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There is no such thing as an old soul, as the karmic wheel turns.
All souls are the same beyond the realm of mortal time, aged the same, turned the same, until they escape the cycle altogether, but so few manage. Enlightenment is not simply a matter of being virtuous and good, but it is also the abandonment of mortal ties, of karmic ties, of debts and fated ties, and Chu Wanning, for all his righteousness and virtuousness, may have been the furthest individual from enlightenment.
Most people do not remember dying and birth, the memories washed away through the churning of the wheel. It is a mercy, this erasure, for death is imminent and unescapable, and mortals spend so few years under the sun to afford fixating on what must come one day. Chu Wanning thinks of the disciples of Sisheng Peak, of their zest for a life full of adventures and glory, training day in and day out under their respective masters, and wonders how few of them would remain should their mortality lies in full view, the memory of the cessation of the breath, of the stilling of the heart. The indescribable pain of the splitting of the soul, of cognition distorted, of being everywhere and nowhere, the confusion and torment of an incorporeal fragment drifting through a stream of regrets accumulated in a lifetime. It is a mercy, the erasure, to wash away the smudges of consciousness, leaving behind only imprints of the past, a patchwork of scars hidden underneath the skin, and let the reborn soul find the same mistakes again and again through the furrows, unafraid, undeterred.
His memories of death are hazy, not from the cleansing fire of rebirth but from the limitations of his splintered soul. Four pieces instead of three, fragments of consciousness lingering in too many places, incoherent embers of stimuli barely making their way to the collective. He is missing too much, too full all at once of the world and the unworld and the tenuous bridge in between, too weak to react and too proud not to. His Earth soul, buried in the halls of the Ghost Kings, fractured in two into corporality and mere shade, defiant and haughty in death as in life. His Cognizance soul, entombed in decay, omniscient and impotent, ceaselessly absorbing the cries of his disciples and the smoke of incense, seven days in helpless rage and sorrow, his body already mourning itself, clad in white in death as in life.
His Human soul wanders. The realms of memories yet lie this side of Naihe Bridge, untouched by the taste of Meng Po’s soup. The paths are worn by regret, branching deep like networks of roots digging underneath the earth, and it is difficult to find one’s way along the barren paths, each memory converging onto the next, no beginning, no end.
It is strange, the way the Human soul perceives and feels, lost in the haze and confusion of the newly dead. His senses diminished, his memories less of a stream than a torrential convergence of tributaries, each vying to pump its own supply into the main stem of consciousness. What little remains of himself, whatever that is, soul and consciousness and the summation of it all, yearns for the sweet, cold taste of Meng Po’s soup to dull the force of the water hitting against craggly rocks, so that the memories are stripped of anger and pain, soothed by the detachment of a life fully ended, the currents no longer quite as savage.
But there is no Meng Po’s soup, the seven days of wandering have not yet begun, and Chu Wanning’s Human soul is more human in death than it has been in life, no cultivation base to bolster it through the pain of existence, and so it drifts in its blood-stained white robe, pushed here and pulled there by the tempest of his own mind, at the mercy and judgment of his own regrets.
He drifts.
On the first day after his death, Chu Wanning’s Human soul walks across a scorching floor.
It is very unfair, he thinks, that of the five senses, touch is the one that has remained largely intact in this ghostly realm. Pressure, temperature, pain, all of them an explosion of sensation. He is panting even as ghosts do not breathe, but he is a soul in a memory, and he is yet himself and not himself, a body not of his own making.
“Mo Ran,” he says, the word forming in his mouth of its own accord. “Mo Ran,” he says again, each step a bloom of pain, blindly moving toward something he cannot see. His arms outstretched, his ears dulled, he moves by pure instinct, propelled by something within him that knows just where to direct his steps. Mo Ran.
“Shi Mei!” comes the voice, and he notes with faint surprise that the sound hurts more than the fire licking at his feet. But of course. He remembers how this memory goes.
“Shi Mei,” Mo Ran responds, “you… Thank you… even in a blissful dream, you still… still remember me.”
The voice is faint. He cannot hear the timbre of Mo Ran’s voice, but he knows its cadence, the undercurrent of youth and strength that readily identify his disciple. He tells himself it does not hurt, being in Shi Mingjing’s form even as he has no form, hearing Shi Mingjing’s voice from Mo Ran’s lips called with such fervor, such devotion, such surety. He tells himself that his duty to his disciples moves him forward, that it does not matter who gets assigned the blame and the praise, and so he cannot stop moving, feet blistering and blisters breaking open, a trail of simmering blood across the stone floor. Pain is inevitable in life, as it is in death. He smells the sharpness of iron, the churning aroma of scorched flesh, and tells himself to move forward.
He falls into a shallow lake, barely finding his footing. The water is a balm on his feet, soothing the burns even as it licks hungrily at the flesh within. He has almost reached Mo Ran, strung up high atop the vine, blood dripping to mark the passage of time. “Don’t be silly. What are you thanking me for?” he says, the line coming through him, and he is as a gremlin directed by spellcraft. “Mo Ran, hold on just a little longer. I’ll get you down from there.”
His hands meet a wall of thorns. The vine connecting Mo Ran to the earth blooms with his own blood, piercing through the delicate skin of his fingertips, his arms. He stretches his burning feet and finds purchase at the root of the vine, feeling his way up, each prick of pain directing him toward Mo Ran. It does not hurt. He is not even fully a ghost. And yet, the knowledge that it is a mere memory matters little, the pain intense, the blood slippery, and he struggles to pull Shi Mingjing’s weakened body up, feeling the remembered muscles contracting and quivering, and slips.
A blast of pain so intense sears into his consciousness. “Shi Mei!” Mo Ran cries out from above. His skin is seared where it touches the ground, the bloody mess of his hands instantly scorched and cauterized, his knees blistering with heat. He grits his teeth and gets to his feet, almost collapsing from the deluge. Mo Ran is up there. He makes his way forward again, and inch by painful inch, drags himself up through sheer force of will, grasping onto the thorns and watering the vine with his blood.
