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Every morning, a thin ray of light came into the bedroom window, passing through the magical protection surrounding the house and slowly brightening the interiors.
That thread of light had reached the bed a few minutes before, and gently grazed their limbs. Xie Lian had observed the slow movement of that ray of light for more than an hour, waiting for it to reach Mu Qing’s body. Light was beautiful on him. It made him seem soft; strangely alive. Now that he finally could look at his skin and not be choked by the image of his white and blood-red corpse, he started to feel a sense of wonderment as he stared at his sleeping face, made sweet by the pale morning light, next to his.
It was thrilling to let his gaze linger on his naked skin. Never had he been allowed more than a wrist, the corner of a collarbone, a calf, when they were young and whole. And he had yearned and suffocated his yearning, loved and suffered from it. Years and years of “cannot” and “not permitted”, centuries of regret for not having tried to love as he wished to before his companion’s premature death. Habits were hard to kill, even if in the form of thoughts. Now he woke up every day, and Mu Qing was sweetly in his arms, all of his body, all of him served on a silver platter, just for Xie Lian. A certain feeling of possession screamed in happiness in his chest, and it scared him.
Following the ray of light, he stroked his chest with the tip of his fingers. His exploration was met with something slightly rough protruding. The coloured stitching that held Mu Qing’s chest closed was of a certain beauty, if one didn’t think of what made it necessary. Never was Xie Lian going to forget the vision of his lifeless body, the memory of flesh parting to let his hand delve into Mu Qing’s chest. Sometimes Xie Lian caught him staring at his own breast in awe, his fingers lightly grazing over the embroidery, the wound. Mu Qing loved him.
Ghosts didn’t breathe, but the cultivator felt a change under the palm of his hand when Mu Qing awakened. Eyes as black as the abyss met his own.
“Qing’er…,” murmured Xie Lian, stroking his face. His partner closed his eyes again and nuzzled his hand like a cat.
Mu Qing was still loose from the previous evening. The prince quickly spread a drop of oil on himself, it was enough to push inside him once again, cradled by his pale thighs.
Mu Qing let him do anything. Xie Lian sank his teeth into the tender flesh of his neck, a desperate attempt to leave a mark on him, something that branded him as his property. That way, he thought, they wouldn’t take him away again. But no mark ever stayed on his skin more than a handful of hours, just like on Xie Lian’s. Nevertheless, Mu Qing let him do it.
That day Mu Qing seemed distant from their home. His eyes weren’t seeing that place and were instead wandering who knows where, lost in some memory that darkened his face and made his voice thin. He answered in monosyllables and seemed to move with difficulty, inattentive to the surrounding world. From time to time, he touched his own chest.
Xie Lian often wondered whether he missed his heart, whether it hurt. Whether he wanted something to fill that empty space. But Xie Lian had already sewn the wound closed. He couldn’t fill it without tearing that hole open again, and he wasn’t able to do so. He wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing that chasm again.
“I’d like to be able to remember,” Mu Qing suddenly said one day.
When Xie Lian turned to look at him, Mu Qing already had his eyes on him and one of his hands was lingering where his heart used to be.
“I try to not think about it, but I always fail. When I close my eyes I return to that day,” quietly continued the ghost. “I never see his face. Only his robes, his sword, his hair. And every time I think it’s you that I’m seeing.”
Xie Lian shivered, and his chest ached at those words. He couldn’t forget the fear, the pain in Mu Qing’s gaze when he found him, when he heard him say that he believed Xie Lian to be his murderer. He still struggled to believe that Mu Qing could have thought such a thing. He didn’t know whether what hurt the most was being believed capable of such cruelty, or the awareness that Mu Qing thought himself to be so hated.
“Mu Qing,” he started to say, uncertain as to how to go on.
“Perhaps if I went back there I might recall something. Reconstruct what happened. Maybe…,” the ghost’s voice was strange, filled with tension. Xie Lian saw his hands trembling and hurried to squeeze them with his own.
His lover’s faded eyes were glistening, and black tears threatened to spill on his cheeks.
