Chapter Text
The day Mo Ran returns to Sisheng Peak catches Chu Wanning unaware.
It is close enough to winter now that the sky remains overcast most of the time, and the dull light that filters through the cover of the clouds brings with itself the kind of drab, gray misery that lodges a chill deep inside the body, impossible to chase away until the first thaw. This high up the mountain, the bitter bite of it feels all the more acute.
No matter how thick his coat, Chu Wanning is rarely warm in this kind of weather. Still, he pulls the lapels tighter over his chest and tries not to shiver.
That day, the northern wind brings with itself a miserable freezing drizzle—the sort that leaves people skulking around the sect grounds, putting barriers or umbrellas over themselves as they rush from one building to the next, paying no heed to anyone or anything around them. When puddles reflect their faces, they are always already turned away.
Chu Wanning only hunches in on himself more, hiding his head between his raised shoulders like a turtle retreating into its shell as he crosses the Naihe Bridge on his way to the Loyalty Hall. He has a meeting with Xue Zhengyong and the other elders before his afternoon class at the cultivation school, and he is already running late, getting increasingly rained on with every passing moment. He could, of course, put a barrier over himself with nothing but a flick of his finger, but it is not that far to the Loyalty Hall now, and the drizzle is more of an annoyance than a real nuisance. His hair is getting wet, but his hair is a limp mess whether dry or damp, so it hardly makes a difference either way.
He is just passing through the main courtyard when a group of female junior disciples approaches from the opposite way, huddled close together under two umbrellas, talking in animated voices that carry across the space.
“Have you seen him?” the tallest of them says. She is one of Xuanji’s disciples, but Chu Wanning cannot recall her name. “Da-shixiong says he’d been away for a while, but now he’s back for good.”
The girl in the middle pretends to swoon. “He’s so handsome. And so tall! I swear, he could be a model if he wanted to.” She pulls her phone out of the folds of her hanfu, then shows something to the rest of them, and they laugh. “See? I told you. So handsome.”
The last of the girls leans in, conspiratorial. “And you know what they say about his—” She covers her mouth with her hand, giggling.
As soon as the female junior disciples catch the sight of Chu Wanning, they immediately fall silent, bowing respectfully as they pass just to immediately burst into a peal of laughter once more as soon as they are past him.
Chu Wanning’s spine goes stiff, face hot with embarrassment.
He knows what reputation he has among the disciples of Sisheng Peak. He knows what they say behind his back, in voices low enough that even his keen ear cannot distinguish the words. He knows how they snigger and point fingers when he is turned the other way—how they warn the youngest initiates, unfamiliar yet with the inner workings of their sect.
Whatever you do, don’t cross Elder Yuheng, they say. He’s really scary and strict, and he’ll make your life a living hell if you get on his bad side. Only three people have been brave enough to ever apprentice with him, and that should tell you something.
He has long become used to the skittering gazes and the polite bows that come from fear rather than respect. It was the same in Wubei, except back then, there was also jealousy at play—the bone-deep envy at being named the lone disciple of his former shizun, completely ignorant of anything that the position really entailed.
Chu Wanning, then, is no novice to being disliked, but the reminder of it still stings each and every time.
With no time to spare to nurse hurt feelings, Chu Wanning quickens his pace, but the wisps of conversation he caught earlier keep floating around in his head. With Shi Mingjing’s return to Sisheng Peak after nearly five years of absence, it is no wonder that the younger disciples are gossiping where the elders cannot hear them. Shi Mei was exceptionally lovely already at twenty, but the past five years have let him blossom into the kind of beauty that most people think can only be found in books or in glossy magazines, on billboards or on the silver screen. It was a strange thing for Chu Wanning to stand face to face with him once again and be forced to look ever so slightly up at a face much more mature and much more beautiful than he remembered.
Of course he would grow up well, Chu Wanning thought in that moment, torn between pride and bitter jealousy that was unbecoming of anyone, let alone Shi Mei’s own shizun. Despite all his efforts to quash the ugly instincts inside him and rip them out before they could take root, deep down, Chu Wanning has always been a rotten man, but even he was shocked by how strong the taste of the bile at the back of his throat was.
Five years is a long time, after all. Some of his defenses must have gone down.
The soft chime of his phone snaps him out of his pathetic self-pity, and when Chu Wanning fishes it out, pushing wet hair away from his eyes where the strands have plastered themselves against his face, he sees a message from Xue Zhengyong.
Where are you, Yuheng? the message reads. We’re waiting for you.
I’ll be there momentarily, Chu Wanning messages back, further picking up his pace.
With his eyes still glued to the phone, watching the typing… notification from the still-open WeChat app at the top of the screen, Chu Wanning does not register the person approaching from the opposite way until he barrels into them with full force, crashing into the stranger’s chest. His phone clatters across the courtyard, and it is only thanks to his years of training that he stays on his feet. Chu Wanning looks up, ready to apologize stiffly and leave in a hurry, embarrassment already curling around his throat like a strangling vine, when he locks his eyes with the man and all words die in his throat. He thinks his ears must be ringing, too, because for a moment, he is blind and deaf and mute.
“You should be a little more careful, shizun,” Mo Ran says, reaching out to steady Chu Wanning. His palm curls around Chu Wanning’s elbow, big and warm even in the cold weather. The touch burns all the way down to bare skin, despite the layers of clothes. Mo Ran looks at where they touch, looks at the way Chu Wanning’s entire body jerks back on instinct, then smiles with the corner of his mouth, just this side of mocking. “But that’s not really your style, is it?”
Chu Wanning takes a step back, and then another one, pulling away from Mo Ran’s grip. His throat is dry, painfully constricted. His ribs, too, seem to be tightening around his lungs like a vise, making it impossible to breathe.
“Mo Ran,” he manages at last, feeling like his tongue is too big for his mouth.
At once, he realizes what a pitiful picture he must paint, with his hair in disarray, plastered to his skull, and looking like a drowned rat—how ugly, how old, how drab. They have not seen each other in five years, ever since that night when the rift opened in Caidie Town, and it seems like those years have been kind to Mo Ran in a way they have not been to Chu Wanning.
Mortification curdles Chu Wanning’s insides, his stomach sitting like a tight knot at the bottom of his abdomen. He wonders what Mo Ran must see when he looks at him now, the ugly stick of a man he calls shizun. Chu Wanning has never been much to look at, but now, at thirty-five, he is just a dried out, shriveled up shell housing a soul. Mo Ran, though—Mo Ran is blooming, blossoming in ways Chu Wanning should have predicted. He has grown even taller than he used to be, and his shoulders and chest have filled out. Instead of the Sisheng uniform that most disciples wear around the sect grounds and out on official sect business, he is wearing civilian clothing that accentuates the lines of his body—the long legs, the lean, muscled chest, the broad shoulders. He looms over Chu Wanning now, every inch the man Chu Wanning never dared imagine for fear of what those daydreams might uncover.
For a long moment, which drags between them into something tense and unbearable, neither of them speaks. Then, from a few feet away, Chu Wanning’s phone erupts into noise.
Before Mo Ran can open his mouth to speak, Chu Wanning turns on his heel and steps around him, bending awkwardly to pick up his phone on the way, then flees in the direction of the Loyalty Hall. As he goes, he swipes a thumb across the spider’s web of the cracked screen.
“I’ve just arrived,” he says, then hangs up on Xue Zhengyong. He does not look back to see if Mo Ran is still there.
