Chapter Text
LANLING, AFTER THE SIEGE
After the first year of her marriage to Jin Guangshan, Luo Xin took steps to ensure she would never be surprised. It takes a great deal of trouble and expense, but for the most part she has managed it. There are only a handful of occasions, through the long years of their marriage, that Luo Xin can say she truly did not see coming.
She is not surprised when Jin Guangshan announced the attack on Luanzang Gang because one of her maids had scurried into her chambers and said, “Jin-furen, Jin-zongzhu is preparing to attack Yiling Laozu,” only hours before.
She is not surprised when a handful of Jin Guangshan’s dalliances come forward to make claims against him, because it had to happen eventually; Jin Guangshan seems completely averse to the concept of discretion when it comes to these affairs.
She is not surprised when Jin Guangshan spins some tale of peril that requires his immediate attention and flees rather than face his accusers – though Luo Xin is still unclear whether he had understood why he was being accosted – because she has been married to him for the better part of three decades. She knows the man. She knows what he is capable of, and while he doesn’t think he would kill their son to salvage his pride, she also thinks he loses all his cunning when his blood is up. Thus, the dalliances. Thus, fleeing Jinlin Tai.
He is gone, though, and his alleged victims are still here.
They are led by Fu Xiang, grim-faced and cold. That is a surprise. Luo Xin would not go so far as to call Fu Xiang a friend, perhaps, but as Jin-furen and Qin-furen they are natural allies. Although, as the wife of a sect leader, Fu Xiang would feel more entitled to some form of compensation, if Jin Guangshan had done something distasteful. She would also see the wisdom in gathering complaints from other women, to protect her own reputation.
Luo Xin makes a point to greet them in her robes and guan, as Jin-furen, not as their peer. They are not her peers.
Some of the women are very young.
One of them is – one of her cousins, or perhaps a niece? There are a handful of Luo girls running around Jinlin Tai. Luo Xin had made it extravagantly clear to Jin Guangshan that they were not to be touched. Anger flashes in her belly, like oil hitting a pan, but she swallows it down. She makes herself be calm, still as an empty koi pond.
“Qin-furen,” she says, when they have arrayed themselves in her parlour. “I understand you have some matters to discuss with me.”
Fu Xiang spares the more intimate details, but that is her only mercy. She lays out times, places, names, with the precision of a weiqi player setting down stones. Luo Xin wishes she were not so credible, but every time a date is mentioned it slots neatly into her own mental timeline. Yes, Jin Guangshan was in Langya that day. Yes, he had brought a girl to his rooms that night; Luo Xin had hurled a vase at his head over it.
She knows this cannot possibly be every girl Jin Guangshan has ever had. That would be an impossible number. These are only the ones with airtight stories, with witnesses, with stories that involve force or coercion. Luo Xin could certainly put an end to it if there were a need. She could meticulously destroy their credibility, one woman at a time, and leave them disgraced. It would take time, though, and when Jin Guangshan has been so thoroughly indiscrete already, who knows what else might come out of the woodwork in the interim? She would be fighting alone, of course – Jin Guangshan would never lower himself to aid her in correcting his own mistakes – and even one misstep could see the entire Jin sect disgraced along with its master.
That is not something Luo Xin intends to allow.
She inclines her head to Fu Xiang and thanks her for her report. She gives some pretty words about the importance of truth and justice for all, even when the accused is the lord of a great sect. She excuses herself and gives quiet orders to a few servants. She sends a spiritual butterfly to Zixuan with clear, specific instructions, and waits with her heart in her mouth for him to reply, to obey or defy her – or to obey his father, which will be the same as defying her, in this case.
It has been a night and almost a full day since her son and then her husband departed Jinlin Tai when Zixuan’s message comes back, advising her that Jin Guangshan had been arrested by Lan Xichen, and that Yiling Laozu was calling for him to be put on trial in Yiling.
It’s almost exactly what she wants. She’s thrilled until she explains the situation to Fu Xiang and her coterie.
“And who will preside over the trial, Jin-furen?” one of the women – the one who’s probably a Luo – asks, quite innocently.
