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“I just really think you’re going to regret this,” says Xie Lian to the ghost known as White Dragon Devouring Moon Hong Ying: current Wrath, aspiring Devastation, kidnapper, fool. “Respectfully, I think you’re in a little over your head.”
White Dragon Devouring Moon Hong Ying continues doing what he has for the past hour, which is pacing agitatedly back and forth. Every so often he’ll bob his head in a peculiar way, like he’s listening to music only he can hear. Then he’ll catch himself doing it and stop, only to start up again a few minutes later. It’s a process Xie Lian has been observing with increasing curiosity. Partly because it’s odd, but mostly because White Dragon Devouring Moon has brought him to a dark clearing in a darker forest at the top of an unremarkable mountain, and there’s nothing more interesting to look at. Also, Xie Lian is chained to a tree.
As Wraths go, White Dragon Devouring Moon isn’t the most intimidating Xie Lian has ever encountered. During the actual kidnapping he took the form of an enormous white dragon, his snakelike body shimmering iridescent in the moonlight, with claws like scimitars and a great flame-orange crest fanning out around his head. It was all very dramatic. A bit much, in Xie Lian’s opinion. Shi Qingxuan probably would have appreciated it; they loved a spectacle.
However, the moment they touched down in the clearing, White Dragon Devouring Moon’s dragon form melted away like a snowbank to reveal a gawky young man in white robes. He pulled a length of chain from his sleeve and said, “Go sit at the base of that tree. One wrong move and I’ll cut out your eyes.”
“Oh! No need, I’ll cooperate,” said Xie Lian, and did as he was told, settling among the tree roots and raising his arms so White Dragon Devouring Moon could loop the chains around his waist. “Are these qi-suppressing chains?” he asked. “That’s pretty advanced.”
“Shut up,” said White Dragon Devouring Moon. Even in his human form, his voice carried the coarse, tumbling-rock scrape of a dragon’s roar. “I need you alive, not whole. Keep talking and I’ll cut out your tongue.”
Xie Lian offered his wrists for a pair of shackles. “Why do you need me, exactly? I assume you’re using me as bait for San—Hua Chengzhu, but what is it you want?”
“I’m going to kill the Ghost King,” said White Dragon Devouring Moon.
“Hmm,” said Xie Lian.
After finishing with the chains, White Dragon Devouring Moon stood in the center of the clearing for a long time, craning his head back to look at the sky. Then he started pacing.
It’s a hot, rain-scented night, the gibbous moon like a sleepy eye struggling to stay open, the forest alive with cicada song and chirping frogs, the occasional trill of a nightingale. Xie Lian can hear tiny creatures scuttling in the underbrush. Mice and rabbits and such. Ah, he’s hungry. Hua Cheng was just fetching him a bun when the kidnapping happened.
Xie Lian allows himself a minute to think mournfully of the bun he didn’t get to share with Hua Cheng.
Then he clears his throat and says, “So! You want to kill the Ghost King.”
Not the most delicate opener, but Xie Lian figures that if White Dragon Devouring Moon hasn’t got all the brooding out of his system by now, it’s simply not going to happen. He’s been pacing for so long he’s worn a line of black earth into the carpet of copper pine needles. Something has to give.
White Dragon Devouring Moon whips around, beady black eyes flashing. “I am going to kill the Ghost King,” he snaps.
“Right, of course,” Xie Lian says. “Quick question. Are you aware that Hua Cheng, the Ghost King, also known as Scourge of the Heavens and the most powerful of the Four Great Calamities, has battled his way out of the Kiln of Mount Tonglu twice over, defeated thirty-three Heavenly Officials and burned all their temples in a single night, and most recently fought and killed the White-Clothed Calamity?”
“Of course I know that!” says White Dragon Devouring Moon.
“Oh, good. Just checking.”
