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The second thing Wei Ying does after waking up in the body of his dead mother’s master is promptly run full force, head first into Lan Zhan, his soulmate, his zhiji.
Because of course it is.
The gods hate him, the universe has cursed him, and it will be a cold, sunny day in the desert before he gets the chance to forget it.
If he’s being honest with himself—and Wei Ying very much feels like a himself, despite his current body’s circumstances—its not like he had wanted to avoid Lan Zhan.
The past week has been difficult. Coming back to life was one thing. Wei Ying is a demonic cultivator, a damned good one. He wrote more than one ritual that could have pulled this off for nearly any other soul.
His excluded—it belonged to the burial mounds in a way he hadn’t wanted to find a cheat to.
But he hadn’t been brought back by ritual.
Apparently, shocking, the transmigration of a soul is something immortal cultivators can be prone to during Qi Deviations. Whichever cosmic force is in charge of it is apparently strong enough to overrule the laws of the dead and piece the shattered remains of what he knows was ripped into tiny tatters back into whichever ill fitting vessel it’s chosen.
Somehow, probably as a form of cosmic retribution for all his grave desecration, Wei Ying has been left in charge of an immortal cultivation sect with a brand new, shiny golden core, and no clue on how to proceed. It’s overwhelming, without taking the new body into account, and he cannot be blamed for taking the one long, narrow path down the mountain the second he was able to remember how legs worked.
“I’m sorry, Lan-gongzi,” he says. He can feel himself rambling even though he has no clue what sounds are actually coming out of his mouth, because Lan Zhan has that glint in his eye, the one he gets when Wei Ying has said something particularly stupid and he should definitely shut up, right now.
An arm comes up around his back, locking like steel against him as his muscles tense in anticipation. Something about it all must show on his new face, and the slight widening of Lan Zhan’s eyes is all he gets before he’s righted and let go.
Running is so tempting.
Lan Zhan’s already taken a step back from him. A polite distance, the space young upright cultivators are taught to keep between themselves and young, unmarried gentry women. It burns him in the same way not being able to wrap his clothes right burns him.
“Wei Ying.” The words are whispered with so much anguish and longing the second he turns his back, there's never actually any hope in him getting away after that.
Time has not been kind to his errant Zhiji. That’s the first thing Wei Ying figures out.
“Er-gege,” he says, his body draped shamelessly against the curve of Lan Zhan’s back a few hours later. He’s got a stack of papers, discarded sect notices that he’d found along the roads of the last town he’d stopped in, what they are isn’t important, what is is the notes he’s scribing along their unmarked sides, half formed seals, and thin wispy ideas for the start of a long term body alteration array. “What are you out here for? And all by yourself, who let their precious Hunguan-Jun wonder so far away?”
Lan Zhan hums, in the way he’d started to before the war when he didn’t want to answer Wei Ying, but had progressed in liking him enough to not outright ignore him or use that Lan silencing spell. A small marvel, tiny in comparison not only to the fact that Lan Zhan is not only allowing him such blatant liberties with his person, but enjoying it, too, if the way he’s unconsciously leaning into Wei Ying’s heat is anything to go off of.
“To think there was something an esteemed cultivator, such as yourself, had to come all this way to deal with. I’m sad that I missed the excitement.”
“Three ghosts haunting a farm,” Lan Zhan says, poking the flames of their campfire and sitting so stone still Wei Ying wonders how he’s breathing, “Wei Ying would have been bored.”
“No,” Wei Ying protests, “I could never be bored with having Hunguang-Jun all to myself. Especially on a nighthunt!”
See, Wei Ying has learned how to read inbetween the lines with Lan Zhan. He’d gotten his practice in deciphering people young. Cutting his teeth on looking past Jiang Cheng's anger, seeing the real threats under all Madame Yu’s daily ones, noticing when his shijie was overworked under her pleasant smile—he’s good now, at picking people apart. And he’s learned that with Lan Zhan what's important isn’t what he chooses to say, it's what he doesn't and the why of it all.
