Chapter Text
The whole night-hunt was supposed to be an easy one. Go into the spooky old forest, find the shrine and with it the creature howling loudly at dark, annihilate it and then collect the few coins from the old lady offering this job for a work well done.
Thing was, often the universe really didn’t care about Wei Wuxian’s notions of what things were ‘supposed’ to be like.
He’d been walking deeper into the forest, an upward slope away from the tangerine sunset, and while his senses were often impeccable in alerting him to the presence of other cultivators nearby, this time he’d been somewhat distracted by the ache in his wrist that was supposed to be fully healed, at least according to the internet, because getting a professional opinion from Wen Qing so soon after the broken ribs thing was going to get him a lecture at the very least, so –
He hadn’t noticed Jin Zixuan until it was too late, and the guy had already spotted him as well. And instead of looking haughty, like he’d always looked before, or disbelieving, like Wei Wuxian was, the guy had the gall to seem a little caught-out, with wide eyes and a straight back.
Next to him, Mianmian looked a lot less like a deer in the headlights, and more like she was an overworked babysitter just now realizing she wasn’t being paid enough for this.
The last time he’d seen the two of them had been months ago. It felt like a lifetime though – sometimes life just kept throwing things at you, and made you age years in the span of a few weeks. Not that Wei Wuxian felt any less juvenile while looking at Jin Zixuan than he did the last time.
Ah. Better not think about that.
“Isn’t this a little too low-profile case for the Jins? Or are you lost?” Wei Wuxian asked, bite in his voice, and then immediately turned to flash a smile to the woman next to him. “Hi, Mianmian.”
“Wei Wuxian,” Mianmian replied politely, while annoyance finally flashed fleetingly on Jin Zixuan’s face.
“I don’t choose my hunts according to how high-profile they are,” Jin Zixuan said. There was something immediately suspicious about the way his eyes flitted away and back. Wei Wuxian decided he didn’t care.
“Great,” Wei Wuxian said. “Well, I’m just going to –“
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” another voice, terribly familiar, said behind him.
Wei Wuxian felt his entire body stiffen. Incredible luck, one might call it. Wei Wuxian thought back to his week – had he accidentally cursed himself somehow? A hundred years of bad luck? The amount to summon both Jin Zixuan, his Shijie’s awful ex-fiance, and Jiang Cheng, had to be insane.
For a fleeting second, Wei Wuxian entertained the fantasy of just making a run for it. He saw the outline of the temple behind the trees, the place where the lady had directed him. He could escape and have Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan deal with each other.
Alas, he wasn’t a coward either. Pulling his sleeve down a little to hide the bandage on his sprained wrist from immediate sight, Wei Wuxian turned to greet Jiang Cheng with only a slightly strained grin. From what he could see from the corner of his eye, Jin Zixuan seemed even more uncomfortable than him somehow. Incredible weirdo, that guy.
“What are you doing here?” Jiang Cheng snapped at him like it wasn’t obvious. Standing there like he owned the forest with a scowl on his face. He’d cut his hair, it seemed. Wei Wuxian wanted to make fun of it, but the way things were currently, he didn’t think it was his place anymore.
“I’m going to let you puzzle that one out on your own.”
“Funny. I thought you said you were going to get out of our hair.” Jiang Cheng gave him one of his patented glares. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
Wei Wuxian had said that. He’d been packing his stuff, what little he had, and said it with lightness he hadn’t felt. Jiang Cheng had been angry then, too. It seemed that the anger hadn’t gone anywhere.
In his defense, Wei Wuxian really hadn’t known this particular hunt would be so popular among the people he wasn’t supposed to come across. The complaint had been made about noise rather than anything truly destructive. This was the kind of work rogue cultivators like Wei Wuxian did, instead of sect heirs. Thankless, easy jobs.
“I know it seems unlikely, given my many talents,” Wei Wuxian said, “but I’m not actually aware of your location at all times, Jiang Cheng.”
Jiang Cheng scoffed at him, then turned to the peacock and Mianmian, giving them a curt nod.
“I’ll be off, then,” Wei Wuxian said.
He headed towards the temple, half-convinced that Madam Yu and Jin Guangshan would jump out of the bushes next to strangle him. Mercifully, the universe deemed the current encounters bad enough.
He wished that the rest would just leave him to deal with the hunt alone, now. No such luck – after a momentary pause, he heard the rest of them starting to follow him.
Wei Wuxian suppressed a sigh.
-
The temple was pretty, though very poorly cared for. It looked like not a single soul had visited it in ages. The floors were dusty and the pillars holding the ceiling seemed like one particularly tough burst of wind away from collapsing.
“Which god was this again?” Wei Wuxian asked Mianmian, because she was the most likely one to know, as well as the only one in the room who probably didn’t want to crash the ceiling on Wei Wuxian on purpose.
“Hanguang-jun,” she replied. “Though it’s clearly not in active use.”
Hanguang-jun. The light-bearing lord, who appeared where there was chaos. Or so the books said. There hadn’t been very many god sightings in several hundred years now, and personally, Wei Wuxian didn’t think things were any less chaotic now than back then.
Maybe Hanguang-jun was busy.
“I’ve been to one of his bigger shrines,” Jin Zizuan said. “Though it was much better kept than this.”
Wei Wuxian acted like he didn’t exist. “Hey, Mianmian, how popular was Hanguang-jun again?”
“Very,” she replied. “Among cultivators, probably second most respected, only after Zewu-jun. Don’t they teach these things in Lotus Pier?”
