The Price of Innocence

by caessura

Summary:

Yiling Laozu has killed Jin Zixuan!
Retreat!

 

There would be consequences for killing the heir of a great clan. No matter the intention, the crime was committed and someone had to pay. Wei Wuxian refused to let anyone else take the blame. He would tear the world apart to keep his people safe. Safe from outsiders who wanted them dead, safe from their own self-sacrifice.
The price is nothing more than his sanity.

...

Canon divergence, Wen Qing and Wen Ning do not turn themselves in following the events at Qiongqi Pass. An isolated sect rises from the dust.

Notes:

This was originally written as a companion piece to the other fic in this series, An Outsiders Guide to Demonic Cultivation, detailing the point of canon divergence, but it can also be read as a stand-alone story.

Chapter 1

It all happened so fast, why did he see it so slowly?

The sword fell first, the dust at their feet marring its perfect golden shine, dulling the glint of its filigree. After it fell a shower of red, marking the pommel with specks to match the brow of its master.

The dying man’s lips were moving. There was blood dripping from them. He didn’t understand the words until a name rang out like a silver bell

A-Li

She’s still waiting for you

It echoed in his mind, accompanied by the bass hit of knees striking earth, the distant tinkling of bells

His blood ran cold when the body fell limp. He couldn’t understand. So many had died at his hands, why was this one so sickening?

Petals of sparks amidst snow littered the ground around him, floating in pools of vermillion.

He could not look up to see the voice coming from before him. He passively wished the noise would stop, there was so much noise, he couldn’t think. The grating shout cut off with a strangled gasp. Good. Finally some peace and quiet. 

The chorus of bells (or screams, were they screams?) rang louder over the bluff. It was beautiful, he thought he could mimic the sound as a lullaby on Chenqing to sing these scattered petals to sleep. 

His world reeled, blinking out at the edges. Was he breathing?

He lost consciousness with the image of a bright red poppy blooming on the back of the white peony

What a strange spring

---

Wei Wuxian…
Wei Wuxian…
Wei Ying…
Laozu…
Master
The whispers welcomed him home
We’ve been waiting so long
It could almost be comforting
You’ve finally come home to us
They sounded so happy, so why did he feel so sick?
Wei Wuxian…
Ah, of course
The scattered petals, the blood soaking the parched soil into a sticky foul-smelling mud
You finally let us in
It would have been easier if he hated him. He used to hate him, what happened?
Thank you, Master
Everything sank in as a sickening boulder in his stomach, pulling down his heart with its weight
We’ve waited so long for you
He could not smell the blood anymore. Where was he now? The air was cold and damp, his fingers clawing at a woven mat that caught in splinters under his nails, slicking the surface with blood. He couldn't care about that, there was a worse pain.
You can’t control us, you never could
There were murmurs above him, it was hard to distinguish words from the whispers and groans and cries and celebrations in his head, but he knew the voices.
She’s still waiting for you
One of them he had last heard in the fierce howl of the unrestful dead.
If you don't let us help they’re all going to die, you're going to die
He sat up, head spinning with the movement, and finally laid eyes on the dark figure kneeling before him, his head bowed and unkempt hair curtaining off his terrified clouded eyes.
murderer
He looked upon Wen Ning, and all he could see was the bloodied fist extracting itself from the mortal wound, never unclenching. It was still not unclenched, now cleaned of blood and grasping at his robes, bunched on top of his thighs. If he were alive, he’d be trembling
Still and dead just like Jin Zixuan
His rage flared. Would he ever feel anything else again? It was unlikely, he would die soon and that rage would never leave him, he would be stuck as an angry and vengeful ghost. 
Our Master, stay with us
With great effort, he peeled himself off the straw mat and stumbled into the other man, his anger overcoming the absolute exhaustion festering in his bones.
Not a man not a man, he's a monster now just like us just like you, you made him like this
Wen Ning was a ragdoll in his hands, no attempt to defend himself. “Who did you kill? Do you know who you killed?!” His throat tightened, he didn't know if to cry or to scream.
Scream scream keep screaming we want to hear you
“You could kill anyone else! Why?! Why would you kill Jin Zixuan?!
It was your fault, you know it was
“What is Yanli supposed to do now? How about her son?!
Your fault you did this you hurt her
“What am I supposed to do?!”
You made him like this, you guided his hand
“I- I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” The fearsome Ghost General sounded so pathetic. “I-it was my fault, it was all my fault, I’m so sorry…” 
this is it you've lost your mind you've finally gone insane
what sort of warrior blames his tools for his failure
Just following orders, Master
His hands trembled so hard he could no longer keep grip on Wen Ning’s lapels. When had he grabbed him? He didn't remember pushing him up against the jagged stone wall he was now backed into. His dour face was downcast, he looked like a kicked dog.
Your dog you sent your dog to kill him now look what you've done
“What can I do now?” he pleaded to the heavens. As if any God or Immortal would pity a thing like him. He stumbled, the weight of his sin finally too much to bear.
It doesn't matter what you do
There was a bee sting prick to the back of his neck. His knees buckled, and suddenly he was being held up by the man he was just threatening
You can’t save anyone
His limbs suddenly felt impossibly heavier, filled with rocks and sand. “What… what did you do to me…?” He turned toward the hand at his back. Too many hands, who else was here?
We’re here we’re always with you
Wen Qing came into view. Of course, it was her, it was always her these days. Her face was so composed and innocent, who would guess she could fell the deadly Yiling Laozu so swiftly. Her round eyes were set with determination.
Traitor ungrateful ungrateful ungrateful

Wen Qing asked him to lie back and relax as they offered up their lives in repayment. ungrateful

They reasoned this as just punishment, that they deserved what was coming for them. you're the one who should be punished the blood is on your hands on your soul you're drowning in it Wei Wuxian
shutupshutupshutup let me think
The Wen siblings stood over him as he struggled and explained the situation with the clinical coldness of their medical upbringings. Lanling-Jin had sent a messenger while he was asleep, they demanded repayment for his crime. 
The Jin always the Jin petals in the dust
They told him their plan without feeling. 
Cold still dead cold dead cold dead dead
“No… don’t do this, take the needle out. Pull the needle out now!” Despite his struggles, his chest refused to rise from the mat.
She’s not your puppet you can’t order her helpless useless useless useless

He could only shake his head. “I didn’t do it, I didn’t curse anyone.” His vision blurred, was he crying? You are not this weak

Wen Qing had pity in her eyes, “But they believe you did. They've already decided you're to blame.” does she want to die quiet quiet let me think I need to think be quiet
They would. They would believe anything of him. Curses were wretched and unwieldy things, he wouldn't stoop to such methods to kill a man whose name he didn't even remember.
Curses have consequences, you know this, shut up shut up, think clearly
Impossible mad hope sprang up with the thought. He turned his eyes, widened with hope or desperation or madness, to the woman knelt beside him, “we can find who really did this. A curse rebounds on the caster, we just need to find who has the marks. I definitely don’t have them!” foolish no one will care

“It won’t work.” Wen Qing was somber and patient. Why wasn’t she scared? It was her life at stake she should be scared. She should be the one crying and screaming why was he the only one who cared

“Why not?!” of course not

“No one will help you. No one will believe you. They don’t need proof from you. You’re Yiling Laozu, master of wicked tricks. No one would believe that it wasn’t you, they wouldn’t even find it strange that you have no backlash.
You’re too powerful for your own good, they’ll believe you’re capable of anything
“Even if you could prove your innocence, it wouldn't matter. The fact is that all of those people at Qiongqi pass, Jin Zixuan… they were killed by A-Ning.” Wen Qing looked to the man in question. His expression gave no hint of remorse, but of course, he couldn't. Expression was an ability exclusive to the living. His posture showed shame and humility, back sloped and eyes downcast as he knelt in silence.
You did this you killed them they can’t punish a monster for a demon’s deeds
His heart sank with the reality of the situation. The decision was already made well before he woke up. They resolved to turn themselves in. 
Ungrateful, after everything I lost for you everything I sacrificed so you could live and you want to march yourselves to your death
They reasoned that without his knife, he would no longer be feared, there could be peace.
They feared you without a sword, why would losing a knife be any different?
“You can’t do this,” his voice shook with fear and rage and dread. His useless body refused to listen to him, stiff as a board even as he struggled to leap up, to stop them, to do something. "I didn't ask you to do this!"
Nothing, there’s nothing you can do, not alone. Let us in, let us help. We can give you so much power, Master, let us through, we can save them

Both sat still, no indication of remorse or reconsideration. He didn't know if the feeling that brought on was rage or terror. Perhaps both. Dread. “I can’t, I won’t let you. I won’t let you walk to your death! They’ll kill you! Don’t you understand?!”
Don’t just let them walk away you coward aren’t you in control?
Wen Qing gave him a pitying smile and brushed the wild wisps of hair away from his sweat-slick forehead. "I've said all I have to say, and I've made myself clear. This is also goodbye. I never told you before, but it must be said now, since I might not get another chance."

"No," his voice shook with the tremors now running through his entire body.

"I'm sorry.
Do something you have to do something
"And, thank you."

“NO! Don’t do this! I won’t let you die for me!”
Everyone around you dies, you’re a curse
stop it stopstopstopstopSTOP
They both stood at the foot of his bed and bowed deeply.
Why would they bow, why would they be grateful to give up their lives like this 
"Wen Qing!” He yelled futilely after them. 
Why have all this power if you won’t use it
“Wen Ning!” you can do better He imbued his voice with an order, one that his thrall could not disobey. “Wen Qionglin!”
Finally
Both halted in their steps. Wen Ning’s stooped and subservient stance straightened ever so slightly as his puppet strings were tightened.

