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When Wei Wuxian leaves the Burial Mounds, he’s fairly certain he’s dead. He certainly should be dead. Perhaps he became a fierce corpse after all. Perhaps this is just what being a fierce corpse feels like: fire behind his eyes and blood on his teeth; rage boiling under his skin and screams where his heartbeat used to be. He’s certainly cold enough to be dead. Cold and thin and pale and hungry. He takes life like it can fill him up. Like revenge alone can keep him warm, like the deaths of others can put color in his cheeks.
It doesn’t work.
He travels on. To the next village. The next supervisory post.
There are rumors.
The villagers say: There is something that stalks in the dark. Something built of shadows and hate that moves like a ghost and leaves ruin in its path.
If it has a name, they dare not speak it.
They say: There is a cultivator that walks the night whose sword is as bright and cold as the stars. He glows like the moon and carries justice like light into the darkest places, and when he leaves, the light stays.
They call him Hanguang-jun.
Once, after he’s done with his night’s work, Wei Wuxian stands at the edge of the forest and watches a supervisory office. He watches a familiar white-robed figure arrive on a familiar blade. Watches him raise light to read the talismans stuck to the gates, and pull them down. Watches another figure descend, even more familiar than the first, flying quick as the wind with lightning sparking in his fist.
They stand together, the both of them whole and resolute. They open the gates. They step inside.
Wei Wuxian backs away. He turns. He runs. Something rises in his throat like a flood, spilling over the confines of skin and bone. He coughs. He falls to his knees and retches into rocky soil until his heartbeat echos in his ears. He cries until heat returns to his cheeks, his arms wrapped tightly around his middle.
He breathes.
Perhaps he is still alive after all.