“They do, but what do you expect?” Jiang Cheng scoffed. “Don’t you know he slept during classes and only participated when it was about something that interested him?”
The altar was near the back wall, simple and graceful. Wei Wuxian got the feeling that this place might’ve looked very nice in the past. There was no picture of the god himself anywhere, but on the altar next to the unlit incense sticks, there was a white, chipped statue depicting a man.
Dust whirled around his feet when he made his way to it. Wei Wuxian figured it had been shiny and bright when it was first brought here. It was practically beheaded at this point.
“Do you sense any evil energy?” Jin Zixuan had walked to the wall on the right, clearly a little unsettled with the condition of the place. He probably didn’t want to get any dirt on his designer clothes.
“Only yours,” Wei Wuxian replied, and then turned away from the glare sent his way. He picked up one of the sticks and started digging in his pocket for his lighter.
“There’s clearly nothing here.” Jiang Cheng sounded annoyed. He’d made his way to the furthest corner of the room, back still as stiff as the first time he’d sighted Wei Wuxian. “Not even traces of demonic presence.”
“You’re right,” Wei Wuxian replied. “It’s a bust. You should leave.”
He got ignored, which was a first from Jiang Cheng, who was chronically incapable of dismissing an insult or not taking it personally.
Mianmian looked over his shoulder as he finally pulled out the lighter. “Paying your respects?”
“We’re in his shrine, aren’t we?” He grinned at her. “Isn’t it only polite?”
The incense stick took to the flame. Sandalwood. The smell was immediately comforting, somehow, and after putting the stick back to the holder, his palms fell against each other automatically, raised into a prayer. His eyes fell shut.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jiang Cheng snapped, but Wei Wuxian paid him no mind.
Sorry for messing with your place, Hanguang-jun. If you’re around, maybe point us to the direction of the howling, so we can take care of that?
Wei Wuxian opened one eye to peek at the altar, empty of any god’s grace.
Or maybe just come say hello?
Seconds ticked by. Still nothing.
Wei Wuxian straightened up.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” he said, and next to her Mianmian sighed. “What? They’re right, there’s nothing here. Whatever noise the lady heard, she was probably imagining it.”
Obviously, it was something none of them wanted to hear. After all the trouble of having to suddenly see each other and, even worse, spend time around each other, this was an obvious disappointment.
But as far as Wei Wuxian could tell, this place was just what it seemed like – an old, poorly kept shrine with no demonic or ghostly energies anywhere to be found. In fact, if not for the bad air quality, Wei Wuxian would’ve found the place remarkably peaceful.
“So. This has been very fun, but I –“ before he could finish the sentence, there was a surge of something powerful enough to make him stumble away from the altar and land on his knees.
He could not see anything for the bright, overwhelming light suddenly surrounding them. Energy so immense flashed through him, over the entire room, that it made the hairs on his arms stand, his entire body shake. Electricity danced across his skin.
The ground shook. He was certain the temple was going to actually crash on them, fall on their heads from the way it was trembling. Or was it just himself? He could not see anything but white, white, white –
And then the feeling receded, the brightness dimmed back to something bearable. Behind him, he felt an amount of spiritual energy that was in no way less overbearing than before, but something that felt contained. He blinked at the long shadow his kneeling body made.
Someone took a shaky breath next to him. Wei Wuxian stood back up despite the sudden weakness in his knees.
There was a man standing behind him. Taller than any of them, an imposing figure even without the effect of sun condensed. He was wearing a hanfu so white it could cause blindness if stared at for too long, and the ink-black hair that cascaded down to his waist only emphasized the contrast.
A white forehead ribbon almost disappeared into the lightness of his skin, the jade-like look completed. Wei Wuxian, blinking his aching eyes, was struck breathless at the sight of the god’s face. The serious brows, the straight line of his mouth. The light gold of the most beautiful eyes Wei Wuxian had ever seen.
But the look in them – the look in them. Wei Wuxian was inexplicably confident of the fact that this was the most powerful being he’d ever come across. The spiritual energy exuding him was so immense he was on the verge of taking a step back, to stop the feeling of being completely, utterly overwhelmed. Yet he could not, because the man, the god, Hanguang-jun –
He was looking at Wei Wuxian like he was the marvel. Lips slightly parted, eyes only a bit widened, though the stare in them more intense than anything Wei Wuxian had felt before.
It might have been a second, or an eternity, that Wei Wuxian was stuck staring back; a still moment before the tidal wave crashed against him. Reality sunk in. He started getting feeling back in his limbs, and more importantly, sense in his head.
He bowed immediately, in the proper way that the cultivators still used in ceremonies. His heart was thundering, feeling like it was going to beat straight out of his chest.
He’d completely forgotten about the other people in the room, and only got reminded when the rest followed his lead and bowed as well.
“No need,” came the answer, the timbre deep and silky, resonating in Wei Wuxian’s bones.
He blinked and straightened himself, probably looking just as graceless as he felt. Hanguang-jun gazed at him with something strange in his expression.
“You have called me,” he stated, slow and smooth, and suddenly Wei Wuxian felt everyone’s eyes on him. It felt a little bit like he was being blamed for disturbing the all-powerful entity. The one that looked so serious that offending him might be the worst move of the century.
“Ah, haha, I did, didn’t I?” He glanced to his side, where Mianmian was back to gaping at the god. So. No help there. “We – I wanted to know about the noises. Since this is your shrine, I thought you’d know what’s going on in here.”
“I see,” replied Hanguang-jun. Then,“I was asked to say ‘hello’ as well.”
“Fucking incredible,” Jiang Cheng mumbled to his left.
