Chapter Text
A/N - This is a very self-indulgent fic. I have a visceral need to write a story about finding a safe place in a dangerous/prejudiced world, and being able to carve it out and shape it with one's own hands. Because in general, the world just sucks and I wanted a fic where they get to sort of.... start over. Thank you to Kimya and Scourge for reading through the early chapters and encouraging me to continue. And thank you, as always, to Zazgeek for beta-ing it!
This specifics of this universe was inspired by a comment I read where someone asked MXTX if there was an emperor during the period of MDZS, and she said yes. It got me thinking about wtf that guy must have thought about the whole ‘massive, never-ending war’ thing. This is modeled a bit after what happened to China after the fall of the Han Dynasty through the Three Kingdoms era (where some estimates say nearly 2/3rds - 3/4ths of the population was killed/died).
Please note that this is a cannon time period cultivation universe, but NOT a cannon storyline at all. It’s not a reincarnation fic and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, etc were not involved with the past war between the cultivation world that is referenced in this story. Maybe it was Wen Ruohan, Jin Guangshan, etc but maybe not. Other power-hungry, terrible leaders would have worked just as well. (But in my head it was jgs, because he is just stupid like that.)
Wei Wuxian looked down at the carefully drawn cinnabar talisman on his chest. It would only need one more line, drawn in his blood, to activate.
Despite what some might claim, he was not entirely reckless. He knew that news of the demon attack on the small border village would have reached the ears of the Emperor’s soldiers in the same way it had reached his own. The Emperor of the Middle Kingdom would likely send a large number of troops to deal with the situation, given the number of deaths involved.
Of course, many of those soldiers would likely die if they actually managed to find it before Wei Wuxian did. But it wouldn’t matter to the Emperor. He would send them regardless.
After all, the aristocracy could only maintain popular support for its purge of all cultivators if they were seen as able to keep their people safe from the things that went bump in the night.
Since the scourge of resentful energy that had been unleashed in the western regions centuries ago had turned the territories there into a virtual wasteland, there were a lot of things that went bump in the night. Particularly on the western borders of the inhabitable world that bled into the beginning of the Blighted Lands.
To the west of the border villages, the land was filled with powerful resentful creatures and the earth and water were too tainted to grow crops. What remained of civilization had been squeezed into three smaller kingdoms in the eastern third of China.
Everything had been upended when the hordes of resentful spirits, fierce corpses, and demons that inhabited the Burial Mounds had been set loose upon the world by the leader of one of the Great Cultivation Sects in the midst of a war that had been dragging on for years.
In a desperate bid for victory, one of the sects had broken the barrier wards around the Burial Mounds, ravaging the surrounding lands with thousands upon thousands of resentful creatures, along with a deluge of resentful energy.
The move was ill-conceived, as the creatures knew no master, killing cultivators and civilians alike.
The sects had so weakened themselves in the war that there were not enough cultivators left to fight the scourge that cursed the lands. Entire villages and even provinces were wiped out, the dead left untended, only adding to the plague of resentful energy and creatures across the region.
History did not record which sect had broken the wards, with the records of that period having been largely lost to the chaos of the times. It was also unclear if the cultivator who had done it had thought he would somehow be able to control it, or if he had realized he was losing and had decided to take the rest of the world with him.
If it had been the latter, he had succeeded to a fairly impressive degree, bringing about the eradication of the Cultivation World and a substantial loss of civilian life, particularly in the central and western regions. The pettiness of the cultivation elite made it worse by using the distraction of the Burial Mounds to continue to attack each other.
The Emperor at the time—tired of the years of war between the Great Sects that had cost thousands of civilian lives and devastated much of the civilian trade and agriculture across China—finally saw his moment to strike.
In the past, even with the Emperor's armies, the Great Sects had been too powerful for him to intervene in their wars. However, the sects had depleted their ranks and resources through years of war with endless atrocities that they committed against each other in their quest for power and revenge.
When the Emperor finally mobilized his armies with the full support of the aristocracy behind him, the execution of the few remaining cultivators was swift and ruthless. The practice of cultivation was banned, punishable by death. Even simply being in possession of cultivation books or artifacts would get one sent to the headsman's axe.
Unfortunately, no one had been able to predict the full devastation that the destruction of the wards that had kept the Burial Mounds contained over the centuries would bring, or the fact that the resentful energy released from the Burial Mounds would combine in an exponential way with the resentment of the war dead in the lands surrounding them.
