Chapter Text
When Madam Mo died, the last of the cuts carved into Mo Xuanyu’s skin healed, and Wei Wuxian considered it done.
Two days later, a sharp, tearing sensation in his chest informed him he was wrong.
Wei Wuxian checked thoroughly that night, looking everywhere on his body, but he’d felt the conclusion of the contract with Mo Xuanyu’s spirit when it happened. He’d spent a little time after he’d come into this body settling in, checking on his spiritual energy and core—it’d been a long time since he’d had one, and this was startlingly weak for the age, but Wei Wuxian was not unaware that he’d been something of a cultivation genius. In fact, he’d been very aware of it when he was younger, since he could play around all night and still be head and shoulders above the average cultivator, even not accounting for his late start.
In any case, he’d checked the next time he rested after escaping the village, and he was very sure—his spirit had settled into this body, and even attached itself to the core properly. Though Mo Xuanyu hadn’t been at all clear in his request, Wei Wuxian had managed to fulfill it, and this body was now his.
So why the tearing?
Wei Wuxian patted at his chest, recalling despite himself the feeling of having his own golden core pulled from his body, two nights and a day of agonizing pain—but this wasn’t quite that, anyway.
No, Wei Wuxian had done enough work with souls to know more than a little about them, and he definitely got the feeling the issue was on that level. The ritual had been completed, though, and with no physical wounds to go with it, and Mo Xuanyu’s tormenters destroyed anyway, surely the problem couldn’t be that?
But another day passed, and as he was listening to the talk at Dafan mountain, again—pain in his chest, a tearing sensation. Wei Wuxian grabbed at the front of his clothes and sighed.
It would seem his return to life really wouldn’t be as smooth as he’d hoped.
The problem was real, and escalating.
Not even half a day for the next instance, though Wei Wuxian had no mind to spare for it as he searched frantically for Jin Ling in the goddess’s cave and lectured the Lan disciples at the same time. Not restocking their signal fire-lights? And their deductive reasoning, so lacking! Maybe failing to recognize the connection between the events or the starting desire for money couldn’t be helped for a virtuous and hardworking sect like GusuLan, but not even noticing that a spirit-eating monster hadn’t bothered to eat all those ghosts? What were they even teaching there?!
Wen Ning arrived, to everyone’s surprise, when Wei Wuxian called on any nearby dark to counteract a goddess that simply couldn’t be fought with normal cultivation. He wasn’t conscious, and the franticness with which Wei Wuxian had called on him to save Jin Ling made him too fierce.
Wei Wuxian pushed down his own roiling emotions and the burning sensation in his chest, looked for peace that he could impart on Wen Ning and found a song, a song that came naturally, as if he associated it with calm in stressful conditions. His soul shook and with it his fingers, but if Wen Ning still lived, for some approximation of the term, he had to put in the effort to save him.
Lan Wangji should have no reason to save Wei Wuxian, but he did it anyway. Wei Wuxian watched him clash with Jiang Cheng, thought of Zidian’s unique characteristics, and the dull ache in his chest, and the fact that Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji and every other cultivator here saw him command Wen Ning with his flute. He didn’t regret saving Jin Ling, but if he wanted any chance to save himself, it’d be better done without people chasing him.
And he really didn’t steal this body, anyway! Better to clear that up now.
Zidian’s strike sent lightning through his soul and shook him to his core, but Wei Wuxian’s play of indignation went on regardless. Through the ensuing argument over whether or not to let him go, the buzzing in his chest did not cease, making him almost short of breath. The laugh he gave as he “turned down” Jiang Cheng was correspondingly breathy, which Wei Wuxian thought highly appropriate. Hoping to annoy the two cultivators from his past as fast as possible and get somewhere he could deal with this, Wei Wuxian turned the conversation back to Lan Wangji.
“I’m very much attracted to people like Hanguang-Jun,” he said coquettishly. If they didn’t leave soon, someone might actually notice that his trouble breathing couldn’t possibly be the result of being overwhelmed with beauty.
“Mark your words,” said Lan Wangji instead. And then, “I will take this person back to the Lan Sect.”
That…was not the plan.
“I really shouldn’t trouble you,” Wei Wuxian said, trying to hide his desperation. They’d pulled him and his donkey away from the remains of the night-hunt and down the mountain, and Wei Wuxian had stayed quiet—both to make a clean escape from Jiang Cheng and with the vague hope that some stillness on the donkey would allow the situation in his chest to settle. It did not, and he was getting to the point where he really couldn’t wait to deal with it much longer. “I can make my own way from here.”
The juniors cast their gazes at Lan Wangji, the one who chose to bring this man back in the first place, but he didn’t seem inclined to respond. He only reacted to attempts of Wei Wuxian’s to leave; clearly, that was not allowed.
“Hanguang-Jun,” Wei Wuxian called, leaning toward him. It only took a fraction of a second to realize it was a mistake. The darkness he’d been holding off at the edge of his vision rushed in as lightning bubbled up his throat. “Oh,” he said, only a little surprised—he knew it wasn’t good, but he hadn’t though it was quite that bad yet—and passed out.
“Then he really is…the Yiling Patriarch?!”
Wei Wuxian came back to consciousness to these words from one of the surrounding disciples. He didn’t know how long he was unconscious, but it couldn’t have been long, provided he didn’t hit the ground headfirst. He didn’t ache terribly anywhere other than his chest, so he probably had not.
“He found a way around Zidian?” another disciple asked incredulously. “And stole a body like that, too, why…”
“I didn’t steal a body!” Wei Wuxian insisted, startling the surrounding disciples into scurrying backward. “Zidian wouldn’t fail. But everyone knows I wasn’t stable to begin with,” he invented quickly, “and that strike certainly didn’t help.”
Wei Wuxian looked over at Lan Wangji, who was watching him intently, and spread his hands helplessly. “There’s no need to take me back, Hanguang-Jun. Regardless of my identity, I’m obviously going to die soon anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Lan Jingyi blurted out. “You were just fine earlier, running around, lecturing us on that soul-eating spirit—”
“Goddess,” Wei Wuxian corrected absentmindedly. “Which is why orthodox cultivation couldn’t hurt her. But this is a problem I’ve been dealing with for some time now”—if a few days counted as “some time,” anyway—“and it’s clearly not going away, regardless of my methods.” Though he really hadn’t had much time to try any, yet. “With my soul tearing apart, even if I were the Yiling Patriarch, it’d be nothing but good news for everyone else. So don’t let me waste your time here,” he concluded brightly. “There’s just not much point!”
“Is this true?” The juniors looked again to Hanguang-Jun for guidance. “His soul is really…”
Lan Sizhui actually looked a little distressed. Wei Wuxian really liked this kid.
Lan Wangji must have seen him fall and caught him, probably even tried to determine what had gone wrong himself, or transferred spiritual energy; he was unfailingly good like that. There was something off about the way he looked at Wei Wuxian, but he still nodded his agreement.
The disciples were just children, in the end. The looks they gave him from that point on were filled with confusion and pity, forgetting all about the earlier fear and distrust.
Lan Wangji, for all that he’d agreed to Wei Wuxian’s description of his current health, was not willing to let him go. Wei Wuxian recognized a dead end when he saw one, and didn’t try to fight him on it. He could find a better opportunity to escape than when everyone’s eyes were directly on him.
“Wei Ying.” Lan Wangji grabbed Wei Wuxian’s arm and the donkey obligingly came to a halt, like the traitor he was. Ahead of them, the disciples turned the corner and passed out of sight, though certainly not out of the range in which Lan Wangji could come to their aid if necessary.
“Please, Hanguang-Jun,” Wei Wuxian replied, fluttering his lashes, “you don’t really believe the Yiling Patriarch would snatch the body of little ol’ me.”
“Not snatched,” Lan Wangji agreed. “Wei Ying. What happened?”
It was clear Lan Wangji wasn’t going to be deterred. The pain in Wei Wuxian’s chest was constant now, and he had to admit, he was tired. Tired, and not long for this world, at this rate. He sighed. “This poor, unhappy kid forced me into this body, and he didn’t even do it right. So now I’ll have to die an even more painful and permanent death! I was a very nice dead person, Lan Zhan; I never caused anyone problems, never schemed a single thing or tried to come back. I’ve been pitted even after I was already dead. So unfair!”
If Lan Wangji decided to kill him on the spot for admitting to being the Yiling Patriarch, well, it was possible that would save his fracturing soul, too. Wei Wuxian could tell at this point that this was a part of how Mo Xuanyu’s ritual had gone wrong—Wei Wuxian had certainly completed the task, even without clear guidance on what it was; the lack of physical wounds attested to that. But the ultimate punishment for failure continued along irrespective of the caster’s request, intending to tear his soul to pieces for occupying this body anyway.
Wei Wuxian wasn’t inclined to suicide, but he didn’t much fear death, either. So he figured it was worth a shot to explain himself a little.
Lan Wangji watched him with his unreadable face, something flickering through his eyes before settling again. “Can it be stopped?”
Wei Wuxian shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t think of a way, right now, since I’ve hardly any resources. But who’s going to give resources to save the Yiling Patriarch?”
“Come back to Gusu with me.”
Wei Wuxian was startled into laughter. “You really, even now…” But what was there to say? He probably should have expected this, and Cloud Recesses did have options, provided they didn’t lock him up immediately. He shook his head disbelievingly. “Alright, then. I’ll go with you.”
Lan Wangji stared at him a moment longer before nodding and letting go.
Well. Boring and inclined to punishment as the place was, he didn’t have a lot of other options. It seemed Wei Wuxian would be going to Cloud Recesses.
“Four thousand rules?!” Wei Wuxian yelped. “Why are there four thousand rules?!”
“To aid us in our cultivation and our conduct,” Lan Sizhui provided helpfully.
“No, that’s—” Wei Wuxian gave up on explaining. He knew what the rules were for, just—how did they gain another thousand of them in less than twenty years?!
He’d already said he would go inside, but did he really have to? He looked over at Lan Wangji pitifully, but he was busy talking to someone who almost appeared his twin—his older brother, Lan Xichen.
Lan Xichen smiled at Wei Wuxian, exhibiting all his usual benevolence. “Wangji never brings guests home. This is?”
Wei Wuxian gave him a beaming smile, but didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure what Lan Wangji intended to tell his brother, especially when it seemed Lan Xichen was headed out, and the other disciples were still here.
Lan Wangji shot him a look, but seeing that he didn’t intend to respond, he simply went back to his conversation with his brother. Lan Xichen seemed to understand something from Lan Wangji’s face, because he didn’t ask again.
Lan Wangji told the disciples to lead Wei Wuxian to the jingshi, then left him to his own devices, likely to go speak with his uncle. Wei Wuxian was glad for the rest, at first, but it didn’t help much with the painful, unstable feeling growing in his chest, no matter how he meditated. Not one to idly wait, he skipped out of the jingshi again and went looking for tools to fix up his flute a little. Wei Wuxian accepted a lot of insults, but looking down on his flute-playing was going too far.
Even that didn’t take nearly long enough. Wei Wuxian considered running the grounds or jumping up the walls, just to see if he could, but he wasn’t sure what effects a harsh impact with the barrier on the wall would cause. So, naturally, he returned to the jingshi.
Which turned out to be a great decision, because there was actually, unbelievably, Emperor’s Smile to be found there! Maybe not easily by most, but who was Wei Wuxian? He was more than familiar with excavating hidden things, and usually with much less pleasant reward than his sorely missed favorite liquor. He hadn’t had any since he was 15! He’d always wanted to come back to get some, but never had the chance. Now here were seven or eight whole jars of it!
Before he knew it, he’d already downed an entire jar of Lan Wangji’s secret stash. Then he figured Lan Wangji owed him for the jar he broke back when they met, anyway, and it wouldn’t be wrong to collect some interest; so he drank another, too.
But there was nowhere to dispose of the jars of Emperor’s Smile, once drunk, so Wei Wuxian had to start thinking of alternatives. He couldn’t very well put the alcohol back, but another, similar liquid would do just as well, right? Water would be good enough. After all, a jar didn’t care what was in it.
Wei Wuxian patted the jars after placing them back in the hidden cache, then paused.
A jar didn’t care what was in it?
His eyes lit up.
When Lang Wangji returned, Wei Wuxian had just finished inking a complicated seal over his wrists and chest.
“Oh, Lan Zhan!” he exclaimed, turning to Lan Wangji before he could begin to ask. “Don’t worry. The situation”—he patted his chest, apparently already dry—“is contained.”
And then he snickered, like he’d just told a particularly bad joke.
Lan Wangji wanted to get a clearer look at the markings, but starting from the place Wei Wuxian had patted, they suddenly began to disintegrate, crumbling away entirely. Wei Wuxian showed no reaction to this, so it was likely intended to happen.
“Your soul is stabilized?”
“No, but it’s not going anywhere.”
Lan Wangji hadn’t been aware that was a concern, but he didn’t know much about whatever body-offering ritual Mo Xuanyu had done in the first place. He wanted to ask, but Wei Wuxian, as with all problems he considered well-enough handled, had already sent his focus off in another direction.
“Say, Lan Zhan, how did you know it was me? You aren’t as impulsive as those children, skipping immediately to possession just because I didn’t handle Zidian’s strike well. I’m sure you know Zidian does not have a delayed effect on expelling spirits, but you still seemed very sure.”