“I’m not an idiot!” he continues. Moonlight slides across his face as he advances on Xie Lian, illuminating the jut of a larger-than-average nose. “But I’m powerful, too! I’ve spent the last hundred years making a name for myself! I’ve slain over one hundred thousand ghosts! A Wrath is only one step down from a Devastation, so—so if I can defeat a Calamity, I’ll become a Devastation for sure!”
“I see,” says Xie Lian. “But—and please, do correct me if I’m wrong—aren’t there multiple ways to become a Devastation? Surely there’s something easier than directly challenging the Ghost King. Maybe you can start smaller and work your way up.” He snaps his fingers, chains rattling with the movement. “I know! Why don’t you start with Green Ghost Qi Rong?”
White Dragon Devouring Moon shakes his head hard. “No. No, I’m strong enough to face Crimson Rain Seeking Flower,” he says in that throaty voice. “I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of being—” He cuts off abruptly. “Hey! Stop tricking me into talking! I really will cut out your tongue!”
“Sorry, sorry,” says Xie Lian. “I’ll shut up, I promise. I just have one more question.”
“What,” spits White Dragon Devouring Moon.
“Why are you pretending to be a Wrath?”
Silence, except for the cicadas. Then White Dragon Devouring Moon rears back, hissing sharply through his teeth. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about! Shut your mouth!”
“I first suspected it when you coiled around me on the lakeshore,” Xie Lian says. “There was something strange about your scales. When you were distracted with flying I tried to peel a scale off your back, but found I couldn’t. There weren’t individual scales—just one big skin with a scale-like pattern. A dragon form like that must take massive amounts of qi to maintain, right? All those details…. If you don’t have enough spiritual power, you certainly wouldn’t be able to make separate scales.” He shifts, wincing; tree roots are not kind on the tailbone. “The second clue was that you took a human form as soon as we landed. I assumed it was because you wouldn’t be able to maneuver the chains with dragon claws. But you didn’t return to your dragon form after that, though you would have been far more intimidating. An odd choice, as you’re expecting San—Hua Cheng to arrive at any moment.”
White Dragon Devouring Moon’s mouth opens and closes like a dying fish.
“The third and most obvious clue is, of course, all around us,” says Xie Lian.
White Dragon Devouring Moon looks around wildly, as if expecting a ghost army to burst from the shadows. “What—what do you mean?”
“Listen.”
“Stop playing games!”
“No, I’m serious. Listen.” Xie Lian closes his eyes. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what? All I hear is cicadas!”
“Exactly,” says Xie Lian. “Cicadas. If a true Wrath entered this forest, the insects would fall silent. The frogs and birds, too. Even the mice know to flee from a Wrath’s dark aura. But we’ve been here for over an hour and the cicadas never once stopped singing. Which leads me to my question: Why are you pretending to be a Wrath?”
“None of your fucking business,” White Dragon Devouring Moon snarls.
Right. No matter how Xie Lian looks at it, none of this makes sense. He’d understand if an actual Wrath like Qi Rong kidnapped him as bait for Hua Cheng. It would still be astoundingly foolish and arrogant, but at least that’s consistent for a Wrath. This, however…. This doesn’t feel like straightforward arrogance. White Dragon Devouring Moon must know how easily Hua Cheng could obliterate him. It’s not arrogance that made him kidnap the Ghost King’s beloved in front of a thousand witnesses at the Hungry Ghost Festival.
It’s something else. But what?
Xie Lian finds White Dragon Devouring Moon’s eyes in the gloomy dark. “Hong Ying,” he says gently. “Hua Cheng is going to destroy you. That’s not a threat. It is a fact. I suggest you leave now, while you still can.” He holds out his wrists and wiggles them around, moonlight catching on the shackles. “He doesn’t like it when people put me in these things.”
White Dragon Devouring Moon’s mouth curves into a crooked smile. “That’s where you’re wrong, Taizi Dianxia,” he says. “Hua Chengzhu won’t destroy me. Not when I tell him your spiritual power is tied to mine. If I hurt, you hurt.”
