Chapter Text
You've spent your whole life living by every rule they gave you
Don't you think it's time that you cut out all the lies?
It's just a short trip from the path of a saint to a sinner
You should try it on, boy it comes in every size
-Follow Me, Written by Wolves
Mo City, on the planet of Dafan
The ghost was a minor one at best, the small and shivering echo of an AI malfunction trapped in the navigation console. Wei Wuxian did not even need to touch Chenqing to deal with it; he simply squatted down in the ship’s cockpit, eyes closed, and called softly to the ghost.
“That’s it,” he said encouragingly as it detached itself from the console and flowed over to him, eager for an understanding soul. “Come to me.”
It wrapped around his outstretched fingers, a black curl of resentful energy and mechanical despair. Wei Wuxian held it there and let it cry its sorrows to someone who understood.
I want it, said Chenqing hungrily, placing her paws on Wei Wuxian’s thigh and levering herself up to stare at it. Tasty.
“I fed you already,” said Wei Wuxian, gently chiding. “This is hardly anything, anyway.”
Indeed it was not; the ghost was already fading now that it had had the chance to vent its despair. Chenqing swished her tail anyway, displeased. Wei Wuxian ignored her and concentrated on the ghost.
just - wanted - see - stars - said the ghost one last time, in a tired machine-language chitter of energy and code strings, then vanished.
Wei Wuxian lowered his hand and allowed Chenqing to lick the last traces of resentful energy from his fingers, her rough cat’s tongue warming his ghost-cold skin. The spacer had really overpaid him to deal with this ghost, but he supposed anything interfering with a starship’s navigational processes was probably very frightening to someone trying to calculate warp jumps without getting accidentally shunted into a black hole.
“Okay,” he said at last, ruffling the fingers of his other hand through Chenqing’s soft black fur. “Let’s go.”
She purred at him and removed her paws from his leg. Wei Wuxian stood, stretched and exited the starship, Chenqing at his heels.
The spacer was waiting for them at the base of starship’s landing pad, fidgeting anxiously. She jumped when they reappeared, her eyes flicking nervously to the red glow of Chenqing’s eyes. Wei Wuxian smiled his most reassuring smile and came to a halt a careful distance from her.
“Your ghost problem has been dealt with,” he said cheerfully. “Make sure you run regular maintenance wipes of your navigation comp, and it shouldn’t reoccur.”
“Thank you,” said the spacer, carefully polite. “I’ve transferred your payment to the account you gave me.”
Wei Wuxian took a moment to verify that - he knew better than to trust anyone’s word on the matter of payment, particularly not a spacer he’d never be able to track down and threaten to cough up what he was owed - and once he’d confirmed the money had gone through, bid the woman farewell.
Scared of us, remarked Chenqing contemptuously, as they departed from the docks and reentered the crowded press of the city center beyond.
“Everyone is, my love,” said Wei Wuxian absently, dodging harried businessmen and teenagers on hoverskates. Why this planet didn’t ban the things on sidewalks, he didn’t know. It was very uncivilized of them. “Anyway, it’s time for lunch.”
For you, said Chenqing, disgruntled. Wei Wuxian grinned; Chenqing might be the demonic version of a cultivator’s cat, but she’d still acquired the baseline feline opinion that no amount of prey would ever truly satisfy. It was very adorable.
They went to one of Wei Wuxian’s favorite cafes - one of the few places he’d been able to find in this city that loaded their dishes with sufficient spice. He found a space in a corner of the crowded cafe and dug happily into his noodles and beer while Chenqing curled up around his feet and went to sleep.
As he ate, he felt the local ghosts crowd in around him: a cold, jostling cloud of resentful energy. No one else noticed this, of course, because it wasn’t like there were any other cultivators here. Someone with mere cultivation potential might have suddenly shivered or found themselves suddenly unhappy or irritated, but you had to have had real training in order to actively notice the presence of ghosts.
