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Wen Qing’s family had been dead people walking for years. She knew it, they knew it. The only person unaware was little A-Yuan, too young still to properly understand.
Two years ago, when Wei Wuxian had brought them to the Burial Mounds, she’d known that he knew what she already did: her family was on borrowed time. Living in the Burial Mounds was awful, but it was something. She’d considered them lucky that they’d managed a month, then two, then six, then a year, then two. And Wen Qing had let herself hope. That maybe, one day, things would be fine. Each day, the earth they planted their crops in became just a bit less resentment-tainted, each day the radishes grew just a little better. Wen Qing had allowed herself to start planning, to start thinking ahead. Before too long, they could start growing a greater variety of crops: potatoes, rice, spring onions, carrots. She’d thought about where to acquire seeds and how to get a good deal on prices. She’d calculated how much of the harvest they might be able to sell, how much they could bargain for when selling, and how long it might take for them to be able to leave and settle somewhere else. She’d seen a cautious hope in her family too, seen her own plans and calculations mirrored in Wei Wuxian.
Wen Qing saw those plans crumble to dust when A-Ning came back a day earlier than he was expected, Wei Wuxian’s dead body cradled in his arms.
Five years, she thought. Five years and they would be able to leave, they would have saved enough from crop sales, possible night-hunting services, and craft skills, to buy a few good donkeys for the eldest and for A-Yuan, and then they could leave. Move on to some small corner of the world that no one was interested in, settle down, tell everyone they were just some small, unimportant cultivation clan relocating after the war. They could replant crops in better soil, get a few pigs, a goat, chickens, and live quietly. It was a dream she hadn’t dared speak aloud, just something she had taken out to polish occasionally, but she had held it dear to her heart.
Five years, she thought miserably, as she roused her family to start packing. It would have been difficult but possible. Now they were moving at the wrong time, without the necessary supplies, and with morale low. At least, she bitterly remarked to herself, there was precious little to pack.
A-Ning used the planks from one of the houses to build a coffin, placed Wei Wuxian’s body into it. His face twisted into an expression that indicated he would be crying if he could.
Lan Wangji arrived outside the wards an hour after A-Ning had returned. Wen Qing went to speak to him.
“Hanguang-jun.” She bowed with perfect formality, allowed herself to feel some small amusement when he did the same, as if she was still the respected Wen-daifu and not a hated Wen-dog. “What are you doing here?”
“Wei Ying—” He cut himself off, opened his mouth as if to start again, closed it again. Wen Qing had only met him briefly before, but she didn’t think he was the sort of person to stumble in his words like this. “They said— Is Wei Ying dead?”
When Wen Qing had been a doctor, she had never tried to soften news, no matter how awful it was. She didn’t see the point. It would still be awful, no matter what words were used, and it wouldn’t become less awful by using more words than necessary. No matter how brilliant a doctor she was, she had lost patients and had to tell families and loved ones that that person was dead. And now… “Yes.”
She didn’t cry. Wei Wuxian had liked Lan Wangji, but Wen Qing didn’t know him. She wouldn’t show her grief in front of him.
Lan Wangji’s eyes closed as his face spasmed briefly. “May I see him?”
Wen Qing considered him. Every rumour said that Hanguang-jun hated Wei Wuxian. The two had clashed over everything from the day they met, and only became worse over time. Wen Qing had heard of punishments in the Cloud Recesses, of irreconcilable world views. Hanguang-jun had dogged Wei Wuxian’s footsteps through the war, scolding him for his new cultivation path, insisting on punishment and reeducation in Gusu under his watchful gaze. More than half of the stories she had disregarded without thinking. She knew how rumours travelled between cultivators and normal people. Cultivators’ conversations about their own society was heard by their waiter in a teahouse, who told his friends, who gossiped about it between themselves, drew their own conclusions. This gossip was heard by other cultivators, whether those of other sects or rogues wandering the world, and carried far from that teahouse to every corner of the world through a continuous cycle of eavesdropping and re-telling. Wen Qing had no doubt that there was a grain of truth in those rumours somewhere, but she didn’t think that Wei Wuxian had once been punished by Lan Qiren for excessive laughter, or that Lan Wangji had said evil should be whipped from a person and, if that failed, struck out with a sword through the heart.
Wen Qing hadn’t bothered to ask Wei Wuxian about most of the rumours surrounding him. They were generally theories about why he had discarded his sword, which she already knew the truth of; and how he had learnt his new cultivation path, which she could make an educated guess of: Wen Chao had bragged that he’d caught up to YunmengJiang’s arrogant First Disciple and thrown him into the Burial Mounds to leave his body unburied and his soul restless for the rest of eternity, Wen Qing didn’t need to be a genius to know that the story was true, if embellished a little, she just needed common sense.
