Chapter Text
When looking at the Jiang children—the real ones and the one Jiang Fengmian brought home without so much as notifying his wife, up until the car pulled into their yard and little Wei Wuxian hopped off the car seat timidly—people would say that Wei Wuxian would be the one who left.
After all, what did Wei Wuxian have in that house? No inheritance to his name, no roots. His parents’ cremains were stored in a columbarium away in a distant city, which Wei Wuxian could only visit once a year. His foster parents were not cruel, but neither were they affectionate. And to top it off, you could just tell that Wei Wuxian was too smart, too free, too full of potential to waste his life away in their provincial town.
And yet ….
And yet.
After Wei Wuxian graduated from his automotive mechanic school, he did intend to try his luck in a bigger city. But Jiang Fengmian held him back—wait until A-Cheng finished high school, he said, keep him company. You’re the only person he listens to, the one who could motivate him to study harder.
There was so much to argue in that sentence, but Wei Wuxian had too much debt to Uncle Jiang to say no. And so, Wei Wuxian stayed.
Uncle Jiang built him a small workshop in the house’s old garage as an incentive for him, although he framed it as “a way to not waste A-Xian’s potential”. Naturally, Aunt Yu was not happy about it (you bought that child a whole workshop, but you refuse to enroll your own flesh and blood to a boarding school? / My dear, those are all second-hand equipment, nowhere near the cost of a boarding school. And how should A-Cheng do his observances in a dormitory? You know they don’t cater to his faith).
Wei Wuxian pretended he did not hear all of that. He worked hard so he could pay back all the equipment by the end of the year.
And then, the next year, Jiang Cheng left for college just as planned.
Except that it wasn’t really what they planned. Jiang Cheng, without any of them knowing, had chosen a major no one in the world would ever expect him to choose. And like a bored kid dousing an anthill with a jug of water, he dropped the news at dinner time.
“The result for the national entrance exam is out.”
Wei Wuxian could still hear Jiang Cheng saying that, so calm, so casual, like it wasn’t a big deal. He even said it while picking a piece of braised pork, then dabbed it on top of his white rice to smear the spice. To be fair, that alone should be alarming for everyone—their antsy, neurotic A-Cheng shouldn’t have been so calm when talking about the result of the national entrance exam.
“I ranked first in Hubei. Got my first choice of college, too.”
But could anyone blame them for being too overjoyed to notice?
All at once, the table erupted with praises to their deities. Wei Wuxian gave his stinky little brother a shoulder hug and tousled his hair, shouting about his big brain. Jiang Yanli squealed in her seat, gushing about her baby brother’s excellence. Even Uncle Jiang offered his rare appreciation, and Aunt Yu was physically beaming.
“So, Beida*, then?”
“Mn.”
“Excellent! And what should we do now? When are you going to re-register? You must prepare all the documents carefully, don’t make mistake in your first step as a doctor!”
“Oh, about that,” Jiang Cheng said, removing Wei Wuxian’s arm from his shoulder. He was so calm, so composed. Not even a waver in his voice when he said, “I’m not going to their med school. I’ll be taking Archaeology.”
The silence that followed. And the rage that erupted after. Even now, almost fifteen years later, whenever he remembered that night Wei Wuxian still felt a mix of exasperation and awe over his brother’s ballsy move. Who would have thought that Jiang Cheng dared to disrupt his family like that?
And archaeology! What the fuck was that? He had never shown any interest in history, or anthropology, or digging stuff out of the soil (Jiang Cheng hated the cassava harvest day for this exact reason), or whatever else was required to study such a thing. Jiang Cheng was not the kind of kid who took that kind of risky decision. Jiang Cheng was the good son.
Jiang Cheng was not, in short, Wei Wuxian.
So why did he do that?
The following weeks, Aunt Yu made Wei Wuxian researched all the procedures to switch majors in the university (well, it is possible in some cases, but switching from archaeology to med school is a bit … / But A-Cheng ranked fifth nationally, that should be enough consideration, right? / Unfortunately, that’s not how it works ….). Uncle Jiang spent a lot more time in the shrine, praying for his son’s enlightenment. Whenever the Jiang parents crossed path, they found a topic to argue.
