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Chapter Text

Now:

Zhang Ruonan stopped, her hands curling into fists at her sides. She had been rehearsing this conversation in her head, but once she was actually at Shen Wei’s office door, she felt uncertain. After all, he had always been so self-possessed. Calm, composed, brilliant, popular. He lived in a different world. How could she possibly help him? She even took a step back, but the movement must have caught his attention. He raised his head. For a long moment, though, his expression remained so blank that Zhang Ruonan was not sure he even recognized her. “Shen-laoshi?” she said at last.

“Ah, Zhang-laoshi.” He looked down at his desk, closed the topmost file folder, then attempted to square the whole stack. His fingers were unsteady, the files slick, and one folder slid away. He reclaimed it, squared the stack again, and looked at her once more.

“Was there something you needed?”

“Me?” She took the opportunity to sidle into his office. “Oh, no. No. I only—” she broke off, frustrated by the way she was losing the thread of this conversation before it had even begun. “I was sorry to hear about Li Qian,” she announced in a rush. “We all were.”

“Yes,” Shen Wei said. “But it is my sincere hope that after rest and care, she may be able to return to campus. I hate to think we might lose one of her talent.”

“You have such compassion for your students,” Zhang Ruonan told him sincerely. “You’re always looking out for everyone’s best interests. But I am concerned…actually we all are. It seems that no one may be looking out for your best interests, Shen-laoshi.”

His gaze had drifted away from her as she stumbled through her little speech, but at that, his eyes snapped back, expression sharp although his tone remained mild. “I don't understand. What is the concern?”

Now Zhang Ruonan was the one who looked away. Did he really think no one had noticed? A week ago he had been so unsteady during a late afternoon lecture several students had intervened to walk him back to his office. Since then his classes had been hopelessly scattershot, starting late and ending early, his lectures peppered with little mistakes and errors, none of them so critical on their own but cumulatively? Such a departure from the professor’s reputation for quiet precision. Far worse were those long, long silences from him, the distant look in his eyes, the tremor in his hands.

His fingers were trembling even now.

“So much has happened,” she said instead of calling him on it. “The death of your student Lu Ruomei, Li Qian’s breakdown and those investigators from the SID crawling all over campus—”

“These matters have been difficult for all of us,” Shen Wei agreed quietly.

Zhang Ruonan stepped further into the office and lowered her voice. “Several of your students have spoken to me. Please understand they are not complaining. They are only concerned, as you would be for them, if the circumstances were reversed.”

“Zhang-laoshi, I do not understand.”

“Jiajia wants to speak to her grandfather, the chancellor, but I said that I would speak to you first. I didn’t want you to feel like we were talking about you behind your back.”

Zhang Ruonan quailed at the expression on Shen Wei’s face, but she dug her nails into her palm and forced herself to continue. “I know, I know, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, but it’s only because we’re so worried about you!”

“I am fine,” Shen Wei said. “But I am at a loss to understand how any of this concerns the chancellor.” He sounded calm, even bemused, but he made a clumsy gesture and his stacked folders avalanched across the desk. A few slid to the floor.

“We’ve all seen it, Shen-laoshi,” Zhang Ruonan exclaimed, stepping in to help collect the scattered files. “That lead investigator comes roaring across campus on his motorcycle, hanging around your office before and after classes-- it’s no wonder you can’t concentrate! Jiajia just wants her grandfather to keep him and his investigators away from the university so things can get back to normal for all of us.”

“Speak of Cao Cao, and guess who appears at your door!” called a big, bright voice behind her and oh no, Zhang Ruonan knew exactly who that was. She looked at Shen Wei instead of turning around. “You see?” she wanted to say. “He doesn't give you a moment’s peace!” But she was caught by the expression on Shen Wei’s face. His eyes had gone soft, as if all the worry of the past few days had been swept away.

Then that welcome expression of pleasure was gone so quickly, she wondered if she had imagined it. His mouth tightened, his eyes closed, as if he knew they revealed too much. “Chief Zhao,” he said.

“At least I did not come roaring up on my noisy motorcycle this time,” Zhao Yunlan exclaimed cheerfully. “But if you want me to stop pestering your Shen-jiaoshi with my presence, I’m afraid the University will first have to stop misplacing its students.”

Zhang Ruonan whirled. “Misplaced students?” she gasped before she could stop herself, immediately thinking of Wang Yike, but no, that was absurd. They’d lunched together just a few hours ago. He could not possibly be talking about her. “What misplaced students?”

The man’s smile remained bright but his expression sharpened. “You seem concerned,” he told her. “Is there a student you’re worried about?”

She backed away from him. “Me? No! Of course not.”

His eyes crinkled. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“Chief Zhao,” Shen Wei broke in. “This is my colleague Zhang Ruonan. Zhang-laoshi, this is Zhao Yunlan, who is—”

“Who is Shen-jiaoshi’s very good friend!” the man asserted shamelessly.

Shen Wei looked momentarily nonplussed and then continued, “I was going to say, he is the chief of the SID, but I believe you already know that. And of course Guo Changcheng, his junior officer.”

He gestured to the pale waif of a young man who hovered in the door.

“Chief Zhao,” Shen Wei said again. “Am I to understand that a student is missing under circumstances peculiar enough to concern the SID?”

“So it seems, and unfortunately for Zhang-laoshi here who would like to have us banned from campus, it was the chancellor himself who requested our assistance. In fact, by curious coincidence—” His sharp eyes glittered at Zhang Ruonan, “I believe the missing student is one of yours.”

“What?” she exclaimed in honest shock. “But that’s terrible news! Who are you looking for?”

“He’s a kid in Engineering 4. Zhang Hao. His roommate reported him missing.”

“Oh,” she said, her worry dissipating. “Yes, I know him, and I noticed he had missed several classes.”

“Doesn’t sound like you were very concerned,” Zhao Yunlan said.

“Well, no. Disappointed, but hardly surprised. In fact, I was forced to give him a failing grade recently because he had so many absences. He apologized to me, promised to make amends, even invited me to his birthday party! Then he was late to that as well. You remember, Shen-laoshi. That was the night I saw you downtown at the city center, and you walked me back to campus because you were concerned about my being out so late.” She smiled and adjusted her glasses. “Shen Wei can be a little old-fashioned, but it was a very kind gesture. Thank you again.”

“Our Shen Wei is nothing if not a gentleman,” Zhao Yunlan agreed, and that casual possessiveness aggravated Zhang Ruonan all over again.

Zhao Yunlan continued, “So it didn't surprise you when Zhang Hao failed to make appointments or show up for class?”

“I’m afraid he was always more interested in basketball than in his coursework.”

“Shen-jiaoshi!” Zhao Yunlan exclaimed suddenly. “Do you know Zhang Hao?”

Zhang Ruonan looked at Chief Zhao, surprised by his tone, and then at Shen Wei. Shen Wei’s expression was carefully blank but his larynx jumped above his carefully buttoned collar, and he blinked before he answered. “It is always regrettable when a student chooses not to make the most of his time at school. But no, I did not have him in class.”

Guo Changcheng suddenly said, “I studied very hard at college, but my grades were never very good. Does that mean I was not making the most of my time either?”

This was ridiculous, Zhang Ruonan decided. And worse than that, Zhao Yunlan’s presence was clearly upsetting Shen Wei. “What I cannot understand is the chancellor inviting you and your police onto campus to investigate a student dropout,” she announced, surprising herself with her boldness. “Has anyone tried just calling his parents instead? And if he’s not at home, I’m sure he’s simply staying with friends.”

“Very reasonable suggestions!” Zhao Yunlan agreed. “Xiao Guo, make a note that the next time we need to recruit new agents we should definitely draw from the ranks of university instructors!”

Zhang Ruonan frowned, assuming she was being mocked. Zhao Yunlan turned back to her, but he was smiling, not sneering, and his tone was serious. “But he is not at home, and neither his roommate nor his other friends have any idea where he might be. Even so, you are quite right that a mere missing person case would not usually fall within the purview of the SID.”

He leaned his hip against Shen Wei’s desk and picked up a letter opener, using it like a lecturer’s pointer as he addressed Zhang Ruonan and Shen Wei. “There is an unusual wrinkle to this case. CCTV footage from Zhang Hao's last night on campus shows him leaving practice, crossing the quadrangle and then walking past the student union, presumably on his way to the dormitories. He was dribbling a basketball the whole way. We found a basketball under some bushes near the teachers’ dormitories and a busted mobile phone that looked like it had been in an explosion. But of Zhang Hao himself there has been no sign. So thoroughly has he disappeared, he might’ve been swallowed up by the Earth!”

Zhao Yunlan beamed, pointing the letter opener first at Zhang Ruonan, then at Shen Wei. “So I put it to you both—”

Shen Wei looked at the blade of the letter opener in the chief’s hand, and Zhao Yunlan placed it back in its sheath on Shen Wei’s desk with exaggerated care. “At any rate, inconvenient as it may be for all concerned, the circumstances of this student’s disappearance are certainly peculiar enough to warrant the presence of the SID on campus.”

Three nights ago:

The forsythia trembled and dropped a few yellow petals. "I cannot," the Yashou said. "Lord Envoy, please understand. The enemy is so much stronger than we knew. If you yourself are not safe, what chance would I have, or any of our fellows?"

“I was taken unawares,” Shen Wei admitted grimly. “It will not happen again.”

“None of us doubt your resolve, Heipaoshi, but when the enemy can set Haixingren children against you to such devastating effect, what hope is there for the Yashou? Since Ya Ching’s heartbreaking defection, Ying Chun has advised us to avoid even the appearance of partisanship, and if that is not possible, to retreat from the field altogether. Please forgive me.”

The suggestion of a face melted into a tangle of branches as the thump of a basketball rebounding on the walk came from behind Shen Wei and echoed from the surrounding buildings. Shen Wei turned. The student dribbling the ball was an overgrown puppy of a kid whose face looked younger than his probable years. He still wore his red and blue team uniform, and when he saw Shen Wei, he caught the ball in both hands. “Shen-laoshi,” he called out. “Hey, what a coincidence.”

“Is it?” Shen Wei asked warily. He did not know this student, but he thought perhaps he had seen him around the department. It was intolerable how the enemy’s attack had left him suspicious of everyone around him, tainting all the pleasure he had once taken in being a teacher. This past week, he could hardly look out at the rows of faces in his classroom without wondering who among them might have been there.

His students! Those bright young minds. Could any among them really have taken such pleasure in hurting him?

The poison was still in his system, and when his emotions were stirred he experienced nausea and blurred vision, a flooding weakness in his sinews, equilibrium lost and anguish welling to the surface. He closed his eyes now and willed himself to relax, riding out the waves of sickness and grief.

As if from very far away he heard the kid with the basketball asking, “Shen-laoshi?”

Shen Wei thought of his poor didi, wailing from the pillar that Haixing wanted nothing from Dixing but the humiliating defeat and death of all its denizens. Shen Wei did not believe that, had never believed it. But right now, were it not for Kunlun’s astonishing, utterly inexplicable incarnation in the person of Zhao Yunlan, it could have been all too easy to despair.

Despair was surely what the enemy wanted. Shen Wei would not give him the satisfaction.

“Shen-laoshi?” the kid asked again.

Shen Wei opened his eyes, blinking away his tears. “What was the coincidence?” he asked softly.

“What?”

“You said running into me was a coincidence.”

The kid grinned. “Oh, well yeah. I can’t stop thinking about it, seriously.” He tossed the ball companionably to Shen Wei who caught it and didn’t throw it back. Despite the student’s smile and friendliness, Shen Wei’s scalp had started to prickle. Dark energy boiled at his meridians, but he forced himself to remain still and calm. His ability to gauge threats had been compromised ever since the attack and obviously hadn’t improved yet. Here he was confronting a kid on the way home from basketball practice like he was a raging youchu.

“No,” Shen Wei finally managed in a level voice, “I do not know why this is a coincidence, nor what you are thinking about.” He threw the ball back. “Student, I do not even know your name.”

The student caught the ball and started dribbling it again. To Shen Wei it seemed like an excuse not to look him in the face. “I was just thinking we had a pretty good time, all right?” He sounded exasperated at being asked to explain himself. “And if you wanted to...you know. Again. I’d be ok with that.”

Shen Wei didn’t trust himself to move. He barely trusted himself to speak. This student could not possibly be saying what Shen Wei thought he had heard.

His silence seemed to embarrass the kid further. “Alright, maybe we got a little rough,” he burst out. “but I saw those muscles. You’re a pretty strong guy, and it’s not like you really told us to stop.” He snorted. “We would have snapped Zhang-laoshi like a twig trying that.” He tucked the basketball under one arm and pulled out his phone. “And we got some really hot pix. Want to see?”

Two weeks ago:

It turned out none of them actually knew the older man with the bad dye job who had been buying them drinks all night.

Zhang Hao and Wang Ziqiang had assumed he was a friend of Liu Yadong’s. The class rep was a year ahead. It just made sense he would have older friends. Comparing notes afterwards, though, they found out that Liu Yadong had spent the night thinking the guy was a friend of theirs.

It didn’t matter. He kept their glasses full, and he understood about a teacher making your life miserable. And if they didn’t come right out and explain the little joke they had intended to play on Zhang Ruonan, he understood, and he echoed their fury at Shen-jiaoshi showing up out of nowhere to ruin everything. How would they ever lure Zhang Ruonan out by herself again?

The stranger clucked sympathetically. He ordered another round and waited until they had all had a drink. Then he told them that while he could not help with their bitch of an instructor, if they wanted to teach Shen-jiaoshi a lesson about butting in where he was not wanted, well, he thought he could do something about that.

Then he placed a tiny, lozenge-shaped casket in the center of the table. Woven from golden wire with green gems set in the lid, the ornate box glittered hypnotically in the low light of the bar. The stranger waited for them to admire the strange and beautiful little thing, and then he popped it open to display a large round pill with a sheen like a pearl.

“What is it?” Zhang Hao asked.

The agreeable stranger brushed his hair out of his eyes. He had leather and steel jewelry crossing the back of his hand. “Give this to Shen-jiaoshi, and I guarantee he’ll let you have everything you missed getting from Zhang Ruonan tonight.”

“Damn,” Wang Ziqiang whispered.

But Liu Yadong laughed out loud and pushed away from the table. “You expect us to roofie Shen Wei? Yeah, that sounds like a good way for us all to wind up in jail.”

“Plus, uh, I’m not really into guys,” Zhang Hao said hesitantly.

The stranger snorted and clapped the casket shut. “This isn’t rohypnol you stupid, stupid fucks, and you’re not asking the professor out on a dinner date.”

He leaned forward over the table and looked at each of them in turn. Zhang Hao felt his heart thudding in his chest, and he realized he was a little afraid of this crazy guy with his purple hair and weird little pillbox.

“Shen-jiaoshi makes himself a cup of tea in his office every Wednesday before his four o'clock lecture. All you have to do is sneak in ahead of time. His office will not be locked. Drop this into his hot water thermos. It will dissolve without leaving a trace, and Shen Wei will drink it with his afternoon tea, suspecting nothing. Then you should pay him a little visit after his lecture. Believe me, he won't be in any state by then to tell you no."

He looked around the table again, then stared straight at Zhang Hao. “You don’t think he’ll be a helluva lot tighter than your slut of a teacher would’ve been?”

“Oh my god,” Wang Ziqiang whimpered. Zhang Hao felt the jolt of heat straight to his groin. Liu Yadong looked equal parts worried and turned on, and he shifted in his chair. He still tried to keep control of the situation, though.

“How do you know so much about Shen-jiaoshi? Why do you care?”

“You’d be better off not asking so many questions,” the stranger said, but he slid the jeweled casket across the table to Liu Yadong, who pocketed it without hesitation. “You must have noticed that there's something a little... unusual about the professor.”

Zhang Hao had not, actually, noticed any such thing. Wang Ziqiang said hesitantly, “Well, he dresses for lectures like he’s expecting a fashion photographer to show up or something.”

The stranger stared incredulously and then looked away, swallowing his first response. "Shen Wei recently interfered with my plans in much the same way he interfered with yours," he finally ground out. "We can all agree that it's past time someone taught him a lesson."

Now:

Heipaoshi was already there by the time Chu Shuzhi arrived. Standing in the center of the stone-paved circle, the Lord Envoy reminded Chu Shuzhi of the needle of an ancient sundial. He stood just as motionless and in the bright sunlight he seemed almost as thin, casting a long, straight shadow. Chu Shuzhi lengthened his stride and went to one knee before him. “Daren.”

“We dwell in dark times,” the Lord Envoy announced bluntly. “There are things you must know if you are to assist me now.” He gestured, black robes swirling, and suddenly an unremarkable man in a sweater vest and slacks stood in Heipaoshi’s place. Chu Shuzhi rocked back on his heels. He knew this man, though it took him a second or two to place him. This was the professor who had somehow survived falling off the roof when attacked by the shadow creature.

Chu Shuzhi laughed shortly and rose to his feet. The professor’s survival seemed considerably less mysterious now. “Daren,” he said, shaking his head. “I was not aware.”

Heipaoshi did not smile back. “You were not meant to know. Your position as my eyes and ears within the SID seemed a delicate enough matter without adding to your burden of secrets. But our enemy is at hand, and I will require the utmost from you in the days to come.”

“My life is yours!” Chu Shuzhi declared immediately. “Dispose of it as you will.” He tried to go to his knees once more, but this time the Envoy stopped him.

“It is necessary that you cherish your life,” he disagreed. “A martyr is of no use to me, regardless of how brave.”

“I understand,” Chu Shuzhi straightened. “But Daren,” he looked closely at him. “Something has happened. Are you all right?”

“You should call me teacher Shen Wei when I appear so.”

“Yes, Shen-laoshi,” he agreed again, but he felt even more uneasy. “What can you tell me of our enemy?”

“He is more ruthless than I knew, and more cunning as well. He would have slain me had he possessed wisdom commensurate with his other talents.”

“My lord!” groaned Chu Shuzhi, in his shock immediately forgetting his instructions. “Shen-laoshi,” he corrected himself. “What happened? Were you hurt?”

“I will be fine. It was a cowardly attempt carried out by intermediaries. Even now the SID is investigating the consequences of their attack.”

“The missing student,” Chu Shuzhi realized.

The Envoy bowed his head in assent. “And it seems likely that Zhao Yunlan may focus his attention on me as the investigation proceeds. Do not interfere. You may advise me of developments if the opportunity arises, but that should not be your main concern. It is certainly not mine.”

“I will do so. But are other students in danger? Is there a way to warn them?”

“There will be no further warning,” the Envoy said in a low voice.

Chu Shuzhi inhaled sharply. “The intermediaries used against you by the enemy—they were students?”

The Envoy did not answer, saying instead, “You must pay attention to Zhao Yunlan’s safety. I have told you our enemy can act with great cunning, attacking without honor from the shadows. I charge you now to ensure he can take no such action against Chief Zhao.”

“Yes, of course, but I still don’t understand how mere students could have hurt you.” And it was clear to Chu Shuzhi as he looked closely at the Envoy, that he had been hurt. His unmasked face was desperately pale in the bright sunshine, but the shadows under his eyes were darker than a day-old bruise.

“Swear to me that you will see to Zhao Yunlan’s safety,” Heipaoshi insisted. “Speak to Da Qing. He will be at Zhao Yunlan’s side when you cannot. Our enemy has used Dixing poisons and the cruelty of Haixingren allies.” His voice shook. “I will not have him touched by this vile creature!”

Chu Shuzhi bowed his head. “My lord,” he said. “I swear it.” He continued more cautiously. “Forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, but shouldn’t Heipaoshi raise his concerns directly with Chief Zhao?”

The Envoy looked away, his face working. Chu Shuzhi lowered his eyes at once, only to notice the clenched fists at the Envoy’s sides. It was a hard thing to see his lord’s anger and fear laid so bare.

“I would surely tell him everything if I thought it might protect him.” The Envoy’s voice was hoarse as he struggled to contain his emotions. “But understanding what I do of Zhao Yunlan’s character, I am very much afraid that anything he learned about the attack against me as Shen-laoshi would only drive him to confront the enemy himself.” The Envoy abandoned that persona all at once, the flash of dark energy burning patterns on the inside of Chu Shuzhi’s hastily-closed eyelids. When he looked again, Heipaoshi stood masked and cloaked before him again, darker than a thundercloud. “We will prevent that at all cost.”

Seven nights ago:

A hand gripped his face, fingers digging into his jaw, and the pain drew Shen Wei into his own body again. He heard himself groan.

“What, did they break your jaw too? Little beasts!” Someone laughed above him. The hand gripping his face let go and patted his head. The jewelry on his wrist and hand caught strands of Shen Wei’s hair.

“Haixingren children are monsters. Their elders are even worse, and these are the people you choose to support?” He clenched his fist roughly in Shen Wei’s hair before releasing him.

“They didn’t even know you are Dixingren. If I had told them, I wonder if they would have left you alive. Listen to me, Shen-jiaoshi,” he bent so close that Shen Wei felt the puff of his foul breath against the side of his face. “My master wants me to give every Dixingren refugee the chance to support his glorious purpose. I understand a simple teacher may have no appetite for battle, but I am offering you the opportunity to amend your ways. The SID are the enemy. I chose not to kill you for helping them, so I am now your friend.”

Shen Wei fought to gather his dark energy, but his meridians were hopelessly disordered. Energy bled from his lax fingers like pooling blood.

His enemy saw what he was trying to do and snarled. “That’s your decision? Then die for Haixing, you pathetic traitor.” A length of something slick and unyielding whipped around his throat. His enemy fell heavily on Shen Wei’s back, and he kneed his way between his thighs, panting. “Your humiliating end will be a lesson to all who might think of defying my master.”

The material around his throat tightened. Shen Wei thrashed, unable to marshal his strength or his dark energy. Then something knocked violently at the windows of his office. A rush of wind seemed very close at hand. Over the roar in his ears he heard beating wings and a woman exclaimed scornfully, “Are you out of your mind?”

The enemy went still, though he didn’t loosen his makeshift garrote. “Go away,” he sulked. “I’m busy.”

“Oh, get up,” she said. “You’re as disgusting as those humans.”

The pressure around his throat eased. The man over him sat up, though he remained crouched between Shen Wei’s thighs. “Don’t act so pure. You agreed to this.”

“I agreed it was a good idea to scare him out of helping the SID, but the master has said we must keep a low profile. Do you think leaving an eminent professor raped and murdered in his own office is low profile?”

“He’s too stubborn to trust.”

“Idiot! Believe me, he will tell no one what has happened tonight, and he will never interfere in our plans again. But if you kill him, the SID will scour Dragon City from the treetops to the sewers, and they’ll have the full support of the Xingdu Bureau. It could be months before we dare show our faces again.”

“Traitors need to be taught a lesson.”

She sighed. “So go ahead and fuck him if you really can’t control yourself. I’ll wait.”

“Yashou bitch,” the other snarled.

“I intend to make sure you leave him alive. I’m not going to be the one who disappoints our master.”

The man climbed heavily to his feet and the discussion continued, heated and ugly, but by now Shen Wei was barely conscious. His vision was shot through with red and black, and it seemed his reluctant savior might have come too late. Every breath was a dagger to the throat. His dark energy was stagnant around his meridians, black pools moving sluggish and thick, as though he were dying. The unfairness was breathtaking. He had just found Kunlun! It did not matter that his beloved did not know him. He was here and Shen Wei had been waiting for so long.

So he would find a way. He would not, he could not die and leave Zhao Yunlan unprotected in the face of such evil. He stopped trying to heal himself and he even stopped trying to breathe. His vision grayed out. The conversation between his enemies faded to a distant drone. Eventually, energy began to circulate along his meridians once more. Dark energy crawled along the principal pathways. Though the recovery was agonizingly slow, once he was no longer suffocating under the weight of his own blocked energy, he began to breathe again.

When he was finally able to open his eyes, he was alone in his office. He raised one hand and finally pulled away the material still snugged too tightly around his throat.

His enemy had been strangling him with his own silk tie.

He dropped the crumpled gray silk and turned his head, a movement which hurt his jaw so badly he hardly noticed the strain on his bruised neck. His throat was sore and the taste in his mouth was foul. His lips were cracked. Something dried and flaking was splattered across his face. A moan rose from deep in his throat, but he silenced himself mercilessly.

The enemy and his assailants had left him alive. That would be their undoing. Shen Wei would survive, and he would trace this evil back to its source, the master in the shadows they all seemed to fear. He would protect Zhao Yunlan. All the rest was merely an insult to his dignity and did not matter.

He would not allow it to matter.

He raised his eyes and tried to orient himself. He lay huddled on floorboards of his office, wearing his sleeveless undershirt and very little else. The blinds were closed along the interior and exterior windows. A single lamp burned in the corner of the room. Night, still. He flung out his hand to lock the office door, and using just that modicum of dark energy exhausted him.

He rolled to his side, breathing carefully through the pain. A warm rush of fluid spilled between his legs and down the back of his thighs. His own blood, mixed with the semen of faceless strangers. He was bleeding still.

The hard shudder of loathing wracked him, vision blurring as emotion stirred the dregs of poison lurking in his system. He reminded himself again that this did not matter, but it seemed impossible to fight his way back to any kind of equilibrium this time. Finally he simply let the waves of grief and rage pulse through him, and those hurt more than the physical damage. Allowing such devastating emotions felt as cruel as the rape.

But even as he curled naked and bleeding on his office floor, he had a sudden, brilliant image of his beautiful Kunlun laughing under the night sky. Shen Wei gave a sob of love and longing, such a relief from horror that he was able to open his eyes once more.

He put his hand to his throat, needing the tactile assurance that his time with Kunlun had been real, and he discovered the jade locket was gone.

Three nights ago, continued:

“Student,” Shen Wei said to the basketball player. He thought his voice sounded calm and mild, Professor Shen Wei from the bioengineering department who was no threat to anyone. “Yes, I would be glad to see your pictures.”

Now:

"What joy, Lin Jing?" asked Zhao Yunlan as he swung into the lab, Guo Changcheng on his heels.

“Damned little in this job,” Lin Jing muttered under his breath, but Xiao Guo had very good ears.

“Very little joy in his job,” Xiao Guo intoned solemnly as he entered his lightly edited version into the ever-present notebook.

Da Qing was sitting on one of the lab tables as a fat black cat, contentedly lapping frothy sweetened soy milk from a bowl, but he snorted at that and blew soy milk all over the table top. Lin Jing immediately turned around with a big, unconvincing smile plastered on his face. “Got the results on that stain on the sidewalk near the wrecked cell phone, boss. It’s blood, all right.”

