Chapter Text
Xie Lian is viscerally, intimately familiar with pain. In any form it takes, he has been well acquainted with the entirety of its spectrum over 800 agonizing years of directionless wandering. He has starved for months, drowned repeatedly until his body managed to drift limply to shore, been buried alive and helpless for decades, and met terror face to face in the form of a white, asymmetrical facade in the only place he should have ever been truly safe from it. He has fought countless battles, and watched as people around him died both carrying his banner and cursing his name.
Xie Lian has struggled, and cried, and raged so desperately that he thought nothing could make the feeling stop, and yet never in his life had he ever encountered a pain quite like this, because-
“He’ll kill you, Your Highness! I know he’s always smiles and sunshine for you, but Hua Cheng personally destroyed 33 gods all over a centuries old grudge. He despises Heavenly Officials!”
And sure, maybe Mu Qing has a point, but…
“Don’t talk to His Highness like that!” Feng Xin snaps back, shoving in-between the two of them. “He obviously already knows that; there’s no point in screaming it in his face!”
“Who’s screaming in whose face!? Because I’m pretty sure-”
Normally, Xie Lian would have intervened by now. He knows they’re both trying to help, and have been for days now. After all, he’s the one that came to the Heavenly Court trying desperately to find answers, and Mu Qing had even uncovered records of the spell!
“So what, he’s just supposed to waltz down in there, plant one on him, and pray he doesn’t get disemboweled? Maybe if you actually used that organ between your ears you would remember that Hua Cheng needs to kiss His Highness, not the other way around!”
“I’m not saying he should go back down there, I’m saying-”
Xie Lian is tired, though. He has been since he woke up after getting blasted half a kilometer across open water by a very old, very angry spirit awoken by Bai Wuxiang’s defeat. And really, Xie Lian would have been fine… except his luck is always terrible and he’s always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and San Lang is always having to snatch him out of harm’s way and this time it put him in harm’s way, and now…
“Ignore this brainless idiot, Your Highness. I know it’s hard, but you told us yourself both he and all of Ghost City have no idea who you are.”Mu Qing frowns and looks down, biting his lip. “We’ll just have to find another way. It’s only been a week, perhaps we just need to wait it out?”
Xie Lian can see Feng Xin winding back up, but his head is pounding and his eyes are starting to blur all the words on the pages together, so he holds a hand up and sighs. “Maybe you’re right, Mu Qing,” he says with a forced smile that probably looks more like a grimace. “We should keep reading through the archives and see if we can find anything.”
Feng Xin bites his lip and Mu Qing shifts, a guilty wince flashing across both their faces.
“No, I’m sorry Your Highness,” Feng Xin says, bowing his head, “we can keep looking through the archives here. You should go rest.”
“As much as I hate it, I have to agree,” Mu Qing says with a grimace. “We can keep looking through stuff here, but you should go rest. I don’t think I’ve seen you leave here in three days, Your Highness.”
It’s been closer to five, but neither of them need to know that.
“Please, let us take care of it. I promise to leave no page unturned,” Feng Xin adds, grabbing a random, decrepit looking scroll off of a stand and brandishing it like a weapon. “If the answer is here, we’re going to find it!”
Xie Lian hesitates a moment, but nods, plastering a fake smile on his face. “Thank you both. I can’t express how much it means to me that you would be willing to help San Lang like this.”
“Trust me, Your Highness, it’s better for everyone involved that you’re there to keep Crimson Rain Sought Flower under control,” Mu Qing deadpans before catching an elbow to the abdomen. “Oi-”
“What he means, Your Highness, is that we’re happy to help,” Feng Xin grits out, shooting his fellow martial god a fiery glare.
“Of course I mean that! I was just saying-”
Xie Lian ducks out quietly, leaving them to their bickering. He considers for a moment perhaps retreating to Puqi Shrine, but knows it’s pointless. He hasn’t slept since he blinked back to consciousness hours after the spirit had been sealed away, Mu Qing sitting silently by his bedside, looking as if someone died.
Xie Lian still thinks he might.