A real cultivator no doubt would have ignored these ones. None of them were dangerous or malicious, just uncomfortably present to those sensitive to their presence. Wei Wuxian, not being a cultivator of the traditional sort, did not ignore the ghosts. He silently reached out to them the way he had to the ship ghost from this morning, letting them wrap around him with the ice-chill of their despair and complaints. The resentful energy settled into his skin, every bit as energizing as the spicy noodles he was currently consuming.
He made a point of befriending the local ghosts wherever he went, learning their habits and memorizing their locations. It would come in handy if he had to make a hasty escape or fight his way out of somewhere, although it had been years since he’d had to flee from anything more dangerous than a handful of cultivators and the local security force. Most people assumed he was either dead by now or causing havoc at the fringes of the Empire, not liberating minor ghosts and eating spicy noodles in the unremarkable cities of unremarkable planets.
He finished his lunch, woke Chenqing with a nudge of his foot and headed home to the small apartment he’d rented a few stops away on the local subway. Of course, small was an overstatement; it was a studio apartment composed of a single tiny room and even tinier washroom. Wei Wuxian’s few possessions had scattered themselves messily throughout the cramped space, making it look even smaller than it really was, but he didn’t mind. He’d lived in worse.
There were no ghosts in the apartment. He’d informed everything that haunted the building complex that his place was off-limits the day he’d taken up residence, and anything with enough self-will to ignore his instructions had found itself fed to Chenqing. After that, the ghosts knew better than to venture there.
He watered his assortment of plants, checked his messages and then curled up on his small fold-out cot for a nap. Chenqing jumped off the windowsill and went to nuzzle herself into a warm ball of contentment at his side. Wei Wuxian stroked his fingers absently through her soft fur, then closed his eyes and dreamed of blood and stars.
He woke perhaps an hour and a half later to the incessant buzz of his comm. Wei Wuxian groaned, fumbled it out from under Chenqing - who hissed with sleepy irritation - and flicked the call open.
“Whassit?” he said blearily, squinting. “I mean, Mo Xuanyu here, how can I help you?”
The voice on the other end of the line was abominably bright and cheerful.
“Hey, guess what? I have a case for you! Come down to Market Square, and I’ll show you what’s up.”
“Xue Yang,” said Wei Wuxian, through another wide yawn. “It’s too early for this.”
“It’s four in the afternoon,” said his best and most annoying informant, unmoved. “We don’t have to kill it now, Master. I just want to show you what it looks like.”
“Don’t call me Master,” said Wei Wuxian automatically. “Is it really that urgent?”
“If you care about murder, yes,” said Xue Yang, more cheerfully still. “I mean, I don’t mind if we wait another day or two. What’s one more dead body in this hell of a town?”
Wei Wuxian did not know if this meant Xue Yang was planning on killing someone, or if he simply intended on letting someone else kill someone. Either way, Wei Wuxian would prefer not to be responsible for any more deaths than he already was.
“Fine,” he said irritably. “Market Square. Give me an hour to get there, okay? It’s rush hour. And send me the address.”
“At your service, Master,” said Xue Yang and, cackling, hung up.
Wei Wuxian groaned and let the comm flop down onto his chest. He really wished Xue Yang would stop calling him Master. The man didn’t even know who he really was; he just thought that Mo Xuanyu had returned from university with a serious talent for demonic cultivation, and had pledged his allegiance accordingly, whether Wei Wuxian wanted him to or not.
(The real Mo Xuanyu was hopefully off somewhere secretly living his best life far away from his abusive family, thanks to Wei Wuxian’s donation of a name change and a bank account. The kid had been more than happy to donate his real identity to the mysterious stranger who’d talked him out of suicide and convinced several dozen ghosts to haunt his asshole relatives.)
At his side, Chenqing uncurled and yawned, displaying a mouthful of very sharp teeth.
We go to hunt? she asked hopefully. Wei Wuxian sighed again.
“I guess so,” he said sadly, and rolled off the cot.
One hour and two very uncomfortable subway rides later - it was always insanely crowded this time of day, all the passengers crammed together like tight-packed barrels of fish - Wei Wuxian made his way to the semi-classy district of Market Square.