Wen Qing turned to look at her brother, horror dawning in her eyes. “Wei Wuxian, don’t you dare.” how rich to think she can issue orders

It was cruel, it was desperate, but he couldn’t care. Yiling Laozu was a cruel and desperate creature, and a beast backed into a corner should be expected to strike. and you are you're a monster beast murderer madman
You can still fix this you don’t need any of those outsiders you’re safe here, stay here, stay with us, Master
He could feel the resistance in Wen Ning when his shuffling steps dragged him back to the bed. 
Nothing can resist, you’re stronger than all of them, you cannot be forced to kneel
He turned his head to the side, the only motion still not locked away from him, and made way for the needle to be pulled out with the jerky movement of a fist. It was clumsy, the remnant consciousness in the Ghost General fighting against the motions his Master bid him, but it worked. The meridian blocked by the thin needle sprang back to life, and his useless body gave a jerk as the coiled muscles were finally allowed to move. He lurched up and doubled over at the weight of resentment suddenly pressing down on his shoulders.
Ungrateful traitor, she thought to control you.
She should be punished
She was trying to help
a bird is not helped by clipping its wings
Shaking fingers clutched at his head, trying to manually scratch out the thoughts. He thought he felt a nail break skin, a bead of warmth dripping down his brow your very own vermillion mark, how enlightened you are
burn it all burn it all burn it all burn it all
Too loud, it was too loud, it was too much.
She was trying to die. If that’s what she wants, give it to her
No! Everything has been to save her to save them keep them safe
shutupshutupshUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP
He clenched his hand around a fistful of hair before it could turn on the wrong person again. “Get out.” 

“Please think about this. Wei Wuxian-”

“GET OUT!” A flash of smoke burst forth from him at the shout.

Somewhere out of his line of sight, he could hear a struggle as his puppet dragged the woman away. It became distant, unimportant. He had work to do.

He could fix this. He could still fix this he could still keep them safe
We’re safe here. No one leaves. Never again.
He brought Chenqing to his lip, and began his work.

Notes:

To my OGDC readers, please accept this as thanks for dealing with my abysmal posting gaps and an apology for making you wait so long <3

 

p.s. There's some custom formatting in the first chapter, so if you have trouble reading it just click the "Hide creator's style" button
Visual description of custom formatting: beginning at the page break, the background is semi-transparent and filled with faint indistinct words overlaid with Chinese calligraphy. Between paragraphs of normal text are interwoven thoughts and whispers in light grey text, nearly blending into the background, without formatting this text is written in italics.

Chapter 2

Notes:

CW: Implied self-harm, gore

From the second ‘Yiling Laozu’ had overtaken Wei Wuxian, the ‘Ghost General’ had also overtaken Wen Ning. Of course, when his armies were called upon, his ‘General’ was called to the front lines. Wen Qing found no trace of her soft-spoken brother within the beast after Wei Wuxian called to him. He had dragged her, begging and pounding fists on his hollow chest, out of the Demon-Subdue Palace as the reedy hollow notes of Chenqing began. 

As soon as she was clear of the cave, he released her and dove into the forest with a single powerful bound. She lost sight of him immediately. When she desperately tried to start after him, she was pushed back by a blood-red array that appeared glowing before her. It seemed to surround the entire encampment, lashing out smoke at anyone who came too close.

Three days. That was all it took for attackers to appear. They must have already been rallied, ready to strike if the wicked leaders of the Wen-dogs refused to surrender. Or perhaps, even if they did. It would not be surprising in the least if Lanling-Jin had been planning to go back on their promise of peace despite their surrender. After seeing what horrors those same Jin soldiers were happy to commit in the work camps, Wen Qing wouldn’t put anything past them. 

At the break of dawn, they heard a rallying cry from within the forest. It had to be hundreds of voices, thousands. Their shouts echoed off the stone of the mountain as they advanced.

Chenqing screamed in return from within the cave. Even the residents of the Burial Mounds were overwhelmed with fear at its sound, sharp as a blade. 

It seemed as though every corpse on the Burial Mounds had sprung up at once. 

Suddenly, Wei Wuxian’s ill-advised choice of location to hide away and build their settlement made perfect sense. In the hands of a demonic cultivator, they were sitting right on top of the most well-stocked armory in the world, and he was making full use of it. They had all seen or at least heard stories of Wei Wuxian’s dreaded army of the dead, but this went well beyond even the battlefields of the Sunshot Campaign. 

They came in unending swarms, forming a putrid and horrifying but truly impenetrable wall of rotting flesh around the settlement. 

For the entire first day, they stayed shuddering in their huts, not daring to show their faces outside for fear of both the attackers and those defending them. The undead army, however, held the line. They did not allow a single attack to cross the barrier into the settlement.

The battle bled into the night, then the next day.

Then the next.

Then still the next.

There was no end in sight; as long as the attackers persisted, so too did the hoards of the undead. The residents of the meager settlement could only huddle in their homes in hopes that the chaos would soon pass, that the army of their insane benefactor that had taken out the rest of their sect wouldn’t suddenly turn on them as well. 

Unfortunately, the most defensible part of their settlement, the place they would typically be the safest in such an attack, was completely inaccessible. The cave that served as their makeshift sect hall was now nothing but a thick storm of whirling blackness. Wei Wuxian had sealed himself inside at the first threat of attack and had since disappeared into the eye of the storm to serve as the conduit of all the resentful energy the Burial Mounds had to offer. He seemed to be using it to defend their settlement at all costs. The only sign of life from within the storm was the occasional mad strain of music from Chenqing. 

Wen Qing had borne witness to enough of Wen Ruohan’s descent to know that Wei Wuxian was already well beyond lost. Demonic cultivation seemed to have the nasty habit of providing enough power to destroy everything, too little control over it, and the overconfidence and lack of self-awareness to use it. She feared that this stunt would be the end of him. Or worse, that it wouldn’t. The longer this went on, the more she dreaded whatever broken beast would emerge after the battle finally subsided. She already hated him for it. What was the point of putting in all this effort to save them if he would become their next threat?

Wen Qing did what she was best at: taking care of her people. The battle stretched on for days, weeks. Long enough that their food stores were starting to dwindle concerningly. They were beginning to resort to digging up the unripe crops and portioning out meager allowances of rice porridge. She did all she could to make sure people were safe and healthy, as much as could be hoped in the circumstances. She spent a good amount of time with A-Yuan, telling him stories and singing to him to cover the sounds of war and death, reassuring him that Xian-gege was going to be okay. She hated lying to the child.

It came in waves. Sometimes they were surrounded by wailing hoards, too many to count and too dense to see past, while other times, there were simply a few shambling corpses wandering the perimeter of their settlement. They never came too close, they never even seemed to notice the presence of others within the area they protected, but there was the ever-present fear that they would eventually find a new target in their huddled encampment. It was hard to tell if the attackers were truly persisting, or if they were just trapped here by the army that was supposed to protect them. If they were still under attack, the attackers never got close enough to lay eyes on their enemy. The sounds of battle were now indistinguishable from the wails of beasts that could always be heard throughout the woods in the night. 

There was of course the possibility that all of the attackers were already dead, joined with the other corpses under Wei Wuxian’s control. Wen Qing began to suspect he was too far gone to realize the end of the threat, that they would forever be trapped in this place because this madman for some reason had decided that they were worth saving at all costs. 

It made her sick to think too much about how many more were now losing their lives simply because Wei Wuxian refused to yield. Was their survival really worth this?

It was impossible to know what state he was in now, but it didn’t look promising. The storm radiating from the cave had been growing, slowly but surely. It began to engulf the nearest buildings, forcing some residents to abandon their homes. No one was able to get near enough to the cave to see what was happening or intervene, nor was anyone brave enough to try. They could only wait as danger encroached from either side, slowly closing them in. 

They saw a full cycle of the moon before any change. On the dawn of the fortieth day, the entire settlement was awoken by a haunting tune pouring out of the storm, amplified much louder than a bamboo dizi had any right being. The music grew louder and more wild as the residents of the Burial Mounds left their shelter to see, until it seemed to be coming from the very shadows of the forest around them. When the noise was no longer recognizable as music, it finally broke off making way for a bone-chilling and guttural scream. 

They watched in horror and awe as the tempest of resentful energy that had been brewing suddenly exploded. The swirling mass of shadow grew to cover the entire settlement, the force of it snuffing out lights and blocking out the pale glow of morning. They were left in complete darkness, able only to listen to the whirlwind whipping its way through the forest beyond them. It was only moments before even that gave way to total emptiness, deathly still. The sudden lack of noise from their environment was extremely unsettling, especially after a month of persistent wails and groans from the army of the dead. 

The first thing that broke the silence was little A-Yuan crying somewhere nearby. Wen-popo, who must have been with him, could be heard comforting the child gently. 

“Is… is it over?” someone finally dared to speak up. 

“Is everyone alright?” Wen Qing shouted into the darkness. 

Scattered affirmations and unsure voices eventually brought them all together in a huddle. Everyone miraculously seemed to be accounted for, and no worse off than they had been the night before. Somehow, that violent explosion of energy that seemed to have silenced the whole mountain had left them unharmed. 

