Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The wind — oh. It blows and it blows, shaking the trees, rustling through its branches. It wrests away the peace. So all that settles are leaves at the roots of trees.

It’s just A-Yao standing alone, before an unmarked grave. A-Yao drawing his cloak tighter around him. A-Yao choked up with a million words left unsaid, a million deeds undone, all crashing against his chest like a torrent until it’s too much…

…until it finds release…

“A-Die,” he utters, weighed down to his knees. He clasps joss sticks in his hands. They light up with a spark of spiritual energy, burning orange at their tips — so piercingly bright against the dullness of the clouded sky all around.

A-Yao bows, bestowing upon this gesture the weight of his regret, until something in him shifts, so he is a little forgiven on the inside, and he finally dares to speak.

“Ah, A-Die hope you’re not too disappointed by your Hai-er.” A-Yao places these joss sticks by his A-Die’s grave, watching them burn.

“The questions you asked me before you died……I’ve held them in my heart for all these years you know? But now, at my journey’s end — I still don’t know. Who came up with cultivation? What is its purpose? Why does it often turn so cursed?”

A gust of wind nearly puts the joss sticks out but A-Yao shields it with his sleeve.

“In fact it’s a little laughable……I fell in love in love with travelling as I sought to answer these questions, until I came to love these questions in and of themselves.” A-Yao smiles with wan eyes, with a heart that aches all the more fiercely. “I hope A-Die will laugh with me.”

A-Yao turns around to look for a moment — at the boy who sits a distance away from him, respectfully out of earshot, looking elsewhere.

“Still, I am starting to understand what was in your heart, when you made me promise you that I would leave cultivation society.” As A-Yao slowly gets to his feet, he gently whispers, “So I know you will understand why I had to break that promise for that boy……”

His gaze lingers on his A-Die’s grave.

He whispers, a secret taken up by the wind: “But know this — that last promise that I made to you that day in Buyetian Cheng — that city where skies were never night ^[1]  — I will keep it to my dying breath.”

A-Yao smiles.

Then A-Yao walks to the boy, who had been sitting quietly behind him amidst the tall grasses the entire time. The boy whom A-Yao had broken his promise to his A-Die for.

Mo Xuanyu.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” A-Yao says to the boy.

Still, the boy stayed sullen.

A-Yao simply stares, feeling a little helpless.

Pulling a piece of paper and a brush out of his qiankun pouch, A-Yao sketched out a picture of a fluffy rabbit lying on its back, with its eyes trustfully closed, out in an open field.

“Here: for you,” A-Yao offered. The sketches of animals that he could do up on the fly always seemed to amuse the children that he met on his travels.

But oh — A-Yu instead looked hurt. It was the first flash of true emotion across his face. A-Yao feels fear flare up within him.

“Why did you sketch me a picture of a dead rabbit?”

Ah……

“It’s not dead.”

“Then why is it lying still and limp on the grass like that?”

A-Yao’s heart aches.

“Believe me, I meant for the rabbit in this drawing to be fine. Give me just a moment more, I’ll show you what I mean…”

A-Yao reminds himself where A-Yu came from, and now, where he can be:

In the dimness of their room, their eyes had instantly connected, A-Yao’s concerned gaze colliding with the boy’s look of utter resignation.

The Jin Sect cultivators who had confined the boy in the dilapidated room lay knocked out by A-Yao’s feet.

Still, the boy had looked at A-Yao as if he was a new captor, as if he were prepared to be shunted off to some fresh new horror.

Then, there was a flash of recognition in the boy’s eye — like a spark from struck flint falling upon the floor — he took in A-Yao’s appearance:

His midnight blue hanfu streaked with dawn-like gold.

His ever-glowing lantern held in his left hand.

His umbrella Fusheng (浮生) ^[2] — meaning a drifting life — in his right hand, with colourful ribbons trailing off its tip.

“Are you…...that famous traveller?”

A smile arches across A-Yao’s expression. He delivers his most genteel bow.

“Indeed, Mo-gongzi, it seems you’ve heard of me…”

The guarded look on the boy’s face wavered, as the boy looked away.

“My supervisors…I overheard them saying that you managed to capture a bashe (巴蛇) ^[3]

A-Yao nods. “Indeed, that was a few months ago…”

The boy’s eyes widen, as he fixes A-Yao now with a look of bafflement.

“Why are you here?” The boy’s voice is barely raised over a whisper.

“A-Yu,” he had said, startling the boy who seemed shocked that he knew his name. “I came for you.”

“It couldn’t be……”

“You and I are half-brothers,” A-Yao continues. “We have the same father. Your Niang — before she died she tasked me with finding you…”

“Niang……,” A-Yu’s bows his head. “She wanted me to establish myself in the Jin household. I showed a talent for constructing arrays. I was supposed to use it.”

Slowly the boy sunk to his knees, though his expression remained blank. It was only then that A-Yao started to take in the sight of A-Yu’s surroundings. There were papers everywhere — strewn across the edges of the floor, plastered all over the walls, spilling out from the only study table.

But most alarmingly, there was blood. So much blood. Blood drawn in the patterns of arrays. In splatters as though spat from lips. In pools as though an injured figure had lain prone there for hours.

How much damage had A-Yu’s body taken from the blowback from failed arrays? How much of that damage had been treated? How could the cultivators have let him do this to himself?

“Your mother told me that you were taken away by some Jin Sect cultivators to meet your father,” A-Yao carefully said. “She was worried for you when she couldn’t contact you, so she sent me to look for you before she passed away.”

A-Yu refuses to look at him. “I have to stay. If I stop now, then what of all the hopes that my A-Niang placed upon me? To become a cultivator and even attain immortality?

Oh. This. These words are a spear driven through his chest.

“A-Yu — please believe me. Your mother wanted you to be safe and happy,” A-Yao urges with desperation, with sincerity shining in his eyes. “That’s what mattered to her. That’s why I’m here.”

A-Yu looked up at him. Eyes still blank. “Have you really come to take me away from this place?”

A-Yao bent down, so he was eye to eye with A-Yu who was still on his knees. With an outstretched hand, A-Yao whispered, “I have come to take you anywhere you want to go……”

A-Yao could now more clearly see it — all along, there were tears shimmering in those otherwise hard eyes.

“But can’t you make me a cultivator as well,” A-Yu whispers, unable to let go fully of his mothers’ wishes.

A-Yao glances once again at the bloodied and dilapidated room around him, letting the scene sink into him with sharp claws.

“I can.”

A-Yu finally reaches for A-Yao’s hand, as A-Yao heaves him up to his feet……

“But this I promise you,” A-Yao says to the boy. “Cultivation will never hurt like this again.”

A-Yao closes his umbrella Fusheng with a snap of his fingers and floats it horizontally. He sits sidesaddle upon it. He gestures for A-Yu to sit beside him, as he hangs his lantern upon Fusheng’s hooked handle.

“And now, Mo-gongzi, won’t you tell me — where you would like me to take you the most?”

✦❘༻༺❘✦ Notes ✦❘༻༺❘✦

¹Buyetian Cheng: Also known as Nightless City (though it directly translates to Never night sky city)^{[return to text]}

²Fusheng (浮生): While it literally means a drifting or floating life, fusheng also has more philosophical connotations of the brevity and ephemerality of life. It's also in the title of the book fusheng liuji — Six Records of a Drifting Life (浮生六记), an memoir by Shen Fu who lived in the Qing Dynasty. It explores his life and that of his beloved life Yunniang's, in just the most endearing and insightful way :3 ^{[return to text]}

³ Bashe (巴蛇): A serpent in Chinese myths that is said to be able to swallow an elephant whole, only disgorging its bones after 3 years. The phrase bashe tunxiang — bashe swallows an elephant — is used to describe someone with an insatiable greed. It’s mentioned in the Shanhaijing, which is a book of chinese mythic geography and beasts. Wikipedia link here. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

A-Yao tastes these words, as he turns to a now bright-eyed A-Yu. In this moment, they are beings riding upon a brilliant burst of colour streaming across the sky — upon his umbrella Fusheng with long ribbons fluttering out from its tip, and his ever-glowing lantern hanging on its hooked end. A-Yao lifts his head upwards, to bask in the glow of the bluish twilight sky. He laughs at A-Yu — who’s enraptured by the flock of geese that they are flying with, swinging his legs back and forth. A-Yao hums a tune until…

“There!” A-Yao draws A-Yu’s attention pointing to the highest mountain peak on the horizon, peeking out from the swirling mountain mists and the clouds.

Yunshen Buzhichu.^[1] The home of the Lan Sect. Deep in the clouds, who knows where.

Just the sight of it alone fills A-Yao’s chest with a warmth that seeps down to the crevices of his soul, like a waterfall through a cliff.

A-Yao turns around to address A-Yu, smiling so hard his cheeks ache. “Hang on tight, I’m taking us down to the foot of Yunshen Buzhichu.”

With that, A-Yao points Fusheng down and dives.

The geese scatter.

A-Yu lets out a thrilled whoop. The wind whistles through their ears, tousles their hair and robes.

A-Yao laughs at the awe of it all that fills him full to bursting.

How had it ever gone dim — his sense of wonder at the sensation of flight?

But then again, what better way for him to recapture that sense of magic than through the eyes of a passenger new to the experience?

The ground rushes at them. Raises up a beloved figure who is waving up at them from below. His outline grows clearer, until A-Yao can draw out the expression on his face.

“Erge,” A-Yao calls out. His voice echoes through the valleys, rises through the birdsong, ringing full and well within his chest.

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen shouts back, the sweetest sound. A-Yao drinks in the delight along every angle of his Erge.

Then they land with a whoosh: A-Yao carefully funnelling air downwards with his spiritual energy to cushion their landing.

Grass goes up in a swirl. Robes, hairs and ribbons of the people around them go aflutter — including that of the typically impeccable, now laughing Lan Xichen. Unruffled despite that, Lan Xichen steadies A-Yao as he pushes off Fusheng. A-Yao relishes the touch.

Then, with pride, A-Yao introduces the boy sitting behind him, who still looks a little dazed. “This is my younger brother, Mo Xuanyu,” A-Yao says to his Erge.

“A-Yu this is Zewu-jun.” A-Yao lets affection drip, syrupy sweet, from every syllable, a silent message to A-Yu that you can trust him.

As though they had rehearsed it, A-Yu perfectly hits that cue, bowing as he greets, “Zewu-Jun. It is an honour to make your acquaintance.”

Lan Xichen bows just as low in return, before A-Yao can stop him. There is a twinkle in Lan Xichen’s eye. He knows he’s outmaneuvered A-Yao. “Now Mo-gongzi...one rite of initiation to become a disciple of the Lan Sect is to climb up the five thousand steps that lead up to the peak of Yunshen Buzhichu.”

Lan Xichen sweeps one arm at the winding path carved into the mountain that seems to stretch forever into the clouds. A-Yao can see A-Yu’s gaze trace the upward path until it disappears somewhere in the clouds, his eyes growing wider by the second.

“But don’t worry, we can do it together,” his Erge immediately reassures A-Yu.

Before A-Yao can tell Lan Xichen that he need not trouble himself as the Sect Leader, Lan Xichen takes A-Yu along the ascent.

Outmaneuvered again — by Lan Xichen. A-Yao cannot bring himself to begrudge the natural diplomat.

“There are, by the way, three thousand rules to the Gusu Lan Sect,” A-Yao remarks as he bounds up the stairs two steps at a time to keep up. “All are expected to remember and adhere to these three thousand rules in the Lan Sect — from the Sect Leader to guest disciples.”

A-Yu pauses mid-stride. Lan Xichen looks a little embarrassed. “Well, this number of rules may seem a little intimidating at first…,” his Erge hedges.

“Three thousand?” Intrigue touches A-Yu’s tone.

A-Yao nods, smiling indulgently. “Carved out in stone. Placed near the entrance of Yunshen Buzhichu for all to see. They cover everything from ethics, such as to appreciate good people; to practices, for instance, to rise at 5am and to sleep at 9pm.”

A-Yu’s eyes light up, like rows of lights across a harbour.

“I knew you would like that,” A-Yao magnanimously tells an amazed A-Yu.

The stability. The regularity. The certainty. The fairness of it all…so far away from the caprices of living under the thumb of an abuser in their household.

A-Yao himself is soothed by the sound of A-Yu chanting under his breath “Arrogance is forbidden. Do not be picky with food. Do not fear the strong. Do not bully the weak. Organise work properly.”

Upon an expectant look from A-Yu, Lan Xichen supplies, “diligence is the root. Morality is the priority. Harmony is the value. Learning comes first. Do not take your words lightly.”

“Very good, A-Yu!” A-Yao gently places a hand on A-Yu’s head, patting it when the boy seemed alright with his touch.

