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Water laps at the sides of the narrow sampan boat. Dragonflies buzz nearby; the sunlight beats down. Jiang Cheng tightens his grip on Sandu, letting its weight ground him, feeling its spiritual energy resonate with his like a half-known harmony. It’s the first night-hunt (well, day-hunt, since they’re supposed to be home before dinner) he’s been on since receiving his sword – him and Wei Wuxian, who received Suibian at the same time (even though he had insisted, mock-pouting and cackling at Jiang Cheng in equal measure, that he’s five whole days older and therefore will always possess five more days’ worth of wisdom than Jiang Cheng can ever hope to have, and thus he should get his sword earlier – even though A-Niang had thinned her lips when she overheard him joking like that and spat that the son of a servant hardly had need of a named sword at all, and why was Jiang Cheng’s swordsmanship so poor that apparently any urchin off the street could claim what should be his by right – even though –).
Whatever. The point is, they’ve both got their swords now, which is amazing, and A-die has taken them to hunt water ghouls on a lake that has started drowning people every few days, and is now a long-sleeved purple smudge standing on the lakeshore, watching over them. Even Wei Wuxian seems to appreciate the gravity of the occasion, and has gone quiet and flinty-eyed as the two of them wait in the boat for their prey.
“Psst. Jiang Cheng.”
Or not.
It’s faster to hear him out than to try to shut him up, so Jiang Cheng says, “What,” while trying to keep his lips as still as possible. (Water ghouls are like guppies; sudden movement sends them darting away.)
“This is taking forever. Let’s go farther out.”
Jiang Cheng glances at the shore. “We’re supposed to –”
“If we’re too close to the docks, the village’s fishing boats and nets might get damaged in the fight,” Wei Wuxian points out. “OR the dam, which wouldn’t be nearly as easy to replace as a couple of boats and would probably flood everything from here to the horizon if it breaks,” he adds, when Jiang Cheng opens his mouth to scoff that what, Lotus Pier doesn’t train its disciples well enough to ensure they don’t wreck their surroundings while fighting water ghouls of all things, or can’t afford to repair the damage if they do? “Besides, the villagers we talked to earlier said that most of the attacks took place in deeper water; it’s only in the past few days that there’s been any trouble close to shore. We’ll be waiting for hours if we keep hiding in the shallows.”
“What if we just make sure we don’t wreck their boats,” Jiang Cheng gripes, even as he helps Wei Wuxian with the oar. A-die doesn’t call them back, so they slowly bring the boat farther out into the lake.
Once they’ve left the lotuses behind and the water turns murky and dark around them, Wei Wuxian reaches into his sleeve and whips out a scrawled piece of paper.
Jiang Cheng groans. He knew it. “No.”
“It’s just one talisman, Jiang Cheng!” Wei Wuxian waggles the paper at him. “And it’s not even a weird one, look, it’s just the same as the ones Zhang-shige says other cultivators use on real night-hunts.”
“This is a real night-hunt, take it seriously,” Jiang Cheng says, snatching the talisman away. It does seem to be an ordinary summoning charm to draw weak ghosts toward the user, with a few embellishments to account for water depth, the season and the type of creature Wei Wuxian wishes to call to him, and a single artistic flourish that Jiang Cheng doesn’t know the purpose of at the bottom of the paper. All in all, positively restrained for Wei Wuxian. “Anyway, how would you know what other cultivators use?”
“I’m the da-shixiong; I’ve gone on night-hunts before to get ready for this,” Wei Wuxian says. Jiang Cheng’s stomach twists. A-die has brought Wei Wuxian along on a few other hunts, to observe, though that’s not the same as participating. A-Niang occasionally did the same with Jiang Cheng when he was younger, though nowadays she prefers hunting alone.
“Those don’t count,” he retorts. They don’t. Wei Wuxian hadn’t had his sword then. “Anyway, my point is, we’re supposed to use our swords, not these.”
“We’re supposed to use all tools available to us as cultivators!” Wei Wuxian counters. “Our wits! Our talismans! Our teamwork!”
“Yeah, but I want to get to use my sword.”
“Well,” Wei Wuxian admits, looking besottedly at Suibian. “Yeah. Me too. But that’s what the summoning is for! It’ll draw the ghouls in the lake toward us and then we can just go to town on them and really test Sandu and Suibian out. It’s efficient!”
