Chapter Text
It is with both fear and hope that I write these words. Fear, because of what I am about to say. Hope, because of who I am about to reach. Perhaps this transcript will be burned. Perhaps it will be tucked away, forgotten. Who can say what the future holds for us, the wise or the foolish? Perhaps that is for the best.
We Lan have been taught to always walk the straight path. To walk it when we are glad; to walk it when we weep. To walk until it is our only certainty, that it does not abandon us, so we do not abandon it. Always there, always waiting.
It is a path I have walked all my life. I have walked it alone, with friends, family, and loved ones. I have walked it with enemies, with rivals, strangers, and ghosts. I have walked it carrying all my hopes, all my dreams, knowing it would always be there to welcome me back when I rested. As is our way, it was my certainty, and it always guided me.
Until the day it did not.
We Lan have been taught to fight emotions with logic, with routine. To overcome all worldly grievances, handicaps, and feelings. Self regulation. Self discipline. Self balance. It is what we know, all we know to do. If it becomes too much, we lock ourselves away, meditate, focus inward. Label feelings and set them aside like teacups ready to be washed clean, spotless, and emerge into our world again, triumphant.
The fact these words exist now proves the fallibility of such beliefs.
I offer this as both comfort and warning. This is an old magic, connected to the heavens, easy to call upon but difficult to fulfill. It will put a path before you when no others can be found. When you are lost in the darkness, it will shine a light. When you are forsaken, you will no longer walk alone.
But be cautious, my dearest brother. Once you start, you cannot turn back. You must forsake your worldly home to walk a path you cannot see. To invoke this spell is to concede control. To walk on faith and not know your destination. To find your peace in the journey. Stay true and steadfast and you will find what you seek. Falter and doubt and you will lose your way forever. Be careful what you wish for.
Attainment is not simple. It will challenge you. It will take time. But the reward is beyond comprehension if you are willing to fight for it. If you are not, turn back now. You will find another way.
But if you find yourself wishing your heart’s wish with no path at your feet and a full moon above you, unafraid of surrender, you may ask for the Old Magic to show you the hidden road and be on your way. Let none stop you. Let none hold you back. Stay humble, my brother, stay trusting and true, and never stop seeking your answers. The blessings of the Gods will be upon you in time as long as you have faith.
Safe journey, wherever it leads, and may your heart fly free.
Lan Bole
---
Mother had once told him that the brightest lights only shined in the darkest of corners. When all hope was lost, a light would appear to lead him back to safety. Back to hope. He’d only been a small child at the time, as old as Wangji had been when Mother had passed, but her words had taken hold of his heart. And though the years had shamefully blurred his memories of her, they remained, rooted deep where he could never forget.
Lan Xichen held onto them now as he carefully packed away the last, small remnants of his life. His brushes, always in a neat line, returned to their boxes. His blankets, always laid out for visitors, folded and tucked away. His favorite inkstone, his poetry, his music, all carefully set aside for safekeeping. Like mortuary tablets, they sat heavy where he placed them, proof he had been here, had been alive in this place, had written words and plucked strings and sipped tea. That he’d laughed and wept and sat in a silence he’d once welcomed. He’d been here. Here had been home.
If he failed now as he had failed in his seclusion, they’d be all that remained of him, the only signs he’d lived at all. That he’d tried . It was a surprising comfort.
What he took was far more simple. A plain set of white robes, a bag of coin; Shuoyue and Liebing; his ribbon. His ornamental headpiece was left on his pillow atop the letters he’d left for Wangji and Uncle that detailed his plans and begged for their understanding. The letter for Sect Leader Jiang, written with the others, was tucked safely away in the folds of his robe. He touched it once as he shut the door behind him, hardly able to breathe in the final quality the air had taken when it slid into place.
His beloved sect was peaceful and silent, lit in the glow of the moon above. Already he missed it like a physical pain and could not shake the feeling he was leaving it forever, even if he managed to return. To give up this place for something so selfish and foolish… would he even be worthy of returning here? Would it ever be home again?
