posture of someone regretting every life choice that led to his presence in this specific patch of grass. “Your genius has terrible timing.”

Wei Wuxian tilted his head lazily. “Oh? Would you like to contribute something to our completely unsanctioned multi-sect lunch gathering, Young Master Jin?”

“I brought the cold tea,” Jin Zixuan muttered.

“And we’re grateful,” Jiang Yanli said kindly, pouring it with quiet hands and the kind of smile that disarmed even the stiffest egos.

Nie Huaisang, fanning himself theatrically, leaned over to reach for another plum bun. “You know, if we weren’t all technically supposed to be doing scrollwork right now, this would be charming.”

“We are building relations between sects,” Wei Wuxian declared. “This is diplomacy. Enlightenment. Peaceful innovation.”

“You’re lying in the grass like you’re on holiday.”

“Exactly.”

It was Huaisang who said it first, half-laughing: “We’re basically our own little sect now. A secret alliance. The Sect of Sighing Juniors.”

Wei Wuxian perked up. “Ooh, that has potential. Maybe we'll get matching talismans?”

“No,” said Jiang Cheng flatly.

“Absolutely,” Wei Wuxian beamed.

Nie Huaisang clapped. “We can have robes! A group name! Weekly debriefing dinners! And no morning lectures.”

“None of this is regulation,” Jin Zixuan said, but without real bite. His cup had already been refilled, and he was beginning to recline slightly against the slope of the hill.

Lan Wangji, sitting at the far edge of the shade with his spine straight and his guqin case beside him, said nothing at all. He had not yet spoken that afternoon—but his gaze flicked toward Wei Wuxian often, subtly, as if checking his presence like one might check a compass for true north.

He had not left the circle. That, in itself, was a declaration.

The Pact Is Formed

“Should we name it?” Wei Wuxian asked later that day, idly carving a charm seal into a thin piece of scrap wood.

“The Not-Very-Official Sect?” Jiang Cheng offered dryly.

“The Unofficial Sect Alliance,” said Jiang Yanli, dimpling. “Sounds less incriminating.”

“That makes it sound real,” Nie Huaisang said, delighted.

Jin Zixuan arched his brow. “Will there be rules?”

“No betrayal. No Meng Yaos,” Wei Wuxian said at once. Everyone froze briefly.

Jiang Yanli cleared her throat and adjusted her sleeve. “I... will allow that.”

“I will celebrate that,” Jiang Cheng muttered.

Nie Huaisang snorted into his sleeve. “We should commemorate this moment.”

And Wei Wuxian did what he always did when his heart was full of too many things to name. He created.

Within two days, he had a prototype: six spirit-linked talismans that activated when imbued with the holder’s qi, humming or glowing depending on urgency. Each talisman was sealed with a unique frequency thread.

Lan Wangji had helped refine the stability, quietly threading Gusu-style harmonics into the woven seals.

Jiang Yanli embroidered the corners with delicate lotus blossoms for “grace and protection.”

Nie Huaisang added a cartoon duck to his.

Jin Zixuan refused decoration. “Function over form,” he insisted.

Jiang Cheng secretly reinforced his with storm-dampening wards and never told anyone.

Wei Wuxian’s glowed brighter than the rest—chaotic but joyful, humming like it was always on the verge of laughter.

When he handed Lan Wangji his charm, he smiled softly. “For emergencies,” he said.

Lan Wangji accepted it with both hands, reverent. “I will answer every call.”

Wei Wuxian’s heart skipped. He laughed it off. “Even if it’s about runaway rabbits?”

“Especially then.”

The Pact Is Sealed. That evening, beneath paper lanterns and the faint smell of evening mist, the six of them sat together in a half-circle of friendship and unspoken understanding.

Wei Wuxian stood, theatrically solemn.

“I propose that we, cultivators of varying backgrounds, declare this circle one of loyalty, mischief, shared invention, and mutual preservation.”

“No betrayal,” said Jin Zixuan.
“No boring lectures,” added Huaisang.
“No Meng Yao,” muttered Jiang Cheng.
“No regrets,” said Jiang Yanli, eyes gentle.

Lan Wangji stood without speaking. And extended his talisman to the center.