¬Jiang Cheng shoots him the most skeptical look he can muster, but he has a point. And A-die certainly wouldn’t object if he were hearing this; he’d nod thoughtfully and let Wei Wuxian try out his idea – after all, the purpose of this excursion isn’t just to steadfastly free Yunmeng from a few water ghouls, but to test a variety of Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian’s skills. Jiang Cheng probably should have brought a parcel of ghoul-specific talismans of his own, if he’d thought of it.
“Fine,” he says. Wei Wuxian lets out a little cheer. “But we should wait a bit longer just in case we don’t actually need it – hey!” Wei Wuxian grabs the talisman out of his hand, crumples the paper around a small rock scooped from the bottom of the boat, and drops it over the side. Jiang Cheng grabs his sword, ready for a wave of ghouls.
They wait, watching the little stream of bubbles rise up from the sinking talisman, then watch the placid water.
“Well, since that one was clearly a dud, maybe we should meditate,” Jiang Cheng says eventually, taking his hand off Sandu. “Possibly fish for food, since I guess we just live out here now.”
Wei Wuxian pretends to sulk. “It was not a dud! It just needs a bit of time to start working. …Though maybe I should speed things up.” He reaches back into his sleeves for more talismans. Jiang Cheng catches a glimpse of inked characters much more in line with Wei Wuxian’s usual interests – flashes, mild explosions, the admittedly hilarious one Wei Wuxian used during Jin Zixuan’s most recent visit to Lotus Pier to stick the peacock’s fancy boots to the dock just in time for Jiang Cheng to ‘accidentally’ hip-check him into the lake, leaving his empty boots still standing upright – and lunges across the boat to grab them.
“Give me those! Don’t do anything! Sit on your hands or wipe down Suibian or count lotus pods or something!”
“Don’t those count as doing something,” Wei Wuxian says, which naturally means Jiang Cheng has to smack him with his handful of talismans like they’re a proper battle-fan. Wei Wuxian cackles as the boat wobbles from side to side. “Save that for the ghouls! Or at least entertain me while we wait, I’m too bored to be held accountable for my actions!”
“What, you’re not entertained by this? I’m entertained by this.” Jiang Cheng lets up, panting but grinning a little in spite of himself.
The boat keeps wobbling.
They peer at the lake, which had been glass-smooth a moment ago, but now has gone rough with small eddies. The boat drifts sideways across the gurgling water. Jiang Cheng hastily readies Sandu again.
“There’s our ghouls,” Wei Wuxian crows, as several faint dark shapes appear below the surface.
The boat rocks harder. More murky shapes appear, until the water around them is thick with roiling, slithering things. Jiang Cheng slowly turns to Wei Wuxian, who, to his credit, looks pretty chagrined.
“So that extra mark on the bottom of the talisman,” Jiang Cheng deadpans.
“An amplifying effect I was testing out,” Wei Wuxian says, and bites his lip. “Which has worked... really well? And’ll be super useful on future night-hunts...?”
“That’s assuming we survive this night-hunt! Day-hunt. Whatever. What I mean is, if these things eat us I am going to resurrect myself as a vengeful ghost by sheer force of rage and drag you to hell with me.”
“Aiyo, Chengcheng worries so much! So it’s a few extra ghouls (“‘A few extra ghouls,’ yeah, sure, go back to junior lessons to brush up on your math”), but! What match are they for Yunmeng Jiang’s two top disciples? Besides, Jiang-shushu will do something if we really get into trouble.”
At that, Jiang Cheng automatically glances toward his father on the distant shore. A-die’s expression of resigned non-surprise is the last thing he wants to think about.
But looking up like that, he’s in the perfect position to see the first ghoul leap up out of the water at them, trailing pondweed and resentment, its mottled blue lips stretched impossibly wide around the toothy dark hole of its mouth. He yells and instinctively flings Wei Wuxian’s talismans at it.
The talisman effects do not combine smoothly.
As soon as the first paper touches it, the ghoul bursts apart. Soggy limbs and damp shards of bone shower down on Wei Wuxian, who yelps but at least doesn’t have a chunk bitten out of him. This is an extremely brief consolation before the rest of the talismans flare red, light up like flashpowder, and explode in a hot, rolling cloud of smoke.
