Archive of Our Own

The kiss was exquisitely tender at first, gentle and lingering. It wasn’t until Zhao Yunlan felt something stream out of his heart, quick as lightning, that he realized what was happening. 

He began to struggle for all he was worth, but Shen Wei’s hands were like steel on the back of his head, impossible to escape. Zhao Yunlan’s heart turned to ice. Every moment between them—the day he’d met Shen Wei, all that time spent getting to know him, everything, right to this very moment—flared before his eyes like light reflected on water. It was the sensation of his own memories being mercilessly wiped away, one by one. 

Shen Wei’s entire body burst into flames. As his long hair and robes ignited, he finally released his hold on Zhao Yunlan, who now lay unconscious. Shen Wei pushed him away through the air, and he landed in the arms of Shennong’s mortar, who stared at Shen Wei in shock from a distance. 

Shen Wei took one final, deep look at Zhao Yunlan. Then the fire engulfed him utterly, and he vanished.

Kunlun opened his eyes on a scene of barely restrained pandemonium. 

The first thing he saw was the Soul-Guarding Lamp, relit and burning heartily. The second thing he saw was Wang Zheng crying. 

He blinked through a wave of vertigo, swallowing hard as he tried to get his bearings. He felt disoriented; something big had clearly just happened. His thoughts were scattered and he couldn’t immediately recall what had caused him to pass out. His mouth hurt and his stomach was sour like he’d just been upset about something. … But if the lamp was lit again, didn’t that mean they’d won?

Turning to Wang Zheng, he asked, “What are you crying about?” 

Her eyes snapped over to him and she froze. At first she looked shocked. Her tears immediately stoppered. Then she saw something in his eyes that made hers widen. 

Ah, Kunlun realized. From one glance, she’d recognized what had changed in him. She could already tell that he wasn’t just Zhao Yunlan anymore. 

Had she been crying about him? She hadn’t thought he’d died, had she? A ghost didn’t shed tears lightly. Why couldn’t he remember how they’d managed to relight the lamp?

Shennong’s mortar — still wearing his dad’s body, that asshole — stepped forward. 

“Greetings to the Mountain God.” 

Unprompted, he started to explain. 

“Back when my master forcefully suppressed the Mountain God’s primordial spirit and sent you into the Reincarnation Cycle, he and the Lord Emissary agreed that the Emissary would live and die with the Great Seal. Now another calamitous trial has come upon the Mortal Realm, the Great Houtu Seal has been broken, and the Soul-Executing Emissary has sacrificed himself for the Seal. All actions and consequences have fallen into place.”

Kunlun’s eyes trailed back to the lamp. 

The Soul-Executing Emissary had sacrificed himself, huh? That made sense. He was a powerful entity with capabilities similar to the primordial gods’. If this was a bargain he’d set with Shennong all those thousands of years ago, then it was only right that he had fulfilled his promise now that the time had come. 

Was that why Wang Zheng was crying? He was a little surprised. He hadn’t realized she cared so much about the Emissary. 

Maybe it was the after-effects of regaining his divinity, but his brain felt foggy and his accounting of the last twenty-four hours was muddled. He still had all of Zhao Yunlan’s memories, but he was struggling to piece together what had just happened, even though he was pretty sure he’d been in the middle of the action the whole time. 

He’d watched the Great Seal break, but he didn’t remember the Soul-Executing Emissary showing up to fix it. Had he been there all along? Why hadn’t Kunlun seen him?

He looked back at Shennong’s mortar, who continued: “The Emissary became a god as a King of the Gui. He got what he wished for, and in the end, erased your….”

Wait, wait, hold on. Kunlun raised a hand and Shennong’s mortar immediately stopped talking.

The Soul-Executing Emissary was a King of the Gui? As in, his little ghost king, Shen Wei? It obviously couldn’t be his crazed brother — Kunlun remembered watching him self-detonate earlier. Did that mean the Soul-Executing Emissary had been Shen Wei all this time?

Shennong’s mortar was shifting his weight back and forth, watching Kunlun like a nervous eunuch. He looked like he wanted to keep explaining. It was like he expected Kunlun to be mad at him or something. 

“Enough.” 

He raised a hand to rub at one of his temples. His head was pounding, but he still grasped the meaning of what had just been said. He did not, in fact, have all of Zhao Yunlan’s memories. Apparently Shen Wei had just erased himself from his mind.

…

Well, evidently he hadn’t erased himself completely, since Kunlun still remembered who Shen Wei was. 

They must have met again in this lifetime. Somehow, Zhao Yunlan had unmasked the Soul-Executing Emissary and discovered something of their ancient connection.

When had Shen Wei become the Emissary? It must have been right after Kunlun was shoved into the Reincarnation Cycle…. 

Kunlun’s memories of his previous mortal lives were still veiled in fog, but he was sure that Shen Wei hadn’t revealed his identity until this lifetime, and probably not long ago at that. He could remember meeting with the Soul-Executing Emissary as Zhao Yunlan a dozen times and talking as colleagues. Shen Wei would have stolen those memories too if Zhao Yunlan had known who he was.  

So how long had they had together? It couldn’t have been much longer than a couple of years. 

That foolish little gui! Just what had he been thinking?!

He’d committed this last great sacrifice, fulfilled his side of the ancient bargain he’d apparently made, and then what — let Zhao Yunlan forget him? Erased him from his brain so he could move on with his mortal life?

Did he expect Zhao Yunlan to live on peacefully after he was gone? Had he thought that he was going to be satisfied with knowing that the mortal realm had been saved even though he had a couple of massive, unexplained holes in his memory?

