#lan wangji's grey horse

[mdzs-equine-archive]

Mo Dao Zu Shi Donghua; Promotional Poster

Artist: 何何舞 (He He Wu)

Equines featured: Lan Wangji's grey horse, Wei Wuxian's black horse

[piosplayhouse]

Mdzs horse fact! The horses Lan Wangji is most commonly depicted riding are actually not technically white horses-- true white horses carry the dominant white gene and have completely pink skin, while white-appearing grey horses like the one lwj is riding here have black skin (which is visible around the eyes and muzzle)

[franniebanana]

CQL Rewatch - Episode 4

Okay, it’s been a hot minute since I was able to get to watching this episode, but here we go!

Great intro. Remember last time how Lan Wangji got to pick Wei Wuxian’s punishment? Well, it seems that Wei Wuxian was up late into the night working on transcribing and, surprise! he’s not done. And unless I’m mistaken, he’s actually spent days doing this, because when they first arrived, the salute ceremony was ten days away, and here we see Wei Wuxian is almost late for it. So by this point, I’d expect Wei Wuxian to have some serious hand cramps from all that calligraphy.

While I enjoy this comical moment and introduction to Nie Huaisang, I have to wonder why he thought bringing a bird into the salute ceremony was a good idea. Birds make noise—they tweet, flap their wings, try to escape cages! Anyway, it’s a goofy moment, but we got some cute expressions out of Xiao Zhan and some disdainful looks from Wang Yibo, so I can’t complain.

Xiao Zhan does a really good job of looking very young here at the beginning: his mannerisms, his facial expressions, how he carries himself, all really creates this feeling of being young and carefree. On the other side, Wang Yibo (who is six years younger than Xiao Zhan) does an equally good job of portraying someone more severe, mature, elitist. Lan Wangji has a reputation for being above people—for creating an aura that implies other people aren’t worth his time. In fact, he doesn’t even have any friends, as we found out in the last episode.

Wangxian really suit each other, even before they know each other at all: Wei Wuxian has this light, carefree nature to his character, while Lan Wangji’s is darker, more austere.

First of all, those fuckers. Gossiping about his lineage in full earshot of not only Jin Guangyao but also Jin Zixuan. This poor guy has practically clawed his way up to where he is, only to be an attendant to a clan that he has no blood relation to. His own father refuses to acknowledge him, his mother is gone, and these jerks gossiping—ugh! Hate it, regardless of who he grows to be later on in the series.

I really love Jin Guangyao and seeing how he changes from beginning to end is honestly a delight to watch. Like most of the characters, he seems so pure, so simple, such a kind person, and his relationship with Lan Xichen is something that you can’t devote enough time to. I think it gets shortchanged a little, but they only had 50 episodes, so I’ll take what I can get. Even in the book, I was left wanting to know more and see more about them (but I wouldn’t trade my wangxian content for that, so I guess I shouldn’t complain).

Last thing I want to say is, DIMPLES! Look at those adorable dimples!!

This is so insane—he literally set this guy on fire! How can he get away with this?! Anyway, enter Draco Malfoy—I mean, Wen Chao. Ahem. This series wants to throw a lot of villains at you right away: we already have Wen Ruohan, Xue Yang, potentially Wen Qing (we don’t know at this point), and now we have Wen Chao. They’re really pushing the Wen Clan is bad agenda. And as if being generally rude and probably mentally unstable isn’t bad enough, Wen Chao literally sets fire to one of the Gusu Lan Clan disciples, while the other disciple basically does nothing about it (why is that guy so useless? Doesn’t he have some spiritual energy to throw at that magic fire?).

Wen Chao is one of those characters that I think most people love to hate. He’s so evil, so horrible, yet charming, in a way. He is a villain and he’s proud of it, y’know? There’s no ambiguity here about his actions, which is kind of refreshing in a series filled with grey characters (and I love grey characters, don’t get me wrong).

Oh! And I just noticed while I was saving that screenshot that Wen Ning can’t even look at what’s going on. Very accurate to his character—non-confrontational, just wants to float along and do as he’s told. Really shows he’s under the thumb of the Wen Clan. I also like how Wen Qing is the one to put out the flames. You get to see that healer side of her early on.

Jiang Cheng and I had the same expression here—I really wanted to know what their gift to Lan Qiren was. If this is something in the book, well, then I’ve forgotten. Wei Wuxian and I have that trait in common: bad memory.

LWJ: Bro, can I hit him?

LXH: Nah, bro.

I missed this on my first viewing—or just forgot, most likely. Lan Wangji is so poised and collected, but also so defensive. He’s the brother who will be the first to go on the offensive if he sees something wrong happening, which I love. But I also love Lan Xichen’s chill attitude—yes, this guy is clearly a troublemaker, and he’s dissing our clan, but let’s settle this in an adult manner. According to the wiki, Lan Xichen is only a few years older than Lan Wangji, but you can see that he is a lot more mature in just those few years. Like I said in the last episode, he kind of had to be a parent to his younger brother and set an example of how you should behave. Of course, he’s also the clan leader, so he can’t really act like a spitfire.

Of course, if anyone is more defensive than Lan Wangji, it’s Wei Wuxian. Even though Lan Wangji has been a bit of a pain in the ass to him, Wei Wuxian still rushes to their defense. Even this early on, he’s started to form an attachment to the Gusu Lan Clan, whether he’s really aware of it or not. I’m wearing my wangxian goggles, but the “you offended the Jiang Clan because my brother was in the middle of his salute” kind of feels like an afterthought.

But of course it’s in Wei Wuxian’s character to be heroic like this—to rush to the defense of others, whether it’s asked for or not, and I don’t get the feeling that Lan Wangji disapproves of this. I think he takes note of this and future events, adding it to what he’s compiled of what makes Wei Wuxian tick. And by this time, I think he’s also decided to give Wei Wuxian another chance—Lan Xichen has planted the seed in his mind that he could be a good friend to Lan Wangji.

I know he’s not supposed to be gay.

I know.

But…come on. The way he’s looking at Lan Xichen right now—it’s a look certainly of deep admiration and respect. And there’s not a hint of jealously either, even though Jin Guangyao has every reason to be jealous of Lan Xichen: the respect he commands is great—he can even subdue the Wen Clan. But instead of hating Lan Xichen, Jin Guangyao instead becomes close friends with him, very much a parallel to Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian. Fascinating! These characters are so rich—so many layers, so much to talk about!

The first time I watched this, I was so annoyed with Nie Huaisang—any additional scenes that were added just drove me crazy. But now, having watched it all, I actually really appreciate these moments of comic relief, even the ones that are unique to CQL. As the series progresses, it gets darker and darker, and these lighter moments are honestly precious when you know what’s coming.

Someone explain to me why Jiang Yanli is making soup when meals are being provided to them? Yes, we know she takes care of her brothers, but why is it always her making soup? This is the first of many soup scenes, and at a certain point, it’s like beating a dead horse. I actually would have appreciated a little scene of them eating Gusu Lan Clan food and getting to see Wei Wuxian complain about it. I wouldn’t mind a disapproving look from Lan Wangji at overhearing it either.

Yeah, remember when I was saying Lan Wangji was taking note of the good things Wei Wuxian did? Well, he’s also very aware of how naughty he is. At the beginning, Wei Wuxian’s good traits are heavily outweighed by his transgressions, though, by comparison, they are minor ones. It’s ironic that later on Lan Wangji will overlook major transgressions without a second thought. Shows what a deep relationship they are able to cultivate.

I feel like, in a way, this is Wei Wuxian’s way of apologizing for offending him earlier—like, I’m being cute, Lan Zhan! Obviously it only makes Lan Wangji more annoyed, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Wei Wuxian is really testing boundaries here. He has such a fixation on Lan Wangji, one that definitely annoys Jiang Cheng (and makes him jealous to boot, in my opinion), but it works to his advantage, since Lan Wangji can’t really keep his eyes off of Wei Wuxian either. And the circumstances that follow just keep drawing them together.

After Wei Ying gets told to leave the lecture and go to the Library Pavilion, he doesn’t look at anyone except Lan Wangji. I wonder if he wants to know Lan Wangji’s reaction—is it disappointment, anger, something else? Whatever it is, he wants Lan Wangji’s attention—that’s what he seeks above anything else. You could argue that he doesn’t look at Jiang Cheng or Jiang Yanli because he knows they’re disappointed or upset with him, and I think that’s fair. And maybe he doesn’t seek their attention because he knows he has it—but he doesn’t feel like he’s gotten Lan Wangji’s attention here and that bothers him.

Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 |

[elliethefroggy]

Delicately Deadly

Sangchengmonth2020 (ao3)

Day 25: Steampunk AU

“This is a terrible idea,” Jiang Cheng repeated as they walked down the cobbled streets, the damp rocks glistening under the gas lamps lining the road.

“So you keep saying,” Nie Huaisang replied. They stopped at the kerb; a carriage passed by, drawn by two mechanical steel horses, steam escaping out of their nostrils and drifting up to be lost in the cloudy evening sky.

“And I’m going to keep saying it until you start listening to me.”

They crossed the road, Jiang Cheng taking care to avoid stepping into the gutter engorged with earlier’s rain.

“Remember what happened with the last invention you tested out for Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng continued, “That toaster machine exploded after the sixth use and completely destroyed our new countertops.”

“But remember how lovely and golden those five first pieces of toast had been,” Nie Huaisang said.

“Remember how that sixth one was burnt to a crisp along with half of our kitchen?”

They turned into a narrow side street and stopped at a red door that desperately needed a new coat of paint.

Jiang Cheng grabbed the handle and opened the door, letting Nie Huaisang in first. The bell over their heads jingled as they walked in.

The shop was dark and cramped, filled to bursting with all manner of curios and contraptions, though, surprisingly, the shelves lacked the usual layer dust.

“The shop’s actually looking cleaner now that Wen Ning’s started working here,” Nie Huaisang commented, looking out at the windows that could now let in some of the street light, having been rid of years’ worth of grime.

The faded black curtain separating them from the backroom was pushed aside and Wen Ning, the new shop assistant, stepped through. Wen Ning looked especially pale under the shop’s poor lighting, the black artificial veins under his skin that could be followed all the way down to his heart made his complexion as white as chalk.

“Good evening Masters Jiang and Nie,” he said in that stuttering manner he always used, bowing slightly.

“Hello, how’s the new heart?” Nie Huaisang asked because he never could keep his nose out of other people’s business.

“It’s doing wonderfully,” Wen Ning said, clutching at his chest where the metal heart was quietly ticking away, “Master Wei replaced some of the valves, and it’s working much better now.”

“That’s good to hear,” Nie Huaisang replied.

“We’re here to pick up the new fire hazard Wei Wuxian made for Nie Huaisang,” Jiang Cheng said, having no patience for small talk.

“Of course,” Wen Ning replied, “Master Wei stayed up all night finalizing it. Please wait a moment.” He bowed again before walking back behind the curtain.

“This is still a terrible idea,” Jiang Cheng asserted once again in a whisper.

Nie Huaisang absent-mindedly shushed him.

Before Jiang Cheng could add more, Wei Wuxian came bouncing in, wearing a big smile on his face and even bigger bags under his eyes. Wen Ning followed close behind.

“Here you go, Nie Huaisang. This one shouldn’t explode,” Wei Wuxian said without bothering to greet them like a normal person.

Much to Nie Huaisang’s delight, Wei Wuxian handed him a fan made of thin sheets of dark green metal. Nie Huaisang’s fingers brushed over the intricate weaving of silver knots climbing up the fan’s guards. It had a simple elegance to it, and even Jiang Cheng had to admit it was beautiful.

“It’s capable of releasing small knives hidden in the folds and is strong enough to deflect pretty much any bullet all the while remaining chic and decorative,” Wei Wuxian said, finishing his sales pitch.

The fan was deceptively delicate just like Nie Huaisang.

With Nie Huaisang sufficiently distracted by his new toy, Jiang Cheng turned to Wei Wuxian.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“It’s good to see you too, Didi,” Wei Wuxian laughed, throwing an arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders. Jiang Cheng made sure to look appropriately annoyed, but didn’t try to dislodge him.

“You should take better care of yourself,” Jiang Cheng reprimanded. “If you don’t, I’m going to tell Ajie on you.”

“Jiang Cheng,” Wie Wuxian pouted, “that’s just mean, and after I made your husband a lovely gift and everything”.

“Keep pushing your luck, and I’ll tell Hanguang-Jun as well.”

Wei Wuxian shrieked in indignation, calling him a big bully, but Jiang Cheng knew he’d get a long night’s sleep after this, the prospect of Lan Wangji’s silent disappointment and discrete mothering too much for even Wei Wuxian to bear.

In the hopes of diverting Jiang Cheng’s attention, Wei Wuxian grabbed a little device he’d been working on.

“Look at this,” he said, shoving it into Jiang Cheng’s face.

It wasn’t much to look at, a jumble of wires and pipes that only made sense to Wei Wuxian.

“It’s going to be a music box,” Wei Wuxian explained, “I was thinking of giving it to Lan Zhan. It’s not done yet, but I’m close.” He pressed a button on the contraption.

Something in the machine cracked, smoke billowed out, and instead of music, shrill distorted sounds filled the shop. One of the small pipes snapped off and flew straight for Jiang Cheng’s face.

Before anyone else could think to react, Nie Huaisang, in one swift movement, opened the fan and extended his arm to block the upcoming projectile. The pipe smashed into the green metal, rebounded off of it and whizzed past right into one of the shop windows, shattering it on impact.

Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning were left staring wide-eyed at Nie Huaisang as the glass crashed down onto the ground. Nie Huaisang didn’t notice the looks, too busy inspecting the fan, searching for blemishes on the metal and finding none.

“Cool, it works,” Nie Huaisang smiled, finally looking up. “Can you make me another one in grey, please?” He asked Wei Wuxian, already planning how to accessorize the fan with all his outfits.

Wei Wuxian could only nod, unable to speak.

[robininthelabyrinth]

AU where not only Jiang Yanli, but also Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji die in that final battle - and something inside WWX breaks. After all, he's the Yiling Patriarch - the necromancer who knows how to raise the conscious fierce corpses - why should he let them go?

Eventually, people would say that a door to the Underworld had opened.

It was in a place called Yiling, they said, where once there had been a great battle, leaving behind thousands of corpses – so many that even the local cultivators could not dream of eradicating the resentment left behind. It sat there for years, festering, and then the doorway opened and the endless dead spilled through, murdering all those they saw in their path, and each one who died was resurrected once again as a slave to their dreadful emperor.

And that, as they liked to say, was that.

That was the prevailing theory, anyway: it wasn’t as if anyone from the empire of the dead would confirm it one way or the other.

They weren’t exactly what one would call friendly.

Not that it was all bad: the neighboring states quickly learned that this was one empire that had no interest in growing its borders. Quite to the contrary; if you left them alone, they would leave you alone – eventually, the fierce corpses were driven by their generals to put up walls around the empire, taking advantage of their soldiers’ inhuman strength to put stones as large as horses together to build up a wall that would block the way in, all but for a few gates that only opened on Qingming and other ghostly celebrations, to send out cart after cart full of food to be distributed to the poor.

No one was entirely sure why the empire of the dead still bothered growing food, but it was an inescapable fact that they did, and also that it was often distributed as charity; the reasons behind it (merits? Guilt? Some curse?) were inexplicable, and often debated, but in the end it was best not to question good fortune.  

Sometimes – rarely – an emissary from within the empire would come out to trade for (demand?) things they happen to want. This was always a matter of great concern for the powerful, and great interest for just about everyone else.

The man in purple was especially popular: the way he scowled and snapped and bickered with his male companions – a man in grey and a man in yellow – and allowed himself to be teased in turn by a lovely maiden in pink made him seem more human than most, if you could forget the black veins visible on his neck or the hole in his face that had once been a left eye, where a sword had once been stabbed.

The stutterer was less popular, having at one point entered a frenzy that killed quite a few people, but it was rather charming how he was often followed by the group of young men, all aged around twenty – it was said that they had been children when the empire was formed, and that they had voluntarily submitted to the process of transformation at the appropriate age. Two wore white, one yellow, the rest assorted colors.

Least popular of all was the small man in yellow, whose smile was as slick as a snake and who always caused calamities wherever he went – though one generally wouldn’t notice it until it was far too late.

(Someone, eavesdropping, claimed that he was the only one who ever volunteered to go, his life inside the empire not quite suiting his ambitions, and there was something in there about nails that couldn’t be repeated in public. No one really questioned it.)

No one ever went in the empire of the dead – but sometimes, if you were lucky, you could look over the walls and see the Emperor and Empress walking together, side by side: black and red for one, all white for the other, hand in hand. They looked like immortals, someone said, and someone else pointed out that for all intents and purposes, they were.

Whether they had come from the Underworld through the door, or had been converted after, no one knew, and no one especially cared to know.

It was said that if you knew too much, the Emperor would be able to find you, and you’d spend the rest of eternity as one of his corpse slaves.

Who would risk that?

[morifinwes]

so technically seen.... lan wangji....is probably not able to ride a horse in canon? he's 1,88cm which is quite tall and that means he should weight around idk 181.3 lb or 82kg? which means he should be able to ride any Draft horses, since they're quite strong and tall, so the balance shouldn't be thrown off? he should avoid small horses, although it shouldn't be impossible for him it can still get very uncomfortable for both rider and horse. Medium Built horses should be fine too, thought i'd opt for taller ones, better safe than sorry after all.

i don't think canon is set in an actual time period though, so they might have magically gotten tall horses instead of the rather short horses asia usually had? looking at chinese breeds on wikipedia, they're not very tall tbh, which would've given him trouble. though, a russian heavy draft might be possible? yeah, maybe.

i think a hanoverian might suit his taste? they're tall and strong, elegant and absolutely gorgeous too. oh god yeah, a grey hanoverian? heaven!! or maybe a bay one? i could actually see wei wuxian with a black or dark bay hanoverian too??

[apprentice-liuyin]

Liuyin Mei

“Uneasy are souls that awaken in smoke”

General information

Known as

Sima Liuyin: Birth name

Leonie Mei: Alias

Occupation

Shop Keeper

Magician

Spirit medium

Medical apprentice

Favorites

Favorite meal: Lamb skewers

Favorite drink: Chrysanthemum tea

Favorite flower: Tea rose

Personality traits

Birthday: January 23rd

Age: 26

Zodiac sign: Aquarius

MBTI: ISFJ-T

Pronouns: They/them only

Main(s): Asra (primarily), occasionally Julian as well

Patron Arcana: Death, Page of Pentacles

Relatives

Note that their family back in Langya would still utilize the traditional naming format of <surname, given name>, unless they have specific titles.

