Archive of Our Own

When he thinks back on it, the first thing Xie Lian remembers of the coffin isn’t the dark.

Sight isn’t the first thing to come back to you, not after unconsciousness, not even after death. It’s a steady reawakening of senses. A barely discernible twitch of a muscle, a staccato beat muffled by congealed fluid and tremors. A flinch of a limb stopped short in its movement by harsh, unforgiving constriction. The absence of sounds that are hardly noted in their presence, no wind, no trees, no birds. The discernible and incomparable lack of air when his lungs coalesce enough to remember their function.

It is only suffocation that prompts his sight, that forces his eyes open and greets him with such a startling lack of anything he immediately recalculates how long his body took to recover from Lang Qianqiu’s execution. If he has been dead long enough for some particularly opportunistic insects to make a meal out of everything that can grant him sight in the first place.

It is movement, that prompts him to acknowledge this as false. He cannot discern more than a darker shade of darkness, a shifting accompanied by the sensation of silk against his throat.

Ruoye.

He thinks.

Tries to speak.

Cannot gain the air to do so.

He suffocates before he can fully figure out what is going on.

This repeats, for a time frame he cannot distinguish, cannot ascertain, even in hindsight.

Ruoye, in his absence, batters against the wooden prison, strengthened and sustained by the blood that bore it. It is successful at penetrating the initial layer of the coffin, splintering wood and irradicating the accompanying talisman sealing the wood against all that could penetrate it, preventing rot and air and water and escape. It cannot understand the double-edged sword this revelation is. Can only consider its damage of its containment a victory. It does not learn as it’s master will, that unconsciousness is a blessing. That suffocation, and its blissful simplicity, will be missed.

It is, despite its sustenance, useless against the marble layer that follows. It is not capable of knowing the stone that would follow that. It curls up around Xie Lian’s neck in its misery, for comfort, and to monitor for the return of the steady beats and breaths that let it know its master is there.

It waits.

The beats come before the breaths. The beats are wrong. Sluggish where they should be strong, irregular where there should be synchronicity. Ruoye does not understand this past it’s elation. It understands life and death. Not sickness and health. It is still young; things do not understand the circumstances they are born from when they are young. It was made from suffering, but it only learns what that means in the years they are buried.

Xie Lian wakes disorientated. He wakes in pain.

These are not new things, and they are not immediately synonymous with panic. He can feel Ruoye shifting against his skin, against something that isn’t his skin but sits within it anyway. He can breathe, which feels like a luxury, to begin with.

He lifts a hand to investigate the thing-that-isn’t-skin and hits cool marble before he can raise it. Initially, an easy rectification, a bent elbow, a low angle of approach. Not anything overmuch to consider.

His hand grazes his chest, feels the tacky combination of congealed, cooling gunk and warm, pulsing fluid. He can smell iron, can feel Ruoye’s energy, and knows enough about his own proclivity for injury to acknowledge his bleeding as a fact. Beneath the blood, his hands find wood where his heartbeat should be.

As with everything occurring up till this point, he is not initially too concerned by it.

(There is the steady, encroaching wonderment of why he is still here, why Ruoye has not freed them yet, why his body has not expelled that which impales it and healed in all the horrifying ways he knows it can. There is an uneasy feeling in his stomach that he mislabels as starvation.)

“Ruoye”. He croaks, and this is perhaps the first instance where he is impacted by his miscalculations to the passing of time. His voice is wrecked. It’s hardly sound at all, it’s so dried the air cracks the mucosa, and the permeating iron smell around him is accompanied by the bitter taste of it in his throat.

He wets his lips. There is nothing to wet them with. He coughs, and the blood that sputters from them is a decent enough alternative.

The silk swims over his eyes, over the mask that presses to his skin. It too, is tinted with the permeating iron, dampened in a sticky secretion Xie Lian cannot see but knows to be staining the white fabric a garish and glistening red.

His fingers grasp the wood, Ruoye knowingly (lovingly) poised to stem and suckle and stop the outpour or blood known to follow. His fingers slip, regrasp, slip again. He tries to wipe the excess blood from his fingers against the robes at his hip, only succeeding in smearing more coagulated fluid into his nails and fingerprints. His hand impacts against more marble by his side.

This is not actually the first time he has been buried, though perhaps never in circumstances allowing for such a luxurious tomb.

He does not panic. Not yet.

He raises his hand again, low angled, bent elbow, no contact with marble to remind him of the limitations of his space.

He grips, he slips, he grips again. He digs his nails into the wood, not at all decayed by the rot and damp that should have allowed easy passage even for human claws. He cannot get purchase against it.

Xie Lian sighs, bends his fingers closer around the stake, and burrows his hands into the bloody flesh of his wound.

If he screams, no one hears him. He is old enough to know that an absence of witnesses means it never really happened. In the later years, the madder years, that is the only thought that grants him comfort.

He digs, until he can feel the unsteady beat of his heart against his ring finger. He cannot get a good enough grip to leverage the stake from his chest, he can barely breathe through the blood that surges to his mouth from the injury’s aggravation. He must suffocate again then. There is a blackness preceding the memory of pulling his hand from his chest, when he does, the wound has tried to scab his fingers into place.

Rethinking, he shifts his shoulders, attempting to raise them from where he lies. He thinks that he may be able to topple the marble lid of his tomb if he can turn and propel force with his arms and back together.

He cannot turn, in fact he can hardly shift his torso at all.

This is, perhaps, the first small moment of panic.

(Not fear. Not yet.)

“Ruoye”. He says again, throat blissfully lubricated by blood. “Help me.”

The silk shifts from his neck, coiling like a snake, like a dragon, wrapping its body around the stake as deeply as it can manage. It tries, unsuccessfully, until Xie Lian can feel it’s frustrated desperation, it’s agony at its own limitations, it’s first-person experiences of the suffering that preceded it.

“Stop.” He says, and the way it flags against his throat feels like a sob. “It’s okay, you’re okay, we’re okay.’

The irritation has aggravated the wound, the blood pulses around him like a blanket. It’s so warm. He mumbles little comforts to Ruoye until the band stops trembling, until he stops trembling and the silk’s stillness is less to do with reassurance and more to do with the vigilance needed to monitor for the return of that beat, those breaths.

When he next wakes, he limits movement and thinks.

He cannot move in any way that helps him. The top of the marble is only just more than a foot above him. He can feel little beneath him but sodden wood, splinters, and gunk. His chest hurts, obviously, but so too does his head, and his hands, and the entire line of his back, hips, calves, and heels.

The iron smell is accompanied by rot. When he shifts his hips and heels, he feels skin pull, peel and tear.

He thinks he is sick - some point after feeling that the first time. He gets used to it a little while after that. He oscillates between consciousness and unconsciousness like the tide, he finds it hard to judge when he dies and when he doesn’t. Living and dying are such an inscrutably similar black nothingness it is hard to discern them.

