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Chapter Text

“Xiao Hua?”

Xiao Hua? Who was that? He stirs, not quite awake, but not quite asleep either. There’s a fatigue in his bones that keeps him caught in between dreams and reality, a suspended state of being trapped within flickering colors around him and having an awareness that makes no sense while he’s within them.

“Xiao Hua?” the voice says again, and he feels himself getting closer to sleep. Closer to where the skies aren’t black and red, ash and lava touching together to paint the ground in bodies and blood. 

It’s so dark. There’s smoke in his throat, his nose, but he doesn’t choke on it. 

Because I’m already dead, he thinks, and it’s such an idle thing to realize, as if it were no different from going outside and thinking how hot or cold the day is. His body aches when maybe being dead should mean he shouldn’t, but instead, there is no part of him that doesn’t hurt. The sleep calls to him, louder; he wants this sleep. 

The sky’s a sleepy sort of gray, the kind that comes right before a storm and stays until it’s over. He lays atop a pile of hay, beneath a slowly dilapidating roof of a horse stable. The lamp light isn’t quite bright enough, not that it matters with how he’s barely awake in the first place. Sighing, he shifts, pillowing his head on his arm more comfortably. 

Suddenly the stable brightens a bit more, and quiet footsteps approach. “Hua Cheng, you’re still out here?” 

The boy that joins him—Hua Cheng? Is that his name?—kneels down beside him. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t open his eyes.

“Xiao Hua, come now. Wake up.”

He opens his eye. 

Xiao Hua…Hua Cheng. Could that have been his name? All he remembers is Wu Ming, all he remembers from before then is Hong Hong’er. His parents never called him by name. They never addressed him at all. But this voice, it’s speaking to him. Was it Hua Cheng before that, Hua Cheng at birth? Perhaps it is. Climbing to his feet, he looks around at the ruined landscape around him. 

Surviving Tong’lu, surviving this, should’ve been impossible. 

There are gashes across his body that would’ve killed him dozens of times over if he were still human, still alive—the war, just like his own death, has taught him as much. He knows the feeling of blood beneath his boots, the feeling of it slowly trickling out from under his body. The screams that flooded his ears when he died the first, died again a second time, are silent when he comes to life for the third. For once, there is nothing but silence, and his eye does not close. He sags with relief, his blade dragging along the ground. If he could rest here, just for a moment…would it lead to a final death? 

“If you have no reason to live, then live for me.”

“Dianxia…” Hua Cheng blinks against the blur of exhaustion. He heard His Highness’ voice. He knows he—but Dianxia cannot be here. Dianxia…

Dianxia is waiting for me. 

The thought sends him forward. A soldier doesn’t leave their prince behind. A person saved doesn’t reject their savior. No matter his death, no matter this hell, Hua Cheng will not abandon His Highness. 

There’s ruin where the flesh and skin of his back and hands used to be, now a non-skin made from the remnants left of his soul, touched by flame and pitching lava. Hua Cheng crawls through the very remains of the ghosts he had slayed, tearing the skin of his soul further and leaving his nails behind on the dirt and pumice stone. 

The Heavens, he’d learned upon his temporary ascension, would know of his freedom and, of that, they would be revolted. His ashes would be their only chance to kill him completely. 

His ashes were now his lifeline, he thinks wryly, pulling himself onto his feet. The last of him is now all of him. Hua Cheng casts his gaze upwards, at the clouded skies that are almost as dark as the ash that fills the air. The gods have a funny sense of humor. 

Then, turning in disgust, Hua Cheng stumbles towards Xianle. He has to find his body before the gods do. 

There’s someone leaning over his body. A junior official, perhaps, or a very strong cultivator, Hua Cheng can postulate that much just from the energy the person emanates. The battlefield where Hua Cheng lays is empty. Where there had been dozens, hundreds, of ghosts before, resentful spirits clamoring for the end of Yong’an, there now isn’t a single one. 

The cultivator must’ve put them to rest. 

Hua Cheng doesn’t bother with silence or discretion—he wasn’t going anywhere—no matter what this cultivator does. E-Ming is a comforting weight in his hand, not like the rusted, unevenly weighted blade he had taken to battle, but Hua Cheng doesn’t raise it. Humans, he will not touch, not with the intention to kill, not again. 

If Hua Cheng wanted to kill them, he could’ve. The cultivator seems to notice him just a breath too late, spinning smoothly and quickly onto their feet, a saber drawn, slashing towards Hua Cheng’s throat. He sees just a sliver of a pale face, obsidian eyes—

It’s him. 

Suddenly, it’s as though the air has shifted, stifling, then gone. Hua Cheng needs air; his death feels as if it finally settled in, and he raises his blade to parry. Metal clashes against metal, clanging through the too-still air of this graveyard that’s once been supple land, and quick, quicker than the man’s eyes can widen, Hua Cheng slams his foot into the man’s chest. 

There’s a sickening crack: the man, though well-trained, takes the full brunt of the kick, stumbling backwards so quickly and so far back, it’s as if his feet left the floor. His heels nearly meet Hua Cheng’s corpse, feet panickedly lifting higher as if to avoid it—

(Hua Cheng nearly laughs. What use was it to respect the dead when the living did not matter?)

—and that’s the man’s mistake. He slams to the ground hard. Hua Cheng hears the breath be ripped out of the man’s throat. 

Eyes like black diamonds seem dull in this groggy-skied graveyard. Empty, tired. But, as the man picks himself off the ground without betraying for a moment the broken bones in his chest, those eyes watch Hua Cheng warily. The fear that should be there, though, isn’t. All that remains is the broken shards of all that glittered in this man’s gaze before, shattered and reformed. Hardened, cold, ready for a fight. 

They’re not the same as Hua Cheng remembers. But then, what did Hua Cheng actually remember? The memories of a miserable child were only daydreams, after all. 

Hair hanging low over his face, he knows there’s no chance for his face to be recognized. Hua Cheng steps closer. Brittle bones, scattered pieces of corpses of people long forgotten, break beneath his feet. 

“Don’t!” the man suddenly snarls, and he comes closer, too. “This field is not your playground—”

“It is simply the place I died,” Hua Cheng finishes, and he smirks. “But you already know that, don’t you, General Mu Qing?” 

The man freezes. His eyes flit from Hua Cheng to the body on the ground and back again. “You…” 

But Mu Qing doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, flames erupt from his palms and he launches it towards Hua Cheng’s body. The patched grass around his body starts to burn: it flickers, sparks, catching onto the ragged remains of the clothes on Hua Cheng’s body. 

Hua Cheng almost curses, and stops, watching Mu Qing take off. What he needed was not his corpse, but his ashes. In this holy fire, Hua Cheng watches his body burn. 

He’ll find Mu Qing again later. 

🎨 • 🐈‍⬛ • 🎨

The Heavens he rejected are glorious; Hua Cheng will make his paradise even better. 

Mu Qing, a martial god, just like the master he’d once served, watches Hua Cheng bring the end to thirty-three of his peers, and doesn’t even flinch. 

“You’re next,” he says it in a prayer. Mu Qing meets his eyes and tilts his chin up. 

He doesn’t reply, because he doesn’t recognize Hua Cheng, because that’d surely be beneath a god of Mu Qing’s caliber. Hua Cheng sneers. But he hears the response, the answer, in Mu Qing’s gaze anyways. 

Do your best then. 

🎨 • 🐈‍⬛ • 🎨

E-Ming. 

Distressed life. 

It’s on Mu Qing, on this man he’d once dared not touch with ill-intent, that Hua Cheng learns the most about this wretched blade. The eye inlaid in its handle does not open, not for anyone but Hua Cheng, but the cursed power of it thrums through the metal as it slices into Mu Qing’s body. Fight after fight after fight—Hua Cheng  had died in Xianle and survived in Tonglu, and the experience made him all the stronger. He finds gods of martial ability, gods who also fought and won wars or, at the very least, survived them, are pathetically lacking in caliber. 

His eye dances with cruel mirth as he slips between his two opponents. They’ve gotten stronger, more powerful as they gained more worshippers but also fought in more missions, but their weakness spills out in their blood, staining them in shame. It does little to enhance his abilities really but, of all of Hua Cheng’s options, it makes Mu Qing and Feng Xin the best used test dummies. 

He’s sure they’re trying to do the same, learning new things, obtaining new skills and abilities, but the weak are only good as chattel, not as prizes. 

Lip curling in amusement, Hua Cheng watches sweat bead along Mu Qing’s forehead. The god pants, and his hand holding his saber shakes. He’s exhausted, he can’t keep up. Hua Cheng knows it’s not strength that keeps Mu Qing standing but rather it is stubbornness. Flicking his finger lazily, Hua Cheng lets E-Ming hurtle straight towards Mu Qing. 

The god’s eyes widen, and he’s just barely able to parry the first strike. The second, the third, Mu Qing is forced into an awkward dance with the scimitar, not able, like this, to gauge movements in watching his opponent. And then E-Ming finally sinks into flesh, slicing across. 

“Ah!” Mu Qing sucks in a breath, free hands scrabbling to apply pressure to the wound across his stomach. His teeth grit, and he glares at Hua Cheng balefully. But his mouth still twists into a taunt. “I thought you wanted me dead, Crimson Rain,” he drawls. His hand lights with spiritual energy—a red light so intense, its center is white—that Hua Cheng had never seen any other god use before, and Hua Cheng watches the blood stop spreading through the fabric of Mu Qing’s clothes. 

He drops his hand, shifts a bit gingerly. When he faces Hua Cheng properly again, it’s without the strain of a wound, without the pain of it. He healed himself. The realization stuns Hua Cheng for a moment. He hadn’t observed or heard of anyone with that ability other than medicinal gods and it was not often that they used that skill opposed to other natural remedies. 

Mu Qing bares bloody teeth at Hua Cheng. “I presumed you were young but I didn’t realize you were a child. If you wanted to play games, all you had to do was send an invite.” 

Hua Cheng wishes Mu Qing would bleed again. 

Just as he thought it, Mu Qing jerks, surprise widening his eyes and he stares down where red starts to color his clothes once more. “…How?” 

E-Ming hadn’t touched him, but he bleeds again. 

When Mu Qing meets Hua Cheng’s eye again, hand again pressed to the wretched, reopened wound stretched across his stomach, his eyes finally, finally, hold a touch of fear. “Demon,” he whispers. 

The word makes Hua Cheng freeze. Sick, self-hate, it builds in the pit of his stomach. That word—“Don’t call me that!” he snarls. 

Mu Qing’s eyes brighten—and suddenly their positions are reversed. He’s entertained, latching onto Hua Cheng’s weakness with clawed hands, unrelenting. “Oh, hit a nerve?” 

Hua Cheng’s reeling, chest tight with every bad memory that that word reminds him of: his father, his stepmother, all the people of Xianle who beat and ignored him in disgust, in fear, in belief that Hua Cheng was nothing but a curse. It reminds him of the young boy who promised he’d never seen Hua Cheng that way, that he would never see Hua Cheng that way. But this Mu Qing does and he mocks him. 

“Did you think you’re anything else?” 

