Archive of Our Own

The ritual really wasn’t that hard. Draw these lines. Use those materials. Imbue it with his qi and all his desire for revenge. Mo Xuanyu would never have had access to the ritual’s instructions or materials without his patron’s aid, of course, but even he—sorry excuse for a scholar that he was—could follow such clear directions.

Mo Xuanyu inscribed the final line, giddy from the blood he’d contributed to the thick paint, and then settled himself in the array’s midst. He breathed deeply, recalling all the lessons he’d sat through, and drew upon his burgeoning egg of a golden core. It fluttered in his navel, then burst, exploding through him and into the cage he’d created, echoing through the heavens and hells alike to summon the being he needed:

The ghost of the Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian.

His room, in this little hut set off from the rest of the Mo Household—nobody wanted responsibility for him, and so Mo Xuanyu took care of himself—began to glow with eerie light. It came from the blood and incense, and was as red as its sources. That meant that, so far, things were going as the instructions assured him they should.

Then Mo Xuanyu’s core began to ache, muscles cramping around it as qi was siphoned away. It started as a trickle, but then turned to a yank that nearly set Mo Xuanyu retching. He couldn’t let himself—it’d muck up the array and then he’d have sacrificed so much for nothing at all—and so Mo Xuanyu bit his lip and swallowed bile and tried to keep his focus on the desires that led to this ritual instead of the pain of performing this summoning.

The desperate draw of his qi halted as suddenly as it had begun, and the light vanished with it. Mo Xuanyu took a breath, revelling in the sweetness of pain-free air, and then whispered, “Hello? Did— Did it work?”

A chill breeze swirled around him. Mo Xuanyu shivered, then recalled that the windows were closed. “Yiling Laozu?” He looked around, eyes wide, hoping that the ghost would manifest visibly and make this a lot easier.

A faint light coalesced in front of the mirror Mo Xuanyu had used to focus the array. Then, barely louder than a whisper, Mo Xuanyu heard someone say, “What the fuck?”

It wasn’t any voice Mo Xuanyu recognised. He crept closer to the amorphous blob. “Ah, Yiling Laozu,” he said, kneeling and bowing in front of the not-fully-present ghost. “This Mo can explain, if you’d like?”

“Who—” An audible sigh. Mo Xuanyu peeked up through his fringe to see the ghost gathering itself into the form of a young man, just as gorgeous as Nie-zongzhu had assured him the Yiling Laozu would be. “Kid, this is blood magic. Also maybe demonic? Definitely forbidden.”

Mo Xuanyu winced at the aggrieved tone. “But you—”

“Do as I say, not as I do.” The ghost paused. “Sit up, kiddo, let me see who did such a dangerous thing.”

Mo Xuanyu sat up, back as straight as for any teacher, and got his first proper look at the ghost of Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Laozu. Not particularly tall, nor particularly muscled. A flute tapped against his lips as his blazing eyes bored into Mo Xuanyu, and his ragged robes swirled around him, fading into mist near his feet. “What’s your name?” he asked sharply. Then, gesturing around the room, “Who taught you this, and what the fuck made you use such a thing?”

“My name is Mo Xuanyu. I was never granted a courtesy name.” He’d hoped that when he came of age, his father would grant him that. But though he’d been gathered from the field he’d been sown in, he wasn’t a war hero like Jin Guangyao to be raised out of the muck; he was a weed to be torn from the ground and tossed back when the gardener realised he wasn’t a wildflower after all. Maybe his father would’ve continued benignly ignoring him, but Jin Guangyao…

Mo Xuanyu swallowed and pulled himself back to the present. The Yiling Laozu had asked about more than just his name. “The array, ah— Nie-zongzhu—Nie Huaisang,” he added, remembering that Wei Wuxian had died when Nie Mingjue had led the Nie, “taught me how to use it. And. Um.” He flushed. “My family—”

Wei Wuxian muttered a curse Mo Xuanyu only half heard. “Your family sucks.” He rubbed at his forehead while Mo Xuanyu stared at him in shock. He’d never heard someone say it so blatantly before! “I’m sorry you’re in such a rotten situation, but is there any reason you need to stay here?”