One by one, the others joined, weaving the charms together with a thin strand of red thread. It shimmered briefly— spiritual light echoing in soft warmth—and then faded.

But the bond held.
Not forged by blood.
Forged by friendship.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The clouds over Gusu hung low that evening, painted with lavender dusk and a spill of gold that made the mountain ridges look like calligraphy strokes drawn in slow reverence. The air, ever-temperate in Cloud Recesses, carried the scent of pine and fresh parchment.

In the east pavilion of the inner Lan residence—a quiet alcove curtained with pale silk and guarded by koi pools and medicinal herb beds—Madam Lan was pouring tea as if it were a formal ceremony. Every motion was graceful, deliberate. Every curve of her wrist said she had never known the taste of chaos in her life.

Which was, of course, a well-practiced lie.

She knew exactly what chaos looked like. It was currently taking the form of her younger son, who had returned from Yunmeng after a “brief summer visit” looking like someone who had come back with the beginnings of a love bond and a smile he didn’t know he was wearing.

Lan Xichen arrived at the pavilion with quiet footsteps, brushing aside a trailing curtain of bamboo leaves. “You called for me?” he asked, voice polite.

“Sit,” his mother said, not looking up from the teapot. “We’re discussing your brother’s heart.”

Lan Xichen blinked. “I… see.”

Qingheng-Jun was already seated on the far side of the table, long sleeves folded over his knees, expression calm. Too calm.

“Did something happen?” Lan Xichen asked, though he had a strong suspicion he already knew.

“Oh, nothing catastrophic,” Madam Lan said airily. “No surprise injuries, no fainting spells, no family scandals involving mystical birds or forbidden talismans. Unless, of course, you count the fact that your brother is now emotionally compromised by a boy who treats rules like polite suggestions.”

Lan Xichen barely stopped himself from choking on the breath he hadn’t quite taken. He sat down carefully. “You mean… Wei Wuxian.”

Madam Lan offered him a cup of tea like she was handing over a sealed scroll of divine revelation. “I mean A-Zhan’s Wei Wuxian, yes.”

Qingheng-Jun hummed, a thoughtful sound that rustled deeper than the wind. “He called him that. Not just by name. By knowing.”

“He’s known him by name since he was fifteen,” Lan Xichen murmured, taking the cup. “They met before the lectures, once, in the gardens. A moment, but… it stayed.”

“Yes,” Madam Lan said. “And he’s never stopped calling him Lan Zhan.” Her eyes glinted, sharp as a quill under lamplight. “Which means we are long overdue for planning.”

“Planning what?” Lan Xichen asked, though dread had already begun to blossom in his chest like a very polite, elegant vine.

Madam Lan sipped her tea. “A future.”

Qingheng-Jun set his cup down. “One in which our son does not accidentally repress himself into a spiritual coma.”

“You know he will,” Madam Lan added. “He’s inherited your stubbornness, Husband.”

“And your taste for subtle dramatics,” Qingheng-Jun replied mildly.

“Please don’t say things like that while I’m holding hot tea,” Lan Xichen said, very softly.

His mother waved her hand. “He came back with a pressed plum blossom in his sleeve and a new rhythm to his silence. He is… changing.”

Qingheng-Jun nodded. “And he has not spoken a word about it.”

“He never does,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”

She leaned forward slightly. “Tell me everything.”

Lan Xichen gave her a helpless look. “Mother—”

“Don’t mother me, A-Huan. I have waited long years for that boy to look at someone the way he looks at Wei Wuxian. I watched him spend his entire childhood staring out the window like he was waiting for a dream he didn’t believe in. Then suddenly, there he is—smiling, playing guqin with flair, touching talismans as if they’re meant to be shared instead of safeguarded. And all because a boy from Yunmeng writes him letters with drawings of ducks in them.”

Lan Xichen placed his forehead gently in one palm. “I told Wuxian not to send the duck drawing.”

“I framed it,” Madam Lan said proudly. “It’s adorable.”

Qingheng-Jun cleared his throat again—more pointedly this time. “His posture has shifted,” he said, tone clinical. “His silence no longer pushes people away. It listens.”

Lan Xichen looked up, startled.

