Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian had been unconscious a lot in his short lifetime.He’d been knocked out through physical violence plenty of times, he’d fainted due to hunger several times when he had been living on the streets before Jiang-shushu found him, he’d drunk himself into oblivion more times than he really ought to have, and he’d even been poisoned once.But this was the first time he’d lost consciousness due to acupuncture.
It wasn’t the same asanyof those other ways.
It was more like being asleep, but without the dreams.
No, that wasn’t it.It was like lying there in the dark, unable to move a muscle or hear anything, but being acutely aware that he absolutely wasnotasleep.(Was this what Jiang Cheng had gone through while he was being treated at the Yiling Overwatch Office?If so, Wei Wuxian wondered if he owed his brother an apology for putting him through something so awful…)
He had a vague sense of the passage of time, and if he concentrated hard enough, he could get the faintest sense of what was happening to his body.Meditating in that state was difficult, but every time he achieved it, he could use that concentration to bend his senses enough to get one brief sensation from the outside world.The feel of hands on his body, carrying him.The sound of several voices talking at once, their words indistinct.The smell of sandalwood.The sound of a guqin playing.
After the first time he heard the guqin, the next time he was able to get a feel for what was happening to him, all Wei Wuxian was aware of was the feeling of sheets around his body.They weren’t particularly soft, but they weren’t too scratchy, either; they were Cloud Recesses sheets, he was sure of it.That particular Cloud Recesses style of elegant asceticism.Did that mean that Lan Zhan had somehow convinced Wen Qing to knock Wei Wuxian out so that he could literally abduct him?Thatcouldn’tbe it.It wasn’t like Lan Zhan to act like a common criminal.And surely Wen Qing wouldn’t have agreed to anything of the sort, knowing that it would leave everyone else at the Burial Mounds at the mercy of the first cultivator who came along looking to punish them for existing.To say nothing of being at the mercy of the Burial Mounds themselves!
And yet…didn’t that seem to be what had happened?
The next time Wei Wuxian managed to connect his mind to his body, it was to the unpleasant, bitter taste of an herbal soup being poured down his throat.He wasdefinitelyin Cloud Recesses.No one else would ever serve soup that awful.If he’d had any control over his body, he would have choked and gagged until he threw it back up again.But he didn’t, and his senses faded back into the blackness of his unconsciousness.
How long had he been like this now?
He waspretty surethat at least one night had passed.But he wasn’t sure of anything beyond that, and connecting to his body wasn’t providing him much more information.Most of the time, all he got was the feeling of the sheets, or the sound of birds chirping outside, or the feeling of the needles in his neck and skull.Nothing useful.A few times he could hear the footsteps of someone moving in the room where his body was lying, but that was it.Nothing to tell him anything else.
And yet, those few things did tell hima little.He could hear birds, so he wasn’t locked away inside the mountain or in some deep dungeon somewhere…though he doubted Cloud Recesses evenhadsuch a dungeon.(He was quite certain that Golden Carp Towerdid, though, and he had lately assumed that he would end his days within it, unless he was lucky enough to die fighting.)
The sheets were the same type that he had slept on when he came here to study as a boy, so if he was a prisoner, he was being treated pretty well; they were the same sheets everyone at Cloud Recesses used.(Or so he had been told at the time.)The footsteps…well, not everything could be useful information.They were probably Lan Zhan’s footsteps—the guqin he had hearddefinitelywas him—but he’d already known Lan Zhan was behind this strange abduction, so there was nothing to learn from that.
With nothing else to learn about his situation until Lan Zhan finally had the decency to pull the damned needle out of his skull, Wei Wuxian could only ponder what had happened, and wonder what in the world Lan Zhan was thinking.He had wanted Wei Wuxian to leave the Burial Mounds and had been insisting that he should give up demonic cultivation for years, and yet he had also seemed to understand why he couldn’t—he had seemed to agree that the people he was trying to protect deserved protection!Why would he suddenly turn around and force Wei Wuxian to abandon them?
From anyone else, he would assume that it meant he really hadn’t agreed.That most or all of their visit together had been a lie, attempting to lull him into a false sense of security.But it was impossible that Lan Zhan would do that.He wasn’t capable of lying, Wei Wuxian was sure.If he ever tried, it would probably be like a little child lying, blatantly obvious.
The only thing he could come up with was that maybe something had changed.
