Chapter Text
When Wei Wuxian came to, he was greeted by the repulsive scent of overripe fruit tainted by copper. He did not move his heavy, aching body as he took his first rattling breaths on a hard, wet floor. He lifted his head, which immediately protested, and opened his eyes to a room he did not recognize. Wei Wuxian was disappointed to realize nothing stood out to him, but he supposed it was only fitting that his surroundings were unfamiliar.
He pulled himself to his knees and found slender legs with deep gashes and equally bloody hands. His fingers were deeply scarred, cut many times like Wei Wuxian’s own had been, except these were much too delicate to belong to him.
This is not my body, he thought in the haze. He’d been such a good spirit, not causing any trouble at all. Who had thought to summon him?
He tried to get to his feet and failed miserably, his legs giving out before he’d finished the attempt, his chin smacking to the ground, rattling his teeth. Whoever had summoned him most certainly had been generous with the amount of blood used. Already so close to the ground, Wei Wuxian took a good look at the array drawn all around him. It was a bit clunky, but resembled the one he’d created ages ago on another sleepless night, thinking he might ease the burden if he returned at least one parent to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli. Someone they could rely on. The ritual he designed hadn’t ended up with that ability. Resentment couldn’t bring forth someone free of guilt.
What a joke.
“What did you do this for?” Wei Wuxian muttered, pausing as soon as he’d spoken. His new voice was light. Just who had summoned him?
In the right corner of the room stood a tall bronze mirror that wouldn’t look out of place in Jinlintai. Dragging himself out of the array, smudging the blood with his white robes, Wei Wuxian aimed for the bronze mirror. Once he’d managed to crawl in front of it, he found himself face to face with a pale maiden. She was young,her complexion that of a poem’s, though it was no natural beauty but blood loss.
“Who are you?” the maiden spoke with her blue lips, Wei Wuxian’s intonation, a foreigner’s voice.
Oh.
Oh, this was not how this should go. Had a woman summoned him? How had a random woman even gotten access to this ritual? It should be as destroyed as Wei Wuxian’s body and yet, somehow, his creations remained while Wei Wuxian had been purged from the earth.
Fuck, Wei Wuxian needed to figure out just where he was. The door wasn’t far off, so he wiped the blood from his face and limbs, dirtying the white robes further. Had she been a widow maybe? Her husband could’ve been slaughtered and left unavenged, so she decided to treat herself to the afterlife and leave Wei Wuxian to fulfill her revenge. Determined, Wei Wuxian pulled himself towards the door, but just when he wanted to reach out to open it, someone else pushed it open.
“What have you done!?” thundered a voice Wei Wuxian had, frankly speaking, never wanted to hear again.
“Old man Lan?” Wei Wuxian blurted out, staring at the aged face of his former teacher.
At the back of his mind, Wei Wuxian remembered the cut of his robes, that he wasn’t dressed like a widow at all, but like a Lan.
Lan Qiren looked around, his gaze stuck somewhere above Wei Wuxian’s head, most likely the half-ruined summoning array behind him – fucking stupid, Wei Wuxian should’ve gotten rid of it immediately. Just why did it have to be a Lan summoning him, why was Lan Qiren his visitor at the door? Wasn’t death enough punishment?
“Wei Wuxian?” Lan Qiren asked wearily.
It seemed as good a time as any to pass out, Wei Wuxian would insist he decided, but in reality, his body decided that sitting upright on top of the blood loss was too much of a challenge, and sent him straight into a dead faint.
Wei Wuxian would like to claim he wasn’t surprised to be waking up a second time, but apparently, Lan Qiren was ready to surprise him with an odd reversal of their usual dynamics. For a moment, he hoped he’d just hallucinated old man Lan, but no, unfortunately, Lan Qiren was sitting on the floor in front of the blood array, studying it intently. Wei Wuxian raised his arms and found them wrapped. Had Lan Qiren actually put him in the bed and bandaged him?
“Are you awake?” Lan Qiren asked into the silence, tearing his eyes from the array and facing Wei Wuxian.
Wei Wuxian considered pettily staying quiet, but he wasn’t going to make it out of this house alive anyway, so he might as well make it quick for himself. Never let it be said that Wei Wuxian couldn’t assess whatever mess he found himself in.
“Yes,” he answered after some deliberation.
“Wang Chunhua?”
Wei Wuxian snorted. “I thought you’d already figured me out, Old Man Lan.”
Lan Qiren sighed, sounding somehow even more exhausted than Wei Wuxian had ever managed to make him in his youth. What a glorious second ending for the Yiling Patriarch, killed by Lan Qiren’s lingering annoyance and lack of patience.
“You are Wei Wuxian.”
“In the flesh,” Wei Wuxian replied, raising his arm as if preparing to bow. “Well, not my flesh. I’m assuming Wang Chunhua is the name of the woman who summoned me?”