“Don’t worry, this will be brief,” Xue Zhengyong says once Chu Wanning finally reaches the eastern conference room at the Loyalty Hall.
All the other elders are there already when Chu Wanning arrives, and Xue Zhengyong’s brows wander halfway up his face when he takes in the state of Chu Wanning, still shaken and dripping water all over the polished stone floor.
“Yuheng, what on earth happened?” Xue Zhengyong asks, incredulous, while Tanlang leans towards Lucun and whispers something—no doubt caustic—into his ear. “Did you wade into the river on the way?”
Chu Wanning bites the inside of his cheek. “It’s raining,” he says, casting a spell to help dry himself off. “I got caught out without an umbrella.”
Xue Zhengyong shakes his head, then pushes a pack of tissues in Chu Wanning’s direction. “Did you run into Ran’er on your way here, then?” he asks while Chu Wanning stubbornly refuses to deal with the mess of his wet hair or his damp clothes. At the question, he stills completely, his back rigid and his shoulders tense as Xue Zhengyong continues obliviously, “I can’t believe this boy. Not even a message to let us know he’d be back! Ah, but maybe that was to be expected, with Shi Mei returning from Guyueye as well. It’s always been the three of them, after all. You must be happy, though, to have all your disciples back together, eh, Yuheng?”
Chu Wanning understands, intellectually, that they are all expecting some kind of response from him, but his mouth refuses to cooperate as his mind gets stuck on the image of Mo Ran, broad and tall, tanned despite the season. On the look of disdain in his eyes, the mocking curve of his mouth.
It is like Chu Wanning has seen a ghost. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He swallows, then tries again, to similar effect.
“Sect Leader,” Xuanji speaks up finally, taking the attention off Chu Wanning, “the point of this meeting, if you will?”
“Right, right,” Xue Zhengyong says, giving Chu Wanning another concerned look. He straightens the stack of papers in front of him and clears his throat. “Well, it’s about the scrolls.”
The room instantly comes alive—the elders whisper among themselves, talking over Xue Zhengyong, who gives up after a while and sits back, waiting until at last the din of the conversation dies down.
“You know that many sects from the Upper Cultivation Realm were very unhappy with how things turned out at Rufeng,” he continues. “Technically, their cultivators found the scrolls, but there is no way to tell where those scrolls originated, and I’m still getting demands from the other sects that claim they found mentions of the scrolls’ origins in their historical records.”
“Right,” Jielu says, leaning back in his chair. Under the fluorescent light of the lamps, his wrinkles make him look like an apple that has been sitting forgotten at the bottom of the fruit bowl throughout the winter. “And they all know how to read them, too, don’t they? That’s why they didn’t have to ask Yuheng to take care of translating and deciphering the contents.”
“I bet it’s Nangong Liu’s work,” Tanlang chimes in. “He’s been angling to have the scrolls returned to Rufeng once they’re fully translated since the very beginning, the goddamn shit-stirrer.”
Lucun shakes his head, putting his teacup back on the table with a quiet clink. “Not like Guyueye is any better, or Bitan, or Jiangdong,” he says. “They’re all the same, all after the same thing, no matter what the thing is, and they have no respect for us, either.”
Chu Wanning remains silent. The cultivation scrolls, unearthed by Rufeng in an old mountain tomb uncovered by a sudden mudslide in the early spring, and written in a variety of Old Chinese that most likely predates some of the earliest known records, have been burning a hole in his desk for a couple of months now. The work has been slow—too slow, it seems, for the appetites of the sects, which have been eager to claim the scrolls for themselves when the issue first arose in the late summer. But even so, the text contained within is beginning to take shape at the margins of Chu Wanning’s notes. It is nothing more than bits and pieces of a much bigger whole at the moment, though the scrolls themselves appear to be incomplete, and under the circumstances, even getting that far should feel like a triumph. Instead, it feels like a failure—like a waste of the hours of study under the watchful eye of Chu Wanning’s former shizun, a waste of the years of self-denial and sacrifice in the service of a higher purpose.
Some things, Chu Wanning supposes, take root deeper than others and are harder to eradicate. Like weeds, they keep coming back, season after season.
It is only the persistent clicking of a pen that brings Chu Wanning back to the discussion at hand.
“No respect for us, unless, of course, it turns out that the only person who can at least attempt to decipher them is from Sisheng.” Jielu gives Chu Wanning a meaningful look, still playing with the cheap plastic pen, the kind one can find handed out at any cultivation conference. “It’s hardly our fault that Huaizui has been in seclusion for over a year now, with no end of it in sight.”
“In any case,” Xue Zhengyong continues, taking advantage of the momentary lull in the running commentary by the other elders, “I’ve had multiple requests to meet and discuss the fate of the scrolls, and it didn’t sound like they were really asking. A few sect leaders have suggested that if we can’t remain impartial, maybe we should involve Tianyin Pavilion, and I’m pretty sure nobody wants that. So we have to figure it out by ourselves, and I don’t think the other sects will just stop asking. So instead, I invited them to meet here in a few weeks, and we can discuss what to do with the scrolls once we get a better idea of what we’re dealing with in the first place.” With that, he turns to Chu Wanning. “Yuheng? Is there any progress on that? Have you figured out what these scrolls might be, exactly?”
“No,” Chu Wanning admits. “They are cultivation scrolls, but the specifics are more difficult to determine. Two of them might be general treatises on cultivation, and the other three most likely detail cultivation techniques, but beyond that, there seems to be a lot of auxiliary text, and so far we only have fragments that bear no significance on their own. And parts of the scrolls have been too badly damaged to be usable in the first place. That leaves only guesswork.”
“Well, then, at least we’ll have something to tell them.” Xue Zhengyong sighs. “So in five weeks, we’ll be hosting delegations from all the sects. I’ll send you the details later, but…”
Despite his efforts to remain present, Chu Wanning finds himself losing the thread of the conversation again. At the table, the other elders keep bickering and nitpicking, clearly dissatisfied with this turn of events, complaining about the Upper Cultivation Realm’s lack of respect. Chu Wanning himself is not pleased with the change in the circumstances either, but the earlier encounter with Mo Ran pushes itself to the forefront of his mind once again, and he can only watch as the scene of their meeting plays over and over before his eyes, like an old video tape stuck in the player.
Back when Mo Ran left, Chu Wanning spent a lot of time wondering why.
He never witnessed his departure, but was only informed of it after the fact, once he emerged from seclusion after a year, with a body that no longer bore visible signs of battle. The skin of his palms, scraped raw to the bone, had healed over, and his fingernails had grown back. There was still an ugly, mottled scar, left by a piece of rebar from the falling house that pierced through Chu Wanning’s side, by some miracle avoiding any vital organs, and claw mark scars from a demon that dug into his shoulder all the way down to the bone—but at least he was still alive.
Then, when he asked to see his disciples, he was told that only Xue Meng had remained. Shi Mei had been sent to Guyueye to recover and was not expected to return for a long time yet, and Mo Ran had left with no plans to return at all.
The question, then, has nagged at Chu Wanning like a hangnail ever since. He understands some of it, he thinks. The helplessness as they watched Shi Mei’s spiritual core shatter inside him, and the blood that spilled from his mouth, his nose, his ears. The anger Mo Ran must have felt towards Chu Wanning, for not protecting them better. For letting things go as far as they did. As a shizun, Chu Wanning had only one duty, and he failed in it that night—that much he recognizes. But even then, five years is a long time to be away from the only family you have in this world. What is it, then—he keeps wondering. What is he missing?