Zhao Yunlan restrained himself from rolling his eyes. They had been sure of that at the scene. Well, mostly sure. “Anything else?”

“This next is speculative. Don’t cut my bonus just because I can’t tell you for sure, but….”

“But?”

“But I can’t rule out the possibility that the blood sample is Dixingren.”

Zhao Yunlan smiled, lips tight. “Anything at all from the cell phone?”

“The electronics are a total loss, but I was actually able to reconstruct the picture on the back of the case. I think it was a promotional image of Yao Ming.”

“The basketball star?”

Lin Jing nodded.

“Then I think we’re safe in deciding it belongs to our vanished basketball-playing student. Any idea what happened to that phone?”

“It burned up. And no, I don’t know how or why.”

“Dixingren powers?”

“Yeah, or a blowtorch. Either one would do the job.”

Zhao Yunlan turned his back on him. “Xiao Guo! I haven’t heard your thoughts on the progress of our investigation.”

Guo Changcheng winced. “I think...it’s going very well?”

Zhao Yunlan shook a finger at him, but he was smiling hard. “Very astute of you! We have a basketball and a bloodstain, a broken phone and two highly suspicious teachers.”

Lin Jing and Da Qing shared a glance. “Two suspicious teachers?” Da Qing asked.

“Another Shen Wei?” Lin Jing moaned. “Oh man, that’s the last thing we need.”

Zhao Yunlan ignored that. Guo Changcheng did not. “I think it would be a very good thing! Shen-laoshi is courteous to everyone, he brings food to people who are sick in the hospital, and the world would be a better place if there were many more people like him. But Chief Zhao, I did not see anything suspicious about either of those teachers. The only thing I thought suspicious was you and me lurking in the hallway so we could listen to their conversation.”

Lin Jing’s eyebrows went up. “If actual investigation makes you uncomfortable, are you sure a career in Special Investigations is really for you?”

Zhao Yunlan shot him a withering glare. He still had dreams of Xiao Guo’s uncle supporting their building fund.

“…so just continue the good work there, Xiao Guo.” Lin Jing finished weakly.

“I’m going to send Zhu Hong to interview Zhang Ruonan,” Zhao Yunlan said. “Zhang-laoshi made it very clear that she doesn’t like me, but maybe Hong-jie will have better luck applying a woman’s touch.”

“You’re the one who has to tell her,” Lin Jing said immediately. “Nobody gripes like Zhu Hong when you ask her to do fieldwork. Unless it’s her idea in the first place, and then she won’t shut up about it.”

“And you’ll interview students in the department of bioengineering,” Zhao Yunlan continued. “Start with the roommate who reported Zhang Hao missing.”

“Wait, what? I thought you wanted me to keep working on the Sundial. How am I supposed to get anything done if I’m stomping around campus talking to students? I think this would be a great job for Lao Chu.”

“Chu Shuzhi is far too dour to establish a rapport with college students. You, on the other hand, are young and lively. The department of bioengineering is full of baby scientists! You should all have plenty to talk about.”

“And let me guess,” Da Qing had been carefully washing his whiskers with his paw. “You’re the one who’s going to investigate Shen-jiaoshi.”

Zhao Yunlan smiled with more than a touch of sadness. “I’m just going to remind him that he promised to buy me dinner.”

Three nights ago, continued:

The kid with the basketball grinned and held up his phone for Shen Wei. "I'll text you the really good pictures. Just give me your number."

Shen Wei ignored that, staring down at a screen that was a grid of tiny images. The little glyphs of light and dark failed to coalesce into anything Shen Wei could understand, as if his eyes were simply refusing to focus. He blinked, wondering if this were another effect from the poison in his system, until the kid said, “Here, this is a good one.” He spread his thumb and forefinger across the phone and an image expanded to cover the screen. Even then, for long moments it remained abstract, flesh and shadow, white, black and red.

Shen Wei abruptly realized he was looking at a close-up of his own face. One visible eye was open impossibly wide, a pinprick pupil lost in the glassy iris. His cheek was wet and flushed dark red. There was a thumb in his open mouth, hooked over his lower teeth, fingers curled under his chin in the ruthless grasp which had probably broken his jaw. A man’s half-hard cock rested on his lower lip.

“See what I mean?” The student’s eager voice broke through Shen Wei’s dark stupor. “And I’ve got lots more.”

The night sky spun overhead and fire exploded between Shen Wei’s temples. He opened a small portal below the student’s solar plexus and folded the student through it, limbs and head twisting and contracting in on themselves, then the student’s torso turning inside out as it crumpled down until there was nothing left, just a red film lingering over Shen Wei’s vision. He gestured, dark energy at his palms, and the portal to nowhere closed. The kid’s basketball bounced away along the path and his phone hit the ground. The screen cracked at the impact, but Shen Wei could still see his own eye staring up, locked in an endless moment of helpless pain and horror.

His next gesture sent blue flames crackling across the phone. The casing broke, and a thin plume of smoke rose. Shen Wei fell to his hands and knees as his vision blurred and his head spun. He gagged up bile and blood. He wiped his mouth with a grimace, tried to stand, but was so dizzy he fell once more and coughed up another gout of bright blood. Finally he pulled himself into the shadows along the sidewalk and curled there, breathing hard, waiting for his strength to return.

“Heipao-daren,” said a soft voice. “Please don’t be alarmed. It’s only me.” The forsythia Yashou had inched closer beside the path and reached out her branches to further shadow the path where he hid. “There is no one near, and no one saw. You are safe.”

Shen Wei nodded wearily. His actions had been precipitate and unwise. He had not even learned the student’s name. He had lost the opportunity to question him about his associates and had learned nothing about the man orchestrating the attack, far less the shadowy master behind them all. He had not even asked about his stolen locket. Shen Wei spread his hand across the hollow of his throat, and it was like experiencing its loss all over again. He groaned out loud and then angrily silenced himself as his heart thundered and juddered in his chest. There were dark spots dancing before his eyes. If he tried to stand up now he would faint.

He needed to be careful and circumspect while he continued to heal. Instead, he had slain a foe in a rage so overwhelming that he’d been left shaking in weakness, practically in tears and hiding under a forsythia Yashou. 

How would his precious Kunlun even recognize a man so broken?

to be continued (of course)

Chapter Text

Wang Yike still did not know quite what she thought about little Jiajia. She found it hard to believe that anyone could really be that cheerful all the time about almost everything. Still, she always had a kind word for Wang Yike when their paths crossed, and although she had a tendency to stand too close when they exchanged pleasantries, she never took offense when Wang Yike moved back to gain a little distance, only smiling and pretending not to notice.

Today, however, Jiajia wasn’t smiling. She had not even seen Wang Yike. She was sitting by herself at a small table near a kiosk for milk tea. She was not reading or looking at her phone. She was not drinking her milk tea. Friends had approached more than once, and she had waved them away with a little smile that even Wang Yike saw hid a very different emotion.

Well, if she didn’t want to talk to her friends, she certainly didn’t want to talk to Wang Yike, who was barely more than an acquaintance. So she was surprised to find herself walking straight to Jiajia’s table after purchasing her own cup of tea. She sat down across from her with just a nod and a smile, pulled out the notebook where she kept her assignments, and started to review notes for her next class. She was saving money for a laptop, but that would be a while yet.

The silence went on for so long that Wang Yike began to regret the impulse that had led her to sit here. Zhang Ruonan had shown infinite patience when she had first reached out to her this way, simply making herself available, waiting until Wang Yike was comfortable enough to accept the proffered kindness. Well, it turned out that waiting in silence for someone else to take the next step was definitely a learned skill.

Finally, just before Wang Yike had made up her mind to gather her belongings and slink away, Jiajia asked in a very soft voice, “What would you do if—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, you’re trying to study.”

Wang Yike closed her notebook and sat up. She tucked her hair behind one ear. “It’s OK.”

Jiajia took a deep breath. Both hands were clenched into small white fists on the table. “What would you do if you overheard something that sounded really bad, but you weren’t sure there was anything you could do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Wang Yike said honestly. “If somebody needed help and I didn’t do anything, no matter why I didn't, I know I would feel pretty bad.” She could not help thinking about Zhang Ruonan’s kindness to her, before her friend had known anything about her or her circumstances.

Jiajia gave a little sob and shook her head. “You’re right. Of course you’re right, but it sounds so bad that I don’t even want to believe it."

Wang Yike thought grimly that just because something seemed unimaginably bad didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. But she was also thinking that it wouldn’t help to tell this naive Haixingren student to just grow up already. Jiajia might be soft and pampered, but she had always been kind to Wang Yike, so she kept her own voice gentle as she said, “Just because it’s really bad doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened.”

“I know that,” Jiajia defended herself, but she still sounded uncertain.

“How about this,” Wang Yike suggested. “You can tell me what you heard, but I won’t tell another soul, and you can decide what you want to do.”

“You have to swear not to say anything.”

“I won’t.” She shrugged. “It’s not like I know anybody else to tell, even if I wanted to.”

“Not even Zhang Ruonan?” Jiajia asked pointedly.

Well, that was more observant than Wang Yike had expected. Maybe she was not giving Jiajia enough credit. She made herself look her in the eye and said plainly, “Not even her. Not unless you give me permission.”

Jiajia nodded. “It’s about two of her students in Engineering 4.”

“Not a word,” Wang Yike agreed again, but this time she was lying. If this was anything that might cause Zhang Ruonan trouble, she would not wait for anyone's permission to take action.

“OK,” Jiajia took a deep breath. “I was up on the third floor of the research library pretty early this morning. You know that circle of club chairs and sofas in the alcove near the elevator?”

Wang Yike knew. Before Zhang Ruonan had helped her find a place to live, she had made a habit of getting herself locked in that library several times a week. She had spent many nights very comfortably in that alcove.

“So I was trying to get reading done before class but I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up Wang Ziqiang and Liu Yadong were talking right behind me.” She looked sheepish. “I was curled up in a club chair and I’m not very big so I guess they just didn’t see me. Anyway, they obviously thought they were alone because the things they were saying were so...” she trailed off and blushed. “Do you know those guys?”

Wang Yike nodded. “The class rep and the student whose roommate went missing, right?”

“That’s them,” Jiajia agreed. “Well, Wang Ziqiang was saying he thought his roommate had probably done something stupid since he just would not stop talking about their hookup with Shen-laoshi. He kept asking if Ziqiang thought the professor would like to get with them again.”

Wang Yike felt her eyebrows rise.

Jiajia had a miserable expression on her face. “Wait. It’s so much worse. Liu Yadong said it hadn’t been a—" she dropped her voice so low Wang Yike had to lean over the table to hear her, "—he said it hadn't been a fucking hookup, and had Zhang Hao gone queer on them or what? They had cored that professor like a rotten apple, and he was probably going to need medical attention before there would be any hookups in his future. Then he laughed about it, and I wanted to jump up, and I don’t know. Do something. Anything!

“But I was so scared they might realize I was there that I just huddled down and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, and they got on the elevator and I didn’t hear anything else. Oh, Yike. What can I do?”

Wang Yike sat back. Her early experiences on the surface had left her with a very low opinion of most Haixingren anyway, but this was so gross and awful she understood why Jiajia was upset enough to confide in a near stranger. Wang Yike handed a napkin to her so she could wipe her eyes and blow her nose. Meanwhile, Wang Yike kept her own voice low. She couldn’t help Jiajia by sounding upset, even though she was.

“Which professor do you think they were talking about?” There was only one Shen-laoshi in their department, but there might be more in the University as a whole.

Jiajia had not considered this. “I just assumed it was Shen Wei—” she interrupted herself. “No, I’m sure it was our Shen Wei. You didn’t see him last week when he got sick in class. He looked so bad by the end of his four o’clock seminar that Xiao Quan and I walked him to his office, and ever since then something just hasn’t been right.”

Actually Wang Yike thought it must be Shen Wei as well. She didn’t have any classes with the man, but Zhang Ruonan considered him a kind and thoughtful mentor, and she had been very worried about him recently.

Jiajia was still talking. “I keep wondering whether those guys had already hurt Shen-laoshi by then. Was that why he seemed so weak and sick? Or did they find him in his office after we left him there? How could we have abandoned him like that? He said he would be fine, but I’ll never forgive myself.”

“You didn’t abandon him by leaving him in his own office!”

Wang Yike thought she knew all about predatory Haixingren. Men had tried to grab her months ago, back when she was still sleeping on the streets. That was when she had discovered she had come into her Dixingren power. Afterward, she stood panting over the withered corpses of her would-be assailants, completely shocked. Then she'd run.

Zhang Ruonan had found her not long afterwards. Wang Yike did not like to think what might have become of her, had it not been for the teacher’s great patience and kindness at a time when she still expected every Haixingren’s hand to be raised against her.

But really, as cynical and suspicious as her early experiences in Dragon City had made her, even she would have thought a professor would be safe enough in his own office.

“Wang Yike,” Jiajia said again. “Is there anything we can do?”

Wang Yike allowed herself to imagine what she would have done. If she had overheard those boys bragging about their rape of Zhang Ruonan’s kind mentor, she could have reached out with an ungloved hand and made sure they never touched anyone again. 

It was a little terrifying how much the idea of leaving them desiccated husks appealed to her. Maybe she was the monster. She smiled to herself. Good. It wasn’t terrifying, it was invigorating. Honestly, she never needed to be afraid of anyone ever again.

“Wang Yike?” Jiajia sounded a little frightened.

She wondered about the expression on her face, and she told Jiajia the truth. More or less.

“I’m just thinking how much I would like to...really beat those guys up.”

“Oh, me too!” Jiajia agreed enthusiastically. “I want them to hurt so bad!” Her face fell. “But what can we do? At first I wanted to tell my grandfather about it, but if Shen-laoshi hasn’t told anyone—” her eyes filled. “I guess rape victims usually don’t, and it must be even worse for guys.”

“What could your grandfather do?”

“He’s the chancellor. He doesn’t like me to tell people,” Jiajia said, shrugging in a way that seemed to indicate this was not a secret she was very good at keeping. “At least he could get them kicked out of the university. But then I thought if their families raised a fuss, we might not be able to keep it a secret, and Shen-laoshi would have everything exposed whether he wanted that or not.”

Wang Yike had scooted her chair back during Jiajia's explanation. As a refugee Dixingren, the most important thing she could do was maintain a low profile, and here she was doing her best to become the confidante of the chancellor’s own granddaughter. Zhang Ruonan should have warned her!

On the other hand, she was also fantasizing about using her powers on a couple of Haixingren assholes who totally deserved it. It still seemed like a good idea, and that definitely wasn't a low profile thing to do.

She thought she had been telling the truth when she told Jiajia that not helping someone just because she was unsure would have made her feel bad. Worse than that. It would make her unworthy of all the kindness Zhang Ruonan had shown her. Worrying about discovery by the terrifying Black Cloaked Envoy seemed a rather distant and abstract concern now. Selfish, almost, in the light of current circumstances. She took a deep breath and said, "I really think we should talk to Zhang Ruonan."

Shen Wei flinched when a knock came at his office door. The flashbacks didn’t surprise him anymore, but familiarity made them no easier to endure.

Once again he thought he saw three students pushing their way into his office, laughing and being much too loud even though they were whispering. The darkness of an early dusk flowed in their wake. When Shen Wei tried to ask their business, his voice tangled in his throat, and when he tried to see their faces, his sight stuttered across features as smooth as finely glazed porcelain.

Shen Wei blinked and found himself alone in his sun-drenched office. He willed his heart rate to slow and he spread his fingers across his desk to ease their tremors. He called, “Enter.”

Zhao Yunlan himself came swaggering in, grinning from ear to ear with packages in his arms and Da Qing at his heels. “Shen-jiaoshi!” he called happily. “I hope you can forgive this intrusion, especially after Zhang-laoshi made it very clear yesterday that I have been interrupting the professor’s work.” He hooked a chair with his ankle and dragged it up before dropping parcels that shone with grease stains all over his desk.

Shen Wei hastily moved his notes aside. “Chief Zhao?” he asked faintly. He had no more energy for Zhao Yunlan’s ebullience and cunning today than yesterday, but he was still very happy to see him. Dark as the world was right now, Zhao Yunlan remained a miracle.

Maddening, impossible, inscrutable, Kunlun and not-Kunlun, but still a miracle.

And so very beautiful.

“Lunch, lunch! Have you forgotten? You were going to treat me after the end of the last case.”

“I regret that I—”

“But a busy professor like yourself, time gets away from you, I understand. So I have brought the meal to Shen-jiaoshi.”

“This was not necessary,” Shen Wei said helplessly as Zhao Yunlan dug into the containers and set out food. The feast appeared to consist of whole fish on skewers, fried noodles swimming in oil, and a frankly bewildering number of sesame balls. Da Qing jumped onto the desk, grabbed a skewer and dragged it to the floor under Shen Wei’s desk, where he crouched on the rug growling to himself and eating in big, messy bites. 

Zhao Yunlan helped himself to a sesame ball and told Shen Wei to dig in.

Shen Wei had been subsisting on broth and thin congee ever since the attack, and the smell of scallion oil and barbecued fish turned his stomach now. He scooted his office chair back. “The chief’s generosity is very much appreciated, but nothing for me right now.”

Zhao Yunlan gave him a sharp look. “Zhang Ruonan thought you seemed under the weather. Are you ill?”

“It will pass,” Shen Wei said. That was more honest than he should have been, because Zhao Yunlan’s sharp expression immediately melted into one of concern.

“The professor should take better care of his health!” he exclaimed at once. “What does your doctor say?”

“I am taking codonopsis root tea,” Shen Wei told Zhao Yunlan, which was true enough for the scant good it seemed to be doing. His meridians remained disordered more than a week after the attack. He was still healing the worst of his physical injuries, and his dark energy remained at a dangerously low ebb. No doubt he would heal faster if he returned to Dixing, but that was not feasible right now for so many reasons.

It might also help if he could sleep nights, but he did not dare while his enemy remained at large and could approach Dragon City University students at will. From dusk to dawn, Shen Wei walked the campus and surrounding neighborhoods, searching for traces of his foe.

“I’m all for supporting your qi with medicinal teas,” Zhao Yunlan was saying, “But if you are still sick, you should let me take you to Dragon City General. In fact, we can go right now!” Zhao Yunlan immediately began packing up all the food he had just spread across Shen Wei’s desk

“This is not necessary,” Shen Wei said immediately. He handed down another grilled fish on a skewer to Da Qing. He was glad to see his old friend accompanying Zhao Yunlan. Da Qing grabbed the fish with his teeth and dragged it under the desk. Shen Wei continued, “Have you made any progress investigating the missing student, Zhang Hao?”

Zhao Yunlan seemed torn over whether to allow the change of topic. “Do not think I am forgetting your health,” he said at last. “I will check with you tomorrow, and if you are still not better we will go to the hospital together. But since you bring it up, I did want to ask if you have any theories about his strange disappearance. Could it be connected to the reemergence of the Sundial?”

“Obviously, this is not something I would know,” Shen Wei said at once. “But even to an ordinary teacher like myself, it seems very unlikely that another student in this very department would also possess one of the holy instruments of heaven. Still,” Shen Wei hesitated but then allowed his need to outweigh prudence. “Still, it might be wise to examine the missing student’s possessions. For instance, have you come across a piece of jewelry that seems out of character for an engineering student?”

He’d been working so carefully to keep his voice neutral, he had not even realized that he had spread his palm across the hollow of his throat until he followed the line of Zhao Yunlan’s thoughtful gaze.

Shen Wei dropped his hand.

“My people are talking to his roommate and arranging for the transfer of a handful of personal items the municipal police collected before we took over the case,” Zhao Yunlan said. “I’ll pass that along. So you think another of the Hallows may manifest itself as an unusual piece of jewelry?”

“That is obviously beyond my level of expertise,” Shen Wei said too quickly, and Zhao Yunlan seemed to narrow his eyes. “I was only thinking of Li Qian wearing the Sundial as a pendant.”

“Of course,” Zhao Yunlan agreed easily. He got to his feet, continuing to smile, but Shen Wei thought there was something a little sad in his expression now. “Shen-jiaoshi, I will not intrude on your time any longer this afternoon. I’ll leave the food with you. Please eat well and do not forget I will be calling tomorrow to see if you are feeling better.”

Da Qing jumped up on the desk. “Damn cat, leave some for the professor,” Zhao Yunlan snapped, but Shen Wei simply handed over another skewer. Then once Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing were gone, Shen Wei rose as well, gathered the cartons of takeout, and carried them all to the TA lounge on the fifth floor where they were received rapturously.

Shen Wei’s office still smelled like fish when he returned. He opened a window and retrieved a spray bottle of mild soap and a washcloth, then crouched to treat the grease stains left on his rug by Da Qing’s enthusiastic appreciation of the grilled fish. He would not use his small store of dark energy for matters easily addressed by more conventional methods. First collecting the abandoned skewers from under his desk, he then picked up as many of the tiny, scattered flakes of fish as he could while he allowed the stain to soak. He wondered if he should borrow a vacuum cleaner from housekeeping. 

Or maybe he should just rent a carpet cleaner. 

Shen Wei smiled to himself, more amused than exasperated at Zhao Yunlan’s attempt to provide lunch. The expression made his jaw twinge. The recent break was still very tender, and he froze, his body flushing hot and then so cold he trembled. He scooted out from under the desk where he had been gathering the crumbs of grilled fish. Crouching on the floor like this was abruptly intolerable and he lurched to his feet. He felt so unsteady he placed both hands flat on the desk to brace himself.

He still had no memory of his actual assault, nothing but that intrusive flashback of three figures, laughing and faceless at his office door. He was still piecing together what must have been done to him by managing the state of his healing body, and by the photograph Zhang Hao had been so eager to share. His own wide, terrified eye, all iris, pupil diminished to apinprick. His mouth dragged open for a stranger’s abuse.

The hours he could not remember remained terrible to him in a way Shen Wei struggled to understand. The mechanics of gang rape were cruelly unimaginative, and in his long life, Shen Wei had endured humiliation and defeat often enough. He could not understand why this inability to remember a few awful details continued to trouble him so, but between Zhang Hao’s photograph and his own lost memory yawned a chasm of utter despair.

Even his enemy’s taunts in the aftermath and the threat of another rape were nothing in comparison. Shen Wei had never been afraid of enemies who crowed and brayed their momentary triumphs. They always fell hardest in the end.

But those empty hours in the hands of mere students haunted Shen Wei. He had never been so helpless.

Ah, he thought then.

He bowed his head and concentrated on his breathing. Actually of course, he had endured such helplessness once before.

The ancient memory was very cold

“Well, he’s totally lying about something,” Da Qing announced once they were outside. He had assumed his human form, the better to walk and eat his last barbecued fish.

Zhao Yunlan could not disagree. “At the very least Shen-jiaoshi knows more than he’s saying. He also wants us to find something that might be among the missing student’s possessions.” He scowled. “And he’s really not well. Not eating, pale as a ghost. I should’ve dragged him to the hospital whether he wanted to go or not.”

“Guilty conscience?” Da Qing mused around a mouthful of fish.

“No, I don’t think a guilty conscience is making him sick,” Zhao Yunlan snorted.

“Well, make up your mind! Is he a suspect or your new best friend? Bringing him lunch, worrying that he caught a cold…”

“You ate most of that lunch yourself, damn cat.”

Da Qing shrugged. “Shame to let it go to waste if the professor didn’t want it. Say, why don’t you send a message to Heipaoshi? If there’s another of the Hallows floating around campus, he’ll want to know, right? Maybe he can look into the mysterious Shen-jiaoshi while he’s at it.”

“You’re so lazy you want the Envoy to investigate our case for us? Forget it,” Zhao Yunlan snapped coldly.

“Don’t bite off my head just for making suggestions.”

“Then stop making stupid ones.”

“Touchy!” Da Qing sniffed. The fish eaten, he shrank down to his cat self again, the better to watch his master with feline senses. Chu Shuzhi had told him he had a bad feeling about this case and not to let Zhao Yunlan out of his sight during their investigation.

That wasn’t like Chu Shuzhi, but he wouldn’t explain further. Everybody was keeping secrets, but fine. Da Qing had his own secrets. Big, important secrets, like which fishmongers at the open market were most susceptible to piteous mews, and which were more hardhearted, but occasionally left their stocks untended.

And in the meantime, he’d keep a close eye on his master.

As Jiajia explained what she had overheard in the library this morning, Zhang Ruonan’s face went so white that Wang Yike half-stood in alarm. “Put your head down on your desk if you feel faint!” she exclaimed, desperately wanting to be closer.

Zhang Ruonan shook her head and held out her palm. “No, it’s all right,” she said faintly. “I’m all right. I’m just so sad and angry.” She set aside her glasses and reached for a tissue on her desk, trying to blot her eyes without smearing her makeup.

Jiajia was in tears herself. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I almost wish I didn’t know, it’s so awful.”

“No.” Zhang Ruonan crumpled her tissue. “It’s always better to know the truth.” Her voice quavered but she returned her glasses to her face and forged on. “But a gentleman like Shen Wei! Such a good teacher and so concerned with his students’ wellbeing. Why would anyone want to hurt him?” She drew a deep breath. “You said it was Liu Yadong? Liu Yadong, the class representative?”

Jiajia nodded. “That’s right. Him and Wang Ziqiang, the guy whose roommate went missing.”

“Oh my god.” Zhang Ruonan put her hands over mouth. Her tears had gone dry but she had started to shake.

“What is it?” Wang Yike demanded. She had never seen her dear friend look like this. “Jie!”

“Those are the same students who invited me to a birthday party downtown a couple of weeks ago. They said it was to apologize for missing so many classes. They were very late, but they kept texting they were on their way, so I waited until I ran into Shen Wei, and he persuaded me to walk back to campus with him.”

She looked at the two students sitting across the desk from her. “The same boys. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“Oh no,” Jiajia put her hands over her mouth in an unhappy mirror of Zhang Ruonan, leaving Wang Yike to say what they were all thinking.

“They weren’t apologizing. They were going to hurt you, and when Shen-laoshi walked you back to campus that night, they must have decided to hurt him instead. I’m going to kill them,” she snarled, head spinning with incandescent rage. “I’m going to kill them both and if Zhang Hao shows up again I’m going to kill him too.”

“Wang Yike!” 

