Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Xie Lian dies, it’s a relief.

When Xie Lian dies, it’s after a century of begging for mercy, for release from his horrible limbo.

When Xie Lian dies, the heavens shudder as a long-abandoned palace finally crumbles to the ground.

When Xie Lian wakes, he’s barely more than a whisper of a soul.

It can feel the power of his shackles gone but they’d been fading for a century, each time they dragged his soul back they lost just a little more power.

It knows it only managed to die because they’d finally run out of energy.

They had had so much energy when they had been placed but dying multiple times a day for a hundred years had used up everything they had to offer.

It’s soul is too powerful to leave fully but it’s will is too weak to solidify.

It wanders around where it woke up.

It was in an overgrown area, a clearing long abandoned.

There is the remains of a crumbling building around it, long eroded tombstones implying a graveyard of some kind.

It seems somewhat fitting that it woke up here.

It can sense it’s body far below the ground but as rakes it’s worn, bloody fingers against the ground it doesn’t manage to move even a grain of dirt.

It is only partially here.

A shattered soul glued together by the power from a god long lost.

A god long destroyed.

It suddenly doesn’t want to be anywhere near here, unidentifiable negative emotions swirling inside of it like a vortex.

It should stay to protect it’s ashes but it doesn’t want to be in this place any longer.

It had spent far too many years here trapped prisoner by one who didn’t know any better.

It’s student only wanted to give it a proper burial.

It’s student had no idea what they were dooming it to.

It needs to leave.

It wanders for a long time.

People cannot see it.

Ghosts can sense it but they rarely interact, assuming it doesn’t have any conciousness.

It is very lonely.

There is a child who sees it.

It cannot truly help her in it’s current state but it stays with her.

She is starving.

It can’t help but it wants to.

It has been years since it has formed but it had never had anything to want.

It had merely wandered.

But it wants to help her.

When it next tries picking something up it can.

It starts bringing her food and she starts talking to it about things. About how it was starting to look more solid. About how the weather was like. About how her beautiful name is Ban Yue.

She makes it feel.

She makes it want to be present for her.

Each day it solidifies a little further until normal people start to see flashes of it.

It doesn’t like that.

It only wants Ban Yue to see it. Others will only hurt it.

It learns to shift it’s visibility so only those it wants to see it can.

Ban Yue meets a boy and they become friends.

It doesn’t want to trust her around the boy but it starts to care for the boy too.

He says his name is Pei Xiu.

It wants to look after them both.

They have seen too much sadness.

It doesn’t want them to end up like it.

It starts to let the boy see it and the boy is shocked but quickly decides that it is ‘cool’.

It doesn’t remember what that is but it seems like a good thing.

It has learned how to shift form into something less dead.

It doesn’t quite remember what it’s meant to look like but it’s kids get very sad sometimes when they look at it.

It knows it is not pretty.

It is skeletally thin and it’s fingers are bloody stumps. Its chest still has the gaping wound, blood and rot staining it’s clothes.

It makes itself whole, willing it’s wounds away. Its chest is filled with gold instead of a rotting hole and it repeats the process for it’s fingers.

It looks like it had dipped its hands in liquid gold and came away gilded.

It doesn’t know what it’s face is meant to look like so it just wills its cheeks to stop looking so sunken and places the white and gold mask it had been wearing back over it’s eyes. When it looks at its reflection it doesn’t get swallowed by the bad feelings again.

It’s children look shocked but happy when it sees them again. They cry and hug it and it is happy.

It just wants to protect them.

Everything has gone wrong.

Ban Yue is dying in it’s arms.

Ban Yue its precious, beloved child is DYING IN ITS ARMS.

It doesn’t know what happened.

Its children had relied on it less and less over the years as they grew.

They still asked it to stay with them but they also talked more on their own.

It had been lying in a field of lovely flowers when it had felt a tug in its chest.

Now it is here, holding it’s daughters bleeding out form.

There is a war raging around them and it makes it want to scream.

It hates war.

It hates war so so much.

It moves them away from the fighting, onto a flat roof.

It tries to push ghostly power into little Ban Yue’s form but it doesn’t take.

It also has other power deep down.

It reaches for the pool of pure energy that had lied dormant since it had woken all those years ago.

It has to push past barriers to get to it but its daughter is DYING.

It manages to grab onto that power and can feel something shift.

He feels like he’s dying again.

He ignores that and starts pressing power into Ban Yue’s form in the hopes that it isn’t too late.

Everything feels like it’s on fire.

He ignores it.

