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The fall is a long, long way down.
The initial sense of weightlessness—of his balance tipping over the edge and plummeting down, down, down is the first thing Wei Wuxian processes before he realizes he’s been pushed. ‘ Ah, i’m falling…’ he thinks, watching the edge of the cliff just barely pass him then race up and away as Wen Chao’s stupid grin rapidly fades from distance as he plummets into the Burial Mounds.
The wind whips in his ears, his clothes, his hair. Wei Wuxian’s limbs flail helplessly; at this height, it’s impossible to get a good grip on anything or steady his fall. His heart pounds in his ears, he can feel the blood rushing through his veins. His limbs tingle. Wei Wuxian’s entire body is on high alert—the longer he falls the more he comes to the realization that he very well may be falling to his death. His stomach churns. Wen Chao is now no longer visible—neither is the edge of the cliff he was pushed off of. The adrenaline rushing through his veins is skewing his sense of time—he’s unsure if he’s been falling for minutes or seconds at this rate. Maybe it’s even been hours.
Wei Wuxian hears screaming, and he’s not sure if it’s his or someone else’s. He swallows, and his throat feels parched and raw; it must be his voice then. The air around him grows colder and colder as he continues to fall, and the sun disappears into the mist that seems to perpetually surround the Burial Mounds. Wei Wuxian knows his doom is fast approaching—at this rate, he’s been falling too long to survive. He closes his eyes, and braces for eventual impact.
The impact of the fall forces all the air out of Wei Wuxian’s lungs. He hears a sickening crack as his arms and legs make first contact with the ground, crumpling beneath him. His bones shatter, turning his limbs into gnarled, mangled stumps of flesh and bone. He doesn’t even have the breath in his lungs to scream in pain. The ground beneath him is softer than expected, almost fluffy in consistency and as Wei Wuxian attempts to sit up with his shattered calves and his shattered arms he sinks into it, no purchase for his weak grip. It’s searing agony as his splintered arms try and fail to hold up his weight, warm blood seeping into the spongy ground as Wei Wuxian lays there, battered and broken. The reality that he’s doomed to a slow and agonizing death dawns slowly on Wei Wuxian, the searing pain too much for him to think about anything else aside from the pain and his impending doom. ‘Maybe if I bleed out fast enough I’ll pass out and die in my sleep’ he thinks desperately—groaning, wheezing breaths loud over the eerie silence.
As Wei Wuxian attempts to shift his broken body once more, he hears the faint, somewhat wooden sound of something clacking together underneath him. Slowly, carefully, agonizingly he uses his mostly unbroken fingers to dig through the soft dirt and ash beneath until his hands come in contact with something hard. Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath and braces himself, grabbing the object and pulling it up as quick and his mangled arm will allow him to. The pain is immediately searing, forcing a scream from his already shredded throat. He sobs, closing his eyes to catch his breath as much as his broken body will allow him to. Feeling around the object, he feels two holes fairly close in distance and smooth to the touch. Feeling down lower, he feels another, more jagged hole—even further down he feels some bumpy ridges and he frowns, trying to figure out what he’s touching. It’s only when he feels the ridges move and open that he realizes what exactly he’s touching and his stomach lurches. It’s a skull. A human skull. He’s been laying on a pile of ash, earth, and bones. Of course, after the initial shock to his system he realizes that it’s only natural that he be laying on a mountain of desecrated corpses in a place called the Burial Mounds. This entire place is probably corpses. Wei Wuxian can’t help but laugh at his fate, Doomed to become another unknown corpse in the endless pile. ‘Ah, if only I could have said goodbye to Shijie and Jiang Cheng’ he thinks as he finally begins to succumb to the blood loss and the pain.
As his eyes drift closed, Wei Wuxian swears he hears distant screaming. ‘Is there someone else down here..?’ he thinks as the screams drift closer slowly, and the telltale wetness of mist rolling in pricks his skin. Forcing his eyes open, Wei Wuxian sees endless black shapes in the distance. Vaguely human in shape, they slink ever closer to his helpless body and Wei Wuxian’s blood runs cold when he realizes what it is—Resentful energy, probably coming to explore the new bit of life in the domain of the dead. He feels the mist roll in closer, up his limbs and he looks down with a gasp, then a groan from the way he’s forced his body to move in a way it probably should not have been moving. Crawling up his body, the same black mist takes the form of claws, exploring his mangled limbs before it seems to find whatever it could have been looking for and takes hold, pinning him to the earth. Wei Wuxian tries to scream, but the moment his mouth opens more mist gags him immediately, cutting him off and restricting his breathing. Even more resentful energy shoots up from the ground, lashing him in place like thick ropes. Wei Wuxian thrashes, pain shooting throughout his body as he does so in a vain attempt to escape.