“…You told me yourself.”
“Myself?” Wei Wuxian thought about what he’d done while there. “Because of Jin Ling? Or summoning Wen Ning? It shouldn’t be, right?”
Wei Wuxian looked back at Lan Wangji to confirm, just catching the tail end of his eyes returning to calm. What was that?
“Think,” was all Lan Wangji said.
Before Wei Wuxian could ask again or express his disgruntlement with the lack of answer, the bell tolled, reminding them of the sect’s schedule.
“Sleep,” Lan Wangji told him, directing him to one of the inner rooms before leaving for his own.
Wei Wuxian huffed, then sat down in the lotus position on the bed. He had, of course, no intention of sleeping. It was only nine in the evening! Even if the Lan sect was going to provide resources to save him, it could keep its bizarrely precise sleep schedules to itself.
In the meantime, he’d made that seal off the top of his head, and it had been some time since he’d done anything complicated with the manipulation of spiritual energy. He didn’t doubt that it would work, of course, but this was all untested theory. He needed to see how well it’d done its job.
The seal had, indeed, settled into him, trapping his soul inside his body. The destruction would continue, but so long as his soul remained in his body, it wouldn’t kill him. Of course, with this setup, his soul would still eventually disintegrate to the point where nothing could contain it. But this was pretty good! Painful, as tearing a soul out of a body inevitably was, but good! If his body thought a soul was there, it’d keep running. If his body kept running, so would his mind. Given enough time, he was sure to find a proper solution.
The disciples woke him up much too early, but learning that Lan Wangji actually kept that many rabbits was more than worth it. He laughed so hard he almost fell over, startling the young disciples into backing up. He’d just opened his mouth to explain when the bell of the mingshi began to toll.
The disciple that stumbled out of the room confirmed what Wei Wuxian had known the moment he hadn’t seen Lan Wangji at the scene; Lan Wangji was already inside. Wei Wuxian sprinted up the stairs and kicked the impenetrable door, locked and only able to open from within.
“Open!” he commanded the dark energy churning inside, and it leapt to obey.
The disciples watched, stunned, as the lunatic who’d laughed so outrageously mere minutes before disappeared into the gaping maw of the mingshi, which promptly slammed shut behind him.
Try as they might, none of them could follow.
Dark energy swept over Wei Wuxian, but he hardly noticed the crushing sensation. He found Lan Wangji sitting placidly in the main position of the summoning ritual, all the other summoners having run or passed out. Lan Qiren lay collapsed and unconscious against the wall, bleeding from every possible orifice. Wei Wuxian settled himself into the man’s vacated position, lifting his flute to his lips and waiting.
Lan Wangji met his gaze, lifted his hand to the still-vibrating strings, and began to play.
Wei Wuxian followed whatever songs Lan Wangji chose, “Evocation” and then “Rest” falling as easily from his flute as they would have thirteen years before, though this instrument was undoubtedly of a lower quality. He wasn’t concerned with anyone finding his ability odd—right now, it was only him and Lan Wangji here.
Lan Qiren likely wouldn’t wake until the body was dealt with and the pieces found, but Lan Wangji alone couldn’t fully suppress the copious dark energy, and anyone other than Wei Wuxian would have fallen to it like all of the others. The obvious solution would be for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian to follow the pointing finger, trace the issue to its source. But Wei Wuxian was, pretty clearly, in no shape to go.
“I could do it,” Wei Wuxian told Lan Wangji once they returned to the jingshi.
Lan Wangji shook his head. “Wait for brother.”
“What if your uncle’s condition gets worse?” Wei Wuxian pestered. “You’re just going to ignore that he’s injured?”
“His condition is stable. You are injured.”
“You’re too righteous, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said, somewhere between a complaint and a sigh. “Helping someone like me, even in this situation. I swear I don’t mind going.”
Lan Zhan just shook his head again, looking off into the distance. “Wait for brother.”
They established a routine from there, looking through all the available texts in the Library Pavilion for anything about how to patch up a soul. Really, Wei Wuxian and his dark cultivation would be the ultimate authority on that, but even he couldn’t patch together his own living soul. He didn’t know of a way around this kind of dark ritual within the realm of demonic cultivation, much like he couldn’t fight a goddess with orthodox cultivation methods. So he put his effort into looking through the rituals and ceremonies listed in the Library Pavilion’s books, searching for anything related to mending tears in living souls or even putting them into stasis. He excelled at using unconventional means to solve difficult problems; he’d take whatever he could get.
Each night, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian played “Rest,” keeping the contained arm trapped within an array and a sealing bell, calming its resentment at the lack of progress.
Its finger pointed sternly to the northwest, but they didn’t go.
Without Lan Qiren to hold classes, the disciples were much more free. However, they were all from the GusuLan sect, so they continued to cultivate diligently. While it was certainly possible for someone else to take over Lan Qiren’s classes, no one seemed to feel it was appropriate. So, the disciples’ education became heavily biased toward the physical aspects.
“What are you working on?” Wei Wuxian asked, falling backward out of a tree and hanging upside down to address the disciples below. He’d checked most of what could be checked by outsiders in the Library Pavilion, and he wasn’t the kind to spend an extended period of time in one place, anyway. He’d needed to feel less stifled, less trapped in his own skin, and climbing a tree had seemed a good enough solution at the time.
“Ah! It’s you!” Lan Jingyi exclaimed.
“It’s me!” Wei Wuxian agreed cheerily.
“We are supposed to work on our sword forms, Senior Mo,” Lan Sizhui replied politely.
“What, just by going through them? Don’t you ever spar?” Wei Wuxian flipped himself to the ground.
“Fighting without permission is prohibited.”
Wei Wuxian laughed. He’d almost forgotten that one, considering how often he’d fought people the three months he’d spent at Cloud Recesses—not least of which being Lan Wangji himself. “I hereby grant you permission, how’s that?”
Some of the disciples perked up, while others looked wary, and a few even disapproving.
“You’re not our teacher, though,” Lan Jingyi pointed out. “You can’t allow us to fight with each other.”
“How about I be your teacher, then?” Wei Wuxian promoted himself shamelessly. A few of the disciples gaped, which he was almost sure was against one of the other four thousand—four thousand—rules of Cloud Recesses.
“You are familiar with the Lan clan’s sword forms?” Lan Sizhui asked, which was already giving Wei Wuxian a lot of credit. As a disciple from the Lan clan itself, he was sure to know that Mo Xuanyu had never studied there.
“Somewhat,” Wei Wuxian allowed. He’d certainly recognize them on sight, and had teamed up with and fought against people from the Lan sect often enough to remember it well. “But what’s the point of getting a teacher like me for a lesson you could learn any time? I don’t mean to teach you my own style—it’s not the kind of thing you could learn, anyway. How about you spar with me directly, to get some practice in?”
“You don’t even have a sword!” Lan Jingyi was incredulous to the point of forgetting the rule about raised voices entirely.
Wei Wuxian did his best to suppress his laughter. How quickly he always seemed to taint the Lan clan’s disciples! Maybe Lan Qiren had a point about him. “I don’t need a sword for this,” he told Lan Jingyi. “Didn’t I already say I wouldn’t teach you my own style? All you have to do is try to hit me! You get some practice, and a chance to see what other kinds of evasion look like. Pretty good, right?”
Many of the disciples still looked unsure, but Lan Sizhui proved again why he was usually the one to take charge on night hunts. “If you’re really okay with it, I am sure I could learn a lot.”
“Of course I’m okay with it,” Wei Wuxian said, but his stance still didn’t look the least bit ready to fight, so Lan Sizhui didn’t move. “Well? What are you waiting for?”
The rest of the disciples cleared space for them, but they really weren’t sure how Lan Sizhui should deal with an opponent who…didn’t seem at all prepared. Attacking someone in that state would certainly seem dishonorable.
“Then…I’ll be offending you, Senior.” Lan Sizhui bowed slightly and drew his sword.
“Oh, I’ve been told I’ve no sense of propriety,” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Do as you like; I couldn’t possibly take offense.”
He sidestepped Lan Sizhui’s sword with an ease that was, ironically, almost offensive. He didn’t seem to have a form to his movements at all, which was initially worrying—but no matter what he did, Lan Sizhui could not get any closer to the man. He bent at odd angles and twisted around, which should have made him look like he was struggling, but the easy smile that never left his face gave the impression of someone getting away with a trick, instead.
The few disciples that had initially decided to ignore the interloper and his fight found themselves unwillingly drawn in. Lan Sizhui was undoubtedly an excellent swordsman, but the man he’d called “Senior Mo,” who wasn’t even carrying a sword, was clearly not at a disadvantage.
For Wei Wuxian, it was obvious he wouldn’t be at a disadvantage. He’d survived a war and the hatred of the masses for years without being able to carry more than talismans and a flute. If he didn’t even learn how to dodge, he’d really be looking down on his aggressors too much. Lan Sizhui might be an excellent swordsman with fairly high cultivation, but it was a time of peace, and Wei Wuxian had several years on him in terms of life experience, besides.
Still, he wasn’t careless. Operating a body with a soul that became more detached from it by the day wasn’t nearly as simple as doing so when comfortable in one’s own skin, and this wasn’t the body that had lived through those fraught years. So he went easy at the beginning, merely moving himself out of the way and watching how the boy moved. Only when he was sure he had the measure of Lan Sizhui’s moves at his most serious did he shift his style to—well, not the offensive, since he didn’t carry a weapon and wasn’t intending to attack, but perhaps the irritating.
Wei Wuxian put his foot in the way of Lan Sizhui’s next step, tripping him up as he slipped past. “Don’t expect your opponent to fight like a gentleman,” he advised. “In a life or death fight, most people can forget their image. Let alone ghouls or monsters, whose bodies are already dead—they won’t even use their body parts like a human, much less have a sense of moral propriety.”
Lan Sizhui recovered admirably and whipped around, but Wei Wuxian was already gone, retreated out of his sword’s range. “Keep in mind the kind of opponent you’re fighting, too. I don’t have a weapon, what am I going to stay so close to you for? If I were really trying to escape, I’d use the time to get distance or an obstacle between us instead.”
Lan Sizhui chased him more closely after that, maneuvering him around the field until Wei Wuxian found himself nearly backed into the tree.
“Good!” Wei Wuxian told him. “Paying attention to your environment is important. Relatedly—” Wei Wuxian rolled against the tree to dodge the next stab, following the curve of the trunk to disappear behind it. Lan Sizhui pulled his sword back and followed him, only to draw up short when he got to the other side; Wei Wuxian wasn’t there.
“—a fight near trees is a fight in three dimensions,” Wei Wuxian continued, clapping a hand on Sizhui’s shoulder as he dropped down from the branches behind him, controlling his fall and transferring the momentum into a shove at the same time. “Aside from the normal variations from spiritual energy guiding a sword, your opponent themselves isn’t limited to the ground.”
Lan Sizhui’s turn was much faster this time, spinning on the spot instead of steadying his stance to properly guard against a strike. He picked things up very quickly.
Wei Wuxian danced backward, continuously stepping sideways around the tree to limit Lan Sizhui’s movement. “And, most importantly—” his next step took him fully out of Lan Sizhui’s sight, and the boy automatically looked up as he turned the corner to chase him. But Wei Wuxian had ducked down instead, and he popped up inside Lan Sizhui’s guard with an arm wrapped around his neck, pivoting behind him to stay out of range of his sword and secure his hold as he went.
“—attack with a weapon is not the only thing you need to guard against,” Wei Wuxian said, gripping Lan Sizhui’s wrist in his free hand to ensure he couldn’t make any further moves with his sword. “People can use anything, from their bodies to words, to gain an advantage. I don’t have a weapon, so you don’t need to worry about my bearing down on you. But when was I actually trying to run away?”
The fight over, Wei Wuxian turned the chokehold into a hair ruffle and stepped back.
“And that’s what a fight with a scoundrel looks like!” Wei Wuxian said brightly, clapping his hands and addressing the dumbstruck disciples. “You’re from the GusuLan sect, most everyone you ever fight will be less righteous than you. Don’t forget it!”
Whether or not it was righteous, almost all of the disciples there were thinking the same thing—being able to fight like that would be really cool! The spectators had a better view than Lan Sizhui would, so they’d seen more clearly the way Wei Wuxian had launched himself into the tree, swinging easily around the branch to land behind his pursuer with minimal effort. Many night hunts happened in forests, but none of them had seen anyone pull that kind of trick before.
“Thank you for your teaching, Senior Mo,” Lan Sizhui responded, saluting gracefully.
Before anyone had the chance to ask questions or propose to fight Wei Wuxian themselves, one of the disciples noticed an austere figure standing on the path next to the courtyard, silently watching them.
“Hanguang-Jun!” The disciples guiltily scattered backward, as if worried Lan Wangji would punish them for neglecting their work if they came too close to the disruptive outsider.
“Oh, Lan—er-gege!” Wei Wuxian caught himself before he called him by his birth name, but the only way to continue smoothly in the same tone was to go for something similarly close-sounding. Well, and calling him “Second Young Master Lan” wasn’t his style in the first place. “Did you find the book you were looking for?”
The disciples shared a confused look between them. Lan-er-gege?!
“Mm. Come.”
“Bye, then, children! I’ll come visit you again another time,” Wei Wuxian sang, with exactly as much cheer and energy as he’d had when he first announced his presence.