“I’d like to know why I had to die,” he whispered, lowering his head.
The truth was that Xie Lian never asked himself that question. He avoided that thought with all his strength for all those years. It was easier to believe it was an accident, the assault of a group of bandits, or a malevolent spirit out of control. He had to survive and endure. He blamed himself countless times for what happened, for that lifeless body he held in his arms as he screamed in pain, as Wu Ming dug a hole to bury it. He never really wanted to know why it happened. He couldn’t accept that someone wanted Mu Qing dead.
But then, there were those words.
“I thought it was you.”
Never such few words devastated him to that point. The scared and confused gaze, the grief in the ghost’s eyes brought that question back to him, that question that he didn’t want to find an answer to.
Had Mu Qing ever tried to find out what happened, during those centuries? Before they reunited, he seemed too out of himself, and when they fell back together he never heard him say it. He didn’t know where he went when he was outside, but something told him that Mu Qing never dared to go back to that place.
“Do you want to… go there again?”
For some time Mu Qing didn’t answer, but then he nodded slowly.
“I think I need it.”
Xie Lian’s heart was disquiet as they returned to those roads that they hadn’t seen in centuries. With every step closer to that small piece of land, he kept asking himself what it meant for Mu Qing to go back to his death, and what it would have entailed.
Perhaps for him it was about closure. Maybe Mu Qing would have found his answer, and his soul would finally be able to rest. He would have left the world of the living, as he should have done centuries in the past. He immediately felt aversion to the idea, and then disgust toward himself for his reaction. It wasn’t right. Especially coming from him. If he loved Mu Qing, he couldn’t wish for him to keep wandering in torment.
He was so selfish, he thought bitterly as he stared at Mu Qing’s back in front of him. He couldn’t chain the man to himself, and yet he couldn’t accept the possibility of him leaving. Xie Lian would end up alone.
A movement in the corner of his eye distracted him for a few moments. Next to him, almost behind his shoulders, frilled a pair of thin silver wings, a tiny, semi-transparent butterfly that had no reason to be so far away from a field of flowers. To be honest, it had no reason to be outside at all in that season.
In front of him, Mu Qing suddenly stalled.
“Qing’er?”
The ghost took a step back and, maybe unconsciously, he squeezed his own arm with a hand.
“I’m not sure…,” he whispered, and turned around to look for the other’s gaze, waiting for a response.
Xie Lian walked forward and let his eyes linger on the landscape, on the trees bent by the wind in the distance, on the dirt road that changed shape with the passing of time.
He didn’t recall it having such a harsh curve up there. The change of direction was less drastic at the time, and it was not as wide either. Perhaps with time more merchants, carriages and wanderers passed on that road, leading to its enlargement. The fields, moreover, seemed more taken care of than before. Agriculture must have flourished there, too.
He remembered, however, the willow tree more or less twenty steps forward. It was bigger, now. Much bigger. But there was the same node on the trunk, and there was a wound on the bark that he recalled quite well. He stared at it for a long time as Wu Ming dug the hole.
“I think it’s here,” murmured Mu Qing. Xie Lian saw their shadows starting to lose their shape and squirm on the ground.
The cultivator looked at the ghost’s eyes as they fixed on a spot on the ground, and he suddenly knew it was there, right there.
He didn’t recognise the small spot. Nothing made it different from any other spot on the road. But Mu Qing stopped and looked at the ground, and he felt like he
returned to that day. He stared at the ghost’s pale visage, and his mind re-evoked the image of a lifeless chalk-white face, limbs abandoned on the corner of the road like a pile of trash, bloodless lips and a hole in the chest. His stomach tightened and he felt unstable on his legs.
“Mu Qing,” he whispered, looking at the black-clad back bowing down. “Mu Qing, I think this…”
“Yes, it was here,” murmured Mu Qing. “This is where… I was going to the village. I believe… I believe I was going to my mother. Or coming back from visiting her. I heard someone else walking with me. I thought it was a Heavenly Official, a deputy god. At the time I was working for… ah. And then?” The last words he said were little more than a breath.
Xie Lian cautiously sat on the ground, an oppressive feeling in his chest.