Xue Yang had messaged him to go to the heart of the district. This consisted of a square park and a plaza lined with expensive cafes and fancy boutiques, none of them top-notch but certainly more than Wei Wuxian’s limited cultivator-for-contract income could afford.
Xue Yang regularly ate here. Where he got the money from, Wei Wuxian did not want to know.
One corner of the plaza tended to accumulate food trucks, in varying numbers depending on how far it was into tourist season. It was slow season now, and there was only one truck parked at the edge of the street, a bright yellow one advertising the local version of meat-on-a-stick.
Ooh, said Chenqing, looking at it, her tail lashing eagerly. Delicious. Fun!
‘Delicious’ and ‘fun’ were perhaps not the two adjectives Wei Wuxian would have chosen to describe the truck - which to his senses was all but shimmering with resentful energy - but he also wasn’t a collection of ravenous undead souls disguised as a cultivator’s cat, so there was that.
“Master!” someone breathed right behind him, close enough that Wei Wuxian yelped and jumped around, fingers glowing with defensive reflex. “You’re here!”
Wei Wuxian scowled and extinguished the glow. There was no point in scolding Xue Yang for startling him; the man would probably think it highly entertaining if he surprised Wei Wuxian into accidentally dismembering him.
“The truck, isn’t it?” he said instead. “And stop calling me Master. We’re in public.”
Xue Yang, predictably, ignored him.
“Master, it’s beautiful,” he breathed, staring past Wei Wuxian’s shoulder at the neon yellow truck. His dark gray cat, Jiangzai, leaned against his ankle and purred, eyes gleaming. “Only four ghosts, but they’re so strong.”
Wei Wuxian sighed and turned around to inspect the truck more closely. He could indeed pick out four distinct strands of resentful energy, sliding and twining as they curled about the truck. The aura was strong enough that even non-cultivators ought to have been able to see the strange wavering shapes that flowed against the tinted side windows, the unnatural way sunlight glinted off the body of the vehicle.
They’re hungry, said Chenqing, and Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but to agree. Tendrils of resentful energy kept curling off the truck, reaching forward to brush against the people queuing up to purchase a disposable tray of food. He could hear, even from all the way back here, their eternal hunger, their desire for blood and pain and death.
“Must be a sacrificial array inside that thing,” said Wei Wuxian, half to himself, half to Xue Yang, who no doubt knew this already. He tilted his head to the side, sifting through the silent, screaming ghost-whispers that only he could hear. “The first one was an accident, the second one an experiment. The third and fourth are stronger; they were deliberate.”
“Mm,” said Xue Yang, happily. “Look at the first one. It doesn’t want to leave.”
Wei Wuxian looked. It was true; one of the ghosts had plastered itself tightly to the surface of the truck like a pulsing second skin. It was the other three that were stretching out, driven by a hunger for more.
Truck’s quiet, said Chenqing, her ears perked forward. I can’t hear anything inside, and it should be loud. Cooking is always loud.
“A sound barrier,” said Wei Wuxian, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “The first ghost died silently and keeps the truck silent. Whoever killed it wanted to strengthen or extend the sound barrier, so they set up a sacrificial array and killed again to stabilize it.”
“They drew the array wrong,” said Xue Yang, with a delighted little giggle. “Instead of strengthening the barrier, they just strengthened the ghosts. Now, they have to keep killing to feed the array or else their precious array will eat them too.”
Wei Wuxian sighed. It was no wonder that people hated demonic cultivators, not when murderous fools like this existed.
“Who are they?” he asked wearily. “Employees? Owners of the truck? Vandals who like to break in and commit ritual murder for the hell of it?”
Xue Yang snorted. “The owners,” he answered. “Brother and sister. I’ve been talking to them; they killed the first guy by accident. Drugged him and brought him to the back of the truck to play, and played too hard.”
Play was not the word Wei Wuxian would have used for lethal assault, but that was Xue Yang for you.
“They’re going to kill again, aren’t they?” he asked, resigned. “Tonight?”