This time, Lan Jingyi completely forgot to protest the appellation.
Wei Wuxian barreled through the children on his way to Lan Wangji, speeding across the yard with the ebullient manner of a young child.
“Do not run,” Lan Wangji said, turning to walk back to the Library Pavillion with him.
“But Lan Zhan, I wanted to be close to you sooner!” Wei Wuxian whined, leaning into Lan Wangji’s face and laughing at his lack of expression. “Did you see the spar? It was so much fun!”
“You should not exert yourself.”
“It’s not like I’ll shatter,” Wei Wuxian laughed. “You needn’t worry so much. I’m fine!”
Lan Wangji did not look like he agreed in the least.
That night, after Lan Wangji went to sleep, Wei Wuxian slipped out of the window and ran to the edge of Cloud Recesses. His path through the children earlier in the day had knocked him into one of the younger disciples, and Wei Wuxian had easily relieved him of the jade token needed to pass the barrier.
Really, if the disciple didn’t notice someone lifting it off of him, he probably shouldn’t go out anyway. Wei Wuxian was doing him a favor!
He went halfway down the mountain before he felt he could call to Wen Ning without alerting anyone. As he’d thought, Wen Ning had been waiting.
In the time he’d spent at the Cloud Recesses, he’d been able to think about what it meant for Wen Ning to still exist, who it was that could have done this to him. But Wei Wuxian couldn’t leave, and he wasn’t at all sure what would happen to him in the future, so there wasn’t much he could do about any of that. For now, what was most important was returning Wen Ning’s consciousness to him.
Wei Wuxian had just flipped over the top of the wall when he saw Lan Wangji standing below, waiting for him.
“Ah! Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian called brightly. “It’s just like old times!”
Lan Wangji’s expression was so dark it was scary. “You went?”
“And returned!” Wei Wuxian jumped down beside Lan Wangji, completely ignoring the implied question of where, exactly, he had gone. “Isn’t it late for you to be up? Come, come, let’s return to the jingshi.”
Wei Wuxian blithely shooed him along as if herding him back to his own home. Lan Wangji waited until they were back inside to grab his wrist. “You…”
“I just felt like stretching my legs a little, really,” Wei Wuxian assured him, but Lan Wangji’s grip did not loosen. “I’ll give the jade token back tomorrow, alright? It’s not like I’m going to be in and out all the time, I just can’t stay in one place too long. You understand, right? Even back at the Burial Mounds, with how dangerous it was to wander, I just couldn’t keep still!”
“…Sleep,” Lan Wangji told him, releasing his arm. Wei Wuxian relaxed a little.
“Okay, okay,” he said, heading for his own room. “I’ll stop breaking curfew and disturbing your rest.”
Lan Zhan watched Wei Wuxian return to his room, waiting for him to fully settle in before finally turning back to his own bed.
The next time Wei Wuxian felt the need to stretch his legs, he found where the Lan clan’s children spent their time.
“I didn’t know your clan had such cute kids!” he told Lan Wangji that night. “Were you that cute as a kid too? Like a tiny version of you now, with the same blank expression?”
He laughed uproariously, then leaned close to Lan Wangji’s face to give his cheek a poke. “Absolutely adorable,” he concluded, mouth pulled into a wide grin. “Ah, Lan Zhan, I wish I could have seen it! By the time we met you were already a little taller than me. Now you’re much too much taller than me, it doesn’t have nearly the same effect!”
“Sleep, Wei Ying.”
“Already?” he complained, as if he could not clearly hear the bell tolling to remind of Cloud Recesses’ schedule. “Fine, fine, I’ll leave you be. I’m staying in your room, anyway, I should try to give you a little bit of peace.”
Lan Wangji nodded and returned to his own bed, leaving Wei Wuxian to pout at GusuLan’s unreasonable rules. He had hours until he’d feel even the slightest bit sleepy!
Something prickled in Wei Wuxian’s chest, but he ignored the feeling.
He already knew what it was.
Lan Xichen had meant to stay with Jin Guangyao for several weeks to talk about the upcoming Discussion Conference. Unfortunately, not long after he arrived, he learned that whatever was brought back from Mo Village had caused a larger problem than expected, and he needed to return. He gave Jin Guangyao his apologies, which his sworn brother waved off easily, and returned to Cloud Recesses.
He hadn’t expected his talk with Lan Wangji about how to handle the matter to divert to the guest from Mo Village, but once he knew the man was actually Wei Wuxian, it all made sense. Lan Xichen was sect leader; it wasn’t appropriate for him to go running off with the arm himself. If Lan Wangji had been willing to go with him, he might have been willing to make himself unavailable long enough to deal with such a serious matter. But Lan Wangji would not leave with Wei Wuxian so close to death, now that he’d finally returned to life.
Lan Xichen sighed, and gave permission for them to study the clan’s more exclusive books and ceremonies.
Though he trusted his brother and respected his decisions, as sect leader Lan Xichen still had a responsibility to the others in the sect that Wei Wuxian could affect. He went looking for information and found it easily; the disciples were more than happy to update him on what he’d missed since “Mo Xuanyu’s” arrival.
“Senior Mo is great! He saved us once before, even though it got him in trouble.”
“Twice! Don’t you remember Mo Village?”
“But he was so crazy then…”
“Hey, you heard what he said is happening to his soul. Sometimes he’s just like that, you have to ignore it.”
“Besides, did you see what they treated him like there? It’s more impressive that he wasn’t more crazy…”
“Don’t speak behind others’ backs,” one of the older disciples reminded, discreetly glancing over at Lan Xichen.
“I’m not! I’m saying what happened, I never passed any kind of judgment,” the previous disciple insisted. “They kept him in a small room and his cousin beat him up, and all he did in response was say he wanted his stuff back. That’s just reporting what we observed, isn’t it?” Still, he looked askance at Lan Xichen a little worriedly.
“It’s good he’s back here now, he’s been much more stable and reasonable. I heard Hanguang-Jun might have found something to help him…”
“Now that’s gossip, or at best speculation. All we can say is that Senior Mo doesn’t always act in accordance with the rules, but he’s always helpful…or at least good to us. It seems like he’s trying, and even when he acts crazy he never hurts anyone.”
“Have you heard him playing his flute for the children? It’s so good!”
“It is! So much improved since Dafan Mountain.”
“Yeah, the flute then was a little…”
“It’s actually the same flute, he just fixed it—didn’t he make that flute in less than a minute?”
“I saw him do it, I’ve never seen someone make a flute that fast before.”
“And in such dangerous circumstances! It’s more impressive the thing played at all!”
Lan Xichen watched the disciples chatter with an amused smile. To have made them just about forget the presence of their sect leader more than once, Wei Wuxian had clearly left quite the impression.
When Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji had gone through nearly every possibly related book, the three of them met again to discuss their options. Lan Xichen had been busy, taking several days to remotely send communications he normally would have done expediently in person, but he didn’t regret taking the time to be here.
“Have you considered the Soul-Calming Ceremony?” Lan Xichen asked.
“I didn’t,” Wei Wuxian mused. “Those never agreed with me, so I skipped right over it.”
“Never agreed with you?” Lan Xichen asked mildly. The Soul-Calming Ceremony was essentially a routine ceremony that every cultivator from an established sect experienced; he’d never heard of anyone who had a problem with it.
“It had to do with my cultivation, I think,” Wei Wuxian said.
Lan Xichen didn’t ask further; asking someone to explain the heart of their own cultivation was, generally speaking, not done.
Though sects each had their own ways of encouraging cultivation, in the end, cultivation was up to the individual. There was a single concept, a focus, that belonged to each cultivator, and being surrounded by it, embodying it, coming to truly understand it, was what allowed cultivation to increase. The GusuLan sect encouraged cultivation through the scholarly pursuits; by tempering the mind, cultivators could come to know themselves and pursue their cultivation in a purer way. In contrast, the YunmengJiang sect was very active, using physical training as the basis that enabled cultivators to pursue whatever actions they needed to take to fulfill their cultivation path. Each style of teaching had its merits, some more effective for certain types of cultivation than others. There was some evidence that instilling certain values early could influence the cultivator’s future path, since the heart of one’s cultivation was usually the quality they valued most, but there was little to be done to change a cultivation path once set. Rejecting it, or failing to understand it completely, would simply lead to slower or stagnant cultivation.
Wei Wuxian knew, having lost it, exactly what his cultivation was: freedom. He could not stand to be tied down, to be punished, as he was in the Burial Mounds, which was why he’d so vehemently rejected Lan Wangji’s insistence that he return to Gusu with him. If they had locked Wei Wuxian up, it would be a fate worse to him than death. Even if Lan Wangji had somehow wanted to offer him help then, as he did now, it would not have been worth the increased pain of restriction in his soul, what with all the cultivation of freedom he’d ever had already ripped out at the roots, never to return—he would never feel the warmth of his own heart again.
However, he’d still had a core when Lotus Pier had attempted to use their own Soul-Calming Ceremony, even if he hadn’t had it long. For all that it was called a Soul-“Calming” Ceremony, to some extent it was a little closer to “binding.” It pulled the soul into itself, fixing it in the fabric of reality, almost tying it to the body and energy system as it settled the soul in, all in the name of keeping the cultivator from later turning into a ferocious ghost. Cultivators were often very strong; if all their souls turned into ferocious ghosts when they died grievous deaths, as cultivators often did, it’d be a real pain for all the cultivators still living. So, the ceremonies were quite thorough, and most cultivators underwent more than one, usually from very early on in their lives.
Wei Wuxian was already nine years old by the time he was brought to Lotus Pier, a much later start than most would have. It wasn’t long after he arrived that they tried to put him through a Soul-Calming Ceremony—but his spiritual energy, in the face of something trying to bind it so thoroughly, violently rebelled. Wei Wuxian didn’t remember much of what happened, but he did know they never tried to put him through one again.
“That was the past, though,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m sure Mo Xuanyu didn’t cultivate the same thing, so it’s worth considering.”
Lan Xichen found a description of the Lan clan’s version of the ceremony for him, and Wei Wuxian seriously looked over the contents for a long time. In the end, though, he just shook his head.
“The ceremony is meant to settle the soul into the body, but my problem isn’t settling in; it’s that the Body-Offering Ritual is designed to tear the soul to pieces after. Of course, that should only happen if the possessing spirit fails to meet the original soul’s demands, which I did, but poor Mo Xuanyu clearly wasn’t working with a complete copy. The bit where I’m absolved if I succeed was missing.” Wei Wuxian took a moment to bemoan his poor luck, before moving on again.
“Even so, the Soul-Calming Ceremony is not meant to help a soul settle into another body. Even if this body, as the one to forcefully pull me in in the first place, won’t reject me, the Soul-Calming Ceremony works directly on the soul, and my soul knows this isn’t my body. In fact, my soul knows it didn’t even want this body, so it might end up causing some kind of rejection if I tried to force it. Now, if I still had my original body around, that might be an interesting way to take this. I bet it actually could help me possess my own body.” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Too bad it was so thoroughly destroyed, so there’s no chance of that. Ah, but I died so horribly. Still, our dear friend seems to have me beat!” he said, referring to the arm they played to rest every night. “I may have been in more pieces, but at least my soul was intact!”
Lan Wangji looked displeased.
“Wei Wuxian, I believe…” Lan Xichen started.
“Right, it’s not a contest, sorry,” Wei Wuxian waved off. “And I’m causing you all such trouble with this, I shouldn’t waste your time. So, unless there’s a way I could connect with my body before it met its gruesome end, the Soul-Calming Ceremony won’t be of much help. A shame, since it’s the closest to useful I’ve seen so far. It might even piece my soul back together as it went.”
“Past Resonance Array,” Lan Wangji said suddenly.
“I’ve never heard of that one,” Wei Wuxian replied, interested. Though there were many secret ceremonies and arrays in different sects, quite a few of them overlapped. The Soul-Calming Ceremony was a prime example of this, since most every major sect had their own, specialized version. Failing that, they usually had at least some fame—there wasn’t any point in having a technique that no one used.
“You would not have,” Lan Xichen said thoughtfully. “It was created as a safeguard to hide a past sect leader’s waning ability. He was quite powerful in the past, but was injured before his successor had grown to a similar level. In order to make sure the sect would not be defenseless in case of another outbreak of war, the sect leader created an array that could, for a short time, give him the ability he’d had in the past. It used resonance to connect his soul to its past self, but the sect leader said it was very dangerous. Since he was so much stronger in the past, the resonance was unequal, and it would continuously tug at his soul, leaving him even weaker once it ended. He put a lot of effort into maintaining a layer of separation between himself of the present and the past, saying the consequences of meddling with the past would be…of unknown magnitude to the present as it was. It is a very complex array, and in general no one would think of using it, so few even within the clan itself know it exists.”
“Well, that certainly wouldn’t help save me now,” Wei Wuxian said. “My end of the tugging competition wouldn’t be much more than scraps, at this point. But it might if it sent me back then.”
“…Sent you back then?” Lan Xichen asked. Lan Wangji didn’t look nearly as confused, which either meant he’d gotten used to Wei Wuxian’s brand of crazy or he’d meant for Wei Wuxian to think in this direction in the first place. Lan Xichen didn’t know which of the two he wanted it to be, much less which it actually was.
