Chapter Text
On the way out of Tanglang Elder’s home Chu Wanning’s eyes brim with tears no matter how hard he tries to suppress them. He speeds up, not wanting Tanglang Elder to witness him or call him back. He hurries down the path staring at his feet. He only stops when he bumps into someone.
“Sorry. I– What’s wrong? …. Yuheng Elder?”
Chu Wanning looks up to see Xuanji Elder looking down at him, obvious concern across his face.
Chu Wanning opens his mouth to tell Xuanji Elder to get out of his way but instead of words a choked sob escapes him. Immediately Xuanji Elder crouches down to be at eye level, setting aside the box of books he was carrying. Chu Wanning wipes his face of tears with a fist wrapped in his sleeve.
Xuanji Elder quickly looks around the currently empty path but knows that people might walk down it at any moment. “Your disciples live in your pavilion now right? Why don’t you come back to my quarters and we can wait until you calm down, ‘kay?”
Chu Wanning doesn’t want to go anywhere with anyone, especially not someone speaking to him like he’s a thin glass filled with hot water and cracking apart. But he has nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Not with the boys living in his pavilion. Before it was a good thing, it meant when he got hurt they would see and make sure he’s okay, but now it’s as much of a curse as his body aging is. It means he'll be seen, witnessed, asked why he's upset when he can't stop himself from crying.
He lets Xuanji Elder lead him back to his tiny home just beyond Yanluo Hall. There he sits on a hard divan while Xuanji Elder makes tea.
He barely manages to stop crying but the knot in his throat remains.
Before the constant hunger and ever present ache of his bones continuously growing was something he could ignore. It was just pain. Chu Wanning, of all people, is used to pretending pain does not exist. But now the ache feels like a countdown to his own demise.
A real demise this time.
The more it hurts the sooner his life as Xia Sini will end.
He hurt everyone with his death. Everyone from the sect's reputation to his only friend, Xue Zhengyong’s feelings, to the random people hurt in hauntings he couldn’t address because he was pretending to be a child.
And he hurt his disciples most. He still sees how much he hurts them. Every so often one will look at him and see a little more of his shizun than he saw the day before and looks away. It reminds him of the looks Huaizui gave him growing up.
And he still hears his disciples whispering after they think their shidi has fallen asleep how much they miss their shizun, or talking in the library what they remember from his lessens so they can retain as much of his teachings as possible, or just how, even nearly a year after the Heavenly Rift, they still cry and sneak away to Butterfly Town to search for a body.
Xuanji Elder hands Chu Wanning a cup of warm tea and drags a heavy chair over to sit across from him. It’s like the night at Peach Blossom Springs after Eighteen was murdered by the fake Gouchin and Mo Ran went to defend their case. That night Chu Wanning cooked his chicken soup and waited for Mo Ran. And waited. And waited. And finally broke down when he realized Mo Ran didn’t care enough about him to come back.
Xuanji Elder came back to check that they didn't forget anything in the cave and found him sitting in the dirt next to the vat of congealed soup, quietly sobbing to himself that he had been forgotten. That night, before Xuanji Elder carried him to where he and Mo Ran would be staying while awaiting a verdict. Chu Wanning was as vulnerable as he had ever been and asked Xuanji Elder how to make his disciples like him.
Chu Wanning’s little mouth is twisted into a tight frown, not even able to resume its natural flatness. He lifts the cup of hot tea and begins to drink, relishing in the way it scalds his entire mouth. He can feel the hot water burn him all the way down his throat and sit somewhere deep within. The pain is a distraction from the countdown to leaving or admitting the truth within his bones.
When Chu Wanning lowers the now empty cup and clutches it still seeking its lingering warmth, Xuanji Elder asks, “What did Mo Ran do this time?”
“...nothing.” He hiccups. “Why would you think that?”
“Why else would you be so upset? It’s always him and not your other two.”
Chu Wanning shakes his head in disagreement even if he knows it’s true. “It’s nothing to do with him.”
“Do you want to tell me what this is about then?”
They fall into silence. Chu Wanning stares down at the empty cup in his hands. He rolls the cup slightly in his little hands, watching the dregs roll along the bottom.
Xuanji Elder waits.
