Work Text:
Lan Jingyi stared at his spicy fishcakes, shifting them around on his plate, trying to arrange them in a way which would make them look mostly eaten to a casual observer. Not so long ago, he would have been delighted to be out in the world, eating dishes that were not ruthlessly bland with people who like to remain awake after hai hour. He still was delighted, he told himself. It was just that nowadays…
A strident voice from his right derailed Lan Jingyi’s train of thought. Having circulated the room all evening, Ouyang Zizhen was politicking with clan leader Yao, and doing a remarkable job of masking the disdain he must still have for the self-important bore, smiling politely and nodding every so often to show he hadn’t fallen into a coma. For his part, clan leader Yao droned on – what was it they said about empty vessels? – apparently not recognising the man in front of him from their boat ride to Lotus Pier. In this, Lan Jingyi couldn’t blame him. The years between then and now had changed all of them.
On his left, Lan Sizhui politely demurred another offer of wine and continued an involved conversation about crop excises that Lan Jingyi had lost the thread of at the exact moment it had begun. Sizhui’s composure and courtesy may not have been new, but his official capacity in Baling was. With Lan Xichen still in seclusion and Hanguang-jun apt to disappear with his husband for weeks on end, Lan Qiren had entrusted sect representation to Lan Sizhui, who had taken to the task effortlessly.
At the opposite end of the banqueting hall, Jin Ling was being courted and flattered by a string of representatives from minor clans. He wore the mantle of leadership more comfortably now; if it still chafed him, he hid the fact well. Lan Jingyi drew his eyes away, hand twitching towards another glass of wine which he certainly did not need. Nostalgia wasn’t going to help him reconnect with his friends at this conference, and neither would drinking too much.
As Lan Jingyi fought with his worse instincts, musical laughter drifted through the open shutters. Silence gripped the hall, fully half of the assembled cultivators stiffening where they sat. The main doors opened and a member of the Ouyang clan, whose name Lan Jingyi had not even attempted to remember, tried and failed to announce the arriving guests before Wei Wuxian breezed past him in a whirl of black and red, shadowed by Hanguang-jun. The pair were ushered to a table and Wei Wuxian flopped blithely to the ground amidst a rising current of whispers and sidelong glances. Lan Jingyi stifled a smile. Some things, at least, never changed.
Ouyang-zongzhu made his way over to the new arrivals with some hesitation, clearly torn between his duties as a courteous host and his desire to stay far away from Wei Wuxian, and was soon deep in discussion with Hanguang-jun. If there was one thing guaranteed to unite the entire Jianghu, it was the opportunity to gossip about Wei Wuxian. Soon, snippets of overheard conversation from their table were being passed around the room like forbidden candies.
…permission to investigate a disturbance not far from Tanzhou…
...resentful energy…
…be mad to let him take charge of something like that…
…better to leave it to the Jiangs…
Straining to hear every word that was said about Wei Wuxian and his reasons for being in Baling, Lan Jingyi failed to notice the appearance of the man himself until he was right next to him, helping himself to the wine Lan Jingyi had so assiduously resisted earlier.
“Jingyi, always a pleasure. What brings you to such a tedious occasion? As I recall, sect conferences are very much not your thing.”
Lan Jingyi scowled at his now empty wine cup until Wei Wuxian laughed and refilled it, pushing it back towards its rightful owner. Lan Jingyi gestured to his left before lifting the drink to his lips.
“Sizhui?” asked Wei Wuxian, puzzled. “Surely he doesn’t need any help with a meeting as routine as this one?”
“No,” replied Lan Jingyi, wrinkling his nose both at the tang of the wine and the reminder he was surplus to requirements. “But it seems to have become a habit to bring me along. We can’t be a quartet anymore, so Sizhui does his best to at least make it a pair when we travel.”
He’d tried his best to keep any stain of disappointment from his voice, but Lan Jingyi winced at the sudden flash of understanding in Wei Wuxian’s too-shrewd eyes. “No more quartet,” Wei Wuxian mused, drumming his fingers on the table. “Hmmm. I’m in the mood for a project. Let’s see what we can do about that.” He leapt to his feet and made his way back to where Ouyang-zongzhu was talking at Hanguang-jun.
Watching closely, Lan Jingyi was able to guess what followed with relative ease, as first Ouyang Zizhen and then Jin Ling were motioned over to join the conversation. Confirmation came when Ouyang-zongzhu rose and requested the attention of the room.
“Xiongdi,” he announced, chest swelling with pride. “The esteemed Hanguang-jun travelled here with his…companion to seek permission for a night hunt to eliminate the source of a reported disturbance. As this falls within the boundaries of the Baling Ouyang, it has been agreed instead that my son should lead the hunt, with assistance from Jin-zongzhu and Lan Sizhui, here to represent the Gusu Lan,” he said, gesturing to each in turn. “Let us toast to their success!”
Amidst the cheers and shouts of ‘ganbei’, Hanguang-jun rose and left silently, arm in arm with Wei Wuxian, who paused to drop Lan Jingyi an exaggerated wink as he disappeared back into the night.