But the rumours surrounding his relationship with Lan Wangji were more complicated, because Wei Wuxian had demonstrated a deep respect for Lan Wangji when he spoke of him. He often became frustrated with Lan Wangji’s inflexibility regarding his new path, irritated at the implication that he would submit to being dragged off for punishment without protest, but he also freely said that he understood why. Lan Wangji had been taught that resentful energy was inherently harmful, inherently corruptive, because it was the energy that animated fierce corpses, that permitted an animal to become a yao that would kill without fear. Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian had mused once, on a sleepless night when he and Wen Qing had been tipsy on Uncle Four’s fruit wine, just needed to tilt his head at the right angle to figure it all out, that resentful energy was energy the same as spiritual energy was energy, and that both were dangerous when used improperly and without caution, but there was nothing inherently harmful about either.
“So far my new path has demonstrated itself to be less harmful to the user than my old path,” he’d said, pouring another drink for her. “Zero percent of ghostly path cultivators have experienced qi deviations to date. Pretty good numbers right?” He’d grinned at her involuntary snort of laughter, and she’d hidden her smile behind her cup. Wen Qing’s heart ached at the memory.
Now, she stood before Lan Wangji, who waited for her verdict. Lan Wangji, who had seen their settlement before, who had had a cordial discussion with Wei Wuxian when every rumour she had heard had implied they would come to blows, who had aided in A-Ning’s waking. He had done nothing, made no hostile move, not implied that Wei Wuxian was wrong for helping them. On the other hand, he had done nothing to help them, left them as they were, barely holding on. Even now, Wen Qing found herself mentally cataloguing just how much he could have helped if he had bothered to think of help beyond returning Wei Wuxian to the sword path.
The wards between them were of Wei Wuxian’s design, a shield around them made from the thick resentment of the Burial Mounds. There was enough there when they arrived to construct a barrier so strong it would have been near impossible for all the righteous sects to break it. Since then, it had only become stronger. Every spark of resentment Wei Wuxian had pulled from the soil and water and stone in their settlement had gone into the wards. They were infallible, the design and strength far superior to what any sect had set around their homes, and they would let Lan Wangji through without so much as ruffling his hair. Wen Qing wondered if Lan Wangji knew that short of having A-Ning fight him, there was little she or her family could do if he decided he wanted to come in. Wei Wuxian had granted him access that day he had visited, and never revoked it. Wen Qing thought that it was because some small piece of him had hoped that Lan Wangji might come back.
He had come now, too late, begging to see Wei Wuxian’s body. Wen Qing thought he might even leave if she sent him away, though he wouldn’t want to. Wen Qing sighed, straightened her shoulders, stood as if she was still respected, bowed again like some farce of common courtesy while they stood on a mass grave, talking about one more corpse. “Follow me.”
The path through the Burial Mounds was hazardous if you didn’t know where to step. Most people didn’t, and they were more likely to wander off into untamed wilderness made of fierce corpses and screaming resentful spirits than find the small settlement. But the path was there, trodden into the ground over two years of walks up and down the mountain, of standing at the bottom for just a few minutes to see true sun, rather than the watered down grey light that shone over the farmland. Even that was better than the stretch between. Resentful energy sat heavy in Wen Qing’s lungs as she lead Lan Wangji along the path, an ever-present ache. She had wondered, more than once, what the effects of a similarly concentrated amount of spiritual energy would feel like. How would that choke her? Just how different would it feel? What horrors could line the paths in a place like that, different but no less awful that the never-ending ghosts of the Burial Mounds.
The cleansed area of the farmland and houses seemed lighter in her lungs, brighter against her skin, than the most beautiful spring day with playful wind in her youth. This was due to acclimatisation over the past couple of years. The resentful energy here was still so thick that in any other place it would be horrifying, but in the Burial Mounds, entering the place most protected, it seemed a paradise. Wen Qing wondered how Lan Wangji was doing, if the effect of the resentment was made better or worse by the strength of his core.
Lan Wangji, behind her, spoke. “You’re leaving.”
Her family had barely paused to look at Hanguang-jun before continuing their efforts. Radishes were pulled from the ground, regardless of how ready they were for harvest. Clothes were folded into qiankun bags Second Auntie had only recently managed to make. Her three missing fingers meant the embroidery that formed the space-folding talismans was more crooked than before, the lines less even and so the structure less efficient, but they were functional for the task.
Second Auntie would live, Wen Qing told herself firmly. She would live to see her stitched talismans returned to their former intricacy and power. Second Auntie had once been able to fold enough space to hold her family’s clothes and keepsakes into a comfortably-sized bag for easy carrying. She would be able to do so again.