Water erupts outward in the shockwave. The boat keels. Jiang Cheng is pitched backward, bounces off the boat’s curved side, and plunges straight into the lake.
Everything goes quiet and cold and dark. He at least has the sense not to gasp, because he’s the heir to Yunmeng Jiang and learned to swim before he could walk. (Then again, if the heir to Yunmeng Jiang literally dies in a battle with run-of-the-mill water ghouls, A-Niang will posthumously disown him. They probably won’t even set up a memorial tablet for him in the ancestral hall, which is fine because in that case Jiang Cheng wants to be forgotten immediately and forever.) Water presses against his nose and ringing ears; his heavy clothing tangles around his legs; Sandu’s unfamiliar weight pulls him down toward the lakebed. He twists in the water as he sinks, trying to kick his legs free. This is all fine. Familiar territory. No need to panic.
Then he realizes that the soft cold things brushing him are not his own robes. The water ghouls were startled by the explosion and the splash as he fell in, but they’ve regathered around him. They are touching his body with their rot-soft hands. He feels the first scrape of teeth.
He flails, hits the nearest ghoul so hard that Sandu punches a gooey hole right through it even sheathed, and claws his way upwards like a cat climbing curtains. He bursts up out of the water, screaming only a little. Wei Wuxian, perched on top of the overturned boat and clearly about to dive in, seizes him by the arms and hauls him up out of the lake. He is also screaming. This night-hunt is going great.
Wei Wuxian pats Jiang Cheng frantically all over. “It’s okay! You’re okay! Are you hurt? Can you breathe? Did the ghouls bite you? They did bite you! Little shidis aren’t supposed to swim alone!” which is pretty fucking rich considering that, first off, that’s hardly what’s going on here, secondly, that it’s a rule for toddlers and also for Wei Wuxian, who (thirdly) Jiang Cheng taught to swim in the first place when they were eight.
Jiang Cheng spits out what feels like half the lake. “Fucking –! I’m fine. There’s even more of them underwater than we thought. What’s the village been doing to this lake? And what the hell did you do to that summoning talisman to dredge up this many ghosts?”
“I just – Watch it!” Wei Wuxian seizes the front of Jiang Cheng’s robes and yanks, sprawling him practically across Wei Wuxian’s lap and nearly capsizing them again. Steel sings. Then something warm splashes onto Jiang Cheng’s back, and the boat reverberates with impact. Jiang Cheng twists around to see another particularly bold ghoul, now thrashing where it’s pinned to the hull by Suibian’s blade. Its teeth are red. Wei Wuxian lets out a long hiss, shaking out his bloodied arm – his sword-arm, which he’d used to cover Jiang Cheng as he stabbed the ghoul with his off-hand. Jiang Cheng’s stomach lurches, but when Wei Wuxian looks down at him, his eyes are bright. “I just turned the juice up on an ordinary spell I already knew. Which gives me an idea. Cover me!”
“Wei –!” But Jiang Cheng has already scrambled upright at the demand, unsheathing Sandu and swiping away another ghoul all in the same motion. The force of the strike nearly overbalances him back into the water. Fingers emerge to claw at the sides of the boat as faces shift in and out of view just below the surface, sockets empty and mouths gaping like hungry carp. A-die hasn’t moved from the shore, which means he still thinks they can handle this. That Jiang Cheng should be able to handle this. “Fine, hurry before they pull the boat down. What are you going to do?” He jabs yet another ghoul back.
Wei Wuxian crouches on the slippery hull to root through his qiankun pouch, nonchalant as he would be on any calm afternoon in Lotus Pier. “Paper… vermillion…. Jiang Cheng, have you got ink?”
“My waist – Are you making more talismans? Now?”
Wei Wuxian is humming as he grabs the pouch hung from Jiang Cheng’s waist-sash. “Of course! Ugh, a little water got into the ink-jar. Eyes front, shidi!”
If he makes more explosive talismans the boat’s just going to flip again, but fine, whatever. Jiang Cheng just has to keep all the ghouls away, just like he would defend Wei Wuxian from a snapping dog. Though he’d never draw Sandu on a dog.
He’s happy to draw it on the dead things that wounded his shixiong, though.