Wei Wuxian let out a strangled noise. The prolonged eye contact was making his pulse go insane.
“I really didn’t intend to disturb Hanguang-jun,” he rushed to say. “Only, if you had a minute or two of free time from your undoubtedly busy schedule, we’d appreciate it if you –“
“Very well.”
“– pointed us to the direction of the thing that – wait, what?”
“It will be taken care of,” Hanguang-jun said, eyes still scanning his face like there was something miraculous happening there. “Is there something else?”
“We can ask for more?” The possibility made him almost jittery from excitement, though thinking over his options wasn’t too easy at the moment, as his feeble human mind wasn’t particularly well-equipped to deal with the intensity of standing a few steps away from a higher level being.
Hanguang-jun inclined his head. It felt like staring into the heart of blue fire, looking at him like this.
“Oh, wow, okay, let me see – can I take a picture of you?” He dug out his phone.
“Wei Wuxian!”
“Are you insane?”
The god only looked at him with an aching amount of something in the depth of his eyes. “A picture?”
“Yeah, with my – oh, never mind.” No matter how many times he tried to turn the phone on, the screen stayed stubbornly black. “My phone is broken.”
“It is my presence,” Hanguang-jun stated, never breaking the intense stare to look down at the phone. “It will not be permanent.”
“Really?” Wei Wuxian glanced at the phone. It was a pretty shitty old thing. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was just something it did.
“ Mn .”
There was a moment of silence, then, where Wei Wuxian’s head was empty and the only thing he could do was meet those golden eyes and try to decipher the intent behind them. He felt like he was being inspected. Like this god was taking him in in a way no one else had bothered before – straight through his flesh and to his pulsing core.
He felt naked in the most vulnerable way under that gaze. Being peeled open. Surrounded by a spiritual energy that could make and unmake him again and again. Yet somehow, a part of him felt at ease.
Then, the eyes finally left his face, dropped to his wrist. The bandaged one.
“You are hurt.”
Wei Wuxian let out a short laugh, breathless, tugging down the sleeve again. Like it could do anything now. “What, this? It’s nothing.”
“Careless.” The god said it like an admonishment, though the tone was soft, quiet. “Pull up your sleeve.”
“I really don’t think – “ he started, but then the sentence got cut with the most unimpressed look he’d ever been leveled. He cleared his throat and pulled the sleeve up.
And in a move he could not predict, even if he’d tried his hardest, the god before him took a step closer and sunk to his knees. Wei Wuxian was frozen stiff, his heartbeat doubling, his eyes widened. It felt like everything in the room had halted to a stop. No one dared to breathe. Not one particle of dust hung in the air. It was quiet unlike anything he’d felt before.
“Be still,” came the command and Wei Wuxian could do nothing but follow it. He felt weak in the knees. Almost anticipatory.
But Hanguang-jun did not take a hold of his hand. Instead, the god reached forward to slowly pull at the bandage, gently unraveling it without ever making contact with Wei Wuxian’s skin. The revealed wrist was a little red, but the swelling had disappeared almost completely.
Hanguang-jun did not – he didn’t blow on it, nothing to so undignified or evident. But Wei Wuxian felt the slightest burst of cool breath against the overheated skin, and then the low ache that’d been there every time he’d moved his hand was suddenly no more.
Wei Wuxian blinked at it in astonishment, while the god stood back up smoothly, with more grace than Wei Wuxian had extended on anything in his life.
“I must not linger,” Hanguang-jun stated. “This construction is fragile.”
“Oh,” Wei Wuxian replied, a strange sort of disappointment welling in him. Which was very stupid – did he think a whole, entire god was just going to, what, stay and hang with them? Get a cup of coffee with him?
He cleared his throat. “I mean, of course, I get it. Being a god must be busy. Answering all those prayers, right? Showing up where there’s, ah, chaos? Completely understandable. Hanguang-jun is known for his diligence, after all.”
The golden eyes met his gaze again, and Wei Wuxian’s throat locked up again. The look this time was almost... tender. Amused.
“Ridiculous.”
And then the whole room got dark, the pressure of profuse amounts of power disappearing around him in an instance. Dust, the scent of sandalwood, and swirling colors in his eyesight whether he blinked or kept his eyes open. He had not realized that he was still shivering.
Wei Wuxian wet his dry lips. If it wasn’t for his healed hand, he might’ve thought he’d hallucinated the whole thing.
“What the fuck,” Jiang Cheng asked, clearly with his whole heart.
“That was,” Mianmian said, “completely insane.”
“I can’t believe it.” Jin Zixuan’s voice was full of existential crisis. “He lights up one joss stick and a god shows up.”
“Well, it’s his shrine.” Wei Wuxian picked up the bandage from the floor. It did not feel like something a god had touched. It just felt like a piece of fabric. He shoved it in his pocket, trying not to feel silly emotions like disappointment.
He sent a smile Mianmian’s way, who was looking at him with a pondering expression. “Since there’s nothing to work on here, I figure it’s time for me to head home. Nice seeing you, Mianmian.”
“What, you’re just going to leave?” Jiang Cheng demanded. “After – after whatever the fuck that was?”
“I said I was going to stay out of your hair.” He didn’t look Jiang Cheng’s way. “That’s what I’m doing.”
He didn’t expect much else than the scoff he got. Somehow, it did not feel as terrible as he’d expected. Perhaps it had something to do with the way his thoughts were very much still wrapped around what had just happened, and how his pulse had not yet settled.
He thought about the look in Hanguang-jun’s eyes and knew that there was no way his heart would calm down for the rest of the day.
