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“Yin Yu! Good morning!”
Yin Yu did not reply, but his form did manifest, real despite its transparent nature.
“We're going to Yushi Country today!” Quan Yizhen explained, “We're invited for tea, and I'm going to help out in the fields again!”
A hum. Nothing more. A meaningless answer, but Quan Yizhen did not let that deter him from the task at hand.
“I'm gonna start now, are you ready?”
A nod. At least this response was clear. Quan Yizhen sat on the bed behind Yin Yu and put his hands on his back, at a level where they would be touching him had his shixiong not been the same consistency as air. This was a position they had agreed on after a lot of trial and error once Yin Yu had been conscious enough to discuss these things, with a notable incident where Quan Yizhen had wanted to try out Xie Lian and Hua Cheng’s method. However, despite it being a very efficient way to share spiritual power, Yin Yu had vehemently refused.
Quan Yizhen focused hard on transferring his spiritual power to Yin Yu, drop by drop, not too much but not too little. The task was delicate and required a great deal of discipline, two things that most people would not associate with him.
And they would be right to think so, as the process of nursing and nurturing Yin Yu's soul had been a draining and difficult process from the very start. Keeping his concentration on anything that wasn't a fight had been unheard of before then, but, just like fighting, taking care of Yin Yu was extremely important to him.
Once it was done, Yin Yu was still transparent but no longer incorporeal. Quan Yizhen fell back on the bed, falling asleep on the spot. He was awoken by voices, both of them familiar, so he rubbed his eyes and opened them. The moment he did, the conversation stopped, and he saw Yin Yu and Xie Lian both looking at him, one tired and neutral, the other calm and smiley.
“Hello Quan Yizhen, I hope you slept well?” Xie Lian said. “Yin Yu was telling me you've been invited for tea today?”
Quan Yizhen nodded, wiping the drool off his face with his sleeve. He caught Yin Yu's disapproving look.
“What?”
“Don't do that. It's uncouth. At least use a rag next time.”
“Oh,” Quan Yizhen looked down at his sleeve. “Okay.”
Xie Lian chuckled. “I guess I'd better let you prepare. See you at dinner, you two?” he said, looking Yin Yu up and down, in a clear assessment of his state.
“It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.” Yin Yu nodded.
Quan Yizhen gave a thumbs up. “Yeah, me too!”
“Wonderful!” Xie Lian said, clasping his hands together. “I'll let San Lang know.”
Once he was gone, Quan Yizhen turned to Yin Yu. “Lantern or pouch?”
“Pouch. I already told you, it's more inconspicuous,” he explained, “The lantern will get the mortals' attention.”
“But the farmers there don't care about things like that?”
“What if they have visitors today?”
Quan Yizhen tilted his head. “Okay... so, pouch it is.”
Since Yin Yu had little to do when it came to preparations, and Quan Yizhen did not care much when it came to his appearance, it did not take long before they used a distance shortening spell to get to Yushi Country.
*
Quan Yizhen enjoyed being around Yushi Huang, just as he enjoyed being around Xie Lian, as they were both nice and strong people who were never mean to his shixiong and would listen to him. They would also explain things to Quan Yizhen without getting mad for no reason.
Hua Cheng was nice to Yin Yu as well, and he was great at fighting, but Quan Yizhen liked him a little less. His smile was not a good one, unless he was smiling at his husband.
But Quan Yizhen had to put up with Hua Cheng to get knowledge on how to nurse Yin Yu's soul properly. Months ago, the moment he had come back from beating up his believers and heard the other gods spread rumors of Hua Cheng's return a few days prior, Quan Yizhen had in fact gone to find him right away.
Hua Cheng had been very, very angry when he had shown up to Xie Lian's temple on Mount Taicang. Quan Yizhen hadn't really understood why, too preoccupied with Yin Yu's wellbeing to notice that both Hua Cheng and Xie Lian were missing a few layers of clothing. Thankfully, Xie Lian had calmed him down and invited Quan Yizhen to their home.
After Hua Cheng had been made a bit more agreeable thanks to his husband's intervention and sympathy for his reliable subordinate, Quan Yizhen had finally gotten the knowledge he had been wanting to learn. He had made sure to remember all of it, asking questions he usually wouldn't have asked, all to make sure everything was as clear as possible.
As he had understood that the ghost realm was the best place to start the process, he had gotten up from his seat, ready to go live there, no matter where. But before he had managed to step through the door, he had been stopped.
He had been offered the choice to stay at Paradise Manor for the first few months of the process. Quan Yizhen had nodded earnestly: Ghost City was a place his shixiong knew well, and since he had learned that Yin Yu needed to be as comfortable as ever, what better place would there be than the closest thing to a home he had?
