Chapter Text
Xie Lian wakes with a violent jolt.
Pain explodes behind his eyes, sharp and blinding, as if someone has struck the back of his head again and again with a heavy stone. For a moment he can’t even breathe. His thoughts scatter, slipping through his fingers like water.
His hand lifts weakly to the back of his head.
Wet.
Sticky.
When his fingers come away, they tremble.
Blood.
“…Ah.”
The sound that leaves him is barely a whisper.
His head throbs mercilessly. Each pulse of pain makes the darkness around him tilt and spin, and for a few disorienting seconds he can’t tell which way is up.
Where…?
His palm presses outward instinctively, searching for something—anything—to steady himself.
His fingertips meet wood.
Rough. Close.
Too close.
Xie Lian freezes.
Slowly, hesitantly, he spreads his hand wider. His knuckles bump against something almost immediately. The space around him is tight—so tight his elbow cannot even fully bend.
His other hand lifts.
Wood again.
Above him.
Below him.
On both sides.
A faint scraping sound reaches his ears when he shifts.
Something trickles through small gaps beside his shoulder.
A mix of dry and damp grains brush against his arm.
Dirt.
Packed tight.
“….”
The realisation arrives all at once.
A coffin.
He is inside a coffin.
Buried.
Underground.
Xie Lian’s breath catches sharply, the air in the cramped space suddenly far too thin.
No.
No, no—
His chest rises too quickly, sucking in a breath that tastes stale and heavy with earth. Panic claws its way up his throat before he can stop it.
His hands slam weakly against the wood above him.
Thud.
The sound is dull, swallowed by the soil pressing in from every side.
He forces himself to stop.
Stop.
If the coffin is sealed…
If the dirt is packed this tightly…
Moving too much will collapse the air holes.
His gaze flicks desperately through the darkness. He cannot see them, but he can feel faint drafts brushing his temple and cheek. Small holes. Someone drilled them.
Enough to keep him alive, at least for now.
Why is he here?
Memory refuses to surface. His head hurts too much—thoughts breaking apart the moment he tries to grasp them.
He swallows, throat painfully dry.
“…San Lang…”
The name leaves him automatically, a quiet plea.
He reaches inward, instinctively gathering spiritual energy.
Nothing answers.
His stomach drops.
No.
He tries again, concentrating harder, pushing deeper into himself the way he always does when he wants to reach out.
Still nothing.
His spiritual veins feel hollow. Empty. As if someone scooped everything out and left behind a quiet, aching void.
He cannot summon a single thread of power.
Which means—
He cannot contact Hua Cheng.
The silence inside his mind becomes suffocating.
For a long moment Xie Lian lies perfectly still. Then his breathing starts to shake.
Cold sweat forms along his spine despite the suffocating heat of the dirt pressing around the coffin.
His fingers curl into the wood beneath him.
No spiritual power.
Buried alive.
Darkness pressing in on all sides.
A horrible memory begins to surface, slow and relentless.
The feeling of a stake piercing through his chest.
The crushing weight of three coffins stacked together.
Air running out.
Pain.
Death.
Then waking again.
And again.
And again.
A century of it.
Xie Lian’s body reacts before his mind can stop it.
His breath suddenly comes too fast.
“No—”
The whisper breaks in his throat.
He squeezes his eyes shut, though it makes no difference in the pitch darkness.
It isn’t the same.
It isn’t the same.
There’s no stake.
His heart is still beating.
He is not dying over and over again.
But his chest tightens anyway, panic rising like floodwater in his lungs.
His hands tremble uncontrollably now.
For a terrifying moment he feels twelve again. Fifteen. Twenty.
A prince.
A prisoner.
A corpse trapped in wood and earth.
His nails dig into the coffin lid.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Xie Lian forces himself to take a slow breath.
The air smells like dirt and rot and old wood.
But there is air.
That means whoever buried him didn’t intend for him to die immediately.
Which means—
Someone might come back.
Or someone might be waiting.
His thoughts steady slightly with the logic.
Still trembling, he lifts one hand and presses his palm against the coffin lid above him.
The wood creaks faintly under the pressure.
Not thick.
Old.
Maybe damaged.
His fingers curl.
“…Alright.”
His voice is hoarse but calmer now.
He survived a hundred years once.
He can survive this.
But just as he gathers what little strength he has left—
A sound reaches him.
Very faint.
Very distant.
Above the earth.
Footsteps.
Someone is walking overhead.
Xie Lian goes perfectly still.
The footsteps above him are faint—so faint he almost convinces himself he imagined them. But no. There it is again. A dull, muted thud somewhere above the heavy weight of soil.
Someone is up there.
His heart jumps instinctively, a fragile spark of hope flickering through the thick dread still clinging to him.
He opens his mouth.
“…!”
But the sound dies before it leaves his throat.
Xie Lian stops himself.
The coffin presses tightly around his ribs as his chest rises and falls. The air feels heavier now that he’s aware of it, thick and warm in a way that makes every breath feel insufficient.
Think.
If he shouts… the earth will swallow the sound. The dirt packed around the coffin is too dense. Even if the person above him were standing directly over his grave, the chances of them hearing anything through layers of soil and wood are almost nonexistent.
And if he wastes air screaming—
His lungs tighten slightly at the thought.
No.
He swallows the urge down.
The footsteps move again, quicker this time, pacing across the ground above him with a sense of urgency.
Searching.
Whoever it is… they’re looking for something.
Xie Lian presses the back of his head gently against the wood beneath him, ignoring the sharp sting where his wound scrapes against it.
Blood has already begun to dry in his hair, sticky and uncomfortable.
He closes his eyes again, though the darkness is absolute regardless.
Think.
How did he get here?
The question floats in the fog of his mind, slippery and difficult to hold.