There is no word in the world to describe the feeling that stabbed through Xie Lian’s heart when he rushed down to Ghost City, only to find it completely inaccessible to himself. The way he had fought with the ghosts guarding the entrance of the city until he nearly cried, only for Hua Cheng to sweep past the road in front of him, not so much as sparing him a glance.
Xie Lian can’t remember the last time he cried since San Lang had returned to him after breaking his shackles. His heart feels like it’s been torn in two, and Xie Lian isn’t sure it will ever fully recover from the sheer disregard paid to him by his husband. He thinks he might vomit up the food Mu Qing had forced on him several hours ago if he thinks about it even a moment longer.
So he stands for a moment at the foot of the archives, and instead really, truly gives some thought to the ill-conceived plan that had floated into his mind some days earlier. It had seemed rash and ridiculous at the time, especially after discovering that they still had surviving records of the last time the Spirit of the Abyss attacked, but now…
Squaring his shoulders, Xie Lian sets off towards the more humble homes in the back of the Civil God Pavilion, mentally preparing himself for a visit with his Guoshi.
It’s not even been a decade since Xie Lian had his cursed shackles removed, and yet somehow he had already forgotten the weight of them. Ruoye stays tucked to his chest, a plain white strip of silk once more tied around his throat. Mei Nianqing had offered to bind it in a different spot, however Xie Lian held his ground on the placement. He had earned this shackle when Wu Ming had been dispersed at Xie Lian’s expense, and now his San Lang had been hurt once more in defense of the prince.
Hua Cheng would most likely be very upset with Xie Lian for his reasoning, but… he can’t be right now.
“San Lang can scold me once he’s back,” Xie Lian whispers, dusting his robes off before knocking at the gate of Paradise Manor.
A single silver butterfly flaps its wings, standing otherwise motionless on the top of the wall surrounding the property. Xie Lian doesn’t hesitate to bow, straightening up and turning to address the ethereal insect knowing Hua Cheng is likely watching right at this very second.
“My most sincere apologies for the unexpected interruption. I have been sent by the Upper Heavenly Court to speak with the Ghost King, Hua Cheng.” He bows again, and the butterfly flaps its wings once more.
All is silent for several minutes as Xie Lian stands at attention, patiently waiting for any sign of motion. After nearly half an incense time, a gruff voice floats over the wall, “Hua Chengzhu isn’t taking guests. Go away.”
Xie Lian nods absently and gives a small smile, the result not entirely unexpected. “Thank you for letting me know! You have my gratitude. I will come back later, then.”
The ghost on the other side of the wall splutters, but Xie Lian pays it no mind as he walks to the end of the path and crosses out of the bounds of Paradise Manor, settling on the ground with his back to the outer gate. Yet another silver butterfly monitors him from a tree nearby as Xie Lian hears something scuttling up the path behind him.
“What are you doing!?” it screeches at him, coming to a stop in front of Xie Lian. “He told you to go away! You can’t just come back wherever you feel like it!”
“Certainly!” Xie Lian agrees, pulling a bun out of his sleeve and taking a small bite. “I will try again tomorrow.”
“You can’t do that!” it cries, pointing quite rudely in his face. “Chengzhu said to leave, so you need to leave!”
Xie Lian blinks up at the ghost who has bullied his way even further into his space, its face only a handful of centimeters from his own. “Did Hua Cheng request that I leave the city entirely, or just his residence?”
“How dare you speak of Chengzhu so casually!? He told you to leave! Fuck off! Go away! Were you dropped on your head or something!?” it shrieks, form flickering in agitation from something vaguely human into an almost indecipherable silhouette.
“Ah, my apologies. Hua Chengzhu, then,” Xie Lian responds in an even tone, giving the ghost a small bow from the waist. “I had left his residence in hope of speaking with him tomorrow. If he would like me to leave Ghost City, I would be willing to do so, however I will still return in the morning.”
The butterfly in the tree flaps its wings and takes flight, soaring over the inner wall of the manor.
“You just- You are so- Agh!” the Ghost rants, stomping its foot(?) into the ground in rage before spinning and storming off. “Do whatever the fuck you want! Chengzhu isn’t going to talk to you, so you’re just wasting time!”