“He sat with me yesterday,” Qingheng-Jun added. “Did not speak for half an hour. But the quiet was not lonely.”

Madam Lan exhaled like someone releasing an entire bouquet of long-held breath. “Then it’s worse than I thought. He’s already in love.”

“Mother—”

“And what do we know about Wei Wuxian?” she pressed. “Brilliant. Loud. Curious. A magnetic disaster wrapped in laughter. He’ll never realize it unless we lightly nudge him.”

“Lightly,” Lan Xichen repeated, warily.

“I’m thinking… a matchmaking talisman.”

“Mother.”

“One that doesn’t activate until both parties admit emotional resonance,” she added. “We’ll call it the Affection-Acknowledgment Array. I’ll embroider it onto a handkerchief.”

Qingheng-Jun sipped his tea again, this time with just the faintest twinkle in his eyes. “Make it lotus-scented. A-Zhan likes lotus tea now.”

“Oh, I knew it,” she said, triumphant. “He drank two cups during the last clan banquet and didn’t complain once. And that boy—Wei Wuxian—he brews it the same way I used to, with plum shavings. It’s destiny.”

Lan Xichen set his cup down with a resigned clink. “You’re serious about this.”

Madam Lan folded her hands. “Of course I am. We missed the opportunity to set you up with that lovely cultivator from Qinghe because you kept quoting poetry instead of flirting. I will not make that mistake again.”

“I wasn’t flirting,” Lan Xichen said, horrified.

“Exactly,” his mother said. “Which is why you are not currently handfasted and blissfully in love beside a pine grove. But it’s fine. Because now I have a new mission.”

She turned to her husband. “Husband, be honest. Wouldn’t you like to see our son… happy?”

Qingheng-Jun’s eyes softened—not visibly, but inwardly. The way old stone softens when moss finally grows across it. “I would like to see him living.”

There was a beat of stillness, reverent and aching.

Lan Xichen looked between them his mother’s spark, his father’s gravity and felt, for the first time, a weight not pressing on him, but rising with him. “You’ll support them?” he asked.

Madam Lan nodded. “If he chooses him.”

“He already has,” Qingheng-Jun said simply.

Lan Xichen closed his eyes for a moment. Then smiled. “In that case,” he said, reaching for the teapot to refill their cups, “we should prepare.”

“For what?” his mother asked, already leaning forward like a strategist in full war paint.

“For the moment Wei Wuxian realizes,” Lan Xichen replied, “that the boy he’s been writing poems about under the guise of experimental talisman notes is already in love with him.”

“And then what?” she asked.

Lan Xichen smiled. “Then we let the ducks handle it.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The idea for the array was born, as most Wei Wuxian inventions were, somewhere between inspired genius and absolute nonsense.

They were resting after an exhausting three-hour spiritual barrier drill, half their group collapsed across a training field littered with discarded talismans, training swords, and a single duck Nie Huaisang insisted had followed him “all the way from Lotus Pier.”

Wei Wuxian lay on his stomach, using Jiang Cheng’s foot as a paperweight, scribbling notes onto a talisman sheet with his brush clenched between his teeth.

Lan Wangji, ever silent, ever watchful, sat with perfect posture not far from him, observing without interruption. His guqin case rested beside him unopened. His eyes, however, had begun to flicker toward Wei Wuxian more often than toward the sky.

“The barrier we practiced earlier,” Wei Wuxian said through his brush, “it was good. Effective. Boring.”

Jiang Cheng groaned. “Not this again.”

“No, no, listen—what if we added intent to the response mechanism?”

“Intent,” said Jin Zixuan, dryly, “is subjective.”

“Exactly! But that’s what makes it interesting. What if an array could respond to emotion, not just input? What if anger strengthened the outer shields and joy lifted the inner ring?”

Nie Huaisang blinked from behind his fan. “You want to make a formation that works better the happier you are?”

“Or more chaotic! Or—more attuned.”

Wei Wuxian turned over, brush tapping against his chin now. “What if we train a formation to sync with multiple spiritual cores—each one acting like a thread in a woven net. You step, it responds. You breathe, it pulses. You fight—it sings.”

Jiang Yanli tilted her head. “That would require perfect spiritual alignment between cultivators.”