Usually the Lan rules are a good portion of the why. Other times it's the vicious streak no one ever believes him about.
It’s part of the reason he likes him so much.
Lan Zhan is a never ending puzzle, that no matter the time and familiarity built between them Wei Ying is always working towards unraveling.
What he hears, what went unsaid, is that no one is keeping track of Hunguan-Jun.
A crime in his eyes.
Lan Zhan has no responsibilities, obviously.
To the point where he has time to find himself lost in a no name secluded village in the middle of nowhere to deal with three low level spirits who would have made themselves nuisances at best.
Clearly, in his death, no one has pestered Lan Zhan to eat enough. The bones of his cheeks are sharp in the way cultivators who practice inedia get when it's been too long since they’ve let themselves put real food in their mouths.
He looks like Wei Ying did, back when his body was familiar to him. Thin and weary, with robes that look threadbare despite the pristine white of them all.
The forehead ribbon is damningly missing. There are no thin lines of ribbon dangling from the now loose black hair for Wei Ying to play with. No Lan jade pendant anywhere in sight.
The first clues really come together for Wei Ying when instead of heading back west the way he can feel in his bones leads toward their sects, Lan Zhan grips his hand tight and starts pulling Wei Ying north east. It’s the exact opposite direction anyone hoping to see any cultivation sect would travel. Nothing but small villages, half formed towns and miles of wild.
The perfect place to be lost and forgotten.
Left alone with no chance of being found.
The first town they stop in is small, and Lan Zhan leads him to an old barn instead of the local inn and trades work for a soft place to sleep in the hay instead of coin.
Never for a moment has Wei Ying doubted that Lan Zhan would always take care of him, if only he would reach his hand out and ask. It’s why back then, after the war, he couldn’t go and ask him for anything.
Now, though, their footing is more even. The invisible weight that kept things stilted replaced by the warmth Wei Ying’s brand new core pours through both of them during the nights they stay curled together in the loft.
That's another thing, too.
Lan Zhan’s core feels different. Not in comparison to his own or in place of what he remembers different, Weird different. Like something happened that's broken parts off and put cracks through the middle. It makes Wei Ying want to reach out and cup it together in his hands until it's back to the way it felt in the cold springs of Cloud Recess.
He’s lucky—that the novelty of him being back from the dead hasn’t worn off yet, because he’s been shamelessly using all the newly tolerated skin-ship Lan Zhan has been giving him recently to pour his Qi through his scarred meridians.
He has the extra now.
It’s helpful even.
After all, Wei Ying really can’t be expected to adjust to having the fully formed core of an immortal locked around a soul that was used to being empty can he? No, he can’t and he will fight Lan Zhan on it to his freshly undug grave if it means he’ll still let him fix this.
The townspeople, for their part, don’t really know what to make of the two of them. Not that Wei Ying would care what their opinions were one way or another. In public, Lan Zhan calls him his wife, and Wei Ying flutters his eyelashes and hangs off his shoulder and uses the pull being married to a rogue cultivator gives him to secure a job from the town seamstress as a mending woman.
Winter is a hard time for people with diminished cores. Wei Ying knows this from experience, if Lan Zhan had felt the need to pick a place to settle for a few months then Wei Ying would do his part and stitch together ripped dresses while he spent his time patching roofs.
It’s weird, but doable. The life they start making together. In private he’s just Wei Ying after all. No one expects anything from Wei Ying.
What with him still being dead and all.
So it's okay when the awkwardness of his new form starts falling off.
Right?
When Lan Zhan helps him dress in the morning, he doesn't always hate the way the shoulders of his shirts fit around his chest. Not when he can close his eyes and let his zhiji draw thin wings of red out from their corners.
“You don't have to do that for me today,” Wei Ying says.
The paint had been a small indulgence Lan Zhan had absolutely insisted was a necessity after he’d caught Wei Ying staring at the stall lady's face just a bit too long during one of their early shopping days together.