“Shi Mei,” Mo Ran cries again, plaintive.
“Don’t call out to me anymore,” he begs, stubbornly swallowing the pressure behind his nose, blinking rapidly. The haze in front of his eyes has not yet lifted. Shi Mingjing. He really cannot compare, but even so, there is only so much he can take, and Mo Ran’s voice wraps around that name with such tenderness, such softness, and it is as if a poisoned spear has run straight through him. “Mo Ran, just hold on,” he says, “I’m getting you down from there.”
“I’m sorry,” Mo Ran cries, but he knows this sorry is not for him.
Can I change this?
I can’t change anything. The past is done. This way lies only torment.
He thinks of Luo Xianxian and her impotent rage. He thinks he understands now the true extent of that helplessness in the ghost realm, forced to watch from a prison immaterial, moving along in a world in which the past and the present intertwine, and there is no future waiting for him.
And yet he knows he is not long for this world. Soon, these memories, painful as they are, will disappear across the Naihe Bridge. Why bring him here if he cannot deviate from what has been? Why can he not try? Drawing comfort from the ghosts of the past, and he, a soul about to disappear into the nether.
What is left unsaid? What tethers you to this world? This is not real. Be selfish.
“Actually… I.... Mo Ran, it’s shizun,” he tries out, his voice strange in his throat, the wild beating of his remembered, borrowed heart deafening in his quiet world. “It’s me.”
Mo Ran falls silent.
He has made it up the platform, his feet finding balance on ground that hurts marginally less than the fire floor below, the blood from his burned and blistered body damp in his robe and sticky on his hands. Mo Ran is close.
“Mo Ran,” he calls out, and a grunt somewhere in the vicinity answers. The tone shift is expected, and the knowledge does not sooth the burst of something deep and aching growing in his chest. “Stay still. I’m coming.”
“Why is it you?” Mo Ran asks, his voice threaded with simmering rage and disappointment, and it clenches its fist around Chu Wanning’s chest, crushing the air from lungs that he does not need.
It has always been like this. He remembers his lifetime well, the solitude, the praise in front of his face and the whispers behind his back. That cold, callous creature cannot possibly feel. He is not of this world. He cannot hurt.
He schools his features, reaching out with his bleeding hands for Mo Ran, who shrinks back. “Quiet, child,” he scorns without heat. “Let me help you.”
“Shizun, I…”
The stupid child is not as foolish as to refuse help when he is dying, he counts on this fact. Mo Ran’s skin is warm, and his bloody fingers find Mo Ran’s firm shoulder, the sword protruding from Mo Ran’s chest. The blood makes it slippery to close his fist around the hilt. Mo Ran is so close to him, his breath warm in Chu Wanning’s ear, the heat from his body rising to warm the air between them.
“Shizun… thank you for waking,” Mo Ran says in a small voice. “For saving me.”
It is easy to wake when one’s imagination is unable to conjure sweet dreams that can possibly exist. There is no version of this world in which Chu Wanning is not a solitary figure, above it all, apart from it all, no version in which things can change, in which others look upon him with love rather than lewd voyeurism, with admiration rather than envy and fear.
“Don’t mention it,” he says simply, and Mo Ran sags into a warm lump on his chest as he pulls away the sword, the thorny vine disappearing in a swoop under his feet, and they are falling onto ground that does not burn, and Mo Ran lies docile in his arms, clinging to his bloodied robe, and he thinks that for once, this may be the sweetest dream he has ever had, and he wonders if he would have woken up from this particular dream.
Mo Ran, did you know the most wonderful dreams are rarely ever real?
On the second day after Chu Wanning’s death, his Human soul is warm.
The air of Sisheng Peak is fragranced with sweetness, and so it must be that the haitang trees are in full bloom. The sun scorches overhead, if his memory has not failed him, but he is comfortably shaded under the canopy, the blooms thick and pink. He turns his eyes upward and registers the faint darkness of the flowers against the brighter sky.
He is younger, in this memory, and yet it has only been two years. It is as if the first thirty years of his life have passed by in a fog, events only halfway remembered, recorded carelessly in the tone of ink and paper, until one day, the days grow brighter and the nights longer, until there comes into his life colors yet unseen. It is as if he has spent thirty years waiting for someone, something, for meaning to imbue his every breath.
The sun is high in the sky, an early summer morning of intemperate heat. He knows the other elders are congregating, and he sets himself apart from the flock, his hand encased in a metal gauntlet. That’s right. He has not yet perfected the design at that point. Chu Wanning sighs, thinking of all the inventions still lying haphazardly in his room at the Red Lotus Pavilion, and wonders briefly where his regrets will take him, if he will ever get to visit his gadgets again in this lifetime.
A blur, small and a child still in form, dashes up the hill and into his space, so close that he can sense the air charged with boyish excitement. The silence around him is different than the muted white noise he has grown accustomed to since his death. The shades in his memory are truly quiet, watching the scene unfold with bated breath.
“Xianjun, xianjun!” comes a young voice, and his heart clenches with recognition. Mo Ran has grown so much in the two years intervening, but here, he is still a boy not yet crossing that threshold between the innocence of childhood and the rashness of a youth. His voice has not yet deepened, his head reaching only to Chu Wanning’s chest. That dark head bobs up and down, its energy wild and unpredictable. “I’ve been watching you for so long already! Why won’t you pay attention to me?”
The dark shape grabs his metal hand. His first instinct is to draw back, to react as he did before, to pull Tianwen out and raise it high as if to punish the insolent little boy. But he is dead, and he is a shade, and he cannot change the world, but he can change this memory.
“Who are you?” he asks, voice soft, even as he knows the answer.
“I’m Mo Ran!” the voice says, exuberant at being recognized. “I don’t know anyone here, but based on face, I like you best! How about you be my teacher?”
What do you regret?