Still, A-Yao is most excited for one last surprise that he has for A-Yu. It swells within him, full to bursting, when they reach the entrance of Yunshen Buzhichu. It’s fed as A-Yu wanders about the entrance of Yunshen Buzhichu, staring especially wide-eyed at the stone carved with the Sect’s three thousand rules.

“A-Yu, I have a very special place to show you,” A-Yao enigmatically offers. Even Lan Xichen looked interested. A-Yao leads A-Yu down a few corridors, into an open field of lush, green grass, shining silken in the morning dew, dotted with fluffy patches of white like clouds.

These are bunnies, lazing on their backs in the evening light, their bellies in their air. There are hundreds of them, everywhere. They occasionally twitch, or hop lazily away to sniff at some new discovery amidst the grasses, before flopping down again.

A-Yu falls to his knees, his eyes wide in disbelief. A little bunny hops up to him, nudging his hands for food.

“Why are they like that,” A-Yu utters, as though expelling his dying breath, his fingers stiff against the rabbit.

“Because they’re feeling relaxed! They know it’s safe here for them here in Yunshen Buzhichu,” A-Yao whispers conspiratorially. He then takes out once again his drawing of a bunny for A-Yu.

A-Yu takes the drawing, and then turns still as a statue...

…But there are tears shining in his eyes that soon spill out…

A-Yao bends down so A-Yu and he are eye to eye. Tenderly, he wipes away those tears with his handkerchief. Then he pulls A-Yu to lean on his shoulder, as A-Yu buries his face in the crook of his neck.

A-Yao whispers tenderly into A-Yu’s ear: “Welcome to Yunshen Buzhichu!”

A-Yao tells himself that he’s being a little silly for missing A-Yu and Lan Xichen already — they’ll only be gone for a while to complete A-Yu’s enrolment. He sighs at his own heart with fond exasperation, as he slides upon the door to exit the hall.

He nearly jumps at how he instantly is face to face with a young Lan Sect female disciple waiting just outside of it. She squeaks before bowing her head.

Aren’t female Lan Sect disciples supposed to live on the other side of the Yunshen Buzhichu? A-Yao thinks to himself, dazed. There are also, oddly enough, quite a number of Lan Sect disciples of both genders simply milling about.

A-Yao gives her a kind smile as he asks, “How may I be of assistance?”

The young lady, who cannot be more than eighteen, whips out a book, and holds it out before him with taut hands, her head still bowed. “Lianfang-zun, please, will you autograph my book,” she asks. Her voice is caught between shyness and boldness.

A-Yao blinks, a little off-footed. Then he examines the book. Its cover is an illustration of A-Yao in the midst of his travels — specifically his silhouette as viewed from the back. He is riding on Fusheng into the horizon, with the wind tousling his hair and rustling the ribbons and lanterns along his umbrella. His heart grows fonder as he traces the delicate strokes that bring together this idyllic image.

“I am especially fond of this edition,” A-Yao comments conversationally. “The illustrations were done by your very talented zongzhu.”

The disciple gives a suitably vigorous nod, with shining eyes.

“I’ll autograph it,” A-Yao replies, feeling a little embarrassed and oddly presumptuous. As A-Yao props Fusheng against the wall, an inked calligraphy brush is presented to him by the disciple.

“What is your name?” A-Yao chuckles, taking both the brush and book in his hands..

“Lan Hezhen,” the disciple supplies with an awed breath.

Lan Hezhen now has the book flipped to a particular page, as she hands it reverently to a bemused A-Yao.

It’s an illustration of a scene from one of his strangest adventures — where he had to tell a stories to lull the giant Kuafu to sleep.

For the longest time, it was thought to be a myth — the story of Kua Fu Zhui Ri (夸父追日) ^[2], where a giant named Kuafu had chased after the sun for many days and nights, hoping to pluck it from the sky, and gift it to humanity for their harvests. But Kuafu collapsed from exhaustion just as the sun was within his grasp. His corpse formed a mountain where humans built a city. There, the soil was fertile and fruit orchards flourished. It was said to be Kuafu’s blessing upon mankind.

Until a nine-fingered, self-taught, demonic cultivator by the name of Xue Yang decided to see if the myth was real. As Xue Yang played the flute and practiced demonic cultivation, the giant began to be roused from what was apparently his slumber. The city started to shake as though it was riven by earthquakes. Its inhabitants began to fear that Kuafu would rise up, throwing the city off his back when he awakened.

Lan Xichen captured it well in this illustration — that moment when A-Yao endeavored to coax Kuafu back to sleep, even though the cavern around him was crumbling, threatening to bring the city down with it. Looking at the illustration, A-Yao can recall the memory almost as vividly as if it were happening to him at the moment.

Kuafu’s acrid breath — stinging and ripping at his hair and robes like a hurricane. Little rocks pelting an opened-up Fusheng propped against his shoulder. The ceiling of the tavern groaning with the steady rise and fall of the giant’s chest. Him trembling, straining with the sheer effort of holding his stance against all these forces, feet scrabbling for purchase against the ground as he channelled spiritual energy into his voice:

Which echoed out to Kuafu, stories of the lives of the humans that unfolded in the city that rested above his back.

It lulled him back into an eternal slumber, with the knowledge that those he had left behind were doing alright......

A-Yao smiles as he signs his name in the illustration, in the space between him and the giant. When he’s done, A-Yao looks up to a delighted Lan Hezhen who takes it gratefully from him.

A-Yao startles at the sight behind her: of a very, very long (but indisputably orderly) queue that had silently materialized as A-Yao had been admiring the illustrations. The queue stretched out further than A-Yao could see, spilling out beyond the courtyard

…..it feels like falling into a world where everything has been turned upside down….

“May I borrow your brush for a little longer?” A-Yao asks Lan Hezhen.

Lan Hezhen nods, looking strangely victorious.

Like that, slowly A-Yao lets himself feel a flush of his pride in his chest — like flowers unfolding in a field— every time he signs his name above an illustration of a disciple’s favorite adventure. Memories of his triumphs blow through his mind like a spring breeze. As A-Yao autographs these books, he tackles these disciples’ questions with sincerity:

“Weren’t you afraid when you bargained against the river gods that insisted upon a human sacrifice when you wanted to cross it?” A short and shy young lady asks.

“That secret organization of executioners that stole the Nie Sect’s techniques to cultivate human resentful energy with their beheading blades — what happened to them after they turned themselves in?” A girl asks with morbid curiosity.

“You’re the only man to have ever set foot in Yihua Gong (移花宫) ^[3] — Shifting Flower Palace. Are the ladies there as pretty as they are fearsome when fighting?” A cocky looking teen asks him.

These are all easy (and flattering) questions for A-Yao to answer.

Only one question throws him off.

“Lianfang-zun — what inspired you to leave cultivation society and go on your travels?”

A-Yao stills his brush, as the Lan Sect disciple continues.

“I was wondering since you were at the peak of your fame as a cultivator then — having become a sworn brother to two Sect Leaders, and gained fame as the slayer of Wen Ruohan. Why did you choose to leave?”

A dozen answers flash across his mind. Not one can be easily said aloud. It feels like choking on nothing.

The disciple bows low, face full of contrition. “My deepest apologies, Lianfang-zun if the question I asked was too personal.”

“No, it wasn’t disrespectful,” A-Yao quickly assures the disciple. “Yours is merely an astute question that I need to think carefully about before I answer.”

The disciple nods, evidently delighted that A-Yao had been impressed.

Just as A-Yao lips part to further reply, he sees Lan Xichen briskly walking towards them. The disciples in the orderly queue freeze. Clearly they thought they were in trouble. But the frenetic intensity radiating off his Erge tells him that something deeper must have gone wrong.

“A-Yao, I’m so sorry,” his Erge says, deepening the worry that’s starting to surge within A-Yao. “I’m not sure what I or the other disciples did, but it scared Mo-gongzi badly. He’s now in the room we prepared for him in Yunshen Buzhichu. But I don’t know how to calm him down.”

A-Yao’s mind clouds with a conclusion that hurts so keenly that it must be the truth: that A-Yao is so fucked up that he will ruin A-Yu the more he tries to be a brother to him.

But then all this rolls away — as Lan Xichen fortifies him with a calming gaze, as he in turn allays the guilt Lan Xichen feels with a hand on his shoulder.

“Let us go to him and try to help,” A-Yao says. He feels wonder at how instinctively he knows that he need not phrase it as a question to his Erge. That he doesn’t need to let it hang nervously in the air— that Lan Xichen, as always, will give him an affirming nod.

A-Yu is holed up in his room, sitting on his bed with a blanket wrapped around him, hugging his knees tightly to his chest.

Carefully, A-Yao approaches him, with Lan Xichen following close behind, closing the door behind them.

Before A-Yao can say a word, A-Yu says, “I’m sorry.” His eyes are downcast.

“A-Yu, please look at me.” Obediently, the boy lifts his gaze to meet A-Yao’s. It is oh so uncertain and afraid of the answer it might find when his gaze connects with A-Yao’s.

So A-Yao lavishes tenderness into his countenance, touching the corners of his lips with his dimples. With an aching heart, he endeavors to catch even the subtlest change to A-Yu’s expression: from his eyes widening just a fraction, to his lips parting just a little. Just so he can understand a little better what he should say.

In the end, A-Yao settles for the words, “I was only worried about you.” Slowly, he reaches for A-Yu’s head and gently cards his fingers through his hair.

A-Yu’s eyes grow dewy with tears. “I’m sorry.” It’s a desolate rasp. “I don’t know why…..I broke……” A-Yao settles a hand over A-Yu’s head, caressing it. “…when they took out the wooden practice swords for us to practice the qing-gong technique…..I just……”

A-Yao nods, letting sadness dye his eyes.

“I just couldn’t…..they reminded me of my supervisors……I couldn’t fight……”

A-Yao catches his drift. The Jin Sect cultivators who supervised his experiments with arrays……he remembered how A-Yu’s body was all black and blue when he first found him......

“And my body all over — there are sharp pains every now and then. It’s broken. I can’t cultivate. Lianfang-zun. I’ve let you down.”

A-Yao does not say a word. He simply sweeps A-Yu into an embrace. In that instant, A-Yao’s eyes connect with Lan Xichen’s, which are filled with the earnestness to sympathise. So he knows Lan Xichen is listening in.

“I couldn’t endure that pain. Push down that fear,” A-Yu sobs into his shoulder. “Why am I so weak? So useless?”

“You’re not,” A-Yao soothes. “You’re not……”

“What must I do? Why can't I be better? What must I do to catch up - ”

The boy’s broken, gasping sobs — they shatter A-Yao’s heart.

From its fragments A-Yao salvages the words, “thank you.”

A-Yu tenses.

“Thank you. In a way, I’m relieved that you can’t bear with the pain, that you can’t push down your fears.”

Because these words can be so easily misconstrued, A-Yao draws A-Yu out from his embrace so he can look at his expression more closely, and A-Yu can look at him in turn.

Gently, A-Yao wipes away the tears at the corners of A-Yu’s puzzled, puffy eyes.

“It can be such a bad thing, you know? Being too good at ignoring what your body needs and wants. Pushing it past its limits.”

A-Yu still looks so confused.

At times like these, A-Yao cannot help but become lost in his memories of the final days he spent Buyetian Cheng — that city where skies were never night.

It is an inhuman voice that echoes through the hallways, in a wail so hollow that it should be nothing but a rasp. But instead it ripples through the entire compound.

“A-Xu. A-Chao. Unfilial sons! How could the both of you be so craven and pathetic as to just die like that at the hands of weaklings?” It spits and snarls, and disintegrates into incomprehensible ramblings.

Resigned, Meng Yao walks towards it with a pleasant smile.

The moment his feet cross the threshold of the throne room......

he never sees it coming

Clattering across the ground — an iron teapot. As if in a haze, he feels pain somewhere on his body. He puts a hand up to his forehead — it’s wet with blood. His skin is raw from being scalded by boiling water.

His smile never falters, as he wipes away the blood on his forehead and the tea spilt on him with a handkerchief.

“This one will clean this mess up.” Meng Yao bows low.

When he lifts his gaze, he is struck by how bright Wen Ruohan’s eyes are, as they are fixed upon him.

“You didn’t feel that at all, did you?” Fascination slithers across every syllable uttered by Wen Ruohan.

“It was no bother at all.” Meng Yao pulls on those muscles he needs on his face for dimples, preparing to withdraw from the throne room.

“Ah come to think of it.....I haven’t seen you eat or sleep......you don’t do that much, do you?”

A chill travels down Meng Yao’s spine, as Wen Ruohan calls out, “Come here.”

Meng Yao registers the sound of his feet clicking against the obsidian tiles, as he crosses the room, and ascends the stairs to the throne where Wen Ruohan is sitting, leaning forward with morbid interest.

Roughly, Wen Ruohan takes his chin in his hands.

“You’re such an intriguing specimen.....,” Wen Ruohan croons. He turns Meng Yao’s face in the most uncomfortable angles. Meng Yao restrains his face, keeping it carefully pleasant.