“I don’t know what I was expecting, honestly.” Mo Ran shoves his hands into the pockets of his pants and laughs grimly, swallowing past the bitterness at the back of his mouth. The night is cold enough that even Mo Ran, who tends to run hot, can feel the sharp bite of it in the tips of his fingers. “He didn’t even acknowledge me.”
At his side, Xue Meng gives him a dirty look. “You just probably surprised him. You were gone for five years, and then you didn’t even send a message that you were coming back,” he says pointedly and turns into a narrow street that eventually gives way to an unpaved track that runs between the dilapidated, abandoned buildings at the outskirts of Wuchang. It’s places like this that lingering ghostly qi likes the most, remote enough that whatever wisps of consciousness reside there have time to take shape before unleashing their hunger on the town’s inhabitants.
“Yeah, yeah, you can spare me the lecture.” Mo Ran waves his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I’ve already heard it from Uncle and Auntie.”
He’s missed this, he has to admit—the late night patrols around the perimeters of Wuchang and Caidie Town, the easy way Xue Meng falls into step beside him. The lack of Shi Mei at his side is like missing a limb, a persistent ache as they make their way, looking out for the places where the barrier between the ghost realm and the mortal realm has gone thin like a shirt that’s been worn long past its prime, nearly translucent and easy to tear—but it’s good to know that some things don’t change.
The route they’ve taken is a well-trodden one, and despite the fact that five years have passed, Mo Ran’s legs still remember all of its twists and turns. Closer to the town proper, some shops have closed down during his absence, and new businesses have popped up in their place, but on the whole, much of Wuchang remains unchanged. Earlier, when they were making their way down the street by the wet market, the auntie selling scallion pancakes at a stall by the eastern entrance recognized Mo Ran right away despite the five years he spent moving from place to place, and called both of them over for a snack.
“Aiyah, who let you grow so tall?” she said, head tilted back to look Mo Ran in the face, pressing the fragrant, oily packets into their hands. “Here, gongzi, another one for you, too. Eat up, eat up, while they’re still hot!”
On the whole, then, it feels good to be back. Disorienting, yes, and downright strange at times, like Mo Ran supposes young adults must feel when they return to visit their parents just to find the four walls of their childhood bedroom strangely ill-fitting for the people they have become, but Mo Ran is glad all the same. Sisheng Peak has been his home for a long, long time—the only place he has ever missed. Even that first home he shared with the only person who has ever loved him without reservation, without condition—he doesn’t miss the place itself, a squalid box of an apartment more fit for animals than human beings. He just misses the person.
“Seriously, though, you need to be nicer to shizun,” Xue Meng drones on, a familiar tune that Mo Ran hasn’t heard in a long time, but no less annoying thanks to that. “At least make an effort to be civil, instead of antagonizing him all the time.”
Mo Ran rolls his eyes and sighs. “That’s what Shi Mei said.”
“Well, then, maybe you should actually listen to him every once in a while.”
With that, Xue Meng reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone to log their progress. A couple years back, someone at Sisheng coded an app that registers potential tears in the barrier based on patrol reports and other user input, and maintains a real-time record of the barrier’s general condition, giving civilians a rough idea of which places to avoid until cultivators can get there to cleanse the area and mend the barrier. Mo Ran found out about it by accident while browsing the app store, and when he sent a message to Xue Meng to ask him about it, Xue Meng was suspiciously, uncharacteristically tight-lipped.
“How’s your side been, all clear?” Xue Meng turns to Mo Ran, who nods, then rubs the back of his neck. The long distance train ride has left him with a persistent crick that hasn’t yet gone away. “Okay, let’s go, then.”
They make their way west, to where the river cuts through Wuchang’s outskirts, lined by old warehouses on both sides. It’s a known hangout spot for the more adventurous of local teenagers, who go there to smoke, drink and hook up, but it’s also a hotspot for increased rift activity for exactly the same reason. It’s no wonder—once coalesced into a sentient form, all beings of the ghost realm want what they don’t have: the bright, golden qi of living things that flows through their meridians, the yang energy to feast on. They go wherever they can find it, and in places like that, buzzing with all the excitement of youth, all they have to do is reach out and take.
Mo Ran has seen this all over in his travels. Ghosts inevitably become drawn to the places that pulse with life, and they are always hungry, starving for it. Night districts, clubs, remote spots that teenagers don’t want their parents to know about—they are the same everywhere, always suffused with the faint aura of ghostly qi just waiting to take form. It’s the worst in places closest to the barrier, but Mo Ran has been everywhere, from Beijing, through Shanghai, to Guangzhou, and that constant never changes, just the intensity of it.
It must be the weather, though, that’s made the horny, rebellious youth of Wuchang stay inside this evening. The northern wind bites into Mo Ran’s face, and by the time they are done with their route, he can feel his cheeks going numb. He’s almost forgotten how bitterly cold late fall can be here in the mountains.
Still, better that than the heat.
Chu Wanning does not go to Mengpo Hall for dinner. He never cooks for himself, even though his home is equipped with a fully functional kitchen, the way all other senior disciples and sect elders’ lodgings are, but he does not feel like eating out in full view of everyone today, either.
Liar, the insidious voice at the back of his head spits out. At least be honest with yourself.
Chu Wanning swallows, turning back to his task. He has been working on the scrolls for the entire late afternoon and into the evening, ever since he returned from his afternoon class at the cultivation school, down in Wuchang. He does not mind the additional work—far from it, Xue Zhengyong’s idea for the school was one of the reasons why he initially agreed to come to Sisheng—but at the moment, the classes are eating into what little time he has between his other duties to work on deciphering the cultivation manuals.
He knows, he thinks bitterly, that if Huaizui were to see him now, he would be disappointed with his former disciple. Chu Wanning can already imagine the dissatisfied frown, the thin line of his lips pressed tightly in disapproval.
That’s what happens when you let yourself be distracted by the trivialities of life, he imagines Huaizui’s voice saying, the curt words that cut to the core. I taught you better than that.
Slowly, ever so slowly, some of the text begins to make sense. He begins with the scrolls containing treatises on cultivation, reasoning that perhaps finding the common reference points will make it easier to translate the scrolls which detail the obscure cultivation techniques. The grammar is difficult to grasp, and much of the vocabulary has no reference in any existing records of the varieties of Old Chinese. It is only thanks to the long hours spent in Huaizui’s study—kneeling with his back ramrod straight as he studied some of the oldest cultivation manuals in existence in their vernacular, starting from the beginning every time he made a mistake—that Chu Wanning can even attempt this. He is capable of inferring the basic syntactic rules and adjusting his translation as he progresses based on his general knowledge of Old Chinese grammar, but the overlap between the extant corpus of xingsheng characters and what can be found in the scrolls is less significant than he would like, and some of the script deviates from the known varieties on top of that, with radicals that seem to have no recorded meaning. It is no wonder, then, that his notes are chaotic, comprehensible possibly only to Chu Wanning himself, teasing out the different interpretations of the characters as more context is revealed to him.
It is slow, tedious work, but if his life at Wubei ever taught him anything, it was how to endure. So Chu Wanning endures, day after day, week after week, the way he has endured so many other, much worse things. Some eye strain and headache are nothing in comparison.