The boy grabs his other hand, unmindful of the blood from the violence of his death, so that both hands are trapped within those small hands that he knows will one day grow to their full size, calloused along the sword grip. Mo Ran’s warmth seeps through the metal glove encasing his hand, and he marvels at the difference such a thin layer of metal can make, comparing the sensation in both hands. Mo Ran’s grip is tight but lacks the strength it would one day have, and he sighs, aching, knowing that the Mo Ran he knows now is not yet a man grown, and never will he get to see the years chiseling out the lines of Mo Ran’s face, the burgeoning of his shoulders.
What do you regret the most?
Chu Wanning finds his voice, which has been absent since Mo Ran came up to touch him. “I am a difficult teacher. You will have an easier time with Xuanji Elder, or Talung Elder.” Anyone else, he thinks, and the ache in his chest only intensifies. He does not know if it is his cruelty he regrets, or if it is the way he accepted the boy under his wings and has failed him utterly in his incompetence.
“Xianjun, I will work hard!” Mo Ran promises, tugging at his hands and drawing them to his own chest. “I promise you. If you take me in, I will call you shizun, do anything you ask, be obedient to you. Please!”
He can almost see the wide smile on Mo Ran’s face, splitting from ear to ear. A child of the street, a lifetime of poverty, and smiling despite it all. And the Human soul of Chu Wanning lacks perception, but it also lacks the heavy layers of armor that Chu Wanning wears in life, and in death, it is defenseless against that bright, innocent smile.
You can change the narrative. Nothing matters here. There is no face to be saved.
“Alright,” he says, and the child whoops in delight, kneeling down on the grass and prostrating at his feet, hands clutching at the edge of his bloodied robe, and the sweet sound of shizun rings out amidst the greenery of Sisheng Peaks, and the air is calm, and the scent of haitang carries him away from it all on petals of pink and red.
On the third day, he is in a memory that is not a memory, or it was a memory of a memory that never fully materialized. Fire burns through the yet unhealed claw marks on his shoulder, ice in his veins, his back covered in lashes that pulse with heat. The haze of his perception seems to thicken, and he is almost insensate, carried to and fro by the waves of heat and cold that alternately take him.
He remembers but bits and pieces of that night, of the cold lotus pond and the gremlins in the Flora Spirit Boundary, of the sharp, abrupt letting of his blood, of the pond glowing red as the flowers are red. He remembers snatches of consciousness, of being supported by a strong, yet slender chest, cradled by hands that stroked at his hair and fed him bitter medicine, of choking and being soothed, of a soft voice murmuring things he truly could not catch. He wants to reach out and touch, to feel that face in his hands, trace the contour of the nose and the brows, finding for sure its identity. A sharp jolt of pain on his shoulder, and he screws his eyes shut, a groan of pain escapes his mouth, and he tries his best to muffle his display of weakness, but it is too late. He is weak, he has always been weak, and it is showing beneath the veneer through the cracks, and he has no binding to patch it up, helpless to watch as the cracks spread and the fragments fall. He is but a jagged edge of a soul, and his soul is splintered, and he is dead, and he still yet feels pain.
As if hearing his thoughts, a voice breaks through the confusion of his soft cries. “Shh… shh… pain, pain, go away,” the voice murmurs, and hands softly stroke his back, avoiding the paths of the whip and the cane, a soothing touch, gentle in its caress.
He thinks that person called him Wanning , the name so unfamiliar in its casual use. No one has ever called him thus. He was Yuheng, or Yuheng Elder, he was shizun, he was Chu Wanning, he was xiaojun, he was zongshi. Never Wanning, so preposterously intimate, so tender that it takes his breath away with shock and the blush of something else he dares not name.
“Wanning, you’ll be okay…” the figure says, curling behind him, arms enveloping him. He is warm, and he is safe, and the tempest raging in his head quiets, and the storm in his body falls in silence.
The fever rages on. He lets that person hold him, heedless of impropriety. He knows the cadence of that voice even as words do not surface, even as names elude him. His skin cries out to be touched, to be held, to feel warmth and pressure and softness, to feel touch that is not claws and touch that is not a cane or an oiled whip, to be held, to be held.
The figure behind him shifts, and he whimpers softly, silently pleading for it to not pull away. Instead, the person only pulls him closer, arms protective around his waist, holding him close enough for their body heat to intertwine, yet mindful of his wounds, hovering just this side of touching. He exhales, the sound like a sob. He yearns, the urge so strong, and he is but a soul with no cultivation.
“Don’t leave,” he says, soft as a breath, and the figure sighs, nodding into the back of his neck, nose nuzzling into his hair, now loose on the soaked pillow.
The fever breaks.
On the fourth day, Chu Wanning finds himself a shade in the Campsis Pavilion. The faint floral scent of peach blossoms clings to the air, the night air cool. The darkness of the night and the darkness of his limited vision blur into one, but Chu Wanning thinks he can feel fabric against his face, his body curled into someone’s chest, his forehead pressed against another, hands bolstering the sides of his face.
“Shidi…” A voice filled with regret, the words coming as if from under water. “Sorry, it was my fault.”
Ah. He knows it is that person again, and he is himself and not himself. He takes a deep breath, the scent of Mo Ran’s boyish sweat enveloping him. He feels Mo Ran move them through the motions, bidding their goodbyes to Xuanji, Mo Ran bundling him onto the wooden bench. He reaches out, feeling for the familiar shape of the clay jar, feeling the remnant of its warmth seeping through the tips of his cold fingers, and draws it to his chest. He knows what is to come, the sight unseen of the uneaten meat buns wrapped in Mo Ran’s clothes. He knows that in the other room, Shi Mingjing’s beautiful form lies sleeping, so softly graceful in the moonlight that illuminates each individual eyelash on that exquisite face. He draws back into himself, seeking refuge away from his failing senses, nestled into the space between the windowsill and the bench, willing this memory to spin out of existence.
The ice in his chest expands to match the coldness of his ghostly form. Again and again, through all iterations of himself, the memory stings. He knows it is easy to forget one such as himself in the face of all the softness and kindness just within one’s reach. Why this regret?