“It is usually cultivation that produces these effects — less sensitivity to pain, the lack of desire to eat and sleep. Your cultivation is next to nothing. Yet you experience things this way......like me......”

Having spent a lifetime with his fate held in the whims of men more powerful than he, Meng Yao offers up the answer he knows Wen Ruohan wants.

“Indeed,” he echoes.

But for once, this answer is also the truth.......

His body — he had made it into that of a doll’s. Pleasant and petite. As harmless as it appeared (unlike every other born and bred cultivators’). (They could rend him to shreds in a simple careless move of theirs).

So he’s always forced it to move as precisely as his mind commanded. Because if his body could feel pain, then couldn’t it understand

— that it was precisely pain that would enfeeble them in the face of danger —

Because wasn’t this all he had against the rest of the society that was out to get him? The infamous ruse of self-injury — 苦肉计 (ku rou ji)? Where you catch a stronger foe off-guard, through executing a move so self-mutilating it is unimaginable to the enemy, or so horrific that even the enemy succumbs to sympathy that you exploit.

It was why it was with clarity of mind that he watched his own hand thrust a blade into his chest, as Nie Mingjue stared at him in horror on the battlefields of Langya. It was enough to distract Nie Mingjue — for him to freeze Nie Mingjue qi and escape when the latter had wanted to drag him to face judgement back at the Jin Sect camp for murdering his commander. As he limped away he could hear whispers in the corners of his mind, telling him: never feel sorry for A-Yao. If he looks pitiful, if he looks hurt, it’s just his ku rou ji. Just him trying to evoke your sympathy to manipulate you. He is unfeeling, inhuman.

And indeed, that knife he’d plunged in his chest — it hadn’t hurt as much as he thought it might. His chest had, after all, already been kicked countless times, as he rolled down the steps of his mother’s brothel, and then Jinlintai. Some time after that, he’d stopped having any sensations in his chest.

That cool unfeeling — it had spread throughout his body. So in Buyetian Cheng, he didn’t feel anything at all — it was all static when he pierced guqin wires into his body, weaving them through his bloodstream, like how he had sewn his own toys as a child. And when he had fevers from the strings being infected, it hadn’t affected his performance as a spy in Buyetian Cheng at all.

He could already imagine it — one day when he was stripped of all his weapons — ripping these wires out of himself to assail his foes, who’d gaze in abject horror at what he had done to himself, as he felt nothing

— he was nothing, after all, if not a doll —

The immortal tyrant of Buyetian Cheng was grinning at him. “You are better. Than A-Xu. Than A-Chao. Even A-Liu. You’re just like me.”

Meng Yao coldly smiles, as Wen Ruohan breathed, “you’re beyond human.”

But that was then.

Now, looking at A-Yu, he feels it rising within him — passion, pure as steam — channeled towards a singular word.

No.

“A-Yu, it is good that you’re not such a good actor. This,” A-Yao tenderly wipes a tear away from A-Yu’s eyes, “is not your body betraying you. Betraying your weakness.

It is precisely these signs that let me know that I need to help you — when you can’t explain that you’re hurt......”

A-Yao sighs. “For the longest time, I told myself that the agony of my body was my greatest obstacle to being recognised as a cultivator. Every time it cried out in pain I hated it. I ignored it. I pushed it harder in spite.”

A-Yu looks at A-Yao, wide-eyed, as A-Yao places a hand upon his chest, saying:

“Until one day, I remembered again — what pain is supposed to say:

There’s something wrong.

There’s something you need to address.

You should stop what you are doing.

Maybe you need to rest…”

A-Yu looks a little mystified, a little understood. A-Yao gives him a slight smile.

“So thank you again, A-Yu for helping me keep that promise I made to you that day when I first found you in that horrible place, where you were forced to do such terrible things.”

He sees that A-Yu recalls the words that echo in A-Yao’s mind as well, when they were uttered in that dark and dismal place.

This I promise you — cultivation will never hurt like this again.

“Thank you,” A-Yu utters.

A-Yao looks once again at his Erge. Wordlessly, an understanding passes between them as well.

He knows.

He knows.

His Erge will help him keep this promise.

And he cannot wait to show Lan Xichen and A-Yu a different vision of what cultivation can be — that he has seen with his own eyes on his travels.

Baoshan Sanren pours A-Yao a cup of tea, tutting at him.

“Really,” she scolds. “You’re the first outsider to have tracked me down — as well as the first I’ve let into my mountain. And the first question you ask me is what I think about cultivation, cultivators and cultivation society?”

“I suspected you might have strong opinions on it,” A-Yao placidly responds.

“Hard pass,” Baoshan Sanren declares. “It would be a waste of my breath.”

A-Yao carefully re-adjusts his approach. “Very well. I’d like to ask you about your title Baoshan Sanren (抱山散人). I can’t help but find it rather strange.”

Baoshan Sanren gives A-Yao a curious look. A-Yao continues:

“Baoshan means carrying, clinging to or hugging a mountain.

Sanren literally means scattered person. It’s an insult against those seen as drifters in life. But it was reclaimed as a title by certain Daoists — who believed that it was good to have distance from the worldly ways of society.

Altogether your title — it means drifter who clings to the mountain. Is that not a contradiction?”

At this, Baoshan Sanren’s eyes turn a little sly.

“Is it a contradiction? Or are you simply too dull to grasp its synthesis?”

A-Yao nods. “A riddle then.”

Baoshan Sanren smirks. “You may be teachable after all! Let’s start first with the idea of Sanren — scattered person or people. These are people who are so useful they are useless. So useless they are useful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you heard of the story of the useless useful tree?”

A-Yao shakes his head.

“Once in a village, there stood a towering tree that reached far up to the skies. As the villagers admired it, a craftsman scoffed, saying “This tree is sanmu (散木) — scattered wood. A boat built with it will sink, a coffin made with it will rot, utensils made with it will spoil, beams made with it will be infested with insects. It’s useless!”

But at night the tree spoke to the craftsman in his dreams. “You call me useless? Compare my wood to that of other trees’? Just look at the peach, pear and other fruit trees in this village! When their fruits are ripe, their branches are torn as people harvest them. Their growth is ever-stunted. It’s why I’ve only ever aimed to be useless. It’s why I’ve grown so tall today. You call my body scattered wood? What about you? You scattered man! ^[4]

A laugh escapes from A-Yao as Baoshan Sanren shakes her head in amusement.

“So that is why I strive to be a Sanren — purposeless and purposeful.

It is why I am Baoshan Sanren. A drifter at heart even as I cling to my mountain. This is my determination to be useless to cultivation society. To protect those I can from being useful to society. So here is where I must be.”

Baoshan Sanren, moved by great emotion, starts to answer the first question A-Yao had asked.

“Cultivation society — it’s corrupted everything! Centuries ago when it was created here in the central plains — cultivation was associated with the idea of building not just one’s body but also one’s character — 修身养性 — xiu shen yang xing. The goal was to be a healthy being. Physical exercise was just one part of how to become a cultivated individual — someone with xiu yang 修养. That was what it meant to be a cultivator — xiu shi 修士.

But somehow the gentry managed to divorce the idea of strengthening one’s body through the formation of a golden core, from that of strengthening one’s moral character — in calling themselves cultivators.

Baoshan Sanren slams a fan in her hand against the table. “It’s why the most powerful people in cultivation society are brutes acting upon their basest instincts. They end up messing everything up with their power struggles, or picking on those too weak to defend themselves.”

Staring fiercely into A-Yao’s eyes, Baoshan Sanren demanded: “Tell me, when was the last war amongst cultivators fought?”

A-Yao scratches his cheek. “...one just ended a few weeks ago......”

Baoshan Sanren lets out an exasperated sigh.

“See! The purpose of cultivation society is so purposeless!

And then after that they muddled morals and cultivation. The cultivators in the gentry started to look down upon those with weaker golden cores. They saw them as uncultured, uncultivated, and thus as lesser life forms.

Even the word for cultivation society — xianmen — 仙门 — literally means gates to divinity. Clearly “cultivators” see themselves as immortals-to-be set apart from commoners. So they do not care about the fate of ordinary people!”

Baoshan Sanren picks up and downs the the piping hot cup of tea she had set before herself. She sets it down with a clatter.

A-Yao knows that he has to take everything Baoshan Sanren just said with a grain of salt ^[5]. Still, his mind is spinning. He says, “I’m struggling to see — what other way there can be……”

Baoshan Sanren sighs. “Cultivation was not created for fighting. Not for fighting fellow humans! Not even for fighting supernatural entities! It’s so tragic that those outside my mountain, they look at the art of flying on swords and think it’s for pursuing enemies or prey. When the first person to fly on a sword simply wanted to soar with the birds.

Or qing-gong (轻功) ^[6] — the art of lightness — which allows one to move swiftly and lightly at superhuman speed, and perform gravity-defying moves such as gliding on water surfaces, scaling high walls and mounting trees. It was not initially designed to be incorporated into fighting styles. It was because someone wanted to scale the highest mountain peaks.”

Ah.

A-Yao bows his head. “This one is truly too thankful for your refreshing perspective on cultivation.”

“There’s no need for thanks! I would need something from you in turn — a riddle that only you can only solve. Unfortunately, you’ll only be able to do so when you leave my mountain.”

“......I was always intending to leave.....”

“I know,” Baoshan Sanren gives him a wistful look. “The most talented outgrow it so quickly...” A-Yao feels his heart warm.

Baoshan Sanren finally leans in to ask, “My riddle is this: what kind of wood should you be made of, for you to accomplish what you have in mind? Wood like that tree that stood tall despite standing in the middle of the village? Wood like my own that keeps far away from society? Or something else entirely?”

Then Baoshan Sanren shoots A-Yao a knowing look. “And this is just a thought: given my long experience as a physician, I can tell with just one glance— you’ve done horrible things to your body that’s caused permanent damage. I’m not sure what your reasons for treating it so brutally are. But I know you have a good head on your shoulders and excellent muscle memory so…”

Baoshan Sanren pokes his forehead with her fan.

“You could consider being a little more useless!”

The sheer novelty of the thought spurs a laugh out of A-Yao. He gives Baoshan Sanren a conspiratorial tilt of the head. “But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Useless…..to whom? Useful for who? Or is “utility” the right thing to think about this?”

He basks in her playful nod, as the riddle grows in his heart.

 

“I’m sorry…..could you explain again what a cultivator is supposed to be?”

Xiao Ying’s voice soars over the sounds of her horses’ footsteps, as it gallops over the grassy plains. A-Yao trails behind her on his own horse. Before he can reply, she pulls at her bow, releasing an arrow into what appears to be the empty sky. A second later, a fat bird drops straight down, right into A-Yao’s hands. Carefully, A-Yao keeps it in the qiankun pouch on his horse, which is rapidly swelling with the other prey that Xiao Ying has caught. Other than birds, it contains other prey like rabbits, deer and foxes.

Once again, A-Yao marvels at the formidable hunting ability of the Qidan.^[7]

The Qidan live in the lands outside the central plains where Chinese civilization is.

For centuries, the Han Chinese looked upon the Qidan and other pastoral and nomadic tribes with disdain. After all, they lacked the sprawling cities, intensive agriculture, schools of scholars, and other signs of high civilization that the Han Chinese were so proud of having. That pride in the unparalleled sophistication of their civilisation was what prompted the Han Chinese to call themselves and their lands Zhongguo — the Central Kingdom. To think of themselves as the civilisation around which other civilisations orbited.

And yet every now and then it was one of these nomadic tribes that eventually gained the strength to try to take the central plains where the Han Chinese dwelt. In cycles of history, these nomadic tribes weakened dynasties, to the brink of collapse or truly collapsing them. This was through launching devastating military campaigns with their impeccable cavalry, or exhausting the coffers of dynasties trying to bribe them into calling these military campaigns off.

A-Yao tries again. “It’s someone who develops their golden core. You know — that orb-like thing that glows in the chest of certain exceptional individuals — where spiritual energy flows towards and from.”

Xiao Ying looks even more puzzled. “Isn’t that just like a muscle in the human body? The more you exercise it, the more visible and developed it becomes? Are there people who do not have one?”

This stuns A-Yao. “Do you have people who know of these exercises and practice them a lot?””

A-Yao demonstrates rapidly the practices he’s painstakingly scavenged through the Sunshot Campaign on how to develop a golden core. He demonstrates core-building exercises, meditation, breathing patterns, and so on. These are meant to be well-kept secrets. He knows there are many back in the central plains who would call him a traitor for demonstrating them to a Qidan person. There are even quite a few who think that A-Yao’s background means he is undeserving of such information in the first place.

Xiao Ying’s confusion deepens. “These exercises — we teach simpler versions of them to babies as they are learning to crawl. Such exercises maintain good health, strengthen the body and encourage longevity. It is woven into every aspect of our life. Even while cooking or dancing — to some extent we are always doing these things. It would be unthinkable for a child to not know them. Is that not so for the people of the central plains?”

