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Chapter Text

It happened as fast as the flash, sending his body into a sealed state of blood and whimper. The first cut was his left ribs, very accurately deep into his flesh and meat despite the fastness of the attacker’s movement, carved by the hands of those who are professional in this field. Before a scream left out of his mouth, a hand smothering the front part of it, blocking its way of communicating. As if a very sharp needle was put inside his throat, the sensation he immediately felt was been getting burnt exactly on his neck. The piece of consciousness was falling as the reality obscured. Wei Wuxian couldn’t differentiate whether what happened on his neck was really real or not. All he know is that in the next moment, his stomach felt as if it wanted to outburst like a burst of fire, and that he knew nothing more than the loud plea of his inner, asking for help of anyone, anything, and someone in the very far distance from the last time they met on top of flourishing hill that reminds him of the place where his golden core leaving him to hollowness and pain, similar to what his stomach and chest felt right now.

He vaguely recalls the previous moments of long minutes before, which he didn’t even care enough to count on how long it was exactly. The night is unusually starless, hidden by the cloudiness of the sky that seems like it want to pour its tears. He just want to have one good rest after a quite long journey to the directionless place, so he decide to stop by the nearest inn for a while which happened to be an isolated area in the border between village and small city. He remembers tying up Lil’Apple in the field in front of the inn, entering the place and immediately booking one small room after, small enough that it actually barely contains one small bed and one drawer.

Foolish....he thought. His Chenqing were dropped there as the innkeeper informed him of “escape” of his donkey, no weapon to defend the stab on his chest that lodged near his heart right now. Wei Wuxian recalls the looks of innkeeper when he told him that good lie and the glance that avoided him anytime---- he wonder how much they paid him now, or maybe he did it willingly with the same ‘justice’ reason. The mob’s nature are never changed in cultivation world nor commoner world, always lacking in being informed but loves to jump into the bandwagon to crucify the “demon”, created by people of agenda in the above. There’s only three people that attacking him right now, yet, so weak his body is to the point he can’t even sense the incoming presence of the attackers. From his blurry eyes, he saw dozens of people wearing sects’s uniforms that he can’t identify are watching the scene in front of them, hiding behing the bushes and trees. The expression of glee and grin painted in their face.

Sharp pain come back in assaulting his stomach, near the liver. He can feels that the deeper it went, as the organ being torn up slowly and painfully, the tissues that made it up is busted in the process, in the same way his consciousness is being disconnected from the living world. As soon as his body finally unable to get up from the hard fall on the tainted grass, those dozens of people are finally leaving in smug of satisfaction. Then the tears of sky were finally falling, wetting the sinful earth. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how long have he been lying there with his limbs feels like it don’t even exist anymore. All he knows is that he should moves into another place, wherever it’s, as long as it gets far away from the field near the inn he was framed.

From the corner of his eyes, a strange area of red dots can be seen vaguely. Instinctly, his fragile knuckles tries to support the whole limp, almost lifeless body, but failing not a second after. The wet under him can’t be differentiated enough between the mixing scent of rain’s water and the red human liquid that continue to pour below, accompanying the life of grass under.

The plant must be spared from the cruelty of his blood, he decide. Long robes part of his tainted black clothes by unseen blood trails as he desperately crawl slowly, just like the lowly dying worms, he thinks ironically. Wei Wuxian drag himself between the grass and stones, the latter act which help in more stabbing to the fresh deep holes. The frequent rubbing of his broken ribs feels too twinge, almost inhumanly, but that doesn’t matter. All that matter is whether he can reach the town when he drop to his death. And so he crawls and crawls, unable to care enough of the route he went, as long as maybe there’s still that little hope. A hope to reach his beloved one that give him that trust, a trust of them can meet together again in the end. At least, he want to fulfill that promise first before he meets the second end. But then, isn’t he be too cruel to him?

There’s a soft feels that touch his wrist, almost silk-like and full of tenderness that he doesn’t feel for a long time. The struggling eyes of Wei Wuxian opened to see the red petals that embraced his bloody skin. Its leather caress him like lovingly, like the touch of his long-gone Shijie. The tears of guilt drops down into the ground, soaking it just like the rain that lie down on them. Several sobs continues to wreck his broken body as he crawls longer to the front, the sorrow of his tears match the sadness of the sky. In the end, he finds the total cold of his body finally catch on to him, right in the middle of the field of the red flowers that shaped almost like spider that widen their net, welcoming every deaths.

It hurt.....

Wei Wuxian himself wants to scream as loud as those of inhuman creatures, sharing all the sickest pain that his entire upper body experienced to the core, but can only find his own voices has been sewn up, sealed hours ago, hindering its from being shared to the world around and isolating him from the help, the thing he finally come to full realizement just now.

He chuckles soundlessly, another wave of blood plunges from his mouth, originated from his stomach that already become the house of gawking holes, displaying the lacerated tissue and organs behind it. He feels his own censors of sensation slowly shut out, becoming colder and numb as the time passes. The wounds he bears doesn’t even aches anymore. The function of vision lost its working, blurry scenery appears before his eyes. As it lost its life, the image of certain light holder he loves since eighteen years ago flashes as fragment of memory that he knows it will stay as unfulfilled hope of his waiting.

Lan Zhan.....I--

The red spider lily is watered by the liquid that as red as them, flow and flowing, forming its own river of human’s blood that soon taking the owner out of the world, cutting his own unfinished thought in such forceful way. It almost like a sleep, in the end.

Chapter Text

The lights of the town is bright and yellowish, perfect for intermission during the tiring mission of night hunting with that warm light. Jin Ling walks restlessly in the merchant street with unsatisfied expression from the result of last night’s hunting, his knuckles still clenched until it went red with his kept-pouting mouth. Beside him, Ouyang Zizhen walking in relaxed posture in companion, his glance keeps glued to that pissed LanLingJin Sect’s heir in easy-going stare.

“Calm down, the prey must be still within near by. Just because we didn’t get that last night doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Perhaps the demon simply an expert in hiding and that’s why even our spiritual powers can’t detect it. From couple of night-huntings that our sect did, many demons are likely to use that trick, although they were easily to be spotted compare to this.”

Jin Ling turned his head in quick response --“What calm down?!” His teeth gritted in annoyance, face still red from frustation that he only lets out from readable expression before. It took quite a second from him to gain some composure. He close his eyes and let down a sigh before going back into his words, his eyes held a bit of contemplate, “ I already took that promise and if we don’t get the target, my appointment is going to be delayed. How do I will lead my sect sooner then?”

The exclamation made Ouyang Zizhen taken aback for a bit, he change his gaze to the front to cover his sudden feelings between surprised and astonished, “I mean yeah--yeah, I get that those branches within your sect are eyeing your heir position and that you’re worry about it.”, he rubs the back side of his head.

For a little while, they both walking in their own contemplation before Ouyang Zizhen starts his words again, “Hhh....If only LianFang-Zun’s case didn’t happen.”, he sighs, “We’re still too young to be thrown into sect politics like this, and yet you’re willing to shoulder this kind of burden at this age plus having this determination and mindset.”, a praise sneak in his tone.

Blush starts to appear in the heir of Jin sect.

“I believe in you, Jin Ling!! You’re undoubtedly the best candidate for sect leader! I will then forever pledge my and my sect loyalty to the Jin’s sect once you’ve become their sect leader!!!” He then exclaimes loudly as a bright smile and a thumbsup is given to the young heir.

Heat from huge embarassment keep climbing up on Jin Ling’s face, “Don’t—don’t sproud nonsense like that!! No one will be that loyal forever. Beside, your father already gives his loyalty to Yunmeng Jiang, and although my uncle is the head of Jiang Sect, I will gain my own independence once I really become a full adult. I will not dependent on him or his dogs or his alliances forever. I will establish my own connection as future leader of Jin’s sect!”

Ouyang Zizhen giggles and trembles a bit, his hand soon covering his mouth to prevent a loud laughter coming from his lips.

“What are you giggling on? Are you making fun of me?!”

“No, it’s not that.” His giggles slowly dissapears although the expression of holding a smile still visible in his face, "It’s just my own personality can’t help but amazed by the strong-will of yours. I admire people with that personality and I think people like you, senior Wei, or HanGuang-Jun are type of people who capable of changing the world.”

Jin Ling let out a loud ‘hah’ in debunking of what he deemed as cheesy-cringe statement, “Changing the world? Are you silly? No wonder Wei Wuxian deemed you as romanticizer since words that came out of your mouth is all romantic exaggeration of something.”. Ouyang Zizhen then has to alleviate his sense of teasing that suddenly increase in his inner before his mind suddenly tracing something and decide to change to the topic of their mission’s importance.

“By the way, according to the report of the town’s resident, the demons was last seen on the east north. They said that it has a habit of often disturbing their pets and cattles, more frequent in cattles. The last accident was that demon get a donkey killed by throat’s slashing, and it’s reportedly has a very incisive nails in its three fingers.”, the young Jin’s heir shifted his attentiveness in favor of hearing the information as he notices the tone change in Ouyang Zizhen’s voice.

Both of them stares focusedly at the east north side of the town, eyes lost in digesting the information down to their head as they continue to walks in the direction that they focused on, houses keep passing them as they went further and further from the street town into the field of plants.

“They said that the demon has its favorite animal, and reportedly, donkeys in this area were often disturbed the most especially at midnight. Considering that this town’s citizen favoring donkey as their pets, of course the demon will have his current favorite ‘habitant’ here. Most of the donkeys are tied in the meadow.”

The place where they stand currently is the border right between the street and the rice field. In front of them lay expanse of plants that form its own landscape of hill-like, dark under the little light of the moon that just covered by the moving gray clouds. The view of the far field isn’t obscured under the night, but the litte ray of moon-light is enough for the hunting sight. An optimistic tone is let out so easy, “I think this is the right place to our hunting tonight.”

“How are you that confident though? We haven’t even--!!”

A sudden shriek sound of donkey from near by interrupted Jin Ling’s light scorn. Both of their gazes immediately drawn to the west north of the landscape, where the source of sounds coming from. From their sights, a donkey is running around the same spot in huge frantic, seeming to struggle to get rid of thing that plagued its body. On the top of the donkey lies a black transparent faceless demon with one arm that swarm whilst attempt to shred the donkey’s face with its sharp fingers, but face difficulty when the donkey is fighting back against it. Quickly, they run sneakly into the bushes near the occurence to observing in silence, expression in focus on the sight in front of them and silent nods is given to each other.

Furs and body are vibrated very hard by the donkey in an attempt to tossed the demon off him, but the that attempt ends up in failure. Instead, the demon successfully clawed the back of the donkey that make it reacts in abrasive manner and jumping really high. That black transparent entity then bounced off from the effect and floating for a seconds before a spiritual arrow hit the hand of the demon. It screams so high followed by the increased shrill of the surprised donkey from the demon’s high-pitched sound.

Jin Ling jumps and then finished the demon in one arrow attack in the head. The demon dissipates into air as the moon starts to get its ray back, giving clearer vision to the field filled with red spider lily flower close to the spot where the donkey stands. The donkey continues to blustering, whether it’s from the trauma of demon’s attack or maybe something else bothering him. Ouyang Zizhen and Jin Ling approaching the frantic donkey closer.

A sense of familarity hit Zizhen, “Huh...why is this donkey looks so familar?”

Hearing that, Jin Ling glances at the donkey deeply, trying to get as to why he feels like he sees the donkey before and as the piece of information finally hit his mind, Ouyang Zizhen had preceded him in releasing the straight-out information.

“Hey, isn’t this Senior Wei’s donkey? What was it name again? Ah...If I’m not wrong, it’s Lil’s Apple, right? If that donkey Lil’s Apple is here, that means Senior Wei is near us? Oh hey hey hey wait---why is it divagate like that and why does it looks so troubled?? Like it wants to tell us something?”

The strange realization hit both Jin Ling and Zizhen simultaenously, “Why isn’t Senior Wei with it? I mean Senior Wei did indeed leave this Lil’s Apple several times, but I doubt that he’s this careless to let his donkey got bothered by malicious energy whether it’s weak or not. Did something bad happened to Senior Wei?!”