“Seems like it.” Xue Yang beamed at him. “Want to kill them first?”
Wei Wuxian considered it. He would prefer to not delve into vigilante justice, but then again, he knew exactly what a legal execution for demonic cultivation looked like, and it wasn’t pretty. Plus, then there’d be all the hassle of ensuring the authorities found actual evidence by tonight, and without a fully-licensed cultivator around to play Inquiry, there was no way anyone would take ‘Mo Xuanyu’s’ word for it that the ghosts were the victims of sacrificial murder. Also, a spot of killing would satisfy Xue Yang’s worst impulses for at least a week, which was definitely worth it.
Well, perhaps he could make a stab at both, so to speak.
“Maybe,” he conceded at last. “They’re going to feed the array again tonight, right? I’ll try and draw security here in time to catch them, but if they arrive too late…” He shrugged. “I’m not fussed if we get our hands a little bloody.”
Xue Yang cackled. Jiangzai and Chenqing licked their chops, almost in unison.
Wei Wuxian shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and wondered when the hell he’d turned into the responsible one.
He spent the rest of the day preparing for the night-hunt and grousing about it to Chenqing who, in typical cat fashion, ignored him and went to sleep. Wei Wuxian groused about that too, not that it did any good.
He invented several likely-sounding alibis, looked up the emergency number for the local authorities and saved it under speed-dial on a burner comm. He briefly considered bringing a knife along with him, then discarded it; he didn’t need to appear extra-suspicious if they caught him, too. Then he hauled his favorite night-hunting outfit up the lift to the top floor laundry room because it desperately needed a wash.
While he waited for the laundry cycle to run, he thawed out a frozen spicy-chicken dinner and watched the news. It was very boring; nothing of interest seemed to be happening anywhere in the empire. The asshole emperor was still on spiritual retreat, his asshole brother had made a speech about closing a shipping lane for warp construction, blah blah blah. The local news wasn’t any better, mostly consisting of endless debate over the latest political scandal. (And really, if Wei Wuxian, number one enemy of the state, could successfully hide his identity for the past six years, why couldn’t these ministers conceal their adulterous love lives for longer than two months max?)
“Good news, Chenqing,” he said, watching as the broadcast showed leaked emails from the minister of finance’s official account, detailing all the very explicit ways he proposed to fuck his husband’s sister. “You and I are still the smartest people in the galaxy.”
Chenqing, still asleep, did not respond.
At half past midnight, Wei Wuxian arrived at Market Square garbed entirely in black, from long flared coat to gloves to mask, and ready for action. Chenqing was an eager, half-purring presence at his side, her eyes glowing red in anticipation of the hunt.
The food truck was dark and deserted when they arrived, silent save for the howling of the ghosts - which was inaudible to anyone but Wei Wuxian, anyway. Presumably the murderous siblings had yet to arrive with their newest victim.
Nine minutes later, his comm lit with a message from Xue Yang.
hey master we r on the way maybe 10min get ready !!!
Wei Wuxian responded with a thumbs-up emoji and drifted closer to the truck. He let his inner reservoir of resentful energy simmer out of his hollow core and into his skin, melding him into the shadows. This would shield him from living eyes only, but he didn’t have to worry about security cameras. Xue Yang had already assured him that these had been disabled.
Chenqing trembled at his side, coiled like a spring and ready to pounce.
“Patience,” he breathed softly, reaching down to stroke her back. “Timing is everything.”
She growled softly, but didn’t move. The minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. Wei Wuxian fidgeted with impatience, his mind spinning in a dozen different directions. He’d never been very good at the whole sit and wait quietly phase of an ambush.
Finally, at long last, he heard the rumbling purr of a groundcar. He flattened himself against a nearby tree, and watched as a black vehicle parked across the square, then disgorged four people onto the sidewalk, one of them stumbling and clearly out of it.
The murder siblings, Xue Yang and the victim, presumably. Wei Wuxian stayed very still and silent as he watched the four cross the square and enter into the back of the truck. The ghosts screamed louder with anticipatory glee, and Wei Wuxian wondered, wincing, how the stars Xue Yang had persuaded the murder twins to let him in on their evil ritual.