Hua Cheng is. He knows he is. 

He’s worked so hard to be. 

In his distraction, in his hurt, Mu Qing takes advantage. The saber, nine feet long, reaches Hua Cheng in a single lunge, and Mu Qing cuts Hua Cheng across his stomach, a matching deep slice to Mu Qing’s own. It burns, and Hua Cheng keens just slightly enough that Mu Qing’s able to escape. In that single moment, he grabs Feng Xin and ascends to heaven. 

Hua Cheng can follow—the heavens aren’t as untouchable as they think, not nearly as impenetrable, but it’s pointless. 

The cut aches but it has no blood to bleed. He’s heard of Xuan Zhen’s zhanmadao, how the wounds it bestows won’t heal without spiritual energy. It’s of no issue; Hua Cheng’s abundance of energy means he can give no fucks at all. But the same cannot be said of the wounds Hua Cheng left on Mu Qing’s body. No, those would scar the god for the rest of his pathetic lifetime.  

His manor is incomplete; like many nights before, Hua Cheng goes to rest away from the construction. On the edge of a barely budding village, within a gate that remains closed, Hua Cheng fashioned himself a shack small enough to fit two. No one dares come close, never mind approach, the essence of Hua Cheng’s evil energy lingering like an ominous curse over the land. It’s the perfect place to be alone. 

Yin Yu, a god broken by the heavens, steps out from the shadows when Hua Cheng arrives. 

He really did choose to stay behind. Hua Cheng can almost be impressed, but he has no energy to bother. Closing the gate behind him, he trudges up to the door. 

“I’ll fill a bath, Chengzhu.” 

The title’s not yet appropriate—there is hardly this cottage under Hua Cheng’s rule, let alone a city, but Yin Yu has faith in the fever dream that Hua Cheng holds onto and says it with respect every time he addresses Hua Cheng. From behind a mask Yin Yu’s fashioned for himself, his own appearance one he wished to hide from—

(Yin Yu, Hua Cheng had learned, isn’t so different from him. Their features held their hatred, their most haunted moments.)

—there’s a strange, earnest devotion that bypasses it. 

Hua Cheng doesn’t know if he deserves it and so he can’t bring himself to look at the man. He has no energy to—but he allows some acknowledgement. 

“You don’t have…” Hua Cheng’s covered in the blood of men he hates, touched by the soot and dirt of the dew attacks that landed near enough to leave dust on his skin and robes. Demon. The word stains his skin. Demon, demon. “Fine.”

The tub is small, just big enough for Hua Cheng to slouch against the edge when he keeps his knees bent up a bit. Across his stomach, the wound has slightly healed, an odd discoloration to it. Hua Cheng runs his fingers across it. He could maybe heal it more. Heal until there’s nothing but the skin he’d died with, the one only scarred by the slash across his back. The mark of his death and nothing else. 

Tipping his head back, he sighs and lets the steam flood up around him and closes his eye. 

“You’re handsome, you know,” someone says as hands brush soothingly over Hua Cheng’s cheeks. It’s the same voice from before, Hua Cheng thinks, the one that had called him ‘Xiao Hua’. “It’s unfair, actually. You don’t try at all. But, if you keep making that face you’re making, you’ll be so ugly, I’ll feel I’ve been the one unfair to you.” 

Now that the person is speaking more, light laughter chasing after their words, Hua Cheng can hear they’re young, maybe the same age as Hua Cheng was when he died. A youth, past the cusp of adulthood, though not by so many years. But Hua Cheng still cannot place it—it sounds just like any voice. In fact, it changes with every word, sounding like every voice. “Ge…”

Ge. In this vision, he tries to look up, tries to see who he is speaking to. Whoever this is, whatever it is that has happened, Hua Cheng tastes guilt so strongly that he can gag over it, sickened by himself even though these visions don’t feel like his own, feels more like they belong to another person in front of him. 

“It’s fine, Xiao Hua,” this Ge insists. 

Hua Cheng snaps. “I got you punished! It’ll scar now!” 

The person scoffs. “And?” They lean close, climbing a little clumsily and a lot playfully into Hua Cheng’s lap, their hair brushing against Hua Cheng’s skin, and they press a teasing kiss to the corner of Hua Cheng’s mouth. “If that’s so bad, should we get matching scars, Xiao Hua?” 

“Maybe I should just imprint something of onto me instead.” Tilting his head to the side, Hua Cheng kisses this person properly. “Maybe then I’ll keep a mark of you just as you are marked by me.”

Hua Cheng opens his eye. 

With a sewing needle, he pierces his skin and writes a name he dare not say. 

(Across his stomach, the wound left by Mu Qing becomes a scar.) 

🎨 • 🐈‍⬛ • 🎨

Demon. Mu Qing uses the taunt freely. He attacks to Hua Cheng’s right, Hua Cheng’s presumed blind side.

“A man who does nothing but hurt people, what else can you be?” he sneered, not caring to wipe the blood on his face, the bare scrape of E-Ming having still cut deep.

It’s so close to Mu Qing’s eye, his left one, an attempt at gouging clean as if to make him and Hua Cheng a matched set. The god struggles to hold his own, trembling beneath the clash of their blades and the littering of injuries on his body while Hua Cheng remains untouched. And yet Mu Qing doesn’t appear so affected, too fixed on affecting Hua Cheng. Mu Qing’s voice gets low. “You’ve been made for destruction and ruin, of yourself and others. This reputation precedes you—do you really think to say it doesn’t please you?”

“If you’re to stand amidst chaos, I’ll stand with you.” That indecipherable voice speaks to Hua Cheng, a watery illusion of a hilltop overlooking a blurry, washed out, unimpressive scatter of houses and buildings falling like a curtain in front of his eyes, until he can barely see Mu Qing and see none of their actual surroundings at all. “But know this, you little idiot: misfortune isn’t your calling, it isn’t your fate, Xiao Hua. In this book of definitions, yours can only be transcribed by you.” 

“You can say what you want about me,” Mu Qing gasps through bloody teeth. “You and anyone else. But people know when they pray to Xuan Zhen, it’s to be helped. It’s to be healed. A beast like you—”

Mu Qing laughs like his head’s been forced underwater. “The sound of your name is the unluckiest curse.” 

🎨 • 🐈‍⬛ • 🎨

Mu Qing’s all alone the next time they meet, his leech strangely not by his side, but that doesn’t mean Hua Cheng cares to be any kinder for it, less so when Mu Qing has stumbled onto his doorstep, in Ghost City of all places, apparently currying for favor if his outstretched hand is any indication. 

“And what,” Hua Cheng starts, “is the meaning of this, Xuan Zhen?” 

The god doesn’t seem to hear him, doesn’t seem to know him or recognize the danger. Hua Cheng looks closer, drags a critical gaze over him. Mu Qing robes are ruined by a previous battle, his hair fallen about his face. He doesn’t seem to recognize anything.  

As if in a trance, Mu Qing pulls his hand back, and steps forward instead, drawing his blade. 

Hua Cheng lets out a derisive scoff. “Are you so eager for the same death you’ve forever feared?” 

Mu Qing swings. 

Arching a brow, Hua Cheng parries easily, but he retreats, drawing the god further into Paradise Manor. The doors shut behind Mu Qing, trapping him, and yet he doesn’t notice at all. 

“I am eager,” Mu Qing starts, stoically, voice monotonous. Lacking any emotion at all. “For your permanent one.” 

Hua Cheng nearly falters. For all their mutual hate, hearing it aloud is suddenly different, wrong in a way their animosity and horrible fighting isn’t. Hearing it aloud from him feels unbearable. 

“Shaoye, don’t cry. You like sweets, hm? This Mu Qing can make you something sweet.”

“I don't care! T-They w-want me d-dead. M-My dad wants me d-dead. I- I should die…”

“No, shaoye. Don’t say that.” Mu Qing—once so much taller than Hong’er, so much gentler—smiles ruefully, pulls a handkerchief from his sleeves and, with callused hands, carefully wipes at Hong’er’s tears. “Shaoye, I’ll tell you what my mother says: Some people don’t see the beautiful things where someone’s life could lead. But others do. Others always do. So keep living, shaoye, other people want you to.” 

Hong’er looks up, unbandaged eye bared. “Does Mu Qing want me to?” he whispers. 

The older boy smiles a bit more kindly, endeared, voice ever soft. “Of course I do. This one wants shaoye to grow up and live a life that others dream of.”

Hua Cheng told himself, for years, ever since Mu Qing first betrayed him, that he detested the older boy. By the time he learned of Mu Qing’s disloyalty, Hua Cheng was certain he wanted Mu Qing dead or, rather, he chased a conclusion that he didn’t want to ascertain. Dead or alive, he told himself that he didn’t care of Mu Qing’s fate. 

It’s now, in this horrid moment, Hua Cheng realizes he’s been a liar, and mostly, entirely, to himself. 

“Don’t you remember me?” Hua Cheng is in front of Mu Qing in a single breath, blocking Mu Qing a second time in a second one. He grasps Mu Qing’s jaw in between his thumb and pointer finger, and squeezes roughly. Mu Qing hisses, and twists, escaping but only by a few steps back that Hua Cheng quickly recovers. “Mu Qing, don’t you recognize me? Your shaoye?” 

It’s a taunt. A demand.

(A plea that he won’t admit to—)

He doesn’t hate Mu Qing. 

Hua Cheng doesn’t hate him. 

He doesn’t hate him, he doesn’t hate him, he doesn’t hate him—

But what if Mu Qing hates him? 

Hua Cheng holds Mu Qing tighter, holds Mu Qing until the man stops struggling, suddenly so still, Hua Cheng can almost believe Mu Qing’s stopped breathing. But his chest rises and falls imperceptibly. His blade sways. “My…shaoye?” His gaze drifts to the side, lost. For a long moment, he says nothing, his eyes are unfocused. And then a rattled scoff escapes his throat. “I don’t know what you speak of.”

Rage, lava-hot, builds until it strips Hua Cheng of his composure, the very thing that is his skin. 

“You do.” He swings hard, and Mu Qing’s saber goes spiraling out of his hand. For a moment, Mu Qing just looks at Hua Cheng. He’s scared. Terrified. And then he’s diving for his blade. Hua Cheng doesn’t let him get far, piercing E-Ming through Mu Qing’s trailing sleeve, pinning him to the ground. “Did you recognize me when you stopped the prince from helping me? When you stopped me from joining the military?” 

When you tried to set fire to my corpse? 

When you let me hurt you over and over again? 

Those questions, Hua Cheng can’t bring himself to ask. But, then again, for the second one, he knows there is no matter of letting Hua Cheng. It was the matter that Mu Qing wasn’t strong enough to stop him. 

“I did,” Mu Qing pants. It’s a lie; it’s obvious in his skittish eyes. Mu Qing, Hua Cheng suddenly remembers, always had a soft spot for the younger children. He didn’t realize who Hua Cheng was, not then. “I did, but the runaway son of the household I used to work for isn't my master any longer.” 

There’s something amiss, even if the words are true and Mu Qing would just as likely say them if caught in high emotion. But he isn’t. He’s breathless, sure, but far too calm. His piercing gaze mellowed. Hua Cheng needs to break this reverie. 