With their departure, the only oasis of stillness in the storm of sweeping sleeves and brandished cups was the one surrounding Jiang-zongzhu. All evening he had sat, impassive, observing Jin Ling as he dealt with supplicants and sycophants. The arrival of Wei Wuxian had turned his expression as brittle as the detente between the two; now, he was staring, flinty-eyed, at nothing in particular. He had the look of a man who didn’t know exactly what trouble was coming, but had seen enough before to predict its inevitable arrival.
The clan leader’s sharp profile began to shift, and Lan Jingyi averted his eyes with the ease of long experience. He’d worked hard on his tact and subtly, and was something of a master at not being caught gazing at Jiang-zongzhu. Lan Jingyi sighed and looked at the ceiling, deep in thought as the celebrations continued around him. He may have long since earned his jia grade for night hunting, but he still had something to prove. He couldn’t afford to be a weak fourth link in what was now such prestigious company. Shit. If only he could have spoken to Wei Wuxian again before he’d left and asked more about the disturbance; any information he could have gleaned might have given him an advantage —
Wait.
Wei Wuxian.
The last time he’d snuck onto the roof of the Jingshi to drink Emperor’s Smile with Wei Wuxian, they’d had a long, if somewhat hazy, conversation about talismans. Wei Wuxian had invented a new one, and sketched out the necessary array in dirt right there on the tiles. A luck array, guaranteed to lend the creator good fortune. When Lan Jingyi had asked about its efficacy, Wei Wuxian had just giggled something about getting lucky every day then fallen off the roof, but that was irrelevant – it was exactly what Lan Jingyi needed. He was pretty sure he remembered how to set it up.
***
After carefully timing his exit to a moment when Lan Sizhui, who would absolutely have intervened, was distracted, nobody else even noticed as Lan Jingyi left the hall. He walked towards the guest quarters unsure whether to feel relieved or slighted, brushing his way through lush grass to avoid the illuminated paths. He hesitated near the door to the room he shared with Lan Sizhui. His friend was unlikely to return anytime soon, but imagining the inevitable look of quiet disappointment on Lan Sizhui’s face if he caught Lan Jingyi messing around with talismans after absconding from a formal engagement was enough for him to not take the risk. He slid silently in and out of the room and made for a quiet end of the compound with an armful of supplies.
This far from the main hall and the heart of the sect, the lights were few and the darkness heavy. Lan Jingyi stopped outside a building right on the outskirts, close to the boundary wall. Surely these rooms would be empty? He waited an incense stick’s time then slipped inside.
It didn’t take long to set up a few candles and close the shutters to contain their feeble light. Lan Jingyi settled cross-legged on the floor and examined his talismans. These, at least, he knew were accurate; some were originals inked by Wei Wuxian himself and the others were meticulous copies. Now for the array itself. Lan Jingyi closed his eyes and pictured what had been sketched on the roof that night, dipping his finger in the pot of cinnabar he had prepared and tracing lines on the floor.
Footsteps from outside had Lan Jingyi’s hand stuttering to a halt. He sighed and rose. Any of the cultivators here would sense his presence - there was no point in hiding. He would just have to hope whoever it was would be too drunk to question Lan Jingyi’s appearance in a far-flung corner of the compound.
Lan Jingyi’s optimism shrivelled as he opened the door. Jiang-zongzhu. This was a disaster on a number of levels. Firstly, Lan Jingyi was incapable of maintaining any level of composure around the man, which was going to fatally undermine any chance he had of coming up with a reasonable excuse. On top of that, there was no way Jiang-zongzhu would be wandering around drunk; whatever Lan Jingyi came up with to explain why he was squatting in an empty room had better be believable. He needed to make a good impression.
“Jiang-zongzhu! Fancy meeting you here.” Lan Jingyi’s voice, as it so often did, came out too loud, shattering the quiet and prompting the sect leader to startle and drop his hand to Sandu before he realised there was no threat beyond temporary damage to his hearing. He stared at Lan Jingyi, clearly waiting for an apology, or an explanation, or both.
“Apologies, Zongzhu. What I meant, of course, is to ask what brings you so far from the hall?” Lan Jingyi gestured at the empty night. “I would have thought a guest as well respected as you would have been given quarters in the centre of the sect grounds.”
The set of Jiang-zongzhu’s shoulders relaxed and he inclined his head in greeting. “I am avoiding Jin Ling.” The sect leader’s lips curved with the hint of a smile at the surprise Lan Jingyi couldn’t keep from his face. “He gets quite touchy about anyone seeing me as his chaperone, so I requested rooms as far away from him as possible. Apparently, this irritability extends to my suggestions for his night hunt, so I have left him to arrange the details with Ouyang Zizhen. And what,” Jiang-zongzhu asked, “ is important enough to drag you from wine and company, Lan Jingyi?”
“Oh, you know,” said Lan Jingyi, head suddenly devoid of ideas. “Same reason.”