Wei Wuxian didn’t know what to feel. He was angry at Jiang Cheng, but then he felt guilty for being angry. And what was he angry about, anyway? That Jiang Cheng chose a different life path from the one his parents chose for him? That shouldn’t affect Wei Wuxian in any way. Or was he angry because it felt like Jiang Cheng was spitting on his sacrifices? After all, Wei Wuxian had stayed home for him, endured Aunt Yu’s sneers for a whole year, and even made double offerings for the Twin Jades in Jiang Cheng’s name.
Maybe Wei Wuxian had hoped that if Jiang Cheng became a med student, then Wei Wuxian could leave the house—his debt paid at last after accompanying Jiang Cheng in his last year of high school just as he promised Uncle Jiang. But didn’t that mean he didn’t do it out of love for Jiang Cheng?
In such a painful situation, Wei Wuxian could only be grateful that he had his faith in Hanguang-Jun. Wei Wuxian was not the kind of kid who cried in front of others. A bigger part of it was his natural character, but the rest was his sense of unworthiness—after all, he got a good life as an orphan, what was there to be a crybaby about?
But Hanguang-Jun knew the content of his heart—even the ones that Wei Wuxian wasn’t aware of—so there was no use for pretense. At night, at the sacred ground of the Twin Jades’ temple, Wei Wuxian shed his tears in the privacy of darkness. At dawn, at their home shrine, Wei Wuxian whispered his grievances, his lament.
Hanguang-Jun did not respond to them with literal words and consolations; but the more Wei Wuxian prayed, the more peaceful he became. Such was working of the divine interventions. It lifted your sorrow in a delicate way; like picking up a thin oil-absorbing paper out of a bowl of broth, taking away all the excess fat with it. One day, Wei Wuxian noted with a startling realization that he no longer felt those confusing anger and sadness anymore.
Perhaps, this was what the gods intended for him to be.
In the morning of Jiang Cheng’s departure, the two of them hugged each other longer than they ever had. There were not many exchanged words, but Jiang Cheng looked at him with misty eyes and said with a small smile,
“Take care.”
Strangely enough, at that moment Wei Wuxian saw how liberating this was for Jiang Cheng, how happy this chance made him. And just like that, he realized that perhaps this was what the gods intended for Jiang Cheng too.
All lingering envy evaporated, Wei Wuxian gave his stinky little brother a shoulder hug and tousled his hair, joking about his life in a big city. They laughed. And maybe they cried a little too.
Jiang Cheng left on a train. The Jiang family stopped their car at the side of the road by the rail track and watched it rushed by, until the last of the wagons disappeared from sight. And then they stayed there some more, looking forlornly at the empty tracks with the mountains in the background, as if unable to believe that their little A-Cheng had now left them.
Wei Wuxian could feel the suffocating heartbreak of the parents, could see the unexpected sorrow in Aunt Yu’s eyes. He felt a tender sort of pity and affection for these two people who had raised him. He wanted, even for the slightest, to ease their burden.
Perhaps, this was what the gods intended for him to be.
And so, Wei Wuxian stayed.
.
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Wei Wuxian’s daily routine started shy before dawn.
He woke up when the sky was still dark, washed himself up, changed his sleeping clothes to his praying clothes, then headed to the home shrine to offer the first prayer of the day. Surrounded by the scent of incense, he kneeled and chanted the first quarter of the four-thousand chant, followed by a filial prayer to the late Jiang parents, and concluded with “drawing” the Jade ribbons to his forehead using the holy water from the altar.
By the time he stepped out of the shrine, the sun was already up, giving him a clear view of the house’s courtyard. It was a paved space where he parked his motorbike, with a couple of well-placed potted plants and a wutong tree by the front gate whose aggressive nightly shedding gave Wei Wuxian a daily morning exercise.
However, he skipped the sweeping today, as it was the morning after the Descent Night. He was supposed to let the blessings get absorbed to the ground. So, he went about and opened all the windows in the house instead, from the bedrooms to the living room, from the study to the dining room. With each gentle breeze that blew in, he offered his gratitude, wishing that the blessings of Zewu-Jun reached everything under the roof—the rodents and insects hiding behind the walls, the woods of the furniture, the floor where he stood and walked all day.
And then, he went to the kitchen to brew his coffee.
It was a peaceful morning, just as always. He sipped his coffee and munched on some boiled yam while listening to old songs from a radio tape. While these days he could easily listen to the remastered versions from streaming services, he liked the nostalgia brought by listening to his own mixtapes.