Did he not understand Zhao Yunlan’s personality at all?!

Evidently, he hadn’t realized that Kunlun’s divinity would return. He must have thought that the memories from Zhao Yunlan’s lifetime were the only ones he needed to take. He clearly hadn’t fully grasped just how the bargain he’d made with Shennong worked. 

Kunlun pinched the bridge of his nose. Fool, fool, that incredible little fool! 

In the next moment, a giant tree burst through the ground. Based on where they were standing, it should have been the Ancient Merit Tree, but instead of a withered dead husk, this tree was radiantly alive. It must have been revived somehow, likely thanks to Shen Wei. 

The leaves on its branches looked fresh and were covered in dew. As the dew dripped onto the Great Seal, it began to close over, like new skin replacing a scab. 

With some effort, Kunlun stood up and reached out to catch a falling leaf from one of the tree’s branches. He let his mortal appearance fall away, donning the green robes of the Mountain God of the Great Wild. Not bothering to look back at Shennong’s mortar, he asked, “Was it you who sent Guo Changcheng to the SID?”

“Yes. When my master was alive, he tasked me with finding someone whose third eye wasn’t open, yet who could see through to the truth; someone quiet and unassuming, but blessed with great heaven-given merits.” 

“I see. I understand now. Thank you.” 

So his little ghost king may have been a fool, but at least he was a lucky fool. 

Daqing rushed up to him then, demanding, “What exactly is going on?” 

“Don’t worry.” Kunlun told him, walking towards the Soul-Guarding Lamp and taking a seat under it. He gave Daqing’s round head a few pats. “The lamp is still lit.” 

Then he shut his eyes and started to meditate. He had an idea of what would happen next, but he didn’t know how long it was going to take.

In the end, it didn’t take long at all. 

Kunlun had been meditating for maybe ten minutes when he felt a pulse of energy disturb the air. His eyes snapped open and he sprang to his feet just as a ball of fire, eye-wateringly bright, flew straight at the lamp. Inside, it joined with the little flame of Shen Wei’s soul. 

The lamp flared, growing from a pea-sized ball into a raging inferno, suddenly hundreds of meters tall. 

He pressed his hands flat against the Soul-Guarding Lamp, waiting. 

He waited. 

As the seconds ticked by, he started to wonder if somehow he’d been wrong. Then a shadow appeared in the fire. 

Gradually, a figure took shape, growing bigger and more defined until it was the size of a man. When it was fully formed, the man tumbled out of the lamp, directly into Kunlun’s waiting arms. 

Shen Wei wasn’t heavy — not by the standards of an immortal anyway — but sheer relief made Kunlun’s knees buckle. He stumbled back and the two of them fell to the ground. 

“Shen-laoshi!” Lin Jing yelped. 

… Yeah, if even the staff of the SID knew who the Soul-Executing Emissary was, then he was missing some pretty significant memories. 

This fool, he thought again, his fingers digging into Shen Wei’s back.

In the next breath, Shen Wei returned to life, choking and coughing against Kunlun’s shoulder, pressing his weight into him and clutching him back. A burst of flame appeared at his forehead and both shoulders, confirming what Kunlun had already guessed. 

Behind them, Shennong’s mortar cried out in surprise. 

Kunlun explained, “The King of the Gui has become a god, and thus the gui now have souls.” 

He’d always been clever, his little mountain ghost. Always too clever for his own good. He didn’t even want to know what kind of devious scheming he’d gotten up to in the thousands of years he’d been wandering around without supervision. This time, however, his machinations had paid off. 

Kunlun answered a couple more questions from the onlookers before he noticed that Shen Wei’s right hand was clenched tightly around something. While he was alive and somewhat responsive, he didn’t seem to be fully conscious. Gently prying his fingers apart, Kunlun discovered that the thing was a small, golden calming charm. It flew up and disappeared back into the Soul-Guarding Lamp. 

He could only assume that he would have known what that was about if Shen Wei had let him keep his fucking memories. 

When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to wake up, Kunlun secured his grip and hiked him up into his arms. He left everyone else behind to deal with the mess in the Netherworld and made good use of his newly regained powers by teleporting them both directly back to his apartment. 

Lin Jing had called out for ‘Shen-laoshi’ back there, which strongly implied that Shen Wei had some sort of mortal guise and probably a house of his own somewhere in Dragon City. Thanks to the hard work of this so-called ‘Shen-laoshi’, however, Kunlun had absolutely no idea where that was. For the moment, he didn’t care to find out. 

Upon arrival, he discovered that his pig-sty of an apartment was somehow, inexplicably, clean. Because of course it was. 

When Shen Wei woke up, Zhao Yunlan — who had decided that he probably ought to start thinking of himself by his mortal name — was going to kill him all over again. 

He laid Shen Wei out on his bed. Tucking him into the clean sheets, he stared down at his unconscious face. 

So the little beauty really did grow into a great beauty, he thought. He’d always wondered. To be honest, he had never expected that he would get to see it. 

At the beginning of the dawn of humanity, his fate had been simultaneously known and unknown — obvious in some ways, mysterious in others. He’d thought his death was one of the obvious parts! Who would have guessed how far Shen Wei would go to keep him?

In this lifetime, Zhao Yunlan had probably latched onto him the moment he got the chance. Before then, as the Soul-Executing Emissary, Shen Wei must have never let him see his face. Zhao Yunlan knew himself. Even without his memories of being Kunlun, one look would have been enough to reel him in. He’d always thought the Emissary had a good personality. If he’d known what a beauty was hiding behind all of that black mist, he wouldn’t have been able to let him go.