The resulting blight of resentful energy and creatures had been overwhelming.
The inhabitable world had been cut in half by the devastation. While the most dangerous creatures stayed close to the epicenter of the Burial Mounds and surrounding territories, there were occasionally creatures that would stray further afield, looking for fresh prey. (Sometimes, there were simply resentful creatures that would form due to the cruelty of the civilian world, but the aristocracy was careful to nip any such talk in the bud and firmly blame the dead cultivation world for any and all spiritual maladies).
The Emperor's soldiers, with their mundane blades, always faced high casualties whenever they had to go up against such a creature. Not to mention the number of civilians that would continue to die in the meantime until the troops arrived.
Which was why Wei Wuxian found himself headed towards an area that would soon be swarming with soldiers who would be just as keen to kill him as they would be to kill the demon. The soldiers had killed his parents after all. But he could not simply stand by and let the slaughter happen.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t go unprepared.
Being seen wielding (or even possessing) a spiritual sword was the quickest way to find oneself surrounded by imperial soldiers. This was why Wei Wuxian’s sword looked mundane with its dark, unadorned wood scabbard and sheath. Unlike the cultivators in the stories of the past, who carried intricate, gilded spiritual weapons that shone with spiritual power even when sheathed, Wei Wuxian’s sword looked completely unremarkable at a glance. Until he drew his blade, no one would recognize it as a spiritual weapon.
Even then, though, being seen with a sword of any type was dangerous. The only people who carried swords were soldiers and cultivators, and his rough-spun, hemp robes showed he was clearly not the former.
His bow, at least, was that of a simple hunter and a weapon he could carry without concern on his back. His father had been a hunter, feeding his family with his bow and making a small amount of money selling his game to vendors in his hometown. He had taught Wei Wuxian to be an excellent archer, which had given him the skills to be able to feed himself with and make enough money for his basic necessities as he wandered on the fringes of a society that rejected him and those like him, posing as a hunter.
But even hunters were only allowed to have a dagger for cleaning their kills, not a sword.
There were a few exceptions, with some villagers in the western edge of the kingdom being allowed to own swords to fight as part of a village guard given the occasional restless corpse that appeared. That was Wei Wuxian’s cover story, in case he ever got caught with his blade.
But he generally kept the sword concealed beneath his cloak or in his qiankun bag unless he was actively using it. In reality, if his weapons came under close scrutiny, his story would never hold up. The blade of his sword and the tips of his arrows were imbued with the intense spiritual power that he had spent most of his life cultivating. Once he drew the blade, the glow of his strong spiritual power made its true nature unmistakable. But if he needed to draw his blade in the first place where he could be seen, then he was likely already fucked.
It wasn’t just the spiritual nature of his weapons that was disguised.
While much of what had actually occurred during the Great Cultivation War was unclear, with most records destroyed either during the war itself or the Great Purge of the surviving cultivators that came after, there had been tales of someone or something that had been able to crush a cultivator’s Golden Core.
Wei Wuxian’s mother had not been able to find out for sure if it had been something the Emperor had developed, or one of the many atrocities the Great Sects had been committing against each other. In either case, she had created a talisman that would disguise someone’s spiritual power as long as they weren’t actively channeling it in order to protect her son.
She had carved it into a simple pendant that Wei Wuxian wore constantly around his neck, held by a leather cord, hidden beneath his robes. He had worn it every day since his mother had had decided to train him in the ways of cultivation she had learned from her Master.
Her husband had insisted that she wear one as well, and they had made matching pendants that concealed their cores from others while dormant.
In the end, it hadn’t saved her.
The way a cultivator fought was too fast and too strong to be mistaken for anything else. But Wei Wuxian wore his both in honor of his mother, and as protection on the off-chance the skill for identifying and destroying a golden core still existed somewhere in the world.
It also concealed his core from demons just as well as it did from humans, which could sometimes be an advantage.
Given the likelihood that he would need to leave the area immediately following the hunt, he packed up all of his belongings from the small inn he had scraped together enough bronze coins to stay in for a single night out of the cold.
Then he headed out and hoped he would find the demon before the soldiers found him.
He arrived shortly after dusk at the remains of the village that had been destroyed by the demon. His heart ached at the sight of a group of children who had been torn apart by the creature. The bodies of their parents and caregivers lay close by, dying as they had tried to protect them.
