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Chapter Text

The tales reach Gusu in whispers, and though gossip is forbidden, even the elders find themselves growing uneasy at the murmuring that inevitably creeps along the halls and paths of the Cloud Recesses like vines of tangled weeds.

They say there's a creature that protects Yiling.

Locals claim it came from the Burial Mounds!

It's a spirit; a giant fox! They call it Húlí!

How very on the nose. Even he has heard the murmurs from within the Jingshi, and so Lan Wangji is expecting the summons well before it reaches him, his qiankun pouch already packed and Bichen humming steadily at his hip. Her presence is a warm and long-familiar weight that sways with his steps as he makes his way to the Hanshi, where Brother is no doubt awaiting his arrival.

The Cloud Recesses is still quiet this early in the morning, the sun just barely cracking along the horizon. As he walks the long-familiar paths, he can hear the stirrings of the Sect as bodies rise from beds and begin the processes of preparing for the coming day. One or two disciples have already emerged from their rooms, and they're quick to offer bows as he passes silently. He gives a nod in return, no words spoken to fracture the silence of a peace that has long stopped bringing him serenity. These days, he allows it to settle around him like ill-fitting robes, the tension of it against his skin uncomfortable as he pushes against that which stays stubbornly mired in tradition, refusing to yield to truths others are too afraid - or arrogant - to accept.

Lan Wangji's eyes are as unreadable as his expression as he leaves the busier walkways and lets the open paths become lined by forest, and then eventually bamboo. He gives nothing of his thoughts away as he walks a well-tended trail that, once upon a time, filled him with a comfort only his family was privileged enough to understand.

Rounding one final bend in the path, he steps into the open yard that surrounds the front of Hanshi and takes in the regal, still form of his brother waiting in the covered entryway of his home. Lan Xichen stands at ease as he approaches, one hand tucked leisurely behind his back while the other rests upon the railing. He's looking up toward the mist-shrouded mountain peaks, his expression as gentle as always, if only just marred by a faint furrow between his brows.

“Brother,” Lan Wangji says by way of hello, offering him an appropriate bow when Lan Xichen turns to face him with a warming smile.

“Wangji,” he greets, descending to meet him where the courtyard ends and his home begins. Lan Wangji stands obediently still and lets him look; allows his quiet fretting while knowing they will not speak of it. They have not spoken of it in years, not since it was made clear that Lan Wangji would not entertain the fussing and Brother was too worried about losing him completely to push.

“You have heard the rumors,” Brother says instead, so much between them left unspoken in ways it never used to be; in ways that cannot be fixed. A layering of invisible gouges that will remain forever alongside the scars that criss-cross over Lan Wangji's shoulders and back beneath his robes. He still cannot carry his guqin like he once did, the nerves too raw and sensitive to tolerate the weight even years later.

It was both his punishment and his awakening, and it has been a lesson he learned with a silence that he has carried and taught to his students. Gusu Lan is shaped by its rules, but it is also choked by them, and he refuses to be complicit in ruining the new generation before they ever have the chance to grow.

Once, he never would have dared disobey, just as they had expected when they molded him along with so many others. Once, the disciplines of Gusu Lan were his lifeblood.

He is not so naïve anymore, and he has made sure his charges - his sons - will not be either.

Sizhui embodies what Uncle believes a Lan should be - Jingyi represents everything Lan Qiren insists they are not. Lan Wangji has raised them the same way regardless, encouraging their freedoms and expressions rather than suffocating them the way he had been at the same age.

He knows his brother is looking at him, waiting for his acknowledgement, and so he leaves those thoughts aside for now. Meeting Lan Xichen's amber eyes, he dips his chin, offering a quiet, “Mn,” in answer, and they both pretend not to notice the way the Sect Leader's shoulders droop slightly beneath the weight of too many past sorrows and sins.

“I assume you wish to investigate the matter?” Brother's voice is light, gently teasing. They both know the name Lan Wangji has made for himself since leaving seclusion. The bloody footprints he has pressed into every inch of the country, stubbornly refusing to return to the Cloud Recesses even when his body was not ready for the burden. It has cost his Sect Leader no little amount of grief, to hear the whispers of him so callously sending one of his cultivators out on night hunts when his body had not yet knit closed and scarred over the reminder of his choice to stand for justice over tradition.

It has cost Lan Xichen and Uncle so much more than that.

“Mn,” he confirms, the cool mountain winds tugging at his robes and sending the long tails of his forehead ribbon dancing. Lan Xichen reaches out as if to catch one, a familiarity allowed once upon a time - a muscle memory that has not yet atrophied, and though Lan Wangji does not rebuke him, his brother's hand quickly falls back to his side without ever making contact.

“When will you leave?” he asks quietly, as if they both don't already know the answer. This has been a formality in name alone, Lan Wangji's quiet allowance to save his Sect Leader face; both of them pretending he would not have gone either way, even if Brother had tried to deter him.

They both know the memories that Yiling holds for Lan Wangji; the happiness that runs just as deeply as the pain and blood. And Brother knows that there is no point in keeping him away, not from something like this. It has been ten years since the Siege, and yet Lan Wangji will always faithfully return to that place when chaos calls in bittersweet whispers. His soul is drawn to it, reaching for its lost pair even after so many years.

The emptiness that echoes back cuts as deeply as the whip every single time, and yet Lan Wangji will always go, because seeing it is better than having nothing at all.

“Now,” he says, and Lan Xichen nods, knowing better than to expect any other response.

“Be safe, Wangji,” he says, voice heartbreakingly soft. He still cares - he always will, that is his nature - but he has chosen his place on the field, and Lan Wangji stands firmly on the opposite side. This is not a war, it never has been. Just a quiet breaking of what had once been an unshakable faith in the brother who, once upon a childhood dream, had been his unwavering guide; the one who had always understood him best until the decisions that made it clear his understanding of Lan Wangji's own nature was not enough to sway him in the face of rigid tradition.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji replies, his focus already trained away from this place that had once felt so much like home. He offers obeisance, as is proper, and they both do Lan Xichen the honor of pretending his expression doesn't grow heavy with loss as Lan Wangji walks away without looking back.

Halfway up the path, he sees Uncle approaching, his face set in its usual stern countenance. Lan Wangji stops long enough to offer a bow, but he does not speak, and neither does Lan Qiren. He waits, eyes fixed on his own cupped hands, until the elder Lan flicks his sleeves, which Lan Wangji takes as dismissal. He rises then and continues on his way, leaving Uncle's eyes to grow heavy with a sore, unspoken grief as he stares ahead and does not watch his nephew leave.

**

The trip to Yiling on Bichen is peaceful, both despite the time it takes as well as because of it. At this point, Lan Wangji's feet have walked tens of thousands of li, his golden eyes taking in more life than any other person in the Cloud Recesses; not even Brother has traveled as much as he has, despite his frequent trips to Carp Tower and the Unclean Realm, both before and after Nie Mingjue's passing.

Aside from Lan Wangji, there was only one other person who would know Yiling so well from beyond its borders, and he has long been torn from this world; even still, the memories remain achingly within Lan Wangji's heart.

He goes despite the pain, following the rumors in a desire to see for himself. He goes to that familiar, bustling town where a child once clung to his thigh and laughed in sun-bright, innocent glee over paper butterflies and a rattle drum. He goes quietly, memories churning behind his expressionless mask, and finds himself dismounting his sword on the dirt road outside of town early that afternoon, trying to make sense of what is before him.

There is a visible barrier erected around Yiling, and it is unlike anything he has ever seen - or sensed - before. The energy ripples and swirls as if dancing, yin and yang in perfect harmony in ways the orthodox path has always sworn could never be done.

He has never seen energy this color before, wild bronze and mossy green twining in constant, dizzying thrums, as if the barrier is alive. As if it is fed by the earth itself.

Atop the curve of it, sitting on the centermost point of the energy flux as though it's awaiting his arrival, is a fox-shaped creature made of amber energy and shadows.

Lan Wangji stares up at it, his expression as unchanging as a still lake. In return, the fox stares back at him, its attention drawn by the presence of someone with such overwhelming yang energy. Even from this distance, he can see the way its mouth opens. Can hear the warbling echo of its cry as its tails flick and lash.

It leaps from high above, dainty paws landing without sound or stirring of dust, and looks at him with marbled moonsilver eyes. There is no pupil, no way to truly tell where those glowing eyes are focused, but Lan Wangji feels the way they regard him all the same - like a jolt to the chest, the crackle of energy swelling in the air that could be a threat or could simply be presence.

Rather than reaching immediately for Bichen, or even to summon his guqin, he instead stands calmly, staring back at this fox that is not a fox. Despite the yin and yang energies covering the spirit in a pattern not unlike a living fox's fur, he feels no resentment roiling within the húlí jing. If anything, Lan Wangji would argue that he's never met a non-living being that held such a perfect balance of energy. Not even he could achieve such harmony, and his control over resentful energy was unprecedented.

"Húlí," Lan Wangji finally says, quiet and inflectionless, and large ears twitch at the sound of his voice. The fox sits, tails curling neatly around its paws; its head comes up to just about his collarbones like this, the tips of its ears nearly level with the hinge of his jaw.

"Are you a spirit?" he asks, wonders, for he has never felt such peculiar energy. It is neither wholly orthodox nor resentful - it is primal. Wild in a way he has never experienced before, as if the very soil of Yiling has come to life, has become this land's new guardian in the stead of what it has lost.

That depends. Are you an executioner?

It is a testament to his training and his nature that Lan Wangji shows no reaction to the voice that suddenly whispers across his mind like a cool mountain breeze through the Gusu trees. That voice... it is both human and not. It's playful and weightless; more of an impression of feelings than outright words. He doesn't know what to make of it, other than that the way it sends a tingle of warm energy down his spine is so reminiscent of him - of the laughter Lan Wangji lost so long ago.

"You do not cause trouble," he notes, gaze drawn back to the unnatural barrier. "You are not... creating harm."

Only to those who deserve my ire. Two of the fox's tails flick, rippling like fire, like raw power, before they settle again. Seven, Lan Wangji notes when he counts them. This spirit is either very old, or very powerful. Stumbling upon a húlí jing is a rare encounter, practically unheard of and therefore deemed impossible; there has not been a confirmed sighting in centuries. Not since the last ones went into hiding to spare themselves from the depravity of Man. Many believed them to be merely a myth; stories woven by artful minds to add a different zest of magic to their tales.

And yet here one sits, in this place where so much began in tenderness and fear, and where it all ended in fire and agony.

"Why here?" he asks, golden eyes lifting to take in the miasma of the Burial Mounds where they rise beyond Yiling. "Why this place?"

What is the connection?

The fox follows his stare, chittering quietly as it, too, gazes up at the place where so much has happened and everything went wrong.

I was born here. Yiling is mine to protect. All of it.

"Born," Lan Wangji murmurs, tasting the crackle of it on his tongue. It feels like whatever runs beneath the earth is vibrating through him, a power he has never felt warming his core in a way he has not known since he was sixteen and mischievous quicksilver eyes caught him and refused to let go.

"How were you born?"

The húlí jing's dark mouth cracks open in a smile. Even its teeth are made of shadows, its tongue wisping yin energy with every pant.

Who knows, it muses with a gentle chatter, shaking itself and sending energy into the air like glimmering specks of starlight. Perhaps someone wished hard enough that this place would not fall to the ravages of war. Perhaps they wanted to preserve its life, rather than seeing it razed by the fires of revenge. Whatever their wish, here I am.

There's something about its words that prickles in Lan Wangji's chest. Something that makes his lips twitch down, that furrows his brow and makes him look closer at the town before them. Nothing seems amiss, and yet there is heat at his nape, a pressure he has not felt snared by since the Sunshot Campaign. He can see even from this distance how Yiling has thrived, and yet it sits behind a barrier, as if it needs protection from some unseen enemy.

“How long have you protected Yiling?” How long has it taken for word to reach Gusu, when it's clear this húlí jing has never once tried to mask its presence? How has word not spread across the entirety of the cultivation world? Lan Wangji has not seen Yiling in three years, but this spirit feels settled in a way that suggests it is not newly-formed; it has been here for quite some time, the chosen guardian Yiling had apparently begged for when no one else stepped forward.

Those inhuman silver eyes go hooded and thoughtful. I do not know, it admits, though I have seen spring return multiple times since my manifestation. I have watched at least seven winters come and go. It's hard to gauge sometimes.

How did he not sense it the last time he was here? There had been nothing, no change in Yiling, in the Burial Mounds, no whispers from the people themselves. So why now has this húlí jing chosen to show itself?

In a situation like this, there can only be so many reasons. “Something is coming,” he surmises, and the spirit dips its muzzle in answer, its head turning to look back over its own narrow shoulder. There is a patch of amber energy along its throat, nestled amongst the curling black, Lan Wangji notices. Something about it makes him blink, memories he's long suppressed stirring in the back of his mind. He can't quite catch them enough to recall, and so he lets them go for now, his own glass-gold eyes lifting to scrutinize the Burial Mounds with new suspicion.

Men have been trying to claim that which does not belong to them, the húlí jing says suddenly, turning its marbled silver eyes back to Lan Wangji. They hunger for the secrets the mountain hides. Secrets you took with you, when you left with the human kit.

Lan Wangji says nothing to either confirm or deny - there is no point, if there's a chance the spirit had already manifested at that time and witnessed his choices. Whether it had stayed hidden or not back then would not have mattered either way; he was too focused on A-Yuan, on his fear that he had been too late, that he had to take everything that had once belonged to-

Better in his care than someone else's. He does not regret his decision, nor will he. “Who are the men you see,” he murmurs.

Rather than answering immediately, the fox spirit stands and shakes itself, its tails waving like banners of power before they suddenly fuse together into a single fluffy black and amber tail. Come, it says, turning and padding toward Yiling. It does not look back to see if Lan Wangji is following. These conversations are not meant for open air. Who knows what shadows may be listening.

It speaks with a lightness, but Lan Wangji is not fooled. He follows without a word, never glancing back toward the trees behind them, where those watching shadows cannot hide as well as they believe no matter their level of cultivation training. They can follow if they please, and no doubt will - something tells Lan Wangji that once they pass through Yiling's barrier, the information they hunt will not be so easily found no matter how closely they tag along behind him.

**

The streets of Yiling are as lively as he remembers - even more so, now. All up and down the main road through town, merchants call out their wares, and the air is filled with the scent of hot oil and sweat, perfumes and sunlight. Not a single person panics at the sight of the húlí jing that leads him past their bustling stalls. In fact, Lan Wangji watches on in silence as hands reach from every direction to pat the spirit or scratch behind its ears, as though it is a beloved pet and not an immeasurably powerful being.

Even the children come in packs of laughter and chattering, climbing the fox while it wags its tail and bows low for several of the smaller ones to ride upon its back. Not once does anyone recoil in fear or pain at touching energy in its most raw form - truly, the people of Yiling have nothing to fear from this guardian they have prayed into being.

It's inevitable that Lan Wangji is recognized; he has spent years roaming from place to place, going where chaos abounds and bringing serenity with him. Several of the townsfolk bow in respect, and he returns their reverent murmurs of Hanguang-Jun with a nod of recognition and quiet thanks.

The illustrious Second Jade of Lan is truly a remarkable man, his companion comments, something like mischief in its voice. It prickles at Lan Wangji's nape in a pleasing way; makes his ears warm from the teasing even as his heart aches from memories he will never allow himself to forget.

As expected, Lan Zhan is just too good!