But how troublesome he was! How much of his plan had he shared with Zhao Yunlan? Probably next to none of it. He couldn’t imagine agreeing to the whole self-sacrifice thing, and certainly not to the memory extraction.

The Shen Wei he remembered had normally been such an obedient little thing, happy to go along with whatever Kunlun wanted… except for when it came to the one thing he really cared about: Kunlun’s wellbeing. Regarding that matter, he’d had a bull-headed streak a mile wide. 

He must have lied to him. If he’d been working with all of his memories as Kunlun, he couldn’t have gotten away with it, but in his mortal state, Zhao Yunlan had been outmatched from the start.

It didn’t take long for Daqing to follow them back. Without taking his eyes off Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan made the cat fill him in on what he’d forgotten. With every word he said, the crease in his brow deepened. 

Having one’s memories stolen was unavoidably a somewhat violating experience. If all he had to process were the thousands of years worth of memories that came with regaining the mantle of Kunlun-jun, that would have been disorienting enough, but doing so while also navigating the minefield of his partial amnesia…. 

He was furious with Shen Wei. Still, for the week that he was comatose, Zhao Yunlan stayed glued to his bedside. He couldn’t bear to tear his eyes away.

The staff of the SID quickly figured out where their boss had gone. They all cycled through the apartment, checking in on them and verifying for themselves that Shen Wei really had survived the ordeal. 

After the first visit, Guo Changcheng was the only one who continued coming back, popping in at least once a day to bring him hot meals. The kid hadn’t realized that with his regained divinity, Zhao Yunlan didn’t need to eat. Nobody corrected him. 

He spent the time trying to align what Daqing had told him with the patchwork of things he could remember. 

Shen Wei was a professor at Dragon City University. He had been thrust into Zhao Yunlan’s orbit about a year and a half ago. It was even less time than he had imagined, but over that fleeting period, judging by how many gaps there were in his memory, he’d very quickly transformed his life to revolve around Professor Shen. 

Zhao Yunlan’s apartment showed some clear signs of co-habitation, but it didn’t look like Shen Wei had fully moved in. They must have at least been sleeping together, he thought, given the contents of his bedroom. He had a fuzzy recollection of poking at a couple of weird bruises, feeling vaguely proud but a little put out about them. Damningly, he couldn’t remember now where they’d come from. 

It made him snort and shake his head. The Zhao Yunlan of back then surely had no idea what he was getting himself into when he started pursuing the beautiful and mysterious Shen-laoshi. When he finally won him over, he would have been in so far over his head. Kunlun could sympathize. It wasn’t like it had been all that different for him. 

Shen Wei’s mortal guise wasn’t bad. At first glance, he certainly looked human. Under close examination, however, there were a few little details that betrayed him. No literature professor had any right having thick calluses like the ones between his thumbs and pointer fingers, for example.  

Zhao Yunlan, a detective by vocation, would have noticed those sorts of discrepancies. He wondered if that was how he figured it out. 

So, a university professor by day, the Soul Executing Emissary by night. 

Zhao Yunlan was sure that he’d been the Guardian through all of his past lives — even with his divinity sealed, by nature of who he was, he would have always been born with his third eye open. Given his personality, this would have only made trouble for the Netherworld if they hadn’t given him an official job.

The Guardian had always worked alongside the Soul-Executing Emissary. It meant that Shen Wei had watched over him all of this time. He would have protected him as much as he could, but it would have worked only up to a point. Up until the re-sealing of the barrier, Zhao Yunlan had still been mortal, after all. 

In the bargain he’d struck with Shennong, Shen Wei had kept Kunlun’s soul in the world, but he’d consigned himself to thousands of years of loneliness and heartbreak. What would it have been like to watch the person at the tip of his heart die over and over and over again? 

In order to save Kunlun’s life, Shen Wei had agreed to an eternity of heartbreak. It was almost worse that he’d gotten to see him on the occasions that called for the Guardian and the Emissary to meet. He could get close, but he could never have what he wanted. Shen Wei had stood right in front of him, but Zhao Yunlan hadn’t seen him — not really. 

Zhao Yunlan, meanwhile, had lived all of those years with no idea of what he was missing… until this lifetime. How much of Shen Wei’s background had he managed to uncover? Had he realized the truth of their shared past? 

“So you remember him, right?” Lin Jing asked when he came by. 

“What, Shen Wei? Of course I do.” 

Lin Jing had slumped in relief. “Good, good. I thought… back there, it kind of sounded like he had—”

“It didn’t work. Don’t worry.” Zhao Yunlan reassured him, lying. 

With the exception of Daqing, he kept the fact of his missing memories to himself. Since most of the SID was not clear on exactly what the prior relationship between Kunlun and Shen Wei had been, it was not particularly hard to leverage his past knowledge, adding in inferences from the evidence around him, and pretend. 

Aside from entertaining these brief visits, he didn’t sleep, didn’t shower, and hardly got up from the dining room chair he’d pulled over to Shen Wei’s bedside. He spent most of the week gazing at his sleeping face, worrying about him, and thinking. 

When Shen Wei finally stirred, Zhao Yunlan shot up to his feet. 

He’d been taking his pulse periodically, not to read his heart rate — possessing a soul or not, Shen Wei still didn’t have one — but to track the wild energy pulsing through his body. As it slowly settled, Shen Wei’s color improved. By now, Zhao Yunlan could tell that he was about to wake up. 