He closed his eyes briefly, wishing he had time to properly lay the dead to rest. The best he could do was murmur a few words of peace to send them on their way, and hope that they had a better chance in their next life. The soldiers would see to proper burials when they came.
Wei Wuxian’s job was to make sure another village did not suffer the same fate before they arrived.
He had hoped to find someone alive that he could ask about the creature, but there was no one. The moon began to rise along with the night wind. The stark silence in what must once have been a small, bustling settlement felt heavy in the cold, winter air.
He stilled his breathing, letting his senses stretch. He was unusually sensitive to resentful energy. His mother—who had grown up in the rarefied air of the celestial mountain of an immortal—did not have the same ability. She had theorized that it was the time they had spent hiding from imperial soldiers in land steeped with resentful energy while Wei Wuxian was still forming his Golden Core that had made him so attuned to it.
He could sense that the creature was still nearby. If he could find it, it would be easier to kill before night fully set, as its strength would grow once the darkness blanketed the land.
He kept his sword sheathed, masking its spiritual power while he hunted. His mother had taught him that the most dangerous resentful creatures were drawn to spiritual energy, since consuming it increased their own powers significantly. Absorbing the spiritual energy of one moderate cultivator was the equivalent of consuming over a hundred non-cultivators. Demons who had learned this sought them out, particularly with cultivators now being so rare.
Wei Wuxian preferred to be the hunter, not the prey, so he kept his sword sheathed and his arrows in their quiver as he walked into the forest in the direction where he sensed the strong concentration of resentful.
There was no sound of the imperial soldiers approaching, so he removed his heavy winter cloak and stored it in his qiankun bag, readying himself for the fight as he walked deeper into the woods.
He had just entered a small clearing when a flash of white caught his eye.
Standing in the branches of a tall tree was the most beautiful man he had ever seen.
For a moment, Wei Wuxian was speechless looking at the way the man’s elegant, pristine white robes glowed in the moonlight. The layered silk of them swayed gracefully in the icy breeze, giving only the slightest whisper of sound as they moved. The sheath of the sword at the man’s hip was white and silver and glowed with a pure light that rivaled even the moon.
There was no doubt in Wei Wuxian’s mind that this man was a cultivator. In fact, the man seemed to have gone out of his way to make that clear. Silk robes were forbidden for anyone but the aristocracy to wear. In the past, cultivators had been included amongst those ranks, but that was most definitely no longer true.The man was dressed in traditional cultivator robes, something that even Wei Wuxian’s mother had stopped doing within days of coming down from the Mountain given the danger being caught even owning them would bring.
How could the man be so fearless in his appearance? The man looked like he had stepped out of an ancient story of cultivators rather than someone Wei Wuxian could meet in real life.
Maybe it was because, unlike Wei Wuxian, this cultivator was not alone. Perhaps he had a community to return to: People to look out for him. People to train him. People to help him if he were injured.
All the things Wei Wuxian did not have.
“I never thought I’d see another cultivator,” Wei Wuxian said, half in shock.
He had been searching for years to find any sign that he was not the only cultivator remaining, and abruptly being confronted with living proof that he was not alone was something he hadn’t been braced for.
The man narrowed his eyes, his face a cold mask that gave little away.
“Leave,” the cultivator said warningly.
Wei Wuxian blinked at the unfriendly tone.
He had been so excited to finally have met someone who was like him that the rejection cut a lot deeper than he was used to.
“Are you alone? Are there others? Where have you been staying?“ Wei Wuxian tried again, one question tumbling after the other in a flood of hope.
Instead of replying, the man drew his sword and attacked.
Wei Wuxian stepped back in surprise, his quick reflexes the only thing that saved him from losing his sword arm.
“Hey! What the fuck?!”
The man did not reply other than to bring his blade around for another strike. Wei Wuxian blocked it with his still-sheathed sword, noticing that the man was trying to disable, not kill. But he could not afford to lose an arm or a hand.
Wei Wuxian spun away, giving himself space to draw his own sword just in time to meet the next strike of the man’s blade. The spiritual energy of Wei Wuxian’s sword surged out to clash against that of the other cultivator.
The man’s eyes widened in shock and Wei Wuxian moved forward to press his advantage. He would not kill him, but he was not going to let himself simply be cut down, either.
It had been a long time since Wei Wuxian had sparred against someone wielding a sword, and even longer since he’d crossed blades with a cultivator. His mother had been killed when he was ten, along with his father. Wei Wuxian had briefly tried to train with the guards of one of the local villages when he was twelve, hoping to find a way to fit into the world and use his skills, but his speed and strength had drawn suspicion within a year. He’d been forced to flee in the night to avoid being taken in for questioning.