“You called me a demon,” he says, voice low. 

Mu Qing tilts his chin. “I called you as you are. If it still hurts to learn self-awareness, then I’m sorry that I’m no longer being paid to lie to you.” 

“Everyone you claim to care about, you’ve left to die. Me, your parasite of the southeast, Dianxia—”

Mu Qing remains unmoved, even as Hua Cheng yanks hard, pulling him close enough, they’re only breaths apart. He’ll break this reverie, even if he has to go disgustingly low. 

“The other child servants in the palace, in Mount Taicang, the ones on the street…”

Mu Qing trembles, swallows hard. “I didn’t—”

Hua Cheng leans even closer. If he tipped his head, their foreheads would touch. If he tilted it instead, their lips would. Already, he tastes remorse. He spits it out with his next words. “Your mother.”

The cloudiness in Mu Qing’s eyes clear and he wrenches himself backwards, reeling. “Take that back!” he screams, and he shoves at Hua Cheng. “Take that back, you fucking bastard, you have no idea what you’re talking about!” 

His free hand raises, clenching into a fist, and he aims for Hua Cheng’s face, his throat, anywhere Mu Qing can reach him, Mu Qing punches—

And Hua Cheng, for once, lets him. 

“Take it back,” he wails. His body shakes, his voice breaks, his fist falls open as he sobs. “Take it back, take it back. I didn’t leave them—I didn’t leave you, I didn’t leave, take it back!”

But Hua Cheng doesn’t and Mu Qing keeps repeating himself, the moments of cognition slipping away far too quickly to hold onto. And then Mu Qing’s collapsing. 

“Are you—” The god is braced against his chest, so deeply unconscious, he could be mistaken for dead, and Hua Cheng squeezes the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

But the god snoozes on, unaware of Hua Cheng despite coming there to kill him and despite how the ghost king now bore the entirety of his weight. Unaware despite how there isn’t anyone else here to save him and despite the fucking fact that Mu Qing himself was too easy for Hua Cheng to kill when he was awake, never mind out cold. Hua Cheng stares at Mu Qing. Carefully, he brushes Mu Qing’s hair off his forehead, tucking it behind his ears. Sweat’s broken out across the god’s face, skin blotchily flushed. But, even at Hua Cheng’s touch, he doesn’t wake. 

Hua Cheng can go to the Heavens. No one would dare stop him. He can leave Mu Qing in an inn or on the road, toss him out to the burgeoning mess that is Ghost City or leave him in the mortal realm. He can let the general’s reputation be slandered like the thirty-three gods who dared to be weak when they went against Hua Cheng. 

“Shaoye,” Mu Qing whispers. His hand smoothes Hong’er’s hair back. “Can this one help you to your room?”

Hong’er’s body is aching; he’s been beaten and he’s sure he’s bloody. He’s cried himself out of tears. But he’s tired, his throat’s dry, and his head hurts. Mu Qing’s close to him. Nodding weakly, Hong’er ropes his arms around Mu Qing’s neck, feeling the older boy go still. It’s only for a moment though, and then Mu Qing is cradling Hong’er into his arms, carefully lifting the younger boy and carrying him to the sorry excuse of a space that Hong’er’s parents allowed Hong’er to call his room.

Mu Qing settles Hong’er onto his bed. From the window, the sun stretches long shadows across the ground. It’s late, Mu Qing has to go home. 

Hong’er won’t cry. 

Hong’er won’t cry. 

The door closes behind Mu Qing. Hong’er doesn’t have the tears to cry. 

Hua Cheng sends orders for not a single servant to come into Paradise Manor, not unless explicitly asked. Once the manor was emptied, Hua Cheng sighed and slipped his hand under Mu Qing’s knees, pulling the god into his arms. There is only one furnished bedroom in the manor—there’s no need for any more, not while he’s alone. 

Once upon a time, Mu Qing had been a servant of Hua Cheng’s household. Once upon a time, Mu Qing had taken care of him and those times Hua Cheng had fallen unconscious, tired from the beatings, he’d always woken to his wounds cleaned and bandaged the next morning, always until Mu Qing had left him. 

Hua Cheng takes Mu Qing inside and carefully deposits him onto the bed. There are bruises and slight cuts on his skin—

“People know when they pray to Xuan Zhen, it’s to be helped. It’s to be healed.”

—the words echo through Hua Cheng’s thoughts suddenly. 

Heal. Hua Cheng stares at his hands, the ones that have caused so much hurt. They aren’t so dissimilar from her hands. His nails, the thin shape of his fingers, these are just like hers.

His mother wasn’t one to hurt anyone. Hua Cheng wishes suddenly, 

Why could I not have been more like you? 

At this thought, he feels his spiritual energy start to gather and, in silver, so much like the jewelry his mother once wore, a wraith butterfly takes form onto his open palm. Warmth resonates from it, like the touch of someone long ago. Her touch. 

Healing. 

“I will not be the evil you ascribe me to be,” Hua Cheng whispers, chest tight, breathless, as he sets it onto Mu Qing’s skin. In a gentle light, the black and blue swelling and the bloodied lines that cut across Mu Qing’s skin start to fade. “I will not be so unlucky.”

People may not know this of him. They may not recognize it with his name. 

But it will be a part of him. 

The god doesn’t rouse, doesn’t hear. Instead, Mu Qing murmurs wordlessly and then curls up on his side, hands finding one of Hua Cheng’s pillows and hugging it to his chest. Hua Cheng watches him, silent. He doesn’t want to think of the Mu Qing of his childhood, the one that would allow himself to be wheedled into sitting beside Hua Cheng until the younger one has fallen asleep, but with Mu Qing sprawled out on Hua Cheng’s only bed, Hua Cheng can do nothing else. 

Hua Cheng doesn’t need to sleep. He climbs onto the bed anyway, settles beside Mu Qing anyway. 

“I hate you,” he whispers. 

Those memories, the ones of his wretched childhood, are less foggy, not like the ones Hua Cheng can’t place. The voice he hears is recognizable, unforgettable. Hua Cheng sits beside the other man. They’re so close, this time without the tie of violence. Hesitantly, he places his hand in Mu Qing’s hair. Mu Qing does not react. Hua Cheng closes his eye and lets out the breath he doesn’t need but that he’d still been holding. Sleep comes to him all too quickly.

The orphanage is ruined. The once white plaster walls are stained with soot, with the remnants of the fire that had raged within the walls. The windows and door are chained shut, but Hua Cheng walks to them anyways, hefting up the ax they use to chop wood and swinging it down onto the handle. 

His beloved was supposed to be inside. 

He swings the ax again. And again. People will notice soon if he doesn’t hurry. The door opens with a shudder, and Hua Cheng nearly vomits. 

The room seems to waver, corpses and bloodstains, ashes and soot, scattered everywhere. Everything’s burnt. The furniture, the children’s toys…

Hua Cheng screams, and he rushes inside, dropping to his knees by the first body. His hands fumble, trying to find a pulse, to find any sign of being alive. 

“Wake up, wake up, hey hey,” he cries, tapping the child’s face. Which one is this one? Xiuying? Chen Weici? Song Youyi? He can’t tell, he can’t tell— 

Hua Cheng drags himself to the next one, soot on his skin and clothes, the wood splintering into the flimsy fabric. He’s trying to staunch the bleeding and to cover the wounds but there’s not nearly enough clean fabric in the building or on his body that he can use. 

Over and over, he stumbles around the room, dirtying himself in blood and ash—and he hopes it’s all the wood, all the things they had in there and not the ashes of the children he’d found himself loving—and his screams don’t subside, only growing more hoarse in his desperation. 

“Please wake up, hm? Wake up, it’s over now, I’m here now,” he begs, but none of them listen. None until the little one in the back of the room, furthest from where the flames had been started. 

“Gege…ge…” the child croaks out, a rasping sound that makes little sense. Hua Cheng almost falls over hurrying to the child. “G-gone.” 

He finds himself in an open field. He doesn’t remember leaving the orphanage but his hands and clothes are bathed in the evidence of his visit, of his loss. People swarm around him, the same who’d drowned the orphanage in flame, reaching to grab his hair and robes, screaming insults and accusations of being born a curse, evil in his veins, and Hua Cheng doesn’t care to prove them wrong.

He raises that ax in his hands again and again, until the voices give way. He’s wet now, a rapidly cooling warmth on his skin that dries stickily, and Hua Cheng wonders when it started to rain crimson, wonders why the skies chose today to do so. It comes with a hazy fog, red and insensible, and he stumbles through it. The people around him fade in this thunderstorm, their bodies dropping off one by one as Hua Cheng walks forwards until the rain starts to lighten, until it stops altogether. 

Hua Cheng is soaked by the time it’s over. 

Pillars of wood stand tall in the open field, all empty save for one, and Hua Cheng moves forward in the same impenetrable fog. 

“Please, airen, look at me,” he’s pleading as he drives the same ax down, breaking the chains keeping Ge tied to the wooden post. The man falls limply into Hua Cheng’s arms, heavier in the wake of his injuries, and Hua Cheng eases him to the soft sand beneath them, pressing his hands to the bloody and burnt skin, red welling up around his fingers. “It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.” 

“It’s all my fault,” the man whimpers, and he gasps painfully at Hua Cheng’s touch. His eyes are shut, words unclear through the injuries on his face and blood in his mouth. “It’s me. T-They’ve nothing to do with it. Let them go, let them go.” 

He begs someone that isn’t there, that doesn’t care, and Hua Cheng curses quietly as he weeps, trying and failing to force more and more spiritual energy into his hands. He can’t see through his tears, can barely hear over the rasp of his own breath in his chest, but the mob storming closer somehow manages to be louder. 

Hua Cheng takes his beloved into his arms and starts to run. 

Hua Cheng jerks awake, chest heaving, hand clamping over where his right eye used to be. His other hand clutches too tight into Mu Qing’s hair and the god groans, slumber disrupted just enough to bat at Hua Cheng’s hand and roll away from the ghost king. 

Once upon a time, Hua Cheng thought he could’ve loved Mu Qing. But that was once upon a time. Hua Cheng can’t keep the god here, not beside him. 

Taking Mu Qing back into his arms—and gods, when has the man ever slept so deeply?—Hua Cheng tosses his dice into the air. 

The shack is still his, still unnoticed, or perhaps avoided, by the villagers that have filled the nearby land. On his sole bed mat, Hua Cheng sets Mu Qing to rest on it, as comfortably as he can. As his shaoye, Hua Cheng would’ve begged to keep Mu Qing by his side. He knows now, knows after so many betrayals, that Mu Qing had never felt the same way at all. 

Maybe that is how His Highness had felt when Mu Qing had left him, too. 

There’s a budding hatred in his chest that begs to overtake the affection that was borne from Mu Qing’s regret, Mu Qing’s desperation, from earlier and Hua Cheng knows that this is their truth. Affection is in their names, but only in that. 

Hua Cheng climbs to his feet, walking ever silently to the door. He can leave Mu Qing here…but he cannot look back. The nights that have led to this have lasted centuries. 