A-Yao inwardly cringes as he thinks of all the fake cultivation manuals his mother had bought for him as a child, and all the time he wasted on them. “Such practices are a closely guarded secret amongst the various Sects — which are organisations of cultivators. Even rogue cultivators who are not part of these Sects are very selective of who they pass these cultivation methods to…”

Xiao Ying looks very disturbed. “Well if you ask me, these cultivators sound like robbers! How ever did they manage to steal this life-giving knowledge from the rest of their society?”

Which was...truly a fascinating question. How did “cultivation” develop so differently in the central plains compared to that of the Qidans’ lands? And was “cultivation” differently practiced in other lands as well?

A-Yao asks, “What about night-hunting? Do you have anyone who specialises in getting rid of supernatural entities plaguing the people?”

Xiao Ying laughs. “I suppose a skilled hunter might be especially good at it. But they should only be needed for particularly powerful supernatural entities. In general, everyone knows how to placate a malicious supernatural entity, or how to defend themselves from one. Everyone carries around some basic talismans that can be activated to ward them off. It’s a basic survival skill.”

A spark of surprise appears in Xiao Ying’s eyes. “Oh no! Don’t tell me! These “cultivators” have managed to trick everyone else in your society into thinking that they’re the only ones who can exterminate supernatural entities! That the average person is incapable of learning how to do so.”

Xiao Ying is…...half right. But as A-Yao parts his lips to explain how she’s half wrong, Xiao Ying bursts into laughter.

“What curious creatures — cultivators! I would very much like to meet one!”

As A-Yao is about to admit that for a time, he considered himself a cultivator, when Xiao Ying smirks and says, “I would be more than happy to stick all the arrows I have into them!”

Merrily, she waves the arrows in her quiver, as she rides after some prey in the distance that A-Yao cannot see.

A-Yao looks at the bow and arrow he has carried by his side. He thinks that perhaps he should put them to better use in this hunt.

These are just the first two stories that flash through A-Yao’s mind. He runs countless others through it as well, as he carefully thinks about how he can begin to challenge cultivation society.

He reaches into his qiankun pouch and pulls out a copy of one of his novels. He gazes again upon its cover, so lovingly illustrated by Lan Xichen.

It will not be easy, but a part of him feels like he is prepared for it.

He will start with revamping the way that technique that had so troubled A-Yu — qing-gong — is taught.

✦❘༻༺❘✦ Notes ✦❘༻༺❘✦

¹ Yunshen Buzhichu (云深不知处): Known in the english-speaking fandom as the Cloud Recesses. But in chinese it actually means: deep in the clouds, who knows where. It’s from a line in a famous Song Dynasty poem — The Hermit I Sought I Met Not (寻隐者不遇), by Jia Dao. I'd translate it as follows:
I ask the boy beneath the pines, his master where can I find?
“He’s here picking herbs in the mountain’s expanse, deep in the clouds who knows where.”^{[return to text]}

² Kuafu zhuiri (夸父追日): An iconic figure in chinese mythology. Full story here. Kuafu zhuiri is also an idiom to describe either someone with great ambitions, or who has overestimated their own strength. It reflects the desire of the early chinese to understand and conquer nature. ^{[return to text]}

³ Yihua Gong (移花宫): Just a cameo from a place in one of my favourite martial arts novels The Peerless Proud Twins. ^{[return to text]}

⁴ This parable is related by Zhuangzi, a pivotal figure in classical philosophical Daoism (chinese source: Baidu). ^{[return to text]}

⁵ This has no historical basis. I'm just tinfoil hatting here :P. But also riffing off Reinhold Niebur's observation that "aristocratic confusion of manners and morals seem to exist in every tongue". For instance terms for the gentry such as "noblemen" in English, or "adel" and "edel" in German seem to have built into them an assumption of their moral excellence compared to the rest of the population, which in turn justifies the wealth and social status they command.^{[return to text]}

⁶ Qing-gong (轻功): In martial arts shows and movies, if you see characters do gravity defying moves, as they bound from spot to spot or glide over water, it's probably them using qing-gong. Wikipedia link here. ^{[return to text]}

⁷Qidan: the mandarin chinese name for this people. If you’re googling for them, they would be the Khitan. I’m admittedly giving a romanticised image of them by depicting only one aspect of their way of life. But it is true that Khitan women had more opportunities to take political power than Han Chinese women in the same era, and were involved in hunting and fighting. ^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

A-Yao’s grand plan to change the way cultivation is practiced goes…….a little awry — starting with an ache in his bones the morning his plan is set to unfold.

The dull pains had woken him while the sky was still a dark blue outside his window — an entire hour before most of Yunshen Buzhichu would stir. Sighing, he summons Fusheng into his right hand, as a support of sorts, to push himself off his bed. His feet sting with the coldness of the floors.

He drapes his traveling cloak around himself, and quickly combs his hair. Then, picking up his ever-glowing lantern, he strides towards his Erge’s personal room, casting faint shadows behind him through the corridor to the Hanshi.

Even before he knocks upon the door of the Hanshi, he hears the sound of shuffling papers.

Clearly, his Erge was already awake.

Sure enough, when he knocks, Lan Xichen soon slides open the door.

A breathtaking smile graces Lan Xichen’s face. A-Yao feels like dawn has arrived early just for him.

Lan Xichen ushers A-Yao into his room, and has him seated comfortably by his balcony overlooking the rolling valleys beyond Yunshen Buzhichu. He hears the sound of water boiling. Lan Xichen soon returns carrying in his hands a teapot, spilling out steam and the scent of white tea with herbs, even before he begins pouring it into the cup set before A-Yao.

The cup, held between A-Yao’s clammy hands, feels warm. He is struck by the realization that the herbs in the tea were likely handpicked by his Erge, and the water to brew it drawn by his Erge himself from one of the springs of Yunshen Buzhichu.

As Lan Xichen settles down beside him, A-Yao sheepishly says, “Erge, I’m so sorry. I think I need your help.”

Concern rounds Lan Xichen’s eyes.

“I’ve had some chronic pains flare up again…I don’t think I will be able to fully engage with the students for the lesson that I have prepared for them in qing-gong. So I was wondering if you might be able to help me find someone who could assist me with some of the more strenuous parts of my lesson plans. I’ve already drawn up in detail how the lesson should be conducted in case something like this happened. But I need someone who would be willing to help me in this. ”

Not too long ago, A-Yao would have forced himself to suffer rather than trouble his Erge. Even now, that instinct is still there, creeping in from the corners of his mind, whispering that he does not deserve to ask for help. After all, so much of the damage done to his body — it's self-inflicted. It is from the awful things he did to himself during the Sunshot Campaign to survive as a soldier and a spy. He’d done this to himself despite knowing all the damage his body had already taken from others — all the beatings and the starving he'd endured growing up in a brothel, capped with his catastrophic fall all the way down from the top of Jinlintai.

But within him there is another little voice whimpering that he should nonetheless try to ask for help — to give others the chance to awe him with their generosity.

Lan Xichen gives him a smile so soft, it could dissolve clouds. “I will be able to help — just let me know what I need to do!”

Still, it startles A-Yao, the immediateness of Lan Xichen’s response. “Erge, you need not personally lend me your assistance. You must be busy as Sect Leader, and I’ve given you such short notice!”

Lan Xichen’s smile turns sweet. “Let me help you, A-Yao.”

A-Yao takes in this scene of Lan Xichen resplendent against the rectangle of light that is emanating from the frame of the balcony as the sun slowly rises. He stows it away like a portrait, to be adored whenever he needs a sight to sanctify his eyes.

“Thank you,” A-Yao breathes out with all the grace he can muster.

Lan Xichen’s eyes sparkle like dew on grass, as he in turn says, “A-Yao, tell me about your plans.”

A-Yao leans conspiratorially towards Lan Xichen, as he sketches out for Lan Xichen the scene that he is trying to set for the Lan Sect disciples on his lecture on qing-gong:

……It starts in a village a few hundred li away from Yunshen Buzhichu named Caixia Cun 彩霞村, famed for its colourful sunset skies. There, the people set fishing nets floating along a nearby lake that pours as a waterfall into rivers, whose banks are flush with fish and wispy reeds along its shore. Just a stone’s throw away, there is an orchard full of massive fruit trees, whose branches can be as thick as a baby’s girth. All was well, except that after a period of dry weather, the rain suddenly fell – so abundantly, that the fruits heavy on the boughs of trees split. These had to be harvested as soon as possible. But the villagers of Caixiacun were caught preparing for a festival to celebrate the abundance of fish in their lakes and rivers.

So here is where they come in – Lan Sect disciples. Those who have roughly learned qing-gong from classes, from battering each other with wooden swords, and martial art manuals. Who can now learn it again the way it was first discovered by the first cultivators. By watching with wide, bewildered eyes: how squirrels leap amongst the latticework of branches that thin along the tops of trees. How dragonflies dips their tail across the waters to create the tiniest of ripples. How sprays of water hover then land, cool and light upon skin.

By finding their place in the rhythm of all things caught up in the high of summer. Learning to swiftly but softly bound to the highest boughs of these giant fruit trees to take their harvest with nary a tremble to the trees’ branches or a bruise upon its fruit……

A-Yao sketches this scene out for his Erge, like how he sends him outlines of the sights he’s seen on his travels.

Just like the illustrations that his Erge has done for his books on his travels, Lan Xichen takes these sketches: he fills them brimming with life — like how mist materializes into a rainbow when the light hits it right.

So in the afternoon, though A-Yao still feels a slight ache as he wanders about Caixiacun, knows acutely the limits he should set for his body this day — he nonetheless feels a sense of release and liberty at the sight that Lan Xichen and he have shepherded into reality.

Heedless and heady, he watches the Lan Sect disciples dart in starts between the trees, with the piles of fruits in their baskets growing. They turn to the fruit pickers in the village who shadow them, who are picking up qing-gong faster than anyone expected.

As the wind whistles its whims through his hair, A-Yao cards looser locks behind his ear, stopping at sight of the tall grasses bending to listen to the idylls of the wind, as the flowers within them rustle with laughter.

Still, A-Yao’s thoughts hover, heavy as the bees between the branches of the fruit trees. His eyes flit from side to side, searching for two particular faces. A bird soars by. A butterfly follows after. A Lan Sect disciple flutters just behind them with rippling robes, stretching for a luscious peach that is just one brush of her fingertips out of her reach…...if only she would loosen herself from the grip of gravity a little more…...then she reaches it as she masters qing-gong in that instant.

Then finally, A-Yao spots Lan Xichen.

Lan Xichen is half-turned away from him, a little further down from the crowd. He carries with him a basket so laden with fruits that it's a wonder that it does not break.

There is a smile gracing Lan Xichen’s face, snug the way the trees tuck songbirds away into their hollows, as he gives pointers to another Lan Sect disciple, who nods vigorously.

Entranced, A-Yao’s eyes trace how the sun sets a trail of sweat across Lan Xichen’s brow on fire. He watches Lan Xichen wipe it away with one of his elegant sleeves that belie the muscled cords of his arms.

A-Yao is suddenly struck by the desire to call out to his Erge, to meet him on the shady side of the river banks, where a raft of clouds drifts thinly over the sky — which would bloom a cool blue if they looked up at it together from beneath the canopy of trees there.

He does not.

But the A-Yao that he daydreams of — he does. There, he takes a peach from Lan Xichen’s basket, holding it out in his hand. He runs a veneer of spiritual energy slightly beneath its pinkish skin in spirals, so it unravels to reveal its bright white flesh. As this Erge of his fantasies is impressed by his control over his spiritual energy, this A-Yao sinks his teeth into it like how the blushing spring bites into the last vestiges of the winter frost. He spoons the soft flesh of the peach into his Erge’s mirthful mouth, face alight with his Erge’s sparkling gaze.

All the while burning with a sudden thirst of an intensity fathomable only in the deepest, most muddled dreams.

Knowing that this desire could only be slaked upon milky white skin, if he were to fall upon Lan Xichen like shadow upon light and...

Oh.

A-Yao restrains himself, drawing a curtain of dignity over his countenance, embarrassed by how long he might have been standing there looking at Lan Xichen, likely with lips slightly agape.

The disciple that Lan Xichen is instructing spots him, and looks like he’s about to speak of his presence.

A-Yao hurries off in the opposite direction along the riverbanks.

Along the way, he hears the delighted laughter of a handful of children. He sees that they are from the village. Each is carried on the backs of various Lan Sect disciples, who in turn are floating on their swords which they have sheathed. On the count of three, the disciples take off, tilting their swords just so their hilts skim the surface of the shimmering river, to send out a sparkling spray of water behind them, as they soar upriver.