After a time he slowly reaches a hand out, hesitating before resting it on Chu Wanning’s knee. It makes Chu Wanning startle, not used to anyone ever daring to convey comfort through touch. Even Xue Zhengyong doesn't touch him. No one but the boys hugging their shidi touches him. No one dares touch Chu Wanning, except, now, Xuanji Elder.
At his sudden startle Xuanji Elder pulls away, not wanting to be struck by Tianwen. The removal of his hand leaves a cold spot where it was before, a promise that as he grows far too fast no one will ever touch him again. All the trotting along hand in hand, hugs and piggy back rides and simply wrestling in stupidly childish play will be gone forever and he'll be left with the cold memory.
He has to fight back a fresh wave of tears. He holds them at bay but his lip still quivers.
"We've known each other for a decade, Yuheng Elder. We might not be close but I do care about you. We all do. So can you please just tell me what's wrong? Or tell me to get Xue Zhengyong?" Xuanji Elder says calmly. He looks down at Chu Wanning much like an older brother looking down on a younger brother who came home from school in tears. He doesn't know what to say to comfort him, but no matter what age Chu Wanning is he just sees the jaded, hurt 18 year old who stepped onto Sisheng Peak planning to leave before the night was over but instead finding a home, and the six year old sniffing as he watches Xuanji Elder ladle soup into a vat..
Chu Wanning fights with himself but he can't hold it all in. His child's body and child's heart cannot hold the same torments as he could before.
Like the night he asked Xuanji Elder how to make people like him, what's hurting him breaks past the lock he keeps on his heart.
"I can't tell them what I've done but it's going to come out."
"...how so?"
Chu Wanning explains what Tanglang Elder told him about the sap running through his body and how he's aging far too fast and that Tanglang Elder dislikes him so much he won't even try to slow it.
"He doesn't dislike you. Well, not in the way you think he does." Chu Wanning looks up through tearful eyes and Xuanji Elder pours him some more hot tea. "When he made you the first pills he didn't sleep at all for a week. And those second pills he burned through all the funds Xue Zhengyong gave him and called in old favors he’s saved for decades. And still spent his own savings to buy the ingredients. No one dislikes you like you think they do."
Chu Wanning has nothing he can say to that so Xuanji Elder asks, "If you don't plan on telling your disciples what do you plan on doing?"
"Go into seclusion."
Xuanji Elder rubs his jaw before saying "So leaving the sect?"
"Yes."
"Have you told Xue Zhengyong?"
"I just found out I have to." Chu Wanning snaps back.
Xuanji Elder moves off his chair to sit next to Chu Wanning, who sits stone still, unwilling to yield to the invasion of his space.
"Why do you think you have to leave? Why can't you tell your disciples? Don't you think it'll hurt them for you to leave right after losing their shizun? Not only will they not have someone to guide them, but they'll also be losing a friend. I don't think the young masters and Shi Mingjing would be able to handle that much loss."
Chu Wanning shrugs more to hide himself than as an answer.
He can't tell them because he knows they'll hate him. He won't be their mean shizun, he'll be their mean shizun who lied to them and watched them grieve.
Xuanji Elder says, "This all happened because of them. They should know that. If Mo Ran hadn't accepted the invitation into the lake–"
"This isn't Mo Ran's fault."
"Right. But you were protecting him when you got hurt."
Chu Wanning downs the entire cup of tea again. It doesn't burn as much but he wishes it did.
Xuanji Elder says, "Your disciples do really care about you. More than anyone else's disciples care about their shizun. I don't think they'd be mad for very long if you told them the truth. I think they'd be happy."
The knot in Chu Wanning’s throat grows again so he can't say anything without starting to cry again. He's forced to sit and listen to Xuanji Elder telling him about how much he, Chu Wanning and not just Xia Sini, is loved.
With everyone busy for the day Mo Ran has no one to keep his mind from drifting to those well familiar dark places of finding hope in the rebirth technique. He doesn't want to but…
Mo Ran forces himself back out of the call of bringing Chu Wanning back from the dead and instead focus on the blind hope that Chu Wanning isn't actually dead.