She finally realized that Zhang Ruonan was shouting at her. “Yike, you can’t talk like that. You have to calm down.”

Wang Yike blinked, the red haze slowly clearing from her vision.

Jiajia was scrunched back in her chair in shock, but she didn’t seem frightened, exactly. Just very, very unhappy. “They’re monsters,” she whispered. “How can people be so evil?”

“They’re not monsters, they’re just Haix— they’re just people. Selfish and cruel and they thought they could get away with it,” Wang Yike said bitterly.

“Oh, I can’t believe most people are like that!” Jiajia protested. “I don’t want to believe it.”

The world doesn’t care what you believe, Wang Yike nearly said, but she caught Zhang Ruonan’s eye and saw her friend was silently pleading with her. She held her tongue.

“What can we do to help Shen-laoshi now?” Jiajia said at last.

Zhang Ruonan rubbed her temples. “I think we have to tell him. He has a right to hear what we all know, even if—”

A knock at the office door interrupted her. Before Zhang Ruonan could answer, the door swung open without invitation and a ruthlessly well-dressed woman stood on the threshold. "Zhu Hong, SID," she introduced herself without a trace of a smile. "We need to discuss the whereabouts of your student Zhang Hao."

Chapter Text

“What the hell is going on here?” Zhao Yunlan bellowed.

Walking into the SID with Da Qing, the first thing he’d seen was the upside-down central table, one of the surrounding chairs smashed beneath it and the rest upended and scattered. Lin Jing was crouched behind the overturned sofa with his arms over his head. Chu Shuzhi stood in the center of the chaos with Guo Changcheng wrapped around him like a two-legged cobra, trying to grab for Chu Shuzhi’s outstretched arms. The puppet was in midair, and its head whipped around at Zhao Yunlan’s entrance. The painted eyes were empty, but Chu Shuzhi’s red-rimmed eyes burned.

Da Qing hissed and flattened himself to the floor. Zhao Yunlan was not afraid of Chu Shuzhi, but he did wonder in that instant if he would be able to draw his dark energy gun on the man.

Well, the question was academic. Zhao Yunlan was not even armed, not after a trip onto campus just to bring Shen-jiaoshi lunch.

Then Wang Zheng floated up between the puppet and Zhao Yunlan. Sounding perfectly calm, she said, “Do not threaten the chief, Lao Chu.”

Guo Changcheng was not calm. “You can’t destroy evidence, Chu-ge!” he wailed. “We can’t pursue justice without evidence!”

“Justice?” Chu Shuzhi groaned incredulously. “There is no justice in Haixing, but there will be vengeance.” His voice was raw, every word rasping. He shook himself like a wet dog and Guo Changcheng slipped down to puddle at his feet. Chu Shuzhi stepped over him, turning away from Zhao Yunlan to advance on Lin Jing. The puppet preceded him ominously. “Destroy everything,” he growled. “Or I’ll do it for you.”

Lin Jing crab-walked backwards. “Xiao Guo is right!” he yelped “We can’t destroy evidence, and this probably isn’t the only copy!”

“Stand down, Lao Chu!” Zhao Yunlan finally snapped.

Chu Shuzhi’s shoulders slumped. The puppet returned to his arms. “You believe there are more copies out there?” he said to Lin Jing.

Lin Jing stopped his backward scuttle. “Uh, yeah. Probably. I’d be willing to bet all three guys have them. And that’s if they haven’t spread even more copies around.”

Chu Shuzhi dropped his head. His fists were clenched and his breaths loud. Xiao Guo crawled to his feet. “We will find them all, Chu-ge,” he said, and then with an appalling but somehow unsurprising lack of good sense, he put his hand on Chu Shuzhi’s shoulder.

Chu Shuzhi shook himself free, but didn’t flatten Xiao Guo. Lin Jing rose cautiously. Da Qing made his way to the kitchen alcove and stood peeking around the corner with Lao Li. “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” Zhao Yunlan asked again, this time with deceptive calm.

Chu Shuzhi strode out of the room without another word. Lin Jing smiled weakly but didn’t speak either. Unable to bear the lengthening silence, Xiao Guo said unhappily, “Maybe—maybe someplace private would be better?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Wang Zheng exclaimed in her soft voice. She glided down beside Zhao Yunlan. “The municipal police finally transferred the missing student’s laptop to us, and Lin Jing found dozens of incriminating photographs once he got into it. It looks like Zhang Hao was part of some kind of rape gang. Their last victim was your friend Shen-jiaoshi.”

Zhao Yunlan went very still.  His entire world had become unstable, tilting and shuddering underfoot. One incautious step and he thought he might fall.

Or maybe he was already falling. The bottom was a very long way down.

“That’s when Lao Chu lost his shit, flipped the table and started yelling at me to delete everything.” Lin Jing finally spoke up. His voice reached Zhao Yunlan through a haze of buzzing static. Lin Jing glanced at the overturned table. “Zhang Hao’s laptop is under all that, but fortunately I’d already backed up all his data.”

“Da Qing, take Lao Zhao into his office and make him sit down,” Wang Zheng said. “Honestly, you’d think we had never handled a sexual assault case before.” Her words might have been exasperated, but her tone was not unkind.

“Right.” Somehow Da Qing’s hands were already full of dried fish, but he stuffed it all in his mouth and returned to Zhao Yunlan’s side. “Come on, boss,” he mumbled around a full mouth. “Lin Jing can pull up what he found on your computer.”

Zhao Yunlan refused to be moved. Not just yet at any rate. “Xiao Guo.”

“Yes?” he answered immediately. He’d been staring after Chu Shuzhi and wringing his hands.

“Keep your eye on Lao Chu. Call if you’re worried about anything he does.”

“Oh yes!” he agreed and went loping off.

“Was that such a good idea?” Da Qing asked dubiously.

Zhao Yunlan didn’t have a better one right now. He led the way to his office instead of allowing Da Qing to guide him there. Behind him, Da Qing was asking Lin Jing, “So what’s got into Lao Chu? How bad are these pictures anyway?”

“They’re pretty bad,” Lin Jing said. “But you have to figure Lao Chu has lived through stuff even more intense while he was in the dungeons of the Dijun Palace, right? But let me tell you, my life flashed before my eyes when he came at me like that."

The conversation reached Zhao Yunlan from a great distance. He waited without comment as Lin Jing sat down at his computer and navigated to the material he had copied from Zhang Hao’s laptop.

“Here’s the folder,” he showed Zhao Yunlan at last. “You’ll have to click through file by file. This student and his buddies were really, really bad news. No surprise that someone disappeared him.”

Zhao Yunlan sat down and began opening files. A picture of selfish, pornographic cruelty filled his screen. Then another. The perpetrators were masked, and Zhao Yunlan asked bleakly, “Do we know if any of these people is actually Zhang Hao? They could be almost anyone.”

The masks were bright plastic ovals, of the kind to be found in any shop around the lunar new year, apparently worn so the assailants could memorialize their attacks without incriminating themselves. Their victims were in no state to testify against them. They seemed deeply unconscious, bonelessly limp with closed eyes.

“These pictures were taken with a cell phone of the same make and model as the one we found torched on campus,” Lin Jing said. “So it’s a good bet that Zhang Hao was the photographer.”

“Makes you wonder if the person who destroyed the phone thought that would get rid of all the pictures as well?” Da Qing mused.

“Or maybe they were just too angry to care,” Lin Jing answered.

Zhao Yunlan clicked past photo after photo, his training coming to the fore to blunt the emotional impact. Three different masks, so presumably three perpetrators. He studied the background of the snapshots. The first assault seemed to have taken place in a dorm room. The second had happened outdoors somewhere, a park perhaps. The third seemed like a student lounge. The cumulative effect was unendurably bleak.

Or perhaps it was Zhao Yunlan’s dread at what he would see next that fretted the universe with such dreary weight.

The next assault was the one in Shen Wei’s office.

Zhao Yunlan let out his breath and found he more than half-envied Chu Shuzhi’s ability to toss furniture around. In a distant voice he told Da Qing, “Wang Zheng needs to dock Lao Chu’s paycheck for the cost of that busted chair and for any other damage. And make him set the table upright when he gets back.”

“Uh...right.” Da Qing looked away from the screen. “You OK there, Lao Zhao?”

Lin Jing had turned his back on them entirely and was looking out the window.

“The attack on Shen-jiaoshi was different,” Zhao Yunlan said at last. He continued opening files and closing them again after a cursory glance. He would have to go through them more carefully later, but right now he was in a grim race to learn the worst. Pressure was beating hard between his temples, and that was odd because his heart felt like a leaden weight, lifeless and cold in his chest. Amazing that anything at all still beat.

“Well yeah,” Da Qing was saying. “Shen Wei was the first time they went for a guy.”

“I meant, Shen Wei is the only victim who—” the words were sour in Zhao Yunlan’s mouth. “Shen Wei is the only one whose eyes are open. And it looks like he was trying to fight back. They’re holding him down in these pictures.”

Oh, Shen-jiaoshi.

The blocked emotions welled up. Zhao Yunlan was honestly afraid he might weep. What he wouldn’t give to flip a sofa instead.

“They’ve got him drugged out of his gourd,” Da Qing remarked, sounding cheerfully unaffected. His ability to regard human pathos with such calm disinterest was part of what made him a good deputy. “Look at his pupils. Maybe they simply misjudged the dosage for knocking out a guy.”

“It’s still a helluva change of MO.” Lin Jing turned back, glanced at the screen, then scowled and looked away again. “From fellow students to targeting your male professor? Then going through with it even though he’s still conscious? Seems weird.”

“Maybe someone didn’t like him helping the SID,” Da Qing suggested. “The way you’ve been hanging around the professor’s office seems to have been the talk of campus lately.”

That suggestion was a gut punch. Zhao Yunlan actually winced, his vision swimming. He had to close his eyes for a moment.

“Lao Zhao?” Da Qing asked. “Your gastritis acting up?”

“Boss?”

“I’m fine.” Zhao Yunlan opened his eyes. On the computer screen, Shen Wei’s upside down face stared, desperate eyes open to the camera lens that pinned him from above. His body was doubled up with his own knees pressed hard into his white shoulders. Two of the bright masks loomed. Zhao Yunlan closed the file and opened the next. He could hardly feel his fingers on the mouse.

He had known the stakes were high. Didn’t they have one of the Hallows locked away in the SID even now? So there was no question that ruthless enemies stalked Dragon City, and still Zhao Yunlan had continued to seek Shen-jiaoshi’s counsel. The professor would not have been involved in any of this if Li Qian hadn't been his student. Shen Wei’s insights into Dixing and the Dixingren were fascinating but not irreplaceable, especially considering the risk to a civilian. Zhao Yunlan had continued to seek him out simply because the professor himself was so intriguing.

If Da Qing were right, if Zhao Yunlan had led the wolf to Shen Wei’s door—

“Hey, one good thing,” Da Qing said.

Zhao Yunlan stared at him.

“Two good things. Now we know what Shen-jiaoshi didn’t want to talk about, and we’ve got a suspect in Zhang Hao’s disappearance.”

“A suspect?” 

Da Qing waved his hand at the screen. “Shen-jiaoshi, of course! Don’t tell me that’s not more than enough motive. And who could blame him?”

“Motive doesn’t mean anything without opportunity,” Zhao Yunlan growled. “You saw Shen Wei this afternoon. He looks like a good wind would blow him away. You’re telling me he made a healthy young basketball player simply vanish between one security camera and the next?”

“He could if he—”

“And don’t try to explain it by saying he’s Dixingren with special powers. We don’t solve cases by grasping at straws and dreaming up absurd coincidences.”

Even as he said it, Zhao Yunlan was thinking that these cases on the university campus had been nothing but one coincidence after another, beginning with a certain professor of bioengineering forgetting to let go after he shook Zhao Yunlan’s hand. 

On the computer screen, one broad palm pinned both of Shen Wei’s wrists to the floorboards behind his head. Another hand twisted thick fingers around a black cord Shen Wei wore at his neck. A pendant swung free. It was the first picture where Shen Wei’s eyes were closed. 

“If he were Dixingren, that would explain why he knows so much about Dixing,” Lin Jing said, then winced at Zhao Yunlan’s expression.

“You’re not here to chase ghosts,” Zhao Yunlan pointed to the pendant on the screen. “Was anything like that found among Zhang Hao’s possessions?”

“No,” Lin Jing said. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“They took it from him.” Zhao Yunlan was absolutely certain. 

Da Qing leaned in. “You think that’s the piece of jewelry he was telling us about?”

From the next room Zhu Hong exclaimed, “What in the world happened? Is everyone all right?”

Wang Zheng explained, and a moment later Zhu Hong came storming into Zhao Yunlan’s office and walked around his desk without invitation. Reaching over him, she clicked through the next few files. Zhao Yunlan didn’t have the strength to protest.

When she’d seen enough, she crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. “Men,” she grumbled, mostly to herself. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Hey,” Lin Jing protested. “Not all guys are like Zhang Hao and his crew here.”

Zhu Hong was unimpressed. “When you’re not monsters, you’re more fragile than Ming porcelain. What possessed Lao Chu to flip the conference table?”

“That’s what we’re all wondering,” Da Qing said, apparently believing his Yashou nature spared him the calumny of being male.

Zhu Hong narrowed her eyes at him. Then she told Zhao Yunlan about her meeting with Zhang Ruonan. “She looked  like she had just had a bad shock, but she refused to tell me anything we didn’t already know. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows about this—” she gestured towards the computer screen, “—and just doesn’t want to talk about it. She might feel like she’s protecting Shen Wei by keeping it private.”

“We’ll have to talk to her again,” Zhao Yunlan said. He felt very, very tired. “And we’ll need to interview Shen-jiaoshi down here at the station. I’ll let him know we’re sending a cab for him.”

He dialed the professor’s office phone. It occurred to Zhao Yunlan that, speaking of coincidences, he himself had very quickly gotten used to Shen Wei being available whenever he called or stopped by, but this time after three rings the call rolled over to an electronic answering service. 

Zhao Yunlan left a brief message requesting Shen Wei call him back and hung up the phone, just as Wang Zheng stuck her head around the door. 

“That was Xiao Guo just now.” Her expression indicated that what she was about to tell Zhao Yunlan would surprise no one. “He lost Lao Chu on the outskirts of town.”

Chu Shuzhi thought it would probably rain tonight. Clouds were banked across the heavens, gray and lowering. Heipaoshi stood in the center of the stone circle with his head bowed and his face in shadow.

Chu Shuzhi dropped to one knee and lowered his own head. “Daren,” he began, but his voice broke. Then he could not manage another word, struggling in silence to contain his anguish and his rage.

The moment lengthened.

“Ah,” the Envoy murmured at long last. “So it’s like that.”

Chu Shuzhi shook his bowed head.

“You cannot bear even to look at me now?” he asked softly. “I assure you, I am the same man as before. But perhaps I am no longer the hero of Dixing in your eyes.”

Chu Shuzhi groaned and fell back on his heels. Dark eyes gazed down at him from behind the mask. Chu Shuzhi remembered terrible pictures of that noble visage stripped bare, helpless and hurting, and he exclaimed, “I should have been able to protect you!”

“Your heart is noble, but a week ago you did not even know I was living among Haixingren as Shen-laoshi.” The Envoy wrapped his hands around Chu Shuzhi’s upper arms, but seemed not to have the strength to physically urge Chu Shuzhi upright. He rose at once on his own.

“Obviously, the nature of the attack upon my person has become known,” the Envoy continued mildly. “May I ask how?”

Chu Shuzhi drew a deep breath. “Evidence was recovered from the missing student's computer.”

Chu Shuzhi thought he saw Heipaoshi flinch, but his voice was controlled as he asked, “What kind of evidence?” Then he answered his own question. “There are photographs.”

“Yes,” Chu Shuzhi confirmed, feeling as if he were choking or drowning.

“I see. Zhao Yunlan has viewed these pictures?”

Calm. His voice was so calm, but Chu Shuzhi had the impression that the Envoy had begun to tremble. But perhaps that was only the evening wind stirring the hem of his long black robes.

“Certainly he has by now. As for myself, I regret that I reacted with emotion rather than reason when I first saw what Lin Jing had recovered.” Chu Shuzhi did not mean to say the next but it spilled out anyway. “Daren, you should have told me!”

The Black Cloaked Envoy said nothing.

“There are other victims,” Chu Shuzhi finally continued. “Fellow students. This information will be turned over to the university, although the SID will, I believe, have some discretion in how quickly that must happen.”

“Of course,” Heipaoshi said in a low voice. “All the victims of these cruel predators deserve justice. Do you have the names of Zhang Hao’s comrades?”

“No.”

Heipaoshi narrowed his eyes. “Since the photographs are in his hands, what stands in the way of Zhao Yunlan tracking them down with the resources of the SID?”

“Daren, they were masked. In every picture their faces are covered.”

Heipaoshi rocked back. Chu Shuzhi reached for him, afraid in that instant he might fall, but the man steadied himself and stepped out of range.

“Daren—”

“I am fine,” he said stiffly. “This explains a matter that had troubled me.” He did not actually look or sound relieved by the explanation. “But it is concerning that mere students continue to evade us. A reminder that even the clumsiest weapon may cause considerable damage in the right hands.”

“You are speaking of the enemy in the shadows who orchestrated this cowardly attack,” Chu Shuzhi said. “Do you know anything more?”

The Envoy was again silent.

“I believed you might have more information,” Chu Shuzhi pressed cautiously. “Given that you found Zhang Hao.”

“That student’s identity was revealed under circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated.”

Chu Shuzhi waited, but the Envoy did not explain further. Chu Shuzhi told him the rest.

“Chief Zhao will want to interview Shen-laoshi. It is very likely he will consider him—that he will consider you—to be a suspect.”

A tiny, wry smile touched the Envoy’s white lips. “He would be accounted a very poor detective if he did not.”

Chu Shuzhi was not reassured. “Please consider that you are searching for an enemy who has already done you grievous harm. Zhao Yunlan and the resources of the SID would be a great help, but at this time when you most need allies, they will be arrayed against you.”

“You have never doubted me before.” The wry twist of his lips under the mask no longer seemed like a smile. “Tell me, is it my courage or my strength that you now find lacking?”

The question hit Chu Shuzhi like a blow. He fell to his knees with a groan. “Heipao-daren,” he pleaded, but the Envoy said only, “There is no honor in kneeling to a leader you no longer respect.”

Chu Shuzhi bent forward to press his forehead to the stone pavement. His grief and shame were crushing, but the Lord Envoy needed his honesty now more than ever.

“My Lord,” he said, forehead against stone. “I would follow you along the track to hell without question or complaint. It is precisely because your spirit is so indomitable that I fear for you.” He sat up slowly and raised his eyes. “You were poisoned and subjected to an attack meant to break body and mind. I must tell you the truth as I see it. You have been badly hurt. You are hurt still.”

Another long silence. Then the Envoy asked quietly, “In body and in mind?”

Chu Shuzhi forced himself to tell Heipaoshi the truth. “In body and in mind, my Lord.”

Night was coming on fast. A gust of wind fluttered the Envoy’s robes and carried the smell of rain. His voice was soft when he finally spoke again. “What, then, would you have me do?”

This was easy. Chu Shuzhi lurched to his feet at once. “Allow me to remain at your side until our enemies are destroyed!”

The Envoy laid one hand on his forearm. Tears came to Chu Shuzhi’s eyes.

“You know that cannot be.”

“Daren!” he protested.

“Return to the SID as quickly as you may. Our enemy in the shadows bears a special animus to SID and Zhao Yunlan.”

“There must be another way,” Chu Shuzhi pleaded.

“I can only attend to my own safety if I know you are watching our friends. You may keep me advised of the status of the investigation.” He turned away.

Chu Shuzhi clenched his fists but he knew he had lost. He gave a stiff half-bow to Heipaoshi’s rigid back, and then returned miserably the way he had come. He ran into Guo Changcheng as he reached the outskirts of town, and he simply snarled and stomped past him when Xiao Guo exclaimed he had been looking everywhere for him.

Then he remembered Heipaoshi’s warning. He turned, grabbed the scruff of Guo Changcheng’s collar and snapped, “What are you doing out here by yourself?”

“Chief Zhao told me to be sure you did not get into any trouble,” Xiao Guo assured him earnestly.

“Zhao Yunlan is an idiot and so are you.” Chu Shuzhi shook him by the collar. “Didn’t you see what happened to Shen-jiaoshi?”

Xiao Guo’s eyes filled. “And that is why I was here looking for you. We are all very sad and angry, and no one should be alone.”

Heavens give him strength.

“Fine,” Chu Shuzhi said. “No one should be alone until this case is wrapped up. I’m walking you home and I’ll pick you up on the way to work tomorrow morning.”

Guo Changcheng wiped his eyes and beamed at him. Chu Shuzhi shook him again for good measure.

He was more gentle this time.

A cold drizzle started as Shen Wei returned to campus. He drew his trench coat close as the handful of students still outside scattered for shelter. Streetlights glowed through the gathering mist.

“Shen-jiaoshi!” came a voice. “You’ll get soaked.” Someone behind him extended an arm to hold his own umbrella over Shen Wei’s head. “Let me help.”

“Thank you.” Shen Wei said, turning. “But this is not necessary. I am fine.”

“It’s no problem, professor.”

Shen Wei knew this student. Liu Yadong, the Engineering 4 class representative. He had been in one of Shen Wei’s classes last semester. Not much of a student, but he was conscientious and polite. Shen Wei liked him.

“You shouldn’t be out in this bad weather with your head uncovered,” Liu Yadong continued. “I’ll just walk you back to the teachers’ dorm.”

That was not where Shen Wei had been planning to go, but it seemed easier to allow Liu Yadong to escort him to the dormitory than coming up with an excuse to escape the kindly-meant help. Shen Wei was profoundly weary after the confrontation with his loyal Lao Chu, and the cold rain chilled him to the bone. He found himself grateful for even the partial shelter of this student’s umbrella.

“Here you go,” Liu Yadong said cheerfully at the door. “My grandmother would say you should have ginseng tea to warm you up, but I don’t know, a strong cuppa coffee would probably do the trick just as well.”

“Thank you,” Shen Wei said, meaning it. Retreating to the warmth and privacy of his own room, enjoying a cup of something hot and perhaps even sleeping for a few hours seemed like a wonderful idea just then. Chu Shuzhi would certainly approve. And how likely was it that his enemy would be stalking the campus in the rain?

“Seriously, take care, Shen-jiaoshi,” Liu Yadong was saying. “I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it, but lately you haven’t looked like you feel very good.” He paused.

Shen Wei said nothing.

“Sorry, none of my business, but you should definitely get out of those wet clothes!” He ducked his head in apology, but as he turned away, Shen Wei thought he saw a smirk cross the student’s face.

A flash of heat went through Shen Wei, followed by a cold more chilling than the rain. He stood motionless in the grip of anger so profound his vision blurred and his heart began to race. He turned and pushed his way blindly into the foyer. Inside, he braced himself, both hands white-knuckled around the door’s handlebar. Sickness curdled his guts, and he didn’t know if it was the poison in his system or the horror at himself. He had been within a hairsbreadth of obliterating Liu Yadong where he stood, based on nothing more than a half-seen expression in poor light on a rainy night.

Chu Shuzhi had been more right than he knew. Shen Wei could not trust his emotions. He could not reasonably evaluate threats. He was a danger to everyone around him, and he could not even protect himself.

His knees threatened to buckle. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, breathing very carefully. He wondered if he should use the last of his strength to return to Dixing. Perhaps he no longer had a place in this world.

“Excuse me—I would just like to go out?” said a woman behind him.

“Pardon me,” Shen Wei said quickly, and held open the door for her.

She stuck her head out, exclaimed, “I didn’t realize it was supposed to rain tonight!” and came right back in. “Oh, Shen-laoshi, it’s you. Is everything alright?”

“I am well, thank you, Li-laoshi,” he said. “You should certainly get a raincoat if you are going out.” With that, Shen Wei himself slipped back out into the rainy night.

He would not leave Zhao Yunlan, the university, and all of Haixing to the machinations of his shadowy enemy. For now, a few hours patrolling the grounds would clear his head and help him order his thoughts.

He crisscrossed the university and explored the surrounding neighborhoods for the rest of the night. He picked up a few tantalizing traces of dark energy, but nothing that might lead him to his enemy. At five AM he returned to the dormitory and stripped off his wet clothes for a shower. The warmth of the hot water seemed to take a very long time to penetrate his icy flesh.

He went in early to his office. The previous day had afforded him precious little time to prepare his coursework. The sun was just coming up when he listened to the message from Zhao Yunlan on his office phone.

Chapter Text

It was a long, bad night at the SID.

Lin Jing identified the other victims in Zhang Hao’s pornographic snapshots within a few hours. Their academic records painted a grim portrait of consequences. One woman was on academic probation now, another was taking the semester off, and the third had dropped out of school altogether. “Whoever made Zhang Hao disappear did the world a favor,” Zhu Hong declared. “They should get a medal when we find them, not get deported to Dixing.”

Chu Shuzhi showed up around nine, used his puppet strings to right the conference table, and when asked about Guo Changcheng, said he had sent him home. He took the news of his pay being docked to pay for damages with a roll of his eyes. He didn’t explain his outburst, and Zhao Yunlan didn’t ask. He didn’t forget either.

Zhao Yunlan did not go back to his apartment that night. Some time after two, he curled up in a high-backed chair in his office with one boot on the tea table and his denim jacket over his shoulders. When he closed his eyes, he saw the despair on Shen-jiaoshi’s face as his body was seized by grasping hands.

Once upon a time, Zhao Yunlan had enjoyed his own fantasies about uncovering the beautiful body under all that fine tailoring. It seemed very distant now, the ashes from incense burned long ago.

When sleep claimed him at last, he dreamed he sat across from Shen Wei at a restaurant table, finally sharing that meal as promised. He felt deeply happy until it finally dawned on him that Shen Wei wasn’t eating. Zhao Yunlan looked up, intending to ask if the dishes were not to his liking, and saw that behind Shen Wei loomed a cloaked and hooded figure.

Zhao Yunlan awoke to his ringing phone. He fumbled it out of his pocket, saw Shen Wei was calling him and happily answered at once in his sleep-rough voice. 

Shen Wei said nothing for a moment, then: “I have disturbed you. I apologize for not checking the time before returning your call of yesterday afternoon. This is Shen Wei.”