And yet, not good enough to save what truly mattered when their backs were forced against a bloody, metaphorical wall.

“Mn,” he says, neither agreeing nor denying, and the spirit's mouth opens in another wild grin as it tilts its head.

So, have you noticed? it wonders, circling him without a care for the little boy still on its back grabbing clumps of its shadowy yin energy, just to watch and giggle as it wisps through his chubby fingers.

Lan Wangji focuses his eyes ahead as they approach a familiar inn. He has noticed, and so he replies quietly, “No cultivators.”

Yiling is teeming with civilians, but there is not a single cultivator to be seen anywhere. While the town is not a central point, it has always been a popular spot for cultivators - both rogue and allied - to gather for night hunts. Yiling's proximity to the Burial Mounds practically ensures that there will always be something to do, spirits and monsters alike drawn to the overwhelming amount of resentful energy that rolls off of the mountain.

“Your doing?” Lan Wangji wonders, meeting the liquid silver eyes that are already watching him.

The credit cannot be claimed by this one, the húlí jing demures, tickling a child's cheek with the tip of its tail before sending the last of them off with a guiding nudge. It is a symptom, but not the root cause.

“Mn.”

They continue on through the center of the town; not much has changed in Yiling, even years later. He recognizes familiar stalls and lets their memories wash over him in aching ripples; the flutter of ribbons and the brightly-painted toys echoing the laughter of a boy who once clung to his thigh.

Well, obviously he's mine. I gave birth to him!

Lan Wangji looks down and realizes that the húlí jing is already looking back, its ears relaxed and its eyes soft in a way that speaks of understanding.

Come, it says, passing the inn and saying nothing when Lan Wangji looks through the open doors, searching the visible tables for a ghost he'll never find. The disturbances are relatively new, it adds, its dark nose twitching. They waited for the world to forget, though it is their folly for assuming Yiling ever would.

“Is this how we speak privately?” Lan Wangji asks, glancing at the spirit from the corner of his eye instead of turning his head. Indeed, the hustle and calls around them will make it harder to pick out specific conversations from within the crowd. Something tells him that is not the entire truth though, and so he waits, and he follows.

Within my influence, they will not remember what they seek, the fox replies, its voice melodious with mischief. We are free to speak however you desire, Hanguang-Jun. Ask, and this one will answer.

That's one way to get rid of shadows, he supposes. He's never truly minded their presence - they would be foolish to believe someone like him was unaware that they followed in his wake. They've never given him a reason for confrontation, and so he has left them to their work; clearly, his companion has other plans for them. It's a harmless spell, compared to many others out there, and so he does not argue.

“The Burial Mounds,” he says, his gaze fixed forward on the shrouded mountain. Why else would they be cutting this path across Yiling, winding their way through streets and alleys he remembers in blurry flashes, like images from another life? To the unknowing onlooker, it would seem they're simply strolling with no destination in mind, a man and an immortal being sharing news and catching up like old friends.

Ah. An ear flicks, and the fox's gait hitches, a quick jump putting it a step or two ahead of Lan Wangji so it can smirk back over its shoulder. Yes, you'll see in a moment. Pretend to be shocked and save this one some face, ah? It's only fun if I get to be mysterious about it!

“They call you Húlí.” He wonders, for a split second between heartbeats, what it would feel like to touch this spirit. The color of its yang energy is unlike any shade he has seen before in a cultivator. Each Sect has their own methods of building a golden core, and as such, the energy they manifest is its own marker. Unless one plays tricks to hide their affiliations, the color of their spiritual energy will always betray their roots.

He can only think of one other exception to this rule - a boy who wore dark robes and summer smiles, whose sword glares glowed red as he fought with a skill almost no one else could match.

Yes, they do.

Lan Wangji wants to touch Yiling's barrier, to feed his own spiritual energy into it and see what happens. Will it feel familiar, like the earth that has supported him so steadily all these years? It doesn't match the húlí jing's primal energies in color, and yet it exists because of the spirit.

Too many questions, not enough answers. He must stay vigilant and unravel the tangles one at a time.

“Did you have a name before they chose one?”

I don't remember, the spirit admits. There was darkness, and then there was daylight. I was somewhere before I was here, but it was a nothing space. I drifted, and then I was pulled into life.

It does not make sense. A creature like this forms from the gathering of energy. It develops a consciousness and cultivates itself into something more than what it was. For this spirit to be so especially powerful upon manifestation… it's more akin to a rebirth. Or a reincarnation - though of what, he does not know.

Animals die frequently in the Burial Mounds - not much can live there without effort - but a húlí jing does not come into being through death. And if it had been a fox living in the Burial Mounds in its former life, the resentful energy would have made it into something completely different; it would have become a yao. Certainly not something capable of this level of complex thought. It wouldn't have been sentient in the same way.

To become so powerful would have taken a few centuries, like with the Xuanwu of Slaughter. And yet it claims to have only been here for around seven or so years.

The people of Yiling prayed for a guardian, and they were given one. But how? Gods are not created so easily. Spirits do not grow in power so quickly.

They step out of the barrier, and the Burial Mounds rise up into the dark, choking clouds before them. Lan Wangji frowns as he looks at it, golden eyes flicking back and forth. They aren't at the base of the Mounds yet, but even from here, the churn of resentful energy is… different. Abnormal. Which is saying something, considering the place in question.

You wish to know?

The húlí jing is still standing by the barrier, and when Lan Wangji turns to face it again, it taps the ground lightly with a paw. Immediately, the grass and dirt begin to glow, characters crawling across the face of the barrier and interlocking into one of the strangest-looking arrays Lan Wangji has ever seen.

A self-charging power source? The barrier is linked directly into the energies of the earth, looping in a constant give-and-take that balances across the whole of it and ensures no outside spiritual energy will be required. Lan Wangji has read about such arrays before, but they're particularly difficult to set up. Nature is not something that can be bent so easily to the will of Man; very few cultivators are able to create such harmony without linking themselves into the array as a focal point.

“You did this.” It’s not a question, and neither of them pretend it is. A seven-tailed húlí jing could easily create such a thing; no wonder his energy isn't present anywhere within the barrier.

Yes.

“Why Yiling?”

Those moonsilver eyes stare back at him, old beyond their years and unblinking.

Because Yiling remembers.

Before Lan Wangji can ask anything else, the spirit trots toward the Burial Mounds, giving him the choice to follow and learn, or stay and remain in ignorance. It's barely even a flicker of an option, and so he follows, one hand tucked behind his back and the other resting on Bichen's hilt, her steady hum a grounding presence as every step forward threatens to rouse memories like crashing waves.

Ten years. It's been ten years since he last crossed the border - when he risked his life and everything else to return, and left with a son and so much else hidden away in qiankun pouches that are still tucked under the floor beneath his bed to this day.

Ten years since-

The closer they get to the Burial Mounds, the deeper his frown becomes. From across town, the miasma of resentful energy looked no different than it had three years ago when he last stepped foot in Yiling. He never came this close back then; had so many unspoken reasons at the ready as to why he didn't need to.

Did his own avoidance cause him to miss what was happening, if it had already begun by that point?

The energy of the Burial Mounds is leaking. Only, no, that's not the right word for it. It's being drained. Even from where he stands, still dozens of chi away, he can feel it. Like a slow but steadily dripping wound, something is drawing the resentful energy out of the Burial Mounds and channeling it elsewhere.

“Arrays?” he wonders, looking at the fox spirit beside him. It's sitting facing the mountain, its tail tucked over its paws and its expression calm even as its own yin energy crackles and lashes away from its body in shadowy tendrils nearly as thick as Bichen's scabbard.

One at each cardinal and intercardinal point, it confirms, glancing at him and flicking an ear. Don't look so glum, Hanguang-Jun. They began their experiments after the last time you visited Yiling. This one fully stepped in as Yiling's guardian then. Your reputation remains intact.

He's positive his expression has not changed in the slightest, and says nothing about the playful teasing. Instead, he reaches into his sleeve and retrieves a talisman, activating it with a pulse of spiritual energy.

The paper burns away, leaving behind the glimmering form of a miniature ice-blue dragon that clings to the back of his hand. It wraps its tail around his wrist and raises its head, staring at him with shimmering eyes and waiting.

Find the boys, he tells it, and its wings flap excitedly. “Come to Yiling, both of you,” he says out loud, pressing the order gently into the dragon's essence with another flicker of energy. “To the Burial Mounds. Your assistance is necessary. Bring no one else with you. Do not let yourselves be delayed.”

He raises his hand, launching the dragon messenger into the air, and watches it fly away at a speed few humans could hope to match, even if they were riding their swords. When he lowers his arm again, the húlí jing's mouth is open in a wide, panting smile.

They say the Gusu Lan are descendants of the great dragons. After such a display, this one wonders if such rumors are true, it teases.

Lan Wangji doesn't answer. Gossip is forbidden, but more than that, it's a foolish thought. They are no more descended from celestial beasts than any of the other Great Sects, no matter their histories. Every Sect has their secrets, their strengths and weaknesses; his messenger talisman is nothing more than a borrowed spell, one he's adapted to his own style instead of following the prototype.

Butterflies were never his calling card. They were never meant to be - they belonged to laughter and mischief and an ingenuity he admires just as much as he still aches from the loss of it.

Recognizing that it will get no rise out of him, the húlí jing stands and shakes itself off, its single tail splitting back into seven. And so we wait, it chatters, its marbled eyes twinkling. In the meantime, Hanguang-Jun, can this one interest you in a drink?

“Mn. Will stay and observe,” Lan Wangji says, his attention back on the Burial Mounds. He watches the resentful energy roil and struggle as it’s dragged toward the arrays in fluttering wisps, the heavy clouds that always hang ominously over the mountain flickering with the threat of lightning strikes. The Burial Mounds has always protected itself - nowhere else in the world is there a place so steeped in such choking, wicked energy - so something like this is unprecedented. No one in the cultivation world has ever whispered about harnessing its evil in such a way. To date, only one man has ever found a way to channel it, and it cost him everything.

The true folly of Man is that he never learns from his mistakes. He only finds more heavy-handed ways to brute-force his way to victory, even in situations where he has no business meddling.

Lan Wangji begins to skirt the edges of the Burial Mounds, his sharp eyes missing nothing. The húlí jing seems content to follow him for now, leaving him to his quiet investigation while it watches him with sharp, knowing eyes.

Above them, the mountain clouds rumble.

**

The boys arrive in the deep golden-orange light of evening, touching down outside of Yiling with wide eyes as they take in the barrier - a marvel they have never seen, something built by nature and unmarked by human influence.

“Wow!” Jingyi chirps, always the more boisterous between the two of them - so much like the man he never got to know - while Sizhui remains more composed in his curiosity. He's always taken after Lan Wangji in that way, all the mischievousness of his youth burned away by a fever that robbed him of so many memories. Since exiting seclusion and taking them both back under his care, Lan Wangji has done his part to teach and guide them while encouraging their minds to question and grow.

In that, Jingyi has flourished. Anyone who does not know his tear-stained past would assume the boys are twins; the pride and joys of their reserved, solemn father. Certainly, Lan Wangji has never pretended to be anything else since the day he plucked the wailing child from the arms of his flustered caretakers, granting them the peace they'd had so thoroughly disrupted when they took in the son of their relatives after they'd died in the Sunshot Campaign.

Jingyi is the sun to Sizhui's placid moon - the exuberance to his serenity. He pulls Sizhui into life and reminds him to have fun. Likewise, Sizhui calms Jingyi's bursts of temper and hones his riotous thoughts into coherence. Lan Wangji is proud of both of them, and often tells them so. Children grow when they are nourished, he knows this well, and he will not be the reason they wither when they are meant to bloom.

He will not repeat his Uncle's - or the Sect elders’ - mistakes.

“Hanguang-Jun,” the boys say in unison, bowing together in greeting. Jingyi is the first to bounce up at his nod, his eyes sparkling with excitement. Lan Wangji cannot blame him for it - they are thirteen now, and have not yet experienced a night hunt this far from the Cloud Recesses.

“Tell me what you see,” he says, gesturing toward Yiling. The boys fall into step behind him, silent and attentive as they approach the barrier. Lan Wangji cannot help but glance up at the crux of the dome where the húlí jing waits, stretched out in relaxation with its front paws folded over one another, waiting and watching like the silent guardian god it has been hailed as by its devoted people.

It will be a lesson on its own, to see how long it takes the boys to notice its presence. Currently they're distracted by the barrier itself, touching and testing the surface of it with gentle pulses of their spiritual energy to learn what they can. Jingyi's is the bright, icy blue of a Gusu Lan cultivator, as is to be expected; Sizhui's is blue as well, though his energy carries a faint purple tinge to it.

Most wouldn't think anything of it, but Lan Wangji knows his origins. He was too young yet to form a core when the Burial Mounds were besieged, but in that place, he'd had his own unique teachers, their energies two different shades of red - the Wen, and-

“Hanguang-Jun, this barrier isn't normal,” Sizhui reports, stepping back and taking in the symbols glowing across its surface with a small frown. He is the academic between the two of them, the scholar and researcher to balance Jingyi's forward, aggressive warrior heart. Even at such a young age, they are already being hailed as the new Twin Jades of Gusu Lan - following in the footsteps of their father and uncle, much like Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen followed their own father and uncle on this path.

“I've never heard of anything like this before,” Jingyi agrees, huffing and tilting his head. His nose twitches, not unlike one of their rabbits, and Lan Wangji allows his mouth to soften into the shadow of a smile.

“Explain,” he says, and the boys share a glance before kneeling to check the base of the barrier again.

“This works off of both yin and yang energies.” Sizhui traces a finger above two of the sigils, sketching them in the air while his sharp eyes follow the curves and lines of them. “Cultivators only work with yang energy.”

“Untrue,” Lan Wangji refutes quietly, and they both look up at him, young and eager in their curiosities. “There are exceptions,” he explains, his gaze drawn back to the húlí jing still watching from above. “It is not considered the orthodox path, and it presents dangers to those who do not know how to channel it correctly. But it can be done.”

Sizhui looks down in thought, a curled knuckle pressing against his bottom lip. “If it's dangerous and considered taboo, why would anyone take the risk?” he wonders.

“Why's it unorthodox?” Jingyi adds, his frown more akin to a pout. “If it works, why condemn it?”

They both know the rules of the Sect well, having grown up seeing the effects of their shackles, but neither of them have truly been yoked beneath the weight of their ancestors’ unbending ways. Lan Wangji has made sure of it, determined to do for them what no one had the courage or the resources to do for his own generation.

“It is dangerous.” Eyes drawn back to the Burial Mounds, Lan Wangji rests his palm on Bichen's pommel, letting her hum soothe the furrow of his brow. “For many, the fear is in the unknown. Resentful energy corrupts if not properly understood; it will corrupt your core and destroy your meridians if you are not careful. It changes people, no matter how strong their will. Becomes a dangerous tool, though an effective one. A powerful one.”

“Like the Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian,” Jingyi surmises, and Lan Wangji is ready for the sharp ache that follows, his name striking his heart like an old, well-known blade. The edge may be dulled, but the pain still radiates, and he closes his eyes against the bruise of it.

“The world will tell you many things about him,” he whispers. “Most of them are untrue.”

“Did you really hate him?” Jingyi asks, sitting up on his knees eagerly and ignoring the gentle elbow Sizhui digs into his ribs. “Did he really control thousands of corpses? Did he use blood magic?”