Without much thought, his feet led him to the door. He picked up his coat, checked to confirm that his wallet and keys were still in its pockets, then hurried out before Shen Wei could open his eyes. 

He spent the night in a hotel. 

With his nursing duties officially concluded, he went back to work the next day. Arriving early in the morning, only Lao Li was there to greet him at the door. The gateman’s jaw fell open when he saw him. The carved bone 3D puzzle in his hand fell onto the guardhouse desk with a clatter. 

“D-director?” He asked. “Does that mean Professor Shen is…?”

“He’s fine.” Zhao Yunlan reassured him, reaching through the open window to clap him on the shoulder. “He just woke up last night. There’s no more need to worry.” 

“... Of course.” Lao Li agreed slowly, still visibly confused about why Zhao Yunlan was there. “I’m very pleased to hear that.” 

This interaction repeated four more times as the rest of the SID day shift trickled in. Even after they had all arrived, no one seemed to be able to leave him alone.

“What are you doing?! After Shen Wei sacrificed himself like that, how can you parade around here?” Zhu Hong yelled across the room the moment she saw him. 

All hints of her unfortunate crush were totally gone. Since he remembered her hopelessly following him around as recently as two weeks ago and had no idea what had changed, this too was clearly Shen Wei’s doing. 

“… You just left him in your apartment?” Chu Shuzhi asked, visibly perplexed.

Guo Changcheng didn’t say anything, but he kept glancing over at him with a nervous frown. He was far too meek to disapprove, but clearly just as confused as the others as to what he was doing there. 

As a matter of self-defense, Zhao Yunlan wound up locking himself in his office. This worked for about an hour, until the cat figured out how to pry open one of the windows and wiggled his way inside. 

“All of that fuss and you don’t even want to see him?” Daqing drawled, leaping down to the floor with a huff. 

“Why don’t I rip out half of your memories from the last year and we’ll see if you want to see me?” 

Daqing rolled his eyes. “He asked after you.”

Zhao Yunlan shot him a thin smile. “And what did you tell him?”

Jumping up and then sauntering across his desk with a pointed little flick of his tail, Daqing replied, “I told him you were pissed off and that he should start shopping for an expensive gift. Flowers aren’t going to cut it.” 

Zhao Yunlan snorted. He turned back to his laptop, open to a blank document upon which he was supposed to be writing a report. 

Daqing, in no mood to be ignored, stretched himself out across the keyboard. A string of nonsense appeared on the screen as his rotund stomach brushed across the keys. 

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll wait him out. He’s caused enough trouble as is, he can make the first move.”

“Hm.”

“Oh, by the way, don’t tell anyone else about my missing memories. I’ve been acting like I still have them, so they don’t know.”

Daqing pulled a face at that, but didn’t argue. He left shortly afterwards. 

After a couple more minutes of fruitlessly trying to work, Zhao Yunlan accepted that he wasn’t going to get anything done. He gave up and started cyberstalking Shen Wei. 

It didn’t take long to land on a Dragon City University faculty page for Professor Shen from the Classical Literature, Languages, and Culture department. Zhao Yunlan stared at his buttoned up, expressionless photo on his teacher profile page until he felt like he was going to go insane. 

According to his profile, Shen Wei’s mortal persona was the poster child for “young, successful, and meritorious". His masters and doctorate degrees were both from prestigious universities. After graduating, he was hired by his undergraduate alma mater. Zhao Yunlan did not miss the fact that the timing and location of all of these positions lined up impeccably well with the geography of his own professional career.  

According to the university course schedule, Professor Shen was teaching three classes this semester: a broad introductory primer on the past thousand years of Chinese Literature, a specialized course focusing on Tang-era poetry, and an anthropology lecture series covering folk histories. 

Zhao Yunlan tabbed away from the university page and ran a couple more searches. Professor Shen had no real family to speak of, of course. There was a made up father who had passed away after some illness, and an imaginary mother who had moved overseas after retiring. It was just enough detail to be convincing, and just unfortunate enough to deter prying questions. 

He didn’t have any public social media presence. Zhao Yunlan was still able to find his home address and phone number — not that he needed the latter; it was already in his phone. He was renting a place not too far from the university. On street view, the exterior of the apartment building looked very standard, and based on a couple of old photos on a realtor’s website, the inside wasn’t anything remarkable either. It was precisely twenty-three minutes on foot from Zhao Yunlan’s apartment, six minutes by car. 

A thought suddenly struck him. Since Lunar New Year was over, the university break had ended and class must be in session. Shen Wei, lying unconscious in his bed, had missed a week of class. Had anyone called out sick for him? Zhao Yunlan certainly hadn’t known to. The university would have called him when he missed his first lecture, which begged the question: who on earth was Shen Wei’s emergency contact? 

(One week ago in the Netherworld, the magistrate answered his phone with a terse, “Hello? … Ah, yes, about that—”)

Well, it didn’t matter now. He went back to the university website, checking the course schedule. Shen Wei was supposed to be giving a lecture at 3pm today…. Would he go? He’d only just woken up yesterday evening. It seemed too fast to go back to work, but Shen Wei wasn’t a normal person and it wasn’t like it had been a normal illness. Now that he was awake, he should be totally fine.

Zhao Yunlan opened his door. “Daqing!”

At once, everyone in the office swiveled their heads to look at him. Zhao Yunlan ignored them. 

There was a moment’s pause, then the cat poked his head out of the secret library. Zhao Yunlan waved him over. 