Soon they reach the shining curtain of a waterfall. The children squeal as the incline of their flight deepens and they are almost parallel to the river, as they glide along the bright curtain of the waterfall.

A-Yao’s gaze lifts to the top of the waterfall, where there is a longmen (龙门) — a dragon gate.

It was said in legends that carp that swim against the current of a river to then leap over the top of a waterfall would transform into dragons. There, longmen are set up to commemorate this feat. The phrase liyue longmen (鲤跃龙门) is in turn used to signify when someone from a lowly position ascends to the high position in society, such as a peasant becoming an official through passing the imperial examinations.

The disciples carrying the village children on their backs crest over the waterfall, through the longmen, reaching the lake on the other side, where cheers erupt for them.

As A- Yao continues his search for A-Yu, he wonders at why that made him feel so wistful.

By the time A-Yao finds A-Yu, the late afternoon has started to turn to evening.

A-Yu has hidden himself away in a secluded part of the forest that is impossible to spot from an aerial view. He floats wobbly on a sword for a split second before he falls down again. There are bruises, black and blue, marring his skin all over. He watches as A-Yu tries again, rising haphazardly in a zig-zag through the air.

This time A-Yao catches him when he falls. A-Yu avoids looking him in the eye, even as A-Yao steadies him on his feet.

“You know, you need to give your meridians more time to recover before you attempt flying on a sword right?” A-Yao exhorts.

“I know,” A-Yu replies, keeping his eyes pinned on his feet.

A-Yao sternly continues, “When we took you to see Sect Leader Wen, she advised that you need to be careful while cultivating — because of the damage you’ve taken from the blowback from experimenting with arrays. If you overwork your meridians, you could really hurt yourself. You’re already hurting yourself.”

A-Yao rests a hand on A-Yu’s shoulder and bends so they are eye level. “Give it time. Take it easy. You mastered qing-gong very quickly today. That’s a milestone to be celebrated!”

A-Yu’s eyes lift to meet his own, still etched with an unuttered emotion. A-Yao gives him time to come up with some way to express it, even as he attentively watches for clues.

From afar, there is an ecstatic shout, followed by the sound of water being kicked up — the echoes of a joyride up the waterfall on a flying sword. There are also sounds of the growing bustle of the kicking off of the fishing festival. Already, the scent of fish roasted over the fire fills the air.

“Yao-gege,” A-Yu whispers, “I feel like I’m letting my A-Niang down.”

“As I told you before — what’s most important to her is that you’re safe and sound.”

“It’s just…..” A-Yu looks away from him again, his face half-hidden in shadow. “When I look at you, I think about how exceptional you are. Your accomplishments during the Sunshot Campaign. All the journeys you’ve made since then.”

A-Yu looks at his hands. “And I feel how lacking I am.”

A-Yao gently pats A-Yu’s head. “Be kinder to yourself. A seed is not as impressive as what it will grow into. Time will reveal all things.” A doubtful pallor remains on A-Yu’s face.

In his heart, A-Yao thinks of wishes, swimming about the dark pools of the soul like little fishes, yearning to be so much more.

He thinks of the carp in stories that attempt the leap over the waterfall — but fail. They say there is a little black bruise over the top of their heads, that will be passed on to their descendants.

He can almost feel it — his A-Niang tenderly dotting a vermillion huadian on the center of his forehead, telling him that this is what he will do one day: he will ascend to the top of Jinlintai and make him so proud.

But the truth is that there is still some part of him lying at the base of Jinlintai, like a fish wrung out of the water and thrown onto the floor.

Ah. How it aches his heart. They always say that the hearts of all parents are the same — that they 望子成龙 (wang zi cheng long) — wish for their children to be as dragons. To make something extraordinary of themselves. To honor the sacrifices of their parents and the hopes they have for them.

This, for the longest time, was A-Yao’s guiding star as to what he had to make of his life…if he was to be a worthy child of his mother…his mother whom he had let down so, so badly, in letting her die so dismally in a brothel, forgotten by the man she loved. To have never repaid her by giving her a good life in her old age……

Suddenly, A-Yu looks so small, buckling from the burden of an unfair world, along with regrets towards someone no longer in this world.

“A-Yu, would you like to try to liyue longmen? To leap over the waterfall through the dragon gates with me?”

“I can’t.” The longing building in his eyes, it burns him.

A-Yao smiles as tenderly as he can, trying to soothe these roaring flames into the warmth of a bonfire. “Qing-gong is enough for this.” You are enough. “You just need to follow my lead…”

A-Yao takes a step on the grass, but this time he rises upwards like he’s taken a step up a stair — because this time he is using qing-gong. So he stands atop the tips of a few strands of grass without causing them to arch.

A-Yu’s eyes grow round, as he tremulously dares to set out a step. Sure enough, like the mythical creature Qilin whose tread is careful not to hurt even the grasses beneath its feet, A-Yu ambles over these soft green blades without bending them in the slightest.

A laugh burbles out of A-Yu, as he looks down at his feet, and then up again at A-Yao.

A-Yao smirks, gesturing at A-Yu to follow him with a tilt of his head.

Then he races off as fast as his feet can carry him. He darts an eye out for A-Yu who trails not far behind him like a kite.

They break out of the forest canopy, into an open field.

Above them — the sky blooms in shades of crimson and ocre, daubed by clouds. Beneath them — the silky grass ripples in the wind as they race over it. Passing over this sea of green, A-Yao catches flashes of color — flowers hidden betwist the grasses like currents of love beneath the surface of a smile. There too, kingdoms of critters are conversing in the darkness, of matters that will never touch them.

On fleet feet, in the twinkling of an eye, they reach the embankments, where the hubbub of the fishing festival is in full motion. The river flows heavily with the colors of the setting sun, away from the jagged beauty of the waterfall. It carries leaves from trees as it moves and deepens like the moods of a sensitive soul.

A-Yao once again shoots a challenging look at A-Yu’s sad face when it seems that their race will end where the grass meets the waters.

A-Yao leaps towards the river, the wind through his hair, cool on his skin.

Time slows; feels like moving through syrup, as he focuses and lands ever-so-lightly upon one of the floating leaves, leaving just the slightest ripple upon the waters’ surface. With a spark of delight in his chest, A-Yao leaps again to another leaf along the river. And then again. And again.

So he is skipping across the waters.

And A-Yu is just behind him. Wide-eyed. Bewildered. Hopping carefully from leaf to leaf with arms outstretched — as though he were in the most wonderful dream that he must be so careful not to wake up from.

But they are soon reaching the waterfall at the top of the river. A-Yao nods encouragingly at A-Yu, and hopes he gets the message — have a little more faith in yourself!

He spots a touch of green on the shimmering curtain of the waterfall. He bounds onto the leaf, on a tiptoe.

One leaf…

Two leaves…

Three leaves…

Four leaves…

Just like that he’s skipped halfway up the waterfall — and A-Yu is just behind him.

In the waterfall he can see a wisp of his reflection. He’s still so slight and small. Not at all the cultivator he dreamed he would be as a child. Without the arms that he thought he could throw around the world to raise and embrace it. Without the legs to carry him to the highest position in cultivation society.

But that doesn't matter. Because everyone knows what happens when carp reach the top of waterfalls.

And this reflection of A-Yao is smiling so brightly at him.

Five leaves…

Six leaves…

Seven leaves…

Eight leaves…

A-Yao turns to A-Yu who looks terrified and elated all at once.

“Remember this,” he says, as he takes A-Yu’s hand.

Nine leaves.

With all the strength in their bodies straining through their muscles, they leap upwards — over the waterfall — until their feet thud on the wooden beams at the very top of the longmen.

Perched atop the longmen, they survey the scene before them, like travelers arriving in a foreign land. There are boats and fishing nets floating along the lake that feeds into the waterfall. Villagers and Lan Sect disciples milling about and chatting with each other. Drumbeats and a raucous folk song being sung. A careless dance by a group of carefree maidens. Lan Xichen stops a conversation he is having to wave at the both of them in delight. A-Yao waves back with a smile. And above it all, sky lanterns are being released into the air, suffusing it with light.

“Remember this,” A-Yao tells himself this time. Letting this sight transform how his body feels to him — from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. Strength floods him till he is flush with pride. This time, it seems A-Yu is on the same page as him.

Sharing a conspiratorial glint in their eyes, knowing now that they are more than fish bound to the waters, they leap to the nearest sky lanterns drifting amongst the clouds……ascending to the heavens in a single step.

They skip from lantern to lantern which stretches on and on like a pathway of warm gold. It feels like skipping from stone to stone to cross a shimmering stream.

But oh! How it feels to float above the arduous affairs of the world, untouchable. Until the world starts to soften once again when one looks down at it all — how it burns again with the allure of a mystery. And they are now so close to the stars, they could catch on its white fire, and douse themselves with the cool glow of the moon.

But eventually the sky lanterns grow scarce. It is time for them to make a descent. A-Yao clasps A-Yu’s hands in his once again, as they leap off the furthest lantern lights from the longmen.

A-Yao feels himself falling, falling, falling into fondness for the wild world that splashes itself out for him below in a furor of lights, sounds and color. A-Yu laugh tickles his ears as the wind whistles along and ruffles his robes.

His heart, full to bursting with wonder, clenches out tears in the corners of his eyes.

“How did I get here?” A-Yao can’t help but ponder.

But that spark summons the darkness in his mind.

Deep down he knows how he reached this place…what drove him to run away from it all.

It is nothing good. But A-Yao cannot bring himself to call it bad either.

A-Yao and A-Yu land lightly upon a raft, rowed upstream — of course by thoughtful, considerate Lan Xichen, who already has a brilliant smile prepared for them.

“The both of you are quite the pair of trendsetters,” Lan Xichen remarks, his arms still rowing their raft towards the festival. A-Yao and A-Yu turn around.

They see both Lan Sect disciples and villagers attempting to leap through the dragon gates through qing-gong. Above them, there are many more skipping on the sky lanterns as well.

“I think I want to try it again,” A-Yu suddenly says. “This time by myself.” He looks a little apologetically at A-Yao — who laughs and waves, saying, “Run along then!”

Lan Xichen smiles at him too in amusement.

A-Yao leans with criss-crossed arms, peering over the hull of the fishing boat that he is riding upon with his Erge, listening to how the tides rhythmically lap against it. Beside him, Lan Xichen’s sleeves drape over the ship's bow, adorning it with silk. Together they watch the reflection of the moon grow clearer, as the tides of the lake slow and it smooths out.

Joy suddenly swells within A-Yao, out of the blue. A-Yao turns to give Lan Xichen his most brilliant smile, with eyes shimmering with sincerity, and dimples touching the bottom corners of his lips. He basks in how Lan Xichen reflects it back in a heartbeat with as much brightness and affection.

But then, he sees a thought flit across Lan Xichen’s mind, that causes his smile to flicker forlorn, his eyes to dim the slightest, before he draws up a smile again. They’re thrown further out of sync as Lan Xichen ducks his head so he is staring silently at the lake's waters.

It feels wrong looking at Lan Xichen like this, when that veneer of perfection he puts up as the First Jade of the Lan has inexplicably slipped off — snagged upon some unspeakable sorrow that his Erge should have untangled.

Still, all A-Yao can do is wait for Lan Xichen to pick up the sense of trust he needs to confide in A-Yao about what is weighing so heavily upon his heart.

Sure enough, his Erge eventually asks, “A-Yao, when will you be departing from Yunshen Buzhichu to resume your travels?”

His Erge’s tone is light and casual, like a leaf drifting across a lake. But there is a tenseness to it — like seeing the silhouette of a great beast pass beneath the surface of the waters.

Abruptly, A-Yao thinks of a moment back in Yunshen Buzhichu, where he overheard his Erge instructing a Lan Sect disciple on how to prepare his accommodations with an unusual intensity.

“......please, do remember to scent his bedding with the fragrance of the fresh wildflowers I gathered, and to enrich the broth in today’s soup with more of the herbs that I picked this morning.”

A-Yao had been caught in the hallway, mid-stride, as he heard those words, charged with a meaning that he had felt, hot as steam and yet could not grasp in the moment.

“We must make Lianfang-zun’s stay as pleasant as possible while it lasts,” Lan Xichen had exhorted the junior disciple. “His travels are arduous, where he sleeps rough and does not eat well. We must make his stay as comfortable as possible while it lasts.”

Then with an uncharacteristic melancholy, Lan Xichen had confided in the disciple, “I do not want to let him down.”

Back then, the undercurrent of agitation in his Erge’s voice had led A-Yao to resolve that he would be a better guest in Yunshen Buzhichu — so his host would worry less about suiting his tastes.

But now he understands……the deeper meaning behind Lan Xichen’s words.

There’s so much he has to say — a spinning, sprawling universe of things, so enmeshed with his being, that he chokes upon it all when he tries to draw it all out from his throat.

It is true that every moment in cultivation society once felt like walking through a shoulder-high sea of porcelain shards that tore him bloody.