Her name wasn’t Lan, but that meant little. She was dressed like one of theirs. Wang Chunhua obviously belonged to the sect.
“So you are possessing her?” Lan Qiren asked, more steadily than expected. Wei Wuxian was surprised the man hadn’t cursed him into nothingness yet. Ah, he was probably concerned for Wang Chunhua. Fair enough, Wei Wuxian also wouldn’t risk harm to the body of a charge under his care on the off chance it would get rid of someone he loathed.
Too bad that possibility had already flown out of the window. Should Wei Wuxian lie? It might give him enough time to gather his wits and run away, but then again, he had no idea how much time had passed since he’d fainted, and while Lan Qiren had been a boring lecturer, he was far from stupid. The man had probably already figured out what was going on and was just waiting for Wei Wuxian to lie to him for a swift execution.
“Aiyah, teacher, don’t you tell your students not to ask stupid questions anymore?” Wei Wuxian asked. He pushed himself upright, leaning against the wall with one shoulder. “She offered her body to me. So as long as I fulfill her wishes, it is mine to do with as I please.”
Not that there was anything pleasant about being stuck in a weak body of a woman. Couldn’t she have used less blood, made this a bit easier on the both of them? What was the point of dabbling in the unorthodox to bring Wei Wuxian back only to set him up for execution? Maybe if she wasn’t a widow searching for revenge, she was some kind of prisoner forced to bring Wei Wuxian back to atone for her own crimes so they could kill him all over again. The more Wei Wuxian thought about it, the stranger his thoughts became.
Lan Qiren’s eyes narrowed. “Are you certain of this?”
“I invented the ritual,” Wei Wuxian said and rolled his eyes. Of course, he knew what it did. “More importantly, how come a member of your clan knew of it?”
“That is of no relevance to you,” Lan Qiren snapped. No relevance? Wei Wuxian was the one stuck in her body! He had every right to know how he came to be there.
“Well, in any case, you’ll have to wait to march me out of the Cloud Recesses, my legs refuse to work,” Wei Wuxian said with a sardonic smile. “What was the rule again? ‘No killing within the Cloud Recesses’?”
“You insolent—” Lan Qiren gritted out, but bit off the rest of the insult. Wei Wuxian laughed heavily. At least he’d have some entertainment before Lan Qiren tried to execute him. “Ah, Master Lan, you haven’t changed at all. You don’t have to worry about me corrupting any more Lan disciples, I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
Oh, he was, absolutely. As soon as he could stand on his own legs again, probably by midnight, he’d run. It seemed that Wang Chunhua was a cultivator despite dabbling in the unorthodox, so Wei Wuxian’s chances at escape weren’t too terrible. But it was best to make Lan Qiren believe he was weaker than he actually was, have him bicker with his Elders on how best to get rid of Wei Wuxian.
Ah, would they have Lan Zhan execute him this time? He wouldn’t mind so much if it was Lan Zhan they sent after him.
“You will not be executed, Wei Wuxian,” Lan Qiren said. Wei Wuxian only raised his brow at him. “Why not? You are just like your nephew, Old Man Lan, you’ve never liked me. Shouldn’t you want to be done with me as soon as possible?”
Wei Wuxian couldn’t parse the strange expression on Lan Qiren’s face. It seemed stuck somewhere between irritation and disbelief. The turn of this conversation was much too bizarre for Wei Wuxian to follow.
“Say I kill you now, what stops you from wreaking a different kind of havoc? I don’t know this infernal ritual of yours, but I do know what a resentful spirit can do. We haven’t been able to summon you for four years, no matter the invocation, but you choose to appear like this?”
There was not much of a choice involved in the body offering ritual, Wei Wuxian thought. Wang Chunhua held his spirit with a blade to his neck and a chance at reincarnation. But he could follow Lan Qiren’s thought process, even if he resented the suggestion that Wei Wuxian would immediately cause harm upon his second departure. If they hadn’t been able to summon him to destroy his spirit the first time, and obviously it hadn’t been scattered into all cardinal directions, why would he hurt anyone now? However long it had been, surely that should speak for Wei Wuxian’s character.
“Besides, this requires reason and investigation,” Lan Qiren continued. “You will remain here until I have figured out what is truly going on, and then you will return to where you belong, Wei Wuxian.”
And with a tremendously dramatic swish of his robes, Lan Qiren left the room.
Wei Wuxian could hear his footsteps on the wooden floor, then on the gravel outside, until they disappeared among the birdsong, leaving Wei Wuxian with the bloody array and his own thoughts.
With a sigh, Wei Wuxian lay down again. Honestly, what a mess.
Oh, well, Wei Wuxian would be just fine. For now, he’d rest before seeing how quickly he could escape.