He almost falls off a few more times, but soon he finds a rhythm, lashing out in circles to drive off clawing hands and dripping mouths. This, at least, feels good. The more he moves with it, the more Sandu’s hilt grows familiar in his hand, flowing through the sword forms so trained into him that he dreams of them. The panic leaves his limbs and sinks back down into the pit of his stomach where he can work around it. So he’s a little out of his depth, so what? He’ll get used to it. This is the first real battle he and Wei Wuxian are fighting together, the trial run for the rest of their lives – his shixiong behind him, beside him, coming up with stupid clever plans to beat back the monsters with him. It’s going to always be like this, except better, because in the future Jiang Cheng will actually know what he’s doing.
“Done it!” Wei Wuxian suddenly says at his back. The ozone smell of activated power sparks through the air.
The ghouls turn feral. They scream and thrash and claw over and through each other trying to breach the boat. The stern plunges down with a sucking noise, dragged by their combined weight, then leaps upwards in an arc of water and broken-off finger-bones. Jiang Cheng scrabbles to stay upright. Wei Wuxian is grinning, a talisman in each hand – one tucked casually against his hip, the other held aloft as if to show it off to the ghouls, the paper spattered with blood from Wei Wuxian’s injured arm.
“Why the hell did you make another summoning charm?!” Jiang Cheng shrieks.
“Give it a minute,” Wei Wuxian says airily. “I’ve got a whole plan. Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“I don’t care, just do it already!”
“Shidi is so eager! Fine then, here.” Wei Wuxian slaps the other talisman down onto the heaving hull.
Dead hands still thud against the wood; corpses slither up toward Jiang Cheng. He goes to kick them away but his knees lock with a snap, legs refusing to move. He realizes, to his horror, that he’s trapped in place. He thrashes against whatever holds him.
“Don’t struggle so much, you’ll hurt yourself!” Wei Wuxian is laughing because he’s a moron who doesn’t grasp that they’re about to get fucking eaten on the most basic, low-level night-hunt possible, directly in front of Jiang Cheng’s father. His back presses against Jiang Cheng’s like a bulwark. “Just look.”
The ghouls still reach for them, but – they’re not getting closer. They turn slow and sluggish as they try to climb the boat, slimy muscles straining against the same force that keeps Jiang Cheng pinned down. Finally, the nearest ghouls stop moving altogether.
The effect spreads outward until the whole crowd of ghouls has become a single twitching, unmoving mass and even the water turns thick and sludgy, clinging to everything. The affected area is enormous. It’s an incredible show of power, yet Wei Wuxian seems barely even winded.
The ghouls are still aware, if their snapping jaws and darting eyes are any indication; they’re just stuck in place. Stuck, Jiang Cheng realizes, to each other.
He looks down at the talisman. It’s the stupid prank spell they’d used on Jin Zixuan’s boots, magnified by the amplifier Wei Wuxian invented. Completely absurd and utterly brilliant.
“Like netting a bunch of tadpoles,” Wei Wuxian says, smugly dusting vermillion powder off his hands. Sweat beads his forehead, but his smile is blinding. “They’re stuck and slow like this; we can zip around on our swords just out of their reach and cut them down easy. A little boring, but at least we’ll get to use our swords, and let’s spice it up by seeing who can do the best acrobatics – I bet you I can spear three of them at once on Suibian!”
Jiang Cheng opens his mouth to take the bet. Then he stops. Slowly, he says, “Zip around on our swords.”
“Yeah! What, are you all out of spiritual energy? I’ve seen you go for twice as long as this on the training grounds. I’ve fought you myself for twice as long as this on the training grounds.”
“Zip around on the blades of our swords,” Jiang Cheng says, pointedly jerking one leg until he pops out of his trapped boot, then stomps back down on top of it to keep his foot from touching the bespelled wood of the hull, “barefoot?”
A long pause. Then, emphatically, “Yes.”
“No!” Jiang Cheng howls.
They do not ride their swords barefoot. Wei Wuxian periodically refreshes the summoning charm until a few ghouls at a time can rip themselves free and crawl stickily into range, they stab the ghouls until they crumble into bone and muck, they repeat the process. Wei Wuxian nearly capsizes them twice with overenthusiastic swings and Jiang Cheng gets one knee glued to the boat during a bad dodge. It’s tedious, filthy, and entirely without glory; Jiang Cheng is so outraged that he may have circled all the way back around to giddiness, if the dumb little snickers he keeps producing are any indication. Wei Wuxian does the same.
