Chapter Text
The red silk of the Cloud Recesses wedding pavilion felt less like a celebration and more like a beautifully tailored noose.
Jin Guangyao had played his hand masterfully. Under the guise of "strengthening sectarian bonds" and "providing a stable home for his eccentric, fragile half-sister," the Chief Cultivator had essentially backed the Gusu Lan clan into a corner. To refuse Mo Xuanyu would be to insult the Jin clan; to accept was to tether Hanguang-jun to a woman everyone knew was fracturing at the seams.
Lan Wangji stood at the altar, a devastatingly beautiful statue in his white and red wedding robes. His face was an unreadable mask of absolute, glacial composure. He did not look at his bride. He didn’t look at anyone. He simply existed in his own private purgatory.
Beneath the heavy red bridal veil, Mo Xuanyu was trembling. But it wasn’t from wedding jitters. It was from a desperate, terrifying clarity.
*They think I'm crazy,* Xuanyu thought, her breath rattling in her chest as the ritual incense burned around them. *They think Jin Guangyao sent me here to be a spy, or a burden. But I won't let him win. I won't let him use me to ruin Hanguang-jun.*
Mo Xuanyu knew what Jin Guangyao had done to her. She knew the secrets hidden in the forbidden pages of the Jin clan treasury. And she knew there was only one soul in the universe chaotic enough, powerful enough, and fiercely protective enough to tear Jin Guangyao’s meticulous world to pieces.
As Lan Qiren cleared his throat to begin the formal bows, Mo Xuanyu didn't bow. Instead, she reached into her wide, red sleeves.
She didn't bring out a ceremonial cup. She brought out a concealed dagger.
"Mo-guniang?" Lan Xichen’s voice cracked through the quiet hall, laced with sudden panic.
Before the Lan clan disciples could move, Mo Xuanyu sliced her own palm open. Deep. The blood spilled instantly, bright and hot against the pristine white floors of the Hanshi.
"What is the meaning of this?!" Lan Qiren roared, rising from his seat.
Lan Wangji’s eyes snapped toward his bride, his hand instantly flying to Bichen’s hilt.
As the Lan cultivators rushed forward, Mo Xuanyu fell to her knees and dragged her bleeding palm across the floor, painting a jagged, terrifyingly familiar array. The spiritual pressure in the room plummeted instantly, turning ice-cold.
*“Flesh for flesh, soul for soul…”* Mo Xuanyu whispered, her voice trembling but fiercely resonant. She plunged her bloody hands directly into the center of the array. *“I offer my body, my spirit, and my breath. I summon the Yiling Patriarch, Wei Wuxian!”*
"Stop her!" Lan Xichen shouted, but it was already too late.
A violent gale of resentful energy exploded outward, shattering the windows of the pavilion. The red wedding banners ripped from their posts, swirling in the sudden, howling tempest. The candles died, plunging the room into a suffocating, shadowy gloom.
Mo Xuanyu let out one last, ragged breath, her eyes rolling back as her body collapsed forward.
For a terrifying second, there was absolute silence.
Then, the collapsed body twitched.
Lan Wangji froze. His grip on Bichen loosened, his knuckles turning stark white. His breath hitched in a way no one in Gusu had heard in thirteen years.
The girl in the red bridal robes slowly pushed herself up. She rubbed her temples, groaning softly, before looking down at her bloody hands and the extravagant silks she was wearing. She blinked, feeling the unfamiliar weight of the heavy skirts and the elaborate bridal hairstyle.
"Aiyay... what a dramatic welcome," a voice muttered. It was Mo Xuanyu’s female throat, but the cadence, the lazy tilt, the sheer, unbothered arrogance belonged entirely to someone else.
The resurrected soul looked up, his gaze sweeping over the panicked Lan elders, the horrified Jin emissaries, and finally, settling directly on the man standing at the altar.
Wei Wuxian blinked, taking in Lan Wangji’s stunning, red-and-white wedding finery. He looked down at his new, distinctly female body, then back up at Lan Wangji’s wide, amber eyes.
A slow, terribly wicked grin spread across Wei Wuxian's borrowed face.
"Well, Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian chuckled, pushing the red veil completely off his head and tossing it aside. "I knew I missed a lot while I was dead, but I didn't think I'd wake up as your bride."