“Thank you for your concern, but I assure you, this is time well spent,” Xie Lian reassures the ghost, who most certainly isn’t listening as it storms behind the walls and slams the gate back shut. Unperturbed, Xie Lian returns to his bun and hums softly as he finishes his meal. After a moment, he readjusts himself against the pole, pulling a small frame from inside his other sleeve. Unfastening the needle and checking his thread, Xie Lian takes in the half-finished silver butterfly set into a red piece of silk as the one on the gates takes off soundlessly into the sky.
There’s certainly more around him, but he can no longer sense them.
The next three days proceed in much the same fashion, however Xie Lian is treated to the sight of a multitude of ghosts going to and from the manor at all times of day. When Xie Lian approaches for the fourth time, his hand doesn’t even make it to the gate before the same voice floats over the wall.
“Hua Chengzhu isn’t taking guests right now. Go away.”
“Certainly. My apologies for the intrusion,” Xie Lian responds with a small smile, pointedly ignoring how they open the gates for a ghost standing directly beside him and allow it through the walls. “I will be back tomorrow, then.”
The angry ghost scoffs, not bothering to acknowledge Xie Lian’s claim. It knows he will be back, after all.
Xie Lian settles once again against the post at the outer gates, closing his eyes and sighing deeply. He fishes in his sleeves for a moment before wincing, remembering how he had run out of food the day before. He debates leaving to find some, but there’s a silver butterfly on the post directly above his head today. Instead, he simply pulls the frame from where it’s tucked into the other sleeve and runs his fingers over it.
The first butterfly is long completed, the frame shifted around as Xie Lian works on a new one. The strip of silk is about a meter long, intended to wrap around the wearer’s waist. When Xie Lian had first moved into Paradise Manor, he had decided he needed a new hobby of some sort. While wandering the streets of Ghost City, he had found a lovely vendor selling the most beautiful embroidery he’d ever seen, and well, one thing led to another, and here he was!
Xie Lian would never call himself a master, but he had learned plenty over the years, and San Lang’s butterflies had long been his favorite thing to create. When this sash was finished, it would be the first piece he would gift to his husband once San Lang had his memories back.
And he would get his memories back.
“Na, gege, why are you sitting on the ground like that?”
Xie Lian freezes, a gutted feeling scraping along his chest. Looking up, he already knows what he’s going to see.
“I’m waiting to meet with Hua Chengzhu,” Xie Lian forces out his voice barely making it past his lips.
The boy standing in front of him looks to be about 17 years of age, with long black hair tied back and a red and white robe with golden embroidery brushing against brown boots.
“Gege?” the boy asks, tilting his head.
Xie Lian swallows before responding, “Apologies, I had something in my throat. I said I was waiting here to meet Hua Chengzhu.”
The boy’s brow wrinkles in confusion, and Xie Lian physically shivers with restraint to keep himself from doing something rash.
“If you want to meet Chengzhu, shouldn’t you be at the gate?” he asks leaning over to peer down and Xie Lian’s project.
“I’m afraid Hua Chengzhu isn’t taking any visitors today,” he says, giving the red-clothed youth a soft smile.
It hurts.
The boy looks at the gates and raises an eyebrow as a ghost with a pig’s head strolls casually through the gates, unimpeded.
“I don’t mean to disrespect gege, but it looks as if Chengzhu just doesn’t want to see you.”
Xie Lian merely hums, another nigh imperceptible shiver running through his frame. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it? That’s alright though; I’ll wait for Chengzhu to be ready to see me.”
The boy huffs and flops down next to him leaving a respectable bit of space between them while still watching Xie Lian work. “Well, gege will be waiting a very long time if that’s the case. If Chengzhu doesn’t want to see someone, then they don’t get seen.”
“As I said before, I don’t mind waiting,” Xie Lian responds firmly, his needle punching through the silk with a bit more force than strictly necessary.
Hua Cheng had waited 800 years for Xie Lian, after all. What was a few more weeks?