Gods, was he really doing this?
As he made his way to Gentian House, Lan Xichen found the answer was a simple yes. Seclusion had not given him the peace he needed, had not allowed his heart to rest. It’d taken over a year of heartache for him to realize that all the meditation, training, and music in the world would not save him. Not this time.
That conclusion had been the final blow. He hadn’t known where to go, despite feeling time whittle away at him more and more. If he could not shed his guilt and grief as so many Lan disciples had before him, then what good was he as Sect Leader? How could he fail so completely and still stand beside them?
That answer, too, had been simple. He couldn’t. The reliable Lan path to redemption and harmony was no longer open to him. He no longer knew the way. And with nowhere to go, he’d been utterly lost.
Mother’s words had planted roots, and tangled inside them was a hope for that promised light. Was it any wonder, truly, that when it came to life inside him, he had followed without question? Despite all the unknown, despite all he was leaving behind?
He was beyond desperation. The light, the spell, the risk… it was all he had left. The only path left to take.
I hope you all will forgive me one day.
Lan Xichen knelt at the door to Gentian House, Mother’s house that Wangji had made into a home. Even in the cold of the moon, he felt the warmth in the walls. As he slipped the letter under the door, he found himself caught by a flickering candle still burning inside. It cast a light over a flurry of papers that seemed to be everywhere except the desk, a spot of chaos in the otherwise tidy space. Lan Xichen smiled to see it.
The light was just enough he could make out the shape of two people entwined on the bed, tucked together beneath the blankets. Lan Xichen stood and moved to the window, watching them sleep. He could imagine their peaceful faces, their soft breaths, and let it wash over him, soaking him through. When it grew to be too much, Lan Xichen lifted his hand and sent a wisp of power through the wall in a silent farewell.
Take care of my brother, Young Master Wei, he prayed when the candle sputtered out. Even in darkness, the warmth of their home was unmistakable. But of course it was. Wangji had, after all, found his light. Now it was time for Lan Xichen to follow his own.
He walked the winding pathway towards the back of the mountain and the least used exit of Cloud Recesses. There, clustered in a spot of pure, unfiltered moonlight, were Wangji’s rabbits all nestled together amid the clover and grass. He sat among them with the moon glowing against his face, allowed a pair of young bunnies to crawl into his lap for warmth, and closed his eyes.
Lan Xichen had found the manuscript by pure chance, hidden in a forgotten corner of the Forbidden Chamber as the mysterious Lan Bole had predicted it would. The words were heartfelt and yet explained absolutely nothing. Even the title was cryptic: Sùyăng. Attainment, with no inkling of what would be attained. It was a mere page of writing, no diagrams, no spells to chant or music to sing. Just basic instructions and little else.
Yet, for it to be locked away with the rest of Lan’s forbidden knowledge… it had to be powerful. Even though all traces of Lan Bole’s person had vanished from every archive he’d read, this letter remained. And what it had promised had unlocked something in his heart that bloomed the way only hope could do. All his empty research could do nothing to dissuade him, so potent was the light he’d found within after so long in darkness. In an odd way, it had only made him more determined to try.
Supposing this spell did as recorded, it had been deemed worrisome enough by the Lan Elders to be hidden, but not destroyed. Valuable enough to keep, but too dangerous to make common knowledge. Even Lan Bole had been removed from recorded Lan history. That had to mean it worked, did it not? If it were nothing more than hearsay, surely it would have been burned the moment it’d been discovered?
It was the only thread of hope he could cling to, and he did so with all his heart. Have faith, Lan Bole had written, and Lan Xichen did his best to hold to it, even if he had no idea how to proceed. No idea what would happen now, to him or to his loved ones, to GusuLan. His heart’s wish was pure, but it was also selfish. Surely the God’s would simply punish him for being so daring?
If that is my fate, I embrace it.
He looked up at the moon, mind clear, and let his gaze trace over the full shape of it. He imagined he could feel the light on his skin like a physical touch and pressed his spiritual energy back against it. Seeking. Reaching out. Until he was his own beacon in the dark, set to guide whatever answered directly to him.
