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With hurried footsteps, Mo Ran rushes to Tanlang’s panic spreading through him. He had just concluded a meeting with his cousin, the Sect Leader, when he spotted a junior disciple of Tanlang’s waiting a few feet outside the door.
Apparently, A-Ning had called for his presence at Tanlang’s as soon as possible, which was already so uncharacteristic that he nearly doubled over in his anxiety.
If anything happened to his precious disciple again…if he was hurt or dying again because Mo Ran couldn’t protect him, failing him as his shizun once more, he doesn’t think he could live with himself.
He slams the doors open in his haste, earning a reprimand from Tanlang. Mo Ran ignores him, agitatedly scanning the room to look for A-Ning.
“I sent your disciple back to his quarters,” Tanlang intervenes, looking unamused, “No need to kick up such a fuss. He’s unhurt, just unconscious when he got here.”
Unconscious? Nobody told him A-Ning had passed out! “Unconscious? What even happened?” Mo Ran almost yells out, “And where’s Shi Mei, wasn’t he supposed to be with A-Ning?”
Mo Ran knew he should have never let Chu Wanning go with anyone but him on a mission. Especially not when he had just come out of seclusion after five years a few months ago, after having been resurrected by Master Huaizui.
But Sisheng was stretched thin as it is, and Chu Wanning had asked him with pleading eyes, saying he wanted to be less of a burden on the sect. Though both Xue Meng and Mo Ran assured him he wasn’t, there was no convincing him.
Mo Ran himself was already about to go on his own mission and had half a mind to just take Chu Wanning with him, but it was a more dangerous mission and he had thought it would be safer to allow him to go to the other one instead. Serves him right for letting his A-Ning out of his sight for even longer than an hour.
Tanlang looked mildly confused before replying, “I was talking about Shi Mingjing. As for Chu Wanning, I don’t know. He was gone as soon as he dropped off his shixiong, I didn’t even see him.”
Mo Ran thinks he hears Tanlang mutter something vaguely under his breath along the lines of Chu Wanning being as annoyingly stubborn as a mule.
His heart leaps to his throat, and he leaves without a word, hurrying to the Red Lotus Pavilion, barely stopping himself from using qinggong in the middle of the sect to get there immediately.
He throws open the door to where A-Ning was staying, and his heart drops to his stomach, and all he sees is red.
“Shizun!” Chu Wanning, his beloved disciple, looks at him with guilty-looking eyes, “Did something happen? Please forgive this disciple for not staying by shixiong’s side, I was heading there soon.”
Mo Ran barely registers his words, his body numbing at the sight of his A-Ning clumsily wrapped in bandages. Blood was smattered across his person, the most bloodied area being his left side, near his waist. With shaky legs, Mo Ran carefully makes his way towards his disciple.
“A-Ning…” is all Mo Ran manages to choke out, fear gripping his throat at the vivid red stark against his A-Ning’s pale, smooth skin and once-pristine white robes.
“Please forgive this disciple for failing you, shizun,” Chu Wanning turns his red-rimmed, widened brown eyes towards Mo Ran, looking at him in what seems to be fear, “I was careless and wasn’t able to protect shixiong well.”
When Mo Ran doesn’t answer, words still caught up in his throat, Chu Wanning turns to look at what Mo Ran seemed to be looking at.
He must reach a conclusion as he continues, “Don’t worry shizun, this isn’t shixiong’s blood,” moving a hand to cover the bloodstained part of his robes.
Nausea curdles at the pit of Mo Ran’s stomach at the words. Was the knowledge that his A-Ning had gotten injured while his shixiong was unharmed supposed to make Mo Ran feel better?
He had told himself he’d rather die first ( would burn this world to the ground first ) than see Chu Wanning hurt again, yet here he was, trying to make Mo Ran feel better as if his being injured was more a source for relief rather than the cause of Mo Ran’s entire world falling apart around him.
“A-Ning,” he tries again, keeping his tone gentle, “Let shizun take you to Tanlang, okay?”
Chu Wanning briefly looked as if he wanted to protest, but in the end doesn’t say anything, just nods obediently at Mo Ran.
Mo Ran carries him in his arms in a bridal carry, ignoring his sputtering protests. He all but runs towards Tanlang, mind in disarray and body numb the entire while.
He keeps down the bile threatening to rise from his throat at the realization that this must be normal for Chu Wanning. How many times did his A-Ning suffer injured and alone, without Mo Ran even noticing?
How many of those times did he yell at his precious disciple while wounded and in pain, all because he was too blinded by his prejudice and unwarranted hatred? Only due to a series of what could have been easily explained misunderstandings, had he just seeked out to understand his A-Ning better?
He recalls a specific memory, one that painfully mirrored the current situation.
They had been out on a mission together, the three of them, and Mo Ran had berated Chu Wanning for not keeping a better eye out on the demons, letting his shixiong get hurt. He remembers mockingly asking him what use his supposedly prodigious cultivation level was if he can’t even keep one person safe?
His A-Ning had only taken it in silence, apologizing for his inadequacy. He had attended their lessons normally, being unusually quiet that Mo Ran had misinterpreted as him being too prideful to accept his own mistakes and was outwardly sulking for his shizun’s attention.
That was, until he found him a few days later, curled up in bed with a scaldingly high fever, whimpering quietly in pain. When Mo Ran had touched his shoulders to wake him, it had felt unusually warm.