Liya Zheng: Paternal aunt, their father’s elder sister who left Langya and settled in Vesuvia. Liuyin inherited her magic shop.

Lieutenant Zheng: Father, subordinate to General Sima. A harsh and temperamental man, from whom Liuyin became estranged.

Sima Yu: Mother, daughter of General Sima. A healer and free spirit who became fettered by the expectations of family.

Sima Xiaoping: Younger brother, five years Liuyin’s junior, born when Liuyin was still living with their grandparents.

Sima Qianren: Younger brother, eight years Liuyin’s junior, born when Liuyin was still living with their grandparents.

General Sima: Maternal grandfather and patriarch of the Sima family.

Madam Sima: Maternal grandmother, wife to General Sima, owned a teashop in her youth.

Zheng Xuan: Paternal grandfather and guardian, a countryside farmer with an affinity for magic, though no abilities of his own.

Sarnai: Paternal grandmother and guardian, wife of Zheng Xuan, a Kokhuri-descended magician who was Liuyin’s first teacher.v

Physical description

Gender: Nonbinary

Height: 5′6′’

Eye color: Plum-purple

Hair color: Black-brown with orange and red undertones

Appearance

Liuyin is a youth with a compact frame, plum-colored eyes, a long and pointed nose, and dark hair that shines copper in sunlight. Their bearing is collected and serene, with a slight smile to their lips. Their customary outfit consists of an inner blouse that resembles an ao, or Chinese upright-collared blouse popularized in the Ming Dynasty that was usually worn outside the tucking of a skirt, as well as an outer cross-collared robe, and any other clothing they may wear would come in shades of blue, grey, and white. They often wear clothing with butterfly motifs on it, as a silver butterfly was their familiar before their death. Their hair is usually left half-up in buns decorated with butterfly pins, and half-down, with sideswept bangs and locks of hair looped over their ears before being pulled back into a bun.

Personality

Liuyin is a person who is serene and demure on their exterior, almost to the point of seeming withdrawn, aloof, or distant from others. However, they bear a naturally warm aura, with a high-spirited but practical-minded personality with a quick wit, being able to banter easily. They have a sincere and well-meaning heart, as well as loyalty to those they care for, to the point they may act recklessly, going against their usual analytical approaches wherein they slice every action down to its bits and pieces, to save those they love. Thus, they rarely get angry unless someone they love is at risk. They hate boredom and insincerity.

History

Family background

Liuyin Sima was a member of the House of Sima, a noble clan of the nation of Langya, a kingdom to the south of Vesuvia which was located east of the Shining Steppe and west of the Strait of Seals.

Their grandfather was General Sima, a powerful military official overseeing the command of the cavalry of the nation, as well as the current patriarch of the House of Sima.

Their mother was the daughter of General Sima and his wife, and an adept healer.

Their father was a lieutenant under General Sima who was arranged by Madam Sima to marry the general’s daughter.

Childhood

They were pretty unplanned as far as children goes-- their mother had to put their studies to become a healer on hold to carry Liuyin to term, and once they were born, they were sent to live in the countryside with Liuyin’s paternal grandparents, since there’s really no place for a baby either in the barracks or in a healer’s academy.

Their paternal grandmother, Sarnai, when she was young, was a Kokhuri shaman and magician, before marrying her husband and settling down as a farmer in the countryside. Liuyin had gained some degree of healing magic ability from their mother, and Sarnai helped hone Liuyin’s paternal magical capabilities, in communicating the restless dead as well as creating an entrance and space within the spiritual plane akin to magicians’ gates and Asra’s oasis, respectively.

Adolescence

When Liuyin was ten years old, they moved back to the General’s manor to live with their father and mother, and their two younger brothers, one of whom was already 5, and one who was 2 at the time. Due to the strict disciplinarian method of parenting their parents and maternal grandparents enforced, Liuyin, who was raised in a more casual and relaxed environments found themselves miserable and often butted heads with their parents, which was then duly punished.

They, at this point, practically lived only for summer visits to their grandparents, where their magical growth increased by leaps and bounds. When they were 16, their father forbade them from seeing their grandparents, and Liuyin had run away from home in retaliation, first stopping by their grandparents’ house, who then sent them on their way to Vesuvia, where their father’s elder sister, Liya, had opened a magic shop.

Arriving in Vesuvia

Liuyin arrived in Vesuvia on the eve of the Masquerade, where they were received by their aunt. They found Asra reading fortunes behind the shop, and they befriended him under the pseudonym of Leonie Mei-- over the course of the next half year or so, Liya had taught Liuyin all she knew about magic, after which Liya had received an offer of professorship at a prestigious academy in Zadith, leaving the shop to be tended to by Liuyin and Asra.

The Red Plague

By the time the Red Plague struck, Liuyin had shed the name of Leonie Mei and went by Liuyin Mei instead, eschewing their family name completely. When the plague broke, Liuyin and Asra had argued over whether to leave the city or stay and help-- Liuyin stayed, Asra left. Liuyin initially tried to ease the pain of the deceased’s families through her divination abilities, trying to allow the spirits to move on.

Somewhere along the line, realized that wasn’t enough and apprenticed themselves to Julian as a medic. It was there in the palace, researching for a cure, that Liuyin succumbed to the disease, dying alone, and being sent to the Lazaret, where they were eventually cremated.

The Masquerade

Broken by their death, Asra resolved to resurrect them. Meanwhile, Count Lucio, failing rapidly from their battle with the Red Plague, hosted a feast on the night of the masquerade designed to gift him a new body, a ritual that Asra sabotaged, stealing the body to resurrect Liuyin. And the rest, from that point, is history...

Powers

Smoke divination: Liuyin has the ability to use a special blend of incense smoke to induce within themselves a hallucination or dreamscape, in which they would be presented with a series of seemingly-disjointed visions, from which they had to determine a storyline or solution to their question. They can also inhale this in the presence of a corpse or scene of crime, and it would show them things that, if interpreted correctly, would show them the cause of death or how a crime was committed. They can also contact more recently-deceased spirits when inhaling this smoke, and thus can use this in a manner similar to an exorcism, laying a spirit to rest.

Potion making: Liuyin is talented at potion-making as well as cooking, as well as a hobby in

Personal gate: Liuyin’s gate to the Arcana realm, taught to them by their grandmother. Later, with Asra’s help, they rediscover and unlock their gate.

Trivia

Liuyin’s inspiration draws from both Chinese folklore as well as popular culture.

Liuyin’s initial inspiration was from Lan Caihe, a nonbinary Taoist immortal said to be patron to florists and gardeners. They traveled the kingdoms wearing a single shoe and ragged blue robes, singing improvised songs about the impermanence of youth.

Other inspirations for Liuyin come from Mei Changsu, Guo Deyou, Kuang Lu, Xiaolongnu, and Lan Wangji

Their name, Liuyin, means “shadow of the willow”. Their birth surname, Sima, means “master of the horse”, and their given surname, Mei, means “plum”.

Their favorite season is winter

Their voice is mid-tone, and a bit husky.

They speak three languages-- the common tongue of Vesuvia, the common tongue of Langya, and the common tongue of the Steppes.

Template credit: apprentice-liuyin

[boxoftheskyking]

Something Good, Part Five

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.

In which there are water ghouls.

---

There are water ghouls in Caiyi Town. This is apparently not a new phenomenon, and dealing with them is common enough that the senior disciples can use it as a test of sorts. Lan Wangji has also decided it will be an educational experience for the junior disciples to observe. In reality this is an end-of-the-first-month test for Wei Wuxian called “Herd eleven children down a mountain for two hours.”

They are tired. They are thirsty. Lan Feifei has lost her shoes. Ouyang Zizhen got an extra turn on Wen Ning’s back and it’s not fair. Lan Ting is allergic to some kind of leaves, but will not stop touching all of the leaves. Lan Jingyi is… consistently Jingyi.

Wei Wuxian does not believe in having favorite children—he and his siblings suffered enough under their parents’ favoritism and expectations. And, anyway, these children are far too different to compare. Zizhen is sweet and asks for adventure stories every night and looks at Wei Wuxian like he created the heavens and earth. Lan Feifei has her head in the clouds and the cutest little dreamy smile right before she falls asleep. But Jingyi is truly a child after Wei Wuxian’s own heart.

He’s not the only orphan left after the ambush that Wei Wuxian was blamed for, but he’s the youngest by far and still wakes up crying in the middle of the night. Wei Wuxian rearranged the dormitory so Jingyi now sleeps cuddled up with Lan Sizhui, which seems to help a bit. Wei Wuxian isn’t sure what Sizhui’s story is—he assumes the kid is also an orphan, but occasionally he spends extra time with Lan Wangji that’s never been explained. Perhaps he’s a close nephew or cousin.

But Jingyi is the most un-Lan Lan child of the bunch, and Wei Wuxian is very invested in keeping him that way. He doesn’t remember being four—his memories are fuzzy before life on the streets of Yunmeng, and even that is more images and impressions than any full events. Except for the dogs. But he thinks that four-year-old Wei Ying must have been like this child—excited, curious, incapable of looking before he leaps (off a table, off a step, into the underbrush, into a puddle), only taking a break from asking “Why?” in order to ask “Why not?”

Wei Wuxian loves it, and it drives him nearly off the ledge. Knowing Lan Jingyi as he knows himself, he spent an evening hand stitching extra ribbons into the back of Jingyi’s robes, reinforced around the waist so it doesn’t tear or pull or pinch when he grabs them. Far from being offended or annoyed the first time Wei Wuxian yanked him back on track by his handy leash, Jingyi simply crowed “I’m a horse!” and threw his whole weight forward against Wei Wuxian’s grip, little boots scuffing uselessly against the dirt. 

Without a golden core and after months in the Qishan prison he’s felt weak, scrawny and uncentered in his body. But lately, arms full of laundry and children, hands calloused from work instead of swordplay and more often than not tucked into scruffs of necks or latching onto misbehaving elbows, he’s starting to feel like a person again. Something solid, ground for building on.

Right now, Sizhui is on his shoulders, absently patting little fingers along his hairline, and Jingyi is being dragged along behind him like a dead fish.

“A-Yi, are you going to walk at any point today?” Wei Wuxian sighs.

Jingyi holds on to the leashes and flips himself around so he can look upwards. “Can I run?”

“No you cannot.”

“Then no.”

“Lan Jingyi!” Sizhui calls down from his perch, swatting a low-hanging branch out of his face. “You should behave better. You’ll be all dirty when we get to town and you will get in trouble!”

Wei Wuxian squeezes his chubby knees and turns around to wave the older kids forward.

“Wen Ning! Come here my friend, take this bag of turnips into Caiyi Town. Try to get a good price for it.” He swings Jingyi over and Wen Ning hauls him over his shoulder

Jingyi smiles as he bounces along upside down, singing, “Turnip turnip turnip” to himself all the way down the mountain.

Before they enter the town proper Wei Wuxian does his best to line them up properly and pick stray leaves out of hair.

“Now, young masters and ladies, remember you are representing the GusuLan Sect. Yes? Heads up, hands to yourselves.” The kids shuffle mostly into position. “The Lan Sect is very important to Caiyi Town. You understand? The town depends upon Lan cultivators to take care of problems like these water ghouls. So when the people see you, you want them to be confident in your abilities, yes? We are proud of where we come from. Lan Hua! Eyes front. You’re not just representing your humble Wei-qianbei, you know. You are representing our Hanguang Jun!” At that, shoulders snap back and grumbling ceases. Wei Wuxian feels a rush of fondness and gives them a grinning salute. “Very good! We want Hanguang Jun to be proud of us, yes?”

“Yes, Wei-qianbei!”

“Very good! On we go!”

Wei Wuxian feels like a mother goose, wrapped in grey servants’ robes and leading his white flock through the streets, Wen Ning bringing up the rear. Sizhui holds onto his hand, hopping every third step to keep up. Normally, Wei Wuxian would happily pick him up, but today is about being dignified. He’s glad for the firm little grip on his fingers, though. It’s been a lifetime since he’s been out of Cloud Recesses, and part of him expects the townspeople to spit at his feet. No one recognizes him, though. Passersby stop to watch the procession pass, bowing respectfully to the disciples. Wei Wuxian feels an odd warm pride unfurl in his chest, and when a mother in the crowd meets his eyes and gives him a knowing eyebrow raise, he lets himself laugh. Feast your eyes, everyone! Eleven children!

By the time they reach the edge of the lake, the senior disciples are already out on their boats near the center with Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen, having flown down on their swords earlier. Nothing exciting seems to be happening so far, but there’s a tense hush in the air that can be felt even at the shoreline. It’s just Wei Wuxian and the children at the water’s edge, townsfolk having decided it’s not worth the risk even to get a good look at cultivators in action. Wei Wuxian arranges the children around an ancient tree, roots and branches gnarled and grasping towards the water, so they can rest their tired legs and still have a decent view. Sizhui tugs on his robes until he lifts him back up on his shoulders.

“What’s happening, Wei-qianbei?” Lan Feifei pipes up from beside him.

“Hmm. It looks like Hanguang-Jun and the senior disciples are waiting for the water ghouls to appear. Perhaps they’re seeing something moving in the water.” He wiggles his fingers and puts on his most dramatic voice, and Feifei gasps appropriately.

When it happens, it’s sudden and almost anticlimactic. A boat flips, tossing one of the senior disciples into the air and the other straight into the water. Lan Wangji flies over immediately, hauling the first into a waiting boat and grabbing onto the other’s arms before he’s pulled completely under the surface. Almost immediately there’s a great rumbling sound and the surface of the lake starts to roil.

Wen Ning runs to the edge of the water. “Wei-qianbei! Someone needs to help Hanguang Jun!”

“This isn’t just ghouls,” Wei Wuxian mutters to himself, though he can see some of the creatures moving, just breaking the surface like sentient seaweed, swirling closer and closer to Lan Wangji’s hovering form. “It’s an Abyss.”

If he’s seen it, then certainly the two Jades have as well. He can’t tell what they’re doing from here, but the remaining boats seem to be regrouping, pulling away from the forming whirlpool. Lan Wangji and the drowning disciple are swept up in the tide, pulling closer to the shore where the juniors stand frozen, hands over tiny, terrified mouths. Bit by bit, Lan Wangji is starting to rise from the water, arm now locked around the disciple’s chest. His normally pristine hair and robes swirl around him, soaked nearly all the way through. The walls of water rise and fall around their bodies as the whirlpool increases in size and intensity. Suddenly, a dark tendrilous form rises from the wall of water, reaching towards the men from behind. Before it can make contact, the water whisks it away, but others begin to rise in its place.

“Wei-qianbei!” Wen Ning calls. “The ghouls!”

Wei Wuxian sets Sizhui down and hurries to the water’s edge. “Hanguang Jun!” he yells, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Lan Wangji, get your sword up!”

Whether he’s unheard or ignored, he’s not sure, but Lan Wangji does not react. 

“Lan Zhan!” he shouts, and he can feel the children behind him gasp as Lan Wangji’s head whips around towards him, just in time to duck another ghoul. There appears to be three of them whirling around, closing in little by little as the whirlpool increases in ferocity. From the corner of his eye, Wei Wuxian can see action from the other boats, Zewu Jun leading the disciples in a spell that makes energy crackle across the misty air. But he only has eyes for Lan Wangji and the ghouls.

“Wei-qianbei, do something!” Yao Hualing cries, grabbing onto his sleeve. 

Wei Wuxian shakes her off and grabs his talismans out of his robe. Time doesn’t slow, exactly, but he feels his brain sharpen and focus. He bites at a hangnail on his thumb, ripping into the skin, and brushes a few hurried characters of negation in blood along two of the talismans—one meant to repair broken objects and one to put out fires. If he had his golden core he’d only need a few gestures—or, better yet, he’d have a sword and could fly into the fray—but this will have to do. 

Lan Wangji ducks another ghoul, and Wei Wuxian rethinks his plan. He rips his talismans into three and opens his cut further, drawing out more blood to repeat his characters on each torn piece. Then he pushes them away from him in a burst of energy, directed at the low-hanging tree branch to his right.

With a great crack the branch shatters into three pieces, all of which burst into flame and arc through the air to collide with each ghoul. There is a series of terrible screams and a smell of burnt grasses, and the ghouls sink below the surface. Lan Wangji rises up out of the water, the now-unconscious disciple wrapped in his arms. As he hovers, the whirlpool suddenly moves back across the lake, seeming to be pulled by a great force. 

Wei Wuxian misses whatever Zewu Jun is doing to address the Abyss. He probably should be paying attention to explain it to the children, but the gaping emptiness in his gut feels no smaller than the whirlpool Abyss itself. He finds himself on the ground, hands holding his body up, gasping in the wake of spiritual power. All humans have a reserve of some power naturally, but without a golden core to focus and grow it, it’s like a spark that never catches tinder. 

He feels a collection of little hands on his back, in his hair, a buzz of worry surrounding him as he coughs up blood. He’s just getting his breath back when one of the children screams, then another, then there’s a mighty roar that shakes the ground and almost forces out the rest of his breath. He shoves himself back onto his heels to see a wall of black-green water, taller than the tree beside him and advancing like a storm. 

“RUN!” he screams, shoving whoever he can reach behind him, picking up Sizhui by the back of his robes and throwing him at Ouyang Zizhen. He manages a step forward, arms held out in front of him, but there’s nothing inside him. No power, no fire, no anything. Even if he could get a spare talisman out, it’s nothing against the mass of water. He reaches instinctively for any resentful energy in the area, whistling out a tune of power and spitting out blood. But it’s not enough. Not even close.

Every town has a certain amount of latent energy—both spiritual and resentful—due to generations of living and dying on the same patch of land. But it’s not enough, barely anything, a few wisps of black smoke that he desperately weaves into the thinnest barrier, a blanket unable to keep out the cold. It’s not enough.

If this is how it happens, he thinks, his mind sinking into calm, at least I tried.

The last time he almost died, his mind was shrieking, desperate, clawing at the world and trying to hold on. But now, all he thinks about is the children. Run, please, run. And then, from nowhere, Lan Zhan, I’m sorry, I tried.

He closes his eyes and braces for impact.

It doesn’t come.

He feels a cold spray against his face and the skin of his chest where his robes have pulled open. When he opens his eyes, the water has subsided and Lan Wangji is standing in front of him, guqin hovering in the air before him and humming with an undeniable power.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian breathes, struggling to his feet.

Lan Wangji turns to him. “What did you call me?”

“Hanguang Jun. I—”

“How dare you summon resentful energy in Gusu.”