(Above them, the húlí jing's ears perk curiously and it leans forward, watching them with a sharper kind of intensity. Its silver eyes glow, a flicker of red pulsing at the center of them where its pupils would otherwise be.)

“Never hated him,” Lan Wangji says softly, his fingers sliding down to curl around Bichen's hilt. He remembers his fox-like smiles, sharp in both play and mischief. His ingenuity, his infuriating intelligence and the casual arrogance that came with knowledge others fought so hard to find footholds in. Even after ten years, he still remembers Wei Ying's face; the gleam of sunlight in playful silver eyes, the vivid red of the ribbon that wove through his black hair and held it in place.

“You were friends, once,” Sizhui says, hesitant in his assumption. “Weren't you?”

“Mn. He did not believe so, in the end. Maybe not ever. But to me, he was-” life. Freedom. A love as untamed as the wilderness.

He looks at Sizhui and Jingyi while he thinks, taking in their similarities and their differences. Jingyi's face is a little more narrow, his eyes sharper and cat-like. Sizhui's own eyes slope gently down at the corners, his features rounder and his hair holding a little more of a curl compared to Jingyi's belligerent waves.

He takes in the way their bangs fall, and the way they hold themselves within his quiet regard. Sizhui's eyes are gray, the color closer to slate rather than Wei Ying's lighter silver. Jingyi's are brown, and as dark as tree bark - not like Lan Wangji's gold, or Lan Xichen's lighter amber. It's one of the main ways others tell them apart, these twins of his who aren't related in any way, but are closer than brothers all the same.

Wei Ying would have loved them both fiercely, and no doubt would have raised them to be as wild as he was. Lan Wangji has done his best to show them how to be free, but some days it does not feel like enough.

“What else do you see?” he asks, guiding their attention back to what matters right now, and they're quick to return to their investigation. Jingyi attempts to dispel part of the barrier with a talisman, still clumsy in his execution the way all fresh-faced students are when finally allowed to put lessons into practice. To his credit, he doesn’t give up when the paper burns to ash upon contact, simply pouts his lower lip and goes about trying something else.

Sizhui follows the curve of the barrier in his own kind of study, his movements silent but for the rustle of his robe hems through the grass. He trails his fingers over its surface, watching with interest as the primal energy is drawn to his fingertips, flickering and swirling as if it knows his signature.

“It's a loop,” he murmurs, stepping back and looking at his hand. No doubt, it's still tingling. “This array, Hanguang-Jun… it's been set up as a constant flow. It's its own power source, constantly cycling back into the earth and replenishing. It requires no cultivators to keep it sustained.”

“How is that possible?” Jingyi demands, scrambling up and joining him to test it with his own energy. “How can something like that even be created?”

“Carefully,” Lan Wangji replies. “Takes incredible skill.”

(Standing atop the barrier, the húlí jing crouches, ready to leap.)

“Who even comes up with something like this?” Jingyi wonders, his nose scrunching from the frustration of not understanding. “And why?”

“You are missing a vital clue,” he tells them, and the juniors turn to him, wide-eyed and confused. He doesn't blame them - they are young yet. There is much they haven't begun to learn, having been tucked away in the mountains of Gusu where the rest of the world seems so far away.

“What clue, Hanguang-Jun?” Sizhui dutifully chirps.

“You assume the one that made the array is human.”

You know what they say about assuming!

The spirit lands beside Lan Wangji, mouth open in a playful grin while its tails flutter and wave behind it. Jingyi yelps and stumbles back, falling through the barrier to land on his hip inside its protection. Sizhui doesn't yell, but his eyes are wide and his hand naturally falls to the hilt of his sword, his body dropping instinctively into readiness as he takes in the creature staring back at him.

“Hanguang-Jun?” he asks, and beneath the title, Lan Wangji can hear the painfully young and anxious A-Die? he doesn't voice.

Oh, they're just precious, the húlí jing gushes, trotting forward and pressing its nose to Sizhui's elbow as though he isn't a millisecond away from drawing his sword. Look at you; such a fearsome kit. And such powerful spiritual energy! As expected of a son of Hanguang-Jun.

“What the hell!” Jingyi sputters, quick to lunge to his feet and jump back through the barrier to loom at Sizhui's side. “What the hell are you?!”

“Language,” Lan Wangji admonishes, giving Jingyi a stern look, and the boy shuts his mouth in guilt. It doesn't last long - though with him, it never does.

“You didn't tell us,” he accuses, sounding almost hurt. Lan Wangji gives a shallow nod, accepting and understanding his displeasure.

“I told you,” he says, letting the lesson sink in gently rather than lashing it into their minds. “Tell me what you see. You focused only on what was in front of you; as cultivators, you must look beyond what is easily noticed. Your senses must account for everything, or the danger you miss will be the danger that harms.”

The boys nod, accepting the rebuke for what it is. Their attention turns toward the fox spirit then, both of them wary and curious in equal measure.

“You're a spirit,” Jingyi blurts, ever the one to speak his mind between them, with little filter between thought and speech - if any.

I am, the húlí jing agrees cheerfully.

“You made this,” Sizhui realizes, looking from it to the barrier with a thoughtful frown furrowing his young brow.

The spirit dips its muzzle in acknowledgement. I did.

“You're the one they call Húlí,” Jingyi continues, his suspicion quickly being replaced by excitement. “You came out of the Burial Mounds!”

“Focus,” Lan Wangji says, redirecting their attention. “A good lesson,” he adds quietly to soften any sting from the reprimand. Jingyi beams, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Beside him, Sizhui's pride is much quieter, a warm smile that lights up his eyes.

Sometimes, he forgets how young the boys are - forgets that they're only thirteen, and yet already so entrenched in a world that has destroyed men decades older than them. Being a cultivator is no easy life; only they can decide if the rewards outweigh the pain of this harrowing path they've chosen to walk.

“You called us here because of the Burial Mounds,” Sizhui remembers, looking up at them with a subtle frown, and then turning his attention back to Yiling. “Does the barrier have something to do with what's happening?”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji says with a nod. “What's different?”

“Protective wards are very rarely visible to the naked eye,” Sizhui answers promptly. He and Jingyi share a look between them; Sizhui frowns in thought while Jingyi taps at his nose, the action so much like Wei Ying's that Lan Wangji cannot help but see a shadow of the man in him, despite them never having met.

“Lotus Pier's barrier requires cultivators to keep it powered,” Jingyi adds, crossing his arms. “It's visible when they do, but it takes a lot of energy to maintain for a prolonged period.”

“There's also the risk of it falling if the cultivators are injured,” Sizhui muses, his eyes distant in a way that means he's remembering a previous lesson. “That's what happened before the war, isn't it? Wen Zhuliu was within the barrier when it was triggered. His actions against the cultivators powering it caused the barrier to break and enabled the siege of Lotus Pier to commence.”

“And our wards?” Lan Wangji asks.

“They require maintenance,” Jingyi says, more of a question than a statement. “Wards don't need constant powering by cultivators, but they do require upkeep. If they're not checked, they eventually erode, right?” He looks at Lan Wangji, grinning brightly at his answering nod.

“Good,” he praises softly, and they both flush with happiness. “What about this barrier?”

“It doesn't keep people out!” Jingyi says quickly, reaching out to thrust his hand through as if to demonstrate what they already know. Then, he frowns. “But, why doesn't it keep people out? Why's it here if it just lets everyone come and go as they please?”

Because it's not meant to deter people.

The húlí jing's sudden answer makes the boys jump, still unused to its way of speaking. Jingyi opens his mouth to retort, his face scrunching up in confused disgruntlement, only to sputter into silence when the shadowy tip of a tail taps his nose playfully.

This one made sure that people could come and go as they needed, it explains cheerfully. That which belongs to danger, however, will not receive the same welcome.

“Was it to protect them from the Burial Mounds?” Sizhui asks respectfully, offering the fox spirit a proper bow when it turns its full attention on him.

Not the Mounds, it says, giving a full-body shake and playfully biting at Jingyi's fingers when he reaches out to touch its ears. He jerks his hand away at first, wide-eyed, and then grins and reaches out again to pet between its ears with a low, disbelieving laugh.

“Wow, that feels- wow,” he whispers. “It's like fur but not. And it doesn't hurt! Resentful energy always hurts!”

Lan Wangji shakes his head. “Not when balanced,” he says, and Jingyi makes a surprised sound at that, both hands now on the fox spirit like it's a particularly friendly canine.

“Húlí, you're so cool!”

The genuine earnestness of his words seems to catch the fox spirit off guard. Lan Wangji watches it still, eyes widening a fraction, before everything about it - about Húlí - seems to soften. It butts its head against Jingyi's chest affectionately, and the boy answers with a sound that is pure delight.

You have raised good kits, Hanguang-Jun, Húlí says to him, the whisper of its voice sweet like the memory of gentian blossoms. It stirs a swell of warmth in his chest, and he bows his head in grateful thanks.

“Mn.”

“Hanguang-Jun?” Sizhui chirps, a question in his tone. Lan Wangji looks up at the Burial Mounds again, so much more sinister now that the evening light is all but gone.

“We will rest for the night,” he decides. “You have both made good observations today,” he adds, and their faces light up with joy. “Tomorrow, we will return and begin investigating.”

The boys bow, rising when he guides them up by their arms. Jingyi is bouncing on the balls of his feet again, barely stilling long enough for Lan Wangji to fix his bangs from their wind-tangled sprawl. He does the same with Sizhui, who as always stands obediently still, his eyes and smile brimming with familial affection at the fussing.

“Are you coming too, Húlí?” Jingyi asks, too excited to wait. A noise like a chattering bark is his answer, and the fox spirit settles itself at Lan Wangji's side as they begin to walk as if it's always belonged there.

Of course, kit. I wouldn't miss this for anything.

“Don't call me kit!” Jingyi huffs, but there's no true disgruntlement in the complaint - there rarely is. As the two of them fall to playful bickering, Sizhui rests a hand lightly on Lan Wangji's elbow, seeking his attention quietly.

“A-Die,” he murmurs, looking up at Lan Wangji with worries far older than any thirteen year old should carry. “What does this mean for the cultivation world, that someone would do this?”

“Do not know,” Lan Wangji admits gravely, his golden eyes taking in the nighttime rustling of Yiling as they make their way through quieted streets toward the inn. “Tomorrow, we will research. We will find out why.”

If someone is pulling energy from the Burial Mounds, if they've gone through this much trouble to contain and control it, then its no wonder Yiling has rallied to pray their guardian into being. Someone is making moves - dangerous ones. Whatever their endgame, it cannot be for the betterment of the world.

Lan Wangji catches Húlí's glowing moonsilver eyes, and the fox spirit dips its muzzle to him before turning back to answer yet another one of Jingyi's excited questions.

Tomorrow, the work truly begins. And for the first time in longer than he can remember - not since he walked with the fluttering of black and red robes in his periphery, the air around him filled with gleeful chattering he never knew he'd miss so much until it was gone, ripped away by those who were wrong - Lan Wangji finds himself eager for the hunt brewing on the horizon.

Chapter Text

The inn's rooms are clean and comfortable, and surprisingly quiet despite how many travelers are staying at the moment. Lan Wangji pays for their meals along with the rooms, handing over extra to ensure they will be brought to them. It gives him the privacy he's craving for tonight - the need to retreat from the noise and take comfort in silence aside from the muffled sounds of the boys, who are in the room next to his. Rather than dining with them, he leaves them to their nightly routines; they know where he is if they wish to seek him out.

Settling at the low table in the center of his room, he uncovers the dishes on the tray and hums in quiet satisfaction when he sees the rice and lightly-seasoned vegetables. The meal has been paired with a pale soup that's still steaming, filling the air with a fragrance that soothes something behind his ribs.

Wow, the Lan Clan truly does strive for restraint in all things.

Húlí is sprawled out on the other side of the table from him, its slender muzzle resting barely a cun from the corner of Lan Wangji's dinner tray.

“Mn,” he replies, noncommittal. “Meals are to be taken in silence. Will you partake as well?”

Spirits do not require sustenance, not in the same way people do. He knows of some that will consume weaker spiritual beings in order to sustain their power and grow stronger, but everything about the húlí jing in front of him is unknown. Perhaps he will write to Brother and ask for information; surely a library as vast and eclectic as theirs will have records somewhere.

I enjoy a meal, but it's not a necessity. Those luminous eyes are half-open, watching him with the lazy interest of a predator more powerful than any mortal creature. Lan Wangji knows he should be suspicious, and yet something in him is far too settled in this spirit's presence. There's a familiarity between them that should not belong, one that both aches and blooms sweetly in remembrance.

It reminds him of what he's lost. Of ten years of mourning and roaming every inch of the country like a restless, half-living thing, his soul crying out in search of what had been so cruelly torn away from him without ever finding the answering thrum it desperately sought.

Húlí's eyes blink open fully when a roasted vegetable is offered, and for the first time since Lan Wangji saw it standing atop Yiling's barrier, the húlí jing looks caught off-guard. Fragile in a way a seven-tailed creature of legend never should.

Yin-black teeth pluck the stem from his fingers without ever scraping skin, and that restless, aching something in Lan Wangji's chest settles at the sight of Húlí eating what he has shared. It compels him to offer more, to split his meal between them - coaxing the fox spirit closer and closer until it sprawls across his lap like it's never belonged anywhere else. He has to shift to sitting lotus-style for it to be comfortable, but he cannot bring himself to mind bending this particular rule. It's not as if they're in the Cloud Recesses, and Húlí is certainly not a pet.

In a way, it's not unlike befriending one of the adolescent rabbits and conditioning them to his touch, though this particular creature is admittedly in possession of far more intelligence than a common wild rabbit. And much sharper teeth.

Despite its size, Húlí curls up with surprising ease on his lap, its tails swaying contentedly and passing through the table rather than knocking it away. Lan Wangji finds himself drawn to scratching behind its - admittedly adorable - oversized ears, settling into a state that's relatively close to meditative as he loses himself in the swirling ripples of yin and yang energies that sneakily curl around his stroking fingers.

Aiyah, the venerable Hanguang-Jun is truly a soft heart for animals. This one is so lucky, the húlí jing croons, teasing and affectionate in the quiet safety of the room. Lan Wangji pinches one of its ears in silent retort, the corners of his eyes softening at the way it flicks and trembles in his grip.

“The men you have seen,” he says, and Húlí tilts its head enough to capture him with one marbled eye. Silver and gold hold unblinkingly, so much that passes between them remaining unspoken. Lan Wangji is aware that the state of his soul is becoming troubling; it's mistaking this spirit for someone else - for the mate it lost and has grieved for. There are so many little things about Húlí that remind him of Wei Ying. He must keep himself in check; what they face is too important to allow himself to become distracted by wishes and what ifs.

There will be plenty of time afterward to uncover this truth and follow its leads, to figure out what, or who, Húlí is, and how it came to be in this place. Gods and mythical beings cannot be so easily raised by the desperate prayers of a town, or else the country would be overrun by minor deities and creatures of legend. Someone orchestrated this. Lan Wangji must figure out who, and why.

What is it my Hanguang-Jun wishes to know? the spirit teases, crawling off his lap after a guiding nudge and watching from its limp sprawl as Lan Wangji neatly gathers the empty dishes and carries the tray away, leaving it outside his room to ensure he will not be disturbed. With that done, he sends a silencing talisman toward each wall to ensure absolute privacy, his pale blue energy shimmering along the plaster before it settles in and vanishes.