Lil’s Apple continue to spurring and then running into the middle of red spider lily landscape in front of them. There’s long, long and huge trails of blood, ranging from the spot near the grass where the two juniors stand to the deep part inside the unseen ground that covered by the beauty of red flowers above it. It seems that the blood’s owner was crawling, dragging itself to be together with those flowers of deaths. The blood is still wet and not dried yet, giving clues that this happened not so long ago. Their eyes carefully tracing the source of the blood with legs walking quiet limply in tremble as they sense that they will soon see something terrifying out of their will.

Both of the breaths are held tightly as the sight came thru.

“Senior Wei...Senior Wei....”

The horrifying sight in front of them thrown both out of rational sense momentarily. The figure lying in front of them are drenched in huge pool of blood, sprawled in yearner’s position as both of his sprawled hands seems like it wants to reach something before the owner lost his consciousness. Stream of blood continue to pour endlessly to the ground below him non-stop, and the gaping hole in his side neck is clear within their lenses.

Wave of nausea coming into his head as Jin Ling has to cover his mouth tightly from making it not coming in form of huge puke, “Zizhen.. the blood...the blood...”

Zizhen immediately drops his body beside Wei Wuxian to correct his position into proper lying on the back, Wei Wuxian’s head is placed gently in his thigh as momentarily supporting cushion. Jin Ling then drop his body in the same manner. Gawking deep wounds in all over Wei Wuxian’s upper body from the chest to stomach left nothing but the feeling of being sickened by how horrible it’s. A hand is placed into his chest and then his neck, Ouyang Zizhen’s eyes widen in horror.

“Jin Ling....he’s not—he’s not breathing.”

As Jin Ling himself try to calm down from near hyperventilation and to gain a bit of rational mind in order to seach some solution, his fingers bring Wei Wuxian’s wrist in his grip. Gently, he places two fingers in the bloody wrist. Faint of hope approaches Jin Ling as he shift his eyes to the another junior in front of him, eyes full of determination despite tremble of fear still seen all over his face and body language.

“There’s a still a pulse. A faint one, but nonetheless it’s a pulse. Zizhen, you have my uncle’s fireworks, aren’t you? Please call him for the help. Him and his sect are the closest to our location right now. I don’t know from who else we can rely at this rate!”

Ouyang Zizhen nods in limp, his right hand reaches a stuff within his pocket and lifting it to both of his hand, the object is directed upwards. A finger then squeeze something from it as river of blood continues to taints his upper and bottom attires.

And fireworks in form of purple nine-petal lotus is painting the sky as it screams for help, sense of desperation radiated from the shot.

Chapter Text

The blood’s imprint on the ground is quiet nauseating, Jiang Cheng decides.

It forms in river-like, almost like a stream that ended back to its source that’s the sea. The owner of this massive river of blood likely really desperated to stay survive or alive to the point either he or she crawled on the ground like a dying worm. Or at least that’s what he sees as he arrives on that place for the first time from answering the call from the sky.

The call seems urgent, so Jiang Cheng doesn’t have enough heart to abandoned or neglected it, even if he’s annoyed by the interrupted task he must dumped in favor of the junior’s plea for his mere presence..to help them with something they’re unable to handle. He wonders what’s this task that they can’t handle, even though they’re both still young and mostly inexperiences, he’d expect them to learn about maturity once or two.

But he can’t abandon Jin Ling’s call no matter what. After all, he’s the only surviving member of his blood-related family that’s already gone a long time ago, times which Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to count anymore. His heart opened its bleeding everytime it came across his mind, together with the thought of what better things could have been happened to them before it all went down like a waterfall that came crashing down to the below, destroying everything it touches. A flash of thought about what would happen about their relationship if it wasn’t for him choosing the outsiders alights him before he quickly brushed it aside.

That’s such a long time already, Jiang Cheng. He slaps himself mentally, you’re not that pathetic, right?

And yet, he always knew his inner heart better.

Jiang Cheng then hears collective jumbled noises of footprints materialized behind him.

“Sect Leader, what are your orders?”

“Just wait for my instruction and come along. If your help is needed, be sure that you’re completely prepared.”

The group of Jiang sect members nods in unison, “Yes, Sect Leader Jiang!!”

Jiang Cheng glances back at the trails of blood that grab his attention again, thinking about the amount of that red liquid that drained of the person’s body and how it must supposedly sabotaging the person’s consciousness. Or maybe a life, he adds. It’s not an easy thing for something to turn his focus like that, but the matching color (and also the meanings) of the liquid and the flower that’s being stained – no...watered by it is a sight to see. Both commonly associated with a taken life, after all. And so he prepared himself as he steps further, nearing the spot where the lotus fireworks was spread into the sky.

He feels like he’s lying to himself again, who knows how many times he’d do it. It already integrated into his habit several times before, all by the same cause, the same person that’s his adoptive brother. How many times Wei Wuxian make him feels like he’s lying to himself, again? From lying to himself that he ‘hate’ him? Lying to himself that he never want to meet with Wei Wuxian again? Lying to himself that he’s not worried about his brother’s life and safety? He’d lost counts of just how many of these already. And now Wei Wuxian making Jiang Cheng lying to himself again, that the leader of Jiang Sect is prepared enough...that this owner of the blood isn’t worthy enough for his business.

“Uncle!!”, Jin Ling’s heavy sobs pulls him out of his pale silent state, “We don’t know how he got into this state....He’s already like this when we got here!!”, the continues cries get harder as he reaches the static non-breathing part of Yiling Patriarch’s body and his wrist, “The last of his pulse stopped just several seconds ago before you got here...we..We don’t know how to handle this!!”

Jiang Cheng then just now fully wake enough to see the severity of the hole that’s imprinted on his brother’s upper body. His teeth is gritting in headache, boiled rage creeps over his body from head to toe, the sudden feeling of urge to kill someone, kill something...find the culprit, torture them slowly and painfully and deadly in the same way they did to his brother to put him into this miserable state.

His piercing eyes of flame stares deeply at his brother’s body whom head lying on Ouyang Zizhen’s lap. Jiang Cheng deducts that the original position of his brother must be not like that before, but now it lying supinely above the ground, a right position to treat an extemely injured..no, lifeless person.

A sharp pain penetrate his bleeding heart.

The sect leader then sees the Junior’s hands tremble when he craddles softly Wei Wuxian’s face, almost as if he’s afraid to break its delicateness and fragility, “We can’t get Senior Wei to wake up...”

“Healer..” his sharp deep tone sends pressure to his surrounding.

The group that got called then response firmly “Yes Sect Leader!!”

Three people drops their weights beside the lifeless, placing their hands into Yiling Patriarch’s chest and stomach, checking every single traces of life that possibly being left and examines the severity of the wounds. The young heir of Jin then quickly placing his existence aside, in order for healers to start their task. He still sits near him though, while Zizhen still offer his lap as Wei Wuxian’s head pillow, afraid if the wounds will get severe.

“A deep slice wound in front side, four stab deep wounds in chest, we sense several broken ribs and destroyed lung tissues, another deep four in stomach and two of them already suffered severe infection.”

Their hands then moves into his neck, brushing the several strands of hair that cover part of neck, a deep bloody hole in the front side that reached Wei Wuxian’s a bit of sliced off larynx reflected on Jiang Cheng’s widened glisten eyes lens, enough for his skin to feels the horror and fright that he experiences on the night of the fall of Lotus Pier and Nightless City. He just continues to stare in trembling at the blood that continue to drippling from his brother’s lips into the ground.

“There’s also a severe wound in his throat burdened his breathing function and it made its stopped early. The effect quickly spreads to the remains of his pulse.”, continues the healer.

His breath feels like it stuck in his throat just like how the blood leaks stopped the road of breathing in his brother’s throat. His mouth feels as they’ve been tightly sewn up, that no words unable to come from him at that moment. When other medical words was still coming and continuing, he’s unable to process it properly as his mind goes cold and colder. He just feels numb.

No, he thinks, he can’t be dying, he can’t die, at least not like this, he closes his eyes tightly.

He’s not ready for the second separation yet.

How can Wei Wuxian be ready for his second separation with his newfound family?

A statement from the healer suddenly catches his mind, connotated in more hopeful tone. His eyes then finally opens in attentiveness, “His body is still warm, there’s still chance, as long as we quick distancing him from the coldness and get him to warm place as fast as possible. We can send our spiritual healing powers to keep his body warmer and to revive bits of blood flow during the journey, and then after that we can try to triggers the vital part of his body to its function later. But the important thing is a warm place right now, and many herbs and medicines.” The healer finish his sentences.

“Sect Leader, your order and decision?”

The Sect Leader of Jiang closes his eyes again and draw his breath deeply into his lung, he needs some appeasement and encouragement, he thought for a while, but that’s something that he rarely gets during all of his life.

His eyes then opens in gazes that filled with newfound determination.

If there’s at least one chance, even if it’s very little as possible, giving up very early isn’t the solution.

“Bring him to the closest physician’s house in the town.” Jiang Cheng swallow his words for a while, then continuing in low tone as he succeeds in articulating his next sentences, “Once we’re able to revive him or stabilized him, then we will bring him into our Yunmeng Jiang’s healing room.”

“Yes Sir!”

As Yiling Patriarch’s body is lifted up on one of the healer’s arms who starts flying using their swords, Jiang Cheng can’t help but glancing at his brother’s face deeply in spite of his own will. Despite horrendous blood spills at the edge of his slightly opened mouth that scatters on his face, Wei Wuxian’s expression looks so peaceful, as if he’s just sleeping unburdened by the weight of the problems in the world, just like he used to be, just like his first death, he thought, when Wei Wuxian felt like he could unleash his burden if he let himself fall into his death.

Hah!! He always choose that way if he felt like it’s too heavy for him to handle!

But Wei Wuxian isn’t a person to run away in the task of taking care of others’s lives, the realization coming in. He always insist more in taking care of others, to the point of abandoning his own mundane needs and even his relation to others. After all, he loves to play a hero, isn’t he? In the end, all of his effort went into failure as he unable to save the people he wanted to save from walking into their own death doors. But the biggest incapability of him is always the ability to take care of himself.

It’s also your own fault in never helping him by his side remember? Jiang Cheng laugh ironically in silent as several mixed emotions and questions hit his head again and again.

But didn’t he ask for Wei Wuxian to take care of himself already?

He feels his breath turns into heat of fire.

Why can’t you take care of yourself properly?

Why you always got into trouble?

Why you can’t just stay well and alive?

Why you always got others into worrying for you?

Why did you betray your promise again, just like how you always did?

It’s only after the juniors follows the healers and after Wei Wuxian’s body is fully carried away that Jiang Cheng realize that....despite he did ask him to do that, those words were never escape from his mouth and never even reached Wei Wuxian in the first place. His mind think back at that time when he thought he already handed his brother to the second brother of Lan, fully entrusted his safety to him. They should be together right now, he grits his teeth in undescribable wrath..no, wrath isn’t even enough word to describe the surging fire that just got bigger inside him, he should be awake, alive, well, and healthy inside your protection. I entrusted you for that, and look what you’ve accomplish for him...His knuckles goes white...Why did you leave him alone...Why Lan Wangji?!  

The Jiang Sect Leader was the last to leave his footprint in that place, a place that he promises himself that it will be the last time he set his foot in there. The pool of blood remains there as he leaves.

Chapter Text

Hua-Daifu was just finished cleaning and disposing her bloody surgical equipments, right after attending of what she thought as her last patient this night when the repeated knock on her door instantly turning it to not be the case and distrupt the thought of getting proper rest after the tiring night.

She let out a long sigh and put the tool carefully on the wooden shelf before went nearing the door and arms displacing the long wood that hinder the door to be broken down by intruders.

There's a sight of a man greetings in, with quiet dishevelled hair from the blast of unforgiving night wind, untidy familar famous purple robe with lotus flower motifs as the signification of the man’s status, and eyes full of red shivering bloodshot, whether it come from his usual rage demeanor or his tragic lament or whatever it’s, but it’s something that she still doesn’t know of, and yet, any of persons will be able to sense the chilling sensation they get from the man’s open desperation.

A still-sheathed purple sword is offered to her by the man’s right hand, right in front of her face and nearing her neck, as if the man is about to slicing someone’s neck in his anger. The man in front of her hasn’t exactly have favorable reputation in the cultivation world. There’s a lack of consideration of others’s opinion, an intricated mess of family’s tragedy in his history, histories of torturing many demonic cultivators, and then, there’s violent and horrific temper coupled with anger issues that managed to whipping everyone near him. The rather violent and impolite attitude that he offers her isn’t even exactly surprising given his fitting nickname itself, and yet, some of knowledge about her own client that she serves for years in mutual trust of her ability as physician gain her some capability of reading the man’s desparate love for his family despite the harsh demeanor.

