Chapter Text
Traveling with his husband was different than traveling alone or with Wen Ning, in ways that Wuxian had not anticipated. For one thing Lan Zhan was quite a welcome distraction most of the time, and Wuxian had found that seeing his husband in his white Lan finery was doing things to him unexpectedly.
Unexpectedly because he had long thought that the white robes looked more like funeral wear than something to be worn every day. After seeing his husband doing chores and helping him wrangle negative energy for several months now in blue with only white accents though, the pure white made him look aloof and untouchable. He wasn’t of course, even now his arm was pressed against Wuxian’s as they walked together, their hand entwined desperately.
Wuxian was thankful for the contact, keeping him grounded while he was so very nervous about this trip. He would be gone from the Burial mounds for about three days for Jin Ling’s one month celebration, and though he and Lan Zhan had done a truly remarkable amount of cleaning when it came to the negative energy, so much more than he could have done by himself, he was still worried about leaving the villagers alone.
Especially after the chicken incident…
“Masters,” Wen Ning said softly, his voice drifting from behind them where he was walking with them.
“Yes?” Wuxian asked, looking over his shoulder with a smile for his shy friend who had insisted on coming with them.
“There are people ahead,” Wen Ning stated, his eyes turned to the cliff side ridges. If he could express his emotions more clearly, he would be concerned, and Wuxian nods as he looks ahead himself. His eyes are not as good as Wen Ning’s, but Lan Zhan is nodding, his grip tightening on Wuxian’s hand before he withdrew to hold Bichen more securely.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Wuxian said with a laugh, only to have his husband turn a brief, fond but exasperated look upon him. Wuxian didn’t believe himself either, but he couldn’t trust his instincts on the matter because he could feel the negative energy permeating the area of Qionqi path like a thick fog that insistently tugged at him.
There had been so much murder here, not long ago, on top of the energies of something huge and evil that had already touched this place. It was insistent, angry, furious. It wanted to reach inside of him and lash out and he was distracted by it enough that he didn’t see the arrow that almost pierced his skull until after Wen Ning had caught it.
He was startled by the close brush with death, and Lan Zhan stood forward, guqin materializing in front of him as Bichen was unsheathed in threat.
The tiny handful of people on the ridge multiplied as their companions joined them, dozens of cultivators with bows aimed at them.
Fury bubbled in Wuxian’s chest at the thought of them daring to aim bows in the direction of his Lan Zhan and his Wen Ning.
“Wei Wuxian! I’ll kill you for what you’ve done, you bastard!” Their leader stated, and he must have been from the main family of the Jin sect, because he had a vermilion mark on his forehead… but Wuxian couldn’t for the life of him recall who this was or what his name was.
It didn’t matter.
Wuxian would have been less furious if the cultivators with him were only aiming at him, he knew people hated him, and he understood why. He flouted tradition and had stolen an entire villages worth of people away, and the fear of his dark cultivation path would undoubtedly cause more hate as time went on.
Wuxian would not forgive that several of those bows were aimed at his husband.
“Who are you?” he asked, sneering as best as he could as the fury thrummed in his veins. Dark energy pulsed around him, the fine black mist roused by his rage.
“Who… How dare you!” the leader sputtered, more like a peacock than Shijie’s husband had ever been, and half as graceful. “You cursed me and forgot? Do you spend curses so cheaply that you can forget when you ruin a man’s life?”
“Curse?” Wuxian asks, genuinely confused, not that it does much for his temper. “What kind of fool would curse someone he doesn’t know?”
Even expecting the volley of arrows that was launched in their direction, Wuxian is furious. Lan Zhan dances out of the way of them, sending a wave of power to knock several of them back and away from the cliff edge with his guqin. Wen Ning places a solid rock firmly between Wuxian and the incoming arrows, before jumping up to start laying down the hurt.
Lan Zhan leaves him to it for a moment, joining Wuxian behind the rock.
“Stay calm,” his husband instructs, taking just a moment to hug Wuxian, who nods, and bites his tongue as he hears more arrows slam into the rock. “I will ask Jin Zixun what he’s talking about.”
Wuxian nods, trying to commit the name to memory as his husband steps away, and lifting his flute to his lips a few moments later as he steps out so he can watch the battle.
It doesn’t take long to subdue the cultivators, and Wuxian plays to calm Wen Ning, whose fury seems to know no bounds as he continues to attack the cultivators. He can’t quite control Wen Ning directly, not like he can other fierce corpses, but he can usually calm his friend down enough to keep him from doing anything rash.
This time Wen Ning is unreachable, and the negative energy of the path is streaming into Wuxian as he tries to manipulate it.
“Stop this!” A voice says, and Wuxian lowers his flute to turn to Jin Zixuan, Shijie’s husband. “Wei Wuxian, what is going on?” the Jin Sect heir asked, and Wuxian scowled at him, because shouldn’t he know why one of his sect members was attacking Wuxian unprovoked?