Mo Ran’s voice comes, distorted and tinny. “Here, I found a fox fur blanket. Bundle up, it’s cold at night.”
He feels the faint vibrations of footsteps, Mo Ran’s hand a blazing spot of warmth on his shoulder. “What’s wrong? You don’t like it?”
At his stubborn silence, Mo Ran’s hand finds his hair, and his voice says, “I’ll go see if there’s a different one, then.” Another beat of silence. Chu Wanning curls deeper into himself, remembering how this conversation had gone, dreading for the pain to blossom in his chest, for the tears to prickle at his eyes. Mo Ran’s confusion, Mo Ran’s excitement, Mo Ran’s exuberant ruckus, all muted behind the haze, a small mercy. Let it go, let it pass. Please, let him go. Let him leave from here.
As if following a script, his mouth moves of its own accord, and he remembers more than hears himself speaking. And once he starts, he no longer knows how to stop.
“You said you would be back for dinner, so I waited. If you don’t want it anymore, then at least send words so I’m not waiting like an idiot, okay?”
Mo Ran’s voice is soft, regretful. “Shidi…”
But he cannot stop. “Have someone pass me a message that you’re going to keep Shi… that you’re going to keep Mingjing-xiong company instead. Would it have been that hard?” He does not know why he feels it necessary to name what should be left unnamed. It is crass to compare himself to the object of Mo Ran’s affection. What is he? A failed shizun, a hated figure, a stern demon tormenting Mo Ran’s life, a child who is not a child.
Shi Mingjing hangs the moon in the night sky, and he is the cloud from which descends a storm.
The script is set. He says what he has said in that distant time in his life, which, chronologically, is not, but time has ceased to have meaning for a soul when each moment stretches like an eternity and each lifetime condensed into the mere blink of an eye, in an exhalation of breath undrawn. “I also feel hunger and sadness. I’m only human too.”
The pain of his remembered past comes suddenly and all at once, a flood of grief for the life he has led. The lonely life of his own choosing. How pathetic he is, crying over the misery he has drawn for himself, but he is himself and not himself in a body that once belonged to him but no longer, and he cries. For himself, for his life and all its small and large sorrows, for the little boy with the clay jar, waiting alone in a cave. He is tired of remembering, but all he can do is remember, all he has the convergence of never-ending memories, each regret branching onto the next.
Firm hands tentatively reach for his shoulders, and this time, he lets them. The small figure of his diminished self is clad in a robe of white splattered in red, his fingers and hands still carry the stench of blood, the nails broken and the flesh torn, but Mo Ran does not seem to take notice. Chu Wanning’s body is enclosed in a warmth he has known only a few times in the past, all of them under dire circumstances, so that every embrace is marred by blood and pain, by claws on his back and thorns in his flesh. But this time, it does not hurt to be embraced by Mo Ran, to embrace Mo Ran, to revel in this warmth fearlessly, burdened only by the weight of his own pain and the shame of having lost control over his composure.
But he is dead, and he is a shade, and Mo Ran lets him cry into his chest, Mo Ran is muttering apologies into his ears, Mo Ran is ruffling his hair even as he would never permit it in life, Mo Ran is rubbing up and down the length of his back and rocking him a little, and he cries, sobs, screams out a lifetime of loneliness, and he thinks of Shi Mingjing in the next room, and cries for his own selfishness, mourns his own incompetence, grieves his own cowardice and envy, and Mo Ran only squeezes him tight in his arms, singing a little song with no tune, and the whispered apologies in his hair carry the scent of the peach blossoms, and he thinks that this indulgence, in death, is one that he can allow, just this once.
On the fifth day, he remembers a dream.
The snow covers all of Sisheng Peak, and his vision is a field of white. The smell of Sisheng Peak in the winter is clean and crisp, the snow a gentle blanket, but in this dream the snow, still pure and white, carries the stench of decay. He is kneeling in the courtyard in front of the main hall, dark figures in a neat row a stone’s throw in front of him, the brown wood of the building indistinguishable from the guards. He remembers that he was clad in a blue cloak lined with arctic fox fur, silver and white, in that dream, but now, he is in his bloodied white robe, his still figure a part of the natural landscape and yet distinct from it. Each snowflake hesitates for a brief moment on the long hair of his cloak, on his own hair, before obediently sliding away.
The snow keeps falling. A woman taunts him, but he does not hear what she is saying. Another voice, closer to him, older, gently coaxing him to leave, an umbrella over his head, blocking the light snowfall.
“Chu-zongshi, it’s getting dark, His Majesty won’t be seeing you today, let’s go back,” says the figure, sighing sadly, quivering with age and sorrow.
He speaks, as if still in that deep dream, his mouth opening and words coming out that he does not know, and yet knows. “Thank you, Liu-gong. You’re getting on in age, so please head back to the pavilion first. I’ll be okay here.”
Despite his words, the old man remains, the umbrella still over him. He thinks of all the times he has casted a weather barrier over Sisheng Peak, of all the disciples who had passed underneath, thanking Xuanji Elder for his thoughtful touch, and of the lone figure who offered him an umbrella, and he doesn't know how these memories are connected. He is in a dream, and in this dreamworld, things appear so alien that he thinks they must, must be from the deep, dark recesses of his mind, drawn forth by weakness, by human pathos, easily suppressed with his cultivation should he actually exert effort.
But he does not, and the dream continues, and the woman is yelling at him again. “It’s freezing out here tonight, who are you putting on that pitiful act for? His Majesty and the Empress are currently delighting in the revelries, you can kneel there for as long as you like, no one is going to care.”
She is right, that he knows. Of course no one is going to care, as no one is wont to do. But in this dreamworld, he cannot move his limbs, and when he does, it is his mouth that moves again, shaping words into existence against his will.
They talk. Derision, a touch of pity and a strong dose of malice, and the fires in the courtyard go out, extinguished with the sizzling sound of water on fire on ice.
“Zongshi, go back,” the old man begs, a note of urgency in his voice, the trembling in his voice intensifies as if he cannot hold back his anguish. “Please go back. Your body can’t take this. You know how His Majesty is, if you fall sick from this, he probably won’t even send a physician. You have to take care of yourself.”