The man whose sword was locked with his was able to meet Wei Wuxian strength for strength, speed for speed, something that even the most senior soldiers in the village guard hadn’t been able to do when Wei Wuxian had been only a child.
He wondered for a brief moment what it would be like to train with him instead of fighting against him, but the thought was a pointless one.
“Who -" the man began, but whatever question he was about to ask was cut short by the roar of the demon as it crashed into the clearing, drawn by the pull of their spiritual energy.
The beast was fast.
Wei Wuxian barely had time to slide his blade away from where it had crossed with the other man’s sword to block an attack from the creature’s claws. He worried for a moment whether the white-robed cultivator would take the opportunity to strike him down, but the man had also turned to face the demon.
Wei Wuxian breathed a small sigh of relief that he wouldn’t need to fight both the demon and a powerful cultivator simultaneously.
Despite having been enemies only seconds before, Wei Wuxian found himself falling into a natural fighting rhythm with the other cultivator. When one moved in, the other pulled back, forcing the creature to split its focus. When the white-robed man had moved in for a particularly skillful close attack, Wei Wuxian pulled out his bow and loosed an arrow with lightning speed. His shot found its mark, striking the beast in its eye with his spiritually powered arrow and earning a sharp look from the other cultivator.
When the other cultivator had to jump out of the way of what appeared to be poisonous spikes on the demon’s tail, Wei Wuxian charged in with his sword, directing his sword to cut deeper into the slash that the other man’s powerful blade had already opened on the beast’s body.
It wasn’t enough to take the creature down, though. The demon had obviously consumed enough human spiritual energy to be a very high level.
The other cultivator fought with a cold, efficient precision that spoke of both training and experience. The man did not speak, but he did at least follow the various suggestions that Wei Wuxian called out.
It was exhilarating being able to fight with another cultivator. Wei Wuxian found him envying the cultivators in the past who had the benefit of a clan to fight by their side. Night hunting would have been so much less risky with a companion.
It really was a shame that the only cultivator Wei Wuxian had ever met seemed intent to kill him on sight.
He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised, though, given that the cultivation world had imploded due to war breaking out between the clans and their apparently endless need to kill each other. He would have to remember that—just because they were both cultivators—it didn’t mean they would be on the same side.
As if sensing Wei Wuxian’s distraction, the creature turned, moving with preternatural speed. It would’ve caught him in the chest with his claws if the other cultivator hadn’t blocked it with the powerful arc of his glowing sword.
“Pay attention,” the man bit out sharply, the only words he’d spoken since the start of the battle.
Wei Wuxian couldn’t argue since the man had just saved him from getting seriously injured, and forced himself to focus on the battle at hand. If he got hurt, he would have no chance of escaping from the cultivator when the fight with the demon was over.
The creature leapt up high over their heads, then abruptly split into four different versions of itself. Both men stilled for an instant in surprise as they went from facing one opponent to four.
“What the fuck?” Wei Wuxian breathed.
He was an experienced night hunter, but he’d never seen anything like that.
He had no idea if it was an illusion or if the creature was truly able to replicate itself. He noticed that one of the demons seemed to be radiating the majority of the resentful energy, though, so he directed his next attack there. He was surprised to see the other cultivator’s sword arcing in the same direction. Perhaps he was able to sense the resentful energy the same way Wei Wuxian did.
“No shadow,” the man said in a bitten-off response to Wei Wuxian’s questioning look as both of their attacks struck home.
Wei Wuxian flicked his gaze to the ground and realized that only one of the creatures cast a shadow. The others must be illusions. Evidently, the other cultivator was more than just a pretty face with a strong sword arm.
Pity about the attitude.
The creature had not expected them to hone in on its true form so quickly, and seemed to have expended quite a bit of its energy on creating the illusion. Wei Wuxian and the other cultivator’s combined strikes of their spiritual swords into the already-opened fissures at the demon’s throat were enough to bring it down.
The white-robed man swung his blade a final time, removing the beast’s head from its body in a powerful flare of icy-blue spiritual energy.
“What even was that?” Wei Wuxian asked, still catching his breath as they both looked down at what remained of the demon. “I’ve never seen anything that could split itself like that, illusion or not.”
“Mm,” the other cultivator hummed in what Wei Wuxian thought might be agreement.
