Chapter Text
Wei WuXian closed his eyes, turned around, and spread out his limbs, “It sounds nice.”
He asked, “What’s it called?”
Lan WangJi seemed to murmur something, but the darkness had taken Wei WuXian, and the beautiful tune carried him down into the depths. For a moment the music seemed to sooth the headache that had accompanied his fever and the tension in his brow smoothed out.
The song suddenly became disjointed and seemed to scream at Wei WuXian, it rattled his bones, shook his dantian, and made him feel nauseous in his head rather than his stomach; he wanted to turn to the side so he wouldn’t throw up on himself, but he couldn’t seem to move and his eyelids wouldn’t open.
In his fever fogged mind, Wei WuXian realised that he was no longer hearing Lan WangJi but was instead hearing the resentful screams of the sword that had fallen into the water. No—that made no sense, water acted as a—as a—he couldn’t—he had to jump into the water to trick to water ghouls into coming to him, because he couldn’t—couldn’t—go to them—
As Wei WuXian pondered the quandary of how to get water (more water?) between him and the sword so he could sleep the individual voices of the screams seemed to filter through to him like they wanted an empathetic ear—that didn’t sound safe. He tried to pull away but the wool in his head seemed to mean that his brain could no longer talk to his body, but his brain could still talk to the sword.
Anger—intense, encompassing, anger—Wei WuXian was in a sudden frothing rage that he wanted to throw up on the stupid murder turtle before he passed out into delicious oblivion—that was stupid, Lan WangJi had killed the Xuanwu, Wei WuXian had even helped by stabbing the beast with the sword that wouldn’t shut up!
The anger immediately let up, it was like a force pulled from Wei WuXian, he swore that his body jerked off the ground from the tug of it. Then energy rushed at him, filled his meridians and rode his heartbeat until it pierced his dantian, like a splinter of ice. There was a brief flash of recognition where Wei WuXian realised that that shard of ice, that spirit had been one of his Shidis that had died in the onslaught from the Xuanwu first appeared. Did, did he just liberate a spirit with his empathy towards hating and killing the Xuanwu with his body? It was horrible and he never wanted to do it again! But the voices from the sword seemed to line up, to fill him with their anger and scream their grievances at him. “It’s dead, it’s dead, it’s dead, Lan Zhan killed it, Lan Zhan killed it, Lan Zhan killed it…” Wei WuXian chanted, screamed, begged, cried, but the words didn’t come out of his mouth, they got caught in the wool in his head, and lodged behind a wordless scream in his throat. A few more souls were liberated, and suddenly Wei WuXian knew that that was no more than a drop of water in the ocean—no, a grain of sand in the Taklamakan desert, since entering the ocean had more of a chance of survival than entering that desert. Even more, some of those souls were hundreds of years old and their anger had ceased to be aimed at the Xuanwu of Slaughter and instead was a raging ice storm of resentment.
Through the screams, pain, and fever came the melodic hum of Cleansing, Wei WuXian remembered it from a demonstration of its use when he had been at the lectures at Cloud Recesses. The voices retreated and Wei WuXian sighed. There were a few heartbeats that weren’t filled with the cold of a liberating spirit and Wei WuXian’s dantian seemed to warm him more than usual.
The screams returned, no longer, wisps of voices that were pulled off and made clear, but in a song of their own, complimentary to Cleansing in terms of melody, but contradictory in that it made his qi jerk through his meridians in turmoil. ‟Where did this melody even come from?”
He was suddenly flying over lands he vaguely recognised, then the ocean, then back on land it was a strange land, the writing familiar but the words just wouldn’t register in Wei WuXian’s spinning head. He saw a man laughing maniacally and then he poisoned the qi of an entire party, with a song that made Wei WuXian want to scream and throw up—he, at the very least didn’t do the latter. Honestly Wei WuXian thinks that it might have killed some sort of royalty as well. In the aftermath there was a Lan, the forehead ribbon and white made it obvious, he investigated and in the end boarded a ship with a book. Wei WuXian felt like a bird on the wing racing the prow of the ship. He followed the man back to Cloud Recesses, the man presented the book to the elders and then Wei WuXian watched as the book was brought to the library pavilion and the Forbidden section opened. Wei WuXian paid attention and then crowd, ‟I know how to get into the Forbidden Section,” and repeated the method for entry a couple times even as he followed the man down and watched him shelve the Songs of Turmoil. The man left, but Wei WuXian stayed like a ghost floating in the Forbidden Library, he couldn’t even explore, all he could do was focus on the one book.
