Chapter Text
"You should stay here for at least two more days. I will need to check the repairs on his meridians hourly, and keep him asleep until… it settles. You can stay without being seen." Wen Qing's voice was just as sharp as usual, if not quite as collected as she had probably intended it to be. She sounded shaken, more so than Wei Wuxian had ever heard her, and he could feel her looking at him as he shook his head and pushed himself painfully into a sitting position. The world tilted and wavered, and he couldn't stop the shiver that ran through him as he clenched his fingers in the dirt and willed himself to stay upright.
"I'll go. If he wakes and sees me --"
"I told you I will keep him asleep."
"Someone has to keep an eye on the village. Be a bit of a waste if he went and got captured again." It was supposed to be a joke, but Wei Wuxian's voice was hoarse and strained and the smile he tried to pull into place was barely more than a twitch of his lips. Someone has to be the bait when they come after us.
"Wei Wuxian --"
"I'm going. You can't stop me."
She could, of course -- even a child could have stopped him at this point, even probably a dedicated rabbit -- but she wouldn't. Just a brief glance at the pained look on her face told Wei Wuxian that.
His head swam as he dragged himself to his feet, and he clutched at the stunted branches of a nearby tree to stay upright as blackness clawed the edges of his vision. Behind him a sharp intake of breath cut the silence, but he didn't bother to turn around. If Wen Qing was going to argue, she could do it to his back.
Wei Wuxian took one final glance at Jiang Cheng where he lay on the makeshift bed -- healthy, whole, colour back in his cheeks and lips, everything as it should be -- and stumbled away down the mountain.
He made it about fifty paces down the grassy hillside, just enough to round a corner out of sight of the Wen siblings, before his legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground. Dirt and rocks scraped his knees and hands as he fell, and a faint, detached part of his mind noticed how much more it hurt now, compared to all the everyday scratches and bruises he was used to. Instinctively, he reached for spiritual energy to dull the minor injuries -- and muffled a cry into his hands as a sharp burst of pain ripped through his stomach, curling at the edges of the hollow space which throbbed and ached with an emptiness worse than anything else in the world.
Dimly, he realised he was shaking uncontrollably, and he could only find some vague thankfulness that he'd managed to make it out of sight already before curling in on himself and fisting his hands weakly in his own robes as he gritted his teeth to keep from sobbing out loud. The hillside spun around him and he felt faint and sick. His mind kept up an internal monologue consisting entirely of swear words as he shivered on the ground, most of them directed at himself, and gradually he forced his attention away from the pain and climbed slowly to his feet again. It didn't matter that he was still shaking and every step felt like it cost the last reserves of his energy -- if he could just get down to the edges of the village, he'd be able to make sure no-one thought to look anywhere else.
The edges of the village were further than Wei Wuxian had thought, or else he was walking much slower than usual, because it was almost dark by the time he reached the last few houses on the mountain road and stumbled to a stop in the shadow of a large tree. He was momentarily at a loss -- he hadn't thought about what came next after he reached the village; he certainly didn't have enough money for any kind of room, and all his usual quick-thinking resourcefulness seemed to have been dulled by pain and exhaustion -- but then he saw a figure in white, and adrenaline chased out all other thoughts as he slipped behind the tree and hid in the gathering dusk. Why were the Lans here??
He peered carefully around the edge of the tree, curiosity winning over caution, and squinted at the figure. It was hard to see in the dusk, but -- was that Lan Zhan?!
The figure turned, as if sensing Wei Wuxian's gaze, and -- yes. Lan Zhan was here, for some unfathomable reason. Wei Wuxian shrank back into the shadows behind the tree, heart racing and mind blank, and tried frantically to come up with a new plan. If Lan Zhan saw him --
"Wei Ying?"
Too late.
Wei Wuxian pulled a smile onto his face and stepped out from behind the tree. "Ah, Lan Zhan! Fancy seeing you here!" He grimaced internally at how rough his voice still sounded. It hurt to talk. "Has Cloud Recesses finished rebuilding already?"
He watched uncomfortably as Lan Zhan's gaze flickered over him, taking in what was probably far more information than Wei Wuxian wanted to give up, and then up to a strangely intense eye contact. He looked distinctly unimpressed (or at least, that was the label Wei Wuxian figured would best describe this particular blank expression, but he had an instinctive feeling he'd got it wrong).
"Looking for you."
"Huh?! Lan Zhan, why were you looking for me?"
"Lotus Pier."
The fake smile slipped from Wei Wuxian's face. He'd gone three whole days without thinking about that. Sure, it was due to the fact that he'd been otherwise occupied with the worst pain of his entire life, but still.
"Ah, Lan Zhan…" Wei Wuxian blinked and shook his head slightly. He felt dizzy again, and he ached all over as though he'd been running for days. Belatedly, he remembered that regular food and drink were things he should probably have been attending to during his day of stumbling down the mountainside. Wen Qing had said something about that, but all those memories were hazy already. Everything was, actually.
Was Lan Zhan saying something?
"Wei Ying."
