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Lan Wangji has never seen the Gusu Temple from the penitents’ side. Only the outer disciples take on the priest duty—guarding the gateways, collecting the offerings, keeping the altars clean, ringing the bells and playing the drums. As an inner disciple, the closest he gets to it is when he slips from the opposite side into the small, hidden antechamber by the inner courtyard. From there, he silently watches the supplicants prostrate before the carved manifestation of the Great Lan Ancestor and circumambulate about its womb-house, their silhouettes through the thick incense smoke moving like shadows on a sundial.
Bearing witness to the worship and supplication never bothered Lan Wangji at all when he was younger, assuming that it was not significantly different from when they, as descendants and disciples, pay their respect to the clan’s founder and ancestors. Even when he grew older, he was none the wiser, standing proud with the knowledge ingrained in him that their lives had higher purposes, among which was to answer to the pleas of the ordinary people.
After all the events that transpired in the cultivation world, from Gusu to Yunmeng to Qinghe to Qishan, Lan Wangji feels silly now standing in the same old spot in the temple’s antechamber. Even just thinking about how laypeople continue to see the Lan of Gusu—gods who have passed and gods who walk among them; paragons of virtue, of the four thousand rules inscribed on that massive rock wall atop the mountain that touches the clouds—makes him wish, repugnantly so, that Gusu had remained in shambles, exposing to the mortal society that their belief is a mere misinterpretation of the truth.
Lan Wangji sometimes finds himself thinking back to the night they once met the pair of rogue cultivators who defied the cultivation world in ways he had never imagined. The laypeople had bequeathed Daoist Song and Daoist Xiao epithets—the Gentry Despite the Frost and the Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze—which the pair gracefully accepted but never let into their heads. If there were anyone worthy of such worship from both the cultivation and mortal societies, it was them—those who truly embodied their principles and stood their ground, refusing the commodities of comfort and indulgence in power as they stayed true to their path.
The clans and people whispered about the tragedy that befell the once revered pair of cultivators, with some even uttering despicable thoughts of how it all could have been avoided had they accepted the generous offers and not gone down the road less travelled. Lan Wangji knows Daoist Song and Daoist Xiao would have their own regrets as they are also just humans, but he is certain that keeping clear of the affairs of the cultivation society and the lies it lets fester is not among them.
Just like how the Lan of Gusu continue to let the people worship gods that are merely a clan of ribboned cultivators with sticks up their asses, as Wei Ying would have gladly and aptly put it.
Wei Ying whom Lan Wangji failed at the bloodbath of Nightless City, whom he let stand all alone against the world, whom he watched fall to death without even a body for the rites of passing, whom he tried to find the past thirteen years in his refusal to succumb to his regrets.
Would it be so hard to leave? he remembers Wei Ying saying, as carefree as Wei Ying sounded when they left Gusu in search for the fragments of the Yin Metal his own ancestor, with hubris that seems to run in their blood, had recklessly tampered with. With juvenile naivety and not knowing what was lying ahead of them, Wei Ying continued, We can always start a sect of our own.
That’s the thing, Wei Ying, he imagines answering Wei Ying with the words he desires to speak but with no one to hear it. It is always easier to leave.
Leaving is as easy as turning a blind eye, and Lan Wangji has turned a blind eye more than enough times—more than he can count—beyond the innocence of youth and the comforts of his upbringing. The more a man knows, the harder he becomes and the less he is able to bend; just like jade that does not store resentful energy, but the more it repels such, the more brittle it becomes and the easier it breaks.
Leaving now is as easy as staying with the cultivation clans thirteen years ago at the bloodbath of Nightless City and his half-hearted attempt at defying them at the siege of Burial Mounds. With the wisdom bestowed by time and age, doing so now is pure ignorance and moral turpitude. Refusal to leave is his acceptance of the retribution for all his transgressions.
Oh, Lan Zhan, he thinks of Wei Ying’s chuckles ringing like a bell. You’re a glutton for punishment.
Oh, Wei Ying, Lan Wangji’s lips tremble ever so slightly with the desire to speak the name he has not uttered in years. It is not punishment enough.
Lan Wangji has never seen the Gusu Temple from the penitents’ side. Even with the temple empty, the adytum reeks of smoke and its walls and ceilings are stained with years of constant exposure to burning incense. Before the altar, the stone tiles are smudged with ashes scattered by gusts of spring breeze. Lan Wangji kneels on the floor without bothering to use a cleansing talisman as one would have been expected from a proud Lan, placing his forehead ribbon as offering and lowering his hands and head on the tile before the Great Lan Ancestor.
“O Great Ancestor, please hear this humble descendant’s prayer.”
There is no one listening. Lan Wangji knows this—after all, he is among those who answer the worshippers’ pleas the clan elders deem worthy. Despite that, it feels right somehow as a channel to release his invocations.
“O Great Lan An, this descendant has searched all the lands known to him. Please show him where he has yet set foot on.”
After three prostrations before the altar and three circuits about the womb-house, Lan Wangji proceeds to leave the way he went in before the disciple on priest duty and the first of the worshippers arrive. He is about to exit the antechamber into the inner courtyard when he heard it: an unfamiliar voice humming a familiar melody that could only come from one person.
When the humming stops, Lan Wangji thinks it has just been another figment of his imagination. He has had all sorts in his years of grieving. Then, the unfamiliar voice utters his name that only one person ever calls him by.
“Lord, please—please tell Lan Zhan I’m sorry.”