“Sāndú Shèngshǒu?”

His fiery eyes continues to staring at her in piercing glare of mix between the frustration and officious attitude,  “Go...save him now.”, the man in purple robe said in slow, emphasized low tone.

The physician can only nods, immediately understanding the existence of urgency that she must fix.

“Alright.”, she closes her eyes and shakes the dirt off the robes.

Her response is firm in the next.

“Deliver me to his location.”

The trip to search any nearest residence was nightmareshly dreadful, to say at least.

Wei Wuxian’s blood rain had been dripping perenially and mercilessly, staining all the bypassed road and three quarter of the healer cultivator’s long robes, and thus it blowing like a red petal of flower during their whole rough journey in that mute night. The town’s physicians houses that they searched for are all closed. The heir of Jin’s sect watched in catatonic muteness as his uncle barging into several physicians houses forcefully, voice tone full of threats and rage with red bloodshoot eyes scaring the family of the residences. There had been little numbers of physicians in that town, almost all of them already moved to another areas in an attempt to find more success within their job. The ones being left by their peers are all low-skilled and have little knowledge in their areas.

‘And also bunch of cowards’, or Jin Ling thought as he watched the hands of his uncle grabbing roughly at the collar of that low-level physician who can only shuddering in fear and beg for mercy, which of course only rising the temperature of his terrific uncle into higher level.

Then he took a little of the slip that he himself fearing too at that moment. A little glance, almost non-existent at Wei Wuxian’s face, pale and limb, cold and helpless, weak and lifeless, and a body that hanging weakly resembling a doll in the back. There’re many adjectives that could describe the state of the patriarch’s dying moment right now, but in the end Jin Ling only decide to awaken his raging uncle to the necessary reality. The physician ended up giving the room that they deserves, and the Yunmeng Jiang’s healers rushed to the above floor quickly. One effort at least paid off, even with the near outburst of his uncle’s nerves.

After that, he and Zizhen sat outside the room, both their backs and heads slumped in blank thought. Everything feels little blur then, he recalls.

His uncle were following inside where Yiling Patriarch was lay on unconsciously, whom head tilts like a helpless puppet and his blank eyes were opened a little from the gentle fall on the bed. He hears his uncle’s shouting echoes hard, cut through the thickness of the wall and perhaps onto the other walls in another houses as well.

Jing Ling could hear the franticness of that tone, which mixed with rage and desperation, frustration, and the sound of a heart that shattering down like broken pot that falls unfixable, scattered into the ground, with the sharp pieces lies to penetrate everything come across. The blurry moments of red dots and red flowers ringing into his eyes and ears hazily, almost as if it will integrained in his sights forever. The mixed words of ‘leaky heart artery’, ‘slightly festered muscle in abdomen’, and ‘almost dysfunctional liver’ disorderedly echoes throrough his mind, and he feels his head become light-headed the more it come. His mind clenched, avoiding hard to not peek at the sight that he know himself can’t handle. Then another wave coming in, one which mentioned about ‘letting out the dirty blood’, and it immediately disputed by his uncle as his voice raises through the anger. The heated situations only spiralled to the worst from onwards, making his headache worsening, and then the more bleeding to his heart. The words of ‘outside of our domain’ were also echoes throughout the room.

Admist in the middle of chaos, another words coming in. This time has a tingle tone of hope. There’s mention of ‘the skilled master of healing and operation’ and the familar name of ‘Hua-Daifu’. However, his mind at that moment is unable to remember the reason behind that familarity. As he desperately try hard to pieces the puzzle, he heard the sound of his uncle stormed out of the room, body language full of impatience and in the rushing. He sees Ouyang Zizhen hurriedly stand from his sit as the Jiang’s Sect Leader appear, giving a quick bow that become merely passed wind for the Leader.

Jin Ling doesn’t blame him for the indifferent attitude though. He knows the importance of the rushing, and he understand his uncle’s personality enough. They merely want to reach something that’s like a whole life to them, to gain something important, to grasp the remaining chance they could to saving the life of one of the important person in life. He would do the same if it were his parents are the one in that room, but that chance is out of possibility since long time ago, since he was still a mere baby, innocent of life and sins.

He falls back to the chair in weariness, legs curls up in the rain of despair that gnaw at him. On the other side the thin walls behind them, the unconscious person lays between the thin line of life and death. The blackness of abyss is all that he sees.

The temperature of the night is really cold than usual, the man in the elegant white robes thought.

It nears the end of the Autumn, next to the coming of icy and snowy famous Winter season. The season when the red leaf turned into dry shell of its former self, covered in thick icy blankets and the imprint of snowflake’s beauty running throughout the road decorated by the white snow. This season is marking the last circle of life that’s death and the next one will show the new bloom of life. The falling of the white balls from the sky become blurry from his lens, and the past and present begin to overlaps, as the sight of himself kneeling in the middle of snow’s rain in front of the room that now his starts to deceive him again, and he strangely feels the sensation of the falling cold snow in his skin, similar to the coldness that he felt during the time he finally understood about his mother’s death, and similar to the feelings that he felt during all those empty sixteen years, when his significant half died right in front of his reach.

His eyes slowly open in flutter, his hands half-trembling. It’s already been five months, he remembers. They parted at summer ago, in the middle of the flourishing landscape full of lifeful green grass.

He remembers the way Wei Ying’s body passed him, and the way himself passed Wei Ying just like that, from putting his decision about his duty first before his selfish wish, and to put the realization of both of their oath to protect the weak and helpless. They made promises to each other to stay safe, to see each other again both in good health and heart, despite the uncertainty of the time they will meet again in next time. The HanGuang-Jun can only hoping that they can fulfill their wish just as wished without another disasters come between both of them, and especially, he hopes, there will be no disaster come in Wei Ying’s life again.

Lan Wangji let out a sigh, his breath forming a smoke in the middle of cold air.

Pile of pipers is sitting behind him, waiting for the Chief Cultivator’s hands to touch their white hill.

Chapter Text

The cold night breeze dashes the two Lan Juniors as soon as their foot set into the dark lush paddock under gray clouded sky.  

Lan Shizui doesn’t waste his time. Two fingers of his right hand enforced to the up just below his chin with the rest of the fingers from the same hand is tucked up inside grip, while his left hand preserve the friable yellow talismans near his right hand. Blue vivid light illuminated from the formed Hànzi in the air, tracing every bit of resentful energy left in the area. For few minutes, the light blue illumination stay brightening the place with no moon’s ray before dissipating into shimmers after it tracks none of the dangers rumored.

Lan Jingyi stares in weary to the other beside him, “Still no sign?”, he asks, hoping the answer would be the opposite of his assumption.

The shaking of the other’s head is all the answer he gets.

Second Lan Junior sighs loudly beside him, body slump into the ground and squatting with his right hand’s grip props the cheek. The dullness of the color of that night only helps in diming up the mood surrounding them.

“I thought our target was really here. Isn’t it supposed to appear the most in this scary desolate prairie according to the rumor? We’ve already been searching it in every place of this town and yet, we’re getting nothing. Now we become a pair of fool for believing in this kind of inaccurate report, and not to mention ends up in this scary empty graveyard." said the Lan Cultivator with expression full of grunt.

Shizui takes a glance into his partner’s nagging with half mental exhaustion, “Jingyi, just calm down and don’t let irrational temper cloud your judgement.”.

The person being appointed by the words only response in apathetical and continued his bosh grumbling, “This place looks like perfect place for murder or something.”

“Jingyi, stop talking nonsense.”, said the other Lan as he closes his eyes and sighs in another wave of tiredness and little of headache.

Lan Jingyi hangs his right palm into the air.

“I just said that this place gave me that vibes somehow.”

Shizui glances a bit at him and then just shook his head in incredulity of his partner’s ludicrous statement.

Seeing the other’s reaction, the peeved mood of him can only get worse, “I mean it doesn’t help that there’s even fields full of flower of deaths over there.”, he argues, trying to back up the reasoning behind his words. His hand then points out to the west north direction ahead, “These type of flower only grew near the graveyard, and the red color of it is perfect for any murderer to hide their victim’s body if they want to do their deeds. It isn’t fully baseless.”, stated him as he tries to continue his argument. The place being pointed can be seen swaying gracefully despite the darkness of the night, however, not the entire part of it can be seen within their limited range of sight, and Shizui can only see the tip part of the hundred flowers in the field colored by the night’s hues.

Before he can dispute it more, the bright ray of moon finally begins to show up its fangs.  

Only then, the sight red blood’s long tail, passing their standing spot like a weightless breeze, came further from the depth of the towering flowers into the far inside of the street town, can be seen right within their reflected eyes lenses. The trail of red looks finally began to dry as the time passes, long after the wet imprint of it on the ground. The ground near them was clearly digged, the crawl and finger marks, all over the way confirming the effort of the person who was just recently attacked –no, possibly murdered in cold blood. Lan Shizui froze in the mix of fear, shock, and perplexity.

“Jingyi….”

The other Lan turns his stare, finding his partner set his gaze into the frightening amount of river blood. His pupils widened greatly.

“What had exactly happened here earlier?”

That question isn’t made for him.

Jingyi can only finally feels the sour of his own careless words, and the tremble starts taking over his body. Both him and Shizui nods together to each other in mutual understanding and unspoken deal, walking slowly to the possibly larger blood pool that hidden behind the beautiful sight of bushes of flowers which color matches the liquid, tracing the sight of the body that possibly being sheltered by the same thing. With great thrill that creeps into them as soon as they spot the sight, their body becoming more and more tense with ascending feeling of anxiousness, presuming for the horror sight waiting for them.

What they get when the clear sight of the spot comes into their lenses is something both less the fulfillment of their scariest anticipation and the more of their passable expectation.

The amount of the blood filling the uneven ground is a lot enough to forming its own lake, and there’s a several red traces of shoes all over the spots, a clear confirmation about the existence of people that tread the red liquid. Whether those people really presence to help the unknown owner of the blood is something unclear for them, but it’s also likely the possibility. The other is the worst kind of scenario in mind, but both of the Lan Juniors don’t want to think the worst of the worst yet as they saw to where the spare of the residual of the red liquid went into.

“This trail of blood leads to the inside of the city”, Shizui stated the obvious, requiring the conviction that the other Lan share the mutual thought and plan as him.

Lan Jingyi nods in the same understanding.

“The town’s people is currently the best place for us to seek the information about what happened in this area. That’s the place where we should go now if we want to help. We can’t let this incident went just like that. There shouldn’t be another victim of such a sick thing like this.”, declared Shizui as he unconsciously gritting his teeth in tranquil furiousness. Jingyi clench his fist in conjunction.

Both then take high steps into jumps as they headed towards the street of the town, the leaves and flowers that had been left behind were blown away by strong winds of the jumps.

After few minutes, they finally arrive to their destination.

The foot set on the ground is quite loud, enough to echoes between the emptiness of the deserted city streets and its houses. The road is quite luminous despite the loneliness of it, as expected from the usual night situation of cities. Between the broadness of the road, houses are mostly tiny and not having many of floors, made from wooden material, and giving the sense of modesty to the town’s visitant. Lan Jingyi and Lan Shizui glances detailedly at it, hoping to find more clues and to find hope that someone can still be awake at this very late night enough to get some needed information.

Still finding none from that spot, both of them decides to walk further to the south direction of the town by the same expectancy.

What greets them in the next is something quiet unexpected to both of the Lans.

Ouyang Zizhen stands not far from them, his overall posture can be seen slump and lethargic, as if the weight of his own body is too much for his limp strength to retained it properly. Both of his eyes are sunked down, heavy eye-bags decorates the circle of the organ that functioning as window of the sight. The same organ is filled with the redness and red eyes veins, as if it was shedding its salty liquid just moment ago. He was walking with trembling, heavily dragged-in legs from his own coercion, left hands grips the other hand’s wrist as he does it.

“Eh…”, muttered Lan Jingyi, still hasn’t recovered from the unexpected feeling and shock-ness of finding his friend here, “Isn’t that Zizhen...??”

