Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Wei Wuxian woke to pain and being enveloped in red and golden light. It took half an hour but the light receded and he realized that his array had worked.
After the events in Guanyin Temple, some things changed, some remained the same. He spent fifteen blissfully happy years with his husband and son at the Cloud Recesses, teaching the disciples and inventing new things to help the cultivation world during night hunts. He and his brother had talked and cleared a few of the misunderstandings, but their relationship never went back to what it was before. But they had been happy. Everything settled in some kind of peace. Then the Discussion Conference in Gusu happened. There were always a few smaller sects that were unhappy to see the Lan sect along with YunmengJiang, LanlingJin and QingheNie be in support of the Yiling Patriarch. Wei Wuxian had long since started cultivating with Mo XuanYu’s core and hardly ever used resentful energy to fight. They took this opportunity to unleash a demonic entity in Cloud Recesses which was too powerful even for Wei Wuxian to control. It turned into the biggest bloodbath ever experienced by the cultivation world.
In the end, Lan Xichen had given them a chance to run. Wei Wuxian picked up his injured husband and went to the one place which always was safe for him, The Yiling Burial Mounds. There in the Demon-Slaughtering cave, he drew an array, with his and his precious Hanguang Jun’s blood, that he had worked on before but never thought he would use. It would transport both of their souls with their memories to their past selves. He and his husband poured all their spiritual power into it. When it fell short, he requested the resentful energy of Burial mounds for help. It welcomed its protector once again and gave as much as he needed, unknowingly overpowering it. The only snag was there would be a price for going back, for him since he was the wielder and he wont know about it till he woke up in the past. But the Energy in the Burial Mounds encouraged him to go through with it without fear and that it would help him as he once did for them. With that, both the husbands held each other for the last time and with the promise to meet again, activated the array. What his husband didn’t know was she had made a small adjustment to the array. Lan Wangji, or anyone else who would be pulled with him, would not remember his past until the first time they meet and then there will be a small ritual to merge his past and present selves. He had to do this since he didn’t know what effect it would have on Wen Ning, since he was connected to Wei Wuxian.
Which brings us to the present.
There was a small ritual Wei Ying had to do to merge his past and present cores, soul and memories. Drawing a small character for merging, he powered it up and lost consciousness. It lasted for three days. During the merging of memories, he found out that he was now a girl, just a year younger than Yanli and three years older than Jiang Cheng, looked like his father except his eyes and smile and SHE was only twelve right now. She was mischievous but everybody in Lotus Pier loved her including Madam Yu. Since she looked like her father in looks as well as in physique, the rumors never lasted about her being the Jiang Sect Leader’s love child. Also Jiang Fengmian treated all his kids equally well and Madam Yu seeing her strong core took it upon herself to train her personally. All the differences in his/her past were too much but since the merging was successful, he got used to being a girl pretty quickly.
Three days later, when she finally woke, it was to see a frowning little Jiang Cheng sleeping while holding her hand, he must have fell asleep keeping watch. She gently began to run her fingers through his hair to try and wake him up when she saw movement from the corner of her eye. It was Madam Yu’s Jinzhu.
“Jinzhu-Jie, how long was I out for and what happened?” Wei Ying asked.
Jinzhu just looked a combination of relived and happy seeing her awake. Everyone had panicked when the first disciple of Yunmeng Jiang had failed to report to her sword training and later found unconscious and running a high fever in her rooms. The healers who were brought, told them that it was just her golden core fluctuating, but they told them to be carefully watch her for the first twenty-four hours. Her golden core had been in a constant state of flux not settling. What the healers and her guardians didn’t know was that merging two cores was in itself difficult but due to using resentful energy in the array, she found she had a second red coloured core, which was trying to stabilize itself along with the two merging cores. But it was getting difficult as she was still in her twelve-year-old body, so she put a seal over it so that it can only be accessed when she deemed it necessary or later after she grew strong enough to control and cultivate with it.
Just as she was being told the healer’s prognosis, her little brother started waking up. She softly called to him, “A-Cheng, are you waking up?”
Hearing his sister’s voice, he jumped up on the bed and fell on her, hugging and crying. Even though it was painful, she sat up and pulled him in her lap, softly humming a tune to calm him down. Later, she would realize this was the same lullaby that she used to hum for her A-yuan, but for now, “A-Cheng, I’m alright now. Look up, look at me”
Jiang Cheng looked up to her face, and the pain and fear in her brother’s eyes broke her heart.
“Shijie, you didn’t wake up, even when everyone called for you. I was scared. Don’t do it again.”