The sun will soon rise. 

It doesn’t change the darkness around them at all. 

🎨 • 🐈‍⬛ • 🎨

The battles, the fights, they don’t end. Hua Cheng can’t figure out if he wants them to. This is the closest he gets to be with the man he misses, the man he hates. 

But it all comes to a head. It seems to always. 

E-Ming slices through Mu Qing’s skin as if it is soft cloth, burying through flesh and organ, and then Hua Cheng has him pinned, the blade dug deep into the tree bark behind Mu Qing’s body, hanging him like an ornament. Blood seeps along the length of the blade, coating it, and Mu Qing chokes. 

“Hong’er?” Mu Qing stares at him, head tilted to the side just slightly. He’s looking at Hua Cheng. It’s soft. It’s soft. Mu Qing is looking at him like he knows him. 

Hua Cheng goes cold. Today is a day Mu Qing remembers him. He looks at Hua Cheng and sees Hong’er, sees his shaoye. Those days are few. Hua Cheng can’t figure what this is, a curse, a dilemma, a lie. He can’t read Mu Qing’s mind. 

But he sees it too clearly. Mu Qing doesn’t move, he doesn’t struggle. There’s a quirk to his lips as if he’s okay with this, with Hua Cheng hurting him. 

It’s too much. 

This recognition aches. It hurts, it hurts, this back and forth of uncertainty of who Hua Cheng will meet: the man who’d taken care of him or the man that only knows to hate him. Today, he meets the Mu Qing that cared for him, a Mu Qing that recognizes him for more than a few minutes, and it’s too much. 

Hua Cheng falls against Mu Qing. He doesn’t know how it happens; his hand is fisted in Mu Qing’s hair, his forehead pressed against Mu Qing’s, and Hua Cheng sobs. 

A sound escapes Mu Qing’s mouth, one Hua Cheng knows he makes just when he’s about to cry. It gurgles around the blood in Mu Qing’s throat and mouth. And then Mu Qing raises a trembling hand to brush Hua Cheng’s hair from his face, just as he used to do when they were children, and brushes his thumb under Hua Cheng’s eye. 

“I d-didn’t m-ean to h-hurt you,” Mu Qing whispers. “I n-never meant to hurt you.” 

Letting out a strangled scream, Hua Cheng yanks E-Ming out from Mu Qing’s body.

There’s a schlick as it slides through Mu Qing’s blood and catches on the buckle on his sash. Mu Qing chokes as it’s removed and his legs buckle. Hua Cheng has just enough time to drop his scimitar carelessly to the side to catch Mu Qing against himself, wrapping his now free hand around Mu Qing’s body, pressing his hand against that wound to stop the blood, and pulling Mu Qing close. Blood spills onto Hua Cheng’s hand and robes, blending into the crimson fabric, seeping through to touch Hua Cheng’s cold skin. With the hand still in Mu Qing’s hair, he tips the god’s head back and brings their lips together roughly. 

Hua Cheng lets his spiritual energy flood through the god, and Mu Qing whimpers against his mouth, hands scrabbling to cling to the ghost. Hua Cheng can feel Mu Qing’s blood smear across his lips, can taste Mu Qing’s blood on his tongue. It makes Hua Cheng’s head spin. He doesn’t stop kissing Mu Qing. Instead, he holds the god tighter, holds him still, as wraith butterflies flutter close. Mu Qing gasps. The butterflies press against his stomach, they replace Hua Cheng’s hand on Mu Qing’s back. There are other injuries, minor, and Hua Cheng leaves them there. 

It’s his mark, it’s his anger…more than anything, this is his forgiveness. 

Mu Qing’s fingers curl around Hua Cheng’s neck, hesitant, desperate. He doesn’t touch Hua Cheng with his hatred.

Tender, it’s the first time in centuries that they hold each other like this. They part, mouths aching, but Hua Cheng dips close again, once, twice, thrice, fleeting, soft presses of their lips, and Mu Qing answers him in kind. 

He bares himself in plea, but it’s not forgiveness that he asks for. 

I’m tired of hating you. It comes as a prayer. Mu Qing’s eyes widen. 

“What have you done to me,” he murmurs against Mu Qing’s mouth. “Give me a reason, in this lifetime, not to.” 

The god stares at him. Then, uninjured once more, he huffs a laugh. There’s a fatigue in his gaze that Hua Cheng’s all too familiar with. 

“This lifetime? I’ve given you them all, Crimson Rain,” he says, a near-perfect reiteration of the same last words Mu Qing had given Hua Cheng in their lifetime before. 

Dread, sickening like a chill, nauseating like bile in his throat, Hua Cheng realizes he knows what this is. He reaches forward but Mu Qing keeps moving back. 

“You’ve rejected them all.”

He knows what this is. It’s goodbye. 

“Mu Qing—”

There’s an array painted in blood on the tree trunk that Hua Cheng only sees now. Mu Qing’s red-stained fingers touch it…

And then he’s gone. 

Somewhere a bell rings. It breaks to fall down atop Mu Qing, only to shatter against the strength of a single hand, a hand that stood no chance against Hua Cheng’s own. 

It’s the first time they touched each other in centuries, gentle in the way they only knew to be. It isn’t supposed to hurt. 

Hua Cheng stands still, clothes sticky, blood on him now as cold as he is. It isn’t supposed to hurt. 

He stares at his bloodied hands. It isn’t supposed to hurt. 

But it still does. 

The Heavens are invisible when Hua Cheng tips his head back. A tear slips down his cheek. Another. A third, a fourth—mending bridges, meeting again, it isn’t supposed to hurt.

But it does. It hurts worse than ever. 

Hua Cheng turns away, and puts the mortal realm between them. 

Chapter Text

When Hua Cheng sees Mu Qing with Dianxia, Hua Cheng thinks he should scream,

‘Don’t trust him!’ And it’s a bitter, hurt thing because trust had made him beg. Makes him beg. 

Trust made him, makes him vulnerable. Trust lets Mu Qing have the upper hand in turning him down and leaving him in the ruins of wretched trust again and again and again. The bed mat that Mu Qing stares at, horrified, Hua Cheng wonders if it reminds Mu Qing of the bed mat Hua Cheng had left him on so many years ago because though the sleeping mat is different, mended from the damage of time, this shack is the same one. That Dianxia found it feels like coincidence. Feels like fate. Feels like a reminder to throw into Mu Qing’s face—Dianxia and Hua Cheng had shared a bed mat, yes, but Mu Qing and he had shared a kiss and so much more. It mattered little that the perception of one was perhaps more scandalous than the other in Mu Qing’s not-so-innocent mind, but Hua Cheng knows the truth. He can still taste Mu Qing on his tongue, feel the press of those lips against his own as if they were still kissing, if he only allowed himself to think of it. 

But he doesn’t have to allow it; it comes to mind immediately and, with it, a single thought:  

Do you wish it was us? 

But he doesn’t say anything to Dianxia. He doesn’t dare say anything to Mu Qing at all. 

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

Hideous. 

The word coils around his tongue, permanent as a tattoo. It’s all Hua Cheng’s ever thought of the man who hid his ugly personality behind perfect statues. At least, that’s what he tells Dianxia. There’s no beauty in one who so willingly swaps humility with others’ humiliation.  

(But desperation isn’t the same as wanting to humiliate, and all Mu Qing is, is his desperation. To survive, to save, to be hated just to hide his heartbreak.) 

It’s easy to slip into the Heavens unannounced, and just as easy to pass through the gates to Xuan Zhen Palace and elope onto the window sill leading into the general’s room. The god doesn’t notice him, too busy preparing for bed. For a moment, Hua Cheng only leans against the wall and watches. The thin robes that are loose around Mu Qing’s shoulders, baring glimpses of the pale skin. The fall of his braided hair down his back that stretches down to his waist. The swollen wound on Mu Qing’s hand that he ignores in favor of cleaning his sword, the one he carried as Fu Yao. 

“You were bitten,” Hua Cheng murmurs. 

Like before, like always, Mu Qing notices him a second too late. The man startles, but otherwise doesn’t react, doesn’t raise his sword the way Hua Cheng would typically expect him to. But that expectation is with the Mu Qing who doesn’t seem to remember him. This Mu Qing stares at Hua Cheng like he’d never stopped looking. 

Mu Qing places the blade down onto his vanity and stands. “What are you doing here, Crimson Rain?” he says coolly, sweeping his braided hair off his shoulder. 

Hua Cheng steps further into the room, glancing pointedly at Mu Qing’s hand. He’d known somehow that, while Dianxia’s wound had been healed by Hua Cheng’s touch, Mu Qing’s would not have been touched with any remedy. 

Ignoring Mu Qing’s question, he draws a salve from his sleeve, lazily holding it up in something of an answer, and steps closer. “Are the Heavens so useless that you’ve yet to treat that wound, Xuan Zhen?” 

Mu Qing follows this familiar dance unthinkingly, stepping forward with a sharp glare. “Is the king of Ghost City so careless, he can waste his time like this instead of running his realm?”

Another step. 

“Only you would see carelessness where there is confidence,” Hua Cheng replies airily. “Ghost City can run without me for a few minutes. My subordinates aren’t so useless.” 

Another step. 

“A disgusting place of chaos—can you truly tell if it’s running or falling apart?” Mu Qing sneers. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked and just let it run into the ground before you blame me again for telling you of the possibility.” 

 Another step. 

Hua Cheng and Mu Qing are closer than they should be. Close enough that the next thing Hua Cheng says comes out in a whisper against Mu Qing’s skin as he takes Mu Qing’s hand and presses the salve into it. “Is that what it is? You’ve been blamed for all the consequences your good intentions would’ve avoided?” 

The ghost king knows, if anyone, that was a blame he levied. Faults were easy to ascribe to a person he once thought faultless, only because he thought it must have been blindness to not have seen any faults at all. Foolishness to think Mu Qing wouldn’t ever hurt him at all. He’s come to realize since: just because actions hurt, it did not mean they were faulty. Just because some actions were pleasing, it didn’t mean they weren’t faulty. 

Mu Qing looks away with a scoff, but he turns towards the table beside his bed and opens the container, setting the lid on top. “You’re too much of a fool to allow that to possibly be a truth to believe in.”

Hua Cheng follows, and he has to make himself smirk, if only to convince himself he’s unaffected. “But you’re saying that it is. It’s a truth you believe in.”

It’s a truth Hua Cheng had come to believe in, too, years ago. But he’s never said so aloud. Hua Cheng has never let Mu Qing think for a moment that he believed the god to be good at all. 

The blasé tone makes Mu Qing spin again to face Hua Cheng, face twisted with a righteous rage. “I said the palace wasn’t the place for you—within a day, you were insulted by Guoshi and chased by ghosts, so I was right. The war killed my little brother—”

Mu Qing’s voice breaks, eyes glittering with tears anew. “Mu Tian was stronger than you. You know he—”

And vaguely, Hua Cheng remembers the boy just around his age, sweet and quiet as a mouse, just like Mu Qing had once been, but with a violent streak and strength that made even the same adults who beat Hua Cheng wary. Hua Cheng never asked how Mu Tian died. He hadn’t thought of it. 