But every moment he spent with Lan Xichen whilst they were still in that broken place?

It was a brilliant bubble, as round and perfect as eternity, where he was safe from harm.

Even when it burst, even when the cracks in his soul were being prised apart by the cruelties of cultivation society……

…...the depth of care that Lan Xichen had shown to him? It always rose like the tides to fill those dark cracks with liquid light, if only just for the briefest moment, before it all leached away.

But it was enough.

It was always enough for him to scrape by with his pride in a world that told him he was useless. What in turn had he given his Erge?

A-Yao now imagines the past few years from his Erge’s perspective while he was out on his travels. It’s A-Yao just popping in and out of his life, with a hello soon followed up with a goodbye, as his Erge struggled with reconstructing Yunshen Buzhichu and his Sect.

It’s A-Yao worrying him with his letters about how he had scraped by the skin of his teeth from a treacherous adventure, before informing him of the next one he had planned.

And it is Lan Xichen, unable to do anything for A-Yao, as A-Yao hung his own life in the balance…...

…...except hold out his arms in hospitality, giving him the warmest smile every time A-Yao deigned to visit Yunshen Buzhichu. Patiently. Lovingly. As if welcoming him home…...

Believing that he wasn’t enough for A-Yao to stay.

Never knowing that the reason why A-Yao never stayed for long was precisely because he always felt thoroughly seen by him.

Because he knew that Lan Xichen would catch on too quickly to the many dark secrets he held so closely to his chest.

(And there was a little part of himself that screamed that the moment Lan Xichen knew, wouldn’t he turn worthless and despicable in his eyes?)

(How could he even believe for a moment that lovely Lan Xichen could love him — a misshapen, stunted thing, against his breathtaking beauty that could make the sun and moon and stars fall out of the sky in shock at his brilliance, which could light up and warm the world in the stead of these celestial bodies, until he hung them up again with his gentleness and immense strength?)

A-Yao takes a steadying breath. He feels his heart rattling like a pair of dice cast in a great game.

“That depends,” A-Yao says, noting how the light in Lan Xichen’s eyes wavers once again.

“On a related note, I have a proposition for you. But you should carefully consider if it benefits the Lan Sect. You should only accept it if it does.”

Lan Xichen looked thoughtful.

“I would like to ask if I could join the Gusu Lan Sect.”

A-Yao’s finger flies before Lan Xichen’s lips, which had immediately curled to form the words “yes”, as he nodded his head.

“Lan Zongzhu, shouldn’t you ask more questions?” A-Yao can’t help but smile even as his tone is chastising.

“But Lianfang-zun is overqualified,” Lan Xichen deferentially bows his head. “Look at how he’s giving me such good advice on how to admit people into my Sect.”

A-Yao scoffs good-naturedly at the mischievous twinkle in his Erge's eye.

“Then you should take my advice.”

A-Yao stares at the quivering reflection of the moon in the lake. “You should at least ask me if there is any reason why you should not accept me into your Sect. And as your sworn brother I promise, I will answer you honestly.”

“Why then, should I not recruit you into the Lan Sect?” Lan Xichen is looking intently at him.

A-Yao sighs, looking at his hands which seem silvery and shaded in the moonlight. “There were things that happened to me while I was a spy in Buyetian Cheng, things about that experience that changed me, that should disqualify me from ever being part of cultivation society.”

“A-Yao……you will always have a place here, either with me in the Lan Sect, or even with our Dage in the Nie Sect……”

A-Yao lets his Erge’s words drift by him like the breeze, as he finally admits the easiest of those secrets, “I can no longer hold a sword.”

Lan Xichen is evidently stunned, from how his eyes have widened slightly, and his lips are parted.

A-Yao puzzles together the words he needs, and tries to not let them catch in his throat. “Every time I try to grip a sword, all of a sudden I can’t breathe. My blood runs cold. I shake uncontrollably, feeling like I’m dragged to the doors of death.”

Lan Xichen moves closer to A-Yao, until their shoulders are touching. “So A-Yao cannot use a sword. That’s alright.”

A-Yao lifts his head, so he can hold Lan Xichen’s gaze again. “A-Yao shines, in a million other ways and more. So please,” Lan Xichen smiles, “won’t you join us in the Lan Sect?”

The tenderness in Lan Xichen’s eyes, it feels like that spark that lands upon kindling, like tending to a small flame, like setting one’s feet down after a long and weary travel.

How he’d missed this.

So he dares to tell Lan Xichen, “I have one last confession to make about what happened to me in Buyetian Cheng…”

He will remember it to his dying day: how he had held himself so still as Wen Ruohan turned his face in his hands so clinically, like examining a prize animal…. How it had felt when Wen Ruohan declared that he was an intriguing specimen — better than Wen Xu, Wen Chao and even Wen Zhuliu. Beyond human.

Was he supposed to hate himself? For being so fascinating to the cruel tyrant of Buyetian Cheng?

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. He tells this to himself.

He tells himself that what matters is how his coming and goings, his reactions to all that should bring him exhaustion or suffering — all are closely observed by Wen Ruohan and his spies.

There is a part of Meng Yao that screams that he should run. Abandon this war of the cultivators. Meng Yao smothers it.

In his mind, he still sees how his A-Niang had tenderly drawn a vermillion huadian on his forehead. One day, she told him, he would not need to wash it away — when he has a place in Jinlintai.

So Meng Yao stays, like an insect suspended in a crystal jar, observed from all angles.

(But this also means that nothing can be done to him without Wen Ruohan knowing.)

…….At a feast, a Wen Sect cultivator wipes the rim of a goblet of wine Meng Yao hands to him for no obvious reason. (“Whore’s son,” the man is probably thinking.”)

The next day, he is found with a belly that had burst from too much wine…… and all those who had attended the feast without standing up for Meng Yao — they are bedridden for days from an agonizing stomach ache……

Slowly, the slander that stalks his footsteps down hallways is snuffed out, the names of his gossipers erased even from the records of the Wen Sect. So striding through Buyetian Cheng becomes fortifying. Oh how blissfully silent it is for once, how light he feels when all eyes are averted from him as though he were a blinding pillar of flame. Fear and respect — he relishes how it rests like an edifying shawl over his shoulders.

Slowly, even he starts to disappear.

He’s handed robes, finer than what even the right hand man of Wen Ruohan should have. He’s shown to a room much more lavishly decorated than any disciple should inhabit. His schedule is cleared of all busywork. In its place, a series of masters are sent to him, to teach him Wen Sect techniques too valuable to be taught to those outside their inner circle, along with etiquette a mere member of the sect would not need.

He senses it. Any moment, if he should ask, he could have his personal name changed to Wen Yao. From there, he could get another courtesy name and then disappear altogether — as the successor of Wen Ruohan.

A jar of wine is cast carelessly across the floor. It shatters so hard its porcelain disintegrates to dust. It cracks the floors’ obsidian tiles, which is soaked all the more with liquor.

“More wine!” Wen Ruohan roars. Meng Yao steps up the dais, to stand by Wen Ruohan’s throne, to pour more wine into his cup.

Wen Ruohan looks at Meng Yao and nods approvingly.

Suddenly Wen Ruohan goes off, “I never understood what they wanted from me — A-Xu. A-Chao.”

“Even while they were children. They were so angry when I didn’t show up for meals with them when I clearly didn’t need to eat.

“They were so upset on days where they were frightened awake by something at night, and I wouldn’t sleep in their room with them — because I don’t sleep.

“And they would pester me to hold them. But when I held them they yelled at me saying that it hurt, it hurt?

What did they want from me? I wonder…”

Meng Yao cannot help but stare, mesmerized by the stupidity of the most powerful man in cultivation society. A cruel tyrant who cannot tell that he is grieving over the death of his only sons.

Who is too proud to hold a funeral for his sons, whom he derides too often as utter failures, for his claims that he despises them to be taken seriously. Who only knows how to bloat himself on wine, even though he cannot get drunk, because his golden core is so strong. So strong that it also strikes terror into the hearts of all, leaving no one who dares to comfort him.

Wen Ruohan is watching Meng Yao expectantly for a response.

For some reason, Meng Yao's mind blanks on him.

All he can think about is that one time in Yunping when Lan Xichen had been washing his own Sect robes, and had torn it due to his prodigious Lan arm strength. Which also meant that he'd blunted the needle when he tried to sew its tears closed but instead jabbed the needle against his skin. He snapped mops when he tried to clean the floor. Bruised fruits at the market when he pressed it with his thumb to check for freshness. Broke the board of his own bed from his night terrors.

At the helpless horror on Lan Xichen's face each time he messed up and turned to look at Meng Yao, all Meng Yao could feel was pity. And a deep sorrow for this gentle man — who had until now, only been asked by those whose affection he yearned for — for more strength, to apply himself more, to push himself harder. So his hands could bend and break swords for battle but could no longer carry out simple domestic chores.

"It's fine," he would whisper gently to Lan Xichen, whenever he would stare stricken at his own arms like they were monstrosities.

So he had let Lan Xichen comb his hair in the morning and in the evenings, to let him feel how it was truly fine. And oh, with his trembling fingers, Lan Xichen was ever so gentle. It nearly brought tears to Meng Yao's eyes, his scalp tingling from the memories of all the other times rougher hands had combed his hair so hard it ripped tufts of it from its roots. 

One day, Lan Xichen could wash laundry without supervision. Sew together clothes. Polish the floor till it shone. Pick produce from the market. And he stopped his night terrors once the both of them pushed their beds together, and linked their hands as they slept. So the burdens of everyday life became easier for Meng Yao to bear.

The air by then had grown sweet with pots of jasmines in full bloom. He had gotten these plants and placed them by the windowsill of his room, when he first found a heavily injured Lan Huan, and had wanted the bedridden youth to have a little something by his side to brighten his day. There had sadly been no flowers on the jasmine plants then.

Lan Huan caressed the underside of these blooming jasmines so delicately with the tips of his fingers, that the drops of dew upon their petals did not shift in the slightest.

At his breath of awe, Lan Xichen had turned to him and said, "A-Yao, you have taught me to be gentle." And this, indeed, was how tenderly Lan Xichen had reached out to cup one of Meng Yao's cheeks, and brush it fondly with a thumb. 

“Wen Xu and Wen Chao already told you exactly what they needed. You just didn’t believe them.”

These words slip out of Meng Yao’s lips.

Wen Ruohan falls silent.

The next evening, an attendant arrives in his room, telling him that he is invited to a private dinner with Wen Ruohan.

When he arrives, he sees a table with five chairs, but only two meals prepared.

There is a steaming bowl of chicken congee placed where Meng Yao guesses he should sit. Along with it are side dishes: braised peanuts, sliced dough fritters, crispy whitebait, chopped up salted eggs and so on.

Wen Ruohan sits where he is, looking like he’s been presented with a puzzle. Eventually, he picks up his utensils.

Meng Yao spoons the steaming congee into his mouth.

“Is it too hot?”

Wen Ruohan’s voice suddenly breaks the silence. His eyes are burning into Meng Yao’s like sizzling coal.

Meng Yao notices it now — it’s scalding his tongue. He nods.

“Eat slower. Wait for it to cool if it's too hot.”

The two of them wait for the congee to cool. It is at such times that one typically fills the silence with inane chatter…

How was your day?

What did you do?

How is so and so?

What’s happened since the last time you talked about this?

The simple act of catching up……trading snippets from each others’ lives……it is enough to build the rapport to last a lifetime.

But the two of them — Wen Ruohan and Meng Yao — do not have this kind of relationship. They are not supposed to have this kind of relationship.

A part of Meng Yao’s mind runs away, throws up an image of him, sitting far from Buyetian Cheng — at a dinner table facing his real father with a huadian on his forehead.

Wordlessly, he lifts a spoon of congee to his lips.

“You can blow on it, if it's still too hot.”

Meng Yao obeys that piece of advice. The steam billows before his eyes as he does so.

Abruptly, he thinks of his A-Niang blowing on congee too, before she’d fed it to him while he was still a child, as she absent-mindedly hummed a tune. He thinks of a summer's day in Yunping, sitting with his shoulders knocking against Lan Xichen’s, as they together blew on piping hot, peppery pork tripe soup, laughing as they drank it straight from the bowl.

“Is it good?”

Meng Yao nods, as he spoons the congee into his mouth. Something is stirring in his chest.

Wen Ruohan, too, must be displacing the crushing weight of his regrets towards Wen Xu and Wen Chao, on him.

“Do eat more.” With a pair of chopsticks, Wen Ruohan piles some shredded chicken onto his bowl, with troubled eyes, like he’s trying to follow a set of cryptic instructions.

He just sits there, silently watching Meng Yao eat.

(“Aren’t you going to eat?” he’d asked his A-Niang once upon a time. “Watching my A-Yao eat makes me feel full already,” she’d said whilst beaming, as she put another vegetable atop his bowl of rice.)