He can see the gold of his fingers flickering in and out of existence, power draining out of him so fast he can’t keep up his form.

The world starts to crack like glass and he only realises when he lists forward that he had given too much.

He tries to stay solid but the world is melting around him. Tries to keep track of what’s happening but he can’t even see Ban Yue in his arms anymore.

He closes his eyes and sees nothing.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he wakes but there is buildings that weren’t there before and the scars in the city left from the battle have been smoothed away.

He feels numb.

He feels too much.

As he listens to the people he learns that it has been at least three years since the war. No one is talking specifically about why but there also seems to be a much more favourable opinion of Yong’an too.

He wants to scream at them.

He wants to bite and claw and rip because his kids are gone.

His daughter died in his arms and he doesn’t feel his son’s presence in his chest either.

They are dead because of this stupid war and the kingdoms choose peace?!

It was too late.

They chose too late.

He thinks idly of destroying the two kingdoms but a different face pops into his mind.

Wu Ming.

It hurt to remember The Before but he could never forget Wu Ming.

The little ghost who died because of his vengeance.

He couldn’t hurt the kingdoms, it would be rubbing dirt on Wu Ming’s memory.

He decides to leave the area, he can’t deal with the resentment building in his chest.

He can’t deal with standing in his children’s graves.

He wanders and wanders, time slipping by like water.

He is completely solid now, the resentment having welled in him to the point where he had to use his spiritual power to keep it from seeping out and making people uncomfortable.

He falls into habits he only half-remembers from The Before, taking what the people consider trash and repairing it into treasure.

It feels strange to be doing that again after so much time.

He started doing that after Xianle.

He barely remembers Xianle.

Faceless people praising him before tearing him down at the first sign of mistake. How old was he then? Young, he thinks.

Two faceless people standing by him, one his bodyguard, one his attendant. They hated each other he thinks, he can only remember them arguing.

A child with a bandaged face, not from the plague but from before then back when the people praised him. He had been so small but he had felt like a gift from the gods, bestowed for him to catch.

Another child, (the same one?), praying for him and him saying some stupid line like ‘live for me’.

The child had probably died in a ditch somewhere from the plague.

Sometimes people ask for his name but he just smiles and lets them call him whatever they want.

One of the children he helps calls him ‘pretty mask gege’ and it sticks, the name following him through the towns he visits.

He guesses a masked cultivator fixing peoples things was distinctive enough that his reputation always seemed to precede him.

He had changed his form after he had left his children’s grave, had shifted his mask to something that incorporates his daughter’s purples and his son’s turquoise, it covered half his face and he had painstakingly painted flowers all over it. His fingers were still gold tipped but he had filled in the hole in his chest and had shifted his robes to a more modern cut, still plain white but without anything that would make people think he might be the relic of an ancient time that he was.

In The Before he had gotten cuts of fabric and had manually cut them to look like the robes that were popular in Xianle but now he doesn’t really feel any of the same draw to them.

Eventually something happens to end his wandering tempererally.

A tug in his chest leading somewhere else.

He has nothing else to do so he follows it.

He ends up climbing a mountain, the tug growing in power the closer he gets. Ghosts try to attack him but he could have dealt with most of them even when he was alive with his power sealed. They are not an issue.

He does reach a point where the ghosts start getting stronger but he also thinks they are getting smarter too because more and more ghosts see him and choose to leave. He realises he’s stopped hiding his resentment with his spiritual energy.

Once he reaches the top there is three other ghosts there. They were fighting before he got there but they all stopped and started focussing on him when he got up there.

It was actually a hard fight this time.

He’d ended up sprawled on the ground with the throat of one of the ghosts in his mouth and the corpses of the other two dissipating around him.

He felt weak when he had dragged himself to his feet, but he has far too much experience with being hurt and exhausted to be defeated now.

The volcano is warm when he walks into it.

Like a hot bath.

He sinks into the magma and lets it soothe the screaming, angry parts of him and coil around his spiritual energy.

He closes his eyes and lets it consume him.

He is different when he leaves.

He can feel the pulse of the mountain curling in his chest and anchoring him to this place.

He thinks it meant to take something but he doesn’t really notice anything different.

Instead he feels strangely peaceful.

As he walks, flowers bloom under his feet.

He likes it.

It reminds him of Wu Ming.

When he puts energy into them, they bloom into tiny spirits. It’s strangely reminiscent of the Land of the tender except instead of naked women they bloom into little child-like versions of him. At least he thinks it’s him, their faces ring a bell in his mind but he hasn’t known what his face looks like since The Before.