Lan Zhan’s hands still inches from where they had been going to cup Wei Ying’s face. There's a hum, which is as good of an invitation to continue as any.
“I know you’re busy today,”Wei Ying tries to deflect, “You have to go help Granny Lou fix her washing basin, and we both know that really means you’re going to be helping all the granny’s with their houses and at least one of them has to have a fence that needs mending or has no fire wood and—you really shouldn’t keep them waiting. Where did I go wrong, corrupting the upstanding Hunguan-Jun into ignoring the plight of the helpless, oh–”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, “do you not want me to paint your eyes.”
Wei Ying bites his lip, “No, I do.”
“Than.” There's a hand cupping Wei Ying’s chin, tilting it up, forward to meet Lan Zhan’s. “I am not too busy to do this for Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying whines low in the throat. “Don’t be unreasonable, Lan Zhan. What about the grannys?”
“They will forgive this one the slight when they realize it was for a worthy cause.”
“Ahh, yes,” Wei Ying laughs, “What's worthier than painting this wife’s face before she goes out and…”
The trailing silence that follows Wei Ying after the words are said is heavy. As a general rule, Wei Ying has been careful to avoid any mention or words like she and her.
It was one thing.
For Lan Zhan to say them. He is an upstanding gentleman, even as a rogue cultivator, appearances must be kept and he couldn’t be permitted to travel unaccompanied with an unmarried, unrelated woman.
Wen Qing had always hated the way people would assume things about the two of them in Yiling. Wei Ying thinks that, if there was ever a chance for her to find herself back in the land of the living, spite alone would put her in some poor unsuspecting, entirely forgettable young man just so she could get the satisfaction of carrying on the way she always had. Just with the ability to drop her pants and flash a dick when someone gave her an attitude about being bossy.
She was just that type.
It's a shame no one aside from Wen Ning and maybe Jaing Cheng had caught on to it, too.
“They will say,” the brush feels cool against the crease of Wei Yings eye, “that A-Ying is lovely with her face painted when she goes to the market.”
It works like this. Wei Ying has a stark moment of clarity sitting there, face held so tenderly that the only other word to describe it is lovingly. One that says there are two roads to be taken and Lan Zhan will be waiting at the end of both of them.
“And Lan Zhan, what will he say, when his zhiji tells him that sometimes–”the words are hard, thick and choking in the back of Wei Yings throat, “sometimes she just really likes the face paint.”
“Her Lan Zhan would say that it would be okay for Wei Ying to like it if he did.”
Wei Ying knows this. Cultivators could be eccentric, the wealth of being backed by a sect allowing them luxuries. Make-up was such a minor one, there’d always been just as many young boys dressed like dolls as there were young girls.
“I know,” Wei Ying says, words just as unsteady, “and sometimes he does like the way you fix his eyes, even though he really wants to figure out how to maintain that array while sleeping.”
“And others?” Lan Zhan asks.
There isn’t any judgment in his tone.
Lan Zhan’s not that type.
He’s not the type to push either. If Wei Ying stops, he won't bring it up again or act like anything is different. Maybe for Lan Zhan nothing is. He’s not a very physical person after all. Wei Ying can’t help but wonder sometimes at the relationship shared between him and his own body.
“She wants you to paint her mouth, too. Not brightly, like the jiejies by the docks, but softly, like how shijie’s used to be.”
Lan Zhan’s smile is full of understanding.
It's sort of horrible.
Around all the ways it's sort of amazing.
“A-Ying should have said.”
It's all the words spoken between them for the rest of the morning.
That night, when Lan Zhan comes home, a small delicately painted jar finds its way next to the eye paint.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispers against his back as they’re drifting off to sleep. The ridges of scars Wei Ying still hasn’t seen pressed firmly against a cheek, “What if sometimes Wei Ying doesn’t feel like anything.”
“Wei Ying is Wei Ying.”