Luo Xin fixes her Jin-furen smile to her face and doesn’t even twitch an eyelash. Her mind, though, races. Obviously, the Jin sect cannot offer a judge, nor any of their allied sects – and some of their allied sects are among those who claim to have been wronged. The Qin sect, obviously, is out. So is Ouyang. The Yao sect would do, but none of the other sects would accept them as a neutral party. The Jin sect has bad blood with the Nie sect from Sunshot, and since Lan Xichen was apparently present to arrest Jin Guangshan at Luanzang Gang, there must be some other feud brewing with Gusu as well. The Jiang sect will stand with the Nie, given where their daughter seems to have shifted her affections. The Wei sect obviously cannot do it, and the Wen sect are equally laughable. When she strips the sects devastated by Sunshot from her mind, who is even left?
“I have already dispatched messengers to find an appropriate person,” she says, even as she leaves through the pages of her mental books. “A rogue cultivator of suitable notability, or someone from one of the temples, don’t you think? Someone with no stake in the games our husbands play.”
“If you can find such a person so quickly,” Fu Xiang says coolly, “I will be amazed.”
Luo Xin does not reply to that, except to smile. She dismisses them, and then snarls at her servants until messengers have actually been dispatched to every Daoist temple and wandering rogue they can think of, quickly enough that, she hopes, no one will notice the discrepancy.
If Luo Xin has to snatch some hermit out of the woods herself, she will.
֎
YILING, AFTER THE SIEGE
Su She is pretty sure someone literally pulled the judges of this particular trial out of the woods. For all their fancy titles, one of them still has grass stains on the hem of his robes.
“Xiao Xingchen, called Mingyue Qingfeng, disciple of the Immortal Baoshan Sanren, and his companion, Song Zichen, called Aoxue Lingshuang, of Baixue Temple,” was how Qin-furen had introduced them before they all settled in to hear hour after hour of stories that would probably give Su She nightmares if he didn’t already dream about war every night.
It’s easier to focus on anything else. Like the judges, who are apparently completely immune to any and all social graces. Like Lan Wangji, caught under a veil of Wei Wuxian’s spiritual energy, like he’s fallen asleep in a winter river under a layer of clear ice.
Luanzang Gang is different from the last time Su She was here, which is… unsettling. Luanzang Gang isn’t supposed to change. That’s what made it safe to live in, despite all the resentment. It was stable, or at least, it was according to Wei Wuxian. Now, though – Su She had only come back because Wen Ning was already on his way, and if he’d known what it would be like, he might’ve stayed put.
Whatever Wei Wuxian had done to repel the Jin forces long enough for the Twin Jades to pull off their dramatic nonsense had clearly… done something. There are birds everywhere, for one, and not a single one of them acts like a normal bird. They all swivel their heads as people walk past, zeroing in on some individual cultivator, then switching to someone new, apparently at random. It’s disturbing. The earth, which used to be subtle about the way it moved to open or close pathways, has been seen rippling and shifting right in front of people. Wei Wuxian is holding the place in check by some astronomical force of will and through a series of increasingly complex arrays that Su She has spent a lot of time helping to draw and redraw and redraw, but it’s not really sustainable. Even the black bamboo has moved; groves which had been self-contained now burst their boundaries now and then. When Su She goes out in the morning, he marks places where he thinks new clusters might sprout. Sure enough, the new growth is almost up to his shins when he returns at the end of the day.
That’s another fun new thing – Luanzang Gang has days now. The sun rises, the sun sets, time keeps moving. Not consistently, of course, because that would be too easy, but it does move. It seems almost jagged. Sometimes an hour will drag on and on and on, and sometimes everything will leap forwards and Su She will step outside and realise the night has passed and dawn is here.
It’s in one of the dragging times that Wei Wuxian comes to find him.
Su She is still running on a Lan sleep schedule, more’s the pity, so he’s awake before the sun is. There’s the barest flush of pink on the eastern horizon, like the day was thinking about getting started but then gave up and rolled back into bed. Su She is perked on top of one of Fumodong’s doorways, on a stone crossbar carved with jasmine flowers, leaning back on his hands and glowering at the sunrise.
“Don’t make that face,” Wei Wuxian says, and slumps down next to him. “You’ll give yourself wrinkles! You’re a young man, Su-shidi, don’t waste that.”
“Who are you calling shidi?” Su She snaps, but he shuffles sideways so Wei Wuxian can sit properly.
“Won’t you just accept my love as your shizun?” Wei Wuxian asks.
Su She wants to ask if he’s drunk, but he knows the answer. Wei Wuxian can’t sleep until they’ve figured out what to do about Luanzang Gang, so Wei Wuxian won’t drink wine, either. “No,” he says instead. “What do you want?”