“Tell me about those who set the arrays,” he says, returning to the table and pulling the supplies he'll need from his sleeves. Parchment, brushes, ink cake and inkstone - he lays it all out neatly while amused eyes watch him arrange everything to his satisfaction.

Good little Lan cultivators should be preparing for bed, Húlí points out playfully, giving a significant glance at the dark night beyond the window of the room. Hài shí approaches. Should you not be setting the example for your kits and tucking away to sleep?

In answer, Lan Wangji stares evenly back at the teasing spirit, arching an eyebrow until the fox lets out a bark of laughter and rolls onto its back to wriggle and kick its hind legs in delight.

Oho! What a mighty paragon of virtue Lan Zhan is, willingly breaking his own Clan's rules for this Húlí!

The familiarity of his birth name hits him as effectively as a strike, and his breath hitches from the shock of it. His eyes widen, fingers gripping the brush he's holding hard enough to split it down the side with an audible crack. Húlí grins at him unrepentantly from across the table, dropping its head to rest on a blank stack of parchment as its tails wag.

Húlí can call you Lan Zhan if such a venerated Lord can call this one by its own name, no? Hanguang-Jun must be fair!

“As you wish,” Lan Wangji murmurs, looking down and frowning at the broken brush. He sets it to the side to repair later and chooses another one before focusing his attention back on the spirit still watching him. “Describe the men who are responsible for the arrays around the Burial Mounds.”

So forward! the húlí jing crows, batting at the ink cake until Lan Wangji rescues it from the mischievous paw and goes about grinding enough ink on the wetted stone to get him started. Húlí watches the process with interest, squirming closer bit by bit until its black nose is a whisker-width shy of nudging the inkstone and both front paws rest on the edge of the table.

If they are affiliated with any Sect, they do not advertise it, the spirit says once his brush has been dipped into the prepared ink, and Lan Wangji dutifully begins taking notes. They come well into the night, typically around choushi. Their robes are common colors and unadorned, and they spell their swords to hide their appearance.

Lan Wangji frowns at that. “Faces?”

Also spelled. Húlí's lips pull back in a sharp grin, its eyes crinkling in what is a surprisingly human expression for a being so animalistic in nature. Not that their little tricks work on this one, of course. Their power is a seedling compared to mine.

Realization dawns and Lan Wangji's gaze turns sharp. “You see through their illusions?”

Of course. Húlí lifts its head haughtily, looking disgruntled at the insinuation that such tricks could fool a spirit like itself. Lan Wangji feels the corner of his lips twitch and represses the smile, though he cannot help the quiet huff of amusement.

“Can you describe their swords?” Cultivators are often recognized by their weapons - even those of lower ranks will be memorable to someone. If the men Húlí saw were that determined to disguise themselves along with their swords, then it's because they're more well-known in the cultivation world. It will give them a better idea of where to look and who to watch.

Boring, the húlí jing complains, sitting upright and tapping a paw against the stack of unused paper. Leaving its own pawprint behind on the otherwise pristine parchment seems to please it to no end. Very well then. This one will tell you what you want to know, and then we shall sleep. Shame on you, Hanguang-Jun, for keeping little foxes like me awake past our bedtime.

That is more than acceptable, even with the pointed teasing. Lan Wangji waits, watching Húlí without a flicker of an expression, and the spirit gives a whine of frustration at failing to get a reaction before it begins describing the group who had originally created the arrays.

The account it gives is a grim one. No less than forty cultivators were responsible for setting up the arrays around the Burial Mounds, but only eight have consistently come by to check and repair them as necessary. Lan Wangji writes every detail down, pleased that Húlí does not skip a single bit of description of their swords. One in particular catches his eye more so than the rest, and he frowns at what he's written, trying to place the sense of familiarity.

The tip of a tail tickles his brow, and he looks back up into silver eyes that are dancing with amusement as they watch him. You're too pretty to frown, Lan Zhan, Húlí complains, its voice a playful whine - it ripples across his thoughts like stones skipping across water and fallen leaves tangling in vines. Come now, be a good boy and go to bed. You can interrogate this one more once the sun has risen.

Lan Wangji accepts the compromise and quietly cleans everything off the desk, tucking things into their separate qiankun pouches to ensure nothing is damaged or misplaced. He leaves Húlí stretched out on the floor while he goes through his pre-bedtime routine, dispelling the silencing talismans before washing his face and letting down his hair. He braids it neatly, aware of glowing eyes watching the way his fingers comb and separate sections, and finally waves a hand to extinguish the lamps before sliding into bed. And yet, he does not immediately drift into slumber as he normally would.

“Three years,” he murmurs, his mind fighting the draw of sleep until this one final question is answered. “You said they came almost three years ago.”

Three years, and not a single whisper of this reached any of them. No rumors, no gossip - just silence. The only thing those in Gusu Lan heard about was the húlí jing that had appeared as Yiling's mysterious guardian, and that was only very recently.

Yes, Húlí murmurs. It has come closer in the darkness; has shamelessly snuck Lan Wangji's folded robes from their place and nested in them beside his bed. He says nothing about it. If anything, the sight fills him with a fond possessiveness he will have to carefully examine in the morning.

“Why did you not leave the Burial Mounds before then?”

Húlí blinks at him, eyes wide and moon-bright in the shadows its wrapped itself in. He's caught it off-guard with this question, he can tell; it turns its head away from him, and Lan Wangji is once again drawn to the amber patch of yang energy on the side of its throat.

Someone needed to keep the peace, it says, which is both an answer and not. The balance had been skewed by the loss of something, though I do not know what. I stayed to correct it, until I was needed elsewhere more.

He can tell that that's all he will get for right now, and so he accepts it with a quiet “Mn,” and closes his eyes.

Go to sleep now, improper little Lan, the húlí jing scolds, playing at sternness that doesn't quite land. He hears it curl up again, hears the rustle of his robes where they bunch beneath the spirit's movements as it settles.

“Goodnight, Húlí,” he murmurs, and just before he surrenders fully to sleep, he feels sun-warm affection creep across his mind, bringing with it the impression of earth and moss-covered stone.

Goodnight, Lan Zhan.

**

He rises promptly at măo shí, as he always has, and realizes without needing to light the lanterns that Húlí is no longer in the room. His robes have been returned to their previous spot, the messy fold of them the only proof that they'd ever been touched at all.

The room smells faintly of the crackle before a lightning strike - like damp soil mixed with charred ash, as though a heavy storm is rolling overhead. Lan Wangji frowns as he breathes it in, the sting in his nose bringing the threat of unknown danger. It has him dressing quickly in fresh robes and sliding Bichen into place at his hip before he leaves the room. She's thrumming louder than usual, almost rattling in her scabbard, and Lan Wangji is down the stairs and out the doors of the sleep-quiet inn before any of the newly-woken servants can think to call out to him.

The night air is cool, settling heavily against him as Lan Wangji turns toward the Burial Mounds. The sun hasn't crept over the horizon yet, the world still washed in that quiet gray light that precedes dawn. It clings to him as he walks, leaving his exposed throat feeling clammy. Above him, Yiling's barrier ripples and twists, pulsing like a heartbeat; every few throbs, it lights up brighter, an off-beat flare that flashes out like forks of lightning. They're coming from the direction of the mountain.

Lan Wangji crosses Yiling in a flash. Silent and wrapped in pure white robes, he shines like a beacon of purity amidst muted gray streets as he takes to the rooftops for ease of travel. The closer he gets to the disturbance, the more insistent Bichen's humming becomes. He grips her hilt to settle her, golden eyes intent on where the barrier ripples with another blast of light - as though something is throwing itself against it, trying to force its way into Yiling through power alone.

Quick on the heels of that attack, a series of flashes light up the fading gray of night in rapidfire flares, and amidst them, he spots a familiar figure perched on a rooftop near the edge of the barrier, ears up and tails lashing behind it. He changes direction with a graceful pivot and crosses the distance with ease to land beside Húlí, dropping into a ready stance as he takes in the situation with glinting eyes.

Below them, masked cultivators hurl talismans at the barrier in sweeping arcs. There's five of them attacking, staggering their blows in an effort to wear down on the protections and break through. Sigils glow and spin across the barrier's surface, twining together in ever-changing patterns that center around where the talismans land.

“You knew they would come,” he says - a statement, not an accusation.

Every three days, Húlí answers without looking at him. They'll try until they're nearly spent, or until I tire of their attempts.

Lan Wangji tilts his head in thought. “It is not chou shí. When did they arrive?”

Just before măo shí. They must know someone has come to snoop. They're more determined than usual.

“What do they want with Yiling?” To come every three days suggests there's something here they're desperate to get their hands on. Desperate enough to face failure again and again just for the slimmest of chances that they will succeed.

No one remembers Yiling, outside of its connection to the Burial Mounds. Silver eyes bright with anger, Húlí licks its lips and stands, padding to the edge of the roof. Its paws make no sound against the tiles. No one in power cares for its people, except for those who need bodies. Test subjects. Lives no one will search for. People no one will mourn.

Lan Wangji frowns heavily at that. “Something to test the resentful energy on,” he surmises. Rather than answering, Húlí lets loose a noise he can only describe as a scream-bark - the sound is almost overwhelmingly loud when it's coming from right next to him. It pierces through the growing dawn, and the cultivators shudder, the one in front raising a pair of talismans in preparation to throw them.

He never gets the chance.

The barrier lights up in a blinding swirl of green and bronze, discharging a surge of power that would no-doubt kill a weaker cultivator. All five men are blasted back at least a dozen zhang, their broken bodies slamming to the ground like lifeless dolls.

Yiling is a unique place, Húlí says, the pressure of its bitten-out words almost hot enough to sear, like the lash of crackling fire. Those raised here are more susceptible to yin and resentful energies. That makes them ideal targets to men who hold no value for human lives.

Lan Wangji nods, his eyes never leaving the crumpled forms of the masked cultivators. If he is to learn anything fast, he cannot let this chance go. He needs to see who's dead, and glean what he can from whatever they have on them.

Before he can leap forward, he feels a pull on his sleeve. Looking down, he blinks at Húlí, who has caught a fold of silk between its front teeth and is tugging in a way that reminds him of a man who once liked to do the same. Who enjoyed catching him by his sleeves, or by his decorative shoulder ribbons, tugging and pulling and demanding Lan Wangji's attention, lips pouting and eyes beseeching in wholly childish ways unbefitting of such a skilled cultivator.

Don't, the húlí jing warns, and a flash of pale green energy bursts into existence beside the unconscious cultivators almost immediately after it speaks. Three more men appear from thin air and are quick to secure their injured members, a second wave of energy spiraling around the group moments later. When it vanishes, so do they, and Lan Wangji's lips tighten in displeasure.

“A-Die!”

Jingyi lands next to him half a beat before Sizhui, their hair still sleep-mussed despite the neatness of their robes. “A-Die,” Jingyi says, barely scraping out a bow as his eyes jump between Lan Wangji and Húlí, who's grinning around the sleeve still caught between its teeth.

“Hey! Don't do that, you'll ruin it!”

Sizhui covers his mouth to hide his smile before offering a proper bow to them both. “We apologize for our lateness. Is everyone alright?”

“Mn. Nothing to forgive. No harm was done,” Lan Wangji says, catching him under an arm to urge him out of his bow. “Did not breach the barrier.”

“What did they want?” Sizhui wonders, moving to the edge of the roof. He seems fascinated by the way the yin and yang energies of the barrier are still swirling, sigils flickering in and out of sight as they settle back into a calmer flow.

Lan Wangji glances at Húlí, who finally lets go to trot across the roof and leap over to the next house. It vanishes over the side, likely down onto the street below. “People.”

“What?” Jingyi yelps, his face flushing with anger. “Like, kidnapping people? Those bastards!”

“Language.”

Jingyi ducks his head at the chastisement, but his jaw remains set in a stubborn clench, his expression mutinous.

“Will they come back, do you think?” Sizhui wonders, and this, at least, Lan Wangji can answer.

“Three days.” He gestures at the boys, and they follow him to the ground, the three of them landing without a sound. “Come every three days. We will find out what we can before their next attempt.”

“Yes, A-Die!” they chorus, and he doesn't reprimand them for the slip into familiarity. It warms him, every time they allow themselves this closeness; he is their father first, and Hanguang-Jun second. Their teacher last. That is how he has always raised them, building affection deeply into decorum and never punishing them the way he once was for blurring the lines.

“Where are we going?” Jingyi chirps, butting up against his side before quickly flitting away, his attention easily caught by the bright splash of flowers growing along the slope that leads to the base of the Burial Mounds.

“Are we looking at the arrays this morning?” Sizhui asks, walking calmly at his side. He's smiling as he watches Jingyi explore, always amused by his brother's antics.

“Mn. After breakfast.” Lan Wangji stops several chi from the closest array and produces a qiankun pouch. Jingyi returns to them without prompting, his fingertips stained green and a blue poppy tucked behind one ear.

While it's far from the breakfast they would have been given had they returned to the inn, neither of the boys complain about the travel rations they're handed, sitting in proper Lan silence while they eat. Jingyi fidgets, but that's nothing unusual - he rarely stays still even in his sleep. Lan Wangji has never punished his twitching and shuffling, knowing it’s simply who he is; his mind is rarely quiet, his thoughts always splitting in multiple directions, and meditation can only go so far for those who think like him.

Wei Ying was the same way.

They've made something of a game out of finding ways to quiet his mind, and Lan Wangji watches from the corner of his eye as Jingyi subconsciously rubs the jade pendant hanging from his belt in slow, firm circles, his squirming relaxing into stillness as his overactive mind zeroes in on the action.

Húlí hasn't returned by the time their meal is done, and Lan Wangji doesn't wait to see if it will. The húlí jing knows where they'll be; it will join them if it chooses. It has an entire town to protect, after all. There is no need for it to personally babysit three cultivators, especially when one of them is the renowned Hanguang-Jun.

The lack of its presence at his side already feels strange, as though in such a short amount of time, the spirit has figured out how to take up the space around Lan Wangji that no one, not even his sons, have learned to navigate. That in itself is dangerous, so Lan Wangji sets that particular puzzle aside for the moment and focuses on what's most important right now.

They begin at the southwestern intercardinal point. He motions for Sizhui and Jingyi to stay back while he approaches the slowly-turning array alone. There's a body slumped just outside its centermost anchor across from where he's standing - all that's left of a fierce corpse, something more skeleton than monster from the looks of how decayed it is. He can't sense an ounce of resentful energy in what's left of it - it’s all been sucked away by the array.

He takes his time to investigate the spellwork, frowning as its purpose takes shape. This array is both a net and a drain. It lures in anything steeped in resentful energy and traps it once it crosses the outer spell, then drains it to a husk. The array absorbs the energy and channels it away - but to where? Nothing in the array marks a second location. He recognizes the familiar sigils for transportation at the center of the spell, but there's nothing to even hint at where the energy goes. Even the color of the array itself doesn't tell him anything about its creator.

All he can tell is that whoever came up with such a complex array as this is far from incompetent. Blending spells to this degree takes an enormous level of skill - something that can only be done by a master-level cultivator, or close to it.

That alone narrows down the list significantly, but it's still not enough. “Come,” he calls quietly, and the boys appear on either side of him with a rustle of shifting silks. “Jingyi, draw what you see,” he says, meeting Jingyi's determined stare and resting a hand on his shoulder. “Do not rush,” he cautions, and the boy blinks before nodding. “Every detail is important; leave nothing out.”

