Chapter Text
Nothing else is out of the ordinary on the day it starts. Lan Wangji rises at 5:00 am, works out at his apartment complex’s gym, showers, meditates, eats. He leaves for work at 7:15 and arrives promptly at 8:00, dressed in his usual slacks and button-down. He parks in the spot he always parks in; it has been years since anyone else has taken his spot, and the most recent time was only because a new intern hadn’t yet gotten the hushed explanation from her coworkers that nobody else bothered to get in at 8:00 regularly, and certainly nobody who did occasionally arrive so early was audacious enough to park where Lan Wangji did. He doesn't care, but since no one else takes the spot, it would be foolish to leave it empty.
Around 3:00 in the afternoon, he notices a strange sensation on the skin of his left arm, under his fine cotton sleeve. He indulges in a moment of corporeal distraction, using his right hand to massage at where the strange feeling is coming from, and frowns. It almost feels like there is something very thin and very hard stuck on his skin, just a small patch of it.
Knowing this to be impossible— nothing had been on his skin or in his shirt all day, and nothing could have gotten into his sleeve without him noticing— he tells himself to focus and turns his attention back to his current project.
It’s a fine project. Music cultivation has become a widespread practice for contemporary cultivators; many with very weak golden cores could still pursue music as a cultivation path with success. Among other pursuits, his family is currently investigating the efficacy of recorded music cultivation, but so far their efforts have been met only with failure. His uncle wants them to move on, but Lan Wangji feels sure they’re on the cusp of a breakthrough.
At 3:45, he can no longer ignore the frustrating feeling of wrongness on his arm. He has seldom felt so restless, but the sensation of something hard on his skin has only grown stronger with time, and Lan Wangji feels like he might do something shameful if he has to sit still and “ignore” it any longer. Like curse in frustration.
So he surprises everyone when he breaks his routine and packs his things up and leaves his office at 3:50 pm. He stops at his brother’s office, not far from his own, to tell him he’s going home early.
Lan Xichen looks up from where he is bent over his desk, marking a paper carefully with a traditional brush and ink. Written cultivation, he and Lan Wangji have speculated, is not so different from recorded cultivation. He blinks at Lan Wangji, brow furrowing.
“You’re going home?” he repeats.
“Yes.”
“Are you… is everything alright?” Lan Xichen asks, setting his brush down and leaning back in his chair. His concern is naked on his face.
Lan Wangji considers how to answer. Saying yes would be a small lie, but a lie nonetheless. He sighs a tiny sigh, barely more than a breath out, but from the way Lan Xichen’s eyes widen, he might as well have punched a wall. “I don’t know,” he says. “Need some time.”
Slowly, Lan Xichen nods. “Call me if you need something,” he says, but it sounds more like a question, or maybe a plea. He thinks Lan Wangji will not tell him if something is wrong, and Lan Wangji doesn’t blame him for this.
“I will,” he says, not even considering whether or not it is a lie. If he needs something. He won’t need anything. He never does.
At home, he steels himself before taking off his shirt to investigate the problem on his arm. He isn’t sure which will be worse— to peel away his sleeve and find something horrific, or find nothing at all out of the ordinary.
Still, the only way to know is to take action, so he shoves his anxious uncertainty down into his golden core to burn away into nothing and unbuttons his shirt. Out come the cuff links, set gently back into their case. Finally, he tugs his arms out of their sleeves and, not yet looking at his arm, puts the shirt into its appropriate color-sorted laundry bin.
At last, he lets his gaze move to the back of his left forearm. His breath catches in his throat. The fingers of his right hand move, shaking just slightly, to skim at the half inch spot about halfway between his elbow and wrist.
Hard to the touch, there is a patch of cool white stone on his skin. More accurately, perhaps, there is a patch of his skin that has transmutated into, if he had to hazard a guess, white jade.
In one of Lan Wangji’s earliest memories, he had asked Lan Huan, not yet known as Lan Xichen, what it meant to be the Twin Jades of Gusu.
His brother had smiled, in the way that he used to smile, where it came from the heart and transformed his whole face into a radiant picture of happiness and kindness. “It means people think we’re really cool,” the young Lan Huan had said. “People think we’re destined to do great things.”
“Destined to do great things,” Lan Zhan had repeated, then frowned. “Why do they call us jade, then? Why not….” he had paused here, thinking hard about his books (his only point of reference), then had held a finger aloft in sudden enlightenment. “Why not the Twin Knights? Jade is just a rock.”