Everything came rushing back. Zhao Yunlan sat up at once, groaning at the pain in his back from spending the night in a chair.

“Chief Zhao?” Shen Wei asked immediately. “Are you all right?”

Zhao Yunlan looked up at his dark windows and then checked the time. It was morning, but just barely. “I’m fine. But the professor is in his office very early. Do you always start your workday at this hour?”

“I find it a good time to work without interruption. How can I help you?”

“A situation has risen during our investigation of the missing student, Zhang Hao. I apologize for interrupting your day, but it is urgent that we speak as soon as possible. I’ll send a taxi to the bioengineering building.”

“Chief Zhao, it is really not convenient for me to leave campus just now. If you would like to stop by following my afternoon lecture, I would be glad to speak with you then.”

“I’m afraid this can’t wait. Furthermore, it has been brought to my attention that it may not be in Shen-jiaoshi’s best interest to be seen associating so openly with any member of the SID.”

“I do not understand,” Shen Wei said slowly, but something about his tone made Zhao Yunlan think he understood all too well.

“I will explain everything once you arrive,” Zhao Yunlan told him. “Do you have any breakfast requests? Youtaio? Are you a coffee drinker, Shen-jiaoshi?”

“Is this not a matter that could be  cleared up over the phone?”

“I regret making things difficult for you but no, we must speak in person. The taxi will be there in fifteen minutes. Thank you most sincerely for your assistance.” He hung up the phone without allowing himself to be drawn into any further discussion, and he buried his head in his hands.

A few deep breaths, then he lurched to his feet and staggered out. Da Qing and Wang Zheng were sitting at the conference table doing paperwork. Well, Wang Zheng was sorting paper receipts, and Da Qing was curled up in a ball on the table with his tail over his nose. “Can you have a cab pick up Shen-jiaoshi from his office as soon as possible? He’ll be waiting.”

Wang Zheng nodded and moved to her desk after securing her stack of receipts with a small dumbbell scavenged from upstairs. Da Qing looked up and blinked sleepily. “Your professor is having a really bad week—and that’s putting it mildly—and you won’t even let him sleep in? Oh!” His ears pricked up. “That’s because you want him to be off balance from lack of sleep while you interrogate him, right? Smart!”

“He’s the one who called me,” Zhao Yunlan answered shortly.

“So what are you gonna do if it turns out he really is Dixingren and used his powers on one of the students who drugged and raped him? Will you still turn him over to Heipaoshi?”

“See if Lao Li is in yet, would you?” Zhao Yunlan snapped. “I’d like to have some breakfast ready.”

By the time Shen Wei was shown in half an hour later, the SID’s main conference room smelled strongly of fresh coffee, chili paste, garlic and scallions. Shen Wei looked around himself with curiosity as he accepted a small bowl of savory tofu pudding. Despite the early hour he was carefully attired in a dark navy coat, the vest underneath fully buttoned and his neck protected by a silk ascot. His collar stays were gold, and his black ankle boots looked recently polished. To Zhao Yunlan’s sharp eyes, Shen Wei wore his nice clothes like armor, and he  carried himself like a man expecting the blow to fall at any moment. 

His face was drawn and very pale.

Zhao Yunlan sat beside him at the conference table with his own cup of coffee and chattered as though this were a social visit, hoping Shen Wei would eat some breakfast. But Shen Wei only sipped his tea as Zhao Yunlan thanked him for coming down to the station to help with the investigation.

Chu Shuzhi walked in with Guo Changcheng. “Oh, is that savory tofu pudding?” Xiao Guo asked, sniffing the air. “What a very good breakfast!” Then he and Chu Shuzhi both saw Shen Wei at the conference table. Chu Shuzhi’s expression turned so black Zhao Yunlan was a little concerned that he might start tossing furniture around again. By contrast Xiao Guo exclaimed, “Welcome to the SID, Shen-laoshi! I’m so glad you could have breakfast with us this morning.” Then he figured out why Shen Wei was here, and his face crumpled. “It is always a good idea to have a nourishing breakfast,” he continued in a small voice.

Chu Shuzhi scowled and flung himself down in his cubicle chair without a word, his back to them all.

“Thank you, Xiao Guo,” Shen Wei said. He glanced briefly towards Zhao Yunlan then continued, “You should help yourself. I believe there is enough to share.”

“Especially since the professor seems not to have an appetite this morning,” Zhao Yunlan observed.

Shen Wei set down his cup of tea. “Not this morning, no. Perhaps we should discuss the matter for which you summoned me.”

Perhaps they should. Zhao Yunlan rose. “Would the professor care to step into my office?" He was not conducting this interview in the interrogation room. "Lao Li, would you bring a fresh pot of tea?”

Zhao Yunlan hastily cleared a side table in his office for the teapot and gestured Shen Wei to a chair. Shen Wei sat and gave a fleeting, very wan smile of thanks as his teacup was refilled. Then he adjusted his glasses and folded his hands in his lap.

There was really no way to delay this any longer. Zhao Yunlan said, “We have found evidence on Zhang Hao’s computer which indicates that before he disappeared, he and several of his friends had been involved in a pattern of criminal activity.”

Shen Wei blinked rapidly but met Zhao Yunlan’s eyes. “Troubling in a student,” he said softly.

“Yes,” Zhao Yunlan agreed with a sigh. Shen Wei was not going to volunteer anything. “We must explore the possibility that Zhang Hao’s wrongdoing played a role in his disappearance, which in turn requires me to consider those people who suffered as a result of his actions.”

Zhao Yunlan laid a file folder down on the table beside the untouched cup of tea. Shen Wei didn’t look. He probably thought he was still maintaining his bland, polite expression, but his eyes were haunted. Zhao Yunlan hated the world, hated his job, and he didn’t like himself very much either as he said, “I must trouble the professor to examine some of the materials we recovered from Zhang Hao’s computer. They will be distressing to you, and I apologize for that.”

“I never supposed the business of investigating wrongdoing could be a light and easy occupation,” Shen Wei said faintly.

Zhao Yunlan opened the file folder. The picture on top had been chosen because it showed clearly enough what was going on, but was less explicit than most of the rest. Shen Wei’s head was thrown back, glasses askew on his face, and he was   wide-eyed above the hand clamped over his mouth. His arms were pinned and his black tank had been shoved up to bare his torso, which was very white against the dark clothes of the men holding him. A camera’s flash reflected off the shiny surfaces of the masks around him. 

Shen Wei sat motionless. Zhao Yunlan wondered if he would simply refuse to look. He didn’t blame him, and he wouldn’t insist. He was actually on the verge of closing the folder, when Shen Wei finally inclined his head.

Zhao Yunlan watched his face, but Shen Wei remained expressionless. After a moment, he reached out and turned the page. This one was explicit. Naked buttocks and a hand with slicked fingers. Shen Wei turned the page, saying nothing. Then again. Photograph after photograph of himself held down and brutalized in his own office by individuals who might be his own students, all of it memorialized in these pitiless images. Zhao Yunlan could not imagine what he was thinking. For his part, Zhao Yunlan was mostly aware of the pulse thundering at his temples and an awful roiling in his guts. He didn’t speak until Shen Wei came to the picture of another’s hand tugging at the small jade locket he wore around his neck.

Then Zhao Yunlan said, “They took it from you, didn’t they? It wasn’t among Zhang Hao’s possessions, but I’ll let you know if we find it.”

“Thank you,” Shen Wei whispered. He did not look at Zhao Yunlan and he did not turn the page. He seemed to be directing his gaze past the table altogether. He had started to shake.

Zhao Yunlan smacked the file folder shut and set it aside. “It’s all right,” he lied to Shen Wei. “Sit back. Take a deep breath. You’re safe and it’s all over now.” He was afraid that was a lie, too. Except for the safe part. That wasn’t a lie because no one would touch Shen-jiaoshi again, not while Zhao Yunlan still had breath in his body.

Shen Wei was still looking at the floor. He tried to adjust his glasses, fumbled and nearly knocked them off his face. “Perhaps you should explain your purpose in showing me these pictures,” he said at last.

“First, I am concerned for my friend,” Zhao Yunlan answered at once.

Shen Wei did not answer that.

“I know you didn’t report this. Have you sought medical attention?”

“That has nothing to do with your investigation.”

“Shen Wei!” he protested, and then had to stop himself from continuing to yell. Shen-jiaoshi was a biologist. He didn’t need Zhao Yunlan to explain the prophylactic care required after an attack like this.

So they wouldn’t argue about it. He would simply escort Shen Wei to the hospital without discussion. 

Zhao Yunlan reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. Shen Wei’s eyes darted up and Zhao Yunlan stopped at once. He spread his fingers wide, broadcasting his intention. Shen Wei sat rigidly, and though he did not move away, Zhao Yunlan let his hand drop as he told Shen Wei, “There are more victims. Anything you remember may be a help to us and ultimately to them as well.”

Shen Wei’s expression had gone from bleak to utterly hopeless. “I remember nothing of those events,” he said as he gestured towards the closed file folder. “When I awoke, all three of the men in these pictures were gone.”

“So you did not know Zhang Hao was one of your attackers.”

“I knew nothing about any of them.”

Something about that phrasing struck Zhao Yunlan. “Did you discover his identity afterwards?”

Shen Wei finally met Zhao Yunlan’s eye. There was a distant shadow of Shen-jiaoshi’s old, innocent deadpan in his expression as he said, “If I did not suspect him before, I can hardly help but do so when presented with the evidence of the SID’s investigation.”

Well, touché, Zhao Yunlan thought. “It’s obvious from these pictures that you were dosed with a powerful narcotic agent. Do you know how or when that might have occurred? Did you go out for a beer that afternoon?”

“In the middle of a school day? No. And in any event, I do not drink.”

“Ah.”

“I took tea alone in my office shortly before I fell ill. I suspect that was the source. Afterward I destroyed my remaining tea leaves, and I also disposed of my thermos, teapot and cups.” He bowed his head slightly. “That was probably an overreaction.” He looked up to meet Zhao Yunlan’s eye again with a wan attempt to smile. “I seem prone to such of late.”

Zhao Yunlan returned the smile although he wanted to weep. “Might you have overreacted in a similar fashion upon re-encountering Zhang Hao?”

Shen Wei froze. Slowly, slowly he relaxed enough to say, “I only now learned his name from you, so it seems unlikely.”

Zhao Yunlan’s heart sank. “Shen Wei,” he said miserably, “Is there anything more you can tell me about Zhang Hao’s disappearance?”

He was transparently relieved by Zhao Yunlan’s phrasing. “There is nothing more I can tell you.”

“Is there anything more you could tell me if circumstances were different?”

Shen Wei blinked. “There is not,” he lied in a strong voice.

Zhao Yunlan nodded. He stood, took the file folder full of printed pictures and carefully locked it in the desk drawer. Only then did he turn back to Shen Wei. “I know you have a full day ahead. I’ll drive you back to campus now.”

Wang Ziqiang was beginning to wish they’d never met that weird guy with the bad dye job.

Sure, it had been a great night, and they all had a really good time—hah, well maybe not Shen-jiaoshi so much, but he probably didn’t even remember it—still, Wang Ziqiang couldn’t deny that he’d had misgivings. Why had that strange man wanted to help? How did he know so much about Shen Wei? Obviously he’d been stalking the professor, and that was getting into creepy personal vendetta territory. Wang Ziqiang had watched enough true crime to know that nothing good ever came of getting involved in someone else’s obsession.

And what the hell had been up with that huge black knockout pill? When they’d dropped it into Shen-jiaoshi’s hot water thermos, it sparked bright blue for an instant and left a fleeting smell like sandalwood joss. Wang Ziqiang hadn’t believed for a minute it would really work, and he’d been wondering how they were supposed to explain showing up at Shen Wei’s office wearing masks and carrying lube if the professor was just fine.

But no, everything had gone just like the purple dye job guy promised. Shen-jiaoshi had been so strung out he couldn’t even shut the door on them, much less call for help. They all crowded into the office, and it had been an incredible rush working over the professor. Wang Ziqiang's dick had gotten so much action he'd been a bit sore the next day. Sure, at first he'd worried about Shen Wei being awake, but then he decided he was glad Shen Wei had his eyes open while they all took him down a peg or two.

So much for your tailored suits and gold cufflinks now, Shen-jiaoshi. Not such an authority figure with cum on your face and a dick up your ass, are you?

That had been a great night. Maybe too great, since his roommate Zhang Hao had not been able to fucking shut up about it afterwards, and now he’d been missing for most of a week.

Wang Ziqiang hadn’t worried at first, mostly since it seemed too bizarre to be real. Like meeting Purple Hair and screwing Professor Shen Wei within an inch of his life had suspended all the rules of the normal universe.

But then Zhang Hao missed his team’s game, and the reality of it finally slammed home. Zhang Hao was gone. Not missing, not hiding somewhere, gone. The cops had seized his computer and Wang Ziqiang sure as hell hoped the encryption was as unbreakable as Zhang Hao had always bragged, but just in case, he’d smashed his own phone with a brick and thrown away the pieces in trash cans all over campus.

Liu Yadong laughed at him and called him paranoid. Maybe he was, but as time passed, his crawling sense of unease got worse and worse until he wished with all his heart they had never even met Purple Hair. This was turning into way too much stress for a single night of partying.

Wang Ziqiang felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck and he whirled around. A girl was behind him on the walk, and she was glaring daggers at him.

“What is your problem?” he snapped. He didn’t know her name offhand, but he recognized her from class. She was Shen Wei’s little teacher’s pet.

She scowled and turned away from him, muttering.

“Hey! What did you say?”

She turned back. Her laughably tiny fists were clenched at her sides. “I said, I know what you did.”

Wang Ziqiang flushed dark red in terror and then in sheer rage. He grabbed her shoulders and dragged her up until she was balancing on tiptoe. “Keep your mouth shut, you little bitch,” he snarled, shaking her as she tried fruitlessly to push him away. How dare she talk to him like that. “We’ll be coming for you,” he threatened her. It felt good to make someone else afraid. “We’ll screw you bloody just like we did your favorite teacher.”

“Leave her alone.” Someone poked him in the back. He was so surprised he let her go and turned to see another of the weird girls in Engineering. Were they having a fucking convention or something?

“Butt out,” he told her. She was that freak who wore her black gloves everywhere. “This has nothing to do with you.”

She was carefully easing off her left glove and then waving her fingers right in his face. “It has everything to do with you, though.”

He grabbed her, intending to break every finger on that hand.

He died before he got the chance. During the moment or two it took for his life to drain away, he heard her say, “This is for Shen-jiaoshi, you filthy monster, and for everyone else you ever hurt.”

And goddammit, that was just the final straw. He was Wang Ziqiang and he had an auspicious name and a job waiting for him in his dad’s real estate firm and the idea that it could all be taken away from him just for having a good time was inconceivably unfair.

He groaned his protest and a few teeth fell from his dried gums. The ancient sinews in his legs snapped, and he collapsed into a pile of withered flesh and brittle bones.

Wang Yike looked up from the body on the sidewalk. It was midday and students were everywhere, but no one else, it seemed, had been looking at them the moment Wang Ziqiang had crumpled into a husk. Jiajia was backing away slowly with both hands pressed over her mouth. “I won’t hurt you,” Wang Yike said sadly. She was wondering if she would have time to say goodbye to her beloved Zhang Ruonan before she  needed to start running.

Jiajia shook her head violently and moaned through her tightly clasped hands. Then she tiptoed closer to the desiccated husk and delicately kicked Wang Ziqiang’s skull. It separated easily from his neck, bone snapping and skin tearing. Another kick sent the skull rolling away until it came to rest under the manicured bushes, wobbling a little.

Wang Yike let her shoulders drop, weak with relief. Then she stepped up and helped Jiajia kick and shove Ziqiang’s remains the rest of the way under the bushes. It was like moving clothes stuffed with dried leaves and twigs. One shoe fell off his foot. Wang Yike wasn’t squeamish. She picked it up and dropped it in the trashcan across the way.

Jiajia still had both hands over her mouth.

“Are you alright?”

She looked at Wang Yike with big eyes, but she nodded vigorously. “We need to walk away from here,” Wang Yike told her. “Can you manage that?”

Another nod.

By now Wang Yike had carefully replaced her glove. “I’m just going to take your arm while we walk to be sure you don’t trip. You’re safe as long as I’m wearing these gloves. Is that all right?”

Jiajia squeaked through her clasped hands but her eyes were trusting. She moved closer and allowed Wang Yike to take her arm. Wang Yike could feel shudders still trembling through her small frame, and she wanted to kill Ziqiang all over again. “Let's go to the woman’s room on the first floor of the Foreign Languages Building. You think you can make it that far?”

“Uh-huh,” Jiajia agreed through her fingers. The two of them staggered past the fountain, and Wang Yike supposed they must look like a couple of typical giggling or weeping coeds, utterly unremarkable on college grounds on a sunny morning after the rain, because no one gave them a second glance. It was a strange sensation for Wang Yike, who always worried about the eyes of strange Haixingren upon her.

But now she had actually killed a fellow student and no one had even noticed.

Well, except for poor Jiajia, whom she would not have upset for the world. 

Honestly, a quick death had been too good for that asshole.

Finally reaching the safety of the women’s room, Wang Yike checked the stalls and then locked the restroom door behind them. Only then did Jiajia slowly lower her hands and draw a deep, deep breath. The ribbon in her hair was crooked. She laughed, high-pitched and sudden, then broke off just as suddenly and looked mortified. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I was trying to hold in a scream all that time, but actually I was just so relieved I was trying not to laugh.” She looked at Wang Yike with shining eyes. “You saved me. It was stupid of me to say anything to that jerk but I was so angry at him, and then you saved me.” She took another deep breath, laughed again, then wiped the tears that welled up.

Then she really looked at Wang Yike. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Me?”

“You just—you killed someone. He deserved it and I’m not sorry and I’ll never tell, but are you OK?”

“I’m OK. But it might not be that easy, Jiajia. They’ll find the body sooner or later. Someone may remember seeing us.”

Zhang Ruonan would be so disappointed in her.

Wang Yike bit her lip. Jiajia said, “I’d really like to give you a hug right now,” and as Wang Yike hurriedly stepped out of range she assured her, “But I won’t. I won’t!  Are you going to tell Zhang Ruonan what happened? She already knows what you can do, right?”

Wang Yike swallowed a groan. Approaching Jiajia had been such a mistake. She was just too damn smart.

“When I was a little girl I loved stories about the Dixingren, and I wished they were real. That’s you, right?”

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” Wang Yike asked instead of answering any of Jiajia’s impossible questions.

Jiajia rolled her eyes. “This week I found out that ordinary people can be more terrible than I could even imagine, but I also found a new friend who would save me from them. It’s scary and awful but it’s also amazing and I’m so lucky. Did you—are you the reason nobody can find Zhang Hao?”

“I know you won’t believe me, but I had nothing to do with Zhang Hao.”

Jiajia frowned. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I? Do you think he ran away? Or is there someone else on campus like you who could just, like, take care of him for good?”

Wang Yike shrugged. “I have no idea. Who else would have attacked him? Who else even knows what he did to Shen-jiaoshi?”

Jiajia caught a glimpse of the top of her head in the mirror and stood up on tiptoe to straighten her ribbon. “Shen-jiaoshi knows,” she said.

Zhao Yunlan pulled into visitor parking and turned off the ignition. The drive from the SID had been silent, and now Shen Wei made a show of examining the entrance before them labeled Outpatient Admissions before he finally remarked, “This is not the university.”

“No,” Zhao Yunlan agreed. “Just thought it would be a good idea to swing by here before I take you back to work.” He opened the door, jumped down out of the jeep and then looked back at Shen Wei. “Coming?”

Shen Wei sat rigid in the passenger seat with his seatbelt fastened. He was staring straight ahead. “I would prefer not to.”

“Just a quick checkup and some antibiotics. You don’t have to tell the doctors anything. Just say you had unprotected sex with multiple partners, and they can get you fixed right up.”

That got Shen Wei to look at him. A complicated expression on his face, he said, “How is that 'not telling the doctor anything'?”

Zhao Yunlan sighed as he looked across the seat at Shen Wei, so carefully armored in his tailored suit. “I just meant, you don’t have to call it what it was. I wish that you would request treatment for sexual assault, but I will not insist. However, you can’t expect me to do nothing when I know you are not taking even the most basic steps to protect your health.”

Shen Wei returned his gaze to the front windshield. “Please drive me to the university. I am already seriously behind schedule this morning.”

A raging case of the clap—or worse—would do even more unforgivable things to his schedule, but Zhao Yunlan managed not to say that out loud. Instead he told Shen Wei, “You told me once that we may have known each other before. Would the man you remember have allowed you to risk your life and health this way?”

He thought Shen Wei probably wouldn’t answer that. He didn’t, but he laid his open palm across the hollow of his throat. His expression in profile twisted momentarily, and Zhao Yunlan knew he was missing the pendant he’d seen in the pictures. The one stolen by his rapists.

“Please,” Zhao Yunlan pleaded softly. “I am sorry I cannot remember our earlier acquaintance, but let me be a friend to you now.”

Shen Wei made a quiet sound. His hand still at his throat, he murmured, “So you see me as a man in need of friends?” 

The comment was probably intended to be sardonic, but Zhao Yunlan heard something far more raw.

“I believe you have held yourself apart from the world for a long time, Shen-jiaoshi, quick to offer your kindness while holding your inmost self in reserve. In the aftermath of this cruel and cowardly attack on your person, it would not be strange if you found yourself in a world that now seems grimly unfamiliar. Worse, you may be uncertain of the friends you have long held at arm’s length.”

“You are not the first to say this matter has changed me,” Shen Wei confessed quietly.

So he had talked to someone else. That was a relief, because Zhao Yunlan had been haunted by the idea of Shen Wei utterly alone with this horror. He remembered Lao Chu flipping the conference table after the pictures on Zhang Hao’s laptop had come to light, then immediately leaving the SID, and he wondered.

But that was an investigation for another time.

“Shen-jiaoshi, I’m just asking you to recognize that you do have friends, and that we want to help you find your way while the world is a dark place for you.”

Shen Wei dropped his head, a bitter smile on his lips.

Zhao Yunlan walked around the jeep and opened the passenger side door. “Shen-jiaoshi,” he said carefully. “Will you permit me to escort you in?”

The expression Shen Wei turned on him was almost more than Zhao Yunlan could bear. He reminded himself that the professor was a suspect, but that made no difference. It hadn’t mattered for a while now, as Da Qing had figured out. Zhao Yunlan wanted to bundle Shen Wei up and take him away to some place warm and safe and very far from everything that hurt him.

The best he could do right now were the sterile environs of Dragon City General Hospital.

Shen Wei was trembling visibly. Zhao Yunlan bit his lip and held up his arm. All he said was, “Careful of your step.”

Aeons rolled away. Zhao Yunlan waited.

Then Shen Wei unfastened his seatbelt. He gripped the frame of the door with one white hand, reached down and wrapped his other hand around Zhao Yunlan’s proffered arm. The toe of his polished black boot was just touching the ground as a voice called, “Shen Wei! What happened? Are you alright?”

Shen Wei froze, half in and half out of the truck. “Easy,” Zhao Yunlan murmured, “I’ve got you.”

Shen Wei forced a smile. “I’m fine,” he said to Zhao Yunlan just as softly. He tightened his grip on Zhao Yunlan’s arm and stepped out the rest of the way. He stumbled slightly, but evaded Zhao Yunlan's attempt to steady him and turned to face the woman who had called to him. “Cheng Xinyan,” he said clearly. “How good to see you. It has been too long.”

“Shen Wei!” she exclaimed, rushing up in medical whites and not being distracted by his attempted pleasantries. “What happened? Do you need a wheelchair?”

“Of course not. I am fine.” He shot a warning look at Zhao Yunlan, and then said in an obvious attempt to derail any further discussion of his well-being, “This is Zhao Yunlan. Chief Zhao, I would like you to meet Cheng-yisheng. We were in school together.”

“It’s an honor, Cheng-yisheng.” Zhao Yunlan gave a half bow. “A friend of Shen-jiaoshi may call on me for anything! So you both attended Dragon City University?”

“Mmm.” She nodded to him, but it was obvious most of her attention was still on Shen Wei. “What brings you here this morning? Is it anything I can help you with?”

Zhao Yunlan held his tongue and let Shen Wei flounder. “I—” Shen Wei started, and then had no way to finish that sentence. Cheng Xinyan’s expression sharpened. “Zhao Yunlan insisted,” Shen Wei said then, and Cheng Xinyan’s eyebrows went up.

“I see,” she said. “Well, please come in. We don’t need to stand out here talking in the parking lot.”

Chapter Text

Between Cheng Xinyan and Zhao Yunlan, then, there was really no escape. Shen Wei thought he might excuse himself to step into the restroom, open a portal and never set foot in Haixing again. But short of that, it seemed like he was going to have to say something to Cheng Xinyan. She hustled Shen Wei through Intake with the calm yet utterly implacable attitude he remembered from school, and left the unfortunate receptionist with the job of rearranging her schedule so that she could see Shen Wei at once.

The only mercy was that she also left Zhao Yunlan in the waiting room. He obviously thought about objecting, but then reconsidered. He settled back to unwrap a lollipop and waved after them.

Cheng Xinyan escorted Shen Wei into her office, offered him coffee that he refused, and said, “I’d be glad to get you a cup of tea from the nurses’ station, but I have to admit, it’s not very good.”

“No thank you,” Shen Wei said. “I’m fine.”

“Yes, you keep saying that,” she smiled at him. “Then tell me what has your friend Zhao Yunlan so concerned.”

Shen Wei smiled back miserably. He had no idea what to tell her. 

Taking pity on him, Cheng Xinyan filled the silence herself. “Zhao Yunlan certainly strikes me as the dashing young rake. Have you known him for long?”

“Practically my whole life,” Shen Wei said at once. Then, with more caution, “We met again recently.”

“And how much,” she paused delicately. “How much does he really know about you? Did he grow up downstairs with you?”

“No. He does not know where I come from.”

She nodded. “You introduced him as chief. Does he work in security or—?”

“He is chief of the SID.”

Cheng Xinyan put down her coffee and sat back in her chair. “Shen Wei, do you know what you’re doing?”

She knew he was a Dixingren with healing powers, but little more than that. He had not, for instance, told her that he was in no danger of being apprehended by the Black Cloaked Envoy, that fearsome entity other Dixingren friends spoke of in such hushed tones.

