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Despite all attestations to the contrary, Wei Wuxian is not an idiot. For him to say that he’s a genius isn’t even an exaggeration. Every word that comes out of his mouth is precisely crafted; he knows what to say, what not to say, and what to imply to make sure he gets the desired results. It’s a skill, one that he’s honed over many years. Being this infuriating isn’t easy , you know. Not at first. But after a while, pushing someone’s buttons became second nature, and now he can piss off complete strangers without so much effort as it would take to lift an apple.
But this time, he’s fucked up.
He takes off his mask, and dips for a drink in the river. His first glimpse makes him look over his own shoulder-- but wait, that’s not someone else, hanging over him. That’s his face now. It’s thinner than his own was. Bone structure-wise, anyway. Wei Wuxian’s cheeks were far more sallow than this towards the end, but his jaw was always broader, his nose was straighter, the ridge of his brow was heavier. He used to have moles dotting his face and neck (and the rest of him), but this new person has flawless skin and brown hair, not black.
“Mo Xuanyu, Mo Xuanyu,” he repeats to himself, taking a moment to listen to his own voice. It’s higher, and his tongue automatically wants to go to slightly different places than he wants it to-- someone else’s muscle memory taking over. He says it again, consciously deepening his voice, but that just hurts his throat.
Wei Wuxian , his brother admonishes. Is Wei Wuxian seeing things, or is Jiang Cheng under the surface of the water? He looks nineteen again, without the lines that formed on his forehead from constant furrowing of his brows, dressed in the teal robes he favored before he became sect leader, his hair still escaping from his guan. His complaints about having his hair bound so tightly that it gave him a headache still echo in Wei Wuxian’s ears, even as he learned to school his expression so that he didn’t look so much like he was always staving off a tantrum. Don’t go stirring up trouble again, Jiang Cheng tells him.
And there’s his sister, with her dimpled smile and glittering eyes, wearing the hairpieces he got her with his first stipend as Head Disciple. She grinned when he gave them to her, and remarked (as he had intended) that the comb and pins would match her favorite set of robes. A-Xian, have some soup! It’s your favorite, lotus root and pork rib!
Wei Wuxian, you said you would assist me. Don’t you remember? You said Gusu has its Twin Jades, but Yunmeng would have us, the Twin Heroes. You promised to always be with me.
A-Xian. You, me, and A-Cheng will never be separated. We’ll be together forever.
“Shijie. Jiang Cheng.” He reaches out for her, so close he could touch, and for him, who must be just out of sight. But her image, so clear in the water, ripples away, until her face is just as unreachable as the rest of her is, now. How many years since her death-- fifteen? ish? It’s tough to tell how old Jin Rulan is, but he looks about that age-- and Wei Wuxian has lived just two days of it. “Shijie!”
A decade and a half gone. Both of his siblings gone. How long has Jiang Cheng even been dead? The grief still seemed fresh on Jin Rulan’s face, but Wei Wuxian knows just how long grief can linger just beneath the surface.
Voices come down the path behind him, so he keeps his head down; it’s the disciples who were trapped in the nets before. “That Jin-gongzi is so spoiled, by both the Jin and the Jiang! What a bossy young master. Can you imagine how much worse he’ll get once he takes over Lanling Jin?”
“Give him a break. First his parents die when he’s a baby, and then six months ago his uncle, who raised him? I’d be bitchy, too.”
“So what? There are a lot of people without parents. He isn’t special.”
“His father was killed because of the Yiling Laozu, then his mother was killed because she trusted Wei Wuxian. No wonder Sandu Shengshou hated him so much. Hated him right up until he died, never forgave anyone who used Wei Wuxian’s tricks, not for sixteen years!”
“I heard that it was one of those demonic cultivators he hunted that cursed him, and that’s how he died!”
“That’s right, I heard that he went mad! His disciples had to keep him locked up in the sect compound because they were scared of what he’d do!”
“Shixiong, hush! All of you are wrong! It was nothing more than a wasting illness. You’re all blowing this out of proportion!”