Meng Yao dares not face the bowl of congee he eats from.

He continues to send intelligence to Lan Xichen.

One day, Meng Yao is summoned to Wen Ruohan’s personal quarters. Even before he has finished sliding open the door, he hears the words:

“You are a spy. You’ve been sending letters to Lan-zongzhu. You’re part of the reason why the Wen Sect is losing.”

He sees Wen Ruohan tip a jar of wine messily into his goblet, until it spills over.

That’s it then, it's all over.

He curses himself for his carelessness. But then again, given the intense interest Wen Ruohan had taken in him, his secret was bound to be revealed.

He steels himself for a slow and excruciating death, as Wen Ruohan messily pours the jar of wine into another goblet.

He motions for Meng Yao to sit on the other side of the table facing him. Meng Yao does, restraining himself from trembling.

“So this was your choice in the end.” Wen Ruohan sighs. “Was what they could give you so much better?”

Meng Yao draws a blank in his mind, as Wen Ruohan haphazardly pushes the full goblet over to him.

“I gave you the most honored place in my Sect — which at the height of its power could conquer all the other great Sects. If you had supported me in this conquest you could have ruled over it all. Any books you wanted, techniques you wished to learn — they would have been yours……” Wen Ruohan sighed yet again.

Meng Yao stays silent, watching for his execution.

“How lamentable, how laughable. I’ve spent almost all my life trying to become the most powerful cultivator, building the strongest Sect — striving to reach what I was told was the pinnacle. And for what?

It was like drawing the waters of a lake with an endless net — all emptiness in the end!” Wen Ruohan begins to laugh hysterically. “For what was I striving so hard for all this time?”

He sets his goblet down with a clatter, and howls to the unanswering heavens.

“Who came up with cultivation? What is its purpose? Why does it turn so cursed?” He turns to Meng Yao as if he could answer.

“Cursed? Your golden core is wasted on you.” The words slip out of his lips.

Wen Ruohan guffaws. There is a strange emotion mired in his eyes, that Meng Yao cannot quite decipher (it cannot possibly be sorrow).

“That’s all I am to you — arent I? My head, my golden core……It’s all I can give you isn’t it? It’s the best thing I can give you — the title of the slayer of Wen Ruohan?”

“Then kill me,” Wen Ruohan says, tilting his head just, exposing the pale flesh of his neck.

Meng Yao’s mind fizzes painfully with static, cracking as it tries to fit in the scene before him.

This…must be a trap……

Wen Ruohan laughs again, hollow and haunting. “Will it finally give you the respect you so crave? That you so deserve? In cultivation society?”

Meng Yao feels it moving — his head — up and down. Scenes flash through his mind: his mother looking at a pearl in her hands, all those days he spent looking out of the window of the brothel, longing for his father in Jinlintai. A-Huan, silently weeping for his father who died from the burning of Yunshen Buzhichu, Nie Mingjue tossing and turning restlessly crying out for his father to watch out in his nightmares. And a thousand other shattered homes.

“Very well. But in exchange I want something from you.”

Meng Yao nods. It seems that there is little else he can bring himself to do in this interaction.

“Can you…just call me once — A-Die?”

Meng Yao stares at Wen Ruohan, with lips agape.

“A-Die…” The words eventually fall out of his lips, which start to feel numb.

Wen Ruohan reaches over, gently brushing a loose lock of Meng Yao’s hair behind his ear. Then slowly, he starts to pull Meng Yao in, until his head is cradled in his chest.

“Yao-er, you know your A-Die is so proud of you right?”

“Hai-er knows……” He feels like his body is shutting down……

“So Yao-er, please. When you leave this place, your real father: he must acknowledge you. Honor you. Dote on you……. Sworn brothers: they must throw all they are. All they have. To stand by you.

And most of all, from hereon, you must live with a smile that springs from your heart. You must live well.”

Wen Ruohan is now cupping his face in his hands.

“And if these three things simply cannot be done……then please, please leave this wretched place, that takes everything soft and twists it ugly before it hardens……”

“…..Hai-er promises his A-Die……,” he breathes.

“Yao-er deserves the best. That’s why A-Die is giving you the best.”

Wen Ruohan tears his golden core from his chest.

He drops it onto the floor, where it plinks like a heavy glass being dropped. There is blood. So much blood everywhere. It splatters on the screen behind them like a blooming flower.

Wen Ruohan is breathless, almost delirious as he says, “A-Die dotes on you so dearly. He loves you, he loves you, he really loves you. 阿爹好疼你。 好疼! 好疼! 真的好疼!”

Tenderly, he feels Wen Ruohan carding his fingers through his hair.

“Hai-er knows,” Meng Yao echoes. “Hai-er knows,” his eyes feeling unnaturally wide.

“Ah,” Wen Ruohan utters, clutching his open chest, as Meng Yao draws out his sword Hensheng, positioning it by his neck. “It hurts. It hurts after all.”

Meng Yao slices Wen Ruohan's head clean off. He stares at all the blood dripping off Hensheng, spilling out on the floor everywhere, staining his fingers red. He drops the blade and falls to his feet.

He cannot pluck his eyes away from the head that sits by his side.

“Ah,” Meng Yao echoes, though the rest of his words are choked up with an ache in his chest. He collapses.

With the sudden assassination of Wen Ruohan, the battlefronts of the Qishan Wen soon collapse.

Meng Yao is hailed as pivotal in bringing about the end of the war.

He pledges an oath of brotherhood with two Sect Leaders — Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen.

He is given a seat of honor at the conference held in the hall of a hollowed out Buyetian Cheng.

Will it finally give you the respect you so crave? That you so deserve? In cultivation society? A voice whispers in his ear.

There, his own father — Jin Guangshan looks him in the eye for the first time. “I welcome you to the Lanling Jin Sect……and I give you the courtesy name Jin Guangyao!”

Jin Guangyao?

It’s wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It agitates him. His heart is a pig struggling in its cage as it’s lowered down to drown in water.

The generational character of his courtesy name — shouldn’t it be Zi like Jin Zixun and Jin Zixuan? The second half of his name — shouldn’t it be any character but the yao of his personal name?

He stares at his Dage and Erge, who stare back at him. It is too thorny, too messy, too selfish for them to intervene in this internal Jin Sect matter — to put the reputation of their Sects at stake for him.

The golden core, close to immortality, that he was going to present to his father after gaining formal acknowledgement from his father….it sits heavily in the bag upon his lap.

All of a sudden he remembers two promises that he made in Buyetian Cheng……

As if possessed, he rises to his feet, his chair screeching behind him, feeling as if he were going through a qi deviation from his whole world crashing down upon him.

“That’s all I am to you — arent I? My status as the slayer of Wen Ruohan?”

Jin Guangshan looks puzzled and thrown off, as though he had expected to grovel in gratitude for even getting a courtesy name.

“Such a shoddily put together courtesy name — keep it! I do not covet it!”

All his regrets pooling in his chest — they’re set aflame like a spark to a dam of oil.

Then turning to the rest of the leaders of the various Sects, he emphasizes, “All my achievements during the Sunshot Campaign and spoils of war — they are mine and mine alone.”

His declaration sets murmurs rippling through everyone in the room.

He sees Jin Guangshan gritting his teeth, not even hiding how physically pained by how he then has to say, “Lianfang-zun keep an open mind. I am offering you a position in the Lanling Jin Sect.”

“Who wants such a position? In such a Sect?” He spits full of spite. “What has the Lanling Jin Sect done for this war this under your leadership, compared to what I’ve done!”

Jin Guangshan sucks in a breath, before he tuts, mockingly. “Whose child is this, who is so arrogant? His mother must not have taught him well…”

Ah…….

“Whose child indeed…...” Hot tears begin to stream down his face.

He hears a voice in his head again. Yao-er, you know your A-Die is so proud of you right?

He knows they are now whispers of how he’s embarrassing himself in public. Still, from the edges of his memory, he recalls a favored physician from the Wen Sect.

“I have one last thing to say. Whilst I was undercover in Buyetian Cheng, the aid lent to me by Wen Qing and her branch was utterly invaluable to my mission. She will be able to tell you all the details. Give her branch of the Sect a portion of my spoils of war and the honour they deserve.”

This is all I can do for you now.

This is all your Hai-er can do……

He flees from the room, which bursts into a flurry of gossip, as he closes the door behind him.

No one remains in Buyetian Cheng, who remembers it like it was before. How divine it was with red tiles dyed in shadow, cast by the hundreds of lights it held aloft, that also bathed it in warm oranges and yellows.

The lights have all been put out.

He flees to an alcove which he’d first retreated to the first day he was asked to torture a man. Carefully, he unwinds Hensheng from his waist. He examines it in his hands. It dyes his vision a grainy red……

……his heart collapses into a marathon, his skin is laced with ice, and he feels like he’s suffocating from a millstone rolled onto his chest. He can’t see it but there’s blood, blood, everywhere. It’s slick on his hands, an iron tang in the air. And out of the corner of his eye, just out of sight, there must be a decapitated head…

Hensheng clatters onto the floor as it slips from his clammy fingers. It snaps him out of his daze.

Suddenly, he recalls the feeling of being gently held against a warm chest. Like the breath of a phantom, words drift through his mind: “A-Die dotes on you so dearly. He loves you, he loves you, he really loves you. 阿爹好疼你。好疼! 好疼! 真的好疼!”

He collapses to his knees, claws at his chest. “阿爹 — 好疼! 好疼! 真的好疼! A-Die— it hurts! It hurts! It hurts after all!”^[1]

For what was he striving so much for all this time? Truly, it was like casting a net over all the winds of the world — it was only emptiness that he drew to himself.

He starts to feel the guqin strings that he had embedded into his body wiggle wildly, as if wanting to escape, ripping at his soft flesh from the inside.

Yes, he thinks hysterically. What was the point of keeping these strings inside himself? He can’t stay in cultivation society anymore…not after those two promises he made to him…now that he can no longer hold a sword without breaking down. So what was the point of living with these strings tearing at him within him, destroying himself with the toll of being mentally prepared to fight for his life at any given moment, when he was going to have to bow out from the cutthroat world of cultivation society?

He rips the guqin strings messily out of him with the violence of an exorcism. Blood splatters everywhere. It's like a beautiful painting of red plum blossoms across the white tiles of the alcove.

That is how Lan Xichen finds him, leaning against a wall, slowly bleeding out, staring blankly up at the sky.

“Oh no, A-Yao.” Lan Xichen’s expression is etched with distress. He sweeps him into his arms, passing spiritual energy to close his open wounds.

“What happened to you,” Lan Xichen pleads, angling his face to catch his expression.

He does not answer. He thinks that he could draw a perfect smile on his face for Lan Xichen under his doe-eyes and above his chin with his lips, dotted at its corners with dimples.

But the pain that he is in is so great, he’s fading away, lapped up by agony itself like liquor.

“You must have been so afraid while you were alone fighting during the war.”

He’s too tired to nod.

“And you must have been so frightened when you took down Wen Ruohan.”

His eyes widen.

He pushes Lan Xichen away with such force that Lan Xichen slams against the wall on the other side of the alcove.

“Go away,” he screams at Lan Xichen, who carries himself with grievous hurt, who shrinks away as though horrified by the hurt he’s somehow caused, who stares at him gaunt as though he were responsible for what happens to him from hereon.

You can’t do this to Lan Xichen, he tells himself. You cannot let him watch you destroy yourself.

He sways as he rises to his feet, summoning Hensheng beneath it.

“A-Yao where are you going?”

“Don’t follow.” It’s an alien voice that crawls out of his throat.

He feels his wounds opening up again.

But he takes off wobbling towards a plume of smoke rising in the horizon, bleeding all the while.

He crashes into the side of the volcano that is closest to Buyetian Cheng, feeling ash kicked up and then settling upon him.

The acrid air chokes him. “A-Die,” he finally lets himself cry. “Hai-er has wronged you. Hai-er has let you down.”

His hair is sticky with his own blood, which is starting to clot. As he brushes it away with his hands, he laughs bitterly as a saying comes to his mind.

We are given our body, skin and hair from our parents; not daring to damage it is the starting point of filial piety (身体发肤，受之父母，不敢毁伤，孝之始也).

Well, then what a colossal failure he has been.

With trembling hands, he cuts his hair with Hensheng, and tosses its strands to the wind.

Then he convulses again from the weight of wielding Hensheng. He throws Hensheng into the volcano, which lets up another plume of smoke.

He crumples to his knees again. Vaguely, he hears the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance, followed by the pattering of raindrops. It soaks his clothes, which cling to his skin, sapping his warmth, until his bones ache. He lifts his head to the darkened sky and cries harder, for a long while.

But then, out of the corner of his eye, he notices a light emanating from the bag still hanging by his side.

At the back of his mind, he can hear a voice calling for him — when it rains, come home. Who it is from, he doesn’t quite know…

He still feels Hensheng melting in the heart of the volcano.