“Zhao Yunlan is a good man doing a very difficult job,” was all Shen Wei said now.

“All right,” she agreed, accepting that. “He managed to get you to see a doctor. I know you, Shen Wei. That was no easy task. Now, why don’t you honor your old friend—or is he a new friend?—by telling me why he wanted you to see me.”

She crossed her hands on top of the desk and looked at him, smiling a little. It was clear this time she was prepared to wait.

Shen Wei adjusted his glasses. He had worked with Cheng Xinyan in their student days. She was a good doctor and probably knew more about treating Dixingren than any other Haixingren physician in Dragon City. That made her the one person who could help him right now.

If he needed help.

He was Heipaoshi. He did not need help.

But since he was here and was choosing not to open a portal to Dixing through her office wall to escape, he put a rueful smile on his face and said, “I remember the work you did examining the efficacy of certain antibiotics for Dixingren patients.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “And you were right there beside me while we used lab space after-hours for research that could have gotten us both kicked out of the university. Shen Wei, what’s happened?” she asked, her voice serious then. “Why are you asking me about antibiotics?”

Shen Wei was a little astonished to hear himself parroting Zhao Yunlan's suggested explanation. “One night recently I...I had sexual relations with multiple strangers without using protection. It has been more than a week now and I—”

Cheng Xinyan was a very good doctor and a thorough professional. She did not react, except for going so still she hardly looked like she was continuing to breathe.

Shen Wei fell silent. He felt cold to the marrow, but his face was burning. The silence continued until Cheng Xinyan said, “All right,” very, very kindly. A sob caught in Shen Wei’s throat. “Are you experiencing any symptoms?”

Where even to begin? He bowed his head.

“Will you allow me to check for fever?”

He looked up, his vision blurred for some reason. Were those tears in his eyes? He blinked rapidly, mortified. “There is no need,” he whispered.

“Just to establish a data point,” she persisted gently. She walked around her desk holding a forehead thermometer. “May I?”

He could not think of a reason to tell her no, so he just nodded.

She held it out and then showed him the reading. “That’s a bit elevated. Can you tell me how you’re feeling? Is it possible this is merely due to your stress at the moment? You've been maneuvered into talking about very personal matters with me.”

She was so gentle and so very kind. “Yes, perhaps,” he whispered. Then he decided, “But no, it is not stressful for me to talk to an old friend like you.”

She smiled. “I am not sure that is completely true. Maybe it is not even true at all. You have never discussed your love life with me.”

“It was not—” he broke off.

“No, I didn’t think love had much to do with it. You do not need to say anything, Shen Wei.” She took a breath and changed the subject. “I can certainly provide you with a course of broad spectrum antibiotics which might be useful for individuals from your background. But I would need you to check with me on a regular basis and to be very careful documenting your symptoms and reactions. Unfortunately, there is just so much that we do not know. Even now—” She stopped herself. In their school days it had been an endless source of frustration that research that might help so many people was forbidden, and the very existence of those people ignored and criminalized.

It had profoundly troubled Shen Wei too, an irony he would never escape. But then as now, he had done what he could to mitigate the effects of the Xingdu Bureau’s zero-tolerance interpretation of the ancient treaty.

“Thank you, Cheng Xinyan. I will defer to your expertise. There is...an additional data point to consider. I was dosed with a powerful narcotic agent beforehand.” He found he could not look at her. “Poison from an unknown Dixingren practitioner. You asked me about symptoms. Even a week later I believe I may still be experiencing its effects.”

She was a very good doctor but she was also a friend. When he dared glance at her face again, her eyes were swimming in tears.

He looked away.

“Shen Wei—” her voice broke. She tried again. “Tell me about your symptoms. Did you lose consciousness?”

“I have no memory of the succeeding five or six hours. Only...I have been experiencing occasionally intrusive visual and somatic flashbacks. Since the incident, I have also had difficulty regulating my dark energy. Cheng Xinyan, I have researched the effects of trauma,” he told her. He wanted to reassure her that he had been taking care of himself. “But as you know, there is so little information on Dixingren physiology. I have found I cannot meaningfully differentiate between what may be only psychological effects and symptoms caused by an unknown drug in my system.”

He stopped and waited, looking over Cheng Xinyan’s right shoulder. He did not want to be here, but if she could help him regain his strength, that would be an immeasurable benefit in tracking down the enemy in the shadows.

“Shen Wei,” she said softly. “Is Zhao Yunlan going to find the people who did this to you?”

Not what Shen Wei had been expecting. “Yes, if he can.”

“Are you safe now?”

Another surprise. “Yes, of course. I am fine.” Then he was sorry to have said the last. Both Zhao Yunlan and Cheng Xinyan reacted badly when he told them that he was alright, even though he was.

“Oh, Shen Wei!” Cheng Xinyan exclaimed. Yes, it had definitely been a mistake to assert that he was fine, regardless of its being true. He was Heipaoshi, and the mighty warlord Kunlun himself had gifted him with the name Shen Wei. This attack by cowardly enemies meant nothing.

Cheng Xinyan said his name again, but this time asked, “May I check your pulse?”

He welcomed the change of subject, and he extended his arm. “Of course.”

Cheng Xinyan wrapped cool fingers around his right wrist. When she finally released him and returned to the other side of the desk, her expression was unreadable. Shen Wei braced himself, but she only rested her head in her hands. She said nothing for a time. Then she looked up and said, “Tell me what this difficulty managing your dark energy really means. Are you experiencing it as a generalized weakness?”

“It is not incapacitating.”

“Have you been vomiting blood?” Cheng Xinyan knew how problems with dark energy regulation could manifest.

“No,” Shen Wei was quick to assure her. “Only when I overextend myself.”

“So the answer to my question is actually yes. When you use your abilities to heal yourself, you are likely to wind up vomiting blood.” She sounded very angry.

“I have been careful not to stress my system that way,” he said quickly. “You have no reason for concern.”

Cheng Xinyan closed her eyes. “My friend,” she said. Her voice sounded funny. She swallowed, opened her eyes and reached for the box of tissues on her desk. She took one and blotted her eyes. Then she smiled at him, still watery-eyed. “I’m sorry for losing my composure, Shen Wei. You deserve better from me.”

“I did not mean to cause you distress,” Shen Wei said miserably.

“Don’t say that!” she exclaimed. “I am glad you trust me. I am just frustrated that there is so little I can do. I’d like to do a full work up on your blood, and I don’t dare because the lab would report you to the authorities. I’d like to admit you and keep you under observation until we know what is going on with your dark energy, and I cannot do that for the same reasons. The one thing I can do in addition to prescribing antibiotics is set you up for ongoing therapy. It would not need to be with me, and it could be a help in untangling the psychological effects that— “

“No, thank you,” Shen Wei interrupted politely. “Just the antibiotics. I will monitor the effects on my system and reach out if I have questions.”

Cheng Xinyan looked as though she might start crying again, so Shen Wei added quickly, “Zhao Yunlan will be very pleased.”

Cheng Xinyan walked Shen Wei back to the waiting room. Zhao Yunlan was tapping away on his mobile phone, the ball of a lollipop lodged in his right cheek. He glanced up immediately at their entrance and gave Shen Wei such a tender, hopeful smile, crooked as it was around the lollipop, that Shen Wei's heart betrayed him. He felt a rush of love for this oblivious modern-day Kunlun, euphoria and heartbreak together threatening to overwhelm him. He had to close his eyes. Just for a moment, he thought. Just so he could reorient himself to this time and this world.

Zhao Yunlan did not know him, not really, and the expression on his face was not love. Just kindness and concern for an acquaintance who was now an assault victim. He remembered Zhao Yunlan watching him this morning as he paged through the file folder of pictures. Zhao Yunlan's expression had been calm and professional, but he was obviously worried about Shen Wei.  It had helped Shen Wei to see it, as much as it also pained him. Zhao Yunlan's concern was a kindness as he looked at the evidence of acts he could not remember. 

One photo had shown him facedown on the carpet, hips lifted by the masked figure behind him. Shen Wei could not even recognize himself in that scene.  Thinking of it now, though, the world shifted and Shen Wei abruptly found himself inhabiting the pain of that lost moment. 

His areolae and nipples had been bitten and scratched bloody, burning as his assailant’s thrusts drove him across the rough carpet fibers. He'd been struggling to push himself up and away, and an eager, panting voice groaned, “Oh fuck, Shen-jiaoshi, you can take it!”

Laughter boomed from all sides, an ancient, evil echo behind it all. 

Shen Wei swallowed a groan, nausea roiling his stomach. That laughter was not real, he told himself furiously as he tried to regain control. The rebel warlord who had stolen his didi was ten thousand years gone. He had not returned to mock Shen Wei’s helplessness. 

Still, Shen Wei raised his hand blindly, groping for comfort. He remembered his locket was gone before he touched the base of his throat, and he nearly sobbed aloud. 

Every trace of the Kunlun who had loved him was lost.

“What’s wrong?” Cheng Xinyan was asking. “Are you in pain?”

He shook his head thickly but did not tell her he was fine. He only spread his hand across his chest, trying to still the physical ache from his wounds as the imaginary laughter faded. He had closed those open bites and fingernail scratches immediately, before he had even dressed himself again that night, but they still pained him. 

Perhaps Cheng Xinyan’s antibiotics would help.

Then Zhao Yunlan was at his other side so quickly he must have vaulted over a row of waiting room chairs. “Shen-jiaoshi!” he exclaimed. “Here, sit down.” He reached out but stopped himself from taking Shen Wei’s arm, instead pulling a chair around for him.

Heartsick and very, very tired, Shen Wei allowed himself to sink into the proffered chair. He knew why Zhao Yunlan was being careful not to initiate physical contact, but Shen Wei longed to reach out to him. He kept his hands folded. “A moment of vertigo,” Shen Wei managed to say at last. “It has been a trying morning.”

For once, no one disagreed with him.

“Are you sure you should be returning to campus?” Zhao Yunlan asked. “Cheng-yishing, perhaps an overnight stay to let him get some rest?”

Cheng Xinyan shook her head unhappily. “I’m afraid hospitals are not good places to sleep. The best I can recommend is that you take at least a day or two off from work. Chief Zhao is right. You should rest, especially since the antibiotics I have prescribed are likely to make you feel a bit worse before you start feeling better.”

“Thank you, Xinyan,” Shen Wei said quietly. “I will certainly take care and remember your advice.”

“That is not the same as actually doing what she says!” Zhao Yunlan protested at once.

“It will be a while before my prescriptions will be ready,” Shen Wei said. “Chief Zhao, I know you have a very busy day ahead of you, so please feel free to return to work. I will call a cab to take me back to campus.”

Zhao Yunlan swung a waiting room chair around and straddled it, one foot on the cushion and one elbow on his knee. He waved his lollipop at Shen Wei. “Haven’t you realized yet? You are my job this morning Shen-jiaoshi, and there is nowhere else I need to be.”

“That is not—”

“Thank you, Chief Zhao,” Cheng Xinyan said at once.

“Call me Zhao-ge! Any friend of Shen Wei’s—”

“So you have said,” Cheng Xinyan interrupted again, but her smile was kind. She took one of Shen Wei’s hands in both of her own. “I am very glad Zhao-ge convinced you to come see me this morning. Please call me if you have any questions or if there is anything at all I can do for you.”

“You may be aware already that our Shen-jiaoshi does not carry a phone,” Zhao Yunlan said. “Perhaps the doctor would like to share her number with me as well? Just in case of an emergency.”

“I am sure there is no need for that,” Shen Wei said, but Cheng Xinyan cocked her head at Zhao Yunlan and pulled out her phone. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Numbers exchanged, Cheng Xinyan reminded Shen Wei once again to let her know if he needed anything before she finally left them. Zhao Yunlan’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, scowled, and silenced it.

“Shouldn’t you take that?” Shen Wei inquired.

“I should not,” Zhao Yunlan disagreed with a quick grin. “It’s just that damn cat—” he broke off. “My staff calling about the cat,” he corrected himself with an unconvincing laugh. “And didn’t I tell you that you are my job today?”

“Is that really the best use of your government funding?”

“Protecting an important asset to the university and by extension to all of Dragon City? I cannot think of a better. May I bring you a cup of tea while we wait for the pharmacy? There’s a beverage cart in the lobby.”

Shen Wei did not want tea, much less tea of the quality likely to be served from a beverage cart in the lobby of the hospital, but Zhao Yunlan was practically vibrating with his eagerness to help, and Shen Wei would like a few moments to himself.

“Thank you,” he told Zhao Yunlan. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

Zhao Yunlan beamed, and as before, Shen Wei had no defenses against that beautiful smile. He ducked his head, heart melting. He was not Shen Wei’s Kunlun, and perhaps this was only pity and kindness, but Shen Wei was not strong enough to hold himself aloof. “I’ll be right back,” Zhao Yunlan told him.

Shen Wei put his hands on his knees and nodded. Zhao Yunlan darted off, and Shen Wei finally allowed himself to think about that flashback. It was like forcing himself to place his hand in a fire, but although the kindness of Cheng Xinyan and Zhao Yunlan had broken his heart, there was new strength in the broken places. He was able to do this. He considered the memory as reasonably as he could, stripping away the millennia-old associations. The braying, gloating voice he remembered was familiar, but he couldn't put a face to it. The laughter was from all three students, but he couldn’t identify them either, only assuming the third was Zhang Hao. 

The laughter of the rebel warlord? That was another age altogether. He was long dead and gone, but Shen Wei was still here, and he was no longer helpless.

“And here we go. I got us both milk tea—is that all right?”

Shen Wei blinked open his eyes and accepted the paper cup from Zhao Yunlan. “Thank you,” he said, and forced himself to take a sip, relishing the sight of  Zhao Yunlan’s approving smile. It nourished Shen Wei’s heart when he simply accepted the affection instead of arguing with himself about it. He couldn't help but love Zhao Yunlan whether the man remembered his life as Kunlun or not.

Chapter Text

Da Qing waved Zhao Yunlan to a stop as soon as he turned in to campus. Zhao Yunlan blinked at the sight of his deputy but pulled over, giving a rueful smile to Shen Wei. “Just let me see what he wants,” he said. “I hadn’t realized my people were at the university today.”

“Possibly because you refused to take any of their phone calls while you were waiting with me,” Shen Wei suggested calmly.

Zhao Yunlan made a skeptical face. “How likely does that sound? I’ll just be a minute.”

He jumped out of the jeep. As soon as the door closed behind him Da Qing demanded, “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

“You know where I was.” Zhao Yunlan jerked his head towards the front seat where he had left Shen-jiaoshi. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve got another dead student. At least there's a body this time, but you need to see this.” 

Zhao Yunlan turned, gesturing through the window to Shen Wei. “Just be a second,” he told him, then followed Da Qing at a jog across the lawn and down the wide brick path. On the other side of the fountain were a couple of municipal police guarding the scene. The medical examiner was flanked by Chu Shuzhi and Lin Jing, who were earnestly examining something Zhao Yunlan could not quite make out. 

Guo Changcheng was sitting in the grass with his back to all of them. 

Zhao Yunlan asked what they were dealing with, and Chu Shuzhi stepped back so he could see. Carefully arranged on a stretcher were pieces and parts that looked more like props for a horror movie than the body of any recent student. The skull was not attached. A few wisps of hair clung to the desiccated scalp and the remaining skin on the face was as thin as parchment. The clothing was new and in good shape, but the arms visible under short sleeves were withered to the bone. Both knees were bent at impossible angles under the blue jeans. One foot was missing.

“And what makes us think this is a student?” Zhao Yunlan asked. “The body looks like it was pulled out of a lost tomb.”

Chu Shuzhi handed over a student ID. “This was in his jeans pocket.”

Zhao Yunlan looked. “Wang Ziqiang,” he read pensively, looking at the square-jawed young man pictured on the ID. He bore very little resemblance to the dried skin and bones on the stretcher at their feet.

“He was the roommate of Zhang Hao, the missing student,” Chu Shuzhi filled in. 

“Ah.” Zhao Yunlan looked back at the withered corpse. “So he’s almost certainly another masked figure from those pictures.” They had already discussed the roommate as a suspect. “Did he have a phone on him?”

Lin Jing held up a cheap flip phone in an evidence bag. “Just the burner. A little out of character for a college kid.”

“Almost like he’d been trying to destroy evidence,” Zhao Yunlan agreed. He knelt on his haunches and looked closely at the skull. The breeze rustled the few remaining hairs on the shreds of scalp. 

Serves you right, you evil little shit, Zhao Yunlan thought with satisfaction. He straightened up, after ensuring that his expression was still smooth and professional. “I don’t suppose we can get a time of death from the body when it looks like this.”

The medical examiner glanced over at him and just snorted. She had been working SID cases since Zhao Xinci’s days as director, and was utterly unflappable. 

“His phone still has a full charge, so he can’t have been under the bushes for too long,” Lin Jing said. 

Da Qing said. “If that really is Wang Ziqiang we can pin it down even further. A couple of students saw him grabbing breakfast in the cafeteria about eight this morning, but he never made it to his nine o’clock lab. So that clears your Shen-jiaoshi as well, as long as he really was at the hospital with you this morning.” 

Zhao Yunlan scowled at his deputy and snapped, “Of course he was,” but inside he was deeply relieved. “Who found the body?”

“A groundskeeper trimming hedges. Apparently the body was shoved pretty deep under the shrubbery, so it might’ve been days before anyone noticed otherwise.” Da Qing said. 

“Any witnesses?”

Zhao Yunlan’s people shook their heads and Chu Shuzhi said, “No one who admits it, anyway.”

Finally Zhao Yunlan asked, “Is there any way this could’ve happened without Dixingren abilities?”

“A few decades in a bog,” the medical examiner suggested. 

“An attack by a Dixingren is the more plausible explanation,” Shen Wei suggested dryly from Zhao Yunlan’s side. He turned. 

“You were supposed to wait in the jeep!”

Shen Wei blinked innocently. For a moment he seemed so much the beautifully intriguing professor Zhao Yunlan had met only a few weeks before, he could almost forget the heartbreaking revelations of the past twelve hours.

“The bioengineering building is right across the quadrangle,” Shen Wei was explaining patiently. “There seemed little reason for me to further delay my return to my office.”

Zhao Yunlan blinked and saw the gaunt cheeks and bruised eyes, the white knuckles on his fist where Shen Wei was clutching his little bag of prescription medicine. He swallowed his renewed grief and gestured Shen Wei to one side. Lowering his voice he said, “We believe the victim is Wang Ziqiang. Do you recognize that name?”

Shen Wei glanced towards the withered corpse without flinching. “He was in one of my large introductory lecture classes last year. Nothing about him stood out to me.”

Zhao Yunlan said, “He was the roommate of Zhang Hao, the missing student who took those pictures. We strongly suspect he was another of your attackers.”

“I see.” Shen Wei’s expression remained painfully neutral.

“I don’t suppose you know any Dixingren who might feel Dragon City University would be a better place without this student and his roommate? I’m not saying they’re wrong, but we do have laws about this sort of thing.”

Shen Wei’s calm didn’t waver. “There are laws about forcible rape as well.”

Zhao Yunlan winced, and Shen Wei continued, “I will be returning to my office now.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

“That is not necessary.”

“Nevertheless, I appreciate your humoring me in this small matter,” Zhao Yunlan announced as he fell into step beside him. To Da Qing he called, “I’ll be right back.” Turning back to Shen Wei he persisted, “So you are not aware of any Dixingren on campus or in the surrounding neighborhoods who might have been able to do this?” 

“I do not know any Dixingren at all,” Shen Wei told him, and his delivery was so deadpan that Zhao Yunlan knew he was lying. 

He gave Shen Wei a smile that he knew was thin and unconvincing, and Shen Wei looked away from him, which made Zhao Yunlan feel even worse. Da Qing was right. He was hopelessly compromised in this investigation.

They walked in silence to his office and Shen Wei laid his palm silently on the door for a moment before fitting a key to the lock and pushing it open. 

Zhao Yunlan eased past him to step in first. 

“Zhao Yunlan—” Shen Wei began, probably worried that Zhao Yunlan would simply make himself at home and be impossible to dislodge.

Well, he wasn’t wrong. If Zhao Yunlan could figure out a way to plant himself in the corner of Shen Wei’s office and never leave him again, he’d take it. For now he turned slowly, taking in the room. The books, the nice furnishings. The fish swimming unconcerned in their tank. It should have been utterly peaceful, but now everything was overlaid in Zhao Yunlan’s mind with scenes of violence. He couldn’t stop himself from remembering images of those brutal, stupid boys with Shen Wei. 

The final photograph on Zhang Hao’s computer had been of Shen Wei sprawled on his belly, half on and half off the rug before his desk. Nearly naked, bloody and bruised. His right arm was pulled up, palm flat on the floorboards as he tried fruitlessly to rise.

 Zhao Yunlan shook himself, trying to banish the memory, and glanced back at Shen Wei. The professor was regarding his office with a shuttered expression.

“Obviously a lot of time has passed,” Zhao Yunlan said carefully. “I could still have Lin Jing scan the room. There may be microscopic evidence.”

Shen Wei turned away. “My office has already been cleaned,” he said quietly. “I was very thorough.”

Of course he had been. An assault victim cleaning his surroundings as compulsively as he had surely cleaned himself, trying to regain control in a universe where it had all been stripped away. 

And Zhao Yunlan had forced Shen Wei to look at those photographs, giving him pictures of the things that had occurred here. He thought of the withered corpse found under the bushes and felt again that swell of fierce satisfaction. Whoever had killed that student, Zhao Yunlan wanted to shake their hand and thank them with all his heart. Da Qing was right. The very last thing he wanted to do was turn them over to the Black Cloaked Envoy, treaty or no treaty. 

Chu Shuzhi had been absolutely right as well. There was no justice for sexual assault victims. Even with those pictures, it would be a grueling ordeal for any of the women to get their cases to trial. Zhao Yunlan had seen it often enough with the municipal police.

It would be even worse for Shen Wei. Older, male, in a position of responsibility. Zhao Yunlan knew exactly how that would go over. He would be painted as the instigator who changed his mind when things went too far. Shen Wei was likely to face charges himself for the corruption of youth, or for abuse under color of authority. And whatever happened, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be dismissed from his position. 

It was enough to make Zhao Yunlan ask what he was doing, since officially he wasn’t here to help Shen Wei track down his remaining assailant at all. He was supposedly here to find the Dixingren friend who had taken that much-deserved revenge for him. 

“Shen-laoshi!” called a voice from just outside. Zhao Yunlan thought it was Zhang Ruonan. “Do you have a moment?”

Shen Wei turned, his expression politely regretful. “I apologize, Zhang-laoshi, but can you excuse me for now? I would be very glad to speak at some later time.”

“I’m afraid this can’t wait,” Zhang Ruonan disagreed, which seemed out of character for her. In fact, she was so intent on talking to Shen Wei that it took her a moment to notice Zhao Yunlan at all. Her expression changed. “Chief Zhao,” she continued flatly.

Zhao Yunlan grinned from ear to ear, forcing himself to exude charm. “Zhang-laoshi!” he exclaimed as though they were the best of friends. “Shen-jiaoshi may be too busy to speak to you this morning, but I assure you I have time. Shall we retire to your office?”

"Oh." Zhang Ruonan’s eyes darted to Shen Wei and then back to Zhao Yunlan. “Oh, no. I would never impose on the Chief’s time that way.”

“No imposition!” Zhao Yunlan declared grandly. 

“Zhang-laoshi,” Shen Wei said. “You should not feel compelled to speak to Chief Zhao.” 

Zhao Yunlan mock-scowled at him. “No one is compelling anyone to do anything! I just want a friendly word with your fellow instructor.”

“I’m afraid I have to go,” Zhang Ruonan said, turning on heel.

“And if I can’t speak to you,” Zhao Yunlan called after her shamelessly, “I suppose I will have to stay and interview Shen-jiaoshi instead.”

“Chief Zhao!” Shen Wei objected, but Zhang Ruonan stopped and turned back. “In that case,” she said, unsmiling. “Yes, I would be glad to speak to you, Chief Zhao. My office is at the other end of the hall.”

“Zhang-laoshi,” Shen Wei protested. “Zhao Yunlan—”

“Don’t forget to take your medicine, and you know you have my number,” Zhao Yunlan told him ruthlessly. “Don’t hesitate to call me.”

He followed Zhang Ruonan down the broad, bright hall lined with windows, around the corner, down another hall and at last into a large, open room with three cubicles. She turned to him. “This is the office for teaching associates in the department. Not quite as nice as Shen-jiaoshi’s.”

Not as private either. “Sorry to interrupt,” Zhao Yunlan said to the man in one of the cubicles. He flashed his badge. “Do you mind if Zhang-laoshi and I have a word in private?” 

The other teacher darted a glance at Zhang Ruonan, wide-eyed, then jumped up and scuttled out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Zhang Ruonan said, “The entire department will be gossiping about this now.” 

“I expect the department will have plenty to gossip about even without you and me having a word. Are you aware that a student was found dead in the quadrangle this morning?”

Zhang Ruonan sat down hard. “Zhang Hao?” she asked faintly.

“Actually it’s his roommate, Wang Ziqiang. Someone reduced him to little more than skin and bones.”

Zhang Ruonan flinched as though she had been slapped.

Zhao Yunlan pretended not to notice. “The medical examiner says his body looks like he spent decades in a bog. That seems unlikely, given that he was spotted having breakfast at eight this morning.” Now he looked at Zhang Ruonan seriously. “This makes two of your students from Engineering 4 dead or vanished under very mysterious circumstances. Do you have any idea what might be going on here?”

“Me?” Her hand flew to her throat, her face white as a sheet. “How would I know anything about something like this? I am only their instructor in one class.” her voice shook. “I don’t know anything about their personal lives.”

“Here, sit down,” Zhao Yunlan pulled a chair around for her, and she sank into it even as she insisted shakily, “I’m fine.”

“Our mutual friend Shen Wei is also one for insisting that he is perfectly fine, even when that is clearly not the case.” Zhao Yunlan observed.

Zhang Ruonan’s eyes darted up at him. “Are you really Shen-laoshi’s friend?” she demanded. Her voice had the quaver of someone unused to asserting herself, but she was determined now, both hands clenched into fists on her lap.

Zhao Yunlan answered honestly. “It’s true I have not known him for very long, but I sometimes feel there is nothing I would not do for Shen Wei if it might ease his path in life, even a little bit.”

“Then why—” Zhang Ruonan broke off and shook her head.