The first full blown moment of fear comes completely unexpected.

He wakes and shakes apart into whines so violent Ruoye recoils from him like a whip.

(The retreat only lasts a fraction of a second before it curls back around his chest, his neck, his head, his hands, his lips, trying to soothe in the only way it can).

Xie Lian, for the first time, brings his hands up to contact the marble tomb intentionally, brutalising his own knuckles until they bleed and ache and bloom to double the size in retaliation of the abuse. When he can no longer summon the energy to hit, he merely claws, dragging his fingertips against the unforgiving stone until his nails break from their beds and join the shattered wooden splinters in the gunk beneath him. He keeps going until the flesh is shredded and the exposed bone cracks.

He drags his ruined hands back to his face and sobs.

He does not know how long he cries, though it must be long enough to drag out another death from dehydration, or infection or exsanguination because he slips once more into another blissfully unaware state after that.

Time must pass, but it feels stagnant to him.

Xie Lian could not tell, in hindsight, how much of it passed before he began yearning for the easy exhaustion of death. The blissful in-between where he did not exist in the coffin because he did not exist at all.

His body, in its betrayal, works for his survival. He recalls, blearily, a dreamlike state in-between fever hot rot and a heady lack of oxygen bought on by another wave of delirium induced hyperventilated panic, where he honestly thought if he clawed enough of the cursed flesh from his neck, he’d be able to break the shackle and finally die.

When he woke again, he felt both stupid, and a bone deep resignation that left him staring impassively into the blackened middle distance until his heart gave out again.

He passed what must have been a lot of time just counting the beats until they slowed. Knowing, with some giddy anticipation, that they would stop again soon.

It was some cruel twist of fate that the shackle ensuring his immortality must, at some point, have ensured the restitching of his body enough for the shackle around his ankle to decide there were worst hands he could be played then repeated demise.

Eventually, the combination of the shackles resulted in body tissue reshaping to accommodate the stake, leaving his heart chambers forming around the wood, until, albeit with a rhythm that under no other circumstances would be regarded as healthy, he could no longer count on the dysregulation and damage to kill him.

Alongside this, the repeated infections resulted in nothing more than an immune system of steel. His fevers dwindled; his delirium settled.

Agonisingly, he lives.

Again, he could not tell how much time passed before he considered another option.

“Ruoye”. Xie Lian said, tired beyond comprehension, lapping at the blood on his lips like water.

The silk band rose from its position at his chest, curled like a cat against his malformed heart.

“Cover.” He said, feeling as the silk eagerly wraps itself around the shackle at his neck, always it’s favourite place to settle.

“Tighter.”

The silk complies, snug as it can be without impairing his trachea, his arteries.

“Ruoye?” He says, taking a deep breath against the restriction. The silk shifts, sliding against itself and his skin as if in acknowledgement of his call, happy to be spoken to, happy to be able to complete even a small order.

“Tighter.”

The silk stops, frozen. Its shimmers turn to unsteady trembles against his skin, one curved end raising to him quizzically.

“Tighter.”

Another twist of the end, like a puppy tilting its head to an unknown command. Xie Lian cannot see its confusion, its resistance, can only feel it’s insolence, an order unfulfilled.

“Ruoye”. He says, voice dark in a way it hasn’t been since a nameless (wonderful) ghost asked him for orders and ignored only one. “I said tighter.”

The silk tightens, almost instinctively, propelled further by the wave of satisfied pleasure the action prompts from its master. It keeps going, it remembers this from its birthday after all. The way it came into existence around this very neck, warm and needed and wanted and with such an edge of weary desperation its master barely responded at all to the sudden sentience of his silk band.

Ruoye loosens eventually, the beats are slowing, after all, and the breaths are gone and Xie Lian’s neck is only it’s favourite place because it can feel them both there.

Xie Lian gasps for a few moments, eyes open and unseeing.

“Ruoye.” He says, barely more than a whisper. “Please keep going.”

Ruoye settles back at his neck, shimmying against his skin, making no motion to tighten again.

“Ruoye please.” The end rises once more, sweeping forward to soak up the water that rolls down it’s masters cheeks. It’s second favourite. “Ruoye I’m so tired.”

The band rests over his eyes, not understanding, sitting like a blindfold.

Xie Lian sobs until he sleeps.

He is not sure if that is the first time he dreams.

Initially of simple, blissful things. The gardens in Xianle, visiting the markets with Feng Xin and Mu Qing, crawling into bed with his parents after a storm.

Later, when the shackle must make note of another avenue for agony, of the plague, the war, the temple, years and years of loneliness and longing and loss.

He knows, as a single defining factor, that at least 3 decades must have passed before he prays. There had to have been significant enough deterioration to his rationale, firstly to believe that anyone would hear him without provision of a suitable offering, and secondly to believe that anyone would be listening even if they could.

‘Feng Xin.’

He starts, what must be five times over so many days before he manages anything else.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I need help.’

‘I need…’

‘I want to go home.’

Snippets lengthen into sentences, into stories. Mainly for something to do, something to say.

‘I’m sorry for what I said, what I did. I didn’t want… I didn’t want you or Mu Qing to… I don’t think I’m good for people anymore, I’m not sure I ever was.’

‘I had a dream about Mother and Father. We all went to the river behind the palace, and I fell in. You jumped in after me because you were worried the weight would drag me down. Mu Qing was mad because he thought he’d get in trouble for the robes getting ruined. We went back to the palace and Mother and Father were waiting at the doors, but they weren’t angry at all, they just laughed. I stayed in the wet clothes for hours and the next day I was sick and couldn’t get up for my studies with Guoshi and got upset but… Mother and Father said they were still prou…’

‘I had another dream about them, about their… is it still a dream if it happened?’

‘I hope you are well. I hope you are happy. If you can hear me… I’m sorry. I don’t deserve your time or your… your sympathy, but… if you can hear me, please… please help me Feng Xin I don’t know how much longer I… I think I’m going mad.’

It must, when he thinks, have been at least another decade until he tried again.

‘Jun – Jun Wu.’

‘It’s Xianle, I… I don’t… I made…’

‘I’d like… I want to renounce my godhood, I don’t think…the shackles are… I’m so tired, I don’t think I can do this anymore.’

‘Please… please take them off of me.’

Not so long passed after that he thinks, barely any time at all, before…

‘Mu… no don’t, don’t do that…’

‘Mu Qing.’

‘Remember when we…’

‘I don’t think you can hear me; you wouldn’t leave me if you could… would you? Not like this? … Please don’t leave me like th…’

Eventually he spends longer unconscious then otherwise. He’ll wake, stare into the uneasy, painful darkness for indeterminable seconds, and smack the back of his skull into the base of the coffin until the painless darkness comes back instead.

Ruoye tries to shelter his head from the blows. It’s still the only time he’s ever tied the silk into a dead knot himself.