“Right, you said there’s a bunch of safeguards to keep the array’s user in the here and now, right? What happens if you get rid of them? Would I end up in the past, start a new branch of timeline?”
“Not enough energy,” Lan Wangji pointed out.
“Right,” Lan Xichen agreed. “The whole purpose of the array was to draw energy from the past, so it has few requirements on the present in terms of energy. Creating a whole new reality is far beyond the scope of what an array like that could achieve.”
“But there’s no way changing the past would only affect him,” Wei Wuxian said. “Even if he only changed himself, if he were different in the past, it’d affect how he interacted with the world, and everything else would change from there. What if he changed the past enough that he never needed to go to the past in the first place? Wouldn’t that be a paradox?”
“Resonance,” said Lan Wangji. “He is himself of the past and present at the same time.”
“You mean an overlap,” Wei Wuxian said. “Without the layer of separation, he would become himself of the past. He’d exist back then as he is now, or rather as he is as a combination of both times. But since the past him is just the present him with fewer life experiences, it’d be functionally the same as being the person he is now.”
“En,” Lan Wangji agreed.
“If it’s just an overlap, then it’s only one timeline,” Wei Wuxian concluded. “The person in the array is the person in the past. Everything outside of the array isn’t resonating, so once the past of our present changes, the present as it is…” He frowned.
“Would cease to exist, would it not?” Lan Xichen asked. “The sect leader must have come to this conclusion himself, and decided to make sure he would not accidentally cause the present to disappear. This was the purpose of all the warnings and safeguards, and why he never tried to spread the idea.”
“That’s…” Wei Wuxian sighed. “Too much. Erasing reality just to save me isn’t really worth it.”
“Wei Ying.”
“Well!” Wei Wuxian jumped to his feet, then stilled for a second before fluidly reanimating. Lan Wangji frowned. “There’s lots of time, I’m sure we can find a less drastic solution to pursue for a little issue like this. We don’t even know if we could make it work, so it’s better to focus on more realistic options.”
“Wei Ying,” Lang Wangji repeated, standing up himself.
“Right, it’s getting late,” Wei Wuxian said with a smile. “Let’s go back to the jingshi.”
Lan Wangji pressed his lips into a line, but followed Wei Wuxian out.
Lan Xichen could tell that Lan Wangji was worried about Wei Wuxian, and that he’d prefer they focus on the method they’d discussed the night before. Certainly right now it seemed their only option, but it really was extremely complicated. If there was enough time, Lan Xichen thought Wei Wuxian’s suggestion of searching for a simpler alternative was reasonable. Especially as even the most successful use of this plan would irrevocably alter reality as it was now, by sending a man most considered to have caused great harm into the past, where no one could govern what choices he’d make. His previous choices were, in Lan Xichen’s opinion, uninspiring.
Still, he would not lightly discount his brother’s feelings, so he went to find Wei Wuxian.
A few of the disciples pointed him toward the domain of the Lan clan’s children, where Wei Wuxian often went when he wanted to relax away from their many books. He arrived to see Wei Wuxian fading into the forest behind the backs of the children, fluttering out of sight like a rare bird. Lan Xichen, needing to talk to him anyway and curious as to what he could be doing alone in the woods, followed after.
He paused when he found him, apparently far back enough that Wei Wuxian did not register his presence. It seemed Wei Wuxian had slipped away earlier, so simple and well-practiced, so that he could…cough up blood in peace.
Wei Wuxian’s coughs were quiet, like he was used to stifling them, and he caught the blood on his hand with a sigh.
“Mo-gege?” It didn’t take long after that for one of the children to find him; Wei Wuxian hadn’t had time to go far.
“Ah, little sprout! What is it?” Wei Wuxian laughed easily, fisting his hand and wiping it across his mouth casually.
“What’s that?” The child pointed at the corner of his lips, where he’d missed a bit.
“Berry juice!” Wei Wuxian said brightly. “Don’t tell anyone, though. It’s just that the food here is too bland, I went looking for something else with a little more flavor. Who would have known, there’s nothing good here! These are much too sour.”
“Really? I want to try!” The child rushed forward to where Wei Wuxian had been crouched over the ground, purportedly collecting berries.
Wei Wuxian expertly grabbed the child’s outstretched hand and lifted it over the boy’s head, twirling him around until he was facing the other way. “Didn’t I just say they’re too sour? Come, I have to wash my hands before someone catches me. Why don’t you take me to the stream?”
Distracted by this task and giggling at the sudden spin, the child ran off with an overly loud whisper of “this way!” Wei Wuxian indulgently followed behind him, back foot casually kicking dirt and leaves over the evidence of his illness as he went.
Lan Xichen stood for a long time, looking at where Wei Wuxian had curled over in pain, at the memory of how practiced and easy his switch to bright laughter and teasing had been. How confidently he’d redirected the child, spinning him around with his free hand, so he wouldn’t walk in the part of the dirt Wei Wuxian’s blood had made sticky and wet.
These years that Lan Wangji had faded, calling stubbornly for a soul that never responded, barely going out enough to keep his reputation of being where the trouble was, Lan Xichen had wondered again and again: Why Wei Wuxian? Why someone who had caused so much harm, whose actions were unforgivable, who showed no signs that any of the suffering he’d caused had touched him?
Was this what his brother had seen in him? That Wei Wuxian was not unaffected, but used to hiding?
Lan Wangji had said he didn’t know if Wei Wuxian had a reason, but he was willing to stand with him anyway. Perhaps it was not just blindly loving him; perhaps Lan Wangji had cause to believe there was more to Wei Wuxian’s actions than they knew.
What Lan Xichen saw here was this: Wei Wuxian’s first and easiest lie was that he’d done on a whim what he’d actually done out of suffering.
“How is your health?” Lan Xichen asked Wei Wuxian, when he’d gathered the three of them together again. It was possible that coughing blood was a recent deterioration, and Wei Wuxian hadn’t known the night before, when he’d claimed they had plenty of time.
“The same!” Wei Wuxian grinned like he had no fear there’d be blood in his teeth. “I’ve got a very good seal on me, you know. My soul won’t be leaving this body until it’s truly beyond saving. As of now, there’s nothing else to fix!”
Close to death and clearly used to it, Wei Wuxian didn’t want anyone to know.
Lan Xichen took a breath, and made a choice. “Well, with that in mind, we can certainly continue to consider other options as they arise,” he said. “But I think we should not so easily discard the one we have now, either.”
The weight of Lan Wangji’s gratitude was almost physical.
Wei Wuxian shook his head. “An option that erases reality isn’t an option at all: It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
“It is not so much erasing reality as changing it,” Lan Xichen told Wei Wuxian gently. “And is changing reality not what everyone tries to do, with every decision they make?”
“Yes, but—” Wei Wuxian huffed out a breath. “That’s only what it would look like to me. What about everyone else? What about all the souls who have their reality obliterated?”
“They all still exist.” Lan Xichen smiled. “It would only be ripples affecting where they are. The present will, indeed, become what you make it—but in this you are just like every other person, constantly and simultaneously working together to create our reality. If I take the left path at a fork in the road, should I mourn the reality that no longer exists in which I went right?”
“Depends on what was down the right path,” Wei Wuxian muttered.
“It is worth thinking about, then, is it not?” Lan Xichen asked, unbothered. “No harm in trying to figure out if you would rather be in the reality in which you took the right path.”
“Ah, you’re so persuasive, Zewu-Jun,” Wei Wuxian complained. “I guess if we wanted to talk about what kind of things we would change if we could, it couldn’t hurt too much.”
“What would you want to do, if you ended up in the past?” Lan Xichen was curious, now that he had the chance to ask, what the Yiling Patriarch’s regrets were. His personality now was too different, so much more like he’d been as a child at Cloud Recesses. Why did he act that way, back then? Did he want to be the person he became?
If not, why had he done it anyway?
Wei Wuxian hummed. “You know, I’d rather the two of you made any choices about that. Everyone says my memory is terrible. I’d probably forget something important!”
Was it a serious request, or an attempt to dodge the question? “You really have nothing you wish were different, nothing you want to protect?”
“I do, but I’m clearly awful at it,” Wei Wuxian said with a wry smile. “I failed to protect anything, in the end. Everything I ever loved is dead or wants me dead, so whatever I thought back then, clearly I did everything wrong.”
“No,” Lan Wangji said.
“No?” Wei Wuxian said, his smile seemingly incongruous to the words he said so easily. “All that’s left of Lotus Pier is Jiang Cheng, and it’s clear his hatred hasn’t waned a bit in the years I’ve been dead. Wen Ning may still exist, but he has apparently lost his consciousness again entirely, and that’s if you can count him as being alive in the first place. Him, I failed long before even my first death. Too late,” he scoffed, “and the rest of his family I did manage to save at first all died in the end, anyway. What is it, then, that you think I managed to protect?”
“A-Yuan.”
“A…Yuan?” Wei Wuxian’s eyes went wide. “He…lived? Where is he? How is he doing? Is he happy?”
“Sizhui,” Lan Wangji said over the tumbling questions.
“Sizhui?” Was A-Yuan one of Sizhui’s friends?
“Lan Yuan, courtesy name Sizhui.”
Wei Wuxian was dumbstruck. He spent a full moment just staring at Lan Wangji, before he suddenly threw himself at him in a hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he chanted into Lan Wangji’s chest, overwhelmed. He knew there was no one else who would have saved Wen Yuan, no one who would have known his name and adopted him into the Lan clan anyway.
“I need to see him,” Wei Wuxian breathed, even though he’d just seen Lan Sizhui not long before; he’d spent some of the morning with the disciples, today. He ran out of the room at full speed, clearly having forgotten yet again the rule about running in the Cloud Recesses.
Lan Sizhui was walking serenely along the path when he was suddenly tackled from the side by an overly exuberant Wei Wuxian.
“Senior Mo!” he yelped. “I’m supposed to go practice the qin!”
“Practicing the qin! Oh, you’re such a good boy,” Wei Wuxian crooned. “Such a very good, responsible boy.” He continued to cling to him anyway, showing no signs of letting up any time soon.
The disciples were somewhat used to this kind of sporadic, inexplicable behavior at this point, so they didn’t often question it anymore. They’d all bought into the idea that his disintegrating soul occasionally affected his mind, and weren’t cruel enough to fault him for it.
“Senior Mo, I really need to go…” Lan Sizhui finally said.
“Yes, yes, go practice your music,” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Though you already play so well. Ah, you’re all grown up!”
Lan Sizhui was incredibly embarrassed by this sudden onslaught of praise and affection. By the time he managed to escape, he was sporting more than a hint of a flush.
“Lan—er-gege—” Wei Wuxian nearly tripped over the address again, forgetting he shouldn’t be so familiar with Lan Wangji in public.
Well, fuck it anyway. Wei Wuxian threw himself at Lan Wangji again. “You’re really good!” he exclaimed emphatically. “The best!”
Lan Wangji didn’t seem to know what to do with Wei Wuxian’s clinging, and eventually rested his own hand gently on Wei Wuxian’s back.
It took some time for Wei Wuxian to remember to return to Lan Xichen, a little covered in grass and with his hair messy, but sporting a completely genuine, verging on elated smile. Lan Xichen, having watched the proceedings from a bit farther away, couldn’t help but smile as well.
“Sorry, Sect Leader Lan,” Wei Wuxian laughed, almost silly with his happiness. “I wasn’t expecting that. But obviously I was right! Intervention from the twin jades is definitely what’s needed for a happy ending. If A-Yuan is safe and happy now, it can only be because of Lan Zhan.”
Lan Xichen glanced at his brother, amused and pleased with Lan Wangji’s own good spirits. As for what the Yiling Patriarch’s regrets were—he thought he had a pretty good idea, now.
(During the siege at the Burial Mounds, the corpses had fought, and so had the Wens who lived there—desperately, hopelessly outnumbered, they’d tried to protect the Yiling Patriarch anyway. Lan Xichen had cut down only corpses, had only protected people by opposing the malevolent undead—right up until the corpses turned on the Yiling Patriarch instead, tearing him to pieces so thoroughly no one could find even a hint of his body.
He knew, for himself, surely, it’d only been corpses.
But he also knew that, in that siege, no other Wen than little Wen Yuan had survived.)
Maybe the Yiling Patriarch really hadn’t been raising an army. Maybe he’d, even then, been the kind of person to laugh in delight because a single child was doing well.
“Well, there is no harm in giving you some help with a plan as you need it,” he said. “We still need to determine if the Past Resonance Array can really be used to send you back at all.”
“Right! And in the meantime, we can reminisce about the past together and bemoan all the things we would have changed.” Wei Wuxian looked at the two composed brothers, one as blank-faced as usual, the other with his normal, friendly smile, and laughed to himself. As if the two of them would have anything they wished they could have changed. When would the righteous twin jades of GusuLan have messed up in the first place?
They talked over several days, somewhat sporadically, between Wei Wuxian writing complicated and increasingly messy notes about the relevant material. Sometimes he wrote vague notes about things in the past; sometimes he wrote whole pages of detailed theory about time and souls before shoving it away to start on something new. Sometimes he still went outside, playing his flute for the children or watching over the disciples. He didn’t often try more active pursuits, now; Lan Xichen had a good idea as to why.
Though they continued looking over other books, those less obviously related to the problem at hand, another method did not present itself. Finally, Wei Wuxian settled on a theory he deemed plausible, and the three of them came together again to discuss.