“Just to see the sun rise. Although it’s taking it’s time.” Wei Wuxian sighs heavily and leans back on his elbows. “Hey, Su She. You never asked me for anything. Why is that?”
There’s not a good way to answer that. Su She knows now that Wei Wuxian, unique among sect leaders, probably wouldn’t use a request as a reason to pull the rug out from under him. He can’t tell Wei Wuxian he assumed that at the time, though, or Wei Wuxian will be sad, and then he might be too distracted to keep Luanzang Gang held together.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted then,” he says instead, which isn’t true – he’s known what he would ask Yiling Laozu for ever since he first heard the folk tale, as a child sleeping in the servant’s quarters in Yunshen Buzhichu – but is probably as close as he’s going to get. “I was still stuck on that being a real thing you really did instead of a silly rumour.”
“That does get a lot of people stuck,” Wei Wuxian says lightly. He knocks his knee against Su She’s, then rolls onto his side and props his chin up on his hand, squinting at Su She as if he’s some kind of puzzle to be solved. “Do you know now ?”
“Maybe,” Su She says. He resists the urge to fold his arms and turn away. Something about Wei Wuxian forcibly drags Su She back to his teenaged self, bad-tempered and sulking and furious at the injustice of the world. It’s hard to remember that he’s a grown adult and a powerful cultivator in his own right. “Is this you asking me to ask you?”
“Sure is!” Wei Wuxian chirps. He knocks Su She with his knee again. “And, you know, no rush, but I do anticipate retiring fairly soon, so.”
“You were about to retire via dying,” Su She points out. “I didn’t think it mattered that much to you.”
“You helped me when it counted, Su-shidi,” Wei Wuxian says, sounding so earnest Su She can’t even pick at being called shidi again. “If I’d known the schedule had gotten moved up so much, I would’ve done it earlier. But it all worked out in the end! This is better, actually. So, go ahead and ask.”
Su She chews his lip, thinking it over. He used to think he would have to be careful and precise in his wording when dealing with Yiling Laozu; he used to have a perfectly precise series of wishes, carefully weighed up and analysed in his head. He’s forgotten most of them in the intervening – years? It can’t have been years. It must only have been a few months since he met Wei Wuxian, and he hadn’t even spent that much time in Luanzang Gang. Not enough time for his own sect to notice he was missing, certainly – and there’s that teenage bitterness again. He swallows it back.
“I want a sect where it doesn’t matter who your parents are,” he says eventually. “I want a sect where anyone willing to put in the work can come and train. Where people don’t get shunned or thrown out because they want to try something new, or overlooked because their parents weren’t married to each other, or because their family don’t have enough money to bribe their way to a good reputation.” He closes his mouth on the flood of other words that could easily come out, jaw working. Adds, “And not having to starve while I build it would be nice, too.”
“Tada!” Wei Wuxian says, spreading his hands wide and waggling his fingers. He forgets that one of his elbows is taking his weight and slips, almost clonking his head against the stone before he catches himself, laughing. “All right, Su-shidi! You want it, you got it. In exchange for your… however-long-it-was of service, and one other thing.”
“What’s the other thing?” Su She asks, immediately suspicious.
Wei Wuxian’s grin has a little edge of malice, this time. “Jin Guangshan will be sentenced tomorrow, and when he is, I need you to play some music for me.”
.⋅ ♫ ⋅.
Su She came up with the song – it still didn’t have a name – after he’d overheard Wen Zhuliu talking about how his core-melting hand actually worked. It was so simple he couldn’t believe it wasn’t common knowledge. And while he wasn’t interested in melting cores, there was no harm in messing around on his qin for what might have been weeks, picking out melodies that would never make it into any Gusu Lan text until he stumbled over the ones that were effective.
He only lingers by the trial long enough to hear Jin Guangshan, offered a chance to speak in his own defence, decline it.
“Who are you to make such demands of me?” Jin Guangshan smiles at Xiao Xingchen. He’s on his knees in one of Wei Wuxian’s arrays, still in the bloodstained golden robe he was arrested in. His lips pull back even further, until the smile edges onto a snarl. “You know nothing except that sheep will bleat. I will not dignify this farce by joining them.”
Su She leaves at that point. He knows that isn’t what Mo Lihua was hoping for, but it’s almost exactly what she predicted, when she’d asked him about Jin Guangshan ever getting held to account.