He sits on the floor of the pavilion with a map of the areas surrounding Butterfly Town. With all the markings on it it looks like the battle maps of the last life. He leans in close to it and starts circling places to search further out than before. Places that feel like they would have caves or old shacks, anywhere a man could survive alone for a year.
Chu Wanning survived so many years under him. He's certain he could have survived just one year even if he was hurt in the Heavenly Rift. And he wasn't even hurt in the last life's rift, so how hurt could he possibly have been in this life's?
He keeps expanding the search radius.
In a week is the one year anniversary of the rift. One year without seeing Chu Wanning.
He wants to hate him still. He fights with himself to keep hating him. It was so easy in the last life to hate him. But now the more he thinks the more good memories he has of traveling with Chu Wanning right before the rift and the more an unsettling feeling of not hating him settles in his chest.
When Xia Sini doesn't return from talking to his shizun after an incense time Mo Ran forces himself away from the map. Instead of folding it up to hide from Xia Sini like he usually does, he moves to the stone writing table outside.
There he sits and starts to write a letter to Chu Wanning. He'll burn it on the anniversary of the rift. Even if he doesn't believe Chu Wanning is dead, it wouldn't hurt to write something to him. …In the off chance he's alone in the underworld wondering why not a single person has burned a single thing for him.
He writes a few lines about missing him and scratches them out. Then about apologizing for… he scratches it out too.
He doesn't know what to write.
He doesn't know which Chu Wanning he wants to write to, his husband or his shizun.
He sits at that familiar stone table that in the last life was covered in tears for a long time. The unsettling feeling of missing Chu Wanning and feeling alone grows.
He gets up and paces around, wanting someone to come back and distract him from his heart. Xia Sini said he wouldn’t be gone too long but he’s been gone for what feels like an eternity, leaving Mo Ran feeling more alone.
No one returns.
He finds himself wandering towards Chu Wanning’s personal library. In that library is the book on the rebirth technique. He has the book memorized but it still calls to him, telling him that maybe he missed something when trying to revive Shi Mei.
It demands he return to it.
It'll fix all his problems.
He'll have Chu Wanning back.
He finally presses open the doors and follows the becoming shadows into the back of the library. He knows exactly what he’s looking for: a stack of books carelessly thrown onto a low shelf in a dark corner. On the bottom is a book from an old monk about means of rebirth, including the rebirth technique.
His hands are shaking when he finds it and he looks around half expecting Chu Wanning’s ghost to emerge and attack him for daring to even consider cultivating a forbidden technique again, much less cultivating one to drag him back.
He sits alone in the dark room, hunched over the ancient book, and begins to once more begin cultivating the rebirth technique.
Chu Wanning only leaves Xuanji Elder’s home after he’s forced to listen to an hour and a half of Xuanji Elder telling him how much his disciples care about him, how much Xue Zhengyong cares about him, “Hell, how much I care about you. Me and the rest of the elders! You really think just because you distance yourself that no one gives a shit you! We just let you do your own thing because we thought you didn’t want to work with us!”
He sniffles still as he shuffles out, no longer crying but very emotionally raw. He’s angry at Xuanji Elder for yelling at him, but it worked. His words linger in Chu Wanning’s head.
Your disciples looking for you means they miss you.
You do realize that Sect Leader considers you like a son, right? He’d be heartbroken if you left.
The entire sect mourned your death!
Why can’t you just tell your trio? Why do you think you have to leave them more heartbroken? Do you really think their love for you will stop just because you lied? How is that going to make any of this better?
Just tell them, Yuheng.
Just tell them.
Tell them.
Tell the truth. They love you like a brother when you’re Xia Sini, and they love you as a shizun when you’re Chu Wanning. No matter what. Everyone but you sees it.
Tell the truth and you can stop hurting yourself and everyone else.
End this all. Don’t leave. Tell them.
He … he should tell them.
His only other choice would be waiting as long as he can before leaving forever and going into seclusion for the rest of his life, just like Huaizui wanted. He doesn’t want that.
He wants to keep what he has. He’s disgustingly selfish like that. He wants to be able to smile and work with people. He wants people to like him for him instead of fearing him and his tempter. He wants casual touch like hugs and playing cat’s cradle. He wants to keep what he’s gained as Xia Sini and as scary as it is to admit the truth and face the harm he’s caused with his lies, it must be done.
