Work Text:
Spring, the mountains melt under late-winter thaw.
Di Feisheng has traversed peaks upon jagged peaks in his travels, he searches amongst the vastness of heights extending to the clouds, always bordering the sea.
A narrowing of the ravines catches his eyes, a flash of red amidst blinding whites as a robin lands atop a valley of plum blossoms in full bloom. Colours show.
He finds Li Lianhua in a stream formed of melted snow.
Here, the water runs hushed, the night’s freeze humming the surface back into thin ice. Few strides south, a cliff’s drop connects the river’s fall into the open sea mouth—a body’s plummet into the abyss.
Di Feisheng gazes soft, the familiar silhouette of paled jade stills in the distance. Something surges inside him, the months-long search where his eyes had barely closed has come into fruition, yet he finds himself now too afraid to step close, afraid to startle.
He watches Li Lianhua stand among exposed river stones, silken hair lifting slow with the breeze. The low river mist rises and the mountain fog pours, the thickened air stifles him; his vision lapses as Li Lianhua’s figure folds.
“Li Lianhua!”
His body moves faster than his thought, his fingers catch the falling waist sash and he pulls Li Lianhua raggedly out of the water.
“What were you doing?” His voice scratches harsher than he intends to, knuckles pressing deep into fading jade. He feels Li Lianhua’s body shifts and turns towards him, a familiar smell of medicinal herbs lingers as dark strands brush lightly against his skin.
“…Oh.” There is a breath’s length of silence as Li Lianhua eyes him, a sort of hesitation to recognize him, but the thin corners of his mouth tug into an amiable curl all the same. “I was just catching dinner, Lao Di, you are way too intense.”
As if on cue, a wriggling cod barges rudely into Di Feisheng’s field of view. The sly fox, raising the fish up high into his face, now beams at him with a confidence that states that by catching the fish, he has somehow absolved every one of Di Feisheng’s current, very reasonable reasons for contempt.
Ridiculous. But much to Di Feisheng’s dismay he finds that that was indeed enough.
Whatever anguish he had wanted to voice, they all end in a sigh no louder than the shake of a branch. The robin flies off.
He sets Li Lianhua down on the boulder by the edge of the river.
The mountains do not grow warm in spring. The tips of their trousers and Li Lianhua’s rolled-up sleeves are wet, and the fish struggling on the ground yet splashes more droplets of water everywhere. Di Feisheng cuts it in half with qi.
“Aiya! Lao Di, if you kill it right now it won’t taste fresh when I get to cooking it later!” Immediately Li Lianhua has the audacity to complain, his face scrunches up into an exaggerated show of disdain.
“You speak as if you’d taste the difference,” he scoffs back, wrapping his cloak over Li Lianhua to silence his whining. The fierce purple does not match him, but Di Feisheng knows it was still warm against his skin.
Li Lianhua’s breath settles into the furred collar, “Well, A-Fei, when you are like me, you need to care about these small things.”
“Do you consider disappearing three thousand li out to nowhere to be a small thing?” He tried not to snap, but there is a hurt that he could not hide in his voice. He takes Li Lianhua’s hands into his own, pressing them dry into his sleeves.
“I did send a letter,” Li Lianhua watches him, voice growing softer, “I asked you not to give chase.”
“And I asked you to face me.” He doesn’t look up.
The broad sleeves envelope their cold fingers, he traces his thumb through the dampened lines inside Li Lianhua’s palms, following the beads of water down to the curves of the thin wrists. He lingers there for some moments longer than necessary, then, almost reluctantly, he places two fingers onto the exposed pulse point.
Li Lianhua's pulse still reads weak and dying. It reads like it’s pulsing just to tell him to give up on him.
Instinctively Di Feisheng decides to inject qi into him, and for the first time since a long time, Li Lianhua fights him.
“Don’t.”
Looking at Li Lianhua’s trembling grip on his wrist, a wry laugh escapes from Di Feisheng. Of course he had expected this, yet it was still more sad than funny. “Why, why do you only fight this?” His voice shakes.
“A-Fei,” Li Lianhua starts, a rare, battered sincerity. “Leave me, let me keep some dignity.”
“Dignity.” The word rings sarcastic on his lips. “If you cared for it, you would not have let them take away all that.”