He lifts his hand and summons it. The molten metal rises, forms into that silhouette which is resting upon his heart. First, it stretches upwards in the shape of a rod, curving at the bottom and then opening up and outward at nine points.

It floats into his hand. He drapes his cloak around its top, makes the right cuts with his spiritual energy along his corners.

He finishes crafting an umbrella.

As he lays it on one of his shoulders, sheltering himself, he wonders who he even is now.

He does not want to be associated with the Jins.

He does not feel worthy of being Meng Shi’s son.

He does not dare to use Wen Ruohan’s surname.

A-Yao will have to do as his name for now.

He hangs the bag containing the glowing golden core on the hooked end of his umbrella. He takes his red hair ribbon that is about to fall off his shortened hair and ties it to the tip of his umbrella.

As he floats the umbrella and sits upon its rod, A-Yao looks out into the distance, with the canopy of the umbrella curved over his head.

He thinks of the thousands and thousands of li he will travel in exile, in repentance. And of the secret he will bear alone in silence. No matter how it weighs him down, all he can do is keep trudging on, even as this thorn keeps cutting deeper into his soul.

He sets out flying into the pitch darkness that lies ahead, punctuated by a flash of lightning.

“So every year on the anniversary of his death, I go to sweep the grave of a man who caused the death of your father, nearly destroyed your Sect, and plunged the world into war……”

A-Yao expects censure, as he admits this truth to Lan Xichen.

Instead, he hears his Erge reply, “How can I begrudge you, when you killed him in the end?”

A-Yao turns to Lan Xichen, as the latter breathes, “I’m so sorry, A-Yao.”

Lan Xichen’s tears drip down into the waters of the lake, causing ripples, as he hangs his head before the railing of their boat, as if weighed down.. “I did not know just how much you were suffering.”

It is a relief, like setting down a burden he had carried for so long that he forgot how it was weighing him down. It is only Lan Xichen’s worry that concerns him.

“Please, Erge, don’t feel too sad for me.” A-Yao tilts his head, endeavouring to catch Lan Xichen’s gaze, to reassure Lan Xichen that he is, in fact, smiling. “You should know better than anyone — that was not the end of my story. Just the ending to one of my stories.”

From his chest pocket, A-Yao pulls out a copy of his book. He holds it flat in his palm. So Lan Xichen can see the cover he drew for him— a lavish image of him riding on his umbrella Fusheng into a bright horizon, with the wind tousling his hair, rustling the ribbons and lanterns along Fusheng.

A gust of wind blows open the book, fluttering rapidly through its pages. The pages blur in a burst of colour, from all the paintings that Lan Xichen had drawn of the adventures he’s been on since, and from the words that A-Yao had written to describe it.

“There have been plenty of other stories in my life ever since,” A-Yao remarks, smiling at Lan Xichen.

In his heart, A-Yao begins to unravel the question posed to him just a few days ago, by the Lan Sect disciple:

Why did you choose to leave cultivation society and go on your travels?

He thinks he can start to answer it, if he just changes the way it is asked to:

Why did he stay so long there?

He had spent the first half of his life dragging himself on his knees, pleading with anyone who would listen in cultivation society, “Let me show you what I can do!”

Hoping, desperately, for any chance to prove himself. As he strained to grasp at whatever opportunity he thought he could reach, even as others were stepping on him, he had bent himself so out of shape, to be whatever they wanted him to be.

Until one day he became a stranger to himself, as he saw his reflection in a mirror. There was something alien about how he looked. He hated how frail he was. He lost himself under layers of clothes that he did not want to wear. Went to places he did not want to go.

He endured it all — for the longest time — because he had believed with all his heart that hope was on the other side. Alas, he had not realised — that he had borne with it for so long that he forgot the shape of hope and how it was supposed to rest in his chest……

So when he was finally reminded of what it felt like to feel sheltered in a home, to be held close and dear to someone’s chest in Buyetian Cheng……when his biological father Jin Guangshan gave him that awful courtesy name as though to honor him, in an instant he felt how it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

It struck him — that hope did not lie on the other side. It became utterly unbearable to stay. With his remaining strength, he ran away.

(And wasn’t it fortunate? That by then he was no longer the helpless, penniless youth he once was? That he carried with him the spoils of war and the backing of two Sect leaders as his sworn brothers?)

For the first few months of travelling around the world, he struggled, out-of-sync with everything that moved and did not, like an orphaned newborn fawn fumbling about on unsteady legs, the torn ligaments of his body speaking a language he could not understand.

In all the new places he visited, no one knew who he was. He started to wonder if he could pretend to be a different person. To fit into these new places. To become part of a new story. To become someone new. As he shape-shifted through these places, he couldn’t resist picking out things that he liked from these new lives. And every one of his choices were his and his alone:

His next meal. Hanfu that he thought were pretty. Hair ribbons to match them.^[2] Books and knick-knacks that he found intriguing.

He moved from place to place, buying, selling and trading his possessions. Yet certain things about him stayed the same. For instance, he kept the hair ribbons that he always bought to match his clothes. He tied them to the tip of his umbrella, as a reminder of the colours and the fashions of the places he visited.

Gradually, he grew awed at how wide the world was. He left behind places with kind faces, telling him that he was welcome to visit again anytime. They were like trail markers leading him to a desired destination, except that each place held a promise that it could one day be his home if he chose to make it so.

Slowly he came to understand — that if he was sick of how he was living, or how the people around him lived — it is not destiny to go on like that. That there are plenty living out their lives very differently, who have made their home and community in ways that work and do not work, that show possibilities.

So it came to him one day — a sudden, unexpected feeling that crashed into him like a tsunami sweeping him upwards, as he skimmed along the smooth surface of a lake, and recognised the reflection in the water as himself. Still riding his umbrella, he swooped and looped in the air, feeling the fullness of life, the ribbons on his umbrella fluttering as his A-Die’s golden core continued to light up the evening sky. There was no point to it all. But wasn’t that the point?

For the first time A-Yao dared to call it happiness. To dwell upon it.

For the first time it was to himself that A-Yao declared: Let me show you what I can do!

So that is how it came to be — how A-Yao came to name his sword Fusheng, and to point it in the direction of something that would challenge him as he flew towards it.

It was how he found the courage to race towards that city built upon a mountain that was said to be the corpse of the giant Kuafu — that was shaking as Kuafu was revived by the demonic cultivator Xue Yang…why A-Yao had stayed to coax Kuafu back to slumber.

It was how A-Yao found the confidence to promise the villagers that he would help to capture the terrifying Bashe — that serpent which could swallow elephants whole, by tricking it into swallowing a stone carved in the image of its favoured prey.

It was how he uncovered the audacity to bicker breathlessly as he raced shoulder to shoulder with Nie Mingjue, as they fled from that cult of executioners A-Yao had discovered, sniping at his Dage, “I told you they were using your Sect’s techniques to harness human resentful energy!”

It was how he dared to stand before the river gods that demanded human sacrifices lest they flood the inhabitants of the city along their realm. How he raised his chin to say: “if you are truly immortal…and to you the life of a human passes in the blink of an eye, then what is the difference to you between the life and death of a human, one moment and the next? Why should it bother you whether the city dwellers bury the living or those who have already passed on by your riverbanks?” And the river gods had assented.

In these adventures, and in countless others, he could feel how small and insignificant he was — against the callous world that gaped at him like a maw. He felt how broken his body was and how he would never catch up with other cultivators. But still, he could make do with what he had, without pushing himself beyond his limits. In the face of danger, he was always able to keep calm and get out of it.

Because he had held close to his chest something more powerful than the most developed golden core.

Letters from Lan Xichen telling him to be careful, to make it back safe; letting A-Yao know that he would always be waiting and praying for him. That he was keen on hearing more stories of what A-Yao was up to.

So while A-Yao had begun his travels with his soul thrown into turmoil, one day he found the compass of his heart pointing steadily and inexorably towards a certain place.

So it felt like a prophecy fulfilled, when A-Yao had first found A-Yu in that dark and dismal place where he was pressured to construct arrays for the Jin Sect. A-Yao had said to him: “Mo-gongzi, won’t you tell me where you would like me to take you the most?”

A-Yu had stared at him, round-eyed and thoughtful as he eventually responded:

“Take me to the place you love the most from all your travels.”

In an instant, A-Yao’s heart had replied: “Yunshen Buzhichu!”

A-Yao slowly brings mind to the present moment where Lan Xichen is smiling at him in relief.

He reflects Lan Xichen’s smile as he asks, “Knowing the whole truth now, I’d like to ask again, will you let me join the Gusu Lan Sect?

He feels the answer in his heart even before Lan Xichen speaks. (He knows that the souls of his parents can now rest in peace). (The last of the promises he made in Buyetian Cheng will be easily kept).

From hereon, he will live with a smile that springs from his heart, and live well!

On another day, on a quiet morning, A-Yao awakens from his dreams of the rain in some far off place, to Lan Xichen pressing a kiss above his brow where his headband is.

Sleepy and sluggish, he murmurs a good morning as Lan Xichen tucks him under their blanket which had slipped off a little, telling him to sleep a little more, it's still early, he'll wait for him in the dining hall.

A few minutes after Lan Xichen patters off, A-Yao slips off their bed. He notices how his back aches today — but that’s fine. A-Yu will just have to go on his excursion today without A-Yao. A-Yao has already packed his lunch for him to go. And A-Yu has already made friends, so he will have plenty of company.

Slowly, A-Yao moves to a chair that is set out by the window, where he can do his paperwork for a little while before breakfast. The aching of his body means that he’ll just write today off as a well-deserved lazy day. Most of his undertakings will wait for him.

There will always be Jin Guangshan to pick a fight with and bring down bit by bit.

There will always be more ways he can transform cultivation society, from how cultivation is taught to establishing a watchtower system to protect the common people.

There’s that cultivator A-Yao should get around to scheduling to meet, whom Wen Qing swears up and down could use Wen Ruohan’s golden core — more than A-Yao appreciates an ever-glowing night lamp.^[3]

A-Yao shakes these thoughts off, as he gazes out of the window, at the sight of Yunshen Buzhichu so soft with the morning light draping its jagged cliffs.

Somewhere in the world, there must be a place swirling with mist that would feel so wonderfully cool upon his skin……

Somewhere in the world, there is a beautiful sight that would bring tears to his eyes……

Somewhere in the world, there are people he has yet to meet, who might change the course of his life forever……

But A-Yao gives that all up to truly be in the moment, as he sips from a warm cup of tea that Lan Xichen has so thoughtfully (and knowingly) placed by the short table beside his chair. There simply isn’t enough time for such longing.

A-Yao knows that between the chronic aches of his body that shrinks the scope of his activities, and the damage his body has taken that has shortened the years he has left on this earth — that there are clear limits to what and how much he can do over the course of his life.

A-Yao has carefully measured out that space between those limits, the way he drafts out his weekly schedules with plenty of buffer to anticipate flare-ups of pain, balances his diet, arranges for acupuncture and massages, and plans for more rest before important days.

And with that space that he has measured out in his life, he dedicates it towards those he loves: Lan Xichen, A-Yu, his Dage — and his gradually expanding circle of those he cares about.

He vows that the limits of his body will not make what he can give to them worth less — the way words punch all the harder when they work with the restrictions of a poetic form rather than against it.

A-Yao smiles into his teacup as he thinks about how he can go anywhere in the world and go home.

But in this moment…….

There’s no other place he would rather stay.

There is no other company he would rather keep.

And there is absolutely no one else in the entire world that he would rather be:

…than A-Yao drinking a cup of tea, about to get up from his seat to look for Lan Xichen and Mo Xuanyu, in Yunshen Buzhichu — deep in the clouds, who knows where.

✦❘༻༺❘✦Notes✦❘༻༺❘✦

¹If you're curious, 好疼! 好疼! 真的好疼! is read aloud as hao teng! hao teng! zhende hao teng! 好 (hao) here means very. Critically, the root meaning of the word 疼 (teng) is ache. So depending on the context in which teng used, teng can refer to that ache one feels when you dote on someone or feel how deeply you're being doted upon. On the other hand, it can also refer to an intense agony. So Wen Ruohan and Meng Yao's lines here are word for word identical, but mean two entirely different things because of the circumstances in which they utter it. In some ways I think love and agony are inextricably intertwined......I hope you will indulge me for keeping this line in, my brain first came up with this scene in chinese :")^{[return to text]}

² Extremely important: Donghua A-Yao always colour coordinates his hair ribbons with his outfits, as astutely observed in this tweet. You may forget everything in this fic. Just not this fact.^{[return to text]}

³ Behind a serene facade of loving-kindness and patience, Lan Xichen ardently and fervently prays that Wen Qing succeeds in this endeavour, so he can finally get A-Yao a night-lamp for their bedroom of significantly less dubious origin.^{[return to text]}