The old man is right, but he has always taken care of himself. All those nights lying in the pavilion alone, illness rattling his frame with deep coughs, pain in his temple splitting his head open, the chills that shake through his limbs, the unbearable pain of his stomach twisting into itself, pulsing and convulsing. All those nights, he was alone. He took care of himself the only way he knew how, by curling into himself, tears involuntarily leaking from the reddened ends of his eyes, and waiting until it all passed by uneventfully, unremarked.
“This ruined body is hardly worth anything,” he murmurs, “I’m willing to die if I can just stop him from attacking Kunlun Taxue Palace.”
He does not know whom he means to stop. More words are exchanged, the snow keeps on coming, and soon even the protection of the umbrella is but a pitiful attempt to patch up the sky. He wavers in and out of consciousness, a soul adrift in a dream in a memory, and he thinks he is falling, he thinks the white of the snow is rushing up to meet him, his blood blooming like red haitang in the snow, and when he comes to, he is in a warm pair of arms, lifted away from the whiteness into a dark blur and the rustle of thick, dark fabric.
He hears more words, but they are muffled, and the voice is dangerously low, anger simmering like fire beneath a frozen lake. Soon, the surface will crack, and he flinches into himself, finding comfort in those arms and away from that angry voice, knowing the two are one and the same, the clarity of death washes over him.
It is Mo Ran. It is always Mo Ran, has always been Mo Ran.
Hands on his face, hands on his brow, flustered, furious. He is in a red room, on red sheets, the satin cold. He whimpers pitifully and hates himself for it, twisting away from the figure. Mo Ran, what have you done?
He must have said it out loud. There is a lull in the room, the air sucked out, and he thinks he can still hear, can still feel in this body constructed in a nightmare from which he cannot wake.
“Wanning,” comes the voice, hardened with years of steel on flesh, drenched in blood, but still so recognizably Mo Ran. “This Venerable One didn’t know. This Venerable One never would have let anyone else hurt you.”
He wants to shy away from this voice, but his body burns, and the hands are cool on his fevered skin. “Let me die,” he begs, finds himself begging, unable to stop. “My life for everyone else.”
The voice sighs, softening. It is Mo Ran, he knows it, but it is different, and he wishes he can see Mo Ran’s face, blurred through his limited sight and blurred through the beaded curtain of the crown Mo Ran wears.
“Your death is not for you to decide,” Mo Ran says, not altogether cruelly.
“Grant it to me,” he gasps through the pain. Please . It is all my fault. All that you are, all of mine.
Mo Ran lies down next to him, the body tall and unfamiliar, and he does not know this form, all of its grownup hardness and all of its scars. The arms around him are familiar and not, and Mo Ran’s nose finds the nape of his neck, and beads of sweat fall of his brows onto the bloodied robe, and his bloody hands are clutched in Mo Ran’s calloused grip, and it is his Mo Ran, cruelly grown up, a specter he has never seen.
“This Venerable One can’t let you go, Wanning,” Mo Ran sighs, and draws him close. “What does this Venerable One have left when you are gone?”
He thinks he is crying, but the fever is strong, and his remembered, imagined body is weak, and he drifts off into a thick fog enshrouding him as he is enshrouded by Mo Ran’s arms, emotions warring in his heart. He thinks he is crying, he thinks he is laughing, he thinks he is coughing and choking on his own blood, and Mo Ran’s voice grows urgent, panicked, the hands clutching at his face no longer gentle but frantic.
“Wanning, Wanning,” the Mo Ran who is not Mo Ran cries, Chu Wanning’s name a prayer on his lips.
He coughs once, twice, chest rattling, the stench of blood filling the air, and he thinks Mo Ran’s tears are on his face, Mo Ran’s arms supporting him as he is rolled over, hands drawing his hair back, his robe staining darker and darker, and Mo Ran squeezes him from behind until it hurts, and there is no escape.
When he drifts away, ghostly tears on his ghostly face, he is glad.
On the sixth day, he is dying again.
He knows what to do now, the small mercies of death have made themselves known. The seven days after that singular act of dying are a salve to the Human soul, coaxing the last bits of resentment from the fragments before the three souls are united in the deep halls of the netherworld. Say what is left unsaid. Leave behind the world and enter it anew.
Dying this time is easier, he thinks, having been through it once, having been through it countless iterations before in the deep reaches of his soul. The weight of Mo Ran on his back is almost comforting even as his remembered body cries out with each step. Sisheng Peak looms overhead, the moon hanging by the spidery weaves of the tree line, the steps stretching out endlessly in front of him. The steps are light in his vision that is not true vision, illuminated by the waning moon and the torches along the rails. Some have blown out in the coldness of the night, but it does not matter. He does not need to see to put one foot in front of the other, his physical strength failing, his spiritual power extinguished. The burden on his back is too precious and yet never too heavy to bear.
No, go back. This is too late. Go back.
He thinks of Mo Ran’s face in the periphery of his vision, dropping soundlessly into the ground in the attack, of the hot twist of pain in his chest from ghostly hands and a source unnamed, of gritting his teeth and resolutely not looking over, for he cannot look, of Mo Ran’s cries for his attention, of the throbbing of resentful energy threatening to spill from the Ghostly Realm and of his own failing power, a twist, a twist of the claws, a tearing of fangs.
He remembers walking away, throwing a protection barrier over that crying figure, walk away, draw the evil away from him, of the ghost hands clawing at his feet, his shoulders, his back, Mo Ran’s cries muted.
I need to go back.
But he cannot, as much as he tries. He is not in control of what he sees, where he ends up along this meandering collection of regrets. He is but a specter forced along the tracts, a leaf on an ever moving stream. He wants to turn around and look, to catch Mo Ran’s eyes, to reassure Mo Ran, of course shizun will come back for you, foolish child , to banish the ghosts sooner, to be more powerful, to protect all that he holds dear, but he cannot. His body failed him and failed him yet again, shrinking into itself, diminutive and weak, and Mo Ran’s eyes on his were too much to bear, recognition a faint glimmer before slowly sliding shut. And when Chu Wanning is himself again, the ghosts no longer beat down on his back, content in the knowledge that soon he will join them just that side of the barrier.