-
“So you met a god.”
His hand jerked at the sudden noise and the front of Wei Wuxian’s shirt got a nice splash of coffee on it. He swore, then immediately turned to whine: “Wen Qing!”
He got a raised eyebrow for his efforts. “Well?”
“Who told you?” Wei Wuxian asked. He tried to subtly close the open book before him, but Wen Qing snatched it right out of his hands. At least it didn’t get the coffee treatment.
“Jiang Cheng. Are you reading up on Hanguang-jun?”
“Since when do you and Jiang Cheng talk?” He attempted to get the book back, but with little actual effort. Wen Qing had a weirdly strong grip. He’d learned it during the broken ribs incident. It was impossible to escape from her clutches when she decided you were to stay put.
“Since you moved out,” she replied, unbothered. “And it’s good that I did. Heard you had a sprained wrist as well.”
“Exaggeration,” Wei Wuxian lied immediately. “It was more of a support bandage thing. Preventive care.”
She gave him a glare, which immediately made Wei Wuxian want to change the topic. “Yeah, we saw Hanguang-jun. And yeah, I’m reading up on him.”
It had been a few days, and the strange itch inside Wei Wuxian had not subsided. When he’d gotten back home from the hunt, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep. He kept thinking about those golden eyes on him, the brightness, the spiritual energy simmering around him.
It was only natural that he was curious, right? He’d met a god. He’d experienced a thing that no one in record had for hundreds of years.
So obviously he wanted to do some research.
Most of the books described a just, unyielding type of deity descending to earth to appear in chaos and help the poor, the needy and everyone in between. Someone good, kind, and unwavering in his morality.
There was lore, too, of course. Stories about him and other gods. Zewu-jun was mentioned often, as they were brothers, as well as the disgraced god of demonic cultivation, the Yiling Patriarch. There was a whole section on the complicated relationship between the two of them.
Some sources said they used to be friends and then turned enemies, after which Hanguang-jun cast him from the heavens. Others claim they’d never been friends, and the hatred between them had kept growing to the point where Hanguang-jun had to do his duty and cast him away. Some sources talked about a friendship that ended in betrayal, as the Yiling Patriarch took advantage of Hanguang-jun’s good nature.
They all ended, however, with the Yiling Patriarch being stripped of his status. Sent away to the Earth, torn apart by his demonic cultivation and his soul so completely destroyed that it could not even attempt to join the cycle of reincarnation.
Wen Qing sighed. “I swear, this type of thing could only happen to you.”
“I was just lucky,” Wei Wuxian replied. “I bet he had a slow day.”
“Slow day of being a god,” Wen Qing said. “Right. Look, I won’t strangle you for not telling me about the wrist, but I feel like ‘I met a god’ is a thing worth mentioning.”
“Jin Zixuan was there too,” Wei Wuxian said, taking the book back now that Wen Qing was distracted. “Is that a thing worth mentioning?”
She looked a little surprised, then the look turned kind of worried, which definitely had not been Wei Wuxian’s intention. “Yes. Are you alright?”
“Of course,” he said, very casually. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
For a moment, Wen Qing looked like she might say something else. In the end, however, she just sighed, and Wei Wuxian could feel the tension bleeding out of him. There was no need to make it a bigger deal than what it was.
“So what was he like,” Wen Qing asked.
“Who, Hanguang-jun?” Wei Wuxian thought back to that moment again. “I mean, he was very godly. Do you know that feeling when you find an old spiritual object that you are afraid to touch because it might just zap you of existence? It was like that. And you obviously want to touch that object.”
She looked unimpressed. “So you really wanted to touch Hanguang-jun?”
Wei Wuxian’s grin turned mischievous. “Well, he was very handsome! Wouldn’t it be natural of anyone to want that?”
“I don’t think Jiang Cheng wanted to touch him,” Wen Qing replied. “He sounded only freaked out.”
“Yes, well, Jiang Cheng has no appreciation for obvious beauty.” Wei Wuxian waved his hand. “You should’ve been there! He was so…so…”
Tall, Wei Wuxian thought, and then when he attempted to describe the face of the god, the absolute beauty of him, his mind came up blank. His hand lingered in the air as he blinked in confusion. What exactly had Hanguang-jun looked like?
He’d been powerful, certainly. Blessed with height, grace, might, and beauty. All traits very appropriate for a god. Wei Wuxian, though, could not recall for the life of him any details of his face. It all came out blank.
“...Huh,” he said.
“What?”
“I can’t remember his face.” Wei Wuxian squinted. “I just remember thinking he was very handsome. But I can’t remember his face.”
Wen Qing looked at him, again, with an expression of someone who seemed like they wanted to say something, but decided against it.
“Human eyes are not made for looking at gods,” Wen Qing stated, instead of whatever she’d been thinking. “You’re lucky you didn’t get your meridians damaged.”
“What kind of a just god would allow that? He would’ve just healed that, too.”
“So he did heal you?” Wen Qing grabbed his wrist and pulled the sleeve back, inspecting it with sharp eyes. “Hm. Seems so.”
Wei Wuxian pulled the hand back, and Wen Qing let him. “Alright, alright, was that all? Did you really cross the hallway just to check whether I had an injury? Wen Qing, I never knew you cared!”
She gave him a withering look, too used to the flirting to waste time acknowledging it. “The next time, you can just ask me to take care of it. No need to bother any gods about it.”
“Mm, well, you’re way scarier,” Wei Wuxian argued, and then laughed when Wen Qing gave him a final unamused look before walking out without another word.
All in all, could’ve gone worse. Wei Wuxian turned back to his books.