Lan Huan had produced a jade token from his pocket and shown it to Lan Zhan. “Uncle says jade is beautiful but not showy,” he had explained, rotating the token back and forth to show off its gleam. “It captures and reflects the light but does not sparkle and demand to be the center of attention. It has a huge capacity to hold virtuous intent and resists resentful energy. Do you get it? People want us to be like jade because it means we’re good by nature, not because we want people to thank us for it.”
When they had gone to visit their mother later that week, Lan Zhan had asked, as he often did, to touch her jade hairpiece. He loved this ornament she wore, and much later in life he would realize that she always wore it on days he and his brother had visited just so he could see it. She had bowed her head with an indulgent smile and let him pull the pin from the precious ornament, then she had helped him remove the hairpiece so he wouldn’t accidentally drop it.
He remembers loving how warm and buttery the jade felt to his touch, absorbing his mother’s heat and natural oils during the day so that by the time his little hands got hold of it, it had felt almost alive. Inevitably, the jade would cool quickly while he turned it over his hands, and this visit was no different. He returned the piece to his mother, who easily fixed it back into her hair.
Lan Zhan had never thought much about jade before, but as he watched his mother show off her redone hairstyle for his amusement, he thought he understood what his brother had been telling him about the stone. Beautiful, glowing from within, absorbing and reflecting his mother’s love back toward him.
When she had died, not long after that memory, one of the only things of hers he had been allowed to keep was the jade hairpiece. But whenever he opened the fine wooden box he kept it in, he had found it to be cold and dull, empty of any of the love it had once represented to him. All the jade held was a void that never warmed no matter how long he held it in his hands.
For three days, Lan Wangji says nothing of how a tiny piece of his arm seems to have turned into jade. He keeps an eye on it, monitoring it closely and observing that by the third day, the patch has grown in size to roughly two inches in diameter.
On the fourth day, he notices a familiar feeling of discomfort coming from his right thigh, and almost vomits while picking up his usual items from the farmer’s market. He leaves without visiting the two final stalls on his usual route and drives home, knuckles white on the steering wheel, before he rushes up the stairs and into his apartment.
He drops what he had managed to buy on the floor, kicks his shoes off in a messy heap that on any other day would have caused a great deal of displeasure for him but today he doesn’t even notice.
Before even making it to the bedroom, he is stripping his pants off and his fingers skim on his thigh, about four inches above his knee and slightly off center toward the outside of his leg. His heart plummets into his stomach and he changes course for the bathroom, where he does in fact vomit into the toilet.
After he recovers, he closes his eyes and sits back against the wall for a long moment before finally, finally letting his eyes open again and take in the sight on his leg.
A patch of white jade in the shape of a kidney bean, maybe an inch and a half long and three quarters of an inch wide. Just like on his arm, what should be soft tissue has transformed into cool, unmoving stone.
He takes a week off of work and does not answer Lan Xichen’s calls, instead driving himself out to the old clan library in Cloud Recesses. He needs to research. Not many cultivators actually make their home in the ancient cultivation capitals anymore, though both Lan brothers had grown up for many years in the Cloud Recesses with their uncle, the acting leader of the Lan Sect, such that it existed now.
He leaves the car at the lot near the base of the walking trail that winds its way up the mountain into his childhood home. Technology doesn’t always work right in places like the Cloud Recesses; at least now he would have an excuse for why he is not answering his brother’s phone calls.
As he walks up the steps, he grimaces. Who knew? Apparently climbing ancient stairways when several inches of your leg flesh had been transformed into stone is painful. Lan Wangji humorlessly files that away as information to be shared with the world whenever he figures out what exactly is happening to him and can update records about such an occurrence.
Because… surely this is not the first time this has happened. This must be a curse, and if it is a curse, then it is a known entity. Curses can be broken. This becomes his mantra.
Hours in the library turn into days, and on the third day of his reading, Lan Wangji absently rubs at his right shoulder when a muscle cramp interrupts his reading. His fingers meet hard stone and he freezes in place, trembling.
No doubt about it. He is turning into jade.
He sweeps his current stack of books into a qiankun pouch and barely keeps himself from running back to the jingshi, where he has been living since his return. He slides the doors shut and strips off his soft disciple robes, still required in Cloud Recesses, and first takes stock of the jade patch on his arm. It has grown to cover roughly a third of his forearm, mostly moving upward toward his elbow and wrapping in toward his body.