The memory of him and Jiang Cheng biked to the radio station downtown after school, writing down their song requests in a paper at the price of three jiao a piece, then waiting eagerly in front of the tape in the evening, fingers ready at the play and record button; always brought a smile to his lips. The mixtapes’ contents were a mishmash of his and Jiang Cheng’s taste, a sudden shift between Vampires Will Never Hurt You and Qing Fei De Yi.
Wei Wuxian chuckled. Maybe, when Jiang Cheng came for lunch at the weekend, he could persuade him for a karaoke battle of these oldies.
After breakfast, it was time to go to work. He went to fetch his keys and his charged phone in the bedroom. He slid open the phone, meaning to text Jiang Cheng about the karaoke thing.
And that was when he saw it.
The dozens of missed calls, from unknown numbers, Jiang Yanli’s number, Jin Zixuan’s, and one that was labelled Search and Rescue Center.
“What the—”
He flinched when his phone suddenly vibrated again, Jiang Yanli’s name flashed on the screen.
“A-Jie, what happened?” Wei Wuxian answered without preamble, already heading out in quick strides.
“A-Xian!” There was blatant relief in her voice. “Thank goodness. Are you home?”
“Yes, yes I am. What happened? Are you okay?” He hopped on his bike, brain running a mile a minute. Jiang Yanli was currently living a literal thousand miles away from him. If something happened to her … “Is Jin Zixuan okay? Oh God—is A-Ling, okay?!” If something happened to his nephew …!
“A-Xian, we are fine,” her voice was calm, although there was a characteristic lilt to it, one Wei Wuxian knew all too well through his childhood, when his older sister was feeling awful and tried to hide it.
There was someone speaking rapidly behind Jiang Yanli, possibly her husband, his voice muffled in the background. Jiang Yanli answered, seemingly confirming something and telling him to do some other thing. And then, there was a high-pitched voice chiming in.
“Mama, what happened to Jiujiu?”
Wei Wuxian’s heart skipped a beat.
And then it beat again, thrice the normal pace and made him tremble all over.
“A-Jie!?” He shouted, feeling like he might topple off his bike. “What is it about Jiang Cheng? Is he alright!?”
“A-Xian,” she took a deep breath and released it, the sound roared in Wei Wuxian’s ear. “Please calm down first, okay?” She tried so hard to sound calm herself, but Wei Wuxian knew every timbre of her voice. She was on the verge of crying.
“A-Jie, what happened!?”
“I-I got a call this morning. From Hubei’s Search and Rescue Center,” the moment she said the institution’s name, her cry finally broke. “They—oh God, A-Xian. They said Jiang Cheng was missing. Have you heard? H-he was working on a site at Su Mountain, and—and he—”
She couldn’t finish her sentence and sobbed into the phone. There, straddling his bike, listening to her, Wei Wuxian felt like he was floating.
Jiang Cheng? Missing? How? When? Where?
.
.
Jiang Yanli married a rich young man from Qingdao whom she met at Wei Wuxian’s workshop.
Their fated meeting was akin to a romantic-comedy drama. Jin Zixuan, a clueless rich boy from the big city, toured the counties in his fancy sedan. Naturally, the poor thing broke down after climbing Yunmeng’s bumpy hillside, and he took it to Wei Wuxian for repair.
Since Wei Wuxian didn’t have the required spare parts at the ready, he needed to order it from his supplier, which might take three to four weeks. The big peacock baby was not happy with it and made his unhappiness known.
It was then that Jiang Yanli arrived.
Her arrival was fated in itself. Working as a secretary in a small firm across the town, she usually had lunch at the food court nearby, yet that day she decided to visit Wei Wuxian to have lunch together. Finding her little brother getting yelled at by a city jock donned in a lemon-colored shirt was not part of her agenda.
“Audi A6L 4.2 Quattro, isn’t she? Such a gorgeous thing, very tough too. Too bad her owner didn’t realize a princess like her isn’t meant to walk off road, despite her AWD,” Jiang Yanli sighed, regarding the muddy silver car with sad eyes. She then smiled at Jin Zixuan oh-so-sweetly, “and it seems he also didn’t consider the lack of spare parts for a new release. Should've thought about it before making an impulsive deal at the auto show.”