Shizui doesn’t response to the question, instead taking an observing glance at the limp-walking figures not far away from them. The sight of him walking and walking become clearer as he gets closer to them, and the red color wetting Ouyang Zizhen’s purple clothes increases the amount of fear he has, and his pupils can only widened as it’s happen. Beside him, Jingyi can only wondered what’s actually going on and comments unconsciously in whisper, “He looks like a mess…”

Realization and sense finally hit both of them and Lan Jingyi finally take initiative to call out their friend who walks only few meters from them.

“Zizhen!!”

Ouyang Zizhen stops his step, his eyes widened and the trembling of his body get greater at the sound of voices calling his name, realizing whose voices belong to and whom are shouting it. He freezes at the spot, can only watching as they approach him.

“Are you here for night-hunting too?”

The voice that asked him is energetic and at least, has some life in it.

Ouyang Zizhen doesn’t know how to response.

“Why is your clothes full of blood? Is there anything we can help you? Is there any of your night-hunting that gone wrong?”, Jingyi asks, his tone full of genuine concern and worriedness. Zizhen shifts his glances at them and realizes that Shizui’s expression is dark and gloomy, as if he caught a guess that be able to read straightly his current fear and the core of his horror. He watches as the Lan that usually sober and composing himself slowly losing his composure and put both hands to his shoulders, demanding a full information.

“Zizhen, please don’t stay silent and answer us.”, he pronounces the words in solemn, slow, and a hidden tremble of fire inside.

He can only feel the tremble of his entire body become more and more uncontrollable.

“Whose blood is this?”

“It’s....”, Zizhen feels his tongue slumps heavily below his throat, words stunned in the weight of catatonic silence, almost in the mind of the denial that almost dominate his mind. For minutes, there’s long solitude before he finally regains the ability of his tongue.

He pronounces his answer in a numb and slow tone contains the wave of sickness that more and more plagues him, and the same response catches the breath of the two Lans just as hard as the rock.

“It belongs to Senior Wei’s...”

The first sight greets him in this unescapable blackness is a tiny red flower, a faint one in this middle of the suffocating darkness that engulfed his whole entity and choking him until he feels his breath dissolves into nothingness. Its own thin petals formed by the growing red inks within the blank canvas that replaced into the color of white which become paper vessel for the glowing red. The beautiful red flowers suddenly multiplying fulling the desolate vacuum and its multiple red petals glowing into red laces that hurries away uncontrolled, tiny moving legs leave behind a track of another red liquid, growing into such monstrous entity that going to devour him and ripped him apart to the nihility.

He was about to move away from it before he realizes that all of the limbs in his body are all numb and he feels himself unable to escape the red color eating him slowly and painfully. The sensation of hot and cold, cruelty and pain, sharp and piercing all preys to his body especially in the lungs and stomach that feels like it about to burst out into sparks of red fireworks. The trembling tissue of his organs, and the sound of dead and beating cardioid track filling and buzzing like a metallic to his almost non-functional ears. His chest feels like they’re hit by a hard hammer repeatedly too, and he doesn’t know why. It feels as if he’s in super deep underwater, far from the reach of anybody and everybody. A taste of salt and metal felt all in his tongue, and his slashed throat unable to spit it all out.

Then, he hears voices- so many voices on top of him, tone in panics and another of these in restless screams. It feels so blurry, he thought. None of those voices feels familiar nor can he identify within the full red blood of abyss. The frequency of the sound fluctuates inconsistently, some sounds louder and then the noise drown within seconds. He then hears the words said in quiet loud tone in which the emotion can’t he identify, "…only two slow distant beats so far…", “…need another blood supply…”, “…wait for the Sect Leader and Hua-Daifu… and also "the hidden poison in the lung is severe, at this rate we might… ".

How long he has been here?

Yiling Patriarch finally feels the heavy weight on his eyelids, icy sensation turns to give the sense of piercing in the lungs and entrails. He tries to move his numb limbs, but the suffocating nothingness restrains him mercilessly no matter what. His eyelids try to fight back against the monstrous red, to shred the thick skin of it. A little light from distant momentarily, very blurry as it’s come into the sight. He tries to shift the movement of the eyelids to the body under, only to meet with part of exposed bloody torn bare lungs and gut on it.

The voice and the tone that he hears in the next feels too familiar, always full of the edge of whirling rage and fiery fury hiding its heartbroken heart underneath. Under the darker blur vision, a bit of his five senses finally gain little of its functions, and vividly he feels his thin friable pale wrist gripped harshly by the shadowy unknown figure above him – “Get out if you can’t heal him properly!!!” - Jiang Cheng? Wei Wuxian asks in his tiny, almost faded presence of mind.

He then struggles to hear the next words of his brother, to be awake, to telling him that he’s here and that he’s just fine. I want to tell that to Lan Zhan too, he decides as he’s forcing his own drowning conscious into the surface. But just like that, he feels his own heartbeat drops very hard into the ground in the matter of seconds, cruelly cutting the pieces that he already arranged into vanity. Afterwards, he doesn't hear the rest, and the next words just don’t matter anymore.

The last strand of his little consciousness and vision soon enveloped by the same frightening blackness.

Chapter Text

The hill of paper is really tiring, the inner heart of the Jade voices despite the patience and lack of complaining attitude of the silent man. All over two days, it had made him occupied in the same room unrelenting, inspecting the report of case after case. Being a chief cultivator is still a once in a lifetime experience for him, something he will never do nor plan again in the future, as once is already enough for him, and the same ‘once’ is already enough separating him from the recent, full of uncertainty chance that he had previously to able to be together happily and freely with the person he loves for a long time. It isn’t because he wanted to waste that chance, but the consideration of his older brother that he equally loves as family was bearing too much into his mind.  The older Jade of Lan is still in deep seclusion the last time he visited him in his room, offering him the mess of appearance with sunked eyes and fake thin smile. The emptiness, delirium gazes lays on him just firming his early decision. His brother is still too mentally unwell to shoulder the burden of the wicked cultivation world, and neither of others are appropriate person in the time.

His jade eyes glances at the earlier report in his hand. Shizui and Jingyi was already sent to the needed location. There had been several apparitions of the demon, particularly animal-attacker type one, the residences of Jinping Town expressed their testimony. The group came to him in half-pleading, suing for protection with their safety and prosperity, and the weight of the head of cultivation world fall once more unto him. His long-held worldly desire buried again, under the people’s cries, wishes, and expectations. Indeed, that’s his long-live reputation.

The desire for longing arrives on him again. This time, he has no talisman nor other property that being kept unlike the sixteen years of silent mourning and moving-on. Still, the hidden Emperor’s smile sometimes accompanied him in this heavy period of five months, enough for the reminder of both of their silent and the expressed oaths, and should be enough for their mutual trust as of now.

Lan Wangji rose from his seat and closes the door behind him with such gentleness and refinement, the flowing white robes only more and more becoming similar to wind as each of his steps are taken above the knocked sound of cold wooden floor, leaving the sinister sound echoes through the loneliness of that isolated area. The solitude of Gusu really shines with the departure of Juniors and the restrained human interactions of the Lan’s upbringing, wooing the rest of the Gusu’s beauty and its characteristic. It’s always been this cold, desolate, and lacking human touch, but the second Jade of Lan never even mind once about the lack of warmth in there. Except for one case.

He then momentarily stuns, time feels like stopping for a second.

From the second Jade’s lens, the graceful fluttering of snowy white robes can be seen in the center of garden. The owner of the robes has both of his hands folded in the back, posture giving the air of usual prestigious, a characteristic that never lost its touch in the slightest even during the deterioration of mental health of the first Jade. An autumn leaf is touching his brother’s face softly and full of caress, as if it’s afraid to hurt the heart of him more, and so it landed softly above the face that looked up to it and near the First Jade’s refined closed eyelashes. The rest of the leaf rain falls into the robes and the body of Zewu-Jun, and realization of the meaning come like a wave in the next.

The end of seclusion….at least, the beginning of it.

“Brother…”, he phrases the call in soft, almost whispering tone. There’s the visible hesitancy as the word being said.

The other guy who was unmoving in the cold starts stirring, responding to the call of one of his beloved family. With his usual mature, almost forced smile, he turns his head to the younger person standing firmly behind him, “Wangji.”.

Both of their eyes clashes for a while, fervently locked into each other. There’s unspoken but transcending understanding between them, resembling the work of telepathy. Mutual closeness built through lifetimes together has its own fruit, and so it forms unconscious habit within the interaction of the two Jades. Often, they’re really understanding each other so deeply with reciprocal agreement, however, sometimes there’re also disagreement, particularly involving the person that each of them trusted on the opposite spectrum. In the end, once the truth has been revealed as whole, the other side of that spectrum had to be destroyed, and it leaves the permanent scar that destroy the sense of trust and faith of self-evaluation. Hard to be healed completely, but one can still move on as long as the scar doesn’t get worse in the future. And so, the older Jade decides that he wouldn’t drowned in that forever.

“How is your work have been lately?”

“Fine.”, the younger Jade answers in habitual concise response, but enough to give the information that the older Lan searched. No other details needed regarding that topic as they both understands it clearly.

Lan Wangji glances at his older brother in deep, difficult to be defined gaze. He’s still hesitant to bring out the topic out of fear of being insensitive to his brother’s still-bleeding heart and also a particular uncertainty. In the end, he's braving his tongue out and the inquiry slithers.

“The seclusion?”

Lan Xichen lets out both eye smile and a thin mouth smile at the inarticulate but an obvious question for him, “Yes, my time of reflection has already been enough. You can unpack some of your duties within few days, Wangji, though make sure to explaining some details needed later so I can take over the task. In no meantime, you can go after young master Wei soon and reunite with him. Don’t let that chance gone.”, the confirmation is said in assuring and appeasing tone.

The younger jade feels the butterfly in his heart in fleeting before it turns out into mix of silent guilt and relief.

“Brother…I—"

“HanGuang-Jun!!”

His words interrupted by the familiar voice of one of his apprentices. Lan Wangji shifts his attention to the junior running towards him, panting and a panic painted on his face. His legs stop as soon as he gets close enough to stand beside the current Chief Cultivators, “HanGuang-Jun…”

A wave of gasping breaths is being let out so harshly and fast. His hand is on the knee, trying to support the amount of exhaustion the junior gets from running in that such energy and dedication before he enforces to straighten his upper body and facing the one bear the title of Light Holder directly.

Lan Jingyi’s face was already gathered enough courage in the previous, but as soon as his eyes clashes into the chilling icy gazes of Lan Wangji, it shrinks in the brink of fear and hesitation. For a moment, his mouth stays zipped in its place, unable to let out any sound or information he wants to convey. But then, piece of remembrance of the weak calling of the man’s name hits him like a hammer, and he takes a deep breath in his newfound couragement, mouth being opened enough to portray the cold information ahead of the older man.

“It’s about Senior Wei…”

When he firstly let Ouyang Zizhen took his running steps from the place, he didn’t expect it to turn out like this. They had been sitting together in the same chair in uncharacteristic obedience, hoping for the news that can at least alleviate the hungry thumps of traumatized bleeding heart, though it sounds as almost impossible as it’s to himself. The hidden hope and wish in his inner give a loud voice under his own tough demeanor, unable to be controlled or subdued even with all of his courage and personality, and he curled up in his sit the whole time it happened behind the cold room and the smell of death in it. The panicked voices still hadn’t yet faded, even getting louder and increased just as the time progressed mercilessly. And so, he sewed himself in the place. That’s for the best, he thinks.

Apparently, the Junior beside him thought otherwise.

He sent himself in the middle of the empty street, blank eyes genuinely echoing a vision of bare ribs and lacerated flesh right there and there lubricated by the beauty of dropped red liquid recorded by the working of his lens. There’re some people who’re able to handle the amount of scream echoes constantly through their head without consent, and then there’re some that don’t, and it took only a slight peek. Jin Ling doesn’t want to know about the sight at all though, and so he only stays muted when the other were taking the hurried steps of running away.

What he didn’t expect – (and also didn’t wish for) was the appearance of the two Lan Juniors in the room. And then there’s the visible trembling body and disheveled hair from the night wind. Lan Shizui seems to be the worst out of the two, face almost pale as the sheet covered the dying’s man body before it got bloodied by the red liquid spilled all over the bed and onto the floor. The puddle of it still hasn’t been cleaned yet from the ground and so it embedded in front of the sight of the two Lans. Ouyang Zizhen stands right beside them, escorting the two other Juniors but doesn’t even attempt to console them. Jin Ling know that he’s unable to, just like himself. There’s nothing to be consoled for, and all of them know the truth better.