Then again, he probably didn’t want to know.
Perhaps five minutes later, his comm buzzed again. Wei Wuxian looked down at the screen and saw a single text from Xue Yang:
its begun !!!!!!!
“Amazing,” he muttered softly, and thumbed the speed-dial open. It was a matter of only two minutes to contact Mo City emergency services, claim he was witnessing a demonic cultivator brutally murder someone - Wei Wuxian didn’t have to see the sacrificial array to explain in detail how it worked; he’d invented the damn things, after all - and persuade the dispatcher to send the authorities for help.
He clicked the call closed. There was, he judged, anywhere between five to fifteen minutes before the security forces and EMTs arrived at the scene. He had those five to fifteen minutes to get rid of the ghosts, immobilize the murder siblings and make his - and Xue Yang’s - escape.
For an ordinary cultivator, this would have been impossible. The food truck ghosts were only mid-level dangerous, but they were no means as easy to remove as the AI ghost he’d liberated this morning. A cultivator would have had to take into account the complex nature of how the four ghosts reinforced one other, the role of the sacrificial array, the presence of the victim, the interaction between the resentful energy and the vehicle it had bound itself to - a task impossible to complete inside of thirty minutes, let alone five.
Even an ordinary demonic cultivator would have struggled. Wei Wuxian was no ordinary demonic cultivator, however. He was Yiling Laozu, the founder of demonic cultivation. If he couldn’t do it, no one could.
He stepped away from the tree trunk, breathed in and began to whistle.
The melody was short, sharp and simple, a high repetitive phrase that lingered eerily in the night air. It caught the attention of the ghosts, and then more than their attention. The music began to squeeze them together, encouraging them to coalesce, lose their individuality, become one solid writhing, twisting mass of resentful energy.
This took thirty seconds. Wei Wuxian raised a hand, crooked his fingers and whistled again, louder now. The ghost-mass wailed and floundered, but could not resist the commanding force of Wei Wuxian’s will. He pulled it off the truck and towards himself, watching intently as it continued to writhe and flicker with black lightning. It looked rather like a whirling vortex of resentful energy, fighting to stay itself and losing as he drew it forward through the air.
Mine! said Chenqing triumphantly. She lifted her head and opened her jaws wide, fangs gleaming in the starlight. Wei Wuxian slashed his hand downward, accompanying the motion with a low, piercing whistle, and the whirling vortex shrieked, struggled and spun as it found itself sucked remorselessly downward into Chenqing’s gaping maw. He buried his hand in her fur, scratching behind her ears in encouragement as she gulped down the screaming stormcloud of resentful energy.
All this took another minute, but soon enough that terrible spinning maelstrom was gone, swallowed down Chenqing’s throat. She licked her lips, eyes glowing scarlet with satisfied pleasure.
Good girl, Wei Wuxian thought, but had no time to say, for he was already darting forward in the direction of the food truck. As soon as he reached it, he curled black-gloved fingers over the door handle and sent a shock of resentful energy jolting through the locking mechanism. Then he wrenched the door open in his hands, leaped gracefully inside and shouldered his way into the tiny freezer compartment.
Xue Yang was not there; possibly he’d departed once he’d felt Wei Wuxian begin to remove the ghosts. The murder siblings were there, standing on an array painted with human blood, their victim slumped half-conscious on the floor. Brother and sister flinched backwards at the sight of Wei Wuxian - a hooded figure clad entirely in black, impossibly shadowed, with only the red glow of his eyes visible in the fluorescent lights of the freezer.
“What the hell…?” breathed the brother.
Wei Wuxian didn’t bother with an explanation. Instead, he slammed his hands forward, mind already imagining the requisite sigils for immobilization, nightmare. The flash of resentful energy hit the siblings at the same time, and they collapsed to the floor unconscious, eyes twitching beneath closed eyelids as nightmares invaded their forced sleep.