Hua Cheng thinks of it now. 

Mu Qing hadn’t stopped speaking, but his body had started to shake, “I said the war would kill you—I was right.” 

Hua Cheng feels the weight of truth in those words, the weight of those good intentions falling apart in hands too calloused and aching to catch and restore them again, for the umpteenth time, again. Quiet in this still too new admission, earnest as an apology he can’t put to words, Hua Cheng finally, finally agrees aloud. “You were.” 

The rage on Mu Qing’s face slips away, giving way for damp eyes and the scratch of his next words as they leave his throat. “Then know I’m right in this, too. Whatever you think once existed between us, whatever you think it is that warrants the occasional kindness, is worthless. Chasing for it now will be a mess that neither of us need the trouble of cleaning.” 

Hua Cheng told himself he wouldn’t. After the first and last rejection, he never wanted to humor the possibility again. Hua Cheng catches Mu Qing’s wrist. “Do you really believe that?” 

Dianxia’s blood is on Hua Cheng’s tongue, but Mu Qing bleeds just beside Hua Cheng’s thumb where it’s wrapped around his wrist. The same venom, a similar snake, there’s poison between him and Mu Qing, and it wouldn’t hurt for Hua Cheng to swallow it down. He’s done it for centuries, he’ll do it again tonight. The color of dark cherries, Hua Cheng wonders if it’s just as sweet. 

Wonders if the stain of Mu Qing’s blood on his lips can be their antivenom, their neutral appeal. 

“Does nothing of it matter to you?” Hua Cheng murmurs. 

He stares at those lips he’d kissed, the only ones he’d ever touched with his own, the same lips that have met his fists, the ones he wished to soothe until all of those violent touches from before became unknown. 

“Don’t think about it,” Mu Qing whispers, a shy, strangled sort of thing, and he’s flushed beneath Hua Cheng’s gaze, eyes cast down…but he doesn’t remove his hand from Hua Cheng’s hold. “You’ll get it infected.”

The mistake of Hua Cheng’s intentions almost startles a laugh from his throat. How could the other man be so…

(His brain supplies “innocent’ but the image of it aches, so Hua Cheng shakes it from his thoughts.)

…clueless. 

There’s salve on Mu Qing’s fingers and, under the weight of Hua Cheng’s gaze, he reaches over to spread it over his wound. For a moment, Hua Cheng lets him. For a moment, Hua Cheng thinks surrender is right. 

But that’s never been something he’d accept. 

Hua Cheng stops him. The reaction’s as expected: Mu Qing looks at Hua Cheng, with narrowed eyes and pale lips, and all Hua Cheng wants to do is color it. He swipes his fingers across Mu Qing’s, stealing the salve.

Then he leans close, pressing the ointment to Mu Qing’s wrist, just a touch hard enough to make the god gasp. “Xuan Zhen.” He’s close enough that their noses could brush. “What difference does it make, one visible, infected wound, when we’ve poisoned each other already?”

And then he’s kissing Mu Qing. Rough and messy and desperate, he presses their lips together too hard. Hua Cheng lets Mu Qing fist his collar and, in turn, wounds his arms around Mu Qing’s waist, until there’s no space for air between them. They don’t need it. 

One step, another, Mu Qing matches him with a step backward until his knees fold and he lays flat against his bed. Hua Cheng presses one hand to the sheets beside Mu Qing’s head, a little leverage, a little space to clear his head. There’s a scar on Mu Qing’s chest suddenly exposed by the fall onto the bed, his robes too loose to hold tight, a wretched ruin of his skin right over his heart that Hua Cheng suddenly wants to kiss, to heal, until it’s gone. “Mu Qing—”

“Are we so unfamiliar?” Mu Qing says breathlessly, almost a demand if it weren’t so curious, so plaintive. “A near stranger and yet Dianxia is ‘gege’, isn’t he? And yet…”

Mu Qing peers up at Hua Cheng beneath long lashes. “What are you doing, Hua Cheng? You insult and taunt me during the day and now have me against my bed at the fall of night, but yet we are strangers. So what do you want?” 

I want this to never end. 

He doesn’t speak, not this, not aloud. But Hua Cheng kisses Mu Qing again…

And Mu Qing lets him.

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

They meet in secret, again and again and again, reluctant, stolen moments neither of them admit to. Falling faster than they want to. Because in public, they are different people. In private, they’re people they wish they weren’t. 

It’s not love, not even affection. It’s not anything they want to have or be. Hua Cheng tells himself that every time one of them leaves because on again, and off again, Mu Qing remembers him—Hong’er, the child he once took care of—and then Mu Qing thinks him a stranger, just the prince’s soldier. 

He doesn’t understand it, why it happens. He hates every time he does, a balancing act of behaving in accordance to Mu Qing’s own behavior: the flare of obsidian eyes or the offer of something—tea, a meal, the same old question:

“What do you want?”

The next time Mu Qing asks, they’re already in Xuan Zhen’s garden, lying on their sides in each other’s arms, hidden by tall trees and towering, flowering hedges. Hua Cheng leans closer, catching Mu Qing’s mouth in a lazy drag of a kiss. 

“I want to know why you keep forgetting me,” Hua Cheng drawls, stroking Mu Qing’s hair behind his ear.  

Mu Qing stills and narrows his eyes. “What did you say?”

Hua Cheng keeps Mu Qing tight in his arms. If the god runs away tonight, Hua Cheng might spend the rest of his life chasing him, waiting for each day Mu Qing recognizes them and what they have. “I know it’s not a game, but you don’t seem to forget anyone else. I’m…curious.”

“I forget you?” Mu Qing bites his lip, clearly dubious. “Hua Cheng, what the hell do you mean?”

The explanation is a strange one to deliver. But Mu Qing listens. His fingers curl into Hua Cheng’s robes tighter, tighter—he’s nervous. The trust sits unusually between us, but it’s there. The acceptance and the fear are there. 

“What I mean is I will figure it out,” Hua Cheng promises at the end, fervent despite trying not to be. But— “You ask me what I want, Mu Qing? I want you to always remember me.” 

(He wants that the next time they kiss isn’t the last time Mu Qing remembers him at all.) 

Mu Qing’s breath hitches. For just a moment, his eyes flit across Hua Cheng’s expression, assessing him…but he nods. 

(He trusts.)

Hua Cheng doesn’t take that lightly. The days Mu Qing forgets do not disappear—

(“What do you want?” Mu Qing sneers the first few times that Hua Cheng comes to meet him in secret. He’s often the same vision he was the first time, the startled disarray of someone ready to rest and not at all expecting a visitor. The haste he’d turned in leaves him disarray, those nighttime robes falling more open, too loose to hold tight, and that horrible scar more obvious tonight than the other time. Mu Qing’s hand is on his zhanmadao, always. Half-drawn, always. “Dianxia may welcome you but the heavens do not.”

“And you?” It’s a panicked sort of imploring, even as calm as Hua Cheng forces it to be. “Does Xuan Zhen welcome me?” 

The look of disgust he sees over and over again on Mu Qing’s face says enough: The god’s forgotten Hua Cheng again, has forgotten them—it’s obvious enough to suffocate. 

Each time, the rejection stings. 

Each time, Hua Cheng is left craving those few minutes that Mu Qing allows him in.)  

—and still, Hua Cheng’s every moment is spent poring over everything he knows and finding everything he can. They meet on the days Mu Qing remembers him, doing a dance of passing notes and letting Hua Cheng coax Mu Qing into trying every possible remedy.

“Don’t you tire of this?” Mu Qing asks as he settles into Hua Cheng’s arms, though comfortably lazy in the haze of what they’ve done, what they’ve been doing, made drowsier by the potion Hua Cheng had poured into his mouth. 

Hua Cheng ignores the question. How can he answer that he doesn’t tire of what they have at all? That he no longer thinks he could tire of it? 

That he’ll do anything so Mu Qing never gets tired of him? 

“How did you get this scar?” Hua Cheng murmurs instead, tracing different ones across Mu Qing’s body. 

They’re in bed, a usual thing for them, breakfast spread out in front of them. Mu Qing elegantly places a berry on his tongue, chewing slowly. 

“I’ll tell you if you tell me about yours,” he quips back. 

And so they do. They feel each one, pressing kisses to each other’s, fleeting but too firm to be mistaken. 

They’ve hurt each other so much. It’s not love, it’s not affection…

“Next time,” Mu Qing murmurs later with his lips pressed carefully against the crinkled lines next to where Hua Cheng’s right eye used to be, “don’t only visit when I remember our past.” 

But maybe, maybe it’s an apology. 

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

He finds a cure, Hua Cheng thinks. It’s not spiritual energy or potions. Whatever this memory loss stems from, it’s embedded deep into Mu Qing’s meridians, poisoning his very bloodstream. 

“Is this really necessary?” Mu Qing says, breath hitched tight. 

Hua Cheng hums, appraising the eight long, thin needles he’d brought with him, settling it down on the clean bed sheet beside Mu Qing. 

It is. It is, and he knows it shouldn’t be. Their past shouldn’t mean so much, not when Hua Cheng has heeded Mu Qing’s last command and taken to dragging the forgetful martial god around, creating new memories from the mottled misery that rested between them two. But it does. It does, and Hua Cheng cannot explain why other than maybe, maybe that fear is still there. That fear that Mu Qing can only stand him and what they have is because there is a part of him that remembers their shared past. Maybe it’s still there. Maybe it’ll one day disappear altogether, if he gave it more time. Or maybe Mu Qing will have forgotten Hua Cheng completely, without recovery, before then. 

“If you’re fine with always forgetting me, Xuan Zhen, then no, it isn’t.” 

It’s a tease, but it’s not. It’s a question, but it’s one he isn’t sure he wants answered. 

Because what if Mu Qing never wants Hua Cheng around again, never again at all? 

Mu Qing glares at him and turns his eyes to the ceiling. “Get it over with then!” 

It’s a breath he doesn’t need but a breath he wants, and Hua Cheng hides a smile. Carefully, he sets a needle in place. “Don’t worry, Qing-ge, I’ll be gentle.”

Then he presses in— 

And the world shifts. 

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

He’s his prince’s soldier—he’ll never desert Xie Lian, not like the scum who have. 

“Dianxia!” a voice, almost hoarse, calls out. 

Unwittingly, Hua Cheng’s head snaps up and his lip curls. Mu Qing stands on wounded legs haphazardly, and he staggers closer as Hua Cheng begins to weaken, to fade. 

“Crimson Rain, if this is a joke—!”

“Crimson Rain, if this is some sort of joke—!” Mu Qing snaps, casting furtive eyes around them. “Who fakes prayers like this?” 

“Perhaps I was in need of entertainment,” Hua Cheng had jeered, but his hand brushed the other man’s as they walked side by side—

Maybe I only wish to spend time with you, he’d thought but hadn’t said. 

Hua Cheng gasps. Where—what? This memory, it’s not like the others. Not like the ones of another’s life, not the ones from his past. This was—this felt newer. Recent. 