The sound of knocking startles Chu Wanning some hours later, and when he looks up at the clock, it shows nearly nine p.m. There are not many people who would knock on the doors of the Red Lotus Pavilion at this hour, and for a brief, shameful moment, Chu Wanning considers pretending that he is not at home, just in case Mo Ran has decided to pay him a visit. It is a pathetic, childish thought, and Chu Wanning is already pushing away from his desk when another knock comes, followed by Shi Mei’s gentle voice.
“Shizun?” he says, the word muffled by the door that separates them. “Can I come in?”
Chu Wanning dismisses the lock talisman with a gesture of his hand, then rushes to open the door, only to be greeted with the sight of Shi Mei carrying a tray of food, smiling softly.
“I noticed you didn’t come to dinner at your usual time, and thought you might appreciate some food,” Shi Mei says, waiting patiently until Chu Wanning moves to the side to allow him to enter.
Shi Mei steps out of his shoes at the entrance before making his way to the dining room that Chu Wanning never uses, except for when one of his disciples comes over to visit. With swift, graceful movements, Shi Mei sets the unmistakable Mengpo Hall wooden tray on the table and uncovers the array of dishes he has selected. There is nothing that Chu Wanning would not be able to eat—hand-pulled noodles in a mild broth, some steamed fish, a bowl of rice, and a sweet pastry to finish the meal.
“Sit down,” Chu Wanning instructs, as he always does on such occasions. “I’ll make tea.”
When he returns, he finds Shi Mei settled at the table, in the same place he always used to sit, with the same serene, mild expression on his face that he wears most of the time. Chu Wanning takes a seat to the side of him, at the head of the table, and reaches for the food.
They have not spoken much in the week and a half since Shi Mei returned to Sisheng Peak. In truth, Chu Wanning hardly knows how to talk to Shi Mei now, with the wide chasm of five years spent apart between them, and a shattered spiritual core that Shi Mei is never getting back. That, Chu Wanning understands, is solely his fault.
He knew, back when the Heavenly Rift opened in Caidie Town, that Shi Mei should have been instructed to stay behind with Madam Wang and the other healers. But he had wanted to go, and Chu Wanning relented, against his better judgment. Now all that Shi Mei has to show for it is a body that will never be capable of any kind of cultivation and an empty space inside his chest where his core used to be. Chu Wanning does not understand how Shi Mei can sit next to him and not despise him down to the very marrow of his bones. How he can look at Chu Wanning and not want to spit in his face.
For a moment, Chu Wanning eats in silence, and Shi Mei drinks his tea. It is one of the few things Chu Wanning knows how to make decently, having served his former shizun on many occasions.
Then, Shi Mei raises his eyes and asks, smiling gently, “Shizun, have you seen Mo Ran yet?”
Chu Wanning’s spine goes rigid. Of course Mo Ran’s return would be good news for Shi Mei—there used to be a time the three of them were inseparable, and only a fool could ignore the way Mo Ran used to look at Shi Mei when they were teenagers, and all the way into adulthood. Of course Shi Mei would be happy to see Mo Ran. To him, it must be an entirely innocuous question. To Chu Wanning, it is a live grenade thrust into his hands.
“Briefly,” he says, picking up a piece of steamed fish with his chopsticks. “We ran into each other at the Loyalty Hall.”
Shi Mei laughs quietly, but it comes out more sad than amused. “Shizun should give him some time,” he says. “He took it really hard, and he’s…not the best at processing his emotions. He didn’t even message me for the first three months, you know? I had to reach out to him first. I think he blames himself for what happened.”
No, Chu Wanning wants to say. He blames me, and he is right to do it.
“I’m sure he’ll come around eventually,” Shi Mei continues, oblivious to Chu Wanning’s internal turmoil.
In response, Chu Wanning makes a noncommittal sound, and Shi Mei does not press the issue any further. Instead, he leans over the table and asks, “And how has shizun’s work been going? Any progress on the scrolls? I’ll have to be honest, it was all some people at Guyueye wanted to talk about for a while. Sect Leader Jiang is hoping we’ll uncover some long-forgotten medical cultivation techniques, too.” He laughs again, soft and melodic. “I think most of the sect leaders are wishing the scrolls contain techniques that suit their own schools of cultivation, so they can demand that we just hand them over.”
It is a curious thing, the way five years can change a person. Shi Mei used to be a lot more timid, a lot less inclined to offer his opinion without having been asked. He was the perfect kind of disciple: polite, obedient, studious. He completed all of his tasks in a timely manner, and—as the oldest of the three—made sure that Mo Ran and Xue Meng were not slacking too much in Chu Wanning’s absence. He never asked for a lot, and gave his all in return. But this new, older Shi Mei, seems to have found the grounding he had been looking for, despite everything, and learned how to be more than just a pleasant shadow of a person, ready to quietly make everyone’s lives around him easier while never taking anything for himself, never wanting any recognition.
He has grown so much more beautiful, too, in the kind of way that leaves people breathless when they look at him. Chu Wanning has no doubt that once Mo Ran lays eyes on him again, he will be reminded of the depth of his infatuation. After all, who wouldn’t want Shi Mei—beautiful, kind, gentle Shi Mei, who makes any room brighter just by entering it? Mo Ran would be a fool to let him slip away.
“Work has been slow,” Chu Wanning admits, “but I’m making progress.”
Shi Mei tilts his head to the side, a curious look on his face. “Could I take a look?” he asks in a tone like he expects to be denied. “I know I won’t be able to make any sense of any of it, but I’ve been curious to see the scrolls for myself.”
There is no reason why Chu Wanning should refuse, perhaps other than the state of his study. As he opens the door, with Shi Mei following on his heels, he is momentarily struck by the kind of picture the room paints. There is paper everywhere—printouts of the digitized scrolls and loose sheets spread over the desk and some of the floor, crumpled pieces lining the carpet around the paper basket—and more reference books that can fit on all the flat surfaces combined. They sway in their unstable piles every time Chu Wanning moves past them. To the side, his laptop is balancing precariously on yet another stack of books. Chu Wanning’s notebook lies open next to it, a nearly incomprehensible mess of conjectures, guesses and estimates.
In the corners of the room, Chu Wanning’s other projects are gathering dust in messy heaps of metal and glass.
And then, to the side, in a glass display case, there are the original scrolls, put under a protection talisman to prevent them from crumbling to dust. He watches as Shi Mei leans over the case, reaching out to trace the outlines of the scrolls, barely touching them with the tips of his slender fingers.
“Does shizun have any idea what these might be, exactly?” he asks, peering up at Chu Wanning from under his lashes. Chu Wanning shakes his head, and Shi Mei hums thoughtfully in response, then says, “It’s so strange that there’s just no record of them anywhere.”
Chu Wanning lets his eyes roam across the expanse of the scrolls, like that alone will perhaps let him unravel their mystery. “They might predate the earliest preserved written records. Or they were never made public,” he says. “Perhaps the Rufeng cultivators found someone’s incomplete notes, and we are just chasing after shadows.”
Shi Mei gives him a curious look. “Does shizun really think that?” he asks. “Why would someone go to so much trouble to keep them hidden away, though, if they were just someone’s unfinished notes?”
“Perhaps it is something. Perhaps it is nothing,” Chu Wanning says, coming around the desk to stand by Shi Mei. “I would rather not speculate until I have the answers.”
Mo Ran and Xue Meng return from patrol just past eleven, looking and feeling a little worse for wear after a hungry ghost jumped them on the way back. Neither of them had any idea where the ghost had come from, but it was starved, vicious, and put up a surprisingly fierce fight before they dispatched it.