Sisheng Peak looms overhead. Agonizing by agonizing steps, he climbs, and then crawls, and then drags their combined weight along the stone steps, blood a grim trail, the stench almost unbearable. He wishes that the old adage was true, that pain no longer exists in the world of the dead, and it is but a comforting lie. Why the torture of the underworld if the soul can no longer feel pain? The soul is made flesh again, a body that is not a body, and yet pain that is more true than any ever experienced in life, searing straight through to consciousness and bypassing the barriers of blood and nerves and weak flesh.
Mo Ran’s breath is ragged as his own breath is ragged, and the fragile fluttering on his back weakens.
It has never been a choice to be made.
They are at a break in the neverending steps, a wide platform of white stone. His blood and Mo Ran’s blood pools beneath them, dripping from the ledge, dragged by the swish of fabric and smeared, a ghoulish trail of red. He heaves them up the platform, collapsing under Mo Ran’s weight, breathing and not breathing, no air in his lungs. And Mo Ran is not breathing, and he cradles that limp body in his arms, Mo Ran’s face indistinguishable from the white stone in its deathly pallor, and he breathes life into his disciple, forcing air into those lungs, wrenching him back from the line between life and death, drawing what is left of his own spiritual power and giving it all, a trade with death.
It is a bargain he has never hesitated to make. Mo Ran draws in a breath, then two, then three, shallow and ragged, but still there, fighting.
Sisheng Peak looms overhead, and he continues the climb, nothing propelling him but sheer force of will, ragged nails against stone, clawing, desperately evading the ghostly claws waiting to take him home.
There is no regret here. There never has been.
On the seventh day, he ends up in Mengpo Hall at Sisheng Peak. Given his death, it is the wrong Meng Po, for there is no cleansing water awaiting him. Instead, he knows that he is alone even through the gauzes muffling his senses, the vastness of the mess hall made eerie by his ghostly footsteps, no sounds escaping the confines of this limited physical manifestation but the mournful, heavy sighs of things left unsaid.
It is the last day that his Human soul will walk the Earth, the final eve before he crosses Naihe Bridge. He yearns for the taste of oblivion in Meng Po’s soup, and yet, the bitterness of his memories draws him back. There is so much to relive, too much to change. He can spend another lifetime atoning for all the wrongs he had committed against himself, against the people unfortunate enough to be in his life, and it would still not be enough.
But it is the last day, and it is the last regret he is allowed to revisit. He knows it well, his living mind having churned it over in multitudes. Mo Ran is but one year into his service, a green shoot eager for life and growth, until this moment.
He has arrived too late yet again. The haitang flower plucked, the judgment delivered. His Mo Ran lies in the disciple quarter, shaking and in pain, away from his reach.
The kitchen is vast and empty, the night deep into its depth, the incense marking the beginning of curfew long burned down to ash. Mengpo Hall is a familiar place, but the kitchen he has scarcely entered before. Without sight, he trails his bloodied fingers along the wall, the counters, finding by touch ingredients in a kitchen he has hardly visited.
It is not altogether too difficult a task. A pot. Water from the large jars in the corner. Flour, in a clay jar along the wall. He rubs it in his fingers, feeling the texture smooth on his ghostly hands, his blood turning the white powder pink, unseen. Salt, with coarser crystal, in a smaller jar. Meat mixture, cool in an earthenware pot set inside a larger jar, cold water coming up to its side. It must be for use another day, but he does not care. He is a ghost, and this is his memory, and there is no tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he will cross the Naihe Bridge, and all of this will be behind him.
He wets the flour by touch, unable to measure out the quantity, sprinkling salt over the white mass until he deems it sufficient by instinct alone. The kneading comes easily. The mass comes together under his fingers, and he worries about whether the wontons will come out splattered in blood, but it is something he cannot help. Knead, knead. Rest. Roll. Cut.
The steps are formulaic. He has been here a thousand times, in his mind, revisiting this memory over and over even during his wakeful moments in life. Where has it all gone wrong?
He fills a pot with water, listening for the muted sloshing sound, and sets it on the wood stove, stoking the fire. The brightness of the fire the only thing truly visible, he turns back to his task, finding the mince and filling up the wonton skins.
His ragged fingers have started bleeding again, the nails worn deep into their beds. Fold by painful fold, pinch by bloody pinch, the plate fills up with wontons. He thinks Mo Ran must be hungry, and so he makes more than he thinks he needs, until he remembers that the fire is burning and the pot is boiling. He reaches out for it, and he turns around, knocks over the salt jar off the counter, shattered.
He does not find it in his heart to curse, merely kneeling down to feel his way around the shards on the floor.
“What do you need?” Someone is close to him, and he has not noticed.
It must be Shi Mingjing. He remembers now what happens next. Soon, he will hand the bowl of wontons to Shi Mingjing, and Mingjing will walk away, and everything will change.
“Let me help you, okay?”
He is mildly surprised. He does not remember this from before, but then again, he did not knock things over before, either.
“Shizun, let me help you, okay?”
He thinks about Shi Mingjing. He rarely thinks of him outside of the context of Mo Ran, and this, too, he regrets. No master should treat his disciples differently, should feel about them differently, and yet he does, unfit in all capacity. A capricious master, jealous of his own disciples, envious of their friendship and closeness, covetous of their affection, avaricious of beauty that will never belong to him. Shame floods his senses, as little else can now. After Mo Ran, this, he regrets the most.
“You’re here?” he finally says, composing his voice.
“Yes…”
He sighs. “That’s good. Just wait at the side for a bit. Once the wontons are done cooking, bring a bowl to Mo Ran.”
The silence answers his command. Just as well. The Shi Mingjing of his memories is gentle and meek, and does as he is bid.