“Resonating with the past won’t help me much by itself,” Wei Wuxian explained. “Since it overlaps the soul in both times, if I did it directly, my younger soul might just tear itself to pieces then and there. Though that might actually change the present for the better,” he suddenly mused, distracted.
“No.” Lan Wangji firmly cut off that train of thought, much to Wei Wuxian’s amusement.
“Right, you’ve put so much effort into this already, that’d be quite a waste. We could keep it as a backup plan, though!”
“No.” Lan Wangji’s face was dark.
“Okay, okay, no messing with the timeline just to see what happens,” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Directly resonating with the past wouldn’t have the effect I need, but when combined with the Soul-Calming Ceremony, it might be possible.”
“To hold your soul together long enough for the array to work?” Lan Xichen asked.
“No, that likely still wouldn’t help me much. The issue is less with my younger soul tearing to match this one and more with the Body-Offering Ritual attacking the combined version of my soul. It’s a powerful ritual, you know. But the Soul-Calming Ceremony will want my soul to come together and return to its proper body; combined with the Past Resonance Array overlapping my past and present soul, it might be able to send a somewhat whole version of my soul directly to the past. It also solves nicely the issue of what time period the Past Resonance Array will bring me to—there’s only one time a Soul-Calming Ceremony was used on me before. If we combine the ceremony and array appropriately, it should latch onto that experience as the anchor. Then the past Soul-Calming Ceremony can include the present version of my soul in its attempts at binding, and I’d be set!”
“That is a very specific and precarious set of circumstances you would need to set up,” Lan Xichen cautioned.
“It really is.” Wei Wuxian grinned. “But it’s the only way I can see this working. Use a Soul-Calming Ceremony to draw the pieces of my soul together outside of this body; open a window to a past Soul-Calming Ceremony with the Past Resonance Array; use the combined Soul-Calming Ceremonies on my combined soul to settle it in my actual body, which only exists in the past and doesn’t have any kind of ridiculous, soul-tearing ritual attached to it. All of that would have to go exactly as planned to avert disaster. The whole thing would be obscenely complex.”
“I will help,” Lan Wangji said.
“Great!” Wei Wuxian replied cheerfully. “Because I’m not actually too sure how your Soul-Calming Ceremony works. I’ve never studied the Lan clan’s compositions, or much theory on musical cultivation at all.”
“Does your flute-playing not involve musical cultivation?” Lan Xichen asked. Certainly Wei Wuxian was known for his flute.
“Sure, but I rarely make up my own songs that work with spiritual energy. As for directing dark entities, my whistling has exact tonal commands, but you could hardly call them a composition. On the flute, it doesn’t actually matter what melody I play, so long as the emotion is there. Like any other musician, I’m just using the songs to resonate with my listener.”
Lan Xichen thought that was a rather odd way to describe the corpses Wei Wuxian had commanded, but he supposed it wasn’t likely wrong.
“In any case,” Wei Wuxian said, getting back to the point, “while it wouldn’t be impossible for me to figure it out myself, I’d much prefer if Hanguang-Jun here handled the execution of the ceremony and the music itself. If I can focus on the array and the actual content of the ceremony, I’ll probably get results much sooner.”
Lan Wangji, of course, agreed.
“If this is actually going to happen, I’d feel a bit bad as things are now. You’ve both put so much effort into helping me, but I’m the one who’ll get to run around the past, changing things however I want.”
“There is no need,” Lan Xichen said with a smile. “You have already asked us countless times about things we would like to change.”
“Yes, but once I’m in the past, plans can change a lot,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’ll have the chance to choose what parts I keep and what parts I forget without issue, but what about you? How about you choose one thing each, one request I’ll fulfill no matter what. Think about it carefully, though! Once I’m in the past, you can’t change it, and I won’t let anyone talk me out of it.”
“That is a very generous offer,” Lan Xichen said thoughtfully.
“Not at all,” Wei Wuxian dismissed. “If you’re going to help me rewrite time, giving you a say in how it’s written is the least I could do.”
As their plans for the actual procedure got more and more concrete, their discussions of what should change in the past became more serious, until Lan Xichen actually put forward the question of how, exactly, Wei Wuxian would go about making those changes, starting with whom he should contact after arriving in the past.
“I’d rather not involve anyone else,” Wei Wuxian said pensively.
“Why not?” Surely he didn’t think the magnitude of the changes they all hoped for would come about easily.
“Playing at being a hero makes you a target; Jiang Cheng told me that so many times, maybe I should start listening. I don’t think I can protect everyone at that age, so the fewer people who know it has anything to do with me, the better. And that’s aside from my being a child and prone to pranking in the first place—who would we expect to believe me?”
They weren’t bad points, but Lan Xichen didn’t think isolation was the right way to handle them, either. “Even if you want to do everything alone, can you? As you said, you will be in the form of a young child, and the things you want to achieve are not subtle.”
“Right, but who am I?” Wei Wuxian said with a wide grin. “If I don’t want anyone to know, who could find out?”
“Something of this nature, from your actions to your own cultivation, would be clear to anyone who paid attention, even if you never explained why. There is a great difference between not speaking of something and avoiding suspicion altogether.”
“I know,” Wei Wuxian assured him. “I understand what would be involved, but you needn’t worry! I’ve done this kind of thing before.”
Lan Xichen remained unconvinced. “I believe you have hidden many things, Wei Wuxian, but you must admit that you were widely seen as a mysterious and incomprehensible figure. Having that kind of reputation as a child would do you no credit.”
“I don’t suppose you’d take your lack of belief in an obvious secret as confirmation that I could hide one?”
Lan Xichen’s smile was leaning toward amused; he didn’t bother with a verbal reply.
Wei Wuxian sighed, exaggeratedly aggrieved. “Well, I suppose, if this timeline isn’t going to exist anymore anyway, and you promise not to tell anyone else in case it does…”
“Do not worry,” Lan Xichen said. “If you feel strongly enough about choosing this method to disclose a secret as proof, we will not share it.”
Wei Wuxian actually looked to Lan Wangji for his own confirmation, and Lan Xichen started to wonder which of Wei Wuxian’s secrets he felt he needed to guard so carefully.
“Right!” Wei Wuxian said cheerfully, once he’d been assured of their silence. “You may not believe me, since I have no proof anymore, but let me just say: Not a single person guessed I gave my golden core to Jiang Cheng back when I was 17, and I didn’t say a thing to anyone, even him—not even when he led the charge to kill me for it.”
Lan Xichen sucked in a harsh breath. Of all the possibilities he could have entertained, all the things Wei Wuxian might have said to convince them that he could truly keep a secret, this would never have occurred to him.
“Gave…your core?” he finally asked, dazed. Could such a thing be done?
“Wen Qing was quite the genius,” Wei Wuxian told him. “She’d done a whole paper on core transplant, but I was her first real attempt. She said she was only about half confident, but I think she was underselling it to get me to stop bugging her, because everything went fine. Well, not quite everything, but close enough.”
“What went wrong?” Lan Wangji asked quietly. His face was beyond pale, but Lan Xichen didn’t have the presence of mind to be concerned about his mood.
“What are you looking like that for?” Wei Wuxian laughed. “It wasn’t anything during the actual operation! Wen Qing is too good for that. She just thought it could work with anesthesia, but it couldn’t. She spent two nights and a day without rest, operating on a patient that was actually awake, and didn’t make a single mistake—too impressive, right?”
Lan Xichen vaguely wondered if this was what Lan Wangji felt like, all those times he wanted to say something but the words clearly didn’t come. What could he say? How could he say it? Was there an appropriate response?
“Ah, but that wasn’t my point!” Wei Wuxian continued regardless. “My point was—what’s more obvious than being reduced to a normal person? I couldn’t even lift my lovely Suibian for more than a few minutes in a fight. And everyone actually believed that I was too bloodthirsty and arrogant to unsheathe my sword for a spar, what nonsense is that? When did I not want to brag and show off my ability, as a kid? Though I guess getting all high and mighty over my ‘amazing’ non-spiritual-energy cultivation I invented was pretty in-character, too.”
It was too soon for Lan Xichen to be able to consider all the implications of this, all the behaviors of the great Yiling Patriarch that would make sense, now—demonic cultivation hurt the practitioner, of course, how would Wei Wuxian as its ultimate authority not have known? Why did he do it anyway? Why, if he was so proud of it, did he refuse to teach anyone else? For fame? For glory?
Which of those had Wei Wuxian benefited from, in the end?
“So, how is it?” Wei Wuxian beamed, inexplicably, inappropriately. He spread his hands as if presenting himself. “Can I or can I not keep an obvious secret?”
Lan Xichen wouldn’t dare say he couldn’t. Where had Wei Wuxian’s cultivation gone?
Not a single person had asked.
“Did you really only cultivate until you were 17?” Lan Xichen asked a little later, when the brothers had managed to find a semblance of calm. Lan Xichen had found a bit of calm, anyway; Lan Wangji was still looking at Wei Wuxian like he wanted desperately to hold him, not that Wei Wuxian ever seemed to notice. Meanwhile Lan Xichen felt the diversion to an irrelevant topic almost necessary to stop the overwhelming flood of implications pushing for his attention all at once.
(Wei Wuxian joined the Sunshot Campaign and swept across battlefields with nothing but corpses, though everyone knew he was a talented cultivator. Wei Wuxian offended everyone with how he wouldn’t even bring his sword, looking down on others, saying demonic cultivation was more than enough. Wei Wuxian grew angrier, scarier, poisoned with dark energy, but wouldn’t listen to a single plea for him to give it up. Wei Wuxian left terror in his wake and wouldn’t stop, like he didn’t care, or he couldn’t change it—)
“Wow, you make me sound so inexperienced, when you put it like that,” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Yes, only about eight years of cultivation.”
“That your sword was so attached as to seal itself even within that time…” Wei Wuxian had started late, and likely hadn’t received his sword immediately, either; truly, he had been a rare talent to achieve so much in such little time.
“Seal itself? My Suibian did?” Wei Wuxian looked absolutely delighted, and didn’t stumble in the least over his sword’s name like so many others did.
“Yes, after your death, Jin Guangyao was the one to take your sword, and he told me it cannot be drawn by anyone else.”
“Ah, I knew my Suibian was the best,” Wei Wuxian cooed. Lan Xichen was starting to wonder if he called it by name so often to directly contrast how no one else would. “A pity I can’t see it again. Well, I’d gotten out of the habit of carrying a sword anyway, so I’d probably just forget it everywhere again.”
Wei Wuxian thought that Lan Xichen was a really polite man; unlike Jiang Cheng in the past, he didn’t show a single sign of reaction to Wei Wuxian’s complete disregard for a high-level sword. “Well! Regardless, nothing to be done now. I wouldn’t survive a trip even just to see it, if there were any point in doing such a thing in the first place. My poor, delicate body couldn’t handle the strain.”
He said it like a joke, but Lan Xichen rather thought it wasn’t.
Lan Xichen had wanted to ask his brother about his relative lack of surprise at Wei Wuxian’s admission; he’d been distressed, certainly, but not on the level of completely blindsided that Lan Xichen had been. It was more than Lan Wangji believing Wei Wuxian had a reason, but on further thought, it made sense: Lan Wangji had spent days passing spiritual energy to Wei Wuxian, he must have noticed something was wrong.
Still, Lan Xichen would have liked to ask. But when Wei Wuxian walked out, Lan Wangji followed him as if physically attached.
“What are you hovering for? It wasn’t a big stumble, I’m just a little tired. What are you going to do, carry me?” he heard Wei Wuxian ask teasingly. Followed shortly by “Stop, stop! I wasn’t being serious, you don’t need to carry me, Lan Zhan—”
Lan Xichen didn’t know how to feel about Wei Wuxian’s treatment of Lan Wangji; he wanted to be angry at Wei Wuxian for teasing Lan Wangji, but at the same time, Wei Wuxian wasn’t acting any differently than he had in his youth. If he couldn’t return Lan Wangji’s feelings, treating him normally was already pretty good.
Still, if he’d had any choice—Lan Xichen would have liked for Lan Wangji to never have suffered these feelings at all.
The next day, Lan Xichen called Wei Wuxian to him, specifically without Lan Wangji. He’d decided on his request, but he didn’t want to speak of it so openly, either. He’d thought about a lot of things he could have requested, about which of them he wouldn’t change his mind on no matter what, and eventually landed on this one.
“Wei Wuxian,” he said, feeling a mix between tired and relieved to finally say it. “If you cannot accept the way my brother feels, next time, please—do not tease him in the first place.”
Wei Wuxian was utterly baffled. “Can’t accept…what?”
Of the responses Lan Xichen had prepared for, ‘confusion’ was not even close. Even if Wei Wuxian had been cruel at the time, even a blind or deaf person would have understood Lan Wangji’s feelings.
“I didn’t think I wasn’t accepting him.” Wei Wuxian seemed to be talking to himself now, which almost made Lan Xichen angrier. In what way was telling Lan Wangji to get lost even as he tried to save him “accepting”? Where did Wei Wuxian find the gall to say such a thing?
“Even when everyone told me again and again that he hated me, I always thought our relationship wasn’t that bad. I tease most everybody, but I don’t think there’s anyone that’s hated me just for that.”
