Chapter Text
In the legend, it is dubbed as his victory, for the most part. He thinks he would rather call it his cowardice instead. His name is a bold head title in textbooks, swirling font in children’s tales, moving pictures in cinematography. The Yiling-laozu. Sometimes he’ll laugh ruefully into the echoes of whatever—and realize what a joke this has all been.
The siege was possibly the worst moment of his life. The dozens of little elderly family members that he had sworn to protect had all died within a few measly hours. The so-called battle was more like a raid, and what hands of justice were overlooked by the heavens. He could only say that the blood had been on his own fingertips, hot and burning. What months grueling over dead land, working and slaving over it to provide a pitiful harvest—and for what? To have his innocents murdered without a second thought.
He remembers the desperation that took ahold of him. The babe was in his arms, and his cold heart had already started to mourn the little one’s inevitable death. His cave, the pools of blood—they were wailing at him to use them, to succumb, to take revenge. Whorls of resentful energy licked at his feverish skin. There was no way to escape without being seen, and he still had to destroy the seal that burned against his flesh where it lay in his robes, but there was a way to hide the child, to prolong that one’s life for just a little longer. Perhaps someone would have mercy…
He took careful, shaky steps out of the opening. Covering the babe’s eyes and muffling the pitiful cries into his own bosom, he headed down the mountain. He ignored the pains of his festering wounds, knowing that his own death was near anyway. And that one, he would make no attempt to stop it. He would take his baby to the tree that he knew was at the foot of the mounds. Hopefully, the opening would be big enough for the child to fit in.
Countless screams were riding the biting winds. He tried not to listen for the sounds of his poor villagers, but his ears would not heed his commands, and so they tried. But when they did, he could not hearken the sound of their voices. Only the war cries of the other cultivators, but none the grating sound of elderly men and women. No pleas for life, no screeches of death. A bitter mercy for his ragged soul, he supposed.
When he reached the tree, he could tell that there was no way that this was going to work. The tree was rotten, and its hollowness was too dark for the toddler to stay in comfortably. One wrong shift and he could impale himself on the jagged points of the bark and die.
The seal burned like fire again. It thrummed with energy, begging for its master to use it, to destroy the ones who dare did him harm. The baby continued to cry and cry, but it was sorrowful and muted like he, too, knew that nothing could be done.
“Little a-Yuan,” he whispered, voice broken. “Wen Yuan, a-Yuan, this gege is sorry.”
He set the child down by the foot of the tree and knelt next to him, cradling his cheeks between his hands. He felt the seal’s energy starting to overpower his weak mentality, and he could see that it was affecting the babe as well. Break him. Kill them.
He let go of the babe’s cheeks to pull at his own hair. His mind was grappling for control, desperately trying to keep the little sanity he had left. Now, the only cries he could hear were his own. The seal was flaming, and he yanked it out of his robes with shaking hands. It was so, so hot. The flesh of his palm scorched where the metal made contact—he worried that it would meld against his skin at this point.
With a scream of anguish, he summoned the resentful energy with the last strands of his willpower. Throwing his head back, he drags the babe to stand behind him and puts himself in between the child and the slowly growing army of cultivators. They must have done their work with the village, now seeking his head.
He could see that they were not going to stop until the whole mountain was razed to the ground. Robes of all colors—gold, purple, yellow, green—colors his younger self would never want to be standing on the opposite sides of—mixed together in a swarm of bitter, angry people.
The seal throbbed. What was he even going to do? There was no way he had it in his heart to kill the whole army. It was likely that his shidi was in there—the thought hurt him more than he would like to admit. (Could he even still call him his shidi? No, he couldn’t.) He wondered how many others were amongst them. His former allies, soldiers who he had once called friends. Friends? The seal’s whispers became more and more like raging cries. What friends can you call them? Kill them all.
He yelled. Though his back was turned, he could tell that the babe was trembling harder than ever. Escape was the only option now. He had to subdue the army somehow—without casualties. The seal—would it let him do that?
The bloodlust. The bloodlust was so strong—
Die! Let them all die!
He had to leave—the seal’s destruction—the bloodlust—his control—
The choice was made.
A pulse of resentment flooded through his veins. All the words that he never had the courage to overthink, all his regret, his wishes for things to be better—they surged through his mind in a flurry of yin energy.
The seal started to manifest the peak of its power. It was always difficult to control—but never this overwhelming. He hadn’t meant for it to be so strong. No…
The resulting discharge hurt. It pushed him back against the child, almost crushing him. The cultivators, the fires, the yells…they became quiet. He seemed to be moving in slow motion. There was a ringing in his ears, and a dark figure swirling nearby. His vision, now blurry, could not focus on the tilting landscape around him.
Clutching the babe in his arms, he tried to make a run for it. The cultivators were sure to recover soon—he had to get off the damned mountain…
And then…and then someone said…
“I think you mean…out the damned mountain…”