Jiang-zongzhu raised one eyebrow. “You are also avoiding Jin Ling?” he asked sceptically.
“No! I mean, yes. But no.” This good impression thing was going swimmingly. “I am avoiding someone,” Lan Jingyi spluttered. “But not Jin Ling.” He risked a glance at Jiang-zongzhu. “It’s Sizhui.”
“Really? I thought you two pretty much came as a pair.”
Before he could school his expression, Lan Jingyi grimaced.
“Ah. Is that the problem?” Jiang-zongzhu stepped forward and squeezed Lan Jingyi’s shoulder briefly. “Don’t worry, no one is ever going to mistake you for Lan Sizhui. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Lan Jingyi watched as the sect leader turned away and entered his room, continuing to look at the closed door for far longer than necessary. He shook himself and went back inside; there was an array to finish. Quietly.
Surveilling his handiwork, Lan Jingyi nodded in satisfaction. The deep red lines he had marked in the floor overlapped perfectly with those in his memory of the array Wei Wuxian had sketched for him. Admittedly, there was one crooked line from where he’d been distracted by Jiang-zongzhu’s footsteps, but it was almost imperceptible; certainly not enough to interfere with the outcome. The quartet would get back together, they would go on an adventure, and Lang Jingyi would be at the centre of it all, dazzling everyone with his insightful decisions, decisive actions and overall competence. For once, everything was going to go his way.
With a whispered prayer to nobody in particular, Lan Jingyi infused the central talisman with a trickle of qi, gently increasing the stream until all the characters on the paper gleamed, then backed off to observe the results. One by one, the markings of the array began to burn, their light crackling from one talisman to another, setting each aglow. The reaction stuttered as it reached the crooked line, but soon continued. When the entire array was alight, an aura began to pulse around Lan Jingyi, warm and golden. Just as the light was bright enough to make him squint, it changed, darkening to a spoiled green. It winked out, leaving sparks the colour of decaying vegetation floating in Lan Jingyi’s vision.
Had it worked? Wei Wuxian had not expanded on what to expect, and the chances were good he didn’t even know. Lan Jingyi prodded gingerly at his arm. He didn’t feel any different. He glanced at the wall separating the quarters he was in from Jiang-zongzhu’s. His little light display didn’t seem to have disturbed the sect leader, and that had to be lucky, right? He plucked the central talisman from the array, tucked it into his sleeve and gathered up his things to return to the room he shared with Lan Sizhui. If he successfully snuck in, he would take it as confirmation the luck array was functional. And if not? Well… no harm done.
***
The sun was preparing to set as the reunited quartet left Baling the next evening, turning the thick grassland surrounding their path into a sea of swaying gold. It was the sort of warm, fragrant night Lan Jingyi could only dream of in Gusu. Baling was beautiful, he was back with his friends, and they were going on a night hunt. Life was good. That talisman had definitely worked. “This is going to be fun,” he exclaimed to nobody in particular. “It’s been too long.”
Jin Ling snorted. “It’s not been long enough. I remember the last night hunt we were on; you didn’t exactly cover yourself in glory.”
“Excuse me,” retorted Lan Jingyi. “I’ll have you know that I received a —”
“Yes, yes,” Jin Ling interrupted. “A jia grade. We know. We all know. The whole Jianghu knows because you never shut up about —”
“Was the Bai residence really the last time we went on a night hunt together? It doesn’t seem possible.” Ouyang Zizhen had drifted back from his place as the vanguard of their little group. The night hunt was being conducted on Baling land, and he was clearly trying to take his leadership role seriously and act as peacekeeper.
“It was. And I still remember how Lan Jingyi had to be dragged bodily to the front of the room to observe,” scoffed Jin Ling.
“Hey!” exclaimed Lan Jingyi, aware that, despite his best efforts, his voice was getting louder and more shrill with each passing moment. “So I don’t like ghosts? So what? What sane person does? Sometimes, I need a bit more incentive than the rest of you.”
“We all know how to motivate you, Jingyi,” smirked Jin Ling. “Food, liquor or, in an emergency, get my uncle involved.”
“Which one?” Ouyang Zizhen muttered under his breath.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Jin Ling, shooting Ouyang Zizhen a glare. “Honestly, it’s embarrassing,” he continued, easily avoiding Lan Jingyi’s attempts to clap a hand over his mouth. “He spent most of last night staring at —”
The rest of Jin Ling’s sentence was lost as he faceplanted into the undergrowth. Lan Sizhui side-stepped elegantly and continued along the path, hands clasped behind his back.
“Did you — Did you just trip him up?" Lan Jingyi gasped.
“Of course not,” replied Lan Sizhui, serene. “Does that sound like something I would do?” He continued down the path without looking back.
Lang Jingyi doubled over, choking with laughter as Jin Ling righted himself and stalked away, deliberately knocking into Lan Jingyi as he passed.
Night had fallen by the time they arrived at the sight of the reported disturbance and grassland had given way to evergreen forest, thick with shadows. Ouyang Zizhen, still taking point, stopped as the ground fell away steeply, the path splitting on either side of a hulking embankment, studded with rocks.