“We are.” She wondered if Lan Wangji understood why, if he had felt the way the wards were already starting to fray as he stepped through. Wei Wuxian had run calculations before deciding whether he could afford to attend the new Jin child’s hundred day ceremony, and determined that without his presence, the wards would hold for two weeks. At the end of that fortnight, the wards would fall. By the end of the first week, they would have weakened enough that a determined enough force with great enough numbers could break through. He had planned to be away no more than three or four days. It had not even quite been two, and Wen Qing could feel the difference. She didn’t know whether Wei Wuxian’s death had hastened the unravelling. She wished she knew whether that had been taken into account in his reckoning of how long they had.
Not that they would wait until the wards fell. They would be gone before night set in, every second important to get a greater lead on any who might decide to hunt them down.
The coffin was put into the house it was made from. There was a hole in the side where A-Ning had hastily pulled the structure apart to create a new house for just one body. The door cut and repurposed into a lid. Not closed yet, showing Wei Wuxian’s still corpse. A-Ning had closed his eyes as he laid him down in the coffin, and if Wen Qing didn’t know that Wei Wuxian moved around even in sleep, she would have tried to convince herself that he was just exhausted and napping before dinner. But even imagination couldn’t hide the stab wound, couldn’t hide the blood.
In the part of her mind that was always occupied with money and calculations, Wen Qing lamented that the robes were so ruined. They had been his best set, made from fine Gusu silk, dyed in Yunmeng, the red sourced from Qishan lands, the black from a small but wealthy non-cultivator merchant family. Finely sewn into the seams and hems were talismans to repel dust and blood, to keep cool under the sun and warm at night. Wei Wuxian had been wearing them the day he had stolen her family away, his once everyday wear becoming his best. When he had left Wen Qing had known that he would be dressed the same as minor sects with less money behind them, far less than the lotus silk he would have once dressed in for such an event. She hadn’t let herself linger on it. The only reason those robes hadn’t been sold for more funds was because they’d been more valuable as a durable set of clothes over any set of cotton they would have been able to afford. Still, seeing them ruined sent calculations spinning about the cost of repair or replacement.
Only, they wouldn’t need to repair them, or replace them. Even if they stripped those clothes from his body, found a white robe to bury him in, she already knew that none of the men in her family would wear them, and nor could she bear to sell them. They were just a ruined set of robes, insignificant in comparison to the man they clothed.
Lan Wangji, when he saw Wei Wuxian’s still body, drew in a breath that shuddered, one that Wen Qing was sure he would prefer her to pretend she hadn’t heard. He walked closer, picked up one cold hand between the two of his, pressed his fingers to the pulse point of the wrist like it would mean anything, like he could do anything.
A part of Wen Qing was still waiting for Wei Wuxian to spring back to life, open his eyes and smile, having successfully pulled off the world’s worst practical joke. But she knew that wouldn’t happen. Wei Wuxian’s jokes had become the quiet humour of a tired man, and would never be so cruel. No, Wei Wuxian was dead, and there would be no changing that.
Lan Wangji dropped to his knees beside the coffin. He cradled Wei Wuxian’s hand in his lap, brought his head down, his hands up. Supported by his own hand was Wei Wuxian’s hand, and Lan Wangji pressed his forehead against it.
There was something sacred, Wen Qing knew, about the Lans’ forehead ribbons, in that Lans didn’t let others touch them. She wondered for a moment what it was.
Lan Wangji lifted his head up after a few moments, his eyes red and shining with unshed tears. “He is not in burial clothes.”
“We do not have any.”
She didn’t know whether he understood what was underneath that statement. While they still wore red and white, still dressed themselves in Wen colours, they had pitifully few clothes between them. They had just enough for two full sets of robes each, one set swapped for another as the first was washed. While many of them would have donated a white layer for a burial robe, doing so would leave the donator lacking clothes between washes. As disrespectful as it was, they had already accepted that they would bury Wei Wuxian in black and red rather than white.
Lan Wangji began to undo the wide belt at his waist, to pull off the outer robe he wore beneath his long, untied cloak.
“What are you doing?”
Lan Wangji paused, one arm out of his sleeve. “A robe. For the burial.”
Lan Wangji’s robes were the kind expected of a sect heir at a celebration: finely woven lotus silk as white as fresh snow, complex embroidery in pale blue giving shape to the elegant clouds of the Lan sect. No doubt they cost a small fortune. They were likely one of only two or three sets of lotus silk clothing he owned. The material was manufactured exclusively at Lotus Pier, required highly skilled labour, and the knowledge of how to weave it was considered a sect secret so exclusive it was passed from a weaver to their apprentice by word of mouth. After the Jiang sect had been slaughtered, they had only been able to revive their most precious craft when a grandmother, nearly two hundred years old, had returned to Lotus Pier to teach five hand-picked apprentices. Prices had skyrocketed to many times its weight in gold. Lotus silk was something that no sect could afford to throw away, and the absence of one of Lan Wangji’s robes made of it would be noticed.