Another disciple scoffs. “Sandu Shengshou died from a curse left by the Yiling Laozu as revenge on whoever killed him! I heard that it sucked his golden core dry until there was nothing left of him but skin and bones! Sandu Shengshou died in order to rid the world of him once and for all.”
“Of course, it’s all that Wei Wuxian’s fault.”
The voices fade into the forest, detailing for each other just how terrible demonic cultivators are, but their words echo in Wei Wuxian’s head. Six months ago, Jiang Cheng died.
“I can see you’re missing some maternal education. Who even is your jiujiu?”
Wei Wuxian slaps himself. How could he have said those things to his sister’s son, to the boy his brother raised? The world kept spinning while he was gone and he thought he could divorce himself from everything familiar. They’ve lived without him for this long, after all. But it’s just his luck that he would get himself so tangled up in feelings that have, for everyone else, had so much time to fester. While he was in the Burial Mounds, his sister got married and had a son. While he was dead, his nephew grew up and his brother died.
He lays down on the bank, closing his eyes and focusing on the rushing water next to him. If he pretends hard enough, maybe he’ll convince himself he’s back at Lotus Pier, wasting away summer afternoons on the dock with his siblings. Things had been so much easier then, when all they had to worry about was doing well in training and not pissing off Madame Yu too much. Shijie was still hung up on the peacock who never spared her a second glance, Wei Wuxian was nothing worse than a troublemaker, and Jiang Cheng didn’t yet hate him.
Did Jiang Cheng die still hating him, Wei Wuxian wonders? He must have. It’s not like Wei Wuxian could say anything in his own defense while he was dead, nor did he leave behind any letters or anything to explain himself. That probably would have been a good idea. But there was no guarantee that they would make it to the people they were addressed to. Oh look, the Yiling Laozu left letters! Let’s deliver them to their intended recipients, and not keep them for ourselves and scour them for the secrets of demonic cultivation .
Still. He should have tried . Snuck into Lotus Pier before going to Nightless City and left a note for his brother, even something so simple as I’m sorry . It’s not like he intended to leave that place alive. Not after waking from Wen Qing’s protection to find the Burial Mounds devoid of life, not after his sister dying before him, her hands going limp in his, seeing the raw grief wash over his brother’s face like the summer floods.
He could have managed an apology. On the cliff, with his brother’s undivided fury on him. It might not have meant anything to Jiang Cheng, but it would have been the best that Wei Wuxian could offer. Who would have thought that it would be his last chance to do so, but in the exact worst way?
“Aiya, Lil’ Apple,” he laments when the donkey nudges him. “Look at me! Two days without my siblings and I’m such a mess already! What must Jiang Cheng think of me in the next life? Wei Wuxian what a fool you are. Pull yourself together! He was always so good at just getting up and going on.”
In fact, he was so good at moving on from the things that bothered him that he’s gone and moved on from this life! What an industrious shidi Wei Wuxian has!
Rather, had.
Just how has Yunmeng Jiang fared in his absence? Did Jiang Cheng get married while Wei Wuxian was dead? A wife, whose cultivation isn’t too high, who’s hard-working and thrifty, who’s naturally beautiful? Are there new little Jiangs running around the Pier, waiting for the day they come of age to take over from whoever was left in charge following Jiang Cheng’s death? Or perhaps were they left in the same unenviable position as their father, as leader of a sect when they had only barely earned use of their courtesy name?
It would be easy enough to get into Lotus Pier and find out, especially once he figures out where he is in relation to it. This isn’t his face, after all. It’s poor Mo Xuanyu’s, who hopefully doesn’t have any enemies in Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian knows how to deal with Lotus Pier. But if, like Jin Ling alluded to earlier, Mo Xuanyu is from Koi Tower ? He would rather be in a grieving Yunmeng.