“Those were the debts of my youth.” Li Lianhua’s eyes shut in a pained tiredness. The air around them has dropped to a chill as the last reflection of dusk is swallowed deep below the sea mouth.
“Debts.” He finds himself repeating Li Lianhua’s words again. Li Lianhua does not pick at him.
“Yes, you paid those orthodox sect scums back with more than they ever deserved, you gave them all their excuses to forget about you.”
Li Lianhua doesn’t speak. He seems to know what he will say. Di Feisheng knows that Li Lianhua does not like that, the talks about who needs to pay whom back still.
“But me, Li Lianhua,” he makes himself press on. It does not fit him to be this petty.
“You know you owe me.”
He keeps his eyes locked up on him, the playful glimmer has long disappeared from that pale, pale face; there is no light around them.
“Di-Mengzhu, what you asked for is impossible.”
“It’s possible now.”
Some hundred zhang below, the sea waves crash violently against mangled reefs, the wind billows, screams, yet here between them, even the steady thaw of the snow does not dare make a sound.
It has been some months since Li Lianhua’s final letter. Di Feisheng has had enough time during his search to ponder and come to terms with what he was doing. He knew why he holds on to an overdue promise that will now never come to be, he knew why he was giving chase to such an impossible, clearly pointless thing.
“Let me stay and witness your ending. I ask that, as my closure.” He held out all his chips but couldn’t even leverage. “Please.”
Whether it be a plea to collect the debt or to be owed further, who could really tell?
Li Lianhua takes him back to his place, a long-abandoned wooded house further upstream that had been roughly patched up.
There are herbs and vegetables in neat patches by the doorframe, a giant wok and much too many spices by the stove, and a single hen roams circles around the table in the unfenced yard. She does not acknowledge their arrival like Hulijing does.
They made a deal.
Di Feisheng will not attempt to prolong Li Lianhua’s life, and Li Lianhua will not disappear on him.
It won’t be a long time.
“Oh A-Fei, I only have one set of bedding, you will have to get your own in town tomorrow. Suppose you can use some of Hen’s haystacks tonight, she isn’t one to mind,” Li Lianhua’s usual ramble comes rolling out from the kitchen. “Don’t just stand there, the rice is already overcooked. I wasn’t expecting visitors, but I will be nice and let you have a scoop.”
Clouds of smoke begin to engulf the kitchen as Li Lianhua heats up the wok, Di Feisheng steps over and lifts the lid off the rice pot beside him. Li Lianhua has lost most of his sight, Di Feisheng could tell as he watches Li Lianhua’s fingers fumble to pick up the knife on the counter—yet he holds the blade and guts the fish with perfect poise still.
“Here, eat.” A dish of fish and greens soon clanks down on the table next to the rice bowls, a trail of steam rises lazily between them. Li Lianhua seems to be in a good mood as he sits down next to him, “I’m all out of alcohol, Lao Di, remember to grab some when you go out tomorrow.”
“You will come with me?” he asks.
“What for?”
Di Feisheng gives him a look—which earns a laugh from the fox, amused that his past mischief has come back to bite him.
“Don’t be like that Lao Di, you know the state of my body. I can’t handle going out far anymore. I will just tend to my greens and catch some fish tomorrow. When you come back, me and a table of food will be waiting for you right here.”
The fox is painting a picture too good to be true again. Di Feisheng sighs, “Don’t go catching fish, I will bring meat from the market.”
“Okay,” Li Lianhua smiles, tilting his head in a docile manner, “but Lao Di, it’s not like I was going to drown earlier. The water only comes up to my ankles you know?”
Di Feisheng lets him laugh without a retort.
After dinner he swaddles Li Lianhua back under heavy layers. Li Lianhua’s mouth shapes into something of a complaint, but he lets him steer him back into the house and complied to his demand to stop moving.
For the first time in Di Feisheng’s hard-bitten life, the alliance leader finds himself being assigned to the task of scouring a kitchen. It is no simple labour, especially since behind him, Li Lianhua has set himself into comfortably pointing out that he has missed a spot, misplaced a bowl, not enough enthusiasm in the scrubbing, and all the while jabbing at how incredibly out-of-place the great Di-Mengzhu looks in this whole arrangement.
In truth Di Feisheng doesn’t mind, he can learn these things if Li Lianhua will give him time.