The dreams become sporadic, and they don’t feel like dreams after a while.

He could swear he’s speaking to his mother, rather than just witnessing her memory, on one of the occasions he wakes to his palace bedroom rather than rot. The timelines don’t line up well enough for a memory, she is older than he has ever seen her and the body he wakes in feels younger than he can ever remember being.

“My baby.” She says, stroking a hand over the top of his head.

Xie Lian can still feel Ruoye around his too small neck, covering the heavy, oppressive weight of the shackle. Ruoye and his mother can’t exist together.

“My baby boy.”

“Mama.” He says, tilting his head up to the contact when he finds he cannot reach for her, it’s like a barrier around his hands, stopping him from extending them to her dress, her hair, her face.

“Why are you crying?” She says, sweeping a thumb over his damp checks, voice like sunlight and eyes like gold.

“I’m so tired.”

“Go back to sleep then, my baby, my beautiful boy.”

Xie Lian sleeps. He remembers very little after that.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

On some occasions, few but favourable to Xie Lian, he can manage to cajole Hua Cheng, Feng Xin and Mu Qing into their Mount Taicang cottage for tea (a necessary consolation of this is that only Mu Qing or Feng Xin are allowed to brew the tea).

Regardless, it’s something that eases a fragile part of his past. These three people are so incomparably important to him, and to see them together is the closest he’s felt to home, to Xianle, in centuries.

“You two know damn well you couldn’t beat Gege in a fight, even with the shackles he would have easily wiped the floor with you.”

“As if you’d fare any better.” Feng Xin rebukes, harsh, but softened by the careful pass of a teacup to Hua Cheng, supplied from where Mu Qing has brewed a batch over the small stove.

Hua Cheng smirks, leaning further down onto the arm he has wrapped behind Xie Lian on the bed mat, lounging like a spoiled cat awaiting praise. “On the contrary, it would be an honour to fall to Gege’s blade.”

“No one will be falling to any blades thank you, I’ve had more than enough of San Lang dying.”

“Gege, it is this one’s honour to-"

“No. I mean it San Lang, never again, my heart can’t take it.’

“You make yourself sound like an old man with angina.” Mu Qing quips, as he settles with his own cup at the table, across from Feng Xin. He hands one more cup to Hua Cheng, given that upon receiving one before His Highness the ghost had immediately relinquished his first to rectifying it.

“I am old, Mu Qing.” Xie Lian says, like it’s not an obvious fact between them all.

“You don’t have angina.”

“He does have an irregular heartbeat.” Hua Cheng says, almost offhandedly, trailing a hand under the curtain of Xie Lian’s hair to spill it over the opposite shoulder, exposing the side of his neck as if in exhibition.

“How the hell would you know?” Mu Qing asks, raising a haughty brow and lifting his drink to take a sip of tea.

“It’s my favourite place to sleep, of course.” Hua Cheng replied, earning a scowl but not reproach from Feng Xin. Xie Lian takes that as progress. “I also have sensitive teeth, so when Gege is especially excited, and I bite just here I can…’

“San Lang!” Xie Lian cries, face taking on a notably rosy hue as he covers a hand over his eyes.

“Yes, Crimson Rain, please spare us the details of your defilement.”

“And have some respect for His Highness!”

“My, my.” Hua Cheng purrs, leaning forward to cover more of Xie Lian’s back with his frame, practically draping himself over his shoulder. “You two are starting to agree on more and more these days, are you sure you don’t want to hear more about my defilement methods so you can finally work on that brewing sexual tension.”

“HOW DARE YOU-“

“WHAT THE FU-“

“Please, please, no fighting!” Xie Lian says, pressing a hand to Hua Cheng’s chest and raising the other placatingly towards the two generals, both having risen from their seats in indignation.

“Of course, Gege.” Hua Cheng says, pressing a reverent kiss to his temple.

“You started it!”

Xie Lian sends Mu Qing another look, the other rolling his eyes and hiding his scowl behind another sip of tea. It’s excellent tea after all, which is exactly why he most often makes it.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a God with an irregular heartbeat.” Mu Qing adds when no other retorts are issued, eyes narrowed as he focuses in on Xie Lian wrists like he is trying to take a pulse from observation alone.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing.” Xie Lian says, waving a hand at him placatingly. “I feel fine, better than ever actually!”

“I didn’t mean that it was necessarily an issue, just that I’m not sure what could be causing it physiologically. Are your meridians okay?”

“Of course, they’re fine.”

“I’d be able to tell if there was an issue with Gege’s core.”

“Yes, Crimson Rain, I’m sure you’re intimately acquainted with His Highnesses' core.” Mu Qing replies with another eye roll. Feng Xin, who has the unfortunate timing of gulping the last of his tea, barely refrains from spitting the contents across the room.

“MU QING!”

“But you’re also not a doctor, and His Highness has experienced repeated drastic alterations to his spiritual energy over the last year.”

“What do you mean?” Feng Xin asks, frowning down at the dregs of his tea, eventually rising to serve himself another cup.

“What do you think I mean, idiot, he went very rapidly from suppression to abundance to dispersion of his whole cultivation, and now regular supplement by Crimson Rain, I’m sure.”

Xie Lian blushes again at ‘dispersion’ and ‘supplement’ and all they imply. Married or not, being a self-imposed virgin for 800 years influences the thickness of one’s face regarding intimacy. San Lang revels in every opportunity to see his face, his neck, and his chest colour. He seems determined to discover how low the colour can go.

“I really feel fine.” Xie Lian says. “I’m sure it’s just a side effect of the shackles.”

“Maybe you should get checked Gege.” Hua Cheng murmurs close to his ear, the frown in his voice confirmed when Xie Lian turns to face him. “You wore them so long; I doubt that bastard thought much for the safety of his victims in their implementation.”

Xie Lian sighs, holding out a hand for Mu Qing when he sees no end to the quiet insistencies. Mu Qing takes a knee at Xie Lian’s side, steadfastly ignoring the aggressively intense look Hua Cheng fixes on his hands as they rise to Xie Lian’s wrists, observing both pulses side by side. He frowns.

“What is it?” Hua Cheng insists.

“Give me a damn minute.” Mu Qing seethes, pulling a stethoscope from his qiankun pouch. “Can you open your robe a second, I need to listen.”

“Mu Qing, I’m really fine-“

“Let’s try and keep you that way this time then.”

Xie Lian smacks his mouth shut at the rebuttal, Hua Cheng himself not coming to his immediate defence in his worry. Xie Lian tugs at the collar of his robe to lower it enough for Mu Qing to reach the centre of his chest, Mu Qing steadfastly not paying any attention to the spattering of bruise like bite marks along his collarbones and ribs.

His frown only deepens as he listens to four distinct points of Xie Lian’s heart, having to move the stethoscope several centimetres in different directions to find the points that should be localised at his original markers.