There was a sudden noise behind him - Xue Yang, most likely. Wei Wuxian ignored it and knelt next to the victim, a young man who gazed blearily up at him, clearly too drugged to make sense of his surroundings. The poor fellow didn’t seem to be in immediate danger of dying, so Wei Wuxian left him there for the medics to deal with.
He rose to his feet and called: “Xue Yang!”
“Here, Master!” said a cheerful voice from behind him, followed by the indignant yowl of a cat.
Wei Wuxian spun around and saw, much to his astonishment, that Xue Yang was indeed behind him, standing on the sidewalk behind the truck. He was not, however, alone. Another cultivator stood next to him, knife against his throat, while a white cat coiled hissing at the base of the tree, its blue eyes glaring malevolently up at the trapped and yowling silhouette of Jiangzai.
This other cultivator was tall and broad-shouldered, with a long black braid of hair and impassive expression. He had to have been skilled in order to have taken Xue Yang by surprise.
Wei Wuxian narrowed his eyes and took a menacing step forward.
“Drop the knife,” he growled, and stepped forward again, letting resentful energy flare around him like a threat.
The mystery cultivator opened his mouth to speak, then paused as the sudden wail of sirens rent the night.
Shit. They needed to get out of here, now.
It was easier to control resentful energy with sound and hand movements, but it wasn’t necessary. Wei Wuxian reached out with his mind to grab one of the wisps of ghost-stuff that always clung to Xue Yang, and used it to flash-heat the knife. The cultivator dropped the suddenly super-heated blade with a hiss of pain, and Xue Yang took the opportunity to turn and sprint in the other direction, laughing like a mad thing as he fled.
Chenqing, who’d been stealthily slinking forward throughout this, launched herself into the air with a scream the moment Xue Yang broke free. The white cat wheeled, startled, and this gave Jiangzai the opportunity to leap out of the tree and pelt down the shadowed streets after his master.
The sirens were growing louder, and the last thing Wei Wuxian needed was some mystery cultivator fucking up his carefully-arranged crime scene. Fortunately, making wild, split-second impulse decisions was a specialty of his. He leaped out of the back of the truck, seized the mystery cultivator’s wrist and launched himself down the sidewalk at a dead run, hauling the astonished mystery cultivator after him.
“Let’s go!” he shouted. “Don’t worry about your knife, my cat’s got it.” This was true; Chenqing was now bounding down the sidewalk after them, cooling knife gripped in her jaws. The white cat followed, running with unnaturally smooth grace. “Trust me, you do not want to be standing around here when the cops show up!”
He half-expected the mystery cultivator to stop, shout or attack him, but the stranger did none of these things, instead allowing himself to be yanked down street after street as fast as Wei Wuxian’s legs could carry him, their cats following behind.
He had no idea where Xue Yang had gone, and did not really care. Mostly he just wanted to get somewhere safe, far enough away from the crime scene that if he really did end up fighting this cultivator, he could do so without attracting untoward attention.
Eventually, his lungs began to burn painfully in his chest. Time to hit the gym more often, he thought, half-hysterically, and barreled into a city park, one several blocks wide with plenty of tree cover. He hauled the mystery cultivator into the park, and let go only when they entered the shrouded center, next to a running water fountain, the hum and splash of which should be sufficient to conceal the sound of speaking voices.
Most unfairly, Mystery Cultivator had not broken a sweat despite the frantic pace of their sprint. Nor was he even out of breath. Wei Wuxian hated him immediately, and resolved once again to renew Mo Xuanyu’s gym membership.
Chenqing dropped the knife on the stone pavement and flopped down on Wei Wuxian’s feet.
Tired, she complained. Wei Wuxian sympathized.
The white cat had come to a halt by its master’s ankles, where it sat down and began indifferently washing its paw. Said master said nothing, just watched Wei Wuxian with that same unnervingly blank expression.
“So!” said Wei Wuxian brightly, and somewhat wheezily. “Are you going to lecture me or kill me? If it matters to you at all, I’d rather take the lecture. Not sure I’m up for a fight right now, hahaha.”
“Why did you save him?” said the cultivator.