“I’m starving,” Xue Meng complains as they enter the compound, heading in the direction of disciples’ quarters.
This late in the evening, most of the juniors are already in bed, and they don’t meet anyone else on their way there, apart from one girl who keeps arguing with someone over the phone in front of the main entrance. Mo Ran, who expected Xue Meng to take a left at the main courtyard, where the sect leader lodgings are located, turns on his heel and leans against the glass, blocking the entrance.
“Forget it, I’m not cooking,” he says, pinning Xue Meng with a look. “Go to Mengpo Hall if you want to eat.”
“But ge…” Xue Meng’s whine carries across the space.
Mo Ran squints, crossing his arms against his chest. “I know what you’re doing, and it’s not working.”
Even five years later, in the fluorescent light of the shitty lamp, he can tell that Xue Meng is waging an internal battle to stop himself from sticking his tongue out at Mo Ran. Some things really don’t change.
“You’re not looking very cute right now, you know,” is what Xue Meng settles on in the end.
“I’m not wasting my cutest looks on you, so fuck you, and also, I’m not cooking.” Not waiting for Xue Meng’s reaction, Mo Ran turns away to punch in the code and pulls the door the moment it unlocks, but he doesn’t take a step inside. “Maybe Uncle is still up, but I’m beat and I’m going to bed. Nag me about cooking when I’m not feeling all of my muscles and it’s not almost midnight, okay? And when I’ve, like, unpacked all my stuff. Then we can talk.”
With that, he blows Xue Meng an obnoxiously loud kiss and disappears inside the building. It’s not like Xue Meng couldn’t easily guess the combination—always the same, always Shi Mei’s birthday—and get in if he really wanted to, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Slowly, Mo Ran makes the trek to the elevator, then pushes the button for the top floor. He got pretty lucky, all things considered—one of the senior disciples had just gotten married, and she was moving in with her new husband, which left a nice, fairly spacious apartment at the very top of the senior disciples’ building up for grabs. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve been snatched up in an instant, but Mo Ran suspects that Xue Zhengyong pulled a few strings to get the first pick for him.
When Mo Ran gets to his floor and rounds the corner, he finds Shi Mei there, sitting beside Mo Ran’s front door with his back to the wall, a styrofoam container resting on his knees. As soon as he spots Mo Ran, his entire face shifts—a smile curving the soft, pink pout of his lips, his eyes lighting up—and he scrambles to his feet.
“It’s so late,” Mo Ran says, punching in the code for his front door, then letting Shi Mei in first. “You didn’t have to wait.”
The entryway comes alive in a flood of light as they enter, pulling off their shoes by the door and hanging up their coats. The place has been left sparsely furnished once the shijie who’d lived there moved out, but that’s nothing that a shopping trip won’t fix, and at least Mo Ran won’t be stuck with furniture he hates. For now, though, it’s not exactly in the state to have guests over, and some of Mo Ran’s unpacked bags are still propped up by the living room wall.
“I knew you’d be hungry after coming home from patrol,” Shi Mei says, looking around for a moment before making his way towards the kitchen counter.
The apartment is mostly open plan—apart from the bedroom and the bathroom—but Mo Ran doesn’t mind. The kitchen space is actually pretty decent, too, with a lot of counter space for the size, and a nice view of the mountains through the large living room windows. The cabinets look fairly new, the fronts painted a pretty shade of midnight blue. In the living room, there’s only a gray couch and a low coffee table for now, as well as a mess of cables spilling from the wall where the TV used to be mounted.
Flicking off the light in the hallway, Mo Ran shuffles over to close the curtains and switch on the floor lamp in the corner, while across the room, Shi Mei settles the styrofoam container on the counter and pops off the lid.
“Wonton soup,” he says, then adds with an apologetic smile, “From Mengpo Hall this time, sorry.”
Mo Ran tries not to let the flicker of disappointment show in his face. He should be grateful that Shi Mei, who’s always so nice and so thoughtful, was kind enough to bring him food while Mo Ran’s living arrangements are still mostly a mess. That it’s not Shi Mei’s homemade wonton soup should not matter.
It was, after all, Shi Mei’s return that convinced Mo Ran to come back to Sisheng Peak for good in the first place. When the message came, Mo Ran finished his business in the city, packed up his shoebox of a temporary apartment in Beijing, and boarded the train to Chengdu without a second thought. Of course, he reasoned at the time, wherever Shi Mei was, Mo Ran’s place was with him.
Now he remembers all over again that it’s so much easier to admire Shi Mei from afar. Mo Ran has no illusions as to the kind of man he is, deep down, or the things he wants from the people he takes to bed, and Shi Mei deserves to know and experience none of it.
Ye Wangxi told him once that he was treating Shi Mei like a Fabergé egg—to be displayed and appreciated from afar, but never to be touched—and Mo Ran bristled, trying to explain everything that Shi Mei meant to him, maneuvering the twisted logic of his own reasoning.
“So if you want to be with him, why won’t you tell him?” Ye Wangxi had asked, looking up from the hotpot they were sharing at some hole in the wall place in Linyi. “Why won’t you just tell him that you like him and let him make the decision for himself?”
“Right, because you’re one to talk.” Mo Ran huffed a laugh under his breath, then reached for a piece of wood ear mushroom, floating in the glossy, red broth. “You can ask me again once you’ve sorted out your mess with that asshole.”
Still, Mo Ran has been in love with Shi Mei for so long that it comes to him as easy as breathing now. It’s hard for him to remember what it was like before he realized he liked Shi Mei as more than just his friend and shixiong, the edges of those memories from before blurry and filtered through the milky glass of the later revelation. The fact of the matter is: he wants all that is best in this world for Shi Mei, who has always been there for Mo Ran, who has always encouraged him and comforted him, and made his life better just by being in it—and that is not Mo Ran. He just wants too much, and he’s too selfish, too greedy. If Shi Mei were to experience even a fraction of what Mo Ran feels, what he wants, he would only be sullied by the filth that hides beneath Mo Ran’s skin.
Sometimes, in his nightmares, he still hears the mocking voices.
Look at him, what a rabid dog.
What a beast.
What, are you going to bite?
Some lessons, he supposes, stick better than others, and Mo Ran learned everything there was to know about deserving young. So if he knows anything at all, he knows this: he doesn’t deserve Shi Mei, and he never will. There’s something deeply rotten inside him, and he can’t pull it out at the root, no matter how hard he tries. Especially now, with Shi Mei so weakened by the loss of his spiritual core, Mo Ran would never dare touch him, afraid of what kind of harm that touch might bring.
Still, that doesn’t extinguish the burning in his chest, the longing that he feels whenever he looks at Shi Mei. That, he knows, is never going away.
“Eat up,” Shi Mei says, pushing the container across the kitchen island, to where Mo Ran has seated himself on one of the barstools.
Mo Ran dispels the heating spell Mengpo Hall must have put over the soup and reaches for a pair of chopsticks, then takes the first bite. It’s not that he dislikes the food at Mengpo Hall, on the whole, but there’s nothing like Shi Mei’s wontons, plump and rich with filling, their skins rolled so thin they get almost translucent once they’re cooked. Still, it’s food, and Mo Ran is hungry, and Shi Mei brought it to him because that’s just the kind of person he is. Good. Caring. People like that don’t end up with people like Mo Ran.