And it was only the beginning. 

The faster he fades, the quicker the memories come. Outings, meals, touches and tumbles and all of the buildup of something incompletely complete, all of this time spent that he doesn’t recall suddenly relived in this moment of dying. 

With Mu Qing’s screaming in his ears, Hua Cheng understands now. The curse had reversed, and Hua Cheng never broke from it. He tries to claw himself back into a corporal form, desperate like reaching for the surface when there’s an unbearable weight tied to one’s leg, thinking only: 

I’m sorry, I’m sorry—Mu Qing, I’ll come back to heal us again. 

He doesn’t know if the words manage to leave his mouth. He doesn’t know if he makes a sound at all.

But Hua Cheng knows, for the third time, for his prince, he dies again.

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

He returns in a year’s time, still dreaming of blood. 

The ground is rough beneath his feet, brambles and rocks digging into soft skin, but Hua Cheng keeps running, leaving his bleeding footprints behind. The kingdom is burning, there’s little place to run and no destination nearby opens their doors to them, so he keeps going, slipping into the shallow creek that cuts across the village in hopes it’d wash the blood from his feet. The water stings, and rises higher than he remembers it ever being, the waves created by his movements splashing up to slap against his beloved. 

The man groans out in pain, twitching with it and curling closer to Hua Cheng as though to hide from it. 

“I’m sorry, airen,” Hua Cheng whispers. “I’m so sorry.” 

He knows it hurts, every movement, every breath, sending violent tremors of pain through the injured man in his arms. The bed of the creek is muddy, slippery, and Hua Cheng finds himself tumbling, falling beneath the surface with the…was this the prince? It couldn’t be; this romance, it couldn’t be theirs.

Hua Cheng was a soldier, a mere devotee…

The prince is not his to love. But this person is. This person is his. 

The water churns, black and unforgiving, and this person—and why is it even now that Hua Cheng still cannot identify him—slips out of his arms. Hua Cheng searches, his hands swinging out beneath the depths as he reaches and grabs at nothing, his fingers treading empty water. It’s easy to lose air in his panic and, sooner than he wants, Hua Cheng is rising above the surface to suck in another breath. Then he dives back down. 

This person, Hua Cheng’s beloved, can’t swim. He doesn’t know, doesn’t remember, how he knows this, but he knows, and he can’t breathe at all. 

“Qin ai de!” He searches frantically, cutting his hands and knees on the garbage and lost trinkets in the sand beneath him. 

His beloved can’t swim, his beloved can’t swim. 

Hua Cheng rises, takes a breath, and plunges himself back under the cold depths. And then a hand grabs him. 

He clambers out the other side shakily, somehow holding onto his beloved in a mocking image of all the times he’s held him before. There’s little intimacy here as they cough the water out of their lungs and struggle to breathe through the burning in their throats and nose, no joy or peace, but his love keeps him close, runs soothing fingers along Hua Cheng’s face and tips closer, resting his head in the crook of Hua Cheng’s neck even though he can barely stand himself. 

“You should leave me,” he croaks out, breath trembling against Hua Cheng’s skin. He curls his fingers into Hua Cheng’s robes, flexing them weakly, and lets go. “Before he catches up.” 

It’s wrong, it’s wrong. A person so strong should never feel so fragile. “No, no, airen—”

“I’m holding you back!” He tries to cry out, but it comes out strangled, more air than sound. “I’m dying so let me! I don’t want you to die, too!” 

But Hua Cheng ignores his reasoning, ignores the weak protest the person gives when Hua Cheng picks him up again and takes off towards the back roads. Even as that familiar heartbeat falls out of rhythm and the skin that is always a touch too warm starts to cool, Hua Cheng holds on. 

And his beloved…

Hua Cheng refuses to think about it, glancing down at where the other man had fallen silent in his arms, his breaths rasping. 

“Hold on, airen, we’re almost there,” Hua Cheng gasps. “We’re almost there.” 

All around them, people have their houses locked tight, putting out the candles and lanterns in their windows and inside their homes the moment they see him, and latch their windows shut. But Hua Cheng doesn’t bother with it, doesn’t hesitate to stop or pause or beg, doesn’t have time even if he wants to. 

His men aren’t far behind him. 

The hill isn’t far from him though, the high priest’s offering flame burning bright against the late night like a signal. He pauses at the foot of the hill, readjusting until his beloved was laid across HuaCheng’s back rather than in his arms, and ties those delicate wrists and ankles together where they cross in front of Hua Cheng’s body with their hair ribbons. 

With the other man secured, Hua Cheng makes his way up the hill, using his hands and fingers to claw his way up the side when his feet stumble. He cannot see, only feel, and he finds his way through injury, dragging himself up further until the sounds of the ragged crowd of brutes behind him grow faint. 

By the time Hua Cheng stumbles into the temple, his clothes, skin, and nails are torn and bloodied from the climb. He stumbles but doesn’t falter, doesn’t stop until he’s in front of the altar, and then he falls. 

“Please!” he chokes out, and he presses his forehead to that offering stone at the feet of a god he’s always, always believed in. 

His prayers before have rarely been answered but never mind, he prayed. He knew his god was listening. He knew his god was trying. He just needs his God’s favor this one time. He’ll never ask for anything again. 

“Please, where are you? Don’t make me lose him! Don’t make me lose him!” 

He kowtows with every plea, his head hitting the stone harshly with each one until blood pools there. “Don’t make me lose him,” he gasps out, and doesn’t stop even as his vision grows blurry, eyes filling with his sweat, tears, and blood. “Don’t make me lose him.”

“It’s too late.” 

The voice echoes in the temple and the High Priest steps out from behind his deity. When he looks down at Hua Cheng, his usually composed expression is shaded with pity. 

“You can’t save him in this life. Just like in your last life and the lives before that—”

Hua Cheng shakes his head. He can’t breathe. No, no, no—he screams, his body racking with his sobs. “N-no, please, p-please–”

“Quit your simpering,” the High Priest orders, almost a sneer. “He will be after him in every life after this one as he has been since the time of your first birth. There’s nothing you can do.” 

“No, no please,” Hua Cheng begs again, and he hurries to untie the ropes keeping his beloved to him, gently putting the other man down, and throwing himself to the High Priest’s feet. He clings to the man’s ankles, stopping him from walking away. Forcing him to pay attention. “Help me stop him. If not in this life, then in our next. Please—”

“Do you realize what you’re asking for?” The High Priest interrupts, grabbing Hua Cheng by the hair and forcing his head up. “Such cosmic intervention requires a hefty sacrifice. He pays it the same way. There is a disease in his body he cannot escape, of which no remedy exists or will ever exist. His soul is cursed! Would you be willing to pay the same?” 

There’s a faint clamoring outside the temple door. 

“Do you think they’re in here?” someone yells, and it’s too close, too loud. 

“Will I save my beloved?” Hua Cheng whispers. “Will I be able to save him?” 

He says something else that he can’t remember, and the High Priest scoffs. “That’s a destiny only you can make. I can only guarantee you the chance to.” 

“Then I’ll pay anything.” 

The High Priest stares into Hua Cheng’s eyes, one moment, another, sees this calm resolve comes as easy to him as breathing, and nods. He lets go of Hua Cheng’s chin, turning and pulling a length of wood from the offering fire. “Let’s pray your payment isn’t in vain.”

Then he presses the scorched wood right against Hua Cheng’s eye. 

Mu Qing doesn’t seem all that impressed with Hua Cheng’s return; instead he stays by Feng Xin’s side, bickering just to bicker. It’s obvious they’re closer. Hua Cheng swallows. His mouth tastes of blood, his throat fills with glass. 

“It’s okay to love him,” Dianxia suddenly says from beside him. Hua Cheng turns to meet Xie Lian’s warm eyes. There’s a mildness to his countenance, one not borne from an acceptance of misery. Instead, he looks…at peace. Hua Cheng feels his eye burn, the swell of happiness of at least that almost enough to force the brittle pain and tightness out from his throat. “Mu Qing…it’s more than okay to love him, actually.”

Hua Cheng glances back at Feng Xin, the way he isn’t scowling any longer and Mu Qing isn’t glaring any longer, and Hua Cheng shakes his head. 

“Dianxia,” he whispers. “You saw what I’ve done to him. You’ve heard what I’ve said. If it were you, could you forgive me?” He looks at the older man, agonized, and struggling to speak through it. “Could you love me?” 

It hadn’t been hard to deduce that whatever curse or spell had been on Mu Qing had reversed onto Hua Cheng when he’d tried breaking it. But to excuse what had followed…there isn’t anything reasonable enough. 

Those ever-soft eyes crinkle. “Ah but Mu Qing and I aren’t really the same. He’s petty, yes, and there’s no detail he’d ever forget, but San Lang, look at us. We’re all good friends now, and you know what we’ve said and done to each other. Don’t be afraid to apologize and ask for chances. You never know when it may one day be too late,” he murmurs wistfully. Then, catching himself, he blushes lightly, waving his hands. “Ah, don’t mind me! Speaking so brashly.”

Hua Cheng finds himself smiling. It’s easy to, around Dianxia. “This one would never think to find Dianxia brash, not when he speaks the truth.” 

His eye drifts back towards the two martial generals. They really were getting along better. It’s a thought that makes him happy—he knows how much Mu Qing longed for this. It’s a thought that makes him feel sick. It’s a thought that reminds him that Feng Xin is the one to whom Mu Qing kept the most close. 

Couldn’t this be their second chance? 

“And Feng Xin…” Dianxia speaks up again then, under Hua Cheng’s curious gaze, suddenly blushes and twists his fingers together.

It hits him then—Hua Cheng thinks he knows what the prince is going to say before it’s said, and he smiles wider. “Dianxia?”

The blush worsens and Xie Lian clears his throat. “Well, I can attest that he and Mu Qing aren’t in a romantic relationship because-because, ah, Feng Xin and I are.” 

Feng Xin’s devotion to His Highness is one that Hua Cheng can relate to. It’s one that Hua Cheng finds reassuring. 

“I’m glad,” Hua Cheng whispers. 

Xie Lian smiles up at him. “So am I.” He takes Hua Cheng’s hand idly. “I’ve heard once that first loves are destined for tragedy but it seems even after eight hundred years, first loves can have a second chance, don’t you think, San Lang?”

The ghost king looks away. For all that the possibility exists, it exists for someone as great as His Highness. But for himself, he isn't so sure. 

“Don’t give up yet, San Lang,” Xie Lian whispers, squeezing Hua Cheng’s hand. “If not for yourself, then for who you love. I tell him the same: You both deserve to be happy, too, more than anyone else I know.” 

Of that for Mu Qing, Hua Cheng is sure. But, with him…Hua Cheng doesn’t think it’s possible. There is too much broken between them. 

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

To go to war for a prince is easy, but shouldn’t it be easier going to war for love?

Xie Lian’s gentle imploration is what drives Hua Cheng to act. It gives him a stupid hope.

“I can come with you.” Hua Cheng tries to sound casual as he follows Mu Qing out the door to leave for a mission after lunch at Puqi Shrine. “I’ve nothing better to do today.”

