Chapter Text
Wei Sizhui sighs as he stares at the mask in his hand.
As always, its fanged snarl holds no answers. He’d stolen it from a night market a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been his only companion in this strange new world. A world where no one is trying to kill his father anymore, and Jin Guangyao is the worst villain in jianghu instead. Sizhui has no idea if he himself still exists in this world, and he misses the gray hills and ghost-green fires of Yiling Wei with everything in him.
Even so, his father and his uncles have raised him to be brave and clever, and so he helps where he can. The masked cultivator known as the Friendly Ghost quiets ghosts, slays beasts, returns children to their parents. Sizhui knows that word of his activities must have spread by now. Some part of him childishly hopes that this version of his father will notice and – what? Help him return to his own world?
Sizhui shakes himself out of his thoughts and puts down the mask in favor of belting Suibian and his flute Zhenyin to his waist. He pats at his pockets and then checks his qiankun pouch, ensuring that he has everything he needs. He’s enjoyed these few days in Yangzi village; its people are surprisingly tolerant and unsuspicious of both the Friendly Ghost and the quiet traveler Jian Yuan. But it’s time for him to move on; he’s heard that Lanling Jin have finally sent a group of cultivators to investigate the Friendly Ghost.
Satisfied that he’s ready, Sizhui ties on the grinning blue demon face and slips out of the window into the moonless night.
As he creeps through the empty streets, unease curls through him. Yangzi is a sleepy village, true, but he hasn’t seen it this quiet before. Every door is shut, every light extinguished. For whatever reason, Yangzi is holding its breath.
Then, just as he crosses into the dappled shade of the woods at the edge of the village, someone drops down from a tree to land neatly in front of him. The newcomer’s white robes almost glow in the darkness – Sizhui instantly recognizes them as Gusu Lan style. This Lan disciple seems about his age, maybe younger; his headband bears the cloud filigree of the clan itself.
Sizhui’s heart jumps into his throat.
“You’re the Friendly Ghost,” breathes the Lan boy.
“And?” says Sizhui cautiously.
“You can’t be much older than me!” The other boy sounds surprised, which is a response with which Sizhui is all too familiar.
“Yes,” he says wryly, “all demonic cultivators are evil old men.” His father has laughed about this very thing many a time. Even people who once knew the old Wei Wuxian seem convinced the Yiling Laozu has become a shriveled monster lurking in a cursed palace.
“Jingyi! —Oh, you found him!”
Sizhui turns to see a teenage boy loping towards them, this one in Baling Ouyang red. He’s followed by another whose gold robes and red zhushazhi dot mark him as Lanling Jin. Sizhui groans to himself. It’s just his luck that he’s been cornered by disciples from three of the sects that hate his father the most.
All he needs now is somebody from Yunmeng Jiang, he thinks wildly.
“You’re the Friendly Ghost?” exclaims the Jin boy. “But you’re just a kid!”
“So are we, Jin Ling,” points out the Ouyang boy fondly. Jin Ling rolls his eyes at him and steps closer to peer at Sizhui. Sizhui stumbles back a step, hand instinctively going to Zhenyin.
“Whoa, whoa, we’re not going to hurt you,” the Lan says. “Who are you?”
After a month in this world, the false name comes more easily to him when he says, “Jian Yuan.”
The Lan shrugs, seeming to accept the obviously-fake name for now.
“I’m Lan Jingyi, and these are Jin Ling and Ouyang Zizhen. Will you tell us what your plan is? Demonic cultivation might be a crime in Lanling right now, but I’m sure Jin-zongzhu would let you go if you’re not, uh, up to anything.” For some reason, this causes a brief round of elbowing between Lan Jingyi and Lan Jingyi.
Suddenly, watching them tussle, Sizhui is so tired. He misses his home and his family and his shidi and shimei.
“I’m stuck in the wrong world,” he says.
That shuts Jin Ling and Lan Jingyi up; all three of the boys stare at him, wide-eyed.
“What does that mean?” snaps Jin Ling, looking as though he doesn’t believe Sizhui. That’s okay. If it hadn’t happened to him, Sizhui wouldn’t believe it either.
He spreads his hands in a shrug. “A month ago, I was camping on a night hunt near Yiling town with my uncle. I went to sleep, and I woke up in this world in the same place. That’s all I know.”
“How do you know it’s a different world?” asks Ouyang Zizhen.
“Because my sect doesn’t exist here,” Sizhui says. “I’m not sure I exist here. Actually, I think this world’s me might be dead.” The first thing Sizhui had done, after confirming the events of the Battle of Nightless City, was to search discreetly for the Wen remnants. The answers had sickened him to his stomach but, more importantly, revealed no sign of the little boy once called Wen Yuan.
None of the others seem to know how to react to that for a long moment.
“Well,” says Ouyang Zizhen eventually, “maybe Senior Wei would know about this?”
“You know Wei Wuxian?” Sizhui says, heart suddenly hammering with hope.
Jin Ling frowns at him. “He’s my uncle.”
Panic shoots through Sizhui, and he stumbles back, instinctively drawing Zhenyin. That means this boy is Jin Rulan, the son of the man who Sizhui’s world thinks Wei Wuxian coldly murdered all those years ago. He is the worst person Sizhui could possibly meet tonight.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers miserably before he brings Zhenyin to his lips. The others have let their guard down, so it only takes a few bars of a lullaby to send them to sleep.
Wei Sizhui, his heart heavy with fear and his father’s sins, flees into the forest.