“Is that so!” says Xie Lian. “How did you manage that?”
“A Yin Xian talisman. You didn’t even notice, did you? Ha!”
“I confess I didn’t. Oh, my. You’ve really got me in a bind.”
“You’re damn right.” White Dragon Devouring Moon puffs out his chest. “I’ve studied the Ghost King’s weaknesses. I know how to defeat him.”
“His weaknesses?” says Xie Lian. “Does he have very many?”
“Well, really it’s just the one.”
Xie Lian feels his face grow warm, his heart an ember, floating. “Is it me?”
White Dragon Devouring Moon stares at him. “Obviously it’s you. Why else would I kidnap you?”
“Maybe you were lonely and wanted company.”
“Shut the fuck up,” says White Dragon Devouring Moon, and returns to his pacing.
“Ahh, San Lang,” Xie Lian murmurs to himself. He thinks of how handsome Hua Cheng looked earlier this evening in the reddish-gold glow of the festival lights, shadows pooling in the hollows of his throat, under the knife-blade of his jaw. Lanterns reflecting in his eye like golden carp kissing the surface of a black pond. Sometimes Hua Cheng smiles and Xie Lian doesn’t even know what to do with himself, with his hands; his heart is a thousand orchards of cherry trees all flowering at once. It seems impossible to hold that much spring.
And yet he does.
-
Last night, on the eve of the Hungry Ghost Festival, Xie Lian and Hua Cheng stayed up later than usual. Hua Cheng was working on an ink-wash study of two sparrows framed by willow catkins. Xie Lian was supposed to be reading aloud but kept getting distracted by the flex of Hua Cheng’s long, moon-pale hands, the careful movements of his wrist.
“San Lang,” he said, “if it’s not too much trouble, could you paint another scroll to hang in the shrine?”
Within moments, Hua Cheng had a fresh silk scroll spread out on the jade table. “I’d be honored,” he said, left eye crinkling. “What kind of painting did gege have in mind? A portrait? A mountain scene?”
Xie Lian set aside the book he’d been reading, shuffled on his knees around the edge of the table, and climbed into Hua Cheng’s lap.
“Oh,” said Hua Cheng, blinking rapidly. “Hello.”
“Hello,” said Xie Lian. “Did you know you’re very handsome?”
Hua Cheng tipped forward, hiding his face in the crook of Xie Lian’s shoulder. “Gege,” he said, and his hands came to rest on Xie Lian’s hips.
Xie Lian hummed, sliding his fingers into the silky hair at Hua Cheng’s nape. “San Lang is so handsome,” he said in the voice that always made that bloodless face turn red, the laws of Hua Cheng’s ghostly body bending to desire. “Handsome and talented and good.”
“Only good for gege,” Hua Cheng mumbled. “Everyone else can rot.”
“Is that so? Then who did I catch playing dice with Lady Windmaster the other day?”
Hua Cheng raised his head. “I told you, we got bored waiting for you to come back. She wouldn’t leave. ”
“Mm-hm.”
“I’m extremely fearsome and I hate everyone but you.”
“Then I suppose I’m very lucky,” said Xie Lian, and bent to kiss him.
It was still strange, this desire. Xie Lian hadn’t been all that tactile even before his first ascension, but after the fall of Xian Le, after everything he saw in the quarantine camps, there was a period of time when the reality of the human body—rubbery flesh and skeletal limbs and glistening, bloodshot eyes—made him want to throw up. Then the night of the temple happened. After that, even the slightest touch—his mother’s hand on his shoulder, a stranger bumping into him on a crowded street—felt like being held down and cut apart until he could no longer remember what it felt like to be whole. His body was the ruin of an ancient building buried in volcanic ash, parts of which might someday be unearthed, but most of which would remain forever lost in the suffocating dark. Two hundred years passed like that. By the time he could handle casual touch without cracking apart, there was nobody, human or god, who wanted to touch him.