Wei Wuxian beamed. “Exactly.”

Nie Huaisang fanned himself lazily. “Sounds romantic.”

Wei Wuxian ignored that. “It’s practical!”

Lan Wangji said, “It’s possible.” Everyone looked at him. Lan Wangji met Wei Wuxian’s gaze steadily. “If the cores are compatible.”

Wei Wuxian’s smile faltered. Then it deepened.

They started the next day.

Lan Wangji offered a training hall with high walls and untouched floors. Jiang Yanli brought tea and warming talismans. Nie Huaisang drew fake instruction scrolls and immediately got told off by Jin Zixuan, who ended up supervising the grounding lines.

Wei Wuxian chalked formation circles by hand, his sleeves pushed up, hair half-unbound and shining in the morning light. Lan Wangji followed behind him, quietly correcting arcane curves and adding anchoring symbols with exacting precision.

They worked without speaking.

And yet, every time Wei Wuxian shifted, Lan Wangji mirrored him with such quiet immediacy that their movements began to form a rhythm.

By the second hour, Wei Wuxian had stopped thinking of the array as a solo project.

It was theirs.

Test One: The Failure
Jin Zixuan played the first music pulse.

His flute sounded clear, elegant, and completely incompatible.

The array sparked, surged too fast, then spat out the talismans like a disapproving spiritual toad.

Wei Wuxian clapped once. “All right! Not everything is made for classical structure.”

Jin Zixuan glared. “My form is flawless.”

“It is,” said Jiang Yanli diplomatically. “But this array may require… less elegance.”

“More chaos,” Nie Huaisang supplied helpfully.

“I vote for Wei Wuxian to play next,” Jiang Cheng muttered.

“Why not you?”

“I don’t play.”

Wei Wuxian turned to Lan Wangji. “How about—”

Lan Wangji was already setting down his guqin case.

Test Two: The Connection
When Lan Wangji began to play, the air changed.

The notes weren’t loud or showy. They flowed like water over stone subtle, sure, unwavering. He played a harmonic scale, then a single, unfinished phrase. A melody waiting to be answered.

Wei Wuxian stepped into the formation ring. He didn’t speak. Didn’t gesture. He just moved. One step soft but swift. Then another, gliding through the ring as if the array were a stage and Lan Wangji’s music the cue.

The talismans pulsed. Not in defense, but in recognition.

As Wei Wuxian’s motion synced with the guqin’s song, spiritual light wove between each rune like thread pulled through fabric soft arcs of gold and silver glowing underfoot.

And when Wei Wuxian reached the center and turned— Lan Wangji met his eyes.

The formation sang.

The music trembled and rose, catching on their combined qi like wind in a kite. A low hum echoed through the chamber, not from the guqin, but from the spiritual formation itself.

Nie Huaisang gasped.
Jin Zixuan stared.
Jiang Yanli’s hand touched her chest.
Jiang Cheng scowled. “That’s not normal.”
Wei Wuxian, breathing a little too fast, whispered, “No. It’s perfect.”

After: Unspoken Realizations
That night, after the others had dispersed, Lan Wangji lingered.

Wei Wuxian approached with two cups of tea and an uncertain smile. “We make a good team.”

Lan Wangji didn’t answer immediately. But he took the tea. Held it between both hands. Then quietly, he said “Yes.”

Wei Wuxian’s fingers brushed his briefly, unthinking. Lan Wangji didn’t pull away. Neither of them said what was hovering between their breaths.

But the array behind them still pulsed, very faintly, soft as the beat of two hearts that had, perhaps, begun to remember the same rhythm.

Chapter Text

The Sunshot Campaign didn’t explode into being, it crept. Like shadows across rooftops. Like smoke before the fire.

Everyone saw it coming. But when the world tipped from peace to war, it still felt like a dream breaking at the seams.

One moment, Wei Wuxian was arguing over ink formulas with Nie Huaisang on a lotus ferry beneath afternoon clouds. Next, his sword was at his side, his charm seals packed in lacquered boxes, and Jiang Fengmian stood at the gates of Lotus Pier giving final orders with steel in his voice.