Finally, they’ve cleared away so many ghouls that the whole lake seems awash in offal. The weaker ones, more spirit than body, melt away under the blazing combination of sunlight and spiritual energy, while the few remaining corpses spasm helplessly in the water. Wei Wuxian hums in satisfaction as he scans the scene. Suddenly his gaze sharpens. “Got a runner,” he says.
The fleeing ghoul is bigger than the others, barely rotted, swollen like a fish that’s eaten its brethren and strong enough to shake off the last of the summoning charm. Its eyes, as it glances back at them, are empty of life but not of intelligence or rage. If it escapes, its resentment will only burn fiercer; the village will be in danger all over again.
Jiang Cheng draws himself up, but Wei Wuxian is already in motion. With a whoop, he yanks out of his boots, throws himself onto Suibian, and rockets forward. The ghoul turns to dive. Wei Wuxian reaches it before it can, and plunges down.
He’s caught for an instant in the red radiance of the setting sun, body dark with shadow but limned in glowing scarlet. His flying form is – okay, bad, frankly, a cultivator is supposed to fly with upright grace but Wei Wuxian has sunk all his weight onto his back foot to direct the dive, his arms are up like he’s jumping off the piers back home, his hair is loose, sleeves flapping, bare feet sure even against the biting blade of his sword, his whole body alight with the easy joy of action. He’s grinning, and it’s fine that his form is bad, he’s fine like this, he’s good. Wei Wuxian brings out the goodness in everything, starting with himself. He glows with it.
Jiang Cheng wants something, watching him. Something huge and nameless that swells tight inside his ribcage, something which is somehow encompassed in Wei Wuxian’s steady stance and messy, untied sleeves.
He wants –
Wei Wuxian twists mid-dive, kicking Suibian out from beneath his feet and up into his hand in an impressive and entirely unnecessary move, and plows into the ghoul blade-first. They both disappear in a huge splash.
Even though he knows Wei Wuxian’s always fine, Jiang Cheng’s pulse hammers until Wei Wuxian finally bobs back up out of the churning water with Suibian lifted above his head. “Last kill goes to me! Did I look cool? But ow, ow, betrayed by my own dear spiritual sword, my feet are cut to ribbons and my poor arm was already torn half-off – Jiang Cheng, I can’t swim like this, I’m drowning! Burn paper money for me and tell shijie I always knew she liked me best –”
Jiang Cheng experiences an overwhelming and unwelcome rush of empathy for Jin Zixuan. He tears free of his boots, rips his trousers off at the knee, and leaps into the disgusting water to reach Wei Wuxian.
Wei Wuxian isn’t drowning – just being dramatic. They can’t fly back to shore, obviously, so they swim. Slowly. Wei Wuxian makes a nuisance of himself clutching Jiang Cheng and whining to be given a ride, and then whining further about mean, heartless shidis when Jiang Cheng snaps to knock it off, he’ll drown them both. Eventually he goes quiet to concentrate on swimming, which is so weird that Jiang Cheng grabs him by the waist to make sure he’s not really sinking and swims one-handed, which sets off Wei Wuxian’s prattle all over again. It’s twilight when they finally reach the docks where A-die is waiting to pull them from the water.
“A-Xian, A-Cheng, welcome back,” he says. He pats each of them on the shoulder with a tired smile, then traces heat charms in the air over their heads. Jiang Cheng nonsensically only starts shivering now that he feels warm.
A-die looks them both over for injuries. He frowns at Jiang Cheng’s torn, dripping robes, inhales sharply at Wei Wuxian’s bitten arm. He waves a gentle hand over the wound to dispel whatever resentful energy might cling to it, then wraps his hands around the forearm to begin healing it. “You did so well,” he says, without taking his eyes off Wei Wuxian’s arm, but the resulting grin Wei Wuxian turns on Jiang Cheng includes him in the praise. “A-Xian, it was a bit rash, but your spell was cleverly chosen and applied with great skill and strength, and it was quick thinking to chase down that final ghoul. Excellent work.” He pauses to sweep his thumb over the scabbing wound. Satisfied with that, he then sighs and says, “A-Cheng. You recalled your sword forms satisfactorily under pressure.” Jiang Cheng snaps upright, flushing at the compliment. “But you would not have been under such pressure if you hadn’t been reckless and fallen first, and endangered both yourself and then A-Xian when he had to help you. You usually err on the side of overcautiousness, which would have served you better here. Disciples should not suffer for their leader’s mistakes. Reflect for the future.”