He retreats further into Fumodong and practices his song again and again, testing, refining. It’s not something anyone is ever going to play for fun, but even without putting his spiritual energy into it, he can
He doesn’t know what, exactly, the sentence is, but he hears a lot of people gasping and a lot of people shouting, so he assumes it’s been pronounced and that it’s controversial. Of course, the idea of punishing a sect leader at all is pretty controversial, so it might not matter what they actually give him.
Either way, it’s probably Su She’s cue. He picks up his qin and goes.
Wei Wuxian is waiting for him. So, to Su She’s surprise, is Meng Yao, along with Nie Mingjue. Xue Yang is attempting to drape himself on Meng Yao’s shoulder, but that’s not a surprise. Xue Yang always has a habit of popping up where he’s least useful.
“Su Minshan,” Meng Yao says, and bows – the polite bow of a sect senior to his junior, which is also just enough of a bow to send Xue Yang sliding off his shoulder. Su She mumbles his way through greeting Meng Yao, and then Nie-zongzhu as well, and doesn’t really have time to process anything else because Wei Wuxian nudges him to kneel at the outer edge of the array around Jin Guangshan.
“Just like we talked about, shidi,” he says cheerfully, and kneels beside him, flourishing his dizi. “Get the energy into the array and it’ll do the rest.”
“I want you to know I hate this,” Su She says – quietly, so no one else will overhear – “but it’s still better than your first plan.”
There aren’t so many witnesses as he’d feared there might be. Qin-zongzhu and his wife and daughter, standing together at the head of a small group of women; Jin-furen with Jin-gongzi at her right hand and Luo Qingyang at her left; Wen-gongzi, awkwardly hovering between a little cluster from Baling Ouyang and a few Nie disciples who must have come with Nie Mingjue, looking like a mouse in a room full of cats. Lan Xichen and his sleeping brother.
Jin Guangshan is kneeling in the centre of the array. He is calm, stoic, looking like a temple carving in his gold robes. Su She doesn’t like that this will be the last image the cultivation world has of him, still and serene – but, of course, it won’t be, because Wei Wuxian lifts his dizi to his lips, and Su She begins to pluck out a melody.
It doesn’t really hurt. Su She had talked extensively with Wen Zhuliu, when he had the opportunity, and he and Xue Yang had messed around with half a dozen variants of the song, taking turns stealing spiritual energy away from each other and then putting it back. It’s not a comfortable feeling, but it’s not really painful. The only reason Jin Guangshan should howl like that is because no one’s told him what they planned to do with him.
Jin Guangshan tries to stand, but Luanzang Gang turns soft and yielding and then hard again and wraps his legs in stone from foot to knee. All he can do is shout at them, face twisting into rage as delicate whorls of golden light drift from his skin and sink down into the lines of the array, carried off to wherever Wei Wuxian sent them.
Su She can’t hear him, too busy keeping his attention on Wei Wuxian’s dizi, on his own qin, but he can sense Meng Yao’s weight shift uncomfortably behind him, so he assumes one of the things Jin Guangshan is shouting is son of a whore.
They don’t even kill him, the big baby, but eventually he’s reduced to weeping anyway, bent forward in a parody of obeisance, trapped on his knees by the earth of the land he tried to invade. Su She considers it, for a moment. It’s very easy to kill someone when you’re already messing around with their spiritual energy. But then Wei Wuxian’s haunting dizi melody turns into something gentler, modulating the final flow of energy down into the array, and so Su She goes with him, guiding the sharp-edged notes into something softer, a modified version of Rest that promotes focus and direction instead of simple pacification.
Jin Guangshan is still having his tantrum when the music ends. It’s awkward. Su She stands up and slips his qin into a qiankun pouch, intending to hide out until someone else has dealt with the problem, but Wei Wuxian is already up and striding towards the audience in the attitude of Yiling Laozu, even though he doesn’t have the mask.
“Since you are already gathered here, honoured sect leaders, I have some news to impart.” Wei Wuxian turns and sweeps an arm towards Meng Yao, who is still standing with Nie Mingjue. “I will be stepping down as the leader of Yiling Wei. My senior disciple and heir, Meng-zongzhu, will be taking my place.”
Su She feels his eyes widen, but Meng Yao looks completely unsurprised. Nie Mingjue also doesn’t look terribly surprised, even though there’s a ripple of shock going through the gathered sect leaders. How long has this been in the works?