Wen Qing didn’t want anything around her family to be noticed. She wanted them to fade into the background, steal away and be forgotten. They couldn’t afford to be linked to Lan Wangji losing his incredibly valuable lotus silk robe.
She told him to use something else, something less likely to be missed. From a qiankun pouch that Second Auntie would be impressed with Lan Wangji drew a robe of white Gusu silk. This was less likely to be missed, and even if it was missed it would cause fewer problems than the loss of a lotus silk layer.
She helped Lan Wangji move Wei Wuxian’s body, well aware how quickly dead weight could turn awkward. They didn’t undress him, but Lan Wangji’s shoulders were just a touch wider than Wei Wuxian’s were, and they didn’t tie the robe tightly once it was on. The robe was tied right-over-left, and now, dressed in a properly folded white robe, Wei Wuxian truly looked like the corpse he was. Wen Qing blinked back tears, wiped the few that strayed down her cheeks with a sleeve. There was work to be done.
The work of packing could be completed quickly. Two sets of clothes per person — four sets for A-Yuan, because each set took less cloth and children tended to get dirtier more quickly and easily than adults — though more important were the radishes hurriedly pulled from the ground, the small amount of seeds they had, the dried meat that would only feed all of them if cooked into a broth. Furniture could be left, food could not. A-Yuan’s toys were kept, Fourth Uncle’s fruit wine was left.
Wen Qing found every scrap of paper in Wei Wuxian’s Demon Subdue Cave and picked through them for the important pages.
More than a few had paintings depicting a person vendors claimed to be Wei Wuxian on one side. This was because Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing had both needed paper for their own work, and for keeping track of money and food. Buying decent paper was expensive, but stealing a few pages with those paintings on them was easy enough, and costless.
Most of the papers had writing on both sides, notes in messy calligraphy, both Wei Wuxian’s slanting characters and Wen Qing’s own cramped writing. The most important things were written on slightly better quality paper, without a painting on one side. The schematics for a compass that would point towards resentful energy were weighted down on the ledge of stone used as a desk by the functioning article. The design for an improved spirit lure were neat nearby. The design for a great array seemed to have weight to it. This design was for the constantly growing array Wei Wuxian had written in the largest cave when he had brought them there, written around a base constructed during his first time living there.
Wen Qing could imagine it, just. Wei Wuxian, still bleeding, still weak and recovering from the surgery, drawing a protection array just large enough for him to lie in with his own blood. Most of the additional protections had come later. Back then, Wei Wuxian had wanted ghosts to approach him, get close to him so that he could figure out how to cultivate with the resentful energy that made them up. He hadn’t cared about restless sleep, and he had had so little food to store that he hadn’t worried at all about it rotting. Those were all things that came later, blended so seamlessly into the base that the only tell that the entire thing hadn’t been constructed all at once was a slight difference in colour. The oldest part was entirely blood, while the newer had some cinnabar mixed in, creating a much brighter red.
The papers were swept into a qiankun bag just barely big enough for them, and into another went the heavier objects: brush and inkwell, the compass, the heavy, rough cloth that a spirit lure was written on. Other papers she left on the walls. When the sects came here to raid they could find their invented Yiling Laozu, but they would have nothing they could use. Even the array on the ground would be almost useless to them — the complexities were many, and while efficient in terms of energy, it was still a convoluted, sprawling mass that would require a master years to completely decipher beyond the basics of its purpose. And so she ensured that they wouldn’t profit from killing one of the best minds in their generation, and likely the previous two as well.
Lan Wangji, when she emerged from the cave, asked for a task, for something he could do to help.
“How much money do you have on you?” Perhaps it was a shameless question, but there was no denying that at this moment the best aid Lan Wangji could provide was financial.
Lan Wangji stated a figure. Wen Qing blinked, for a moment having a sensation much like mental whiplash. It was a lot. On the level of herself that had been a well supplied doctor of the single richest and most powerful sect in the known world, it was not an unreasonable figure for a young master to be carrying around. Young masters were allocated money by the sect based on what inns they might stay at, what food they might eat, potential purchases (either necessary or otherwise), enough to be generous and loosen lips when questioning people on night-hunts, and still have money left over. The more prestigious the young master and the sect, the more was allocated based on wealth and where the young master might expect to be. On the level of herself that she operated on now, where meat was something to save for and new robes could quite literally not be afforded, the amount seemed insane. Lan Wangji carried around in his purse enough that Wen Qing would be happy to move her family based on those funds entirely. How many robes was that amount? How many seeds? How much meat?