“You don’t have to talk about it. If it’s too much…,” he began, but Mu Qing didn’t seem to hear him anymore.
The ghost mumbled to himself as if in a trance, and his hands were shaking.
“There was someone with me, so I turned to see who it was, to greet them. They had… white robes. Long hair. A sword. It was you. It was you.”
“No, Mu Qing. That wasn’t me. I could never be that person.”
The air was cut by a choked sound. Mu Qing fell on his knees on the dirt road, and the prince saw himself, his own pathetically sprawled figure as he held the beloved’s corpse tight in his arms.
He carefully walked closer to the ghost and stretched one hand to stroke his shoulder. Black tears spilled on chalk-white cheeks once again.
When he touched him, Mu Qing shrank away. He kept his hands tight on his chest, the fingers scratching the fabric of his robes as if trying to dig into his own flesh.
“I’m sorry,” whispered the cultivator, ignoring the stab in his heart at the rejection. “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”
Mu Qing for a moment met his gaze, and those eyes seemed confused as they held Xie Lian’s stare. He cautiously got his hands away from his chest, as if he feared getting burnt, and he slowly seemed to settle down under his lover’s attentive gaze.
“Forgive me,” he murmured when he managed to stop the trembling of his hands. “I didn’t mean… I know. That it wasn’t you. I know it couldn’t be you. But I thought…”
Xie Lian kneeled in front of him and slowly wrapped his arms around the ghost’s shoulders. He shivered from the effort of not crumbling down before the prince. Xie Lian stroked his arm, holding him until he felt him calm down little by little.
“What did you think? You can tell me,” he whispered gently, turning Mu Qing’s face with his hand.
It took Mu Qing a while to answer, and Xie Lian thought he wasn’t going to do so until he finally opened his mouth.
“That you hated me,” he murmured. “You hated me at the time. I never believed you capable of cruelty, but those last times we saw each other you didn’t seem like yourself. For all I knew, you could have killed the prince of Xianle I thought I knew. You could have turned into someone capable of killing me.”
Xie Lian kissed his forehead.
“I did kill the prince of Xianle you knew,” he said, grimly. “But I don’t believe I would have been able to hurt you on purpose. I hit you on the day we parted, and I’ve felt guilty ever since the moment my anger simmered down.”
Mu Qing didn’t say anything, but his body melted in his arms. They stayed like that for a long time, and when the ghost moved a bit to stretch his back, that road seemed less grey and bleak.
“Xie Lian.”
“Mh?”
“I’d like to see where you buried me.”
The distance between where Mu Qing died and where Xie Lian buried him wasn’t long, but it seemed like it took an eternity to take his partner under that willow tree.
There was no trace left of the small mound, but on the spot where he was quite sure the grave was, grass and wildflowers had grown more luscious. A huff of white petals marked the piece of land under which Mu Qing’s body lay.
The ghost sat under the fronds, and stared.
“You choose a nice place,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been unhappy, had I known where you were going to put me to rest.”
Xie Lian let out the breath he was holding.
A thread of pale light came through the branches, painting the shape of the long, thin leaves on his companion’s visage. Mu Qing’s eyes were terribly pale and vitreous, but in the daylight, as weak as it was, they gained some guise of life.
“You should have seen it already,” said Xie Lian. “When you came to gather your ashes. You must have been here to do so.”
Mu Qing shook his head. “The first few decades, I was barely conscious of myself. Even after I came out of Mount Tonglu. I have been here, hearing the call of my remnants. However, I don’t remember clearly what happened those days, or what I could perceive. It probably wasn’t even during the time of day that I came here to burn what was left of my body.”
A sob broke the quiet.
Xie Lian sat beside Mu Qing and pulled the man’s head on his shoulder when he broke out crying. His voice seemed so small, so young, and Xie Lian felt the need to hold him close. That was not the Weeping Face, he felt it like a punch in the gut when Mu Qing’s pale hands tensed before they grabbed onto his robes. That was the boy from centuries ago, as it was the first time he managed to see him again.