He chooses to wander again, he liked the feeling of helping without the expectations. Of the gentle look of surprise on people’s faces when puts their things back together for them.

He is very old now, he thinks.

People List places he’s been to when they’re talking about ancient kingdoms.

It’s very strange.

He starts to help as a cultivator too.

He wanders around and helps put tortured spirits to rest. If he can’t enjoy eternal rest he might as well live vicariously through others.

It’s during one of these that he meets a man in red.

There are corpses all around and the sky is filled with a rain of blood.

Beautiful silver butterflies flitter around and he can’t help but hold his hand out as they reach for him.

“Are these yours?” He says with absent happiness while watching the insect get closer to him. “I can do something similar too.” And he summons a little white flower for the creature to land on.

It does a strange little jerk before gently landing on the flower, the other butterflies pausing in their advance towards him.

It’s a little weird but he hasn’t seen such beauty in a long time so he ignores it to run a finger gently against the bug’s back.

“They are mine.” The man says haltingly and he has to ignore an involuntary shiver at that voice, “That flower, where did you get it?” Such a weird question to ask, but the longer he keeps the man talking the longer he gets with the butterfly so he obliges.

“Well I make them I guess?” His voice turns a little confused towards the end, “I can make them talk too but I don’t do that often because it feels weird leaving a sentient being behind and I can only carry so many little plant spirits with me at a time.” He feels a shift in his pocket and the eldest of his little flowers pokes it’s head out of his pocket and gives the man a little wave.

There’s a choking sound and he looks up to see the man in red staring at him with wide horrified eyes.

“You are a ghost.” The man says quietly, voice hollow. He tilts his head slightly.

“Pretty sure.” He replies, tone light, “Unless there’s some other being you can become after dying, but yea, I am like a good 90% sure I’m a ghost. Why?” It was very strange that this man was so interested in him, he seemed very powerful though, so maybe…

He jolts as the man is suddenly right in front of him, hands twitching in the air like he was stopping himself from reaching for something.

“Can- can I take off your mask?” the man asks and he makes a face.

“I would rather you didn’t, I don’t actually remember what I’m meant to look like so I just wear the mask so I don’t have to think about it.” It’s not an uncommon issue for ghosts, many wear masks or other coverings for the same reasons.

The man makes a noise like he’d been stabbed and flinches back, eyes watering and face full of agony.

“Did… did I know you?” He asks gently, feeling somewhat like he’s comforting a terrified stray, “My life is quite blurry so I’m sorry if we were close.” The man opens and closes his mouth a few times before his voice comes out, heavily choked.

“We weren’t… close. Y- you saved me as a child and I followed you for a bit…” The man trails off and he looks wretched. He leans forward and gently pries the man’s hands off from where he was digging them into his skin. He searches the man’s face, trying to place it but his memory was so blurry and fragmented.

Until a smell catches his nose.

A smell like flowers and metal.

It’s entirely improper but he can’t help leaning forward and gently sniffing the miserable man. The man goes completely stiff at his insane action but that doesn’t matter because he knows who this is.

“Wu Ming.” He whispers, realisation settling through his whole body and making his eyes well with tears under his mask. “Oh Wu Ming, you survived!” He can’t help the way emotion slams through him like a battering ram and he tugs his little (not really anymore) ghost against him, cradling him in his arms.

“Dianxia.” Wu Ming lets out in a desperate whisper.

They end up curled on a bed of white flowers, his hands running through Wu Ming’s hair, tears slowing to a crawl as he lets himself settle into the idea that his lovely Wu Ming is here and safe.

Everything he has been through is worth it just for this moment.

“Dianxia.” Wu Ming asks softly and continues at the little hum he lets out, “Do you want me to take you to see yourself?” His voice is halting, embarrassed, “Not like in a mirror, I… made portraits over the years so I didn’t forget you.”

His breath catches and he has to resist the urge to start sobbing again.

“That-“ His voice is heavy with emotion, “That would be amazing, Wu Ming thank you!” Gods it’s been actual centuries since he last saw his real face, he couldn’t bare the thought of getting it wrong so he’s never actually crafted himself a face, and his Wu Ming has kept it, has saved his face when even he can’t remember it.

Wu Ming helps him up, endlessly gentle with him, and rolls some dice in his hands. A door appears and he’s tugged through.

Wu Ming places a hand across his eyes and guides him across the place he’d transported them to. “Sorry Dianxia but I want you to see your natural face before you see any of the others. Sometimes when ghosts redescover their faces, they get stuck in the first they see. I don’t think you’d want to be wearing unremovable makeup for all eternity.” He laughs lightly and agree’s with Wu Ming.