The offer gains no reaction—few things ever do with Mu Qing. For a long moment, it doesn’t even seem that Mu Qing heard him. The god glances away, to the setting sun that shone against maple leaves. 

“It wasn’t so long ago that whether I lived or died mattered nothing to you,” Mu Qing says softly in contemplation. 

His eyes flit to his wrist and Hua Cheng’s heart seizes; he remembers watching the shackle drinking in Mu Qing’s blood, his veins becoming visible beneath his pale skin. The Hua Cheng of then didn’t love Mu Qing and so the Hua Cheng of then didn’t care.  

Mu Qing finally looks at him. “Why is it now that you choose to have a say in it?”

There’s no way to answer that. Shame, guilt, it clogs his throat. He’s become good at hiding his emotions—centuries of pain and loneliness shape a mask that is untenable—but he feels the burn behind his eye. The wetness in it stings. 

“Is it because your god thinks I have value? Am I thing for you to protect now?”

Hua Cheng stares at Mu Qing. “Is that what you think this is? Guarding Gege’s possessions? The curse rebounded onto me! I hadn’t remembered—!”

“If not that, then what is it?” Mu Qing snaps, composure finally breaking as he interrupts Hua Cheng. His voice lowers dangerously, not the loud anger Hua Cheng is used to, and this, this feels more tempestuous. The air is charged with centuries’ of rage, rage that could never be freed because Hua Cheng has been too strong, has been winning and not listening, for too long. “When it had, had we also gone back in time? Are you still hoping to see a reason to not hate me? Have you done anything so that I owe that to you, Crimson Rain?”

Mu Qing’s face is flushed, stretching down his neck. His hands are still down by his sides, fingers curled into fists. The grit of his teeth, the glare in his eyes—it’s almost like watching a child throw a tantrum. But Hua Cheng sees the glistening, the red along the rim of his eyelid. 

This is a god, a person, who rarely cries. Not as a child, overworked and beaten. Not as a teenager hated by the same adult that should’ve guided and protected him. Not as an adult, alone and with only pain as his company, not with E-Ming slicing through his skin, not when a sure death touched his skin, and he begged and screamed like a criminal seeking penance. 

But, for the third time, it’s for and because of Hua Cheng that Mu Qing does. 

“When I f-forgot about you and I, I didn’t t-treat you like that. Not until you—not until you changed. I s-should’ve known a man who can care so fiercely could hate even stronger, and it’s only because I know you’ve never hated Dianxia that I trust you with him still.” 

Hua Cheng swallows carefully. He wants to reach out, but he won’t. He knows, once again, he’s not allowed. He knows, this time, he’s the one to have rebuilt that wall. “I have wronged you, more than once. I know that makes me someone impossible to trust but—” 

Obsidian meets Hua Cheng’s gaze. “You’re right. It does, so don’t ask me to.” Mu Qing draws his sleeves up and turns away. “It’s best we keep our distance, Crimson Rain, truly, this time.” 

—but let me spend the rest of my life earning it. 

Hot tears fill Hua Cheng’s eye and slip down. Gege was right. Hua Cheng has spent years waiting too long…and now he’s finally that one day too late. 

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

One hour. 

Two hours.

Three hours…

“Gege, have you heard from Mu Qing?” Hua Cheng asks through the array. 

“Sorry, San Lang, I haven’t yet.”

E-Ming starts to cry. 

One day.

Two days.

Three days… 

“Gege…”

“It’s okay, San Lang. I understand your worry. These missions take time. He’ll reach out soon.”

If only the prince could sound as reassured as he tried to be reassuring. But Hua Cheng doesn’t press. 

Half a week. 

A week. 

Week and a half. 

The incense sticks burn uselessly, telling time that remained unmoving for all that nothing changed. Hua Cheng feels sick. 

“Nan Yang, did Mu Qing return to the Heavens?” 

“When the fuck did you get my password?” 

If it were any other occasion, perhaps Hua Cheng could’ve been amused at how Feng Xin sounds put-upon rather than bewildered, acquiescing easily to the fact that Hua Cheng wasn’t one they could best, not even in these little secrets they keep. 

Still, the distraction only lasts so long, and Feng Xin sighs. “He hasn’t yet. I’ve a small mission nearby. I’m going to check.”

Hua Cheng hums and goes to leave when Feng Xin speaks again, quieter. 

“…I’m surprised you haven’t yet. Dianxia said that with him, as his loyal soldier, you never left. What kind of love is this if you can’t be loyal to it? If you can so easily let it go?” 

And then the god exits the array. 

The ghost king remains frozen in place. Feng Xin is right but he is wrong. But though he is wrong, he is still right, because for all of Hua Cheng’s stubbornness, this is where he is cowed by his mistakes. It’s where there are still too many he can make. 

Hua Cheng lights more incense sticks. 

Two weeks. 

Two and a half. 

Wraith butterflies flood the Southwest among dozens of He Xuan’s clones. Hua Cheng would be there, too, if he could dare to show his face. 

‘Crimson Rain?’ He Xuan’s voice comes through Hua Cheng’s array just as another ghost arrives at the other end of the gambling table. 

Hua Cheng stills, restlessly tapping fingers now hovering. 

Something is…off. Just moments before, his mind was hardly focused, thinking only of Mu Qing and how Hua Cheng ever thought he had a chance after fucking up so much. But now he can’t focus on anything except the other ghost. He can’t. The other ghost feels too familiar, and yet not. Their spiritual energy feels strong, consuming, but it’s not right. This energy or power, it doesn’t suffocate the way Jun Wu’s did or He Xuan’s still does. It isn’t incomprehensibly expansive like Hua Cheng’s either. 

Hua Cheng narrows his eye. “Yes?” 

The ghost stares mildly up at where Hua Cheng is sitting on his throne. “I’ve come to bet against the owner of this gambling house.”

A cacophony breaks out, ringing out louder than the crowds surrounding those at the table. Hua Cheng pays it no mind and beckons for the ghost to continue, an irony in how he waits for He Xuan to continue as well. 

“I offer a rarity—if Hua Chengzhu wins, he may have it. If I do, however, Hua Chengzhu shall bequeath it to me until the end of eternity.” It’s a strange offer, ringing through the air in dangerous tenor, too self-assured to be a falsado. “I heard Lord Crimson Rain was fond of unique things. Rare, unattainable things.” 

“You asked for my assistance too late.” 

There’s a streak of cold cruelty in Black Water’s voice that Hua Cheng knows far too well when it comes to the younger man. Damning, unremorseful. Designed perfectly to drown. 

Hua Cheng’s chest gets caught in a vice and, dragged into these depths so quickly, he claws for control, to stabilize, to float, and he nearly breaks this facade of impassivity to snarl, “What do you mean?” 

The ghost across from him sets something at the edge of the table. A daruma doll? Hua Cheng frowns. 

“I heard you like these,” the ghost says idly. “So I thought it was fitting. Never mind it though, it is not quite what I’m betting. A rarity, Chengzhu, will you agree? That is your preference?” The ghost throws the doll onto the table and looks up, gaze hardened. There’s a light, and suddenly a body is sprawling across the betting table. Rivulets of blood flow down from the person’s hair to trail down his face like beads of jewelry, falling like a slow rain onto the gambling table. They drip onto his neck, onto his ragged under robe of white that is decorated with a stretching splotch of violent red. The person shakily tries to push themselves up, only to land on their elbows hard.

“Your Mu Qing is dying.”

The unknown ghost reaches for the person on the table and wrenches their head back by their hair. Around them, Ghost City is silent. Obsidian eyes look up to meet amber. 

“After all, what is more rare than the actual death of a god?” 

Immediately, Hua Cheng disperses the crowd. Stepping down from the dais into the newly emptied space, he rests his hand on the hilt of E-Ming. “What is the meaning of this?” 

The ghost grins. “I only answer if you agree.”

Hua Cheng draws E-Ming. “You seem to think I’m easy to humor.”

“You must think me unserious,” the ghost sneers. His hand still in Mu Qing’s hair, he all but throws the god to the floor, the thud of Mu Qing’s body against the hard ground resonating too loudly in Hua Cheng’s ears. 

“You—” Hua Cheng draws his saber. 

“Uh uh. Don’t. He’s not healing,” the ghost says gleefully. He kneels behind Mu Qing, a filthy hand coming up to wrap around the thin length of Mu Qing’s throat, the other covering Mu Qing’s on his chest to dig nails into the wound. “And, if you kill me now, after what I’ve done, he won’t ever heal.” 

Mu Qing chokes. But it’s obvious to Hua Cheng that the god can’t move. He’s caught in the hold of this ghost who won’t let him go. 

The ghost twists Mu Qing’s head just so, pressing his lips to the corner of Mu Qing’s mouth where blood speckles his skin. Hua Cheng watches as the skin starts to rot.  

“Ah!” Mu Qing cries out, and he struggles with a sob that doesn’t stop as the skin under the ghost’s hand starts to turn gray, then black, trailing across the hollow of his throat, down to collarbones. Mu Qing tries to scream again, the sound wet, garbled, and wretches more blood across the floor. 

“I’ve men ready to burn all of his temples. In reality, you should consider this to be a gift for you, Chengzhu.” The ghost glances up, golden eyes sparkling. The humor on his face is gone as he traces the bloodied hand from Mu Qing’s chest to drag open the loose collar of Mu Qing’s robe to spread the decay along Mu Qing’s chest and shoulder. Mania settles in his eyes, contorts a semi-decent face with hunger. “Enjoy it or make a deal, but choose wisely, because we’ve met many times before, Xiao Hua, and no matter your strength, you’ve never bested me. Not even once.”

That draws Hua Cheng short. The memories that hadn’t felt like his. The burning orphanage. The failed escape. Hua Cheng stares at the man…horrified. “How many lifetimes…?”

The man laughs. And laughs. And laughs until he’s half bent over. “Too many. I didn’t keep count. We’ve never truly met, so allow me to introduce myself.” He mimics a bow, mockingly. “Chengzhu, in this life, Mu Qing knew me as Zhu An.”

The name doesn’t even sound familiar. A nobody, then. A nobody seeking to be somebody through Mu Qing’s life in his hands. 

Hua Cheng grits his teeth. He’s not felt so helpless in a long time. But, when he’s needed most, he is. “What are your terms? You asked me to bequeath something, what is it?”

“Bequeath Mu Qing to me with your eye,” Zhu An hisses. “Rid yourself of the damned blessing you’ve been given to keep finding Mu Qing over again in every fucking lifetime because this time, when he dies, you should never find him again. He should be mine.” 

The feeling of horror settles it fully. This is what Hua Cheng wished for in another life. 

“Help me stop him. If not in this life, then in our next.” 

He’d prayed for this cursed eye, the one embedded in E-Ming. The part of himself he is disgusted by…it’s what led him to Mu Qing in every life. It’s what led him to his beloved in every life.

Once upon a time, he’d nearly given it up. 

Hua Cheng remembers blood and fire, dreams of screaming. This is all the work, the suffering placed upon them by a jilted admirer and only that. No other reason. 