But how much of Lotus Pier is still what he remembers? After the massacre, after the Qishan Wen attacked and killed every disciple, every senior and junior, and every civilian who stuck around too long, only the barest bones of the Pier had been fit to remain, and Wei Wuxian will admit that he spent much of the reconstruction getting too drunk to remember his own name, much less to learn new walkways. The most he remembers of the new layout is that they moved the kitchens to be closer to the dining hall.
His sister is buried in Lanling, for sure, in the cold earth, surrounded by all the finery she could ever need in the afterlife. His brother now sleeps beneath the waters of the broad river. Sandu was buried with him, no doubt, under his folded hands as his whole body was wrapped and interred in white silk.
“I wonder--” he stops rubbing Lil’ Apple’s nose, which the donkey takes as a cue to wander off and start munching on nearby grass. “I wonder if he was hurting. When he died.”
Lil’ Apple, of course, does not answer, too busy being a hungry donkey, eating glowing grass. Huh. Grass isn't supposed to do that.
He rips the grass from the donkey’s mouth. “This is soul-gathering grass.” It gathers spiritual energy from the earth, and normally grows near the graves of cultivators, whose bodies leak their excess of spiritual energy. He glances around at the amount of soul-gathering grass around him, and knows that it would only grow in such quantities around a whole cultivator graveyard.
Well, Wei Wuxian has never been one to turn down a good graveyard.
Except when he finds it, he can’t help but feel like it’s too familiar for his tastes. Something about the carvings, combined with the landscape. A mountain with a set of graves like this?
“Excuse me, to which clan do these graves belong?” he asks the caretaker.
“They disappeared long ago,” the old man despairs, which is not nearly as helpful as he must think it is. “The Wen clan has disappeared.”
Wei Wuxian, he hears on the wind, the only place he’s ever going to find any part of her. He sees red robes fluttering in the corner of his eye. My clan is buried here .
“Jin Ling is in danger.”
He turns back to the old man, his mouth already open to ask a question he hasn’t decided on yet. Have you seen any obnoxious teenagers in gold pass through here today? How about walking statues of dancing women that are about four times the height of a grown bear? But the old man isn’t there. Where did he go? Was he there at all, or was he just a product of Wei Wuxian’s imagination? A mirage concocted for him to remind himself of what he heard here all those years ago?
“Fucking Tiannu Temple, of course it is, of course I had all the fucking luck to end up on Dafan Mountain of all places,” he says to himself as he sprints up the mountain, hoping he remembers the way to the place where--
The memory nearly stops him in his tracks as he comes up on the rotted doors to the temple. Here, where he met Wen-popo for the first time. He and Nie Huaisang and Lan Zhan spent the night in the temple, and even though it freaked out Nie Huaisang something fierce, Wei Wuxian can’t help but smile at the memory of his shidi playing his first little prank in so long!
But there can be no time to stop, not when his nephew, his nephew , little Jin Rulan, who bears the name Wei Wuxian chose for him, and dark doe eyes like Shijie’s, and what will surely be majestic cheekbones like Jiang Cheng’s once the baby fat melts off, is there, the nearest disciple to the statue which Wei Wuxian knows for a fact won’t be still for much longer.
“Mo-qianbei!” the little Lan-- he has such a sweet face, and a smile that Wei Wuxian swears he knows from somewhere-- Lan Sizhui, he thinks, calls.
“Get out of here! That’s a soul-eating statue,” he directs before anyone else can get a word in edgewise. There will be time to debate this later-- the talisman he set on the statue won’t hold her forever, and not even for long. A few seconds, but it’s enough for them to get out if the other Lan-- the one who shouted at Jin Ling, the little rascal, who does he think he is?-- can stop shouting and if everyone can stop pointing their swords at a walking hunk of rock.
“Stop stalling. Run!”
He figures that these kids, despite all evidence to the contrary thus far, have to be pretty smart, right? They have the ribbons that denote an inner disciple of the Lan sect! They look to be old enough to be somewhat intelligent, and have brought no Official Adult with them on this night hunt, so they’ve been trusted with some modicum of responsibility.