“Then why do I bedevil him so? Zhang-laoshi, you and I both know I am not what is troubling Shen Wei now.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered.

She was a very bad liar. Maybe not as bad as Shen Wei, but seriously not good. Zhao Yunlan pressed on, certain he was on the right track. “You know that Shen Wei was assaulted in his own office just over a week ago, and that the perpetrators were students in this department.”

Zhang Ruonan’s eyes filled. 

“Two of the students who attacked Shen Wei are gone now. If you know anything about the responsible parties, you need to tell me.”

“And then what? Suppose I could give you the name of the third student who hurt Shen Wei, what would you do about it? What could you do?”

So she had thought this through. That was the problem with intellectuals. Sometimes they actually used those brains.

“What I cannot do is allow a vigilante to take revenge outside the law for what was done to Shen-jiaoshi,” he told her. 

“You say Shen Wei is your friend,” she spat back, still teary-eyed. “If you know what they did to him, why do you care what happens to them now? Those boys didn’t just wake up one morning and decide out of nowhere to attack a professor who had never done them any harm. There’s no doubt in my mind that they’ve left a trail of victims across this campus. If it hadn’t been for Shen Wei, I would have been another!”

She broke off, panting, spots of color high on her cheeks. Zhao Yunlan filed away that revelation for another time and waited until she was a little calmer to say, “I care because whoever is acting to avenge Shen Wei is taking a terrible risk by using their Dixingren powers so openly. The Black Cloaked Envoy will show them no mercy, regardless of the circumstances.”

Zhang Ruonan groaned and put her fist in front of her mouth. She was rocking slightly in her chair, tears sliding down her cheeks.

“Have you told Shen Wei the name of his third assailant?”

Zhang Ruonan shook her head. “I wasn’t able to find him until the two of you came back to his office this morning,” she said in a choked voice. Her thin shoulders were hunched in misery. “A student overheard those boys bragging about what they had done and came to me about it. I decided Shen-laoshi should know what I knew, even if—” she sat up and looked at him squarely, eyes blurred behind her glasses from weeping. “You know Shen Wei cannot make a formal complaint about this.”

“I understand that,” Zhao Yunlan said. “Zhang-laoshi, you need to give me the name of the third student who hurt Shen Wei. Don’t force Shen Wei to deal with this knowledge. Don’t allow your Dixingren friend to do anything.”

“I don’t even know what—”

“No,” Zhao Yunlan said. “It’s too late for you to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. The name, please. If you care for Shen Wei and for your Dixingren friend, you’ll let me deal with this.”

“What will you do?” she whispered. 

"I cannot give Shen Wei justice," Zhao Yunlan told her honestly. "You and I both know that. But I can make sure that vicious little prick never hurts anyone else. Zhang Ruonan, tell me his name."

Alone in his office, Shen Wei closed the door behind Zhao Yunlan and locked it instinctively. Then he realized what he had done and felt foolish. He unlocked the door even though his heart rate ticked up at the sound of the latch retracting. He closed his eyes, placed one hand on the door panels, and simply breathed until he was calm. He did not berate himself too severely for his weakness. It had been a difficult morning.

He made his way to his desk, set out the blister pack of antibiotics and unfolded the sheets of instructions. He read through them carefully before setting them and the pills aside. The pills were to be taken with food, so he would wait until this evening when he could prepare congee for himself in the little dormitory kitchen. The congee served on campus was made with chicken or even richer ingredients, and he still could not tolerate protein or fat. For that matter, the antibiotics themselves were likely to make him even sicker when he started them, further disordering his weakened meridians and diminishing his fragile store of dark energy. Cheng Xinyan had warned him. 

It was a shame he could not take her advice and simply rest for a few days, but events were moving too rapidly for Shen Wei to withdraw from the field. Another Dixingren, it seemed, was stalking Shen Wei’s assailants. He had no idea who they might be, nor how they knew what had happened. He could not even assume he was the reason Wang Ziqiang had been killed—Chief Zhao had told him he was not the only victim. 

Knowing that another of his assailants was gone left Shen Wei numb. The knowledge did nothing to relieve this maddening physical and emotional weakness. Now Shen Wei worried that if Wang Ziqiang had been killed by a Dixingren student, then that student was jeopardizing their own undercover status. They might even attract the attention of the ruthless figure behind Shen Wei’s own attack. 

In addition, Zhao Yunlan and the forces of the SID were already searching for them. 

They would be safer if Zhao Yunlan found them first. 

He ran his hands over his face, then sat up and retrieved his notes. He would patrol more carefully tonight, track down every wisp of dark energy, focus on any other Dixingren on campus. They had to be warned.

But for now, he also had academic responsibilities. He was painfully aware that his lectures had not been up to his own standards over this past week.

Ten minutes later he realized he had been sitting here at his desk accomplishing nothing at all while the humiliating pictures Zhao Yunlan had shown him this morning played on an endless loop through his mind. 

He bowed his head and looked at his clenched fists atop his notes. He was Shen Wei, once the beloved of the mighty warlord Kunlun. Mere degradation of the flesh did not matter. Kunlun himself had taught him that, listening under starry skies as Shen Wei confessed that the Black Cloaked Envoy was not truly fearless at all.

Kunlun had listened seriously, but then he laughed and snatched the mask away, teasing him, and stuck a lollipop in his mouth. Shen Wei understood. Even the very biggest things, life and death on the battlefield, were less important than the love of your comrades and an appreciation of the pleasures to be experienced in the moment.

Shen Wei had never forgotten, but the last week had been more difficult than most. 

He started to raise one hand to the hollow of his throat, remembered, and instead spread both hands across his lecture notes. Drawing a deep breath he resolved to concentrate. He would not fail the students enrolled in his class by giving another subpar lecture. 

A tear rolled off his chin and splattered silently into the midst of his handwritten notes. Shen Wei sat back in angry surprise and touched his face with his fingertips, finding that both his cheeks were wet. 

No.

This was utterly unacceptable. He removed his glasses,  unfolded a handkerchief and carefully dried his face. He was not only Heipaoshi, he was Shen-jiaoshi. Neither the machinations of a hidden enemy nor the crude brutality of a gang of students could stop him. He was so much older and stronger than all of this, and he would endure.

Fuck yeah, sneered the voice in his memory. You can take it.

That voice mocked his resolve, reduced everything Shen Wei was to warm flesh for a stranger’s rutting.

Except that wasn’t a stranger. Shen Wei knew that voice. It was Liu Yadong, the class representative who had always impressed Shen Wei with his courtesy and sense of responsibility. The student who had shared his umbrella last night.

Eight days ago, he had thrown Shen Wei to the floor and gleefully fucked into him with all his might, gloating over his abuse of a drugged and helpless man.

Shen Wei crumpled the handkerchief in his hand. He’d thought he was losing his mind, seeing threats everywhere, but he had been right all along. Monsters were everywhere. They wore the faces of his own Haixingren students and they were as lawless as men in the age of the meteor strike. Even worse, since they were not desperate and  hungry, they were merely privileged and cruel.

A knock came, then a voice. “Shen-jiaoshi?”

“No!” he roared back and flung out his hand. He intended to lock the door, but he was not in control of his dark energy nor of anything else at that moment. 

The knob melted and ran down the panel. A starburst of scorched wood appeared across the inside of the door as it slowly, slowly swung open to reveal Zhao Yunlan standing wide-eyed on the threshold. “Shen Wei?” he asked quietly, a glance at the ruined door and then back. “What the hell?”

Then he asked, “Are you all right?”

Shen Wei stumbled to his feet. “I’m fine,” he said. “I am fine. That must have been an electrical short. I will notify maintenance.”

“Shen Wei,” Zhao Yunlan said very gently.

“You must excuse me,” Shen Wei demanded frantically. He was trembling from head to foot after the uncontrolled discharge of dark energy. He shoved the chair aside so he could back away, which he did until he backed into the bookcase and could go no further. “I need to prepare for my lecture.”

“Shen Wei,” Zhao Yunlan said for the third time. He took a step into the room and stopped, arms open, hands spread. “Please let me help.”

“I am fine,” Shen Wei insisted with growing desperation before he doubled over and coughed up blood. His knees began to buckle and Zhao Yunlan bounded across the room and rounded the desk to catch him. He pulled Shen Wei’s arm over his shoulders. “Hey, let’s get you back in the chair,” he said, calm and gentle despite everything, the blood and the blasted door and heaven knew what Zhao Yunlan was thinking right now. He helped Shen Wei sit, then eased the clenched handkerchief out of his hand and carefully blotted the blood from his lips and chin. He tried to fold it once he was done, made a face and said, “Sorry. I’m afraid this is done for,” and dropped it in the trash can under his desk. “I’ll call Cheng Xinyan, all right?”

Shen Wei caught his arm. “There is no need,” he whispered, hoarse from the blood in his throat.

Zhao Yunlan smiled down at him so sadly. “Shen-jiaoshi,” he said. “Can you understand why I might be concerned for you right now?”

“The wiring in these old buildings is certainly reason enough,” Shen Wei tried. 

Zhao Yunlan actually snorted a laugh at that. He laid his hands on Shen Wei's shoulders, either forgetting his earlier caution about reaching out, or simply deciding to disregard it now. The warmth of his hands was such a comfort that Shen Wei closed his eyes, in his weakness surrendering utterly to the sweetness of touch. "Thank you," he whispered. And then, too exhausted to watch what he said any longer, he pleaded with Kunlun. "Please don't leave me."

Chapter Text

So Zhao Xinci probably would have burst in with his dark energy gun blazing if Shen-jiaoshi had melted a doorknob in front of him. 

As Zhao Yunlan knelt on the floor beside Shen Wei’s chair, one hand on Shen Wei’s knee, his other hand holding the phone, praying he would catch Cheng Xinyan between appointments, he supposed it was nice to know that he was not so much like his father after all. He might be head of the SID like his old man, but it was reassuring to have some evidence the resemblances stopped there. 

“Chief Zhao?” Cheng Xinyan answered the phone.

Thank the heavens.

“He almost burned down his own office door with dark energy,” Zhao Yunlan blurted. “Then he coughed up blood and collapsed.” 

“No, oh no!” Cheng Xinyan exclaimed, sounding on the verge of tears. “Chief Zhao, please. What are you going to do?”

“Whatever you tell me to do, of course. Cheng-yisheng, how do I help him?” Then he realized what she was actually asking. “He is my friend, he is a good man and he needs my help. I would resign my position before I reported him.”

Cheng Xinyan gave a little sob of relief. Then she mastered herself, and sounding again like a doctor, she asked Zhao Yunlan to describe everything that happened, then asked him for more details about Shen Wei’s symptoms. 

Zhao Yunlan hadn’t thought Shen Wei could follow the ensuing conversation, but as Zhao Yunlan was about to hang up, promising to call immediately should he take a turn for the worse, Shen Wei covered the hand Zhao Yunlan had placed on his knee and murmured seriously, “Please tell Cheng Xinyan I am well.”

“Did you hear that?” Zhao Yunlan asked her. 

Cheng Xinyan gave a suspiciously watery laugh. “I heard. Call me if anything changes.”

Then Zhao Yunlan set about trying to make Shen Wei more comfortable per the doctor’s instructions. She had suspected his biggest problems right now were actually exhaustion and malnutrition. Had he been sleeping? Had he been eating regularly? Neither Zhao Yunlan nor Cheng Xinyan actually knew, and neither of them believed Shen Wei would tell the truth if asked. 

The evidence suggested he had not. 

Cheng Xinyan told Zhao Yunlan to help him rest in place and to serve him some simple foods, bao or plain congee with ginseng tea. With luck, she hoped he would be able to return to his dormitory under his own power within a few hours, sparing him the indignity of being carried out of his office on a stretcher.

Zhao Yunlan texted instructions to his deputy, then coaxed Shen Wei over to the high-backed chair in one corner of the office. When Shen Wei fretted about his suit, Zhao Yunlan helped him out of his coat and hung it up. When Shen Wei balked at propping his feet on the tea table, Zhao Yunlan knelt to ease his boots off first. 

Shen Wei blinked down at him, those normally keen eyes muddy with exhaustion. “What are you doing?” he asked in thick bewilderment. “Why are you here?”

“The real question is, when was the last time the professor got a good night’s sleep?” Zhao Yunlan told him gently, easing off his second boot and setting both aside. Cheng Xinyan had told him that, in peak health, some Dixingren could go days without sleep. 

Shen Wei was not in peak health.

Shen Wei started to say, “I do not require—” before apparently remembering he was cosplaying a Haixingren who absolutely did require sleep. 

Zhao Yunlan lifted Shen Wei’s legs and stretched them across the scavenged sofa cushion he’d laid on the tea table. Shen Wei’s head dropped back. His eyes closed just as a tentative knock came at the door Zhao Yunlan had propped shut with a chair. Shen Wei’s eyes flew open. Zhao Yunlan saw his surprise shift to grim determination. He raised his hands, rotating his palms outward. 

“Stop!” Zhao Yunlan grabbed both wrists. “That’s just Xiao Guo.”

Shen Wei looked at him, then down at Zhao Yunlan’s fingers curled around his wrists. “You should have a care,” he said in a low, serious tone. “That was very dangerous.”

Zhao Yunlan smiled at him. “Not for me, it wasn’t,” he disagreed confidently. He could not fathom why Shen Wei was so nakedly, unreservedly fond of him. Please don't leave me, Shen Wei had begged, and this might be a hell of a time and a place for vows but  Zhao Yunlan would do his best to promise all the same. "I won't leave you," he said.

Shen We's eyes went wide. He looked on the verge of tears, but then expression shifted to wary defensiveness. He balled his hands into his loose fists and freed himself from Zhao Yunlan’s easy grasp, but he was so tired his hands dropped again into his lap. He looked away, as if he could not trust himself to keep his control or his fragile cover with Zhao Yunlan so near.

Yeah, he didn’t actually have a cover to maintain any longer, but Zhao Yunlan didn’t know whether Shen Wei had quite grasped that yet. “You are safe,” Zhao Yunlan assured him, then went to the door and moved the chair aside. Chu Shuzhi was the one standing there, not Guo Changcheng, and he shoved past Zhao Yunlan to kneel beside Shen Wei. 

“Shen-laoshi,” he said, his voice reverent. “What has happened here? How can I help?”

Shen Wei blinked at him, and the puppetmaster said, “I am Chu Shuzhi with Special Investigations, daren. We have met before.”

You don’t say, Zhao Yunlan thought with a roll of his eyes. And more importantly, who was Shen Wei that a man like Lao Chu called him daren? He thought he should probably be perturbed by this evidence of a Dixingren spy embedded in the very heart of the SID, but honestly, right now he was simply glad Shen Wei had such a loyal friend. 

And of course, he had always known Chu Shuzhi’s assignment had everything to do with machinations in the bowels of the Dijun Palace, and very little to do with Dixingren immigration to the surface.

So who did that make Shen Wei?

“I don’t...” Shen Wei trailed off. “There was an electrical short in the wall,” he remembered. “Chief Zhao was concerned.”

“Ah.” 

Chu Shuzhi shot a quick, suspicious glance at Zhao Yunlan, who grinned back with a shrug. “These colonial era buildings,” he said cheerfully. “What can you do?”

Chu Shuzhi narrowed his eyes at him, and Zhao Yunlan asked, “Is Xiao Guo going to get what we need?"

“He’d better, or he knows I’ll twist his foolish head off his shoulders.”

“He is merely young,” Shen Wei chided softly. “You will learn much from his pure heart as he gains experience.”

“Yes, Shen-laoshi,” Chu Shuzhi agreed. He saw Zhao Yunlan looking at him with raised eyebrows and added, “It is as you have often said, Lao Zhao. Intellectuals see the world differently from us ordinary folk.”

All right, this was simply painful. Zhao Yunlan was on the verge of telling Chu Shuzhi to knock it off already, that he knew, when Shen Wei said, “My lecture.” He struggled to sit up. “I have been sadly remiss.”

“No,” Zhao Yunlan put a hand on his shoulder. “We have already explained to the chancellor that the rigors of this investigation have forced you to cancel your classes for the rest of the week. Unfortunate, of course, but unavoidable when the lives of Dragon City University students are at stake.”

“Canceled?” Shen Wei frowned unhappily, but he stopped trying to get up, to Zhao Yunlan’s relief. He was trembling with exhaustion, eyes dark and bruised in his pale face. 

Chu Shuzhi noticed as well. He unwound his scarf and tucked it around Shen Wei’s shoulders, only saying “With your permission,” once he was done.

“Thank you,” Shen Wei murmured automatically. His eyes were sliding shut. He blinked them open again with an effort. “But none of this is necessary.”

“Of course not,” Zhao Yunlan agreed. “The professor is kind to indulge our concerns.”

Shen Wei’s eyes closed. He didn’t try to open them again. 

Zhao Yunlan gestured Chu Shuzhi to the opposite side of the office in the hopes their whispered conversation would not disturb Shen Wei. “Text Xiao Guo. Tell him not to knock when he arrives. In fact—”

Zhao Yunlan went to Shen Wei’s desk and scavenged in the drawers for a blank piece of paper and an actual ballpoint pen instead of the brush that had been laid out, and wrote, Teleconference in progress. Please do not knock and stuck his sign on the outside of the office door. 

Chu Shuzhi nodded approvingly but Zhao Yunlan couldn't help saying, “Unexpected knocking seems to trigger electrical shorts in this office. It’s the damnedest thing.”

Chu Shuzhi didn’t seem to know what to do with his face and settled on strained impassivity. Zhao Yunlan allowed himself a moment to enjoy that before deciding they were all navigating dark waters with too many secrets. “Lao Chu, of course I know what he is. I’m not going to arrest him, and although I suspect the Dijun Palace already knows this man is here, I’m certainly not calling Heipaoshi.”

Chu Shuzhi stared back at him. He started to speak, looked away to reconsider, and finally said, “Words of mercy for the Dixingren in Dragon City? This is something I never expected to hear from the son of Zhao Xinci.” His expression turned rueful. “Shen-laoshi had his doubts about my discretion. It seems he was entirely correct, as he is about most things. But Lao Zhao, I can answer no questions about this, and though I understand if there is no longer a place for me at the SID, I would request that you allow me to remain long enough to assist Shen-laoshi as he recovers from this unspeakable and cowardly attack.”

Zhao Yunlan shook his head. 

“Lao Zhao!” he protested, voice low, but so emphatic that Shen Wei stirred, hands twitching. Both he and Zhao Yunlan froze until he was still once more. 

“Lao Zhao,” Chu Shuzhi breathed again, pleading. 

“I meant, you don’t get out of your job that easily,” Zhao Yunlan told him quietly. “Who do you think would serve as field agent if I lose you? Lin Jing? Dragon City would be completely overrun with criminal Dixingren while that man huddled in a coffee shop muttering about the calibration on his dark energy detector.”

A corner of Chu Shuzhi’s mouth quirked. “Thank you,” he said as Xiao Guo whispered at the door, “I have bao and ginseng tea and other good things for the professor. May I come in?”

Chapter Text

At half an hour past sunset, the colors on the horizon were shifting from pink to red. Shadows gathered under the trees as Zhao Yunlan paced the courtyard behind the student dormitories. The space was small and partially secluded by shrubbery that wasn’t pruned as ruthlessly as the front-facing gardens. He thought he recognized this place from the pictures on Zhang Hao’s computer. One of the assaults had occurred here, hadn’t it? 

At that realization, Zhao Yunlan bit down so hard on his lollipop he worried for a moment that he’d broken a molar. 

The class rep, Liu Yadong, came sidling out from around the building and stopped. “Chief Zhao?” he asked, his moon face very pale in the dusk. His eyes were scared. 

Zhao Yunlan gave him a predatory smile. “You found me.”

“Yeah. Hey, look—” he crossed the little courtyard. “This has all gotten way out of hand. You need to tell Shen-jiaoshi to lay off.”

“What makes you think I have any influence with the professor?”

“Because that’s what you said in your message!” Liu Yadong’s voice trembled in fear, but mostly, Zhao Yunlan thought, with indignation. 

“I said if you returned the item you took, that I would speak to him,” Zhao Yunlan corrected calmly.

“I’ve got it, look, here it is.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket and finally produced a broken, knotted length of cord with the yellow jade amulet dangling from one end. “If he wanted it back so bad, all he had to do was ask!”

Zhao Yunlan took it from him. The cord would need to be replaced, but the jade seemed undamaged. He closed his fist around it and looked back at the student. “So he gave this to you, did he?” he asked pleasantly. “Just a friendly memento of the evening?”

“It was all Shen-jiaoshi’s idea in the first place,” Liu Yadong insisted angrily. He changed track when he saw the expression on Zhao Yunlan’s face. “But I get it. People can change their minds. You need to tell him!”

“Give me your phone.”

“What?” Liu Yadong fell back a step. “No!”

“Have you heard what Wang Ziqiang looked like when they found his body? The ME has been picking pieces out of the shrubbery all day, and they just found his foot in trash can.”

Liu Yadong burst into tears and fumbled his phone out. 

“Thank you,” Zhao Yunlan said with a thin smile. “Now unlock it and show me the pictures.” 

“I don’t know what pictures you’re talking about.”

“I don’t care if you insult my intelligence but you’re not going to get very far trying that with Shen Wei.”

“I thought the whole point of the police was to arrest crazy dangerous people like Shen-jiaoshi!” he protested. 

Zhao Yunlan smiled, ensuring he showed teeth. “Shen Wei?” He said. “Oh, he’s not the dangerous one. His friends, now? They’re the ones we all need to worry about.” 

“Shit, shit, shit.” Liu Yadong fumbled open his phone, navigated to photographs and handed it over. Zhao Yunlan quickly scrolled through the most recent. The pictures of Shen Wei’s rape weren’t here. He looked up.

“Tell me, did you get to be class rep by virtue of being the very stupidest son of a bitch on campus? Show me your locked photographs.”

“Shen-jiaoshi is the one who wanted pictures!” he claimed. “If he’s mad now, he’ll be even angrier if he finds out I let you see them.”

“Fine.” Zhao Yunlan hadn’t really wanted to see those pictures again anyway. Lin Jing was in the kid’s dorm room right now wiping his computer and destroying any online storage. 

Zhao Yunlan returned the phone to its factory settings and tossed it back to Liu Yadong, who took it and squawked in dismay when he figured out what Zhao Yunlan had done. 

“Now tell me what you used to drug the professor.”

He looked at Zhao Yunlan, his face blotchy with emotion, and said, “He was already high as a kite when we got there. I guess that’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? Shen-jiaoshi finally sobered up and started to worry about his reputation?”

One of the things Zhao Yunlan had seen over and over again as a cop was that the greatest harm usually wasn’t done by criminal masterminds, but by stupid, selfish brats like this class rep. Even so, it was getting harder and harder for him to control his temper. Zhao Yunlan wrapped his fist in the student’s collar and dragged him close as he struggled and protested.

“Remember how I told you it was Shen Wei’s friends that you really had to watch out for? Well, the professor is a very, very good friend of mine.” He twisted his grip in Liu Yadong’s collar until the kid gurgled breathlessly and his face flushed beet red. 

“You should remember you’re getting a chance to live that your friends didn't. I wouldn’t waste it if I were you. Now tell me how you dosed Shen Wei. I won’t ask again.” 

Zhao Yunlan released him and Liu Yadong fell back sputtering and rubbing his neck. “I swear I don’t know what it was. Weirdest goddamned pill I’ve ever seen, about this big—” he made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “It sizzled when we dropped it in the thermos and threw sparks. It was too bizarre, but it worked just like the guy said it would.”

Zhao Yunlan felt a sinking sensation. He’d seen drugs smuggled out of Dixing before. “Where did you get it?”

“It was just some guy with a grudge against Shen-jiaoshi. It’s not like we exchanged names and phone numbers. Now I’m sorry I ever met him.”

“Someone you didn’t know asked you to drug your professor, and you just did it?” Zhao Yunlan demanded incredulously.

“Well, he said it would make Shen-jiaoshi all—” he broke off and scrubbed the tears from his cheeks with his palms. “I’m not even into guys usually,” he protested as though that were a defense. “It was just too hot to pass up. You probably would have done the same thing!”

Zhao Yunlan had to close his eyes and breathe through the red wall of fury. He needed to focus on what was important. This cowardly little sociopath was no longer the most critical issue, despite the harm he had done. Far more alarming was the fact that Shen Wei had been targeted by someone with access to rare and powerful drugs from Dixing.

Shen Wei was Dixingren himself, and he was so revered that even an iconoclast like Chu Shuzhi reflexively called him lord. Nothing about his attack had been random. This had been an act of political espionage.

Well, hell. This time it really was about a criminal mastermind.

“Describe the man who gave you that pill. Where did you meet him?”

But before he could say anything, though, Liu Yadong shot backwards as though he’d been grabbed by a giant fist. He slammed into the side of the building and staggered. 

“Telling tales out of school?” boomed a voice from all around them.

“I didn’t!” Liu Yadong wailed as his body rose in the air, and someone emerged from the shadows behind him. “I didn’t tell him anything, I swear!”

“I hate sniveling little Haixing liars.” The figure behind Liu Yadong had longish hair that was an odd color under the lamp lights. He wore steel jewelry that rattled and clinked when he raised one hand and clapped Liu Yadong on the back.

Dark energy splashed upwards, and the student’s spine and ribcage emerged bloody from his own chest, rags of viscera hanging with his t-shirt from the jutting ribs. Liu Yadong stared down at the ruin of his torso, mouth wrenched open in a soundless scream. Zhao Yunlan saw the light fade from the kid’s eyes even as Zhao Yunlan wrestled his gun out and took aim. 

He was too slow pulling the trigger. 

The Dixingren vanished, only to appear directly in front of Zhao Yunlan. Grabbing the gun with one hand, he patted Zhao Yunlan’s face with the other, steel jewelry clinking. He vanished again, appearing a few meters away, and leveled the gun at Zhao Yunlan. “So this is the esteemed Lord Guardian,” he drawled. “I have to say it’s a mystery why that professor chose to side with you and the SID. Are you really that good in bed?”

The gun wouldn’t kill Zhao Yunlan. He thought there might be a surface wound if the soft metal jacket pierced his flesh, but the explosion of dark energy wouldn’t do him any lasting harm. 

Probably.

But this was the bastard who’d sent a rape gang after Shen Wei. Zhao Yunlan didn’t care if the dark energy gun did kill him. He was going to take him down if it was the last thing he did. 