More importantly, how many steady, reliable donkeys could that amount buy in Yiling?
Wen Qing wasn’t delusional. Yiling people were tough and generally unfriendly to outsiders. While they did their best to foster trading relationships with merchants, the shadow of the Burial Mounds looming over them made merchant caravans rarer than they were in other areas, which only reinforced the typical unfriendliness of Yiling people. Much of what was sold in Yiling was either produced in the town or close by, and only the necessity of buying horses or donkeys would be made difficult by how few were generally on sale in the tiny live market Yiling hosted. They were more likely to find pigs or chickens than dependable donkeys.
But Lan Wangji’s money would at least let them afford some. She directed him down the mountain, into Yiling with its live market, with instructions to buy two or three donkeys for some of the less physically able of her family to ride.
Lan Wangji hesitated.
“What?”
“You will have finished packing before I finish this purchase.”
“In all likelihood.”
“You cannot delay.”
“Certainly not.”
“If I come back here, you will have left.”
Well…thinking about it, they really couldn’t waste the hours. “Yes.” Wen Qing was beginning to understand why Wei Wuxian had spoken of Lan Wangji with both fondness and frustration. The man was apparently allergic to a clarifying statement, instead expecting his still face to do the rest of the talking for him.
There was a short lull in the conversation as Lan Wangji apparently realised she wasn’t going to answer a question he hadn’t yet asked.
“Which direction will you go?”
And that… that was a question Wen Qing wasn’t sure about. In all the quiet planning she’d done, she’d never picked a destination, or even a direction. And now, she still didn’t know. Lan Wangji seemed to understand her silence.
“Head towards Gusu. I will catch up with you on the road.”
Towards Gusu? Well, that was fine, she supposed. They wouldn’t reach Lan heartlands within seven days anyway, and there was sure to be some tiny village that would accept their excuse as a small cultivation clan resettling after the war.
Wen Qing nodded, and returned Lan Wangji’s bow, and then the two of them parted ways. Before a stick of incense could have burnt, her family was packed up and they were ready to leave their small sanctuary and go back out into the world. A-Yuan sat on the shoulders of Fifth Uncle, who had once been broad with muscle, and was now still the only one of them strong enough to carry a toddler for hours apart from A-Ning, whose shoulders were blocked from being sat on by the coffin strapped to his back.
The remnants of QishanWen left the Burial Mounds.
Lan Wangji had never worn a disguise before, but a woman missing three fingers had insisted on it.
“You have a recognisable face,” she’d said, “but the robes are more obvious.” She’d had him bring out all his spare clothes and put together an outfit of white cotton with a single layer of blue silk on top. The silk robe did have cloud embroidery, which the woman frowned at, but it blended well with the weave and wasn’t obvious. She had him throw his heavy weather hooded cloak over the top, which hid the embroidery and covered his forehead ribbon. She’d deemed him to look the part of a wealthy young man, but that he also shouldn’t be connected to GusuLan, then she sent him down the mountain, informing him that they needed steady, reliable donkeys, not spirited horses that they couldn’t control.
Which was how Lan Wangji came to be walking through Yiling’s live market, wondering if the process for finding a good donkey was at all similar to finding a good horse, which he had been taught when he was fourteen and the riding instructor at the Cloud Recesses had been looking to introduce new blood to their horse lines.
He stopped before a line of horses, one of them nosing at the hay bale put out for them, another drinking from the bucket of water. These horses were not particularly impressive by cultivators’ standards. They didn’t have the strength of body to keep up with their rider’s stamina or expectations, and didn’t look to have the reaction speed that any cultivator would expect of their mount. No, these horses were more suited to pulling a cart: slow but steady walking, unphased by almost anything the road could offer. Or at least Lan Wangji presumed. He only had experience with finding good horses for cultivators, anything like these would have been passed over without a second glance.
Now, though, he was looking for something steady and reliable. Donkeys had been emphasised, though Lan Wangji thought a mule would be suitable enough too. He walked through the streets, then came to an abrupt stop with a stuttered breath.
He’d left the live market by accident, taken a wrong turn into streets lined with food and crafts rather than pens with pigs and chickens. But there, there was the place where A-Yuan had slammed into his legs before bursting into tears, calling for his father.
Lan Wangji imagined he could hear those tears now, and that if he looked up…
There was no Wei Ying there, not the bright youth he had first met or the angry young man from the war. Not the tired young man from after the war or the man who had stood in the street, laughing, his later smiles gentler things than Lan Wangji had ever seen, making his heart fill with yearning.
A-Yuan was not there, a warm weight against his leg, because he was with his family, preparing to leave. And Wei Ying was not there, because Wei Ying was dead.