It takes a little time before they stop moving and Wu Ming gently removes his hand from his face.

There is a painting in front of him.

It’s exquisite in it’s artistry, so real it looks like the subject would step out of the frame any second. It’s a man with soft brown hair done half-up and he’s smiling gently at the viewer with simple but fine white robes covering his body.

Xie Lian’s chest hurts.

The painting is done with such care and attention to detail it makes him want to cry.

“Oh Wu Ming.” Xie Lian whispers and he can’t stop the tears from coming this time. Wu Ming shifts towards him and holds him so gently, as if the wind would blow him away.

He slips the mask off his face and looks at the world without it for the first time in centuries. He kind-of feels naked without it.

Wu Ming stares at his face like a dying man, fingers gently tracing Xie Lian’s face all over. Wiping away his tears with the reverence Xie Lian doesn’t even think he got as a god.

For the first time in a very long time, Xie Lian knows who he is.

Chapter Text

At some point Wu Ming had steered him off to a great manor with towering doorways and extravagant furnishings. Xie Lian wants to say he appreciated it as it deserved but his mind had been somewhat fuzzy since he’d managed to gain his face back.

He’s curled into his Wu Ming right now, the man had put him on a bed and tried to leave a while ago saying something that Xie Lian’s brain refused to compute but the idea of separating from his Wu Ming made him feel like he’d just blow away in the wind.

There are hands stroking through his hair and he feels so soft and safe.

He never wants to go back to the before.

He hasn’t felt safe like this in such a long time.

Everything in his mind feels quiet and calm.

After almost two hundred years he can feel that he would be able to move on if he wished.

He doesn’t want to though, his Wu Ming never got the love and protection that he deserved. If Xie Lian will do anything in his life, he wants his little ghost to never feel sad or hurt again.

He lifts his head from where it had been tucked into the other ghost’s chest and looks at Wu Ming.

The man is staring right back at him with such a vulnerable expression that it made Xie Lian’s stomach squirm. Xie Lian slips a hand up to wipe away one of the tears making it down the man’s face and smiles softly at him.

“Dianxia.” Rips out of the man’s throat like a prayer and more of the warm squirmy feelings pulse through him; Xie Lian can’t help but notice that Wu Ming had gotten very pretty in the 800 years since they last saw one another.

“Dianxia, this servant apologises for being so useless.” The man continues and annoyance flares in Xie Lian’s chest like a spark in a field of dry grass.

“No.” He states, sitting up so he can cup both hands around his silly ghost’s face and aim his eye at Xie Lian. “You did nothing wrong. You died for me. Twice! If anyone has to apologise it’s me for dragging you into dying a second time just because I couldn’t let my anger go.”

Wu Ming’s eyes are wide and his skin is cold. They are ghosts now, both of them. The living let thoughts rush through them like water, the dead get stuck in patterns and thought loops, spiralling till there’s nothing left of their original self.

Xie Lian just wishes he could have met the loyal soldier when he was alive. But he hadn’t and one of his dear Wu Ming’s stuck patterns is clearly an incorrect feeling of worthlessness. Xie Lian refuses to abide by his dear moral compass feeling anything other than worthy.

“You saved my face. You kept my identity when even I had lost it.” Wu Ming is biting his lip like he thought it was shameful somehow. “I would have never recovered that part of myself if it wasn’t for you so never ever call yourself useless again.” His voice is quiet but commanding, Wu Ming is his and so it was Xie Lian’s job to protect him, even if only from his own mind.

Wu Ming is staring at him like he was still the god he had been long ago, like he was something precious and not just a creature that brought misfortune and death wherever he went. Wu Ming’s tears rolled down his face and Xie Lian cant help but lean forward to give him a gentle kiss on his forehead, gilded fingers wiping away his precious one’s tears.

“But you died!” He gasps into Xie Lian’s chest, “You died and I wasn’t there for you!”

Oh his poor Wu Ming.

“Wu Ming” he whispers into the other’s hair, “I am honestly happier dead.”

It feels like he shouldn’t say it, like it’s some horrible taboo that he’s breaking but as he says it, he knows it’s true.

“Even when I was a god I was just a puppet, a figurehead, controlled by expectations and orders and rules. The one time I did something for me, the one time I chose to do something myself, my whole world crashed down around me. Even as a prince deviating from the script that someone else wrote for me, resulted in pain and suffering.” Xie Lian can’t help but let out a harsh laugh, memories blurry with age but remembered nonetheless purely by the indignation and anger surrounding them.