“I didn’t want to die... I…,” he stopped, harshly breathing in even if he didn’t need to. “I wanted to be a cultivator. I wanted to live. To ascend with you. I… I wanted to be alive, I want to be alive!”
The words were like a knife stab.
Xie Lian hugged him so tight, as if he wanted to melt into him. Mu Qing’s body was shaken by his sobs, and they were so strong that Xie Lian feared the ghost was going to ruin his throat. He would have sobbed too; he would have cried with his partner if he didn’t think it was his duty to keep Mu Qing’s pieces together. He couldn’t afford to break down when the other man needed him.
Looking for something to give him some relief, Xie Lian put his hand on Mu Qing’s chest, and it was almost by accident that he found the irregular shape of the wound’s stitches. He began to slowly stroke his partner’s breast, reminiscent of how he melted under his hands when he sewed him closed. He wasn’t wrong, and little by little he felt the tension leaving Mu Qing’s body and the sobs getting quieter.
It took some time for Mu Qing to recompose himself, but Xie Lian didn’t complain.
“Mu Qing,” he murmured, stroking his hair and helping him wipe the tears out of his face. “I need your help with something.”
An incense’s time later they had gathered an armful of seasonal flowers, twigs and plants with interesting shapes, and they sat to weave them into crowns, bouquets and other arrangements, following Xie Lian’s instructions. If Mu Qing was surprised by the fact that the prince wasn’t a complete disaster in this thing, he didn’t let it show.
When they were done, Xie Lian stood up and encouraged his companion to do the same. The cultivator, holding his compositions in his arms, stood before the spot where he buried Mu Qing and placed his offering on the ground with a solemn and melancholic look.
“The last time I’ve been here was when I bid you farewell,” he said quietly, looking at the field of grass.
“I didn’t have any parting gift, because I didn’t have anything on me. I didn’t say any word of goodbye, because I had none that seemed adequate. I didn’t even dig the hole myself. If you let me, I’d like to give you something made with my hands.”
By his side, Mu Qing was silent, and he looked at the bouquet of flowers and grasses as if he wanted it to give him an answer.
Slowly, very slowly, Mu Qing bowed and put his compositions next to Xie Lian’s.
“I’m happy I got a funeral,” he said. “Not everyone is this lucky when they die on the side of a country road like dogs.”
His voice obviously didn’t sound happy at all, and his lip trembled when he straightened up and went back by his partner’s side, observing their work positioned on the grass like an offering in a temple.
They stayed there for some more hours. Xie Lian sat under the willow’s branches. After he studied his grave for some time, Mu Qing imitated him, and after some encouragement he let Xie Lian pull him down and make him rest his head on his lap.
Perhaps he slept, perhaps he was just deep in meditation, but the ghost eventually found himself staring at the setting sun with the sound of Xie Lian’s breath and beating heart cradling him.
A fluttering movement took his gaze away from the partner’s half-asleep face.
Xie Lian stretched his arms and frowned, perplexed, when the other man suddenly stood up.
“What is it?” he murmured, looking around for what caused that sudden reaction.
Mu Qing nodded toward something glittering on the grass. Looking more carefully, Xie Lian saw it was a small butterfly of a pretty silvery-white colour.
“Don’t touch it,” said Mu Qing dryly, as if he had foreseen his instinct to reach out for it.
“Mu Qing, what…?”
The ghost already has a hand on his saber’s hilt.
“Crimson Rain. Those things are his eyes,” his voice came out as a hiss, every trace of torpor and softness washed away in an instant. His body tensed like a bowstring; a weapon ready to strike.
The butterfly slowly flew closer, and its flapping around seemed almost sassy and arrogant; as if it was mocking him. It fluttered around Mu Qing, and before he could stop it, the creature landed on Xie Lian’s shoulder.
The ghost gasped. He lunged forward to chase it away from his companion, his face contracted with terror. The butterfly, however, did nothing. It just landed, not harming the cultivator.
“Go away!” shouted Mu Qing, fiercely flapping his wide sleeves at the creature. “Damn, don’t you dare get close!”
