Chapter Text
When Jin Ling is eleven years old, he’s had enough of trying and failing to live up to Jiang Cheng’s expectations. He’ll prove himself once and for all. He knows there’s only one prey his uncle truly cares about hunting. The entire cultivation world may have tried to summon the Yiling Patriarach, but doesn’t Jin Ling have more motivation than anyone? His parents were killed! And so, for a year, he studies every forbidden technique he can get his hands on (a rather large number, considering he’s the Jin sect heir). Finally he’s ready. He’ll fly to the Yiling Burial Mound, summon Wei Wuxian, take his revenge, and prove to everyone just how strong he is!
He wakes up at Lotus Pier a week later, immobilized in bed. A ghost is watching him.
“You really did it. How? Why?”
The ghost’s face, clothes, everything, are torn to shreds, a terrifying sight, but his voice sounds…normal. So normal that Jin Ling begins to doubt. “Are you Wei Wuxian? Are you the man who killed my parents?”
“Jin Ling, I—”
That’s when Jiang Cheng returns. And of course he was worried sick, and of course he shows it terribly. “What the hell did you think you were doing? Do you want to die?”
“Uncle! I did it! I summoned Wei Wuxian!”
“Don’t you dare joke about something like that.”
“But–he’s right there!” Jin Ling points to the figure standing by the end of his bed. The ghost only shakes his head. No one else can see him, he tells Jin Ling. He’s been here a week, Jiang Cheng by Jin Ling’s side almost constantly, and no one noticed him at all. And since can’t move too far away from Jin Ling, he was really hoping the boy, at least, could see him.
Yiling Patriarch or not, Jin Ling clearly summoned someone, and he’s not going to back down. “I’ll prove it to you!” But the ghost stubbornly refuses to participate in anything that would prove his presence. Jin Ling begins to describe the ghost, but his features are so marred Jin Ling can only describe his condition, and Jiang Cheng flies into a rage.
“Are you saying you’re possessed? You want me to use Zidian on you?” He walks right through the ghost as he strides across the room, but then he backs down. “Never mention this again,” he warns, and that’s that.
“You’re not even him, are you?” Jin Ling sulks, when he can speak without being overheard. “You’re just some no-name cultivator who died during the siege.”
“…that’s right,” the ghost agrees. “Just some no-name ghost.”
So Jin Ling has a ghost. Only he can see him, only he can touch him, and if he ever gets the nagging suspicion that this ghost is–well, Wei Wuxian would never teach him to stand up for himself against bullies, Wei Wuxian would never help him out on night-hunts. Wei Wuxian could never be his friend.
A few years later, he’s almost certain it’s him. He still doesn’t ask.
He’s night-hunting with Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi, Ouyang Zizhen, and a few others. They camp rather than travel to an inn–some might call it romantic, Jin Ling finds it uncomfortable and unnecessary. Under the moonlight, Lan Sizhui suggests that Lan Jingyi practice Inquiry, as he still hasn’t mastered it.
“I’m gonna prank him,” says No-Name Ghost.
But the Lan boys weren’t expecting an answer at all; when Jingyi receives one, Sizhui takes over. His next question answered, he looks, up, shaking. “It says…it says it’s Wei Wuxian.”
The boys erupt into a panic. “I didn’t know he was strong enough to force an answer,” No-Name Ghost–Wei Wuxian–defends himself. He knows Jin Ling guessed, too.
Jin Ling tries to divert them. “We’re nowhere close to Yiling, how can it be him?”
“Sizhui didn’t make a mistake!” Jingyi protests.
“We have to tell someone,” Sizhui says. “This is more than we can handle.”
They’re not far from Gusu. Sizhui fires a signal flare into the night.