“I am referring specifically to the events that followed the time at Nightless City!” Lan Xichen could be patient about many things, but his brother’s happiness and well-being was not one of them.
Wei Wuxian seemed to be thinking hard, which Lan Xichen found increasingly offensive. Perhaps Wei Wuxian was known for his bad memory, but who could forget something like that? And even if he did, how dare he discard something that had caused Lan Wangji so much pain as if it weren’t worth remembering?
“Sect Leader Lan,” Wei Wuxian said finally, for once absolutely serious, and maybe even a little disturbed. “If it weren’t for the fact that I woke up in Yiling instead of at Nightless City, somehow still alive, I would have thought I had been completely unconscious. I have no memory of the intervening time at all.”
Lan Xichen stared at him, wide-eyed, somewhere between rage and disbelief. Unconscious?! But he spoke, did he not? He had enough consciousness to tell Lan Wangji to get lost, but not enough to remember it?!
“Did something else happen?” Wei Wuxian asked, definitely worried now.
But what could Lan Xichen say? How could he even begin to describe what Lan Wangji did for Wei Wuxian, how he fought his own sect, the punishment he endured, without a single attempt at justification—and what point would there be to it? If they succeeded in sending Wei Wuxian back—and for the sake of his brother, Lan Xichen knew they must—then it wouldn’t have happened at all. And if they failed…
He ended up just shaking his head, not denial but unwillingness. He’d thought, this last night, that he’d finally understood Wei Wuxian, with the secret of his core brought to light. Its mere existence said so much about him as a person. But Lan Xichen thought it was only now that he really understood what had motivated Wei Wuxian’s silence, and how he could have been so instinctively against the idea of changing this reality in the first place, too. How could Lan Xichen say what Lan Wangji had suffered? But at the same time, how could he bear for it to be erased without remark?
If everything could be undone, what meaning was there to the struggle of all these years? Was it nothing, if it hadn’t occurred?
What would travel to the past were only Wei Wuxian’s memories, a reality only he would know. If Lan Xichen spoke of it now, Lan Wangji’s pain would still exist, even after everything else was changed. Then maybe, maybe—he should say nothing.
“An apology for something I can’t understand the magnitude of might be meaningless, but Sect Leader Lan—I am sorry. I really never meant to cause Lan Zhan pain. Teasing is how I interact with most everyone I want to be close to, so I can’t promise that I could interact with him without falling into the same habits. But if you—If you think he’d be better off if I never spoke to him at all, I can take that as your request…” Wei Wuxian found that the words had to be dragged out of him, but he’d promised them each a request he wouldn’t go back on. If Lan Xichen asked it of him, he’d do it, no matter what.
“No,” Lan Xichen eventually said, but it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “It is not fair for me to make that decision for him, then or now. Instead, please…treat him well.”
“Alright.” Wei Wuxian felt unaccountably relieved. Though he and Lan Wangji had never been as close as Wei Wuxian always acted, the thought of making a promise he could never take back, to never even speak to him, no matter what Lan Wangji or Lan Xichen of the past might say, or how things might change—it hurt. Maybe just because Wei Wuxian had so little now, but he thought it’d hurt even if he had all the people he’d lost with him again, anyway. “But it just so happens that I’d already promised that to myself anyway, so please—ask for something else.”
And Lan Xichen wanted to laugh, or maybe cry, because Wei Wuxian was such a mess, stumbling into all the right things in all the wrong ways.
“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen said, after a deep breath. “Can you save him from being pushed down the stairs?”
It took Wei Wuxian a moment to understand whom Lan Xichen was referring to. Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen’s sworn brother, who had been pushed down the stairs of Koi Tower at 14, and still bore the scar.
“He was really distressed by all the politics he got pulled into, and the way people treated him because of his past. There have always been vicious misunderstandings arising from this, and I think…it would be nice, if he never had to deal with it at all.”
“Really?” Wei Wuxian asked. “Your one, ironclad wish is to prevent that one incident? You don’t have to decide now, if you want to think about it more.”
“No,” Lan Xichen said firmly. “Of the things in the past that matter to me most, my brothers are already most important, and I cannot ask you to save Nie Mingjue from his own cultivation.”
Wei Wuxian hadn’t known that Nie Mingjue had died, but given his strength, personality, and his sect’s history with cultivation, he supposed it wasn’t too surprising.
“So save A-Yao, please,” Lan Xichen said. “He deserves better.”
“Alright, then,” Wei Wuxian said. “We can figure out how to work him in the next time we meet up for planning.”
Lan Xichen watched Wei Wuxian leave, then walked to his window. Lan Wangji was resting nearby, where he’d passed on his way to speak to Lan Xichen earlier and ended up staying, dazed, due to what he’d overheard. Lan Xichen hadn’t been unaware of his presence, but he hadn’t stopped to admonish him for listening in, either. He thought Wei Wuxian’s words might be something Lan Wangji needed to hear.
“It would appear he did have a reason for never mentioning what happened in Yiling,” Lan Xichen told him quietly. “He has no memory of it.”
“Mm,” was the only response he got.
“It might be better, that you have the chance to explain to him on your own terms.”
Lan Wangji didn’t say anything else, just silently looked into the distance. Lan Xichen sighed, because he knew his brother wouldn’t. The situation really wasn’t much better than it had been back then, in terms of Wei Wuxian’s encroaching death and what he might feel he owed Lan Wangji for trying to save him from it.
They both knew, now, how seriously Wei Wuxian took loyalty and debts of gratitude. If he treated a relationship with Lan Wangji like that, it would only make them both miserable.
“You actually know the exact day that Jin Guangyao went to Koi Tower for the first time?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“…Yes,” Lan Xichen answered, bemused. “Even if I had wanted to avoid knowing, it was widely discussed for some time in the cultivation world.”
“Wow, is that what it’s like to have a memory that actually works?” Wei Wuxian cackled. “I couldn’t tell you the exact day anything happened, even in my own life!
Lan Xichen felt a little helpless at this assertion. Wei Wuxian’s memory really was abysmal. “A-Yao will be traveling from somewhere in Yunmeng, so you should have a good idea of what direction he would be coming from. Failing that, he was left to wait outside for quite some time; you should be able to intervene then. You might even be able to get an invitation, since it was Jin Zixuan’s birthday celebration.”
“It was?”
Lan Xichen inwardly despaired. Surely he should have known at least that much, if not from the oft-repeated story, then at least from recognizing the birthday of his shijie’s husband. “It was.”
“Well, even so, you’re thinking much too narrowly, Sect Leader Lan. If Jin Guangyao lived somewhere in Yunmeng, and I live in Yunmeng, I’m sure I can contrive to meet him a little sooner.”
“No one knows which brothel it was that A-Yao lived in,” Lan Xichen reminded him. “I could ask, but I believe he would prefer that I not know. Without explaining why I need the information, it would be much too rude.”
“Hm, yes, better not ask,” Wei Wuxian said. “But she was supposed to be a famous prostitute, right? In any case, I’ll figure it out. And if not, I can always take meeting him at the last second as a backup plan.”
How using the solid information they already had to plan out a meeting became an unreliable backup plan in Wei Wuxian’s mind was truly something to behold. Worse, Lan Xichen almost agreed that Wei Wuxian’s method would be preferable. If he could somehow find a way to save Jin Guangyao’s mother, or even just the trouble and disappointment of a trip to Koi Tower, Lan Xichen would certainly be grateful. “If A-Yao chooses to help you after you find him, he would be quite the asset. If you are serious about acting without being recognized, I am sure he would be able to help you.”
“He is very clever,” Wei Wuxian agreed, “and much better at social maneuvering than I am. Do you think that’s fair, though? My intent was to not involve anyone unduly with matters that will draw enmity.”
“Back then A-Yao always wanted a way to prove himself, and he is not afraid of danger,” Lan Xichen said with a smile. “You can trust him with your plans. He is one of the main reasons for the victory of the Sunshot Campaign.”
From there the discussion moved into constructing a timeline of events, prioritizing those that had caused the most harm and examining interrelatedness to see how one change might affect other events down the line. It could have been tedious work, but Wei Wuxian happened to have a strong interest in putting together facts and determining motivations, so he actually found it quite enjoyable.
And if all the talk of the Sunshot Campaign reminded Wei Wuxian to go check on Wen Ning again, well. He’d been busy before, and now was a better time than most. Lan Wangji had been particularly absorbed in his half of the work recently, though he claimed there was no issue with it when asked. Perhaps he was just very interested in the puzzle of it.
Wei Wuxian hopped the wall and sauntered down the mountain. He didn’t even get halfway before Wen Ning appeared before him, looking bedraggled and a little anxious, as he often did.
After the attempts at apologies and updates on what they’d missed, Wei Wuxian had to actually get around to explaining his current predicament.
“Young Master, they locked you up in the Cloud Recesses?” Wen Ning looked positively distraught.
“What ‘locked me up,’ am I not here right now? Lan Zhan just gets silly about my going off on my own sometimes, and I don’t have a jade token, so it’s a little inconvenient.”
Wen Ning looked at him mournfully. “But you hate being kept in one place…”
“And I’m not, right? Besides, we’re in the middle of research anyway. And!” Wei Wuxian suddenly remembered something much more important. “A-Yuan is here! Lan Zhan adopted him, can you believe it?”
“A-Yuan…” Wen Ning got that face he did sometimes, where it looked like he would be crying if he could.
“He’s called Lan Sizhui now. If we’re wrong about how this time array works, you should still be able to see him when he comes out. He got a bad fever and lost his memory, but he’s such a good boy, all grown up now.” Wei Wuxian sighed with a mix of pride and nostalgia. “So! Don’t be too sad, either way. Not everything about this version of events is so bad.”
“Young Master Wei…” Wen Ning’s face hadn’t left that not-quite-crying position yet.
“But if we can have a different version of events—Wen Ning, is there anything you’d like to change?”
Lan Wangji was waiting for him again when he climbed over the wall.
“Lan Zhan! You keep staying up so far past your bedtime! That can’t be good for you.”
“You should not climb.”
“Oh? But how else am I going to get down? Lan Zhan, will you catch me?”
“I will.” Lan Zhan stepped forward and spread his arms like he actually would, and Wei Wuxian laughed.
“Really? Don’t regret it!” He let himself fall over the edge of the wall, and Lan Wangji was as good as his word, solidly catching him despite the fact that Wei Wuxian was not much smaller than him at all.
“You can put me down now,” Wei Wuxian told him, but Lan Wangji continued walking back to the jingshi as if he couldn’t hear him. “Hey, don’t ignore me! Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, hey, look at me! Let me down!”
“Quiet,” Lan Wangji said. “It is late.”
Wei Wuxian wanted to continue protesting, but it didn’t take that long to get to the jingshi, and he really was tired, anyway. Well, if Lan Wangji was going to volunteer to be his vehicle, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t complain. It wasn’t like there was anyone else there to see them.
Having much of the plan fleshed out and Lan Xichen’s request settled, Wei Wuxian went to ask Lan Wangji if he knew, yet, what he would ask for.
“Do not cultivate the dark path,” Lan Wangji said.
Wei Wuxian yelped. “This still? How do you expect me to avert a war without it, especially when I’m that young? It may not be the righteous path, but it shouldn’t be a problem so long as I do righteous things with it. What could be more righteous than ending a war before it can harm anyone?”
“Demonic cultivation harms the body and the heart,” Lan Zhan said calmly.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian whined. “It’s only my body and heart, surely that’s fine? I’ll prioritize not hurting anyone else this time, even if I have to go live in seclusion for the rest of my life.”
Next to the door, where Lan Xichen was waiting for Wei Wuxian to get Lan Wangji’s request so they could continue their plans, Lan Xichen thought that any doubts he might have had over whether Wei Wuxian had really forgotten the events after Nightless City could now be put to rest. Wei Wuxian couldn’t possibly have chosen a worse argument to make than limiting the destruction to himself.
“No.” Lan Wangji didn’t bother with any extra words or an explanation.
Wei Wuxian groaned. “It can’t be that it’s unorthodox. I notice people using my inventions all the time even now; those came from ideas related to demonic cultivation, even if there’s no real use of resentful energy in making them.”
“No.” Lan Wangji’s answer wouldn’t change. “Inviting in resentful energy harms the body and the heart. Do not.”
Wei Wuxian sighed. “Okay, so it’s fine if it’s demonic cultivation adjacent, like the spirit attraction flags even your sect uses, but I can’t draw resentful energy into myself?”
Lan Wangji paused for a moment to think. “Yes.”
“Okay, okay,” Wei Wuxian said. “I understand. I promised a request, and I’ll stick to it.”
“Mm.”
Wei Wuxian huffed, then turned to Lan Xichen. “Sect Leader Lan,” he complained. “We have to start all over.”
Lan Xichen laughed. Wei Wuxian really had vaguely said “I have a way to handle it” or “that won’t be an issue this time” for more than half of the events they’d decided on changing when he went back. Assuming each of those was a reference to demonic cultivation—yes, they would have to start again from the beginning.
The new plan would be much, much more difficult for Wei Wuxian. It also relied fairly heavily on Meng Yao’s involvement for most of the major changes; Wei Wuxian would need a contact outside of Lotus Pier who could pull off his schemes if he wanted to remain undetected. Still, it greatly limited what kinds of changes they could make.