Next he takes in the patch on his right leg. It bothers him more than the one on his arm, since it makes walking, climbing stairs, and just about any kind of exercise very uncomfortable. It is about the size of his palm now.
Finally, he assesses the newest jade patch on his shoulder. It is hard to see, because it is on the back of his shoulder, so he has to maneuver himself in front of a mirror to see it better. It’s small, like the other two started, but its proximity to his neck is troubling.
He swallows the rising panic, throws on an inner robe and trousers without dressing himself further, and dumps his books out. He reads through the dinner hour and past curfew, until he falls asleep at the desk, his face mashing into a book detailing known curses that manifest as bodily afflictions.
Lan Xichen finds him in the morning, still asleep over the desk. Before waking him, though, his brother inspects the pile of books that Lan Wangji had stacked around him, and peeks past the curtain of hair covering the one on the desk to get a glimpse of it, too. All books about curses, old and new.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen says quietly, crouched next to the desk now, one hand reaching out to gently shake his brother. As his hand falls on Lan Wangji’s shoulder, his breath catches. The flesh under his palm is hard and cold; it’s like touching a statue covered in a cotton cloth.
But before he can panic at this, Lan Wangji sits up, sleepily blinking as he gathers his bearings, and for a second Lan Xichen thinks he must have imagined the feeling of stone under his brother’s robe. Then he watches the way Lan Wangji winces in pain as he stretches out his legs, and how his right hand moves as if on its own to massage at a spot on his left arm before his eyes go wide and he actually lets out a pained hiss of a breath.
“Wangji?” Lan Xichen says, hands at the ready to steady or catch him if he passes out. He has no idea what to expect. “What’s going on?”
Silently, his brother pulls his robe’s left sleeve up and away from his arm, revealing the flesh beneath. Or… what should be the flesh beneath. Instead, Lan Xichen is horrified to see that his arm, from a few inches above his wrist all the way up to the elbow, has transformed into pure white jade. Lan Wangji is still silent as he rotates his arm to the best of his ability, taking in the way the jade portion of it wraps fully around the circumference and has locked his elbow into place, bent at a wide angle.
Lan Xichen reaches out with trembling fingers and takes his brother’s arm in his, almost dropping it again when he finds it cold to the touch. “What— how long?” he asks.
“The day I went home early,” Wangji admits. “They’re growing.” He pulls his arm away and rolls up his robe’s skirt to expose his trousers, which he tugs awkwardly down to his knees. Together, the brothers look at the patch of jade on his right leg, which has taken over less of the appendage than the jade on his arm. Still, Lan Xichen doesn’t like how close to his knee this one is getting. Like Lan Wangji’s elbow, he doubts it will be long before the knee is locked into place.
“And here?” Lan Xichen asks, reaching toward Lan Wangji’s shoulder to pull the collar of the robe back and see the jade there. Between his brother’s neck and spine, the location of this patch scares Lan Xichen the most. “Are there more? What caused this?”
“Don’t know,” Lan Wangji says. "And no, just these three for now."
Suddenly, Lan Xichen is very angry. He stands up and backs away from the desk, turning his back on his brother and clenching his fists while he lets the wave of emotion pass through him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, pleased with how steady his voice is despite the inner turmoil.
He hears Lan Wangji sigh. “Yesterday I was going to,” he says. “Phone won’t work up here.”
“So you could have walked down to where there’s service!” Lan Xichen argues, turning back to face Lan Wangji.
Slowly, Lan Wangji shakes his head. “Made a mistake coming here first,” he says softly, eyes tight and forehead scrunched, and oh— he’s terrified, Lan Xichen realizes as though he has been punched in his gut. He’s terrified and Lan Xichen has been yelling at him. Lan Xichen closes his eyes, but his brother isn’t done speaking. “Can’t walk back down the stairs now.”
His eyes snapping open, Lan Xichen recognizes his anger for what it really hides: fear. He lets it go. His brother needs him, now.
“Let’s go,” he says, holding out his hand and hauling Lan Wangji to his feet carefully. He wraps one of his brother’s arms around his shoulders, then puts his own around his waist, so that he is supporting most of his weight.
“Go where?” Lan Wangji asks, letting Lan Xichen help him hobble to the dresser. Lan Xichen hands him a light sweater and he dutifully shrugs his white inner robe off and pulls the sweater on instead. Next he trades his white under-robe trousers for the pair of light blue jeans that Lan Xichen has selected, and then they walk together to the door where Lan Wangji puts his shoes on.