“We’re in the right place,” said Lan Jingyi, nose wrinkling. “I can smell them from here.”
“Walking corpses,” agreed Jin Ling, moving to the edge and peering over. Lan Jingyi followed cautiously. Between the overhang and the lack of light, he couldn’t make anything out at the foot of the hill, but they were definitely there. The shuffling footsteps and putrid stench left no doubt.
Instinctively, the quartet worked as a team; all four cultivators advanced down the path to where the corpses were, Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi on the left, Ouyang Zizhen and Jin Ling to the right. Jin Ling was the first to stop, halting with a sigh and letting the point of his half-drawn arrow tilt towards the ground.
“Disturbance,” spat Jin Ling. “ I don’t think this even counts. There’s nothing here worth investigating.” He gestured to a spot right in front of the outcrop, and Lan Jingyi adjusted his position to see what his friend had discovered. As expected, it was walking corpses, but there were only a handful, and they were barely animate. As Lan Jingyi watched, they shambled aimlessly, colliding with trees and each other, stumbling mindlessly in the undergrowth. Whatever resentful energy had animated them was weak, distant, sealed away, or all three. They certainly weren’t under conscious control.
As Jin Ling groused about wild goose chases and wasted time, Lan Jingyi approached the face of the rocky mound furthest from the lumbering corpses. There was something…off about how the stones were positioned. It wasn’t that they were too regular, they were anything but. The gaps between them seemed too few and too bare. Something was amiss, but Lan Jingyi couldn't quite place it. As he touched his fingertips gently to the closest stone, green motes began to dance before his eyes and he snatched his hand away.
“Something wrong?” Lan Sizhui’s question came from behind Lan Jingyi. He answered without turning, frowning at the rocks in front of him.
“I’m not sure,” replied Lan Jingy, reaching out again hesitantly, marvelling at the way this made the sparks swirl and multiply. He’d seen those last night as he completed the luck array. So it was working. Working and trying to tell him something.
“We’re leaving,” snapped Jin Ling. He and Ouyang Zizhen were making their way back up the slope having already disposed of the few corpses silently and efficiently.
“But…” Lan Jingyi trailed off, uncertain what his objection was.
Ouyang Zizhen smiled. “There’s no night hunt here for us, Jingyi. Let’s head back.”
Back. Back to the sect and the conference, to the discussions and treaties, to duty and going years without seeing his friends.
Lan Jingyi took hold of the nearest rock and pulled, hard.
For a long moment, nothing happened bar the others looking perplexed at Lan Jingyi’s unexpected foray into landscape gardening. Then came the noise.
It started quietly, seemingly from a point deep inside the hill, then rose in volume until the earth began to tremble with it; a low-pitched inhuman groaning. Soil began to slide down the outcrop, first in a trickle, then a hissing flood. Smaller stones followed, Lan Jingyi back-stepping to avoid them even as he watched fissures appear and widen between the rocks.
“Jingyi! Come on!” Lan Sizhui had a hold of Lan Jingyi’s sleeve, all but dragging him away from the collapsing hill. As they scrambled back up the path, there was a final deafening crack as part of the embankment gave way entirely.
“What the fuck was that?” snarled Jin Ling, hauling Lan Jingyi into the relative safety of the trees as he reached the brow of the hill.
Lan Jingyi didn’t respond, brushing off Jin Ling’s grip and stepping carefully back onto the partially destroyed path. He stopped before the broken-off edges that had fallen away, peering forwards. It was impossible to see what had happened down at the bottom of the slope; the landslide had thrown thick dust into the air, obscuring Lan Jingyi’s view.
“Is that…” began Ouyang Zizhen, hesitantly. “Is that dust getting thicker?”
Frowning, Lan Jingyi realised he could barely see the expression mirrored on the faces of his companions, despite their proximity. The dust wasn’t dissipating like it should, and, while it may or may not have been getting thicker, it seemed to be getting darker, black now rather than the ochre of the soil it came from. The noise was strange, too. Lan Jingyi had assumed the groaning sound was the earth shifting and crumbling, but it was still going. And now it sounded almost like —
“Oh shit,” whispered Lan Jingyi, dropping the rock he had kept in his hand with a thump that fixed the attention of all his friends in his direction.
“What is it?” demanded Jin Ling.
“This isn’t dust, “replied Lan Jingyi. “Or, at least, it’s not just dust. It’s—”
“Resentful energy,” confirmed Lan Sizhui, eyeing the hill warily.
Motioning for the others to stay where they were, Jin Ling began to creep down the slope, stepping carefully around fissures and missing chunks of earth. Within moments, he had melted into the dust, the eyes of everyone else trained anxiously on the spot where he disappeared. After a tense interval, he reappeared, face pinched.
“There is a fucking army of walking corpses down there. That hill must have been full of them. There’s too many to take on – we need to go back for help, and we need to do it silently.”