“I am here to walk the Hidden Road,” he murmured, body thrumming with all the power he held within. “I humbly ask for the guidance of the Old Gods. Please, show me the way.”
The rabbits shifted around him, disturbed from sleep by this surge of energy. Even the snuggling kits in his lap scrambled away as though startled. He glanced down at the movement.
And suddenly, there it was, the feeling of something ancient taking hold of the power he offered and clamping down. Lan Xichen didn’t dare to even breathe, feeling the judgement of that foreign force as one violent rush of fear. He was so small in comparison to what he was feeling. Could his wish even be considered worthy? Could this actually work?
All sound and movement ceased, the world narrowing down into that invisible contact, and for one terrible, heady moment, time itself was suspended.
Then, it pulled.
All the air was sucked out of him, draining from him so quickly he cried out, though the sound choked off quickly with no breath to support it. His hold on his own spiritual energy released and everything came crashing inwards at dizzying speeds, dragging him down, down, down. So fast he could feel the descent. Was he truly falling? Was the earth itself swallowing him up? Was his wish so fatal this was to be his grave?
That fear sharpened into a true terror when his world went blindingly white. Lurching to a stop, locked in place, there was nothing else but light. No grass, no wind, no sky. Just his heartbeat.
Lan Xichen… Lan Xichen… oh, how long I have waited for you…
The voice was everywhere, in everything, pushing away his fear into a startling, eerie calm. It felt too big to comprehend, too far away to hold, even though it rushed over him like a trickling stream. A fallen leaf trapped in each ripple, he felt his body settle, helpless in the tide even as his mind floated in that odd haze of dreaming. Time no longer existed. Night or day, it no longer mattered. There was only warmth, so much warmth, and the feeling of being small, curled away, unseen. Safe.
...Lan Xichen…
The sounds of the forest were slow to return. First the fluttering of leaves in the trees overhead, then the shuffle of the rabbits. Something was nudging him, but he was slow to realize it was his own body feeling the movement. Fighting through a hazy sludge , he managed to open his eyes and saw only white… cloth?
He instinctively moved his hand to brush it away, but it immediately felt wrong. The grass was suddenly too thick, the grunts of the rabbits too loud. The smells… these were not smells he knew. They were too potent, too clear, wrong, wrong, wrong.
The something nudged again and the cloth shifted, allowing in a tease of fresh air under the folds. He hadn’t realized how stuffy the heat had gotten around him and moved closer to the coolness with a stumble that, too, felt wrong. A nose, trembling and curious, bumped into his own, and a dawning, horrible suspicion encased his heart.
In disbelief, he shuffled away, but it did not deter the rabbit, who was now bolstered in the knowledge that someone was there and seemed determined to help him get out. As Lan Xichen struggled to find some sort of handhold in this new reality he was faced with, it lifted the edge of the cloth on its head and wiggled its nose at him; pleased, no doubt, to see a fellow rabbit huddled inside.
A rabbit, of all things. A rabbit. The Old Gods had judged him and this was their answer to his pain?
Have faith.
Lan Xichen forced himself to breathe and focused on slowing his racing heartbeat. The rabbit watching him gave another soft grunt and moved in to join him, nudging him in hello, or perhaps in comfort. He did his best not to push the creature away. It was probably a good idea to stay on friendly terms with his brother’s little pets, especially if he was stuck here. And watching them could only help, not only to overcome his panic, but for more practical reasons. It was a foreign body, but it was still his body, and if he wanted to fix this and survive, he had to learn to control it. And quickly .
As he was circled, Lan Xichen guided his focus from body part to body part. He lifted his left front paw and flexed the claws, then lifted the other to do the same. He shifted his back legs under his body and slowly bunched the muscles there, as though to jump, before relaxing them when the pressure stabilized. He wiggled the little tail he had, scrunched his nose, blinked his eyes, opened and closed his mouth.
