Chapter Text
The soul sacrificial ritual had been a failure.
Mo Xuanyu had woken up from the foul smell of blood, smoke and old paper that was making it hard to breathe. Moving to get his hand and wipe his nose in hopes in shaking the smell off, he had dully noted the dried blood at the corner of mouth and nose as the source of the smell. With a groan and realisation that yes, somehow, he was still alive, he decided to look around.
The room was covered in an eerie glow from the silver light of the moon from the dirty windows of the warehouse, illuminating the still hanging talismans, half burnt candles and the array.
Mo Xuanyu’s hand trembled as he gathered some strength to sit up to take a closer look at the array that he way laying in, trying and somewhat failing to not smudge anymore of the lines as he tried to assess the lines and symbols, trying to figure out if he had somewhat misspelt any words due to the Grandmaster’s messy handwriting.
It wasn’t as thought there was a full-on probability for it to succeed but it wasn’t as if was more than a few possibilities for it to fail, the success almost certainly had been within an incense stick away as he had meticulously prepared everything beforehand for months. The writing had been flawless, continuous lines and cursive symbols flowed in a harmony that could only flow due to malevolent energy even though some of the lines had been erased, smudging the blood on Mo Xuanyu’s clothes.
What he didn’t notice though, was the seemingly unmoving body laying down next to him on the array, their back facing Mo Xuanyu, making him unable to see their face.
…At least it seems like it wasn’t a complete and total failure, that is, of course, if his fucked up family thought to play another messed up prank.
Standing up on unsteady legs, he took a few steps so that he could crouch down and take a closer look. First thing that he could note, was that the body was indeed of the Grandmaster’s curled up, as if so that he wouldn’t somehow stray outside of the array, giving as impression that it was not fully completed yet. Some of the details looked unfinished however, maybe due to the missing information that he did not manage to get from the rumours and random sketches in the Grandmaster’s notebooks, in the end were made to look like Mo Xuanyu’s own. From darkened nails and whitened fingertips that were moments ago covered in dark red shadows, to even robes and shoes.
Given the soft rise and fall of the chest, the summoning was a success.
Then the question was why was am I still alive?
He had planned to be alive until the fall of the sun, not to be the first witness of this miracle
of sorts that he had managed to achieve for fucks sake!
Taking a shallow breath to calm down and gather any remaining rationality he had left, Mo Xuanyu had decided that he wasn’t going to stand and wait until the Grandmaster woke up and explain everything that had happened since his death, THIRTEEN YEARS AGO, and even WHY he had summoned him; or maybe even until his fucked in the head cousin decided that his breathing from li away made him annoyed, or, oh, maybe Nie Huaisang would suddenly come and check from afar to see how had his work done!
No thank you, Mo Xuanyu has had enough of more than a decade worth of headaches from different nuisances and death threats, and his now look alike, even though he was more powerful and older, could deal with them.
The shadows covering the body cleared even more, meaning that time was running out, so if Mo Xuanyu wanted to flee, he had to do it soon or be witness to what was to come.
Gathering more will power to stand up once again, he felt the soreness in his bones that he never thought that any living person would be possible to feel with a hitch of breath. His knees almost buckled from the pain, the thought of having to walk in such pain almost made him throw up as he rushed to lean on a nearby wall.
The warehouse’ front door going to be locked, meaning that the only way to go out was one of back windows and that it’s going to be necessary to leave a clue for the Grandmaster to know from where to escape as well. That might prove to be difficult as he’ll need to find a way to mark the window without the person that is going to come and bring him food later notice.
Once the dizziness faded to back to soreness and a headache, Mo Xuanyu took another look at the resting body before moving towards the window.
Being the only clean window might be too obvious, as well as marking it with either rouge or blood… Another option would be to crack it or scratch it.
The other windows had small cobwebs that the light coming from outside often made it look as it they were cracked or scratched if they weren’t already. Often during autumn and winter, due to the harsh weather the glass would crack from both inside and outside as the warehouse was more in the middle of the forest than the outskirts of the city. But even so, given the lack of care and attention, the usual people who would visit him were his cousin and his dumb friends, other servants and his uncle, who in turn didn’t really care about his living conditions as long as he wouldn’t steal more opportunities from their precious son
nor make them even more ashamed to have such a relative
.
Dragging out his carefully hidden qiankun pouch out of his sleeve, Mo Xuanyu searched for a sharp enough object to carve into the glass, which had happened to be a dagger he had managed to steal a few nights ago from the shed nearby.
A small circle should be auspicious enough.
It was impossible that a perfect circle would appear on a window, especially from the inside, so if one would pay attention to this window would clearly notice that it was marked.
With a satisfied hum, he tucked everything away before taking a moment to think if he had anything worth taking with him. He had a few golden crowns, a dagger, a few old talismans, a box of powder and rouge, and some change of robes in his pouch already; anything else of value should be hunting tools, food and water, which he would most likely need to acquire on the road.
The fresh and cold air made him flinch at first before opening the window more and leaping a foot over the edge and touch the moonlit grass. Taking a last glance at the Grandmaster, he gave a small bow of his head as he rushed whispered a prayer for protection and good luck before closing the window as swiftly and silently as possible. Mo Xuanyu felt somewhat like a teenager fleeing to meet up with their lover in the middle of the night as he walked away with rushed yet unsteady footsteps.
Next step would be to get away from the Mo village.
However, to move a longer distance from the Mo village in his current state with the unhealed sacrificial wounds was going to take days. Furthermore, his next step is going to be to take a steed or donkey, from the shack that was barely a li away, and figure out the next destination on the road.
…This is going to be a long night, isn’t it?