His bones tell him time is running out.
His heart is racing as fast as it ever has when staring down the worst demons and beasts. Almost as fast as when Huaizui kicked him the knife. He feels faint. Far too light headed to be walking. But even so he keeps himself up and keeps walking back to the pavilion.
It’s empty.
He sits anxiously at the table, each passing second making him lose his nerve. He’s far more used to walking away in hurt and anger than facing the truth that he is just a person who has a heart.
Between his hands he rolls the bottle of pills Tanglang Elder made for him so long ago. It clatters against the table with each movement. Just as he considers sending small blossoms of energy to ask the others to return to the pavilion, Shi Mei enters. He kicks off his boots and throws a cloak onto a pile by the door for Mo Ran to pick up, a trait he’s unconsciously picked up from Chu Wanning.
He sees Xia Sini sitting alone at the table when he walks to his trunk to pull out clean robes after his travels.
“What’re you doing alone? Isn’t dinner starting?”
“It is.”
Shi Mei stops dragging out his blue robes at the depressed response and walks over. “What’s wrong?”
Chu Wanning looks up at Shi Mei. He has a secret too. One that would be impossible for him to tell. He wonders if Shi Mei would ever tell him or anyone else. Is Shi Mei the only one of his disciples with a soul crushing secret he could never share?
He hopes so. He hopes they’re the only two tortured by painful secrets.
He doesn’t want to tell his own secret.
He opens his mouth to admit the truth but realizes he’s only going to have the strength to do it once. If he says it now, he won’t be able to later. Instead he asks, “Can we have dinner here instead of the hall? Can you get the others?” Concerned at Xia Sini’s strange behavior, Shi Mei flips over the child’s wrist to examine his pulse for a moment before setting it down again, clearly thinking him sick. “Sure. I’ll get them.”
It takes Shi Mei a while to gather the two. He finds Xue Meng easily and sends him to get food then has to find Mo Ran. He only finds him from spotting a faint candle light through a paper window in Chu Wanning’s personal library.
“A-Ran?” he calls when he enters. He’s met with the sound of a book slamming shut and chaotic shuffling before Mo Ran walks to the entrance holding his candle.
“How was your trip, Shi-ge?”
Shi Mei’s smile is tight when he replies, “Not good. The person I expected to meet never showed up. I’ll have to return next month. But the villagers were happy to see me.” He then explains Xia Sini wanting to eat together in the pavilion tonight and how he looked feverish with red cheeks, glazed eyes and an elevated heart rate.
“I think he’s a little sick. He looked upset, but he always is when he’s fevery.”
“He’s sick?”
Shi Mei nods.
“I wonder if he’s upset himself sick because of the anniversary of….” Mo Ran can’t bring himself to say it out loud.
Chu Wanning feels ill with all the boys in front of him eating. They all assume he wanted to eat here because of the impending anniversary of the Heavenly Rift making him feel vulnerable and not wanting to be in the crowded dining hall.
His bones hurt, rapidly growing, telling him that he has to admit the truth before it’s too late and his hand is forced.
It already is.
“So,” Mo Ran starts a new conversation, scooping food onto Chu Wanning’s plate. “I mapped out some new places to look. I saw there were a few abandoned houses higher in the hills last time we went so I wanted to check those out tomorrow.”
Xue Meng agrees and adds, “I wanted to start asking more people this time. People’ve started moving back into the town again now so we can ask if anyone’s seen any signs of him.”
Chu Wanning lays his hands on the table harder than he meant to, making his plate clatter.
“Stop.”
Everyone looks over at him. Xue Meng says, “What? You know we’re not going to stop looking for Shizun so don’t even try to talk us out of it. You can tag along or not, but we’re going.”
“That’s-” Chu Wanning fights every instinct to snap at them all for looking at him and leaving. He has to force down the urge to hide his heart. He struggles to cling to Xuanji Elder’s words that they won’t hate him, that this continued search is proof that they want Chu Wanning alive.
His heart has risen into his throat.
“I… I need to tell you something.” He hangs his head before forcing his chin up to look forward, even if he’s not looking at any of them in particular. “I… I…”
Mo Ran slides across the bench to be closer to him. “What’s wrong, Shidi? You can tell us anything, remember?”