“A friend. Someone who can help faster than these books, I hope.”
Jiang Wanyin opens the door to his house with his usual scowl, irritated at being interrupted during his work. His irritation changes to surprised satisfaction when he sees Lan Xichen, and then quickly to concern when he sees the younger man Lan Xichen is holding upright and whose face is drawn with pain.
“Wen Qing!” he yells, standing back for Lan Xichen and the other man to enter. “It’s for you!”
He thinks the younger man is Lan Xichen’s brother, though it has been many years since they had last met. Lan… Wangji, probably? Whoever he is, the man is not doing so well, walking painfully and leaning heavily on Lan Xichen. Jiang Wanyin hurries ahead of the pair while they shed their shoes and clears his papers and laptop off the couch where he’d been working.
Lan Xichen gives him a grateful look as he deposits his charge into the newly available space, and Jiang Wanyin can’t help but reach out, grip Lan Xichen’s arm in concern. But Lan Xichen tenses uncharacteristically under the touch. Jiang Wanyin sees him cut his eyes to the young man on the couch— he must be the younger Lan brother, they look too similar not to be brothers— and he thinks he understands. He pulls his hand away, not letting the sting of it show.
He knows a thing or two about hiding relationships from family members.
Wen Qing comes down the stairs and brightens when she sees Lan Xichen. “A-Huan,” she greets him, but her smile slips quickly at his statue-like posture. She cuts her eyes to Jiang Wanyin, who gives her a helpless look, then finally sees the third figure on the couch. She clears her throat. “Lan Xichen, who is this?” she asks in her brusque doctor voice, and both she and Jiang Wanyin notice that Lan Xichen relaxes a bit.
“Dr. Wen,” he greets her, offering a quick bow. “My brother— Lan Wangji— he’s—”
She brushes past Jiang Wanyin, and he feels the briefest touch of her hand against his, reminding him to breathe. He does, letting out the air he’s been holding onto since Lan Xichen rejected his comforting touch earlier.
“Wangji,” Lan Xichen tries again as Wen Qing comes to crouch in front of him. “This is my— this is my friend, Dr. Wen Qing. She’s the best at medical cultivation I know of. If anyone can help, it’s her.”
Lan Wangji finally speaks. “Dr. Wen,” he murmurs. “Thank you for letting us into your home.”
“My husband, Jiang Wanyin,” Wen Qing says, gesturing at him without looking. “Since I’m presuming neither of them introduced him?”
Lan Wangji hesitates, then shakes his head. He looks up at Jiang Wanyin and nods a hello, which Jiang Wanyin returns.
“What’s going on?” Wen Qing asks, scooting Jiang Wanyin’s laptop out of the way and sitting on their coffee table so she can face Lan Wangji.
Lan Xichen steps forward and opens his mouth to respond, and Wen Qing never looks away from her patient as she says, “A-Cheng, why don’t you and Lan Xichen make some tea?” Give us some space, and get A-Huan to calm down, she means.
Jiang Wanyin clears his throat. “Xichen-ge, this way.” He doesn’t reach out to take Lan Xichen’s hand or arm, but after a second of hesitation, Lan Xichen turns and makes his way to the kitchen without Jiang Wanyin needing to lead the way.
Trailing after him, Jiang Wanyin glances back once at Wen Qing and Lan Wangji before disappearing into the kitchen. Once they’re out of sight of the living room, he crowds up into Lan Xichen’s space, taking his hand and bringing it up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles and holding eye contact.
“Huan-ge,” Jiang Wanyin whispers as Lan Xichen sags forward, resting his forehead on Jiang Wanyin’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“He’s— I think he’s been cursed,” Lan Xichen says, voice shaking. This time, when Jiang Wanyin reaches out to wrap his arms around his waist, Lan Xichen does not draw back or refuse the contact.
“Cursed? What happened?” Jiang Wanyin asks, rubbing soothing circles into Lan Xichen’s back.
Lan Xichen’s warm breath tickles his neck as he gathers his thoughts. “I don’t know. I mean— I don’t know how it happened. He’s barely said anything about it, but… he’s turning into jade, A-Cheng. His flesh is slowly becoming stone. It’s spreading like… like a rash, or something.”
Jiang Wanyin pulls away from the embrace, holding Lan Xichen by the shoulders at arms’ length. “He’s what,” he repeats, voice flat. He thinks of all the ridiculous things his brother has ever told him about curses, but he can’t remember ever hearing about someone gradually turning into stone.