The darkness faded slowly over the course of the next few shi. By the time the sun should have been fully in the sky, it had allowed through just barely enough light to see by. Now, they could finally see what Wei Wuxian had done: there was a sort of dome surrounding their settlement, crackling with red lightning and lined with a thin veil of black smoke that was slowly dissipating. The dread army that had been surrounding them for weeks was now nowhere to be seen, having retreated back into their tombs. Their job must have been done, as there were apparently no more attackers either. It seemed that the battle was truly over. 

Wen Ning was still somewhere out there, beyond her reach. Wen Qing could only hope that he had not been too badly injured in the battle, that he would be able to return, that his Master was sane enough to allow it.

As the day stretched on, all eyes were warily on the cave, waiting for Wei Wuxian to emerge. He never did. There was a heavy and disturbing aura hanging around where the storm had been, and most of them were afraid to get too close to it. Wen Qing, concerned that Wei Wuxian was injured or unconscious and in need of help, was the first brave enough to enter. 

By the small amount of light that filtered in from outside, the only thing that could be discerned was chaos. It looked like a hurricane had gone through the place. All of Wei Wuxian’s possessions, which hadn’t exactly been organized to begin with, were scattered across the floor: ink and brushes, miscellaneous crushed bits of half-finished contraptions, books torn open and papers strewn everywhere, candles burned down to wax waterfalls puddled on the tables and chairs and floor and natural shelves of the rough-hewn walls. Through the choking smoke of incense, there was also a horrible musky and metallic smell permeating the place, and once Wen Qing was able to light a few more candles to see by, the reason for that became disturbingly clear.

It looked as if that month-long battle had taken place entirely in this room, the gore of hundreds of defeated enemies painting the place top to bottom. There were splatters of sickly red on nearly every surface, on the talismans plastering the walls, in puddles on the uneven stone ground, soaked into the endless pages of Wei Wuxian’s writings. Where he had apparently run out of talisman paper, torn strips of clothing hung in strings of tattered flags, black and red fabric dripping with bloody characters. Where even that failed, he must have resorted to mad scrawl upon the bare stone of the walls and floor, puddles dragged about into unrecognizable sigils. The scene made her stomach turn with horror and disgust. All that blood, it was a sickening thing to behold, and staggering to even imagine where it had all come from. 

She didn’t have to imagine for long. 

With a rising sense of dread, Wen Qing stepped into the further recesses of the cave, areas that were usually off-limits to anyone but Wei Wuxian. To the back of the cave, behind a curtain of red cloth covered with scribbled talismans, sat a huge, viscous crimson pool, as if the mountain itself had suffered a fatal wound and was bleeding out in front of her. She had not laid eyes on the blood pool since Wen Ning’s successful quasi-resurrection over a year earlier. It had always made her sick. While Wen Ning was confined here, she had at least gotten the impression that it was mostly water; it was somewhat transparent, it had very little scent, and its ripples moved quickly. Besides, her medical experience told her that so much blood on its own would coagulate over time, that it was unlikely to stay liquid for long. That no longer seemed to be the case. The pool was somewhat smaller now, but it appeared darker and thicker, now completely opaque. The smell of blood was suffocating, her lungs rejecting breathing it in and spasming with coughs. She had to suppress the bile that came up her throat, a hand clutched over her mouth. If it made her uneasy before, it was unbearable now, filling her with the instinctual animal fear of its overwhelming wrongness . She had to stop herself from calculating how many would have to die to bear that much blood. There were now endless strings of talismans spider-webbing across it, stuck on the stone surrounding it, all written in blood to match the ones at the entrance. 

However, even that was not the most horrifying discovery. Suspended in the air above the pool was a small iron amulet. Compared to its surroundings, it might appear so unassuming, if not for the overbearingly sinister weight radiating from it. Though she had never before laid eyes on it, Wen Qing knew its name instantly. 

Yin Hu Fu

The impossibly powerful cultivation tool Wei Wuxian had used to single-handedly turn the tides of the Sunshot Campaign, the weapon that was strong enough to raise armies and destroy empires. And here it was in the heart of their hideaway, a ticking time bomb waiting to destroy everything they had managed to save. That cursed thing seemed to be the source of the sickening aura that permeated the cave, that washed over the whole of the Burial Mounds. It idly spun in the air, wreathed in wisps of shadow. The weight of its waves of energy disturbed the pool below it in slow-moving ripples, too thick to be water. 

At the bank of the pool lay a dark mound, what appeared to be a corpse. A shock ran through her when she saw the red ribbon in his hair, silk spilling away from his head like rivulets of blood. Her heart stopped in the moment she thought he might be dead, and in the next when she feared he had met a worse fate.

It looked like he had collapsed at the edge of the pool, only narrowly avoiding drowning in it. The edges of his tattered robes fell into the pool, soaking redness halfway up the fabric. Chenqing sat loosely nestled in his limp hand. 

At the sight of him, Wen Qing forced herself past the horror of the scene. She was a doctor, she did not have time for emotion when there was a life at stake. His skin felt like paper when she laid two fingers on him to check for a pulse, dry and frail and cold. His vital signs were so weak it was almost difficult to determine, but he really was clinging on to life, as if purely through stubbornness. She called upon a few others to help move him out of the cave and onto a cot in the hut that served as her makeshift apothecary. 

Chapter 3

Notes:

CW: referenced self-harm

Wen Qing was a good doctor. One of the best, she might even say. Her entire life, she had learned medicine as innately as she learned how to walk and talk, and she was accustomed to being able to recognize and treat nearly any ailment with no difficulty. Now, however, she was at a complete loss. 

Wei Wuxian was barely alive. His skin was cold and sallow. He was covered with shallow gashes: a few clean cuts from a blade, but the shocking majority were ragged bites and scratches and tears. Wen Qing would have said it looked like he had been attacked by some wild beast, if it weren’t for the place she had found him. The only beast in that cave was Yiling Laozu. She could guess those wounds were self-inflicted for the purpose of creating those hundreds of talismans; there was the telltale black-red of old blood staining his fingers, crusted under his nails and at the corners of his mouth. It was hard to determine just how much blood he had lost, what of that horrific scene had been his own and what was from the pool, how much of that vile pool had mixed in his wounds and poisoned his body.  

He proved rather difficult to treat. His breathing was consistently so shallow that her incense had little effect. His organs seemed to be working so sluggishly that her medicines worked too slowly to gauge any benefit. His unique qi composition made qi infusions completely useless, which was particularly distressing considering all of his meridians were nearly shattered. Not to mention, he presumably hadn’t eaten or drank anything in the forty days he was locked away in that place. He looked gaunt and sickly, eyes and cheeks beginning to sink into his skull. His cultivation was easily strong enough to practice inedia under better conditions, but the sheer amount of resentful energy had apparently taken its toll on his body, and the lack of nutrition surely wasn’t helping his healing process. 

So Wen Qing was limited to treating the external wounds and doing all she could with her needles. Even after days of treatment, he continued to lay limp on her table like a sickly pincushion. 

And on top of all of that, she still knew nothing of his mental state. She frankly didn’t have high hopes for his sanity if he ever did wake up. Part of her hoped that he was pushed past ‘maniacal and power-hungry’ and into ‘fully unaware’. Wen Ruohan had gotten caught in the former stage of insanity, and after the incomparable display of both power and unfettered madness Wei Wuxian had just shown, she felt that it would be a very bad thing for the world at large if he ended up the same way.

She reserved a handful of needles dosed with a paralytic for the purpose of incapacitating him again if necessary, and she kept in a locked drawer the poison she wished she had had the good sense to use on her uncle before he plunged the world into war. She hoped she wouldn’t need it, but she refused to serve under a tyrant again. 

On the sixteenth day of treatment, as Wen Qing was re-applying medicine to his external wounds, Wei Wuxian finally jolted back to life. To be honest, she wasn’t certain how. His lungs, which had been lazily rasping just enough air to keep him alive, suddenly remembered their duty. His breathing became frantic and panicked, his eyes snapped open, dilated and bloodshot and emanating a faint crimson light. That crazed look darted everywhere in the room before falling on her. 

“What are you doing?” His voice was weak and hoarse with disuse and full of panic. “What did you do?! Put me back, it wasn’t finished, I wasn’t done!” He immediately tried to shove her off, to push past her and drag his broken body back to that wretched cave. But he was still weak, and Wen Qing was prepared. She twisted a needle still stuck in his abdomen, causing him to cry out and flinch back into the table. His pain allowed her enough time to deposit two more needles in the precise points that would cut off feeling to his arms, not truly enough to fully immobilize him, but enough to buy her time and force his attention. 

“Let. Me. Go.” He pushed out through bared teeth. If he weren’t in such a sorry state, that might have been intimidating. 

“You’re not going anywhere. You are not well, and I refuse to let whatever was happening in there continue. Work yourself to death for all I care, but I will not allow you to make a monster of yourself just because you think you can do the impossible. What I saw in there was hell come to life. You may not care about destroying your own spirit, but you will not drag us down with you.”

“I’m trying to save you. Now let me go.”

“You’re not saving anyone in this state. What do you think you can do, really? I barely dragged you back from death and you want to go running in again.”

He spoke over her, rage and desperation in his voice. “If I’m dying, it’s because you took me out of there!”

She was fed up. In an instant, she had her feng zhen to his throat, a simple motion away from freeing the last of his blood from his jugular. “Wei Wuxian, you are going to shut up and listen to me. You’ve gone too far! You can’t even tell, can you? You can’t even see yourself. What good are you to anyone if you go insane? What of my people? Did you save us just to trap us here?”