He had discovered a hastily wrapped wound upon checking. When he removed the bandages, the wound was heavily infected, having been left untreated properly for days.
Though it had filled him with guilt at the time, his undue hatred had blinded him instead with rage and disbelief. After taking him to Tanlang’s, he had admonished him, asking him was it really worth dying over preserving his pride, instead of admitting he could make mistakes?
Mo Ran’s hands tighten minutely at the recollection, causing Chu Wanning to flinch slightly in his arms. It takes him out of his reverie, “I’m sorry, A-Ning. Shizun’s sorry, we’ll get you patched up, okay?” he chokes out, voice trembling slightly.
Soon enough, they reach the healers and Tanlang. He deposits Chu Wanning gently on an empty bed, before laying a soothing hand over his forehead.
“Can you call for your shizun? Tell him it’s urgent,” he tries not to command too abrasively at one of the junior disciples.
Tanlang’s already there before the disciple could so much as move an inch, “So you ended up here anyway, Chu Wanning. You should have just gone straight to me in the first place,” he snarks.
Mo Ran shoots the other Elder a glare, and notices his disciple doing the same, though his face was much grumpier, as if holding back replying.
“Nothing to say in your defense?” Tanlang says mockingly while carefully removing Chu Wanning’s hastily wrapped bandages, “Look at this mess, you’d think you’d have gotten better at wrapping bandages with the amount of times you do it.”
Mo Ran feels his neck nearly snap with how quickly he moves his head to look at Tanlang at those words, “What do you mean, ‘the amount of times he does it’?”
Tanlang looks at him wryly, “Shouldn’t you know? I can’t even count the amount of times this kid came to me, half-dead with an infection or something else equally ridiculous.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Chu Wanning snaps back, then looks down immediately, as if regretting his reaction immediately.
“You’d think you’d have gotten more careful with your life after having lost it once,” Tanlang rebukes, pointedly ignoring his intervention, “Resurrection’s a one time thing, kid, don’t waste it over your own stupidity.”
Mo Ran stands up unsteadily, moving to cover his mouth with his fist when bile threatens to hurl out of him. The guilt and fear simmers lowly at the pit of his stomach, threatening to engulf him completely.
He thinks he hears Chu Wanning call out to him, tone sounding worried, and Mo Ran gives him a wan, shaky smile at him to reassure him.
“And will wonders never cease,” Tanlang’s voice resounds, dripping with venom, “Of course you’re poisoned.”
Mo Ran feels his blood pressure drop dangerously, before he growls out, “Poisoned?! And you didn’t go straight to a healer?”
“It’s not lethal,” his beautiful, precious, thick-headed A-Ning insists, as if that was somehow comforting.
“And how would you know that,” Tanlang asks wryly while searching his rack of vials for an antidote, “It wouldn’t be out of experience would it?”
Chu Wanning only narrows his eyes, “I had an antidote ready this time,” he spits out.
“Then why didn’t you use it?” Tanlang spits right back, before shoving the vial of antidote at Chu Wanning’s face.
He sees the fire dim down in those brown eyes that looked borderline molten gold in its indignance. Chu Wanning drinks the antidote before he looks down on his hands, as if embarrassed, “I only had the one, it was difficult and expensive to make it,” he grumbles in a nearly inaudible tone.
Mo Ran feels the last thread of his patience about to snap, a fact that Chu Wanning seems to realize as he immediately tries to placate him, “I had shixiong drink it just in case! I wasn’t being careless with my life. I know how much trouble shizun went through to bring me back, after all.”
His A-Ning then turns to glare mutinously at Tanlang, as if he was the root of all of Chu Wanning’s troubles in the first place.
Mo Ran feels himself zone out, his A-Ning’s words resounding accusingly in his ears. As if Mo Ran going through the underworld for him was somehow an inconvenience. As if letting him stay in the Red Lotus Pavilion to recover from fatal wounds from saving Mo Ran was somehow a nuisance.
Just how little did his A-Ning think his significance was in Mo Ran’s life, that he’d keep talking about himself as if his existence was nothing more than a mildly inconvenient thing that Mo Ran was saddled with?
The moment Tanlang finished dressing Chu Wanning’s wounds, Mo Ran moves to carry Chu Wanning in his arms again, ignoring both protests directed at him, “I’ll watch over him, he’ll stay in my room.”
After reaching the Red Lotus Pavilion, Mo Ran’s just about to lay Chu Wanning carefully on his bed, before a hand reaches out as if to stop him.
“I’ll sleep in my own bed, shizun,” his A-Ning says quietly, eyes cast to the side, “I don’t want to stain your sheets or put you out of your own bed.”
Mo Ran swallows back down a sob, “It’s okay A-Ning, it will wash off, don’t worry,” he feels ridiculous even saying the words. As if a bit of fabric being stained was somehow comparable to his beloved disciple being hurt.
“Rest, A-Ning. Shizun will be here when you wake up, I promise,” he murmurs quietly in what he hopes is a reassuring tone, caressing the top of his A-Ning’s head affectionately.
Once he sees his A-Ning’s breath even out, signaling that he’s fallen asleep, Mo Ran allows the tears he’s been holding back fall from his eyes. He kisses the back of the hand he’s holding reverently, vowing to take better care of his A-Ning, to make up for all the times he couldn’t and more.