Lan Shizui take a seat right beside him in the next with his folded fingers on top of thigh and feet pressed together as tightly as possible. From the dim light of the room, he can see the glooming shadow on the top part of his face, seemingly hiding the window of hurricane emotion behind the dull eyes. He might be not the one having all the information about what they have together, the only things that he saw was the blossoming close relationship as student and teacher during their whole trip to Yi City, the protection and defense during the siege in Burial Mounds and then there was the knowledge that Shizui had chased both HanGuang-Jun and the Yiling Patriarch after the entire ordeal of Guanyin Temple. The last time they also saw each other was five months ago, Shizui himself confirmed. However, the turmoil and depth of feelings never went under radar, and despite the slight difference between what both of them experiences, the understanding is never more than reciprocal.

His uncle still yet to stir the sign of his incoming, and so Lan Jingyi who has been leaning into the cold wall from earlier then gesturing something to communicate with the other Lan. Jin Ling didn’t hear all their conversation clearly, but he managed to catch each of expressions and agreement between both of them, as expected from Lan’s disciple. One thing that he does know of is that they will bring another person that has been important to Wei Wuxian, the one that always stay beside him both in his two lifetimes. Jin Ling doesn’t need the clear phrase of the name to know who is this person they’re referring to. His uncle never gets along well with him after all, and they both hold long grudges to each other, all of it tied to the one person laying between thin line of life and death on the bed. He wonders what will be of both of them once they’re able to face to face later, and hope that his uncle’s immature temper can be subdued.

When Lan Jingyi finally went out of the inn was the exact timing of the advent of his uncle, the frown and exhaustment still settled in his face, and probably will still be in the next few days (also possibly be forever). Next to him there’s a Daifu, complete with all the clothes and equipment needed. Both of them aren’t wasting no time as they went hurried to the room, the door is being slammed hard, and his uncle doesn’t even realize the presence of Shizui there. What’s back to him is only the repetition of vague sounds obstructed by the thickness of the barrier.

Hua-Daifu shifts her eyes to the unmoving person in the bed, black hair fanned out around him and on top of cushion like a spilled ink. The deathly pallor and dark bags already clinging to his eyes and face, probably already since long time ago before she arrives and not long ago after the consciousness was taken in that forcefulness. His upper clothes already being torn apart enough, too wide for his thin frame, and displaying the extension of failing and damaged red-white organs, unticking heartbeat and only a slight of beating pulse that has been a sole of successful work of Yunmeng’s healers. She glances at the man that continues to vent his explosive resentful temper, then to the man who become a frail shadow of his past reputation, and can’t help but feels the slightest sorry for what stored in the history between two men, the perish of family by the misfortune and the forgiveness after learning something. For whatever it’s, it’s worth a single tear.

“Hand me the stitch.”

Chapter Text

Hua-Daifu glances at the things she tasked to fixing.

A damaged spleen, several snapped tendons on throat, chest, and stomach, five broken ribs on four sides of lungs, torn and deflated pleura tissue, infected and festered holes in stomach that already cut through several tissues and muscles and went through layers of abdomen, leaking blood vessel that drains out the Yiling Patriarch’s heat, and then the mess that is spilled red liquid all over part of the room. A part of larynx was busted in such a way that it almost resembling vicious red worm more rather than the organ part of either living (or dying) human…or perhaps both. Having only beyond weak pulse can’t be classified as really living, though not fully drop dead like any of those cultivators that died killing each other driven by their own greed at that particular Nightless night.

She then remembers once again how the man sprawled lifelessly in the front is only shadow of his former self and reputation, now known as a mere pawn, a simple one piece of spider chess that had been sown neatly without most people’s knowledge, a mere victim in this entangling dangerous cruel cultivation world, a fallen hero who dragged down by the ugliness of humanity and its nature.

It makes sense anyway, the kindest are too good for this sinful earth.

Scalpel is taken crudely and the sound of clashing metal ringing into the ears, then she looks at the bleeding that won’t stop.

“Help me in giving him some spiritual energy first to warm his circulation.”, orders her to Yunmeng’s healers surrounding the bed.

The Daifu only met with silence and hesitation in the response. Her eyes shifted from the patient to the group of healers that glances at each other awkwardly, expression full of doubts and anxiousness. In the instant, her gazes deepened to the grilling.

“Is there any hindrance?”

The lower tone digs out the sense within the hesitant healers whom clashes their eyes once more before finally nods in some unspoken agreement with each other, the response issued is halting, “Daifu… The Yiling Patriarch doesn’t have the core…”

So, they have to do it manually then.

Hua-Daifu bits her lips in stress that creeping to her head, her dark orbs examines the serene and calm expression of Wei Wuxian’s pale face, being drained from blood and being robbed from life, becoming the embodiment of everything he never represented before, at least in the eyes of world. The person’s known reputation is chaos, the person she sees is quietude. If the irony managed to be seen even by the outsider, the people behind the door must be the one grieving the most.

She thinks about the man in restless rage who stormed out of the room a moment ago. The violent, surprised tone of voice followed after, though the cause is unknown to her. She didn’t pry at that. Another matter is her focus right now.

The surgery proceeds like a fierce wave, highest at its high and lowest at its low. The healers managed to get three distant beats, the last one stopped not long ago and a steady slow pulse, however unable to extract the breathing. For a moment, she saw the little unfold of Yiling Patriarch’s dull eyes that closed flimsily like a fallen butterfly. No spiritual powers to help in pumping the heart and lungs, the first step she done was supplying and transfusing the blood needed to help in warming the circulation for hearts and lungs, and then cleaning up every wounds from infections with strong medicinal wine and several herbal medicine in which being measured carefully in its each ingredients and weights.

After the concoction was applied to the broken lung tissue and the larynx, she tied up the tendons of broken vessel right near the mute heart. A scalpel and stitch were used numerous times during the mend as the Yunmeng’s healers stitching the wounds on both in stomach and the throat, but the leaking purple fruit in the left upper quadrant of abdomen kept weakening the immune system and holding the old broken red blood cells. The skin she touches only grew colder and the bleeding happens profusely, soaking her own hands and the crimson sheets below their sits.

The failing organs fails to kept the reserve of blood, and so they had to pumped the transfusion again. They still had yet to pump the heart, but what’s the matter currently is to restore some basic function of the organs so it will not preclude the trivial revival not long after. She then applies the portion of her own-made peculiar potion to the spleen. Other healers help in repairing the broken artery near the heart, letting out several dirty ruined blood cells and filling the blood tube with the new ones. The failing diaphragm is also taken care too with medicinal wine and stitch. Scattered pieces of broken ribs were taken from inside the body and they operated on the newfound ruined bits of bone marrow.

During the process, the Yiling Patriarch stayed still in his unchosen new serenity, unmoving and lifeless, skin feels very fragile and cold under the touch like feeble thin paper, easy to smash it into pieces. The hands that pumped his chest and heart was initially afraid of breaking it, but administrated all the magic potion to the hearts with enough courage. At the time they finally got the slow beats they were looking for, they finally finished washing the stomach and the hurting intestines while giving it herbal medicines inside. The steady beats they were looking for finally starts to give its fruit, not before his body went into shock again and they had to pressing his heart again, hands carefully not to break the almost fixed lungs nearby. Spilled hair still spread elegantly on the crimson-soaked cushion, and Hua-Daifu swears in her heart that she saw a flash of flickering eyes for a moment, gazing at her and asking to be helped before it shuts down again.

Someone is still waiting for me, those frail eyes also said under its short-lived life.

Chapter Text

They once parted on a warm summer night, he was sitting idly below the ray of beautiful moonlight above the rooftop, drinking a portion of famous Gusu’s Emperor Smile with eyes closed and a slight smile carve out his lips. The Younger Jade saw it and in relief, taking his step onto the way back to Gusu’s peacefulness before the rising sun hampered the road.

They once parted in the darkness of cold cave. Their injuries were like passing winds as every fragments of their remembrances played through the cryptic beautiful humming tune in the middle of increasing heat of the soulmate’s fragile health and mind. He was the first to gone and his sun were left all alone in the cold wall of stone.

They once parted on a cold early autumn night. His sun’s light had been dimmed and about to lost to the darkness that dragged him mercilessly. He was absent during the time, occupying the priority in taking care of his wounded sect and family that almost vanished by the glory of blazing sun, not quite like annihilated flowers of Lotus Pier either. Its three brightest pearl survived, one in such a way that had made his feelings left conflicted between the relief and the worry of choice.

They once parted in the middle of autumn’s coldness, the improper war graves around them and the fall out trees shed its brown leaves in its agony season. Chilling whistling of the wind touched their skins as they both said unwilling goodbye and a lot of unspoken wills to each other, swallowing their mutual desire under the weight of oath and humanity. He assured him that everything’s going to be just well at that time.

It wasn’t in the end.

They once parted at the tip of sharp cliff of the former Sun’s quarter. It was dawn and the sky was showing the beautiful scenery of its grayish orange colors. Underneath it lays the ugliness of humanity, bloods and dismembered bodies and among other things which he didn’t pay attention too. The dying sun hanging in his grip was more worth it. He was giving him the same assurance, the same bright smile. Desperation and surrender were inside his assuring eyes, giving up to the shots that he had taken over and over from this sinful earth he’s walking into. And then the sun fell to his demise. His expression was peaceful however, happy to finally free from the burden of the sins he bore. It was the next time they’re parted.

They once again parted at the tip of the cliff. It was a warm summer noon at that time, five months ago. They bid each other the same unwilling goodbye and same lot of unspoken wills, promising that they will meet again next time in good mental and good health. He was giving him the same repeated assurance, the same bright smile hiding the sadness and pain behind the window of his eyes, and that everything’s going to be just well and alright.

In the end…in the end it wasn’—

The white robe showing the fang of its fluttering as a Gusu’s Younger Jade takes each of his rashly steps, hard knock sounds were echoing throughout the town’s road he passed. It’s louder and louder and louder and louder. It’s one of the loudest sounds to ever be heard by the town and its residences, and they almost swear that they could hear the echoes of despair behind the thickness of the wooden wall that were being built neatly. It’s a warm cold Autumn night, the night after the news of murder of previous night were spread throughout the town and even onto several of its neighbors. Some saying that it’s just an ordinary cultivator, and some saying that it’s a prominent cultivator, or even the famous legendary Yiling Patriarch who recently came back to the living world. There’s once a rumor about his coming to the town too, and so they guess, either it’s the battle of death and alive or the total passing of the ill-fated cultivator.

The Jade only letting the hearsays as merely a wind to his ears, each step taken are manifestation of every mixed feelings of silent anger and blame and fear and doldrums that he grudges deeply in his heart and mind. Other sounds and everything happened arounds only become fragments of blurriness, everything suddenly become less significant. What left behind in his glory of despair and uncharacteristic selfishness and inconsideration was the Juniors that guide him to the aimed destination while his mind continues to be occupied by the same priority and thought, incapable of leaving him since yesterday till this night and never intended to be dropped nor leaved from his life.

If only it’s much earlier, perhaps there would be no another pain and regret and debt…perhaps there would be no life that hangs in the thin line of life and death right now…perhaps there would be no Wei Ying that struggling alone behind the cold room…

Each of his steps can only accelerates as the stomp of his foots uttering the breaking of the open-bleeding heart to the emptiness of the town’s street and within the echoing hall of the inn. The door was forced to open strongly, leaving its tip to collide with the wooden wall that smells nothing but death in its solitude. The stomping sound of his steps will not stop expressing the raging and broken of the soul, and that all he knows is Wei Ying needs him. His hair disheveled from the merciless winds he passed during the whole travel, his eyes is nothing but balls of red and salt liquid looks like if it’s about to drop off shamelessly from the orbs that contains the indescribable pain of experiencing losing for countless times.

From the tip of his sight, he sees the man in purple sitting jadedly on the right side of the only chair in the room above, his posture slouch way down and his knuckles clenches in such a way that the blood stops pouring to that area and the entire of fingers become white, exact expression hidden behind the darkening of silent rage shadow of bent face. There’s no taking much for every person passed to see the visible nerves on the Sect Leader Jiang’s neck and his usual silent rage. One catalyst is enough to make it explode and gulfing everything and everyone under its heat.