Four hundred years ago, an old woman at a traveler’s inn mistook Xie Lian for her recently buried son. She was out of her mind with grief, carrying on a conversation with thin air, the skin on her hands all red and cracked from endless wringing. Xie Lian didn’t have the heart to tell her he wasn’t her son. He talked to her all night, until both their throats were raw. She ran out of words around dawn. As the light in her room shifted from deep blue to palest gray, she pulled Xie Lian into her thin arms. She pressed her papery cheek to the crown of his head and stroked his spine with gnarled hands and sang a lullaby in a dialect he recognized but couldn’t speak. Then she whispered a few words and released him. And he bid her goodbye and left the room and left the inn and walked until he reached the banks of a nearby river, where he waded into the current and sank to his knees and let the water, icy with coming winter, close over his head, submerging himself until his entire body was numb, and he wished the numbness could go on forever, and wished someone would hold him again, and knew they would not.
It wasn’t so bad. He got used to it. His hands forgot how to touch people, and his body forgot how to be touched, or how to want to be touched, or how to want anything at all.
But he wants Hua Cheng. Always.
“So good, San Lang,” Xie Lian said last night, lips brushing Hua Cheng’s ear. He tightened his grip in Hua Cheng’s hair and used it to tilt Hua Cheng’s head back, baring the pale curve of his throat. “Your hands,” he murmured, and shifted to straddle Hua Cheng’s lap, thighs spread around those narrow hips. Like this he had the height advantage, if only by a palm-width. Like this he could lean down to slide their mouths together. He could let one hand fall away from Hua Cheng’s hair to cup his face, thumb tracing his high, pretty cheekbone, fingertips resting at the hinge of his jaw.
“My hands?” Hua Cheng said, sounding dazed. The hands in question moved from Xie Lian’s hips to the inlet of his waist, sinking into the white folds of his robes. “There’s nothing special about my hands, gege.”
“Not so, not so,” said Xie Lian. “Yours are the only hands I want on me, after all. Nobody else, just my San Lang.” He reached down and took Hua Cheng’s wrists, guiding those hands to his lower back. Then he hooked his arms around Hua Cheng’s neck and rocked into him, just once, just enough to brush up against the flat muscle of his lower belly.
Hua Cheng, who did not need to breathe, drew in a long breath through his nose. “Fuck,” he said, and then, “Gege,” when Xie Lian rocked forward again.
It still takes Xie Lian a long time to grow fully aroused, in the physical sense. Eight hundred years of not wanting are not so easily undone. His mind is partitioned by countless barriers, some he was aware of and some he didn’t discover until they became abruptly relevant under Hua Cheng’s searching hands. The sutras, once a comfort, now ensnare him like spider’s silk. Sometimes Hua Cheng appears at Puji Shrine, ducking his head to clear the doorway, silhouetted against a sunset or lavender twilight or summer rain, and Xie Lian’s heart blooms at the sight of him, and a voice in his head starts chanting—therefore the sage seeks to satisfy the craving of the belly and not the insatiable longing of the eyes—he puts from him the latter and prefers to seek the former—but no, that’s not—he doesn’t need to do that; he’s decided. He can bloom. He can desire. He can close the distance between them and push up on his tip-toes and draw Hua Cheng into a kiss that doesn’t stop until Hua Cheng’s hoisting him up with both hands under his thighs and Xie Lian’s clinging to him and saying San Lang, San Lang ah, and then Hua Cheng takes a step forward and the world is briefly silver and they’re in his bedroom at Paradise Manor and he carries Xie Lian to the bed and lowers him to the soft soft blankets and crawls over him, a bloodred curve in the light, and kisses him deep as rainfall sinking into the earth. Xie Lian can do that.