“Yes, A-Die.” Jingyi pulls his sketchbook from his sleeve, the thick cover marked by inkstains and carved designs he had watched his son work carefully into the leather himself. He can tell from a glance that the book is almost filled, with extra pages stuck between others that are covered in everything from distracted, round-cheeked doodles to illustrations of landscapes that would make Nie Huaisang himself covet them.

Once Jingyi has folded himself into a lotus pose and wet his brush with his tongue, a tiny pot of prepared ink already open and waiting, Lan Wangji motions for Sizhui to follow him along the edge of the dead forest that stands as crooked, twisting sentinel to this stretch of the Burial Mounds.

They pass a gap in the trees, a path that has long since been reclaimed by wild grasses and limbs, and Lan Wangji takes note of an old, half-rotted shrine; there's a tiny stone altar beneath the dilapidated roof that hasn't seen an offering or stick of incense in years. It's been mostly reclaimed by nature, but he remembers it, remembers how it used to look piled with apples and steamed buns and skewers of sweet, sticky tanghulu. Offerings to the man locals used to whisper of as a god, though a calamitous one.

Something flutters in the sour breeze, drawing his attention to the corner of the shrine, and he reaches out to snag the tail of what's left of the ribbon someone tied to the support post there. Time has turned the once-crimson silk dark and filthy, has tattered the neat stitching and left the ribbon torn and fraying. He holds it with care all the same, looking down at the sprawl of it over his broad palm and allowing himself the sweet ache of remembering of another red ribbon, its tails flying behind the man whose hair it adorned as he ran ahead of Lan Wangji up this very path; returning to the prison he chose for himself to keep others safe while a talisman burned with danger between his fingers, Lan Wangji following him and cradling A-Yuan against his chest.

“Oh,” Sizhui says, soft and painfully fragile, and Lan Wangji closes his eyes in a slow blink before looking at him, watching to see what memories bloom in wide, gray eyes.

“I… I know this place,” his son whispers, brow furrowing with his uncertain frown. “It feels so familiar, A-Die. But I've never been here before.”

“Mn.” Neither confirming nor denying the question in Sizhui's voice, Lan Wangji brushes a speck of nonexistent dirt from his son's sleeve before guiding him past the overgrown path with light fingers. “Come. Tell me what else you see.”

He looks back over his shoulder to check on Jingyi, his heart stuttering in a rabbit-quick leap of fear when he realizes the boy isn't sitting where they left him. Sweeping the terrain, Lan Wangji relaxes when he catches sight of white robes up a nearby tree. Apparently, Jingyi has decided to climb to a higher vantage point in order to better draw the array. His sight has always been the sharpest of his growing skills - aside from his mouth, Lan Wangji admits with amused fondness.

“Jingyi, do not wander without warning,” he says firmly, and Jingyi chirps back an affirmative noise without looking away from his task. Lan Wangji shares a look of amused resignation with Sizhui before he gestures for the boy to continue.

Their morning passes much like this, with Sizhui and Lan Wangji checking every inch of the Burial Mounds’ crumbling edges and tattered wards while Jingyi draws the arrays at each vital point. They don't travel too far from Yiling, not today; Lan Wangji would prefer more than just himself and two fresh-faced junior disciples for that monumental task.

Even so, their time is hardly wasted. Jingyi has drawn the southern array, as well as the southwestern and southeastern anchors, his fingers and tongue stained black by the time he's finished. Even his lips are tinged gray, darker in the corners, and he sputters complaints when Lan Wangji cleans his face with a handkerchief but tilts his face up regardless, his arms loose at his sides.

“Impressive,” Sizhui comments, lightly teasing as he traces a finger over the constellations of ink stains spattered up Jingyi's sleeves to his elbows. “Maybe we should come up with a talisman that repels ink from fabric, to save the washers more undue stress from you.

“Ha ha,” Jingyi grumbles, stained lips pouting like they're no older than five again and squabbling over one of Sizhui's grass butterflies. “You're just jealous that all you can draw is splotches and stick portraits.”

“A-Die likes my art,” Sizhui says blithely, and his boys quickly devolve into giggles beneath his stern but benevolent stare.

“We will return to the inn for lunch,” he decides as Jingyi packs away the last of his supplies, his sketches nearly dry where he's spread them out in the sunlight. “Will look at Jingyi's arrays and decide on a course of action.”

“We'll need more people, won't we?” Sizhui guesses, kneeling to help collect the already-dry drawings; carefully stacking them at Jingyi's direction so they're in order. “This is too big for just us.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji agrees, watching the edge of the dead forest for any trouble that might try to slip out between the arrays, drawn by their yang energy. Thankfully, they remain unaccosted, and soon enough they're making their way back to Yiling on foot. No need to travel by sword when they're already so close. It gives the boys more time to think, rolling what they've learned so far around in their minds and coming up with theories and ideas to present. For his part, Lan Wangji leaves them to their musings, his eyes reflexively sweeping the fields and forests around Yiling in search of a conspicuous flash of black and amber energies.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Húlí meets them just outside the barrier, its tails wagging fast enough to blur as they approach the húlí jing.

Informational morning? it chirps, falling in at Lan Wangji's side like it's already second nature. Jingyi immediately starts complaining, which is nothing unusual.

“How can anyone live near that place?” he whines, all theatrics and sweeping hand gestures that mean nothing to anyone but him. “It smells so bad! I bet Jin Guangshan's trousers never got that wretched!”

“Jingyi!” Sizhui tries to scold, but he can't quite manage to sound properly scandalized with how hard he's trying not to laugh. “Do not speak ill of the dead!”

“I didn't!” Jingyi insists, rolling his eyes. “I spoke ill of his trousers. You know they had to smell positively awful, with how many different floors they wound up on. Hey, do you think Jin Guangyao's hat smells on the inside, too? He never takes it off. I bet it reeks of sweat and politeness. Do you think politeness has a scent? I bet it smells like cotton. All bland and boring, just like him.”

“Jingyi!”

“You know it's true!”

Sizhui covers his mouth with his sleeve, struggling to hold onto his composed expression. Lan Wangji admires his efforts. “You can't speak of the Chief Cultivator that way!”

“It's not like he's here to smile all creepy-polite at me about it!” Jingyi argues, his eyes sparkling with the victory of getting a visible reaction out of his brother.

Beside Lan Wangji, Húlí is making some kind of stattaco, yelp-like sound, its sides heaving as it fills his mind with laughter that ripples like sunlight through leaves, dappling him with a joy he cannot help but be affected by.

Aiyah, Hanguang-Jun, how opinionated your kit is! This one has never met such a free-spirited Lan!

“And how many Lans have you met?” he retorts dryly, which just makes Húlí laugh even harder.

None before you!

And so they enter the inn, rowdy enough to draw the amusement of the patrons already seated. Lan Wangji gives the boys a pointed look, which succeeds in getting Jingyi to swallow whatever insults were brewing in his throat despite his unrepentant grin. He scampers up the steps with Húlí, Sizhui following them with far more grace and restraint while Lan Wangji approaches the counter. The innkeeper's wife is already grinning at him, her expression matronly and commiserative.

“Those're some good boys you've raised, Hanguang-Jun,” she says with warmth. He nods his thanks, placing several pieces of silver between them.

“Four meals, delivered to my room, and a pot of tea,” he requests.

“Of course, sir, I'll prepare our most popular blend. Plain dishes again?”

“Yes.” He turns away, but pauses in thought and looks at her again. She stares back, patient and curious. “Three plain,” he decides. “One with spice.”

Unfazed, she nods her understanding and sweeps up the silver before disappearing toward the kitchen. Lan Wangji heads up his room, his head held high and a hand tucked behind him while Bichen sings, soft and sweet, at his side.

He hears Jingyi before he's even at the top of the stairs and sighs in fond exasperation at the boy's loud, jubilant nature. He has no doubt Húlí hears his approach, and the húlí jing must keep it to itself, because Jingyi yelps in surprise when Lan Wangji swings the door open and fixes him with an expectant look.

“Do not yell,” he reminds his son, and Jingyi looks properly chastised for all of three seconds before he's grinning widely again.

“A-Die, come look!” he insists, and only Lan Wangji stepping into the room and closing the door is what saves him from being dragged toward the table, where Jingyi has already spread out several of his drawings.

“We will discuss after the meal,” Lan Wangji says, and Jingyi groans but obediently gathers everything back into a mostly-neat pile before shoving it into a qiankun pouch.

“So, who do you think is behind it?” his rambunctious boy forges on, never one to be subdued for long.

“Do not condemn without evidence,” he reminds Jingyi as he joins the boys at the table. Húlí is sprawled across his bed, taking up the space like it belongs exclusively to the fox spirit and watching on with clear amusement.

So moral, Lan Zhan, it teases, letting its head hang over the edge of the mattress to watch them upside down, its paws relaxed against its chest. This one cannot believe such a noble and upright member of the gentry could sire such a delightfully feral kit.

“I'm not a kit!” Jingyi protests, which only makes Húlí laugh again in that sharp, cackling way.

Forgive this one, esteemed cultivator! How shall this lowly spirit address such a venerable lord, then?

Sizhui covers his mouth, trying to cover his laughter with a cough despite the mirth dancing in his eyes. Lan Wangji says nothing, leaving Jingyi to climb out of the hole he's dug with his own hands until a knock on the door interrupts them.

Servants carry their lunch in, setting down the trays and tea on the table before bowing and leaving just as quickly. Once they're gone, Lan Wangji places another round of silencing talismans while Sizhui prepares the tea. Jingyi unloads the covered dishes onto the table; his sudden noise of confusion reminds Lan Wangji that one of the meals is significantly more red than the others, which has Jingyi staring in horror. Even Sizhui looks mildly unnerved, as if he's remembering something he'd much rather forget.

Húlí looks downright ecstatic. Oh! Is that for me? Lan Zhan, you're too kind!

“Mn.” Lan Wangji carefully arranges the spirit's dishes at the end of the table for it while Sizhui and Jingyi try and fail to be subtle about moving their own meals farther away, as if afraid the rich, burning scent of the spices will somehow transfer to their own food.

Jingyi eats quickly - he always has, wolfing down his food like it will be snatched away from him if he doesn't get it into his mouth as fast as possible. It is the one habit that Lan Wangji has never managed to coax him out of, no matter how much he's expressed that Jingyi's food was his own and no one would dare take it from him. It has made him wonder what could have happened before he adopted the boy, to make him so frantic.

Once, when they were six, Lan Qiren had tried to discipline Jingyi by taking the food away until he could moderate himself and act properly, as befitting of a Lan. Jingyi had bitten him so hard he'd drawn blood, and Lan Wangji never wants to see that haunted, desperate look on his son's face again. He'd made it abundantly clear that no one was to ever punish the boy in such a way again. Lan Qiren, shocked silent by Jingyi's obviously traumatized reaction, had not argued.

Sizhui, on the other hand, eats at a far more reasonable pace, his eyes closed as though he's savoring every bite. Lan Wangji cannot help but wonder if this is its own kind of trauma response; Sizhui's own small ritual of enjoying each meal with such aching happiness because he so often went without proper nutrition as a child.

“I didn't even think spirits could eat human food,” Jingyi mutters once his bowls are empty, eyeing Húlí with faint horror as the húlí jing enjoys its meal with exaggerated glee.

When Lan Wangji arches an eyebrow at him, Jingyi points to his neatly-stacked dishes with wide-eyed innocence. “I'm finished with my meal,” he protests.

He's so much like Wei Ying it's as if the man raised Jingyi himself. Lan Wangji wishes he could have. He would give anything for Wei Ying to have raised these boys by his side. For Sizhui to know his Baba, rather than fate cruelly burning the memories from him with the fever that almost took his life. No one would understand Jingyi the way Wei Ying would be able to. Lan Wangji tries his best, but he knows his flaws painfully well.

At least Jingyi is happy. He's happier than he would have been, if someone as rigid and structured as Lan Qiren had been tasked with raising him. And perhaps that is unfair to Uncle, who raised Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen the best way he knew how, but it does not change the fact that Lan Qiren has only ever known how to repress and mold, as tradition demands. He does not know how to nurture such whirlwind minds without caging them like birds and leaving them to yearn for the storms beyond their gilded prisons.

When the meal is done and the trays have been left in the hallway to be cleared away, Sizhui pours tea for everyone - including Húlí, who is delighted at being served in a shallow bowl - while Jingyi spreads his drawings across the table once again.

“The intercardinal arrays are different from the cardinal one,” he says immediately, launching into his explanation with mounting excitement while the rest of them listen and study the sketches. “The intercardinal arrays are the lures. They attract the corpses and beasts, and drain their resentful energy, but the cardinal array is what siphons the energy from the mountain itself.”

The cardinal array is easily twice the size of the intercardinal ones, and Lan Wangji sees immediately where Jingyi says it's different. Unlike the smaller ones, which lure and drain before transporting, this one forcibly draws in the energy; it doesn't give it a choice. Once the resentful energy is caught within the boundaries of the array, it's transported away.

“This has to require a massive amount of power to summon,” Sizhui murmurs, his frown a mirror of Lan Wangji's as he studies the drawing in his hands with intense focus. “That's not even considering what they're doing with the resentful energy on the other side of this. How is it being contained? How has no one noticed such a large gathering of resentful energy where there was never any before?”

“That is what we must uncover,” Lan Wangji says grimly, sparing a glance toward Húlí. The fox spirit is staring down at Jingyi's work, its expression difficult to read.

“Even the Yiling Laozu didn't do this kind of thing, did he?” Jingyi asks. Lan Wangji shakes his head.

“He summoned armies of fierce corpses to fight in the war, but after each battle he laid them to rest with full rites. Never summoned even half as many after the Sunshot Campaign. Only kept Wen Ning close and summoned what was needed to defend himself. Always laid them to rest with respect afterwards. This much resentful energy… it would destroy anyone that tried to command it themselves.”

Would control quite an army, though, Húlí muses, and the temperature of the room almost seems to drop in response to the icy horror the comment brings. Three sharp breaths are drawn, and then Jingyi and Sizhui bend over the table together, speaking in frantic whispers while Sizhui writes out notes and theories to be examined further, his brush flying across the parchment in neat - if rushed - rows of script.

Lan Wangji moves to the window, pushing it open before drawing another messenger talisman from his sleeve. When he activates it, the dragon squirms in response to his need for urgency.

Find Brother, he instructs, cupping the dragon in both hands and bringing it to his face. Their noses touch, human warmth against the buzzing tingle of his own yang energy. “Come to Yiling,” he says, letting his worry bleed into the messenger until the dragon is trembling with the urge to fly. “Bring more disciples. What we have found requires more than us alone. Leave Uncle in charge; you are needed.”

As soon as he finishes, the dragon leaps out the open window and streaks across the sky, heading straight for the Cloud Recesses. Lan Wangji closes the window and returns to the table, where Húlí has slunk over to lean between the boys and add its own thoughts and observations over the last few years to the conversation. It looks up at his approach, and understanding passes between them, heavy with the knowledge that, once Lan Xichen arrives, things will change rapidly.

Whether or not that's a good thing, they will have to wait and see.

Chapter Text

Lan Xichen arrives with no less than twenty disciples, the entire contingent of them appearing as the golden light of morning is burning off the last of Yiling's nighttime fog. Lan Wangji watches their descent from just outside of the town, the barrier a warm hum at his back and the boys waiting with differing levels of excitement and patience on either side of him.

“Bó-!”

“Jingyi,” he says, a quiet but gentle warning, and Jingyi huffs. Sizhui is polite enough not to tease, and to hide his smile behind a sleeve while their Sect Leader approaches.