When he got close, he ushered him into his office and closed the door. He didn’t need the whole office prying into this. 

“Where is Shen Wei right now?” 

On his way back to his apartment, his mom called. 

“Even now that you’re starting your own family, you still never think to call your mother? Honestly!”

“Didn’t I come home over the holidays? More than once even!”

Ignoring him, she carried on, “I’m calling because it looks like your father will finally have some time off next week. Bring Xiao-Wei over. I’ve explained everything to him, he won’t say anything bad. Since you’re serious about settling down, you need to come home more often. Once he gets to know Xiao-Wei a little more, I’m sure he’ll like him. Even if you’re gay, at least you’ve found someone sensible with all of the good qualities you lack.” 

Zhao Yunlan was gobsmacked. He racked his brain, trying to remember exactly what had happened during those two visits home. Aside from the vague notion of offering up some pleasant lies about how work was going, jousting back and forth with his mom in their standard verbal spar, and eating, he couldn’t remember much.

What the fuck? Had he come out to his parents?! He could hardly believe it. 

Of course, he would have been serious about his future with Shen Wei. He would have brought him around to meet his parents at some point — that was a given. But for it to have happened so soon? 

And then, even worse: he’d apparently already brought Shen Wei home to meet his mother and that asshole had still erased his memories?!

Zhao Yunlan had already well established that Shen Wei had not been firing on all thrusters when he’d made that choice, but really! Was he expecting that Zhao Yunlan’s parents would never mention him again? Were his parents supposed to take it in stride when their son came out to them as gay and then magically forgot he had a boyfriend?

Absolutely unbelievable!

“Ma…” 

“What? Are you going to tell me now, after all the trouble I’ve gone to talking your father around, that you’re not actually serious about him? If you’ve broken up, so help me, I’ll—!”

“Ma! We’re not broken up! We’ll come to dinner, I’ll bring him!” Zhao Yunlan shouted desperately into the phone. 

His mother huffed, then gave him a date for next week along with strict instructions for when to arrive and what to bring. It was only after he’d been thoroughly scolded into submission that Zhao Yunlan was finally released. 

The first thing Zhao Yunlan did when he got home and ascertained that Shen Wei indeed was no longer there was to pack a suitcase. The hotel he’d booked wasn’t bad. It had all the toiletries he needed, but if he showed up tomorrow wearing the same clothes he was wearing today, he wouldn’t know a moment’s peace. 

Now that Shen Wei wasn’t lying in his bed, comatose and distracting, Zhao Yunlan took the time to more carefully rifle through his own belongings. 

Most of it was as he remembered, but in one of his desk drawers, he found the deed to an apartment hidden under a stack of contracts from interior furnishing and construction companies. He remembered making the purchase, but only barely. The SID office was relocating, so he’d been looking to move too. The address for this new place was just a handful of blocks from the Dragon City University campus. Three guesses as to why he’d made that decision.

He dropped his clothes back at his hotel before heading directly to the university. 

The old campus wasn’t far away and before he knew it, he was jogging up the handful of stairs leading into the Classical Literature building. Shen Wei’s class had started twelve minutes ago so Zhao Yunlan opened the lecture hall door carefully, doing his best not to make any noise. He entered a medium-sized classroom, about a hundred seats arranged on a slope, theater-style. On silent feet, Zhao Yunlan snuck over to one of the empty spots in the last row and sat down. 

Shen Wei’s back was to the door. He was in the middle of writing something down on the white board; above him, a powerpoint slide projected a picture showing a couple of lines from some old poem. 

Zhao Yunlan had to swallow hard when he saw that tall, elegant profile in motion after so many days of watching him lie in bed. The whole time while he was recovering, Shen Wei had been as still as a corpse. 

A mortal wouldn’t have noticed Zhao Yunlan coming in. He’d been so quiet, none of the students even turned around to look. They probably didn’t notice Shen Wei’s reaction either — a quiet, nearly soundless hitch in his breath. Zhao Yunlan heard it, though. 

Shen Wei finished what he was writing and turned around. While he clearly knew he was there, he didn’t dare look up at Zhao Yunlan. Instead, he kept his eyes to the first couple of rows of students and launched into an explanation of the historical context for one of the turns of phrase in the poem.

This left Zhao Yunlan free to shamelessly watch him. Professor Shen sure was something to see. 

Standing at the front of the class, six feet of gorgeous, buttoned up, untouchable elegance — even quietly unsettled by Zhao Yunlan’s presence, he lectured eloquently. He was the very picture of a scholar. What taste he had, what culture! No wonder Zhao Yunlan’s mom liked him. 

It was such a departure from the barely-civilized affect of his savage little ghost king that it boggled the mind. With his brain split across two imperfectly-remembered lifetimes, it felt like only yesterday that Zhao Yunlan had been teaching him the difference between right and wrong. How strange it was now to see him presenting a nuanced retrospective of Tang-era social commentary in the poems of Li Bai! All the same, he could only think: of course this is what he grew up into. Of course. 

Zhao Yunlan stayed until class was almost over, then snuck out the same way he came in. As the lecture hall door closed behind him, he felt Shen Wei’s eyes on the back of his neck. 

The workday was pretty much over, and since the SID wasn’t actively working a case, there wasn’t much point in going back to the office. At the same time, Zhao Yunlan didn’t feel like heading back to his cold, impersonal hotel room just yet. 

Leaving his car in the university parking lot, he ducked into the nearest alley, then teleported himself to the peak of Mount Kunlun. 

