Work Text:
Xie Lian couldn’t get it out of his head.
He understood, now, that San Lang was really Hua Cheng, the Crimson Rain Sought Flower of the Four Great Calamities. He understood it, but he still didn’t get it.
San Lang had been, no, he was perfect. He was lucky and kind, and made Xie Lian’s stomach turn in knots in the best way. The words average and mediocre were unsuitable. But calamity? That was surely completely off the table.
Certainly this is like the first case he solved, where a number of different things occurred, and they were all attributed by the locals to a single entity. Surely, people were just attributing things to San Lang that he didn’t do.
And yet, that also didn’t seem to be true. San Lang never denied it. He never lied. He’d admitted that he’d done some wicked things. But under that facade, the face he changed and the persona he wore, Xie Lian couldn’t sense the supreme ghost king he was supposed to fear. All he could feel was… well…
It seemed as though the Crimson Rain Sought Flower was not an evil ghost. He felt safe. He felt warm. He certainly didn’t feel like the other supremes. He had a heart, Xie Lian knew.
Back in the Heavens, he heard the talk. He would be lying if he said he didn’t want to speak up in defense of Hua Cheng in the communication array, but he knew he would be met with silence, and likely become more ostracized than he already was.
The Heavens are so obsessed with labels, virtuous or wicked, without much acknowledgement that people can be, and often are, both.
There’s certainly some gods in the heavens that are less than perfect; everyone could agree on that. (Though which gods were and weren’t on the list would inevitably vary depending on who was asked.) Was it so hard to acknowledge that the same may be true of the ghosts?
Hua Cheng, no, San Lang. He wasn’t bad.
And as Xie Lang spotted San Lang walking up the hallway, his heart fluttered, and he knew that this was one person who could never be truly wicked.