The last part almost sounded like an order, but coming from a nine-year-old kid, it could only be called adorable. Meanwhile, Jinzhu had gone to tell everyone else of hew waking and to call for their healer. The family arrived first, all from different directions. The Sect Leader from his office, Madam Yu from the training fields and Yanli from the kitchens.
After the healers pronounced her well, Jiang Cheng suddenly exclaimed, “Shijie, its my birthday today. Come have lunch with us instead of the disciples please.”
“Ok, A-Cheng, I’ll have lunch with you today, just let me freshen up and change and I’ll join you, okay? And as I didn’t have time to get you a present, just this once, you get to ask for a present of your choice.”
Hearing that, a happy Jiang Cheng, a giggling Yanli and chuckling parents, all left her to her own devices. She had an hour before lunch so she had a proper bath, she was still getting used to her female body but muscle memory was a great thing, and combed her hair into twisted braids on one side and put all her hair in a high pony tail. She wore her normal sect robes and remembering that she had made a new enchanted purple lotus charm for the tassel on his belt, picked it up and went to join the family in the hall for lunch.
On the way, every person that she met, told her how happy they were that she was alright again and made sure to tell her to take care of herself more. As everybody sat down to eat, she was updated as to what had happened in and around their home. It was nothing special, just the regular everyday stuff, but she felt grounded by the routine of sharing of info. As they finished their lunch, everyone took out their presents for the birthday-boy except Wei Ying. He had received a new purple robe from his parents, and a finely embroidered cloak to go with the robes from Yanli.
When it was her turn, remembering her promise, Wei Ying asked, “So, what would you like your present to be?” A-Cheng first looked at his parents, then his sister and finally towards her.
“For my birthday present, I would like, from today, to call you A-Jie instead of Shijie.” He said.
When Wei Ying looked the Sect leaders, they were both smiling encouragingly. She felt overwhelmed by the show of so much love and acceptance, which he only had received from his Shijie in his previous life. She didn’t even think before saying an emotional, “Yes” when she found herself with an armful of little brother who refused to get up from her lap for the rest of afternoon. She also presented him with the gift that she had carved and asked him to always keep it on him.
Things settle down after a few days. This time Wei Ying has decided that both her siblings would be powerful cultivators in their own right. She talks about it with Madam Yu and then all the three children start on a new routine. Her sister loved peace, but she would protect what she loves with the fierceness of a tigress. So, Wei Wuxian decides that defence, strategy along with the six arts are going to be what she would be good at. She encourages her sister and helps her where necessary. She teaches her how to wield a sword, but also makes her proficient in the use of slim daggers called fletches, easy to hide on one’s self and lighter to use. For this she asks Madam Yu’s maids Jinzhu And Yinzhu to help her.
With Jiang Cheng being still too young, she trains him along with his sister, in hand to hand martial arts and makes maze like hurdles for him to complete daily. He always wanted to be strong and to protect the people he loved. She teaches them arrays, talismans, takes them to the healers to learn many things from basic first aid to recognising all kinds of herbs and poisons. She never stopped inventing new things. Her Spirit Attraction Flags and compass were a hit in the whole cultivation world. They made sure to copyright the design to the sect so nobody else would try to steal the designs.
At ten, when Jiang Cheng gets his sword, Sandu, her training gets even more rigorous. She would be fourteen soon and the sect’s leaders, both of them, had asked her to take over complete duties of the First Disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect. She added a few new things to the training. Doing physical strength-based exercises, like handstands, weights and laps while keeping their spiritual energy locked was compulsory for all senior disciples. She led by example on this matter. Everyone, including the female disciples had to follow this. On her insistence, an extra class was added for all the male and female disciple above twelve-years of age. They were taught how to fight of persons three times their sizes. They were given proper sex education by the healers. Most importantly they were taught to respect and protect each other and everybody else and give everyone a common courtesy of first and foremost of treating like humans. Though Sect Leader Jiang and Madam Yu were perplexed by this, they accepted that this was a good lesson to be taught.
Wei Ying also started visiting the poorer areas along with his siblings, providing the people there with medicines, food and clothing where ever necessary. She converted two of the empty hovels into an orphanage and a soup kitchen. That was just once a week. Rest of the week, the rest of the disciples would do the same.
By the time Wei Ying was fifteen, and ready to go on night hunts on her own, the Yunmeng Jiang disciples had become some of the strongest cultivators. There had been some kind of incident previous year, which had sent Madam Yu in a rage and Sect Leader Jiang so angry he went into isolation for three days. Wei Ying had been quiet for a couple of weeks but then everything had gone back to normal.