He reaches out again, this time finding the boiling pot, burning the tips of his fingers as they graze against the side of the clay, licked by fire. It does not matter. He drops the wontons into the water by feel, and some drops of boiling water splatter onto his hands.
He wants to explain himself. Shi Mingjing should know, at least in this version of his memory, that he is trying his best, that his cruelty is a dark stain on his soul that he must remedy, that he takes no comfort in its ferocity.
“I punished him too harshly yesterday, he probably hates me now. I heard Xue Meng said he’s not eating anything, so when you deliver this to him, don’t tell him I made it. He won’t eat it if he knows.”
Shi Mingjing’s voice is soft, muffled. “Shizun…”
He forces a smile that he does not mean, hands hovering over the pot, stirring into the murky darkness with a big wooden spoon so that the wontons will not stick to the bottom of the pot. “I’m afraid I was too strict with him, but that rashness of his should be tempered. Nevermind, get a bowl for me, a thick one if you can. It’s cold outside, have to keep the food warm.”
Shi Mingjing is silent, waiting. He spoons the wontons over the bowl, filling it with hot broth and plump pockets of minced meat, fragrant with ginger and scallions. The steam seems to penetrate through his ghostly skin, imbuing it with warmth.
Do something. Deviate. Change things.
Die in peace.
“I really was too unkind to him,” he says, stopping his hand from handing the bowl over to Shi Mingjing. “Never mind. You don’t have to deliver it anymore. I’ll go see him myself, and apologize to him.”
A beat of silence, and then two. There is pressure at the edges of his robe, but he does not understand, and he pays it no mind. The wontons are cooling, and he must get to Mo Ran, must explain things, must pay his penance.
Shi Mingjing’s voice is soft, plaintive. He does not catch the words, only understands that Shi Mingjing is upset about something, but he cannot find it within himself to care at the moment. In a moment of life and death, one’s priorities lie bare, even at the expense of one’s carefully constructed defenses.
Shi Mingjing takes his unoccupied hand and leads him through the winding paths to the disciple quarters. He is grateful. The paths are unfamiliar, the Yuheng Elder preferring to keep his own company at Red Lotus Pavilion, and without his full sight, in the darkness of the night illuminated only by the wane light of the moon, it is almost impossible for him to find his way. And the wontons will be cold, if he finds himself lost.
They are in Mo Ran’s room, or so he assumes when the door shuts. He makes his way in, feeling along the wall, finding his way to the bed where his disciple lies, tormented by the product of his own judgment, his own callousness. “Mo Ran is still asleep?”
A beat. “Shizun, I’m awake.” Mo Ran.
He furrows his brows, makes a noise of confirmation, and listens for a faint clatter at the door. “Shi Mingjing took me here. Did he leave?”
“Mm,” Mo Ran mutters. So the child is still upset at him, after all. He has expected nothing less. He thinks to call for Shi Mingjing, to extract himself from this situation, but the stakes are too high.
After tonight, this, too, shall fade.
He has to make it right, for once.
“The wound on your back,” he begins, and is cut off.
“The wound on my back is not Shizun’s fault,” his disciple says in a soft voice, piercing through the fog around his senses. How can it not be? It is. It is.
Mo Ran continues, “I picked a precious herb without permission, Shizun’s punishment was well-deserved.”
This child. Saying things he does not mean, trying to assuage his old master. He feels a hot surge of shame. Of course he had been too harsh with Mo Ran. It is in his nature to be so rash, to have skin so thin that he dares not show an ounce of kindness to the ones he cherishes most.
He lowers his eyes, eyelashes fluttering. “Does it still hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” Mo Ran says, reassuring him.
He reaches out a hand, following the source of Mo Ran’s voice, his silhouette impossible to place in that dark chamber. He ghosts a finger over Mo Ran’s cheek, feeling a warm flush under the ice of his hand. Mo Ran’s face is soft, the cheek downy, yet as he trails his hand downward the skin starts to roughen around the jawline, a sign of maturity soon to come. “Sorry, please don’t hate shizun.”
His eyes flash as he finds his hand trapped within Mo Ran’s own, warm and rough. He remembers how it feels, in moments of panic, in mortal danger, to take that hand and run, to fight evil alongside it. He mourns that it shall not be again, that this is the first time it has been held in affection since their first meeting on that hill, grateful to have even this to accompany him across the river.
“I don’t hate you. Shizun, you’re good to me. I don’t hate you.”
A spring of emotions wells within him, powerful in his consciousness, and yet the connection within himself is disjointed, and he cannot show just how much Mo Ran’s innocent words affect him. He wants to cry, to break down and wrap his arms around that willful boy, to apologize for all the times he has raised his hand in anger, for valuing his face above Mo Ran’s feelings, for hiding his affection in each strike of Tianwen. But he is a shade, and he can only summon the barest of smiles onto his ghostly lips, and he thinks to himself that even in death, his ghost body still manages to save his face.
The silence between them grows, although not an uncomfortable one. He is at peace. He thinks he has finally found peace, on this last night in the mortal realm.
Suddenly, Mo Ran becomes more animated, saying, “Shizun, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“Hmm?”
“I really didn’t know how valuable Madame Wang’s haitang flower was. When I picked it that day, it was because I wanted to give it to you.” A pause, and Mo Ran repeats, “It was for… for you.”
He does not understand. The words are intelligible, and it is not his hearing that fails him. “But why would you pick that flower for me?”
Mo Ran’s voice becomes frantic, like someone else’s voice has become frantic, a long time ago in a world that is not real. “I-I-I don’t know either, I just, I thought it was really pretty, I…”
He has got it right all along, after all. Mo Ran isn’t a willful, disobedient child. It is he who has been a poor master, unable to reciprocate, unable to educate properly, too quick to anger and too slow to sooth.
He cannot change the past, but he can treat the Mo Ran in his memory right. “Dummy,” he says, extricating his hand from Mo Ran’s grip, finding the softness of his hair and ruffling it. Mo Ran’s hair is thick and soft, the strands a little tangled. He will have to tell Mo Ran to brush his hair more carefully in the future.