No matter what limitations they ran into, though, Wei Wuxian did not complain nor mention demonic cultivation as an alternative again. He discussed certain inventions he might be able to make once he had a proper body with his own cultivation again, but didn’t spend much time on them—finishing the combination of the Soul-Calming Ceremony and Past Resonance Array that would be able to take him to the past was of the highest importance.
At the end of the day, Lan Xichen found Wei Wuxian with the children again, finishing up an exaggerated story about several heroes working together to take down a great monster. The heroes were very obviously idealized versions of the children themselves, and they left in great spirits, excited to practice drawing talismans and perfecting their sword forms, eager for the future.
“You are good with children,” Lan Xichen commented.
“You think so?” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Wen Qing always said I was so terrible, but I always thought having a little one would be great fun. Maybe it’s better to do it as a community, though. If I have a kid alone with me too long, they tend to start crying…”
Wei Wuxian looked lost for a second, caught in memories of little Wen Yuan, who didn’t remember him now, and whom he couldn’t protect on his own, anyway. Maybe he really wasn’t cut out for kids.
“A community? Did you never…think of love?” Lan Xichen asked. It was possible that Wei Wuxian was just not the type to want a cultivation partner.
“Love? Hm, no, not really. I asked shijie—Madam Jiang about it once, because…” he trailed off.
“Ah, I don’t remember!” he laughed after a moment. “Still, at that point, whom could I afford to love? I was already so widely hated, you remember. More than that, I couldn’t afford to have a cultivation partner. With no core, how quickly was I bound to die? Leaving someone behind like that would really be too cruel.”
Lan Xichen thought of thirteen years of Lan Wangji’s unanswered Inquiry, every day without fail. It really was…too cruel.
“Before, then?” he asked. “You always seemed very interested in beautiful ladies.”
“Chatting with women is fun!” Wei Wuxian said easily. “But before? Before was the war. Before that—too young! I never had a chance to develop a proper relationship. It might seem hard to believe now, but I’m actually the type to save myself for my cultivation partner, you know.”
Wei Wuxian spun his flute around his fingers before catching it and tapping it against his leg. “Guess that’s a little silly, considering the end I got, but I really didn’t plan to give even kisses to anyone else! Oh,” Wei Wuxian laughed suddenly. “Though I guess someone did steal one when I wasn’t looking.”
“When you were…not looking?” What could that possibly mean?
“Yeah, literally not looking. The blindfold was my own foolishness, though, can’t really blame anyone else for something I put on myself. I never did figure out who it was. But it seemed to really matter to them, and it wasn’t like it was bad!”
In the process of shaking his head at Wei Wuxian’s lighthearted recounting, Lan Xichen caught Lan Wangji frozen at the side of the courtyard in the corner of his eye. “Hello, Wangji! Why do you—” look so guilty, Lan Xichen didn’t finish.
Oh.
Oh, that wasn’t…something Lan Wangji should have done. Lan Xichen had just been thinking that stealing that kiss wasn’t very fair to Wei Wuxian, for all that he seemed ready to brush aside the value he’d placed on it himself in favor of a stranger’s feelings. Even if Lan Xichen had somewhat assumed himself that Wei Wuxian’s frequent flirtation had corresponded to frequent action, something like that was still…
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian called, spirited as always as he bounced in Lan Wangji’s direction. “What are you doing over there? Isn’t eavesdropping forbidden in the Cloud Recesses?” he snickered.
“That day, you—you said…many…” Lan Wangji said haltingly.
“Hm? Many?” Wei Wuxian tilted his head to the side, then started laughing. “Oh, you mean when I said I’d had so many kisses already? I was just teasing you! Did you really believe that so easily? Ah, so refreshing, Lan-er-gege, always so innocent.”
Lan Wangji looked away, and Lan Xichen looked up at the sky, unsure if he could laugh at this absurd situation.
It would seem that in this instance, at least, Lan Wangji was the least innocent party there.
Lan Wangji had come to tell them that he’d finished his part of the ceremony. Since Wei Wuxian had already finished his own, all that was left was to combine the two parts and make sure everything would work. Lan Wangji intended to do it himself, but Wei Wuxian figured there wouldn’t be a problem if he showed it to Lan Xichen for his opinion, first. With something this complicated, it’d be best to have more than one person check it over for any problems.
And, indeed, Lan Xichen found one. Much more surprisingly, it wasn’t anything small.
“Using this as it is…” Lan Xichen furrowed his brow, studying the combined ceremony again.
“It won’t work?” Wei Wuxian frowned.
“Sending a soul that far back in time would use up all of its energy by the time it got there, even if it were in good health. The past resonance aspect is fine, but for the ceremony to bind your soul now to a body that far in the past…” Lan Xichen shook his head. “With the way your soul has fractured now, it likely would be unable to get you there at all.”
Wei Wuxian hummed, tapping his fingers on his chin. “Can the energy be augmented with an outside source?”
It was strange that Lan Wangji could miss such a thing, but perhaps he’d been distracted. The only other option was that he’d known from the start, and Wei Wuxian didn’t want to consider what that could mean.
“It…could. But it would have to be the same type of energy: a living soul.”
“Ah.” Wei Wuxian’s fingers stopped their tapping. “That’s no good. Figuring out how to fool the ceremony into thinking the energy came from a living soul would take longer than I have, if it can be done at all. And even then, there’s the issue of factoring another ‘person’ into the ceremony; there’s just no room for an outside entity in something this complicated, so there’s nothing to serve as the source.”
“The ritual’s enactor.” Lan Wangji had appeared in the doorway, looking utterly calm.
“Absolutely not,” Wei Wuxian responded instantly. It was easily achieved, almost certainly what Lan Wangji had already planned if Wei Wuxian actually thought about it, which he wouldn’t—but completely unacceptable. He drummed his fingers against his flute, then stopped with a sharp pat to its head, decided. “Even if the ceremony can be modified enough to fix this, it can’t be done within the next few days.” It was the first time he admitted out loud how little time he had now, but in this case, there was nothing left to hide. “It’s a shame to waste all that planning, but a ceremony that costs the enactor’s soul can’t be used.”
“I am willing.”
“I’m not,” Wei Wuxian said, cheerful over the sudden and fierce anger that twisted through him in response. Lan Wangji just really wouldn’t let him ignore this implication, would he? “If my soul is torn to shreds, fine, but I’m not taking anyone else down with me.”
“I am willing,” Lan Wangji said again, intent and serious.
“No.” The smile dropped off his face. “There’s nothing to be done with this method. We tried, but it didn’t work out. That’s the end of it.”
“Wei Ying.”
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian parroted, eyes narrowing into a glare. “Let it go.”
“I will not.”
“You—” Wei Wuxian pressed his lips closed, in case any of the anger churning inside him tried to spill out. He didn’t know if the remnant dark energy of the ritual or the tearing of his soul could lead to the same madness he’d experienced before, but he was sure he didn’t want to speak as carelessly as he had toward the end of his first life, regardless. So he left it there, whirling around and stalking off.
“A-Zhan…” Lan Xichen sighed. What could he say?
“Brother.” Lan Wangji didn’t further explain, but Lan Xichen didn’t need him to, anyway.
Thirteen years was a long time.
Lan Xichen found Wei Wuxian sitting on top of a building, agitatedly spinning his flute and staring up at the sky. Lan Xichen settled next to him, but Wei Wuxian didn’t look down.
“This timeline…will cease to exist, anyway,” Lan Xichen said after a moment of silence. He knew Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be thinking of anything else.
“You can’t be okay with this!” Wei Wuxian burst out, the flute’s spinning coming to a halt.
“Why not? If even a shadow of his soul survives the trip, there would still be more of him as he is now left than anyone else in this timeline.”
“It’s not worth it!”
“That…” Lan Xichen looked out at the grounds of Cloud Recesses, where Wei Wuxian had entertained children and taught disciples, laughed in the sun and played his flute with an aching kind of emotion that never showed on his bright and cheerful face. Where Wei Wuxian lived, so exuberantly and simply, while all the world hated him and his insides were hollowed with ever-escalating pain. “…is Wangji’s choice, is it not?”
Wei Wuxian gaped at him.
“You were willing to go back and erase this timeline before,” Lan Xichen reminded him. “Lan Wangji might use his soul now, but once you arrive, that choice will no longer have been made. There is little difference.”
“Little difference?! He’ll suffer, Sect Leader Lan! I know you don’t want that for him. I don’t want that for him. And what if the theory is wrong, and this timeline continues? What of his soul then? It’s no harm if my own soul disappears, but his? What logic is there in his going through this kind of thing for me?!”
Lan Xichen thought tiredly of the memories Wei Wuxian didn’t have, of the suffering Lan Wangji had already gone through for him. Years of longing followed by years of unending grief. What now, when even Lan Xichen thought Wei Wuxian’s death would be a shame? Would his suffering be any less, with Wei Wuxian’s soul scattered to dust, incapable of even reincarnation?
“It is Wangji’s choice,” he repeated. “And I have always thought Wangji’s choices were worth respecting.”
The look he gave Wei Wuxian was meaningful, and Wei Wuxian wasn’t so blind as to miss it.
“That’s not fair, Sect Leader Lan,” Wei Wuxian whispered.
“Come down when you are ready,” was his only reply.
None of this was fair.
“I,” Wei Wuxian said, slamming into the jingshi, “am going to get blindingly drunk.”
Lan Wangji turned to him with slightly drawn brows.
“Don’t give me that look,” Wei Wuxian said, coming forward with a mischievous smile to poke at the slight wrinkle in Lan Wangji’s forehead. “I know all about your stash of Emperor’s Smile. Really, back then you were so mad, even hitting me and throwing me off the wall, but now you hide it in your own room and secretly drink.”
“I did not touch any jar of Emperor’s Smile,” Lan Wangji replied calmly.
“Why did you hide them if you’re not drinking anything? Saving them for me?” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Fine, fine, you didn’t drink any. I’ll believe you. I’ll just drink them for you, then, okay?”
“Drinking to excess will cause harm.”
“In the long-term!” Wei Wuxian said cheerfully. “I don’t have a ‘long-term’ anymore, so it doesn’t matter!”
“Your health is already poor.”
“But if I don’t survive it, you won’t have to give up your soul. So that’s fine too!”
“Wei Ying.” Lan Wangji’s stony face would scare many others, but Wei Wuxian was so used to various stages of disapproval from a wide range of people by now that it barely registered.
“If I die tomorrow, I want to die having drunk Emperor’s Smile,” Wei Wuxian insisted, opening the cache. It was only then that he remembered two of these jars were now filled with water. But which two?
Well, there were several to choose from. Maybe his luck would be good. Wei Wuxian grabbed two jars out and put them on the desk. “Come on, drink with me, Lan Zhan! I want to have company.”
Wei Wuxian was expecting a prompt and blunt rejection, so he was surprised by Lan Wangji’s long hesitation.
“…I want to remember,” Lan Wangji finally said, before Wei Wuxian could think of something further to say to convince him.
“What, you don’t want to get too drunk? That’s fine, you don’t have to have a whole jar, if you’re really a lightweight. A single bowl won’t be enough to make you forget, right?”
Lan Wangji looked down, then slowly shook his head. “No alcohol. I want to remember.”
Was that a tacit admission that a single bowl would get him that drunk? Wei Wuxian stared, somewhere between disbelief and amusement. Now he really wanted to see it. Too bad there was only this one night left; he should have confronted Lan Wangji about the alcohol much sooner!
Wei Wuxian was in luck: The two jars he’d taken were both actually Emperor’s Smile. He was contemplating the rest of the jars, considering what kind of chance he’d have of getting the trick jars with these two already finished, but Lan Wangji stopped him before he could reach out for another. “It is unsafe,” he said seriously.
Wei Wuxian knew that. His soul was mere fragments at this point, his body an absolute mess internally, to the point where he wouldn’t be mobile much longer. If he’d had the ability to steal a jade token and skip down the mountain for some Emperor’s Smile of his own, he would have done it already. Fun as the idea of drinking with Lan Wangji might be, he wouldn’t have believed in his approval so much as to risk it if he had another choice. Serious alcohol intake might put his body in an even worse state; it wasn’t in any shape to waste energy on handling his recreational poison.
But he wanted to drink. He wanted to drink, because it was Emperor’s Smile, because he might not survive this, because Lan Wangji might not survive this, because his life was a shambles and he wanted something good.
“So what?” he said. “It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.”
Lan Wangji was noticeably frowning, but Wei Wuxian didn’t care. “You can’t fault me for being unhappy about this,” he said, the frustration pacing under his skin closer to the surface now. “I don’t want you to lose your soul! Using it up like that is completely different from dying. What if you can’t reincarnate?”
Wei Wuxian couldn’t stand the thought of Lan Wangji’s soul really disappearing, especially on account of him.
Lan Wangji’s lips were pressed together tightly, but he eventually responded. “…do not want to lose your soul,” he repeated. “Dying. Destroyed. Cannot reincarnate.”
It took Wei Wuxian a moment to realize Lan Wangji was actually talking about him. “…That’s different, Lan Zhan, that’s just me. Who cares what happens to me?”
Lan Wangji just shook his head. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, knuckles white.
“You’re too good, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian felt that something in him ached, like sorrow, but also warm. “Why are you so good?”
