Chapter Text
“This is taking forever…” Mo Xuanyu moaned from the top of the empty bookshelf; he was lying upside down, his limbs spread out, and over the long mahogany sides, his robes sprawled out, and his head cracked to one side to watch Lan Yuan, who was facing away from the ghost.
Lan Yuan ignored the useless moaning, sliding the box he'd just rummaged through away. His knees throbbed painfully when he'd crawled to the next unopened box, the annoyance of searching through all the boxes by himself slowly seeping into him.
What seemed to be a quick and easy job became stupidly long; the search was futile as they came across everything but the Yin Tiger Tally. It was as though it was hidden in the depths of hell, anywhere but nearby, robbing the two of the chance to move on to the next step finally.
What made it feel less fair was the work he'd had put through, but Mo Xuanyu leisurely lounged across the top of the wooden bookshelf, humming to himself, not a single care in the world.
Lan Yuan gently played the ancient guqin back into the box, ignoring the coldness that seeped deep into his bones when Mo Xuanyu slipped off from the top of the bookshelf, his ghostly steps mute when he'd strided over to Lan Yuan, a huff of boredom sounding from the boy when he'd lowered to the floor and lay onto his back once more.
“How long?” Mo Xuanyu cried out once more when he slid to his side, his head leaning on his palms, his eyes lapping up the objects Lan Yuan had carefully lifted from the box before placing them back down when it led to another dead end.
“Maybe if you help instead of lying around, it'll speed things up a little,” Lan Yuan said, his words rough and harsh. He'd reach for another box, ignoring the long look Mo Xuanyu had thrown at him.
“I need to preserve my ghostly energy levels! If I use it for everyday mundane activities, then I'm sure to run out quickly! I can touch you, yes, but I cannot touch anything else without using that energy unless it's from another world!” Mo Xuanyu cried out in defence of himself, crawling on his fours when he'd peeked into another pointless box Lan Yuan opened.
There was another huff of disdain from Lan Yuan, the mortal boy shoving the box away harder than intended, ignoring the careless rattling, his eyebrows furrowed when he'd yet again got up to look through another box filled with ancient teacups, withered talismans and various instruments encased in a ziplock bag. Lan Yuan was very irritated with rotating around the same three of these objects over and over again; the very sight of them began to make him sick.
“Can you possess humans then? Make things levitate? Do strange and unusual things with your saved energy?” Lan Yuan asked curiously and shrugged away the previous irritation; the forgotten questions he'd meant to ask previously on the roof were resurfacing; tales from the ghost had made him forget to ask.
He'd figured out that if the ghost possessed such abilities, then it ought to come into play at some point; it could give Lan Yuan an advantage for sneaking around their newly off and unusual house, especially with the bonus perks of being able to speak to the deceased.
It was unusual but beneficial in their quest to find the Tally and release Wei Wuxian from the afterlife.
“Yes! Any ghost can do it pretty much. But I have a question for you,” Mo Xuanyu gasped and slipped onto his knees, his black hair flowing across his enthusiastic face, head tilting to one side as a snide grin possessed his face.
“Go on,” Lan Yuan said and carried on with his work underneath the watchful eye of Mo Xuanyu, ignoring the strange look the ghost threw at him when he dug back into a new load of relics.
“You told your father the truth. Despite the fact that it made you look crazy. Not everyone would confess to seeing the dead, let alone to a normal person and someone so close like your father.”
Lan Yuan's hands fidgeted with his black cuffs; the black lace felt too rough when his flesh pressed down onto the material. He leaned back and away from the piles of artefacts on the floor, his head slowly turning towards the ghost who'd stared at him, his sharp eye hardened when Lan Yuan avoided the look on his face and instead focused on the red hemming of the ghost's unconventional robes.
“Why? Why did you do that?” Mo Xuanyu calmly asked.
There was a moment when Lan Yuan turned back around, his hands finding themselves back in the box, turning the plastic bags before taking them back out, his palm dropping limply to his side, his eyes making their way up to the skyline where the impending afternoon light gently filtered through the glass and through the shaft of light that lit up the forgotten corner of the house that was the library.
“Lans don’t lie, Mo Xuanyu. I told you this back when we were in the hallway. And I know it may seem stupid to you, to a ghost who's bound to no rules, but it's everything to my family.” Lan Yuan's words bounced off the empty bookshelves and echoed around the circular room.