Though the new year celebrations were over, Spring had yet to properly arrive, especially not at altitude. Biting alpine winds whipped over deep snow drifts and sheer, jagged rock faces. Zhao Yunlan was the master of this mountain, however: no matter how cold it was, it wouldn’t affect him. 

With a flick of his wrist, he cast off his mortal guise. Kunlun’s green robes billowed up around him, panels of cloth whipped around by the violent wind. Paying this no mind, he started to search for a good ledge to sit on. He wanted to stare over the great expanse of the valley and brood. 

As he settled in, he felt a prickle on the back of his neck again — Shen Wei’s gaze. 

After the stunt he’d pulled with his divine tendon ten thousand years ago, they were both the Mountain God, sort of; this was just as much his territory as it was Zhao Yunlan’s. He couldn’t hide from him here… but that was fine. He wasn’t trying to. 

(At this point, he doubted there was a place in all of the three realms where he could hide from Shen Wei. Now that he’d regained his divinity, it probably went both ways.) 

Even without turning around, he could feel Shen Wei building up the courage to call out to him. 

He waited. 

Long minutes passed, then the prickle was gone. Shen Wei had left. 

Kunlun sighed. 

His little ghost king…. So different, and yet exactly the same. 

Five days later, Zhao Yunlan was still sleeping alone in the hotel. 

Out of self-pity and boredom, he had gone out the previous night and tried getting drunk, only to discover that his newfound divinity made it nearly impossible. He’d gone to bed sober and in a bitter mood. In the morning he hadn’t been the least bit hungover, but as if in rebellion against his circumstances, he wore sunglasses into the office anyway. 

His anger about the whole memory-stealing thing was cooling (sort of), but it was swiftly being replaced by frustration. What on earth was taking Shen Wei so long?

At this point, Zhao Yunlan wasn’t sure which one of them was going to break first. Maybe it would be him. Shen Wei had apparently waited over five thousand years, keeping watch from a distance. Zhao Yunlan was heartsick enough already, he doubted he could take it much longer. 

Things at the office weren’t bad at least, but the SID staff were still getting used to his new identity. They kept making jokes, pestering him, and running mock “experiments” to test his divinity. 

“Boss, we got a call about some low-level youchu infesting a local temple. Are you sure it's okay if we butt in on some other god’s turf?” Lin Jing asked with a shit-eating grin.

“Tell them we’ll handle it so long as they switch the temple over to worshiping Kunlun!” Chu Shuzhi called from across the room.

This was the very least of it.

“I heard that you, O Great Immortal, can’t return to your own home, so I’m giving you this. It gets you forty percent off, so you can stop spending all your pay to put a roof over your head. This is all I can do to help you.” Zhu Hong told him solemnly, sliding a crinkled-up old hotel voucher across the table.

Zhao Yunlan put his head in his hands and muttered, “Fuck off.”

His team still had a lot of questions. Twelve days after the ordeal, they had more or less wrapped their heads around everything that had occurred, but they kept thinking of new things to ask.

This, too, was another way in which Shen Wei was failing him, Zhao Yunlan had decided. If he was going to be a secret-keeping, memory-stealing bastard, at the very least he could have shown his face already and shouldered his fair share of the burden of managing the SID’s curiosity. 

As he was thinking this, Daqing poked his head in. “Hey, someone’s here for you.”

Zhao Yunlan frowned. “Who? I don’t have any appointments…”

Then Shen Wei walked in and he abruptly decided that he didn’t want to see him after all.

His sunglasses nearly slid off his nose as he sprang to his feet.

He fumbled to readjust them, then stood up straight and in a brisk, professional tone insisted, “Sir, if you have a crime to report, you’ll have to do so at your local police station. We don’t take cases directly.”

Shen Wei had clearly come straight from teaching. He was carrying a stack of  manilla folders that Zhao Yunlan knew held his lesson plans.

“Yunlan…” 

“Excuse me, who are you? Don’t call me that, I don’t know you,” he spat with real malice.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Chu Shuzhi’s eyebrows shoot up. The entire office was staring at the two of them. When Shen Wei had first walked in, their expressions had all picked up a gleeful spark, but as soon as they heard Zhao Yunlan’s tone, the mood shifted. 

In lying about the state of his memories, Zhao Yunlan had kept the true depth of his anger hidden. With Shen Wei standing in front of him now, however, he couldn’t stop it from welling up and pouring out. 

Shen Wei opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Zhao Yunlan’s end-of-the-workday alarm went off.

In a voice that brokered no argument, he informed him, “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m finished for the day.”

Shen Wei took four quick steps to cross the room and grabbed his wrist, fingers bruisingly tight. 

“… I’m sorry.”

Zhao Yunlan’s vision went red. He kept his expression even, however, as he reached up with his free hand and removed his sunglasses. Taking his time tucking them into the collar of his shirt, he asked in a nonchalant voice, “Sorry? Sorry for what? Deception? Or deception? Or maybe deception?” 

The fingers around his wrist twitched, but Shen Wei was silent.

In the background, the peanut gallery continued to stare at them, rapt.

Zhao Yunlan tried to tug his wrist back, failed, then tossed out a barb: “If there’s anything else you need, just spit it out. I have a date at a hotel after work.”

As expected, even though they both knew he was lying, Shen Wei’s fingers twitched, his grip growing even tighter. 

After a long pause, he simply repeated himself: “I’m sorry.” 

