Chapter Text
Prologue
It started, part of it at least, the bit that mattered, when Boashen Sanren fell pregnant. The fact that it had occurred was notable for a variety of reasons.
The first reason being that if you asked someone not knowledgeable about the nature of cultivators in general and female cultivators in specific they would have said the pregnancy was impossible. Boashen Sanren had lived for longer than the two thousand years the modern calender measured. If she had been a mortal woman she would have lost all capacity for child bearing long before she had tripped over her second century.
Boashen Sanren wasn’t a mortal woman, had not been one for long enough that she had forgotten what it was like to live a fundamentally finite life. She was not constrained but the squishy biological processes that those of a more mundane class were forced to participate in.
She would have used Mediocre to describe the mortal women forced into the indignity of biological reproduction but that word had taken on certain unsavory connotations over the years. It had failed to retain the label of common people and instead had been relegated to the concept of being so criminally below average that you shamed your family by your every breath.
The second reason that Boashen Sanren falling pregnant was in any was significant was the fact that she had carried exactly three pregnancies to term, though she had had five in total. The remaining two had been favors for other immortals and the gestation had been transferred to them after she had begun the process in her own core.
She had given birth three times and those three children that had been produced were hers. The first had been her beloved Xiao Fengyin who had fallen in love with Lan An and begun the Lan Sect.
The second had been Xiao Xiulan, who had been called Cangse Sanren and had left her mountain to fall in love with a member of the Jiang sect, a bastard heir through his grandfather’s indiscretions. They had eloped, though Boashen Sanren did not particularly care about her daughter’s marital status as long as she was happy, leaving to become rogue cultivators. The two had had a child, a little boy named Wei Ying.
The third had been Xiao Xingchen, who had died, horrendously, betrayed by one he thought he could trust.
All of her children had been met with tragedy in the end, though A-Feng’s fate had taken many, many years to catch up to him. He had been much loved and powerful in his own right but his immune system had been damaged on a night hunt while he had been in a critical phase of core development. Without access to the spiritual energy Boashen Sanren leaked into her mountain his body had begun to eat him alive, though it had waited until he and his beloved had children of their own.
The third reason that Baoshen Sanren’s pregnancy was significant was the fact that she had not chosen to have another child. This would not have been all that surprising if she had had a lover or one that would have been a lover had she not so disliked the needs of the flesh but she had not taken a companion in centuries.
It always hurt too much when they died, almost worse than when her children did.
The fourth reason that Baoshen Sanren’s pregnancy was significant was the fact that she had been pregnant with this particular child before. It was Xiao Xiulan, there was no mistaking that particular spark of electric glee that had always followed her daughter around.
She probably should have told someone about her condition, if it had been any other child she would have, if she had chosen to have another child she would have. An Immortal’s child was a rare enough occurrence that her community would have rejoiced, the whole cultivation would have.
But she couldn’t do it, she couldn’t tell them about her daughter for one very good reason, Hanguan-jun. Her grandson’s lover, his soul mate, cursed to walk the world unchanging while his love lay in his grave.
Wei Wuxian had not been reborn since his first incarnation, a fact that, in retrospect, was probably the fault of his heritage. The children of Immortals were different, they lived forever if they survived and the grandchildren of immortals were powerful, barely needing to take the tiniest step down the path before reaching immortality.
Wei Wuxian was her grandchild, her daughter’s son and neither could exist unless they were birthed from her body. She would not admit it outloud but once the realization had crept over her there had been a wash of guilt, deep in her blood, in her meridians over the fact that she had caused one of her own such suffering.
She told no one.
She went into seclusion instead and gave birth in a bed of her own blood, golden core flooding her mountain in a way it hadn’t in years, decades, centuries, possibly more than a millenia.
*****
“Sanren,” a calm voice said.
Baoshen Sanren straightened to look at the woman that had interrupted her. The woman was young even though she was as old as Baoshen Sanren herself, with brilliant beetle black eyes and inky hair. The Yu that made her home in Meishan was as beautiful as ever and she was glaring at Baoshen Sanren.
“Popo,” Baoshen Sanren replied.
“What are you doing with my granddaughter?” Popo Yu asked.
Her face was young, as was her voice but there was a weathered quality to it, an age hiding just under the surface, like tectonic plates sturing from their age old slumber. Baoshen Sanren was the mountain, the craggy snow filled peaks that made men’s hearts tremble in awe, Popo Yu was the earth itself, the force of who’s rage made even the most arrogant of kings bow before it. Popo Yu was something that made even mountains crumble before her.
“Giving her a sister, sooner than last time but it's better this way,” Baoshen Sanren said.
“You aren’t going to tell them what you're doing, you aren't going to tell Him what you did?” Popo Yu raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t do this,” she hissed.
Popo Yu’s face smoothed over in sympathy and Baoshen Sanren wanted to rip the skin off her face, to claw the expression from her bones to leave only the stark whiteness that would be underneath. What right had she to look at Baoshen Sanren with such pity? What right had she to judge what she could never understand? What right had she to mock Baoshen Sanren’s pain?
“You did,” Popo Yu said. “You’ll do it again. How long has it been since you welcomed disciples to your mountain?”
Baoshen Sanren snarled through bared teeth, gesturing in a way that hadn’t been seen since her first century. Popo You didn't even twitch thought Baoshen Sanren knew she recognized the gesture, she just kept looking at her with pity in her eyes.
Baoshen Sanren turned on her heel and set her foot on the window sill. She didn’t pause but she heard the parting words anyway, heard the words that had dogged her steps since she had last seen the Yu that lived in Meishan, since her grandson’s funeral.
“Humanity isn’t meant to be alone, Sanren.”