“Since we’re making announcements,” Nie Mingjue says, “I will also be leaving the care of my Nie sect in the hands of my younger brother and heir.”
That does make Meng Yao flinch. Su She is close enough to hear it when he hisses, “Have you told Huaisang yet?”
“No,” Mingjue says, “but he can hardly be surprised. Anyway, he owes me for going through all the nonsense with his betrothal.”
“And why will you be doing that, Nie-zongzhu?” Baling-zongzhu asks. He doesn’t sound curious so much as exhausted.
“I’m hoping to marry into the Yiling Wei sect,” Nie Mingjue says, as if that isn’t completely baffling. “Or will it be the Yiling Meng sect, now? That could be confusing.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Wei Wuxian says, hurrying over. “I may not be their sect leader anymore, but those are still all my shidis and shimeis you’re talking about! Who exactly are you hoping to marry?”
“Meng Yao, courtesy Meng Fuqiu,” Nie Mingjue says easily, apparently entirely immune to the way Meng Yao blushes vibrantly and hides his face in his hands. “I’ve been courting him since you brought him to Bujing Shi, Yiling Laozu. I’m not sure how you missed that.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I was slightly busy winning the war for you!” Wei Wuxian is grinning, though, a laugh bubbling under his voice. “Come on, let’s get all this cleared up—” he gestures at Jin Guangshan, huddled in the array, with all the care he’d give to a pile of firewood “—and we can celebrate your engagement properly!”
That’s when it all descends into chaos, of course, so Su She escapes back into Fumodong before anyone can ask his opinions about it.
.⋅ ♫ ⋅.
He comes back when Meng Shi, Meng Yao, and Nie Mingjue come in. Meng Yao is still blushing and, from the look of things, hiding behind his mother, who has taken to interrogating Nie Mingjue very intently about his intentions for her son. Nie Mingjue doesn’t seem phased by this, but Su She has no desire to see it.
When he steps outside, he finds Wei Wuxian, Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan, and Lan Xichen all standing together over Lan Wangji’s napping bed. Lan Wangji almost looks like he’s been laid out for a funeral in his whites, the occasional shimmer of spiritual energy sparkling over him like sun on glass. He’s barely even breathing. He could be dead if Su She didn’t know better.
“I thought he’d have woken up by now,” Su She says, strolling up to Wei Wuxian’s side like he belongs there and interrupting whatever urgent low-voiced conversation they’re all having.
“I thought so too,” Wei Wuxian admits. He brushes a hand over Lan Wangji’s frozen face. “We managed to counteract the poisons, so unless there’s something left in his system…”
“I thought Luanzang Gang would be fixed by now too, actually,” Su She says, because he’s not all that interested in Lan Wangji. “Not enough core juice?”
“Please don’t call it that,” Wei Wuxian says, grimacing. “And… no. Although. Hmm.”
“Have we been introduced?” Xiao Xingchen asks. “I’m Xiao Xingchen, and this is my friend, Song Lan.”
Su She bows to them. “Su She, courtesy Minshan. I was very impressed with your ability to be impartial, despite the…” He looks pointedly at the array, where Jin Guangshan had sat in robes that cost enough to feed an entire province for a season. “External pressures.”
“It has always been a dream of mine to found a sect where shared values and friendship count for more than bloodlines,” Song Lan says. He follows Su She’s gaze to the array and scowls. “And for more than wealth, too.”
“Oh! That reminds me,” Wei Wuxian says. “Song Lan, Xiao Xingchen, this is Su Minshan. He wants to build a sect where anyone can come and train as long as they’re willing to put in the work and won’t be cast out because they don’t have the right bloodline, or the right amount of money, or the right orthodoxy.” He pats Su She’s shoulder. “I surrender him to your care. Maybe talk to Meng-zongzhu about giving you a chunk of territory; Luanzang Gang is really far too large for one sect to manage alone. Ask me how I know!”
“Wait, what,” Su She says, but Wei Wuxian is turning away, stepping closer to Lan Xichen, and there is nothing that could motivate Su She to butt into that conversation. He turns to Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan instead, spreading his hands helplessly. “I’m sorry. He just… he does things like this. You don’t need to take him too seriously—”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Xiao Xingchen asks. His face is sharp, almost catlike, but his smile is gentle. “Wei Wuxian has told us a great deal of your accomplishments. And you have something we lack.” When Su She stares at him, uncomprehending, Xiao Xingchen laughs. “Knowledge of the sects, and their relationships.”