The boy chuckles, leaning back onto his hands. “Wow, gege really is determined! This one is impressed!”
Xie Lian’s response is instinctive, even if he knows it’s going to hurt. “And this one being? I do not believe we have been introduced. My name is Xie Lian.”
The boy startles at his half bow in his seated position giving Xie Lian an appraising look. “Ah this one is no one important. It is nice to meet you though, gege! Good luck meeting with Chengzhu!”
Xie Lian was wrong. When he asked for the boy’s name, he thought nothing in the world would hurt more than being told to address a San Lang that didn’t know him. As Xie Lian watches him scamper away, he realizes how much worse it is not to be trusted with a name at all.
The boy comes back to watch the next several days, watching as Xie Lian tries and fails to get an audience with Hua Cheng. He doesn’t interact, just stays on the edges of the property until Xie Lian eventually sits back down by the pillar and pulls his embroidery back out. He will observe quietly, sometimes for a few minutes and others for several hours, but doesn’t attempt to reinitiate conversation until the end of the week.
Xie Lian is used to being without food. It has never been a constant in his life, and while his last several years of marriage have been very comfortable, Xie Lian’s stomach had all but ceased in giving out hunger signals two days ago. There is an ever-present ache in his abdomen, but as long as he doesn’t move too much he doesn’t feel faint.
Finally though, at the end of his eighth day without food, his body decides to protest. Xie Lian makes it to the gate without much issue, but after his tacit rejection, he turns around a little too fast and the world goes black for a moment. When he regains his bearings, there’s an arm draped in red around his middle, supporting him.
“Is gege unwell?” the boy asks, helping Xie Lian to his post.
He slides down gratefully, breathing out slowly. “I am well, but I do thank you for the assistance.”
“If gege was well, I don’t think he would be fainting at the gates,” the boy points out, raising an eyebrow. “Why is gege collapsing?”
Xie Lian sighs, too exhausted for the conversation, but pushing through regardless. “I am simply a bit hungry, that is all. I will be just fine. Please, don’t concern yourself.”
“Hungry?” the boy repeats, sounding perplexed. “Then why doesn’t gege go get food?”
“As I’ve said before, I am waiting to meet Hua Chengzhu. I will not leave here until I have been granted an audience, as long as it takes.”
Or, at least, until his body gives out completely and he’s forced to do something about it so he can still keep walking to the wall and back. The small stream on the border of the path has kept him hydrated and clean, but Xie Lian is uncertain what he will be able to do if he gets to that point.
“Why would it matter if you left for a little bit? There is no way Chengzhu doesn’t know you are waiting. Why be so stubborn?”
Xie Lian might be projecting, but he could swear he could hear a bit of… concern buried underneath the exasperation.
“If I leave from here, then I will no longer be waiting for Hua Chengzhu. I would not do him the disservice of abandoning my mission because of a mere discomfort,” Xie Lian says, leaning his head back on the post and closing his eyes to make the world stop spinning around him.
“I don’t understand you,” the boy says, a hidden edge to his voice. “You’re hurting yourself. Why?”
“Because some things,” Xie Lian murmurs, “are more important than myself. This is one of them.”
“Why are you even here?” he snaps, somewhere on Xie Lian’s right. “What business could a Heavenly Official possibly have with a Ghost King that garners this kind of recklessness?”
Xie Lian opens his eyes and makes contact with the stormy brown ones next to him. “The kind that keeps mortals and gods alike alive and happy. It is my duty to protect and serve the people, and I do it with pride.”
Xie Lian’s eyes slide back closed, and he feels a bit sorry for how sharp he was with San Lan- with the boy, but his head drifts too far before he’s able to apologize. He thinks the boy might be ranting at him, but he can’t be sure. Regardless, this is the first time he’s truly drifted off for more than a brief moment since Hua Cheng was cursed.
It figures it would be in his presence that Xie Lian would feel safe enough to do so.
When Xie Lian opens his eyes again, there’s a bowl of rice and plain chicken sitting by his legs, a pair of chopsticks laying across the top. He smiles faintly before picking it up and tucking in slowly. It would be no good to make himself sick again, after all. Above him, a silver butterfly flaps its wings and takes flight.