“What if it spreads to his spinal cord, or his heart?” Lan Xichen asks, clutching at Jiang Wanyin’s elbows. “Or even his lungs? Will he just—”
“Hey,” Jiang Wanyin interrupts, reaching up to grip the back of Lan Xichen’s neck, giving it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Wen Qing is the best, you said it yourself. Let’s not panic before she tells us to, hm?”
Despite himself, Lan Xichen smiles a little at this. Wen Qing will never tell them to panic.
Jiang Wanyin nods once at the smile and pulls Lan Xichen forward to press a kiss onto his forehead. “Let’s make that tea.”
In the other room, Lan Wangji allows the doctor Wen Qing to examine his body and his golden core. He watches as she uses a combination of many medical traditions to assess his condition, moving between them seamlessly as though they aren’t contradictory or mismatched. He answers when she asks questions. He tries to read any information from her expression, but is met with an almost gruff blankness that masks more than even his brother’s placid, empty smile.
Finally, she sits back on the coffee table again, tapping one thin finger against its wood. “And you can think of no time in the week or two preceding the first appearance of symptoms when you could have been cursed?” she asks again.
“No,” he says, and because this is the third time she has asked something of this nature, he elaborates. “I have been on no night hunts for at least a month and a half now. I have not met anyone new, or reunited with someone I have not seen for some time. Nothing changed at work. Nothing changed at home.”
She nods slowly. “My professional opinion is that this is not a curse,” she announces when he has finished. He stares at her blankly. “But before we continue, I think we should ask someone who is an expert on curses to make sure. If he concurs, we will move forward with other possibilities.”
“You have someone in mind,” he surmises.
She sighs. “I do.”
A phone call and forty-five minutes later, during which time Wen Qing’s husband and Lan Xichen reappear and they sit around having tea and making boring, uncomfortable small talk, the doorbell rings.
Jiang Wanyin rises and vanishes into the foyer, and as soon as the door is opened, there is immediate noise. The curses expert loudly greets Jiang Wanyin as Jiang Cheng, then there is a crash, and embarrassed laughter, and an apology shouted over angry cursing from Jiang Wanyin. Lan Wangji cuts his eyes to Wen Qing, who is calmly sipping her tea, and takes from this cue that whoever this man is, this is normal for him. Then Jiang Wanyin starts shouting, too, and the two men are arguing. Threats are exchanged, mostly by Jiang Wanyin toward the curses expert. Lan Wangji cuts his eyes now to Lan Xichen, who gives him a half-apologetic, half-amused smile.
“He really is the best when it comes to curses,” Lan Xichen says just as Jiang Wanyin reappears with another man in tow. The curses expert is tall, almost as tall as Lan Wangji himself, with a trim waist and the kind of figure that must make grannies worldwide exclaim over the tragedy of how little he eats. He wears his hair long and pulled back into a bun, and he’s carrying a frankly concerning number of reusable shopping bags that are overflowing with papers rolled up into tight scrolls.
“Hi, Lan-gege!” he calls to Lan Xichen as he sees him. Lan Wangji gives his brother a flat, unimpressed look, which goes completely unappreciated since Lan Xichen is looking at the curses expert and smiling fondly, though he has already turned his attention to Wen Qing. “Hi, Qing-jie!”
“Hello, Wei Wuxian,” Lan Xichen says, inclining his head from his seat as the curses expert— Wei Wuxian— sets down the bags he’s carrying and bounces over toward the gathered group. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“When Qing-jie asks me for help, you know it’s serious,” Wei Wuxian says with a wink, then turns to look at Lan Wangji. He opens his mouth to keep talking, but he seems startled by Lan Wangji and loses his train of thought, just gaping at him for a minute. Everyone waits until Jiang Wanyin, the least patient of the group, tsks and elbows him.
“What are you staring at?” he demands. “Are you going to introduce yourself or what?”
Wei Wuxian blushes and drops his gaze from Lan Wangji’s, laughing that same embarrassed laugh he’d heard from the foyer earlier, but quieter. “Sorry, sorry. You must be Lan Wangji,” he says, gaining some confidence back as he starts talking. He looks up and smiles, and Lan Wangji thinks he means it to be reassuring. “I’m Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng is my brother! Lucky for you he’s married to the best doctor and brother to the best curse breaker on the market. Let’s see what’s going on, hm?”