Wei Wuxian’s hero worship dies down as his hackles raise. “What was I supposed to do? Let the children drown? Not even try?”

Lan Wangji glares at him, a muscle in his jaw twitching so violently Wei Wuxian is reminded of Jiang Cheng.

“I don’t think anyone saw,” Lan Wangji says, finally, turning back to the lake.

“What?”

“My brother and the others. I don’t think they saw you.”

“I—” 

But he’s gone, sailing out over the lake to the boats at the center, white robes flapping behind him like the wings of a swan.

“Fucking—” Wei Wuxian mutters, but he cuts himself off and wipes his face on his sleeve before turning back to the children.

“My disciples!” he shouts cheerfully, pasting on a smile and holding out his arms. “How brave you all are!”

---

They commandeer an entire inn for the night. It’s been a long day; the children are exhausted, and a storm has been gathering at the edge of the horizon that promises lightning and torrential rain. The children packed into a few rooms upstairs, senior disciples on the ground floor, and Wei Wuxian has ended up with his own small pallet in what was probably once a storage closed. After the children are fed and sent to sleep, he wanders back down to the dining room.

He won’t sleep tonight. He’s tossed between so many emotions—thrill from the adventure, fear for the children, triumph at his successful talismans. But above all, the ache, the emptiness. 

Useless, useless, useless echoes inside him, screams into the dark canyon under his ribs. Completely useless.

It’s one thing to give up puppet armies, raising spirits and casting bolts of dark energy into a battle. It’s another to encounter himself at the moment of crisis, the moment he is truly needed, and to find himself just another man. Mediocre. To face the imminent death of the children he’s grown to adore so entirely. To stand with empty hands before the deluge.

I’m completely useless.

The innkeeper is leaning against the bar, absently reading over a scroll.

“Sir?” Wei Wuxian asks politely. “Can I trouble you for some wine?”

“Indeed, young master!” the man crows, jumping to attention. “Some Emperor’s Smile? The finest liquor in all of Gusu. No, in all the world!”

Wei Wuxian smiles slightly, not quite bitterly, remembering a night on a roof under a clear moonlit sky. The taste of sweet liquor and the smell of sandalwood.

“Ah, I’m just a simple servant. Whatever you have that is cheap will do me just fine.”

The innkeeper narrows his eyes, looks over his damp and rumpled appearance. “Were you with those cultivators that banished our water ghouls today?”

“I was— Yes, I was with them.”

The innkeeper grins, showing three shining gold teeth. “In that case, the drink is on the house. Please, enjoy with our gratitude.” He holds out two delicate white jugs tied with lace ribbon.

I don’t deserve it. I did nothing.

Wei Wuxian grins. “Your generosity will not be forgotten!” He bows and takes the wine back to his closet.

Useless.

With a rumble of thunder that shakes the foundation of the inn, the sky opens above him.

Part Six

[sheadre]

Aurora Borealis (Jiang Cheng x Reader) Chapter 9

Summary: Zhu Ran'En (Reader) has always been forced to fight for her life through schemes and lies, betrayal and cruelty. However, Jiang Wanyin who grew up in Yunmeng and lived a complicated life full of obstacles, did not have to play these games. Therefore, when he has to face the cruelty of noblemen and the royal family, he has to ask the Imperial Princess for help.

Will they manage to dodge all the life threatening dangers the snake Zhu HuaJin and the Second Prince is throwing at them?

Word Count: 3183

Warnings: angst, mentions of violence

The morning sun was shining through the blinds on the windows while you sat in front of the mirror. You carefully applied the mask that was so thin it felt like a second skin. Using certain tools, soon you saw a young man with feminine features look back at you. He was clearly a man, though his jawline was not as prominent as most men’s. Hiding your chest was easy, using tight bandages helped. They were uncomfortable but it had to do for the time being. Standing from your seat, you looked at your small luggage and grabbed it before joining the others.

White puffy clouds swam across the sky, a light breeze caressed your cheeks as you walked through the gardens and halls of Yunmeng. The strange feeling of finality filled your lungs. Your eyes scanned your surroundings as you walked with your head held high.

At the gates, you approached Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. They were both dressed like servants in their simple grey outfits. Hanguang-Jun was not wearing his headband and was wearing a different hairstyle which made him blend in better with everyone. He bowed to you, once he noticed you, causing Wei Ying to turn to you quizzically. You smiled at him and bowed.

“Good morning, Wei gongzi” hearing your voice, his brown eyes widened in recognition.

“Your highness?” he asked, shocked at your appearance making you chuckle.

“From now on, this humble one is called BoXu” your friend nodded with a mischievous smile playing on his lips.

“Won’t the noblemen mistake you for Jiang Cheng’s xianggong1?” his voice was low. You were grateful for already wearing the mask, because it hid your burning cheeks.

Lan Wangji was quick to scold his lover but Wei Wuxian only laughed it off. Taking one last look of Yunmeng, you smiled sadly. Maybe in another life, you’d be lucky enough to live a simple life, a life in which you would have children and raise them with love.

Then your (e/c) eyes landed on the last arrival walking towards the carriages and horses at the front. His back straight, broad shoulders moving with each step he took as his hair was let down. With the decorative headdress sitting on top of his head and his purple silk robes reflecting the sunlight made him look similar to a fantasy prince’ from a novel.

Jiang Wanyin truly looked like a noble prince.

His brown eyes met yours as he approached you. He furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to find out who you were. Wei Wuxian snickered behind you, but your only reaction to that was a subtle eye roll. You bowed to him in respect after schooling your features into seriousness.

“Sect leader, good morning”

“Who are you…?”

“This humble one is called BoXu, my lord” you replied to him with a gentle smile. “I’ll be at your service and will be looking out for you in the palace.”

“A-Cheng! Have you seen her highness?” Wei Ying suddenly spoke up. The smug look on his face made the sect leader even more confused.

“She should be here already…”

“Wei Ying, stop playing around!” Lan Wangji scolded the Yiling Patriarch with slightly furrowed eyebrows.

“Jiang sect leader can take a little teasing, Hanguang-Jun,” you couldn’t help but quip. Wanyin’s head whipped around, shock taking over his features.

“Dianxia?!”

“Ehehehe, I’m sorry but couldn’t help tricking you.” You shrugged with a playful smile.

“Please take good care of me then, BoXu”

The veins throbbing on his temples made you take a step back. The apologetic smile pulling on your lips could not help your case. Then, Jiang Wanyin sighed and shook his head like he was dealing with five years old children.

The sect leader turned to the front of the entourage and walked up to the carriage silently. His handsome face was deceptively calm as he walked. He was clearly unused to the formal wear you made him dress into. As an esteemed hero of the nation and invited guest of the emperor, he needed to show up dressed in solemn clothes. Fortunately, you found a dozen finely made formal wear in the market. The merchant asked for a high price but you thought it was worth it. Now seeing him wearing one, you definitely agreed with your past self about the need of the clothes.

You got onto a horse and trotted up next to the carriage in which the sect leader was sitting in. The entourage was small but it was not uncommon for a sect leader to travel with such a small number of men. After all, he was the strongest of the men around. You were riding on the left side of the carriage while another man was riding on the other. Right after the carriage, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were following, while behind them were another four soldiers of Yunmeng. The carter was sitting at the front while two soldiers were riding their horses in front of the carriage. The capital was three days away from Yunmeng. You looked at Jiang Cheng through the blinds, your heart pounding in your chest. If things would go according to your plans, he would come back to Yunmeng unharmed.

It was around lunch time when you first made your stop at the river side. The water was bubbling a few feet away from you as you sat on a big rock. The horses were grazing at the grass under the shadows of the pine trees, while you stared at the waves of the running river. You munched on a baozi2 when Lan Wangji approached you silently.

“Hanguang-Jun,” you greeted with a small smile, “come join me.”

He nodded silently and sat down on another large rock.

“We still haven’t agreed on a cover for either Wei Ying or myself.”

“Do you have a name in mind?” you asked before taking a large bite out of the baozi.

“Xie Yun” Wangji replied quietly. You hummed and turned back to see Wei Wuxian talking to Jiang Cheng who had a miserable expression on his face.

“Tell me, Xie Yun… would you change anything that led you to Wei Ying?” you questioned as your gaze returned to the water. You felt Hanguang-Jun’s eyes resting on your profile, analyzing your expression.

For a long time, the two of you sat there in silence, your bun was almost finished by the time he finally decided on an answer.

“If I would change anything… would I get the same result in the end?” your lips pulled into a wistful smile as you chuckled at his answer. Hanguang-Jun was truly smitten with his lover and you couldn’t blame him. Your mother used to say that, once you find your soulmate you wish you could live another thousand lifetimes with them.

You hummed silently then quickly jumped to your feet and patted your clothes down.

“Let’s go, we have a long journey ahead of us.”

Hanguang-Jun nodded silently and followed you back. Soon you were back on your horse, listening to the animal’s hooves clank against the dirt road. You decided that you should enjoy the silence and peace while it lasted. You closed your eyes and tried to relax a bit.

Flashback~

Summer came with almost unbearably hot weather, the sun seemed to glare at the earth beneath. Servants though were still running around like they were not affected by the hot summer day even though their foreheads were covered in sweat. You leaned back in your seat as you sat with the Princess Dowager. You couldn’t really believe how your great grandmother was still alive.

Her wrinkly face was resting in a soft, kind expression as she put her cup back down on the small table between you two. The Princess Dowager had this fondness for you that she had for no one else. No matter what, you could always count on her in quarrels with your cousin. You turned to the Princess Dowager and spoke:

“Your Highness, shouldn’t you be resting inside? The hot weather can be hard to stand these days.”

Her deep brown eyes looked at you wisely as a small laugh escaped her old, chapped lips. She leaned forward and patted your knee.

“You’ve always been a smooth talker, hiding the true meaning of your words behind the façade of worry” she noted before she continued. “I am aware how old I am… but I am no different from others in this world, Ran’En.”

“I cannot live on without taking a look at the outside. There are many dangers and evil but I cannot help admiring the beauty of the world. Every day, I find something new that I can appreciate and give my gratitude for. Do not be so cruel to this old hag to forbid her from seeing the last thing that keeps her alive!”

“Princess Dowager, you know me” you smiled with a soft chuckle. “Though you have to know that I’d give you whatever you wish for.”

“I wish for your happiness, little flower” she sighed with a solemn expression. “Go already, leave this damned place for the snakes and live a happy life somewhere else. Give me chubby great grandsons and daughters!”

“How would I fight for what’s right when I’m not here? Crown Prince is in danger.”

“Crown Prince has two capable sons,” the old woman scoffed. “You’re too blind for many things, Ran’En. You need to leave.”

That conversation played through your mind many days after it happened. Through rounds in the palace, you kept recalling the Princess Dowager’s words. Your ears perked up suddenly at the sound of quiet footsteps behind you. Your back straightened as you turned around with a hard expression, your body slowly moving to face the approaching Zhu HuaJin.

The princess looked right back at you, her painted lips pulled into a displeased fake smile, like she was smelling something rotten. Her slim form took unhurried steps towards you until she stopped a few feet from you. Keeping her distance at any costs. Not only from you but from most people.

She made sure that everyone associated her person with the color of peach. Just like most of the princesses, she was always wearing beautiful headdresses accentuating her face.

“Junjun3” HuaJin curtsied to you meanwhile kept that self-assured smirk on her lips.

“Xianjun4” you greeted back, your eyes never leaving her form. “Have you prepared your present successfully for Her Majesty, the Princess Dowager?”

“Ah, it is but a little gift though it comes from the heart.” She waved her fan, “it is a wonder how she is still so healthy at her old age but we must give many thanks to the heavens for it!”

“Now that we met, let us join the celebration together,” you replied and motioned for her to lead the way.

The day was the Princess Dowager’s birthday and the emperor decided to celebrate the occasion in a grandiose way because of her old age. The palace was decorated with flowers and colorful ribbons, servants hurried up and down the hallways and corridors from one building to the other, while the kitchen was in a blaze. Cooks were by the fireplace since last night making the scent of the Beijing Roasted duck5 waft around the palace.

Fortunately, the walk to the throne room was quiet and short. HuaJin ran to her father the moment she stepped through the doors while you quietly walked up to your sister, WuXi who was already there. She smiled at you kindly but otherwise stayed quiet. Taking your seat by your father, you greeted him which he responded to with a gentle smile. Then Eunuch Wang stepped forth and announced the arrival of the emperor. Your attention turned to your grandfather, his rich, emerald robes made of the finest silk sweeping in as he walked. His posture straight, chin held high even though he had a warm smile as his eyes landed on his family. Zhu MingKai was the dynasty’s most loved monarch.

The royal family members were sitting in the front, the closest to the emperor, while the officials and generals were seated further back. The Princess Dowager was sitting a step away from the emperor, on a small throne. Her wrinkly face was smiling at everyone waiting for the emperor to say the first toast. Lifting his cup filled with wine, the emperor spoke up with a large grin on his face.

“This is a joyous night for us because the Heavens are letting the Princess Dowager grace us with her presence and give us wise advice. Tonight, we celebrate the Princess Dowager, let’s raise our cups for her honor and drink!” you lifted your cup to your lips and tipped your head back, drinking the wine filling it. The hairs on the back of your neck stood on end when you caught sight of the evil smirk playing on your cousin’s lips as she drank her fill. Looking around subtly, you tried to look for something amiss. Your heart started pounding in your chest as the minutes ticked by feeling that something was off. However, nothing happened.

The family celebrated merrily, the emperor saying toasts, drinking with wide smiles and boisterous laughter. For the first time since you were born, you saw your family truly enjoy the occasion.

You were a few hours into the celebration enjoying the dishes given to you by the servants when the Princess Dowager suddenly started coughing hard. Her face went crimson red as she tried to breathe but it was too late.

Your hands went cold as you watched on like you were watching a scene unfold on a stage as a simple viewer. Anger burned in your chest as you watched HuaJin and Second Prince rush to the Princess Dowager's side.

WuXi was so pale you thought all of her blood left her. Your sister watched with glossy eyes as the princes and the emperor tried to do something.

It was in vain.

The Princess Dowager fell into the arms of the emperor lifelessly. That night was filled with pain. Crown Prince and your father tried to calm down the emperor. You heard the yelling and arguing coming from the emperor’s quarters, all three of them started a witch-hunt, closing the palace completely.

The palace was in a frenzy, servants were running around faster than ever before. Flowers and colorful ribbons were taken down, replaced by white satins. The official mourning stretched into almost a week. The emperor closed himself into his quarters and only his sons were allowed to enter. It was tradition that the son mourns his parents for the next two years, however, you doubted the emperor could do the same.

Lili kept urging you to eat something even though all of the trays she brought you were left untouched. Her gentle, murmurred words soothed you on sleepless nights, when your thoughts were not letting you rest. Your unkempt hair and wrinkled clothes made you look like a lunatic.

One morning, Imperial guards surrounded you in the corridor. It filled you with dread as they pointed their swords at you. However, demanding answers did not do much. Xiao Pei stepped out from behind a pillar with a mournful expression on his handsome face.

You listened to your grandfather as he paced back and forth. Jaw clenched, hands balled into fists at your sides as you knelt a few feet from him. Every word made you feel more desperate as he listed off the evidence pointing to you as the culprit. Then the emperor stopped and looked down at you with his eyebrows set in a frown.

“Can you give me an explanation for your actions, my child?” he asked with an icy tone.

“I can only repeat myself, Bixia: I did not assassinate the Princess Dowager.” You kowtowed deeply, your forehead touching the cold marble floor. Your voice never wavered as you spoke quietly.

“Then why does the evidence that Second Prince and your cousin have given me all point to you?!” he yelled angrily. You straightened up and looked up into his eyes. It was a daring move, no one else in your position would try something like that.

“Second Prince and Zhu HuaJin both have been trying to get me into trouble for reasons I do not know,” you said quietly, “even if I cannot defend myself this time, I ask Bixia to be merciful because of past cases including my person. I never had any reason to turn against Princess Dowager.”

“Are you willing to die for not being able to prove yourself innocent?” the emperor narrowed his eyes as he stared down at you. You stretched out your arms and kowtowed again before speaking.

“Then I will pass on with a clear conscience even if my word means nothing.” Your reply sent a chill through the room. For a long time, you listened to the silence engulfing the two of you as you knelt there.

“Three days from now… be prepared” the emperor replied then coldly, turning away from you. For three days and nights, you knelt in the temple of the royal family. For three days and nights, you prayed to the Heavens.

End of flashback ~

On the second day, the little entourage arrived to Qitou5. The city was located on the main road, where merchants often passed by. The city was filled with life, some merchants opened their business here, some of them traded with other merchants. The streets were bustling with life, gambling houses and red lantern houses littered the streets while many inns and hotels were welcoming guests on the main street.

The group stopped at one of the inns, dismounting your horses while servants came to lead them to the stables. You looked around before following the others inside.

To be continued…

1The area south of Qianmen Gate was once known for its brothels, and in the late 19th century the most popular attractions were not always the fragrant female courtesans imported from China’s south, but young – and sometimes not so young – men often referred to as xiànggong 相公. The term could mean “gentleman,” or an old-fashioned way for a wife to address her husband, but it was also a play on words, a loose homophone for “xiàng gūniáng” 像姑娘, or “as like a woman.”

2Baozi is the Chinese steamed bun made with meat usually pork, which can be seasoned with Chinese cabbage or chives. (Though, my dad keeps putting a lot of different vegetables in it like green beans/zucchini.)

3郡君; jùnjūn; title given to the princess born from the Prince of the Third Rank (in the Qing dynasty).

4县君xiànjūn title given to the princess born from the Prince of the Fourth Rank (in the Qing dynasty).

5齐妵 a city name I came up with, I tried my best at naming a city. This is just a fantasy name. First character came from the surname Qi 齐, besides it was the name of dynasties and states at several different periods. Second character means beautiful/fair.jiang cheng

[needtherapy]

soaring, carried aloft on the wind...continued 3 / 4

A story for Xichen and Mingjue, in another time and another place.

The Beifeng, the mighty empire of the north, invaded more than a year ago, moving inexorably south and east.

In order to buy peace, the chief of the Lan clan has given the Beifeng warlord a gift, his second oldest son in marriage. However, when Xichen finds out he makes a plan.

He, too, can give a gift to the Beifeng warlord, and he will not regret it.

The story continues...

Part 1: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / ...  HOME

It’s on AO3 here if that’s easier to read.

NOTES: This story starts out G but will eventually be E for Explicit.