Besides, Quan Yizhen himself grew to like the place. The manor itself was secluded enough that it was quiet and relaxing for his shixiong, and Quan Yizhen liked being able to sleep a lot in the bed of the guest room he was staying in between sessions of energy transfer to Yin Yu's soul and sparring with anyone available.
The inhabitants of Ghost City were also quite fun, and there was always something new and interesting happening whenever he brought Yin Yu along in a lantern for a daily stroll, something that had also been deemed important for Yin Yu's soul to settle.
Sometimes, random ghosts wanted to start fights with him out of curiosity, something Quan Yizhen appreciated. But more importantly, most were kind to his shixiong, referring to Yin Yu by his title and asking after his health. Quan Yizhen hoped his soul could hear their voices, as he had been told he should be able to.
For weeks upon weeks, Quan Yizhen would diligently transfer his spiritual power to Yin Yu, doing so multiple times a day, every single day, without fault. He had even denied some of the fights or sparring sessions he had been offered and declined opportunities to go beat up huge and strong yao beasts if it meant he would miss a transfer, no matter if anyone offered to take his place as Yin Yu’s helper.
He would also make sure to relay any news or gossip he could remember to Yin Yu, in the hopes he would come back faster to get these news himself.
Despite his efforts, there was little progress to be shown for much too long. Until one day, when he saw the proof that the nurturing was indeed working.
If he had been able to, Quan Yizhen would have hugged Yin Yu when he first manifested as a ghost fire. But even if Yin Yu had been tangible, Quan Yizhen's legendary impulsiveness would have been impeded by the knowledge he had gained thanks to the events that had led to Yin Yu's death, as well as Hua Cheng's very clear and brutal honesty.
This knowledge was thus: Yin Yu hated him. The shixiong he had always loved and admired could not stand him and found him to be nothing but an annoyance and a source of shame. To this day, Quan Yizhen had not entirely figured out what he had done wrong, but he was more than ready to make up for it.
He would pay extra care to listen to anything Yin Yu would ask for, no matter how strange or difficult of a request it would be. This resolve of his was tested right off the bat on the day Yin Yu regained his voice, not long after he had become able to manifest as a transparent and somewhat blurry person.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You were hurt, and you’re my shixiong. I want to take care of you.” Wasn't that obvious?
“But why?”
Another question. But Quan Yizhen had a simple and true answer, “Shixiong needs to be strong again!”
“I've never been strong, Quan Yizhen.”
“But you've always been strong?”
The members of the sect had looked up to him as much as Quan Yizhen did, and Yin Yu had ascended as a martial god, something Quan Yizhen had taken some time to fully understand the implications of. If he wasn't strong, then how many weaklings were there in the world?
Yin Yu had frowned, and sighed. And Quan Yizhen's heart had sunk. Hua Cheng had told him to watch out for negative feelings: resentment was usually good for ghosts, but Yin Yu's state of being was uncertain, and with what his soul had gone through he needed balance.
With how irritable or downright murderous Yin Yu could feel around him, Quan Yizhen could easily do more harm than good. But he could fix this, if only Yin Yu told him when he was doing something wrong...
“Shixiong, please tell me when I'm annoying you.”
“You're not annoying me.”
“But I saw your face, and your sigh. Doesn't that mean you're annoyed?”
Yin Yu had stayed silent for a long moment.
“Are you annoyed?” Quan Yizhen had repeated, unsure he had been heard.
“Maybe...” Yin Yu had swallowed, closing his eyes. “Yes.”
Quan Yizhen had gulped, his shoulders slouching a little. “Oh... why?”
“It's... hard to explain.” Yin Yu had sighed again. “... Do you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“That I'm strong.”
“Of course I do? Why would I not mean it?”
Yin Yu had hummed. Quan Yizhen had frowned in turn, deep in thoughts. “Do you want to be called weak?...”
“No! That's not it at all!” Yin Yu had groaned, on the verge of whining, putting a hand on his face.
Quan Yizhen had said nothing, waiting for him to explain further. But nothing had followed.
After a while of sitting in an uncomfortable silence, Yin Yu slid the hand off his face, his eyes darting to and away from Quan Yizhen's own.
“But... when it comes to calling me something...”
“Yes?”
Yin Yu had looked away. “Don't call me shixiong anymore.”
“...”
Quan Yizhen had not known what to feel about this. What else could he call his shixiong? His shixiong would always be shixiong, there was no changing this.
But he had made a decision, and he would stick by it, no matter how strange this would feel for him.
“Okay, sh-, um...” Quan Yizhen had stammered, his brain feeling a little scrambled. “What do I call you?”
Yin Yu had looked back at him, blinking, his mouth opening and closing a little, much like a carp.
