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蓝忘机一字一句道：“你别碰他。”
金光瑶道：“那含光君知道该怎么做。”
须臾, 蓝忘机道：“好。”
蓝曦臣叹了一声。他举起手, 重重两下, 锁住了自己的灵脉。
金光瑶微微一笑, 轻声道：“这可真是……”
Lan Wangji enunciated each word slowly. “Do not touch him.”
“Then Hanguang-jun knows what he ought to do,” Jin Guangyao said.
Immediately, Lan Wangji said, “Yes.”
Lan Xichen let out a sigh. Lan Wangji raised his hand, made two tense motions, and locked his spiritual channels.
Jin Guangyao smiled ever so slightly, softly saying, “This really is…”
◈
“A-yao!”
Then—a near invisible golden thread at his throat. Lan Xichen was not fast enough to cut through it or its wielder, his sword pointing at Jin Guangyao’s chest instead. Xichen’s eyes look past him, trained on the person behind him. His face is pale.
“Step back please, Zewu-jun,” Su Minshan says, voice steady.
Jin Guangyao says, calmly, “Su-zongzhu, what is the meaning of this?”
“Do not be alarmed,” Su Minshan says. “As long as Zewu-jun does as I say, no one will get hurt.”
“He’s already been hurt!” Lan Xichen says, raising his voice in anger. He takes a step forward, but halts when Jin Guangyao inhales sharply, eyes flickering to the qin string as it tightens, nearly breaking skin.
“Step back and sheathe your sword!” Su Minshan demands. Jin Guangyao sees the slight shake in Lan Xichen’s hand, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. “Well?”
A pause, then Xichen stiffly steps out of his sword form. He takes a step back. He sheathes Shuoyue.
“Now, your spiritual powers.”
At this, Lan Xichen’s eyes finally meet Jin Guangyao’s.
Searching.
And the fear he had so carefully boxed and hidden away renews itself, claws at his throat. He sees himself in Langya again, in the midst of the Sunshot Campaign, in those woods where Nie Mingjue had shouted his name, voice trembling with rage. He sees, again, the moment he had turned to face him. He sees, again, what still haunts him to his very core—
Those eyes.
He thought he had felt fear, before, but it was nothing, nothing compared what he felt when he had seen those eyes, seen so clearly that violent hatred towards him, simply because he now knew, better than anyone, who Meng Yao was—his true nature, and what he was capable of—this resentful, bitter, jealous, cruel, hungry self—
A self that he had curated and hidden so carefully, and for so long, from his beloved er-ge. A self that Lan Xichen will soon realize, with nothing to blame other than his own selfishness.
But the thought of Lan Xichen looking at him with those same eyes—
“Don’t,” he whispers. Don’t do it.
Don’t trust me.
Jin Guangyao’s facade cracks, ever so slightly.
And just like that, he knows what decision Lan Xichen will make.
As he watches Xichen close his eyes, sealing his spiritual channels with a tense motion across his chest, Jin Guangyao wonders, numbly, whether he’s done it on purpose. The fear was real—but to reveal it was to let Xichen misunderstand. The line is blurring—what is manipulation and what is genuine.
Though hasn’t it always been this way?
He forces the terror back down his throat.
When Lan Xichen’s eyes open again, his voice is low. “Let him go.”
“Indeed, Su-zongzhu,” Jin Guangyao says. He pauses, surprised to find his voice wavering. He takes a steadying breath, collecting himself before continuing more firmly, “He’s done as you asked. You may step back now.”
Su Minshan immediately releases him, almost deferential in his swiftness. Jin Guangyao sees Lan Xichen parsing this sudden change, the flicker of confusion that crosses his face. He feels a flash of anger at Su Minshan’s obvious oversight, but extinguishes it swiftly.
It’s no matter. The veil was to be lifted soon, after all. Would there be any use in continuing to pretend?
“If you think it strange, Er-ge, you would be correct,” he says softly. “Is it not just as you have been suspecting, regardless? No matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise.” He holds out his hand without looking away from Lan Xichen, and Su Minshan obediently places the near-invisible guqin string into it.
Lan Xichen says nothing, simply closes his eyes again, lips pursed ever so slightly. When they open, his expression becomes almost as hard to read as his brother’s.