The knock of his steps finally makes a clear echo within the narrowness of the room, each of walls screams nothing but the wither of life and the arrival of quietus, and the resonance of the ticking of the non-presence clock grows closer to the ears as the fiery gazes of wrath meet the icy chilling eyes of the Lan, and the room simply falls into the unspoken mutual anger, resentment, and blame. Each moment passing is focuses only on both men with unpleasant history between each other, the shadow of Juniors in the corner become heeded bystanders watching the room grow colder and colder, as cold as the skin of the dying man behind the wall.

And as the bloodshot eyes finally meet each other in its fullness, Lan Wangji feels his breath bottle-up in his own throat as the man speaks the words of fear.

“You’re late, Second Master Lan.”

Hua-Daifu wipes rain of sweat in her forehead, hair ragged in the wake of fatigues wave that almost washed over her, the scalpel and stitch placed properly in the metal bowl. Nor of her or any other healers has gotten any proper sleep for nineteen hours yet, body sours and weariness all over their joints. The overall surgery was middling with its unstable ups and downs, perhaps will never getting stability for uncertain period amount of time just like the fragility of a life in the bed, skin feels too dry like paper and frame too pale and thin with lack of red liquid inside.

Heartbeat at least finally beating, albeit in each of its weak taps after ceased for two times along with the regained frangible breathing, air still not enough to fill whole lungs and brain that had been deprived from oxygen needed for so long and the potion that supporting its function tentatively. The poison had marked its damage to the lung tissue and the herbal medicine could only neutralizing it by half, drops of it still hiding behind the deepness of pleura and detained by the healing potion placed inside.

Damage that the liver and spleen received were quite much to be handled as whole, but they managed to detain it from the worst deterioration so far along with wounds in bowel of stomach. During its dissection, she saw the hollow place that once became the home of the core that is the pride of every cultivators and their achievements, eyes squinted at the misshapen state of it giving some theoretical theories she used to see in the past, but hands continued to do its work. The artery has been successfully being stitched and pulse rather slow but steady, sustaining his sign of life though uncertain in the recovery.

She looks up to the pale face, heavy eyebags hanging under the eyes and telling the severity of the brain that shutting down for how long it will be, as long as a life still striving under the pressure of fatality.

What is difficult for her is to tell his closest one.

The man outside is full of temper and hidden grudge, hard tone apparently rising after his awareness finally gained a bit of function, detecting the other presence beside from his treasured nephew and his companion. The voice was also shrinking to unusual quietness after that, and so she took that as resignment under dispiritedness and doldrums. A sound of opened wooden door finally make its arrival much long after the shrinkage of interaction and she finally sees the sight of the tragedy of threnody in front of her eyes.

The man sitting in there is a mess, red bloodshot all over his wide-eyed eyes and body trembling from fear and frustration mixed into one, body language rather slouches in the brink of its tacit fright. He rose, frame move slightly forward. Hua-Daifu doesn’t even able to see the other reactions behind him as her orbs can only see the catatonic state of the person who has so many loses within the three decades he lives, and the same man can only zipped his mouth in the willing stillness as she unfolds every information needed, feeling a bit to bite her own tongue as she sees the increasing whiteness in everyone’s face. In the end, the Yunmeng’s leader can only stay in his catatonic state, unable to express anything from his mouth just like in the past, always choosing to stay silent and not communicating.

Hua-Daifu lets out a loud sigh, heart and mouth feels heavy in the next expression she planned to vocalize in the time. But her eyes shot up from another push of determination. As intruding as it’s, the information is currently at its necessariness notably for the comatose man lying fragilely within the wall behind them. And despite the heaviness of her tongue, the words are let out from her mouth.

“Sāndú Shèngshǒu…”

The dull and fiery eyes shift at the calling of the title, expression of inquiry flashes for a bit in spite of its madness, head raised and attention full on the Daifu in front of him.

“Yiling Patriarch’s golden core was transferred, wasn’t it?”

He freezes, wide-eyed.

Silence is all in the cold air of the room for every ticking of seconds that feels much longer than the actual. For moments, there’s no sounds, no movements, no other things. Everything feels floating, as if it’s in the infinite amount of vacuum, silencing and suffocating.

Sāndú Shèngshǒu only lets out a wail laugh in return, hand concealing the top part of his face and his eyes and his other hand put itself in the waist. He laughs and laughs and laughs, laughing for his every pent-up frustration and poking fun at the cruel irony that punching him over and over to no end, frame shaking so hard in the brink of its madness and the echo of the cry of laugh echoing throughout every nerve. And for every laughs that comes out, the petal of weeps and heartbreaks are raining to the ground below.

Chapter Text

Lan Yuan washes and winds the white towel quietly beside the bed, water pouring seamly to the metal bowl. The fluidity of candle stands near them exuding the heat needed, the scent of warmness lit the smell of coldness and lack of life in the room. He touches the skin with gentleness and tenderness to the man who was his father and is still his father, sleeping peacefully on the bed for uncertain long period, perhaps be forever. The towel wets the dry skin and replaces it with dampness, but no one and nothing will be able to replace the thinness of his frame and the hollowness of his cheek.

In silent, the last of the Sun let go of his silent tear.

There left the three juniors in the corner and the two prestigious cultivators with history of silent hate and disdain between them, sit in the distant and across each other. Both men with opposite reputations aren’t sparing each other faces, there’re the silent expressions of blame, grudge, and great anger. The man known for his turmoil is bearing his unspoken revilement and the man known for his calmness is bearing the clear unspoken anger and blame for himself. The silence occurs for unrealized amount of time, hazy under the so many fears and strains and the helpless nausea that plaguing relentlessly.

The air in the room is nothing but an unseen water of suffocation.

That condition stayed in that blurriness of time until the slight stir of the man bearing the title of light triggers bigger tension within the air of fake tranquility. The ‘concord’ that lasts for how long it was is broken by a low but expected sarcastic tone of the man of turmoil.

“Must be very exhausting and difficult to take care of those many cases, isn’t it right eh Chief Cultivator?”

The addressed man doesn’t flinch. He knows the clear feelings of the man on the opposite side. They both somehow know each other’s unspoken feelings. They aren’t sparing any waste words for each other and never planning to. The man is clear and direct in his action, there’s a sore sharpness in the words spoken.

Lan Wangji ends in ignoring the jump of stab pain in his heart for a second.

“Quite.”

Truthfully, he doesn’t know how to answer it.

(All that he knows is that his mind is burning, and that his heart is bleeding, and perhaps he could’ve been healthy and well if only those mistakes never committed.)

Any kind of brief reply never sits well on the Yunmeng’s leader nerves. In the past and present, the man he once called his brother (and still is) also using this method sometimes. They both are similar in that regard, and perhaps that’s why they suit each other more than him and him. The quiet man in guilt is always too brief in his words that result in lack of communication. The man he loves, him, maybe the man of many mouths but it was never for the useful use for direct communication, he only loves to dance around it. On the other hand, that man’s brother isn’t and never the person of courtesy, and so just like as he always is and was, only tossing the hook more to the person he directed to, harshly and mercilessly.

“Yeah, so quite that you’d come to the point of abandoning him.”

The Second Lan doesn’t answer in that regard. His lifeless gaze can only sink and sinks to the more inescapable deep dullness and nor any words can escape from his own throat. A flash and flicker of thoughts flooding his mind and he feels his breath is about to meet the end of its existence.  

He considers it, too.

“Don’t speak that carelessly Sect Leader Jiang.”, Lan Jingyi quickly comes in defense, unable to accept the satire words that his respected Senior receives unfairly and also in justified worriedness of the Second Jade’s mental health, “Hanguang-Jun never intend to abandon Senior Wei.”

“You!!”

The bloodshot glared eyes and heated grunts zip the mouth of Lan Junior in the instant.

“Who teach you to raise your words at me?!”

He doesn’t reply beyond further after that and the fiery panting is the only thing filling the room in those moments. The three bystanders can only watch in the strained silence with the stretched and stretched time, unable to moving or even breathing properly. The hall feels increasingly suffocating with the intense anger of the man full of life’s grudge and turmoil.

The Yunmeng’s leader feels his temple hit repeatedly by a hammer and closes his eyes for a while, trying to gather at least one of rational nerve among endless irrational thought of his through the control of his exhale and breathing.

‘He’s not the person to vent all your angers’, convince his inner, trying to suppress the amount of surging temper coming in. ‘After all, Wei Wuxian was and is never Lan Sect’s responsibility to protect in the first place.’  

And yet, he only lying to himself again in each of every uncounted second passing.

“So…you two…parted away from each other?”

He asks, this time in quiet whisper, rather rational tone. Jiang Cheng can only feel the rifting of the last of his rational nerves getting bigger and bigger.

There’s only silence as sole answer of query after that. But even the time is unable to be felt under the fiery breathing of man of turmoil and the catatonic state of the man of tranquility, the tightened grip on his white robes is all his ‘reply’ to that man. And then, like the fire slowly grabbing the fuel, that long muteness of the Lan’s Second Jade also slowly breaking the last straw of the grip of sanity that he attempts to hold a little.

“How can you two parted away in the first place?! You always firmly locked by his side all this time and never you chose the opposite before! Why now?!! Why this recent?!! Why only at the time like this you fucking choose this kind of resolve?!”

The question turned into a yell.

Second Jade of Lan lifts his head a few inches at the slight scream, the expression of mourning and depression and regrets are all in his window. He swallows his throat, trying to fight against the wave of hesitation and the settled numbness on his brain before finally letting the loose of his paralyzed tongue.

“Wei Ying…made his decision.”

“And you let him go just like that just because of that ridiculous reason?!”

Silence.

Suddenly, Lan Wangji feels the force on his left cheek that leaves him sprawled immobile on the cold floor. It was strong and full of brute, all the rages and the grudges were released through the raging punch of the brother of Yunmeng’s Wei Wuxian, hard to be differentiated between the flickering of past and presents turmoil. The calling of his name was blurry under the limbs that grow colder and colder and the fire that finally reaching the tip of fuel, lit it to its whole unending explosion.

“Made that decision! Made that decision!! Is that the only reason that you can give me?! That he’s the one made his own decision!! You think I don’t know that?!! I was the one grew up and raised together with him all these years!! You think I don’t understand him?!!”

Jiang Cheng screams, loudly, bottling up every catharsis needed for himself and for his sanity.  

He thrown two other punches to his cheeks, and the targeted person doesn’t object the blows that’s given to him, obediently receiving the pain that’s nothing compare to the open bleeding of his regrets. Jiang Cheng is crying, tears raining up so hard on his cheeks and his eyes can only grow redder under the frustration that isn’t only directed to others around him but also for himself, for his helplessness, for all the bad traits he inherent and all the mistakes he did that lead to this.

He stops his fist in the next, putting all his both hands to cover the running tears from his eyes and on his cheeks that just won’t stop falling, wetting the ground and the white robes of Lan lays below him. He’s shaking his head in repeat, before let out a sarcastic laughing that echo through the walls and the floors. The irony is in the embodiment of that cold laughter that just become menacing and menacing as the seconds passed as it’s slowly slower but sharper with the wave of another bottle-up that coming in, letting out the very question he wants to ask for very long time along with the inescapable impingement.

“Hah…but you’re right though, I don’t understand him. I never understand him nor try to at least understand him!! Unlike you!! And that’s why we ended up like this!! All our family dead and we can’t even trust each other fully anymore!! But you’re supposed to be different than me!! Weren’t you supposed to be different?! You’re supposed to understand his feelings, you’re supposed to be the one that always accompany him, you’re supposed to never leave his side!! Are you even doing your job properly?!!”

He chokes in his rage, tearfully. The raining on his cheeks just can’t be stop no matter how hard he tries to suppress it in front the others. All the pride and the last rope of his self-hold is being thrown away in hard but he stops being caring about it since the month when he finally knew whose golden core was that reside within him all this time and being the force that gave him the strength to built the Yunmeng’s sect.

Yunmeng Leader can only watch his words eaten little by little by his own tears and his throat chokes inside just like the time at the Guanyin Temple when he bottle up to the very man he always wanted to talk to, the same man that now lays within life and death on the other side of cold wall.

“Tell me...Who were the one that have unwavering loyalty for him during those long sixteen years?! Who were the one hoping for him to be alive?! Whom were the one that hoping for him to be together at his side?! Are you fucking forget your own wishes Lan Wangji?!!

