Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian wakes up in a bed.
That in of itself wouldn’t usually be a cause for concern if he hadn’t gone to sleep on his thin and cold straw mat inside the Demon-Quelling Cave last night. The mattress is still hard, but a far cry from the rocky and damp floor he usually lays down on and the covers he is tangled in are soft and warm. He wakes up refreshed. Better than he has in who knows how long. Yet it doesn’t help him understand the situation he’s in.
He takes a moment for his consciousness to fully take hold of himself and pushes down the rising unrest in his chest before opening his eyes.
Clear sunlight streams through the tall windows into the room. Not the gloomy shadows that seem to perpetually hold the Burial Mounds in their iron grip. Wei Wuxian lets his gaze wander further and recognizes the simple but elegant furniture in an instant. The white walls and white sheets and white robes hanging in the corner.
He’s in Cloud Recess.
How in the world…? And then it hits him. Lan Zhan. Of course it had to be him. Who else asked him to go back to Gusu? But had the honourable and righteous Hanguang-jun truly resorted to kidnapping him? He cannot imagine it. But on the other hand, could he really be sure about that? There had been many things he couldn’t have imagined a few months ago: He couldn’t have imagined becoming an uncle. Couldn’t have imagined being ambushed by Jin soldiers. Couldn’t have imagined Jin Zixuan- He stops himself then and there. The blood on his hands is still too fresh, still too hot.
But his point still stands.
Who knows what Lan Wangji was capable of. Then again, why keep him in this room? As spacious and well furnished and homely as it is, someone must live here regularly and it sure as hell wasn’t him.
Wasn’t he supposed to be a prisoner?
Wei Wuxian slips out of the bed and finds himself neither bound nor chained. He checks himself for any spiritual devices or trackers and finds none as well. Nor is anyone inside the room except for him. How strange…
A set of black outer robes are neatly folded on a dresser with a Jade Token lying next to it. He quickly puts the robe on and can’t help but notice how thin he has gotten. But no wonder, their fields have yet to yield significant produce and if it weren’t for Wen Qing and Wen Ning bringing him food, he would probably only eat one meal a day with how busy he is, creating new talismans and seals to contain the resentful energy surrounding the Burial Mounds.
The clothes aren’t his, he notices right away, with no mud sticking onto it and no patched holes littering the heavy cloth, but they fit him nonetheless. And the Jade Token doesn’t look like the one he used to have back when he studied here. It looks more refined, as if it belonged to a resident and not just a guest. He leaves it behind.
Afterwards, he takes to exploring the room which is much larger than he would have expected from Cloud Recesses’ usual guest rooms or maybe prison cells, if they even had one. It must belong to someone important then. But the orderly and sparse interior decor could frankly belong to any member of the Lan Clan. And he truly doesn't want to stick around to find out whom it belongs to.
Entering the adjacent hall, he spots Chenqing resting on top of several open scrolls and books and hurries to grab it. With every passing second the situation is growing more and more confusing. Why leave his belongings here? His weapon? Isn’t he supposed to be contained here? As he takes a closer look at the sheets of paper he recognizes his handwriting all right. And his talismans with some weird experimental spell that should keep the wearer from getting drunk…? This doesn’t make any sense at all! How is this possible? Why would he be working on this nonsense when he’s busy crafting countless spells to subdue resentful energy before?
Of course no one answers him. Not that it matters anyway. He needs to get back to the Burial Mounds, who knows when the Jins were to launch their next assault and with him here, he doesn’t know how long the seals around the camp would last. Wen Ning would be able to protect them for a while, but even he isn’t invincible. With that he hurries towards the front door but freezes at the sight that greets him on the way there.
Suibian .
It’s sitting on a stand, proudly displayed for anyone passing by to see. Why was it here ? He had thrown it into the deepest corner of that cave. Out of sight and out of mind. He had never touched it again and swore to never think of it again. So how did it find its way all to Gusu out of all places? Had Lan Wangji truly searched the entire cave for it? But why? Why go to such lengths? To what goal? He feels dizzy with questions and confusion and barely catches himself from reaching out for his sword. What good would it bring him except for being a reminder of what he gave away? He never regretted it and never will. But it doesn’t hurt any less, knowing that this is a path with no return. A lonely path he must walk on his own.
