Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian begins her second life with the acrid taste of resentment and copper blood in the back of her throat. She groans weakly from a scratched-raw throat and turns onto her side upon the cool stone of the floor. Wei Wuxian lays there and drifts for ages, recovering from being thrust back into the cold, unforgiving world. She doesn’t remember where she was before this, but anywhere is better than here.
Wei Wuxian is startled back into consciousness some time later by a loud band on the door beside her head.
“Wake up, Mo Xuanyu!” A nasally voice shouts, “I know you’re in there, tell me what you did with my knife, you brat!”
She didn’t do shit with your knife, gongzi. Let her go back to sleep please.
Another bang and the door slams open into Wei Wuxian’s head.
“Ack!” She yells, “Ai, ai, I’m here gongzi, that hurt!”
Wei Wuxian blinks her eyes open and comes face to face- well, foot- with a rotund boy whose face is steadily getting redder as he stares down at her. She blinks dumbly up at him and he grabs her by her dark robes to lift her off the dirty ground.
How rude! She thinks. That floor was comfortable!
Once she’s lifted up, the boy starts shouting and spitting at her about how she stole his knife and that she’d, “Regret ever messing with me, Mo Xuanyu!”. She ignores him; doesn’t he know it’s impolite to shout in your senior’s face? Who raised this kid?
She waits patiently for the boy to let go of her now wrinkled robes and leave, slamming the ramshackle door behind himself. It’s now that Wei Wuxian is alone and off the cool floor, she can better assess the situation she finds herself in. The room is small and dimly lit by a few melted candles on the floor. From the ceiling hang hundreds of talismans written in what look like blood and a large array drawn on the floor in the same red shade. Wei Wuxian frowns and squints at the drawing, she knows that array, she designed it!
Wei Wuxian crouches on the ground and examines the array closer. It’s a resurrection array, as suspected. Whoever this ‘Mo Xuanyu' person was, she was certainly dedicated to her craft! As she reaches a hand out to trace the array, Wei Wuxian notices four deep cuts in her forearm. They have a slight black tint to the edges, so she deduces that they’re probably the last wishes of the woman who resurrected her.
“Hmph,” she huffs, “I hope you don’t want me to massacre a load of people. I’m not who they said I am, Mo- guinang.”
In the corner of her eye, Wei Wuxian spies a bowl of water and is quickly reminded of how dry her throat is. She grabs the bowl, but stops before she drinks. The woman who looks back at her is- puzzling, to say the least. Her face is caked in makeup, obscuring her fine features. What a lunatic! Why would such a pretty young girl cover her face like this!
Wei Wuxian ruefully smiles to herself and her reflection smiles back, dimples poked in her cheeks. For a moment, one aching moment, Wei Wuxian can swear she sees her old face reflected back. It makes her grin falter and her chest sink.
She died, it sinks in. The demonic Yiling Matriarch, killed by her own resentment filling the place where her golden core once sat. What a pathetic life , she thinks.
“No matter,” she mutters to herself, “You’ve got a second chance now, A-Ying. Don’t screw it up again.”
First thing’s first though; find out where the hell she ended up.
Wei Wuxian can see why Mo Xuanyu took her first chance to get out, now. This place is a disaster, even by Wei Wuxian’s standards! She chuckles ruefully to herself and the little Lans sneak a look at her from where she haunts the veranda. These little kids swept into the Mo Manor like the Gusu mist and it made Wei Wuxian’s heart clench. They’re so young, their flowing blue and white robes look new and fresh as milk. Some of them don’t even have their forehead ribbons yet.
Were we ever that young, Lan Zhan? She thinks with a sad smile.
She wonders what Lan Wangji is up to now. Likely teaching from high up in the Gusu mountains, from his throne of purity and light. Wei Wuxian misses bathing in that light of his attention. She’s jolted from her memory by a possessed Mo family member slicing his clawed hand at her.
Time to get to work!
“Thank you for your help, Mo-qianbei!” one of the little Lans says with a sunny smile. They fought well, against the demonic hand that clawed and scratched something awful.
“Ah, it’s no problem! I was due for some excitement anyway,” she laughs.
One of the other Lans, the one who took charge tonight, ordering his sect siblings around like a militia, stares at Wei Wuxian with silver eyes that shine with intrigue.
“Mo- qianbei, I didn’t know you were so skilled with resentful energy,” the boy says. Something in his look, his face so open and calm, makes Wei Wuxian smile familiarly at him.
“It was just something I picked up!” she says to the boy, smiling at him, “I hope you all remember to write your reports from tonight, I know your senior will be on you otherwise,” she says, wagging her pathetic bamboo flute at them. She hopes she meets these little Lans again someday soon, but right now, she should get on her way out of here before a senior Lan disciple shows up with the memory of the Yiling Matriarch’s flute playing over the battlefield. Wei Wuxian waits until the boys are distracted cleaning up the aftermath of the fight, steals a donkey, and rides off into the forest.
The forest is a kind place, Wei Wuxian thinks. It doesn’t judge her for her quiet muttering or her caked-up face. It doesn’t toss shadows of her past back into the light. She sits atop a stubborn donkey and wonders what she’ll do next.
“I wonder if the people still know who I am. Yiling Matriarch, demon of the Burial Mounds, come to steal your husbands,” she snickers to herself. No doubt, with Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji in the world, the people would never stop resenting the Yiling Matriarch.
Lan Zhan, she thinks somberly, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan.
Wei Wuxian smiles soft and sad, reminiscing about the boy who would follow her to the end of her life, determined to save her wretched soul; even as that care turned into hatred. Lan Zhan must hate her, for all she did. She hopes he doesn’t.