Chapter 3

The boy accompanies him through the encampment, talking non-stop the entire way, but Xichen isn’t listening. He’s observing this army with a commander’s eye. It helps him to pretend that he’s a spy, not a slave. He notes the neat lines of tents, the clean smell despite hundreds of horses, the smiles on the faces of the soldiers—men and women. This is not the bloodthirsty and chaotic rabble he had expected.

Who hasn’t heard stories of the Beifeng? They have devastated even the strongest clans, whose swords and magic were no match for the Beifeng archers and cavalry, not to mention their own unknown power. Some of the clans retreated into the hills, some sought sanctuary in the Cloud Recesses. And the man Xichen has just met—just kissed—is the demon they fear the most. 

Xichen can’t believe all the stories. No man can disappear and reappear at will, nor fly to the top of a building, nor drive an arrow through the heart of a soldier a full li away. He does not have wings or fangs. He is certainly tall enough to be fearsome, Xichen thinks with irritation, if less hideous than reported. His broad shoulders must make him as dangerous with a sword as he is known to be with a bow, but surely no more deadly than Xichen himself.

They reach a tent larger than the rest, hung with colorful panels of embroidered linen. Despite his churning fear, Xichen evaluates the workmanship and the cost of the dyes with favor. He sees purple and gold mixed with blue and less expensive yellows and greens, yet somehow the riot of color is pleasing. It is a far cry from the grey and white serenity of Xichen’s home. 

Not his home anymore.

“This will be your home while you are here,” the boy announces, gesturing to an exquisitely embellished panel hiding a doorway, stitched in a beaded pattern of clouds that almost seem to be drifting in the wind.

Xichen’s stomach clenches at this small reminder of the Cloud Recesses, and he’s instantly nauseated. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe away the bile, flinching when he feels a touch on his arm.

“Zewu-Jun, please come inside,” the boy implores, and Xichen lets himself be led through the tent flap.

“If you need to throw up, there’s a basin in the corner.”

Xichen’s eyes fly open, staring at the boy, whose eyes are dancing with repressed laughter. It makes Xichen furious that this child can find his distress so hilarious, and some of his feelings must be evident on his face, because the boy takes a step backward, hands up.

“I meant no harm, Zewu-Jun. The negotiations with your family ensured your safety, but you would be treasured regardless. Whatever comforts you need, please ask.” “Ask who?” Xichen snorts, more acerbic than he intends.

The boy’s grin turns his face into a dancing butterfly, light and carefree, and again, Xichen wonders who he is to the warlord.

“Me, of course. In your language, you can call me Huaisang. I will see you daily, whenever I can, but you can always ask your guards for me. Just say my name. They’ve been informed.”

Xichen looks around him. He has been given every luxury as far as he can see. The tent is warm, thanks to a covered brazier sitting on a ring of stone tiles. There are overstuffed cushions to lounge on, light blankets for summer, heavy wool blankets for the approaching autumn chill, paintings hanging from the tent ribs, a small but sufficient desk stocked with paper, ink, and brushes, and a table he assumes must be for meals, because it holds a pale blue tea service, plates, and bowls. Furthest from the door, next to the thing he will not yet acknowledge, is a wash basin, pitcher, and an unnecessarily large copper bathtub. 

It is all exquisitely made: the wood masterfully carved, the pottery glazed to a mirror shine, the artwork elegant and refined. The finest prison Xichen has ever seen.

He looks in a trunk near the tub, and surprise escapes him in an involuntary gasp. It is filled with books. He hadn’t realized what they were at first because they are wrapped in dark leather with no identifying marks on the bindings. He touches them reverently, opening some of their covers to reveal histories, books of folklore, even musical notations. Some he knows, some he doesn’t, but they are all beautiful. Tears sting his eyes and he inhales, rolling his eyes upward just enough to stop any drops from escaping.

“There’s a guqin too,” the boy—Huaisang—offers, pointing to a wooden case in the corner. “We understand your clan values music and learning. Elder Brother wants you to be comfortable.”

As comfortable as any concubine or sex slave, Xichen’s harsh inner voice reminds him, and he finally looks at the bed that dominates the tent. At home, this bed would be an extravagance. Even in the emperor’s palace, Xichen guesses, although he’s never been there, this bed would be excessive. It looks easily big enough for four people to lay in and never touch, and the thought heats his cheeks. The bed sits low on the ground, but its tall, carved posts are draped with silks thin enough to see through, and the mattress that looks soft enough to sink into is covered with a creamy blanket woven in a blue pattern Xichen would know anywhere: the graceful, curving seal of the Cloud Recesses.

This has all been made for him.

No, he remembers. Wangji. 

It was made for Wangji.

Chapter 4

In his twenty-two years, Xichen had never knowingly broken the rules of his clan. It had been something he was proud of, that obedience and propriety came so effortlessly to him. It made his life uncomplicated, and it allowed him to protect his brother’s small, secret rebellions from notice.

Now, it made it easy for him to deceive without being questioned.

He asked to see the letter his father was sending to the Beifeng warlord, to check it for errors, because there could be no mistakes to disgrace Wangji. His father was grateful for the assistance. He even apologized awkwardly to Xichen for not telling him what they were planning.

“We knew you would resist, Zewu-Jun, and there was too much at stake for your soft heart to interfere.”

Soft heart. As though that was all Xichen was. As though he did not earn his military title at the age of fourteen, two years before his father did. As though he had not defended the Cloud Recesses successfully until he reached his majority and switched his focus to preparing to lead his clan. As though his kindness and integrity were not regularly praised by all his family’s allies. 

What his father meant was, you would have told us we were wrong, and we did not want to hear it.

His father would have been right. He would not have agreed to give away his brother—Wangji, who did not like to be touched even by people he was acquainted with—to be what? A warlord’s concubine? A servant? Xichen was filled with a rage he had never known before, and it blazed like a funeral pyre.

No, Xichen would not be ashamed of his soft heart, no matter how it sounded in his father’s stern voice. 

It was far too simple to imitate his father’s hand and rewrite the letter accepting the warlord’s terms, changing the names and some of the details like his age and accomplishments. Truly, the warlord was getting a better bargain than he intended, Xichen thought. The first jade instead of the second. The heir instead of the spare. In light of the trade, he altered the letter to ask for Yunmeng’s safety as well, rationalizing that it would be suspicious to give a greater tribute than had been asked for.

He gave the letter back to his father, rolled in leather, scented with jasmine, and placed in a bamboo tube, already prepared for travel. His father accepted without suspicion. Xichen hid his smile with practiced ease. Perhaps there was some value to living a life above reproach.

The only thing Xichen regretted was that he could not tell his brother. He knew Wangji’s stubborn pride too well, and his brother would never let Xichen sacrifice himself, even if it was for Wangji’s own happiness.

Under the plum tree, he had wiped the tears from his brother’s cheeks and reassured him that he would tell Wei-gongzi anything Wangji wished. He could deliver a letter to the Yunmeng camp, if that would make it easier, and it strengthened Xichen’s resolve when his brother’s usually impassive face lit up.

The letter Wangji gave him the day before he was scheduled to leave was heavy, several pages thick. Xichen wondered what you told your soulmate when you had been sold in marriage to save your clan and maybe even your region from being overrun and destroyed.

Xichen had no way of knowing. Now, he never would.

He added Wangji’s letter to one he had written and hid them both under a floorboard in their mother’s empty home on the edge of the great forest. She had laughingly explained that as a healer, she needed to be closer to nature, so it had not been a scandal when she had moved away from their father so many years ago. But Xichen remembered the difference in her smiles before and after and the way she seemed to take fuller breaths here in this little house. It was a place he knew Wangji visited regularly, and the only place he could think of where his letter explaining what he had done and why, would be safe.

And then he prepared to get his brother drunk.

Xichen hated to lie to him, but by now, it was just one more promise he couldn’t regret breaking. His brother would leave at dawn in a caravan of horses, mules, and guards that would convey him and his dowry north to the Beifeng camp on the southern border of Lanling. The night before, Xichen invited Wangji to his rooms to share a hot pot of aged white tea, one of the oldest their family possessed.

“If there was ever a time to drink the best tea,” Xichen said, the misery in his voice unfeigned, “Today is the day.”

It was a family joke, Wangji’s intolerance for alcohol. Xichen had put in just enough so the taste would be masked by the sweet, rich honey flavor of the tea, but it would still put his brother to sleep. He was developing a talent for subterfuge, he thought, staring down at the limp form of his brother, sprawled across the table. Wangji’s face had lost the hard planes that masked his emotions, and he looked exactly his age.

It was easier than he expected to disguise his brother as himself, undressing Wangji down to the silk underclothes they both wore, switching their hair ornaments, and turning his face away from the door. Xichen pulled the blankets high around his head, and reinforced his brother’s sleep with a brush of magic. He felt a twinge of sadness to leave his beloved Shuoyue behind, but he couldn’t very well take the sword. Someone would definitely recognize it by his side, and he didn’t want to deprive his brother of Bichen. What would he do with a sword where he was going anyway? 

He put a note on his door with a single angry word—no—and hoped it would be enough to keep anyone from entering for a while.

“I am sorry, and I love you,” Xichen whispered before he left. He told himself it didn’t matter if Wangji didn’t hear him.

The last thing he did, a risk he couldn’t help but take, was to visit the library. His library, as he always thought of it. He breathed in the smell of leather and ink, touched the bindings of books he loved and scrolls of poetry he would never see again. He tried not to think about the music he had not yet committed to memory. Some of these books were ones he had bought himself, when he used to travel to other clans to contract and trade. Some had belonged to his family for generations. Next to his brother, this library was the thing he would miss the most.

Xichen was ready to leave at dawn, waiting on his horse before anyone else was awake to see him off. It felt strange to be riding again. He had not left his city in years, not since he had traveled to Qishan for the grand wedding of the Wen clan chief mere months before the Beifeng invaded. After they invaded, of course, he was too valuable to send into battle, despite his experience.

“You are too valuable to risk being ambushed and lost,” his father had said, but what Xichen heard was, your life only has value inside these gates. 

He wore a heavy riding coat with a tall collar and a plush scarf—too warm for late summer— that covered most of his face. He refused to look at any of his family, disdaining them as he knew Wangji would have done. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful or offended that no one, not even his father, noticed the change.

Notes: This story is about 40k words, so if you want to follow along, it’ll be on my pinned post, and tagged with #soaring au. It’s also on AO3 (same title).

[mdzs-equine-archive]

Mo Dao Zu Shi Promotional Art

Artist: Qianerbai

Equines featured: Xiao Pingguo and Lan Wangji's grey horse

[insomnia-productions]

modern mdzs: tumblr styles

Wei WuXian:

basically gaud

WWX would be the biggest-gaudiest-patronuses of the mdzs world

Confusing, abstract posts that are both funny and vaguely ominous??

shitposting for days

“this is an uwu safe space”

But he also dispenses really good advice to his followers and genuinely makes them feel better about themselves

also he would 100% eat a whole-ass box of crayons on livestream

This is while he’s sharing a flat with Jiang Cheng in college so JC is just sat on the couch with him, staring into the void as his brother eats crayons

He tags JC in e v e r y t h i n g

*photo of a rock* this is you *anatomical drawing of a bird* ha you *description of lichen* you on mondays lmao

After he starts dating Lan WangJi, endless posts about how much he loves his bae

102% refers to LWJ as “bae” and “boo” exclusively

Posts beautiful drawings of LWJ

Isn’t as active in adulthood but still pops in to antagonize the kids once they get tumblr

Lan WangJi:

Gorgeous calligraphy

Has thousands of followers and 53% of them are WWX on different accounts (he keeps getting blocked)

Not a single reblog to be found

No text, no tags, nothing but photo posts with calligraphy and the occasional painting

Eventually branches out a little and posts audios of himself playing the guqin

“Jiang Cheng listen to this I can’t beLIEVE” “stfu Wei Ying it’s 3am get off tumblr”

When he starts dating WWX he posts a duet of them playing music together. It’s his first video and the first time he tags a post: ‘wangxian’

His followers connect the dots pretty quickly and there is mass hysteria

WWX reblogs it and now his fanbase is screaming too

Each of them gains several thousand followers that day

meanwhile jiang cheng is sitting with his much smaller list of followers watching this and internally screaming

Jiang Cheng:

Everything is purple

Tried to delete his account 13 years ago but couldn’t bring himself to

He didn’t even want to get tumblr in the first place but WWX talked him into it and then he got addicted

His username is sandu-shengshou and WWX teases him about it constantly

“Wow, so edgy~” “it’S CULTURALLY RELEVANT”

Started out as an anti-WWX blog

“this is an uwu free zone”

His header has been “wei ying sucks” since he was 12 and will remain that way until he dies

Eventually he started including general complaints about life along with his many complaints about WWX

Known for his sarcasm and saltiness

Has a infinitely long queue filled with posts about “that one asshole from maths” and “this douchecanoe I met at the supermarket today”

Individual tags dedicated to WWX and JZX (he always saves the most creative insults for WWX)

He barely uses his blog now but the queue is still going

From time to time he still adds to it

Has exactly 714 followers and 1/4 of them are porn bots

Now he mostly uses tumblr to stalk Jin Ling

Jin Ling:

Archery and horses

Picture a hybrid of Student Athlete and Horse Girl

idk i just think if jin ling ever met a horse he would love them

Half of his posts are chain arguments with JingYi

Posts tips on archery and sword fighting techniques

Reblogs other blogs’ advice and corrects everything that’s wrong with it

Gets blocked by all other archery blogs

Works part-time at a centre for horse riding lessons and posts stories about the horses there

He didn’t have any followers at first because the blogs that he corrected made a big fuss about him, but some curious people went to check him about and realized that he actually really knows his shit

Then they read his posts about horses and realized that he’s actually very sweet under the prickly and snobbish exterior, and now he’s got a fanbase

One time he accidentally reblogged from JC and then hid at JingYi’s house for three days out of pure embarrassment

He inherited a sword from his father’s family and named his blog after it

He knows that JC stalks his blog to keep tabs on him but he doesn’t say anything because sometimes people send him asks about how his advice really helped them and he lowkey wants JC to see that and be proud of him

Lan JingYi:

Reblogging memes, all day every day

You get to his blog, the icon is screaming seagull, the header is a collage of spongebob memes, the first post is related to the simpsons probably

A few wacky conspiracy theories sprinkled into the mix, no one can tell whether he really believes them

But if you scroll for a while, you’ll start to notice breaks in the pattern

Little aesthetic collages and edits made by JingYi himself

Stuff like the various seasons of Gusu, the mood of a night hunt with SiZhui, Jin Ling, and Zizhen, the atmosphere of Lotus Pier and Koi Tower and all the other sects he gets to visit

Aesthetic boards for his friends, his mentors - there’s even one for Lan Qiren and it’s full out mountains, calligraphy pens, grey clouds, and that lemon guy who says “uNAcEPTtABLe”

And if you look really, really closely, you’ll find that amongst the collages and the edits and even the memes… he’s managed to hide every. single. lan sect rule.

All 4000 of them. Hidden amongst memes, shitposts, and mood boards.

Lan Qiren finds out and doesn’t know whether to facepalm or be impressed

Ouyang ZiZhen:

Book reviews and recommendations

Header is an edit of books against a rainy window (JingYi made it for him)

Tags the other kids in all the most wholesome posts

People discover him from reblogs on the other kids’ blogs and then follow him because of his tags

ZiZhen is That Person who chats in the tags

Half of his posts are in the tags, almost like he’s shy to have all of it out on display

He gives recommendations for books based on specific seasons, moods, themes, etc

Someone sends him an ask one day to ask for a themed rec list and he screams, he’s buzzing about it for weeks, he goes all out and researches the shit out of his library to give the anon the best book list possible

After that he gets lots more asks and it makes him happy to provide other people with good books

Is a mutual with every single one of his followers and loves all of them

Lan SiZhui:

Everything is soft and blue

He was raised by WWX and later on by LWJ as well so the day he joined tumblr was a Historic Moment for the wangxian fanbase

There are bets down about whether he’ll be a shitposting blog like his Meme Dad or an art blog like his Mature Dad (or both??)

In the end he turns out to be an advice/suggestions blog

Every day he posts a wholesome suggestion and responds to anyone looking for advice

His followers: came for the wangxian lovechild stayed for the emotional healing

A lot of his advice asks are just JingYi and Jin Ling complaining about each other on anon

Sometimes he posts a short audio or video for a message he feels should be spoken

Now people keep requesting him to do asmr (JingYi laughs hysterically and tells him to do it) (he doesn’t)

Always promotes his friends’ blogs and encourages his followers to visit their blogs

His whole blog is just super wholesome and nice. WWX and LWJ are so proud.

[izanyas]

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow (22)

Updatey

Rating: M Words: 15,100 Warnings: violence, mentions of rape

[Read from prologue]

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow Chapter 22

Wen Qing weeped for the longest time.

She was a silent crier. Wei Wuxian had known this during the one and only embrace she had given him, when the weight of her grief seemed to have surpassed his, and they lay entangled together in the bleak depths of the bloodpool cave as she tried to crush out his own distant misery. She did much the same then, hiccuping noiselessly against Wen Ning's cold shoulder. The newly awakened Wen Ning did not seem to know how to show emotion anymore; he had no heartbeat, no pumping blood to keep his body warm or convey the biology of feeling, but his spirit was the same.

He held her back. His stiff face tensed into a smile. He nodded again and again for every trembling, "A-Ning," she called him by. Wen Qing seemed not to want for more than this—for him to be aware and alive to a point, for the movement of his arms as he embraced her febrile body.

When she released him, she looked at Wei Wuxian. Her tear-streaked face glowed wetly under the light of fire. She did not let go of her brother, choosing to hold his hand now rather than the breadth of him in full, but she looked at him; she rose awkwardly to her feet.

She bowed with all of her back and said, "Thank you."

Wei Wuxian had stepped away so that the both of them could reunited, unhindered by his presence. His own back stiffened at the sight of her acting in such a way, so used was he to her unbendingness, so clear the memory was of her scolding him the one and only time he had bowed to her instead.

But she smiled. Her skin lit up with joy and gratitude. And he realized as the fear dissipated that it had been here at all: that all along he had believed she would leave him after she got what she wanted, and that he was a fool to take her friendship for something temporary. Wen Qing dragged her confused brother by the hand until she stood by Wei Wuxian's side, and she embraced him too. She softened his shoulders and his arms. She warmed the center of his chest with gratitude and loyalty.

Wen Ning took to life in the Burial Mounds quietly and uneasily. If the others were scared at first of his appearance, and thought Wei Wuxian was once more trying to guard their sleeping quarters and separate them from the Wen sect remnants, Wei Wuxian did not know. Wen Qing took care of any explaining in his and her brother's stead. A few weeks later, one would have believed Wen Ning to have always been part of the landscape in the dead hills. Not a single person there so much as looked at him in askance.