Wei Wuxian blinked, confused. “Ah, sorry? Save who?”
“The other killer,” said the cultivator, as if this explained anything at all.
“The other…” Wei Wuxian racked his very tired brain, trying to understand this reply. Then - “Oh! You mean - ahaha. He wasn’t a killer! He’s my, uh, associate?” That was probably way too formal a word to describe Xue Yang’s obnoxious presence, but Wei Wuxian was too oxygen-deprived to come up with anything better. “He led them there so we could knock them out and make sure the authorities got them.”
Of course, Xue Yang had probably been hoping that either the authorities would not have come so quickly, or that the murder siblings would put up more of a fight and thus end up dead at either his hand or Wei Wuxian’s. But it was likely best not to say this to a morally upright cultivator.
“If he is your cultivation partner,” said Mystery Cultivator slowly, ignoring the way Wei Wuxian choked at this description of Xue Yang. “Why did he leave you behind?”
“Oh, we’re not partners,” Wei Wuxian said, waving a hand in frantic denial. “We just work together sometimes. When things get tricky, you know.”
Mystery Cultivator nodded again, slowly, like this was the solution to a deep and intellectual puzzle, instead of Wei Wuxian just uttering words as they came to mind. His white cat began washing its other paw, still with the same aura of indifferent disdain. Wei Wuxian glanced down at Chenqing, who remained sprawled over his feet, breathing hard, and sighed. Maybe he needed to find a cat gym, too.
“Okay,” said Wei Wuxian, levering himself up to a less slumped-and-gasping-for-air position. “Serious talk now. You going to scold me or kill me? I gotta know.”
Mystery Cultivator frowned at him. “I have never known demonic cultivators to enjoy being scolded,” he replied, visibly puzzled. “Furthermore, field executions are reserved for cases of self-defense, and you have not attacked me.”
Wei Wuxian had never heard anyone use the word furthermore in casual conversation. Also, he had never yet met a cultivator so willing to stick to the word of the law that they hadn’t even tried to start a fight with him just so they could claim self-defense as justification for killing him.
“Uh, okay,” he said, equally baffled. “Are you going to… arrest me maybe?”
“Although you have performed demonic cultivation, which is illegal, you have done so in defense of an innocent,” said Mystery Cultivator, very seriously. “You have also delivered two murderers into the hands of legal justice. I do not feel that this action deserves arrest.”
“Huh,” said Wei Wuxian, now thoroughly bemused. “What sect licensed you? I should send them a thank-you card for training such forgiving disciples. You’ve got a Gusu accent, but it can’t be them, they’re assholes.”
One of Mystery Cultivator’s eyebrows twitched, but his expression didn’t change.
“I am not currently licensed by a sect,” he answered. “Nor do I represent any specific entity or organization.”
“A rogue cultivator, then,” said Wei Wuxian, nodding. “Makes sense. That’s why you were lurking around in the dark with us, because you can’t night-hunt something that complex legally without a license.”
“Yes,” said Mystery Cultivator, a little uncomfortably. Wei Wuxian grinned and carefully wiggled the foot hidden beneath the fluff of Chenqing’s fur.
“Well, if you’re good enough to sneak up on my, uh, associate, then you’re good enough for me,” he said cheerfully, and yawned. “Good hunting, and all that. Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired. See you around!”
The moment his mouth closed around the last syllable, he wheeled about and took off into the trees again, Chenqing lunging after him. He was half afraid the Mystery Cultivator would follow and outrun him, since the guy seemed to be in far better shape than he was, but no one came after them. After three blocks of steady sprinting, Wei Wuxian slowed to a limping, wheezing walk.
I want to go home, said Chenqing, and added: If you make me run again, I will summon ghosts into your bed.
“Hrrrnnnff,” said Wei Wuxian, too tired for coherent speech. He heaved in a breath, let it out and began weaving his way over to the nearest bus stop, following the directions of nearby shades and shadows.
He wondered, very tiredly, if he would come across the mystery cultivator again - but that was a problem for tomorrow.