“You’ll only stay trapped here if you don’t let me finish what I started. Where is Chenqing, I need it.”

“What you’re doing is not right. You can’t expect anything but evil to come from something like… that.” A wave of nausea came over her just at the memory, at the knowledge of what still lay waiting in that cave. 

“If you’re going to tell me that my methods are dangerous and harmful, save your breath. I’ve already heard it. I don’t care. Why does it matter what methods I use if the outcome is the same? Look around you. Where are your enemies? Where are the ones who wanted you dead? Where is the danger?”

She could almost laugh in exasperation. “You really don’t get it? The danger is you." Only medical expertise prevented her hand from shaking, some bitter mix of fear and anger catching in her throat. "You forget, I’ve seen this happen before, I know where it ends. You think you can control it, you think you’re somehow different from anyone who tried before you, but you’re not.”

“I know what-“

“Wei Wuxian, I trusted you! I trusted you to not be like him!” She was too angry to bother regretting that statement. She would feel guilty for the comparison later, right now she just needed to snap Wei Ying’s head back on straight. 

It successfully gave him pause. The frenzy began to leave his face, and he seemed to be making a concerted effort to appear controlled. It was only so convincing with his eyes still glowing red. He spoke with measured and deliberate evenness. “I am not Wen Ruohan. I am not Xue Chonghai. I know what I’m doing. If I only cared about myself, I could have let you turn yourselves in. I could have let them kill you. You are alive and your people are safe. Have I not kept my promise?”

Wen Qing hesitated. He was right. Though they had spent so many long nights in fear, they were never actually harmed in that wild battle. Wei Wuxian’s methods were disturbing and volatile, but their strength and efficacy couldn’t be argued. The only thing that remained unsure was his sanity for using such methods. Everything had to come at a cost, and he would have to pay it sooner or later. Then again, considering his current state, he had already paid quite a bit. 

“I don’t just think I can do things differently, I know I can. If you still aren’t convinced, then I will promise you this: if I ever become like Wen Ruohan, you have not only my permission but an obligation to kill me. Until it comes to that, know that everything I do is for the benefit of others. For your people. You said you trusted me. Trust me now. Give me Chenqing.”

She hated herself for being convinced, but he held the one card that could sway her: the safety of her people, the last of her village, her family. If they were truly trapped here, which honestly seemed to be the case with that strange dome surrounding them, then Wei Wuxian was again their only hope of survival. There was only so long they could live on unripe turnips. She hated that this had become their fate, backed into choosing which force would be the one to kill them: the angry mob or the madman. The madman at least didn’t seem to want to harm them. He had some chance, however slim, of actually doing good. 

Without a word, Wen Qing produced the dosed needles she had saved for the worst-case scenario and deposited them into various acupoints, fully paralyzing him. If she were to give him a weapon, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to allow him the ability to use it. Wei Wuxian, to his credit, did not try to fight her, simply following her with his eerily luminous eyes as she fetched a cloth-wrapped bundle from a chest on the other side of the room.

Vicious and loyal thing that it was, Chenqing had refused to be touched by anyone but Wei Wuxian. As they were removing him from the cave, someone had made the mistake of trying to take it as well. He was now being treated for the blisters covering his hand where the instrument had touched his skin. They had needed to remove it from the cave swaddled in thick layers of cloth and sealed with talismans. She unwrapped it, careful not to touch it directly, and placed it into its Master’s motionless palm, gently curling his fingers around it.

“Thank you,” he breathed out quietly.

The change in him was immediate, the tension melting away from his face, eyes finally losing their glow and resting closed. His breathing shifted from frantic to meditative. He looked as if he was feeling relief after years of torture, exhausted but peaceful. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned by that reaction. Against her better judgment, Wen Qing decided to just stand back and watch whatever he planned to do with it. She had already exhausted any methods she knew of to help him. 

It was subtle at first, a vague darkening in the air and an increasing presence of that heavy aura she had felt inside the cave. Within minutes, there were thin tendrils of black smoke slowly escaping from Chenqing. The resentful energy moved as if it had a life of its own. It first enveloped his hand, then began to snake its way up his arm, finally bursting off into multiple paths when it reached his shoulder. To her surprise, Wen Qing recognized instantly the paths it was taking, the structures and lines that she knew better than anyone: the resentful energy stored inside Chenqing was now flowing steadily along each of the twelve meridians. It swirled along persistently, ghosting over the skin and absorbing into various acupoints. It seemed to move freely in some spots, then with more difficulty in areas where Wen Qing had noticed the worst blockages in his qi, doing the work that she had failed to. Now that she saw the remedy, it made perfect sense. Wei Wuxian was no longer in possession of what could be considered a normal body, especially when it came to his qi. With the absence of a golden core mixed with years spent in the Burial Mounds and generous use of his demonic path, his body must have become accustomed to resentful energy in place of spiritual energy. Being taken out of the heavy concentration in the cave must have disrupted the steady infusion of it that had kept him going for the past month. 

With that realization, Wen Qing immediately went to remove her needles from where they may be blocking the healing energy, baffled when it immediately moved in accordance. It was a strange thing to witness, smoke seeping in and out of his skin like water gently replenishing a parched riverbed. She had never seen resentful energy so… calm.

“I told you I knew what I was doing,” he muttered almost inaudibly, surprising Wen Qing. With the sudden change in demeanor, she had assumed he had fallen unconscious again. His eyes were still shut, but there were the beginnings of a smug look in his sunken features. 

She shook her head, bemused. “You are a very strange man, Wei Ying,” she said finally, at a loss for anything more profound. 

A tired shadow of a smile appeared on his face. Though he was still so haggard, he almost began to look like Wei Wuxian again, shining out from beneath the frighteningly serious and dangerously insane Yiling Laozu. “I think I can live with that.”

Chapter 4

Wei Wuxian had moved his work to Wen Qing’s apothecary hut. A fact that Wen Qing was grateful for, sure, but having to bear witness to the things he was doing to continue his work was disturbing, to say the least. Any semblance of sanity that had briefly flashed through him was quickly snuffed out the second he continued working on whatever complex enchantment was maintaining that dome. As reluctant as Wen Qing was to allow it, this was the best arrangement that could be hoped for: Wei Wuxian insisted on continuing his work, and Wen Qing insisted he not return to that wretched cave. The resentment there had obviously affected his mind, body, and spirit in irreversible ways already, there was no way she was going to let him lock himself away again to rot in that place. Their wills each proved strong enough that neither backed down in their convictions, so they came to a compromise. Wen Qing had reluctantly accompanied him back into the nightmare to retrieve things that he insisted he needed: bowls of dark liquid and brushes with crushed and tattered bristles, miscellaneous papers of illegible notes and torn books, a few bloodstained makeshift tools. It had been a struggle to drag him out again, but if she allowed him to stay any longer, he would never leave. He had created a horror of that place, she couldn't stand to be inside for any significant length of time. She would wonder how Wei Wuxian himself endured it, but of course, he had survived much worse.

He seemed to quickly forget that she was there, regressing into his madness. Sometimes, he couldn’t sit still, pacing up and down the small space and mumbling to himself, scratching at his skin and snapping at voices only he could hear. Other times, he was quiet, meditating for days on end, or sitting silent and focused huddled in a corner with some whittling or a book of notes or scribbling down talismans and sketching arrays only to cross them out and crumple them up.

The carnage of his work began to take over the entire space, and it was becoming clear how the cave had gotten to the state it was now in. Wen Qing dreaded allowing him to destroy her space in the same way, but at least this arrangement allowed her to keep an eye on him and provide treatment when possible. Aside from treating his injuries and fixing his nutrition, she tried to focus on medicines that would promote balance and clarity. He obediently drank his medicine and allowed her to light incense while he worked, presumably only to prevent Wen Qing from disturbing his work further with her doting.

After a week or so of this, after seeing that he had no intention of doing anything more violent than arguing with ghosts, she finally found the courage to confront him about the issue weighing on her heart so heavily. She caught him during one of the quieter episodes, crouched over a table and scribbling in the only unused corner of a sheet of paper. If his other notes were anything to go by, running out of space would not be a problem, as he would simply write over old notes in overlapping scrawl. She wondered if he truly could read them, they looked like nonsense to her.

"Where is he?" She asked bluntly, wasting no time on preamble. The chance that he would even hear her was admittedly rather low, she just needed to get his attention.

Wei Wuxian responded only with the same distracted “mn,” he typically gave when Wen Qing gave him medicine or insisted he rest, clearly not bothering to understand the words.

She was losing patience. It had been nearly two months since Wen Ning disappeared, and she was getting more worried every day he did not reappear. “Listen to me. Where. Is. he?"

He swatted at something whispering in his ear before glancing up at her briefly, annoyed. That eerie red glow had returned to his eyes the second he continued his work after waking up and hadn’t left since. It made him look somehow even more wild. He seemed to consider something before returning to his notes. "Safe, where he belongs,” he finally said dismissively.

Her heart dropped. “What does that mean?”

Wei Wuxian sighed and briefly paused his writing to close his eyes in focus. A cool breeze swept over him, jostling his wildly unkempt hair, and his head swiveled after it as if listening to a voice on the wind. The voice he responded with did not seem to be his own, hollow and cold. “Eight li south, at the top of a hill. He is buried beneath a willow tree. It is beautiful there.”