Wen Ning himself spoke very little: his demeanor was much the same as it had been every time he and Wei Wuxian met in the past, but his words were quieter and rougher. Born thinly out of a throat that no air came naturally through. Perhaps this was the reason he was so few-worded anymore; or perhaps, as Wei Wuxian had feared in the lonely nights of waiting, the violence that had taken him out of the world of the living remained stuck to his skin as it did to Wei Wuxian's.

He shared not his worries with either of the siblings. Instead he looked from afar as Wen Ning got to know of what had happened since the day he died; as he discovered with wide and whitened eyes the near-hundred of his kind who now lived out of cultivating the earth and sewing clothes together. Wei Wuxian spent the most time he ever would with them all during this period—watching Wen Ning adapt to life and the omega adapt to him; watching Wen Ning come to know Luo Fanghua, Grandmother, Uncle Four; watching him be acquainted with the young Wen Yuan.

Wen Ning loved the child.

He seemed to find Wen Yuan's presence more soothing than the rest, than even his sister's at times. He played often with him into the dark hours of evening, his lax face showing more lightness of heart while in the child's presence than anyone else's. Wei Wuxian discovered this as he came back from the very edge of Gusu territory once, with a forty-year-old woman in tow who had begged him on her knees to take her away from the lonely room she was trapped in all her life.

It was not the first time he came back to the Burial Mounds and found the child running awkwardly around, although usually Grandmother or Wen Qing were quick to take Wen Yuan away so that he could walk through. Even Luo Fanghua now looked between Wen Yuan and Wei Wuxian in worry on the rare occasion the two stood within watching distance, and although she disliked such displays of touching or affection, she took Wen Yuan in her arms and took him out of Wei Wuxian's sight.

But on that day, she was not around. Her fever time must have come while Wei Wuxian was away, for this was the only thing that ever kept her inside rather than out. So Wei Wuxian halted at the wider end of the hillpath and watched, frozen, as Wen Ning carried the child on his back and smiled stiffly at his high-pitched laughter.

Round and round he walked and ran, tireless, voiceless. And Wen Yuan laughed as loudly as he cried, and the sound of it lodged within Wei Wuxian's throat and made it hard to breathe.

Wen Ning stopped when he noticed his presence. "Young master Wei," he called softly, despite the many times Wei Wuxian had asked him not to be so formal.

He stepped toward him leisurely. Wen Yuan on his shoulders was flushed with laughter; as Wei Wuxian stared at him and felt his body grow distant from himself, the child turned curious grey eyes his way.

"A-Ning."

Wen Ning's steps halted. From behind him his sister came, looking once at Wei Wuxian before turning to him. "I need to speak with Wei Wuxian for a bit," she said kindly. She always seemed so kind, so tender with pain and love, when she looked at her brother. "You should take A-Yuan back to Grandmother."

"Oh," Wen Ning said. "Yes. Come on, A-Yuan."

The child moaned and pouted at being asked to walk on his own, but he followed obediently, his hand held delicately in Wen Ning's own.

The woman by Wei Wuxian's side had been tense through the whole journey, unwilling to believe him when he had told her that the moonless tea would prevent her from being fevered as they traveled, or that none could guess her true status with the tonic Wen Qing brewed. Now, she relaxed. Her handsome face peered distantly at Wen Ning's back.

Wei Wuxian expected her to ask about the grey quality of Wen Ning's skin, the white veil over his eyes, the black veins running up his neck so evidently; instead she said, "So there are children here," with relief weighing on her voice.

"Welcome," Wen Qing told her briskly. "I imagine you'd like to rest now—I'll take you to Grandmother while we figure out where you'll sleep. There is a new house being built by my uncles, you'll probably live there once it's finished, but for now…"

She was so very good at this despite her unfriendly appearance and bitter scent. The woman followed her in slow steps, exhausted from the three-day journey on horseback after so many years of stillness, but she looked trusting. Like the others before her, and no matter how desperate she had been to flee, she seemed afraid that a step further would have her scolded or punished harshly. Wen Qing's presence always seemed to do away with such worries.

Wei Wuxian led the tired horses back to the stable. The cold was still sharp on his skin despite the winter sun shining over them. He did not experience such physicality anymore, not for a long time, but his back braced for shivers all the same. Uncle Three manned the stables most of the time, as he was too old to participate in the more strenuous kind of manual work; he took the animals from Wei Wuxian with a bright, aged greeting, his suntanned face so wrinkled by time that his eyes were buried under folds of skin.

Wei Wuxian visited Luo Fanghua next.

She lived still in one of the earliest of the houses. As such, it was small, and only three others lived there with her, sharing two beds between them. Her ripe scent of berries was riper still after he pushed open the door, after hearing her call for him to enter; and Luo Fanghua herself was sat by a wall at the other end, sewing by candlelight. She had not been idle while her fever lasted: clothes of all kinds were strewn over tables and chairs, and piled onto one of the two beds.

"You should be resting," Wei Wuxian told her.

He put the needles and thread she had requested he buy while he was away on a chair by her side. She took them immediately, testing the sharpness of a needle on her thumb in precise hands. A thin drop of blood beaded out of the prick like a tiny ruby; she sucked it dry and nodded to him.

Luo Fanghua looked very poised in spite of her heat. Sweat made light shine off of her face, and she blinked groggily once in a while, but she looked otherwise unbothered. Her fingers were nimble as she knotted thread to fabric too quickly for him to see.

"You were away for long," she said breezily.

Wei Wuxian had been ready to leave her to her task right then—he paused at the sound of her tired voice.

"Only ten days," he replied. "I've been away longer before."

"Cultivators came three days ago."

"The barriers are strong enough to resist them even if I should be outside for weeks. Were you afraid they'd get in?"

She shook her head, staring at him ruefully for the accusation. It was almost enough to make him smile.

She must have been afraid, if she was fevered already when it happened. But Luo Fanghua was as stubborn and rueful as he was—she did not like to speak or show her thoughts in any way if she could avoid it, and her smiles were precious and rare.

Looking at her now, flushed and uncomfortable and still putting on such an appearance for him, Wei Wuxian was reminded of Lan Wangji.

He blinked. He breathed in her fever-sweet scent and the burned smell of the candle. "How is your foot?" he asked, taking another step toward her.

Luo Fanghua took the time to finish her row of stitches before she put her work down on the other chair. She bent over her own knees; took the boot off her left foot; raised her leg a bit so he could see better, and only Wei Wuxian's quick reflexes allowed him to grab her calf before her balance faltered. He crouched so that the height may be less straining for her to handle.

There was a ring of blue and black around her thin ankle. He did not touch it, although he knew from Wen Qing's words that it was not painful anymore. His eyes still ran over it carefully, burning the shape and color of it to memory.

Every second spend thusly made hatred swarm what was left of his heart.

"You know you only have to say the word," he told her, carrying her leg back to the floor.

It touched upon wood carefully, as if she were still ready for it to hurt as it had on that day. When he had found her laid in silk and near-unresponsive, an iron chain linking her foot to the wall of her omega house, with only enough give to it to allow her to reach the water room.

She had to crawl to go there, she had told Wen Qing. Her foot ached too much to bear her weight anymore.

"If you would like me to take revenge for you, you can ask me to. For this, they do not deserve to live."

"No," Luo Fanghua said, as she had every time he had given her the choice.

How he wished that she would say yes. Perhaps he would find satisfaction in punishing her tormentors, if he could not find it in punishing his.

Luo Fanghua's face was more flushed now than it had been a moment ago. She pushed away his hands and put her boot back on. She patted the robe over her thighs and sides until he rested once more creaseless upon her.

Wei Wuxian stared at her for another moment, crouched over the floor, before he rose. She avoided his eyes all the while.

"Then I'll leave you now," he said. "You should stop working and rest."

"I do not like being idle," she replied stubbornly.

Her forehead wrinkled in unhappiness. The image of Lan Wangji struggling with his frustration once more superposed itself to her, and Wei Wuxian's lips lifted through no will of his.

"You do not…" Luo Fanghua's words halted. She brought her work to her lap again as if to strengthen herself. "You don't bring so many anymore," she said.

He could not find them anymore.

So many of the houses now lay empty. Wei Wuxian would have believed this to be chance if he were more naïve, if he had not seen the hostility on the faces of those who were present on Phoenix Mountain. As it was, he knew that the omega were being kept from him deliberately. That the greater sects had grown complacent; that the small villages and families whose houses he could find entry to were now keeping them somewhere else.

He had an idea where, and he had an idea of the consequences if he tried to go after them.

But Luo Fanghua only looked worried. She had suffered so much already, and was only now beginning to smile and accept to rest and preserve her efforts. Wei Wuxian knew why she worked so hard for all of them, and he knew that no amount of reassuring would convince her heart that he would not one day send her back whence she came if the mood struck him.

"Will you dine with us tonight?" she asked him as he was about to leave, and Wei Wuxian had not the heart to tell her no.

So he ate with a group of them, far from the Wen sect people who did not need to be asked to know that they should stay away when one of the omega was fevered. He listened without speaking to the cheer of conversation. He did not manage to answer the smiles around him, or to do more than stay by Wen Qing's side and watch Wen Ning play with the child near Grandmother's front door.

He cleaned the dishes they had used side by side with two elderly men. He tried to drown the scent of petrichor with water and oil.

That night, Wen Qing said, "I haven't told him."

She was sitting by his side with a bowl full of tea in her hands. The furs she was wrapped in hid her face to the cheeks, and although she was not shivering, she kept her naked hands close to the heat of her drink. She gave him frowns from time to time, worried that he would catch a cold with so little on him.

But Wei Wuxian did not feel cold, or heat, anymore. Weather had no grasp on him now.

"I figured," he told her.

Wen Qing sighed. She shifted closer to him, almost close enough that her cloak stuck to his own side. "A-Ning hasn't asked anything," she said. "But I can tell that he wants to know why you avoid him now."

"It is not him I avoid," Wei Wuxian retorted.

"I know this. A-Ning doesn't, however."

He remained silent.

"You think he will change his attitude toward you," Wen Qing went on softly. "But I know my brother better than anyone in the world, even better than I know you. He has adored you since the first time you two met. Telling him would not change anything."

"I'm not worried about this."

Or at least, not only.

Wei Wuxian had also liked the Wen Ning he met in the Nightless City. Even when he had thought him to be beta, even when Wen Ning's own shyness had gotten the better of him and proven Wei Wuxian's bravado wrong in the eyes of so many, he had never resented him. What Wen Ning had done to help him after the Lotus Pier burned, after Jiang Cheng lost his golden core… Wei Wuxian could never repay such a debt.

And yet it was not this selfless act he thought of when affection squeezed his chest as he looked at the man, but another; one much more delicate and private, when Wen Ning had told Wei Wuxian the truth of who he was and allowed him to sob and weep with no judgment.

Wei Wuxian could not help but fear that learning of Wen Yuan's situation would draw a gap between himself and Wen Ning, now that the boy was so attached to him. But it was not all.

"He's doing so well," he said.

Wen Ning had sat upon the ground with Wen Yuan before him, caught in the middle of a hand game of sorts that the child must be teaching him. His face was stiff and unexpressive as ever, but still there was peace to be found there. His slow and careful hands, which did not know their own strength anymore, allowed Wen Yuan's to guide and mold them as they wished.

Wei Wuxian looked away. He rose from the wooden bench he and Wen Qing occupied. "If he doesn't remember how he died, then I won't be the one to remind him," he told her. "I won't be the one to put those thoughts through his head."

"Through his or yours, Wei Ying?" Wen Qing replied.

His jaw tensed in anger. It was all he could do, suddenly, not to turn to her again and look for a way to make her unending calm break open on rage at last.

But Wen Qing said, "Forgive me," with enough sorrow on her voice to stay him.

Grandmother was still outside despite the cold. She sat at the table where they had all eaten, warming herself with tea. The man who was the most beautiful of them all—the one who had agreed so readily to follow Wei Wuxian here and never left, in spite of how lucky his chances were at being agreeably married—was speaking to her slowly. Wei Wuxian watched them and saw only the narrow walls around them, the heavy roofs over their heads. The silken prisons they were once left in to die.

"He remembers," Wen Qing said.

Wei Wuxian thought of Jin Zixun begging under his foot; and like with Luo Fanghua earlier, his chest tightened and burned.

Wen Qing laughed emptily. She put a hand over his arm, bracing herself against him. "He won't tell me anything, but I know he remembers," she continued. "But A-Ning is like you. He's convinced himself that relying on anyone else would be a terrible sign of weakness."

She supported herself on him as she rose, exhausted by the efforts of the day, her half-empty bowl spilling tea over her fingers.

"I won't break," she told him. "I know how it goes, Wei Ying. I'm no fool, I was no fool when we first met."

"I know," he replied.

He had never forgotten the words she had said as she was fixing the scars left on his back by Zidian.

"I handled everything. I could keep standing after A-Ning died, I could keep my head cool when Zewu-Jun brought you to me, I could handle all the people you brought here and keep them fed and housed."

His heart ached. "Wen Qing," he said.

She stopped him with a wave of the hand, with another grab at the thin meat of his arm. "Do not apologize," she barked at him. "I've told you already what I think of your guilt."

He must look very stricken, for Wen Qing's shoulders dropped all at once.

"Damn you, Wei Wuxian," she said without heat. "After all this time, you still believe yourself at fault for anything." She closed the cloak more tightly around herself. "Sometimes I wonder, if I hadn't taken the golden core from you, would you be able to see how much good you're doing? How grateful everyone here is for you?"

"Just tell me what I can do," he found the strength to say. "Wen Qing—just tell me what I can do to make you happy. I hate to see you—"

Jiang Yanli had cried, once, when he told her that he hated to see her sad; Wen Qing did not weep, she did not laugh or smile wetly, but she wrapped an arm around his back. She gave him warmth from the side of her body, and she whispered, "I don't want anything from you. You've already given me everything."

She touched his arm and the side of his face, pushing back the limp hair that had fallen before his eyes in the cold evening wind.

"So please," she said. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

-- 

On the first day of spring, Wen Ning broke apart the oakwood door of an empty omega house with his bare hands.

Wei Wuxian had asked him to come along with him on Wen Qing's suggestion. She had figured it a good way to allow the both of them some time together, far from Wen Yuan who now clung to Wen Ning's side every chance he got.

"Where are they all?" Wen Ning asked him.

Wei Wuxian walked twice through the little house. Habit had him checking under the bed, into the cupboards, between the wooden beams supporting the roof. No one was there, but the ghostly touch of sweetscent remained. People had lived here until very recently.

"They're being kept somewhere else," he replied. He brushed a hand against the surface of a table; his fingers came back unmarked by dust. "Probably with the greater sects," he said, clenching his fist. "Somewhere I can't access them so easily. I suppose it only took these idiot two years to figure it out."

Wen Ning shuffled and shifted on his feet, twisting his pale hands together.

"Young master Wei," he called.

"I told you to call me by name."

But Wen Ning shook his dead decidedly. "Young master Wei," he repeated, as stubborn as Luo Fanghua and his sister combined. "I wish—I wish to help."

"You're already helping plenty—"

"No. You do not understand."

Wen Ning had never interrupted him before. Wei Wuxian stared at him, surprised, and waited him out.

Whatever Wen Ning wanted to say next obviously came with some difficulty. Anyone else may have believed him unfeeling and unmoving, but Wei Wuxian had grown used to watching over him, to pushing past his own shame and terror when Wen Yuan was by Wen Ning's side, if only to glimpse and look for a hint of unhappiness on the man's face.

"This body is strong," said Wen Ning.

He picked up a clay pot over the table, turning it twice between his fingers. Then he crushed it one-handed, breaking it into sharp little pieces.

Wei Wuxian heard himself grunt in worry, felt himself move to Wen Ning's side to open his fingers and check that his skin had not split; but although the shards of clay were fine enough to cut, his palm bore no trace of so much as an indent.

"I have to be careful," Wen Ning said, allowing him to stroke over his palm in shock. "Once, I almost hurt A-Yuan without knowing. But I know I can lift a horse, perhaps two, and I can run very fast as well."

"You shouldn't push yourself," Wei Wuxian replied, "I don't know how solid your body truly is..."

"Young master Wei. I want to help you free them."

Wen Ning's lax fingers came alive. They tightened around Wei Wuxian's in a semblance of hand-holding.

"When the young master Jin killed me, I could do nothing," he said eagerly.

Wei Wuxian tried to tear out of his hold, but Wen Ning's strength was true. Although they never became painful, his fingers did not leave any give for Wei Wuxian's hand to squirm out of.

"I wish I could have done something then. I was never one for violence, I always preferred to read than to hunt, even if I do miss archery…"

"You don't have to tell me," Wei Wuxian said tightly.

Wen Ning shook his head. "But now, I am strong," he said. "I'm stronger than any man alive. I could help, if you wish to go against the greater sects."

Wei Wuxian took a deep breath. He pushed his other hand against Wen Ning's until it would finally relax and let him go.

"Your sister would never agree," he tried to argue.

"I have already asked her. She said that she wanted me to do it, if it was what I wanted."

Wen Ning stepped forward. His oddly-still mouth moved, twisting into a smile he meant to be encouraging.

"If I had Jin Zixun before me now," he said, "I could kill him before he had the time to blink."

Gentle Wen Ning, shy Wen Ning, looked at Wei Wuxian with the same quiet strength that his sister had ever-shown.

"Use me, young master Wei. Let me help you like you have helped me."

--

They went to Gusu first.

Wen Ning tore apart the cultivators in the mountain villages who tried to stop them. He broke down housedoors and spiritual swords, heedless of the shouting of frightened alpha and beta. Tempered steel could not break his skin any more than clay could; moon and sunlight had not effect on him, unlike other corpses; his name spread over the land in quiet and terrified whispers.

They found three young omega willing to come with them at the foot of the Cloud Recesses, after thirty strong of the Lan clan's affiliates failed to stop the both of them. None came from the Lan clan themselves to help—the affair was too quickly put to a close, the omega whisked away in the deepest and darkest of night.

Caiyi Town was a much different sight under steel and torchlight than it had been when Wei Wuxian chased water ghouls on Biling Lake. He had no Suibian now to help him fly, but his ghost flute Chenqing served well enough to terrorize.

One couple resisted him. A beta man and his alpha wife, holding between the both of them a babe with the scent of berries.

"Don't take him from us," they cried at him in that endless first night, as Wen Ning stood before them with his black-veined hands held open.