“Can one of you set off a signal flare to summon that Hanguang-jun of yours?” Wei Wuxian will need to book it before Lan Zhan gets here, of course, but he’ll stick around long enough to make sure that none of these kids are going to get themselves killed by wandering statues.
Lan Sizhui and Lan Number Two both pat at their robes. And check their pockets.
“Oh, gosh.”
That’s not the response Wei Wuxian wanted to hear.
“The flares were all used up at Mo Manor the other night.”
“You didn’t get more?” They only set off one flare at Mo Manor! Did these little idiots-- and there’s what, eight of them here from the Lan sect alone?-- set out on a night hunt with only one signal flare? If Wei Wuxian were their Head Disciple, he would have them running laps for days over this oversight!
“I forgot,” Lan Sizhui says.
Days? Make that weeks of laps, and make them give their report to Madam Yu. “You forgot. You’re going to be punished if your Hanguang-jun finds out.” Unless something happened to Lan Xichen in the past sixteen years, Lan Zhan will still be the Head Disciple.
“We’re doomed,” Lan Two says. “This time, Hanguang-jun will punish us severely.” Though the ‘this time’ certainly doesn’t help his case, just from the boy’s expression, Wei Wuxian can tell that this kid is accustomed to the punishments of Gusu.
“The punishment is meant to teach you a lesson, otherwise you won’t remember it next time,” Wei Wuxian says, and immediately suppresses the urge to grimace. He feels like he opened his mouth and Lan Qiren came out of it.
“Mo-qianbei, how did you know it was the statue that was eating souls?”
“I saw them.” Duh??? Is this kid blind, or just stupid? Has the quality of a Gusu education gone down in the years he’s been dead, or does this kid just have raw cotton between his ears? “The old graves,” he clarifies. “There were old graves, so I figured it wasn’t something a soul-eater would do.”
“Why?”
“Your Gusu Lan teaches too much about etiquette, cultivation, and clan history, but do you know what they all have in common? They’re meaningless and tiresome in recitation alone.” He starts walking around as he talks-- he’s missed being able to talk about things that he knows so well. There hadn’t been anyone to teach his lessons to while he was in the Burial Mounds.
The kids turn out to be an engaged audience, and look so proud of themselves when they answer his questions right! Just like his own juniors back when he was Head Disciple Jiang. They just need to be prodded into asking these questions themselves, and they’ll be well on their way to being good cultivators.
“I understand now,” Lan Sizhui says, tucking his sword into the crook of his arm. “So when Jin Ling made his wish, ‘I wish that the monster of Dafan Mountain would show up in front of me right now’, the statue was brought to life!”
“Jin Ling,” Wei Wuxian repeats. His nephew. Where is he? That boy is all he has now, with Shijie and Jiang Cheng both gone and dead and buried, and Wei Wuxian knows precisely what Jiang Cheng would do to him if Jin Ling died on his watch. How will he face his siblings in the afterlife if he can’t even keep their boy safe on a single night hunt, versus an opponent he already knows how to subdue? “Did anyone see Jin Ling?”
The little Lans are speaking around him as they all turn to see the statue lumbering towards them, chasing Jin cultivators who can’t seem to figure out how to avoid her feet, but he pays them no attention. The cultivators aren’t Jin Ling. The Lans around him aren’t talking about Jin Ling.
Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan sealed that statue, so what happened? Was the foolish, impulsive, spiteful, proud wish of a child enough to break her out of Wei Wuxian ’s seal? Not to toot his own horn, but sealing is kind of his thing.
Out of the corner of his eye, an arrow, then three more hot on it’s fletching. He looks to see Jin Ling.
Idiotic boy. What is he doing, running into danger like that? He doesn’t know Jin Ling’s abilities, but it took Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, Hanguang-jun, the Second Jade of Lan just to seal that statue the first time. There’s nothing a couple of arrows can do to hurt it.
Lan Sizhui tells Jin Ling to set off his signal flare, but his nephew ignores the call. He shoots again. Wei Wuxian would be proud if he wasn’t scared out of his mind for the kid.