“People skills,” Song Lan says dryly. “Xingchen doesn’t know who gets which courtesy, and I don’t care. It seems that’s not the best starting point for founding a sect.”
“I,” Su She says, and blinks a few times. “I don’t know what to say?”
“Take your time,” Xiao Xingchen says. “Perhaps we can meet tomorrow, and discuss further? That should give Meng Yao some time to resolve his own matters, as well.”
Su She looks back over his shoulder at the entrance to Fumodong and shudders. “Yes. That sounds wise.”
֎
NOW
Wei Ying waits until even Lan Xichen has given up and gone away. Everyone is either gone or safely inside Fumodong. Fumodong itself, he hopes, will only change the parts of itself no one else can see.
He takes Lan Zhan with him, away from the parts of Luanzang Gang most changed by human activity, into the forest they almost never touched. The birds watch them as they go, tilting their heads in unison.
“I know you don’t like him,” he tells Lan Zhan as he walks, “but Su She was right, actually! You should be up and about, and so should Luanzang Gang, and the fact that neither of you is means I missed something.”
Lan Zhan doesn’t answer, of course, but Wei Ying wasn’t expecting him to.
They arrive somewhere Wei Ying has revisited many, many times, at least in his memory. There’s still a scrap of dark grey cloth clinging to the tree Lan Zhan had shoved him against. Wei Ying sits down by its roots and settles Lan Zhan in front of him.
“I’ve never done this before,” he confides. “I mean, I put Meng Shi to sleep, of course, but she had a physical sickness, and those poisons were attacking your meridians. In theory, once I wake you up, you’ll be fine.” As long as Wei Ying is correct. As long as Wei Ying got everything exactly right when, in the dark of Fumodong, still reeling from the dizzying rush of channelling Luanzang Gang and from Jin Guangshan’s attack, he had put Lan Zhan to sleep. He swallows hard.
“But I can’t wake you until I fulfil my promise to Luanzang Gang,” he tells Lan Zhan. “And I can’t give Luanzang Gang what it asked for without… letting go of it. So here we are. Letting go of it.” Saying the words out loud does nothing. Wei Ying sighs. “Fine, fine. I can do this, you know!”
Neither Luanzang Gang nor Lan Zhan reply. Wei Ying pulls out Chenqing and rubs it on his sleeve.
Chenqing used to have a charm, a pendant Wei Ying had found in the depths of Fumodong: a white jade rabbit, pale as milk, set into a silver moon with a pestle by her feet. Now that charm hangs from a string of shiny beads that change colour when the light catches them, themselves a gift from a petitioner, and those beads hang from Lan Zhan’s belt, gleaming black and blue in the dappled sunlight.
“Well,” Wei Ying says. He rests a hand on Lan Zhan, kept from touching him by the veil of spiritual energy Wei Ying himself laid there. “No one ever wore jade that hadn’t been carved, did they?”
He lifted Chenqing to his lips and began to play.
.⋅ ♫ ⋅.
The earth felt it first. In the driest places, the worst hurt, it shivered like a horse shaking off a fly. Dust rose and jumped as, far below, long-buried rock began to move. Ancient bones rose up and were carried away, drifting on a gentle breeze.
A million tiny creatures, long dormant, stirred to life as the earth moved around them; they found the roots of torn-up plants, fragments of desiccated flesh, and consumed them. Others of their kind drew air down into the earth, breathing life into the soil. Their work disturbed larger creatures – things that squirmed and crawled and scuttled, things that burrowed, things that slithered – and these creatures in their turn woke the plants that yet remained, coaxing them to life.
Trees which had slept for an eon stirred as worms and beetles moved through their roots. Bamboo, which was tenacious, seizes the chance to sprout wildly, far beyond what anything else might dream, and its vigour disturbs the smaller plants which are forced to push through in the spaces it leaves behind.
The array in which a man had been sentenced for his crimes pulsed, sending shivers through stone.
The bones of the ancient dead gathered in the open air and laid themselves out in rows, as complete as they could be after so long ground into the dirt. One by one, the willing souls drew close to what remained of their bodies; one by one, Luanzang Gang closed the earth over their bones, drawing them down to rest in safety; one by one, the resentful dead released their grip. Justice had been done, even if it had not been done for them. For many, that was enough.