Wei Wuxian thought of the figure he must cut to them, with his fierce corpses and black flute, with his eyes rendered red by the glare of demonic cultivation.

The child cried in his father's arms. The man himself shook with terror, his face bearing faint traces of familiarity that Wei Wuxian could not place to a single person he knew.

Still, he drew back. Still he called Wen Ning to his side again and told them, "I will come back, and if I find that he is growing locked up, I will take him from you."

He never again saw those two people, who moved to the Cloud Recesses soon after, who died of illness before their time; but fourteen years later, his reincarnated self would crouch before their son in the main hall of Mo Manor. He would look into the young cultivator's eyes and say, wondered and ached: "You're omega."

In Lan Jingyi's quick wit, in his unabashed freedom, Wei Wuxian would kindle the first embers of his own hope.

To Gusu Wei Wuxian first showed his Ghost General. To Qinghe then he guided him, raiding the towns around the Unclean Realm and then the Realm itself. He met neither Nie Mingjue nor his half-brother Huaisang there, as they at the time were caught in a conference with Jin Guangshan, but loose tongues would say that upon hearing of his deeds, Nie Mingjue laughed.

That he told the harrowed messenger who came to deliver the news, "Just let him have them."

The eighty omega of the Burial Mounds became a hundred, became a hundred and twenty, before Wei Wuxian was stopped by Jin Guangshan and Jiang Cheng. And though it had been years since he started doing away with tradition and spitting in the faces of those who upheld them, those were the things that all would remember after he died—

The weeks that the Yiling Patriarch spent going after each greater sect, taking his due from them, walking around with his Ghost General. Spreading terror and myth as he went, making all whisper that it was not people he took, but souls; that all could fall prey to the madman's whims one day and end up one more lost spirit in Yiling.

The seventh day after Jin Ling's birth, when the mad Wei Wuxian was invited to Golden Carp Tower in spite of all concerns by Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli; when he attacked Jin Zixun in Qiongqi Path and murdered Jin Zixuan unprovoked.

Then the confused hours after the massacre of Nightless City. The hundred and more cultivators who rose from their wounds and hurried to asiege the Burial Mounds, only to find sect leader Jiang Cheng howling out sobs and pleas, his hands wrapped around Lan Wangji's throat; and next to them the corpse of Wei Wuxian, his belly speared by Bichen's white blade.

--

Jin Zixuan had never known his father this angry before.

Jin Guangshan was of a bad temper, but he was the kind to mellow out under authority and settle easily into complacency. When Wen Ruohan had often visited Golden Carp Tower, the sect leader of Lanlingjin thrived in his attentions, doing his utmost to please him and ascertain his allyship.

When he was young, Jin Zixuan had found this demeanor humiliating. He had never realized quite how much until his understudies in Gusu, when he had spent more time than he wished to admit watching Wei Wuxian turn his nose to Lan Qiren's authority.

If an omega can do it, he had thought then, torn between his own shame and the fluttering of his heart each time honeyscent reached him; If even en omega can do it, then why is my father unable to?

Now the golden-and-white house in the far depths of the Tower stood empty of all its inhabitants, and Jin Guangshan raged and raged, breaking vases and liquor pots, terrorizing his concubines; and Jin Zixuan wished more than anything that he would go back to his meek, cowardly self.

"I will have Wei Wuxian's head," Jin Guangshan bellowed at the height of drunkenness. He had not stopped either—screaming or drinking—since the alarms had been rung that very morning, when servants had come to tell him that the omega house was empty. "I will kill this bitch if it is the last thing I do—"

"Father," Meng Yao said as Jin Zixuan stood frozen by his side; "Father, if your allies hear you say such things…"

"Spare me your snivelling, Meng Yao," spat Jin Guangshan. "What good is saying that killing him would be immoral now? He is so twisted and evil, he barely counts as omega anymore! Did you feel a hint of sweetscent on him in the competition, you bastard?"

Meng Yao did not recoil at the crude word, and neither did Jin Zixuan. For the first time that day, Jin Guangshan met his son's eyes.

He smiled. It was such a cruel and unknown thing, so foreign over his face, which Jin Zixuan had come to recognize as weak, that he found himself wordless.

"Perhaps you were right after all, A-Xuan," he slurred. Another cup shattered as he set it down too forcefully, and his soiled sleeved wetted again under the spill of alcohol. He laughed shriekingly. "Perhaps if I'd let you marry the boy, we would not be in such trouble."

"I'll kill you," Wei Wuxian had threatened.

He had not noticed until he was pushed away that the unfamiliar expression on Wei Wuxian's face had been fear. Not until he had thought of sealing his words with a kiss and looked up; and Wei Wuxian had been looking back to him, as unmoving as stone, cold energy spread over his skin like a layer of armor. So very still and pale under Zixuan's touch.

His fingers had burned when he pulled them from Wei Wuxian's face. They burned yet every time he remembered and guilt started hounding him. He had not slept a full night since the competition without it hounding him.

Jin Zixuan left the room stiffly, shame burning once more up his chest, his hand nervously wound around Suihua.

Outside of the hall where his father's high dais rested, servants and cultivators ran and shoved at each other, making preparations for the days to come. So many had come already to Golden Carp Tower, and Zixuan knew that many more would come still, called by his father's missives to rally behind him.

Only Qinghenie and Gusulan had refused. Yunmengjiang had not been informed at all.

"Maiden Luo," Jin Zixuan called when he found her in the widest of the gardens.

It had flowered thickly with the coming of spring, and fragrant senteurs wafted over the cool air no matter where he walked. Luo Qingyang liked to help with caring for the plants, and spent much of her time with her hands in water and dirt. Jin Zixuan thought, with his throat tight and febrile, of how often he had pictured Wei Wuxian in her stead; of how often he had watched him as a boy waddling happily among blooming lotuses.

But he had been wrong to assume even this much out of the man that this boy had become. Oh, how wrong he had been, and how bitter the knowledge was now.

"Young master," Luo Qingyang replied, nodding to him.

"You have recovered your sword from Qishan's treasury, haven't you?"

She looked at him oddly. "Yes," she replied after a brief silence. "What is it that you…"

Jin Zixuan hesitated.

He could still leave. If he were to turn around now and keep silent after all, no one could fault him for anything but a moment of lunacy. Luo Qingyang was a fellow disciple of the Jin sect, a girl he had known since he was only a child, but one he would only tentatively call a friend. He knew not if he could trust her with this.

He knew not whom he could trust aside from her, however.

He took the letter out of his sleeve slowly. Already the paper had creased from being handled so many times since the early morning hours, and the wax seal keeping it closed threatened to break apart.

"I need you to… No," he stopped himself.

Now more than ever, he could not afford brusqueness.

"I would like you to carry a message for me," he said. "To Jiang Wanyin, in Yunmeng."

Luo Qingyang had been reaching for the letter he held; she stilled at his words and looked at him in shock.

"Young master," she gasped.

"I know I have no right to ask this of you," he added hurriedly. "I know my father asked everyone to remain in the Tower whilst the other clans arrive, but—"

"Young master," Luo Qingyang interrupted. "Are you asking me to betray our sect leader?"

His tongue burned within his mouth, but he could not deny her accusation.

He was asking her such a thing.

"Please, miss Luo," he said.

His free hand found the place over his heart in a show of respect; the very place where it had held Wei Wuxian's cold and unresponsive hand in such terrible selfishness.

He doubted he could ever use such a gesture again and feel that he had a right to.

"Please, you are the only one I can count on for this."

Luo Qingyang was a pretty and mild-scented alpha, a short woman with a round face, with skin goldened by sun and a face ripe with smiles. She had been the one to tell him, once, of Jiang Yanli's secretive kindnesses. She had berated him for his uncouth attitude when he was but a boy in Gusu, when his words had come rude and hurtful for the purpose of having fifteen-year-old Wei Wuxian's attention on him.

"The Yiling Patriarch stole an omega from my family two years ago," she said, looking heartbroken. "She was a wonderful seamstress, and my family lost one of their greatest sources of income after she fled with him."

"I know," he replied.

He remembered when Luo Qingyang's father had come to spend his complaints on Jin Guangshan after it happened. How he had begged for retribution, on behalf of the fact that his alpha heir had trained under the Jin sect since infancy, and how Jin Guangshan had refused to hear of it.

Now Jin Guangshan was raising an army, because Wei Wuxian had taken the two omega hidden in the house at foot of a tower, and taken as well two of the man's five spouses who lived secluded in quarters of their own near his chambers.

Luo Qingyang took the letter from him. "I will warn sect leader Jiang," she said ruefully. "But Luo Fanghua needs to go back to my family once she is found. You cannot allow your father to keep her, as he will keep all of the people that Wei Wuxian stole if given the chance."

Her words could be taken as treason of a kind, as conspiring; but Jin Zixuan was too caught in how guilty he felt for agreeing to care at all that they were.

He had another task ahead of him, now.

Meng Yao found him at the back of the Tower, atop a string of stairs much more decrepit than the ones at its grand entrance. He looked poised and quiet despite the agitation around them, and his voice was even as he took in Jin Zixuan's travel cloak and sword and asked, "Where are you going, brother?"

"A-Yao," Jin Zixuan breathed.

Meng Yao was not someone he ever wanted to butt heads with. He was too clever, too talented despite his mild-manneredness. He was now Jin Guangshan's ears and eyes in a way Jin Zixuan had never been.

But A-Yao did not look angry or surprised. He stepped toward Jin Zixuan with only a smile on his lips, unbothered as always by all that surrounded him, his clothes devoid of dust and his brow clean of any sweat.

"I always took our cousin's insinuations for lies," he said once he stood by Zixuan's side. "But what father said earlier… could it be that they are true?"

"What insinuations?" Jin Zixuan asked, though he knew them very well.

Too often had Zixun taunted him through their youth, after his studies in Gusu, after the archery competition, even on the night they had both spend in the Lotus Pier as a storm raged outside—after Zixun himself had tried to buy Wei Wuxian under Jin Zixuan's very nose.

Zixun had been so incensed then. So terribly and profoundly humiliated by Wei Wuxian declaring that he would rather die than marry him. For hours he had talked Zixuan's ears off, criticizing his taste, accusing Wei Wuxian of licentiousness, for how else but by the use of his body should he have secured Zixuan's affection?

At the time, Zixuan had been only frustrated. Enraged by his cousin's audacity, simmered through by jealousy, wanting and yearning for the brief sight of Wei Wuxian in silken robes, his neck and collar left exposed to the air.

Now he knew how Wei Wuxian reacted to a touch, to an offer for love; and the shame eclipsed even the anger.

Meng Yao did not disgrace him with an answer. He nodded his head deeply, almost bowing at the shoulders. "You shall have to be quick," he said. "I do not know how long I can keep our father occupied until he notices your absence."

Surprise swallowed Jin Zixuan's protests whole.

He was no good with words. He had never been more aware of than since watching Wei Wuxian stare at him in rage rather than understanding. Still, Zixuan grabbed onto Meng Yao's arm and promised, hoping that gratitude showed through rather than aggression: "After this is over, I'll talk with Father. I'll make him acknowledge you, I swear to you."

Meng Yao's becoming face tensed before he smiled.

Jin Zixuan flew for hours over the river-wet mountains and hills, knowing that the one he sought had hours to put distance between himself and Lanling—knowing, as well, that he was traveling with four omega in no running shape.

Most of the people that Jin Guangshan had sent in search of Wei Wuxian had gone toward Yiling directly. But Wei Wuxian was always clever, always bolder than people assumed he was. It was true when he defied the spiteful Lan Qiren with dark ideas he would later go on to make reality, and it was true now, even with how sickly he looked and how little he smiled. He would not have taken the short road home, even at the risk of exhausting his escort.

There was another road he could take. One leading close to the ruins of Qishanwen's stronghold, the now-deserted Nightless City. One that would require long days of riding through narrow mountain paths, and could ensure that any tail was lost or killed discreetly.

Jin Zixuan was willing to take that risk.

He found them after nightfall, following the glowing pinprick of fire at the entrance of a cave. Jin Zixuan had flown lower over the passes after the sun vanished behind the dry mountains; it was the only reason he even noticed the fire, which would have been hidden by rock had he been any higher.

He dismounted at the entrance of the cave. He looked over the empty space by the fire, noticing cloaks and bags but no one at all. Then he took a step further in, and suddenly a shadow loomed over him in the shape of a grey-skinned man.

One death-cold hand wrapped around his neck and squeezes all the air out of him.

"Stop," he rasped, dropping Suihua to the ground, clawing uselessly at the skin of the corpse's wrist—his nails could not cut through it at all, as if it were made of stone or steel. The hold tightened; he choked; his vision swam with black-and-white spots, and his body thrashed helplessly.

Then another voice from behind him— "Wen Ning, release him."

Jin Zixuan heaved in such a deep, shuddering breath after that hand left his throat, that nausea burned through all of his trachea. He coughed, swaying on his feet till both of his knees hit ground, expelling bitter bile over the soil.

There came a clatter of steel on stone. The edge of a sword rested over the side of his shuddering throat. When Jin Zixuan found the strength to twist his back and look, he found Wei Wuxian holding Suihua as if the sword belonged to him.

"Is your memory so short, Jin Zixuan," Wei Wuxian said coldly. His eyes glowed red even in the shadow of night; there was no differentiating the cold air from the stench of resentful energy. "I told you what you happen to you if you ever came close to me again."

"Wei Wuxian," Jin Zixuan croaked out of his aching throat.

Suihua's blade dug more sharply into his neck in warning.

A whimper echoed through the cave behind him. Jin Zixuan tried to turn around and look, but Suihua blocked him before he could do more than shift on his knees.

"Master," came the lifeless voice of the corpse.

"You go take care of them," Wei Wuxian replied. His eyes had not left Jin Zixuan. "I'll handle this alone."

Another whimper, no doubt from one of the omega hiding deep within the tunnel. The corpse's—the Ghost General Wen Ning's—footsteps rang onto rock and water as he walked away.

Suihua did not lower from Jin Zixuan's neck even when after they vanished.

"I warned you," said Wei Wuxian in the thick silence. "I told you that I would kill you."

Jin Zixuan swallowed back the protest, the anger immediately rising through him, and made himself look at the man before him. He made himself see what he had refused to when he had been so focused on expressing all that he held back for years.

Wei Wuxian had looked sick ever since his return to war. He had been pale and thin in Golden Carp Tower, and emaciated during the hunting competition. Jin Zixuan had known and noticed this and had not thought more deeply upon it, or upon his behavior around the Jiang siblings that day, but now, he did.

Now he wondered that Wei Wuxian could terrorize so many by his lonesome when he looked a second away from collapsing. He saw the fear and rage he had refused to acknowledge in his stupidity that day, and the shaking in the hand holding onto Suihua's pommel, never mind that the blade itself lay strong.

The Wei Wuxian he had known as a child, the bright and lively boy from Yunmeng who did not shy upon a touch or an insult, was not the same as the man standing before him now. No matter how much time Jin Zixuan had spent imagining the touch of his hand or the taste of his lips, or picturing him among the flowerbeds of Lanlingjin, wearing a golden uniform.

"My father is gathering an army," Jin Zixuan said. "He will be marching upon the Burial Mounds within the week to take back what you stole. I've sent a message to Jiang Wanyin to inform him, and Lan Wangji and Nie Mingjue refused to accept my father's call for rallying, but I'm afraid I can't stop him, not after—"

Suihua left his throat. The air it moved before his lips cut him short and breathless.

Wei Wuxian did not look surprised by any of his words; he did, however, look angered.

"You told Jiang Cheng?" he asked briskly.

"Yes," Jin Zixuan replied breathlessly.

"You—"

So great did his rage seem that he could find nothing to say anymore; but Jin Zixuan could guess what it was he was thinking, and had experience not taught him better, he would have grabbed onto his arm to still him and convince him to listen.

He only had his words now, and those had always failed him somehow. "You'll need all the help you can get," he said anyway. He pushed himself to his feet, shocked by the weakness through his limbs after being strangled by the Ghost General. No doubt bruises already showed around his neck to tell the tale. "Wei Wuxian," he pleaded. "You can't survive against so many, you need your sect."

"I have no sect," Wei Wuxian spat at him.

He had taken a step back after Jin Zixuan rose. Zixuan tried, and failed, not to let disappointment grip him.

Silence spread over the both of them, broken only by the crackling fire at Jin Zixuan's back. It lengthened the shadow of his body till it touched Wei Wuxian's robes; it shone upon Wei Wuxian's face and dug deeply into the tired lines of it.

"I don't need Jiang Cheng's help," Wei Wuxian said.

He looked like he believed it, too.

"He won't put Yunmeng in jeopardy for me either. Your efforts were a waste, Jin Zixuan."

"They were not," Jin Zixuan protested. "You have time to flee."

Wei Wuxian laughed at him.

He threw Suihua to the ground between them. There had been no light to the sword, as though he had no wish to make use of its power, although Jin Zixuan had no doubt that it would obey him. His hand came instead to the black flute always hanging from his waist.

"Where's Suibian?" Zixuan asked him.

He had not seen Wei Wuxian's sword since it was stolen by Wen Chao.

Wei Wuxian's fist tightened around Chenqing. "I don't need a sword to deal with people like you," he replied. "Now leave before I decide to take your life after all."

But Jin Zixuan did not move. He did not look away from Wei Wuxian's shuttered face.

And though he knew, now, how his words would be received, he still told him: "There is something else I wish to say."

Shivers creeped up his back as the cold and unforgiving presence of the Ghost General once more made itself known. He heard no footsteps this time, and felt no hands upon his bruised neck, but he knew that Wen Ning was looking at him and readying himself to attack.

Still, it was Wei Wuxian he looked at and not the wide-open space at his back. Wei Wuxian's bloodless face in the light of fire, Wei Wuxian's eyes gone grey again with what Zixuan now knew to be fear.

Jin Zixuan pushed past the guilt and the longing alike. "I will not reiterate what I—what I told you the last time we spoke," he said, the blood so thick in his throat that he feared it would spill over his tongue. "Although my feelings are still..."

But he cut himself short, shaken. His own hand lifted to his chest; he thought better of it and lowered it again.

The whole time, Wei Wuxian watched him like a hawk. Searching for any hind that he should approach or speak out of turn.

"I distressed you," Jin Zixuan managed to say. "I did not mean to, I did not… realize how much until the end, but that is what I did anyway. For this, I am sorry."

Wei Wuxian was silent for a long time. Wen Ning's presence at Jin Zixuan's back never vanished as he waited, as if the corpse were only a thin thread away from using his terrifying strength on him again.

At last, Wei Wuxian spoke: "I don't understand you, Jin Zixuan."

His fingers finally went lax around the the ghost flute.