Chu Wanning swallows hard and grips his thighs to keep him from wrapping his arms around himself. He wants to shrink from the weight of their gazes but can only sit straighter, more upright, frowning with a frosty discomfort.
As fast as he can he spits out “ChuWanningisn’tdead.”
“What!?”
All three of his disciples speak at the same time. Chu Wanning can’t help but look away, down at the plate of non-spicy food Mo Ran lovingly prepared for him from the food Xue Meng personally picked out. He already regrets saying anything at all.
Still speaking far too fast and sounding far too angry to hide his misery, he repeats, “Chu Wanning’s isn’t dead. I- I’m not dead. I… faked my death.”
There’s a long silence that makes Chu Wanning want to curl inward on himself or explode outwards. He instead fidgets with the bottle of pills he takes out of his pocket.
“...I’m sorry.”
“WHAT THE FUCK!”
The yell makes Chu Wanning jump, far too frayed from his raw emotions to control it. He’s already on the edge of childish tears. It’s worse because it’s not Mo Ran who he expected to yell, but Xue Meng, who has shoved his chair back to fall on the floor and now stands over him with a darkness previously unseen in the darling of the heavens.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN THAT YOU’RE SHIZUN? YOU CAN’T BE SHIZUN BECAUSE SHIZUN WOULDN’T DO THAT TO US! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE PRETENDING TO BE SHIZUN?”
Shi Mei places a hand on Xue Meng’s shoulder saying, “Calm down, Young Master. We should listen to what he has to say.” And Xue Meng slaps him away, his face turning red with anger. “Get the fuck off me!” he snarls at Shi Mei before grabbing Longchen from next to his chair and turning back to Chu Wanning and continuing to yell.
Chu Wanning sits and takes it. He doesn't know how long he takes it, just that deserves it. He deserves for his disciples to yell at him, scream at him, vent the pain of the past year on him. He’s small and miserable and pathetic, especially as tears start to creep into his eyes again and he bites his lip to still his face and stop them.
Xue Meng yells for a long time before he storms away to walk in a circle and breathe heavily, hands resting on top of his head.
Shi Mei just stands looking down at him. Chu Wanning doesn’t dare look up, but Shi Mei’s expression easily says he guessed long ago. He quietly asks, “What happened?”
The thorns in Chu Wanning throat dig in as he spits, “It was the sap from the Heart Pluck Willow. When I tried to stop it from… with the blood hour glass…” He can feel the blood rising in his throat with his words. To not spit up blood over the food Mo Ran lovingly plated for him he falls silent.
Xue Meng curses loudly in the background before yelling again into the room at large.
Chu Wanning sets the pills on the table before he dares glance at Mo Ran.
Before he admitted the truth Mo Ran was leaned up against him to reassure him. Mo Ran now leans back, staring at Chu Wanning with wide, glassy eyes and a deep frown.
Mo Ran spins around on the bench and gets up.
“Mo Ran…” Chu Wanning croaks.
Mo Ran says nothing. He just starts walking towards the door.
“Mo Ran, please...”
Mo Ran doesn’t look back. He just walks out of the pavilion into the darkness without a word.
The tears clinging to Chu Wanning’s eyelashes break free and flow down his face watching Mo Ran walk away, listening to Xue Meng yelling angrily, feeling the weight of Shi Mei watching him.
This is what he was scared of. This is what he knew in his heart would happen. This is what… this is what’s destined for him.
He dared believe in people’s belief in him. He dared entrust people with the fragile heart so easily cut open he hides it deep in his wooden chest. He dared believe what he’s done is forgivable, redeemable, within remedy.
He did this.
He can’t even be mad at them. He can only hate himself.
He really does hate himself.
He wipes his tears and puts on the frosty, cold mask of Chu Wanning that he thought he abandoned. He pushes the bench back to stand. With shaking hands he tries to pick up the bottle of pills but instead spills them. He grabs the bottle and whatever is left in it and walks out of the pavilion.
As Xia Sini he learned to expose his heart and show his emotions. He learned to laugh and cry and trust. But now he can't. He can’t even cry. He can only be Chu Wanning because he is Chu Wanning.