Jin Zixuan’s face turned very red, while Wei Wuxian gaped at her. Who would have thought that the unassuming Jiang Yanli, with her small stature, soft speaking, and modest working dress, would flip a metaphorical finger to an arrogant brat? Or even knowing what an Audi A6L 4.2 Quattro looked like.
Guess she really listened to Wei Wuxian’s enthusiastic automotive rambling. He was touched.
Jin Zixuan ended up staying in town for the whole month as he waited for his “princess” to get repaired, during which time he made an awkward, cringe, yet surprisingly effective move on Jiang Yanli. Half a year later, he came with his family to court her.
Admittedly, although his posh attitude was a bit irritating, Jin Zixuan was a decent man. He was even willing to participate in the Jiang family’s ritual of asking for the bride’s hand from Hanguang-Jun and Zewu-Jun. After this, as the two families had agreed upon, Jiang Yanli would follow her husband’s religion.
Sooner than they thought, they were at the train station again, sending off another Jiang child to their new life. Only this time there was no tension in the air, no silent opposition from the parents. Aunt Yu cried freely as she hugged her only daughter, Uncle Jiang and Wei Wuxian made a cordial farewell with Jin Zixuan. Unlike the previous one, it was a happy separation.
The Jiang family stopped their car at the side of the road by the rail track and watched Jiang Yanli’s train rushed by, until the last of the wagons disappeared from sight. And then they stayed there some more, looking forlornly at the empty tracks between the swaying tall fountain grass, as if unable to believe that their sweet Yanli had now left them.
Wei Wuxian glanced at the Jiang couple, noting the creases on Aunt Yu’s skin that weren’t there when A-Cheng left, the tremor in Uncle Jiang’s hands that made him pass the driving wheel to Wei Wuxian. They had grown old, and in their dusk year, with both children away, they had grown melancholic. Aunt Yu wasn’t so stern with him anymore, Uncle Jiang wasn’t so preachy. Wei Wuxian felt something break in his heart, something fragile that, up until that moment, he didn’t know was there.
By that time, Wei Wuxian could have finally left. But how could he, when his parental figures had no-one to take care of them?
Perhaps, this was what the gods intended for him to be.
And so, Wei Wuxian stayed.
.
.
Wei Wuxian went through his day with prayers.
He didn’t even notice it, most of the time. The chants for Hanguang-Jun had always been hummed in the back of his mind, resurfaced when he had nothing else to think about and he mumbled his chants under his breath. Uncle Jiang used to tease him about it (look at you, so besotted to Hanguang-Jun, you kept praising him all day!). It was funny, until Uncle Jiang used it to advise Jiang Cheng to follow Wei Wuxian’s example.
Today, as he raced up the Sou Mountain on his motorbike, Wei Wuxian’s mouth didn’t stop chanting. Prayers after prayers rolled out of his mouth like pleas, while his mind raced with anxious imagery, one more horrible than the last. Had he had the mind to look back, he would have realized that it was the first time for as long as he remembered that he prayed yet not getting any peace from it.
He arrived at the site in record time. There was an obnoxious yellow ribbon tied between two posts to secure the entrance of the site, guarded by two young policemen.
“Let me in, I’m his brother,” Wei Wuxian said, breathless.
One of the officers frowned. “Pardon?”
Wei Wuxian realized he still had his full-face helmet on. He took it off with some difficulty (his hands wouldn’t stop trembling) and said, clearer this time, “my name is Wei Wuxian. I’m Jiang Cheng’s brother. That’s the missing person,” he added, just in case these juniors got no details about their job and only stood there because they were told to do so, as was often the case with lower-ranking officers. “please let me in. I need to speak with … them.” He didn’t know who he was supposed to talk to. He just needed to know where Jiang Cheng was, right now.
The other officer chimed in, “do you have any form of identification?”
Some part of Wei Wuxian knew it was a standard, non-malicious, and perhaps even a necessary question. But a bigger part of him, one that kept taunting him with dozens of stomach-twisting scenarios every passing second, was aggravated by it.
He raced up a narrow, slippery, unfamiliar mountain trail on a damn motorbike, wearing flip flops and fucking culottes. Would some nosy rando do that kind of thing? What other proof did they need?
“Sorry, I don’t bring my ID,” Wei Wuxian was surprised by how calm he sounded. He even felt his lips stretched to a smile. His sister just called him from a different province, telling him while crying that their baby brother, the one he just talked to yesterday, was nowhere to be found; and Wei Wuxian was supposed to what, remembered to bring his wallet before rushing up here?