“Have you gone to see shizun yet?” Shi Mei asks after a while. He leans against the island counter on his elbows and peers up at Mo Ran, face gentle and open.
Mo Ran freezes with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “I ran into him earlier,” he says. “He was in a hurry, clearly, since he couldn’t even bother to acknowledge me.”
Shi Mei sighs and shakes his head. “A-Ran, you really should be nicer to shizun,” he says. “He’s not your enemy, you know.”
“I don’t know how you can forgive him just like that.” Mo Ran picks up the last wonton, then grabs the bowl to drink the remaining broth. “But I don’t have to, and I’m not going to.”
That’s one of the problems with Shi Mei, Mo Ran thinks—he forgives too easily, but that’s fine. Mo Ran can hold that grudge for the both of them.
In truth, there were many reasons why Mo Ran left those five years ago. After everything that had happened, he felt so conflicted, so incredibly messed up and unsure of everything, unsettled like a glass of water that had been knocked over. So angry. So helpless.
There was nothing he could do about the yawning chasm inside Shi Mei’s chest where his core used to be. There was no cure for this, no going back. It was there one moment and gone the next, leaving behind only shrapnel. No matter how hard he tried, there was no way for Mo Ran to patch that wound up. There was no way for anyone to patch that wound up. It was just there, and it was going to remain there for as long as Shi Mei lived.
A void. A lack.
At the time, all the muddled up emotions kept roiling in his gut like maggots, but there was one thing he knew for certain: he hated Chu Wanning. He could not stand to look at him, and the thought of having to speak to him made Mo Ran sick to his stomach. But Chu Wanning wasn’t going anywhere, so Mo Ran did the next best thing and left himself, hoping that with time, his emotions would settle into something that didn’t feel like tar at the bottom of his stomach and venom in his mouth.
He was mostly right. With time, his hatred mellowed out to a sneering indifference, and by the time Shi Mei messaged him to tell him he had been cleared to return to Sisheng Peak, Mo Ran no longer wanted to spit at the mere mention of Chu Wanning’s name. But all it took was one chance encounter, one look at Chu Wanning’s proud face that closed off the moment he laid eyes on Mo Ran and realized who was standing before him for all those feelings to come back in a bitter flood.
It's not like Chu Wanning ever thought there was any worth to Mo Ran’s existence. Why would he think any differently now?
Shi Mei sighs again. “I understand,” he says, reaching out to touch Mo Ran’s hand. “But…could you try? Please? For me?”
And there, of course, lies the problem, because Mo Ran would do anything that Shi Mei asked. Even attempt to make peace with Chu Wanning.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll try.”
There is another problem with Chu Wanning, Mo Ran soon realizes. Whatever remains of his ill-advised teenage crush on his shizun must have embedded itself deep into his subconscious, because whenever he inadvertently catches a glimpse of Chu Wanning in the next few days, his brain always stutters for a moment, static buzzing in his ears as the deepest recesses of his mind consistently spit out just one word: beautiful.
It's such a shame, Mo Ran thinks, that for such an unearthly beautiful man, Chu Wanning is so ugly inside. It would be so much easier not to think about him at all if Mo Ran didn’t spend so much time trying to figure out what Chu Wanning would look like naked, spread out across the sheets under Mo Ran, moaning as Mo Ran opened him up on his cock.
Maybe it’s just that Chu Wanning always looks so neat, so proper, not a hair out of place and the collars of his hanfu pulled up high, exposing just the tiniest sliver of his neck where it meets his collarbone. It makes Mo Ran want to crowd him against the wall somewhere in a secluded place and leave him a shaking mess, with his robes stained and his hair in disarray. It makes Mo Ran want to know what Chu Wanning would look like, flushed and indignant, so aggrieved at the very thought that Mo Ran could get him hard—could make him come. This little fucked up fantasy that he’s entertaining can’t be good for him long-term, Mo Ran thinks, but it’s very, very good for his dick every morning in the shower and every night before bed.
It's safer, though, in a way, for Mo Ran to pour this heated, restless frustration that buzzes just beneath his skin into lewd daydreams about fucking his shizun. He could never imagine having those kinds of thoughts about Shi Mei, and he’s not fucking anyone else at the moment—though maybe that does mean he should hit up Rong Jiu and see if he’s up for some fun. Maybe it’s just that Mo Ran has gone too long without, and now even the sight of his shizun, with his red-rimmed eyes and pink lips, makes him all hot and bothered.
Yeah, he thinks, already scrolling down through WeChat to his long-abandoned conversation with Rong Jiu. Yeah, that must be it.
In the dark, no one can tell that Chu Wanning’s flush spreads all the way down to his chest. He lies there in his bed, with his legs spread wide and his face pushed into the pillow, breathing heavily under the hot weight on top of him.
“Can you feel it?” Mo Ran whispers into Chu Wanning’s ear, and Chu Wanning shivers. “You want it inside, don’t you? But would you beg me for it? Hm, Wanning? What would you be willing to do for it? Would you suck it? Would you say, please, gege?”
He laughs, dark and mean, and bites the lobe of Chu Wanning’s ear so hard it stings.
Chu Wanning swallows, clenching his jaw to keep the moans from spilling out as Mo Ran grinds into him, smearing slick all over his thighs and ass. His cock is a long, hard weight that presses against him, catching on the rim of his opening every once in a while as a white flash of panic goes through Chu Wanning, because he’s never, and it’s so big, and it’s not going to fit like this, but—
But Chu Wanning is hard, too—he’s so, so shamefully hard and leaking all over the sheets, the dirty, disgusting man that he is, getting off on everything Mo Ran does to him.
There must be something wrong with him, because why else would he enjoy this kind of humiliation—why else would he enjoy Mo Ran’s rough hands leaving bruises in the shape of fingers around his hips, and the marks Mo Ran leaves all over his neck with his lips and his teeth, sucking, licking, biting, until Chu Wanning can’t stop himself from crying out.
“Good,” Mo Ran says, low and gravelly. “Good, I want to hear you when I fuck you. Sluts don’t keep their mouth shut when someone is giving them what they’ve wanted all along, do they?” Another slide of his cock against Chu Wanning’s ass, along the cleft of it, spreading more sticky fluid all over. “I’ve seen the way you look at me, shizun. What would other people say if they knew the venerable Elder Yuheng dreams about taking his disciple’s cock, hm? Do you think they’d be scandalized? Do you think they would laugh?”
“Stop,” Chu Wanning forces out, even though everything else inside him is screaming that he never wants this to stop, not if this is the only way he can have Mo Ran. But the shame floods him like a tidal wave, filling his lungs with salt water. It burns when he tries to breathe. “Stop it, Mo Ran, I— Stop.”
He won’t say please. Even if that’s what Mo Ran wants to hear, Chu Wanning will not plead.
Mo Ran’s weight is still on him, pressing him to the mattress, and if Chu Wanning wanted to break free, he’s not sure he’d be able to do it. This new, older Mo Ran is taller, broader, stronger—he could so easily overpower Chu Wanning. He could do anything he wanted to, and Chu Wanning would just have to lie there and take it.
But Chu Wanning doesn’t—he doesn’t want to break free. He doesn’t want it to stop. He wants all of it—the rough touches, the mocking words. Whatever Mo Ran wants to give him. With his chest hot and his lungs burning, Chu Wanning lies there, and he spreads his legs wider, and he lets it happen.