Yes, that was it. And now he would pull another smile into place, and say --
"Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian breathed, and listed dizzily sideways into the trunk of the tree. Bark scraped through his robes to his skin, and his whole body felt painfully sensitive. The hollow space inside him throbbed and ached again as his instincts reached into nothingness in a futile attempt to stay upright against the shadows at the edges of his sight, shooting pain out through empty spiritual pathways and catching his breath in a gasp. Lan Zhan had that same expression again, the possibly-unimpressed one, but this time with just a slight fraction more pull between his eyebrows. It looked like -- worried? Was that a better label than unimpressed?
No, it couldn't be worried, Wei Wuxian decided as he slid down the tree and felt strong arms gently lift him before he hit the ground. Lan Zhan would never be worried about him. Lan Zhan didn't even like him.
***
Lan Wangji did not run, or shout for help, or do anything else undignified or against the sect precepts. He gathered Wei Ying carefully into his arms, heart hammering in his chest so hard and fast he was vaguely surprised it didn't wake him, and walked as swiftly as he could get away with towards the small camp where the other disciples were setting up for the night.
He left brief instructions for them to wait in the vicinity of the village and keep watch for trouble -- if Wei Ying was here, he supposed Jiang Wanyin would not be far away, and technically this search party had been meant for them both -- then unsheathed Bichen and stepped at once into the air. He would fly Wei Ying to the Cloud Recesses himself, immediately. There was… something was very wrong.
The flight to Gusu was cold and dark. Wei Ying was too light in his arms, and seemed to have almost no warmth of his own at all. Lan Wangji studied his face, catalogued the hollow pallor of his cheeks, the dry chapped edges of his lips, and the bruise-dark shadows under his eyes (these latter too extensive to even be called circles any more), and worried more and more with each passing minute. It had hardly been more than a week since Lotus Pier fell -- what had happened to him in that time?
He shifted Wei Ying slightly in his arms, adjusting their position to reach one hand to Wei Ying's wrist, and pressed two fingers there to assess his spiritual energy.
And felt the pit of his stomach drop into nothingness as he swayed in shock and almost forgot to keep Bichen airborne.
There was nothing.
In the cave of the Xuanwu, when he had transferred his spiritual energy to Wei Ying for hour after hour, he had felt Wei Ying's own energy beneath his fingers. It had responded to him, thrummed with recovering power, teased at his edges with an echo of Wei Ying's irrepressible personality -- even weak and delirious as he was, Wei Ying had been whole, and wholly himself.
Now, as the night wind whistled past him and Wei Ying shivered in his arms, all Lan Wangji could feel was dark, dead emptiness. Not even a single spark remained. He followed the pathways back to their centre, almost desperate, refusing to admit what he would find until he saw it -- but too quickly, there it was. A hollow, yawning void where Wei Ying's golden core should be, painful just to look at, raw around the edges and utterly devoid of light. He sent a thin thread of spiritual energy into it, carefully and gently, and watched in bleak horror as it dissipated like smoke into open sky. There was nothing to receive it.
He held Wei Ying tighter, and flew faster.
*
The rebuilding effort had barely even begun in earnest, but the healing pavilion at the Cloud Recesses had been among the first to be restored. Lan Wangji did not run, when he landed in the outer courtyard, but to call it a walk would have admittedly been somewhat understated. No-one questioned him as he swept into a private room and carefully laid Wei Ying on the bed, and one of the healers was at his side in the next second without even needing to be asked. Which was definitely a good thing, because he wasn't sure he would have managed to speak at all otherwise. For one wild moment as the healer pressed two fingers to Wei Ying's wrist he hoped maybe he had been wrong, maybe he had imagined it, maybe something else had caused it to appear as though --
"The core," whispered the healer, a look of appalled dismay on his face, and that brief hope died as fast as it had sprung up.
There was a long, long silence as Lan Wangji attempted to pull together some kind of functional sentence. He was vaguely aware of the healer fetching warm water and clean cloths from somewhere at the side of the room. The words felt stuck in his throat. He couldn't look away from Wei Ying's too-pale face. There were dried tear tracks mixed in with the smudges of dirt; they hadn't been visible in the dark of the mountain or the night sky, but the lamps of the pavilion rooms threw every detail into relief.
"Was it," he tried, and took a deliberately steadied breath before continuing, "the Core-Melting Hand."
The healer shook his head. Lan Wangji didn't know if that made it better or worse.
"The Core-Melting Hand destroys all meridians and pathways. This… they are still intact. It seems," the healer paused, and Lan Wangji could see him swallow nervously before continuing, "almost… surgical. As though someone has done this with the intent of removal rather than destruction."
Lan Wangji felt rage blaze up in his heart, pulling the edges of his expression tight and making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up with its intensity. Someone has done this.
He took the water and a cloth from the healer's hands, and gently began to wash the dirt and tear tracks from Wei Ying's face. It focused him, narrowed the whole world to Wei Ying's soft skin beneath his fingers, and the careful dedication he put into each pass of the cloth made it almost feel as though he were doing something that could actually help.
Someone has done this. Lan Wangji was going to find that someone, and he was going to make them regret every last breath they ever took.