“Then we cannot let you in. This area is sterile until further notice.”
“You don’t understand. I am his brother.”
“We suggest you wait until—”
“What’s going on here?”
Another man came up to them. Instead of a police uniform, this one was decked in the signature orange of search and rescue team. Great. Another bureaucratic obstacle incoming.
One of the officers spoke first, "This person claims to be the brother of the missing individual, but he has no proof of identification." As if Wei Wuxian couldn’t explain that himself.
“Listen,” Wei Wuxian finally said, trying to make his voice low but firm, swallowing all the profanities he had at the tip of his tongue. “I don’t need a badge or a card to tell you who I am. I just need to find my brother. I don’t care about protocol or your sterile zones—this is my family, and I’m not leaving here without answers.”
He imagined whacking these people’s heads with his helmet. That would remind them that administrative procedure could be bypassed in a time of crisis. But then again, it would cause another ruckus, which in turn would slow down Jiang Cheng’s rescue effort.
The SAR guy’s eerie golden eyes looked at him up and down, frowning deeply as if judging Wei Wuxian’s worn-out flip flops and light culottes. Wei Wuxian had almost made up his mind to make a run for it past the yellow ribbon, consequences be damned, when the SAR guy said,
“Your phone.”
Wei Wuxian, “Uh, pardon?”
“We called Jiang-xiansheng’s emergency contacts.”
Wei Wuxian’s mouth formed an “o”. “Yes, yes you did!” He fumbled a little as he fished his phone out of his pocket. “You called a few times this morning. I didn’t notice, I was doing a morning prayer, then you called my sister, and she called me, and she explained everything! Here’s the call logs!”
He said all that in one breath as he shoved the phone in the SAR guy’s face.
SAR Guy narrowed his eyes as he scanned the numbers on the screen. And then, with a small nod, “Follow me.”
The officers looked like they wanted to argue, but the SAR guy looked older and more authoritative than these obviously new recruits. Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes upwards, sent a breathless gratitude to the twins, then rushing to catch up with the SAR Guy. He glanced at the man’s embroidered nametag on his left breast. Lan Wangji.
“Thanks, Lan-xiansheng. Much appreciated.”
.
.
Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan passed, one after the other, during the early months of the pandemic. Jiang Cheng, trapped in Beijing, couldn’t go home to attend his duty to arrange the funerals; and neither could Jiang Yanli, who was pregnant at the time. Not that a normal funeral procession could be held, what with the quarantine and the Jiangs’ cause of death being the virus. It was Wei Wuxian who took charge of the arrangements.
It was a quiet, lonely affair. Wei Wuxian made the journey up the mountain to store the ashes (he was allowed solely because the mountain temple had hardly any visitor these days). The Jiang siblings accompanied him through video calls, all three of them crying, until Wei Wuxian entered the area where the vegetation was too thick and the altitude too high to receive any signal. He had only the deities to accompany him then, and he recited the four-thousand chant over and over until his throat rubbed raw.
When he thought about it, it was such a grotesquely sad moment. For years, the Jiang parents had herded the whole family to trek up the mountain, and yet, in their death, they had only the adopted son to send away their ashes.
Jiang Cheng returned home eight months later. He recounted then how, after his mother’s passing, he had attempted to sneak out of the city, using illegal cabs, taking multiple detours, and weaving through the countryside. He made it all the way to Hubei border before the patrols caught him. He was fined a hefty amount, not to mention having to spend two weeks in a quarantine facility at God-knows-where. Wei Wuxian snorted at the absurdity of it all, and they laughed at the stupid story, until a sob escaped between Jiang Cheng’s laughter, and he broke down crying.
Jiang Cheng later trekked up the mountain, kneeling for hours to send prayers for his parents. His thousand-chants whispers echoed in the empty cave. Wei Wuxian was struck by how deeply ingrained the imprint of the Twin Jades was in each of them, that even Jiang Cheng, who had, without official announcement, left their belief, still memorized each and every word, and was willing to offer it as a gift for his parents.
But in the end, Jiang Cheng left again. The day he went off to college all those years ago was the day he left for a new home, one that turned their family home from a place of belonging into a place to visit. When Wei Wuxian sent him off at the station, Jiang Cheng looked at him intently and said,
“There are a lot of luxury cars workshops in Beijing. They’ll be happy to have a talent like you.”