“I once stopped a child from falling to his death in the middle of a parade and you know what happened after? I was scolded for saving some poor child’s life and my insane cousin decided to shove the child in a sack and drag him behind a carriage.” His Wu Ming is stiff against him but Xie Lian is so fucking angry at the memory that he can practically taste the emotion.

He pauses and takes an unnecessary breath to calm himself.

“Dying sucked.” He says blankly, not about to lie about something like this, “It was horrible and dark and so unbearably lonely.” Flashes of screaming till his voice refused to make a sound, scratching at the coffin till his fingers were nothing more than stubs, the oppressive darkness that made him feel like he was beign consumed by some horrific entity.

“It hurt and I wanted nothing more than to just wake up and find it had all just been a horrific nightmare. But it wasn’t, and you know what?” He gently cupped Wu Ming’s face again so his red, swollen eye could lock with Xie Lian’s, “Dying sucked, but death… death was freedom.”

Wu Ming’s eye still looks so terribly sad but now it has a look of grim understanding.

“Nobody controls me anymore. I go where I want and I help whoever I want. If someone orders me not to help a wife getting beaten or a starving child, I just ignore them.” Warmth surges through him like a wildfire and he can’t help but let it show on his face. “Nobody is forcing me to be some perfect god-prince, I am just ‘that strange cultivator who helps anyone’ and it is so freeing!”

“All my life I’ve wanted to help and protect and now I actually can.” As he says it, he can feel something deep inside him latch onto the statement because it was true, everything he’d truly wanted, not what he’d resorted to when controlled by anger, but what he felt so much joy and happiness from achieving, was protection.

He’d wanted to protect that little boy.

He’d wanted to protect his people.

He’d wanted to protect Ban Yue and Pei Xiu.

He’d failed so many times but he’s stronger now.

Now he will protect Wu Ming, his little ghost. The one he’d failed so long ago.

He feels like something in his chest is thrumming with the realisation but he ignores it because his Wu Ming is staring at him with something like adoration and the squirmy stomach feeling is back.

“I’ll help you!” he says with almost puppy-like enthusiasm. “I wanted to be able to provide for you when I finally found you so I started a city.” His cheeks go a little pink and Xie Lian is struck by the insane urge to bite them. “It’s already established so I can delegate to others if you want to go travelling or you could help me protect the people of the city? I mean you don’t have to obviously but… I mean-”

Xie Lian laughs and flops forward into Wu Ming, sending them both tumbling onto the bed.

“I don’t care right now.” Xie Lian chirps, “I want to protect Wu Ming, I’ll stay wherever you are for now.” Wu Ming goes bright red and makes a noise like a dying kettle and clasps his hands in Xie Lian’s robes.

“If I’m dreaming, I’ll kill blackwater!” He says with feeling and Xie Lian giggles.

“Who’s that? Does he have dream manipulation powers or something.” Wu Ming makes a disgusted face and rolls his eye.

“No one important dianxia, he just owes me. I don’t think he has dream powers but usually in situations like that, it’s in some level his fault.” Xie Lian pokes him in the nose.

“I get the feeling that it’s not the case but if he does cause you trouble, just tell me and I’ll stab him a little for you.” Xie Lian tries to keep the violence to a minimum because suffering begets more suffering and all that but since he died he has recognised that his morals tend to go out the fucking window when it comes to protecting the people he cares about. He never did mention to Ban Yue what happened to the fruit vendor that had tried to cut her hands off for stealing a single fruit from his stall. Let’s just leave it at turnabout is fair play.

He should be more worried about that but honestly he has decided to be more selfish now that he’s dead so he can leave ‘being a paragon of virtue’ to someone alive and just keep to his occasional flashes of somewhat significant violence.

He got stabbed and locked in a coffin for a hundred years, some abusive street vendors can afford to live without their hands.

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” Wu Ming says softly, “By the way I have a new name now.”

Xie Lian props up his head so he can see Wu Ming better, “Oh? What is it then, don’t leave me in suspense?”

“I uh- I chose the name Hua Cheng. But I’d prefer if you called me San Lang?” His voice trailed up a little at the end as if embarrassed to be asking for such and endearment but Xie Lian loves it.

“Hua Cheng.” He says testing the name on his tongue, “San Lang,” he smiles at the fact that his little nameless ghost had chosen such a pretty name, and a little possessive part of him purrs at the fact that he’d chosen a family name that Xie Lian had also used.