Resentful energy quickly engulfs him, and if Wei Wuxian thought he was in pain before, it’s hundredfold now. He thrashes and screams against his restraints as the resentful energy engulfs him, clawing and ripping into him. The telltale sensation of fresh blood flowing fills his senses, nerves firing off as it quite literally rips into him, gnawing and clawing at the place his golden core used to be. Tears stream down Wei Wuxian’s face as he’s forced to watch as he gets torn open, his own blood and viscera out on display. He swears he sees his intestines be ripped out of him and tossed to the side. The pain is excruciating, cold and hot and searing all at the same time. The resentful energy is chilly to the touch, and he can feel it filling him and coursing through his body. Wei Wuxian tastes the distinct tang of iron in the back of his throat and realizes he’s screamed his throat to absolute shreds, gurgling on the blood. His limbs, mangled and gnarled are pulled forcefully apart with a sickening crack, stretched to the breaking point. He can hear fabric tearing, perhaps even his skin, as he’s pulled this way and that like a ragdoll.
As the torture goes on and on, surrounded by shadowy figures and screams, Wei Wuxian feels his sanity slipping away as he begs every god he knows for something, anything. He begs for mercy, begs for death, begs for annihilation—he just wants it to be over. Pushed up into the air by the energy, Wei Wuxian sees the largest mass so far heading towards him, and he thrashes weakly, skin paper white from blood loss and no energy to his movements. The only thing keeping him alive is the resentful energy, his heart having long since stopped pounding in his chest despite his panic. The large mass races towards him, and all Wei Wuxian can hope is that his impending doom is quick and merciful. With very little energy to thrash about, nevermind scream, Wei Wuxian allows the resentful energy to flood him. It fills every space, leaking from him like a sickness, like inky black bile from every orifice. It claws at and consumes him entirely before settling like a weight where his golden core used to sit. As he’s gently returned to the earth, Wei Wuxian wonders if it’s finally over.
Suddenly, he feels his limbs tingle and begin to twitch uncontrollably, as if being pricked with thousands of needles. He looks down at his arm and watches in horror and awe as his arm snaps back into place and undoes itself from its splintered, tangled state with a series of loud pops. Crack crack crack crack crack go his limbs as they undo their own damage, one by one. The pain is excruciating but all Wei Wuxian can do is laugh—laugh at his fate and at the pain he endures. ‘Maybe I’ve been dead all along! Is this my hell? Is this where I’ve been sent to repent the lives of Yunmeng Jiang?’
“You have been wronged. So wronged. Hate and resentment flows through you like blood in your veins, let us amplify it. Let the hate wash you away.”
A chorus of voices; male, female, old and young fill Wei Wuxian’s mind as the resentful energy finally settles and withdraws partially. Wei Wuxian gasps for air as the hands retreat from his face, gulping down the acrid oxygen as if it were the sweet mid-spring air of Yunmeng. “Who’s there?!” he asks, scrambling onto his newly restored knees as his head whips around. No one except him and the shadowy black figures are around. There are even more of them now.
“We are all that remains. We can get you what you want. You have been so very wronged. We can help you take your revenge. We can help you take their heads.” the chorus says. Wei Wuxian swallows.
“How do you know revenge is what I’m after?” he asks, eyes darting from shadow to shadow. The chorus laughs, an eerie cacophony of sharp and flat, an out of tune procession of music. “You would not have survived if you did not hate. Your hate is what is keeping you alive in this place. Let it consume you. We can help. We can give you the power you need. Let the resentment take you, let the sweet embrace of hate fulfill your desires. They deserve nothing less than what they have inflicted upon you and yours.”
Wei Wuxian hesitates. His heart pounds in his chest, ever so tempted by the offering. He swallows, his parched throat screaming for water. “And if I refuse?”