He lowered his head and dove. 

The Dixingren didn’t fire. He didn’t need to. Zhao Yunlan was seized by invisible forces and hoisted to dangle with his arms stretched to either side and legs kicking just above the ground. The pressure on his lungs was crushing. He wondered if he were about to see his own ribs tear their way out of his chest.

He hoped someone would return the jade amulet to Shen-jiaoshi. 

But the Dixingren didn’t kill him. “I have a proposition,” he said conversationally. He walked closer. As he passed under one of the path lights, Zhao Yunlan saw his hair had been badly dyed in purple streaks. He stopped in front of Zhao Yunlan and reached up to curl his hand carefully around Zhao Yunlan’s throat, just under his jaw.

“I have a proposition for you too,” Zhao Yunlan rasped. “Fuck off and die, you evil son of a bitch.”

The Dixingren smiled and tightened his grip. 

“I have a better idea. You tell me where the Sundial is. The Envoy took it back to Dixing, didn’t he? Or is the SID really storing it here on the surface like that Yashou bitch claims?”

He loosened his grip just enough for Zhao Yunlan to answer. “Can’t even trust your own spies?” he rasped painfully. “Nothing I can do about that.”

The Dixingren shoved the barrel of the dark energy gun into Zhao Yunlan's belly, just above his belt. “Try again.”

Zhao Yunlan spat in his face, and the Dixingren pulled the trigger. 

Zhao Yunlan felt like he’d been kicked in the gut by an angry yak. His body spasmed in midair, and the explosion of dark energy itself was a spreading, sickening cold. He groaned, shuddering uncontrollably.

The Dixingren stepped back to watch with avid interest. “So this is the dark energy gun so feared by every Dixingren in Dragon City.” He examined the end of the barrel thoughtfully, then stepped closer and yanked up Zhao Yunlan’s shirt. “Didn’t even break the skin.” He spread his hand over Zhao Yunlan’s bruised stomach, and now Zhao Yunlan's shudder was one of loathing. “I could feel the dark energy pulse, though.” He gave a crooked smile. “So did you. If you’d been from Dixing that would have been the end of the story, but since you’re Haixingren, we get to try again.”

He rammed the barrel into Zhao Yunlan’s gut and fired again. As Zhao Yunlan thrashed in agony, he wrapped his hand back around his throat and tightened his grip until dark specks bled from the edges of Zhao Yunlan’s vision. 

“Where did Heipaoshi take the holy instrument?”

Then a glint of steel and the slash of midnight black shattered the dusk. The Dixingren was smashed away from Zhao Yunlan, screaming, before he fell as silent as the grave. Zhao Yunlan dropped. He staggered as he hit the ground and tried to keep his footing, but his knees buckled and he sat down hard.

“Zhao Yunlan,” said the familiar deep voice. “Once again I was negligent, and I have arrived late. Are you hurt?”

He was shaking like a leaf, but he looked up into the Envoy’s masked face and said, “Don’t worry about it, Brother Black.” His breath wheezed and he gave a jaunty little wave. “I’ll be fine.” He touched his throat with a wince. He was furiously angry, the emotions from meeting the bastard who'd sent those students after Shen Wei, not to mention Liu Yadong’s heartless eagerness to help, all roiling around inside him. Even knowing both had paid with their lives didn't make him feel better. Being shot with the dark energy gun had left his nerve endings sparking like overloaded electrical wires. 

None of this was Heipaoshi’s fault, exactly, but Zhao Yunlan was still raging inside. “You think you might stick around long enough to help with the cleanup this time? Turns out there's a hell of a lot of collateral damage.” 

He thought of Shen-jiaoshi, asleep at last in his dormitory room with Guo Changcheng keeping watch, and he couldn’t help but snarl up at the Envoy, “Actually, it would help all of us trying to live our little lives here on the surface if Dixing’s ruling triumvirate could get its house in order.” 

Yeah, Shen-jiaoshi himself was probably one of that brood of vipers in the Dijun Palace—no offence to Zhu Hong—but that just made Zhao Yunlan all the angrier. Was this how they treated their agents after they sent them to Haixing? Just threw them to the wolves? They had done nothing to protect Shen Wei. 

Heipaoshi lowered his head and did not answer except to say, “I fear you have been injured.” He extended his hand. “Please, Zhao Yunlan,” he continued, and Zhao Yunlan thought he sounded strained. “Allow me to offer my assistance.”

Then a shot rang out.

The Envoy staggered. 

Zhao Yunlan screamed, “No!” as the Envoy crumpled. Beyond him, the Dixingren with purple hair had managed to prop himself on his elbow, the dark energy gun in his hand. He groaned, then forced a laugh.

“So that’s how your weapon works on us. Thank you, Lord Guardian. It is gratifying to learn the fearsome Envoy was not truly invulnerable.” He kept laughing, harsh and forced, until he had to break off and spit blood.

“You bastard,” Zhao Yunlan moaned. He lurched to his feet blindly, no plan except his determination to strangle the life out of the man. 

He only managed a step before the Dixingren’s dark energy seized him again. He was lifted for an instant, then smashed down violently. Both ankles shattered. Zhao Yunlan curled up screaming, trying to ride out the waves of agony and keep an eye on his enemy at the same time. 

The Dixingren ignored him. He dragged himself to the Envoy’s side and pushed him onto his back. 

“Don’t touch him!” Zhao Yunlan groaned in helpless rage. He was light-headed and sick with pain.

“He’s not dead yet,” the other said, fingers on his neck pulse. “But we can do something about that.” He put the barrel of the dark energy gun to the Envoy’s brow. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

“You’ll never get the Sundial if you kill him!” Zhao Yunlan shouted.

The purple-haired Dixingren snorted and spat more blood. He wiped his mouth with the back of the hand holding the gun.

“Without Heipaoshi to protect them, all the Hallows will be mine sooner or later.” He pointed the weapon again, this time using the end of the barrel to nudge the Envoy’s mask up and off his face.

The Dixingren froze. 

Then he threw back his head and howled. At last he knotted his fist in the Envoy’s long hair and said, “I might have sent you to hell with my cock up your ass, and I didn't even know! I'm going to wring Ya Qing's scrawny neck for stopping me.”

Zhao Yunlan saw Shen Wei’s face then, eyes closed and blood on his lips, and although he was utterly astonished, he was not actually surprised. All the clues had been there ever since Chu Shuzhi knelt at his side and called him daren.  

Hell, he probably should’ve guessed when Chu Shuzhi flipped the table. 

Now he was going to lose Shen Wei and Heipaoshi both. He screamed himself hoarse as the Dixingren smiled and centered the barrel on Shen Wei’s forehead.

"Goodbye, Shen-jiaoshi," he said.

Chapter Text

Zhao Yunlan shouted, “I can take you to the Sundial!” His voice was hoarse and rasping. “I could do it right now.”

“You can’t even stand up right now,” the Dixingren said. 

He was right about that. Zhao Yunlan’s shattered ankles felt like bags of blood and bone shard, both swelling so rapidly so rapidly his boots had become miserably tight. The pain was making his head swim and his eyes water. 

Meanwhile, the Dixingren’s purple locks gleamed in the lamplight. “You probably won’t ever stand again,” he mused contentedly. “That might be reason enough not to kill you. Would you prefer to live out your life as the crippled Lord Guardian?” He smirked, but at least he hadn’t pulled the trigger. 

Zhao Yunlan thought this man was the sort who would delay almost anything, even the murder of his enemy, just for the pleasure of hearing himself talk. Zhao Yunlan desperately tried to give him something to talk about.

“I can call my people. They’ll bring it to us.” He took a deep breath. “I will do anything you want as long as you don’t pull that trigger.”

“Zhao Yunlan,” a weak voice shivered through the darkness, electric and unmistakable. “You must not!”

A terrible smile spread across the other’s smirking face. “So Heipaoshi decided to join us?” Then he snarled, “No you don’t.” He rammed the barrel of the gun down onto Shen Wei’s open right palm and fired. Zhao Yunlan roared in fury. Shen Wei groaned and tried to curl his body around the new injury. The Dixingren grabbed Shen Wei’s left wrist, slamming his hand to the ground, and fired again. Shen Wei didn’t make a sound this time, but his body spasmed and then coiled slowly to the side. His long hair covered his face, braids tangling and coming undone.

The Dixingren fell back. He was breathing hard, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth. Shen Wei’s initial blow had taken its toll, but it hadn’t stopped him. “So this is the end of Heipaoshi,” he gloated. “Not the hero of Dixing, but a whore for Haixing’s children.”

Zhao Yunlan dragged himself forward on his elbows. He was going to strangle the life out of this smirking son of a bitch if it was the last thing he did—a prospect that seemed increasingly imminent. Every inch of his progress was agony. Alarms began wailing in the distance. Zhao Yunlan supposed it was reassuring that all the screaming behind a student dormitory had not gone totally unnoticed. 

Another scream rang out, this one shatteringly high-pitched and very close. The Dixingren’s head jerked and he staggered to his feet. Stumbling out of the shadows was a student in a sweatshirt that was hugely oversized on her small form. Her hands were balled into fists under her chin, and she was still shrieking.

“Get out of here!” Zhao Yunlan groaned, but there was nothing he could do. The purple-haired Dixingren turned to her with an angry, impatient motion. The student flew backwards, arms pinwheeling helplessly just as another student, this one in a red hoodie, emerged from behind the Dixingren. She poked him in the back and as he turned, an expression of bewildered fury on his face, she took his hand in a firm grasp. “ You!” he exclaimed in shock and outrage. Then he crumpled as suddenly and irreversibly as a paper lantern in a squall. His limbs splatted, his skull thumping down in the center of a thicket of bones.

Zhao Yunlan gaped. 

The student in red was the Dixingren who had slain Wang Ziqiang. She and her friend with the impressive scream had probably been following Liu Yadong ever since, waiting for their chance. 

Distracted by his realization, Zhao Yunlan thoughtlessly drew up his leg as though he might stand. Agony crashed like ocean waves, all salt and bitter cold. He swam back to consciousness and heard a woman’s voice shouting, “Jiajia, are you alright? Jiajia!”

He blinked. Despite her anxious shouts, the student in the red hoodie was carefully drawing on a pair of black gloves before she ran to pull her friend to her feet. 

Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan thought. He dragged himself closer to the huddled black robes. “Brother Black,” he whispered, and reached trembling fingers to touch the white face behind the tangled hair.

Shen Wei opened his eyes. “Zhao Yunlan,” he breathed.

“Yes!” he exclaimed, all but weeping in relief. “Yes, I’m here, and it’s all over now. Just lie still, and we’ll get you help.” 

“But you’re hurt,” Shen Wei said. “Zhao Yunlan, you’ve been wounded.”

Well, yes, both ankles were killing him, and he knew he was going into shock, light-headed and sick as he was. But Shen Wei was alive. Nothing else mattered. “I’m fine,” Zhao Yunlan lied outrageously. 

“My Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei whispered, then blinked as though he had not meant to say that out loud. “Chief Zhao,” he corrected himself in a stronger voice but then began to cough painfully. Blood flecked his lips.

“Just rest!” Zhao Yunlan insisted, and gently smoothed the hair out of Shen Wei’s eyes. “My people will be here soon, and we will both get the care we need.” Then he looked into Shen Wei’s worried eyes and whispered, “And I will be your Zhao Yunlan, as long as you will have me.”

Shen Wei stared, eyes reddened, brimming with tears, desperate to believe but still so cautious. 

Zhao Yunlan was the one who looked away first. He was not a good enough man to make promises like that. Adrenaline and shock had made him unforgivably reckless. “Let me see your hands,” he continued gruffly, and he gently drew out one arm that Shen Wei had curled against his chest. 

There was a smear of blood across Shen Wei’s right palm, but the flesh underneath was what caught his attention. Zhao Yunlan drew in a harsh breath. The skin was darkened as if from a burn, but it was also strangely translucent, more like smoky quartz than flesh and blood.

Deep in the center of his palm, light coiled. 

Zhao Yunlan had seen wounds from his father’s use of the dark energy weapon before. The skin was blackened in such instances, the flesh dead. If not immediately fatal, the dead skin around the point of impact would continue to spread. Zhao Yunlan did not know the final outcome of such injuries, since Heipaoshi generally removed such victims to Dixing. He had really never bothered to think about it before.

He was thinking about it now, dread pulsing through him with every beat of his heart. 

Zhao Yunlan drew out Shen Wei’s other arm and saw the same atypical wound there as well. The fingers were curled slightly, twitching. Zhao Yunlan wondered if the light he glimpsed deep in the palm was evidence of Shen Wei’s stressed meridians fighting the spread of decay from the gunshot. The light gave him hope but was also terrifying. Shen Wei had been so weak even before he appeared out of nowhere to save Zhao Yunlan. 

“Does it hurt?” he asked helplessly. Dammit, where were his people?

Shen Wei would no longer meet his eyes. “It is not so serious as my enemy believed it would be,” he murmured. 

“Shen-laoshi?” asked a timid voice. “Is that you? Are you all right?”

“Come away, Jiajia,” said another student. “That is Heipaoshi. He doesn’t need your help.”

“Wait,” Zhao Yunlan pleaded. “My people should be here soon. Call the police if you don’t see them.”

“ This is the Envoy you’ve been hiding from?” the first girl asked, more concerned with her friend than anything Zhao Yunlan had to say. “But it’s Shen Wei, he’s only a man, and he’s hurt—” 

The girl in the red hoodie approached to look down at Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan. “Heipaoshi is not as mighty as the stories would have us believe,” she announced flatly.

“Wang Yike!” her friend pleaded. She reached out her hands but then let her arms drop without touching her. 

“We were all so scared of you,” Wang Yike said. “But you couldn’t even stop a gang of ordinary college boys. How could you let them do that to you?”

“He needs help!” Zhao Yunlan pleaded. The student in the red hoodie had saved all their lives, but she was also a fugitive Dixingren who had lived her life in fear of discovery by the Black Cloaked Envoy. 

The figure from her nightmares now lay helpless at her feet. 

“Jiajia is correct,” Shen Wei said. He closed his eyes. “I am only a man, as weak and as flawed as any other. Now I beg of you, please get help for Zhao Yunlan.” His voice broke. “I could not protect him, and he has been hurt.” 

Wang Yike turned away. “Can you call Campus Security on your phone, Jiajia?”

And then Chu Shuzhi was there, shouting. “Lao Zhao! What—” He broke off to survey the scene. The two bodies, one withered, the other mutilated, the two students who had saved them, Shen Wei unmasked and curled on the ground. 

“Daren,” Chu Shuzhi exclaimed in soft despair. “You should not have been here.”

“Lao Zhao!” Da Qing came bounding up in cat form, utterly heedless, transformed into his human aspect and knelt beside Zhao Yunlan. “What happened to you? Are you hurt?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed Zhao Yunlan onto his back and tried to help him sit up.

The change in position jostled both his ruined ankles. Zhao Yunlan couldn’t help it. He shrieked. Shen Wei groaned his name, but Zhao Yunlan was in too much agony to answer. 

The air grew suddenly sharp and cold. Wind rushed through the little courtyard, wind rattling the branches of the ornamental trees and thick shrubbery. Zhao Yunlan blinked open his streaming eyes to see lights at Shen Wei’s hands and feet. More glowed, swirling, at his brow, at his heart, at the points of his shoulders, at his belly and in the hollow of his throat. They grew brighter and Shen Wei arose. 

“Zhao Yunlan,” he said, voice low. Zhao Yunlan felt the warmth of it in his bones. “My beloved Kunlun.” Shen Wei’s robes were a shadowy outline around the swirls of light, like the picture of a constellation in a sky map come to life. “I will not hurt you.”

“I know,” Zhao Yunlan whispered thickly. “I’m not afraid.”

“The apotheosis of Heipaoshi,” Chu Shuzhi murmured in shocked awe. “I thought it was only a legend.”

Shen Wei’s constellation stepped nearer. Zhao Yunlan could not be sure those feet actually touched the bricks as he moved. Shen Wei knelt over him. Beneath his raised hood, his face was a night sky of swirling stars. Zhao Yunlan felt a warm hand cradling the nape of his neck. “Gently now, my love,” Shen Wei murmured and existence itself grew soft-edged and calm. Zhao Yunlan could feel the bones and tendons in both ankles being reknit and repaired, and it should have been agonizing. Perhaps it was, but Zhao Yunlan drifted in perfect ease upon the sea of Shen Wei’s tender care. 

When he opened his eyes again he saw Chu Shuzhi bowing deeply, his forehead touching the ground. Even the student in the red hoodie had dropped to her knees. Jiajia had drawn back with her hands over her mouth. Only Da Qing seemed utterly unaffected by Shen Wei’s constellation of stars, demanding impatiently, “Is that it? Did he fix you?”

The stars grew brighter. Then they winked out all together and Shen Wei lay crumpled on the ground where he had been all along, wounded, unmasked and helpless. 

“No!” Zhao Yunlan groaned in despair. He felt like he had been shouting his defiance since this evening began, and nothing he’d said or done had made any difference. “Oh dammit, Shen Wei, what have you done?” He tried to get to his feet, was surprised by the feeling of pins and needles in his feet and ankles, and he would have fallen if Da Qing hadn’t been close enough to catch him. 

“What’s the matter?” Da Qing complained angrily. “I thought Heipaoshi fixed you!”

“He did, you damned cat. Just getting the feeling back. Help me!”

Clinging hard to Da Qing he lurched to Shen Wei and dropped to his side. Chu Shuzhi had risen from his deep bow and crouched on Shen Wei’s other side, checking his breath, then the pulse in his throat. “Lao Chu?” Zhao Yunlan whispered.

“He lives,” Chu Shuzhi muttered roughly, not raising his head. What Zhao Yunlan could see of his face was stony, but his eyes were red. “He needs medical attention,” Chu Shuzhi said. “But Dixing and the Dijun palace are not safe for him.”

“I know a doctor who can help,” Zhao Yunlan said at once. “Can you carry him to the jeep?”

Chu Shuzhi rose at once with Shen Wei in his arms. Shen Wei’s head lay against his chest, one arm trailing and the black robes tucked close. 

“Hey, wait a minute,” Da Qing complained. “You’re not leaving a mess of a scene like this for me to process are you?” He gestured irritably. “And what do we do about those two?” He flapped his arm at the two students who had drawn away, watching the proceedings with wide eyes. 

Jiajia interrupted tremulously, “You will take care of Shen-jiaoshi, won’t you?”

"They're friends," Zhao Yunlan told Da Qing. "Friends to the SID and friends of the professor. They saved our lives, so don't give them a hard time. And yes," he said to Jiajia in her oversized sweatshirt, "we're going to take care of your professor." Before he followed Chu Shuzhi he addressed the second student as well, the Dixingren in the red hoodie. "Be sure you tell your friend Zhang-laoshi, too. I am sure she will want to know."

Chapter Text

When Shen Wei awoke, he thought at first he had returned to Dixing. The light bleeding past his eyelashes was tinged red, and there was a suggestion of ambient dark energy all around him. He nourished his meridians with caution, waiting for the expected rush of physical weakness and emotional despair. Ever since his poisoning, every attempt to strengthen and regulate his energy flow had been a dismal failure. He had begun to believe the poison had fatally compromised his ability to process dark energy. But now Shen Wei sensed only the natural flow as his long-starved meridians were slowly replenished. His grief and anger were merely a distant shimmer. Though he could not help remembering scattered moments from that terrible afternoon and the long night that followed, now his emotions did not interfere with his ability to strengthen himself. He drank deep, his mind clearing, until a voice beside him exclaimed, “Patience, Heipaoshi! You are still healing.”

He opened his eyes and found himself in a room with windows along one wall. The metal blinds were partially open, and the red light painted long streaks across the linoleum floor

Shen Wei turned his head. A man sat beside him, a white lab coat over his plain denim work shirt and jeans. He wore a badge with the Dragon City General Hospital logo and his name, Su Bohai.

This was not Dixing at all. The red light was only sunset. Or perhaps it was the sunrise?

Either way, Shen Wei was profoundly relieved. “You are Cheng Xinyan’s friend,” he said. His voice sounded very hoarse in his own ears. “She has mentioned your name to me in the past, and she told me you are a skilled healer.”

Su Bohai bowed his head in acknowledgment. He poured hot water from a thermos and brought a cup to Shen Wei, saying, “I am honored by Cheng Xinyan’s regard.”

Shen Wei drank gratefully as Su Bohai held the cup. “Your ability to share dark energy is a skill worthy of the highest regard,” Shen Wei told him then in a stronger voice. “I am in your debt, but I am also concerned that you may be endangering yourself. I might have drawn too deeply and injured you before I realized I was not in Dixing, and that I was not consuming dark energy from an inexhaustible source.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Su Bohai said lightly. “And in any event, you did stop as soon as I asked. How do you feel?”

“I am fine.”

Su Bai raised his eyebrows.

“I’m feeling much stronger,” Shen Wei amended. “but I have a further concern for you as my benefactor. How is it safe for you to practice the healing arts of Dixing so openly here in the city hospital?”

Now Su Bai actually smiled. 

“For one thing, I am not terribly concerned about the Black Cloaked Envoy whisking me back to Dixing.”

Shen Wei went very still. 

So, he was exposed.

What did that mean for his life in Dragon City? Could he continue as Shen-jiaoshi? Did he even want to? His own students had left him naked and bleeding. They had been encouraged by a Dixingren agent, but they had been glad enough to assault Shen Wei when given the opportunity.

“Forgive me.” Su Bohai interrupted his dark thoughts. “I spoke too lightly about very serious matters. I certainly don’t understand all the diplomatic repercussions of your injury. I only know that the hospital has opened a ward for Dixingren, and that healers have been recruited from across the city with promises of amnesty and immunity. I would not have seen you injured, my Lord, but it is no small thing to be allowed at last to step out into the light.”

His injury? 

Shen Wei turned his attention to himself and found his once-broken jaw no longer troubled him. There was no phantom pain from his scratched and bitten chest, and he was no longer aware of the internal damage from the rapes.

There was a dull, persistent pain in his upper back, however. The palms of both hands were numb and heavy, and despite the dark energy nourishing his meridians, he was not sure he could gather dark energy to attack or defend himself. He raised his right hand and looked down at the palm. 

The scarring was recent and deep. A healer had used dark energy to mend the flesh, but they had allowed scar tissue to replace his damaged skin rather than reknitting the flesh clean. 

The injuries must have been profound for a healer to use such stopgap measures. Shen Wei himself would not be able to repair the scar tissue until he was much stronger. 

“The healer Han Zhilan has been treating your injuries from the dark energy weapon,” Su Bohai explained. “She wished me to tell you that she believes you will make a full recovery, but that it will be a slow process, and she begs your patience in the meantime.”

Shen Wei considered this. So he had been wounded by the Lord Guardian’s dark energy weapon? He could not fathom how that might have happened. Had Zhao Xinci finally snapped? He carried so much rage that Shen Wei was not entirely surprised. But he had no memory of the attack, and the nature of his injuries gave him pause. The gunman must have downed him with the initial shot to his back and then bent over him to shoot through his hands. That was cold deliberation, not sudden rage. 

Shen Wei felt a sense of distant, dark amusement. He could easily imagine Zhao Xinci being provoked into shooting a Dixingren, even Shen Wei himself, but then being far too much of a politician to actually torture him. 

It didn’t answer the question of who actually had shot him. 

Not Zhao Yunlan. Someone must have taken the gun from him. That was a terrible thought. “What of Zhao Yunlan?”

Su Bohai blinked. “I…I’m not sure. What do you want to know?”

Shen Wei immediately struggled to sit up. His head spun and he fell back. Su Bohai reached to steady him. “Please lie still, my Lord! It has been three days. You must give your body time.”

“But Zhao Yunlan!” Shen Wei insisted. He grabbed at Su Bohai’s coat sleeve with clumsy hands. “Has he been hurt?” And even as he asked the question, devastating memories came to him. 

Zhao Yunlan’s scream of pain. The dusk flooded with the reek of physical agony, blood and cold sweat. Zhao Yunlan’s blood pressure was dropping precipitously, his body temperature falling as he slipped into shock and Shen Wei would not permit this—

“The Lord Guardian is fine!” Su Bohai exclaimed at once. “He was here only a few hours ago, he placed that pendant around your neck with his own hands, and I know he will be very glad to learn you are awake.”

Shen Wei reached up with trembling fingers, and he found the jade locket lying just below the hollow of his throat. The silk cord was new, but the feel of the jade was so welcome and familiar he could have wept. “Are you telling me the truth?” he asked, his voice tremulous in his own ears. 

Su Bohai blinked. “Of course, my Lord. I would not dare do otherwise.” 

Shen Wei released his grip on the healer’s coat sleeve. “Call me Shen Wei,” he whispered. “I am your patient, not your lord.”

“Yes, Shen...xiansheng,” Su Bohai said, stumbling a bit before settling on the humbler honorific. 

Shen Wei closed his eyes. Zhao Yunlan was safe and well, and he was suddenly so very tired. 

When he woke again, Cheng Xinyan was standing at the foot of his bed reading his chart. When she noticed his open eyes she smiled and came around the bed to pour him some water. He attempted to take the cup from her, but his scarred hands were hopelessly clumsy, and he had to allow her to raise the rim to his lips.

Afterwards she set the cup aside, and took his arm to measure his pulse. Shen Wei lay quietly to let her work, and he did not ask the most important question until she released his arm.

“Is Zhao Yunlan truly well?”

She smiled, and Shen Wei could finally relax at the sight of her easy certainty.

“Yes,” she said plainly. “Su Bohai told me you had been asking about him. Shen Wei, I promise you, Chief Zhao is fine.”

“Thank you,” Shen Wei whispered. “My memories—I had reason for concern.”

She nodded. “And how are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” he answered automatically. Cheng Xinyan looked so disappointed that he quickly amended, “The healers you gathered for me have done excellent work. I am very grateful, but I regret having caused so much trouble.”

“You will not apologize to me for requiring medical treatment! Shen Wei, I am a doctor and you are in a hospital.”

“And that is what I have had trouble understanding. Su Bohai told me that there is now a ward for Dixingren patients?”

“You were very ill when you were brought here. Dark energy was no longer circulating through your meridians. It is no exaggeration to say you would have died without treatment by Dixingren healers. I explained this to your friend Zhao Yunlan, and he intervened with the Xingdu Bureau.” She forced herself to smile. “It seems, my old friend, that you are an individual of some importance in Dixing.”