Come with me. You don’t have to stay here all alone.
But just as Jiang Cheng had built a nest for himself somewhere else, Wei Wuxian, too, had planted is roots here, in Hanguang-Jun’s soil and under Zewu-Jun’s sky.
“Then who’s gonna help city brats if their fancy cars broke down over here?” Wei Wuxian grinned.
Jiang Cheng snorted. The station announced his train’s arrival. He hefted up his backpack and engulfed Wei Wuxian in a hug.
“Take care.”
Wei Wuxian stopped the family’s car, now his, at the side of the road by the rail track and watched Jiang Cheng’s train rushed by, until the last of the wagons disappeared from sight. And then he stayed there some more, looking nostalgically at the empty tracks bathed in russet by the sunset, long resigned to the fact that his stinky brother had now left him.
He listened to the quiet rustles of the leaves—Hanguang-Jun was running his silver wind-robes on the foliage—and watched as a black stray cat appeared from behind a tree, rubbing its back on the bark, before jumping to catch some insects. Wei Wuxian smiled, somehow reminded of Jiang Cheng. Their family’s little adventurous cat, the beloved yet misunderstood one. Try as they might to make their house a home, Jiang Cheng never quite fit in. He would come, and then go, and those at home could only pray for his wellbeing until he returned again, his tiny paws pat-patting on the wooden floors.
But even if the owners of the house could not absolutely own the cat, they would always wait for its return.
And so, Wei Wuxian stayed.
.
.
Lan Wangji led Wei Wuxian to a tent where people in various uniforms of different institutions were gathered. On the table lay a map of the Sou Mountain, marked with red Xs at various points. Wei Wuxian swallowed the unease he felt as he looked at those marks.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Wei-xiansheng, Jiang-xiansheng’s brother. Wei-xiansheng, this is the search team,” Lan Wangji introduced briefly.
“Thank you for your help to find my brother,” Wei Wuxian bowed. There were murmurs of acknowledgment, but none of the team members seemed focused on him. He didn’t mind. Everyone was fixed on finding Jiang Cheng, which was exactly what he wanted.
“Here’s the approximate timeline,” Lan Wangji handed him a handwritten chart detailing the time and activities. It chronologically outlined, with some approximations, Jiang Cheng’s movements since the previous evening.
15:00 – Workers leave the site. Jiang Cheng prepares for night watch duty.
15:30–17:30 – Dinner (cup noodles).
17:30 – Rain begins.
17:30 – Entering the temple (air rifle found inside. Possible robbery attempt?)
? – Leaving the temple, heading toward the cliff. Tracks disappear (signs of soil erosion. Possible fall).
Wei Wuxian felt his knees wobble as he read the last two lines. A robbery attempt? A fall off the cliff? Jiang Cheng, what happened to you?
He must have visibly shaken, as Lan Wangji grabbed a chair and gestured for him to sit. Wei Wuxian sank into it, his eyes glued to the timestamps, reading them over and over as if they could miraculously reveal hidden clues.
“Was Jiang Cheng attacked by robbers? Did they do something to him?” he asked.
A police officer, his nametag reading “Nie Mingjue”, stepped forward. He was a stern-looking, burly man who was likely several ranks senior to the younger brats at the gate. “We are investigating. We’ve conducted a search around the temple. There were no missing artifacts or equipment. We also found no footprints except for Jiang Cheng’s, but the heavy rain might have washed them away, especially if the robbers were wearing light footwear. It's also possible they were already in the temple before the rain began, since only Jiang Cheng’s muddy footprints were found inside.”
Wei Wuxian closed his eyes. So, Jiang Cheng might have encountered the robbers in the temple, but instead of seeking help like a normal person, he tried to confront them on his own. What a brave little brother Wei Wuxian had.
“And the fall?” Wei Wuxian hoped he didn’t sound as shaky as he felt. He tried to hold on the Twin Jades’ chant in his mind, but they kept slipping, the ancient words overlapped by Nie Mingjue’s technical rendition.
“Signs indicate Jiang-xiansheng headed south from the site,” Lan Wangji pointed to a blue line extending from a circle marked “The Site”, leading to jagged contour lines tightly packed together in harsh, grayish-blue gradient. “Parts of the ground crumbled here.” He indicated a red X. “Jiang-xiansheng might have slipped. Or been pushed.”