The butterfly didn’t immediately move, it lingered for some moments, as if to make fun of him. Then, finally, it flew away and disappeared just like it came.
Even after it was gone, Mu Qing kept swearing under his breath, his eyes spirited.
“Xie Lian… do you understand what could have happened? Why didn’t you move from there?” He erupted, his hands shaking as he feverishly stroked his partner’s arms.
Xie Lian stared at him for a bit before he replied. “I didn’t know what it was.”
“I told you it was Crimson Rain, damn it. That feral beast, I can’t believe it dared get close to you. Next to my grave. He shouldn’t have dared,” his voice was as cold as steel, and the sudden cadaveric paleness and the unnaturally glowing eyes weren’t even pretending to hide his true nature anymore.
The ghost started drawing a transportation array on the hem of his robes.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to him. I let him spy on me for too long, but him doing such a thing isn’t acceptable. If I don't wipe that arrogant grin from his face, he’ll keep pushing the limit.”
Xie Lian grabbed his arm.
“We don’t know whether he had bad intentions. He might simply be interested in another ghost king.”
Mu Qing huffed, rolling his eyes. “The likes of him are never just interested. He’s a haughty creature, and he enjoys being a pain in the ass. My patience isn’t endless.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Don’t talk back. I said I will, and this is it.”
For a moment he got scared of his own voice. For the first time in centuries, he heard the Crown Prince of Xianle coming out of his mouth.
Mu Qing must have heard it too, because he froze where he stood and stared at him for a handful of seconds before he frowned and acquiesced with a reluctant tone.
“But don’t head forward in absurd situations like you always do. If I have to watch out for you when we’re in that hellish place, Ghost City, I’m done,” mumbled Mu Qing.
Even if Xie Lian didn’t particularly appreciate sarcasm, he saw this as a good sign. One day, perhaps, his Mu Qing would actually be back. He would have stopped crying black tears and having sudden amnesias. He would have stopped scratching on his chest with feverish hands as he looked for his heart.
Ghost City was as Mu Qing described it, but Xie Lian didn’t have the same impression of it as his partner nevertheless. Just like Mu Qing said, there was chaos, noise, and stalls selling stuff apparently pulled out a horror story. The acrid smell in the air and the red colour that dominated the crowded street were so intense that he felt dizzy with it, but it had a certain charm, in his opinion. He could get used to it and learn to appreciate it.
Mu Qing didn’t share the same sentiment. He walked at a fast pace, his face tense as if only being there caused him extreme disgust and pain.
The ghost stopped when they reached the entrance of a gigantic palace even more pompous and red than the rest of the city. Xie Lian tried to read the banner on top of the doorway, but the calligraphy was unreadable.
“This is where he lives. Paradise Manor,” murmured Mu Qing with a sneer. “Gods, what an obscene name.”
Just a moment before Xie Lian tried to knock, the doorway was opened, and a masked face peered out from the inside.
“Chengzhu isn’t home. If you seek an audience with him, you need to return another day,” said the masked man in a hushed voice.
“Oh, so now he plays coy? When he’s the one who stepped where he wasn’t welcome?”
The ghost didn’t bat an eye. “I can’t make my master appear where I most like, sir Weeping Face, as much as it’d be useful to me as well. If you excuse me, unless you have other business to attend here, I’d be grateful if you left the Manor as soon as possible.”
After he finished talking, he closed the door in their faces.
They were forced to go back home. Mu Qing was still seething. In a way, it was entertaining to see, even if Xie Lian would never dare to say that looking at Mu Qing losing his temper could be a source of entertainment.
For a while the ghost spent his time fixing the embroidery on some of their robes with nervous hands, then he started to pace around the house, as if in wait for something.
Xie Lian managed to pull him inside and make him eat something, even if he didn’t really need to. Anything as long as it could distract him from that issue.
It was later, when night was falling already, that the ghost tensed up and turned toward the door, on edge as rarely Xie Lian had ever seen him.
“Bloody arrogant beast,” he hissed, showing his teeth.
Xie Lian saw a flash just outside the window, and he walked closer. Right there, on the other side, a small silver butterfly was floating.