A flash of sensation, of cold skin held in his hands, of a face that should be filled with expression being utterly still, of grief welling up like water from a place within himself, a cut so deep it would scar irreversibly.
The press of that cold, still hand against his forehead, against his ribbon, something that would never happen again, because Wei Ying was dead.
Lan Wangji thought that water-like grief would spill over, dripping tears from his eyes if he stood there a moment longer, reminded of that last day with Wei Ying. He turned, walked back towards the live market before he was tempted to find the restaurant they had eaten at, to eat the dishes that Wei Ying had eaten and suffer through the burn of the spices to feel that bit closer to Wei Ying. He focused on the feeling of his ribbon against his forehead. Self restraint. He had a task.
As he searched for donkeys, his mind wandered back to that day. The way Wei Ying had looked in the light, the way his smile had lit up his face in a way Lan Wangji hadn’t seen in years, had missed with an intensity that had surprised even him. At one point, Wei Ying had turned to him and his eyes had caught the sunlight, turning his irises silver for an instant, only more precious than any silver by far. Lan Wangji remembered Wei Ying’s voice, more serious than it had been in their youth, but rising and falling in patterns that he had engraved into his heart at fifteen. He remembered sitting across from Wei Ying, a child playing between them, and wanting.
He could admit to himself the dreams he’d had, less intense than others in that he didn’t wake with a racing heart and hot skin, but they had been dreams of family, of a life he never expected to have, of Wei Ying dressing in the darkest blues of the Lan sect as well as his usual black, the possessive part of Lan Wangji humming in satisfaction at seeing Wei Ying in his colours. He had dreamed of night-hunting, of travelling together, of a life in the Jingshi, of wide smiles with a lazy air to them, of gentle touches, of the laughter of a child mirroring Wei Ying’s own, echoing around their home. He’d dreamed of duets, of new music that was just theirs’, of love given and returned easily.
He hadn’t expected anything. Wei Ying wouldn’t return those feelings, and he wouldn’t burden Wei Ying with them. But it was a much more awful thing to know that those things could never come to fruition not because of a lack of feelings, but because Wei Ying was dead. Lan Wangji stopped in the middle of the street as it struck him all over again that he would never see Wei Ying’s smile, not the exuberance of their youth, not the tired but open one of their last meeting, not even the cold and empty ones from the war. He let him eyes squeeze shut, blinked a few times to force back tears, and carried on. He would weep another time, in private, not here where anyone could see.
Eventually he did find donkeys. He inquired as to their reliability over distance, what weights they could carry, whether they would accept someone on their back. There were three of them. They looked uninjured, well fed, generally healthy. Lan Wangji couldn’t speak to exactly what made a good donkey, but all his examinations yielded nothing negative that he could determine. Their teeth were in good condition, and their hooves were not cracked. He bought the three of them, haggled down to a slightly lower price as would be expected, and led the three donkeys through Yiling to the eastern outskirts, and along the road towards Gusu.
Lan Wangji caught up with the Wens after an incense stick’s time less than a shichen. He had been travelling faster than them, and their pace was limited by their group size and the old injuries among them. Apart from A-Yuan, and the elderly woman all of them called Granny, there was a young man with a badly healed leg, only able to walk with the support of a staff, a middle-aged woman who lacked obvious injuries but seemed to have issues with walking in a direct line who was relying on the woman next to her to keep her on track, and another man walked with a stiff gait, indicative of an unbending knee, which Lan Wangji assumed meant one of his legs wasn’t flesh from the thigh down, but instead some kind of prosthetic. He wondered whether he ought to have tried to find more donkeys, or also bought one of the sturdy horses he’d seen, but put the thought out of his mind. Such useless contemplations were worthless now. There was no changing the number of donkeys he had, only that some were available.
Granny was given one of the donkeys, A-Yuan held in front of her, his hands kept busy and the animal unannoyed by use of the two grass butterflies he had as toys. Another was given to a limping elderly man, the woman who couldn’t walk straight on one side, so that any listing would put her against the donkey, keeping her straight, though her companion still stood on her other side. The third donkey was given to a young woman with a pain-drawn face, an older woman walking next to her. Murmured conversations were had about when different people would ride, and who would ride and who would walk. The group moved onwards, eastwards.
They moved at a pace that, for the number of people and their general condition, was fast. For Lan Wangji, it was slow. He had never been more aware of how quickly a cultivator could travel until he was limited by the pace at which fifty malnourished people could walk. He understood, though, from Wen Qing’s grimaces and the main group’s own frustrated mumbles that they were just as frustrated as he was.