Lan Wangji was summoned back to Gusu.
Nie Mingjue sent for Nie Huaisang.
Jin Guangshan, dragged reluctantly into action by the iron grip of his wife, gave Jin Zixuan his own banner and fifty cultivators.

The Unofficial Sect Alliance dissolved without ceremony. No formal goodbyes. No declarations. Only the knowledge that wherever they went, the world was fraying.

And they would all be needed to hold it together.

The communication charms, initially a joke, now became sacred.

Where before they'd hummed for ducks and soup recipes, now they vibrated with status reports, danger alerts, and half-garbled jokes sent after midnight patrols.

Jiang Yanli’s charm glowed regularly, gentle warmth pulsing through with reminders to eat, to rest, to be kind to others and to themselves.

Nie Huaisang rarely used words, only quick little sketches: a duck dressed like a Wen soldier. A stick figure version of himself sleeping beside a sword labeled “not mine.” Once, a doodle of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji labeled “cultivation buddies ♥” with Wei Wuxian lying dramatically on the ground.

Jin Zixuan’s charm flared once every few days, brief updates, always polite, always clear. No sentiment, but his steadiness had become its own comfort.

Wei Wuxian wrote constantly. He sent pages folded into strange shapes, diagrams, water-stained jokes, and once a lotus seed he swore had “spiritual properties” and “definitely not a prank unless it grows upside down.”

But Lan Wangji wrote too. Less often. Never long. But always precise. A brief message after each encounter. A comment on a drawing. A correction in blue ink. A pressed flower once, a pale plum bloom flattened neatly between parchment, with no message at all.

Wei Wuxian held onto that one. Carefully. Silently.

Gusu felt thinner without Wei Wuxian.

Lan Wangji moved through his patrols like a shadow swift, sure, tireless but every breath he took felt one beat out of step.

The charm he wore was pressed to his inner sleeve. It didn’t hum often. But when it did, the echo left behind in its wake stayed with him longer than he cared to admit.

He caught himself waiting. Not for orders. Not for battle. But for laughter in the wind.

For ink-stained paper that smelled faintly of lotus root and mountain air. For his name—Lan Zhan—written in a scrawl only one person used.

He kept every message. Each one tucked carefully into a wooden box beneath his travel case. Even the one where Wei Wuxian had sent only a single phrase

“Stay safe. Or I’ll personally resurrect you just to strangle you.”

Lan Wangji had stared at that note for hours. And had smiled.

Wei Wuxian missed a lot of things.

Lotus Pier sunrises. Jiang Yanli’s soup. The faint smile Jiang Cheng gave him when pretending not to worry.

But what he missed most was something more difficult to name. It came in the quiet moments. When the battle was done. When the dead were counted and the sky hung low with tired stars.

He would sit outside the tent, talisman charm curled in his palm, and wonder if somewhere, Lan Wangji was doing the same.

Sometimes he imagined it too vividly: Lan Wangji’s long fingers turning pages beneath candlelight. His head tilted just slightly, as if he were listening to a sound only he could hear. The shape of his silence measured, but never cold.

Wei Wuxian would open his satchel and reread the notes.

Short, clean lines. No ink stains. No extra flourish. But they said things that others never did.

“Your seal logic was flawless. I have adjusted my training accordingly.”
“I refined your musical resonance array. It functions now with greater precision.”
“You wrote this backwards.”
“Your handwriting remains poor.”
“I saw a cloud that looked like the lake near the east gardens. It reminded me of when you laughed.”

That last one he didn’t tell anyone about. He kept it in the inner lining of his robes. Over his heart.

They didn’t see each other for months. But once, once they came within twenty yards. It was during a multi-sect strategy gathering near Yue Ridge. Wei Wuxian arrived late, covered in ash and mud, his hair tied hastily with a red ribbon, talismans stuffed into his belt like a traveling merchant.

Lan Wangji had just finished giving a terrain report. He turned. Wei Wuxian caught his eyes.

And it felt, absurdly, like coming up for air. The crowd was thick. They didn’t speak. Didn’t move toward each other.

But Lan Wangji’s gaze held him. And Wei Wuxian’s breath caught in his throat.

Before he could move, Jiang Cheng grabbed his sleeve and dragged him toward the logistics table.