“You picked a good name,” Hua Cheng radiates with smug joy and Xie Lian has to bite his lip at how warm seeing him happy makes him. “Does it mean anything?” Hua Cheng blushes again and Xie Lian is very quickly getting addicted to the sight.

“You gave me a flower when I was young and lost, I’d kind-of given up on the idea of kindness and had no idea why I even still tried. I prayed to you and you handed me a flower and told me to live for you. It was everything I needed in that moment. And, uh- Cheng is after-”

Xie Lian can’t help but cut him off, mind reeling and he knows if his heart still beat, it would be pounding.

“You were the child I caught!” Hua Cheng stiffens and shrugs lightly and Xie Lian cant help but lean forward and trace his fingers against his face, “You didn’t die in the plague. Oh I had convinced myself-, but no matter. You were so tiny back then, but you grew up wonderfully.” Xie Lian is full of fluttering joy for the child he thought he had failed, he thought had been consumed by the horrors that had filled Xianle. But he’s here now, where Xie Lian can keep him safe. His little Wu Ming had been the even littler Hong-er.

Of all the people that had left him, Hua Cheng is the only one that keeps coming back.

Xie Lian closes his eyes and buries his face in the front of Hua Cheng’s robes, emotions flooding though him like waves. He lets out a wet laugh, “I thought I was done with the whole tear-invoking realisations for the night but apparently you had one more for me, my San Lang.” Hua Cheng does a full body shiver under him at the use of the pet name and slips a hand up his back to rub there comfortingly.

“Apologies dianxia, I will endeavour not to cause you any more tears.” Xie Lian smiles against his chest.

“You better not.” He says teasingly, lifting his ugly tear-stained face to stare at his San Lang, “Or I’ll bundle you into a blanket and hide you away somewhere you can never get hurt.”

“Only if I get to do the same to you dianxia, somehow I get the feeling that you’ve managed to get yourself into much worse situational than I have.” Xie Lian makes a face at him and then buries his face back into Hua Cheng’s robes, breathless giggles shaking his form.

“If I get to call you San Lang, then you have to stop calling me something so formal as ‘dianxia’” He states once the giggles have abated enough for him to get a word out, “It doesn’t even apply any more San Lang, and being a ghost is a lot more fun than being a prince was.”

Hua Cheng pouts for a second before a conniving look paints itself across his face, “Oh~ well if I can’t call you dianxia… how about I call you gege?” Hua Cheng is grinning like the cat that got the cream and now it’s Xie Lian’s turn to let out a kettle noise at the idea of such a pretty man calling him gege, it should be illegal, that’s what it should be.

He can feel the smugness radiating off of Hua Cheng and all of a sudden they’re both laughing again, the situation so silly that it’s ridiculous. Of course the child was Wu Ming was Hua Cheng, of course Hua Cheng finally found him again, of course two powerful ghosts were sprawled all over one another acting like teenagers. Why not.

Life is so weird and death somehow manages to be even weirder.

Xie Lian wouldn’t change it for the world.

He closes his eyes and relaxes into his San Lang, Honghong-er and Wu Ming all grown up and knows full well that if anyone tried to take this from him, he would rain down hell upon them.

Chapter Text

It’s a strange time, the ensuing year.

They were both people who had spent large swathes of time alone and independent, by all logic there should have been awkwardness and annoyance at the lack of space from both of them.

But there was none of that.

Xie Lian and Hua Cheng slotted together like they had once been the same person but were ripped into two beings.

That first week they didn’t even leave the bedroom, too scared that everything would just evaporate if they stepped out of their little sanctuary. They spoke of the lives they had lived between the last time they’d seen each other and now, they spoke of the people they met and the troubles they had dealt with.

They cried and laughed and felt.

They were two broken people who slotted perfectly together, each being able to comfort the other through their worst memories.

Xie Lian whispers of his children, little Ban Yue and Pei Xiu, not so little anymore when they had been taken from him because of stupid unnecessary conflicts.

Hua Cheng clings to him, tone hollow, as he tells of years of searching, centuries of feeling purposeless and adrift. The way he’d only started to properly put himself back together as he’d created Ghost City.

Xie Lian has never felt as close to another being as he has to his San Lang.

Xie Lian has done so many horrible things over the years, many things that people had barely even seen a glimpse of before they had left him, but San Lang… he had seen Xie Lian at his worst. At the time where Xie Lian was fully prepared to kill thousands, if not millions, just to make them hurt the way he did.