“Too late,” whispered Lan Sizhui, tilting his chin in the direction of a group of walking corpses who had stumbled through the trees and inadvertently flanked the cultivators.
Ouyang Zizhen touched his hand to the hilt of his sword and raised an eyebrow at Jin Ling, who shook his head. Too many, he mouthed, pointing in the direction of the foot of the hill.
Run? asked Lan Sizhui. Jin Ling shook his head, looking around with mounting frustration. He couldn’t explain it without speaking aloud, but Lan Jingyi recognised the problem. If they ran, they would draw the horde into the open, either leading them directly to the sect or sending them stumbling into the path of people from nearby villages. They needed a means of escape.
Reaching into his sleeve, Lan Jingyi pulled out an attention-diverting talisman; another of Wei Wuxian’s inventions, and one they were all familiar with. He raised it to Jin Ling’s eye level, head tilted in question. Jin Ling nodded and moved closer, motioning for Ouyang Zizhen and Lan Sizhui to join them in a huddle so the effect would cover them all.
The first trickle of Lan Jingyi’s qi into the paper brought the dancing emerald sparks back into his field of vision. What was that? His infusion of the talisman stuttered to stop as he pawed at his eyes and blinked. A sharp elbow jabbed into Lan Jingyi’s side.
Hurry up! If Jin Ling had been able to use his voice, he would definitely have been shouting. Alarmed, Lan Jingyi flooded the talisman with spiritual energy, momentarily tinging the forest, the sky, his friends and everything else he could see a different colour, like it had all been plunged underwater.
Then all hell broke loose.
First, the nearby walking corpses whipped around, their movements suddenly sharp and precise. Then came the sound of a horrifying volume of footsteps, all beelining for the cultivators, the heads of the foremost corpses in the main horde already visible over the brow of the hill.
“NOW WE RUN,” yelled Jin Ling, taking to his heels.
Lan Jingyi turned to follow, the first step he took snagging his leg impossibly into undergrowth that suddenly seemed ten times denser than it had been. He caught a glimpse of retreating robes before he fell, crumpling to the ground as purple lightning split the sky.
***
“How did we end up here?”
It was a very good question, and one Lan Jingyi feared he was incapable of answering coherently with Jiang-zongzhu’s words rumbling against his back and their thighs pressed together in an unbroken line.
The here in question, for Lan Jingyi, was wedged between the sect leader's legs, straddling the bough of a tree. Specifically, the only bough of the tree sturdy enough to take the weight of two men. It was also the only tree in a clearing crammed with so many walking corpses they seemed to be a feature of the landscape rather than an addition to it.
Carefully, Lan Jingyi shifted forwards, trying to make some literal breathing space. The branch creaked and dipped precariously, sending Lan Jingyi scrambling back, pushing into Jiang-zongzhu and trying to ignore the hissed intake of breath from behind him and the flood of warmth through his own body.
As much to distract himself as to answer the question, Lan Jingyi began to talk. “How did we get here? Well, first, you untangled me from the thicket I fell into after you cut your way through to me with Zidian. Then —”
The sigh from behind Lan Jingyi rolled through him like a wave.
“Jingyi, have you ever heard of a rhetorical question?”
Jingyi? That was new.
“Although,” Jiang-zongzhu continued, drumming his fingers on the trunk, “that’s not a bad idea. Maybe if we go through what happened we can come up with some answers to…this.” The arm the sect leader waved in the direction of the corpses below set the branch swaying, and Lan Jingyi clutched the bark in front of him in a death grip. “So what came next?”
“Umm, after that I fell in a stream and you had to mount Sandu to rescue me,” replied, Lan Jingyi, glad Jiang-zongzhu couldn’t see the blush creeping over his face.
“Yes, and then you did an impromptu dismount and I had to pull you out of the bog you landed in.” As close as they were, Lan Jingyi couldn’t miss the sound or feel of the sect leader chuckling.
“Well I’m glad you find it funny – I’ve come closer to dying more times tonight than I have in the rest of my life put together. And I haven’t lived a boring life!” Lan Jingyi folded his arms huffily across his chest, the movement tilting him off balance.
“Easy,” said Jiang-zongzhu, snugging an arm around Lan Jingyi’s waist to right him. “I’m not laughing at you; the entire situation is ridiculous.” Silence fell but for the shuffling of the walking corpses as the two contemplated their situation. The sect leader showed no sign of moving his arm from its new position, which was, Lan Jingyi decided, absolutely fine and the sole good thing to have happened to him that day.
“It is strange,” Jiang-zongzhu continued eventually, sounding out each word like a man thinking over a puzzle out loud. “We ended up here,” he said, slapping the trunk of the tree with his free hand in an impressive display of balance, “because the entire horde followed us, and the only way to get away from them all was to qinggong up a tree. Why did none of them follow Jin Ling? Or Lan Sizhui?”
He was right. The others had escaped because they had no pursuers. And none of them had fallen in any streams or bogs. It seemed terribly unfair that Lan Jingyi had all the bad luc—
“Ah.” The realisation escaped Lan Jingyi’s throat in a puff of air.