“I—” Mo Xuanyu blinked, utterly lost. “Uh.” His mother had died a few years after he’d been sent back. Any friends he’d made before going to Jinlin Tai had drifted away, first from jealousy and then from fear of the days—sometimes weeks—when he could barely do anything other than huddle in his room and scream or cry or talk to things nobody else could see. The only consolation was visiting cultivators reassuring his family that he wasn’t haunted or possessed, which was the only reason they kept feeding and housing their pathetic offshoot at all. Telling any of this to Wei Wuxian felt overwhelming, so instead Mo Xuanyu stammered, “I don’t have money. Or supplies. Or the skill to live on the road.”

“I can help with that.” Wei Wuxian smiled at him, cheerful confidence in his voice. It was far more reassuring than Mo Xuanyu had expected the demonic lord to be. “We can play a few tricks before we leave, if you feel a need to get some revenge, but Huaisang owes me a massive explanation and I don’t want him to slip away.”

Mo Xuanyu had known that Wei Wuxian and Nie-zongzhu had once been friends. He still hadn’t expected the eye-rolling familiarity and affection in Wei Wuxian’s voice. “You—” Mo Xuanyu’s voice broke, and his throat choked around the words, “You won’t leave me?”

“Ah, kiddo.” Wei Wuxian crouched down in front of him to pat his hair. His misty fingers went through Mo Xuanyu’s hair like a winter wind. “You’ve bound me pretty tight. I don’t know how long this summoning is supposed to last, but I’m not leaving you until it wears off. Plus, you’re a cute kid underneath that makeup, and I don’t want to leave you here in suffering.”

Mo Xuanyu collapsed forward, weeping, grasping for a man whose body wasn’t really there. That was okay; he had experience with such things, and knowing that the ritual had worked was enough salve for his aching soul.

Wei Wuxian stroked his back with one cold and comforting hand. He didn’t say anything, and that was the most reassuring act of all.

They didn’t leave that night. Mo Xuanyu wanted to, but Wei Wuxian pointed out that he’d drained his core using this ritual. “Rest and eat something,” Wei Wuxian advised as Mo Xuanyu slowly wiped up the bloody evidence of the array. “Fuck, I sound like Qing-jie, but she’s right.”

Mo Xuanyu sighed. “Yes, xiansheng.”

“Ugh, don’t call me that, I’m not a xiansheng.” Wei Wuxian leaned on the wall, lips pursed, flute idly twirling in his fingers. “Qianbei, I guess? Or maybe ge?”

“Ge?” Mo Xuanyu said tentatively. “Can I— Really?”

“Sure.” Wei Wuxian smiled at him, bright as the morning even as faded as his ghostly body was. “Once you’ve got things tidy enough to sleep comfortably, go to bed. I’ll wake you up if someone comes.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded, putting more energy into his cleaning. He’d imagined having companions like this before. They’d never been real. Even if Wei Wuxian was only doing this because Mo Xuanyu had bound him with a ritual, that was still leagues better than people who pretended to be his friend just to laugh behind his back. Wei Wuxian wasn’t laughing. Wei Wuxian had meant it when he had said kind things about Mo Xuanyu and offhandedly furious things about Mo Xuanyu’s family.

Wei Wuxian was also still talking, mouth running like he needed to talk to think, and that was a nice background noise. “From the memories you shared in the ritual, it’s not likely anything’s going to change to be dramatically worse in the next day or two, and planning is going to make it better. So! I’m pretty sure I can protect you on the road, maybe even teach you a few tricks—if you’re good enough to use that array, then you can definitely learn to make protective talismans—and we can head to Qinghe. Maybe bring a donkey or something to ride and carry supplies? If there’s one we could take? I don’t feel bad about stealing from your family; they haven’t given you nearly enough care. It’s getting close to dinnertime, right? I can see the sun setting. But nobody’s coming over to make sure you show up to the table.”

“They don’t want me there.” Mo Xuanyu was long used to that. Being alone wasn’t great, but it was much better than company when the company scorned you. “I’m unsightly and I cause scenes.”