Maybe there was a meeting of the clan leaders, deciding to wipe out Wei Wuxian and the Wens he had rescued.Maybe Lan Zhan had come and kidnapped Wei Wuxian while the rest of them fled.After all, none of them were as well known as Wei Wuxian, and all of them except for Wen Ning and Wen Qing would be able to pass for ordinary people easily enough.For that matter, the rest of them basicallywereordinary people, despite nominally having been part of a cultivation clan.
It seemed believable enough.Except if that was the case, why wouldn’t Lan Zhan havetoldhim about it first?
Admittedly, even if he had, Wei Wuxian probably would have refused to go, insisting that he could fight off the entire cultivation world single-handedly while the Wens escaped without him, but…
…yeah, that was probably more than reason enough for Lan Zhannotto tell him.
It pissed him off, but as long as everyone else was safe…
After the second time he had been able to hear snatches of Lan Zhan’s guqin, Wei Wuxian began gathering his mental strength.If he was guessing correctly, the guqin music meant it was nighttime.Lan Zhan always played the guqin right before going to bed.Or he had when they were boys, anyway.It stood to reason that he still did that—the man wasn’t capable of breaking from his habits, after all.
That meant he was heading into the third day of this forced unconsciousness.That left him with the question of what Wen Qing had actually beensayingwhen she mentioned “three days.”Jiang Cheng was unconscious from the needle in his skull for a lot more than three days, so it wasn’t that he would wake up on his own after that span of time, or that he would suffer any harm being unconscious longer than that.Therefore, unless she had been saying the Wens would need three days to evacuate the Burial Mounds, she had probably been talking about the effects of the needle in his neck, the one that had paralyzed him.If that paralysis was going to wear off on the third day, then all Wei Wuxian needed to do was to somehow free himself from the forced unconsciousness caused by the needle in his skull, and he might be able to…to…well, he’d have to see what he could do, wouldn’t he?Maybe he wouldn’t even be able to do anything, but at least it was something to try for.He had an idea of how he might be able to do it, though he couldn’t be certain it was going to work.Still, even if itdidn’t, it wasn’t like there was anything to lose by trying!
Entering into a deeper state of meditation, rather than trying to connect his mind to his body, Wei Wuxian forced his consciousness inward, into the gaping spiritual hole where his golden core had once been.It was unpleasantly identical to the feeling when he had first been tossed into the Burial Mounds, complete with swirling spirits and the sense of voices he couldn’t quite hear.But this time he knew what he was doing, and he was in control.These spirits and voices were within him now, a part of him, and he was going tomakethem obey or else!
He wasn’t sure how long he spent mentally wrestling with those spirits before he finally forced them to obey his commands and travel through his body to attack that needle in his skull.Spirit after spirit launched themselves at the thing, until finally one succeeded, burning itself up in the effort required to shove the needle loose and allow Wei Wuxian to wake up.Finally, he was fully conscious and entirely aware of his body’s surroundings, hearing the birds outside, smelling the mingling scents of sandalwood and that bitter herbal soup, and feeling every nerve in his body.
What those nerves were telling him, though, was confusing—no, alarming!He was still lying in bed, but his torso had been raised slightly.An arm held his torso in place, and a hand held the back of his head.That much wouldn’t have been upsetting, especially since it was clearly time for another disgusting meal.
The fact that a pair of lips were pressed up against his and a tongue was curling around his own, though…that was enough to make him panic.
Unfortunately, his body was still paralyzed by the needle in his neck.
All he could do at the moment was open his eyes, though when he did he was nearly blinded by the brightness of the room.Even as his sight began to recover, he couldn’t tell the identity of his molester, only that they were a Lan:about all he could see was a forehead and the Lan Clan ribbon resting upon it, and even that much was out of focus, being too close to his face.
The kiss seemed excruciatingly long, much longer than the one that mysterious girl back at Mount Baifeng had stolen from him, yet it still wasn’t long enough for him to regain any control over his body.
When the kiss was finally over, Wei Wuxian saw the other man’s eyes flit up to his as he was pulling his face away.He gasped even as Wei Wuxian found that his mouth at least worked.
“Lan Zhan!?”
Lan Zhan let go of him and practically leapt away from the bed, wide-eyed.Wei Wuxian fell backwards onto the bed, hitting his head in the process, jarring the needle in his neck a bit loose, giving him some slight hope of regaining control over his body.“You’re awake,” Lan Zhan said, his voice trembling slightly, even as Wei Wuxian let out an exclamation of pain.