He takes a steadying breath and turns away from that life before moving onto his actual destination.
Wei Ying checks the front door for any spell that could either lock it or alarm someone but finds none and slides it open without any problem.
The cold morning air is the only one that greets him in the quietness of Cloud Recess. Judging by the height of the rising sun, it must already be around eight or nine, which was still rather early for him but not for the inhumane 5 a.m. morning bells he remembers. Which was one of the many rules that had brought him grief during his studies here (besides the one that prohibited his Emperor's Smile, of course).
Gods, it’s been so long since then. A whole war laid between those times and now.
The picturesque view that presents itself before him stirs long buried memories. Long buried laughs and smiles. Even though Lan Wangji asked him countless times to come back with him, Wei Wuxian never actually thought that he would return at all and even less that he would somehow miss this place. The soft mist crawling up the bamboo forest, the melodious chirping of the little birds living above them and the soft patter of the stream nearby. It looks serene. It looks peaceful. But he knows better than that. There was no peace for the Yiling Patriarch as long as he breathed and as long as a single Wen remained alive. It was because of that reason that he kept going still, even though the whole world has now turned against him.
He couldn’t tarry any longer.
The stone path leads him towards the main street to the different classrooms and halls. He wisely decides to avoid it and makes his way through the bamboo forest instead. Gods forbid he runs into someone, he really doesn't have the strength nor the time to talk to them. Even worse, he could run into Lan Wangji!
Of course he wants answers, but right now he needs to know the Wens are safe. It's not like he hates Lan Wangji, he never did, but their paths have diverged to the point where they would never cross again. He made his peace with it, or so he thinks at least. It's Lan Wangji who still chases after a version of himself that no longer exists for some unfathomable reason.
His feet take him through the thicket down the mountain until he stumbles upon a different path. He recognizes the Cold Springs beneath him and is grateful to not find anybody there.
Quickly he descends the stone steps and rounds the spring glittering in the morning sun. He cannot help but stop at the spring for a moment and let the memories wash over him.
It had been fun studying here and of course annoying Lan Zhan, no, Lan Wangji . It was always amusing getting a rise out of the usually stoic man and he had never failed to deliver. He misses those simpler times. When he could still call himself Jiang Cheng’s brother and a member of the Yunmeng Jiang Clan, but those times were also long behind him, they had gone up in flames with the Lotus Pier.
He closes his eyes for a moment and tilts his head up to the sky. A sigh manages to escape him. He’s been doing that a lot in the past days and weeks. Sighing. And wondering. Was this really the right way? The entire cultivation world stood against him, but couldn’t they see? Couldn’t they understand that not all is black and white? That the Wens under his care were not their enemies?
He’s tired. He’s so tired, but he can’t stop, not now and not until his final breath. He would continue to fight for what is right. Even if no one supports him anymore.
Another sigh and he lets his gaze travel over the clear water surface. He looks at his reflection and cannot find his face in it.
Who is this?
He touches his face and the man staring back at him with his steely grey eyes does the same. But it's not his face. Not his hand. Not his skin.
He stumbles back, his legs suddenly as weak as those of a newborn calf. He falls onto his buttocks, crawls back as far as he can to not face that unknown person in the spring.
Some loose strands fall into his face and then he sees it. His hair is a tad bit lighter than it should be. More brown than the crow-black he used to comb through.
His fingers are a tad bit thinner. And his steps are a tad bit shorter than they should be. The world around him is a tad bit taller.
This isn't his body.
It must be some kind of curse or some kind of intricate nightmare. Because why else would he be stuck in someone else's body? The scars he has are gone, the burn mark on his chest as well.
It's wrong.
Everything's wrong! What is going on? And who had done this to him?
"Wei- gongzi?," someone calls out from behind him, he whips around with Chenqing already in his hands when he sees the First Twin Jade of Lan, Lan Xichen.
Truth be told, he looks worse than what Wei Ying remembers. His face is haggard as if he hasn't been eating properly for quite some time and his usually bright disposition is dulled. But there is still kindness behind his dark golden eyes. Lan Xichen looks surprised to see him here but doesn't make any move to somehow subdue or catch him.