The only one of them who could have kept pace with Lan Wangji travelling at pace was Wen Qionglin, even with the coffin tied to his back. Wen Qionglin never tired, didn’t need to sleep. When they settled down at night it was Wen Qionglin who kept watch when Lan Wangji could not due to his sleep schedule. The next morning, he woke to find Wen Qing already awake, having kept watch for the second half of the night while her brother ran ahead and back, easily covering the distance his entire family would take the day to cross in a shichen or two, including the return journey. While Lan Wangji could do the same, and could then do a day’s travel, he couldn’t have managed it every night as Wen Qionglin did.
They travelled east for six days, putting less distance between them and Yiling than Wen Qing liked but apparently more than she expected. The Wens alternated who rode the donkeys between a few of their members. Wen Qing never rode a donkey, nor did the man she called Fifth Uncle, or the woman who had disguised him, referred to as Second Auntie. In fact, it was a group of ten or fifteen who shared the donkeys, those ones whose walking would be too slow to otherwise keep up, or who tired quickly. Lan Wangji was unsure whether they rode on some schedule or by some other cue, but they all kept up.
On the evening when it had been six days since Wei Ying died, Wen Qionglin made a wider search than usual. He didn’t only look directly eastward, but in an arc. Lan Wangji learnt this on the morning of the seventh day, when he woke to Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin discussing something quietly next to the coffin. It was forbidden to eavesdrop, but there were some things impossible to prevent with the strong senses granted by cultivating.
“Which might be best?” That was Wen Qing, looking intently at some lines scribbled on the ground.
Wen Qionglin pointed with a stick, which had evidently been used to draw the lines. “There are three with decent soil. All perhaps one or two days’ journey from a town. We would have to clear wood and weeds, and at one we would need to redirect a stream for a close supply of water.”
“Not that one.” Wen Qionglin drew a line through a marking in the dirt. “And the other two?”
Wen Qionglin pointed again with the stick. “East-north-east and nor-nor-east, on opposite sides of the same town. The soil is hard but much easier than the Burial Mounds, plenty of grass for any grazing animals, a wood nearby for pigs to root in.”
“And the same wood would allow us to start building quickly. Third Uncle has an excellent trick with wood so we wouldn’t have to wait for it to cure… Is there any benefit to one over the other that you can tell?”
“If we choose the east-north-east it will give us half a shichen over the other before we are found if the sects track us from Yiling.”
Wen Qing snorted. Lan Wangji realised this was a joke, though he couldn’t understand the humour of it. “Negligible then, and another half a day for us.” She tapped the dirt lines. “This was at the very end of your arc?”
“Not the end, but it is when accounting for skirting around the town.”
“Then we’ll go nor-nor-east, and arrive earlier. That will give us plenty of time.” The last sentence she said with her eyes on the coffin. Her gaze eventually moved to Lan Wangji, taking in his open eyes. “Hanguang-jun,” she said, and gestured at the lines. “A-Ning has looked ahead, and we’ve chosen a destination. Come look.”
Lan Wangji got out of his bedroll and rolled it up, stowing it away in a qiankun pouch. These past days it had seen more use than it had since the Sunshot Campaign, he had grown used to sleeping in inns during night-hunts. When he approached the coffin he felt his heart spasm with fresh grief welling up in him, the way it did every time he was reminded that Wei Ying was no longer alive. He forced himself to focus on the lines.
They were a quickly-drawn map, a few deep lines representing rivers and streams, a series of much finer ones likely representing elevation based on the shapes they made within each other. There were a couple of crosses, and far more circles inscribed by a single dig of the stick into the ground to make a hole. There were faint lines that Lan Wangji recognised as the area’s roads, though there were few enough of them. There was also cross-hatching in areas, which Lan Wangji extrapolated to be wooded areas. All bar two of the circles had a line through them, and the remaining two were on the opposite sides of one of the crosses. Wen Qing pointed at one of the circles. “That’s where we’re going, and that’s where we’ll be staying.”
Lan Wangji looked up, surprised. “You won’t be going further?”
Wen Qing matched his own face for stillness. “We are not going to bury him and then abandon him.”
Lan Wangji’s heart spasmed again. This was the seventh day after Wei Ying’s death, the day which he had to be buried by lest he rise again, resentful at the disrespect done to his body. Lan Wangji remembered learning as a child: over seven in ten fierce corpses and resentful spirits are caused by improper treatment of the person’s dead body, and while not all unburied corpses turned vengeful, over nine in ten did. Wei Ying had to be buried by sunset on that day or risk his wrath.
Lan Wangji nodded, chest tight with grief, and didn’t say another word.
