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The scar on his palm is nothing more than a thin, white line, made even paler now that his skin has changed to the grey colour of a Fierce Corpse. Song Lan can remember the day he gained it well; he’d been a young teenager, then, sparring with one of his marital siblings when their weapon had slipped from their grasp and, as they both attempted to keep it from hitting the ground, it sliced his hand. By all accounts, the wound shouldn’t have scarred over in the first place—his cultivation was more than high enough, even at that time, to heal a cut as simple as that—but for some odd reason, it had. Over the years, he’s found himself studying it when he didn’t know where to go, or what to do, from where he was. Every time he faced a crossroad, Song Lan would turn his gaze down to his right hand and stare at that thin white scar like it held every answer in the world.
These days, however, it is not the only scar on his body. The things Xue Yang would make him do—killing those who came too close to Yí City, mainly, whether they have been misfortunate ordinary people or cultivators, rogue or established—had seen him garnering more battle scars than he would have accrued had he been in those battles while alive, and they litter his body in varying places. Once, he would have been annoyed with them for merely existing, but now, with as many things he’s had to get used to as a Corpse, he doesn’t mind them. Every now and then, like the scar on his hand, he’ll study them with great attention, and even trace them if he truly has nothing else to do.
Just as much as it’s a past-time, though, is it also soothing, such as when he’s been thinking too much about things too far out of his reach. He’s stronger, now, in his undead life, but in many ways, he’s also weaker. Any little comfort he can get, he will take, even if he must give it to himself.
The only scar he is surprised he does not have is one across his eyes; when Xue Yang had slaughtered everyone within Baixue Temple, he had intentionally left Song Lan alive but blinded, and he made sure he was thorough about it. Not only had the villain slashed his eyes to the point that they’d never work again, he had gouged them out to ensure that Song Lan would never even be able to open them. After that, Xiao Xingchen had taken him to the immortal mountain that his master, Baoshan-sanren, and her disciples resided on, and she had restored his sight by giving him, at the latter’s request, Xingchen’s eyes. Such an injury followed so quickly by such a procedure would have left anyone with intense scarring, but there wasn’t even a thin line of marred skin. Doubtless the mysterious healing work of a cultivator as the immortal Baoshan-sanren, but it was still something he couldn’t get used to, despite all of the time that has passed since then.
Perhaps that’s, in part, why he has always focused on the one on his palm. The thought that it hadn’t been healed by any extraordinary power was its own comfort, even more than that which he found in simply looking at or tracing it. Even if the memory faded from his mind with time, the physical reminder would always be apparent, so long as he, too, remained. And perhaps that was the reason it had become one in the first place, all those years ago.
The thought, strangely, makes him smile. For all of the turmoil that has seen him to this point—all of the pain and suffering, both his own and that he was forced to cause—there are still parts of himself that he is happy with. There are still ways that he can be happy now, despite everything.
Any comfort I can get. He thinks; and he will always find it, wherever he can.