It’s then that Wei Wuxian and her silly donkey are hoisted into the air by a spirit net, Wei Wuxian yelping all the while.
“Oi!” she shouts, “Come let us out! We’re people, not ghosts!-”
“Ugh,” a young voice scoffs, “How’d you get stuck in that? Don’t you know people are hunting out here?”
Wei Wuxian yelps indignantly, “Don’t blame me, kid! Why’d you even set a net up in the road anyway?”
The boy sighs and raises his bow. Wei Wuxian doesn’t even have the chance to yell before the net dumps her and her donkey in a heap on the ground. She groans, kids these days are so rough! She stands, rubbing her lower back comically and turning to face the boy. In the dim moonlight, she can begin to make out his features. He’s wearing Jin gold, with a vermillion mark between his brows. Something in the purse of his lips feels achingly familiar to Wei Wuxian, but she can’t quite put her finger on it.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners? How rude,” she admonishes.
The boy’s face darkens with such intensity that Wei Wuxian immediately knows she messed up. His hand tightens on his bow and he glares at her with a ferocity that makes her wonder who hurt this boy so.
“Ah,” she winces, “Nevermind. It’s none of my business anyway-”
A gruff shout blows through the trees, “Jin Ling! You’ve better have caught something in those nets, or I swear!”
Wei Wuxian freezes, her heart thudding in her chest and an ache of memory forming in her dantian. She knows that voice as well as she knows her own. It’s rougher with age, sure, but there’s no mistaking that tone. It almost feels like being back at Lotus Pier, knelt on the golden wood and sweat dripping down her temples as Madame Yu berated her for some inconsequential thing she did- or didn’t do- Madame Yu never really needed a reason to whip Wei Wuxian.
The boy- Jin Ling, Jin Ling - scowls at Wei Wuxian as he answers, “I caught a pest, jiujiu.”
Wei Wuxian stands there, frozen in place by her past clawing its way into her gut. Jiang Cheng marches over the hill and into the moonlight. His hair tied back in a severe knot and his dark, twilight colored robes cloaking him in the riches of the Yunmeng Jiang. His clarity bell swings on his belt beside the sheath of his sword. He makes eye contact with Wei Wuxian, takes in her pale face, dark gray robes, and bamboo flute. Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes, Zidian sparking on his finger in a flash of purple lightning, illuminating his clenched fist. Wei Wuxian’s brother, come to soak her blood into this thirsty forest floor.
She does the only thing she can: she grabs the reins of her stubborn donkey and sprints off into the dark.
Wei Wuxian runs for a while, her boots crunching the leaf litter on the forest floor and her stupid donkey following along begrudgingly. Eventually, she runs out of breath, the lack of stamina something she didn’t have the chance to get used to, in her past life. She wheezes and leans her hand on her knees. Wei Wuxian gasps and gapes for air to fill her aching chest. She hoped it would be longer before she ran into Jiang Cheng, his hatred for her a force to be reckoned with. The boy though, she never let herself think of.
Shijie’s son , she gasps, oh gods her son.
The son she left orphaned when she slaughtered his father on a mountain pass and his mother speared through, caught in the middle of Wei Wuxian’s storm.
She laughs sharply, hysterically, into the night. Mo Xuanyu should have left her dead, there’s nothing in this world for demons like her when people like Shijie are only remembered as ghosts.
Wei Wuxian raises up and turns her face towards the sky, letting the moonlight warm her face. She doesn’t know what to do.
“Jingyi, stop trying to make bets about the spirit,” a young voice remarks from the distance, “Our job is to dispose of it, not make it a competition.”
Those sound awfully like those baby Lans Wei Wuxian met the other day, Wei Wuxian thinks, her grief dispersing into the soft mist of memory rather than the monsoon it was a moment ago.
What’s this about a spirit?
“You!” Jiang Cheng shouts from behind where Wei Wuxian stands staring down the Ghost General. She whips her head to look at him, hair swinging across her face, and she raises her flute to her lips to call Wen Ning off. It’s not safe for him here, surrounded by Lans and Jiang Cheng who’s strong as all of them combined in his anger. Wen Ning, answering the lullabye Wei Wuxian plays, rushes off into the forest, leaving Wei Wuxian to face down her brother.
“You were supposed to be dead ,” Jiang Cheng growls. Wei Wuxian says nothing, silent for once.
He scoffs at that, “What, thirteen years in Diyu strip you of your wit? Answer me!”
What can she say, really? With her sister’s heart made flesh standing beside the ghost of the boy Wei Wuxian was raised with, what can she say in the face of those who have every right to shove her back down into the afterlife.
Jiang Cheng isn’t having it, clearly. He snarls, flashing his teeth, and whips out Zidian, lightning flashing in the forest clearing like a starburst. Wei Wuxian rushes to run, but she hardly gets a few steps away from this force of nature before she feels the electric strike of the spiritual tool slice into her back, tossing her to the ground with her back smoldering and her limbs paralyzed with the shock. Wei Wuxian lays on the ground, cheek pressed against the soft dirt, and waits for the slice of Sandu through the cord of her neck. It doesn’t come.
“Sandu shengshou!” a voice yells, “Please, stop! What crimes has Mo- qianbei committed to be attacked like this?”
“She’s alive. That’s enough a reason for me,” Jiang Cheng snarls at the Lan who spoke out.
Truly Madame Yu’s son, Wei Wuxian thinks to herself as her vision darkens and her fingers go tingly and numb. Then she knows no more.