It’s so much—it’s too much, the sharp burn of it forcing all air out of Chu Wanning’s lungs. Mo Ran just keeps going as Chu Wanning tries to squirm away, whispering, stop, stop, stop, over and over again, even though what he really wants is to sink down even further on Mo Ran’s cock.
He can’t take it. He can’t bear it. It’s too much, and his body is all wrong for this, deficient just like the rest of him, and he wants all of it—all of it, and more. Slowly, gradually, Chu Wanning can feel himself falling, falling, falling, and then—
Chu Wanning wakes up with a startled gasp. He is overheated, his cheeks and chest burning, sweat sticking his hair to the back of his neck—and then he realizes, as horrifying clarity dawns on him, that he is hard. His cock strains against the fabric of his underwear, trapped between Chu Wanning’s body and the bed.
Disgusting, the voice at the back of Chu Wanning’s head spits out. You’re disgusting, thinking such things about your disciple. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
The truth is, Chu Wanning has lived with the acrid taste of shame at the back of his throat for the past several years, ever since he realized, with gut-churning dread that climbed all the way up to his lungs, making it harder to breathe, that he wanted Mo Ran like a man wants another man. The rot inside him must spread deep, down into the very core of him, because years have passed—some of them marked by separation, which should have dulled whatever twisted feelings he harbored—and yet Chu Wanning still yearns for what he cannot have.
This, though—this is a new low, even for him. He attempts to fight it, wait it out, the way he had been taught at Wubei, where restraint and purity of body and mind were encouraged in all disciples and enforced in Chu Wanning. But his body seems to have a mind of its own tonight, because Chu Wanning’s hips move of their own accord, grinding into the mattress, and he comes, soiling his clothes and the bedsheets, sick to his stomach with guilt and shame as he shakes in the aftermath.
It is perhaps ironic, Chu Wanning thinks, that for a man so cold, he hates the winter chill so much. Like should attract like, and yet he shivers as he dresses in the morning, looking away from the mirror as he tries to shake off the remnants of last night’s mortifying dream, unable to even look at his traitor of a body. Outside, dark clouds hang low over the horizon, threatening snow, and Chu Wanning wraps the collar of his coat tighter around his neck as he rushes across the pathways and courtyards to reach Mengpo Hall.
It is early enough that there are not many people around, but not so early that he is the only one here. Chu Wanning has forgone his morning sword work exercises, intent to get a head start on the translation work today, before he has to leave for Wuchang to teach at the cultivation school all afternoon. The progress has been slow but steady, and Chu Wanning knows that he is inching ever closer to some sort of breakthrough.
A few bleary-eyed junior disciples are sitting at the table closest to the entrance, talking about something in quiet voices. As soon as they spot Chu Wanning in the doorway, they bow as best they can while still remaining seated and then grow silent, staring into their bowls of congee and plates of steamed buns. Gradually, once Chu Wanning passes them, their voices float back into the air with a quiet murmur, rising and falling as they return to their conversation.
Only a couple other tables are occupied—there is a group of three senior disciples sitting in the opposite corner of the cafeteria, and Xuanji is sitting with Tanlang by the windows, enjoying the view over the bowls of steaming noodles. They both give Chu Wanning a nod once they notice him, but they make no move to invite him to join them, either.
Chu Wanning is halfway through his bowl of tofu pudding when the door to the cafeteria opens once more, and three familiar voices carry through the air in a cacophony of sound.
“Shizun!” Xue Meng must be the first to spot him, or perhaps the first to give voice to what everyone else can see: Chu Wanning, sitting alone at breakfast.
Shi Mei and Mo Ran enter after him, and Chu Wanning is struck by a memory of all those mornings from years ago, when his disciples would find him in the very same place, at the very same table, and clamber over the benches to sit next to him, surrounding him with noise and commotion. Chu Wanning never let it show, but he enjoyed those moments the most, with the sun shining through the eastward, floor-length windows of Mengpo Hall and his disciples’ voices speaking over each other, young and full of excitement.
“Keep quiet while you eat,” he would tell them every time in a stern voice, but when they inevitably started talking again a few minutes later, he let it go on for as long as he could before he had to react once more to avoid losing face.
Now, it is not much different. They each go to grab a tray from the counter and return with an assortment of food and utensils, settling in their seats in a familiar order: Xue Meng next to Chu Wanning, with Mo Ran and Shi Mei sitting across the table.
Chu Wanning’s shoulders tense into a painful line once he feels Mo Ran’s eyes on him without even having to look up. He feels thoroughly scrutinized by the intensity of Mo Ran’s gaze, exposed in a way that makes him queasy, the fragments of last night’s dream dripping back to the forefront of his consciousness. He feels so obvious about his sick desires, so pitifully transparent. With his stomach twisted into a painful knot, Chu Wanning pushes the half-eaten bowl of tofu pudding away, clenching his teeth to ward off the nausea.
It is pathetic. Mo Ran has not even said anything, and yet the mere fact that he is looking at Chu Wanning is enough to unsettle him, knock him out of his fragile equilibrium.
Chu Wanning has seen him around Sisheng Peak over the past few days, always careful not to let their paths cross. That, too, is laughable. Chu Wanning cannot spend the rest of his life avoiding his own disciple, even if that is what Mo Ran seems to prefer as well. They will have to continue working alongside each other, so Chu Wanning needs to swallow his pride and endure it. He is, after all, very good at that.
“Not hungry anymore?” Mo Ran asks after a moment, when it must become apparent that Chu Wanning is done eating. It is an innocuous enough question, but in Mo Ran’s mouth, it feels like an accusation. It is the same tone with which Mo Ran from the dream spat out the words, But would you beg me for it?
“No,” Chu Wanning says quietly, forcing himself to look up.
Across the table, Mo Ran is looking at him with an assessing expression on his face, tinged with part-curiosity, part-condescension. There is something else there as well, which Chu Wanning cannot quite place, but he refuses to back down now, even as the tips of his ears begin to burn under the intensity of Mo Ran’s gaze.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than bother shizun at breakfast?” Xue Meng glares from above his bowl of congee.
Mo Ran’s brows rise and he leans back on the bench, crossing his arms over his chest. “How am I bothering him?” he says. “I just asked him a question. Besides, he’s done eating, he said so himself.”
Xue Meng exhales loudly through his nose. “You promised you wouldn’t behave like an asshole,” he grits out while Shi Mei reaches out across the table to touch his arm, trying to calm him down. When Chu Wanning follows the lines of his body, he realizes that his other hand is resting curled around Mo Ran’s wrist. He needs to go, he decides. In that same moment Xue Meng adds, “And stop talking about him like he’s not even here.”
Mo Ran bristles. “What, like you’re doing now?”
“Enough.” Chu Wanning reaches for his tray, already standing up on unsteady legs. “I have work to do. Enjoy your breakfast.”
He should not have been so easily shaken, he berates himself as he takes long, hurried strides towards the door. He is not running away so much as he is rushing out, but it feels like a hollow defeat anyway. The three of them used to bicker all the time—or rather, Mo Ran and Xue Meng used to bicker, and Shi Mei quietly indulged them from the sidelines, reining them in when they crossed the line—and it never bothered Chu Wanning so much. He reprimanded them when they got too rowdy, but it never used to sting like this, even when they fought for his attention amongst themselves, clearly aiming to elicit a reaction. Now, though, Mo Ran’s gaze on him felt like a burn—like Chu Wanning has willingly placed himself under a glass roof on a hot summer day.