Stupid statue. Of course, it couldn’t have stayed sealed like a good little demon, but has instead elected to come to life and try to eat some more souls. Are they really so tasty?
Wei Wuxian curses Mo Xuanyu for not cultivating a stronger golden core. There are so many ways he could have fixed this by now if he only had better reserves! But alas, Wei Wuxian’s strongest weapon (as always) is still his demonic cultivation. The poor little Lan he pilfers a sword from doesn’t even have time to be surprised before the blade is back in his hands, and Wei Wuxian has a new dizi.
He doesn’t know what he’s playing to summon. Anything that will come to his aid. Anything that will keep Jin Ling safe. Wei Wuxian has lost so much already in the past two days-- his siblings, the Dafan Wen. He can’t lose Jin Ling too.
It’s not fucking working. Jin Ling looses another arrow, then shoves his bow onto his back as the statue gets too close for it to be of use. Even from here, Wei Wuxian can see Zidian sparking to life on his nephew’s hand.
The snap of Zidian, shrieking like a flock of carrion birds as it descends onto stony skin, does nothing to exorcise the spirit that may have been hiding within, though it does make the statue balk.
It’s not enough. Zidian is a first-class spiritual tool, but even the best tool needs the right hand to use it, and Jin Ling can’t have had Zidian more than six months. Even Jiang Cheng took longer than that to get really, truly good with a whip, and he had Madam Yu teaching him. Jin Ling goes flying backwards with a single bat of her hand.
The statue descends on Jin Ling, looming over him, and the notes flying from the makeshift dizi become more frantic. Is he even playing music anymore? Musical cultivation is about putting the right notes in the right order to have a certain effect, and he doesn’t even know if he’s getting the fucking notes right --
Over the treeline, a black shape. The clanking of chains. Wei Wuxian has never been gladder to see another person in either of his lives, tears springing unbidden to his eyes. He doesn’t even care that Wen Ning is supposed to be ashes in the wind. He can worry about that later.
Wen Ning is here. Everything will be okay.
(Wen Ning looms over Jin Ling, and even through the joy of seeing his friend, he can’t help but feel his heart seize in his chest. He remembers all too well what happened last time Wen Ning stood with a Jin.
He’ll keep control this time. He has to, so he will.)
Instantly, the cries rise around him. ‘It’s the Ghost General, Wen Ning!’ Congratulations for having functional eyes. Esteemed cultivators, my ass. I’ve been dead sixteen years, and you don’t know any more than I do!
“Wen Ning should have died sixteen years ago, along with the Yiling Laozu,” Second Baby Lan says (Wei Wuxian needs to learn this kid’s name).
Wen Ning, with just a few notes, is incentivized to destroy the statue once and for all, shattering her into ten thousand tiny pieces that are almost instantly indistinguishable from the rest of the gravel path. Hooray! Problem solved.
Everyone else seems to just be screaming about how the Ghost General is going to kill them all, but Wei Wuxian thinks they’re overreacting. Wen Ning is under his complete control when his eyes are all black like that; the only way he’s going to hurt anyone is if Wei Wuxian tells him to, and Wei Wuxian is feeling lenient today.
“The Yiling Laozu isn’t here, are you all cowards?” one of the cultivators calls.
“Yes, there’s no need to worry. Wen Ning’s master is dead!”
Then how is Wen Ning dancing like a chained-up bear, smartasses? Is someone else pulling his strings? he wants to scream, but he actually thinks he can do some good by staying alive, so he keeps his pretty little mouth shut.
With a collective cry, the assembled cultivators rush Wen Ning.
But not Jin Ling. Jin Ling is a safe distance from the cultivators, and from Wen Ning. Wei Wuxian can handle that. He strikes up a new tune.
There are over a dozen cultivators here. In his heyday, Wei Wuxian could puppet Wen Ning to take down twice that many. But that was with Chenqing, a dizi carved from a tree stained so deeply with resentment that it colored the wood, lacquered in the Blood Pool itself. It’s a fast-tracked first-class spiritual tool, one that he doesn’t think he could replicate if he tried.