And he had stayed.

He had looked at all the worst parts of him and had chosen to die for him anyway.

Twice.

(Xie Lian is not over that and he’s going to have to be watching his San Lang like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t try to bump it up to thrice)

And for Hua Cheng, Xie Lian gave him something to live for, some hope in this horrific world. In a world where Hua Cheng was shown no kindness by his fellow man, where he was beaten and abused for being cursed, Xie Lian had caught him. He had put himself in hatred’s way to save a disgusting child with absolutely no expectation of reciprocation.

How could he want to destroy the world when people like Xie Lian exist in it.

How many poor damaged souls would he be denying their own saviour.

So instead of burning a bloody path through the mortal and heavenly realms, he only targeted thirty three gods.

Instead of destroying everything he saw to cope with the distance from his god, he created.

Statues. Paintings. Ghost City.

What had started purely as an attempt to honour his god slowly morphed into him creating things that he, and hopefully by extension Xie Lian, would like to see.

And his god had come back to him and adored them. Had adored the works he had done for fun far more than the ones solely made for reverence.

Xie Lian may no longer be a god but to Hua Cheng, being around him is the greatest heaven one could achieve.

When they finally expand their little bubble, Hua Cheng finally gets to take care of his god the way he had always craved.

Xie Lian gives him such a fond exasperated look when Hua Cheng presents him with the first piece of jewellery that it makes him want to explode into butterflies and burrow under his skin. The way his eyes had widened into amazed sunrise when Hua Cheng has mentioned that he’d made it will stick with him until his ashes are finally dispersed.

Hua Cheng is horribly grateful at his choice of artful pursuits when he realises that Xie Lian is so much more likely to accept a gift if Hua Cheng made it himself. He almost cries when his god surprises him with calligraphy in return.

They coil around each other, both feeding into each other’s love languages.

Xie Lian takes to trying the assorted crafts Hua Cheng loves with abandon, wanting to make his San Lang something more than pretty words or noxious foods (both things that Hua Cheng adores receiving). His San Lang loves teaching him the crafts and Xie Lian loves seeing Hua Cheng explain things he enjoys, the way his eyes light up and he ends up going on tangents and impassioned rants about the differences between certain methods over the centuries.

Xie Lian doesn’t particularly take to any of the crafts except weaving (something he had been taught as a child and offered very warm nostalgic memories of a mother’s touch and the joy of success) until San Lang had taken him to his forge.

It had been one of the last crafts they had gone over as it wasn’t San Lang’s favourite but as soon as Xie Lian clumsily tried making his first sword, he was spellbound.

Those days were his favourite; San Lang explaining the theory of some smithing technique he’d read about while Xie Lian threw himself into the amazement of making a weapon with his own hands. San Lang loved to read, loved the theory of smithing, but had never really liked the process of making weapons himself. They fit together so perfectly.

Some days when they were not feeling up to the conversations that usually flowed so easily, they just existed near one another, the sound of metal being hammered accompanied with the tap tap tap of stone being chiselled of the light twinkling of jewellery.

Xie Lian had never met someone else who had quiet days the same way he did, someone else who didn’t find his extended silence as a sign of anger or annoyance. His San Lang is just as good company whether they’re sprawled across one another talking about anything and everything or just quietly working next to one another taking comfort in the others presence.

Sometimes when Xie Lian is watching him talk about something that excites him or when he’s tucking another little handmade trinket into Xie Lian’s hair, he thinks about how glad he is that he is a ghost now. Xie Lian had never really thought about taking a partner as a human, had hated the idea of an organised marriage with some woman he’s met once or twice, so he’d chosen abstinence as his cultivation method.

But now… Xie Lian is a ghost… he doesn’t need to ignore it when looking at San Lang makes his chest feel so full it might burst. Ghosts don’t cultivate the same way humans or gods do, they don’t need to worry about avoiding such things as lust or hatred because indulgence in such things is what makes them stronger.

Xie Lian doesn’t indulge yet, doesn’t want to threaten this relationship before it was more established, they had only been living together for a year after all. That’s not even mentioning how Xie Lian has 1) no idea how to court someone and 2) no idea how to seduce someone.

But Xie Lian doesn’t push the feelings down when he sees San Lang look at him with such loving eyes, doesn’t run away when they’re sleeping in the same bed and Xie Lian realises that it’s only really a matter of time before their relationship progresses that way. Even though it scares him more than he can really explain.

Xie Lian has never loved elegantly.

Every person he has ever loved has left him one way or another and left Xie Lian having to glue the broken pieces of himself back together.

