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Meng Yao is eight years old when he meets Wei Wuxian.
He’s alone in an alley just off the town center, surrounded by a group of kids that his mother wants him to befriend and who do not want to befriend him, if his bloody lip and twisted ankle are any indication. They’re bigger and older than him and his mother is going to be so upset if he causes trouble and they’re getting closer and he doesn’t know what to do.
“That doesn’t look very friendly.”
He turns to see another kid, one that looks to be about the same age as the rest of them, but that’s where the similarities end. He has on black and white robes, his hair is pulled into ponytail, and he has what has to be a training sword on his back.
He’s a cultivator. A child still, but a real actual cultivator, just like his mom is always telling him that he’s going to be one day.
“Who are you?” the largest kid asks rudely. “Just leave the whore’s son to us. You shouldn’t be here. Junior cultivators aren’t allowed to leave the Koi Tower. My dad said so.”
The boy tilts his head to the side and Meng Yao shifts uneasily on his feet. Lots of people come in to see his mother and his aunts and most of them are unremarkable, most of them are just people, but some of them are dangerous. Not bad, but they’re the type of people who make everyone nervous because if they were bad, there’s not much any of them could do about it. Meng Yao knows who those people are because those are the times he’s sent out of the house. Like today.
This boy reminds him of them. He doesn’t think the sword on the back of the boy’s back is a toy, but a tool.
“Do I look like a Jin cultivator to you?” the boy asks finally, a very adult contempt in his voice. He doesn’t, not his robes or his hair or his attitude. “Scram.”
“If you’re not a Jin, then you’re probably not a real cultivator at all,” the leader sneers. “We’ll beat you too, I don’t care.”
He should care. Meng Yao doesn’t think a fight between him and this boy who stands like an adult is going to end in his favor.
“Please,” he says quietly, and the boy looks over his shoulder to meet his eyes. “It’s alright. My mother says it’s better not to cause a fuss.”
He blinks and scratches his chin. “Really? My mom told me that assholes who make problems for other people get what’s coming to them.”
Meng Yao stares for a moment, mouth open.
He doesn’t even notice that the boy hasn’t moved until he realizes he’s looking at empty space. He turns his head to see the boy fighting the group of older kids, his sword still sheathed across his back. He’s got a huge grin across his face, like this is fun for him, but he’s getting hurt too, unable to avoid every hit.
Meng Yao knows that his mother is going to be upset, but he can’t just stand on the sidelines and do nothing. He balls his hands into fists and takes a step forward, wishing he knew how to do something useful with the golden core sitting in his chest. No matter how much he meditates, it can only take him so far.
The boy sees him and his eyes widen. He steps in front of him, unsheathing the sword strapped to his back and pulling it across his body in a smooth, controlled arc that just confirms what Meng Yao already knows. He really does know what he’s doing, he really is a cultivator. “I’m not supposed to use this on civilians, but you’re being really annoying. Get out of here.”
The gleaming sword pointed in their direction is enough for them, the group of kids running away from them.
The boy resheathes his sword then turns to face him, a cut bleeding above his eye and a red mark on his jaw that’s sure to bruise. “You okay?”
“Yes,” he says, trying not to stare too obviously. He goes into a deep bow, just like his mother taught him. “Thank you.”
An arm settles around his shoulders, pulling him upright, and the boy is grinning at him. “Don’t worry about it, those guys were jerks. I’m Wei Wuxian. What’s your name?”
“Meng Yao,” he answers.
Wei Wuxian frowns suddenly, reaching out and grabbing his wrist, pressing his fingers into his wrist before Meng Yao yanks it back. “I don’t get it. You’re a cultivator too. Why didn’t you fight them yourself?”
“I’m not,” he says, face burning. “I’m going to be one day, but not yet. Mom says that I’ll be one when my dad comes back for me.”
There’s another complicated, adult look on his face that Meng Yao doesn’t understand, but then he just says, “Where do you live? I’ll walk you home. I’ll send up a flare when we get there so my parents know where I am.”
Meng Yao tries to argue with him, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t listen, insisting on following him back to the brothel. He doesn’t react at all to where they are, even though he has to know, and his mother is with a client now so they sit in the parlor and one of his aunts brings them tea and fusses over their bloody faces.
Then Wei Wuxian’s parents arrive.
This is how Meng Yao becomes the disciple of Cangse Sanren.
~
A year after Meng Yao joins them, Wei Wuxian spends a season as a guest disciple with the Jiangs. It won’t be the last time, but it is the first.
There’s something about it that Master Cangse and Wei Changze aren’t telling them, because Master Cangse is angry and reluctant and only relents after Wei Wuxian complains loudly about missing some people called A-Cheng and A-Li, saying that they deserve the chance to get to know one another properly. She goes on a lot of solo night hunts after that.