They were standing close already, since Lan Wangji had come to stop him, and with a slight lean forward Wei Wuxian found himself clinging to him. Maybe he had some thought that it would ease the feeling in his chest, though it didn’t. With his head rested on Lan Wangji’s chest, he could hear his steady, slightly-too-fast heartbeat. He probably hadn’t been expecting Wei Wuxian to grab him like that, but it was an impulse Wei Wuxian was too tired to think of suppressing.
He was really…really tired.
Lan Wangji, rather than push him away, slowly put his arms around him too, and rested his head on top of Wei Wuxian’s. Wei Wuxian thought that Lan Wangji was…probably pretty tired, too.
Still, with Lan Wangji’s head on his own as a reminder, Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but laugh. “So weird, I used to be much closer to your height.”
Wei Wuxian tilted his head to look up at Lan Wangji, while Lan Wangji had already shifted to look down at him. With a slight tilt of his head their foreheads touched, but neither of them moved back. Lan Wangji closed his eyes, and Wei Wuxian followed him.
It had been a long time since he’d had someone care about him like this, be so close to him in a non-threatening way.
“Thank you,” he finally whispered. He didn’t say what for; there were too many things, and it could hardly be put into words anyway.
Lan Wangji sighed and pulled away. “Go to sleep,” he said, but Wei Wuxian didn’t want to let go.
In the end, they woke up the next morning a mess, fully clothed and in the same bed.
Wei Wuxian hadn’t slept so well in a long time.
Everything was prepared for the modified ceremony, including, he’d repeatedly assured Lan Xichen, Wei Wuxian himself. Though he had a terrible memory for life events, Wei Wuxian would not have been known as a genius and one of the top cultivators in his generation if he couldn’t memorize his academics; when Lan Xichen asked him if he remembered the plan, he recited every important event and how they intended to change it from memory.
Wei Wuxian had already said his goodbyes to the disciples and children as well, using the excuse of a trip to make sense of his sudden farewells. The disciples were concerned, since they were now well aware that Wei Wuxian did not have the health to be running around, but he assured them the trip was supposed to help, and he’d be fine to go on it. He dodged around questions of whether he’d even survive it, courtesy of Lan Jingyi, telling them that while his health wasn’t the best, regardless, he had to go.
None of this was a lie: This trip to the past was supposed to help, and Wei Wuxian didn’t have long to live in Mo Xuanyu’s body, now. Regardless of whether or not the plan succeeded, in attempting this modified ceremony, in this timeline, for sure—he would die.
Wei Wuxian was not afraid of death, though, and he walked toward it all in good cheer.
“Are you nervous?” Lan Xichen asked, with his usual warm and accepting smile.
“A little,” Wei Wuxian replied. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen everyone, you know. I have no idea how I’ll react!”
Lan Xichen laughed a little. He noticed Wei Wuxian said nothing of what would happen to himself, or even Lan Wangji. Clearly, he’d chosen to put his faith in Lan Xichen’s brother.
Lan Wangji had already taken his place, so Wei Wuxian turned to Lan Xichen and gave him a sincere salute. “Thank you, Sect Leader Lan. Your willingness to help me, despite everything, is beyond what anyone could ask. I will do my best not to let you down.”
Lan Xichen was a little surprised, then somewhat amused. Wei Wuxian was not nearly as oblivious to others’ emotions as he might appear. He nodded in return. “I am sure you will.”
Wei Wuxian gave him a bright grin, then walked toward the array. “Are you ready, Lan Zhan?”
“Mm,” Lan Wangji replied.
“I’ll take off the seal, then let’s get started!” Wei Wuxian smiled at Lan Wangji as he got into position, then closed his eyes and put a hand on his chest, before shifting to clasp each wrist in the opposite hand. A light shone for a brief moment, and Wei Wuxian’s eyes opened again, but it was entirely different.
He looked absolutely terrible, and his eyes were somewhat empty; it was clear he hadn’t been joking about only being able to last a few more days. His soul was just about at the point where it would disperse, and if Lan Wangji weren’t the one doing it, Lan Xichen might be concerned that Wei Wuxian wouldn’t survive the trip.
Lan Wangji would never allow Wei Wuxian to disintegrate into nothing, though, so there was nothing to be worried about. Nothing but watching his little brother attempt an untested ceremony on the person he loved most, whom they were sending to the past with the hope that a nine-year-old child could make everything better, though he was all but in pieces himself now, even as an adult.
Wei Wuxian settled into the center of the array, and Lan Wangji began to play.
Lan Xichen watched his brother go paler and paler as the ceremony continued, feeding off of his own soul, watched Wei Wuxian slump as his soul resonated with something, somewhere else, some other time. His soul, barely clinging to that body in the first place, left it entirely, but didn’t disperse beyond the bounds of the array. Lan Wangji was nearing its end now, stubbornly continuing even as he lost strength, steadfast in his will to make sure this ceremony was completed properly, not pausing even as Mo Xuanyu’s body breathed its last before him.
Lan Xichen watched his brother fade as the ceremony moved toward its end, thought of all the different things in this timeline, all the people that had nothing to do with them, or even cultivation in general—thought about whether it would really affect them, affect everything, birds in flight and water running, thought about what he would do if this timeline marched on, with the array, with the bodies, as nothing seemed to change around him and Lan Wangji finished the active part of the ceremony, and its power started to recede.
Lan Wangji was slumped forward, and Lan Xichen took a deep breath, thought of Wei Wuxian’s confidence, and his brother’s intense and sincere love, and rather than wonder about how they were doing, if Wei Wuxian could survive or if Lan Wangji could succeed, wondered how the rest of the timeline was doing, what it would feel like for time to be overwritten, what it would mean for all of
Wei Wuxian wakes up in an array, inside an even smaller body than last time, has the delirious thought that he just keeps shrinking, and passes out.
In his fever dream, Madam Yu is angry again. He’s sitting up and looking at her, running on a vague but well-engrained instinct to keep upright, to look fine no matter what.
“You’ll bring disaster to Lotus Pier,” she says harshly. She seems to be doing something at the same time, but he’s not sure what; the details aren’t there. It might involve folding? “I’ve always thought so, but now there’s proof—”
Oh, it’s one of these dreams. “I’m sorry,” he says, because this is always what he wants to say.
“What are you sorry for?”
Through the floaty, suspended feeling inherent to his dreams, Wei Wuxian feels tears well up in his eyes, drip down his too-hot face. “I really did bring disaster to Lotus Pier. Everything burned, it’s all my fault, and the core-melting hand, there’s nothing left anymore—I’m so sorry, Madam Yu. I should have run away before. I should have just kept living on my own, but I dragged you all down, and now everything’s ruined—” his breath hitches, and that is weird. He doesn’t usually cry in dreams anyway, or if he does, he usually can’t feel it. But it’s never been so inconvenient to speak before. Maybe he’s been forced into silence in some of his nightmares, but it’s never been like this, where it’s just…unpleasant, and kind of snotty.
“You took care of me for so many years, and I repaid you so terribly,” he says anyway, because he actually usually doesn’t get this far in dreams. Usually she cuts him off more cruelly, or the scene changes and everything’s on fire, and she’s already dead—
“I’m really sorry,” he says again, and feels a bit lighter. How nice of his mind, to actually let him say it this time. “I tried to avenge you, but it wasn’t enough, and I did a terrible job anyway. I’m sorry.”
“Are you ill?” Madam Yu’s voice is much closer now. “Where are you getting all these ideas?”
“Memories, of course,” Wei Wuxian tells her, a little confused. Is she allowed to break the scene like that? Are there rules to dreams? “That’s where all these dreams come from, don’t they? I know the building I used to live in never got rebuilt, so it must be a memory.”
Cold hands impatiently brush back the hair on his face, and Wei Wuxian can properly see Madam Yu now, as she looks directly into his eyes. “Ill, but not enough to be delusional,” she mutters. “Just a little confusion. This is not a dream, Wei Ying. Now, what is all this about a disaster?”
Not a dream? Right, the array—weren’t they clinging to some kind of vague, ridiculous hope that he’d manage to go back in time? “Oh, so it worked!” says his traitor mouth. His thoughts are definitely supposed to stay in his head. That’s how they usually work.
“What worked?” Madam Yu asks, a little impatiently, and he’s confused again.
Didn’t he have a plan for what to say? Of course they wouldn’t send him back without a plan. They even made two, since Lan Wangji was so stubborn about demonic cultivation that they had to start all over. Of course, the beginning of both plans wasn’t too different, even started with the exact same idea—
Blend in. Avoid suspicion. Act like a normal nine-year-old boy who’s just been saved from the streets, whatever that looks like. It was at his own repeated insistence that they started the plans from this point.
“Wei Ying, answer the question!”
It would seem he needs a third plan.
…Somewhere, somewhen, Lan Xichen is definitely laughing at him.
Madam Yu is more than a match for a nine-year-old, malnourished boy suffering through a vague illness and burdened with too much information, information he certainly didn’t have before.
She gets her answers.
After she leaves, Wei Wuxian finds a way to draw a simple seal on his chest, something to suppress a core—the extra core, Mo Xuanyu’s core, that he didn’t realize would come with him. But the Body-Offering Ritual originally succeeded, or at least he cleared its demands, so the core and his soul were somewhat attached. Apparently, enough so for it to make the trip too. The confused, tugging, floaty sensation he had when he woke near Madam Yu came from the way his cores can’t both work in this body.
Though it isn’t a good way of handling it, sealing away Mo Xuanyu’s core will handle it, at least for now. As he reaches higher levels of cultivation, though, it really won’t be good. Still, he’ll find a way to deal with it later. For now, the seal—and his head cleared.
It cleared as much as it could, anyway. Through the confusion of his soul traveling through time, he felt a little like his mind had been torn to pieces and pasted back, overlapping to fit in a small space and with all the pieces not quite lined up.
Wei Wuxian touched his fingers to his face, slightly crusty with tears now dried. With the other important bits now handled, that was his biggest question.
Why the hell had he cried?
After much consultation with experts on the ceremony and a few more harrowing rounds of interrogation from Madam Yu and soft questioning from Uncle Jiang, the conclusion reached was that some damage must have happened to Wei Wuxian at a future date, and the Soul-Calming Ceremony somehow guided those fragments of memory back here and now. Wei Wuxian was a little impressed they guessed so much, though they pretty much went with “freak accident,” in the end.
Wei Wuxian managed to dodge any explanations of what his life after Lotus Pier’s fall was like, other than the war, and especially how he died. And came back. And died again, kind of. Really, it was too messy to get into, especially since, in terms of Wei Wuxian’s current capabilities, he and the twin jades had gravely miscalculated. Wei Wuxian was an adult soul in a child body, yes. But apparently he also had a child’s mind, specifically his own mind, from exactly where it was the first time through: just picked up off the streets and still suffering the aftereffects.
His preoccupied worry about causing inconvenience was severely engrained, his association of spice with good food was stronger than ever, and his fear of dogs—couldn’t even be mentioned. Almost literally.
Still, though, there was one thing he’d wanted to do when he came back, and he would do it, even if it meant bothering Madam Yu and talking about things he’d rather not.
“Can you…” Wei Wuxian steeled himself, because he was not actually a child, and he had faced so much worse than this. “Can you bring back Jiang Cheng’s dogs?”
He shook as he said it; he couldn’t help it. If he could have gotten over or conveniently suppressed his fear of dogs, he would have done it long ago. But he can manage it better, he can, even with his brain returned to the state it was just after he was saved, when every dog meant nothing but pain—
“Oh?” Madam Yu looked down at him, as unwelcoming to his presence as ever. “You have memories to show that you finally get past this foolishness?”
“No,” Wei Wuxian said lowly. “I—the memories—it never goes away. But—but I don’t want to start off like this, having taken away something he loves.”
He’d done more than enough of that already.
The agony of regret was so much worse in this little body, little mind, that had experienced so little of life, and he really couldn’t stand the way it cowed him into this kind of stammering mess. He needed to adapt or overcome as soon as possible, and he knew enough about numbness to be sure that wasn’t the solution he wanted. So instead, he would change as much as he could, return what had been taken and protect what he might otherwise lose. He would triumph over his own mind and build a better future.
He owed it to them.
Jiang Cheng, though, had different thoughts about this situation.
“What do you mean, ‘bring back my dogs’?” he said fiercely, storming into the room with all the rage a nine-year-old boy could possess. “Didn’t I tell you I’d protect you from dogs from now on?! You want me to be a liar, or you just don’t believe me?”
Wei Wuxian looked at him with wide eyes. He’d been secluded while they figured out what happened to him in the Soul-Calming Ceremony, so he hadn’t been close to Jiang Cheng yet since his return. Wei Wuxian had only been at Lotus Pier for about a month at this point, and he was still severely malnourished. Jiang Cheng, as of now, was clearly larger than him.
He’d forgotten there’d ever been such a time.
“They already have happy families they live with anyway,” Jiang Cheng said self-righteously. “I can go visit them if I want to. And I don’t need anyone saying I’m only good at night-hunting because I have dogs, so it’s better not to rely on them now. I already thought about all this, so why can’t you?! Don’t just go making decisions all on your own! I’m not air that you can ignore me so easily! If I say no more dogs, then there are no more dogs!”
“…No dogs?” Wei Wuxian asked quietly, not sure what to do with the burgeoning warmth within him.
Jiang Cheng puffed up his little chest. “No dogs!” he insisted.
Wei Wuxian smiled.