“What the f*ck, Lan Zhan?”Wei Wuxian did his best to glare at his so-called friend as he tried to muster up the strength to sit up in bed.“Did you kidnap me so you could…could….what thef*ck, Lan Zhan?!” he demanded, even as he used what little control he had to try to remove the needle from his neck.His fingers were still clumsy from the needle’s effects, but he was able to pull it just a little bit further out, giving him more ability to move.
“Wei Ying, this…”Even Lan Zhan could be tongue-tied, apparently, because he stopped without saying another word, juststaringat him.
“Seriously, what the f*ck?”Finally having managed to sit up, Wei Wuxian scowled at him.“What do you think you’re playing at?”
Lan Zhan hesitated a moment, averting his eyes.“I thought of another road you could take,” he finally said, looking back at him.
“Locking me up isn’t a road I’m taking,” Wei Wuxian said.“It’s just you holding me prisoner.And leaving everyone I wanted to protect at the mercy of—”
“They are safe,” Lan Zhan assured him.“I have seen to it.”
“Oh, really.Andhowdid you manage that?”His words were filled with much more bitterness than he had realized he was capable of.“Spread rumors that the Burial Mounds are haunted?Oops, no, that’d never work—everyone already knows they reallyarehaunted!Maybe you told people that the world’s most vicious demonic cultivator was lying in wait to kill them to death if they should happen to approach the Burial Mounds—no, wait,they already think that!So what was it, Lan Zhan, what was this brilliant f*cking plan of yours that youf*cking kidnapped mefor?!”
Lan Zhan just stared at him, something within his eyes trembling, as if he was hurt that Wei Wuxian was angry at him.As ifhewas the one being unreasonable here!
“They are no longer in Yiling,” Lan Zhan finally said.“They are outside the reach of the other clans.They are safe.”
“Where are they, then?”
“I do not know the name of the place.”
“That’s not filling me with confidence.Give me some details if you want me to believe you.”
Lan Zhan looked down at the floor, shutting his eyes.“I have few details to give,” he said.
“Didn’t you say it wasyourplan?”
“It was not my own power that accomplished it,” Lan Zhan said, looking back into his eyes.“It was the scrap-collecting god and his…”He coughed uncomfortably.“His companion.”
“Scrap-collecting god?” Wei Wuxian repeated.“Who the f*ck is that?”
Lan Zhan shrugged.“That is all I know.”
“How did you call on—no, you know what, never mind.I don’t care.Just take me to them and let me go.I’m done with this place, I’m done with cultivation, I’m done withyou.”
Lan Zhan winced visibly.Wei Wuxian had rarely ever seen such a large reaction from him.“I cannot.”
Wei Wuxian clenched his fists, wishing he had the strength to get up and punch him in the face.It probably wouldn’t land even if he did, but just the attempt would make him feel a lot better!
“Fine,” he ultimately said.“Once I get my strength back, let’s have it out.You and me, full-on duel.You with your sword and me with my dizi.Winner gets to decide my fate.”
“No,” Lan Zhan said.“That instrument was corrupting you.You will not use it again.”
Wei Wuxian grimaced.Lan Zhan’s obsession with how demonic cultivation was ‘damaging his soul’ or whatever was bad enough, but now he was blamingChenqing?That would be like blaming Suibian if he cut himself while cleaning the blade.“Can you really stop me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, really.”Wei Wuxian laughed.“Don’t you know me better than that by now, Hanguang-jun?The more I’m told not to do something, the more determined I am to do it.”
“You cannot,” Lan Zhan insisted.“Not while you are locked in here and it is not.”
His logic was unfortunately unassailable.Not that Wei Wuxian would ever admit defeat so easily!“You really think a lock is going to hold me?”
“No.The seal array around the house will.”
“So you really are holding me prisoner.”Not that a seal array would be enough to hold him in, either, but it would be harder to get out of for someone like Wei Wuxian, without a golden core.However, it would be easier to get out if Lan Zhan didn’t realize that he was working on an escape plan, so he bit his tongue to keep from taunting the man about how easily he was sure to escape.
“It is for your own protection.”
“Protecting me fromwhat?”
“Everything.”Lan Zhan looked at him, and a hint of dismay crossed his eyes at the sight of Wei Wuxian’s disbelieving scowl.“From the other clans.From indulging in demonic cultivation.From yourself.”