“What is it?” From Feng Xin this time, earning only a slightly less seething look.

“Your heart doesn’t follow any normal anatomical configurations, it doesn’t seem to be effecting your output overmuch, but your heart-sounds are so irregular they hardly follow a traceable atrium to ventricle rhythm, and you have a significant radio radial delay.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad!” Xie Lian says with a smile, refolding the front of his robes.

“If you were a human, you’d be dead.”

“Oh…”

“Is he okay?” Feng Xin asks, re-risen from his chair in concern. Hua Cheng places his own fingers to Xie Lian’s pulses in synchronicity, frowning as he feels what Mu Qing meant.

“How long have you known it to be irregular?” Mu Qing asks, ignoring Feng Xin.

“Since I met him after his third ascension.” Hua Cheng replies, folding both of Xie Lian’s hands into his own. “It wasn’t like that when I knew you before Gege, but that doesn’t narrow the timeframe down much.”

“It doesn’t no, but if it was going to impact you negatively it would have already done so by now.”

“How does that even happen?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Mu Qing says, slipping back into his seat with an innocuous smirk in Xie Lian’s direction, like he thinks his following question is inconceivable, and therefore funny. “Any major trauma to your heart during your second banishment Your Highness?”

Xie Lian flinches, the slightest movement, almost unnoticeable in any area other than his brow and his shoulders, alongside an almost imperceptible tension through his neck and mouth. He immediately laughs to disguise it.

“Nothing significant no!” He says, laughing again.

For the first time since they have known each other, Hua Cheng, Mu Qing and Feng Xin are mutual in their reactions, three simultaneous frowns marring their lips and brows.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Xie Lian says, jumping up with an incidental jolt to Hua Cheng’s shoulder to grab his bamboo hat from its place beside the door. “I promised one of the farmers that I would help him with the wedding preparations for his daughter, blessings and such you know!”

“Gege, it’s dark out.”

“Yes, yes, it’s best to get a head start, these things take so much time!” Xie Lian says, already hallway out the door when he seems to remember himself, quickly hurrying back inside to bow his head loosely at his guests. “Thank you both for coming, it has truly been lovely, I hope you can both come visit again soon. I will see you at Paradise Manor later San Lang, I love you!”

And then he’s gone.

The three of them look at each other, perplexity masking their animosity for a moment. Feng Xin tilts his head in confusion while Mu Qing and Hua Cheng share a more significant look.

“What the hell was that?”

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

It is not so much that they forget, then that they cannot make sense of it enough to query.

Hua Cheng spends long nights with his head against Xie Lian’s chest, tapping out the rhythm against the sheets until he has it memorised, and cross referencing what he has found through every medical textbook in his extensive library. Absolutely nothing matches.

After an unfortunate and prolonged fall Xie Lian sustained into a semi frozen lake while on a mission with the two generals, Mu Qing utilised his ‘assessment’ of his ‘lungs’ to further explore the irregularities from his back also. Waving off an angry Crimson Rain, who was irate at the fact they ‘allowed’ His Highness to fall into the lake at all. He consults his own extensive library, and still cannot make sense of it.

Feng Xin, comparably lacking in the literature and medical professions, takes it upon himself to approach His Highness for a series of spars that damn near kill him with the extent of their resulting exhaustion, intact heart, and all. He reports this back to Mu Qing, who only frowns, jotting another note on a spare bit of parchment at the side of his desk.

Eventually, they resign themselves to the fact that they are unlikely to know. Xie Lian is not someone who gives information freely, not when it only impacts and relates to himself, therefore, they are unlikely to ever receive whatever piece of the puzzle they are missing.

The answer comes, horribly, hideously, nearly a year later.

From Lang Qingqiu of all people.

Arguably, he’d been avoiding Xie Lian like the plague ever since the revelations with Qi Rong. The later revelations regarding Jun Wu hardly helped matters, given that absolutely everything about the heavenly realm had been turned on its head, and the Gods were too busy scrambling to re-establish some sense of dynamic to deal with much more than their work. Xie Lian himself had hardly stepped foot into the heavenly realm while waiting for Hua Cheng to return, and as such, interactions with him were limited unless he was sought out directly at Taicang Mountain.

Given all he had done for them, the Heavenly Officials were both unwilling to interrupt him and quietly despondent that he had no interest in claiming his rightful position as emperor. Many still hoped the return of Crimson Rain Sought Flower would encourage him to reconsider.

With Hua Cheng returned, Xie Lian’s presence had steadily grown in the heavens, even more so when it was decided that allowing Crimson Rain entry in return for more consistent visitation of their (extremely unofficial and yet unaccepted) emperor was well worth it. There was bitter understanding also, that Hua Cheng’s previous ascension was never technically voided. He was after all, not banished from the heavens. He simply left them of his own volition.

It was all too common for Xie Lian to attend meetings, either unaware (likely) or uncaring (unlikely) for the newfound deference shown to him, with a tall, intimidating red shrouded shadow at his side. Hua Cheng, if left to his own devices, was happy enough to occupy himself with petting and visual appreciation of his husband, only interrupting the proceedings with an occasional cackle of laughter at other god’s expense.

Frequent meetings occur between the martial gods, normally to manage disputes between their ever-changing borders. Something often forgotten to those who live long enough for entire human lifespans to be momentary things is the frequency of development and destruction of settlements, landscapes, and kingdoms. This fluid environment leads to constant renegotiation of designation, alongside frequent redistribution of assigned mission parameters.

Alongside this, is the necessary reclassification of the current temples of Jun Wu.

Many had transferred to Xie Lian automatically (much to his displeasure and later acceptance only when he realised many believed in worshiping him and Hua Cheng as a mutuality). Some structures in already designated areas had instead seen their mortals transfer them to the gods known to them.

Pei Ming, overseeing the North. Quan Yizhen, to the West. Mu Qing designated to the Southeast, with Feng Xin taking the Southwest.

And Lang Qingqiu, managing the East.

Who had initially been known as a rather outspoken and impassioned young God, never one to bow his head or curb his words so long as he fully believed in the point he was making.

Which is why his sudden silence is considerably notable. The tense set of his shoulders and jaw, the harsh sloped line of his back as he bends over the table, fringe falling into his eyes until the entire top half of his face is shrouded in shadows. His fists are often clenched so hard the veins of his hands stand out in stark clarity, sharp nails digging into his palms so hard it must hurt.

He sits silent throughout meetings, and practically runs from the room once they are dismissed.

Xie Lian, naturally, notices immediately and often attempts to encourage communication by directing conversation to the opinion in the East. He stops, not long after starting, when he realises his attempts to engage are having a horrifically opposite effect.