Lan Wangji turned back to the generals. But his fingers brushed the charm at his wrist as he walked away.

And that night, Wei Wuxian found a letter in his pack, slipped between his diagrams. No signature. No seal. Just a single line in Lan-script:

“Even among a thousand voices, I hear yours.”

Wei Wuxian didn’t sleep that night. He sat up beside the fire, holding that paper in both hands, and didn’t say a word.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

It had been a brutal, mud-thick week on the southern front.

The Wen cultivators, desperate and cornered, had begun deploying mirror-fire traps that left whole stretches of mountain forest smoldering. Talisman lines shorted out. Defensive wards dissolved in the heat. Nightwatch flares failed to spark.

Wei Wuxian had been there for five days without proper sleep. Jiang Cheng’s unit had taken heavy losses early on, and even with reinforcements arriving in waves, the command camp felt held together by bamboo slats and spit.

Wei Wuxian refused to leave the front lines. Not when the injured were still being carried into camp. Not when his new spiritual containment theory— the one he’d sketched with Lan Zhan during the array trials hadn’t yet been field-tested.

He didn’t want praise for it. He just needed it to work. Because these were his people. His home.

And he could not, would not, let it burn again.

Wei Wuxian heard the notes first.

Distant, clear, soft guqin harmonics threading through the clamor of battlefield shouts and flickering flame talismans. The sound was so out of place, so achingly serene amidst chaos, that Wei Wuxian stopped moving.

He turned toward the ridge, breath caught in his throat.

There—emerging through the smoke—strode a line of Gusu Lan cultivators, white robes gleaming beneath protective enchantments. At their head walked Lan Xichen, calm and sure. Behind him— Wei Wuxian’s heart skipped.

Lan Wangji. Hair tied with his pale forehead ribbon, robes dusty but unmarred, guqin on his back, sword gleaming at his hip. His expression was unreadable from a distance, but his stride— gods, his stride was purposeful.

Wei Wuxian did not move. He couldn’t. Because Lan Wangji had not taken his eyes off him. Not for a single step.

They met in the shattered space between two burned pines, amid scorched earth and smoke-tinged air.

Wei Wuxian opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Lan Wangji did not speak either. He simply reached into his sleeve, unwrapped a silk-bound packet, and held it out.

Wei Wuxian took it automatically. Inside: a single formation tile, etched in both their handwriting, finished with a seal he didn’t remember completing.

Lan Wangji spoke first. “Your array was incomplete.”

Wei Wuxian blinked. “I thought I needed another anchor line—”

“You needed a harmonic bridge.” There was a flicker, something almost like a smile. “You forgot the third resonance point. Again.”

Wei Wuxian laughed, too loud in the silence around them. “Lan Zhan,” he said softly, like a prayer, “you really came.”

Lan Wangji looked at him, something quiet and raw in his eyes. “You called.”

They didn’t have time for more words. The Wen cultivators launched a counter strike not half an hour later, unexpected, fast, and spearheaded by spiritual flame-binders that shattered three defensive barriers on contact.

Wei Wuxian barely had time to scream for the junior disciples to fall back before his hands were moving, sealing lines flaring to life under his brush as he knelt in the center of the collapsed formation ring.

Lan Wangji appeared at his side before the second sigil was even drawn.

No signal.
No call.

Just presence. As if he had always been meant to stand there, shoulder to shoulder with Wei Wuxian, arms moving in mirror alongside his.

The Core Bloom Array roared to life.

Pale blue and vibrant silver light erupted around them, talismans folding outward like petals under wind, each one pulsing in time with Wei Wuxian’s breath, Lan Wangji’s heartbeat, the ground beneath their joined spiritual pressure.

It didn’t fight back.
It didn’t defend.
It responded. To their thoughts. Their movement.

To the emotion that hung between them, unspoken but deeply embedded in every line of ink, every brushstroke, every turn of the foot on scorched earth.

And as Wei Wuxian drew the final arc, Lan Wangji raised his guqin. He played.

Wei Wuxian had never heard Lan Wangji play in battle before. He’d imagined it dozens of times, fantasized about what it might be like to fight beside music rather than noise.

But nothing compared to the real thing.