He tries to trace his memories backward.
The most recent thing he remembers is—
Warmth.
Soft bedding.
The quiet, peaceful rhythm of another person breathing beside him.
San Lang.
The thought comes with surprising clarity.
Yes.
They had woken together.
Xie Lian remembers turning slightly, still half asleep, feeling the warmth of Hua Cheng beside him beneath the silk covers. The morning had been quiet, calm in the gentle way mornings sometimes are when there is nowhere urgent to be.
He remembers sunlight filtering through the curtains in the shrine.
He remembers—
His thoughts falter.
Then what?
He tries to push further, but his mind meets a strange, blank wall.
It’s not the hazy blur of ordinary forgetfulness. It’s too sudden for that.
As though something simply… cuts off.
Xie Lian frowns faintly in the darkness.
That isn’t normal.
Even if his head was injured, there should be something. A fragment of movement. A conversation. A shift in the room.
But there’s nothing.
Just morning.
Then this.
The footsteps above him begin to move faster.
Scraping slightly across the ground.
Then they fade.
Quickly.
Hurried.
Within seconds the faint vibrations disappear entirely, leaving only the crushing stillness of the earth around him.
Gone.
Xie Lian listens for several more long moments.
Nothing returns.
The silence settles over him again like a heavy blanket.
“…What...”
His voice is soft.
If that person had been searching for this coffin… they would have stopped.
Which means either they didn’t know it was here—
Or they weren’t searching for him at all.
His hands have begun to feel strange.
At first he thought it was just trembling from the panic earlier, but now the sensation is different. A faint numbness creeps slowly into his fingers, dulling the sensation of the wood beneath them.
Xie Lian flexes them experimentally.
The movement feels clumsy.
His arms are pinned close to his body by the narrow coffin walls, making even small movements awkward. Each shift makes the dirt above him shift faintly as well, sprinkling grains through the small air holes near his shoulder.
A bit of soil lands on his neck.
He ignores it.
Focus.
He needs to stay calm.
Panic wastes oxygen. Panic clouds judgment.
Slowly, carefully, he inhales through his nose.
The air tastes stale but breathable.
There are holes drilled somewhere along the sides of the coffin—that much he’s sure of now. He can feel faint currents brushing his skin when he moves slightly.
His head throbs again as he tries to think too hard. The injury there feels worse now that the initial shock has faded, sending dull waves of pain through his skull.
Blood loss, perhaps.
That would explain the dizziness creeping through him.
His fingers drift once more to the back of his head, carefully probing the wound.
The touch makes him wince.
The skin there is split. Not deeply enough to kill him, but enough to bleed quite a bit.
Something heavy must have struck him.
From behind.
The thought settles quietly in his mind.
If someone attacked him…
Why?
Xie Lian isn’t exactly difficult to capture if someone truly wants to. Most ghosts stronger than him could accomplish it easily if they tried.
But knocking him unconscious and burying him alive?
That’s… elaborate.
Unless the goal wasn’t simply to restrain him.
His chest tightens slightly at the thought.
His breathing grows a little shallower before he forces it steady again.
No.
He won’t assume the worst yet.
His hands are definitely numb now.
The sensation creeps slowly up his fingers toward his wrists, like cold water soaking into cloth.
That’s not good.
Lack of circulation, early signs of oxygen deprivation.
Xie Lian swallows.
He cannot afford to lose consciousness again.
If he passes out…
There will be no waking up this time.
He tries to shift his shoulders slightly, testing the coffin lid again with cautious pressure.
Creak.
The wood groans faintly.
Not strong.
But the dirt above it presses down with tremendous weight.
Even if he could break the lid—
Several feet of packed earth would still remain.
And digging upward in such a confined space…
His stomach twists faintly.
Not impossible.
But extremely difficult without spiritual power.
And right now he has none.
The absence of it feels deeply unsettling.
Spiritual energy has always been there for him, even in the weakest amounts. A quiet presence inside his body.
Now there is only emptiness.
He tries once more to reach for Hua Cheng.
San Lang.
The name echoes silently in his mind.
Nothing answers.
Xie Lian exhales slowly.
If Hua Cheng were nearby… he would have found him already.
Which means one of two things.
Either he is very far away.
Or—
No.
He cuts the thought off immediately.
San Lang is fine.
There is no reason to assume otherwise.
Still, the quiet inside his mind feels heavier without that familiar presence lingering somewhere beyond it.
His hands twitch again.
The numbness has reached his wrists now.
That’s faster than he would like.
He wiggles his fingers again, forcing them to move despite the dull sensation.
Stay awake.
Stay calm.
Think.
Someone struck him.
Buried him.
Left air holes.
Then someone else—or perhaps the same person—was searching above ground just now.
Maybe they were checking the burial site.
Or maybe they lost something.
Or maybe—
His head swims suddenly.
The darkness around him feels thicker for a moment.
Xie Lian pauses, breathing carefully until the dizziness settles again.
He laughs softly under his breath.
Well.
This situation is certainly familiar in an unfortunate way.
Buried.
Alone.
Waiting.
For a brief moment the old memory presses closer again—the suffocating weight of three coffins stacked together, the endless cycle of death and revival.
But this time he doesn’t let it swallow him.
This time he focuses on the present.
This coffin is smaller.
There is air.
And most importantly—
It hasn’t been a hundred years yet.
His lips curve faintly despite everything.
“…San Lang will be very upset if I die again.”
The thought is oddly comforting.
Hua Cheng would tear apart heaven and earth to find him. Of that much Xie Lian is completely certain.
Which means his job right now is simple.
Stay alive.
Long enough to be found.
Even if the numbness keeps creeping slowly up his arms. Even if the air grows thinner with every breath. Even if the darkness presses in on him from every side.
He presses his palms once more against the coffin lid above him.