Wen Qing couldn't hold back any longer. She rushed forward to rip the paper out of his hand in order to force his attention, smudging the wet ink, gods she hoped that was ink, on her fingertips. “Bring him back,” she insisted through clenched teeth. “Now."

“No,” he responded, quietly. "He deserves to res-"

Wen Qing heard the impact and saw his head snap to the side before realizing that she had slapped him. She didn’t allow herself to consider the consequences of that action. “Don’t.” Her voice shook with rage. “Wei Wuxian, don’t you dare pretend to be righteous now. Don’t pretend to care about what is natural and what is not, not after what you’ve done. You bring him back."

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was unjust and unfair to force Wen Ning to continue living as the thing he now was, a monster whose only autonomy was what his Master saw fit to bestow upon him. Wei Wuxian had proven himself capable of using Wen Ning in terrible ways, bending his actions against his will. It was cruel, both of Wei Wuxian to use him like that and of Wen Qing to insist on keeping him that way. But grief was irrational, and Wen Qing could not bring herself to lose her brother again. He had died so young for no crime other than righteousness and selflessness. He had been murdered for trying to protect his people. He was entitled to so much more life. Now that Wei Wuxian had dangled in front of them the possibility of returning that life, the possibility of living again and creating something new out of the death and violence and despair that had befallen him unjustly… it was impossible to give up. She could not just let her brother disappear. Even if he were to be put to rest, he deserved a proper funeral, a proper burial, a proper cenotaph where he could be honored by the people he had died to protect. As a conscious corpse, he should have some say in how and when he was buried. None of it made sense, none of it was fair, but if they were living in a horror, they may as well embrace those horrors that benefitted them.

Wei Wuxian sat deathly still for a moment, not moving his head from the angle the slap had recoiled it. The fire in his eyes flared unconsciously, not touching the blank expression on his face, and his hands curled into tight fists, knuckles turning white. For a terrifying moment, she saw Yiling Laozu spring back to life within him. She backed away half a step, afraid of whatever urge he was holding back with those clenched fists. There was a long, tense silence before he responded, still keeping his voice at a bare whisper as if trying to hide his words from some eavesdropper. "I can't."

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“I can’t.”

"I don't believe you." With the amount of power he had displayed over the past weeks, it was hard to believe that he had any limit beyond his body simply giving out on him, and even that seemed unlikely to stop him.

"Wen Ning is one of thousands. He was given the same orders as all the others. The command was to rest, he obeyed as all the others did. Power or control, you can't have both. Either they all rest or none of them do. Your brother is not an exception.”

It was the most coherent she had heard him in days, but that didn’t lessen the impact of his words. Wen Qing pushed down her rage. She needed to take advantage of this clarity to try and reason with him. “Can you afford control now? Do you think we still need an army? Are we still under attack?”

“It doesn’t matter. I need to be ready, they need to be ready.”

“Not him. There are enough without using him. Let him go, bring him back.”

“Patience,” was his only response before snatching the paper back from her. With that, the tenuous clarity he had spoken with dissolved back into madness.

She could only stare as he became closed off again as easily as if he had never spoken, his crimson eyes darting over from his writing to other unorganized pages strewn about him. He muttered incomprehensibly, to himself or to the dead, it was impossible to tell. As expected, when he ran out of clear space on the paper, he simply turned it ninety degrees and kept writing. Suddenly, the image of him unwittingly shifted before her eyes from a powerful force of nature to a rabid beast, trapped to prevent him from harming himself and others in his mania, knocking his head on the walls of his cage for lack of other outlet. He looked trapped and helpless, desperate and so very scared and alone. Her rage begrudgingly gave way to pity. There was no salvaging Wei Wuxian out of this state. It was hard to even associate the bright young righteous cultivator she had met years ago with the instrument of destruction before her. The Burial Mounds had truly claimed him, his mind lost somewhere in the mist.

Wen Qing made a decision. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, that her medical knowledge would somehow be enough. It was not. Reluctantly, she wrote a letter and passed it to one of the crows, the only creatures who seemed able to pass through that dome. With it, she sent her last shred of hope that it understood her instructions and would bring her letter to the one person capable of getting through to Wei Wuxian. Hope that someone like him would even be willing to help.

---

He felt a disturbance at the barrier, more of an annoyance than anything, the insect buzz of spiritual energy probing at his enchantment. It was not nearly strong enough to break through, but it was enough to get his attention.
They’re back they’ve come back to kill you
Burn them burn them burn them burn burnburnburnburn
They know you’re weakened they know you can’t keep it up they’re waiting for you to fall
It was too soon since he had released all of the resentment he had access to in order to create that barrier. His qi was pulled in too many directions, he didn’t have the focus to raise an army again, no time to gather them.
Get to them first kill or be killed
He had no choice. He gathered himself and rushed, Chenqing in hand, to the disturbance, ignoring the concerned and frightened looks and exclamations that followed him through the settlement.
You don’t need an army they fear you and you alone
Show them your power Master
As he came to the edge of the barrier, that buzzing spiritual energy solidified into music, the unmistakable dulcet tones of a guqin. His rage flared hot and acrid. Only one person would be so bold.
He would dare
He wants to rip your power from you he wants to make you kneel
“Hanguang-Jun.” It was hard to tell if the words came from him or from the dead, the whispers echoing from the shadows around them. No matter, their anger and his were one and the same. “What do you think you’re doing here?” He stepped into the barrier, its shadows clinging to him in tendrils of smoke. He could feel it pulling at his very spirit, the voices in his head raising in panic.
Master please don’t leave don't leave us Master stay with us staystaystay
It is not safe the outsiders will kill you let us keep you safe
Hush now, quiet my dears, do not fret I am not going anywhere I will come back to you
He soothed the voices like a doting parent, and they finally receded, their shadows fading to reveal his form, wreathed in darkness with eyes flashing blood red, to the man before him. The resentment of the Burial Mounds clung to him like wet silk, draping over his body in a thick black cloak. It was as comforting as it was suffocating.

Lan Wangji’s robes of pristine Gusu-Lan white were far too bright against the darkness. He was seated on a rock near the barrier with his guqin resting on his crossed legs. The music halted the second Wei Wuxian appeared, his lithe fingers freezing on the strings. He attempted to look as stoic as always, his expression trained into a jade mask, but even he could not keep the fear from his eyes.
Good he should fear you they all should
He’s so close unguarded kill him kill him kill him now do it now while his guard is down
They think you’re a monster let us show them how right they are
"Wei Ying-"
Wei Ying Wei Ying
He does not respect you
Make him regret his disrespect make him pay make him kneel
Rip him open use your nails use your teeth
“Lan Wangji. Who do you think you are? What do you think gives you the right to call me that?”

Lan Wangji bowed his head slightly. “Apologies. This Lan Wangji only wishes to aid Yiling Laozu.”
Better, he is beneath you, he knows how powerful you are
A laugh shot out of him, sharp and cold. Was there once a time when laughter was warm? When it was genuine? He couldn’t remember. “How righteous! You want to help me? Out of pure selflessness too, I’m sure! Surely you weren’t sent to eliminate the threat. Is this an assassination attempt? Did they send you because they think I won’t harm you? They think I won’t kill you? Or are you a sacrifice? Is the blood of the peerless Hanguang-Jun clean enough to purify me?”

“I am not here on behalf of the sects. I mean no harm. You are unwell.”

“Oh? And what do you think would help me? Dragging me back to Gusu? Locking me up and squeezing out every last drop of resentment until I’m some perfect little Lan disciple? Or better yet, perfectly powerless? I’ll have to respectfully decline.”

“It would not-”

“Why would I trust you? Why would I trust the Lan? Do you think I didn’t notice the little Lan soldiers on my mountain, coming to raze my lands and kill my people? Do you think I would hesitate to repay the favor given the chance? Do you think I am above raising their bodies to tear your sect to the ground?”

“Wei Ying,” there was almost a hint of emotion in his voice.
Manipulation, don't fall for it he wants you to let down your guard he doesn't care about you none of them do they just want you gone they want you dead
“Ah Lan Zhan Lan Zhan, did I offend your delicate sensibilities? Do you finally see what I am? What I’ve always been? Do I disgust you?”

“This is not your nature. The resentment is affecting your mind and temperament. This place is killing you.”
He wants to tear us from you he wants to steal you away from us don’t leave us Master don’t let him banish us
please
“You know nothing.”

“Let me play for you.”

“How stupid do you think I am? Your Wangji is a weapon, just as much as Chenqing is. You think I’ll let you hold it to my throat without a fight?” His grip tightened on Chenqing as he brought it before him, resentment both spilling from it in waves and gathering to it in streams. “I wonder, will you run from me, or do you think you’re strong enough to kill me? Make your choice.”

With that, the pretense of civility was gone in an instant. Lan Wangji strummed his guqin to life, the blade of its spiritual energy crashing into the resentment that poured from Chenqing.
You see you see now he has always hated you he has always been disgusted by you this is what you deserve
kill him kill him rip him apart you have the power to stop him he wants to rob you of everything you have built you can't let him
outsiders are nothing but trouble you don't need them you don't need any of them they come to your domain and they ask to die
As the rage-filled whispers rose to screams in his head, their power solidified into inky shadows, leaking from the forest floor and swirling thickly around him until there was nothing left in view but the crimson glow of his eyes. Between one blink and the next, the waves of resentment had brought him up to the top of a tree to give him space to work.