“That’s what this is about?” Hua Cheng sounds sickened when he speaks, like his throat is restricted, trying not to vomit. “You’ve killed Mu Qing in past lifetimes…” 

“Because he’s always fallen in love with you!” There’s a frenzy in Zhu An’s eyes, an insanity that brightens with every word coming out of his pathetic, wretched mouth. “Always. No matter what I’ve done or what I do…” his voice trails off, gaze unfocused. It’s a whisper, as if he was speaking to himself, when he speaks again. “All the times I’ve ensured that you’ve forgotten each other, the times I cursed your negatives to heighten impossibly—I, haha, always make sure you never get to have him, though. In the past, I have asked for so many blessings, have practiced so many arts to achieve immortality and yet—” Zhu An laughs again. “Despite everything, he has always chosen you. And so I thought Mu Qing must always die before you can get him. But you both fucked me over this time! This time, this time both of you chose immortality! So, no matter what, you can always have him! Death won’t change anything!”

“I won’t allow it.” He finally looks up at Hua Cheng again. “That’s why we need this deal, otherwise I will continue to kill Mu Qing over and over until it works. Would you be able to bear that, Chengzhu?”

There’s a strange possessiveness to it; Hua Cheng is so used to being the only one to have hurt Mu Qing so badly that this realization feels maddening. He is the only one to have managed to cut and bruise and break Mu Qing, whose immortality meant he couldn’t scar, whose immortality meant he would always heal. 

But Hua Cheng’s never been this heartless. 

And Mu Qing is not healing this time, not like he has all those times before. 

Zhu An tightens his hold on Mu Qing and the god gasps against the blood bubbling past his lips, gagging on it as it fills his mouth and blocks his throat. Desperately, his hands clutch at the wound in his stuttering chest. For a moment, his eyes meet Hua Cheng’s. For a moment, they gleam, his unshed tears like a plea. 

Hua Cheng knows it without hearing it: Mu Qing doesn’t want to die, not like this. 

But then Mu Qing turns, falling to his knees to cough blood onto the floor, painting Hua Cheng’s floor in a deeper color than his robes. 

“What would this bet be? I’m sure it’s not in rolling dice, and you cannot be stupid enough to test me in battle,” Hua Cheng drawls, but he fixes his grip on the hilt of his scimitar. 

Zhu An smiles, a line across his skin like a blade split his face. “It’s easy; break the curse that binds me to Mu Qing and Mu Qing to me within the hour. If you can, I will never find him again. But, if you cannot, I’ll let this spread across his skin and kill him again.”

“And if I don’t take your bet?”

“Then I’ll kill him still and when I find him again, I’ll ensure you never see him again.” 

Hua Cheng curses internally, a stream of words he would say if he wanted to give this vulnerability away for Zhu An to play with. Hua Cheng’s already caught in the man’s web, he needn’t be more tightly bound. Hua Cheng shrugs a shoulder as lazily as his appearance can allow when his innards were curling in on themselves. “Fine. I agree to your terms.”

🐈‍⬛ •🗡️🎨🗡️•🐈‍⬛

The hour will pass by too soon. 

Hua Cheng feels each second like a taste of being doomed. A damnation as sure as being consumed, devoured, not a trace of existence left behind. He’s spent months looking into a remedy. 

The hour will pass by too soon. 

Mu Qing lies curled against the floor in ruin. His skin, his figure, the more they become damaged, the less likely he’ll reincarnate whole. Hua Cheng comes closer and kneels beside the man. He runs his hand through Mu Qing’s hair, stroking spiritual energy through every strand he touches even though he knows it’ll do nothing. 

“This is how you choose to use your time?” Zhu An lounges on the betting table, all too entertained. “You really aren’t anything without your cursed luck.” 

The words wash over Hua Cheng, unintelligible for all that they were well enunciated. 

“I’ve never lost a bet,” Hua Cheng whispers. An apology hovers on his tongue, it burns tears into his eye. 

Mu Qing laughs, a gurgled, choked thing, too pained to warrant any illusion that it’s a reflection of amusement or delight. “You’ll lose this one, though,” he says definitively. “An hour will pass by too soon.”

Hua Cheng chokes on a sob. An hour will be up too soon and Zhu An stands by, waiting for his win. It’s too much. It’s too quick. It’s too much. To be given his love, to be that moment too late, to have him taken away—pressing his face into his hands, Hua Cheng screams. 

And he cannot stop. 

The sound tears from his throat, like the last breath of death. It echoes in agony, wrapping everyone, everything, in pain. Over and over, endless, Hua Cheng curls over Mu Qing and screams. 

Hands suddenly catch his face, mottled and brittle. Hua Cheng lets them hold him anyway. 

“That’s enough. Xiao Hua, that’s enough,” Mu Qing coaxes and pleads, voice weak. “That’s enough.” 

Hua Cheng can’t agree. He feels broken, shards of shattered pieces stuck together in a thin balancing act instead of glue. “Again, you are leaving me,” he says. “Again, I am losing you and it is all because of me.” 

What good was a damnably cursed eye that led him to Mu Qing and did nothing more? That existed without indication, a mere map without explanation or written locations. 

Mu Qing shakes his head. “It’s not, it’s not. I—I don’t know how many times we’ve met and have been broken apart but, Hua Cheng, I am not any less at fault. In another life, I called you ‘Xiao Hua’ and I did not remember that until now. In this one, you were Hong’er, I had once called you ‘shaoye,’ and I had forsaken you because it was easier. It was easier to choose to remember you differently and only call you Crimson Rain…” Mu Qing swallows, and he all but falls against Hua Cheng’s chest, hiding in that space. Mu Qing’s fingers curl against Hua Cheng’s robes. It’s shy, it’s desperate, it’s the first time they’ve allowed each other this affection in the presence of an audience. “Demo—”

The realization is both slow and quick. The memories that Hua Cheng has and Mu Qing does not, the way tampering with the curse made him forget all that he’d been blessed to remember. If his eye is what holds this protection over their love, then…then Hua Cheng knows what comes next. 

He protests the word before Mu Qing finishes, vehement. “I am no demon,” Hua Cheng says, suddenly wondrous. 

His eye is no curse. He was never cursed. 

“I know,” Mu Qing whispers. “I never thought you were—”

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how right he is. 

“You didn’t allow me to finish, Qing-ge. I am not a demon, but I’ll be the one to haunt you,” he murmurs, stroking Mu Qing’s hair back. “No matter what he says or does, if you love me as I love you, I will always find you.” 

In a single, swift movement, Hua Cheng tears his eye from his scimitar, letting the blade fall and shatter now that the source of its power left the hilt. What had been the origin of E-Ming stares back at him. Zhu An startles, loud and outraged, clambering down the table only to be caught and shoved to the ground, arm in a bind just on the edge of breaking.

“You’ve given Chengzhu an hour. He is to not be interrupted,” Yin Yu says icily. 

This eye, it’s always known and shown Hua Cheng’s emotions best and, even now, it understands. 

“What—what are you doing?!” Mu Qing gasps. “Hua Cheng, Xiao Hua, you—”

In his fist, Hua Cheng destroys his eye. Pain, horrible pain, shoots through him as he crushes it into a fine dust. 

“Xiao Hua!” Mu Qing holds him through the pain. “What the hell are you doing? Stop, stop—”

That mark on Mu Qing’s chest, always brightest when he forgets Hua Cheng. The mark that Zhu An hovered his hand over, as if in display of his work, as if pleased. 

This is his claim on Mu Qing. It has to be. 

Yanking open the lapels of Mu Qing’s robes to bare the scar to him, Hua Cheng takes what remains of E-Ming and carves it open anew. And then he presses the dust of his eye to it, a salve, a bandage, to this old and once-again new wound. 

The entire time Yin Yu holds Zhu An still even as the man screams and thrashes, arm and shoulder broken in his frenetic tantrum. The entire time, Mu Qing lets Hua Cheng hold him. Lets Hua Cheng hurt him again only to again apologize and heal him weakly. 

This cycle, if it works, it’ll be one Hua Cheng breaks. But he allows it for now. 

The dust glows, white and red, knitting each edge of Mu Qing’s wound. Mu Qing sucks in a breath, a staccato of exhales and inhales that surely did nothing. 

“Does it hurt?” Hua Cheng suddenly worries. If he messed up, again, he doesn’t know what will become of this. Of him, of Mu Qing. Hua Cheng urges them closer to falling completely apart. 

Mu Qing keels over, eyes squeezed shut and panting. His nails sink into Hua Cheng’s skin, and he clenches his jaw against the pain. “Fuck…it hurts.” 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought…” 

In front of him, the decayed skin on Mu Qing’s body starts to heal, flesh and muscle returning to where it had rotted away. Color fills where he had been too pale, all of the blood he lost rapidly multiplying and flooding back into his body. 

“No, no—how did you—you cheated! You cheated! You cannot—” Zhu A screams. His hair falls in a mess around him, a drooping curtain of a dilapidated house. His own skin begins to blacken, dropping from his bones in splatter. “You bastard, you cheating bastard, you—”

“I didn’t die,” Mu Qing says loftily. His narrowed eyes do not leave Zhu An. Nearly as soft as a breeze, he murmurs, “I remember everything now. In this life, you will be the one to die.” Mu Qing’s saber appears within his grasp. “And you’ll never find me again.” 

A single, practiced movement. A flash of silver. Mu Qing’s blade meets Zhu An’s throat and then goes through. 

Mu Qing sags back against Hua Cheng, watching the head roll to a stop on the ground. 

“I’d forgotten you, I still have just a few memories, and then you had forgotten me. After all the times and ways we’ve hurt each other, it didn’t feel right to love you,” Mu Qing murmurs, and he braces close as if worried any slight distance would be used to push him away. Hua Cheng wraps his arms around Mu Qing tighter. “It didn’t feel like I should be allowed. But I really—I really do love you, Hua Cheng.” 

“I shouldn’t be allowed to love you, not after what I’ve done,” Hua Cheng says into Mu Qing’s hair. “But if you allow it. If you could allow it.” The words are so hard to say. Hua Cheng closes his eye. “There is no blessing I need to find you. There is no curse that will intervene and stop me from finding you. My heart cannot do anything else. If ever I die, I will love you until my final breath. If ever I live anew, I will find you only for the chance to again love you. No fate, no foe, if you allow it, Mu Qing, then I will always love you.” 

Mu Qing trembles in Hua Cheng’s arms. And then he reaches up, curling his hands around Hua Cheng’s neck to tilt his head down. 

“These memories do no justice. This life is not those. Can we begin anew? Can you…can you love me always, Xiao Hua?” Mu Qing’s words hitch through quiet crying breaths. Hua Cheng is no better—but he’s silent to listen better. Silent enough to hear Mu Qing say, “Because—because I will always love you.” 

I will always love you. 

Hua Cheng gasps and then keens. The words repeat until he cannot hear the nightmares that he dreams of or feel the ruin of the one that had just been real.

Who leans first, who kisses harder, who remembers their affection having once been this, it does not matter. All that does is the promise they make when their lips touch again, having missed meeting together: 

I will always love you.