“I don’t need you to protect me frommyself.”
“You will understand in time,” Lan Zhan said.“This is for your sake.”
“Do you really think I’m going to buy that?!”Wei Wuxian could feel himself trembling all over.He wasn’t sure if it was rage or his horror at being so betrayed by one of the only people he thought he could trust.“I swear, if I had full control of my body right now…”
“It should return soon,” Lan Zhan said, moving towards the door.“There is food on the table.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Wei Wuxian demanded.“We’re not done talking yet!”
“I have duties,” Lan Zhan claimed, then left without another word.
Wei Wuxian yelled at him until his throat was raw, but he didn’t come back.
It had taken much too long for him to regain the ability to get out of bed.The afternoon was half over, and the disgusting soup was now stone cold, making it even more of a crime against the culinary arts than it had been to begin with.Wei Wuxian ignored it, and went to try the door.It was, as Lan Zhan had said, locked.It wasn’t a complicated lock, and he was able to open it quite quickly.As soon as he tried to set foot outside, though, a strong, sharp force pushed him back again, leaving a slight, stinging aftertaste in his mouth, as though he’d been lashed with Zidian again.
Screaming in rage, he grabbed the bowl of herb soup and flung it out the open door, watching it tumble through the air, dispersing its contents into the grass below before shattering on the ground.
There had to be something in the room that would let him get out.Some weapon, somesomething.Even if it was only a bit of bamboo he could carve into a new dizi.No, actually, that wouldn’t help, would it?There were neither ghosts nor corpses here:what could he evendowith a dizi?Admittedly, there were tricks in his repertoire that didn’t require a full spirit, but they did at least require remnants of ghostly energy.Most places had that, but Cloud Recesses was utterly bereft of it.Made sense, really.That was the sort of thing he wouldexpectof the sanctimonious Lan Clan, clearing away every last drop of ghostly qi.
The more Wei Wuxian searched through the contents of the room, the more enraged he became at this unjust imprisonment.What right did Lan Zhan have to lock him up like this?From the Jin Clan, it would make sense:he had enabled Wen Ning to avenge himself on their corrupt guards, after all.But he’d never done anything to any Lan cultivators, except to piss off Lan Zhan all too frequently, and if that was an imprisonment-worthy offense then half the cultivation world would need to be locked up!So what made him think he could do this?!
Wei Wuxian quickly got to the point that every time he picked up an object and found it useless to him he dashed it down to the floor, exulting if it broke, the smaller the pieces the better!By the time he heard someone speak from the open door behind him, he had actually gotten to the point of picking things up for no reasonotherthan to smash them.
“Please do not destroy my mother’s vase.”It was Lan Xichen’s voice, calm and pleasant.“I understand your rage, but I would greatly appreciate it if you would return that object to me.”
Lowering the vase he had been holding above his head, Wei Wuxian turned to look at him.“Zewu-jun?I…”He shook his head, fighting the urge to apologize at the sight of the disappointed expression on Lan Xichen’s usually smiling face.“What is something that belonged to your mother doing in this prison?”It wasn’t like this was Wei Wuxian’s fault, after all!He was the victim here!
The look of disappointment was replaced by one of pain.“A prison,” Lan Xichen repeated.“Yes, it is,” he agreed.“It was her prison.”
“What?”
After an uncomfortable pause, Lan Xichen explained that his mother had not been of a sickly nature, as everyone had always been told, but that she had been imprisoned in this remote cottage at the edges of Cloud Recesses, the only punishment that her smitten husband could bear to see imposed on her for the murder she had committed.His own seclusion had been his self-inflicted punishment for continuing to love and protect her despite that she had killed one of his teachers.The true victims, of course, were the two boys born from the union, who had barely ever met their father and could only see their mother one day a month, and even that privilege was taken away by her death when Lan Zhan was only six.
Wei Wuxian was momentarily overcome by the story—the history—of this little building that Lan Zhan planned to force him to live in for the rest of his life.Not really knowing what else to do or say, he silently closed the distance between them and handed the vase over to Lan Xichen.
“Thank you.”Lan Xichen's words were accompanied by a smile, but it was a very somber one.“I have spent the past two days removing everything personal of hers from these chambers, but I wanted to check one last time before Wangji awoke you this evening.”