He can even let the emperor live with his flowers, he won’t disrupt the peace of the jianghu, he can learn to forgive everyone—if Li Lianhua will just give him more time.
He finishes setting the last of the utensils onto the wooden rack, making sure no stray splash of water remains on the counter. He turns to ask if Li Lianhua is satisfied, but the words die in his mouth as he finds that Li Lianhua has fallen asleep, slumped against the edge of the wall.
The dark fabrics of his spare robes wash out Li Lianhua’s bloodless pallor, the only hint of colour is the quiet purple festering under his veins. Lightless strands shadow his eyebrows, they remain pinched even in his sleep. His cheeks are sunken and he looks painfully thin—a ghost—but at least for now, he isn’t shaking.
Di Feisheng doesn’t want to think how Li Lianhua had looked in this mountain when the poison had stirred. For too many years before Di Feisheng or Fang Duobing ever found him, he had simply decided to endure everything alone. So it must be out of habit that this man escapes from him over and over, determined to die on his own, as if he truly believes that out of sight can achieve out of mind, as if he truly believes that, just like everyone else, Di Feisheng would be fine, eventually.
Silently, he lifts Li Lianhua up and places him onto the bed. Li Lianhua’s eyes flutter hazily, too blurry to settle on him.
As Di Feisheng pulls the blankets over, he catches the bitter murmur of a voice, “A-Fei... why do you bother now?”
“Sleep,” he replies with a prayer.
Di Feisheng returns to the cabin at noon.
He had spared no expense and lost no time at the market, but the morning’s haul all lands crudely on the ground when he finds his body once again moving faster than his thought.
“Li Lianhua!”
The man is writhing on the ground, coughing, shivering, covered in the spit-ups of his own blood. It seems Li Lianhua had barely managed to wake and pin-up his hair that the poison struck.
Di Feisheng rushes to hold him up from the ground, Li Lianhua’s body trembles twice between every one of his own speeding heartbeat. It’s clear that Li Lianhua could no longer suppress the poison, it seeps up through the veins in his neck reaching mercilessly for his face, leaving it a hideous painting of purple and blue.
“A-Fei, it hurts… A-Fei...” Li Lianhua calls for his name, the man so ready to face death tells him it hurts and burrows his face into his chest.
Di Feisheng wants to more than anything to pass his yuanqi over to Li Lianhua, but he knows it to be useless when Li Lianhua would never accept. He could only hold him, tighter, harder; he disperses enough qi in the air to raise the temperature around them.
Time passes like it has stopped. The only sense of pain he could feel is Li Lianhua’s fingers digging into his back, unaware of how deep or how much blood they are drawing. It is absolutely nothing to him, but it feels like despair all the same.
The poison continues until sundown. He has long since wrapped Li Lianhua into the snow fox mantle brought back from the market. Carefully, he picks him up and takes him back to the bed.
Li Lianhua’s face is still a pale sheet covered in blue and purple, a tint of red is bit out from his chapped lips. Di Feisheng hands him a cup to drink, he starts, but spirals into a fit of cough and the pale jade shatters into countless shards on the ground.
He sees the tears in Li Lianhua's eyes that have yet to dry, he tells him with those eyes—he lost him ten years ago to that sea.
For the next days, the poison mercifully slumbers.
Di Feisheng brews bowls of congee for Li Lianhua. With both their senses of taste long gone, Di Feisheng isn’t bothered by his inexperience in cooking. He only knows to ensure that the bowls are brimming with the finest ingredients, and Li Lianhua drinks them with but a subtle look of disapproval.
By day, Li Lianhua lingers by the flimsy walls of the worn-down cabin. With the pointing of a finger, he begins commanding the current world’s greatest martial artist to fall timbers and patch up the cabin’s gaps. He decides the stove requires a new shelve up top, and so Di Feisheng builds it. He declares that the hen deserves a proper coop, and so Di Feisheng raises the fence, and Li Lianhua, draped in his snow fox mantle, bobs triumphantly over to the oblivious hen to claim the credit.
They had but painted a picture together, but neither of them decides to break out of it.
In the afternoon when the sun hangs bright and heavy, Li Lianhua announces that he wants to take a walk. Di Feisheng doesn’t let him step out the yard until he has put on another layer of underrobe.
There is no stick this time, Li Lianhua simply reaches out, his fingers catching Di Feisheng’s hand, and pulls him towards the direction of the river.