“What?”
When he didn’t receive an answer, Jiang-zongzhu leant forwards, strands of his hair brushing against Lan Jingy’s cheek as warm breath fanned the back of his neck. There would be no disguising his racing heartbeat now; Lan Jingyi hoped it would be put down to the confession he was about to make.
“This…” Lan Jingyi hesitated. The man was definitely going to kill him. ”This is all my fault.”
“Explain,” Jiang-zongzhu commanded, failing entirely to make Lan Jingyi’s life easier by moving back to his previous position.
“The horde – I set them loose. They’d been contained, but I set off a landslide that freed them.”
“Set off a landslide?” scoffed Jiang-zongzhu. “By yourself?”
“I know. Impressive, right?” This elicited a response; the arm around Lan Jingyi tightened. Well, if Sandu Shengshou had wanted formality, he shouldn’t have been hugging Lan Jingyi and breathing in his ear. “I think it’s all to do with the array I set up last night.”
“An array? That explains the racket coming from your room.” The sect leader sounded curious, but not angry. Lan Jingyi allowed himself to relax a little despite the ravening masses below him. He might still die, but it wouldn’t be by Jiang-zongzhu’s hand.
“You heard that?” Emboldened by their proximity, Lan Jingyi pushed for answers. “Why didn’t you investigate?”
“Enter another man’s bedchamber? Not without an invitation,” the sect leader replied, lightly.
Lan Jingyi froze. Was Jiang-zongzhu flirting with him? Impossible. Regardless, he shifted back fractionally on the branch before continuing.
“I was constructing a luck array,” admitted Lan Jingyi, “and I think it has backfired.”
Behind him, Jiang-zongzhu made a noise which Lan Jingyi chose to interpret as encouragement to continue.
“I’ve been getting visual disturbances since then; when I touched the rock that triggered the landslide and again when I used the attention-diverting talisman. Which, I think, is how we ended up in this tree.”
“Well, since we’re stuck here, let’s see if we can’t work it out. We’ll start with the talisman.” Jiang-zongzhu leant back and removed his arm from Lan Jingyi’s waist to hold out his hand; Lan Jingyi mourned the loss of contact even as he rifled through his sleeves.
The proffered talisman disappeared behind Lan Jingyi as the sect leader began to examine it.
“Hmm.” Lan Jingyi could feel the pulse of Jiang-zongzhu’s qi as he examined the paper and made non-committal sounds.
“What does ‘Hmm’ mean? Is that a good or a bad noise?” Burning with curiosity, Lan Jingyi twisted as much as he could without upsetting his balance, first one way then the other, trying to see what was going on behind him.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Jiang-zongzhu concluded. “It should have worked perfectly. Do you have another?” The sect leader took the fresh talisman Lan Jingyi offered. “Now stop squirming – it’s distracting.”
A surge of spiritual energy and drifts of ash floating to the ground signalled the demise of the original talisman. Several bu below, the walking corpses changed pattern, breaking their encirclement of the tree and beginning to fan out, bumping into one another as they went.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Lan Jingy. “They’re acting normally again. The new talisman must be working.”
“I haven’t even activated it yet,” replied Jiang-zongzhu. “I didn’t need to. Whatever the hell you did to the last one was drawing them to it, acting like a magnet. We’ll let them disperse and then, if I need to, I’ll use the new one to get us out of here.”
The horde was already dissipating, heading back in the direction of the outcrop they’d come from. Lan Jingyi watched the stragglers as they moved away. Individually, from a distance, the corpses were pitiful rather than frightening. “What happened to them all to create so much resentful energy?” Lan Jingyi sighed and averted his eyes. “I hope the others return with help soon; these souls deserve peace.”
“We could figure it out ourselves,” said Jiang-zongzhu, sounding thoughtful. "I’d hate to leave a night hunt unfinished, and I think we’re both due a bit of the limelight.”
Lan Jingyi snorted. “Where would we even start? Right now I’m more likely to lead us to quicksand than answers.”
“Then it’s just as well I’m here,” replied Jiang-zongzhu. “There’s some half-collapsed roofs visible above the treeline over there. Maybe an abandoned village?”
“Really?” Lan Jingyi rotated in place, trying to catch a glimpse of what the sect leader had described. Two strong hands gripped his hips, holding him in place and sending bolts of warmth to the pit of his stomach.
“I said, stop squirming,” Jiang-zongzhu growled, punctuating his words by squeezing his fingers tighter, his thumbs tracing lines on the small of Lan Jingyi’s back.
Biting off a groan, Lan Jingyi stifled the urge to grind back, likely tipping them both off their perch in the process. “That,” he breathed, “is not going to persuade me to move less.”
Jiang-zongzhu was pressed against him again, hair spilling over Lan Jingyi’s shoulder, humid breath behind his ear. His lips must be so close. If Lan Jingyi just turned his head, he could probably —
Green flowers bloomed before Lan Jingyi’s eyes. He drew breath to shout a warning as the bough broke and sent them both into free fall.
