Chapter Text
It takes Lan Wangji three years to step foot in the Burial Mounds again - A year spent recovering from the Discipline Whip, and two more devoted to reacquinting himself with A-Yuan, making sure the precious child knows that he is home and that he is loved. Three years until he feels it right to strap Bichen on his waist and Wangji on his back, bowing his leave to his brother and gathering A-Yuan into his arms to promise a swift return.
Three years after the Siege, and there are still traces of Wei Ying in the barren ruins of the Burial Mounds, even after the place had been stripped and raided to within its every cun by the Great Sects. In the husk of a lotus pond beneath the shade of a dead tree, in the carefully-arranged plots of overgrown land and the remains of what must have been an ingenious waterway system made out of bamboo halves.
Lan Wangji wonders if the Cultivators who had stormed into the place had seen the selfsame traces, of a hard, simple life carved out upon an inhospitable land. Of elderlies and youths and a child simply trying to survive. And if they had, if they cared at all. Had ever cared, in their mad rush to amass more power after the war and keep away from the wrath of the Jins.
Lan Wangji doesn't know exactly what he's looking for, even as his steps trace upon ash and dust and broken splinters of wood, up the winding steps into the mouth of Wei Ying's erstwhile home. There is nothing left even here, especially here - The mess of Wei Ying's papers and scrawled handwritings swept away by greedy hands, leaving only ink stains and the imperfect circles of long-gone candle stubs. He tries not to look at the dark splatters on the ground, the faint iron of old blood in the close air, mingling with the oily blanket of resentment that seems to cling to every surface.
Wangji makes a soft clink as it's laid against the stone of what used to be Wei Ying's bed, the sound almost too loud in the hollow silence of the cave around him. He doesn't even know if it would make a difference, to call for Wei Ying here, where his blood paints the stones still. Not if there is nothing left to call for, not if Wei Ying himself doesn't want to answer.
Lan Wangji draws a deep breath before strumming a simple chord, the sound carrying a wave of his own spiritual energy to disperse the thick, hindering resentment all around him.
For a moment, the air clears, and then something in the far wall across Lan Wangji glows, as if answering the call of his guqin. He hesitates before strumming another chord, and the something glows brighter, the pulse of its energy signature palpable now through the dispersed cloud of resentful energy.
Lan Wangji has always known himself to be cautious and wary, often too much so, but he knows now that caution and the restrain his Sect carved into his bones means nothing when it has to do with Wei Ying. And surrounded as he is by the remnants of Wei Ying's home, by the ruins of his own failures, Lan Wangji's steps take him closer to the glow in the wall, his hand already reaching out towards what seems to be an array carved into the stone wall. It pulses with anticipation - a cup half full, calling for more power to unveil whatever secrets it seems to hold.
And so Lan Wangji places his palm against cold stone, and gives it his power.
- * -
Lan Wangji had expected many things, in the brief, wild moment where he'd thrown caution to the winds and pushed his spiritual energy into the mysterious array carved into the stone. A backlash of resentful energy, a malicious array activated, a hidden chamber perhaps - filled with things Wei Ying had not wanted to fall into the cultivation's world hands. For a brief, painful moment, there had been hope too, that perhaps, perhaps Wei Ying -
He had not expected a blinding light and the air around him to shift and heave, as if rearranging itself. He had certainly not expected two people - A man and a woman - to stand beside him where previously there had only been thin air.
The two are Cultivators. It's hard thing not to notice, with the swords ready on their grips, the grace they carry themselves with, disoriented as they are to be transported to a new surrounding. They are close as well, going by the steadying hand the man has on the woman's shoulder, the fluttering of the woman's hands only for them to rest securely on the man's.
Lan Wangji tries not to stare, not to take stock of the deep, longing twinge in his chest at how seamlessly they move together, how their very breaths seem to draw them to each other. Once, he had fancied the same for himself, a hazy yet coveted thing every time he caught a glimpse of bright silver eyes and a teasing smile. Now -
Now, Lan Wangji's hand flies unbiddden to Bichen's hilt, eyeing the pair of cultivators before him with a sense of regained wariness. The woman's eyes flicker shrewdly towards Bichen, and she lets out a soft oh before she sheathes her own sword, her companion quick to follow her.
"We mean no harm, Gongzi, we're mere rogue cultivators on a Night Hunt in the Mounds. It would seem that whatever array you had activated was the counterpart to the array we had activated in another part of this complex. We’ve been stuck for days now since entering the passageway to escape a horde of fierce corpses."