He let Chenqing sing to the land and its dead, picking through the bones for any who still had the stability and strength to fight. The fields of bodies were a mosaic of loss and hatred and helplessness, the ancient bones of the fallen and abandoned now covered over by new blood of the righteous, spirits centuries apart mingling in discord. In his music, he called to them just as they had once called to him: Do you want power? Do you want revenge? Follow me, you will have it. The Burial Mounds were just as drained and exhausted as he was, but they too still had some fight left in them, they too would push to the very brink to defend themselves.

Lan Wangji wasted no time in conjuring his own musical enchantment, fingers moving over the strings with a grace that could never properly represent the ferocity behind his attacks, the same fierce determination with which he had held back hordes of attackers on the battlefields of the Sunshot Campaign.
He was only ever your ally out of convenience he never cared about you he never will he does not respect you now that you cannot help him you're worthless worthlessworthlessworthless
The ferocity of Chenqing’s tune flared along with his temper, calling up a few soldiers. He could feel their unrestful spirits lurch at his call, finding their crumbling bodies and clawing their way forward over fields of rock and bone. He felt their terror at the power of their Master’s call, their plodding uncoordinated steps tripping over themselves to rush to the intruder. He heard the ghastly screams of their overexerted spirits scraping at the back of his mind among all the other voices. It filled him with a rush of mad joy, pressing him forward to ruin consume destroy.
you have had your rest, up now
come children your work is not done
hunt consume kill kill killkillkillkillkill
The three strongest and most resentful corpses he could find finally stumbled out of the mist. Ah, no wonder they had so much fear, so much hatred, so much power. Each one was a colorful jewel against the darkness, two dressed in bright Jin gold, one in the royal blue of, was that Ouyang? Yao? It didn’t matter who they were in life, the only important thing was that they belonged to him now, to the Burial Mounds.

Lan Wangji was forced to jump up from his seated position as they lurched at him, strumming a strike down at them from several chi in the air.

The first handful of corpses was struck down, only to be replaced with another, then another, then still more. Wei Wuxian had endless suffering to pull from. As exhausted as he and the land were from the battle, there was always more suffering.

As Chenqing called up soldiers, Wangji struck them down. A perfect ebb and flow, they clashed and intertwined in brutal cacophony one moment, then glorious concord the next, their duet violent and unpredictable. If their masters weren't locked in fatal battle, their opposing songs may be mistaken for balance.

Lan Wangji fought valiantly, but never drew his sword. He managed to keep his distance from the gore of the attacks and maintain a perimeter with the guqin's warding songs. He must have implemented some incredibly strong warding before coming here; even as his fingers blistered and bled on the strings, his spirit seemed nigh-untouched by the resentment crashing into him.

It was already too late by he time Wei Wuxian recognized a specific melodic structure in the guqin’s song. Woven into battle songs, one unique turn of notes triggered an immediate panic in him. The spirits screamed in violent self-preservation once they read the recognition from his mind.

Clarity

The familiar melody was woven in with other forms over an unfamiliar ostinato, but the effects of it were preserved. A consummate master of Gusu-Lan musical cultivation, Lan Wangji had hidden the purifying melody from him, just long enough for its hooks to sink into his control and anchor to his cultivation.

The shared panic and rage between Wei Wuxian and the Burial Mounds was far too great for words or music to express. It finally became too much for him to contain. The full force of the Burial Mounds' resentment tore through him in an unstopable, all-consuming flood, wresting from him all control. He loosed an animalistic howl, laced with all the force of every wicked creature, every unrestful soul and desecrated corpse, every wrathful entity that ever met a violent end. There was no thought, no intention, no humanity left in him. He was nothing but a vessel for their vengeance. It exploded forth from him in wave after wave of inky shadow, everything with claws and killing intent springing to his call.

Through the destruction of all things sat a pure white pillar of stone, unflinching and unrelenting. He faced the storm head-on, and even as it sprang at him with claws and fangs to rend his soul, he played on.

Through the tempest, his song painted images of a calm pool, fresh water cascading freezing cold over them, cloud-ringed peaks of mighty mountains, sure and steady.

The violence of the music’s effect gave way to reveal a melody that rang in his soul with a nostalgia he couldn't place, a song that felt like home, comfort, peace. It sounded like a far-off, pleasant dream, long forgotten. It promised safety. For a single, terrifying second of unforgivable weakness, he believed it.
Please, please let me rest I just want to rest
In the exact moment his guard was weakened, the hooks that the melody had secured in the resentment jerked back, pulling it away like a rug from under him. It felt like falling into an endless abyss.

For a heavy moment, he lost his senses. The cacophony in his head became overwhelmed by a high-pitched ringing. Through it, the guqin suddenly sounded much more beautiful and much further away.

He took a shaking breath, filling his lungs with crisp and clean air that no longer tasted of death.

The thick clouds of black smoke gradually cleared, revealing bits and pieces of a room filled with light and breeze. Details gently faded in; scrolls and books neatly perched in their shelves, tidy stacks of papers, brushes, ink sticks and stones. Low desks dotted the perimeter, each perfectly tidy, save for one cluttered and disorganized and left abandoned.

The smoke finally faded down to a single steady wisp of sandalwood incense, drifting up from the desk he was sprawled beside.

“You should return to your work,” the voice above him said, tones gentle and low. Despite the sternness of his words, the voice was impossibly comforting. It eased the incessant ringing in his ears, the tightness in his heart. He selfishly wanted to hear more of it.

He responded with a light laugh and an easy smile. “Ah, I’ve been working all day, just a moment of rest can’t hurt. Distract me, just for a moment, then I’ll be able to focus again, I promise.” He leaned an elbow on the desk before him. “What are you reading?”

The other paid him no mind and simply turned a page.

He sighed dramatically, just to get some acknowledgement. He had been writing all morning, he was so bored, his fingers ached from writing and eyes from reading and head from the monotony of it all. “Don’t you ever do anything but study? Doesn’t it get boring?” Still no response. He shuffled a bit closer to encroach on a bit more of the desk. “Now you’re just being petty. Isn’t that against the rules somewhere? ‘You must look at someone when they are speaking’ or ‘you must not ignore someone’? Won’t you at least look at me? Eh? Lan-er-gongzi? Lan Wangji?” Still nothing. He shuffled a bit closer to lay claim to half the desk, resting his head on crossed arms, and looked up at the other with a pout. “Come on, just a glance. Lan Zhan?”

Music floated through the library on a gentle breeze that ruffled the wafting silk. He watched the way it caught the other’s hair and the tails of his forehead ribbon briefly before gently returning them to perfect composure.

He felt tired. Beyond the exhaustion of copying rules for days, there was a bone-deep tiredness that promised if he closed his eyes for just a moment, he would fade away entirely.

He fought against it. As tired as he was, he didn’t want this moment to end. The thought was oddly painful.

“Lan Zhan, won’t you give this one the honor of your attention?”

Lan Wangji gently closed his book and set it aside, each motion made with incredible care, as if the wrong move would spook away some skittish animal on the desk. With just as much care, he turned his gaze finally to him. Those eyes held emotions he could not understand: pity, guilt, fear, care, determination.

He wanted to smile widely in response, but he was becoming too tired. What he mustered was small and tender. “Hello, Lan Zhan.” He yawned. Somehow, everything felt perfectly calm, perfectly safe.

“Wei Ying,” the deep velvet of his voice washed over him warmly. He felt happy. Despite himself, his eyes fell shut. “You're safe. You can rest now.”

And he did.

Chapter 5

Wei Wuxian did not come to, so much as he drifted from an old nightmare to a new one. This one was less bloody, at least at the current moment, but no less horrible than the others. In many ways it was worse, this one he did not have the luxury of waking up from.

He awoke to a crushing clarity, magnitudes heavier than madness had been.

The haze of emotion and long-dead wrath that had surrounded him for… gods he couldn’t remember how long, weeks or months or his whole life, it felt like they had woven their way into his entire being – it was all suddenly gone. In its place, the ringing hollowness of his mind was deafening, unbearably vulnerable.

Memories and visions resurfaced as his mind reluctantly regained awareness. The memories were clear now in a way they had not been when they were experienced, but the pieces of them felt shattered, disjointed, distant, foreign. It took active focus to wrestle them into any semblance of continuity. Clarity had not scrubbed from the memories the endless visions and hallucinations and delusions. Shadows and ghostly figures reaching for him from the corners of his cave, spirits hanging over his shoulder, cold fingers guiding his hand as he wrote. Even now, he could not discern which of them had been the true presence of ghosts and which were hallucinations brought on by his madness. It all felt so real; perhaps it all had been. Perhaps none of it had been.

The pieces he was able to fit together clearly were this:

He had killed Jin Zixuan. There was no way to avoid the impossible weight of that truth. It hadn’t been his intention (or perhaps it had, the control of fierce corpses primarily came from intention. He just hadn’t meant to follow through, hadn’t expected Wen Ning to react that quickly, that violently. He had been too caught in the moment, he had been too angry, too hazy, too broken by betrayal, imagined or not), but it was undeniably his power that had driven Wen Ning’s hand through the man’s chest; it was he who had raised the Ghost General in the first place. Some momentary delusional dream of peace had left him foolish enough to walk into that trap in the first place. Had Jin Zixuan known about the ambush? Had he helped plan it? He had hardly seemed to believe his cousin’s accusation. He had only asked Wei Wuxian to stop the fighting, he hadn’t demanded that he lift the curse from Jin Zixun. If that weren’t the reason he was there, then why? Why would a proud father take time out of his son’s hundredth day celebration just to escalate an old grudge, a petty disagreement from a lifetime ago? Their disagreement had been between impulsive teenagers, one defending his sister’s honor, and the other too proud and naïve to see what was in front of him. In the years since then, Jin Zixuan had matured. He had proven himself worthy of Yanli and learned to give her the respect she deserved. Most of all, Yanli approved of him, and Wei Wuxian had never been able to disagree with his shijie’s judgement. He didn’t hate him, not really, not anymore. He had hoped the feeling was mutual.