“A whole professor of classical literature and that’s really all you can think to say?" Zhao Yunlan derided. “If apologies could fix things, why would we need the police? Why are you still hanging on to me? Do you want a salute and a handshake from Mr. Policeman or something?” 

“Oho—!” Daqing bravely called from the background, only for Zhao Yunlan to finally slide his eyes over to the group and snarl, “Get out!” 

At once, an unearthly chill ran down the spine of every member of the SID. The hair on their arms lifted up. Several of them shivered. They did not need to be told twice.

Five seconds later, the office was cleared, save for the two of them. 

For a long beat, they just stared at each other. Zhao Yunlan waited him out. 

Finally, Shen Wei broke. Hanging his head, he said, “I accept whatever punishment you think I deserve.”

“I thought I had already taught you about the difference between right and wrong. It seems my student didn’t respect me enough to retain any of it! With an unfilial charge like this, what’s an old teacher to do, ah?”

More desperately, “Kunlun, I… I’ll do anything you want.”

“Anything I want? And I suppose that’s to make up for all of the recent moments where you did the exact opposite of what I wanted?”

“I thought you didn’t remember.” Shen Wei said quietly.

“I can read between the fucking lines!” 

Shen Wei’s grip loosened and Zhao Yunlan finally managed to snatch his hand back. Then Shen Wei dropped to his knees. 

“What are you doing?” Zhao Yunlan roared. “What the hell is your problem? Get up!”

Bowing his head like a prisoner awaiting execution, Shen Wei said nothing. 

Throwing his arms in the air, Zhao Yunlan whirled around, turning his back to him. He took a step away, but couldn’t bring himself to go any further. Letting out a deep huff, he turned back and placed his hands on his hips.

“Any punishment, hm?”

Shen Wei nodded, gazing up at him steadily with his fathomlessly dark eyes.

That only made him more angry. “What kind of punishment could I even give when you’ve proven you’re willing to do something as awful as this? Am I supposed to try to figure out some way to hurt you as bad as you’ve hurt me? Am I supposed to send you away to reflect on your sins? How does that fix anything?! Shen Wei, just how cruel is that heart of yours?” 

Shen Wei sucked in a sharp breath. He shuddered, then visibly swallowed around a lump in his throat. 

Zhao Yunlan stood towering over him, breathing raggedly for several long moments.

Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he took two swift steps forward and collapsed down to his knees too. He was utterly exhausted. 

He folded over and covered his face with his hands. Hiding from Shen Wei and the rest of the world, he mumbled: “Give me my memories back.” 

“Yes.” Shen Wei rasped without hesitation. 

Shifting his fingers, Zhao Yunlan half lifted his head and peered through them. Shen Wei’s stoic, icy facade had cracked. His expression was wretched — devastated. 

Good, Zhao Yunlan thought. It meant he was finally getting somewhere. 

He stared up at that face and thought about the thousands of years Shen Wei had waited, alone and longing. He imagined wanting something so desperately, something he knew he couldn’t have, and then finally, miraculously getting it, only to fumble it this bad. 

He didn’t really want to hurt Shen Wei. As long as he understood his mistake, as long as he wouldn’t do anything like it ever again — that was enough. 

He let out a long sigh. Sitting up straight, he reached out for him. 

Shen Wei didn’t move, leaving Zhao Yunlan’s outstretched arms hanging. His wide-eyed, helpless stare revealed just how wounded he was. 

This dummy, Zhao Yunlan thought. Didn’t you do this to yourself? 

In the span of a couple of minutes, it was like all of the millennia had fallen away and they were back to how they had originally been: a pair of young, ignorant creatures who met by chance at the start of the world and recognized something in each other.  

The blank expression on Shen Wei’s face was so reminiscent of Kunlun’s wild little mountain ghost. The eloquent scholar was completely gone now. He was all cautious, wary hunger, a carefully restrained embodiment of the ravenous, ever-consuming chaos from which he’d been born. 

Hands falling to his lap, Zhao Yunlan tried, “Hey, it’s practically sunset. The night shift’s about to come out. Won’t that be embarrassing for you, Lord Emissary?”

As he’d half-expected, however, Shen Wei made no reply.

Wrapping two hands around his wrists, Zhao Yunlan took hold of him and pulled them both up to their feet. 

Shen Wei still didn’t speak or even look at him directly, but he did bite his lip, his blank expression taking on a hue of apprehension. 

Zhao Yunlan’s heart softened further. He led him to his car and quietly drove them back home. 

Shen Wei was obedient, at least. He followed closely as Zhao Yunlan pulled him all the way up to his front door, unlocked it, and then ushered him inside. 

He locked the door behind them. Shen Wei was standing stock still in the entranceway. He hadn’t even moved to take off his shoes. 

Zhao Yunlan pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.

“You little fool.” He whispered into his hair, a hand coming up to cup the back of his head. “I’ll forgive you, just give my memories back and promise to never do it again.”

Shen Wei melted in his arms. Turning limp, he curled his head over Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around his midsection, holding him tighter than a boa constrictor. 

“Kunlun,” he whimpered. Then again, “Kunlun, I’m sorry.”

“Yes, yes, it’s alright.” Zhao Yunlan replied, rubbing a hand down his back even as he tried to figure out how to breathe through being crushed. 

He could feel the back of his shirt growing wet from the tears sliding down Shen Wei’s cheeks. 

That was enough of that, he decided. He pulled Shen Wei back, took hold of his face in both hands, and kissed him. 

Shen Wei melted into this too.

Carefully, Zhao Yunlan watched with new eyes as he transformed from a tightly-controlled, loaded spring of a man into a possessive, desperate thing. While they’d definitely done this before, he couldn’t remember it. For him, this was the first time.