In the corner of his eyes, he could tell that the light that stole in through cracks was changing at as rapid pace. At one point the room grew hot and ash rained down through cracks in the ceiling, but the Forbidden Library remained mostly untouched. All was quiet again, but the light still flickered and Wei WuXian realised that it was time, he was speeding through time until something relevant happened, which became even more apparent when Lans entered and checked the books, they moved around faster than humanly possible flicking in and out of Wei WuXian’s sight like a dragonfly. Then the book was taken down and time slowed to a normal speed as he watched the book be checked for damage—there was none.
Lan XiChen came next after the books had been checked, and after time had sped up again, he came laughing and chatting with someone that Wei WuXian couldn’t see. They never got near the book, but perhaps all the time stuck staring at it had calmed Wei WuXian’s nausea because he could understand what Lan XiChen was saying. He described the layout of the Forbidden Library and what each section held.
It was nighttime, with not even a sliver of light coming through the cracks, when a figure stole in and by the light of a candle rifled through books. It took a while before they had come upon Wei WuXian’s book, but when they had, Wei WuXian watched as they devoured the book with great speed and then tore out a single page before replacing it.
Wei WuXian was flying again not following the thief in the night but speeding northward from Cloud Recesses. The land he was flying over at least vaguely looked familiar. Wei WuXian figured at least this time he was still in the Jianghu.
The music returned, still the version of Cleansing that was anything but cleansing and Wei WuXian’s flight seemed to take him to the source, he hadn’t even noticed that it was no longer night. He was at the Unclean Realm, the tall, imposing stone walls of the main complex nestled in the shadow of the mountains was unmistakable. Suddenly, Wei WuXian was watching some Jin that he had never seen before, but a Jin none-the-less, golden-tan robes, red mark on the forehead. Based on the relative age of Nie MingJue, who Wei WuXian did recognise and the age of the Jin, he had to be, Jin Zi-something. But it was the hat that was messing Wei WuXian up, he didn’t even remember glimpsing a Jin with such a hat.
The three of them were in the room, the Jin knew what he was playing, Wei WuXian knew what the Jin was playing, Nie MingJue did not—the large sect leader knew he wasn’t listening to Cleansing, but he had no clue what he was listening to. Wei WuXian marvelled at that fact because the song made Wei WuXian want to remove the Jin’s head with his bare hands and at the same time it made his meridian scream, but Nie MingJue seemed content to see how it played out. And in that moment Wei WuXian got flashes of how it played out ChiFeng-Zun—where did that title come from? Qi deviated and ‘ran away’ but instead the Jin killed him and dismembered his corpse.
Wei WuXian wanted to throw up again, he tried to shut his eyes against the horror of the dismemberment, but the scene continued to play against the back of his eyelids. ‟How did we get here?” because Wei WuXian knew he had been watching the past and now he was seeing the future. ‟Why would a Jin kill Nie-Zongzhu?”
He didn’t fly across the land again, the scene shifted instantaneously, Wei WuXian found himself in Koi Tower, it had to be, no other sect decorated in gilt. A cultivator in white brought a child, a junior Jin disciple, before the sects. Apparently, the child had used demonic cultivation to slaughter the YueyangChang sect. Wei WuXian was shocked, as most of the sect leaders in the room were, for the accused didn’t even look old enough to attend Cloud Recesses!