He has to hide his heart. Hide his emotions. Pretend to be wooden so no one knows he's rotting from within. Wear his cold mask of contempt and disgust when those feelings are actually directed at himself.
Don’t have a child’s heart.
Don’t cry.
Do not cry.
Do not.
…
Do leave.
His ears are ringing too much to hear the change in Xue Meng’s tone seeing him walk away with a cold expression. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from sobbing. The only sign he's shed tears is that his round cheeks are red, but it now looks more flushed with anger than pitiful tears.
His life as Xia Sini is over. The childish tears and laugh and smile will be no more.
His life as Chu Wanning is over, unable to return to what he was before.
His life…
He moves like a ghost through the darkness surrounding the pavilion, far too fast for them to catch up.
What started as a quick walk turns into qigong turns into a childish run through the darkness to anywhere he can hide. Hide from his disciples, from himself, from his lie. It all hurts too much. He thought they could forgive him but seeing their response he knows he was wrong. He won’t forgive himself, so how could they forgive him?
He can’t hide in his home. He can't even hide in the side chamber off Xue Zhengyong’s private rooms because they’ve found him there before. He wants to never be witnessed again.
He has nowhere he can hide.
When Xuanji Elder opens the door Chu Wanning’s entire body is perfectly straight with a flat expression except for the occasional hitch in his breath as misery consumes him from within. He’s immediately let inside, given tea he burns himself drinking yet wishes it hurt more, and shown the bed rather than hard divan, where Chu Wanning is allowed to curl up in a tight ball and finally cry.
He can’t cry.
Crying was for Xia Sini. He isn’t Xia Sini. Hate it or not, he is Chu Wanning.
Xuanji Elder doesn’t try to ask what happens. He can already see it. He instead sits in the next room letting Chu Wanning grieve his lie in peace before silently summoning Xue Zhengyong once asleep.
Mo Ran sits alone on the very roof he spent a long night in the last life drinking to celebrate Chu Wanning’s death.
Never to return .
At some point that night so long ago he summoned his saber and drunkenly slurred those words. Bu'gui became forged onto his weapon, a promise and a curse.
Did Chu Wanning really kill himself then? Or did he fake his death then too, just to escape him?
The cold air scalds him like boiling water. Merely existing hurts right now. He doesn't understand what happened. Not now and not then.
All he knows is that this time he mourned Chu Wanning with his whole heart.
He spent a year yearning for him.
He spent a year repeating Chu Wanning! You should be the one dying today, not your disciple! Over and over in his head until the last words he spoke to his shizun festered in his heart.
He…
He corrupted himself in this life too, beginning cultivating the rebirth technique once more, all for Chu Wanning.
Who was by his side, watching him suffer.
He can't help but think about the day he woke up after the Heavenly Rift and learned Chu Wanning was dead. Xia Sini sat on the bed next to him and comforted him. He promised to sit with him as long as he needed and make sure the candle burned through the night for him.
What felt like kindness before now feels sickening. As if he's been a prisoner of Chu Wanning’s mind tricks for the past year.
Past two years. That's how long he's pretended to be their shidi.
Mo Ran’s face contorts as he hides in his hands.
He doesn't notice the scene below of Xue Meng and Shi Mei running after Xia Sini. He just notices how his heart feels as though Chu Wanning has pierced through it to leave it full of holes that will rot the living flesh until there's nothing left but corrupting pain.
Hours later Mo Ran is poked awake by Xue Meng.
It's still dark out.
Mo Ran groans loudly. He feels like he drank all night even though he only imbibed the pain of the past. Xue Meng pokes him again with his toe.
"Get up."
Mo Ran groans and tries to roll away and almost rolls off the roof. Xue Meng grabs him by the collar and drags him up.
"Get up!" His voice is raspy. "You need to help find Shizun."
"Fuck off." Mo Ran grumbles. He cared so deeply about Xia Sini and about Chu Wanning’s death but now he doesn’t have the heart to care. His heart started rotting the moment Chu Wanning cared so little about his disciples he let them think he died.
His heart starting rotting long before that. A lifetime ago when he saw a pretty flower that reminded him of his shizun and only received hate in return.