It comes to a boiling point unexpectedly, right at the end of a meeting determining the final resolution to an admittedly mild border dispute between Mu Qing and Lan Qingqiu. Pei Ming and Quan Yizhen are not in attendance, both occupied with missions in their own domains, and unneeded due to the areas of consideration. The whole matter is settled almost laughably abruptly when, almost immediately upon sitting, Lang Qingqiu relinquishes the territory (which, if looking objectively should have been resolved as his regardless) and makes to leave like he cannot fathom a worst fate then remaining in the room.

“Your Highness.” Xie Lian calls. “Could I speak to you?”

Lang Qianqiu’s shoulders fold forward like a sudden weight has settled upon them. The rest of the martial gods look on with quiet befuddlement, while Hua Cheng amuses himself with twirling a stray strand of Xie Lian’s hair between his fingers.

The silence rings for many more seconds than could be classed as comfortable, but Xie Lian is unwilling to bow to the disquiet, not this time.

“…I would rather not.” Lang Qingqiu bites out, though he makes no move to continue his retreat.

Xie Lian sighs, looking, for one brief second, the entirety of his 800 years.

“I understand that I have hurt you greatly, Qingqiu. Regardless of the origins or intentions of that hurt I am at least guilty by association and allocation of blame.” Xie Lian’s gaze is firm, and fixed onto the younger gods back, observing the unsettling way every word utters seems to draw those shoulder further up to his neck. A gesture of discomfort rather than the expected fury. “I won’t judge you for avoidance, nor for anger, but I cannot willingly allow you to continue such things if they become synonymous with your own detriment. This battle was yours; it was hardly an argument worth having here. Your hatred of me is more than justified, but I’m failing to see how that would result in you giving up all notions of rationality towards your own domain.”

The silence is suffocating. The familiar unease trickles down Xie Lian’s back like blood, soothed only by the secondary passage of Hua Cheng’s hand as it trails soothingly down his spine.

“My hatred of you?” Lang Qingqiu breathes, turning back no more than a flinch, the slightest of movements showcasing the tense line of his jaw and the unsteady line of his lips.

“What hatred?” He continues, turning enough to make weary eye contact, water budding along his lash line substantially enough to give the room pause. The other martial gods are silent, even Hua Cheng himself has stopped pretending to breathe. “What you did was nothing compared to my retaliation.”

“I killed your father.” Xie Lian says, like it is the only answer required, like it should settle the unsteady air of the room.

“And you paid for a genocide.” Qingqiu stutters, looking too pale, too drawn, and visibly startled. Like he wasn’t expecting to speak and can’t stop now that he’s started. “Even if you had been guilty of the entire gilded banquet massacre, I would have never condoned such suffering.”

“I made no claim to innocence, I am anything but.”

“Don’t try to justify what I did.” Qingqiu says, haggard. For a second, he looks nothing like a martial god at all, and far too much like a boy faced with the destitution of his world. “I wouldn’t have…I didn’t…”

He stops, breathes. The air stutters on its inhale, forcing itself back out of his lungs like it cannot stand to be within them. His gaze alters from Xie Lian to the heavy double doors of the imperial palace, and back again. Mu Qing and Feng Xin sit like stone at the west side of the table, having settled at Quan Yizhen’s side in his absence for little more than the benefit of proportionality. Xie Lian and Hua Cheng have similarly settled at the North in the absence of Pei Ming. Xie Lian was initially pleased at being spared the (assumed) indignity of being seated at the dais, where he is usually relegated in fully attended meetings.

He cannot help but feel like his increased proximity led to this, as if the only thing that had held Qingqiu together was distance, be it meters or miles.

“There’s no need-"

“I didn’t know.” The younger god interrupts, either not noticing or not caring for the flash of fang Hua Cheng’s snarl develops at the indignity.

“Of course you didn’t, how could you?”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known, not like that.”

Xie Lian tries for a smile, hopes it is placating rather than painful. “You were trying to prevent a vengeful spirit, that’s admirable.”

“But you… you couldn’t have gotten out.” It’s scarcely more than a hiss, and Xie Lian’s face drops at the way an overflowing lash lie finally breaks its banks. It feels like an echo of failure. Like the uneasy memory of your student’s blade in your chest and their tears falling hot and desperate into your hair. “…How did you get out?”

“That’s not important.” Xie Lian insists, giving a single, firm shake of his head.

Qingqiu shakes his head right back, far more desperate, far more urgent.

“How long was it?”

“That’s not important either.”

“It is to me!”

Feng Xin rises from his chair at the exclamation, taking a step closer to Qingqiu as if he intends to intercede an attack. To Xie Lian’s surprise, Mu Qing’s placating hand lands on his shoulder before anything else can come from the movement. Feng Xin relents, even more surprisingly, but stays on his feet with a frown and shrugs the hand from his robes.

Lang Qingqiu seems blind to everything. He jabs an angry hand at his chest. “You have no idea, how the thought of this has plagued me. All you tried to do was help me, and I re-paid that help with torture.”

“What exactly did you do?” Hua Cheng hisses from Xie Lian’s side, curled around his back like a viper set to strike. His energy is so full of potentiated violence it feels suffocating even in heaven’s ever-present benevolence.

“Please, San Lang, it’s not important.”

“It sounds incredibly important, Gege.” Hua Cheng says, and it is revealing enough of his frayed control that Xie Lian’s touch does little to settle him, merely prompting a tilt of his head and an affectionate brush of black against brown in the wake of his budding outrage. His upper lips curls, fangs fully extended and vicious. Never to Xie Lian, but all too frequently in his defence. “What. Did. You. Do?”

“I…”

“You have ten seconds to answer my question before you know longer have an East to go back to.”

The martial god of the East does not look nearly cowed enough by that prospect, simply closing his eye in resignation, in pain, perhaps even acceptance. He has turned fully to face the table, backlit by the ever-present glisten of sunlight on gold, his shoulder slump forward in something not unlike defeat and his head bows as if in worship, or penance.

“I found him after the massacre, he hadn’t really run, and he didn’t really fight. That should have been my first clue… But I…”

Xie Lian stands from his seat, making to move forward. “Qingqiu, stop, it’s not necessary.”

The younger god flinches at the sound of his step, halting his movements entirely. He raises his head enough to make eye contact, eyes red rimmed and desperately haunted.

“I was angry. I was hurt. I was alone and I should have known you were too easy to kill. All those years of training me and I could never get a hit on you and suddenly…”

He spits a laugh, it’s bitter enough to burn, humourless and self-depreciating. It’s so unlike him the other gods present in the room are powerless to interject, wrongfooted and worried.

“I held you until you died… you were the last person I had. I was warned that you’d likely become a vengeful ghost, maybe a demon. It was advised that precautions be taken with the burial of the body.”

“Qingqiu, stop this.”

Hua Cheng slides his hand around Xie Lian’s wrist from where he remains sat, stroking a finger against the pulse in a juxtaposition to the snarl in his voice.