“I am no Lan if I cannot uphold the rules that have been hammered into me, into all of us since birth. I can't lie, and it seems I can't even lie under extraordinary circumstances,” Lan Yuan emptily laughed, devoid of any amusement, his head shaking at the morbid thought of disobeying his family.
Despite everything he'd gone through, all the hardship the Lans had given him for his excessive grief, he was still a Lan through and through. How can he be anything more?
“You're forgetting something, Lan Yuan.” Mo Xuanyu said and moved onto the balls of his feet, his hands swiping up the box Lan Yuan was rummaging around in, the ghost placing it out of the way when he crept to a kneel in front of the mortal.
“You're also a Wei.”
Lan Yuan swallowed the lump in his throat; his breath shuddered at the words.
“You may be taught to grow up as a Lan, but you are as much of a Wei as you are a Lan. You gotta think like your dead dad, act like him. Be shameless, be erratic! You've already done so by excessively grieving; how much more trouble could you be in?” Mo Xuanyu encouraged and grasped hold of Lan Yuan’s black clothing, hauling him to his feet, his fingers snaking underneath his chin, forcing his head high and proud.
“Don't let the Lan upbringing hold you back. Don't let their constant hounding of outdated rules get to you. You are Wei. Use that to feel no shame.”
Somewhere in Lan Yuan’s blackened, shattered heart wailed in misery that this was wrong. Something felt out of place; it was uncomfortable, as though it was lodged in the wrong places and needed removing.
He's loved his dad, and he's wanted nothing more than to get rid of himself or his Lan’s way of life. And maybe in a different life that could've been true. But through and through, is it what Wei Wuxian would've wanted for his son?
After all, it's Wei Wuxian who'd agreed to the upbringing; it was Wei Wuxian who fell in love with the Lans and happily married one to raise him in Gusu.
His head dropped low when Mo Xuanyu stepped away, his footsteps invisible when he'd finally crouched down and begun helping in the search.
Lan Yuan said nothing and stayed quiet when he'd begun helping the ghost, his heart conflicted, heavy with what he'd wanted and the newly gained thought that had pulsed in his brain that asked him, would Wei Wuxian want him to do this?
Of course, that didn't last long. Lan Yuan shrugged off the horrible thought; he was doing this for the greater good of his life, and if the Lans didn't want a part in it, then maybe they truly didn't love Wei Wuxian to begin with.
He had grieved long enough; through thick and thin, he wanted his dad.
Mo Xuanyu dropped out after his fifth box, deciding to lounge around and talk about anything on his mind, which included every single thought he'd had at the moment.
“You reckon your father would move out at some point? No one ever stays long term here!”
“Hopefully not. It's too strange for him; it's unpredictable. No idea why he moved here in the first place.” Lan Yuan replied.
There was a pause.
“No one ever stays. It's sort of like living: one day you're here, next you're gone.”
Mo Xuanyu chuckled, his head resting on his arms, a pause in their conversation.
“Don’t you miss your friends at Gusu?” Mo Xuanyu asked.
“Yes, Jingyi.” Lan Yuan spoke warmly; the thought of his best mate warmed his heart.
“I bet you miss him dearly, I suppose.”
“Of course I do! We text, but it's not the same as seeing him. Never could be.”
And the ghost went on about some story of the eerie forest in the back which Lan Yuan tuned out, humming along when he continued his search.
It was when it hit the afternoon, and the last box was opened and empty, that they realised the Yin Tiger Tally was nowhere in this collection in the library.
The pair looked down; the plastic covering that had held the other part of the pendant lay alone in the box, next to it a black, sleek dizi.
The only thing left of the pendant was evaluation papers, marking off the intricate edges of the Tally. Either way, it was as though it was never there to begin with.
Mo Xuanyu turned around, the frustration and wrath taking hold of him like an out-of-control hound. He swaggered away, his footsteps felt heavy for a ghost and before Lan Yuan could reason with him, his leather-clad shoes kicked the boxes carelessly out of his path; he'd stormed towards the bookcases, his ghastly fist slamming against the oak, almost breaking the precious wood, his punches repeatedly slammed back into it over and over, each blow more harmful than the last, fueled with pure madness.
“FUCK!” he'd cried out, delivering one last punch for good measure.
Lan Yuan was sure that if he were alive, his hands would be bloodied and numb.
“There's got to be a reason it's not here…” Lan Yuan muttered, lifting the note to his face so he could read the hurried scribbles of Wei Wuxian’s handwriting.