“Mo Ran!” Xue Meng yells in his face and shakes him. “Get the fuck up! You need to help find Shizun!”
“What do you mean?” Mo Ran says, shaking his cousin off and standing up. He doesn’t really care. He’s getting up so he can pack his belongings and move out of the pavilion. Get the fuck away from the monster in a child’s skin holding him a prisoner of the heart.
Xue Meng’s eyes are puffy and he shivers a little from the cold air or from emotion.
“Xia Sini– Shizun left. After he told us he just left and we can’t find him anywhere or dad or anyone. Mo Ran, Ge, I don’t know where he went and I yelled at him! What if he left because he thinks…” Xue Meng chokes on his words. “...I’m mad at him? I just- I was angry but I don’t want him to leave!”
Mo Ran is angry. Or, rather, he’s hurt and still doesn’t know how to feel hurt without feeling anger. But he doesn’t want his cousin to cry and he doesn’t want Chu Wanning to leave. He asks Xue Meng to fill him in on what has happened in the passing hours.
Xue Meng explains how after Mo Ran left, Chu Wanning did too. Xue Meng and Shi Mei followed, but, proving his truly is Chu Wanning, Xia Sini moved far too fast for them to keep up. They lost him immediately, his dark blue disciples’ robes vanishing into the dark night. Since they’ve searched everywhere they can think of but cannot find him. They tried to find Xue Zhengyong but couldn’t, though when they asked Madam Wang she was confused how they knew but confirmed that Chu Wanning has indeed been living as Xia Sini since their trip to Jincheng Lake so long ago.
Mo Ran sends Xue Meng to keep looking.
He then walks through the darkness along the lonely paths around Red Lotus Pavilion that Chu Wanning frequented in the last life.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he’s the one to find Chu Wanning. He doesn’t know if he wants to find him. He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling. There are far too many emotions to do anything but stumble forward.
Then to the library, where Chu Wanning curled in a pile of books in the last life, long passed out from fatigue.
Then around the corners of the pavilion itself, where he often found Chu Wanning not hiding but so clearly hiding.
Then down the Southern Peak to main halls of the sect, to the chambers his own bedroom was in just off where Xue Zhengyong and Madam Wang’s chambers are now.
Mo Ran is faced to acknowledge that maybe he didn’t know Chu Wanning as well as he thought he did. He doesn’t want to think about whether Chu Wanning is as cruel as he thought he was. He was starting to believe he was wrong before the Rift, but now he can’t help but think he was always right.
He kicks his feet as he walks back towards the pavilion from the main halls of the sect. At the base of the Southern peak he stops, looking at the small stone house. He debates with himself for a moment.
This is where Liu-gonggong lived.
He knows there were times when Chu Wanning couldn’t make the long hike up to the top of the Southern peak to the pavilion and would sleep here. Or other times Chu Wanning would pretend he had dignity and social niceties still existed and he would walk down to drink tea with Liu-gonggong. Or, of course, there were the days Chu Wanning was too sick when Taxian-Jun was away and Liu-gonggong needed to stay with him but also needed medical supplies he kept in his own home and not the pavilion.
Mo Ran doesn’t know who lives here now.
He stares at the window lit orange by a faint candle.
He knows Chu Wanning won’t be in there. He knows Chu Wanning has no reason to enter the home of a random elder. He has no friends. But even so Mo Ran’s feet carry him to the heavy front door and knocks loudly.
A minute passes and he can hear Xuanji Elder call through the door “If that’s you, Yu Tie, it’s not a good time. I need you to come back in the morning.”
Mo Ran’s heart sinks hearing it’s Xuanji Elder. Not only does Chu Wanning have no reason to speak with the man, the last time Mo Ran stood face to face with him Xuanji Elder yelled at him for forgetting Xia Sini in the cave and making him cry.
It’s a stab to Mo Ran’s heart thinking about that time together. He genuinely bonded with and liked Xia Sini in a way he thought it would impossible for anyone to do so with a man like Chu Wanning. There, trapped in the cave awaiting possible death Mo Ran was still happy because he had his shidi….
“It’s not- It’s Mo Ran.” Mo Ran calls back through the door. “Have you seen my shidi?”