Last night, on the eve of the Hungry Ghost Festival, Xie Lian took Hua Cheng’s face in his hands and pressed a kiss to his forehead, then the space between his eyebrows. His left eyelid, the puckered scar of the other. He trailed his lips down Hua Cheng’s cheek to find his mouth again, kissing him slowly, letting their lips catch and stick like old locks. Want you, he thought dizzily, hips restless. Want you, want you. His most precious person. His San Lang. To kiss him wasn’t heaven; it was human. Not godly or ghostly, not the state of them, just them. Their mouths, Hua Cheng’s hands, his silent chest, his messy hair, his scars and sharp elbows and bony knees. Xie Lian thought of a story he’d been told as a child: Once, a long time ago in a kingdom that has long since been forgotten, there was a crown prince who hired a hundred poets to each write a hundred poems about the prince’s beloved, in the hopes that even one poem would be able to sufficiently describe her beauty and grace. None of them came close. The prince despaired, until one evening he was walking through the palace gardens and heard a starling singing to the coming night. The starling’s song moved the prince to tears. He called out, How do you sing so beautifully? How do you sing a song worthy of your beloved? And the starling answered, It’s for my beloved, so it’s beautiful. And the prince returned to his room and wrote his own poem, and that was that.
Xie Lian rolled his hips, grinding steadily against Hua Cheng’s belly until—San Lang, oh San Lang, oh—he came. He slumped against Hua Cheng’s chest, making a face at the sensation of trickling wetness in his pants, the damp patch on the front of his robes. He pulled back to find Hua Cheng staring at him, eye wide and red-rimmed.
“San Lang!” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Hua Cheng. “Nothing, gege. Truly, nothing.”
Xie Lian hugged Hua Cheng’s head, laughing into his hair. “Aiyo, you worried me,” he said, and nipped Hua Cheng’s ear, and was rewarded with a full-body shiver from the Scourge of the Heavens.
-
A few more minutes pass. White Dragon Devouring Moon paces, then drops into a crouch and wraps his arms around his shins, hiding his face in his knees.
“Fuck,” he says, muffled.
“Are you alright?” asks Xie Lian.
“Shut up.” There’s no heat to it. His voice cracks.
Xie Lian rotates his wrists within the confines of the shackles. He shifts his weight again, trying to avoid one of the more knobbly tree roots. Overhead the branches rustle, and all around the cicadas and frogs and mice and rabbits make their noises in the dark. Xie Lian clears his throat. “Is it revenge you’re after?” he asks. “Is that why you want to kill the Ghost King?”
White Dragon Devouring Moon lifts his head. There’s an odd quality to his hair—like many weaker ghosts, it appears he doesn’t have enough power to form individual strands, same as the scales in his dragon form. His hair sticks together in feathery clumps. “Revenge,” he says. “Revenge. No, Taizi Dianxia. It’s a hundred years too late for that.”
Ah.
“You died a hundred years ago,” says Xie Lian.
White Dragon Devouring Moon makes a hollow, honking noise, a not-laugh. “That’s right. It took me a hundred years to become a vicious ghost. By the time I was strong enough to get revenge, they—they were already long dead!” He wipes a hand over his mouth, white sleeve trailing. “But I’m strong now,” he says, more to himself than Xie Lian. “I’m powerful. I’ve slain a hundred thousand ghosts. I am worthy of my name.”
“Hong Ying,” Xie Lian murmurs. “Vast Shadow.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Hong Ying. How did you die?” Still no response. “You might as well tell me. You know, as long as we’re waiting for Hua Cheng.”
“I.” White Dragon Devouring Moon’s throat bobs. He’s in a patch of moonlight about ten paces away from Xie Lian, bony shoulder blades casting stark shadows on his white back. “I—I was traveling south for the winter,” he says. “Night was falling, I was tired, so I found a lake. There was a village beside it. A fishing village—I could smell the fish from where I was resting on the shore. I remember that. The smell of heaps and heaps of fish. I was hungry. I thought, in the morning I’ll take one. I won’t even have to catch it myself. They’ll do the work for me—the fishermen. I’d seen them before, in other places. Other lakes. I’d seen their nets bulging with fat, wriggling fish.” He’s gazing up at the night sky again. “I hid in the reeds to get some sleep. But then I heard voices. One of them nearly tripped over me.”
