Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng finds himself looking up these days, as if the open, blue skies would reveal to him an answer he had not yet found. He finds himself looking out, over the expanse of Lotus Lake, seeing ghosts of memories that wound him, yet he cannot bring himself to let go of them.
All his life, he had been told to work harder, be stronger, and strive further. No matter what he did, it had never been enough to earn praise from his father or satisfy his mother. Jiang Cheng had lived in a shadow, the shadow of his da-shixiong , but the shadow had been so bright and all-encompassing, that others only ever saw it as the light.
Now, all of that is gone. The approval he had always wanted to earn. The shadow that followed and engulfed him. He had outlived them all. He should be able to move on, and chase after happiness, now that everything that had held him back had been taken away.
And yet, he remained in the darkness. The darkness clouded his mind, filling him with rage, and hatred, and hurt. It caused him to snap at those he loved, to terrify his own nephew into submission, and to strike the fear of God into anyone who practiced demonic cultivation. Instead of trying to overcome the darkness, Jiang Cheng unwittingly fed parts of himself to it. He could slowly feel himself getting absorbed by it, dark tendrils creeping through his veins.
Jiang Cheng had to bring his hands to his chest, and feel the energy thrumming in his golden core, coursing through the rest of his body, to remind himself that it was there. That he had not been overtaken by resentful energy.
He sleeps fitfully, even ten years later. On good nights, he wakes only once before the sun rises. Sweat beads on his forehead, his breath comes out as ragged pants, and he curls in on himself, clinging tightly onto his arms in search of comfort and warmth that he cannot give.
And in the dead of night, swallowed by darkness, alone in the vast expanse of his own mind, Jiang Cheng mourns. The sobs are ripped from deep within him, and the tears burst forth after having been held in for so long. Trembles and shivers wrack every inch of his body, and he laments his losses, his choices, his fate. He folds, deeper and deeper still, into himself.
This side of himself, he could never show the world.