"You've never shown any sign of being less than faithful to your sect and father," he went on. "Yet you go against him now. You try to warn me so that I may escape his anger, although I could not be less afraid of Jin Guangshan even if he were an insect at the sole of my foot. Am I supposed to just believe that you didn't come here for your father's spouses? Or for the two people he kept locked in the omega house of the Tower?"

Jin Zixuan had never set foot into the omega house of Lanlingjin before that very day.

When he was woken up by a fearful servant and walked amongst the cries of the fretting house staff, it had seemed natural to walk down to the base of the Tower and see things for himself. He had known where the house was located, of course, and never thought much of it. His father had told him of the age and names of those held within it; he had participated in the coming-of-age ceremonies, in some negotiations for marriage; had even met a few of the omega who were sold during his lifetime.

But he had never gone to the house itself. Not until that cool spring morning, with rumors of Wei Wuxian's sightings spreading like wildfire, with frightened tales of soul-stealing, of the terrifying Ghost General. He had found the little golden house on the shadowed mountain flank where the Tower stopped short, accessible only through a fling of narrow stairs gone fragile with age and use. He had looked at the broken oakwood door and stepped into the single room it held.

He had taken in the windowless walls, the bed on which two people had slept only hours ago, the lingering sweetscent gone acrid with despair. The inside of the door was blackened by candlesmoke. The beams supporting the roof where the house was not buried in stone barely let in any air.

For the first time in his life, he had tried to imagine what a childhood spend in such a place could lead to; and for the first time in two years, he grew close to understanding why Wei Wuxian had renounced everything he was ever given for this one hopeless cause.

"You will not convince me that you are on any side but your own," Wei Wuxian was saying, wounded in ways Jin Zixuan could only guess at. "I don't understand you at all."

"I don't understand myself either," Jin Zixuan replied weakly. "I can only tell you that I am sincere. That I was sincere the last time, too."

Wei Wuxian's hand spasmed and shook before he tightened it into a fist.

"I acted mistakenly. I had no thought for your circumstances, only for what I wanted, and I came here also to tell you that I…" He swallowed. "That should you refuse me now, I will never again speak of this to you or anyone," he said. "This, I can promise you."

"I refuse," said Wei Wuxian.

Jin Zixuan's heart felt wrung dry.

There was nothing on Wei Wuxian's face. His mouth and eyes were cast into lines of anger, his body laid like the defensive wall of a keep. Although he looked handsome still, as he had been in his youth, this beauty had wasted with the hardships of the past years. There were no creases now for his mouth to smile into.

The sound of steps surrounded him. The Ghost General appeared again before him, rejoining his master's side, looking at Jin Zixuan with white eyes. Jin Zixuan had never truly met Wen Ning, had not even known who he was before that day at the Golden Carp Tower, but there was recognition on the corpse's grey face.

Wen Ning, the Ghost General, the brother of Qishanwen's famous doctor Wen Qing; and the omega that Wei Wuxian had once accused Jin Zixun of raping and murdering.

He looked not the part of omega now, with his inhuman strength and lack of any scent, but there was a wariness to the way he moved around Jin Zixuan. As if he should fear Jin Zixuan attacking him rather than the other way around.

"Get them ready for departure," Wei Wuxian told Wen Ning, who nodded at him. "We need to reach the Burial Mounds before Jin Guangshan does."

"Yes, master."

The corpse of Wen Ning went back around, giving Jin Zixuan a wide berth.

"Pick up your sword, Jin Zixuan," Wei Wuxian said next. "Go back to your sect. Don't speak of this to anyone."

Jin Zixuan feared that Wei Wuxian would step back again when he advanced, but the man held his ground. He felt his eyes over his nape as he bent down to grab Suihua. Its pommel was still warm from the touch of Wei Wuxian's hand.

And then Wei Wuxian moved. His hand went to Chenqing again before falling limply; his shadowed face tensed and frowned, and he looked away from him.

He said, "Even if I did not have so many people relying on me now, even if I'd still been just another cultivator of the Jiang sect, I would have refused you."

Why? Jin Zixuan thought helplessly.

But he knew better than to assume he had a right to the answer.

Wei Wuxian seemed to know what he wanted to ask anyway. "I would have refused anyone," he replied. "Regardless of any affections. And I never held any for you."

Wen Ning came again out of the cave, followed by four people, two of whom Jin Zixuan recognized faintly for having seen his father marry them. A man and a woman not much older than he or Wei Wuxian were; dressed in the finest silks but wearing the face of the hunted, holding on to each other shakily. Three horses were also led out of the tunnel in the hands of the Ghost General.

Wei Wuxian stepped toward them slowly. "I do thank you," he murmured when he was leveled with Jin Zixuan. "For coming here today, and for that time you came to stop your cousin from buying me. I'll repay both of those debts one day."

"There are no debts for you to repay."

Wei Wuxian smiled.

It did not lighten his face or wash away the fatigue that had gnawed the weight and color off of him, but it was a smile. It was the first smile Jin Zixuan had seen on him since they were both children traipsing through the mud-and-snow-covered mountains of the Nightless City.

"The both of you always say this," Wei Wuxian murmured, turning his back to Jin Zixuan. "I fear the price of such kindness."

As he watched Wei Wuxian help three omega onto two of the horses, and then mount the least sturdy of them himself with the youngest against his front, Jin Zixuan thought of the archery competition in Qishan.

He recalled the moment he had seen Wei Wuxian arrive to the gathering in company of meek-looking man with light hair and eyes. He remembered the shock that had shaken the ranks of cultivators as the smell of honey lingered, deeper and more settled now than ever before—as they all realized that Wei Wuxian was not simply an odd omega among his superiors anymore, but a mature one.

How long Jin Zixuan had searched for him through the maze of rocks, how delighted he had been to find him alone and bow to him for the first time with his intent as clear as day—how Wei Wuxian had already shown then such a deep discomfort at being addressed this way.

And then the end of it, his father's congratulatory words at the top of the majestic stairs, while Zixuan's attention was caught to Jiang Fengmian and his disciples not far. The sight of Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen going away with their uncle, Wei Wuxian running after them with a smile on his bright face.

The sight of him bowing to the Lan sect heir, and Lan Wangji asking him not to.

It seemed to Jin Zixuan, now, that his loss had been secured that very day. That he should have realized as much long before he wandered alone through the woods of Phoenix Mountain, shocked and despaired after his words of love were met with such terror, guided by the sound of music. That he should not have been grieved to glimpse Wei Wuxian through the thick, intertwined trees: to see him sat there, lax and peaceful, his pale brow eased out of tension; and Lan Wangji playing songs by his side with the black flute to his lips.

-- 

It took them two days to reach the Burial Mounds again, and by that time the horses were weary and the omega even more so. Wen Ning held the one he carried with unending strength, with the lack of fatigue that death had granted him, but he was the only one in such health. Wei Wuxian's legs and back ached from the quick and tortuous journey through the mountains of Qishan. His soreness did not ease even when the terrain flattened into kinder hills.

He found the village at the foot of the hillpath swarmed with cultivators, and he found Jiang Cheng with Sandu yet sheathed waiting for him at the edges of the barriers.

He was arguing with a group in the muddy robes of the Ouyang sect. In fact he was arguing with Ouyang Zhi, who was screaming words of outrage to him until he saw Wei Wuxian emerge with his following in tow.

"The Yiling Patriarch!" he bellowed, half-feared and half-vindicated.

"Wei Wuxian," Jiang Cheng called in the very same breath.

But Wei Wuxian did not linger on what expression Jiang Cheng wore; he took Chenqing in hand without even dismounting, and called forth the corpses buried all around them.

They were out of the earth in a matter of seconds. Twenty, thirty of them, all in grievous states of decay, surrounding the Ouyang cultivators and those who had followed them. Many of them lost their composure before the ghastly sight and retreated on their own. Those who did not, the corpses flattened to the dirt and disarmed quickly.

Only Jiang Cheng was not attacked in any way. Still he looked at the spectacle around them in thin-veiled horror, and his eyes upon Wei Wuxian felt like a blade to the neck.

Wei Wuxian galloped to him quickly. He jumped off of the riled, frightened horse, helping the young omega boy down with him and giving him to Wen Ning. "You take them up to your sister now," he told him in a hurry. "I'll join you in a moment."

"Young master Wei—"

"Just go, Wen Ning."

Wen Ning may have gotten his spirit back, may be able to feel and speak and act of his own volition, but he was tied to Wei Wuxian inextricably. He could not disavow this bond or disobey the orders which Wei Wuxian carried through it.

Wei Wuxian had never wished to impose upon his will like this.

"You need to leave," he told Jiang Cheng after Wen Ning had gone and taken the four terrified omega with him. He went so far as to grab onto his former shidi's arm tightly, repeating, "You need to leave now, before Jin Guangshan arrives."

"And just let you die?" Jiang Cheng yelled back. "Do you have any idea the state Sister was in when that messenger from Lanling came!? You should be thanking Jin Zixuan on your knees for the risk he took for you."

Wei Wuxian gritted his teeth. "I have no time for this," he spat. "Just go back to Yunmeng. I don't need your help, I'm not part of your sect anymore."

Jiang Cheng tugged his arm out of Wei Wuxian's hold so violently that Wei Wuxian swerved on his feet and almost fell.

"You look like death, Wei Wuxian," he cried. "You think yourself so strong, you think you can just handle the Jin sect and its allies on your own, just you and a bunch of terrified omega—"

"I don't need to hear this," Wei Wuxian cut him off.

Then he turned his back to Jiang Cheng and started walking up the hill.

He was not surprised when Jiang Cheng followed in his steps. He was close enough as well that the token of passage on Wei Wuxian's body encompassed him too, and allowed him behind the barriers that years of cultivation had laid thickly over the Burial Mounds. Wei Wuxian heard him gasp at the difference in the air—as the poisoned, grimy quality of it suddenly turned breathable—but he did not stop.

He all but ran up the half-mile separating the path entrance from the village. He caught up with Wen Ning and the Jin sect omega, and helped to carry the slowest of them the rest of the way. Jiang Cheng remained silent in his fury the whole time.

Finally, they emerged to the village. A group had gathered already, worried for the commotion of cultivators in such numbers. Wen Qing was there trying to soothe them all, although she looked tense and worried as well. Her face lit up at the sight of him and Wen Ning, before falling in disbelief when she saw Jiang Cheng behind them.

She had no time to quiet anyone this time; the omega saw him, and smelled the overturned earth scent he carried with him, and all of them scurried away in fear, some shouting or whimpering, causing the child in Grandmother's tired arms to start wailing as well.

Not even this terrible wail, this gut-wrenching sound Wei Wuxian always so feared, was enough to still him this time. "Get him away from here," he snapped at Grandmother, who looked at him shock but obeyed wordlessly.

Wen Yuan's cries vanished slowly in the distance.

Wei Wuxian could feel that Jiang Cheng was deeply shocked at being met with such a reaction. He knew that if he were to look at him now and study his face, he would find it shattered.

But there was no time for this, and no time either for the guilt he felt at having betrayed all of them by bringing an unknown alpha here. "Wen Qing," he called.

She snapped out of her own stupor immediately. "What is going on, Wei Ying?" she asked him. "Why are so many people here? What did you do?"

"Jin Guangshan is about to lay siege on us all," was all he said.

Her face whitened.

Around her, the four Jin sect omega stood still and frightened. Even the woman Wei Wuxian had found near Jin Guangshan's private chamber of concubines, the one who had begged him for over a minute to take her with him, her terrorized face turned to the ground and her shaking hand pressed to her swelling belly, now looked full of regret.

He saw that she was about to speak. He could guess at what she meant to offer, that she would be willing to go back to her own tormentor if only to calm his belligerency, and he spoke before she could.

"The four of you go get settled now," he said, as kindly and evenly as he could. "Don't worry about a thing. I'll handle this."

"Young master Wei, if I—"

"Consort Jin," he cut in. "I swear to you, you will never again have to be in that man's presence. Please follow Wen Qing and try not to worry."

His own tension had gone entirely.

It was as though the simple sight of her, of all the people like her he had gathered over the years, were enough to suffuse his body with strength. He saw that some had come back after running, hiding within the shadow of houses or of the stables where the old Wen sect man ever-worked, peeking fearfully at the scene. Looking in fright toward Jiang Cheng.

"Wen Qing," Wei Wuxian said again.

His own fear was distant now. Like the echo of water dripping from the ceiling of a cave.

Wen Qing's teeth clenched visibly under the gentle slope of her jaw. "I'll be with you in a moment, Wei Ying," she replied. "Don't you do anything stupid until then."

Then there was only he and Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng had not said a word yet. The worst of his shock must be gone now, which was the only reason Wei Wuxian turned around to see him. He found him staring oddly at the houses and stables; at the wide vegetable gardens that would need to be harvested soon, and the rows of dyed fabrics drying on strings strung from flowering trees.

Springly light shone over him kindly, belying the anger ever-simmering within him. Still his voice was not so harsh when he said, "So this is where you live."

"Yes," Wei Wuxian replied.

He knew not why the word had to push out of his lips thusly, or why such vulnerability shook him, seeing Jiang Cheng standing here.

"You," Jiang Cheng started.

He paused. His face tensed and twisted, his eyes shining and wide despite it all.

"There's so…. there are so many of them," he said at last.

"One hundred and twenty-seven, exactly."

The number seemed to shake him greatly.

"I never—I thought people were exaggerating," he stuttered. "You never took anyone from Yunmeng, I thought…"

Wei Wuxian would have laughed, had he not felt so weary.

"There were none to take in Yunmeng," he replied. "All the omega houses there are empty. Either omega stopped being born there years ago, or more likely, people have grown clever at hiding them and marrying them in secret. I started searching in Yunmeng, after all. They must have taken precautions sooner than the rest."

Jiang Cheng took this in stride more calmly than Wei Wuxian had expected him to.

"And they all came with you willingly," he said. "They all wanted to come with you."

Wei Wuxian looked away. "I know you don't believe me, but yes. Every single one of them."

He tensed reflexively when Jiang Cheng stepped toward him; but Jiang Cheng did not attack him or insult him, and only laid a hand on his shoulder.

The memory of his embrace fitted itself to Wei Wuxian's mind and heart and made him want to pull away as much as it tried to bring him closer and feel it again.

"You're going to your death," Jiang Cheng told him, aggrieved. "Jin Guangshan is not Jin Zixun. People would look the other way if he killed you. Your..." He breathed in loudly. "Your status won't protect you now."

"It never has," Wei Wuxian said.

He saw the alarm on Jiang Cheng's face and pulled away.

"Just leave," he ordered, before his former shidi could ask anything more. His heart beat like drum under the fragile veil of his throat. "There's nothing you can do."

"I told you," Jiang Cheng retorted in fury. "I told you you're not allowed to die!"

"And I said you had no responsibility toward me now!" Wei Wuxian yelled. "I freed you of this, I told everyone I was no longer part of your sect, so you don't have to stay, you don't have to risk anything for me now—"

But Jiang Cheng was holding him by both shoulders now, forcing him to face him, to read over the man's face what he thought would be anger but looked instead like disbelief.

"Wei Wuxian," Jiang Cheng called, in that same voice he used in those woods years ago, when tears had marred him and Wen Chao whimpered and cried at their feet. "After all this time, you think I'm doing this out of a sense of duty? You think I came here because I care for the reputation of my sect?"

Wei Wuxian stared at him, at the marks of grief and exhaustion on him that should not be there at all. Jiang Cheng had his sister and clan back, he had a thriving sect despite the losses of the war—he had a golden core in his chest, shining with spiritual energy, even now giving Sandu a glow that filtered through the gap between scabbard and sword.

Jiang Cheng's face loosened with surprise at his lack of answer. He huffed something desperate, something like a laugh. "You truly don't know," he said in wonder. "You truly think so little of me."

His hands left Wei Wuxian's shoulders. One lingered by his arm, squeezing it briefly, and Jiang Cheng's face seemed to ache again to find it so thin, like his sister's did so long ago.

He said nothing of it, however. He stepped back and pulled away, and his other hand lifted to his chest in a gesture too recognizable for Wei Wuxian not to see white and step back reflexively.

Jiang Cheng stilled. His sharp face grew sharper still, awash with frustration. His hand fell again to his side, clenched into a fist.

"I didn't come here because I worry for Yunmengjiang," he said.

And it looked as though he would say more, as if he were bracing himself for it, vulnerable and scared as Wei Wuxian had never seen him; but then Wen Qing appeared from around the corner of the nearest house with a group of Wen sect people in tow, and Uncle Four called Wei Wuxian's title brightly.

Jiang Cheng grabbed the pommel of his sword. "I won't let you die," he said. "You're not allowed to die while I still have breath in me. I'll find a way—"

He took a breath. Unsheathed Sandu quickly and stepped over the blade of it.

"I'll find a way," he repeated. "I swear to you."

He flew away from them all before Wei Wuxian could even move.

-- 

Jin Guangshan's army spread around the hills not two days later.

Wei Wuxian had not appreciated just how many people could be gathered in such a place, just how many of them could be looking at him in such disgust and hatred, so much more potently than they had on Phoenix Mountain. As if dripping rage from the mouth like spit.

Jin Guangshan sat upon a gold-clad horse with his seldom-seen sword in hand. He brandished it toward Wei Wuxian the second Wei Wuxian appeared out of the protective barriers, followed by Wen Qing and the twenty people of the Wen sect he had taken with him so long ago.

He had not asked them to come. He had tried to forbid them to come, in fact. But Uncle Four and the others had smiled and shaken their heads, even the elderly.

"It's the least we can do," the stable man had said.

So now they stood around him, some of them even wearing robes sewn with crimson suns, and Wen Qing held in her hands one of the swords Wei Wuxian had stolen over the years.

"Affiliating with Wen dogs," Jin Guangshan sneered from his mount. His long sword pointed to Wei Wuxian, his weak face gone delighted with triumph. "See now the kind of person Wei Wuxian is?" he called loudly for the sake of his troops. "See what becomes of an omega left to roam freely? And he would like to raise an army of them to do his bidding!"

"Thief!" people clamored as an echo.

"Madman!"

"Give back what you stole, bearer!"

Wei Wuxian fit the two halves of the Stygian Tiger Seal together, and corpses sprung from the dry earth of Yiling, crowding the cultivators into stepping back.

But there were so many of them. So many rows of them armed with swords and bows, with instruments to repel the dark energy. They surrounded the hills as far as the eye could see.

"I'll take care of Jin Guangshan myself," he told Wen Qing coldly.

"Wei Ying, wait—"

He felt her despair as acutely as his own.