"How are you feeling today? Did you already talk with Wangji?" He sounds genuinely concerned and that's what puts Wei Ying even more off. And how did Lan Xichen recognise him so easily in this body? He was missing something big and he cannot fathom how that could be possible.
He needs to get out of here.
He needs to think and he cannot do it if everything around him screams of a life he can no longer have. If everything he receives are more questions than answers.
There isn't much resentful energy in the Cloud Recess that he could draw upon to begin with. But the little he can pull together should still be enough to give him an escape.
But Wei Ying is not focused. Still rattled and reeling from this impossible discovery. The darkness engulfs him whole before he realizes it, but he manages to channel it nonetheless. The screams of the damned, of the untreatable, of the dying, they ring in his ears making it impossible to hear what Zewu-jun might say. But they are something he is used to, that the Yiling Patriarch knows how to handle. He takes control over their agony and hatred. Forces them to obey him, to give him their strength and to lift him up into the sky and out of Cloud Recess. It’s true that he cannot fly anymore like he used to on his sword, that traveling became much more difficult, but he still knows how to move from one place to the other swiftly. The world around him flies by, trees and shadows and light all mix together. It’s not flying, what he’s doing. It’s more like propelling himself into the air and not falling right away. He lands less than gracefully before the entrance to Cloud Recess and can already hear the shouts of the guards behind him.
Shit.
That had been exactly what he had tried to avoid, but now there was no other way. Through the thundering heartbeat in his ears, he can’t make out any of the words they shout, but he doesn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.
Without thinking twice, he bolts it down the stairs, resentful energy boosting his every step. He sees the glinting of the swords beside him and blasts them away with a wave of his hand, sending them careering into the water below. So he had been a prisoner after all!
It doesn’t take him long to reach Caiyi Town this way and soon after he finally leaves Gusu Lan territory behind.
It still takes him three days to reach the Burial Mounds. With no money on him, he steals the bare minimum he needs to scrape by and avoids any settlements and villages the best he can. He never enjoyed it. Stealing, he means. But without any alternatives, he has no other choice. Arriving at the Burial Mounds half starved wouldn’t do anyone any good. He takes a wide berth around the more traveled roads and the nighthunt areas he remembers. No one finds him and no one sees him. He barely sleeps more than a handful of hours during it all and finally sees the ominous peaks rising in the distance.
During it all he still cannot understand why he’s trapped in this foreign body and who it belongs to. A cursory spell told him that his soul is bound to it. That he is not just possessing it but is now fused to it. But how? Where was his body? What had happened in that one night that he cannot recall? He pushes those questions aside when he reaches the outskirts of the Burial Mounds.
He calls out to Wen Ning, but no one responds. And if that wasn’t enough to push him into a panicked frenzy, the missing protection spells do the rest. Did the Jins break through the barrier without him noticing? How did that happen? And when? How did he not notice?
He doesn’t waste any time and rushes up the familiar path. No one greets him on his way up. No one is there at all. The fields they so painstakingly cultivated are gone. Destroyed and returned to the barren land they once were.
Wei Ying runs up the hill where their little camp had been and only finds ruins.
“No…” his voice is barely above a broken whisper. “No, no, no, no!”
How did this happen? Why?!
“A-YUAN! WEN NING! WEN QING!” he screams at the top of his lungs. “GRANNY!”
No one is there to answer him. No one is there at all.
He looks everywhere: In the tents that could barely be called that way anymore. Ripped and trampled as they are. He searches in the Demon-Quelling Cave and in the Demon-Slaughtering Cave. He searches the eerily dead forest nearby. But only splinters litter the abandoned road and overturned carts and rusted pots and pans. How could this all have happened so quickly? Was this why he had been in Cloud Recess? Had Lan Wangji kidnapped him so the Jins could slaughter the remaining Wens? He was one of the very few people that were able to enter the protection spell, after all. But could he have truly done that?
Something deep inside of him shatters as he falls onto his arms and knees. His dizi unlodges itself from his belt and rolls onto the ground with a sad hollow wooden clatter.