Debate went on for a while and two factions emerged one that wanted execution, headed by Nie MingJue, and the other life imprisonment, pushed for by Jin GuangShan. Execution won, but Wei WuXian watched later as Jin GuangShan freed Xue Yang to continue his demonic cultivation work, while confined to Koi Tower. Nie MingJue, of course made noise about when the execution was to occur and Jin GuangShan told Jin GuangYao to deal with it.
Jin GuangYao started playing for Nie MingJue, it was soothing, not as good as Lan Zhan’s playing, but it even seemed to ease Wei WuXian’s headache. But then the scene changed to the top of the Koi Tower stairs and Nie MingJue yelling at Jin GuangYao, ending with the latter being kicked down the stairs. After that the music changed and like what had happened years ago in Dongying the music led to Nie MingJue’s death. Wei WuXian was horrified, “Why would anyone do all this to defend a demonic cultivator?”
Wei WuXian saw himself, robes and hair flapping in a phantom wind, eyes glowing red, black dizi at his lips and the dead rising around him and attacking mainly Wens but they attacked members of other sects as well, and there was a tally it looked like the design was a tiger. He realised that the tally was the sword, he could hear it whispering to him, about how strong they could be together, but behind the coaxing whispers of the sword, he could hear the screams of the dead in the memory of a future not yet come to pass. The dead there screamed and cried they were the restful dead that Wei WuXian had disturbed for the war, he didn’t understand why. “A cultivator is meant to bring rest to the restless dead, not disturb the restful dead. I wouldn’t do this.”
That was when the real horrors started, not that everything he had seen before hadn’t been horrific, but he was learning just what it would take to drive him to act in the antithesis of everything he stood for.
He came to understand that while the living experienced time in a linear fashion, the dead were not so restrained. The second he protested or tried to shake his head he saw a different future but all of them ended in his death or him becoming a demonic cultivator. Sometimes Wen RuoHan had Yin Iron, sometimes he didn’t, sometimes Wei WuXian took the sword with him, sometimes he went back for it, sometimes he started experimenting with demonic cultivation when he had been studying at Cloud Recesses, sometimes Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi got married in the Cold Pool Cave before Lan Yi. Even watching the memory of a past that could have been, Wei WuXian didn’t understand the significance, but the sword knew and mocked Wei WuXian with how even his husband would abandon him. There was a fifty percent chance that the golden core transfer wouldn’t work, so half the timelines Wei WuXian could not see past his death at the hands of Wen Qing or if he survived, he might not have survived the fall into the Burial Mounds or the Mounds themselves.
He saw Wen Ning just barely alive, a puppet of demonic cultivation, he saw Wen Ning, dead and then really dead but still walking around. He watched his martial uncle die, he watched Xue Yang’s insanity, he watched himself perform Empathy on a living A-Qing in a few of the timelines, but that seemed truly impossible.
Wei WuXian could see how demonic cultivation damaged the body and the mind. He knew that his break from his siblings and the loss of the Wen Siblings, or all of the Wens in some timelines, not to mention the nightmares of the screams of the restful dead that he had disturbed, and the constant nattering of the sword/tally as it bayed for blood, would have made him go mad, he could see exactly how he had gone mad, he could see exactly when he lost control, even if in some timelines if was some sloppy Lan that was using demonic cultivation to cause Jin ZiXuan’s death and the chaos at Nightless city.
But Wei WuXian could tell, that while Xue Yang relished in the death and chaos and laughed at the screaming dead as he took in their strength and power but never liberated their souls, the Sloppy Lan just took the resentment in the air and directed it, never letting it touch him. There were others, most used a method between the two, most were LanlingJin Demonic Cultivators, learning from Wei WuXian’s notes. At first, Wei WuXian thought that his success was due to his lack of core, but then he watched Jiang Cheng whip a coreless demonic cultivator that could little more than direct resentful energy.
“Why me? Why am I different? Why do you want me to wield you?”