-
That night, Wei Wuxian saw a dream. He was sitting on the edge of something, staring down from what seemed to be an airplane perspective. When he focused his eyes, he could see extremely far, down so low that he could peek into the houses of people. He watched them laugh. He watched them fight. He watched them cultivate. He did this for minutes, or hours, or days. The time felt muddy here, passing without leaving a mark.
Someone sat next to him, a flash of white that folded into the proper sitting position. Wei Wuxian was leaning on one of his knees, while his other leg hung in the air.
He gave a bright smile at the other, pleased despite knowing he shouldn’t be.
“Lan Zhan, did you learn nothing about yesterday? Your uncle will be furious if he finds out you’re sitting around with me again.”
“Mn.” Lan Zhan said. “Let him.”
“Hahaha! When did you become so unfilial?” Wei Wuxian’s narrowed into a crescent as he watched him, handsome Lan Zhan with his serious expression.
He was given only a look, though fond in its exasperation.
Wei Wuxian raised his hands. “Fine, fine, stay there. I certainly won’t complain! But you don’t get to either, alright?”
Lan Zhan would never complain either way, he knew. The man still nodded, as if finding the offer reasonable.
“You are watching them again,” Lan Zhan said after a moment of shared silence.
Wei Wuxian hummed. “They’re very interesting, aren’t they? And they have so many problems, down there. Easily fixable ones, even.”
Lan Zhan gave him a look. “Do not interfere too much.”
“Yes, yes, Lan Zhan, I know the rules. We’d all be out there picking sides, and then how would that end? Both the Earth and the Heavens would be at war! I’d always end up picking the wrong side, if we asked your uncle, haha!”
“Wei Ying.”
“Of course I’m kidding, Lan Zhan.” He waved his hand. ”It’s only that there is so little to do here. I create things I cannot share! I have knowledge I could use to fix problems, and I cannot help but see the need for it. You can see it too, right?”
“I do,” Lan Zhan admitted.
Wei Ying looked on quietly. Here, the wind was always gentle, always mild and comforting. It made chills run down his spine nonetheless.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan asked after the silence continued a beat too long, a note of worry in his voice. “What are you planning?”
Wei Ying turned to him with a smile. “Don’t you worry about it, Hanguang-jun.”
He did not get to hear Lan Zhan’s reply before the dream dissolved with the sound of his alarm. In a matter of seconds, the memory of the dream was already dissipating, only the vague image of it in the front of his mind.
Weird dream, obviously just as silly and cryptic as the rest of them. Wei Wuxian turned around and buried his head back in the pillow, and soon fell asleep again, this time with no dreams. When he woke up from that, he did not remember a thing about any dreams at all.
-
Wei Wuxian was a rogue cultivator. What this meant in practice was that to pay his rent, he had to be pretty lax when it came to the kinds of jobs he accepted. Big sects usually took care of the bigger or more interesting stuff, as long as the hunt wasn’t something unsanitary.
This meant that whenever he got messages about a night-hunt, they were mostly very simple hauntings or extremely disturbing monsters. There was little variation.
The advantage of all of this was of course that he rarely had any competition. The last time with Jin Zixuan and Jiang Cheng had been some sort of a weird coincidence that Wei Wuxian was sure to ignore and forget as soon as was humanly possible.
Too bad that the next time he found himself at the site of the day’s hunt, he once again stumbled into the worst possible person one could.
“What, you again?” Wei Wuxian groaned. “Are you following me?”
Jin Zixuan looked embarrassed again, or at least a little awkward, standing there in the middle of the forest like his shiny white luxury brand shoes could even endure the amount of mud on the ground after how it had been raining the past few days.
Then again, Wei Wuxian was sure Jin Zixuan of all people could afford a new pair to replace this ruined one.
“No,” the guy said, but kept looking awkward. “No, I’m not following you.”
Wei Wuxian stared at him. Stupid peacock, so deep in the woods without any of his lackeys accompanying him, searching for a monster that had killed someone’s goat and was worth less than what Jin Zixuan probably made by standing around for fifteen minutes in his dad’s firm.
Wei Wuxian wasn’t an idiot. He crossed his arms, willing himself to get through whatever this was.
“Well?” he asked.
Jin Zixuan frowned. “Well what?”
“You want to talk.” It was so obvious. He’d even brought Mianmian to act as a mediator the last time. “I’m waiting.”
Thankfully, Jin Zixuan didn’t deny it. He only looked a little bit sick for a while, before he seemed to gather whatever little courage he had, and said, “I’m sorry for what happened.”
Out of all the things the guy could’ve said, this was one Wei Wuxian had not been expecting. His eyes widened, arms loosened.
“I...I realize it was my fault,” Jin Zixuan continued. “So I’m sorry.”
Jin Zixuan’s fault. Wei Wuxian could not do anything but stare. Yes, he had been a dick. He had said some awful things about Shijie.
Wei Wuxian had been the one to punch him. The one to push him over the snacks table and make the whole thing crash and flood the floor with punch and broken shards of glass. He’d been the one the Jins had attempted to get arrested for assault, and he was the one who had caused the engagement to be broken, and he was the one who had been disowned right after.
Jin Zixuan had not seemed sorry, back then. He’d spat out blood, and called Wei Wuxian a psycho, and then marched out without another word.
The one he should’ve apologized to was not Wei Wuxian, in any case. That night, Wei Wuxian had been an instigator, the person who made the move that he could not think of as a mistake no matter how much destruction it had caused.