Wei Wuxian closed his eyes again. Dammit, Jiang Cheng.
“Our current theory is that Jiang Cheng might have caught the robbers in the act,” Nie Mingjue supplied, “They fled before taking anything. Jiang Cheng pursued them, but he might not have been familiar with the terrain and slipped off the cliff, or perhaps the robbers ambushed him and sent him over. Either way, there’s a high likelihood that Jiang Cheng is down there.”
“Okay,” Wei Wuxian inhaled, running a hand over his face. Gods, he would have to relay this to A-Jie. “Okay.” A-Jie, who was currently pulling all the strings to get the earliest flight to Wuhan while trying to explain to preschooler A-Ling about what might happen to his favorite Jiujiu.
Wei Wuxian glanced around at the others. Most of them seemed to avoid meeting his gaze, unwilling to address the unspoken question in his eyes. Nie Mingjue would have met it head-on, but one of his subordinates was showing him something, and they were busy discussing it.
In the end, it was Lan Wangji who took a pity on him and held his gaze.
“The cliff is 15 meters high,” he said, his tone as direct as always. “This may turn into a retrieval mission. I’m sorry.”
Wei Wuxian appreciated his honesty.
.
.
The first thing Jiang Cheng became aware of, even before his eyes had the strength to open, was the pain.
A persistent, throbbing ache that started as a dull hum, gradually escalating into a fiery, unrelenting pulse as he climbed slowly—agonizingly—toward consciousness. For a fleeting moment, he wished he could retreat into the blissful darkness of sleep again, but the pain refused to let him. Like a fisherman refusing to let go of its biggest catch, the pain mercilessly reeled him closer to awareness, the sensation sharpened with each passing second just like the fish coming closer to the boat of its death.
“Owww,” Jiang Cheng groaned, then coughed, his throat raw and parched. How long had he been asleep?
He felt movement next to him. With a staggering effort, he peeled his eyes open. The face that greeted him was strangely familiar, though he couldn’t put a finger on it. His mouth, however, formed a name that was as close to his heart as his own, a name his subconscious would call even before had the capacity of thinking.
“Wuh Wu—shan …. Hurtsss,” he whined. He tried to shift his position in an attempt to ease the pain, but the movement only sent a jolt of searing, excruciating pain racing from the tip of his toe to the crown of his skull—so sudden and intense that it nearly blinded him. He screamed, his sobs tearing through him, and instinctively, his hand shot out, grasping the other person’s in a desperate search for comfort.
“Sssh, sssh, easy there,” the familiar stranger cooed, stroking his head.
Jiang Cheng cried and sobbed. His face and neck felt sticky with tears. Mucus clogged his nose; it was hard to breathe. “It hurts; it hurts … please help me. Please ….”
“Sssh, sssh, you will be fine. It will all be fine,” the stranger hummed. His voice was calm, soothing, like a whiff of cooling breeze in an unbearably humid summer day. Jiang Cheng found himself clinging to it, clinging to the promise of relief it brought. The stranger kept humming, perhaps a song, perhaps words of consolation. Though his voice was low, Jiang Cheng could still hear him clearly between his own loud ugly sobs and pained weeps, as if his ears had craved a special channel for it to travel directly to his brain, where there too already an empty place waiting to be filled solely by this specific sound.
Jiang Cheng directed all his attention to it, followed each of its lilt and dip. The hand stroking his head felt oddly cool, like the gentle caress of the stream behind their house, one Jiang Cheng and his siblings used to put their heads in, allowing their hair to bloom on its surface like dark lotus leaves. Slowly, as if a sophisticated eraser was brushing it off, Jiang Cheng’s pain began to ebb, and he too, drifted back to sleep.
.
.
When Jiang Cheng resurfaced, he found himself staring at the cloud-and-lotus-patterned room divider of his father’s study. His sluggish mind caught up to him a few seconds later, telling him that it was impossible to look at that room divider since he was not at home. With that thought, he blinked, and the divider turned to a stone wall. At the same time, his memory flooded him with the entire series of events, not sequentially but complete nonetheless.
Falling from the cliff, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling … the world a spinning blur of sounds, darkness, and suffocating rain. Running down the hill in the rain, skin and clothes caught in the branches. Zewu-Jun’s dragon form in the temple. Clinging desperately to tufts of grass, feeling the ground slip from beneath him. Mud in his mouth. Crashing against rocks with a sickening crack, thinking, shit, my leg!