“Wei Ying!” Lan Zhan suddenly yells, and Wuxian is moving forward to push Jin Zixuan away as Wen Ning attacks. There’s a sickening crunch and the shrill sound of a flute before it’s drowned out by the strings of Lan Zhan’s guqin. Wen Ning is pressed to the ground by the music, pinned in place, even as Lan Zhan is turning to charge an outcropping of rock.
The shadowed figure drops a flute as the masked sword comes up to meet Bichin, and Wuxian yells as the fury fills him.
The dark energy is flooding all through him, and when his voice screams it explodes out of him.
##
Wangji feels the dark energy wash over him, the explosive power of his lover losing control both tantalizing and terrifying. The Jin cultivators are all knocked to the ground, many of them groaning in pain. The masked figure in front of Wangji is hit harder, knocked back and down with a scream. Wangji pulls cord from his sleeves, using Chord Assassination to manipulate it to bind the stranger before he turns back to where his husband has just collapsed.
Wen Ning has stopped moving, his eyes white and unblinking as he lays on his back, and Jin Zixuan is curled in on himself, obviously in severe pain. There is blood covering him from neck to ankle, but he is breathing as Wangji rushes over.
Wangji ignores him and checks on Wei Ying instead, ignoring the mist of black energy that rolls around his husband like a living miasma of pain. His husband is breathing, but not well.
The message butterfly is leaving his palm, it’s message desperate as it heads for carp tower loaded with as much strength as Wangji could put into it to make it faster, as he drops into a seated position and begins playing Cleansing and Calming with a frantic energy.
It is not long before Lan Xichen shows up, Jiang Wanyin hot on his heels with dozens of Lan and Jiang cultivators who swiftly take charge of the situation.
Brother is shocked looking at the groaning Jin cultivators, the mess of arrows littering the ground and Jin Zixuan with a growing horror on his face.
“Wangji, what happened?” he demands, and Wangji glares at him.
“Tend him,” he demands, his eyes flickering briefly to Jin Zixuan, before focusing again on his music. Jiang Wanyin at least has taken charge of the Lan and Jiang disciples to start gathering up the Jin cultivators and the bound masked person.
He looks up as Jiang Wanyin lets out a shout of pain, just in time to see the masked man disappearing over the rocks. Wangji almost jumps to go after him, but Wei Ying is whimpering in the pool of shadow that surrounds him, and his husband must come first.
Time enough later to find the other person and make them pay for manipulating Wen Ning and trying to kill Jin Zixuan and Wei Ying.
##
Wuxian awakens warm and safe, his husband’s arms around him as he breathes in the warm, flower scented air. Cleansing is ringing gently through the room as he flutters his eyes open and realizes that they are not on his rock bed piled with woven mats to soften it, but rather in an ostentatious room bedecked with opulence of all kinds.
Shijie smiles at him from where she is sitting next to the bed, and Wuxian finds himself confused but comforted.
“What…” What happened, he tries to ask, but his throat is dry and he starts to cough as the first hint of sound leaves him, blood coating his lips as strong hands lift him into a sitting position. Shijie wipes away the blood with a damp cloth as large, familiar hands rub circles on his back.
“What happened?” he finally manages to ask, looking around the room and seeing Jiang Cheng sitting nearby, his arm and side wrapped with bandages. Lan Xichen is the one playing Cleansing, and he has not stopped despite Wuxian being conscious now.
“Ambush,” Lan Zhan states from behind him, warm arms wrapped around Wuxian like a blanket of safety. “Jin Zixuan, injured worst. Jiang Wanyin injured, Wen Ning injured but safe. Wei Ying injured.”
Lan Zhan’s words are terse and short, belying the anger in them, but Wuxian can hear and feel the rage the other feels.
“The doctors are with my husband… but it… it doesn’t look good,” Shijie says softly, and Wuxian throws himself forward to hug her as she starts crying again, tears streaming down her face in a way that tears at Wuxian’s heart.
“Oh Shijie… I’m so sorry… I… I remember Wen Ning…” he pales, shaking as he remembers shoving Jin Zixuan out of the way, the sickening crunch and the spray of blood as the others face had drained of color.
“It wasn’t your fault, A-Xian… and it wasn’t Wen Ning’s fault either…” Shijie sniffles, sobbing and Jiang Cheng who has been glaring at an innocent cup of tea like it was what injured him speaks up.
“That bastard was using demonic cultivation to control Wen Ning, while you were trying to calm him down,” he explained, looking murderously at the cup. “The bastard got away, but he left a dizi behind. It’s a simple one but…”
“What happened to Jin Zixuan?” Wuxain found himself asking, his voice hard but shaking. “I… I saw…”
“You pushed him out of the way,” Lan Zhan stated, and Wuxian found himself sighing in relief. “Otherwise the blow that destroyed his arm would have crushed his heart.”