“One of them?”
“Boys. Human boys, from the village.” His fingers flex, then curl into fists. “I tried to—but I was exhausted, I couldn’t move quickly enough. They threw a net over me. I was all tangled up in it—the more I moved, the more it twisted around me. They were laughing. I remember that. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I know now: they were laughing. I held still. I thought maybe if I held still, they’d forget I was there. They pushed something through one of the holes in the net. It looked like food, and I was hungry, so I ate it. It was soft and round and white.”
“What was it?” Xie Lian asks quietly.
“A rice cake.” White Dragon Devouring Moon looks over at him, eyes black as the night. “It tasted bitter.”
“They don’t usually.”
“Yeah. I’m fucking aware, thanks.”
“Your name,” says Xie Lian. “Hong Ying. It’s not ‘hong’ as in vast, is it? It’s ‘hong’ as in wild goose. You’re not a white dragon who devoured the moon. You’re a wild goose who died from eating a poisoned rice cake. You can’t get revenge, because the humans responsible for your death already lived and died a hundred years ago. Even their children are dead. So what do you want from the Ghost King? Are you trying to find their souls?”
Hong Ying leaps to his feet. “You don’t understand!” he yells. “You don’t know what it’s like! Dying alone! Dying in agony! It hurt so much and nobody helped me! Nobody stopped them! It just got worse and worse and worse and then I died! I was so cold!” He grips two fistfuls of his feathery black hair. “As a fledgling I slept under my mother’s wing, tucked close to her body, where it was warm and dark and safe. I wanted that. I wanted someone to put their wing around me and keep me warm, just for the end. Just for the very end. But nobody did.” He rounds on Xie Lian, eyes wild. “You don’t know what that’s like! It was winter in the mountains—I was so cold! My wings were tangled in the net! I couldn’t move!”
Xie Lian draws in a slow, steady breath. “Hong Ying,” he says. “That’s awful.”
“And you know what I realized? You know what I realized, once I grew powerful enough to take this human form? There was no reason! They weren’t going to eat me! You don’t poison something you’re going to eat—and they just left me there! They did it for fun! They were laughing!”
“I’m sorry.”
“They didn’t even—” Hong Ying falters. “They—what?”
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” says Xie Lian. “Being poisoned hurts a lot, doesn’t it? What a cruel thing they did. What a terribly frightening way to die. You didn’t deserve it, and I’m sorry.”
“It…. It was scary,” says Hong Ying, no longer in the dragon’s rasping growl. His voice is small and hoarse and wobbly. “It was really scary,” he continues, shoulders hunching. “For a while they stayed and watched me. One kept poking me with a reed. But the moon rose, and I heard distant voices, and they left. They left me alone under the net. I struggled to free myself, but I felt… so strange, so tired. Then it began to hurt inside. Inside of me, my belly. It felt like I’d swallowed thorns. It felt like being pierced by a hundred arrows, one after another. I didn’t have words for it then—I don’t have words for it now. It just—it hurt. It hurt. I was all alone and I couldn’t move and it was so dark and cold and I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t know, it was—it was really scary, I was so scared, I—” He sinks back to a crouch, hiding his face in his arms again. The white wings of his sleeves. “I wanted my mother!” he sobs. “I wanted anyone, anyone at all! I was so scared! Taizi Dianxia, I was so scared!”
“I know,” says Xie Lian. “I know, Hong-gongzi.”
“I don’t want to be scared.” Hong Ying’s breath shudders out of him. “I want to be so strong that—that no one can trap me. That no one can hurt me, ever again.”