“Why is it,” Di Feisheng asks, his voice low against the wind, “that you are so drawn to the water?”
Li Lianhua doesn’t answer.
He stands there upon the cliff’s edge, a lone thread of light between the sky and the sea.
For a moment, Di Feisheng could see the young hero that had come to face him on the East Sea. He wonders if the look in Li Xiangyi’s eyes that day had but resembled hatred, or had they always been whatever they are now? He wonders if he could have noticed it then, then, would Li Lianhua still be so keen on leaving him alone now?
The picture breaks.
Li Lianhua’s figure coughs, folds, the metallic smell of blood fills the air as he falls. Di Feisheng dashes over and holds him back into his arms.
“Li Lianhua, don’t go... don’t go…” His voice is a pathetic plea.
The shivering doesn’t get better, even if there are more layers than before. It is only going to get worse, and Di Feisheng dreads it as Li Lianhua muffles his cries into his chest.
The fox mantle is soft but creases easily. Di Feisheng caresses the fabric folds on Li Lianhua’s back, and then it creases again, and he flattens it, over and over. The sound of the waterfall is drowned in the background, sparse pebbles cut deep into his knees as he presses Li Lianhua’s weight into him to a still.
They stay like this. Di Feisheng takes in every tremor.
He has told Li Lianhua a lie.
He only asked to stay so the memories would burn.
How could there be closure for him? He had met him in the years when they were both so perfect.
Very slowly, Li Lianhua’s head lifts up.
The blood on his lips must tint brighter than the moon that night. Di Feisheng raises a hand to wipe it away, but he hesitates, as he hears Li Lianhua whisper to him, “Lao Di, my legs are gone.”
A ghostly smile spreads on that face, Di Feisheng doesn’t dare to move, and the smile spreads into a distortion.
The vast expanse of the skin on and under that face is now a blackened shade of purple. He tries to smooth out the furrowed brows with his thumb, he traces his hand down to caress the sunken cheeks and the gruesome veins. He trails down further, fingers slipping under the loosened collars searching for the source of the pain.
He finds it stark on his heart.
Compared to the marks of the poison, the bone-deep wound Di Feisheng had left just above seems but a tiny jot of white, too easily forgiven, like everything else.
He puts a hand over the scar, gently, it seems that’s all he has been doing lately, not killing, but everything around him still smells like metallic blood and herbs for pain.
Li Lianhua grabs his hand and places it back onto his face. His eyes no longer reflect anything.
“Does this look good?” Li Lianhua uses the same words that Di Feisheng had used when he was back inside the water prison. The angle of Li Lianhua’s lips is pointed upwards, but each word seems to grip bloodier than any form of torture he had endured then. “I don’t look good anymore, do I?”
“You look good,” he whispers. Cradling the side of Li Lianhua’s face, his fingers trace over the blood on his lips. He leans in and closes their distance, “You will always look like that day to me, Li Xiangyi.” He doesn’t try to take his lips, he shifts over and buries his face into Li Lianhua’s shoulder.
He smells Li Lianhua’s skin. The collars of the loosened robes become damp. He feels Li Lianhua’s hand land slowly onto his back, like he is comforting the most fragile animal in the world. “A-Fei… will you be fine tomorrow?” he hears him say.
His head shakes against his skin.
“I’m sorry A-Fei,” Li Lianhua smiles at him, “I will have to owe you to the grave.” He looks so pretty smiling with his eyes closed.
“Make up a story for Xiaobao for me, ah, he is not as susceptible as before now…” Li Lianhua’s voice is trailing off, his body is going limp.
“A-Fei,” he says, glowing in a final, beautiful burst of qi, “I think, I would’ve liked to live a life out with you.”
...
He follows him another hundred li away from the jianghu he gave his life to keep.
He buys the line of villas by the shore and dresses his body up cleanly.
They exchange hair pins.
Traces of Fang Duobing appears every few months around the unmarked tomb. Sweet, exotic candies that Fang Duobing finds all end up here in the soil.
He takes in the hen and tends to her needs.
He has become very good at cooking, even if everything tastes the same to him still.
The memories blur.
He kills the emperor and obliterates the rest of Sigu.
He reaches the pinnacle of wulin and destroys every peace known to the jianghu.
It turns out Li Lianhua was right.
He is fine after all.