Lan Wangji can only stay in muteness during Jiang Cheng’s other tantrum previously, but like a fragile candle, it’s finally blown up as the last words pierce the last straw of his numbness. The silent tears finally falling to his cheeks like a slow rain that slowly turns into heavy rain.

“I’m sorry.”

The man of turmoil tears his hand from his face to looks up at the sobs that finally released from the quiet man. The unending sobs is full of helplessness and pleas.

“I’m sorry that I failed to protect him, Jiang Wanyin…”

Jiang Cheng shakes his head greatly, then burying his face into the deep of his palms and the position that now changes to the feeble sitting on the floor. He suddenly burst out into the mix of laughs and tears, his hand covers all the voice of insanity and the realization of irony and the hypocrisy up. Seconds later, his muffled voice escapes from the allusion that he held himself.

“I’m sorry too”

Chapter Text

Jin Ling thinks back on the decision that Hua-Daifu made, can’t help but feeling a little relief as he watches the two men weeping on the cold floor spilling all their tantrum in constrained silence.

After all, she’s a person with sharp perception that could see potential emotional mess along with the fueling of animosity by crumpled expressions and heavy tension of the two men that would only worsen the fragile condition of her patient, and so, she only allowed certain person she saw as having the best emotional state out of all them to enter the room and tend the comatose man.

The man sprawled on the floor that became the punching bag is filled with his own visible numbness, the tears that falls into the floor are the consideration to end a life, life or lives that he deemed responsible, maybe it’s the lives of the killers, or perhaps it’s the life of hims---

He cut out his own thoughts quickly. After all, he’s only outsider to the man, who only knows him as the only child of Wei Wuxian’s sister, the last blood of Yunmeng Jiang aside from the man known as Wei Wuxian’s former brother, and one of the persons who ever endangered Wei Wuxian’s life like those scums.

Whether the respectable Jade have his own hidden resentment or not though, it’s doesn’t matter to him right now.

The image of powerful dazzling man he admires in Yi City that he attempted to preserve, the same man right now is wearing his heart on sleeves, snowy exterior melts into seemingly endless salt waters in uncontrolled muteness. Fitting for the man known for his tranquility.

On the other hand, his uncle was and is always the man of temper, the man of turmoil. Dissonant tranquil rage is boiling inside him in everyday he ever knows him. Outside, the man seems to never held back when it comes to directly making his expression visible to those in the interactions with him. If any of things that’s the similarity of two men sprawled on the floor aside from their hidden, silent care or love, is that a rareness for them to wears heart on sleeves straight in front of others, and yet, it’s flowing heavily and fills the tone.

The explosive anger of his uncle, and the melancholy state of the Jade. The one hasn’t even yet having the knowledge, the other is the only person in this room that having the thing he himself doesn’t want to know and perhaps never ready to know, and ready to spill all of those in his tantrum, but it seems he finally decides to bottled it up again like in the past and present, whether it’s because he’s unable to do it himself or because of his dishonesty to both others and himself like he always did and do.

A slight call, almost like whisper come from his mouth, “Uncle.”

The man addressed kept drowns in his unstable state of mind and then ends up walking out of the room, legs limply and eyes sags from the tears settled and being hold by his pride, both hands and legs trembling when he pushed himself hard from the floor, and Jin Ling watches as the figure of his uncle dissipates in the dark, the thoughts to mend is discarded soon after that.

There’s no need, he thinks after a while as the vision of his uncle went feral at the sight of both the sight of the son and the father, repeatedly first and second.

Is this how he was when his mother was stabbed right in front of his sight? 

Was Wei Wuxian also like this? 

The other man doesn’t even shift even for the slightest from his spot, keeps sinking into the deep and depth of his footing on reality and into the dark pitch of unmeasured sorrows and the drop of wistful. He stays in that manner for how long it’s and nor of the remaining people in the room is able to take out him from that state until the sound of opened door echoes to the ears.

Hanguang-Jun stirs a bit but slumped back as Lan Shizui approaches and places his hand on his shoulder. The next words in Lan Shizui’s attempt is blurry on his ears, but he sees the slight movement on his hands and frames, and the fruitfulness of the hazy words. The hands pushed the body from the floor but something very heavy causes him slipped back sitting on cold floor for a while, as if he doesn’t have enough strength to live on, and a cold panting blown out of his nose before finally gathered enough strength to lift himself entirely, with Shizui places his support on his arm as they both walk into the room, the slit of the door is slow and haunting.

And then he sees his figure dissipates in the darkness just like his uncle.

“I can’t restore the function of his lungs, liver, spleen, nor his throat to what these were before.”

The sharp nails draw drops of blood in the tightened grip.

"His immune is very fragile as the result of the damage to his spleen, and his blood circulation might have bigger problem in the future. I try to work with his lungs or throat, but I can’t guarantee it. If he had the core, there would be more chance, but alas, that's not the case. For most of people, they will rather choose death instead of living. Even if he survives this, I’m afraid that…”, the pause echoes as the silence paint his breath to the slowness.

The next moments came in the thousands separated fragments, and he just laughs. Rains of leaves come raining on his head and shoulder, marking the end of Autumn and the beginning of Winter. 

"The Yiling Patriarch can’t be the same as before, both in his physique and his mental.”

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji sits quietly on Wei Wuxian’s bedside, palms holding tightly the wet towel moistened by warm water and eyes glazed glancing at the muted man in the bed, red dot visible within white bandages in the perforated neck, and the heavy white blanket that cover almost all his body except for the frail hands that placed right beside him, brittle and white from the bloodless state within. For an immeasurable amount of times, his hands stay hanging in the air and never once move, nor his melancholy gazes shift to other things other than the man’s shut eyelids and the black ink that spilled and bloom around his head, adorning the ugly within.

Wobbly, he reaches Wei Wuxian’s pale chin with right hand, trembling. He strokes it with such gentility by his thumb, fear of breaking the one he loves more than he already is. He then starts to wash his chin with the towel slowly, one can tell the patience and the dedication he has for the man who will not wake-up greeting him with his warm, sunny smile. That man was always the warmth sun to his cold moon, the liveliness to his coldness. Now he’s the cold one, laying for what seems like forever and become the serene and the quite statue in the bed, breath short and very weak under the faint moving of the blanket, perhaps will lose all the life its left in short time.

Lan Wangji thinks of what could be and what would be if he didn’t make that decision that time. The path of prioritizing his family, the path of prioritizing the safety of people and society, and the path of protecting the weak, the same choice that leaving Wei Wuxian alone in this cruel and cold path, leaving him to be the prey of the wicked world, and the same choice is also the path of throwing away his happiness of what he thought would be only momentarily, soon to be taken away into eternity, and the realization of his greatest fear.

He wonders of what would be if he never give Wei Ying the swallowing of his own unshed tears at their unspoken preparation on the road at that time, if he never give Wei Ying the glances of silent devastation, if he didn’t let go of him that easily, if he didn’t let Wei Ying walked passed him in that bracing hill, if only he call his name when they turned their back to each other…and for once, didn’t abandon him again for the amount of times that he himself can’t counted.

Perhaps, if he had put Wei Ying’s needs above others, he wouldn’t be here laying lifeless in the thin door of life and death. He wouldn’t have his throat taken away from him forever, he wouldn’t have his lungs and stomach torn apart in the name of inhumanity, he wouldn’t be having his consciousness ripped apart pieces by pieces as it worth nothing. He wouldn’t here be the personification of everything he’s not.

His dead, eyes gazes at the mute man in the bed, sinking into the abyss and voices sealed by the strip of his own will.

All this time, it’s a wrong choice?

The rain of regret slumps into the face of earth, salting the palm and the sweet smell of blanket and cold skin. The cold and hot of unfolded woes flickering right before his eyes like a lit of candles winded by the wind of the deceased fleeing the clothes of purity and mourning.

Is it worth it for Wei Ying the one to pay for the price that belongs to him?

(n-…)

Is it worth it for Wei Ying to have his life taken away from him for the second time?

(n-.....)

Isn’t it enough for Wei Ying to pay the price of things he never owned?

(n-……)

Why always him the one that pay the price?!

(I-…)

Why can’t it be himself?!

(Wh-……)

Why can’t you protect Wei Ying?

(Why can’t I?! Why?! Why can't I be able?!)

Why didn’t you have the ability to protect Wei Ying?

(Because……I’m……I’m………I’m….!!)

Why did you let him wounded again? Why did you let him die again?!

(I should be the one dying on the bed!)

Why did you choose it?! Why?! Why?! Why?!

(I’m sor--……...I’m sorr-………Wei----)

His tears continue to shed with grace of mourn and regret, wetting his white and pure clothes of heartache, the same heartaches behind the strings that played uselessly for sixteen years of the empty within, there’s no spirits nor anything that could answer him and his plea.

Neither the Wei Ying on the bed and the Wei Ying on the bottom of cliff of the night less also could and can answer his pleading, too.

Why would you let him fall again?

Red tears start to rain from his pale, white moon knuckles. It’s raining heavily that the child on another bedside could swear that it will soon fill the room, hauling everything with the crimson of lament and the loss of will to live. He’s the sun whose flames shot down repeatedly by the darkness of shadow, and he’s the helpless moon who can only staring but does nothing.

The grip of knuckles goes nothing but hardness as the time go.

“Hanguang-Jun…”

The last of the sun’s voice softly calls, the hand placed into the shoulder be the reminder of the time and the waste of health. Lan Yuan tenderly gazes at him, giving the smile of the fake and the sugarcoating of bleeding heart behind, but it continues its solace, not like the rose-colored glasses either.

“Let switch place as of now. You’re tired, you need rest. This is already have been twelve hours and yet you never once eat or drink.”.

The touch strokes the silk softly and the smile widens in its coercion, swallowing its own misery to put others above him.

“Let me help you.”

Chapter Text

Jin Ling wipes Wei Wuxian’s neck in tremble, red blood stains the purity of the white towel and kindle the fearfulness he didn’t felt in almost such a long time in the iron, hardened bringing up by the family indulged in their own egoistic greed and never spare any care for his well-being and the uncle who only know one method to raise a frightened child detached from the warmth love and affection of parents since birth.

He remembers vividly the taste of painful loneliness throughout every cold days and nights, begging for the presence of the father and mother who were gone along with the wind of December’s winter, and crying for the absence of the dead and the livings. Sometimes summer’s sun was warm, and sometimes it was cold with the abandoning of the kin busied with gold and reputation and reign, punching the small body out of the jealousy and unappreciativeness. The touches of the beating still craved in vivid, and the unending mocks is still tainted in his heart, never being thrown back properly in the past as his courage shrink from the lack of support and solace.

When he was finally can throw back those insults and beating fairly, he had the pillar. The hands that taught him of defending was warm and smiling, filling the empty spot of parenting affection that deprived from him since the day of his birth. The person that helped him was trying to redeem himself at that time, for robbing the life of his father and the reason of mother’s death. In the end, he has nothing to be redeemed, except for the body that grow cold and the slowly frozen pulse inside the frame too tiny for the silk that protected him from the sharp knives of coldness in the outside, for about to robbed his uncle from the only person he loved aside from him, for about disappear from being one of his pillars, for spilling the frozen tears of the one that loved him the most.

He touches the wrist with the near frozen pulse synchronize with his touch, now grow colder together with the bloom of the winter outside, the frost starts to dance in air and make the beauty of the dead of the sky and the demise of petals of flowers. He sees a snowflake floats gracefully in the wind, slowly getting its beautiful landing in the palm of the ice that formerly bears the name of the sun, the last sun to be alive in this world that colder and icier by air of death and unspoken misery filling all the scenery.

A week ago, he finally knew.

They shared their sorrow together, in the middle of the adults drowning in thousands of their sorrow and self-hating. He’s years older than him, but can understand and receive each other for who they’re without any of hard feelings. His mother met her demise because of his beloved brother and the people he saved at that time but his father’s demise has no correlation. He was merely a child born bearing the name that curse him and his family, he was only a baby that being born only around one month bearing the name of the blessing and gold, soon turns into curse too. Neither of them bears the sins of the older generation, they were just children being protected against the ugliest nature of humanity. It was the first time they talked heart to heart after months of separation, fulfilling their unspoken declaration of friends, ready to support and console each other.