The reprimand scrapes along the inside of Jiang Cheng’s skin. It’s deserved. Jiang Cheng knows that. He’s been biting down on the inside of his cheek for the past hour over Wei Wuxian’s injury. But to call it recklessness, when Wei Wuxian –
But no, there’s a huge difference between bravely leaping into danger on purpose and being pitched ass-first into it by your own ineptitude. He mumbles an apology to both his father and Wei Wuxian and squeezes water out of his sleeves, eyes down. Wei Wuxian pulls out of A-die’s grip with a hasty, slightly desperate thanks and throws an arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulder, nearly bowling them both over.
“What do you look so tired for, you got first blood right off the bat!” he crows, too loud. “I’ll beat you to the punch next time, Jiang Cheng, I won’t let you show me up!”
Jiang Cheng’s throat goes tight. He knows what Wei Wuxian is doing, and hates it as much as he’s grateful for it. He elbows Wei Wuxian, gently enough that he barely shifts from where he’s draped over Jiang Cheng. “Don’t jump on me with your sword unsheathed, idiot. You trying to stab me? Am I supposed to be your ‘first blood?’ And keep your feet out of the mud before you get infected, if all the ghoul-muck didn’t do that already.”
“A-Cheng, there’s no need to snap. What’s this about feet?” A-die bends down and picks up one of Wei Wuxian’s feet to examine the cuts. Wei Wuxian grips Jiang Cheng for balance loudly proclaiming that he’s fine. His protests cut off when A-die rises, lifting him in his arms as he does and tucking him against his hip like a child so he doesn’t have to lean on Jiang Cheng. At thirteen, Wei Wuxian is way too big and gangly to be carried comfortably; he clearly doesn’t know what to do with the one million elbows he suddenly seems to have. “These will need a proper healer,” A-die says. “We’ll ask around the village. A-Cheng, you’re not cut? Quickly, then.”
Wei Wuxian chatters as usual but barely even squirms as A-die carries him away, which means he really is tired. No wonder, after all he accomplished today.
Just like Wei Wuxian is too old to be easily carried, Jiang Cheng is too old to be so easily bothered by it. He picks up Suibian from where Wei Wuxian left it, jams it through his sash next to Sandu, wipes the water from his face and hair, and follows, leaving wet bare footprints on the dock behind him.
~ ~ ~
The village doesn’t have an inn, and A-die isn’t about to kick more people than necessary out of their own beds to accommodate the Jiang family, especially after he haggles two pairs of ugly straw sandals from their hosts. Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian end up sharing a sleeping-pallet for the night in a spare corner of the village’s biggest, least worn-down house.
Jiang Cheng lies on his side, facing the wall instead of Wei Wuxian, feeling how the tightness under his ribs has changed to something squirming and sharp. He dozes uneasily, curled around the sensation, but jolts awake every half-shi convinced that Wei Wuxian is sweaty and too-hot because he’s gotten a fever from his injuries, when it’s really just that Wei Wuxian is eternally a fucking furnace and keeps lying on him.
The tenth time it happens, Jiang Cheng grits his teeth, turns over, and yanks a lock of Wei Wuxian’s hair, almost too upset to remember not to jostle his injured arm or legs.
“Hmmaph?” Wei Wuxian gurgles, startling awake. “Jnnngcheng, quit it….”
“Why’d you take that hit,” Jiang Cheng says.
Wei Wuxian squints blurrily at him, then yawns. “Wha?”
“Your arm. Where you got bitten. That’ll take like three days to heal even with your core; you didn’t have to use your sword-arm to cover me. You didn’t have to cover me at all. My sword forms were fine; A-die said so.”
Wei Wuxian just squints even harder, saying nothing. His hair is a disaster and his eyelids are puffy from sleep. A streak of drool has dried on his upturned cheek. The window in the far wall is lit a hazy yellow from village’s single night-lamp; the light shines pink like a shell through Wei Wuxian’s (huge) ear that pokes up through his messy hair.