“Gege, with the upmost respect, if he doesn’t finish talking, I’m likely to find him later and force him to.”

Xie Lian shakes his head, linking his fingers through the ghosts despite. “This is not the place-”

“Three-layer coffins were standard for one of your ranking. Wood, marble, and stone, with the usual array on the wood to prevent decomposition. I was advised to place a second array on a peach wood stake through the heart, to trap the spirit and prevent removal.” Everyone in the room is aware enough of arrays to know that prevention of decomposition means no outside exposure, means no air. That one similarly placed onto the stake means no escape, no healing, no mercy.

Mu Qing sits up even higher in his chair at the mention of this, thinking back to a snide, unthinking comment from little under a year ago.

‘Any major trauma to your heart in your last banishment, Your Highness?’

“You did what?” Hua Cheng growls, shoulders inching forward like a coiled snake. Xie Lian’s hand at his breastbone settles the strike but does next to nothing to ease the snarl on his face. He has half turned back to Hua Cheng to allow it, unwilling to let go of the way their fingers link with his other hand.

“I thought you were dead!” Qingqiu insists, sounding more agonised by the second. Xie Lian can’t stand the sound. “I would have never…”

“Qingqiu please, it’s alright. I’m no worse for wear.”

“Please, I need to know!” Qingqiu takes another step towards the table, fleeing all but lost to him. The entire room tenses with the movement, the atmosphere equal parts brittle and volatile. “How long were you there? How did you get out? What was it…”

“None of this is important now.”

“HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT!”

“Worst things have happened, Qingqiu, for far less.” Xie Lian says, and the room sobers at the reminder. It has not nearly been long enough to clear the heavens of Jun Wu’s presence, his influence, his memory. “I refuse to blame you for grief, I refuse to hate you for justice.”

“You did nothing wrong!”

“I’ve done many things wrong.” Said softly, less like admittance and more like acceptance. Xie Lian smiles at him as if they are conversing a change in the weather or a fond memory, peaceful, now that he has committed to it. “If any kingdom had right and reason for my punishment, it was Yong’an. Let the reasons lie, knowing it was more than deserved.”

“That’s-”

“Gege, that’s not-”

“I’ll hear no more on it.” Xie Lian says, swinging a hand to open the golden doors at the rooms summit. Already, a collection of civil gods are gathering for their own meeting, scrolls secured in their arms like mothers with their children. “The land is proportional to the original borders of the East, as such I reassign the area to your protection.”

Lang Qingqiu shakes where he stands, hands clenched, and cheeks wet with pain. “I don’t want-”

“This meeting is concluded.” Xie Lian insists, seemingly too softly to avoid argument.

Despite this, even the walls of heaven acknowledge his word as gospel.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

The conversation haunts Hua Cheng.

He finds himself unable to pull his thoughts away from it, waking up in the night to visions of his beloved injured, trapped, dead and dying and living in conditions where both begin to feel like a blessing.

His nightmares have nearly always revolved around his beloved’s suffering. His own is not nearly as horrifying to him.

He finds himself waking still within his dreams. Reduced again to nothing but a useless, voiceless, powerless entity on the border of life and death. Forced repeatedly and unendingly to watch his beloved suffocating, bleeding, starving, driven to madness within eternal blackness and stagnation. He has not slept so badly since finding his god.

A god who, benevolent and beautiful as he is, notices the disturbance to his sleep. Xie Lian takes to wrapping himself around Hua Cheng’s back as they lie down to rest. Arms around his still, silent chest like a brand, legs tangled, the elegant slope of his nose coming to rest against the cool nape of the ghost’s neck. His even breaths are hypnotic despite the horror, they soothe Hua Cheng into sleep regardless of how fitful he knows it to be.

Often, they have shifted as they wake. Occasionally, Xie Lian will find himself curled against Hua Cheng’s chest; face nuzzled into the slope of his neck. Much more often, Hua Cheng’s head finds its way to Xie Lian’s chest, like he is searching for the reassuring, uneven thrum of his heartbeat even in unconsciousness.

It is a position so frequent they are almost surprised by any other.

Hua Cheng will wake from horrors, emotionally turbulent but physically still, almost as if his muscles return to their deadened state in the absence of his consciousness.

He takes the time now as he did before, to press his ear against his god’s chest and listen to his unsteady heartbeat. It is strong, though that is the only thing about it that sounds healthy, but it is Xie Lian, so it is perfect and comforting and loved.

The ghost lies still until his disturbed thoughts settle, listening to the beat. Unbidden, he imagines a stake through its centre, imagines the disturbance to the chambers and the way the valves, atrium and ventricles would rip and shift at the intrusion. It brings tears to his eye, and bloody droplets from his broken tear ducts, that the imagining fits perfectly with the distortion to the sound.

It has not escaped Hua Cheng’s knowledge, that there is a significant and clearly discernible gap in Xie Lian’s knowledge of the last 800 years, far more significant and consistent than is to be expected of any immortal being’s capacity for remembrance.

The kingdom of Yong’an slowly deteriorated after Lang Qianqiu’s ascension, inevitable after the absence of a leader with no heir and a dilapidated court that never fully recovered from the gilded banquet massacre. The land was fraught with rebel’s fractions and crime until the establishment of a fraction known initially as the Xushi clan. Those who had been unable or unwilling to leave the lands, desperate and disparaged from the plight of crime and poverty, had clung to the new establishment of order.

Eventually, the area itself was known as the village of Xushi, and later the Kingdom of Xushi, when the clan leader was assigned by the people as their official ruler.

It was the first instance of civilian led democracy, and the first mortal ruler assigned through action rather than blood right. To this day, the leader of Xushi is assigned rather than born.

Both the fall of Yong’an and the establishment of Xushi were incredibly notable events in semi-recent history. So much so that many know of the tale simply due to recitation from relatives and acquaintances.

Xie Lian had absolutely no knowledge of these events when Hua Cheng first mentioned them, not long after the events with Lang Qingqiu at Qi Rong’s lair. He had heard of Xushi only in passing and was shocked to learn it occupied the area Yong’an had previously held. He had never even heard of Yong’an falling, though he had quickly rationalised the inevitability given what he had learnt of Lang Qianqiu’s accension.

The approximate span of this gap was a little over a century.

It’s enough to send icy shivers of agony through Hua Cheng’s un-beating heart, cheek nuzzling almost frantically into the skin of Xie Lian’s chest and arms coming round to curve against the gentle space afforded by the bow of his lower spine.

Xie Lian, sensitised to his distress, wakes almost immediately, lifting a gentle hand to card through strands of hair so perfectly engineered the only fault in their realism is an inability to tangle.

“My San Lang.” Xie Lian sighs, resting his hand against the curve of Hua Cheng’s skull, thumb stroking back and forth in quiet placation.

“Beloved.” Hua Cheng says, quiet and reverent in the early morning light. His lips brushing against the skin he rests on almost give the word more intonation than his voice for how softly it is uttered.