When Xie Lian approaches the gates the next day and knocks, there is still no response. He nods in acknowledgement, apologizing for the intrusion before humbly ambling back to his post. When he reaches it, there is once again a small bowl of rice and some sort of meat lying where the empty one from the day before had been. Blinking in surprise, Xie Lian picks it up and glances around, his silent observer nowhere to be seen. He glances above him and bows in the direction of the silvery sentry above him before settling back down to eat. He can barely make it through half the bowl after two such meals in such close proximity, but hums happily anyway. Once he sets aside the extra for later, he pulls out the red sash and frame, unwinding his thread from the needle.
Four perfect butterflies look back at him.
The boy returns at random intervals over the next month of knocking and leaving without a response. They don’t speak much, just the occasional comment here and there, but Xie Lian is able to catch him leaving a meal once, and smiles knowingly at him the next time. The boy huffs and stomps away, cheeks lightly dusted red.
When Xie Lian reaches twelve butterflies on the sash, the sentry above him flutters down to settle on his hand. Xie Lian freezes for a moment, but carefully lifts his hand and allows the insect on his hand a better look.
“I plan to fill the whole sash,” he explains, running his other hand across the pattern. “It’s a sort of moving design to make it look like one butterfly fluttering across the whole thing. What do you think? It certainly can’t compare to the real thing.”
Xie Lian doesn’t receive a response, not that he expects one, but gently moves his guest up onto his shoulder, starting on the thirteenth iteration of flight. It stays with him until the light fades, and Xie Lian is forced to stop his work for the night. He smiles softly as the butterfly takes flight, returning back to its post.
The company was nice, even if it was silent. After all, his private communication array has long since stopped being used. Mu Qing and Feng Xin must have realized something was happening at some point, but Xie Lian no longer has access to his Spiritual Power. Even if they wanted to get into contact with him, there is simply no way for them to connect. He is glad, however, that they haven’t decided to storm Ghost City in some reckless plan to try and save him from Hua Cheng.
After all, of all the people he could possibly need saved from, his San Lang is the very last.
When Xie Lian approaches the gate the next morning, his silver companion flutters back down to land on his shoulder. He jolts in shock as it settles, but continues to the gates regardless. Xie Lian has just raised his hand to knock when the doors swing open, a large ghost startlingly reminiscent of a cow staring back at him.
“Hua Chengzhu will see you now,” it says, turning before waiting for a response.
“R-really?” Xie Lian chokes, stumbling as he rushes to catch up. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this! Truly, you have blessed me this day!”
The ghost looks back at him, raising an eyebrow and sneering in disgust. “Why Chengzhu wants anything to do with a creature like you I will never know, but I will not question the whims of my master.”
Xie Lian nods, momentarily distracted by the sight of a familiar face among the other ghosts wandering the manor. It takes everything in him not to stare, the small woman glancing at him without a hint of recognition. Xie Lian drives his eyes forward, and tries not to think about all the times they had shared tea in the garden while watering the camellia blossoms.
Xie Lian instinctively makes his way through the manor, nearly side-by-side with his guide before he remembers he’s not, technically, supposed to know where to go. The ghost gives him a peeved glance and Xie Lian shrinks back, a guilty smile flickering at the edge of his lips.
As they finally make their way to the throne room, the bovine ghost stops him gruffly, pointing at the door. “Knock on this door. When Chengzhu says ‘Enter,’ you’ll go in there. Bow to Chengzhu, and tell him what you want. He’ll help if he feels like it, but if he doesn’t, you fuck off. And this time, I mean permanently.” He glares, attempting to hammer the point home. “Don’t fuck it up.”
Xie Lian nods, sending a bright “Thank you!” at the ghost’s retreating back before raising his fist. He hesitates for a moment, brushing one knuckle along the silvery presence at his shoulder before steeling his resolve and bringing his fist down on the door. The knock seems to echo far more that Xie Lian remembers, but it’s the silence that follows that rings even louder. After a few more moments, though, a familiar drawl floats through the door.
“Enter.”