***
“I did try to warn you,”
“Next time,” Jiang-zongzhu tsked, “try harder; especially if the caution you are about to give involves tumbling out of a tree.”
“What, and miss seeing you land on your feet and catch me before I hit the ground? Never. It was…” – Hot, thought Lan Jingyi. It was hot – “...romantic.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Jiang-zongzhu. “Who on earth would think that was romantic? It’s just good sense.”
"Of course, Zongzhu.”
“Please stop calling me that. I think we passed that point somewhere between pulling you out of the mud by your feet and spooning in a tree.”
“Of course, Jiang Wanyin,” complied Lan Jingyi, teasing.
The sect leader snorted and picked up the pace, emerging from the forest path into the village he had spotted earlier. It was derelict, the elements having reduced the simple wooden huts to skeletons with gaping sockets where the windows and doorways had been. Lan Jingyi shivered.
“There.” Jiang Wanyin was pointing to the far end of the settlement, to the only intact building. “A temple?”
“Let’s find out.”
Up close, it became clear why the structure was in better shape than the rest of the village.
“Stone? Obviously, the owner didn't believe in bad omens,” remarked Lan Jingyi.
“Or they were comfortable with the dead.” Jiang Wanyin pushed the door, which swung open with a disappointing lack of portentous creaking.
Inside, the air was still and stale and the shadows deep enough to be impenetrable to non-cultivators. As it was, it took Lan Jingyi long moments to adapt to the darkness, his vision marred by shapes that could have been caused by either his bad luck or his straining eyes.
Instinctively, Lan Jingyi turned to close the door behind them, a layer of precaution against being taken by surprise. It stuck fast halfway through its arc, and he channelled a little qi to get it moving again.
“Maybe it would be better if I did that, Jingyi, given the sort of —” Jiang Wanyin broke off with a sigh as the lintel above the door split with a sickening crack, collapsing the doorway and sending Lan Jingyi scrambling backwards.
When the dust settled, Lan Jingyi winced and braced himself to break the news. “We, uh… We’re trapped again.”
“So I gathered,” replied Jiang Wanyin, flatly.
Lan Jingyi levelled a scowl at him, but the sect leader had already turned his back, staring at the far corner of the room they were stuck in. Lan Jingyi followed the line of his focus and stifled a gasp. “Is that —”
“No. Just another Yiling Laozu wannabe.”
The contorted body of a cultivator lay in the corner, limbs twisted, rents torn in his familiar black and red robes. As they approached the area where he’d fallen, Lan Jingyi could see chunks of wall missing, and deep scratches hewn in the floorboards.
“Qi deviation,” concluded Lan Jingyi.
Jiang Wanyin nodded in agreement, gathering scattered scrolls from the floor and shuffling through them, skimming their contents. He stopped to read one more carefully, his face twisting in distaste; wordlessly, he handed it to Lan Jingyi.
“He killed them all. Whole families. Everybody.” The scroll drifted to the floor as it fell from Lan Jingyi’s hand. “And then he dumped them in the forest and walled them in.” Lan Jingyi knotted his brows as he tried to work it out. “To build resentful energy? And to make sure it couldn’t dissipate?” he asked, looking to Jiang Wanyin for confirmation.
“That would be my guess,” he answered. He seemed tired. Sickened
“Then how did he end up…” Lan Jingyi gestured at the body in the corner.
“He was probably trying to manipulate all the resentful energy using his own qi,” Jiang Wanyin shrugged. “He couldn't know that wasn’t how — Does it matter? He got what he deserved. Let’s focus on undoing the damage he caused.” The sect leader was already moving, putting as much distance between himself and the fallen cultivator as their current situation would allow. Lan Jingyi followed, turning his back without a second glance. They had both seen worse.
Back at the collapsed doorway, Jiang Wanyin prodded at the fallen stonework, no doubt planning their escape route. “You’re a Lan – can you play Eradication? If we go back to the source of the resentful energy?”
Lan Jingyi laughed. “Absolutely not. You’ll need Hanguang-jun for that. Maybe Sizhui at a push. Neither of them would do it though – those poor souls don’t deserve it. I could just about manage Rest, but not without an instrument. Besides, I wouldn’t risk it in my current…situation. Only the gods know what effect it would end up having. Maybe I’d turn them into chickens.”
“Your situation… I think it’s about time we spoke about that.” Jiang Wanyin turned away from the rubble and focused his attention on Lan Jingyi. “A backfiring luck array, right?”
“Uh-huh,” hedged Lan Jingyi.
“Why?”
“Oh, I have no idea why it backfired,” replied Lan Jingyi. Equivocation was one of his special talents; he could talk around a subject extensively without ever breaking commandments about telling lies.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” The sect leader wasn’t going to let this go. He moved closer, pressing for answers.
“Fine,” sighed Lan Jingyi. “It isn’t as easy as it used to be, to keep up with my friends. Jin Ling and Ouyang Zizhen are sect leaders now, or near as damn it. And Sizhui…Well, I’ll never be a model Lan like him. It’s hard to live up to.”