Shen Wei lowered his eyes. “I have kept secrets from you,” he admitted. 

“Mmm,” she concurred. “At any rate, your Zhao Yunlan convinced the Bureau that the only way to coax Dixingren healers out of hiding was to announce a general amnesty for all Dixingren living in Dragon City.”

This was even more astonishing than what Su Bohai had told him. Shen Wei didn’t know what to say. Zhao Yunlan knew he was the Envoy, and now all Dixingren might live without fear of arrest and deportation. That was wonderful news for hundreds of immigrants. 

Did Heipaoshi even have a role to play here in Dixing any longer?

Cheng Xinyan was saying, “Of course we have used the opportunity to immediately set up a ward for Dixingren patients and to hire healers. There are so many details to work out, but in the short run, my dear friend, we have saved your life. In the long run, being allowed to treat all Dixingren will save many more.”

“Just like you dreamed of when we were both in school,” Shen Wei said.

“Yes,” she agreed, but her expression suddenly seemed a bit sad. She looked down and carefully picked up his right hand. Turning it, she examined the thick scar tissue. “This must be very uncomfortable. I will speak to the healers about effective pain management for you.”

Shen Wei drew his hand away. “That won’t be necessary.”

“This isn’t about necessity,” she said, her voice getting a little sharp. “This is about making you comfortable so that you may rest and heal.”

And now he had made his friend angry. She certainly had reason enough. Shen Wei closed his eyes. He opened them again at the touch of her palm against his forehead. 

“Would you eat dinner if I had some sent up?”

He was not interested in food, but he knew that was not what Cheng Xinyan wanted to hear, so he said, “Thank you, yes.”

He was asleep again before his dinner arrived. He asked the orderly who awakened him to leave the tray on the bedside table, and then he overawed the young man with a frown when he tried to convince Shen Wei to sit up and eat a few bites. Left alone, he stared up at the ceiling and focused on the healing flow of dark energy along his meridians, and he thought about Zhao Yunlan managing to convince both the Dijun Palace and the Xingdu City Bureau to soften their interpretation of the ancient treaty and to stop criminalizing all immigration.

What an accomplishment!  Shen Wei could no longer doubt that Zhao Yunlan was truly Kunlun. He had managed to leverage Shen Wei’s health into a new age for Dixing and Haixing alike. It was a breathtaking stroke of diplomacy, more than worthy of Shen Wei's Kunlun. 

Although, perhaps this also meant it was time for Shen Wei to return to Dixing. As soon as he was well enough, he should focus his attention on the shadowy figure behind the unrest in both worlds. He had long worried that his poor didi might exercise influence that stretched beyond the Pillar of Heaven. Shen Wei could leave the University—if indeed he had not been dismissed from his position already. He could leave Zhao Yunlan, whom he could not protect. Who probably did not even need his protection.

But the idea of leaving Zhao Yunlan was a bridge too far. He reached for Kunlun’s locket with clumsy, trembling fingers as a sob crawled up his throat and escaped. The door to his room flew open at once. “Shen-xiansheng? Are you alright?”

It was Su Bohai, the healer with the gift of sharing dark energy. 

“I’m fine,” Shen Wei whispered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” 

Su Bohai came into the room and shut the door behind himself. 

“My entire reason for being here is to help you heal,” he responded calmly. “There is nothing you can do that would disturb me, save for refusing my assistance. Will you permit me to sit at your bedside and spin dark energy for you? Cheng-yisheng’s treatment plan was for you to absorb the energy passively in your sleep, but you may make faster progress while you are still awake.”

“Yes, thank you,” Shen Wei agreed softly. The sooner he healed, the sooner he would cease to be a burden to everyone around him. He settled back as the healer took the bedside chair. 

“Have you heard anything of Zhao Yunlan?” Shen Wei had not known he was going to ask that until the words had already escaped. 

Su Bohai laughed a little. “Oh, no. I’m afraid I am not kept advised of the Lord Guardian’s movements, daren. Ah, Shen-xiansheng. Would you like me to inquire for you?”

“There is no need,” Shen Wei said immediately. He laid one scarred palm over the jade pendant and closed his eyes. “You must tell me if I draw too deeply.”

“You need not worry about that.” Shen Wei thought he heard a smile in his voice. “You are not my first patient, merely the most auspicious. Now I would like you to focus on the movement of dark energy along your principal channels. There may be some discomfort, but unfortunately that is to be expected. I was told your meridians have been disrupted for more than a week? An exposure to a toxic substance?”

“I was poisoned,” Shen Wei said. 

“I am sorry,” the healer said sincerely. “But we will not permit your enemy any victories here.”

“—and I’m not leaving until this bowl is empty. No, not you, you damn cat! Shen Wei is going to empty this bowl before anyone is going home this morning.”

Shen Wei opened his eyes with a gasp. The blinds had been drawn up, allowing the morning sun to flood the little room and halo Zhao Yunlan in glory where he sat at Shen Wei’s bedside. 

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Zhao Yunlan said, beaming, when he saw Shen Wei’s eyes were open. “I promised that I would get you to eat some breakfast. What do you say?” 

Shen Wei meant to say hello, to ask if Zhao Yunlan were well, to assure him that he did not need to be fed like an invalid. 

But he felt tears gathering and only turned his face away. 

“I know it’s been too long since I have visited my stylist,” Zhao Yunlan said as he combed his hand through his bangs. “But no one has ever wept at the sight of me before.”

“No.” Shen Wei looked back. Since he could not hide them, he simply let the tears run down his face. “You look very well. How are you feeling?”

“No need for this,” Zhao Yunlan chided gently. He pulled a few tissues from the box on the bedside table and carefully blotted Shen Wei’s cheeks dry. 

“Lao Zhao’s great,” Da Qing announced, stomping across the bedclothes on his short black legs. “Are you going to eat your congee or not? Because I could take care of that for you.”

Zhao Yunlan elbowed him away. “Back off. You’re not getting Shen Wei’s breakfast.”

He looked back to Shen Wei, his smile softer. “One bite?”

“Are you really well? I remember—”

A shadow seemed to pass over Zhao Yunlan’s face but his smile remained. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll answer a question for every bite.”

Shen Wei tried to scowl, but Zhao Yunlan’s presence made his heart too light for complaint, and he allowed Zhao Yunlan to feed him a spoonful. The congee was warm in his mouth, but made his stomach twist when he swallowed. When had he last eaten? He breathed through the discomfort. Then he said, “You are not hurt?”

“I’m fine, Shen Wei. You went all sparkly and fixed everything. You don’t remember?”

Shen Wei blinked. “What do you mean, ‘all sparkly’?”

“Ah, that’s another question.” Zhao Yunlan’s tone remained light but there was something haunted in his eyes. “Another bite first.” He held up the spoon. Shen Wei complied. Warm and savory in his mouth, easy to swallow, but uncomfortable in his belly. He closed his eyes and waited for the faint nausea to subside. 

“Lao Chu had a word for it,” Zhao Yunlan was saying. “That sparkly business, I mean.” Shen Wei opened his eyes and looked at him. Zhao Yunlan was still smiling, but his eyes seemed sad. “And he told me a story from the days of the great rebellion. The Alliance was losing an important battle. Heipaoshi himself had been critically wounded, but at the moment when it seemed all was lost, he sent his dark energy into an avatar that healed the soldiers of the Alliance and attacked the forces of the Rebellion. The battle was won, but with no dark energy left in his body, Heipaoshi would have died without the immediate intervention of Dixingren healers under the wise direction of Ma Gui and Fu You.”

“That…is a very old story,” Shen Wei murmured. “I would not have thought anyone still remembered.”

Zhao Yunlan’s smile finally slipped. “There was no need to do that for me!” He lowered his voice to avoid shouting, but in his vehemence, the words came out as a furious hiss. “You very nearly did not survive, and for what? Just to spare me the inconvenience of some broken bones? I am not worth dying for!”

Oh, this was easy. Shen Wei reached for Zhao Yunlan’s sleeve and grasped it with his frustratingly clumsy fingers. “You are worth it,” he said fervently. 

Zhao Yunlan just stared at him, his face a study. Then he set down the little bowl of congee and used his free hand to untangle Shen Wei’s fingers. He stood and stepped away. “Rest,” he ordered gruffly, not looking at Shen Wei, and he left the room. 

Da Qing stomped up the bed and crossed to the table. “You don’t want any more of this, do you?” he announced, not actually a question. He stuck his head in the bowl and finished the congee. Then he sat back and began washing his face with a paw. He paused and looked at Shen Wei. “I keep getting the feeling that we’ve met. Did I really know Heipaoshi back then?”

Shen Wei managed a smile for his old friend. “So you did,” he said. 

“Huh.” Da Qing went back to washing his whiskers. At length he made his way back to the foot of the bed where he settled in with his front paws tucked neatly under his chest. Another look across the bed at Shen Wei, and he said, “Lao Zhao will be OK. He’s just a little freaked out by everything.”

“He has been wonderful,” Shen Wei said. “In every way.”

“Yeah, and it’s saying that sort of thing that scares him.”

“That is not my intention. Da Qing, can you tell me what happened? My last clear memory—”

Well, he was unsure. He remembered his much-neglected lesson plans, his sudden realization that the class representative had been one of his assailants, and the wash of dizzying, white-hot rage. “Did I hurt anyone?”

“No one who didn’t deserve it. Oh, and fair warning. Lao Chu will probably be stopping by and he’s in a mood, too. I think it’s because you gave Xiao Guo the slip when you should’ve been resting.”

“Did I?”

“I know, not really all that surprising. And apparently you did it to save Zhao Yunlan who was being tortured by that Dixingren who wanted the Sundial, so personally I’m glad you did, even if nobody else in the SID has enough manners to thank you for saving Zhao Yunlan’s life. So, thanks. And the congee was good too.”

Shen Wei managed a small smile for him. “You are welcome.”

Da Qing nodded, satisfied, then let his head drop as though it were too heavy to hold up anymore. He shifted, looked up once, and then he let his head drop for a second time to faceplant in the coverlet.

His breathy little snores soon filled the room.

Chapter Text

To Shen Wei’s surprise, Zhu Hong was his next visitor. She came marching into his room with a laptop case over one shoulder and a very long-suffering expression on her face. 

“Zhu Hong?” Shen Wei said, startled. He struggled to sit up in bed. 

“Shen-jiaoshi,” she acknowledged shortly. “I trust they’re taking care of you.” She cleared the little tray table and moved it around in front of Shen Wei. Then she pulled the laptop out of her bag and smacked it down on the table so forcefully that Shen Wei flinched a bit. 

“What—”

Zhu Hong opened the laptop and turned it on. Zhao Yunlan’s face immediately filled the screen. Shen Wei sat back in surprise, while Zhu Hong crossed her arms over her chest and took a seat on the bedside chair.

“There you are!” Zhao Yunlan exclaimed happily. “Can you see me?”

“Um, yes?”

“Great, great!” The view of Zhao Yunlan’s face bobbed up and down as the camera moved erratically, and then the scene shifted entirely to show a long interior hallway lined with doors, and then suddenly Lin Jing’s face filled the screen.

“Hi, Shen-jiaoshi,” Lin Jing said. “Hope you’re feeling better!” 

The circling camera swung back to Zhao Yunlan’s grin. “I wanted you to see your new apartment,” he announced happily. 

“My what?”

“Your new digs! I’ve got the perfect place. I’ll bring the paperwork around later so you can sign the lease, but I thought you might like to see it first.” 

If this was intended to be an explanation, it only left Shen Wei more bewildered. “You can see the common areas are well-maintained,” Zhao Yunlan was saying. He swung the phone back and forth dizzyingly, presumably to show off the hallway and the line of closed doors. “New carpet, paint job in good shape.”

“Why do I need a new apartment?” Shen Wei finally asked, but then the answer was obvious. He had feared the events of the last week would lead to his dismissal. 

So it had actually happened, and now he needed to vacate his university housing as soon as possible. Shen Wei was startled by the wave of sorrow that swept over him. He had been wondering whether he even wanted to continue his teaching and research, but now that it had all been taken from him, he grieved. The truth was, he had been happier during his years at Dragon City University than he had been anywhere since losing Kunlun. He closed his eyes and tried to pull himself together.

“Thank you, Zhao Yunlan.” His voice was only a whisper. He swallowed and tried again. “I appreciate all your efforts on my behalf, but I will be returning to Dixing soon and—” His voice broke and he could not even say the words. He tried to clench his fists but his scarred hands trembled and ached at the effort.

The camera came back to Zhao Yunlan’s face, filling the screen and scowling darkly in concern. “Seriously, Shen-jiaoshi? That sounds like a helluva commute. Lin Jing was going to get you set up so you can give your lectures remotely while you’re getting better, but I’m not sure even he could finagle a video link all the way to Dixing.” He pointed the camera at Lin Jing, who frowned thoughtfully. 

“That would be a really interesting technical problem. I mean, theoretically it ought to be possible but you’d have to give me some time.”

Zhao Yunlan turned the camera back to himself. His scowl had grown even darker. “You can think about it on your own damn time because Shen Wei is not going anywhere.”

“Surely the Chancellor will have decided I am too great a liability for Dragon City University,” Shen Wei said quietly. 

“What sort of nonsense is that?” Zhao Yunlan demanded, but his expression gentled. “The brave Dixingren professor who risked exposure and death to defend the university from the scourge of that saboteur? Dragon City University is fortunate to have such a selfless hero on their teaching staff!”

“You have spoken with the Chancellor, haven’t you?” Shen Wei answered with a slight frown, because although his memory was compromised, he was quite certain that glowing account did not tell the whole story. “What did you tell him?”

“What do you mean? Yes, the Chancellor wanted an explanation for the mayhem on his campus. I simply made sure he understood how much worse it would have been without the self-sacrificing bravery of a certain professor of bioengineering.”

“Zhao Yunlan, this is hard for me to understand.”

“It’s possible the Chancellor mentioned some faculty discomfort at continuing to share housing with a professor from Dixing—I believe you and I can both agree that such prejudice is distressing in an institution of higher education—but I explained that you were facing a period of rehabilitation which would require greater privacy than was available to you in faculty housing, so you would be moving into a private apartment. Then the Chancellor was only too happy to make arrangements for you to continue teaching your classes remotely until you are able to resume in person. Obviously, your going back to Dixing would be extremely inconvenient for all involved, so I hope you will put that out of your head.”

“I—”

Zhao Yunlan turned the camera towards the apartment door and flung it open. “Large front room with bookshelves. The furniture is in good condition.” He marched through the apartment pointing out amenities. “Closet space, new electric water heater for the shower, three-quarter refrigerator, balcony off the bedroom and look there!” Stepping out onto the balcony, he pointed the camera at the rooftops below. “The SID is just a few blocks away. You can see the roofline from here.”

“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei asked as the light dawned. “Do you happen to live nearby?”

Lin Jing snorted off camera. Zhao Yunlan’s face filled the screen, beaming. “I was saving the best for last. Da Qing and I have the apartment right across the hall, so if you ever wanted anything in the middle of the night, all you would need to do is knock on my door! Great, right? As soon as you sign the lease I’ll have Xiao Guo pack up your things and bring them over. Everything will be ready when Cheng Xinyan releases you.”

“Zhao Yunlan...” Shen Wei truly did not know what to say. He should not accept so much work and effort on his behalf, so much trouble for everyone, but it was everything he wanted, everything he thought he had lost.

Everything his enemies had tried to take from him. 

He found the jade locket at his throat and clasped it loosely, fingers still awkward. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I look forward to becoming your neighbor.” 

The healer Han Zhilan spent more than an hour that afternoon with Shen Wei. The work restoring damaged tendon and muscle was tedious and painful, but when she called a halt for the day, Shen Wei protested that he was fine and that they could certainly continue.

Han Zhilan scowled at him, far less deferential than Su Bohai tended to be, despite the fact that she could not be dissuaded from calling him daren. She wrapped her hand around Shen Wei’s wrist and lifted his hand. “Do you see how your fingers shake?”

It was true. His fingers trembled so badly he could not have held a calligraphy brush, much less a pair of chopsticks. “Which is why we should continue,” Shen Wei said. 

“Which is why you must rest,” she disagreed sternly. “Perhaps when Heipao-daren is healthy and at full strength he can repair catastrophic injuries and blithely continue on with his day.” Her sour expression made it clear what she thought of this. “But while you are my patient, you will rest and allow your damaged meridians to return to homeostasis before we do further work.”

Shen Wei intended to continue on his own after she left him, but in fact he fell asleep almost at once, and when he awoke the room was in darkness, save for the city lights twinkling through the open window blinds. Zhao Yunlan was asleep in the chair beside him. Shen Wei’s breath caught. Everything about him was so beautiful in the half-light, the planes of his face, the curve of his body slumped in the chair with one leg over the arm and the other propped on Shen Wei’s bed. He hadn’t bothered to take off his boots. 

Shen Wei didn’t care. He could’ve watched the man sleep all night in perfect contentment, except he worried Zhao Yunlan might wake up with a crick in his neck that Shen Wei would not be able to fix with his control of dark energy still compromised.

 “Zhao Yunlan,” he whispered. “Chief Zhao. You ought to have awakened me when you arrived.”

“Mmm?” He stirred slowly, then stretched, his lean form curling upwards as he stretched his arms over his head and then sat up. “Shen Wei!” He beamed. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m sorry I was asleep when you arrived.”

“Don’t be! Sleep is good for healing bodies.”

“Please turn on the lights if you like.”

“This is fine. I’ll leave the paperwork on the side table here for you to read over in the morning.”

“Ah, the apartment.”

“Yes, your new home. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to the arrival of my auspicious neighbor. Has Cheng-yisheng told you when you can leave the hospital?”

“Soon now. She was only concerned that it might be difficult for me to manage in faculty housing.”

“And we have taken care of that! I’ll speak to her in the morning and see how fast we can get you out of here.”

“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei said seriously, “there is another reason I could never have returned to the faculty dormitory. It is true that most Haixingren do not know or care who or what the Black Robed Envoy may be, but now that I have been exposed, my enemies will certainly be aware. They have attacked me once,” his voice dropped. “I cannot ensure the safety of the people around me should my enemies try again, especially while I am still healing.”

Zhao Yunlan waved that away. “Please give the SID a little credit! Lao Chu will be near at all times, at least for now. It would take a direct order to keep him away, and frankly, I’m not sure even that would work.”

“Ah.” Shen Wei smiled sadly. “I fear I have gravely disappointed Chu Shuzhi.”

Zhao Yunlan blinked in surprise. “Why on earth would you think that?”

Shen Wei cut his eyes away to the city lights twinkling through the open blinds. This was easier to say if he was not looking at Zhao Yunlan. “He saw me as Dixing’s legendary hero and now he knows the truth.”

“What truth are you talking about?” 

Zhao Yunlan sounded angry. Well, that was no surprise. Shen Wei seemed to be angering all his friends these days. He groped for the pendant at his neck, taking comfort as ever from the memory of Kunlun under starry skies. 

“Shen Wei,” Zhao Yunlan persisted. “What the hell are you talking about? Lao Chu worships the very ground you walk on, and if I’m completely honest, it can be a little annoying sometimes, but he’s not wrong about you.”

Shen Wei made himself meet Zhao Yunlan’s eyes. He was so kind, but kindness did not change the facts. Shen Wei laid them out plainly. “He was following a hero, and now he knows I am only a man, as subject to humiliation and defeat as any other.”

Zhao Yunlan stood and looked down at Shen Wei. “Do you think he ever forgot you were a man? Do you think any of us did?”

Well, certainly not now, Shen Wei reflected. Those photographs were never far from his mind. “Heipaoshi needs to be more. He is a symbol, a figurehead for Dixing’s might, but I am only an injured man in a hospital bed.”

“Shen Wei!” Zhao Yunlan was almost shouting. 

“Zhao Yunlan?” He wondered what he had gotten wrong now.

“Shen Wei,” Zhao Yunlan repeated, softer this time. He realized he was looming over Shen Wei, and he  stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed instead. “Has no one ever told you—” he broke off and started again. “Shen Wei, not even twenty-four hours ago you said I was worth that ridiculous, life-endangering stunt you pulled to fix my broken bones.”

“And so you are,” Shen Wei agreed fervently. “Now more than ever.”

“And so are you!” Zhao Yunlan roared. 

The door opened at once and the night nurse stuck her head in. “Excuse me,” she growled. “It’s after visiting hours and you are disturbing my patient.”

“He is not disturbing me,” Shen Wei disagreed at once. “We were discussing affairs of state and we both became overexcited. It will not happen again.”

“Cheng-yisheng is aware,” Zhao Yunlan put in. “Unfortunately the world rolls on even while Brother Black is laid up in bed. We’ll keep it down.”

The nurse scowled at them both. “Any more disturbances and you will need to leave,” she told Zhao Yunlan, still frowning, and pulled the door shut behind herself. 

Zhao Yunlan turned back immediately. “Shen Wei,” he said at once. “Old Brother Black,” his voice was soft. “Has no one ever told you it is your very humanity that makes you the hero Chu Shuzhi would die for? Don’t you know that I would do the same in a heartbeat?”

“I don’t want anyone to die for me. Least of all you.”

Zhao Yunlan smiled. “I’d rather live for you, too, if it came right down to it.”

He was younger than the Kunlun Shen Wei remembered, angrier and more impatient, but that fierce heart of his could also be so gentle. Shen Wei reached for Zhao Yunlan’s sleeve, tangled his fingers in the material and tugged him near. Zhao Yunlan allowed himself to be drawn closer. “Shen Wei?”

“Please,” Shen Wei said helplessly. 

Zhao Yunlan’s smile was so lovely. “I’d like to kiss you,” he said. “Right above your eyebrow here.” Two fingers ghosted over Shen Wei’s brow. “Would that be alright?”

“Please,” Shen Wei repeated, and Zhao Yunlan came closer, stretched up and pressed his dry lips to Shen Wei’s forehead. Shen Wei felt the warmth like a blessing, and the world that seemingly had no place for him faded away, making him wonder why he had ever thought he should leave it. 

 Zhao Yunlan sat back, looking insufferably pleased with himself. “Again?” he asked. He brushed Shen Wei’s cheek, fingertips light across the four-day-old bristles.

“I haven’t shaved,” Shen Wei apologized. 

“Does that mean no, don’t kiss my cheek?”

“No,” Shen Wei said. He had been waiting for such a very long time. He sat up a bit. With his free hand he touched Zhao Yunlan’s beautiful mouth. His clumsy fingers still trembled, but he could feel the softness of Zhao Yunlan’s lips and the warmth of his breath as he exhaled, not quite laughing. 

“It means, I would like to kiss you now, my beautiful Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei said. “That is, if I may,” and Zhao Yunlan sighed so happily that Shen Wei immediately sat forward and found Zhao Yunlan’s mouth with his own. It was almost too sweet to be borne, and all too soon Shen Wei had to sit back, head spinning and his heart full. Zhao Yunlan caught him and helped ease him back down onto the bed.

Zhao Yunlan frowned in concern. “Are you alright?”

Shen Wei smiled up at him. “You have always been worth everything I have to give,” he said, so happy and relaxed he was far more honest than he had meant to be. Da Qing had told him that it frightened Zhao Yunlan when he told the truth.

But Zhao Yunlan did not look frightened. He smiled down at Shen Wei. “Rest now,” he said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“You should go home,” Shen Wei disagreed. “Get a good night’s sleep in your own bed and—”

“I cannot help but feel that you and I have already been separated for far too long, Shen-jiaoshi. So for now I believe I will be staying right here.” He leaned forward. “Close your eyes.”

Shen Wei obeyed. 

Zhao Yunlan dropped a kiss on each closed eyelid. His mustache tickled Shen Wei’s face, and Shen Wei thought the waves of perfect happiness sweeping over him might break his heart. 

“Sleep well, my good old Brother Black,” Zhao Yunlan said, and Shen Wei could hear the smile in his voice. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You’re Wang Yike, right?”

Wang Yike turned, uneasy. Zhang Ruonan and Jiajia had assured her the amnesty was real, and in any event, she had saved the Lord Guardian and the Black Cloaked Envoy by killing a terrorist intent on provoking war between Haixing and Dixing. She was a hero and did not have to hide anymore!

Wang Yike believed her friends, she did, but old habits died hard. “Ye-es,” she agreed cautiously to the woman who had spoken. “Do I know you?”

Even as she asked the question, Wang Yike was pretty sure she did not. The woman was tall and heavyset, about the age of the other students on campus, though she didn’t look like a student herself. Or at least, not like a student who hoped to walk into a prestigious job upon graduation. Her hair was dyed vivid blue and sheared into a buzz cut. Her right arm was covered in tattooed words, all inked in heavy black. The little bit Wang Yike could read looked like it might be poetry. Tattoos were starting to climb her left arm as well, the ink on her forearm surrounded by the pink of healing flesh. “No,” the woman said. “We’ve never met. I just heard some things, and I wanted to see you in person.”

“Uh....” An introduction like that did not make Wang Yike feel any more comfortable.

“I heard the official story, too. So they’re saying those three boys were killed by a terrorist trying to provoke a war? Yeah, whatever. Anyone who knew them knows there was a lot more to it.” The woman shook her head with a grimace. “ I knew them and I wish to heaven that I didn’t. So whatever you did, thank you.”

“I—”

“I know you can’t say anything. But after I heard the three of them were dead, I got my first good night’s sleep in almost a year. So, thanks and good riddance. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“What’s your new tattoo?” Wang Yike asked instead of answering that, or asking any of the questions she had. Who was talking about her? How had this woman heard? But she also knew some questions were better left unasked, and she concentrated on the tattoo instead. It showed a woman in old-fashioned robes carrying a long knife.

“Ah. It’s Qui Jin, the poet.”

Wang Yike shook her head. She hadn’t had a lot of time for poetry since coming to the surface.

“You should look her up. I think she’d be right up your alley.” 

And with that, she turned and walked away. 

Not a man in the flesh,

        unable to walk among them;

but my heart is stronger,

        more fierce than a man’s!

I think of my inner spirit,

        stirring often with passion on others’ behalf.

How can narrow, uncultivated minds

        comprehend my nature?

A hero at the path’s end

        must suffer trials and tribulations.

In the vast, worldly dust, where can I find my soulmate?

Lines excerpted from A River of Crimson: A Brief Stay in the Glorious Capital by Qui Jin and translated by Yilin Wang