“He got over the defences I erected around this place! Damn, I swear, I…”
Xie Lian walked toward his partner and took him by the shoulders, making him sit on the bed. He began to draw little circles on his back to calm him down.
“We don’t know if he’s looking for a fight,” he murmured. “Let’s wait and see what he wants.”
“Every time I’ve met him he was looking for a fight. Don’t you remember the last time?”
Xie Lian remembered, remembered even too well seeing him coming back home exhausted and injured, and waking up the following day to a Mu Qing who didn’t even recall being a ghost.
“Look,” he said quietly, pointing at the window. “It’s already gone.”
“He will come back. He surely will. This isn’t a safe place anymore.”
Xie Lian shut him with a finger on his lips.
“Perhaps. But now it’s gone. We can talk about it calmly one of these days. Now I’m really tired.”
Mu Qing frowned and let his partner get him out of his robes and slip him into the simple ones he used for bed. Not that he really slept, but it was nice to pretend he did. It felt domestic.
While Xie Lian washed his mouth and slipped under the heavy blanket by his partner’s side, the ghost blew the candles off with a hand gesture. A thread of darkness rose from the ground and grazed the tip of the candles, taking their light away.
Mu Qing rose in the middle of the night and sat still on the bed. Xie Lian heard him move, and saw with the corner of his eyes his dark silhouette curled up, with knees tucked under his chin. He didn't know whether to take his hand or not. He didn’t know if he was simply tired of lying down or if something upset him, either.
He heard him take a shaky breath, saw one of his hands stroking the stitching on his chest.
Then a soft, choked sob, one not meant to be heard. Sleep had almost left him. He was about to sit up as well, to cradle the ghost’s shoulder with his hands.
Mu Qing was faster. He quickly wiped his face, had it been daytime Xie Lian would have seen black tears on his fingers, and lay down again, turned toward Xie Lian. The cultivator quickly closed his eyes.
A few moments later he felt a pair of arms around his waist, the tip of a nose on his neck. Mu Qing didn’t breathe, but he felt him move to find a more comfortable position.
“What was his name?” murmured Mu Qing.
Ah. So he noticed Xie Lian was awake.
“Whose name?”
“The person who helped you bury me. You said someone helped you.”
Xie Lian shook his head, his heart tight at the memory of a masked face dissolving into smoke.
“I didn’t know his name. I called him Wu Ming; “nameless”. I never even saw his face.”
Mu Qing stayed silent for a while.
“You don’t like talking about it,” he declared, and for a moment Xie Lian was afraid, afraid that Mu Qing saw more than he let on.
“It’s not a nice memory,” he said quietly. He felt his partner’s arms loosening as if to pull away. Xie Lian grabbed his wrists and kept him close.
“Will you ever tell me about it?”
Xie Lian heard the impatience in his voice, a dissonant note that betrayed a tremor, an insecurity.
“Sooner or later,” he whispered. “I will tell you everything you want.”
Another silence.
“What you did… what you and that nameless ghost did. Thank you.”
Xie Lian turned around, still holding Mu Qing’s wrists. He couldn’t let him slip away at that moment.
“You don’t have to thank me. It’s the bare minimum.”
The other shook his head.
“No, it’s not. Not…,” his voice broke, and he had to stop and close his eyes before he continued. “Not everyone would do it. Many people who knew me would have left me there where I was. On the side of the road.”
“Mu Qing…”
“I’m happy. That you… that you care. I always wished for that.”
Xie Lian pulled him in with all his strength, and the ghost let it happen, let himself be wrapped in the cultivator’s arms. Gods, his throat hurt, thought Xie Lian as he pushed Mu Qing’s head into spot between his neck and shoulder. It felt like there was a knot in there. He kissed his companion’s black hair.
I always cared for you.
He should have told him. Should he tell him?
Perhaps he already did.
He didn’t say anything anymore, simply holding Mu Qing in his arms. He didn’t know how ready Mu Qing was to believe it. Maybe, in the future, he would have said all he was holding inside.
It wasn’t the right time yet.