“So you decided to give yourself an advantage?” Jiang Wanyin kept moving nearer; Lan Jingyi shied away from him and the question until his back hit the wall of the temple, eyes downcast. “You didn’t need to.” The sect leader’s fingertips gently gripped his chin, lifting his face until Lan Jingyi couldn’t avoid looking at him any longer. “You might not be the model Lan, but you’ve always been the most interesting.”
“Is that why you’ve been flirting with me?” Lan Jingyi challenged, heart racing.
Jiang Wanyin hummed. “That and the way you stare at me.”
“Last night?” Lan Jingyi couldn’t help a stab of disappointment. He hadn’t been as subtle as he thought.
“You’ve been doing it for longer than that.”
Ah. Not subtle at all, then. Lan Jingyi decided he could live with his failings, given the circumstances.
Jiang Wanyin’s fingers were migrating, ghosting down Lan Jingyi’s neck and tracking his collar bones through his robes. “And…” The sect leader broke off, intent on tracing patterns across Lan Jingyi’s chest.
“And?” prompted Lan Jingyi.
“You also spent the better part of the night sitting in my lap. Squirming.” Jiang Wanyin grasped Lan Jingyi’s hand with his free one, lifting it above Lan Jingyi’s head and pressing it to the wall. “It’s hard to ignore.”
Lan Jingyi let his mouth fall open slightly, trailing the tip of his tongue across his lower lip. Jiang Wanyin lifted his hand from Lan Jingyi’s chest to brush his thumb slowly along the glistening line on his mouth. Lan Jingyi made a needy sound and swayed forwards, stopped short by the hand pinning him to the wall.
Smiling, Jiang Wanyin leant down, catching Lan Jingyi’s lower lip between both of his and sucking gently before flicking his tongue, featherlight, along the path his thumb had taken. He withdrew and whispered in Lan Jingyi’s ear.
“Are you feeling luckier?”
“Much,” groaned Lan Jingyi, fisting his free hand in Jiang Wanyin’s robes and tugging him closer. They were kissing again, and the sect leader’s tongue was in his mouth, and his hands were on his thighs, and it was all so much. Lan Jingyi was seeing stars.
Green stars.
With an effort, he shoved Jiang Wanyin away, gasping for breath. “Something’s about to —”
The debris that had once been the doorway of the temple rattled before erupting across the room, showering Lan Jingyi in dirt for the third time that night. Before he had a chance to turn away completely, Jiang Wanyin swept him to the ground, covering him with his body.
“Are we interrupting something?” Lan Jingyi couldn’t see anything but a faceful of Jiang Wanyin’s robes, but would have recognised the voice, and its playful tone, anywhere.
“Yes, Wei-qianbei,” spat Lan Jingyi, extricating himself enough to glare over Jiang Wanyin’s shoulder. “ As a matter of fact, you are.”
“Good,” laughed Wei Wuxian. “You deserve it. Lan Sizhui has told us what happened – I knew you had a flair for the dramatic, Jingyi, but setting off a landslide? Desecrating a temple?” He held a hand out to help Lan Jingyi to his feet, raising his eyebrows when Jiang Wanyin slapped it away and righted Lan Jingyi himself.
Wei Wuxian shrugged. “Shall we see what has been going on here?”
“No need,” replied Jiang Wanyin. “Jingyi worked it out.” Tersely, he began to lay out the details for Wei Wuxian, pointing intermittently to the dead cultivator in the far corner of the room. He needn’t have bothered. Wei Wuxian was too busy mouthing ‘Jingyi?’ and waggling his eyebrows when his erstwhile shidi wasn’t looking.
“Fine,” Wei Wuxian interrupted, obviously a little disappointed he didn’t provoke a reaction. “I get the idea. We’ll go back to where the villagers were walled up and Lan Zhan will liberate them. We can argue about who gets the credit when we return to Baling.”
Outside, the sky was finally becoming lighter. Hanguang-jun and Wei Wuxian mounted Bichen, their arms curling naturally around one another. “Aren’t you coming?” Wei Wuxian asked when Jiang Wanyin made no move to unsheathe Sandu.
“I’ve got something better to do.”
“I’m sure you do,” Wei Wuxian remarked. He nodded to his husband and the pair took off across the sky. Lan Jingyi watched them until they were specks on the horizon.
“So,” said Lan Jingyi, turning to Jiang Wanyin and pressing closer than necessary. “What’s the ‘something better’?”
“We,” said Jiang Wanyin, readying his sword, “are going straight to Baling.” He mounted and lifted Lan Jingyi up in front of him, snugging them back to chest in an echo of the time they spent in the tree. “We are going to utterly dismantle whatever cursed array you built, and then,” he continued, smoothing his palm down Lan Jingyi’s abdomen for emphasis, “we are going to carry on where we left off.”
Lan Jingyi smiled as they rose into the coming morning. Maybe they could skip demolishing the array – his luck was changing already.