He’s failed them. He’s failed them all again…
Wei Ying clutches Chenqing in his hand. He has to know. He has to make sure! For the first time since he began dabbling in the demonic arts, he feels remorse for playing this melody. The corpses that heed his call don’t belong to the Wens. So, he quickly dismisses them to their final resting places. Relieve floods him for a moment. Because that meant that they escaped, right? There was no blood on the tents, nor on the ground, after all. And if he couldn’t summon them, it meant that they were still alive somewhere! Right?!
With renewed fervor, he searches the camp again for any sign someone might have left behind for him to find, but he finds nothing in this desolate place.
So, he summons the resentful energy once more to show him the way instead. It leads him back into the Demon-Slaughtering Cave. It’s the pool of blood in the middle of the cave where the energy beckons him towards. Where all traces of the Wens end. Where no corpse remains, where no life remains.
It was undeniable now.
They were all gone.
They were truly gone.
Every single one of them.
Wen Ning, Wen Qing, Granny, Si-shi, A-Yuan…
With no bodies to be found and no ashes to collect he settles on carving stone slabs with the small knife he finds in one of his pockets. The names come easily to his mind. After all, he’d just spoken them a few days ago, had seen the faces they belong to, had carried little A-Yuan in his arms. And if his vision blurs with tears midway through, nobody is there to see him anyway.
By evening 50 new gravestones line the dirt path where their camp once stood. And the Yiling Patriarch lies between them. Empty. Hollowed out and drained of everything. There is no revenge burning in him. There is no anger clawing at him. There is nothing at all.
He stares blankly at the darkening sky and doesn’t see the grey slowly turning black.
Was this his punishment? Had someone bound his soul to this body so that he could stand trial for all the mistakes he committed?
The evening turns into deep night, not that he cares nor notices, really. He misses his Shijie. He misses his Didi and the family they once had. He misses his home, wherever it might have been. He misses living without having to worry. Without being tired. Because right now, he's just that: Tired.
Tired of the bloodshed, of the deaths and of the losses. Tired of the fights, of the arguments, of the pain. He's so tired and the weight of all his mistakes, his failures, of all his lost chances, they come crashing down on him. Leaving nothing behind.
He's dead to the world anyway.
What difference would it make?
The Yin Tiger Tally.
That had made all the difference. That had been why they managed to turn the tables during the Sunshot Campaign. Wei Ying doesn't have it on him and he hadn't seen it in the Demon Quelling Cave. He needs to find it first and destroy it. As his last act as the Yiling Patriarch, he needs to know it gone for good, before anyone else might use it to hurt others.
So, he pulls himself together and channels resentful energy once more to track down that cursed object. He finds a lead further away from the camp. A distant flicker of powerful energy he knows too well.
The traces guide him down the hill, back into the pit that spit him out wrong. He never went back here, never wanted to go back here at all. It's true that it's where he invented demonic cultivation, but it's also the place where he was filled with agony much stronger than he ever experienced before. But if the Yin Tiger Tally was still down there, he had to go get it.
He slides down the steep slope and catches his fall with a burst of resentful energy. A white glint catches his eye as he surveys the area for the tally. As he moves closer to it and cleans it of the dirt, he can identify it as a bone. It's undeniably emitting the faint energy of the tally. Around him, he senses more and more energy coming from the ground. So, he digs them out and as more and more bone-splinters accumulate before him, he finally understands.
That’s him. He thinks, no, he knows. Those are his bones. Broken and withered away. Those are his clothes. Pieces of black and red cloth sticking out from underneath the rubble.
He died here.
He was buried here in a shallow grave.
No.
No, he wasn’t buried at all.
No one had dared to come back for him. Or maybe, no one had bothered. The Yiling Patriarch was dead and gone.
So why was he here? Why was he breathing when his body had been torn to shreds? And why couldn’t he remember? It had only been four days since he had bid goodnight to A-Yuan and gone to bed as well. How could it all have gone so bad so quickly? How could he not remember any of it?
And whose body is this? What is it grieving? Whose tears is it spilling? Are they his? Are they his? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know!
The sobs wreck through this body, sapping away the little energy he had left. He cries himself to exhaustion and finds no solace in the rocks digging into his knees nor in the howling wind passing through the empty mountain peaks.