Each note struck the air like a carved stone, resonating through the array and grounding their spiritual field. The talismans adjusted automatically, flaring into protective rings, bouncing enemy fire like reflected moonlight.

Wei Wuxian spun through the center, his qi amplified by the array’s attunement to his mood— furious, desperate, protective.

Lan Wangji’s melody held him steady. And when Wei Wuxian stumbled once, blood streaking his forehead, exhaustion nearly toppling him, Lan Wangji was there.

No words. Just a hand under his elbow, holding him upright. And then music again. Like a vow.

When the battlefield finally fell still, the only sound was the soft crackle of ruined branches and the gentle fall of snow. They hadn’t noticed the weather shift.

Wei Wuxian, light-headed and dizzy, leaned back against a crumbled stone, hands stained with blood and ink. Lan Wangji stood beside him, sleeves tattered, his ribbon slightly askew.

Neither moved for a long time.

Then quietly, Lan Wangji turned to him. “Next time,” he said softly, “let me arrive sooner.”

Wei Wuxian blinked. He wanted to laugh. Wanted to throw something. Wanted to reach out and just touch.

Instead, he nodded. “Next time,” he whispered. “Don’t wait for a charm to tell you I need you.”

Lan Wangji didn’t smile. But his fingers brushed Wei Wuxian’s wrist. Once. Just once. And it was enough.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

After the Southern Pass battle, everything changed quietly, not with fanfare, but in the subtle reordering of routine.

Wei Wuxian was no longer just a field cultivator.

He was listed by name in three inter-sect reports as the "primary tactical innovator" behind the successful defense. His Core Bloom Array, refined and battle-tested, had already been copied and deployed in two additional sectors.

Lan Wangji’s guqin-assisted spiritual harmonics were quietly declared "elite-tier auxiliary technique support."

And so, naturally, utterly predictably they were assigned to night watch duty together for the remainder of the southern deployment.

Wei Wuxian tried not to react when Jiang Cheng handed him the patrol order with an exasperated expression. “Try not to seduce him while on the clock.”

“Why would I seduce him?” Wei Wuxian shot back, flustered. “I’ve seen the man meditate for four hours without blinking. That’s not seduction material.”

“He requested you.”

Wei Wuxian froze. “…What?”

Jiang Cheng shrugged. “Or at least, he didn’t object. That’s basically the same thing.”

Their first night watch passed in near silence.

They walked the border together, the stars veiled in mist, their lanterns casting long shadows over the broken trees and smoldering ruins. The battle had stripped the forest bare in patches, ashen scars marking where flames once raged.

Wei Wuxian didn’t speak for the first twenty minutes. That in itself was a miracle. He wasn’t sure what held his tongue. Maybe the tension still thick in the air. Maybe the strange comfort of Lan Wangji’s presence beside him—so solid, so still, so… close.

Lan Wangji carried no lantern. He moved like he didn’t need one. As if the shadows parted for him alone.

Wei Wuxian, who had once joked that “Lan Zhan probably glows in the dark,” kept the thought to himself now. It felt too personal. Too intimate. Like touching something he hadn’t earned the right to hold. Instead, he said softly, “You really came.”

Lan Wangji turned toward him, a fraction. “You called.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Wei Wuxian looked at the sky. “The charm is just a field report. You were supposed to be halfway across the region.”

Lan Wangji was quiet for a breath, then said: “You sounded tired.”

Wei Wuxian blinked. The words weren’t accusatory. They weren’t worried. They were observant.

Not, "You were injured."
Not, "I thought you needed help."

But: You sounded tired. As if the tone of his voice in a half-charged talisman charm had reached across provinces and called something unspoken to action.

Wei Wuxian smiled faintly. “I think I’ve been tired since I was born.”

Lan Wangji didn’t answer right away. Then softly “You’re still brilliant.”

Wei Wuxian choked on nothing. “Lan Zhan—!”

“I’ve never seen a formation respond like that,” Lan Wangji continued. “It felt… alive.”

Wei Wuxian swallowed. “It only worked because of you.”

Lan Wangji turned toward him fully now, expression unreadable. “That is not true.”

Wei Wuxian looked down at his hands. Callused. Ink-stained. Tired to the bone. He felt something like warmth bloom behind his ribs. “I missed working with you,” he admitted quietly.