Lan Wangji frowns, his eyes sweeping the two Cultivators anew. After the Siege, the Burial Mounds had been cleansed and warded with the stones set up by the Great Clans. It would be impossible for any fierce corpses to still roam around, much less a horde of it.
"Our gratitude for the assistance, Gongzi. I truly do not know what would have happened to us otherwise had you not activated that array," the man bows, smile warm and soothing even as Lan Wangji's hand stays gripped firmly around his sword. The woman bows along before he notices her gaze straying to his face, her silver eyes lighting up in recognition.
"It's Lan-gongzi, right?" The woman's face brightens, hand gesturing to her own temples to echo Lan Wangji's forehead ribbon, "You're a member of the main clan? Huh, could have sworn I've never seen you - You're one of Qiren's cousins or something? I swear you look just like him if he'd just shave off that awful goatee of his."
"Cangse," the man nudges the woman gently, even as he dips another, almost apologetic bow at Lan Wangji, "Come, let's not take more of Lan-Gongzi's time. A-Ying must be waiting for us, with how long we've been gone-"
Cangse, the man said. The woman knows his Shufu, knows him enough to see the resemblance even others often pass over between them, knows him enough to call him Qiren.
A-Ying must be waiting for us.
It's a well-known story, a tragic, cautionary tale for Cultivators walking into every unknown Night Hunt. Baoshan Sanren's brightest disciple and her cultivation partner, who walked into the Burial Mounds one night and never came back.
Oh.
Oh.
It's impossible. It's an unheard of thing, people displaced in time, passing by decades as if they were days. But the silver eyes that gazes worriedly upon him now are all too familiar, luminous grey flecked with lightning, as if the heart of a raging storm. How could he have not seen?
"Lan-gongzi?"
He feels hands on his shoulders, tentative yet firm, and almost hysterically thinks that these are hands that have cradled Wei Ying. These are hands that had held him and soothed his hurts, as they would never again do so.
"I-" Lan Wangji chokes out, "I have to tell you something."
- * -
They take the news in silence, with a sort of detached, terrible calm that Lan Wangji himself had felt once, lying on his stomach with his back flayed open as Brother relayed the news of Wei Ying's passing to him.
"Is there a-" Wei Changze begins quietly, "A memorial? A tablet somewhere we could pay our respect?"
Lan Wangji feels the beginning of a sob in his throat. Amidst everything else, it had felt inconsequential and trivial, to want to light an incense for Wei Ying. But now that he sees Wei Changze's face, he sees the kindred longing in it for that one simple act. This one simple thing that the Cultivation World had robbed from Wei Ying amidst all the other things they had taken from him.
"Not that I know of. The Jiangs had banished him from their ranks, and Wei Ying-" Lan Wangji draws a deep breath, trying to put into words just how maligned Wei Ying's name had been at the end of his life, even now, where every misfortune and sinister plots are still attributed to the Yiling Patriarch's evil, "There is no one else."
There is a choked sob, the sound reverberating in the hollowness around them, and Lan Wangji feels his own vision blur at the sight of Cangse Sanren's tears. Familiar silver eyes twisted in familiar anguish.
"I-" Lan Wangji whispers, his own cowardly eyes locked upon his lap, where his hands twist and clench on pristine white silk, "I am sorry. That things have come to this was also my responsibility. I have failed your son. I should, I should have-"
Lan Wangji does not expect himself to break down, not here, in front of two people whose grief must far outweigh his. He does not expect to be engulfed in an embrace, another pair of hands firm and grounding on his shoulders, so he is surrounded, enveloped in warmth
"There is nothing to be sorry for," Cangse Sanren whispers into his hair, patting his head as one would a child, "You tried, and that's more than what everyone had done. You tried as our A-Ying tried, and that matters too in this kind of world."
For a moment, Lan Wangji wants to protest. Wants to tell them that he should be the one embracing them with words of comfort for their lost son, the son he had failed so badly. But then the arms around him tighten, warm and firm and safe, and it's as if something enormous and old had loosened inside his chest as a high, keening sob tears from his lips. Lan Wangji thinks that he should care, that he should not act so unseemly in front of strangers. But these are the hands that had cradled Wei Ying, had soothed his hurts, and selfish as he is, Lan Wangji curls into the embrace and after three years of silence finally, finally lets himself cry.
- * -