Jin Zixuan should have apologized, but not to Wei Wuxian. Not when Shijie had cried, when she’d looked so ashamed when the guy who did not deserve her talked shit about her where she could hear him, not even when everyone knew she was in love with him and he still said those things.
“Why do you care?” Wei Wuxian asked.
There was no reason for Jin Zixuan to have changed his mind these past months. From the day he and Shijie had been engaged, he’d been nothing but terrible about it. Shijie had loved him, despite that, and Wei Wuxian had watched, because what else could he have done?
Shijie had wanted to get married to the bastard. Despite everything, that was what she’d wanted. Jin Zixuan, Jin Guangshan, and Wei Wuxian had ruined that for her.
Jin Zixuan had never wanted to marry her. He should’ve been out there living his best, useless life. For months, he’d been free. So what was he doing here now, apologizing?
The pause was long and strained, until Jin Zixuan finally replied. “Your sister and I have...we’ve become friends. What I thought I knew of her – it was all wrong.”
Wei Wuxian stared, once again. He was uncertain if he’d heard right. Friends. Shijie and this peacock were friends.
He let out a burst of laughter, incredulous. It really couldn’t be like that, could it?
“Are you kidding me? You’re shooting your shot now, after all that?”
The confusion was fast replaced with anger, at the way Jin Zixuan’s eyes darted down, ashamed. At least he could recognize the hypocrisy of it all. Did he even realize how much he’d hurt Shijie? And he was here now, trying to do what, exactly? Turn back time a few months?
“Hah, well, tough luck. You don’t deserve her.” Wei Wuxian turned to walk off, lest he punched him again. “See you around. Or better yet – let’s not.”
“Wait!” Jin Zixuan said, urgency in his voice. “She is unhappy! She has already rejected me, and I think it’s because of you –“
Wei Wuxian swirled back around, the volume of his voice rising, as he demanded, “So you thought to come here and apologize, so that she’ll give you another chance? Just forget everything you’ve done?”
“No, I just – I just want her to be happy.” He looked increasingly desperate, keeping his stance even when Wei Wuxian advanced. “And like this, she is not.”
Guilt gnawed at Wei Wuxian in the middle of his chest where he was soft and tender. Of course Shijie would be unhappy with this. She was too kind, had always been too kind. No one else would even consider being friends with someone like Jin Zixuan after the humiliation he’d put her through.
He raised his chin up, still. “Look, if she really wanted to, I would see her. But Madam Yu told me not to approach them again.”
“So you’re letting their mother make decisions for them?”
“Watch your tone,” Wei Wuxian snapped. “Wasn’t she the one advocating for your engagement? And besides, aren’t you always doing what your parents say?”
Jin Zixuan looked away, obviously caught. Then, swallowing the words he could not say if he did not want the conversation to escalate into a fight, he faced him again. “She wants to see you.”
“Yeah, well, Shijie’s always been too forgiving for her own good.” He didn’t mean only himself, and it was evident, from the way Jin Zixuan cast his eyes again.
The talk clearly finished, Wei Wuxian gave him a final, freezing look, before walking past him. Jin Zixuan stayed where he was.
“And stop following me around,” he added.
-
Wei Wuxian didn’t like to admit it, but the conversation had thrown him off. His focus had shifted, his thoughts were scattered, and when he accidentally got caught off guard by the yao, he could not be too surprised.
It was a big one, this time, and fast enough to have immediately done great enough damage to his leg that he was pretty sure the wound would have been stitch-deep for a regular person.
Annoyed, he slapped a talisman on it to help ignore the pain while he danced out of the range of the beast’s claws, and then ignored it some more as he attempted to slash, kick, poke, and hit the yao to death.
Wei Wuxian wasn’t kidding when he said he was a good cultivator. Being a rogue one was dangerous, so people often did it in pairs at the very least. Wei Wuxian had been doing just fine. Was doing just fine, except that his thigh was bleeding, and the conversation was still bouncing in his head like a Windows screensaver, and he just wanted to scream a little.
He did, when landing the final blow on the yao, slaying it with relatively little effort, except that suddenly he was running out of health and even standing up was too difficult, and then he realized just how deep the wound was.
His pants were drenched in blood. Usually, with his golden core, the wound would’ve easily closed already. He should’ve been as healthy as ever.
“Fuck,” he said, emphatically. “Shit. Fuck. Fucking fuck.”
Of course the yao had been venomous. The cherry on top of the disaster cake this day had been. Of course.
Wei Wuxian slowly got down to his knees, then fell on his ass in the mud. It was cold and disgusting, but he wasn’t really bothered by it over the wound. He dug out his phone, only to find out that the piece of crap was acting up, the screen completely black no matter how many times he pressed the button on the side. Typical.
For a moment, he could only stare at the carcass next to him and wonder whether he should just lie down next to it and accept his fate. Death by idiocy. Death by not noticing the huge monster coming from his right. Death by being embarrassingly distracted during a night-hunt.
He wasn’t going to die, though. Probably. He figured his golden core was stronger than whatever this was, and he just had to lie down and let it run its course. His spiritual energy would eventually clear the poison from his body. It would be fine.
Sighing, he lay down fully on the ground, not even caring that he would have to wash his hair thousand times to get the dirt off of it later. He’d just need to ride it out.
-
When he opened his eyes the next time, what he saw was the most handsome face looking back at him that he’d ever seen. No more than twenty minutes could’ve passed since he’d started his nap. It had been darkening when he’d gotten there, but it was still in the darkening stage rather than just the dark stage, so it couldn’t have been long.