Sometimes Xie Lian was the one to push them away himself.

But… San Lang is the only one who came back.

Over and over.

Time and time again.

His San Lang had died for him twice and still managed to return.

And now Xie Lian had the power to protect him back.

It took Xie Lian eight centuries and dying to learn how to be selfish but now he knows that he’s never going to let San Lang leave him, and if 800 years of learning to read people has any weight, San Lang doesn’t ever want him to leave either.

Xie Lian treasures the vulnerable disbelieving looks his San Lang give him when Xie Lian acts on his impulses; the way he lets out a little punched out breath when Xie Lian presses a kiss to his cheek and the way he smiles like Xie Lian is somebody worthy of worship every time Xie Lian links their hands together.

It’s amazing how they can literally sleep in the same bed but walking around paradise manor with linked hands is what sets their cheeks aflame.

Xie Lian is not blind to their own ridiculousness.

But he loves all the same.

It’s after the first time that Hua Cheng takes him strolling through Ghost City that Xie Lian notices something. The air has an almost imperceptible buzz of his San Lang’s power and when Xie Lian brushes his hands against the buildings and ground he can feel it there too.

It’s when they sit on twin thrones in the gamblers den, concealed by a curtain, that Xie Lian notices his power in the air too. It coils lazily with San Lang’s slowly getting coaxed into the surroundings and Xie Lian realises he can sense the entire trail they’ve taken from the manor through the city.

San Lang’s face is once again doing that warm disbelief look that Xie Lian has grown to adore and he gently takes one of Xie Lian’s hands with his own shaking ones and delicately presses kisses against his knuckles. Xie Lian’s mouth goes dry as foreign impulses surge through him and leave him warm but wanting.

“You would make your home here?” San Lang says in that voice that is more Wu Ming than Hua Cheng, the voice that makes Xie Lian forget that San Lang is currently a large, physically imposing ghost and instead makes him want to wrap up his small Wu Ming and protect him from everyone who ever hurt him.

“Of course I would? What do you mean?” He lets out fondly, brushing the hairs out of San Lang’s beautiful face.

“You would make your lair here, with me?” And Xie Lian loves him so much.

“I would never want to settle down anywhere else San Lang, I told you a year ago and my answer hasn’t changed, I want to stay with you and protect you and hold you hand as we walk across the gardens. I want to see your dimples that only show when you’re really into the topic you’re telling me about. I want to have quiet days were no one expects me to force myself to speak where I can just curl up next to you and not have to think about whether you’ll think I’m annoyed at you just because I’m not talking.”

“San Lang I’m not making my home anywhere, you are my home.”

Tears run down his face and Xie Lian lets out a soft happy laugh before standing from his seat and gently curling into his little ghosts lap. Arms move up to grip at his back and Xie Lian presses light kisses all over his San Lang’s face.

The world threw so much hatred and cruelty at his lovely little ghost that sometimes he just needs to be reminded that this is real, that he isn’t alone anymore.

His San Lang does the same for him when he wakes up and can’t tell reality from a sensory deprivation based hallucination. When he’s still so sure that this is just his brain playing tricks on him as he dies on repeat, consumed by the darkness.

They both spent far too long without kind touches.

Sometimes the only proof that those times have passed is to curl into one another until all they can feel of hear is their unnecessary breathing and the beating of Xie Lian’s dead heart. Ghosts usually don’t bother with things such as heartbeats but there’s something so unbelievably calming about listening to someone else’s heartbeat when you feel like you’re drowning under the tides of your own past.

It takes barely a fraction of his power to pull them across their lair and onto their bed in Paradise Manor so Xie Lian can properly wrap himself around his chosen person.

There is nowhere Xie Lian would rather be than with his San Lang.

It takes two weeks for the news to travel and for a meeting to be called.

After a year of suspicious absence, Crimson Rain Sought Flower Hua Cheng has returned and is rumoured to be in a romantic relationship with a mysterious ghost.

Simultaneously, Ghost City, Hua Cheng’s lair has suddenly doubled in power and size, becoming near-painful for heavenly officials to even get near.

A lair’s power increase is proportional to the power of the new ghost. Ghost City doubled and Hua Cheng is a calamity.

Combined with the unaccounted-for calamity (affectionately nicknamed ‘the masked flower’ by the incredibly ‘inventive’ heavenly officials that had been stationed at the kiln to gather information when the calamity escaped) it is a fairly safe bet to assume that Ghost City now hosts not one but two Calamities.

This is very not good.