What if he knows? the voice asks. What if he knows the kind of filth that you think about when you look at him? What if this is why he stares at you like that?
Enough, Chu Wanning tells himself. Enough. It was just a dream.
He is not even halfway through the courtyard when Mengpo Hall’s front door opens and closes with a loud thud, and then there is the sound of footsteps coming Chu Wanning’s way.
“Wait!” Mo Ran’s voice reaches his ears, and Chu Wanning’s spine goes rigid. “Shizun, wait!”
He catches up to Chu Wanning a moment later, his breathing slightly elevated, and turns on his heel in front of Chu Wanning to stop him from leaving.
“You left in such a hurry,” Mo Ran says, and there it is again, that condescending note in his voice. He takes a step towards Chu Wanning, and then another one, and then he is close enough that Chu Wanning can smell the deep, woodsy scent of his cologne. “I thought we were going to catch up, shizun. It’s been a long time, after all.”
Chu Wanning blinks, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. He attempts to evade Mo Ran, but Mo Ran only falls in step with him, walking with an exaggerated bounce, hands folded behind his back.
“You should go finish your breakfast,” Chu Wanning says quietly, avoiding Mo Ran’s gaze. “I have work to do.”
Mo Ran has the gall to laugh—a quiet, breathy thing that makes the air he exhales billow in white puffs. “You can’t just avoid me forever, you know?” he says. “Like it or not, I’m still your disciple.”
“I am aware,” Chu Wanning says stubbornly. “And who says I’m avoiding you? I have work to do.”
Mo Ran laughs again. “So shizun hasn’t seen the updated fieldwork roster for the month yet, I take it?”
“What?” Chu Wanning stops in his tracks. He has the mission roster synced to his watch and his phone. If there have been any changes, he would know.
“Some people in a village south of Wuchang have been complaining about an infestation of shui gui in the local lake,” Mo Ran says, “and Uncle is sending both of us.”
For a moment, Chu Wanning can only hear the faint sound of static in his ears.
“Isn’t there someone—” he catches himself before he can finish the sentence, clenches his jaw, then unclenches it again, and picks up his pace once more. “I see. Very well.”
Xue Zhengyong must have had a reason in choosing to send the two of them together, and, being the straightforward man that he is, there can be little doubt as to what this outing is supposed to achieve. Mo Ran has been right, too, as loathe as Chu Wanning is to admit it. Chu Wanning is still his shizun, and that means that he cannot run from him forever.
“Is shizun disappointed?” Mo Ran asks, his voice losing some of the sneering edge. It grows increasingly more tense with each uttered word, instead. If this is another one of Mo Ran’s mind games, then Chu Wanning cannot comprehend it. “Was shizun hoping someone else would go with him instead?”
Chu Wanning scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. I wasn’t even supposed to be going out into the field until I’d made more progress on the scrolls, but that has evidently changed.”
He cannot fathom why Mo Ran keeps antagonizing him like this—why he keeps clinging to Chu Wanning’s side, when he could instead be back at Mengpo Hall, stealing glances at the ever-beautiful Shi Mei.
In his preoccupation, it takes Chu Wanning a moment to realize that beyond the bamboo trees, the rooftops of the Red Lotus Pavilion have already come into view. The idea of having Mo Ran back in his private space—just a few steps away from the room in which Chu Wanning brought himself to orgasm last night to the memory of a filthy, shameless dream—settles like ice water at the bottom of his stomach. It sloshes with every step, bringing back the nausea from earlier.
“You should go,” he says once it becomes clear that Mo Ran is set on following him back home, trying to make his voice less harsh, more gentle, more encouraging. He is not looking for a fight, merely for a way out. “Your breakfast must be cold already, and Mengpo Hall will run out of noodles if you don’t hurry up.”
Mo Ran makes an amused sound. “Shizun worries so much about me, I’m touched.” He turns on his heel, and Chu Wanning’s breath catches in his lungs, so close to the reprieve he needs. “Well, maybe shizun is right. I am feeling pretty starving this morning.”
With that, he finally goes, leaving Chu Wanning to stare at his retreating back.
The morning is a complete waste of time and effort after that. No matter how hard Chu Wanning attempts to focus, his conversation with Mo Ran and the dream from last night keep returning to the forefront of his mind, demanding attention. He is scattered, and growing increasingly angry with himself as the minutes tick away into hours, until it is almost time to leave for his classes at the cultivation school.
It was Xue Zhengyong’s dream, together with his brother, realized only after Xue Duanrong’s death. It was also the reason why Chu Wanning was initially convinced to come to Sisheng Peak after leaving Rufeng. Back then, he had only a passing familiarity with Xue Zhengyong, but as it turned out, their goals were more aligned than Chu Wanning had ever anticipated. The school, founded in Xue Duanrong’s name, was supposed to teach those who could never be accepted by any of the sects, but who nonetheless possessed enough aptitude to learn some rudimentary techniques which did not require a fully-formed spiritual core.
“We could use someone like you,” Xue Zhengyong told Chu Wanning, clapping him on the shoulder like they were old friends, right in the middle of the Six Virtues Hall during a cultivation conference. “For the sect, and for the school. Just think about it.”
Chu Wanning gave a noncommittal answer, just to leave Rufeng a few months later, shaking with fury and disgust.
Now, Chu Wanning teaches at the cultivation school three days a week, familiarizing the students with talisman work and rudimentary barrier techniques. It is good work—necessary work—that helps people who need this help the most.
After his last class, before he can leave to continue his work at home, Ling’er approaches him once everyone else has left. She is a smart girl, barely twenty, who moved to Wuchang from a small village about an hour away, hoping to pursue her dreams of cultivation. In the end, her foundation was not strong enough for the sect, but it was strong enough for the school. Now she sits in on Chu Wanning’s classes twice a week, and stays behind to chat from time to time, seemingly undeterred by Chu Wanning’s cold exterior.
“Chu-laoshi,” she says now, coming closer to where Chu Wanning is packing his notes, “has…something happened? You seemed a little distracted today.”
One of the things about Ling’er, which Chu Wanning has learned very, very quickly, is that she always says what is on her mind, even in the presence of someone like Chu Wanning. It is, in a way, a refreshing change of pace from the junior disciples, who cower in corners and shush each other whenever Chu Wanning comes into their vicinity.
“It’s nothing,” he says, dismissing her with a gesture. “You should go before it gets dark.”
Ling’er gives him one last considering look, but eventually she leaves, shouting over the shoulder for Chu Wanning to come by the shop when he is next in town.
Back at the Red Lotus Pavilion, Chu Wanning brews a pot of fresh tea and returns to his work. He can tell that he is right at the cusp of something, with enough understanding of the script that he has managed to translate several passages from one of the two treatises on cultivation. It is the kind of puzzle that comes together slowly, but it is not, it would seem, impossible to solve.
His eyes are getting heavy by the time he comes to the end of a longer passage, only to discover that the next part of the text is missing almost in its entirety. Frustrated, he reaches for the printout of one of the scrolls containing cultivation techniques, which have until now remained mostly impenetrable. But several things have fallen into place since the last time Chu Wanning attempted to decipher any of them, and when he looks closer, cross-referencing with his notes just to make sure, he understands, all at once, what it is that he has in his hands. He pushes his notes away from him on instinct, his heart hammering against his ribs. Chu Wanning looks at his work again, but the word is still there, staring back at him: four characters, arranged on the page in Chu Wanning’s neat handwriting.
It reads, Rebirth.