Before he knew it, Shen Wei had him pinned up against the wall, his arms locked against his sides, hands immobilized, and his mouth captured in the fiercest, filthiest kiss he had ever experienced. None of Zhao Yunlan’s past conquests could hold a candle to what Shen Wei was doing to him right now. He’d never felt this way before — the fire in his belly, the hot delirium that fogged his brain when Shen Wei bit his bottom lip. 

“Bed,” he gasped at some point, in one of the brief seconds he was allowed up for air. 

Shen Wei got his hands underneath his thighs and carried him to the bedroom. He pressed him into the mattress and started kissing the memories back into his mouth. 

They came in fragments at first — a confusing, loose jumble of puzzle pieces. As more flowed in, the overall picture of everything that had happened began to emerge. 

He remembered meeting Shen Wei on the university campus, getting rejected months later over dinner, rescuing him from thugs in that dark alley, lying down next to each other in sleeping bags in that derelict little cabin.

He remembered discovering that Professor Shen was the Soul-Executing Emissary — the initial rush of panic, then the drop in his stomach as he processed how he’d been trying to woo an incomprehensibly old immortal being. 

He remembered Shen Wei taking care of him when his chronic stomach condition flared up. He remembered catching Shen Wei extracting blood from the tip of his heart. He remembered being lied to over and over again.

As Zhao Yunlan gasped and shook through the recollection, Shen Wei kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. 

He finally got to the moment that Shen Wei went back on their agreed-upon mutual sacrifice deal. 

“Holy fuck— Shen Wei!” Zhao Yunlan shouted, leaning back and pounding a fist on his chest in frustration. Shen Wei, immovable as a mountain, merely pressed down further, retaking his mouth. 

More memories came. 

There were little pieces, quiet moments where he watched Shen Wei from across a room. There were glimpses of his elegant hands cleaning Zhao Yunlan’s apartment. An image of him comfortably curled up on the sofa, reading — the most beautiful creature Zhao Yunlan had ever seen. There was the feeling of long, gentle fingers brushing hair back from his forehead. 

Zhao Yunlan’s breath hitched. He gulped and took another breath that tumbled back out as a sob.

How dare he take this from him. How dare he?

Zhao Yunlan loved him more fiercely than he’d ever loved anything else. He’d loved him as a primordial god and he’d loved him as a mortal. He’d loved innocent Professor Shen, and he loved him still, even knowing every wicked thing he’d done. Even if he’d forgotten him, even if Shen Wei had somehow been successful, that love would have stayed a part of him — hidden, inaccessible, but still there. 

None of their meetings had been fated. A god and a ghost — no part of their relationship had been sanctioned by heaven. No, the wellspring of Zhao Yunlan’s heart was entirely his own. He’d looked into Shen Wei’s eyes on the day that he first saw him and thought, oh. So you are just like me. 

Holding Shen Wei in his arms was like watching a vast, beautiful, boundless road unfurl at his feet. That he’d tried to steal away these memories was nothing less than an attempt to rob him of the greatest miracle of his life. 

Hot, angry tears dripped down the sides of Zhao Yunlan’s face. He turned his head away, breaking the lock of their mouths. Shen Wei leaned down and started peppering kisses across his cheek, unwilling to be parted from him by so much as a centimeter.

“Do you even know that you were wrong?” He asked, the words slurred from crying.

“I know.” Shen Wei replied wretchedly. “I knew as soon as I had them. When I started, I didn’t realize—“

“You thought that it couldn’t be the same for me?” Zhao Yunlan cut in. 

The only way Shen Wei could have justified taking those memories was if he’d assumed that Zhao Yunlan felt less than he did. 

What unspeakable arrogance, he did not say. What a self-centered, presumptuous, ungenerous outlook to have. 

He didn’t have to say these things. Shen Wei clearly knew it too. When Zhao Yunlan cast his eyes back, his face was ashen. 

“Forgive me.” He choked out. “Yunlan — Kunlun — I was wrong. Please—“ his voice was so torn, he couldn’t even finish. 

Zhao Yunlan reached up and pulled him into his chest. Shen Wei collapsed like his strings had been cut, shuddering through dry, soundless sobs. 

He held him. There was nothing left that either of them could say. Of course Zhao Yunlan forgave him. Of course.

They returned to kissing, and it soon grew into more: their bodies pushing together needfully until, little by little, their pain became an artifact of the past.

Shen Wei was everywhere. Zhao Yunlan could remember their previous times now, but it didn’t wipe away the feeling of newness and discovery. Now that he was Zhao Yunlan and Kunlun all at once, having Shen Wei in him felt like an entirely different thing. A new kind of gift.

Shen Wei surged forward and Zhao Yunlan felt whole. 

In the morning, he woke up ravaged. Not in the coy, euphemistic sense writers so often employ when describing a passionate night’s affair…. Rather than appearing pleasantly tousled, the dark bruises, scratches, and love bites littered across Zhao Yunlan’s body made it look more like he’d barely survived an encounter with a bear. 

He had discovered, once again, precisely what happens when the chains came off that carefully-constructed cage Shen Wei kept his true nature locked up in most of the time. 

“Yunlan…” the devil himself said, apologetically carrying over a tray of breakfast. 

Zhao Yunlan sighed dramatically and promptly started to complain: “My wife really doesn’t know when to stop. Baobei, I thought you’d taken advantage of me our first time, but really, you’ve outdone yourself!”