The writing gave him nothing, no lead nor information about its current whereabouts.
“This can't be it, Mo Xuanyu. It has to be somewhere," he'd reasoned, standing up when Mo Xuanyu turned around and rushed him with such fury that it had startled Lan Yuan.
“This can't be it?! Then where is it?!” Mo Xuanyu's words were laced with venom, his eyes blinking dangerously with hidden rage that he'd suppressed from resurfacing.
It was clear as day that it wasn't simply misplaced. It was taken, hidden away somewhere. And there was no way that it would've been stolen. The only two people who had access to the collection were Wei Wuxian himself and his father, Lan Wangji.
And it could never be stolen because the collection was exclusively private to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji’s eyes only.
Lan Yuan didn't mention that fact, not when Mo Xuanyu was clearly in a horrid mood; the ghost dipped down, grabbed the dizi that was placed in the box before turning it back and forth in his palm.
“Mo Xuanyu, calm down first, and I'll help you!” Lan Yuan cautiously stepped forward, hands raised up and though he was finally spooked by the ghost he'd previously not feared, somewhere deep within, a flicker of doubt coiled around the uneasy feeling he had felt earlier.
Mo Xuanyu stood eerily still, unnaturally so for a ghost, before toying with the dizi in his hand; he'd played a few broken notes, as though to distract himself from the lingering fury that had taken hold of him like a demon, to rid his brain of the ferociousness before dropping the dizi in Lan Yuan’s hand.
His face was scrunched up in madness, but when he said, "You're right, I'm sorry,” he'd sounded as though he'd finally come to his senses, the logical part of his brain taming the anger that he'd let momentarily control him.
“Listen, and I think you're not going to like this, but… I think my father has it…” Mo Xuanyu opened his mouth, but Lan Yuan cut him off once more before he could blow up once again.
“Only he and my dad had access to this collection. I would never lie to you about this. For some reason, my father must've taken a liking to the Tiger Yin Tally. We need to get it off him.”
Mo Xuanyu shakily laughed, then threw himself onto Lan Yuan, grabbing the boy aggressively by the shoulder, his talon-like nails grasping mercilessly into his skin, his previously soft looks morphed into something dark and desperate when he barked like a crazed man, his eyes wavered underneath the shadowed pillars of the house.
“SHIT! Remember how I said to become a Wei? Disregard that; be Lan Yuan! Be the Lan who'd get what he wants- do ANYTHING to get that Yin Tiger Tally! I'm begging you,” the ghost dropped to his knees pathetically, hands grasping into the black fabric of Lan Yuan’s attire as he babbled and wailed inconerriently.
“Xuanyu! Pull yourself together!” Lan Yuan cried out.
“Pull myself together?! Your father holds the answer, the father who thinks you're a weirdo holds the answer, and I need to pull myself together?!”
Lan Yuan was taken aback by how Mo Xuanyu could snap horribly at him. The previous warmth he'd held for the ghost started to boil over into something else wicked; the place within him that felt wrong started to shift and morph into something more understanding, as though he was starting to realise.
He couldn't put his fingers on it because by the time he opened his mouth to bite back at the lunatic ghost, out from the closed grand doors to the library, a ghost who wore rough and torn robes had stepped through the locked wooden doors.
Despite being a distance away from the two, he'd towered over them menacingly, his eyes void of anything, his movements slow and ragged, moving as though he was a cursed puppet forced to move forward.
Lan Yuan knew, by the way Mo Xuanyu scrambled up to his feet, the haunted look that had dropped onto his face, that it was one of those demons from the attic. Still, Lan Yuan couldn't help but take in the translucent facade of the supposed demon that had stepped through a wall as though it was nothing; its haunting black robes swayed loosely behind it, and its body swayed as though he was (is) dead.
Surely demons were not see-through?
The new appearance of this ghost, whose face was void of anything, lifted its hand limply; a finger pointed wickedly towards Mo Xuanyu, who'd taken a sharp step back, his face stooped low in horror.
“Wen Ning?! What are you doing here- HEY, HEY-!”
Mo Xuanyu had no time to scream when the ghost, Wen Ning, thundered across the room in two short strides, his fist colliding with Mo Xuanyu’s face, the taller ghost throwing him across the other side of the room and into the bookcase, whose shelves shattered from the impact.
Lan Yuan watched, mortified.