The ears were the strangest, being so long and tucked in so neatly against his back. As a man, he had no need to flex his ears, even to hear, but watching his enthusiastic companion, it was clear that rabbits did. He lifted one, then the other, making them stand up as tall as they could go, and settled them back down. Tucked them in the way they had been and lowered his nose to his front paws, hoping to look as pitiful as possible so the rabbit would not see him as any sort of threat.
It did not and happily led the way out of the bundle of robes. Lan Xichen was immediately surrounded by curious eyes and perked, white ears. Noses pushed against every crevice of his body, exploring. Not used to being touched so shamelessly, he hopped out of the bustle and moved into a patch of taller grass to hide and collect his tumbling thoughts, lest he be too overwhelmed to do anything more than scream.
Calm, he needed calm again. Hiding in the clovers, he focused on the smells, so crisp in his nose. And the colors. So many shades of blue and green… he had no words to describe them, nor would he wish to even if he had. No written character, no matter how beautifully written, would do them justice.
Awed, he looked up to the trees, amazed at the staggering breadth of vision he could actually see. Side to side, behind, and he didn’t even have to turn his head! His fur moved in the breeze and he shivered with it, ears standing up almost on their own. He felt cooler doing so, oddly, and sat that way awhile, letting his logic settle back in.
It was daylight, he saw, which meant he was missing hours that he had no knowledge of. No matter how hard he tried to puzzle through what had happened, Lan Xichen could not guess just how much time had passed. Surely, not too long? Wangji must have gotten his letter by now. Even the shock of Lan Xichen’s sudden absence would not lead him to neglect his beloved rabbits. If he did not come himself, he would send Wei Wuxian, or Shizui. And then Lan Xichen’s discarded robes, sword, and ribbon would be discovered, prompting some sort of search.
But would they find him? Looking down at his paw, he could see it was just as white as all the others. That severely lessened the chances of Wangji realizing he had one extra rabbit than he’d had before, especially since they seemed to multiply on the regular. But then again, he was the only rabbit here with spiritual energy, so maybe…
Fear crept back in, but he pushed it down firmly. It would not do to panic now. He’d called upon the Gods and they had done this in response. It had to be for a reason. Assuming this was meant to happen was safer than assuming he’d failed already. That meant there was a road to find and answers to try to seek. Lan Bole had said he would be guided as long as he stayed true. So he would.
He hopped along the knoll, looking down at the dirt path. He was still terribly clumsy, but getting stronger with every step, and dared to peek over the edge of the hill and the small fence keeping the rabbits in once he no longer felt he’d immediately fall over.
But the road looked no different than it had before. He felt no pull, no tug in any direction. Determinedly, he hopped to the other side of the clearing to check if the road he needed was one less traveled. But still, nothing.
Lan Xichen shuffled back to his robes, which were by now swarmed by all the other rabbits, and ducked in with them. They were little more than strangers, but there was still a comfort being among such simple, happy creatures. They knew no grief, no longing. They were pampered and ignorant to the cruelty of the world. To be one of them, if only for a moment, was better than being himself.
He was flopped over and buried under their squirming bodies. Adrift as he was, Lan Xichen was thankful for their warmth and living pressure, proof they were real and he was real. He was alive, therefore he still had a chance at this and prayed it was enough. His faith was strong, buoyed by desperation and his longing for a light. He told himself it was still there, that he would find the way, and repeated the words over and over until he believed them.
I am here to walk the Hidden Road, he thought, mind tired, but heart open with longing. I humbly ask for the guidance of the Old Gods. Please, show me the way.
A soothing warmth pooling in him was his only answer and he gave in to the inevitable. To give up control was part of the spell, to walk in faith and trust. It was out of his hands now. What more could he do but wait?
The wind was cool, the sun was bright, and the rabbits pressed in close. Lan Xichen fell into a fitful sleep, full of hazy stars and a light that danced just out of reach. Laughter, deep and shivery, followed his every step. And a voice, far away, beckoned him into the dark.
Be careful what you wish for.