Wei Wuxian’s mother had said that there used to be beautifully illustrated books cataloging each type of resentful creature along with their abilities and how to liberate, suppress, or destroy them depending on how far gone it was.
It made Wei Wuxian frustrated to think of how much knowledge had been lost. It also made him think of the sealed qiankun bag he had under his robes—the only thing he still had from his mother—and what might be contained inside.
He wondered if the man would be open to revisiting the whole “let’s kill each other thing” now that they had fought together and taken down the demon, but before he could find out, an arrow flew through the air and embedded itself in Wei Wuxian's chest below his left shoulder.
The shock of the unexpected wound stunned him for an instant. It wasn’t a killing wound, but it would make fighting pretty much impossible (or at least excruciatingly painful) until he got it healed.
“Shit!“ Wei Wuxian choked out as he gripped the shaft of the arrow, bracing it to try to hold it still while he tried to get ready to defend against the unseen enemy.
He knew better than to pull it out without anything to bind the wound, but the way the arrow swayed with even the smallest of movements made it tear and pull with every breath. Their battle had drowned out the sound of the imperial scouts approaching through the forest, but he could hear the footsteps now. He could also hear the louder sound of a much larger group of soldiers rapidly approaching.
The cultivator he had just been fighting side-by-side with now turned on him with his weapon still drawn, his eyes burning with a cold anger.
Wei Wuxian leaped back, his body still slightly slow from shock. He had to get out of there immediately. He hoped that the arrowhead pierced his body high enough that it didn’t mess up the talisman he had drawn on his body. Whoever had shot the initial arrow was sure to have more. He leapt to the side just as another arrow whizzed by. Based on the sounds, they only had a minute or so before dozens of soldiers would be entering the clearing.
“Come with me,” the cultivator commanded in a cold, unyielding voice as he reached for Wei Wuxian’s arm.
“Fuck you,” Wei Wuxian said, dancing further back out of his reach as another arrow nearly ended the argument for them.
He was more upset than he would like to admit that the man still seemed to want him either dead or a prisoner. Without wasting another moment, he shoved his robes open just enough to be able to use the blood from his wound to complete the last stroke of the talisman he had inscribed earlier, while keeping the majority of the talisman concealed in case the other cultivator was able to read Seal Script.
It would only give him about twenty seconds to get away, but it would have to be enough.
He hadn’t anticipated needing to escape from a fellow cultivator who could also fly, but he hoped that the combination of the flare of light and his own abrupt disappearance would make it appear as though he’d used the fabled teleportation talisman that filled so many stories of cultivators. Wei Wuxian had never been able to find out if those had actually been real, since they had been even more rare than qiankun bags, but there were enough stories about them still remaining that it would at least give that impression. It wasn't like there were enough cultivators left to prove him wrong.
The actual talisman he had created was much simpler. It simply created a flash of light while simultaneously making him invisible for a few seconds, allowing him to fly silently away. As long as there was no one physically touching him, the illusion of teleportation would hold.
The flare of light went off as expected, causing shouts from those around him as he disappeared from their view. He immediately mounted his sword and flew as high and fast as he could. He spotted the silver line of a river in the distance that he knew from the map he had studied earlier would lead him west and slightly north, away from civilization and to the relative safety of the outer edges of the Blighted Lands.
He ignored the shouts of surprise and anger coming from behind him, mentally counting down the seconds as he ignored the pain in his chest and pushed every bit of the remaining spiritual energy he could into the speed of his sword to maximize the distance between himself and the soldiers.
The soldiers would be hesitant to pursue him into the Blighted Lands, even if they suspected that was where he went. He was less sure about the other cultivator, but hoped that the man would be too focused on making his own escape to follow Wei Wuxian.
He didn’t regret coming to fight the demon. It was much more powerful than he had expected, and it was likely every single guard would have died in a failed attempt to kill it. But he couldn’t help the bitterness that filled him at the fact that they had shot him down even knowing he was there to help, that he and the white-robed cultivator had saved their lives.
Still, even with all of that, the thing that pained him the most was the bitter disappointment that he had finally found another cultivator, only to have the man draw his sword against him.
To be continued…
A/N - I have 63k words written on this fic, through chapter 13. This is the first time I have ever tried writing a fic in advance. The remaining 4 chapters are outlined, so this should be quick to post. All of the chapters are in 'first draft' form, so I will need to smooth them and clean them up as I post, but that should not take me more than a week per chapter. I hope?