There was silence. Then— “…I missed it as well.”

When they returned to the edge of camp, the world had gone still.

Most cultivators slept in uneven shifts, some in tents, others in makeshift shelters or against fallen tree trunks. The moon was climbing higher now, pale and round above the branches. Someone had left a small campfire going. It cracked gently.

Wei Wuxian sat beside it with a sigh.

Lan Wangji didn’t walk away. Instead, he pulled a folded cloth from his sleeve, unwrapping it carefully revealing a flask of jasmine tea and two cups.

Wei Wuxian blinked. “You brought tea to the night patrol?”

“I thought you might forget to drink something warm.”

Wei Wuxian stared.

Lan Wangji poured with reverent hands. When he handed Wei Wuxian the cup, their fingers touched for just a second enough to make the cup rattle faintly in the porcelain saucer.

Wei Wuxian did not comment. He simply drank. It was good tea. Fragrant. Gentle. Lan-style.

Of course.

He exhaled slowly, letting the steam warm his cheeks. The silence between them was… soft. Not the rigid kind of silence that demanded space, but the kind that made space.

“You still stargaze?” Wei Wuxian asked, glancing up.

Lan Wangji looked up as well. “I map them.”

“Even during war?”

“Especially during war.”

Wei Wuxian tilted his head. “Why?”

Lan Wangji sipped his tea. “The stars do not change.”

Wei Wuxian looked at him for a long time. Then, in a voice that barely carried over the fire: “Neither do you.”

They didn’t say everything that night. There were no confessions. No touches beyond what duty allowed. No declarations of anything real.

But there was a shared moment, when the tea was gone and the fire embers dimmed, when Wei Wuxian leaned back slightly, palms braced behind him, and Lan Wangji mirrored him—postures equal, breath matched.

In the silence, they watched the stars.

And in the stillness, something passed between them that neither would name but both would carry with them into the next battle, the next message, the next storm.

A closeness not earned in words. But in presence. In trust. In the quiet way one soul, without even trying, began to make room for another.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The campaign’s southern front held for now.

Which meant, for the first time in weeks, the juniors were granted a rotation cycle back to their respective sects. “Rest and regroup,” the official report read.

Wei Wuxian read it as: sleep until the sun explodes, and avoid paperwork at all costs.

So when a message bird arrived, bearing Madam Yu’s handwriting, he assumed it was a reminder to report directly to Jiang Cheng upon arrival or suffer a truly agonizing death.

Instead, it was a summons. Not from Jiang Cheng. Not even from Madam Yu. It was from his father, Wei Changze.

And it read, in wildly uneven brushstrokes:.

“BRING LAN WANGJI TO THE DINNER STOP. WE ARE FINALLY GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE FUTURE, DON’T BE LATE, YOUR MOTHER HAS ALREADY SET THE TABLE. I HAVE BEEN READY FOR THIS SINCE YOU WERE TWELVE. I LOVE YOU, MY GIFTED LITTLE HEARTACHE”

Wei Wuxian screamed into his hands for a full minute before setting the letter on fire.

Too late. The message charm had already been sent.

The sun over Yunmeng was warmer than Wei Wuxian remembered. As he stepped off the boat, the scent of lotus flowers hit him like a wave—wet leaves and fresh water and faint incense drifting from the temple on the far hill.

Lan Wangji stood beside him, quiet and still.

Wei Wuxian should have been used to his presence by now. They had fought together, bled together, stood under starlight drinking tea without saying the things they meant.

And yet.

Every time Lan Wangji stood beside him now, he felt like the ground was tilting just slightly beneath his feet. Not dangerously but like it might lead somewhere if he let himself fall.

Jiang Yanli met them at the dock with a tray of steamed buns and an expression of sweet triumph.

“You came,” she said, eyes darting meaningfully between them.

Wei Wuxian groaned. “You knew this was a setup, didn’t you.”

“I encouraged it.”

Lan Wangji accepted a bun with a polite nod. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Hanguang-jun,” Jiang Yanli said, eyes shining.

Wei Wuxian, who was absolutely not blushing, bit into his bun and muttered, “You’re all traitors."