“A nightmare?”

“A thought.”

“Penny for them?” Xie Lian asks, seconds or maybe minutes later, when nothing further is offered in remedy of silence.

“Gege can always have them freely.”

Hua Cheng speaks as he always does, voice low and rumbling through his chest in a way that sends tingles of pleasure through Xie Lian’s skin. Notable through the familiarity, is a hitch in the ‘always’, a wave of despair powerful enough to disturb the delivery of the promise.

“The coffin.” Hua Cheng whispers eventually, only after he’s wrestled his voice back into submission and shrouded his agony enough to form words. “It was a long time, wasn’t it?”

Xie Lian opens his mouth, denial on the tip of his tongue. Hua Cheng’s head shifts from his chest to rest his chin ever so gently against the edge of his sternum, looking up at him with such a resigned agony, such an indisputable sense of realisation, that Xie Lian cannot force the lie past his lips.

He takes in an unsteady breath, ashamed to find his eyes burning with the effort to hold back tears, then blurring with his failure to do so.

“…It was.”

Little more than a breath, watching through wetness as his husband’s face morphs into an agony mirroring his own, like their nerves are connected and their feelings run fluid between them.

‘Perhaps they do.’ Xie Lian thinks, as Hua Cheng bundles him into his arms and holds his shaking form in his own.

Xie Lian cries like he’s falling apart, safe in the knowledge that this is a time and place where he can.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

“It can’t have been long.”

Mu Qing can feel a nerve near his eyes twitching.

“He would have said something.”

He closes them, lets a long exhale out slowly and grips his brush tighter, reopening his eyes to see a stray line of ink ruin his last character.

“You don’t look convinced.”

“You’re the one who keeps talking about it!” Mu Qing snaps, glaring at Feng Xin as he stands across the line of his desk. How he even got into his palace is a mystery, his deputies know better by now. “I’m just making an effort to understand if and how that could have fucked up the entire anatomy of his heart.”

“He said it was the shackles.” Feng Xin says, with a shrug that tries for nonchalant and falls short. “He had Ruoye, he would have been fine.”

“Are you really going to keep going on about it?”

“Do you really not care at all?”

“Don’t you dare.” Mu Qing says, low and controlled enough to ensure acknowledgement without reproach. “You’re confusing your ‘care’ for abstract curiosity. Even if it’s true, there’s nothing I could do for him now, is there?”

“You’ve been looking over old scrolls like a bored civil god for three days, and you’re going to tell me it’s not bothering you too?”

“I’ve no idea what type of magic Jun Wu used to accommodate survival to such an extent that it altered anatomical structure, for someone who, at the time was essentially mortal in all but lifespan and durability.”

Feng Xin doesn’t reply immediately, staring at the walls like he is seeing something very different to the books and scrolls that line the library of Xuan Zhen’s palace.

“Does it truly not bother you more than that?”

Mu Qing fixes his gaze down to his current scroll, clenching his hand around the brush.

“Xie Lian had a very specific set of shackles. One suppressing spiritual energy, with the subclause of providing immortality. The other supressing luck, and in many ways attracting misfortune.”

“I know that.” Feng Xin says, like he thinks he is being condescended to. Mu Qing sends him a look so tiredly venomous he wisely says nothing more.

“I’m concerned about instances where the logical conclusions of the shackles’ influence were altered due to the circumstances their wearer found themselves in.”

He stands from his desk, motioning for Feng Xin to follow him to a secondary room of the main library. It’s almost like an office, or perhaps more akin to a reading nook. Feng Xin honestly had no idea Mu Qing was so invested in literature outside of medicine, though he can see that many of the books lining the walls are an assortment of poetry, fiction, and tales.

Mu Qing selects a scroll from a box set atop a smaller writing desk in the corner, opening it to a specific point and laying it against the surface for Feng Xin to read. It’s a combination of medical notes, talismans, anatomical drawings, and arrays, as far as he can see, though it makes little sense to him altogether.

Feng Xin tilts his head at the notes. “I’m not following.”

“No, I didn’t expect you would.”

“Just for once, can you not be pedantic about this.”

Mu Qing sighs like he’s just been told he’s going up against another heavenly calamity as opposed to explaining a concept to a relatively knowledgeable official. Regardless, he closes his eyes and tries to formulate his words in an understandable way.

“In most circumstances, finding oneself in a situation that resulted in death would be incredibly unfortunate, and there would be no need for the shackles further intervention. The only time I could rationalise this changing, is if the wearer wanted to die in consistent enough circumstances for the shackle to recognise it as a fortunate occurrence.”

Feng Xin nods his understanding.

“We know already that Xie Lian could die, it just wasn’t a permanent state.” Mu Qing continues, pointing out the section of his notes where this was quoted by Lang Qingqiu alongside several instances where Xie Lian himself had referenced dying, such as with General Hua’s grave at Banyue Pass.

“I think…” Mu Qing says, swallowing harshly for a second before continuing. “If stuck in a perpetuating cycle of life and death, where death was the preferred state of being, the second shackle would have intervened.”

Feng Xin opens his mouth as if to speak, closing it again with a heavy swallow as comprehension dawns.

“That would explain how Xie Lian’s heart restructured itself until it could keep him alive despite being impaled.” Mu Qing finished, closing the scroll and depositing it back into its container alongside the others. “I just can’t fathom how long that state was a requirement, to have made the alterations permanent. Or if maybe what Xie Lian said was true and it really was just some sick side effect of the shackle’s magic, which as I already said, must have been incomparably strong.”

“We could always ask Ju-”

“No.”

“How else are we ever going to know?”

“I’m not giving that sadistic bastard the satisfaction.”

Feng Xin runs a hand over his face in frustration, resting it at his neck for a second and if soothing a persistent ache. “If you’re right, we deserve the discomfort. If Xie Lian is right, we owe him enough to find out what other effects the shackles might have.”

“I’m not going-”

“Then I’ll go alone-”

“You barely understood what I just explained!”

“And?” Feng Xin asks, too tired to be a shout yet to emotional to be intended as anything else. “I’m not so prideful that I’m not willing to lose some face for a friend.”

“Oh, for fucks sake.” Mu Qing hisses, angrily clawing his own hand through his ponytail in exasperation. “This is a bad idea.”

Bad idea or not, a distance shortening array later finds them at the small abode Mei Nianqing has established for himself while keeping Jun Wu company. If he is shocked to see them, he makes no reference to it. Though he does seem confused by a very notable absence of the only person he could associate their visit with.

“Where is His Highness?” He asks, when it becomes clear to him that is really is just the two of them.

“Probably with Crimson Rain doing heavens knows what.” Mu Qing glowers. “I prefer not to think too hard about it.”

“But if he is not here, why are you?” For all his years, Mei Nianqing seems genuinely confused, as if the idea of anyone other than Xie Lian appearing to Jun Wu’s prison is something altogether unfathomable.