“Ah! Good morning, Wangji-xiong!”

With Nie Huaisang. Whom Lan Wangji had not anticipated. He blinks at the flurry of green and silver robes that shuffles out from behind Lan Xichen, his painted fan already open and fluttering in front of the Nie Sect Leader's slender face.

“Sect Leader Nie,” Lan Wangji greets. The boys both bow politely, which makes Nie Huaisang stutter and wave for them to rise with the hand not holding his fan.

“No need, no need!”

Lan Xichen is looking at him, something fragile in his expression that neither of them will comment on. “Wangji,” he says softly, warm and smiling.

“Brother,” Lan Wangji answers, offering him the bow Nie Huaisang did not receive, not that he'd ever raise a fuss about it. “The trip?”

“Peaceful.” Guiding him back up, Lan Xichen squeezes his forearms - a subtle, quiet moment of affection before he lets go and takes a step back. Lan Wangji watches as he examines the barrier, his amber eyes darting in a confused sweep before they resettle on him. “Wangji, what is this?”

“Protective barrier.” An exclamation from Nie Huaisang draws his attention to where the flighty man is enthusiastically looking over one of Jingyi's newer paintings, his pale hazel eyes wide and delighted. “Why him?”

It's not a loud question, but something tells him the Nie Sect Leader hears him perfectly fine and simply chooses not to react. He's always been like this, loud and exaggerated in his shortcomings, as if he couldn't tell you where the sun rose for all the gold in Lanling. And yet, Lan Wangji knows that a few of his ever-present shadows before Yiling had belonged to Qinghe. Why someone like Nie Huaisang assumed he needed to be watched, he couldn't begin to guess, though he has his suspicions.

He supposes it's no coincidence that the Sect Leader has chosen to show up here, now that his loyal whisperers have stopped feeding him information.

“Huaisang wished to visit the market in Yiling before returning to the Unclean Realm,” Lan Xichen explains with an amused smile. “He won't get underfoot, Wangji; you know him.”

“Ah, yes!” Nie Huaisang chirps, deciding now is the time to join their conversation from behind his ever-present fan. “It's on the way, isn't it, so I figured, why not! It's been some time since I've gotten to enjoy the craftsmanship of Yiling, after all!”

Yiling is not, in fact, on the way. Qinghe is practically on the opposite side of the country from here, and Nie Huaisang knows that as well as any of them. Lan Xichen may be willing to indulge his ridiculousness, but Lan Wangji is not. He's not rude enough to scoff outright, not when Brother is looking at him with a plea for diplomacy in his eyes, so instead he turns and walks away - back into Yiling, the barrier welcoming him with a warm caress, as though he's someone known and cherished.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen calls after him; when he looks back, his brother is hovering outside the barrier, eyeing it with uncertainty.

“C'mon, bóbo!” Jingyi says eagerly, hooking an arm around his Sect Leader's and tugging him through while Sizhui offers to guide Nie Huaisang behind them. “See! It's fine; it's just to keep the bad stuff out!”

“I see.” Smiling at his nephew's excitement, Lan Xichen allows himself to be pulled along, affection shining in his bright amber eyes. Lan Wangji watches silently, his only source of disgruntlement being the presence of the Nie Sect Leader, who gasps and frets and complains far too loudly about being escorted through the barrier, no matter how much Sizhui attempts to reassure him.

“Your art looks more breathtaking every time I see it,” he hears Brother murmur to Jingyi, and something in Lan Wangji softens at that.

It's no secret that Lan Xichen adores and dotes on his nephews shamelessly. He was their main caretaker for three years, after all, raising them in Lan Wangji's stead while he was healing in silent, slow agony from the lashes of the discipline whip. Even if he'd wanted to, he'd been in no state to care for his sons, and they were too young then to understand.

Those years of seclusion were marked by tiny pockets of joy, when Lan Xichen would bring his boys to him for a visit and consequently remind him of what he had left waiting for him on the other side of the misery. Perhaps he had pushed himself too hard to get back to them, refusing to stay prone when they cried so desperately for their A-Die at night, and the country beyond the prison his home had become was suffering without someone to follow the chaos and vanquish the darkness.

If nothing else, he will always be grateful to his brother for loving and raising them when he could not. Sizhui and Jingyi have a strong, loving relationship with their bóbo, and Lan Wangji does not interfere because Lan Xichen, unlike Uncle, does not seek to repress the boys’ freedoms or mold their minds beneath the weight of uncompromising disciplines.

“Hanguang-Jun! Hanguang-Jun!” Nie Huaisang flutters and fidgets at his side, and Lan Wangji eyes him coolly, arching an eyebrow until that fan comes back up to hide the bottom of the Sect Leader's face. “Wangji-xiong, are you responsible for that barrier? How unusual it feels!”

“You have complaints?” he retorts, which sparks another round of stuttering and tripping over rushed words.

“I don't know, I just don't! How can I? I'm no good at spells, you know that! It just feels so strange compared to Qinghe's wards, or even those of the Cloud Recesses’!”

Rather than answering, Lan Wangji looks over the disciples Lan Xichen has brought with him. All twenty stand at the ready, steady and focused; none seem to have been afflicted by whatever tricks Húlí uses to confuse and disorient those who are unwelcome in Yiling. That is a relief, and he allows himself to relax a few degrees before turning his attention to Brother, who is watching him with strained curiosity from behind his usual mask of politeness.

“Wangji?” he prompts quietly, hopefully - tinged with that same desperate sadness; a longing for them to be as they once were, of one mind and in sync with every thought and step.

“The Burial Mounds,” he replies, looking toward the shrouded mountain. “Something has happened.”

His voice isn't loud, but it ripples across those gathered like the strike of a gong, shattering the quiet and filling the cracks with the sour tang of fear. Brother's eyes widen a fraction, his pale, jade-smooth skin turning a shade paler at the implications of Lan Wangji's words.

“Let us make haste, then,” he says, drawing himself up and giving his men encouragement with that gentle, steady strength he's always been known for. “If the Burial Mounds are stirring, then that is troubling indeed. Let us go and see what we can do. Wangji, if you would please?”

Lan Xichen gestures for him to guide the way, and so he does, leading the group through Yiling with Sizhui and Jingyi at his sides.

Not once do his searching eyes catch a flicker of Húlí, and he tries not to ponder too hard over the ache of missing the spirit when it's gone; he knows why it's chosen to hide its presence at the moment, and he understands.

And yet, he still misses the húlí jing. He will unpack that later - for now, there are more pressing things to focus on.

The Burial Mounds cannot wait.

**

“Oh my!” Nie Huaisang gasps, and Lan Wangji leaves him to his dramatics; he has no time to play into the man's games, and even less desire to do so. Instead, he turns to his brother, taking in Lan Xichen's pale face and wide eyes, that always-present mask of serenity cracked clean through in the face of understanding.

“The arrays must be documented,” he says quietly, stepping closer and lowering his voice to a level even the cultivators around them won't register. These words are for his Sect Leader and him alone. “Jingyi has drawn the lower three, but it is too big a task for just us.”

“Do any of the other Sects know of this?” Lan Xichen murmurs, and when Lan Wangji hesitates, his gaze sharpens. “Wangji?”

“Men come,” he replies, his jaw setting in a stubborn clench. “Unadorned. Swords masked. They maintain the arrays. Try to breach Yiling.”

“Try?” Brother wonders, looking back at the shimmering barrier with a frown. “Wangji… did you create that?”

“No.” His denial is instant, and firm. “Yiling's guardian. It protects them.”

“So the rumors…?” Lan Xichen looks troubled. An unknown creature guarding Yiling, and now the resentment poisoning the Burial Mounds being siphoned away - it's a lot to take in, and Lan Wangji can admit that. The cultivation world hasn't faced such a dangerous unknown since Wen Ruohan began making his moves, and what came after that cost them all.

Some significantly more than others.

“Did it do this?” his brother asks, and Lan Wangji's grip on Bichen tightens to the point that she gives a displeased thrum.

“No,” he bites out, fierce and unwavering. “It protects Yiling. Would not harm it. Would not do this.”

Lan Xichen gives his forearm a comforting squeeze, tilting his head to catch his eyes when Lan Wangji stubbornly looks away. “I can't know what you do not tell me, Wangji,” he says in gentle reproach. “Tell me about this guardian. Why have we heard of them, but not this?” His eyes return to the Burial Mounds, the shadows in them haunted by very different memories than the ones that cut into Lan Wangji.

“Protects Yiling,” he replies, drawing away from Lan Xichen's touch and watching Jingyi animatedly talk at a few of the younger disciples, filling them in on everything while they stare, wide-eyed and looking faintly poleaxed by his rapidfire retelling. “Keeps the people safe.”

“Safe from what? Wangji, please. I cannot help if you do not talk to me.”

Lan Xichen doesn't sound angry. He isn't frustrated, though maybe he would have the right to be, after Lan Wangji called him here only to rebuff his assumptions over what's happening. He sounds lost, and maybe just a little hurt, his hope at Lan Wangji actually asking for his help after years of tepid-to-frigid interactions between them making him more desperate to understand and bridge the rift that has come to feel like a canyon.

“The men,” Lan Wangji says, turning to meet his brother's hopeful expression. “They try to take the people. The barrier keeps them out.”

“You have seen this? These men?”

Lan Wangji nods shortly, watching as Brother closes his eyes and takes a deep, centering breath. “Five attacked yesterday morning," he adds, and Lan Xichen nods to show he's listening. “Couldn't get through. The barrier lashed back. Three more showed up and teleported them all away.”

“Teleportation is an incredibly difficult skill to learn,” Lan Xichen murmurs with a frown. “You said they mask themselves and their swords?”

“Mn.”

“That will make it difficult to identify them.” Amber eyes blink open slowly, unfocused as though Lan Xichen is focused somewhere else. “If that barrier truly does keep the people of Yiling safe, then the Burial Mounds take precedence. Where does the resentful energy go? How much has been taken already? What is the end goal?”

They're all rhetorical questions, so Lan Wangji doesn't answer. “Need to finish drawing the arrays,” he reiterates, his eyes seeking out Jingyi again. He's talking to Nie Huaisang now, Sizhui quiet and amused by his side. “Need to understand them, and safely dismantle if possible.”

“How many arrays are there in total?” Lan Xichen is eyeing the one closest to them. Its pale yellow glow lights up the ground around it; a monstrous yao was drawn in at some point overnight, what's left of it slumped near the centermost layer of the spell.

“Eight. Maybe more.” Lan Wangji gives a quick, brusque recount of what he and the boys have discovered so far; by the end of it, Lan Xichen's frown has only grown deeper, an uneasiness in his eyes that he doesn't try to hide from his brother.

“We might not be enough,” he sighs, looking over the gathered disciples. “Perhaps, if I were to write A-Yao-”

“No,” Lan Wangji rumbles, low and fierce enough to shock his brother, who stares at him wide-eyed. “No others.” You should not have brought Nie Huaisang, he doesn't say, but once upon a time, no one knew how to understand him better than Lan Xichen. Even now, with the distance that has cracked open between them, that remains true to a degree. Lan Xichen sees it in his eyes, dropping his own away in a sad, sore flare of guilt. He swallows thickly, his jaw setting in a stubborn clench, but it's quick to bleed out of him when he meets Lan Wangji's uncompromising glare again.

“This is a problem that concerns all of us,” he tries to reason. And that may be true, but someone sanctioned draining the Burial Mounds, and they did not deem it necessary to share their intentions with the rest of the Sects. Lan Xichen knows that without him ever needing to say it aloud.

He does anyway, as a reminder. “Untrustworthy,” he says, flat and cold. “Too many questions; too much unknown. Need more information.”

His brother, loyal and gentle and trusting to an overwhelming fault, pushes back. “A-Yao is the Chief Cultivator, Wangji. This threatens all of us; he should be made aware.”

“And if it's him?”

Lan Xichen steps back like he's been slapped by Lan Wangji's quiet, harsh words, his expression cutting from stubborn to wounded. “I trust his integrity, Wangji,” he says softly. “I trust him. A-Yao would never do something like this.”

Loyal to an overwhelming, painful fault. Lan Wangji once held that faith in others. In his brother, in his uncle, in his Sect and their thousands of rules he devoted his life to. They were the first to teach him the truth - that blind faith and tradition will always cripple those who dare to question those in power. That what's moral and right doesn't matter in the face of those who refuse to bend from their idea of justice. “Trust can be broken,” he says, everything but coldness leeched from him. He stands rigid, a hand behind his back and the other resting on Bichen. His golden eyes, like chips of ice, regard his Sect Leader. “Easily, by those closest.”

He turns away before he can see the devastation bloom, the chasm between them yawning even wider. Perhaps it is cruel of him to throw this in Lan Xichen's face, but he once chose silence over integrity. He had his chances to speak - many of them, in fact - and insisted on peace as a cover for his indecision. Whether or not he believed in Wei Ying or even agreed with his distinction between what was right and what was wrong, the fact remains that when it was most important, Lan Xichen stood in silence and let himself be led by those whose voices were louder, because they were the majority. Because to go against them would have meant recognizing and accepting his part in the rot that was festering beneath the surface of the cultivation world, masked by money and ignored by the powerful because to look at it would have been to admit their own sins.

Pausing after a few steps, Lan Wangji turns his head without looking back. “If asking for your help was a mistake, do not stay. Would not want you to sacrifice your friendship if it means that much to you.”

He hears the sharp inhale, the choked-back gasp of his name, and leaves his Sect Leader to make his decision. He goes to Jingyi and Sizhui instead, who have been watching with worried eyes, and pulls the boys aside to speak to them quietly.

“Take who you trust,” he says, and they nod in unison. “Split the groups as you see fit. Sizhui, assign them each an array. Determine one artist for each group you trust not to make mistakes. Jingyi, show them how you drew the arrays step by step.”

“What about bóbo?” Jingyi asks, looking over at where Lan Xichen stands alone, staring up at the mountain with an unreadable expression on his jade-like face.

“Let him decide where he wants to be,” Lan Wangji replies, and his sons nod again. “Make it clear that no word of this is to spread,” he adds, glancing meaningfully toward where Nie Huaisang is fanning himself and looking twitchy with unease. “Gossip is forbidden. See that they remember.”

“Yes, Hanguang-Jun,” the boys chirp, bowing before heading in different directions to assign groups. They are the youngest juniors present, but they carry the weight of being Lan Wangji's sons. They're accomplished even at thirteen, their record for night hunts impressive because they have learned from him alone, and he has trusted them to tackle situations others would have given to older disciples.

No one can claim they haven't earned their place.

“Ah, hearts are such fickle creatures.”

Lan Wangji side-eyes Nie Huaisang, who yelps at the glare and ducks behind his fan. “I don't know, Hanguang-Jun, I was just thinking out loud!”

“Idiocy does not suit you.”

The Nie Sect Leader goes still, his wide eyes blinking innocently as he observes Lan Wangji over the edge of his fan. “Ah, you're too kind, Wangji-xiong, but everyone knows I'm hopeless,” he whines. “Even my brother said so. Xichen-ge truly is kind, to help this useless one so much.”

“And not Jin Guangyao?”

The corners of Nie Huaisang's eyes tighten, a tic in his temple his only visible tell, there and gone as he whirls into motion again with a bright laugh.

“Ah, Yao-ge is so good to me too! Without them, the Nie would be no more!”