Without Chenqing, this many cultivators will be a challenge, unless he releases Wen Ning from his control, which he doesn’t think is the best idea at this precise moment. His playing earlier was too fierce. Wen Ning’s temper is all riled up, and that will make him fight control. But neither one of them has the strength to defeat this many cultivators right now. He needs to calm his friend down, and get him out of here.
He starts his next song as easy as breathing.
He can’t quite remember where he heard it. Maybe it was a song from Gusu that he overheard through a window. Maybe it’s a song from Yunmeng that he heard on the docks or in a teahouse. Maybe it’s from one of any number of places. It doesn’t really matter where it came from. Wei Wuxian used it as a lullaby for A-Yuan. It’s a song Wen Ning learned and used for him too, so it’s one he’ll recognize. And sure enough, his head snaps over towards Wei Wuxian when he starts.
This dizi is haphazard, and off-key. But it does the job. Wen Ning starts to walk slowly towards him. He backs away while he plays. He doesn’t know where he’s going. Away from here. Away from Jin Ling, where there could possibly be fighting that will hurt him. Every scrape on that boy’s skin is an arrow through Wei Wuxian’s heart.
There’s a body behind him. A hand grasps his wrist. His breath stopping in his throat, Wei Wuxian turns his head to see just about the least helpful person he could possible have run into-- Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan who is giving him the most-- what is that, hope? Hope for what? What can Wei Wuxian give him? He almost wants to ask, no to demand what the other man wants from him? Is Wei Wuxian finally going to get hauled off to Cloud Recesses to be punished for his demonic cultivation? Sorry, Mo Xuanyu. The last person on your hit list had better live in Gusu, or I’m fucked .
Or… Lan Zhan has always known Wei Wuxian better than he knows himself. Is the jig up? Has he been found out already? What could Lan Zhan have seen from him that would give it away? It’s probably the color scheme, isn’t it? It won’t be a problem anymore, he supposes. He’ll be wearing Lan white for the rest of his life, locked up in Cloud Recesses until he dies of fucking boredom.
He searches Lan Zhan’s face, the gentle openness of it, the new lines around his eyes, and pulls his wrist away so he can keep playing. He needs to get Wen Ning away from here.
Lan Zhan… lets him. Lets him keep playing, until Wen Ning has once again disappeared from view and everyone is clamoring for the esteemed Hanguang-jun’s attention on the matter. But Lan Zhan hasn’t looked away from him yet.
Dropping the dizi, Wei Wuxian grabs at Lan Zhan’s wrist himself. He's wearing a mask that covers half of his face, including his wonderful and expressive eyebrows, but he hopes that he imparts his question well enough-- let me go, let me go, let me stay with my nephew, don’t take me away from him. You saw him this morning, Lan Zhan, he needs someone to take care of him. Let that person be me. Please.
Wei Wuxian is a proud man. He is not above begging. Not over this. He’ll get down on his knees and kowtow for Lan Zhan, if that’s what it takes. Surely, Lan Zhan isn’t so cruel that he would keep Wei Wuxian (because he has definitely figured out it’s him) from his last living family… right?
It’s been sixteen years , he reminds himself, in a voice that sounds suspiciously like Jiang Cheng. You have no idea how he might have changed.
But before Lan Zhan’s expression can change, before he can answer, Wei Wuxian hears the sizzle of Zidian.
“A demonic cultivator who dresses in black and red, uses a flute but carries no sword, and can control Wen Ning?” he hears over the whip. “You’re either a good enough impressionist to be a problem, or you’re the real deal.”
There’s barely a second between the flick of Jin Ling’s wrist and when Wei Wuxian knows from experience it will land. He’s well-acquainted with that second. A flash of hot air too brief to really notice, then a sharp burn, even through three layers of robes. It must be the lightning that does it, because the force would never travel through cloth like that, but either way, it hurts like a bitch even when the wielder is feeling kind with it.
But the anticipated sting never hits.
The strum of a guqin saves him for the second time in a day; Jin Ling, for a second time, squawks like a bird over the offense.