“I’m sorry.”He wasn’t actually sure what he was apologizing for, specifically, but none of this was Lan Xichen’s fault, after all… “Ah…so, you…you were told I was here?”
“Of course,” Lan Xichen said, smiling at him more genuinely.“Wangji would never dare to hold you here without informing me first.”His smile faded slightly.“But no one else knows, so I would appreciate it if you could refrain from doing anything to draw attention to your presence.My uncle will not understand as I do.”
Wei Wuxian chuckled despite himself.“He always did hate me.”
“He prizes peace and order above all else,” Lan Xichen said, nodding, “and you were always disruptive of both.”He sighed sadly.“That was what first brought Wangji tonoticeyou.”
“Yeah, I was on the roof with a couple of jugs of wine.Hard to miss.”
Lan Xichen laughed.“That is not what I meant.”His cheerful expression changed to one of melancholy.“Wangji has turned out to be far too much like our father, I fear.”
With that mysterious statement, he left again, closing the door behind him.
What hadthatmeant?
What was there in any of what Lan Xichen had just told him that was anything like anything Lan Zhan had ever—
The answer struck Wei Wuxian so hard and so suddenly that he collapsed right where he was standing.One shaking hand rose to touch his lips.
He…
That…
Lan Zhan couldn’t…
No.
No.
It was impossible.
Lan Xichen couldn’t have meantthat.
It didn’t make the least bit of sense.
Lan Zhan hated him.Lan Zhan hadalwayshated him.From the day they met.It had only been Wei Wuxian’s delusional arrogance that had ever encouraged him to think otherwise.
So it couldn’t be that.
It was, maybe, possible that Lan Xichen had mistakenlyassumedit was that.
Maybe he’d seen…whatever had been going on when Wei Wuxian woke up.He’d seen that and assumed it was…
Yeah, that had to be it.
He picked himself back up off the floor and started searching the half-trashed room again, no longer looking for a way to escape, but something to keep his mind occupied.
WhathadLan Zhan been doing when he woke up?
It had seemed like a kiss, but of course itcouldn’thave been.Lan Zhan wasn’t the type.And especially not with someone ‘corrupted’ by demonic cultivation.No, it had to have been something else.
Wei Wuxian chuckled to himself.Maybe Lan Zhan had been trying to suck out his ‘corrupted’ qi through his mouth.Someone had probably told him it was possible, so he was trying it, like a moron.
As he continued searching, he wondered who could have pulled such a clever trick.That was the sort of thinghewould have wanted to try convincing Lan Zhan of, just to see if he’d fall for it.But who else might get a laugh out of the notion of Lan Zhan suddenly kissing someone to try and save them from their own evil?
He tried to imagine how it would have gone if he had tried tricking him into that in the brief period when he had been studying here.Wei Wuxian did his best to picture the scene:Lan Zhan’s gullible teenage self trying to suck corrupted qi out of some random criminal-type, and Wei Wuxian’s younger self standing nearby, laughing his ass off.And standing beside him, Jiang Cheng would have been scowling at him while fighting to contain snickers.And on his other side, Nie Huaisang would have been poorly hiding laughter behind his fan…
Hmm, could Huaisang be the one who had convinced him he could suck out evil qi?
Hewasthe type to enjoy a good prank, but could he really lie convincingly enough?Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure about that, one way or the other.Though Huaisang was so habitually helpless that someone like Lan Zhan probably wouldn’t suspect him of having thenerveto lie to him.
Then again, why would Lan Zhan have even been talking to Huaisang?He hadn’t exactly thought much of him back when they were boys.Sure, their elder brothers were now sworn brothers, but that wasn’t going to make Lan Zhan any more likely to spend time with Huaisang, who was even more his polar opposite than Wei Wuxian was.
There wasn’t much point in guessing who had tricked him.
He’d never know the answer unless Lan Zhan chose to tell him.And why would he?
Besides, his search had finally turned up something he could use to pass the time.
A brush, an ink stone, and a blank book.
It’d be better if he had found some blank talismans, but of course Lan Zhan wouldn’t have left him something he could so easily use to escape.He’d even managed to remove every single one of the talismans Wei Wuxian had hidden on his person!
But a book would be useful in its own way.
He could draw up copies of talismans that he might be able to use to escape.
That way he’d already have dozens of plans ready to go the minute someone slipped up and he got access to some blank talismans…