“You clean up perfectly well when you’re given access to a bath and good clothes.” Wei Wuxian’s voice held much more understanding than Mo Xuanyu expected; that couldn’t come just from seeing some memories. But the Yiling Laozu had been a young master of the Yunmeng Jiang before falling into dangerous cultivation and betraying them to save the Qishan Wen, hadn’t he? When would he have experienced such deprivation? “And if you’re causing scenes then so are they by their reactions.”

“You’re too kind, Wei-ge.” Mo Xuanyu wrung his cleaning rag out the window, watching rust-colored water drip to the ground. It didn’t matter if someone overheard him, anyway; they would just think he was having an episode and avoid him even more. “I don’t deserve this.”

Wei Wuxian squeezed his shoulder. “You’re a person, Xuanyu; you don’t deserve to be treated like an unwanted animal.”

Mo Xuanyu closed his window, closed his eyes, and curled up on the bed, too exhausted even to cry.

“Things won’t meaningfully change,” Wei Wuxian muttered the next day. “Things hadn’t been meaningfully changing! Why would something new happen now? Is this a curse upon me?”

Mo Xuanyu shrugged. His head hurt, and his body felt faintly untethered. “I don’t know what the problem is.”

“Cultivators will notice me.” Wei Wuxian paced around Mo Xuanyu’s small room. He didn’t seem to notice when he went straight through pillows or books or any other detritus piled on the ground, and even waved his arm straight through a screen. “Untrained commoners shouldn’t! But cultivators? Especially Gusu Lan cultivators? They’ll catch me so fast, and then also notice you, and then neither of us will get what we want!”

It was weird being the calm one for once. Mo Xuanyu blinked, considered Wei Wuxian’s words, and then said, “Wei-ge, if we stay inside, they won’t see us.”

“They don’t need to see me to sense me.” Wei Wuxian grabbed at his hair, cursing, and continued swirling around the room. For a moment, Mo Xunyu wondered if this is what it was like for his family to watch him in one of his moods. Then, just as suddenly as Wei Wuxian had started moving, he stopped, pointing his flute at Mo Xuanyu. “I know one way to protect myself from their ghost-sensing and ghost-summoning rituals. I don’t think you’ll like it. We don’t need to do it.”

Mo Xuanyu shrugged and settled back into his bed. There was a lot he didn’t like. At least Wei Wuxian was giving him a choice. “What is it?”

“If I possess you, it would take intentional examination of us for them to notice you had a ghost tagging along.” Wei Wuxian grimaced. “If they’re busy outside with other spirits, they probably won’t think to look at you.”

“Whenever cultivators are here, Auntie asks them to look at me, just in case.” Mo Xuanyu curled up, hugging himself protectively at the frustration on Wei Wuxian’s face. “Sorry, Wei-ge.”

“I’m not mad at you.” Wei Wuxian shook his head and glared out the closed window. “Want to try sneaking away?”

“The cultivators are already here.” Mo Xuanyu had glimpsed them, a flash of sky-blue and white clouds, swords shining like lightning. The servants, as they brought his breakfast, had been gossiping about them and how grateful they were that the fierce corpses in the nearby countryside would soon be taken care of so they could travel to markets more easily again.

Wei Wuxian hopped onto the bed to sit next to him with a grin. “So?”

So there would be more guards. So there would be more people looking out windows. So it was the middle of the day. But in the face of Wei Wuxian’s excitement, all Mo Xuanyu could say was, “Okay, Wei-ge. Tell me what I need to do.”

Wei Wuxian’s plan almost worked, too.

They got out of Mo Manor easily enough. Nobody paid attention to Mo Xuanyu, especially when—at Wei Wuxian’s urging—he cleaned off his preferred makeup and dressed himself like a servant, his hair pulled into an unfamiliar bun on top of his head. With his head down, nobody gave him another look; he seemed like just another person taking out some trash.

Outside, Mo Xuanyu straightened his back as best he could and changed into a cleaner outfit. Here, Wei Wuxian advised, he wanted to look like a young master. “Pretend you’re a Jin,” he said as Mo Xuanyu tied his hair up in a topknot. “You belong here, and nobody should question you.”