Jiang Cheng’s chest heats and tightens just as much as it did while Wei Wuxian was diving at the ghoul. Forget Wei Wuxian getting feverish; maybe Jiang Cheng is the one getting sick after spending all day in a haunted lake. A perfect cap-off to this excursion.
“Promise me you won’t do it again,” he says. Wei Wuxian makes promises as often as breathing, and forgets half of them unless Jiang Cheng reminds him. He’ll remind him. “I’ll do better next time. So promise me.”
Wei Wuxian stays quiet a little longer. Then he yawns again, breath sour, ear still pink, and nuzzles down into the hard pillow. “Maybe f’you don’t off and swim alone next time,” he mumbles.
“I wasn’t swimming,” Jiang Cheng says, jabbing him (gently) with a knee. But then he subsides and turns back over. It’s as much of a concession as he’s going to get from Wei Wuxian, who’s already asleep again. It’s good enough.
~ ~ ~
They leave the village in the morning, so early the lakes are still covered with mist. Jiang Cheng’s head hurts from sleeping badly. Wei Wuxian bounces around like he slept uninterrupted for three days, occasionally remembering that he’s supposed to be injured and draping himself over Jiang Cheng, whining about how his feet hurt and how A-jie should make his favorite foods when they get back to help him recover from his ‘battle wounds.’ Jiang Cheng stays mature and barely jabs him in the ribs over it.
Wei Wuxian’s golden core has, in fact, almost entirely healed his feet already. He doesn’t even complain about his rough, borrowed sandals as they do the last required thing to complete the hunt: they all stand at the edge of the lake, light incense, and bow.
A-die questioned the villagers further over breakfast, and had finally ascertained that a flash flood a few weeks ago had caught up a collection of traveling peddlers’ boats, drowning them all and dumping the corpses into the lake, and that the village had reported nothing in favor of keeping the late peddlers’ waterlogged wares for themselves. Hence, an unexpected surplus of ghouls for Wei Wuxian to dredge up. Jiang Cheng watches the thin line of smoke wind across the water, trying not to resent the idiot village or the throb of his ghoul-bites or the scratchiness of his cheap sandals or the bandage on Wei Wuxian’s arm, wrapped with ragged, not-clean-enough-for-Jiang-Cheng’s-tastes cloth. The ghouls are all dead and he’s alive, and hence they deserve his well-wishes so their souls can move on and not bother Jiang Cheng’s family again.
Like he can hear Jiang Cheng’s internal grumbling, A-die murmurs, “For all we attempt to cultivate ourselves to immortality, for all the yao we slay and decisions we make for the land as a whole, this is what our sect truly offers to Yunmeng. Simply cutting down our prey wouldn’t heal this lake, or keep this village safe for long.”
Jiang Cheng bows just a little lower, keeping his spine as straight as he can.
“It’s like treating an illness,” A-die continues. “When A-Li gets her fevers, it’s important to keep her cool and let her rest, yes? But the fever is not the illness itself, simply the sign of what is wrong. It’s important to keep her comfortable, but far more important to treat the underlying cause.”
“Which is what we’re doing when we speak to the villagers before a hunt – trying to figure out the cause,” Wei Wuxian says. “The ghosts are just the symptoms of whatever’s actually gone wrong.”
“And the act of respectful liberation is the treatment,” Jiang Cheng parrots. It feels rote in his mouth. Privately, he thinks that being respectful isn’t worth much if the people you’re supposed to help are lying about shit that nearly gets you and your shixiong eaten. He prefers the path to liberation that involves straightforwardly hitting evil things with swords. Wei Wuxian is obviously thinking the same thing because he catches Jiang Cheng’s eye and wiggles both his sword and his eyebrows with gusto. Jiang Cheng refuses to laugh; he bites the inside of his cheek and shuts his eyes to properly concentrate.
They straighten from their bows, step onto their swords, and start for home just as the sun crests the horizon.
The light catches Wei Wuxian again as he turns to say something to A-die. Jiang Cheng watches how the sun filters through Wei Wuxian’s hair and slides over the cloth around his arm, feeling the – the something, the start of a fever – in his chest. Then he looks past Wei Wuxian to the route ahead, the steadily lightening sky.