Maybe it is. It’s not like either of them have felt the need to visit before.

“We need to speak to Jun Wu.” Feng Xin says, crossing his arms over his chest and making a move to enter the array sealing the base of the mountain.

“He’s not in a good mood.” Mei Nianqing warns, though he makes no move to stop them.

“I don’t much care about his mood.” Mu Quin mutters.

“And it’s important.”

“Must be, if it has the two of you in agreement.” Mei Nianqing sighs, turning around to head back into his residence, purple robes falling down his back like waves. “I can’t guarantee he’ll speak to you, nor can I stop you. Do as you wish.”

He leaves them to step into the array, working their way down a spiral staircase and plunging through a false bottom body of water not dissimilar to the array shielding the Xianle mausoleum. Considering it was largely Xie Lian’s construction, the similarity is hardly surprising. They land into a room set aside from the cell itself, faced with several more arrays that require spiritual manipulation to allow entry. Feng Xin takes the initiative to use his own, and Mu Qing sees no reason to stop him, given that this entire endeavour was his idea.

“Xianle’s not here.” Jun Wu says as they step through, cross legged on the floor with his back to them. “That’s a shame.”

He makes no move to face them. Quietly, they are both glad for it.

“He comes to see you more than he should.” Mu Qing says, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall of the cave.

“Certainly more than either of you.” Jun Wu agrees, amused. “Makes one wonder what prompted such an unexpected visit."

Feng Xin takes a single step closer to the cell, taking a breath before he speaks.

“We have a question about the cursed shackles.”

“Do you?” Jun Wu shifts on his heels, flicking a length of long gunmetal grey hair over his shoulder. “Or do you have a question about Xianle?”

Mu Quin and Feng Xin glance at each other. It is one of many occasions that others would observe frequently if they knew to look for it, that regardless of how much fighting surrounds a decision, they are often in agreement before the argument even commenced.

“What do you know about Guoshi Fangxin?” Feng Xin says, cutting the preamble.

“Does calling him that help?” His smirk is audible, though he still makes no move to turn towards them. He tilts his head as if in consideration, or remembrance of a memory fondly held. “An excellent teacher, by all accounts.”

He laughs, just once.

“Messy death.”

“He was buried alive.” Mu Qing states, long past the point of needing to question it.

“He was.”

“For how long?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“For how long, Jun Wu?”

Jun Wu hums, turning his head just enough for them to make out the jagged edge of a scar on his cheek. They are aware enough not to flinch, lest it be seen as weakness, or retreat. Jun Wu has always had an air of superiority to him, even when caged and powerless, he knows how to entice those around him into subservience, into submission.

“I will answer your question if you answer one of mine.”

“Name it.” Feng Xin says, ignoring the steady glare Mu Qing levels his way.

“Has he taken on the role of the emperor, in my absence?”

“He didn’t want it.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No one officially holds the title.” Mu Qing interrupts, taking a single step towards Feng Xin when he makes to open his mouth again, tugging the sleeve of his robe with a single abortive shake of his head. When he glances back to Jun Wu, he is watching the exchange from the corner of his eye.

“And unofficially?”

Neither of them have anything to answer that with other than what he wants, they are loathe to give him any verbalisation of it.

“Hmm.” Jun Wu hums, finally turning that scared cheek back to the wall. “Good.”

“That’s enough of your games.” Feng Xin says, ripping his sleeve away from where Mu Qing’s fingers have lingered, unbidden and wrong footed. “How long was he buried?”

“Long enough to pray to me. To pray to you both.”

They say nothing in response, though their confusion must be palpable enough to entice his continuation.

“I believe it was you first, Nan Yang.” He says, like he would ever offer the fact if it was given with anything other than certainty. “Around the third decade. He begged to me sometime just shy of the fourths end. He really wasn’t sure on calling for your aid Xuan Zhen, but he got particularly desperate around the fifty-fifth year. That desperation waxed and waned like the moon’s cycle for another thirty or so, I lose track of the exact timings.”

“You knew?” Feng Xin says, stepping as close to the final restraining barriers as he can. He looks very much like he would smash a fist into it if he didn’t know the consequences of that magic backfiring on him. “Why didn’t you help him!”

“He asked me to renounce his godhood fully. I didn’t feel that much suited my plans for him. Later he asked me to remove the shackles, but I wasn’t too keen on that either. I’m sure you understand the significance in the order of those requests.”

“You disgust me.” Feng Xin spits, teeth bared, and shoulders squared into a battle stance. His fists flex so harshly at his side his vambraces creek in protest.

A chuckle greets his outrage. “All in all, it was quite a beneficial learning experience for him.”

“Feng Xin. That’s enough. He’s just enjoying it.”

“But the shackle-”

Mu Qing shakes his head, pushing back on Feng Xin’s shoulders to put distance between him and the barriers.

“I’ve heard enough to determine for myself. Wasn’t that the whole point?”

“Will you be going now?” Jun Wu calls, the slightest hint of that scared cheek tilted back into their view. “Give Xianle my regards.”

“Get fucked.” Feng Xin hisses.

“So loyal. You must feel you know him so well.” There is something almost placating about his tone, like he is reassuring a child of a facet in a fairy-tale, knowing all the while everything they believe is a lie. “It would do you well to remember, Nan Yang, that you barely know him at all.”

“I’ve known him his whole life!”

“His whole mortal life.” Jun Wu corrects, softly enough to sound sympathetic. “Rather insignificant, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it?

“You know nothing!”

“I know everything.”

“Feng Xin, that’s enough, you idiot! He just wants a rise out of you!”

The tension in Feng Xin’s shoulders is so profound he’s almost vibrating with energy, Mu Qing himself is barely holding back an old urge to hide himself behind the forward fall of his hair. There is something exhausting about confirmation, something he wasn’t expecting. All this sounded so much like a thing of nightmares; he never once seriously imagined it could be true.

They are most of the way back to the array when they hear Jun Wu shifting round to watch them leave. It’s unnerving even with the wards, like he can see right through to their viscera, their hearts, their fears.

“Do you know how Ruoye was born?” He asks, stopping them in their tracks just at the foot of the barrier.

“No?” He muses, sounding amused and somewhat prideful. “What about Lang’er Bay?”

They remain eerily still, as if frozen, nothing but the steady clench of their hands indicating their attention.

“Hmm.” A hum. Of contemplation initially. Of confirmation when the only answer that greets him is their silence. These are not questions he lacks answers to, after all. “And I suppose you’ve no idea why he really wanted you both to leave, back then?”

Mu Qing can’t help the abortive way he flinches, almost losing his composure enough to sweep his eyes back to where Jun Wu is watching them, hawk like and piercing.

“If you ever consider getting properly reacquainted with Xianle, I suggest you ask him about those.”