It worked for about an hour.

Then they reached the nearest village. Mo Xuanyu entered the inn for food and froze, panic overwhelming him, at the sight of a white-robed man drinking tea.

“Oh,” Wei Wuxian said faintly in his ear. “Shit.”

The man—Hanguang-jun, Wei Wuxian hissed, in between curses—looked up like he could hear Wei Wuxian.

Mo Xuanyu turned, heart beating out of his chest, and did his best to act like he wasn’t running away.

They made it five steps before Hanguang-jun’s hand clamped down on Mo Xuanyu’s shoulder. “Gongzi,” he said. “Let me treat you to tea in a private room.”

Mo Xuanyu nodded. He kept his eyes fixed on his toes as he followed Hanguang-jun back into the inn and up a flight of stairs into a quiet room. Hanguang-jun murmured something, his fingers flicking across strings, and a pulse of qi vibrated through Mo Xuanyu’s body. The room went utterly silent, not even the barest echo coming up the stairs or through the floor.

Into that silence, Hanguang-jun said, “Wei Wuxian.”

The slight pull on Mo Xuanyu’s core was the only warning he had before Wei Wuxian manifested, fully visible, and said, “Lan Zhan.”

At that moment, Mo Xuanyu realised that this wasn’t about him. He wasn’t being given any of Hanguang-jun’s attention. The hawk-sharp focus of his eyes was on the ghost, and Mo Xuanyu couldn’t read what the emotion behind that focus was; there was only ice and light, the glare of a sword condensed into a gaze.

When Hanguang-jun said nothing, Wei Wuxian laughed nervously. “Ah, I suppose I should call you Hanguang-jun, yeah? I apologise for not bowing, but I had expected you to be sending me on my way by now.”

“No,” Hanguang-jun said, the syllable sharp in his mouth. “I have too many questions, Wei Wuxian. I will not let you go.”

“Great.” Wei Wuxian collapsed onto the floor in relief, legs folding beneath him. He patted the ground beside him. “Come here, Xuanyu, let’s talk like civilized people. This is Lan Wangji, Hanguang-jun. I’m sure you know about him. And this is Mo Xuanyu, who performed the ritual bringing back my ghost.”

Hanguang-jun’s eyes turned to Mo Xuanyu, and he scurried to try and hide behind Wei Wuxian’s insubstantial form. “Performed the ritual. Was he not the one responsible?”

Wei Wuxian hummed. “You’re so clever, Lan Zhan! No, he says Nie Huaisang taught him, so I think that’s a better person to question. That’s where we were going.”

Hanguang-jun’s fingers slid against the strings of his guqin, drawing out an almost-audible hum. “I will escort you.”

Mo Xuanyu’s mouth fell open. One legendary person brought back from the dead was strange enough. A still-living hero choosing this quest over any other duties? That was far stranger!

In front of him, Wei Wuxian was also silent. “Hanguang-jun,” he said after a moment, “you really do not need to.”

“I do,” Hanguang-jun said, and there was no arguing with that.

When they departed from Mo Manor the next day, a dismembered arm in tow and too many dead bodies left behind, Mo Xuanyu found himself caught between excitement and grief. He might not have liked his family, but they had been his family, and Mo Manor had been his home.

But now, surrounded by skillful youths, a protective hero, and a very helpful ghost, there was so much more to look forward to. The road ahead might be strange and full of questions, but it was also full of life.

Mo Xuanyu took a breath and looked up at the unclouded sky.

“Ready to leave?” Wei Wuxian asked, from where he floated next to Hanguang-jun.

Mo Xuanyu smiled at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I am.”

Hanguang-jun reached out a hand. Mo Xuanyu took it, stepped carefully onto Hanguang-jun’s sword, and leaned into Hanguang-jun’s stable warmth as he led the Gusu Lan disciples into the air.

The promise of a new life hadn’t worked out so well last time, but Mo Xuanyu had hope that this time would be different. This time would be better.

After all, this time he already had a friend.