Mo Ran sniffs pitifully. “Mm, I’m a dummy.”
He cannot help laughing a little, marveling at the ease of speaking to Mo Ran without heat. Regrets and regrets, piling onto each other like mountains, crashing into each other like rivers at the mouth of the ocean. “Don’t do it again,” he says gently.
“Shizun, I promise you, from now on I won’t do anything to disappoint you. I’ll be good, I won’t be bad. Shizun, this disciple is slow-witted, and didn’t realize until now how good you have been to me. So from now on, Mo Ran won’t bring you any disgrace ever again.”
Chu Wanning sighs. It is hyperbole to say that this is all he has ever wanted, but it is the closest to it he can hope to achieve, even in this dreamscape, memoryscape, this last mercy before the oblivion of death takes him. Mo Ran does not hate him. Mo Ran does not resent him for all that he has done, all that he has failed to do, all that he will never do and never get to see. At least in his own mind, he can be content with the thought of Mo Ran’s safety, that Mo Ran will be fine without him, stout and steadfast in his own right.
The wontons are growing cold. He finds the stone bowl, the heat still retained in its sides, and pushes it over to Mo Ran, who has somehow found himself at Chu Wanning’s feet. “Eat,” he admonishes lightly. “Shizun isn’t a good cook, but Xue Meng said you won’t eat. Eat this. Shizun added chili oil for you.”
Mo Ran is silent. He thinks he can hear a soft cry of something, but it is only a sound of the night. After a moment, Mo Ran places a gentle touch on his wrist. “Shizun, these are the best wontons I’ve ever had.”
But Mo Ran’s voice is soft and sad and watery, and Chu Wanning frowns, tilting his head. “You don’t sound like you are really enjoying them.” Perhaps he should have asked Shi Mingjing to deliver the food, after all. As the old adage goes, everything tastes better when made with the beloved’s hands. He is not blind to the shy glances exchanged between his disciples, and he feels disgusted at himself for inserting himself into this narrative, for even daring to harbor this envy.
Mo Ran clasps at his hand again, the sincerity of the gesture touching. He thinks of the Mo Ran outside of this realm, the one he dragged back to Sisheng Peak, and hopes that he is alive and well, and hopes that one day, that Mo Ran too will find it in his heart to forgive his old master.
“I’m just… trying to eat them slowly. Shizun spent a long time making them, right? I don’t want to just wolf them down without tasting.”
If souls in ghostly bodies can blush. “Eat them while they’re warm,” he says simply, holding back the deluge of his emotions.
Mo Ran makes a sound as if in agreement, and begins to slurp loudly. Chu Wanning does not find it in himself to scold. The sound, instead, brings a deep ache to his chest, but a different kind of ache than the sting of self-hatred and regret. It is a tender pain yet rooted so deeply, so sweet it clamors to be acknowledged, a warm squeeze of the heart, curled softly around the bud of a haitang blossom.
“Shizun will try to be better,” he says, knowing it is a lie and yet fully intending on following through with his words. In the next life, I want to meet you again.
“Shizun is already the best,” Mo Ran replies through a mouthful of wontons and broth. “I’m stupid. Will shizun forgive me?”
“Silly child,” he sighs, shifting a little closer to the source of Mo Ran’s voice. Their robes are one on top of the other, and he thinks of the blood on his body, and hastens to draw away.
Mo Ran reaches out a hand to stop him, finally settling the bowl down on the bed behind him. “Shizun, I really am sorry. I- I want to be good for you.”
He smiles. Mo Ran can be very sweet, when he puts his mind to it. He has seen it, how Mo Ran talks to Shi Mingjing, two dark heads bent together, secret whispers and secret smiles. He wonders if, in another life, he can ever find that kind of simple happiness for himself, if he were not who he is.
What are titles for? Beidou Immortal, Yuheng of the Night Sky. It is no compliment to be a solitary star in the sky, above it all, looked up to by all, but neared by no one. At least, at the end of this lonely life, he can be warmed by the presence of this pupil, this child whom he cherishes with all his heart, despite his best effort, still willing to be with him even knowing just how foul his temper is, how caustic his words, how miserable his existence.
"I want to see you smile all the time, shizun," Mo Ran says wistfully. "Shizun's smile is the prettiest. I'll make you smile. I'm going to work hard and grow up, and I'll protect you. I won't ever let you get hurt for me again."
For once, it does not hurt too much to be eclipsed by the radiance of Shi Mingjing. He would give his life for this boy. He already has.
He would do it again, a thousand times over, in lifetimes innumerable.
“Shizun is... proud of you, Mo Ran,” he replies haltingly, and Mo Ran falls upon his lap, heedless of his appearance, undeterred by the vile stains of blood. He thinks Mo Ran is crying a little, but that is to be expected. The child has gone through a hard time, and it is alright to indulge him, on this last night.
“Shizun,” Mo Ran says at last, when the sun is beginning to rise and the horizon lightens. “Will you come home with me? Let me take you home.”
To go home. So the shades of the dead have sent the image of Mo Ran to take him home. The small mercies of death.
It is not altogether true to say that he has no regrets, but with Mo Ran’s hands holding so tightly to his, with Mo Ran’s warmth so close they are almost touching, in this quiet room where all is right, he does not feel that it is all that important to rectify every mistake, only the ones that matter.
“Alright,” he agrees easily, and Mo Ran takes out a paper lantern and removes the screen.
“Shizun, trust me. I will come get you. I will bring you home,” Mo Ran promises, and he does not understand, but Mo Ran’s voice is determined, and the fog of his vision lifts just enough in that last moment to see a pair of dark eyes, bright in their fervor, glinting with determination.
It is fitting that Mo Ran’s beautiful face should be the last sight he sees, and so it is.
He drifts, and he is found, held tightly within Mo Ran's arms, cocooned.
Mo Ran, the most wonderful dreams are rarely ever real, but sometimes they don’t have to be.