Plants raced over the soil that covered them – grasses, flowers – and in that grass, bees and moths and butterflies set quietly to their work. Among the trees, the birds that perched in silence began to stretch and sing. Many took flight, chasing after the insects below; others sought out places to nest in trees which were no longer frozen.
Finally, the song reached the sky. The clouds thickened, turned darker; lightning cracked the open and let the clouds burst. A downpour pounded the earth until it accepted the rain and turned from dust to mud. In the old, stagnant ponds, water seeped into the earth, drawn away by thirsty roots; rainfall refilled them, the force of the deluge breaking open long-forgotten nests and carrying new life. When the ponds were full, algae and pond weeds gave shelter to hundreds of young carp, crayfish, crabs; frogs sang from among the sprouting reeds at the water’s edge. A family of water voles emerged from their burrow and plunged into the water.
The rain eased, slowing, fading to nothing as the sun set.
The moon rose, white as jade.
Luanzang Gang waited.
.⋅ ♫ ⋅.
Wangji wakes in a place he does not recognise.
He sits up gingerly. His last memories are inside Fumodong – Jin Guangshan, poison, a blade slicing through his wrist – but the threat is surely past, or he would still be there. Now he is in a forest, flushed green with recent rain. Night birds call to each other.
Did his brother take him back to Yunshen Buzhichu? He does not recall anywhere in the back hills having so many cypresses or so few fir trees, so it seems unlikely. This is not the kind of forest he would see in Qinghe, or Lanling, or even Qishan, and the forests in Luanzang Gang are not alive—
Plenty of people live without golden cores—
Wangji lurches to his feet, whirling. “Wei Ying?!”
“I’m here!” And he is – Wei Ying is there, in front of him, hands gripping Wangji’s biceps, steadying him as he turns. “Lan Zhan, ah, Lan Zhan, I’m all right, I promise—”
Wangji shakes Wei Ying’s hands off and takes a firm hold of his shoulders, nudging him backwards until Wangji can inspect his torso. He runs his hands down Wei Ying’s arms, down his ribs, down the outsides of his thighs, turns him around and maps the expanse of his back with his palms.
“See? I’m fine, I told you—”
Only when Wangji is satisfied Wei Ying is not hiding an injury does he spin Wei Ying around again and kiss him. It is a good kiss. Wei Ying melts under him immediately, throwing his arms around Wangji’s neck. Wangji almost lifts Wei Ying off his feet in an attempt to hold him closer, which only makes Wei Ying laugh against Wangji’s mouth. And, best of all, when Wangji reaches out, when he allows the slightest trickle of his spiritual energy to pass from his mouth to Wei Ying’s, Wei Ying reaches back with his own.
They break the kiss and stand for a moment, foreheads pressed together, sharing breath.
“Xiongzhang?” Wangji asks. His voice is a little hoarse.
“Safe and well and sleeping in Fumodong,” Wei Ying says. “Worried about you. He’ll be happy to see you awake.”
That gives Wangji a flicker of guilt, but he presses on. “Jin Guangshan?”
“Prosecuted for his crimes – some of them, anyway.” Wei Ying gestures at the forest around them. “He was sentenced to live without a core, so I didn’t have to use mine. You should thank him for all this!”
“No,” Wangji says. “Wei Ying—”
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, and bites Wangji’s lower lip, a gentle scrape of teeth that sends thrills through Wangji’s blood. “Your brother said if I could save your life, he would grant me a boon.”
Wangji swallows, transfixed by Wei Ying’s eyes. “What will you ask for?”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Wei Ying says, “but I thought perhaps the Second Jade of Lan’s hand in marriage might be on the table? If I haven’t ruined everything—”
Wangji does not shove Wei Ying against a tree this time; instead, he kisses him first and then walks him backwards, until there is conveniently a tree for Wangji to lean him against. It is a simple thing to pin him there, caught between unyielding wood and Wangji’s own body.
“Wei Ying,” Wangji says, “come back to Gusu with me.”
“Are you sure?” Wei Ying asks. He is pleasingly breathless. “I thought – you might still have a bargain to fulfill—”
“My bargain was to keep Wei Ying safe, if Luanzang Gang could not,” Wangji says. “It will be much easier to fulfill it once we are married.”
In the east, the sun is rising. Magpies begin to sing the dawn chorus. Wei Ying laughs and kisses him again, hands winding into Wangji’s hair.