He had fallen unconscious. From the resentment? That didn’t feel right. He had wielded much more resentment far more violently during the Sunshot Campaign; why now would a single small attack cause him to lose control in such a way? Then again, it could be said that he had never been in full control during the war either. He had simply been resigned to a rage that had driven him to keep fighting. Resentment was so inextricably linked to emotion; maybe it was the fear and shock and horror and the desperate need to escape that had rendered him unconscious. The very same must have guided Wen Ning to carry him from the fight and back to the Burial Mounds. Clarity did little to help him fully understand what had happened, and that disturbed him.

Lanling-Jin had sent a messenger to issue their demands. (Who had received the messenger? Wen Ning? Wen Qing? That made no sense, they would have been killed on the spot. Any of his people would have. There must have been some real ruse of diplomacy if the Jin sent a messenger instead of an army.) Their true motives were glaringly obvious in the demands. Despite Wei Wuxian’s obvious guilt, it was not his surrender they asked for, but the surrender of the Wen. They still told themselves the story of an evil demonic cultivator building an army in the shadows, irrationally remounting the Wen army he had helped them destroy. They were apparently given three days to surrender the “leaders of the Wen” or face retaliation.

He had taken control of Wen Ning (unforgivable, disgusting, monstrous) to free himself from Wen Qing’s immobilization. It had been a cruel act of desperation, but at its core, the intention was to save them, to save all of them. They were acting irrationally, and he had to save them from it. (Why should they have to pay for his crime? The murder of Jin Zixuan was on his hands, why should they be the ones to die for it? If anyone should surrender, it should be him. [Why didn’t he? This could all be over if he had surrendered, if he had let them kill him. Monsters held no right to life. Why was he still alive?]) Wen Ning had again been caught as a pawn of Wei Wuxian's lost control. He had been called to the battlefield along with every other dead thing on the mountain. Wei Wuxian could tell that he hadn't been defeated, but his consciousness had been locked away from him, and when the army was put to rest, Wen Ning rested with them. Wei Wuxian would need to bring him back to return his consciousness again and beg forgiveness. He decided that would be his first order of business, given the chance.

What followed was still difficult to apply reason to. Some final tether in him had snapped. The overflow of emotion had finally given the Yin Hu Fu and the spirits of the Burial Mounds the opening they needed to take control. No, not take control, not fully. He wasn’t a puppet to them; he still controlled his actions, just not his mind. They took advantage of his vulnerable state to mold his thoughts, to coerce him to follow their will. Only now was he able to separate the wants of the Burial Mounds from his own: they wanted him to stay, they wanted to keep their Master, the one who finally listened to them, finally heard them, finally gave them a voice. They wanted to destroy anything that would take him away from them. They convinced him that to leave was to die, that the outsiders would take everything from him, from the survivors he had deserted his sect to rescue (that hadn’t been the only reason, it couldn’t be. His desertion had been in progress from the moment Jiang Cheng’s core was melted, when he made the decision to become mundane to save his shidi. [no matter how he tried to cling to his old life, the power he found to replace his cultivation was simply too rotten to fit among their world] It had been inevitable, this was just finally the last straw, the last thing that Jiang Cheng couldn’t shoulder for him. It wasn’t so simple as abandoning his sect for the Wen, he had sacrificed his position and had been falling ever since. The Wen were just where he happened to land [when other lives were swept up in his cascade of mistakes, he was left with no choice but to protect them]). They told him that violently cutting ties was his only option. There was no place for him in the outside world, he would never be understood, never be trusted. If that hadn’t been true then, it was certainly true now.

He had unleashed the Yin Hu Fu and the Burial Mounds themselves to enact their will, with the only guidance being to protect their settlement at all costs. It had been some array, some spell that he didn’t remember conceiving. His hand had been guided unconsciously to draw out a sigil in his own blood (so much blood, it made him sick even now to think of it, the unnatural cold of his limbs, the disconnected unreality of a mind deprived of oxygen, the feeling of his life draining into that cursed array [had he died? Had it truly killed him, then dragged his soul back somehow? Why? Why was he still cursed to live? Could he even still be considered alive?]), his voice compelled to an incantation in words more ancient than any he could understand or repeat. 

The first wave of attackers had been primarily Lanling-Jin and a few subordinate sects, rising up to avenge their heir. After Wei Wuxian’s fierce retaliation, other sects must have gotten involved, realizing that the conflict had grown beyond one sect’s grief. His defense of the Burial Mounds forced them to see the threat he posed to the entire cultivation world, and the righteous sects could not let it go unanswered. There had surely been war meetings where the leaders of the cultivation world agreed that Yiling Laozu must be stopped at all costs, that he was too volatile and dangerous to let live (he wondered if anyone had vouched for him, how long they were able to keep defending him, if anyone had bothered at all. It didn't matter, in the end). Lanling-Jin’s allies in the Four Great Clans came to their aid one by one, first Qinghe-Nie, then Gusu-Lan, then finally even Yunmeng-Jiang turned on him. They were struck down just the same. By the end, no one force dominated the battlefield aside from the undead dressed in a colorful mosaic of sect robes.

The dead of the Burial Mounds rose up to defend their Master, and meanwhile, he worked to create something more stable, more permanent. He lost track of how long he had spent tailoring every cun of protection around their settlement, individual spells for every soul in his care, every garden plot and ramshackle building, every last thing he still had left in this world. The work had seemed endless: he would design and create and experiment and test and ultimately discard hundreds of different versions of the wards. When the solution finally became clear to him, he quieted the Burial Mounds, drew their power into himself, and directed all of it into the barrier. It was no mystery to him why he fell unconscious after that.

And it worked. It was impenetrable, perfect. Its perfect protection became its only flaw. No one could leave. Over a month of siege had left their already precarious means in danger of becoming famine; they wouldn’t be able to survive for long on the meagre resources available to them in the small settlement. He came to the dreadful realization that his work was not over, he had to find a way to maintain the safety of the barrier without trapping his people against their will. So his work began again.

He hadn’t fully felt the delirium caused by the flood of resentment until he awoke outside of the cave. Its claws clung to him, whispering to him, screaming in his ears. Hallucinations plagued him constantly, surrounding him with visions of fallen allies and phantom enemies. He found himself on battlefields, lost in the depths of the cave, drowning in the blood pool or in the lake of the Tulu Xuanwu. He couldn’t distinguish his own thoughts from the voices invading his mind, swarming his head like insects. Work on refining the barrier was all the more difficult as he struggled to cling to any shred of rational thought. The forces that had assisted him in his goal before were now working against him. The Burial Mounds finally had a sect of their own, a family. They didn’t want to risk letting them leave.

The rage that he had felt toward the attackers had faded significantly with the tentative feeling of safety. The barrier was in place, the Burial Mounds would protect them, he no longer needed to worry about outsiders. So he thought, until one showed up at his doorstep.

Which brought him back to the present moment.

He knew that the rage was being kept at bay by the strains of guqin music lofting through the stale air. He wanted to hate every tone, but couldn’t find the energy for it. He felt so exhausted, his body finally giving out without the force of resentment driving it.

“Stop,” he managed to croak out. “Stop playing.” His mind had been pulled into pieces from endless influence, he couldn’t imagine anymore what it felt like to have his own thoughts, his own will. Even if the current influence was for his own good (he recognized distantly that even that thought wasn’t his own; that was Lan Wangji, those words were his, rang in his voice) it was still influence. It was still a violation of his mind. He was tired of it.

The music ended, though not all too suddenly. The musician brought it to a gentle cadence before resting hands on the ringing strings to dampen them. Once the last tone quieted, Wei Wuxian was allowed to feel annoyance at the other’s insistence on finishing his song on his own terms.

The silence of the room was so horrifyingly complete, it was suffocating. His ears had been so strained with the voices of the dead for so long, their absence was almost painful, a static ringing forming in their place. He could hear his own breath, his heartbeat, his stubborn life.

There was the space of a few breaths in silence before a voice appeared, soft and hesitant. “You’re awake.”

He didn’t bother to sit up, didn’t bother to even open his eyes. He didn't dare to look. He knew what he would see if he did: Lan Wangji sitting perfectly poised and calm, his polished guqin resting on his lap. Maybe he would have that tiny crease between his brows, the only evidence of emotion on his face. What that emotion was, he didn’t allow himself to imagine. “Why are you here, Hanguang-jun?”

“To help.”

“You could have killed me a hundred times over by now. So? What do you want from me?”

That made him pause. Telling. “Don’t want to kill you.”

That statement was so simple, so honest, so innocent. He couldn’t help himself, Wei Wuxian laughed. He couldn’t stop. It was not joyful, it wasn’t rational. He was out of words, he had no energy to be guarded or aloof or intimidating. He brought a hand to his face to muffle it and realized that he was not restrained. That made him laugh more. It morphed from a grim semblance of mirth to something mad and desperate, every breath came out of him with a pinched sound that, had he had more energy left, would have been a scream. He felt hot tears trail down the sides of his face, the line between sobbing and laughter obsolete in the remnants of his madness.