“Mn.” He has no tolerance for this game right now. “Your shadows reach far indeed, for a useless Sect Leader.”

Nie Huaisang's smile doesn't falter, but it does change subtly, the frantic motions of his fan smoothing into a lazy sweep as they size one another up. “One can never be too careful, when a false sun seeks to eclipse the moon,” he drawls, glancing up at the Burial Mounds with a shudder that isn't entirely theatrical. “Sometimes, all one needs is a few shadows for company if they plan to walk the single-plank bridge instead of the wide, sunlit road.”

“Why Yiling, then?” Lan Wangji asks - demands - taking a step closer and letting his greater height and bulk loom over Nie Huaisang, who watches him with the wariness of a street cat who hasn't yet decided whether or not to unsheath its claws against a larger predator. “Why here?”

Why this place, where his heart was lashed apart by his own family, and the only person who ever belonged by his side was swallowed by the darkness he had once played into compliance?

“Because everything began and ended here,” Nie Huaisang murmurs, looking down at the painting on his fan, faded now by age but still depicting a beautiful, forested mountain range and a single house overlooking it all. “Yiling needed a guardian, and one appeared. Quite the coincidence, wouldn't you agree?”

“Hanguang-Jun,” Jingyi calls, and just like that, the tense air between them shatters. Nie Huaisang once again starts stuttering and falling over his words, offering a quick bow before hurrying back to Lan Xichen's side with a glance over his shoulders that to others probably looks like fear.

Lan Wangji knows better, though, and golden eyes narrow in thought before Jingyi pushes into his space, bouncing on the balls of his feet like he can't wait to be noticed. As if Lan Wangji would ever be unaware of where his sons were, especially with danger writhing just behind crumbling wards and rotting trees in his periphery.

“Jingyi.” He nods to show he's listening, catching the gleam in the boy's brown eyes and recognizing immediately that he's up to something. Something he doubts Lan Wangji will like, not that it will stop him from forging ahead with it anyway.

“The groups are decided,” Jingyi tells him, too pleased to be anything but a visible trap. “Zewu-Jun is the artist for your group. He offered.”

And there it is. Lan Wangji isn't angry about it, nor is he resigned. He had told Lan Xichen to choose, after all, and his brother had. He offers a nod to show he understands and squeezes his son's shoulder.

“Well done, both of you.”

Jingyi glows at the praise, smiling widely enough to show his teeth. “There were two disciples unassigned,” he adds after a moment. “They have offered to escort Sect Leader Nie around the market so that he is protected.”

“Good.” Better that Nie Huaisang isn't left entirely to his own devices. Lan Wangji still plans to corner him later and drag the truth out of him, even if he has to threaten the man with Bichen to do it. “We leave now. Prepare the others.”

“Your group is the cardinal North array,” Jingyi chirps before bounding off. Lan Wangji watches him go, amused and fond of his free-spirited boy. He watches as he tugs Sizhui aside, the two of them whispering quickly to each other. He gives them the courtesy of pretending not to notice their glances, instead joining Lan Xichen and their group of disciples.

“The hearts of youth,” his brother says with quiet amusement. Lan Wangji hums in answer, drawing Bichen and waiting for the others to draw their own swords as well.

“Fly high,” he tells them firmly. “Do not stray. If you falter, we will catch you. When we land, assist your Sect Leader as he requires. Be always on your guard.”

“Yes, Hanguang-Jun,” the three of them chorus, bowing as one before they mount their swords. Lan Wangji watches to make sure they're steady and sure-footed before he follows suit.

“Good luck!” Nie Huaisang calls, waving his fan as they all rise toward the clouds. “Be safe! Draw me beautiful things, Xichen-ge!”

“Frivolous,” Lan Wangji mutters. Beside him, Brother chuckles softly. For a while, that's the only sound between them. They reach altitude, and the five groups separate, flying toward their assigned points. He and Lan Xichen fly behind their three juniors, side by side and watching to make sure none of the disciples struggle. Flying this close to the Burial Mounds is not easy for many. The resentful energy is powerful, and heavy; once you're snared, it is not easy to twist free of. Even being so high above the mountain, the air is murky with decades of rage and oppression, thick enough to cling to their skin and robes and make breathing harder.

“Do not let yourself be swayed,” he tells them, and lets himself be their anchor as they need it, saying nothing when they swerve toward him or Lan Xichen in search of support.

“You are a good teacher, Wangji,” Brother says softly, offering him a smile that is genuine, if slightly strained. “They all adore you.”

“Uncle would disagree,” he says just as quietly, keeping his gaze fixed ahead. “He says I allow them far too many freedoms.”

“You help them understand, not just memorize. You allow them to be themselves. There is no dishonor in that.”

Lan Wangji glances toward his brother, who is already looking back at him. Their eyes meet, a scripture's worth of words passing between them before Lan Xichen looks away.

“There is no shame in believing in others, Wangji,” he murmurs. Quiet. Helpless. Begging him to understand everything he does not say.

“There is no dishonor in questioning injustice,” Lan Wangji replies, equally quiet. Unyielding. “The rules are a guide, not law. They do not allow shades of grey. When they are broken, it should not warrant death.”

“A-Yao is a good man.” Amber eyes plead with him to understand. Lan Wangji does not, and he will not pretend to.

“So was Wei Ying.”

Brother flinches subtly, the name landing like a blow. “He made his choice,” he whispers. Ahead of them, the juniors are valiantly pretending not to hear the conversation between them. Lan Wangji appreciates their discretion.

“What choice was he given, truly?” he counters. “What choice are any of us given, in war? And when the blood dried and the fires burned out, what understanding did he receive from the gentry? How did they repay his sacrifice? How did they choose to honor all he had given of himself in order to keep so many of us alive?”

“Nightless City-”

“Was a massacre of more than just our cultivators,” he rumbles, the words coming from deep within his chest not unlike a dragon's fire. Lan Xichen closes his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. It does not matter - Lan Wangji will not let him hide from this. Not anymore. “Jin Guangshan hung innocent people from those gates. Elders, who had harmed no one. Women whose only crime was their surname. Civilians with no golden cores. Farmers. Crippled. They would have been murdered in those despicable labor camps if not for Wei Ying's sacrifice and self-banishment. Instead, they were hung to rot by the men you claim to be so honorable; not even given the courtesy of a proper burial.”

“We can speak of this later, Wangji,” Lan Xichen says, shaking his head. Clearly he doesn't know what to say after that - it's the most Lan Wangji has spoken to anyone but his sons in years. Since the day Wei Ying was cut down in his own home, desperately trying to destroy the Stygian Tiger Amulet before greedy men like Jin Guangshan could steal it for themselves and ruin everything. Murdered by the very people he had given so much of himself to save - by his own Sect brother, while Lan Wangji lay bloodied on the raised altar of the Cold Pond cave, his back flayed open to the bone and his blood pooling across ice-slick stone faster than the air could freeze it.

Unable to move. Unable to help. Screaming into the silence as it felt like a piece of his soul was ripped from the world with the death of the only person who had ever shown him what it meant to be truly blinded by the sun. What it meant to love, wholly and desperately, even if Wei Ying never knew.

They called each other soulmate, swore they would uphold honor and justice together. Wei Ying had begged him, that night at Qiongqi 

Path as the rain poured down over them.

If I am to die by anyone's hand, then let it be yours, Lan Zhan.

A promise broken, something he can never make amends for. He can only hope that Jiang Wanyin was quick, that he did not force Wei Ying to suffer for the satisfaction of others.

“We all must choose,” he says quietly, standing with proper Lan posture as has been carved into him - upright, hand tucked against his lower back, chin raised as he stares ahead. “I choose justice. If that makes me wrong, then I will walk the single-plank bridge and leave men like Jin Guangyao to rot in their golden palaces.”

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen whispers, his name sounding so fragile on his brother's tongue. “It does not have to be this way.”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji says, meeting his Sect Leader's pleading amber eyes, “it does.”

They do not speak again until after they have landed at the northernmost point of the Burial Mounds, where the array glows dully through the thick cloud of resentful energy swirling around it. Summoning his guqin, Lan Wangji sits and strums an opening cord.

“Draw every detail you can,” he tells Lan Xichen. His brother nods and quickly prepares his brush and inks while Lan Wangji turns his attention to the junior disciples.

“Assist him however is needed,” he instructs, and all three are quick to nod. “If you are confident in your painting, do not hesitate to lend your skill. Otherwise, you may join me in playing Cleansing.”

One of the boys immediately goes to Lan Xichen's side, pulling out a qiankun pouch of his own supplies. The other two, a boy and a girl whose names he has not yet learned, are quick to sit on either side of him. The girl pulls a guqin from one of her pouches; the boy draws a xiao from his sleeve.

“Do not fear mistakes,” Lan Wangji tells them quietly as they make sure their instruments are ready. “I am here to guide. Play with heart. Do not hesitate.”

They nod as one. “Yes, Hanguang-Jun.”

Nodding as well, he glances toward Lan Xichen, who meets his gaze and nods firmly.

Lan Wangji focuses on the array and lets his spiritual energy flow to his fingertips. “Begin.”

**

They return to Yiling well into shēnshí. Lan Wangji flies with one of the boys - This one is Lan Haoyue, Hanguang-Jun - on his own sword, supporting him as he slumps from exhaustion. He and Lan Jīngxiù had played well, their minor fumbles due purely to lack of experience and ultimately nowhere near enough to disrupt the flow of Cleansing.

Lan Wangji cannot help but wonder if the other cardinal and intercardinal arrays were so heavily steeped in resentful energy. Clearly the arrays closest to Yiling have remained the purest - whether that is due to Húlí's care, he does not know. He will have to ask the spirit once he has time, provided it appears at all while so many cultivators roam Yiling's streets.

“They did well,” Lan Xichen says warmly, his usual gentle smile having found its home once more. Whatever strain there might be between them, Lan Wangji would never allow it to affect something as important as this. They had worked seamlessly, his brother focusing on painting every layer of the array alongside Lan Yángchēn while Lan Wangji and the other two junior disciples had kept them safe from harm.

“Mn,” he agrees, and when three pairs of hopeful, reverent eyes turn toward them once they've landed, he offers a solemn nod. “Well done,” he praises, and all three of them light up, blooming like young flowers tilting toward the sun. “Go to the inn in Yiling's center and seek rest and a meal. Replenish your strength.”

“Yes, Hanguang-Jun, Zewu-Jun.” They offer their bows to both him and Lan Xichen before walking through the barrier, and Lan Wangji turns his focus back to the Burial Mounds to wait for the others. He and Lan Xichen stand shoulder to shoulder in silence, the air between them neither warm nor frigid. He has spoken enough today - more than enough, even if so much yet remains unspoken. Whatever Lan Xichen feels, he will stand by his morals, as Lan Wangji will live by his.

He misses the closeness they once shared sometimes, but he will not compromise on his beliefs. Not anymore; not now that he knows the grievous cost. He has never been known as the reasonable Jade between the two young masters of the Lan Clan anyway. When it comes to him and his brother, Lan Xichen was the one born for diplomacy and politics, no matter his desire to find a compromise in all things.

In comparison, Lan Wangji is a blade, forged to protect and never bend beneath the strikes of those who stand opposite him. Together they are sword and shield, action and word; unyielding steel and deceptive silk.

Their uncle is a scholar through and through. His peace is found in molding young minds into the next great generations of cultivators, for all that his methods are inflexible. He is a powerful fighter, but the sword was never truly his calling, not like it has been for Lan Wangji. Of the three of them, he is the warrior who has chosen to teach. Lan Qiren is the teacher who fights when he must.

Lan Xichen is the leader who fights with words just as expertly as he does a sword.

“You would make a better Chief Cultivator than Jin Guangyao,” he says quietly, his eyes sharp as Jingyi and Sizhui land with their groups and approach where they're waiting. He can feel Lan Xichen's startled gaze burning into the side of his head and meets his brother's eyes for a heartbeat before looking away again.

“I do not think such a role would suit me,” his brother says slowly. He makes a disagreeing noise low in his throat.

“You would lead with integrity and honesty. No tricks or shadows. The world needs that more than it needs smiles that hide poison.”

“You truly trust A-Yao so little?” Lan Xichen doesn't sound angry; he sounds contemplative. Resigned.

Good. Maybe Lan Wangji's sharp tongue finally succeeded in cutting open something important. “I trust that those who oppose him too loudly inevitably find themselves eradicated in conveniently coincidental ways,” he retorts.

Whatever answer Brother is gathering on his tongue will have to wait; the juniors are close enough to hear them now.

“Hanguang-Jun, Zewu-Jun,” his sons chirp, bowing along with the other disciples. Lan Wangji guides the boys back up, scrutinizing all of them for injuries before giving a short, satisfied nod.

“Well done,” he murmurs, and even with their visible exhaustion, the juniors all perk up at the praise. “Jingyi, collect the copies of the arrays from each group; we will study them later. For now, all of you return to the inn. Eat, and rest. You have done well.”

Once everyone is accounted for and sent to recover, Lan Wangji makes his own way into Yiling with Lan Xichen at his side.

“Your help is invaluable and appreciated,” he says suddenly into the fathomless quiet between them, and after a moment of surprised silence, he hears his brother chuckle.

“Praise from my notoriously reserved didi?” he teases. After how long they've spent holding the shards of what-was between them, this carefully-settling affection feels fragile in its newness. As if they're taking a step toward learning each other again. The easy closeness of their youth has become unreachable after so much has happened, but starting over doesn't have to be a loss.

Things can never be like they once were, but perhaps that is for the best. The Lan Wangji of those years believed his brother to be infallible, someone set apart; not wholly human, but not quite a god. Such hero worship does not belong anymore now that they are grown.

The chasm still yawns between them - too much has happened to collapse it that easily. But maybe, in time, they can build a bridge from their respective sides to meet in the middle, and find a foundation that cannot be so easily shaken.

“This one is honored by your words,” Brother continues with a playful lilt. Lan Wangji stubbornly refuses to rise to the bait, but he lets him warm him all the same, like a tiny flicker of fire finally finding kindling after years of waiting for a breath.

“Xichen-ge! Wangji-xiong!”

Nie Huaisang hurries toward them, grinning widely while the junior disciples accompanying him sort parcels and books into qiankun pouches.

“Ah, I have forgotten how wonderfully rich in variety Yiling's market is!” He snaps open the fan in his hand - a new one, its frame made of dark-stained wood and its face painted with birds in flight. “I would stay forever if I could!"

“Your Sect might despair at that,” Lan Xichen muses, his teasing swinging flawlessly toward a party far more likely to play along. Nie Huaisang certainly doesn't disappoint, fanning himself as his expression twists into something like despair.

“I don't know, I don't know!” he whines. “Xichen-ge, we both know I'm hopeless as Sect Leader! Wangji-xiong would be a much better candidate than this one!”

“I refuse,” Lan Wangji says immediately, his voice flat. Brother hides his laughter behind his sleeve while Nie Huaisang continues to lament over his terrible misfortune.

“Ah, Wangji-xiong, no mercy at all for your old friend!”

“Not friends,” he grits out. Nie Huaisang was closest with Wei Ying, not him. No matter that they traveled together for a time, that they saw war from different areas of the battlefield, that Nie Huaisang almost certainly visited Wei Ying and the Wen remnants in the Burial Mounds without his volatile brother ever knowing. Lan Wangji has never desired a friendship with Nie Huaisang deeper than cool acquaintances, and the Nie Sect Leader has never pushed for more either.