He’s the only one willing to console others in the time that feels freezing along with the winter. Ouyang Zizhen never unable to even step an inch into the room, Lan Jingyi that even never lay his gaze at all, his uncle ‘s continual to pay visit to the room and giving excuses every time they talked, keeping his own secrets and knowing all by himself just like in the past and only willing to talk to Hua-Daifu regarding the comatose’s man seemingly deteriorating health with incoming of the Winter, and the Lan Jade that kept nursing the person he loves and longs for until he exhausted and torturing himself enough to be lay on the white bed across, tears frozen like the crystal snow like the winter Jade he’s and sky seems sorrowing together with the losing of his will to live.

Some things are bound to being kept both secretly and sometimes it’s a better thing too. Out of the people waiting for the healing of Wei Wuxian, only the three people bearing all the needed knives by themselves. Sometimes, he would almost witness their talks, hidden in the corner of the room and filled with the painful silence of the blame and depression. In the end, his hands always ended up blocking his ears from all the needles around, just like how he finally realizes the truly gone of his parents in the loneliness of the hall filled with both happiness and greediness of the gold.

As he’s drowning in the sea of cold memories and recollections, a sound of wood breaking in through his glass, and he averts his gaze.

In the darkness that illuminate, he sees the ray of light slowly brighten and warming Wei Wuxian’s frost face, contented with his eternal peace and the suffering of his beloved. Nobody dare to moves him from the bed nor to another room, as his life is still lying on the cracking thin glass with nobody can rescue him from it. As he’s about to shift his eyes to see the opener, Lan Shizui already calling the name of the person before he can lay his gaze at.

“Zewu-Jun.”

Chapter Text

The tree has withers.

A pair of Two Jades sits kneeling against each other at the midst of one blizzard day, snows dancing heavily outside the window and their bare feets freezing like that frost of winter. In front of them lays two abandoned white cups waiting for their own demise by the cold air of the season of the dead in the world. One guqin, one icy flute, and two frost swords stands beside feelings the frosty atmosphere and the weary tension of the Jades as icy as the ices under the snow. The older Jade’s orbs have a tinge of sadness, the pity gazes are upon the younger one across the table, eyes dead and hair crumpled from neglect and mute self-torment. He glances at the hollow shell of a person that lays on the white bed wearing the white robes concealing the ugliness of the holes and imperfection inside, the color of mourning in the dusk of dawn. The cloths on his neck decorating his penetrated neck with the same color, too.

“Wangji, there’s no improvement from Young Master Wei’s condition yet?”

The addressed Jade stills mute, eyes staying still in the drown of insentient and the death. Their own’s green teas are getting cold, and the mourning cups and their frost swords they ordered sits there, watching them both in the squint of judgement. The air in the room is still cold and icy and suffocating. The person sleeps on the bed can’t hear every single word spelled in his deep slumber and gagged ears and a sere brain.

“Wangji, how long are you going to be like this?"

A little bit of stir comes from the younger Jade.

The next seconds, there back the absence of the life and gone the slight hope that emerged.

The Older one sighs loudly, breath turning into vapor from the freezing air carving and plaguing deep to their bones. There’re anguish and a pledge of plea coming from the brown eyes, once in a while gazing at the dead man nearby. Here lays a person once the liveliest and the beloved of people, now still the beloved of his brother but no longer the beloved of many people nor the liveliest of them, now the cold one on his white deathbed. At the best, he’s their neutral pawn. At the worst, he’s a sore that must be eradicated. They’re smart and didn’t take time to serving their worst tea, and that was in the death of Autumn.

Now they’re in the spring peak of the blooming of snowflakes, the day after his incoming and still not a single uttered other than mere formalities as the façade of the mess behind. The people responsible are still on their free running, hiding behind the mazes of towns and trees. The wall meters away is quite thin, on the flipside the Junior sits unwillingly outside in the long-term of anguish and despair by order, each feets slowly frozen from the anguish of the wind. The white rains on transparent window is still merciless and the breeze slaps it several times.

“Wangji, both of you and Sect Leader Jiang, not a single one willing to speaks to me about the details. I know from the Juniors that the Daifu will make her presence here tomorrow, but even both of you refuses to give them needed. If you both continue to hiding your own pain like this, how can I help you both and Young Master Wei?”

The Second Jade gives a slight flinch, his face still crumpled from the lack of color of the blood and the lack of will to live. Within the flickers of his visions however, he sees his brother’s eyes turning into the begging and the silent crying. For a lot of moments, they fell back into heavy silence, one falling in the unending holes of self-blaming and the other stabbed by his own inability to console nor lifting the sorrow of his beloved brother.

“Brother…”, a soft whisper tone catches him back to the reality.

In front of him is his brother, eyes red and rather swollen and strands of hair untreated, gazing at him in plea and anguish. His snowy lace robe wavering a little by slight movement and the cold breeze, hands and feelings are like the fragile frost in the midst of merciless winter.

“Can I bring him back to Gusu?”

Indeed, the tree has withers.

Chapter Text

“Here’s the details about his condition.”.

A Daifu sat at one cold snowy moonless night with medicines and concoctions that sleeps on the table, in front of her were the two people of each other's antithesis like of the calm ice and raging fire forced to sit on the same side despite the unending hostility and hatred and guilt between them, the green teas that already gone with the winter’s coldness patiently waiting for the words to be unfold one by one, and for those whose heartaches to flung further melodied by the strings of woe.

“He had four deep stab wounds in chest that shattered his ribs and made his lungs drowned in blood, four deep wounds in stomach that already got infected badly due to the lateness of proper treatment, poisons that spread within his lung tissues, tendons, tissues, and several blood vessels that severed all over the upper body, injured liver, and damaged spleen that hampering the production of blood cycles and circulations and the working of his immune system which rendering him to have other kind of sickness and infection in the future if not being taken care or protected properly. I managed to heal his external injuries and repair half of the damages, but so far neither of those can restore to what they were before, and his condition can still roll to the possible worst option in the future.”

The death.

Sound of both men’s breaths increasingly audible in the room, rolls the past’s grudges, hatred, love, fear, and debts displayed in the flash on the eyes of those who’re never letting go, and the air are nothing but suffocating and chilling to the core of the bones.

His third second death.

“If he had golden core, it can possibly help the recovery faster and maybe saving him from the possible disability he about to possess but…”

Sandu Shengshou’s jaw indurates, shoulder and fists tightening and eyes running away to the floor, pupils dilated and widens in the extreme expression identified as anger addressed to nobody but himself. The melancholy eyes beside him switches to glaring at his direction for a second before it turns back to the dead gazes staring at the medicines on the table.

“…what happened already happens.”

The man with the dead family laughs at himself in silence.

Hua-Daifu glances at the front men in the right, body trembling in laugh and hand covering the face of nothing but a madman driven out of his sanity, and fist of the Jade that does nothing but stiffened in each time passes, “Also…”. The continuation caught the two men back to the attention.

“…the sword that slashes his throat touched the larynx.”

And the words end with heavy falling of the snow blurring senses of the ears in the withering of Wei Wuxian.

‘

‘

‘

‘

‘

‘

(“He might be not able to speak anymore.”)

The man in his past memories were thin but warm.

He was lively and engaged him in the plays he can no longer remember that buried in the deep of the past, consoled him in the cry and accompanied him in the joy. He would bury half of his body in the ground, for planting his favorite radish as the man said, but then growing other radishes himself. He would also move around, planting his favorite Lotus flowers and then growing them, waiting for seasons to come and gave them the lives and the light in the darkness of the cave they lived in.

In those hazy memories, the man was talkative, and so he assumed that man loves talking and loves opening himself to the world around. The wide smile painted in the man’s face that he remembers was warm and sincere, and within the blurry memories, nothing was hidden in it.

It was in the lively joy of summer.

When the deep slumber of winter approached(s), those images came(comes) more in vivid.  

Wide smile with the air of melancholy, the sad eyes behind the eye-smiles he gave, the coldness of his hands that similar to those of the snow, and the one yelling of angriness that once he thrown once right in front of his eyes.

The eyes he gave was glaring at that time. He would then be surrounded (trapped) by the black smoke of the cave, the strange red liquid, the withering of plants and trees and Lotus flowers he’d grown by himself, and the longing gazes and the talks preserved to the only person that bearing the light that shun in his path of darkness.

He remembers it vividly.

The man was indeed loves talking (not mute like the current self in the mourning bed), but neither of the words were open nor it were sharing. He loves smiling but neither the smiles were for himself. He wasn’t lively, miserable and sugarcoated by his own deceits to himself and the world.

In the deep slumber of winter, he was(is) finally(finally) withered just like the Lotus Flowers in the cave (and those in the lake of Yunmeng).

The man in his sight and touch is thin and cold.

“Of course, Wangji.”, said the older Jade confirming.

The medics of Lan Sect are known for the expert in herbal medicines and natural method of healing after all.

Perhaps…there’s a hope.

Chapter Text

The people who’re frosty in that chilling cold Winter aren’t just the one lying on the bed and unalive beyond his will.

One known as the bearer of light sits on the bedside of the one in an endless deep slumber, the light he bears is dim and his hair crumpled like a crusty frost, face pale like cold snow from the very lack of maintain and dead jade orbs coupled with heavy eyebags painting his complexion. For the times that he himself can’t counted, the Jade stays still, washing the skin that’s about to break by its fragility and drunk in sorrow that can’t be saved, not even by his own son’s wise words.

The person that the Jade cherishes is no more different than the dead, skin is a dry parchment and lips cracked in with no colors of life. No red and no cherry, and a body covered by the beauty of white bandage sullied by the crimsons and scarlet, the only red in the Patriarch’s complexion that faded along with the white blanket and the white bed he’s sleeping on, the rose and down of his chest is almost non-existent. Sometimes, the Jade would touch his lips with his, breathing the air of life needed by the failed lungs and sometimes his lips would be grown into beautiful cherry when it bitten the forbidden fruit, their long black hair that loose and cascading to the sheet and the floor would sometimes entangled with each other and creating the black river of unspoken love and regret.

Sometimes also, he would hear the way the Daifu’s tone sound in peevish during the time he would hear the sound of breath that breathing its life into another and the clear dripping of crimson. He would always on the outside of the wall along with others, unable to face the sight that almost displayed right in front of his eyes. The sight of a dying light, the sight of the dying seasons, the sight of lively man of his childhood turns into the silent man lying on an uncomfortable dry ice in the dark room of death and isolation.

The Daifu would sometimes go back and forth for times that’s blurry while the Jade stay stills on his lament.

The man of turmoil never even stepped his foot there.

He saw him in times that’s easy to be counted by fingers, silhouette appears only on the night reserved for the times when the Daifu was opening her mouth, three of them sitting on a small room with a paper and a candle lighten the darkness of the suffocating space and atmosphere that choking them to the point of drowning their voices under the sea of self-deception.

The sensation of the skin of fingers that touched his ears still burning in his senses and the eyes that turns away still clear in the canvas of his sight, unconsciously even if he didn’t have the intention in the first place. Even when he should be strong during the time when no one are able to be, there’s a limit to all of the façade.

The brother of the man in the deep slumber never appears, spending his meaningless times in the street of forgetting woe, colorless since sixteen years ago of the death of his last kin. The last straw of his life hanging on the weak beating of Senior Wei’s heart and the thing called hope, unable to be let go nor forgotten, even as little as it’s, they will do anything to grasp the thin line of chance even with the struggle of inner.

“Our Lan Clan’s healers are expert in natural healing.”

Sect Leader Jiang was only muted when Zewu-Jun proposing the talks that only vaguely heard to the ears, emitting the aura of slightly disapproval but also a great hesitance. His answer was the back that facing the First Jade as he walked away from the room behind the wall of where his brother lays in thin rope of death and life.

It was the silent and unspoken agreement, though the heart maybe said otherwise, putting aside his usual selfishness for the sake of him, the one that froze along with the winter, hands cold and body went into several complications because of the coldness of winter that weakening the immune that’s almost non-functioning.

Hanguang-Jun wasn’t there during the proposal.

The Jade hand was busying gave him the warmth the lifeless hand desperately needed, in the room where it’s all cold and suffocating, continues into the room where it’s all finally warm and spacious with the strong sandalwood scent of Jingshi as Senior Wei’s robes is painted in harmony with Hanguang-Jun’s color of robes.

Healers of Gusu finally comes in a quiet hurricane.

“Uncle…can you at least visit him for once?”