It’s rare that Xie Lian feels the full span of his lifetime. Like tree rings, like layers of silt on a lakebed, the accumulation of years. Mostly he feels like the bark; the tranquil water. Mostly he lives at the surface of himself. As he listens to Hong Ying cry, he feels every last one of those eight hundred years. He thinks of San Lang in the rain, bruised and swollen with a flower in his fist. He thinks of the old woman at the traveler’s inn. The last thing she said to him was: Thank you. I know you’re not my son. You’ve traveled a long way, ah? Troublesome child, your mother must be worried. You should go home to her.
“Taizi Dianxia,” Hong Ying says suddenly. “The cicadas have stopped singing.”
Xie Lian cocks his head, listening. “So they have.”
Hong Ying whimpers.
“Oh, none of that,” Xie Lian tells him. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Let him? He’s the Ghost King! Nobody lets him do anything!”
Xie Lian hums, acknowledging this truth. “If I ask him not to hurt you, then he won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?” Hong Ying wails. “You’re his weakness. His most precious person.”
“Exactly,” says Xie Lian. “I’m precious to him, so he listens to me. He’s precious to me, so I listen to him. That’s all.”
“But why…. Taizi Dianxia, why would you want to protect me?”
“You made a mistake tonight,” says Xie Lian. “You did something foolish and reckless and short-sighted. You did it because you were scared. Because someone hurt you, a long time ago, and you wanted to make sure nobody could hurt you like that ever again. At that time, no one helped you. No one came along to stop those boys from poisoning a poor wild goose. No one came along to sit beside you and tuck you under their wing, so at the very least you wouldn’t be cold and alone. Sometimes that’s all we can hope for. That we’re not alone at the end. That someone sits beside us and bears witness to our suffering and tries, in some small way, to ease it. The trying is what matters, in the end. Even a suffering as vast and relentless as a monsoon can be eased by something so ordinary as a straw hat, provided there’s someone to offer it.” Around them, the forest is silent. “I’m sorry you died alone, Hong Ying. I’m sorry no one was there to keep you warm. Maybe it’s too late for revenge, but it’s not too late for someone to extend a wing, as it were.” He frowns. “Oh, dear. I’m mixing metaphors.”
Hong Ying’s face trembles like light on water. He opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out. His beady eyes widen, darting back and forth in panic, and Xie Lian realizes Hong Ying has been frozen like a statue, unable to move or speak.
“San Lang!” he calls out. “San Lang, I’m fine. I’m here.”
The shadows at the edge of the clearing scatter like black silks in a gust of wind, and Hua Cheng steps out from between the trees. Xie Lian winces. The look on Hua Cheng’s face is admittedly not great news for Hong Ying. When Hua Cheng is annoyed, his jaw tightens. When he’s very annoyed, he smiles pleasantly. When he’s angry, his smile grows wider and ice cold. When he’s furious, his expression turns absolutely blank except for the black fire in his left eye. That’s what has come for White Dragon Devouring Moon Hong Ying.
Of course, Hua Cheng doesn’t spare Hong Ying a glance. He walks right past him to kneel down in front of Xie Lian, turning the qi-suppressing chains to dust with a wave of his hand.
“Gege,” he says evenly. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
“No, no,” says Xie Lian. “Your timing is flawless as always, San Lang. And really, I’m fine.”
Hua Cheng takes Xie Lian’s wrists in his hands, smoothing his thumbs over the faint red marks from the shackles. “Hm,” he says, and rises.
“Wait!” says Xie Lian, scrambling to his feet after Hua Cheng. He stumbles over a tree root, catching himself with a hand on Hua Cheng’s shoulder. “Wait, don’t hurt him!”
Hua Cheng stares at him. “Don’t—what? That’s White Dragon Devouring Moon, yes? The one who kidnapped you? Very recently?”
“Well, yes, but he’s not a dragon, he’s a goose,” Xie Lian says. “Ah—never mind, I’ll tell you everything later. But don’t hurt him, San Lang. He didn’t hurt me.”
“He put you in chains.”
“They weren’t very tight.” At Hua Cheng’s incredulous look, Xie Lian huffs. “San Lang, please free Hong-gongzi. I wasn’t done talking to him.”