The Wens had a quick step to them as they walked, all well aware that this was the last day of their march. As such, they reached their destination just after the sun hit its zenith, and all immediately went to work. While camp was set up Wen Qionglin and a couple of others went to the nearby wood to cut trees, which were dragged back to the man with the prosthetic leg. This man examined the trees, all cut of their branches, which were piled up close by for later inspection, and deemed them all acceptable. He then carefully wrote a talisman directly onto the bark of the trees, starting a process which he said would cure the wood within a matter of hours rather than needing months. Lan Wangji assumed this must be the Third Uncle Wen Qing had mentioned.
Lan Wangji was sent off to the nearby town, once again in disguise, to purchase food they could store until their own crops could be harvested, and also joss paper. Upon his return, an older woman took his purchases from him, and directed him to Wen Qing.
She stood in a hole. She was using a make-shift spade to dig a little more, then handed it to an old man. As she climbed from the hole, he climbed in, digging down just a little deeper. The man handed the spade to a young woman, who dug a little more before she handed the spade to Lan Wangji. He looked at it, then over at Wen Qing.
“We all wanted to help dig the grave. You’re included in this.”
Lan Wangji’s heart squeezed so tightly and painfully that he thought he would cry from it. Wei Ying’s grave, to house his body in its coffin forever. He lowered himself into the hole, dug down deeper with the spade, feeling as though he was digging a hole in which to bury his heart. In a way, he supposed he was.
He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, looked up into a middle-aged man’s sympathetic eyes. The man gently took the spade, and shooed him from the hole, before starting to dig himself. Wen Qing took him away, and set him to writing suppression talismans. She must have understood his confused look, because she explained that these were of Wei Ying’s own design, for suppressing the Stygian Tiger Seal. It had no true master, she explained, but liked its maker well enough. So, in order to hide it, they would cover it in these talismans so no one would be able to sense it, and bury it with Wei Wuxian, never to be used again. Chenqing and Suibian would not be subjected to this fate, though. “They’re well behaved,” Wen Qing commented as she wrote out yet another talisman.
Lan Wangji did not watch her tuck the Stygian Tiger Seal into the coffin. There was a morbid curiosity though. Had she tucked it into Wei Ying’s hand? Or perhaps it was tied to his belt. Despite that curiosity, Lan Wangji did not want to actually find out.
Before they ate their evening meal, they buried Wei Ying. They cried, and burnt the joss paper. One of the younger men produced a wooden tablet he had apparently been carving for most of the journey, showing Wei Ying’s name — birth and courtesy — in neat calligraphy.
After they ate, Lan Wangji put Wangji-guqin before him as he sat by the grave, and began to play.
Inquiry was the name of the GusuLan sect’s technique for communicating with spirits. It was difficult to master, but Lan Wangji had done so by the time he turned seventeen. Its primary use was to communicate with lingering resentful spirits in order to gain information to aid in a night-hunt. But it could be used to speak with any spirit that might still be lingering, even those without resentment. This was rarely done, since a non-resentful spirit would move on to the afterlife after no more than seven days.
The invocation to the spirits, often considered the opening phrase to Inquiry, was not a musical phrase, though it was played like one. It was instead a sentence, played in the qin language with qi infused and intent to speak. Come forward. It went. And answer me. Be truthful. And then, he played two additional notes. Wei Ying.
He kept energy circulating through the strings, permitting response. And when he withdrew his hands, the strings seemed to pluck themselves. Two notes. Lan Zhan.
Lan Wangji had spent seven days wishing Wei Ying was there to speak to, wishing for just a few words. But now, he didn’t know what to do with the opportunity, didn’t know the words to use and the sentiments to express. But before he could work it out, the strings were plucked again.
You helped them Lan Zhan. Thank you.
Lan Wangji reached for the strings, played a familiar phrase. Is there anything you would like to say to them? Lingering spirits often had last messages for loved ones. Sometimes a night-hunt could be as simple as repeating a ghost’s words.
There was a ripple of noise, like a contemplative hum given more energy by Wei Ying. That I don’t regret it. Not any of it. That this time with them has been precious to me. Tell them: thank you, and I’m sorry.
The last note echoed into the evening, and Lan Wangji felt the imaginary weight of a spirit leave the guqin strings. With a reaching desperation he played Wei Ying but there was no answer.
Wei Ying, he played, still with energy as though Inquiry would reach him. I love you.
The notes were beautiful, and no spirit heard them. There was no reply, as Lan Wangji had known there would not be since he’d felt Wei Ying’s spirit dissipate from the guqin strings.
Lan Wangji let the energy stop running through the strings, and stared ahead to the grave, where the wooden tablet was sat temporarily until a proper ancestral hall was built to house it. Seeing it, seeing Wei Ying’s name on a memorial tablet, made the cold water of grief well up yet higher, Lan Wangji powerless to stop it.
And finally, Lan Wangji wept.