In that time, he’d somehow managed to attract the prettiest person in the woods to come and loom over him like the most blank-faced yet still somehow explicitly disapproving forest fairy.
“Whah?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“Are you alright?” the forest fairy asked, and his voice was velvet.
Taking a moment to blink away the bleariness, Wei Wuxian started noting more things about the situation. His thigh was feeling like nothing at all – it had been completely healed, apparently. And the serious man asking questions about him didn’t seem to be a fairy, actually. In fact, he had a sword strapped to his back, and despite seeming to wear only light colors, there was not a spot of mud on his clothes, which had to be the work of some kind of a spell.
“I’m fine,” Wei Wuxian said. His pants were still wet with blood. He wondered if the stranger could tell. The pants were dark, and it was not very bright out here. He pushed his upper body up from the mud, elbow against the ground, and flashed a bright smile. “In the shape of my life, really! Ah, did you happen to see the yao I killed?”
“Mn,” the man said, and didn’t seem at all impressed with this great feat. Instead, there was a shadow of a frown on his face.
Wei Wuxian cleared his throat. “So, you’re a cultivator, too, right? What a coincidence you happened to find me here! You wouldn’t mind helping me up?”
The man blinked. Then, “Mn.”
Instead of taking him by the elbow or hand, like a normal person, the guy picked him effortlessly into a bridal carry, before gently letting his legs down. Wei Wuxian felt a little bit weak in the knees. It must have been the residual effects of the poison.
“Um,” he said, hands against the man’s firm chest. Despite how easy and poised the move had seemed, it must’ve taken some effort after all, since the man’s heart was beating fast under Wei Wuxian’s palms. “Thanks.”
He patted the chest for good measure, before taking a step back. The man’s eyes followed him intently. Wei Wuxian was a little flattered, at first, before he remembered that he’d been lying in the mud for half an hour and was probably looking pretty rough.
He stretched in a manner he hoped would come across casual, and explained, “The yao managed to get a little hit in. That’s why I was resting for a bit.”
The man inclined his head. His mannerisms still felt a bit otherworldly, like he wasn’t sure how to move his facial muscles.
“I know,” the man said. “I healed you.”
Oh. How embarrassing. Wei Wuxian couldn’t help the strangled sound that left him, and immediately masked it with laughter. “Haha, ha, is that so? Well, I have to thank you sincerely for your kindness then. No wonder I feel so springy!”
The man nodded. And kept staring. In fact, his staring was so intense that Wei Wuxian felt a little like squirming under it. It distantly reminded him of something, but he could not place the feeling.
“Would you like some tea?” Wei Wuxian asked before he could help himself. It was only polite to offer, wasn’t it? This guy had, if not saved his life, then at least saved him some trouble!
Surprise passed through the man’s pretty features, but in the end, he only nodded again, like this was a normal request coming from a sane person. “Mn.”
No need to look a gift horse in the mouth. Wei Wuxian’s smile brightened.
“Great! Great, I – oh, we should probably go to my apartment, right? I’m filthy. I have oolong in the closet, I think? Green tea at least,” he mused. The man looked neutral about the tea options. “I’m Wei Wuxian, by the way. Though since you just healed me, I think you can call me Wei Ying.”
In the light color of the man’s eyes, something turned a bit warmer. “Then you may call me Lan Zhan.”
Wei Wuxian smiled, warmth spreading in his chest as well. “Lan Zhan, then.”
-
Lan Wangji, Lan Zhan, was apparently a rogue cultivator as well. When Wei Wuxian tried to guess his sect, he kept shaking his head until Wei Wuxian ran out of sects, which definitely meant that there were none, and they had that in common. It was a pretty exciting revelation. The possibilities were abundant, clearly, what with the two of them both happening to be rogue cultivators without a partner.
Wei Wuxian also found out that Lan Zhan was ‘not from here’, and had a brother, and liked his tea mild, and clearly thought that Wei Wuxian was way too careless during his hunts, since his serious brows turned even more serious whenever his gaze fell down to Wei Wuxian’s ripped pants.
This was all Wei Wuxian could really get out of him when they first walked for forty-five minutes to the nearest subway station, and then sat in the subway for half an hour, and then walked to Wei Wuxian’s apartment. During this time, Wei Wuxian had shared enough of his own life to make a family-friendly, nicer version of an autobiography about it.
Lan Zhan seemed to listen, though. Intently. Like he was genuinely just that interested in Wei Wuxian’s childhood, and his thoughts about cultivation, and the TV show he’d watched recently. He kept saying ‘mn’ and ‘I see’ and nodding, encouraging Wei Wuxian to go on.
Once they were at his apartment, Lan Zhan seemed equally interested in scanning each nook of it completely expressionlessly, eyes lingering on old pictures with Shijie and Jiang Cheng, as well as those with the Wen siblings. Wei Wuxian attempted to kick some garbage under the couch, but Lan Zhan saw it and raised an eyebrow at him.
The kitchen was a mess that would’ve been impossible to solve by kicking. There were a lot of talismans on the table, as well as some weapons Wei Wuxian had been modifying lately to perhaps help him during a night-hunt.
“Don’t touch those, they can explode,” Wei Wuxian told him while pulling his jacket off. The mud had dried and was now falling off in flakes. “You can check the closets, there’s tea in there somewhere. I’m going to take a quick shower.”
“Mn.”
“Don’t rob me,” Wei Wuxian called over his shoulder before closing the door. “Not that there’s anything worth robbing here, but I think it still needs to be said.”
This time, the ‘mn’ sounded a bit amused, though Wei Wuxian could still not be entirely sure.