Wei WuXian was a child alone in an alley in Yiling. He as he was, could feel the oppressive atmosphere of the Burial Mounds even through the memory, his tongue gummed in his mouth from bone dust in the air, the whole city reeked of rotting dead. He realised then that the common folk couldn’t feel it like a cultivator could. Then he watched himself in a million ways form his golden core for survival. Maybe he had been too cold, or too hungry, or fighting dogs, but his core formed and began to grow in the shadow of the Burial Mounds.
He was just trying to figure out if he was watching baby Lan Zhan give him a rattle drum when he was dropped into the Burial Mounds, the impact with the ground was just as jarring as going from the distant past to the near future.
He understood then he had an affinity, in the timelines where he had lost his parents while in Yiling, the Burial Mounds had become a second mother. But it was more than that he was righteous to his very core he wanted to eliminate evil and protect the weak, there was an echo of some other past where Wei WuXian made that vow with Lan Zhan at a Qixi lantern lighting. That was it—there were many Wei WuXians, many timelines, all of time happening all at once, a vow made in one timeline bound his soul in all.
Wei WuXian succeeded at demonic cultivation because he didn’t see the dead and their restlessness as inherently evil to be eliminated, he didn’t see them as a tool, his goal had always been to help them find peace, perhaps at the height of his madness in the war and when he was in the depths of his cups after, he had forgotten, but he always got back there.
The sword wanted him to think that it was Wei WuXian’s destiny, that a core formed in Yiling, a body honed in the Burial Mound was destined to wield the sword/tally. There was even a timeline where the sword he had left in the lake in Mount Muxi, appeared before him when he fell into the Burial Mounds like a benevolent saviour. The sword was trying to lure Wei WuXian in, how many timelines did Wei WuXian’s parents not die, or Jiang Cheng didn’t lose his core, or he did but Wei WuXian wasn’t caught by Wen Chao?
He’d seen himself die, during the surgery or the Burial Mounds, those timelines would have gone on without him, gone on without Wei WuXian showing the Jin just how powerful demonic cultivation could be. Wei WuXian was Wei WuXian at his core or her core in some timelines, an eliminator of evil, a protector of the weak, but the timelines never unravelled the same way.
The sword disagreed, immediately showing Wei WuXian a dizzying kaleidoscope of images of people hating him, Jiang Cheng’s sneering face lingered in the forefront as if to say that they were not worth returning to he should throw his lot in with the sword, at that very moment and skip the mess.
The song shifted again to the first one, the one Wei WuXian didn’t know the name of, it made the sword angry and beat back the resentment better then Cleansing. He had a flash of playing the song at Dafan mountain to calm Wen Ning, and before that for Wen Yuan at the Burial Mounds.
Wei WuXian opened his eyes, “What was it called again?” But he knew, he knew it was called WangXian, he knew it but his head still pounded, his words had halted Lan WangJi’s humming and the screams and taunts of the Sword redoubled. ‟I don’t want you to go Lan Zhan, I was talking to the sword never ‘get lost’ never. If we separate the world burns. I want to marry you in Lan Yi’s cave. I’ll have all the A-Yuans—‟ Wei WuXian brow crinkled that wasn’t right, he repeated the sentiment, ‟As many A-Yuans—no? A-Yuans are what? when they are small. That! I will give A-Yuan to as many births as you want.”
The vision of Lan WangJi’s face before Wei WuXian’s swam, even as he registered the shock in those golden eyes, he thought he could see Lan WangJi’s mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear the words over the roar of the resentment. ‟The sword won’t shut up, I forgot in the future, it made me not hear you, and then I forgot, I was dead for so long… I don’t want to forget, don’t leave me the elders will whip you, don’t leave this time, tell me again, when I don’t remember, tell me every day, and I’ll tell you back… resentful energy is misunderstood, I promise not bad, the sword is though. Did you give me a rattle drum in Yiling when you were just a baby? I can’t remember, my memory is so bad. Don’t let your brother fall in love with the hat-Jin, beware hat-Jin. Remind me ChiFeng-Zun uses corrupted energy. WangXian.”
The last words trailed off, a slurring jumble in Wei WuXian’s mouth and then blackness reclaimed him, but the sword still chuckled in his mind.