How naïve, how trusting, how stupid. Lan Wangji had subdued a demon, and all he did was sit by his bedside and play music for him. It was absurd. It was idiotic. It was far more than Wei Wuxian deserved. He thought he should flay the man alive just to show him how stupid he was to trust so blindly. He hated the part of his mind that reminded him that that terrible thought was purely his own. For once, he was under no influence, he was left only with the horrifying reality of whatever monster he had become. The voices were gone, the resentment was gone. It was only them: two near strangers, classmates, brothers in arms, sworn enemies. Two boys who never quite figured out how to be friends. The righteous Hanguang-Jun and the wicked Yiling Laozu. And neither could bring himself to lay a hand on the other.

The outburst died out eventually into unsteady shuddering breaths. Not quite composed, but finally out of energy. The lack of anger left nothing but grief and regret, so heavy it pinned him down, pushed the breath out of him. He missed the rage, it made things simpler.

However long it took for him to regain composure, it could have been an incense stick or a full day as far as he could tell, Lan Wangji sat quietly through it all. Patient, understanding, merciful. He hated him for it. He didn’t deserve mercy.

“So what now? You drag me back to Gusu with you? Or are we already there?” He finally opened his eyes to peek through the fingers of the hand still clasped to his aching head as if to hold it together. The low light did nothing to alleviate his pain, stabbing cruelly into his eyes. At first glance it was immediately obvious that this was not the Cloud Recesses. It was dim and plain, motes of dust shimmering in slivers of light that shone through shoddy woodwork. Odd, he seemed to remember being back in the library — no, that was another hallucination, of course it was. A memory from another life. That delusion must have been conjured by Wangji. Lan Wangji couldn’t drag him back there physically, so he took hold of his mind and brought it there instead. Wei Wuxian had had just about enough of being manipulated. 

“We are still in Yiling,” Lan Wangji confirmed. “An abandoned building away from the city. Purified.”

“Purified…” that would explain why he felt so untethered and powerless; since entering the Burial Mounds for the first time years ago, he had never been without resentment for even a moment. He felt empty without it. “So you’ll be bringing me to Lanling for execution? Or are they coming here? I doubt they'd waste time on any kind of trial.”

“No one is coming. No one knows we are here. You are safe.”

A dry laugh, “safe? Even if there were no one coming for me, of course someone would be coming for you. You really expect me to believe no one knows you came here?”

“Xiongzhang knows I am in Yiling. I am here to… see to the fallen.”

The fallen. The dead. Those countless lives ended at his hands. He had no idea how many had died on his mountain (when did he start thinking of the Burial Mounds as ‘his’?), but he remembered sending out his influence like a dark cloud over the battlefield. He knew the feeling of countless souls rising to his call, he had heard their screams, felt their terror. “How many?” He breathed out the question despite himself. He didn’t want to know. He had to know. 

“It… is not yet known.”

“So you will be gathering them once you’re done with… whatever this is. Not lying, just not telling the whole truth. How convenient it is for you to know the rules well enough to bend them.” The jab was unnecessary, but harsh words and a sharp tongue seemed to be the only power he had left. 

“There is no rule against assisting Wei Ying.”

“You’re smarter than that. Don’t pretend not to know that it’s treason for you even to be here. But I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. So that’s really it? You wanted to help me, then what? Just let me go? To kill more? I’m a monster, you know. I can’t be trusted.” That was meant to be sarcastic, but the words rang painfully true. If he lost control before, what was stopping it from happening again?

“Not a monster,” Lan Wangji answered all too quickly, and damn him for sounding so sincere. “Is that really what you want? More death?”

He could have tried to keep up the act, to play into the persona of the monster driven mad by power. He couldn’t bring himself to, it was too painful to even think of. Lan Wangji saw right through him anyway. “Of course not,” he replied weakly, “I didn’t want any of this.”

“Then you should return. The people there need you. Wen Qing. Wen Ning. A-Yuan.”

That nearly made him break down again. He would be angry at Lan Wangji invoking A-Yuan’s name against him if it weren’t for the fact that he was certain it was not a manipulation tactic, but rather a true concern for the child’s well-being. A Wen child whom Lan Wangji had met only once, but Wei Wuxian was certain of his genuine care for the boy. It had been so nice for a while, his little farce of a community, a family. In the peaceful moments, he had let himself imagine a future where their unlikely home began to thrive, became a place where his people could be happy. Where he could be happy. He really had sacrificed so much; the least he could do was follow through on the dead-end path he had begun carving. He thought of A-Yuan’s bright, innocent laughter. He couldn’t leave him to starve trapped behind an impenetrable barrier. “How merciful you are, Hanguang-jun.” It was meant to be biting, but it came out achingly sincere. “You save me from my own madness, then you spare me. I should owe you my life.”

Lan Wangji considered that for a quiet moment. “A favor.”

Was he serious? Lan Wangji never bartered, he was sure there were at least ten different Lan sect disciplines against it. He was reluctant to comply, but considering he had already promised not to drag him off to Gusu or Lanling, he was curious what else he could possibly ask. “Sure, a favor.”

“Will you release them?”

He immediately became guarded again. “Who? The Wen? They are not prisoners, they are refugees.”

“No, not the Wen. The… puppets. The living ones.”

“The living…?” Horror dawned on him. The battle had been so fierce, his control spread so thin. He had allowed the Yin Hu Fu full license to do as it wished with the attackers, of course it hadn’t distinguished between the dead and the living for its soldiers. The living cultivators that had come to the Burial Mounds were surely full of fear and hatred, their qi the perfect fuel for the resentment to feed off of. They were perfect fodder. Wei Wuxian knew, of course, that it was possible to overtake a living creature, he had done so countless times with ghouls and yao. But a human? To take a living person’s autonomy from them, to force them to turn on their own… it was unforgivable. He wanted to refute the accusation, to wail against it, but he knew that it had to be true. Lan Wangji must have seen it happen, a companion in arms suddenly go mad and turn on his kin. He must have seen the resulting battlefields, those who had not been killed by the corpses, but rather struck down by their companions in self-defense. Wei Wuxian wanted to scream in horror, to escape the beast that had become of him. He couldn’t. “I will,” he finally whispered, unable to say anything in his defense, “I will release them all. Any who are still alive, they will return to you. I—”, ‘I’m sorry’ caught in his throat. It was far too little, far too late. There was no redeeming this. He could only move forward from it. "I promise."

There was a rustle of fabric that may have been a bow. He still didn't dare to look over. “This Lan Wangji is thankful for Yiling Laozu’s mercy.” The genuine relief in his voice made Wei Wuxian’s heart sink. 

The humility and respect that in his frenzied state he had reveled in now felt so wrong. He realized the glaring hole in his understanding of events: the outcome of the battle. The strangeness of the situation and their interaction finally made sense. The dreadful truth of it dawned on him slowly, sinking into his chest with an unescapable weight.

He had won. No one was coming for him, no one was calling for his execution. The cultivation world had retreated, unable to push past his armies without unjustifiable casualties. How could they continue to fight when every one of their fallen soldiers immediately joined the enemy? They had surrendered. Hadn’t that been the goal? Wasn’t that what he wanted? To be left alone? He had demonstrated for the whole world the terrible consequences of defying him: certain death, untold destruction, horrors and cruelty beyond their imagination. His prize: he had solidified his break from the cultivation world and secured his reputation as a terrifyingly powerful evil force, a monster that the righteous could only beg for mercy, thankful for the smallest kindness of him sparing their lives. 

He was victorious. 

He was disgusted. 

“Don’t,” his breath shook, clenched teeth holding back the bile that rose in his throat. “Don’t talk to me like that, I’m not…” he didn’t know where that thought ended. ‘I’m not worthy of respect’? ‘I’m not going to hurt you’? ‘I’m not evil’? ‘I’m not a monster’? He swallowed down every possible plea. He was guilty, there was no more talking his way out of things. All that remained was to reap his spoils of war. 

It was a long while before he spoke again, cold and detached, resigned to the new role he had earned for himself. “I’d like you to relay a message for me back to the sects. Tell them the Burial Mounds are sealed, and Yiling Laozu with them. No one enters, no one leaves. My domain is no longer part of Jianghu. I want nothing more to do with them.”

The silence of Lan Wangji’s contemplation was painful. He could feel the other man’s betrayal, his disgust, his hatred. His only response was a simple “mn”. He did not argue. He dared not. 

“Ah, Lan Zhan, that’s a favor I just asked of you, isn’t it? That puts me back in your debt. I’d like to have no more ties, so I’ll do you one last favor in return: you get to leave here with your life. Consider all debts repaid.”

The cold threat did what it was meant to. Lan Wangji sat in contemplation for some time, but never again responded. Eventually, Wei Wuxian heard him stand, heard his steps retreating. He would never see him again. Good. Lan Wangji needed an incentive to stop stubbornly exposing his flawless reputation to such a corrupting force as Wei Wuxian. He was too dangerous. Removing himself from his previous life was the most merciful thing he could do. They were all better off without him. 

Wei Wuxian finally allowed himself to turn his head to the place Lan Wangji's voice had come from. There was no trace of him. Perhaps he had never been there in the first place.

He wished he had dared to look at him one last time.

The only thing he could do was move forward.

He indulged a few more moments of clarity, the last vestiges of a righteous life that could have been. He then turned away from it and toward a new future, a new life, a second chance he didn’t deserve. 

He turned to the Burial Mounds and walked home. 

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of The Fall and Rise of Yiling