Now that he knows Chu Wanning and Xia Sini are the same shidi tastes strange on his tongue.
The door opens. Before him stands Xue Zhengyong who waves him inside.
“Where’s Meng’er and Shi Mei?”
“Where’s Chu Wan- Xia Sini?”
They ask at the same time. Xue Zhengyong tilts his head to another room and says, “Sleeping.”
Mo Ran nods stiffly and clenches his fists. “They’re out looking for him.”
Xue Zhengyong says, “I should go recall them then.” and steps outside to send small messages through the air.
Mo Ran walks towards the room his uncle indicated but someone reaches out and grabs him. Xuanji Elder looks down on Mo Ran with an expression of displeasure. It makes Mo Ran’s face turn red with anger being looked down on like this. It makes him remember how easy this man was to kill. He wasn’t even worth turning into a chess piece.
“Listen carefully to me,” Xuanji Elder says with unexpected sternness. “I don’t care if you’re his disciple. Right now he has the heart of a child and he really cares what you think about him. If you– Listen Mo Weiyu. If you upset him I will personally drag you to the Platform of Sin and Virtue and punish you for disrespecting your elders. Do. You. Understand?”
Mo Ran grits his teeth at the threat but replies “Yes.”
“Good.” Xuanji Elder releases his arm. “He’s in there. I’ve set up a sound barrier since he finally started sleeping. Do not wake him.”
Mo Ran rips his arm out of Xuangji Elder’s grip and walks into the room.
There he is, curled in a tight ball with his hands resting under his cheeks. Chu Wanning or Xia Sini, he’s not sure which. He’s both and neither.
Mo Ran sits on the edge of the bed almost as a dare to Xuanji Elder to stop him. He looks down at Chu Wanning.
Curled so small with still glistening tracks of tears that only escape in sleep, he looks so much like he did in the last life when at his lowest points. It hurts Mo Ran to see him like this again after thinking he would never see him again.
Except now instead of greying from age and stress, or a small and round faced child, Chu Wanning is a young man of only 28. His features are strong and straight and defined, even when his brows pull together and he frowns deeply in his sleep. Even like this, so obviously distressed, he is still so beautiful.
After a year of not seeing him at all it’s reassuring to see his face again.
For the first time that Mo Ran can remember he feels the anger and hate and hurt welling in his chest and he lets the bubble burst rather than forcing it to grow, releasing himself from the pain of it all. Chu Wanning has hurt him in unimaginable ways over the course of two lifetimes, but he wants to forgive him. For the first time, he wants to let his anger pass and focus on the kindness of the person in front of him. He wants Chu Wanning who is cold and harsh yet also caring and protective, but he also wants the humorous vulnerability that he became accustomed to with Xia Sini.
He just wants…
He wants…
Mo Ran slides his palm into the hand not serving as a pillow for Chu Wanning’s head and squeezes it a little. To his surprise, the hand squeezes back and the frown marring Chu Wanning’s face recedes.
Still holding his hand, Mo Ran lays down on the bed face to face with Chu Wanning and watches him sleep. A smile crawls across his face now that he knows Chu Wanning is alive.
He has a chance to redeem himself and their relationship.
Chu Wanning wakes before the sun is up. The room is still dim and grey. But while the bed was cold and empty and alone when he drifted off to sleep, it’s not anymore. Mo Ran sleeps with his face next to him and hands intertwined. Xue Meng curled between them using Mo Ran’s arm as a pillow, and Shi Mei sprawled longways over the bottom of the bed.
Lifting his head a little, he can see Xue Zhengyong is snoring loudly in a chair near the bedside.
Chu Wanning closes his eyes again.
He’s not alone.
Chu Wanning, the man who has always been alone, is not alone. He always thought no one cared about him after Huaizui demanded his heart, but here they are. There are people who care about him still, even after hurting them all so deeply.
He does not want to face the morning and face the fact that Chu Wanning is Xia Sini. He doesn’t want to face the fact that he watched his disciples in pain and did nothing but make it worse.
But for right now, in the dim light of the morning, he doesn’t have to. He can just lay in the warm bed and listen to the light breathing and heavy snores of the people he’s forced to admit care deeply about him.
Chu Wanning is alive.