He moves the rest of the distance to the couch and folds himself up at the end, facing Lan Wangji. Wen Qing gathers her husband and Lan Xichen and ushers them out of the living room, making space for Wei Wuxian to work his magic.
Once it’s just the two of them, Wei Wuxian holds out a hand, his expression going softer, kinder. “Sorry for all the noise and chaos, I know I’m a lot. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Not scared,” Lan Wangji says, more out of instinct than anything else, and lays his hand into Wei Wuxian’s so he can begin his examination.
Wei Wuxian looks at him a little sadly. “If I were you, I’d be terrified.” His face brightens a bit, gets a mischievous glint. “Even… petrified. Eh? Eh?”
Is he making… puns… about Lan Wangji turning into stone? The look Lan Wangji gives him must be some combination of incredulous and angry, because Wei Wuxian lets the laughter die on his lips and winces. “You’re right,” he says, though Lan Wangji has said nothing. “Too soon. Like, way too soon.”
Before Lan Wangji can reply, he feels the flow of Wei Wuxian’s qi into his own meridians, much like Wen Qing had done earlier. Wei Wuxian closes his eyes, concentrating, so Lan Wangji does the same, glad to have something familiar to do amidst this nightmare of a day. Meditating, he can do.
Wei Wuxian’s energy rushes into him, bright and quick. Wen Qing’s energy had been controlled and— well, elegant, is maybe the best word Lan Wangji could come up with. His brother, with whom he had done similar exercises many times, was like a gentle river: strong and inexorable, but not demanding or coercive. Being connected to Wei Wuxian like this makes Lan Wangji think of cartoon depictions of children putting forks into electric plugs.
But it doesn’t hurt, and once Lan Wangji gets used to it, he actually doesn’t mind. It feels… exciting, maybe? It feels like half of a dance, an invitation to move with Wei Wuxian through unknown steps in order to make something beautiful together. Without really thinking about it, he tries to match the steps a bit, to take Wei Wuxian’s invitation, and—
It’s like slamming into a wall face-first at full speed. The jade is there, cold and unforgiving, and it’s all metaphorical and inside his body and energy of course, but Lan Wangji reels away from Wei Wuxian nevertheless. His leg seizes as he tries to scramble, too much stone to work properly, and he can’t use his half-jade arm to catch himself.
Wei Wuxian is saying something, but Lan Wangji doesn’t hear it. He can’t move. He can’t even meditate properly, directing his qi as he pleases. He’s— he’s—
He’s broken.
There’s a lot of noise, suddenly, and motion. Wei Wuxian is standing up and gesturing to something behind Lan Wangji, and then Lan Xichen is there, trying to help support Lan Wangji’s weight. But Lan Wangji is so tired of needing his brother to hold him up— he doesn’t! He doesn’t need his brother or anyone else to help. He doesn’t need, period.
What does a stone need of humans?
He shoves Lan Xichen off of him and tries to stand up again, forgetting his leg once more, and everyone panics and there are so many hands reaching for him. Someone, maybe Jiang Wanyin, calls for Wen Qing to do something, and there’s more of a commotion as Lan Wangji manages to fall forward, using his good leg and good arm to catch himself, and the thought of what would happen if he fell on his jade arm is blinding—
Would it just shatter?
Would he just… shatter?
Jade shatters when dropped.
Jade is empty.
He is— jade—
A needle prick on his scalp, and he is asleep.
He dreams.
He is young. His mother has just died a few months ago, his father is gone somewhere. In the wake of the funeral, so many people came and went from his home, and he heard them comment about how he and Lan Huan were truly the pride of their family. The Twin Jades of Gusu.
After the funeral, he takes everything he knows about jade and catalogues it, staring at his mother’s ornamental hairpiece as he memorizes fact after fact.
Jade resists resentful energy. It is good for purifying places and things that have been tainted by strong resentful spirits. It harbors great potential for cultivators to bend it to their spiritual purpose because it receives and holds incredible amounts of righteous energy. It is too beautiful and precious for everyday use, and should be employed with purpose and efficiency as needed. It is too delicate to risk using on things that might not need it, so he must be sure before risking it.
He also learns things about jade by observing the hairpiece. It is cold to the touch. It can never be filled. It demands nothing, needs nothing, wants nothing. It gives what you ask of it infinitely, if you ask the right things, but otherwise never yields. Unbending, unerring, uncaring.
He thinks, maybe, he hates jade.
He thinks, maybe, he is jade. Or more accurately, that he should become jade, like everyone expects.