“Then you will die. Your body will stay here to rot and no one will ever find your corpse. You will join us, until the next unfortunate soul falls in and can handle our hate and yours. Your hate will make us stronger regardless. We simply wish to be sated.”
Wei Wuxian is silent. Either he dies now or he dies later due to resentful energy. He knows it’s a gamble, but if it means being able to avenge Yunmeng Jiang and to be able to do tenfold what Wen Chao did to them all…Wei Wuxian would be a liar if he said he wasn’t tempted. “So I get all this power in exchange for…?”
“In exchange for blood. Give us the blood of those who have wronged you. We will give you the strength to do whatever you wish.”
Wei Wuxian bites his lip. “Will I be able to control it?”
“With some practice.”
“And if I can’t control it?”
“Then it will consume you.”
He laughs. Of course there’s a catch. Wei Wuxian begins to chew on his bottom lip, weighing his options once more. In the end, his hunger for revenge and a promise of a possible escape wins out. Turning to the faceless masses, Wei Wuxian sets his jaw and takes a deep breath. His lungs burn with the phantom pain of his previously broken ribs. “I’ll do it. I’ll learn to control it.”
The mass of faceless bodies smiles. Sharp white teeth—sharper than what should be possible for a human grin in unison, like crescent moons in a starless sky, over and over. Wei Wuxian can’t help but feel like he’s walking to his death. The smiling forms come closer, crowding him until they smother him and Wei Wuxian is lost to the mist. Lost to the hate.
When Wei Wuxian regains consciousness, His clothing is in tatters, he’s drenched in blood and bile, and his already unruly hair is a nest. Looking down at his hands, Wei Wuxian is holding an unidentifiable mass of what looks to be flesh. Dropping it with a gasp, he licks his lips and is struck by the unmistakable taste of iron and rot. Wei Wuxian feels his stomach turn and he retches, covering his mouth as quickly as he can. It’s futile. After he’s emptied his stomach, Wei Wuxian regains his bearings. He doesn’t know how long it’s been but clearly the resentful energy didn’t overtake him completely. ‘Not yet at least…’ he thinks as he dusts himself off and wipes his mouth.
Over the next three months, Wei Wuxian spends his days and nights perfecting his control over the resentful energy. He writes notes with his own blood on scraps of cloth he finds around, forming the foundation for a new type of cultivation based on his theories from back before he was kicked from the Cloud Recesses. He hones his skill to a knife edge, learning how to use music to control the resentful energy even further than what his previous methods would allow. Taking a page out of Gusu Lan’s book, Wei Wuxian carves himself a flute using some bamboo so soaked in resentful energy it grows an inky black. He names it Chenqing.
Occasionally, he blacks out and reawakens in a completely different part of the Burial Mounds, feral and consumed by something he doesn’t know how to put into words. Once he forges the stygian tiger seal as a focus for the abundant resentful energy in and around him, his progress ramps up. The day he feels himself ready, Wei Wuxian packs his things and leaves the Burial Mounds, hungry for revenge.
His first victim is a Wen cultivator he meets in a shitty restaurant in Yiling, feeling the rage rise as he sits in the corner away from prying eyes and listens to this man brag to a waitress about how many people he killed during the siege of the Lotus Pier. The last straw is when he pulls out a tassel, silver bell mangled and bent and beautiful purple stained a ruddy red with old blood. The Wen cultivator brags about having five more, taken off the corpses of disciples as trophies. “This one’s my favorite. Pulled it off some poor kid. Couldn’t have been older than 12.” the Wen Cultivator cackles, and Wei Wuxian grips Chenqing so hard the wood creaks. Later that night, Wei Wuxian follows the man to a secluded area and gives him the pleasure of learning just what his newfound demonic cultivation can do.
As he tortures the man, using resentful energy to keep him alive far longer than he should be able to endure, Wei Wuxian finds he enjoys it more and more as the torture continues. He finds himself giggling, then laughing, drunk on the heady satisfaction of revenge. In the back of his mind, he knows he shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as he is, knows his sanity will eventually slip if just one no-name Wen cultivator under his belt makes him feel this good.
“Finish him off. Make him regret he ever crossed paths with you. Sate your anger.” the voices in his head say, and who would Wei Wuxian be if he were to deny them?
Wei Wuxian leaves a mangled corpse behind. He promises himself that Wen Chao will have hundredfold what this man had. The thought makes him giddy.