Then Meng Yao meets Madame Yu, figures out that A-Cheng and A-Li are referring to the heirs of Lotus Pier. He still doesn’t understand what’s going on, exactly, but the warmth between Wei Changze and the lack of warmth between Master Cangse and Madame Yu tell a story all on its own.
When they return to Lotus Pier to pick Wei Wuxian up, he’s referring to Madame Yu as Aunt Yu and Meng Yao has never seen that look on Master Cangse’s face before.
Wei Wuxian kicks his ass and tugs on his hair and gets dirt on his robes and Meng Yao tells himself that he hadn’t missed him at all.
~
“A-Yao,” Wei Wuxian says, his eyes sparkling in a way that Meng Yao knows means trouble. “Let’s go after that ghost they say is living in the well.”
“No,” he says, not looking up from the book Wei Changze had given him to memorize.
“Okay,” he says and Meng Yao stills, because it’s never that easy. “I’ll go on my own.”
“Master Cangse said to stay here,” he says. He can already feel a headache building behind his eyes.
“Here’s a bit of an unclear word, really,” he says, even though it’s absolutely not. “They’re going in the woods to nighthunt, so maybe here is really just any place that’s not there. The town has to count as here.”
It probably would if Wei Wuxian wasn’t going out specifically to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. “You can’t do that. We’ll get in trouble.”
“Are you going to stop me, A-Yao?” he asks, smirking.
Meng Yao glares. He’s improved a lot these past couple of years, but Wei Wuxian is, unfortunately, still leagues ahead of him. Based on the other cultivators they’ve met in their travels, Meng Yao doesn’t see that ever changing. It’s really annoying. “Don’t worry your parents, Shige.”
Wei Wuxian lights up, like he always does when Meng Yao calls him that, but unfortunately it’s not enough to distract him. “What’s there to be worried about? I’ll be there and back before they return. If you are worried about me, A-Yao, then of course you’re welcome to come along.”
They’ll be so upset if Wei Wuxian gets eaten by a ghost.
“Fine,” he says, putting his book aside. “But we’re just going to investigate. If there’s something actually there, we’ll wait for Master Cangse and your father.”
There is something in the well. It’s not a ghost.
They don’t end up waiting.
Only a couple buildings get destroyed, in the end, and now they don’t have goblins living in their well, so the townspeople really didn’t have that much to be upset about in the grand scheme of things.
Wei Changze and Master Cangse say they’re sending Wei Wuxian off with Song Lan and Uncle Xingchen so each of them can get more dedicated training. Meng Yao is pretty sure it’s just because they’re worried about what they’ll get up to if they spend too much time together, which he thinks is a little unfair.
Wei Wuxian only convinces him to get involved in one out of a hundred bad ideas, but it’s the one that always seems to get them in trouble.
~
When Meng Yao is thirteen, Wei Wuxian goes missing.
They get the message from Song Lan and Uncle Xingchen that Wei Wuxian didn’t meet them when he was supposed to, which isn’t really all that surprising or concerning on its own. Wei Wuxian gets distracted easily and he’s a strong enough cultivator that even on his own there aren’t too many things could hurt him without getting lucky.
But after a week with no word, Uncle Xingchen had gone looking for him, tracking back from where they’d heard from him last, and what he finds out makes no sense at all, is absolutely nonsense and can’t mean anything at all.
Wei Wuxian was in a town on the outskirts when a traveling part of Wen cultivators passed through.
He wasn’t there when they left.
Meng Yao hopes that means Wei Wuxian snuck away when he saw them, that he avoided trouble for once in his life and got waylaid by something else, but –
Well, it’d be a first, is all. It’s still possible. Everything has to happen for the first time.
Master Cangse’s expression sours and Wei Changze grips his sword tightly enough that his knuckles go white. Song Lan has no expression at all, but Uncle Xingchen is as distressed as Meng Yao has ever seen him.
All of them are too well known to go sneaking into Wen territory, unfortunately. Meng Yao tries to convince them to let him go on his own, but they shut him down. He’s a very good cultivator, especially for his age, but they insist he’s too young to do something so dangerous.
Wei Wuxian is missing and all they can do is make enquiries and try to find someone within the Wen who knows what might have happened to him. They talk about sending out an announcement, about reaching out to their many friends across the clans, but it’s Meng Yao who reluctantly points out how badly that could go for Wei Wuxian if he really has been captured by the Wens. If they find out he’s the son and disciple of Cangse Sanren, that will only put him in even more danger, assuming they don’t know already.
They argue about someone named Qiren and the last time they kept a secret and in the end a letter is dispatched, but that’s all Meng Yao knows of it. He can’t remember meeting someone named Qiren before, but they all split up often enough that it doesn’t mean much.