“You...” He had trailed off, playing with his sleeve. “I guess Yin Yu will do.”
“... Yin Yu,” Quan Yizhen had said, testing out the syllables he would have to get used to. “From now on, I'll call you Yin Yu.”
The awkwardness and inadequacy he had felt in the moment had soon been washed away with a tentative feeling of hope, when the ghost of a smile had appeared on Yin Yu's face.
It had eventually gotten easier to address Yin Yu by his name: after all, it was his name, and Quan Yizhen called most people that way, so it wasn't hard to stick to it.
What was harder was not annoying Yin Yu. He tried to learn, he really did, but he never had much patience to begin with. And there were so many little rules to learn and remember, for someone who had never understood nor followed most rules in the first place!
Sometimes he did the wrong things, sometimes he said the wrong things, sometimes he acted the wrong way... He tried to make changes to the way he behaved or approached situations and people, but it often was that those changes turned out to be worse! It was frustrating, especially when new mistakes kept popping up, adding on to the pile of things Quan Yizhen could not get right.
Thankfully, whenever they would get to visit Yushi Huang, Yin Yu would become a lot more patient and tolerant of Quan Yizhen's mishaps. Maybe it was the serenity of Yushi Huang's domain, or the fact that Quan Yizhen would stay away from him and burn his energy in picking fights with the Ox and helping the farmers out with moving heavy things.
But, as surprising as it was, it became more and more probable that the first of those explanations was the case. Quan Yizhen could not be sure, as constant confusion had been the way he had lived his life since forever ago, but the fact that Yin Yu often sought him out, watching him work much in the way he had watched him train back in the old days, might have meant something.
And even in Ghost City such a thing started happening, sporadically at first. But Yin Yu coming out to watch actual or mock fights had gone from a rare to an expected occurrence in recent weeks. Although he claimed he was doing so out of boredom, Quan Yizhen still held out hope.
*
Stepping out of the array into Yushi Country, they were greeted by the locals and offered some fresh produce to take back to Ghost City. Quan Yizhen almost let himself get distracted, but the Ox coming in to guide them to their actual destination made sure he kept on track.
“Welcome, friends.” Yushi Huang said once they had properly met with her, as she gestured for them to take a seat.
While she poured them tea, Quan Yizhen chanced a look at his shixiong, out of the pouch and looking like everything about him was normal, at least for a ghost. It was hard to decipher the expression on his face, even less so his thoughts, but he knew from eavesdropping on Yin Yu's conversations with Xie Lian and Hua Cheng that visiting Yushi Huang always lifted his spirits a little.
He didn't really understand why: between Yushi Huang and Yin Yu, there wasn't much else done but tea drinking, and whatever conversations would start did not last long. At least the tea drinking was something Quan Yizhen liked to see, as the ability to interact in that way with the world was another proof that Yin Yu was coming back together.
But the peculiar silent exchanges were mostly why Quan Yizhen would often ditch the meeting after his first and only cup.
“How are you doing?” Yushi Huang inquired as Yin Yu was taking a small sip of his tea.
“Better.”
Yushi Huang smiled and nodded, and that was that.
Just like every time they visited, Quan Yizhen slipped away from the quiet and boring atmosphere to let out some steam. This time again, Yin Yu joined him from afar after roughly two incense time, doing not much aside from taking turns watching Quan Yizhen and the landscape.
And just before they left, Yin Yu sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, high upon a hill overlooking the village, with Quan Yizhen standing behind him and pouring his power into his meridians with careful focus.
Whenever he did this, and especially there, in the mortal realm, Quan Yizhen could almost feel as if the past hundreds of years had been a strange dream. If he ignored all the obvious signs that they had both changed –Yin Yu most of all– he could convince himself they were still mortals, shixiong and shidi, sharing a moment as the afternoon led way to evening.
He wished for things to go back to this, though maybe not exactly the same. He had learned things he would have liked to have known back then. If he had, then he would have tried to learn how to be more patient, he would have asked Yin Yu to be clearer, more honest, to not be afraid to tell him when he was doing something he shouldn't have, because Quan Yizhen would not ever have gotten mad.
He could never get mad at Yin Yu.
But this was the past, and all he could have was the future. And in that future, there were many possibilities: they could grow, they could change even more, they could see each other differently. But those were things that seemed far away. When it came to the near future Quan Yizhen wished Yin Yu would grow strong enough to practice martial arts again, as he longed to be allowed to train with his shixiong. If not, he at least hoped Yin Yu would practice alongside Xie Lian.
However, for the time being, Quan Yizhen only wished for one thing.
“Yin Yu... are you really doing better?”
With a quiet exhale, Yin Yu answered, “Yes. I truly am.”
And that was enough. This would be enough.