There was no coming out of this alive for any of them; still he would die before allowing any of these people entry.

Jin Guangshan did not seem scared of the terrible strength that Wei Wuxian gathered, or even of the Ghost General Wen Ning who was now sending cultivators flying every way in a rampage. He watched Wei Wuxian approach from high upon his horse. His face in the sunlight seemed to change for a second, seemed to twist into the monstrous head of the Xuanwu of Slaughter, which Wei Wuxian had gone to face on his own much the same.

He almost expected to see Lan Wangji by his side, strangling the beast with bowstrings tied together, calling his name in worry.

"You will lose, you deranged omega," Jin Guangshan was saying now, his face the very picture of disgust. His hand clenched over the reins of his horse so tightly, Wei Wuxian fancied that he could hear the sound of knuckles cracking in the distance. "You will be captured and taken back to where you belong, and those you have stolen redistributed to their sects and families."

"So you don't actually intend to kill me, Jin Guangshan?" Wei Wuxian replied coldly. "And here I thought you couldn't prove yourself more cowardly."

Jin Guangshan reddened in rage, and his horse huffed under the kick he gave its sweaty flank, veering forth and sideways. "I have not sunk so low as to sully my hands with omega blood," he spat, "but who knows what could happen? Perhaps you may suffer the same fate as that pet ghost of yours."

Wei Wuxian called, "Wen Ning."

Wen Ning answered him as if he had whispered the words to his ear.

Cultivators fell. Cultivators died under the power of the Seal, for the first time since the Sunshot Campaign. Rows and rows of them put themselves between Jin Guangshan and he, blocking his way each time he tried to get close enough to the man to finally stop his continued living.

And Jin Guangshan sat on his horse in the distance, watching his people die for him, secure in the strength of his own numbers—knowing, as Wei Wuxian knew, that no man alone could hope to stop him now.

A man who had insulted him too many times to count since he was just a child. A man who had sheltered Jin Zixun, who had lived for so long with the reputation of one who liked to hoard Wei Wuxian's kin like mere possessions; who had put a child into the belly of his youngest concubine and left her crying to Wei Wuxian's knees, begging him to take her away.

She had broken out of her quarters herself after hearing the commotion in the Tower, after hearing his name. She had found him, barefooted and frightened, as he was about to leave; she had wanted so dearly to be taken as she had heard others were before her.

"Where's your son, Jin Guangshan," Wei Wuxian called as Wen Ning kicked away one more man trying to make a shield of his own body. "Did you bring him to life with the same violence that you did your many bastards? Is this why Madam Jin can't even stand the sight of you?"

"You mad thief," Jin Guangshan replied in rage, "rotten like your bitch of a mother, you should have been locked and left to starve before you could grow old enough to speak—"

Like Luo Fanghua and the forever bruise at her ankle, like Grandmother who had weeped so after walking into the sun, like Wen Linfeng sobbing into his lap as she related all her fears.

Like the old man in the Lotus Pier whose name Wei Wuxian had never known.

Sandu came down from the sky like the coming of storm, carrying with it the scent of lighting and upturned earth, the acrid smell of a landslide.

Jiang Cheng was the one to parry away Wen Ning's attack this time. He hit his sword to the side of Wen Ning's chest and made the corpse sway aside, and he stood before Wei Wuxian with sweat shining over his brow, as if he had traveled across land and sea to get there in time.

"Wei Wuxian," he panted.

Wei Wuxian felt so cold. So very distant from his own self and feelings, so very numb to all but the wish to see Jin Guangshan dead. "Get out of my way," he replied. "Or I'll kill you too, Jiang Cheng."

No matter how the repercussions of such a thing would destroy him, no matter how much love even now tried to surge up his frozen heart at the side of the one he wished to call brother.

Wei Wuxian tugged Chenqing out of the strip of leather at his belt. He pointed it to Jiang Cheng with enough meaning to it that he felt the black tip of it should flatten, widen, lighten; take the shape and feeling of Suibian in his hand and make the hole in him fill again with a golden core.

But Jiang Cheng did not move. "Just look around you!" he howled.

Sandu swerved around him to show the battlefield, the decaying corpses and rage-lost cultivators, the Wen sect remnants crossing blades with enemies, Wen Qing herself caught in battle with a man twice her size.

"You can't win this! You'll die if you try to kill him, you'll lose everything you ever fought for!"

"Get out of my way," Wei Wuxian breathed.

Chenqing hit against Sandu's blade, so much weaker to such blows than Suibian ever was; not meant to be wielded in the way of the sword.

Wei Wuxian's hand shook badly. If Jiang Cheng meant to just push the flute out of his way, he could have, so easily. Wen Ning stood still by their side, his bond to Wei Wuxian telling him that this was foe at the same time as it told him that this person should never, ever be hurt. Jiang Cheng had no restraint to him if he should desire to put an end to it all.

But he did not. He stared at him in despair, heedless of Jin Guangshan at his back crying at him to finish it, to fix the mistake that his clan had brought in letting Wei Wuxian be raised under the sun.

"Get out of my way or kill me," Wei Wuxian said to him, pleading. Three years of exhaustion, of hanging onto nothing but the barest of threads, pushing the words out of his bleeding lips. "If I have to die here, Jiang Cheng, please be the one to kill me."

And for a second he saw before him not the man that Jiang Cheng had become, but the child he had met on the first day of his life in Yunmeng; the stubborn boy who looked at him so jealously, until Wei Wuxian first dragged him through mud and water to play and made his serious eyes widen and shine.

His first shidi. His first and only brother.

Sandu cut into Wei Wuxian's belly as if cutting through water. It plunged through him unfelt, emerged glistening with blood, shaking in Jiang Cheng's hold as if he were a second away from dropping it. Wei Wuxian did not immediately feel the pain of the wound or hear the agonized cry of his name that Wen Qing gave in the distance.

Then it spread through him, crushing, unbearable; and he fell to his knees in the mud and retched blood over the hem of Jiang Cheng's robes.

He felt hands over his back immediately, heard Jiang Cheng's voice call in a hurry—"Take him away, take him back up the hill now."

"Young master Wei!"

And other such words lost to the ringing in Wei Wuxian's head and the pulsing, awful pain in his middle. A pain he had not felt since the day he had lain in his own blood and sweat and pushed out of his body the parasite put there by Wen Chao.

He recognized Wen Ning's strength around his back and under his knees, the call of Wen Qing's voice asking for all to retreat back to the village. The two halves of the Stygian Tiger Seal came undone, now that he had no strength to keep power surging through it.

He felt tepid rain on his face, breathed in the smell of petrichor. He swayed in Wen Ning's careful hold, hearing the whispers of his name coming from thos dead lips, from that airless throat. He opened hazy eyes in direction of Jiang Cheng, whose hold on Sandu trembled, whose face had wetted already with the rain and his tears.

He thought of the first touch Jiang Cheng had given him after his first fever; he thought of Jiang Cheng's hands around his throat in the aftermath of his parents' death; he thought of his embrace in the abandoned fort grown tight and stifling with relief.

He thought, Don't look at me.

Then he thought of nothing at all.

-- 

There was music in the distance.

Songs from across the land, born up on the cool and clear mountains of Gusu. Old enough that the structure of sentences was barely more than a series of high and drawn-out notes infused with spiritual energy. The song changed and turned into another, echoing off of walls which must be made of stone smoothed over by time.

Lan Zhan, he thought; and he wanted, suddenly, for that song he had played as he lay in such a groggy state. For the sound of bowstrings pinched by bleeding fingers, and Lan Wangji's voice humming over the faint backdrop of stillwater.

But no such song came.

Wei Wuxian opened his eyes to the familiar ceiling of the bloodpool cave. For a second he did nothing but watch light stripe the ridges of stone overhead, but hear the unfelt fire crackling near him. One of the blankets sewn by Luo Fanghua rested over him.

The music stopped. A warm hand slid under the cover to grab his, practiced fingers pressing against the crook of his wrist to feel his pulse, and Wei Wuxian breathed in the scent of persimmon.

"You didn't need to," he told Wen Qing.

His voice came thin and easily broken, and the effort of speaking alone tugged at the wound left in his abdomen.

Wen Qing said nothing. He turned the head to look at her, quickly enough to catch the little flute she set on the floor by his side. She was not wearing the clothes he had last seen her in, and her face and hands were clean of dirt, of blood.

"How long?" he asked.

"Five days," she replied evenly.

So long, then. Longer than Wei Wuxian had ever slept before.

Long enough for everything to be taken from him.

Wen Qing must see how he tensed then, how he made as if to push out of the bedding and crawl his way outside the cave if he had to; her hands pushed his shoulders down harshly, and she told him, "Calm down. They're all fine. If you reopen that wound now after the work it took to fix you up, I'll kill you myself."

"We wouldn't want that," he said thinly.

She almost smiled. It almost looked as if she were crying. "No," she replied succinctly.

The rest was routine.

Wen Qing undressed his wound carefully, going so far as to bring torchlight closer for a better look of it. It must be nighttime, Wei Wuxian thought; the smells were different here after the moon rose, and the air that came in from the entrance of the cave was cooler. No light filtered under the curtain of furs they would soon take off for the summer.

"Sect leader Jiang was very careful how he stabbed you," Wen Qing said, palping the wound slowly.

Wei Wuxian did not look at it any more than he had the others—the Qishanwen brand or the line of core surgery, or even the shameful marks left by his once-stretched skin.

"He did not hit anything vital, or not much anyway. But your body is weak, and you've been pushing yourself more than ever lately. You caught an infection."

"You took care of it," he replied drowsily.

She gnawed at her own lips. "Your fever only broke yesterday," she said. "I wasn't sure you would wake up at all."

Perhaps it would have been better if he did not.

Wei Wuxian did not share those thoughts with her, knowing how she disliked his more maudlin moods. He allowed her to clean the wound and dress it again, and her fingers on his skin only felt the slightest bit maddening.

Wen Qing had more that she wanted to say. He knew it, and she knew that he knew, but she delayed anyway. She stepped away from him to put water to boil overfire. She remained there as the tea steeped, as she sorted out the drugs she would not doubt administer him, before scolding for not eating enough.

Wei Wuxian could not afford any more delays. "Just tell me," he said. "Just tell me how bad it is."

Wen Qing gnawed at her lips again. "It's not so bad," she replied. "Sect leader Jiang negotiated with Jin Guangshan for days, and they managed to come to an agreement. That as long as you never steal anyone again, and as long as you never attacked another cultivator, you can stay here. All of us can stay here."

Wei Wuxian scoffed, although the act pained him and cut his breath off. "I can't believe that's all there is to it."

"You were skewered on a sword in front of thousands. Many think that was punishment enough, considering your status. Jiang Wanyin is facing his lot of contempt for daring to do such a thing."

I won't let you die.

"And Jin Guangshan accepted this," he said, feeling dried out entirely. "He would just let me go after everything."

There, he thought, watching the twinge of guilt in Wen Qing's ruthless face. There it is.

"He wants his omega back," she admitted at last. "Especially the one pregnant with his child."

Rage simmered again under all the numbness. "He can't have her," Wei Wuxian replied. "I'm never giving her back to him, even if she begs me to."

"She did beg." Wen Qing's voice had gone soft with misery, with understanding; the glance she gave him then was too knowing for him not to avoid it. He looked again at the ceiling. "But she wasn't in her right mind, and her friend managed to make her see reason."

"What did Jin Guangshan have to say about this?" he asked roughly.

Wen Qing came back to his side. She took his hand in hers, not under any pretense of caring for his health this time—only to link their fingers together and try and share some warmth to him.

"He took a hostage for a hostage," she said quietly. "He required your shijie to live in Golden Carp Tower until the day you see fit to agree to his demands."

Wei Wuxian sobbed out a breath and covered his face with his hands, crushing it over his own eyes in hope of stoppering a flood he knew would not come any way.

He heard no word Wen Qing said after that—none of her soothing claims, none of the It wasn't your fault—nothing at all. He pressed onto his eyes until even darkness vanished under grey and red spots of pain, until the knot in his throat widened and cut out his airways, making him gasp, flaring pain through the wound Jiang Cheng had given him.

He tasted bile over his tongue, slick and warm, inescapable; but the bitterness he found there was only from his own failure.

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[thesporkidentity]

The a-yuan broke my heart, I was crying like the final flashback battle all over again but they were happy tears, ya know? THE LEG HUG!!! Also is it just my dumb self or was his costume slightly different between the walking and then the final playing in those final 30 seconds? Not lying it's perfect either way but oh if it's like a little while later I can't with my child. Also oh my goodness can that boy smile like a sunbeam, my heart has been restored from the PAIN, SO MUCH PAIN.

Also with bby!Nie I literally called it, I knew something was up I was screaming and hollering. Don’t get me wrong there’s enough in the flashback that yeah they’re all dumb together but there’s enough hints there, just enough. It was very well done that section. I’m being extremely vague in case the other anon’s still around. I literally love everyone on the show even though in some cases I really shouldn’t because… jsdjcsd they belong in the garbage can.             

Don’t get me wrong I sympathize with them very deeply in some cases but in other cases like dude I wanna slam dunk them in the garbage where they belong for very good reasons. They seem to have added a lot more gray into the live drama from what I hear, which makes it a bit easier in every case but the consent issues (oh god the consent issues, that’s not going to be fun). I’m glad I might still get to try the AD! Apparently it’s the same voice actors so it’s like a rewatch but more canon ;)            

THE. LEG. HUG. he’s just such a precious baby duckling! and he’s ALIVE! and my god lan zhan fucking RAISED HIS CHILD FOR HIM like that is devotion right there and he did such a good job he turned out so well like even before knowing WHO he was he was ALREADY everyone’s favorite of the juniors.

if you’re talking about between lwj and wwx walking away and then the final thirty seconds with the silence and then the music then yeah it was a different costume. so even after lwj and wwx split to fulfill their own separate duties in the end they still come back together like, lwj tracks him down and finds him again (presumably when his duties are finished and the cultivation world has recovered from that chaos) because they’re fucking cultivation partners and after they do what their honor and goodness demands they finally get their happy ending of just wandering around and doing good together and it makes my heart so full.

nei huisang!!! my little dark horse! yeah i don’t want to spoil it but hot damn.

and yeah i’m not gonna judge you for loving the garbage people like, book jin guangyao is actually one of my favorite characters. (i just find him so fascinating because so much of him is so understandably human that, a few of his crimes aside, i can actually totally understand him. so you end up asking like, what was the tipping point? what number of his mistakes or which of his crimes took him from redeemable to unforgiveable? in a universe a little bit to the left could he have been a force for good or do you side with nie mingjue’s opinion that after his first crime that he could never be anything else?) i like that in most cases the villains in this story are so very human rather than a caricature, like aside from wen ruohan and wen chao they actually have reasons behind the bad things they do besides just ‘oh well they’re an evil character.’

as for the grey morality, the live-action actually took away a lot of that in my opinion (likely due to censorship reasons, so i wouldn’t blame the production for that they very obviously tried as hard as they could to be as faithful as they could) at least as far as the leads go. it’s like they polarized it so like wwx was better and jgy was worse, but at the same time those changes made some of the minor characters a little more gray though i guess because they were minor it was okay? skip these parts if you’re wary of spoilers.

**the villains are more evil, the heroes are more pure. like the show glosses over it but in the book one of jin guangyao’s biggest contributions to the cultivation world is a watchtower project where small groups of cultivators rotate through garrisons spaced out along the countryside in order to make it easier for the people under their protection to get help and to reduce reaction times when they detect surges of resentful energy. like, he fought a lot of the sect leaders on this since setting up garrisons could (and likely was) a first step towards consolidation of power, but at the same time it did protect the commoners and rural areas that a lot of the others deemed unimportant enough to really care about. but because that distracts from his misdeeds the show left it out to make him more explicitly evil. (also the whole NOT MENTIONING THAT HIS SON WAS CONCEIVED BEFORE HE KNEW SHE WAS HIS SISTER AND THEN HE NEVER TOUCHED HER AGAIN, WHY DID THEY HAVE TO TAKE THAT OUT AND MAKE HIM COMMIT INTENTIONAL INCEST??? anyway i’m fine it’s cool whatever) but for the most part everything he does isn’t about power just for power’s sake the way it seemed to be for wen ruohan or jin guangshan, it’s the impulse of someone who was abused and powerless amassing power because maybe if he gets enough he can finally keep himself safe (and the tragic thing is that it will never be enough because he cares so much about what everyone thinks about him that he could never achieve what he would view as “safe”)

and the live-action absolves wei wuxian of…basically all his crimes except maybe having a bit of a temper and a sharp tongue. the whole ancient ancestor of a destroyed clan creating yin metal? the wens already practicing demonic cultivation with xue yang? none of that was in the book. wei wuxian wasn’t just a demonic cultivator, he was the genius who invented it. xue yang didn’t even come in until much later as an imitator. it’s like the difference between someone who uses a gun versus someone who invented the gun and introduced that kind of harm into the world. and no one interfered with his usage of the tiger seal at the pass with jin zixuan or at nightless city. wei wuxian really was just emotionally compromised and he lost control and yeah it wasn’t intentional but it did kill people and it was very much on him.**

so like, there’s a lot more grey in the novel and who you decide to hate and who you decide to forgive is very much of the “when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it” variety. so if that’s your bag you might really enjoy that novel.

yeah the consent issues… the consent issues feel in my opinion  like…unnegotiated kink? at least that’s kinda how i interpreted it to get through the sex scenes (and also i’ve read in this series of posts that some of those consent issues are exacerbated by the translation and were not necessarily in the original text). like from POV you can tell that what he says and what he wants are two different things and he definitely wants, but it is not something that would be okay to do in your real life as opposed to in fiction without a pre-scene negotiation and a safe word so the lack of that might be a trouble spot for some people. and if you’re sensitive to that then definitely skip the incense burner extras. if it’s something you’re worried about then i’d say read that series of posts to make an informed decision.

and the voice actor for the AD is the same for wei ying, but different for lan wangji. but the same for some other actors. the live-action took a smattering of different people from the AD and the donghua. but it’s really good and it follows the book canon super closely and the scenes they add are really good.

okay i’ve blabbed on enough at this point i apparently like hearing myself…type? that expression works less well in this context. but yeah, done now lol

[mdzs-equine-archive]

Mo Dao Zu Shi Novels; Cover for Volume 3

Artist: Qianerbai

Equines featured: Wei Wuxian's black horse, Lan Wangji's grey horse, background chestnut horse

[mdzs-equine-archive]

Mo Dao Zu Shi Donghua Promotional Art

Artist: BC May Pictures Studio

Equine Featured: Lan Wangji's grey horse