A week later, when they’ve gotten nowhere and heard nothing and dread is starting to settle in the air around them, a piece of news spreads across the cultivation world like wildfire.
Wen Ruohan is dead.
There’s no reason to believe it has anything to do with Wei Wuxian, of course, but it means Wen Xu is now the head of the Wen sect. It means that maybe in the chaos they’ll be able to sneak across the border into Wen territory without getting caught.
Master Cangse and Song Lan are in a heated argument about the best way to go about it. Or, well, it’s heated on Master Cangse’s side, and not so much on Song Lan’s. It’s interrupted by the piercing cry of an eagle that cuts them both off.
They all look up and Meng Yao blinks several times, sure that his eyes are playing tricks on him, but the image doesn’t change.
A white eagle swoops down towards them, letting out another harsh cry. Meng Yao flinches, but instead it drops something over them and then disappears back into the trees.
Uncle Xingchen reaches up to snatch it from the air and what’s in his hand is even more baffling than the impossibly white eagle.
It’s a circle of jade with a twig of larch through the center.
Uncle Xingchen brings the twig to up to his nose and breathes in deeply. His eyes widen and he snaps, “You told him?”
“Of course I didn’t,” Master Cangse snaps in return, snatching the twig out of his hands and taking her own deep inhale. She shakes her head slowly. “You must have let it slip somehow.”
“I must have,” he starts, then cuts himself off. “I did not. He didn’t hear it from me.”
“Well, I didn’t tell him either,” Master Cangse says, but some of her irritation melts away and she rubs her thumb over the piece of jade. “At least this means he’s safe.”
“Relatively,” Uncle Xingchen says grimly and Master Cangse laughs. “He can’t have been there this whole time. She wouldn’t have waited this long to tell us if he was.”
“Well, if he was in the Wen territory, then,” she starts, then glances at the rest of them, and modifies, “No, you’re right, he likely wasn’t there this whole time. But he’s there now.”
Song Lan’s eyebrows are pushed together. Wei Changze holds out his hand and Master Cangse places the jade in the center of his palm. His hand closes over it and he looks uncertainly between Master Cangse and Uncle Xingchen. “Are you saying – what are you saying?”
“Wuxian is safe,” Master Cangse says. Meng Yao would be more relieved about if he didn’t know that she wasn’t basing this assertation of a weird eagle and a twig.
“Is he going to come back?” Wei Changze asks, something terrible in his voice that Meng Yao hates.
Master Cangse doesn’t answer. Instead, it’s Uncle Xingchen who says, “We did.”
That doesn’t seem to be a comfort a Wei Changze.
“What are you all talking about?” Meng Yao bursts out with when he can’t take it anymore. “Where’s Wei Wuxian? Why wouldn’t he come back?”
There’s a heavy silence and he knows whatever they say next isn’t going to the truth. Or at least not the whole truth.
“He’s with someone we knew before he was born,” Master Cangse says finally. “He’s alright. She would have told us if he wasn’t. We don’t have to worry anymore.”
Meng Yao still worries.
Uncle Xingchen and Song Lan go their separate ways not long after and Meng Yao falls back into a familiar rhythm of training and traveling.
He’s been apart from Wei Wuxian before. But this is different. Before, he’d known where Wei Wuxian was.
He’d known that he’d come back.
~
It’s Meng Yao’s fifteenth birthday and they’re back in the city he was raised in so he can visit his mother and his aunts and let them fuss over him.
He’s wasting time by going through the market, trying to pick something out to ask his mother for, when there’s an arm around his shoulder and a familiar voice saying, “A-Yao, please tell me you have money on you. I can’t keep walking around like this.”
Meng Yao grabs his robes and pushes him away so he can both see him properly and he can’t run away.
Wei Wuxian grins at him, looking so much older than when Meng Yao saw him last. His hair is in a complicated hairstyle and he’s in pure white robes edged in silver, something that looks more like clothes Master Cangse would wear.
His looks aren’t the only thing about him that has changed. Meng Yao’s hands are nowhere near his wrist, but he can feel the warmth and pressure of Wei Wuxian’s golden core even still. If he’d been a candle flame when Meng Yao saw him last, now he feels like a furnace.
“You,” he starts, but then the words get caught in his throat. He unhooks his sword, still sheathed, from his belt and starts hitting Wei Wuxian with it, because if he does anything else then he’s sure he’s going to cry.
Wei Wuxian’s bright laughter fills the marketplace and Meng Yao thinks that this is a pretty good birthday, actually. Not that he’ll ever tell Wei Wuxian that.
Wei Changze actually does start crying when he sees them. Master Cangse skips that step and goes straight to yelling, unsheathing her sword and going after her son blade first.