“Ah, shit,” he groaned. As the memory of having his leg broken came back, then so did the pain of it, although it was strangely bearable this time. Instead of the mind-numbing throb from before, it was a steady, yet manageable discomfort, like the beginning of a toothache.
“Ah, I see you are awake,” a voice from his left startled him.
Jiang Cheng jerked away, inadvertently shifting his injured leg, sending a burst of lightning up his spine. He yelped, and the voice beside him immediately hushed him.
“Oh, my. I apologize. I did not mean to startle you.” The man fussed over him, fixing his blanket (huh, he didn’t notice that), and helped him settle into a more comfortable position, repositioning his pillow with gentle care.
While the stranger tried to make him comfortable, Jiang Cheng took the opportunity to take in his surroundings. He lay on the floor of a yellow stone cave about two meters high, with the width barely large enough to accommodate his prone form. The cave wasn’t deep either—if he craned his neck, he could see half the opening, covered by what seemed to be a thermal blanket held down by rocks and a large Deuter backpack. He was resting on what felt like a sleeping bag, wrapped in a soft blanket. A flashlight was smartly fixed to the cave ceiling, casting a warm, adequate light.
Jiang Cheng then shifted his observation to the stranger, his mysterious helper. The man wore a bluish grey short-sleeved shirt, while his jacket was hung in one of the cave’s jutting rocks. He appeared to be in early thirties, only slightly older than Jiang Cheng. He had a handsome, kindly face, the type that always looked like he was faintly smiling even when he wasn’t.
The man caught Jiang Cheng staring and smiled. Although his eyes were the color of earthly brown, they were beautiful, sparkling in the dim light as if they contained stars within. “Are you quite well now?”
Jiang Cheng blushed. “Uh, yeah, thanks.” Then, after an awkward pause, he made a deliberate look-around and asked, “where are we?”
Out of all the questions he could have asked—what happened? How did you find me? Did you see a giant white dragon chasing after me?—he instead asked one with the most obvious answer. Well, at least he didn’t ask the crazy one.
“We are in a cave, sheltering from the storm,” the man gestured toward the entrance.
Jiang Cheng noticed just then how the thermal blanket was swelling and rippling, its edges fluttering violently as if struggling to break free from the weight of the rocks anchoring it. The sounds of the storm outside seeped into the cave—whistling winds and the relentless patter of rain, with the occasional rumble of thunder.
Huh. “How long have I been out?”
"Around eight hours, I reckon. As I was setting up the cave, I heard a noise—something falling nearby. I went to investigate, and there you were," the man explained, his gaze falling upon Jiang Cheng's left leg with an apologetic look. "It appears you've injured your leg quite severely. I have done what I can to bind it, but you will require proper medical care. I do hope the storm ends soon. The search and rescue team cannot come for us in these conditions."
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng sighed, pursing his lips. Eight hours. The last time he checked his watch, just before he entered the temple, it was six-fifteen in the evening. That meant it was now around two or three in the morning (he tried to check the time but realized he must’ve lost his watch in the fall). Even without the storm, there was no way anyone at the site would have noticed his disappearance until at least seven more hours.
With the most optimistic estimate, they might be found in around ten hours. But optimism wasn’t always realistic, and he hadn’t even accounted for the storm.
“But worry not. I have sufficient supplies to last us quite a while,” as if reading his mind, the man reassured him. “I also brought some painkillers, should you require them.”
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng said again, lamely, because he had no smarter remarks. “Thank you, for saving me. Really, I can’t thank you enough.” Without him, Jiang Cheng would have died for sure.
The man’s smile grew even warmer, until his eyes became tiny crescent moons. “It is no trouble at all. I believe this is our fated meeting, as aligned by the stars.”
Jiang Cheng was stunned for a few second, both by the corny words (which somehow didn’t feel cringe when the man said it) and the sudden radiance of the man’s presence. He seemed to glow from within, like he had a lantern lit from the purest oil in his chest. Flustered, Jiang Cheng quickly looked away, embarrassed by how handsome the man was.
He cleared his throat. “Ah, sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Jiang Cheng.”
The man beamed; his beauty so overwhelming that Jiang Cheng literally couldn’t look away. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Jiang Cheng. You can call me A-Huan.”