He deliberately did not look at himself in the mirror before jumping in the shower. He didn’t need to know just how terrible he’d been looking the entire way there, especially standing next to such a ridiculously handsome man. People had given him a wide berth in the subway.
Once he had scrubbed all dirt off of himself and then put on the nicest casual clothes he owned, he went back to the kitchen, where he expected to find either all of his things stolen, or two mugs of steaming tea on the table.
He found neither of these things. Instead, Lan Zhan was standing on the other side of the table, looking over the open books about Hanguang-jun. His gaze flew up to meet Wei Wuxian’s, unreadable.
Wei Wuxian rubbed his damp hair with a towel thrown over his shoulders and flashed him a smile. “Ah, I didn’t tell you, did I? You’ll never guess what happened to me last week.”
Lan Zhan tilted his head. “Hm?”
“I met a god,” Wei Wuxian revealed. “And not just any god. Hanguang-jun! Now, before you call me a liar, there were other witnesses. I’ll get you a testimony.”
Lan Zhan’s blank face was somehow even more expressionless. He turned back to the books. “No need. I believe you.”
“What?” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Just like that?”
“Mn.”
“That’s very over-trusting of you, Lan Zhan.” His smile threatened to turn into a teasing one. “I could very well be lying!”
Lan Zhan gave him a look that had to mean something like ‘ you have just brought a stranger into your home, and you call me over-trusting? ’
“Hahaha, fine, alright, I’m not lying at all and you’re the exact right amount of trusting,” Wei Wuxian relented. “Aren’t you curious at all, though? If you really did believe me, you would be drowning me in questions right now.”
The long-fingered hand of Lan Zhan’s spread the pages neater where it rested on the book. He looked at it thoughtfully.
The book was open on the chapter talking about the Yiling Patriarch. Lan Zhan seemed to study the illustration on the corner, where the patriarch was seemingly growling wrathfully, bushy brows furrowed and beard-covered lower face twisted into a grimace. It was an ugly drawing.
“What did you think,” Lan Zhan asked eventually, “when you saw him?”
What had he been thinking, then? When Wen Qing asked, he’d only talked about Hanguang-jun’s handsomeness. He’d been undoubtedly godly in his appearance.
“I suppose I was very impressed,” Wei Wuxian said, after a moment of thought. “You don’t often get to see a real god, after all.”
His heart had stuttered a bit. Mostly, he’d been awed. Overwhelmed. And yet something inside him had settled as well, as if with Hanguang-jun’s presence, there was nothing that could go wrong. A sense of security, perhaps. Safety.
Ridiculous nonsense, of course! Most of Wei Wuxian’s brain activity had gone to gasping at how astonishing he’d been. The way he’d looked back at Wei Wuxian back with the seemingly that same emotion.
Lan Zhan inclined his head, and that seemed to be the only answer he was getting. Wei Wuxian had known this guy for two hours and already knew that Lan Zhan would not push for more details.
“Truthfully, he was way different than I had thought,” Wei Wuxian continued when Lan Zhan did not reply. “From the books we read as kids, I got the impression that he was kind of a boring fuddy-duddy. The teachers always said things like, ‘Hanguang-jun follows the rules, you should too!’ But I thought he was more...”
Lan Zhan blinked again, like a house cat. “More...?”
An awkward laugh bubbled out of him. “Well, you know. You don’t really think about gods as people. They’re so…abstract, and distant, and they mostly just represent values. I thought, if Hanguang-jun was some kind of way, he’d be very strict, someone who follows rules blindly.”
Wei Wuxian thought back to the moment of overwhelming lightness enveloping him.
“Lan Zhan, do you know, he fixed my wrist, and I thought that his heart must be very good.”
The silence that followed was a bit heavy. Lan Zhan did not look at him; the look in his pale eyes was closed-off, impenetrable.
Wei Wuxian laughed again. “But, you know –“
“You are too kind,” Lan Zhan cut in. “To think that.”
“Ah, well, I only saw him for a moment,” Wei Wuxian said. “Snap judgment and all that! Lan Zhan, there’s really no need to look so serious. You must be more of a Zewu-jun fan?”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan said. Then, suddenly, “Wei Ying. I fear I cannot stay, after all.”
Wei Wuxian blinked, opening his mouth before closing it again. He couldn’t help the disappointment. “Oh?”
Lan Zhan nodded, closing the book.
“Is it something urgent? No need to worry about public transport, I have a spare mattress,” Wei Wuxian said, and then immediately realized how weird and desperate he sounded, talking to a man he’d only just met tonight. “Or, um, we could do this again some other day?”
There it was again, the warm look in Lan Zhan’s eyes, though this time tinted with something almost wistful. He nodded at Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian bit his tongue to not say anything more embarrassing as Lan Zhan made his way to the door.
He stopped, however, before he’d left entirely. “Wei Ying.”
“Yes?”
Lan Zhan raised his eyes, unreadable when they met Wei Wuxian’s. “Are you happy?”
Such a question, so late at night after such strange few days. Yet the tone was so earnest when Lan Zhan asked. Like he truly wanted to know.
Wei Wuxian licked his lips, before nodding. “Yeah. Yes. I’m happy.”
Something softened in Lan Zhan’s eyes, then. His looks were so expressive, even when his face wasn’t. Wei Wuxian could feel his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.
“Good,” Lan Zhan said, and then left Wei Wuxian in his weirdly silent apartment, oolong tea still in the closet, and the book about Hanguang-jun firmly closed on the table.
Wei Wuxian stood staring at the door for a long moment, before he groaned.
“I forgot to ask for his phone number!”
-