Meng Yao takes a hasty step back and Wei Wuxian reaches for his sword, grinning as he meets his mother’s blow. Cangse Sanren goes skittering back several inches from the force of it. Her eyes widen in surprise before narrowing, and it doesn’t happen again, but it’s enough to prove that Wei Wuxian’s strength really has grown in the time he’s been gone. That blow would have put him to his knees before.
After, when Wei Wuxian is exhausted and sweaty and Master Cangse has made her displeasure with his actions known by making him eat dirt, he says, “So, after A-Yao’s dinner and if Aunt Shi doesn’t mind, I think we should go to the Unclean Realms. I found something weird there.”
“What were you doing in the Unclean Realms?” Master Cangse asks, frowning.
“Oh, this was before. If I’d gone there this time, I would have stolen some better robes,” he reassures.
“Why were you in the Unclean Realms before? How did you end up in Wen territory?” Wei Changze demands.
Wei Wuxian scratches his nose then says, “Okay, there are a couple people you’re going to have meet for this story, actually. Have you heard of the Dafan Wen?”
When Wei Wuxian finishes explaining, Meng Yao can’t help but think that none of this would have happened if he’d been there.
Or at least it wouldn’t have happened so messily.
~
The Nie do not want their help.
Nie Huaisang doesn’t end up giving his clan much of a choice.
“You told him?” Nie Mingjue demands of Wei Wuxian, his anger nearly a physical thing.
“Well, it’s not like I knew it was as secret,” Wei Wuxian answers, uncaring of the angry sect leader bearing down on him with a very big saber. “You should have signs or something. I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I started poking around, you know.”
“Most people who poke around there just get eaten, so it hasn’t really been a concern,” Nie Mingue scowls.
This is ridiculous. They’re never going to get anywhere like this.
“Sect Leader Nie,” Meng Yao says, smoothly stepping in front of Wei Wuxian. Now that very intense and angry gaze is focused on him, but Meng Yao has endured far worse.
Actually. It’s. Not that bad.
Being fifteen is the worst.
“What’s done is done,” he says evenly. “We know and your brother knows and now the question is what are you going to do about it? Will you let us help? Or will you let yourself and your people suffer and die to protect a secret that we already know?”
He lets them help, in the end.
Meng Yao likes the Unclean Realms. Nie Huaisang reminds him of Wei Wuxian when he was younger and got into more manageable mischief. He likes the order of everything and likes the way Nie Mingjue seems to care so much about all of his people and how he does such a poor job of hiding it.
He’s sad when it’s time for them to leave, but he tries not to show it.
The open invitation Nie Mingjue gives them to the Unclean Realms helps. He thinks he’d like to come back, soon, if he can.
~
When Meng Yao is sixteen, Master Cangse sits him down and brushes back his hair and says, “We’re running out of things to teach you, A-Yao. You can stay with us if you want, of course, or travel with Xingchen and Song Lan again, or you’re more than ready to go off on your own. Or you could join a clan if you don’t want to be a rogue cultivator anymore.”
Meng Yao once wanted nothing more than to join his father’s clan, to receive his father’s name and uphold his legacy. But he’s not a child anymore. He knows that his father’s legacy isn’t worth upholding. He’s met Jin Zixuan and mostly he just feels bad for him.
“Nie Mingjue spoke to me,” Master Cangse says and his eyes snap to hers. “He asked about you after the first time we went to the Unclean Realms, but I felt like I still had too much to teach you then. He wants to offer you a position in his clan.”
“Oh,” he says, something warm and new blossoming in the center of his chest.
He goes to the Unclean Realms to accept Nie Mingjue offer.
~
Meng Yao ends up hearing about the Burial Mounds mess from Wei Wuxian when he comes to deliver copies of the talismans to Nie Mingjue and get into trouble with Nie Huaisang.
He can’t decide if he’s irritated or relieved that he missed out on it.
~
Meng Yao hears from Nie Huaisang that Wei Wuxian has cajoled his way into an invitation to Cloud Recesses. Meng Yao knows that Lan Qiren is fond of Wei Wuxian but he thinks his fondness might be blinding him to how terrible of an idea this is.
Nie Mingjue wants to send someone to check in with Nie Huaisang because his letters have been vague but he doesn’t want to offend the Lans. Meng Yao offers to go under the guise of visiting with his master, but it’s mostly because Nie Mingjue becomes intolerable when he’s worried and Meng Yao has no problem making it Nie Zonghui’s problem.
They arrive just in time for dinner and Meng Yao is treated to the sight of Master Cangse effortlessly kick Wei Wuxian’s ass. Of course, he doesn’t even get the chance to enjoy it properly, because Meng Yao gets his first proper look at a boy that has to be Lan Xichen and struggles to force himself to look away.
That bone structure. For fuck’s sake.
Meng Yao just can’t catch a break.