“Lan Wangji--” because, yeah, as heirs to two of the great sects, they are on equal ground, huh? Jin Ling has the right to address Lan Zhan by name, even if only by his courtesy name. How weird it must feel to be Lan Zhan, addressed in such a way by a teenager-- “how dare you?”
The air is thrumming and tight, like a drum. Or a guqin string, full of sound, just waiting to be plucked so that it can scream at the world. No other cultivator is even moving, no-one willing to get between Zidian and it’s target-- no one, except for Lan Zhan.
Well, this is a shitshow , Wei Wuxian thinks, and makes a run for it.
Such a shame that Jin Ling is faster.
The sound of his own feet and his heart drumming in his ears drowns out any hum from Zidian that might have warned him. His back to Jin Ling prevents him from seeing the windup to the attack. Perhaps that’s a blessing. It means he has no time to anticipate the hit, only to realize afterwards that he’s been whipped.
Mo Xuanyu does not have the same pain tolerance that Wei Wuxian’s last body had. Or, perhaps it just doesn’t have the same Zidian tolerance.
Either way, he forces himself to his feet, hissing at how his robes rub at the fresh burns. The lightning flowers will disappear in a few days. They always do. The buzzing will be there for a while, and given even the light training of a golden core, the feeling should return to his arm in a couple of minutes.
“What, you think you can just go around whipping people willy-nilly because you’re rich and powerful?” he scolds the boy. “Have you ever been hit with that thing? It hurts!”
Jin Ling’s jaw is set, his teeth visibly clenched together. “Take off your mask,” he demands.
“No!”
His nephew brandishes Zidian, even though it’s retracted back into the ring. “Take off the mask, or I’ll hit you again!”
“You’ll be shocked to death if I take it off! I’m so ugly under here, Jin-gongzi, it will turn your hair white and send you prematurely to the next life!”
Jin Ling bristles like an angry cat, already raising his arm for a second strike. Okay, wrong thing to tell the grieving teenager. But that Other Lan Boy shouts before the whip can even re-emerge.
“Hold on, Jin-gongzi! That’s the Zidian, and it forces possessing spirits out of their unnatural bodies, yes? Wei Wuxian’s body was lost after he died, so if that’s him, then he would need to be possessing Mo Xuanyu. But you already hit him with the Zidian. If it was going to work, it would have worked already,” the boy explains, but if Jin Ling is anything like his jiujiu…
“You don’t know that he died for sure!” Jin Ling spits. “No-one ever saw his body! That could be him!”
“Are you saying that your esteemed jiujiu, Sandu Shengshou didn’t kill him?”
Baring his teeth, Jin Ling turns his body (and Zidian) towards the Lan. “Say another word about my jiujiu, I fucking dare you.” Then, he looks back to Wei Wuxian. “Who the fuck are you? You’re sure as fuck not Mo Xuanyu.”
He wants to answer. He does. He wants to jump forward and wrap Jin Ling up in his arms, and tell him hello, A-Ling, I’m your dajiu, and I’ve been so excited to meet you! Do you have any idea how much you look like your mother? Like your jiujiu? Like your grandfather? Has anyone told you? Did anyone dare?
But Mo Xuanyu’s body doesn’t have as strong of a golden core as he thought. He can hardly fault the guy. Don’t worry, Mo Xuanyu. I fainted the first few times I got whipped with Zidian, too.
Wei Wuxian tips his head to the sky, hoping that the change in his spinal posture will keep him awake like it used to. No dice: his head is still going fuzzy. He wishes Jiang Cheng was here. Jiang Cheng never hit him with Zidian. Jiang Cheng always helped him afterwards, Carried him back to his room, got Shijie to help deal with the worst of the injuries that his juvenile core couldn’t fix.
I want it to be sixteen years ago again , Wei Wuxian pleads, though he doesn’t know who he’s pleading with. I want to go back to Lotus Pier. Even if it is only in my dreams. I would want to stay dreaming there forever.
A-Xian!