“Gege,” Hua Cheng complains, but waves a hand. Hong Ying crumples forward, throwing himself to the ground in a full bow, forehead pressed to the pine needles.
“Taizi Dianxia!” he gasps. “No matter what, there’s something I must tell you! I was never going to harm you, I promise!”
Xie Lian laughs, warm. With Hua Cheng at his back, he crosses over to where Hong Ying is cowering in the center of the clearing. “Oh, I know,” he says. “You’re strong, Hong-gongzi, but at any point tonight I could have destroyed you with a flick of my fingers.”
“...Hah?” says Hong Ying.
“I don’t know who sold you the chains, but I’m afraid it was a scam. The qi-suppressing effect was meager to begin with and wore off completely within five minutes. I really can’t overstate how easily I could have severed the chains, turned your Yin Xian talisman to a puff of smoke, and obliterated your soul beyond all hope of reincarnation.”
“Ah. Yes,” says Hong Ying to the ground. “As that’s the case, please allow this lowly waterfowl to express his undying gratitude for the mercy and benevolence of Taizi Dianxia. Hong Ying thanks you for sparing his worthless, undeserving soul.”
“Damn right it’s undeserving,” says Hua Cheng.
Hong Ying looks up, startled, when Xie Lian crouches before him, their white robes overlapping on the dark earth. “Would you like to know why I didn’t destroy you, Hong-gongzi?”
“If. If Taizi Dianxia, in his infinite grace, wishes to tell this servant anything, this servant will listen.”
Xie Lian flaps a hand at him. “Aiyo, please quit with the formalities, I’m really just a scrap collector. Sort of a minor deity on the side. Anyway. There are two reasons I didn’t destroy you. The first reason is I found the whole thing very entertaining and wanted to see how it played out.”
Hong Ying makes a gurgling noise.
“The second reason,” says Xie Lian, eyes crinkling with his grin, “is why you were able to sneak up on me at all. I did not sense any killing intent in your aura, Hong-gongzi. Not even the slightest trace. I know you were never going to hurt me, even if you’d been strong enough. It’s not in your nature.”
“Have you ever met a goose?” says Hua Cheng.
“So it’s alright,” Xie Lian finishes. “It’s alright. Don’t do it again, but it’s alright. If you’re that desperate to become a Wrath and eventually a Devastation, believe me, there’s other ways to do it.” He taps his chin, thoughtful. “You know, maybe He Xuan could be convinced to take on an apprentice. He’d never admit it, but I think he gets bored.”
“You don’t mean—Black Water Sinking Ships?” Hong Ying squawks. “I—but he’s so—I couldn’t possibly—!”
“For fuck’s sake,” Hua Cheng mutters. Xie Lian pats his arm in commiseration.
Hong Ying’s black eyes shine like polished river stones. “Taizi Dianxia!” he says. “Thank you, thank you! Hong Ying shall forever be your most devoted believer!”
“That role’s been filled, actually,” says Hua Cheng. Xie Lian coughs.
“Second most devoted believer by a feather’s-width!” Hong Ying amends, bobbing his head. “If you’re ever in need of my service, speak my name to the northern wind! I’ll fly to your aid at once!”
“That’s very kind, Hong-gongzi,” says Xie Lian. “I’ll remember that.”
-
“I was never in any real danger,” he tells Hua Cheng later, when they’re curled up together on the roof of Paradise Manor to watch the last of the festival fireworks bloom and fade in the night sky. The colors are beautiful, even if most of the fireworks form the shapes of skulls and howling ghost faces and various body parts. “I’m just disappointed I missed the festival.”
“Ah. That reminds me,” says Hua Cheng. “Brought you this.”
He pulls a white bun from his sleeve. Xie Lian takes it, cupping it in his palms. It’s still warm.
“Thank you, my San Lang,” he says, and Hua Cheng smiles.
END.