“Aiya, you wound me,” Nie Huaisang mourns, not sounded wounded in the slightest. “And just as I was about to offer you my resources.”

Gamely, Lan Xichen continues to play along, his stride unhurried and his mouth pulling in a lopsided smile as he follows Nie Huaisang back through the market. Lan Wangji takes his cue and remains silent, passing stalls that still snag him with tendrils of memories he cannot bring himself to let go of.

“I accidentally caught a glimpse of one of those arrays young Jingyi had drawn,” Nie Huaisang explains, waving his free hand quickly before either of them can comment. “Just an accident, I don't know what any of it means! Ah, but, it did look similar to a particular scroll I have recently found myself in possession of. One of my disciples brought it back from a night hunt. As payment! Aiya, I will truly be the downfall of the Nie Clan, allowing stories in place of silver.”

“I believe your love of the arts will deplete your treasury far sooner than payments of peculiar scrolls,” Lan Xichen muses, a teasing glimmer in his eyes. Unlike his far more open-hearted brother, Lan Wangji eyes Nie Huaisang's innocent face with suspicion. Somehow, he doubts the Nie Sect's acquisition of that scroll was in any way coincidental, but he says nothing.

“Wounded again! There is no justice!” Nie Huaisang wails, slumping against Lan Xichen, who laughs and supports his weight without so much as a fumble, as if this is an act they have performed many times.

“What is so interesting about your new scroll then, A-Sang?” he prompts, redirecting the conversation with fond grace.

“Ah, well, there were similarities between the array drawn in the scroll and the ones your disciple drew.” Mouth covered by his face, Nie Huaisang's eyes dart back and forth. “I think! I don't know. I'm awful at all of that, you know me, Xichen-ge! But it looked so familiar. That's what made me think of it.”

Brother frowns at that, looking over Nie Huaisang's head to meet his narrowed eyes. Lan Wangji nods, a sharp tilt of his chin, and Lan Xichen is quick to give the Nie Sect Leader a reassuring smile.

“Come, A-Sang, you must be hungry after all your shopping. Let's get something to eat at the inn before I take you home. We can talk more about your scroll then, too.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Nie Huaisang frets, even as he lets himself be herded along. “Do you really think it'll help? It's me, after all, Xichen-ge. I can't tell a silencing talisman from a fire one, so it's quite possible that they're truly nothing alike!”

“Would not have brought it up if it wasn't relevant,” Lan Wangji retorts. He's tired of the theatrics; they've already had a long day, and no one has ever claimed him to be patient in the presence of fools.

Not that he truly believes Nie Huaisang to be one. Whether the rest of the cultivation world believes it or not, he hasn't spent the last decade shadowed by silent watchers for no reason. He also isn't naïve enough to believe he's the only cultivator Nie Huaisang has been watching.

“Wangji-xiong!” Nie Huaisang cries, closing his fan to clutch it in both hands - his best attempt at looking pitiful, and one Lan Wangji watches with absolutely no sympathy for his wailing.

“Xichen-ge, I don't know!” he insists, even as he lets himself be guided along toward the inn. “I'll be wrong and it'll have wasted your time, I just know it! Just forget I said anything! I don't-”

“Hanguang-Jun! Hanguang-Jun!”

The voice is unfamiliar, yet it tugs at something in his chest all the same; whispers you know me across his prickling nape and snaps his attention away from his brother and the Nie's notorious Head-Shaker. He pivots on his heel, golden eyes searching the street. Behind him, Brother and Nie Huaisang have stopped. He thinks, distantly, that he hears Lan Xichen say his name, a question in his voice.

He doesn't look back to check.

“Hanguang-Jun!”

There.

Lan Wangji's breath freezes in his throat.

A man is running toward him, his dark robes billowing in his wake like fabric tails. His feet are bare, his open mouth smiling. Pale, moon-silver eyes are fixated on Lan Wangji like no one else exists as he weaves his way between the people of Yiling, who laugh good-naturedly and clear a path as though making way for a god.

Behind him, he hears the sharp snap of Nie Huaisang's fan opening again. Hears the man himself speak, awed words carefully wrapped around the underlying satisfaction of plans that are at long last falling into place.

“Oh, I really don't know.”

Chapter Text

This man is not Wei Ying.

He cannot be Wei Ying. His eyes are too wide and pale, his lashes too long. His features are fox-like, sharp with mischief, his mouth full in a way Wei Ying's was not. The top of his head comes to just under Lan Wangji's chin, his body slender and his movements vulpine.

It cannot be Wei Ying. Wei Ying was taller, his shoulders broader. He moved like a fight, like water just waiting to boil and rise over its banks. His eyes were the same silver as his sword, his lips thin and always hitched in a crooked smile.

This is not Wei Ying.

And yet.

The inky spill of his hair carries a familiar crackling scent, something sweet and dangerous that rouses memories of blades gleaming under moonlight and harsh, eager breaths as they danced and parried, moving as mirrors of each other. He tilts his head back, canines too sharp when he grins, and Lan Wangji's eyes drop to his bared throat, his breath stuttering at the sight of the mark there - only a few shades darker than sun-kissed jade skin, something easily missed by those who never knew to look.

But Lan Wangji remembers everything about Wei Ying.

“Húlí,” he says, and those pale, moon-bright eyes crinkle from the width of the man's smile. Hands come up to throw themselves over his shoulders, and the sight of them - black, as though they've been dipped in ink, or wrapped in the húlí jing's yin energy - makes his eyebrow twitch in surprise. His fingers lash out to grip narrow wrists and lift them high over Húlí's head, his billowy sleeves sliding down to bare him to the elbows. The blackness continues up to nearly mid-forearm before fading in uneven tendrils, blending into the paler skin like wisps of dissipating shadows.

“How cruel you are to your Húlí,” the man - can he be considered a man? Húlí is a spirit, made entirely of energy, and yet the body pressing against him is solid and warm - complains, even as delight dances in those too-pale eyes. “You would deny this one a hug after letting him have your lap? How cold Lan Zhan is!”

He even teases like Wei Ying, but Lan Wangji already knew that. Húlí has teased since the moment he got close enough that very first day, slipping past a decade's worth of armor like smoke - like none of it was ever meant to keep him out.

“Húlí,” he says again, a breath of sound meant for no one else's ears. Húlí's smile softens as he rises onto his toes, his nose rubbing against Lan Wangji's cheek in what is unmistakably a nuzzle.

Behind him, the sound of Shuòyuè sliding from his sheath rings far too loudly, a danger that makes Lan Wangji's grip on Húlí's wrists tighten as he pulls the creature against his chest; one hand drops to keep him close, the other reluctant to slide away from the slim wrist still in its hold.

“Brother,” he says over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off the top of Húlí's head. His hair is longer than Wei Ying's used to be, falling to just above the curve of his backside. The only adornment is two simple braids pulled back and tied by a fluttering indigo ribbon; it's so similar to how Wei Ying wore his hair when he resided in the Burial Mounds that the color of the ribbon feels wrong.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen replies, his voice tight with worry that barely masks the crackling tension. “Who is that?”

“The guardian of Yiling.” Lan Wangji forces himself to release Húlí, to turn and face his brother while still keeping the húlí jing behind him. “What I came here to find, before realizing what was happening with the Burial Mounds.”

It's a reminder. A warning.

Lan Xichen's expression is blank, his amber eyes unreadable. “You did not inform me of his existence,” he says, looking past Lan Wangji to what he stubbornly protects. A furrow appears between his brows, his mask cracking to reveal a deep confusion.

“Not a threat,” Lan Wangji stubbornly insists, a hand dropping to Bichen's hilt when Brother's grip tightens on Shuòyuè. “Protects Yiling.”

“How can you be so sure?” Lan Xichen presses, looking between him and Húlí, who is watching their interaction from over Lan Wangji's shoulder, silent for the moment but thrumming with primal energy that coils just under the surface. His nails are claws, Lan Wangji realizes belatedly when fingers curl around his sleeve; yin-black like his hands and curving just slightly, the sharp tips snagging against the silk of his robes but never cutting through.

“Ask them,” he rumbles, his golden eyes icy in response to Lan Xichen's aggression. A sweeping hand encompasses the whole of Yiling, filled with people who know their savior well. Who let their children crowd close and ride upon the húlí jing's back, and welcome him with all the reverence befitting a denizen of the Heavenly Capital.

Those people are inching closer now, their previous cheer turned swiftly to protectiveness as they close in on the cultivator threatening their guardian. They're all civilians, most of them merchants and farmers, some who have called Yiling home for longer than Lan Wangji has been alive. They have no weapons, but that won't stop them from defending their own, and Húlí is theirs; their guardian, their god.

Nie Huaisang steps forward then, his eyes wide and wet; his fan trembles in his white-knuckled grip. He looks stricken, like he's seen a ghost.

“... Wei-xiong?” he whispers. “Is that… is it really you?”

Lan Wangji can understand the turmoil. What he can't quite tell with Nie Huaisang is where the truth ends and the acting begins - all that matters is that his actions have the desired effect. Lan Xichen falters, lowering his sword and taking in the crowd around him, all of them willing to risk a fight they cannot win - not against a cultivator of Lan Xichen's skill, not even with a mob - to protect the spirit he threatens.

As if unaware of the true extent of the danger, Húlí tilts his head toward Nie Huaisang, his cheek pressing against the back of Lan Wangji's shoulder. “This one is Húlí,” he chirps, the warmth of his breath sinking through layers of silk and leaving the skin beneath them tingling. “Do I know you? You seem familiar. Like Lan Zhan but… not.”

Lan Xichen's expression goes from contemplative to alarmed, his wide eyes snapping back to Lan Wangji. Their silent conversation is quick, little more than eyebrow twitches and the tug of Lan Wangji's mouth into a deeper frown.

“Húlí protects the people from the men who maintain the arrays,” he says fiercely. His brother has yet to sheathe Shuòyuè, but the blade is at least lowered and held off to the side in rest at the moment. “The barrier is his doing.”

“You mentioned those men before,” Lan Xichen muses. “You said they were unadorned, their faces and swords hidden by a spell.”

“Jingyi has the sword descriptions.” Lan Wangji glances back at Húlí, who perks up at his attention and gives him a crooked, beaming smile. “Their magic cannot fool something like Húlí,” he adds, returning his attention to Lan Xichen. He knows he's glaring, daring his brother to challenge his words - or Húlí's integrity.

Lan Xichen's answering frown is thoughtful, a touch of calculation gleaming in his eyes. “He described their swords, but not their faces?”

“Would you like this one to describe their faces?” The húlí jing steps out from behind Lan Wangji and offers a formal bow, looking up from behind his cupped palms. “Lan Zhan only asked for the swords, and so this Húlí described them for him. I can tell you what they look like if you wish to know, Sect Leader Lan.”

At Lan Xichen's pointed glance, Lan Wangji tilts his chin up. “Swords are more recognizable,” he mutters tersely. Nie Huaisang coughs behind his fan in a poor attempt to disguise his laugh.

“That's Wangji-xiong's way of saying he doesn't care enough to remember someone's face," he stage-whispers to Húlí. They laugh together, and Lan Wangji is viciously, painfully reminded of another town, another time; two young men leaning together and laughing over masks while he stood and watched their closeness, burning with jealousy and hating himself for coveting someone so bright and untouchable.

Except he wasn't actually untouchable. Wei Ying touched him constantly and without reservation, bumping hands and brushing elbows as he talked on and on about everything and nothing whether or not he was answered. He always grabbed Lan Wangji by his wrist to pull him along, eyes sparkling as he dragged Lan Wangji's silence into the light with him, leaving him blinded and helpless to do anything but follow and yearn to drag such heat behind the cage of his ribs and hide it away so no one else could see it.

But Wei Ying was never meant to be contained, not by him or anyone else. He was meant to soar, to reach higher than anyone. He did reckless, impossible, brilliant things, and men who held greed above decency shot him down from the clouds so they could steal everything he was for themselves.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen says, and he blinks slowly at him to show he's listening, all too aware of Húlí leaning in curiously as Nie Huaisang whispers from behind his fan. Those pale silver eyes are still fixed on his face, watching every microexpression like Lan Wangji is the most fascinating thing he's ever experienced and he doesn't want to look away for even a moment.

Brother calls his name again, quietly amused, and he directs his attention away from the húlí jing with a hum of acknowledgement. “Where did he come from?” Lan Xichen asks. Wangji's eyes stray toward the Burial Mounds in answer, lit by the golden glow of the setting sun. The dark clouds churn across its peaks, a swirling miasma of rage and resentment pierced through by golden rays that make it look deceptively beautiful.

The crowd around them disperses now that the danger is past, melding back into their evening routines. People flow past their group like water parting around rocks, carrying on with a cheer that Lan Wangji feels separate from, as though he's watching from far away.

It has been a long few days.

Brother's voice intrudes upon his splintering thoughts, drawing him back to shore like a gentle lure. “Wangji… Do you think… Could it be…?”

Lan Wangji clenches his jaw and refuses to answer, because it cannot be. It cannot. It makes no sense that Wei Ying would return like this. That he would look so different while looking so similar at the same time. That he wouldn't remember.

He can't bear the thought that Wei Ying could have spent the last near-decade living in the place where he had been murdered; that whatever had dragged him back had made him no longer human. That he would forget everything - his family, his friends, Lan Wangji.

Sensing the spiral, Lan Xichen wisely chooses a safer topic. “We should return to the inn,” he suggests, tucking a hand behind his back and giving them all a wry smile. “There is much to discuss. I would like to look at the sword descriptions as well.”

“Jingyi wishes to work on drawing them,” Lan Wangji murmurs, and Brother's smile widens, warms, gentles.

At times, he wonders if Lan Xichen might have adopted Jingyi himself, had Lan Wangji not claimed him first. Not that Lan Qiren would have ever allowed it, not when Jingyi is so free-spirited and recalcitrant, those supposed faults making him somehow unworthy of being the Clan heir.

Not that Lan Wangji can imagine a life where Jingyi is not his son, loud and boisterous and swinging from his arms like he is the boy's favorite tree.

“Ah, Húlí-xiong!” Nie Huaisang yelps, his voice strangled by surprise and uncertainty. Lan Wangji looks over and blinks at the sight of Húlí snuffling at the lapels of Nie Huaisang's robes where they fold at his throat, huffing noisily as he breathes in the flighty man's scent. “What, what are you-!”

“Húlí.” His voice is low, deep, rumbling from an ancient place. The spirit turns to him immediately, melting into Lan Wangji's side and tilting his head with a grin.

“Just wanted a sniff,” he chirps, squirming closer and hooking his forearms loosely around Lan Wangji's neck. “Húlí just wanted to know why he seems so familiar!”

Nie Huaisang is quick to wave his hands, too flustered to even pretend to hide behind his fan. “I don't know!” he squawks, looking to Lan Xichen in a desperate plea for help. “I don't know, Xichen-ge! I don't come to Yiling; how would he know me?!”

“It's alright, A-Sang,” Lan Xichen soothes, his lips quirking in an amused smile. “It's been a long day. Let's return to the inn for a meal and see what progress we can make in regards to those masked men.”

Lan Wangji is ready for the silence of a meal, and even more ready for the peace of his own space. It has been a long day; he cannot remember the last time he was surrounded by so many people outside of a classroom. It's straining, grappling with so many emotions outside of his own. Handling his brother's quiet grief and hope as he continues to reach but refuses to understand.

“Give him time,” Húlí coos, warm breath puffing just below his ear as they finally make their way back toward the inn. He lets Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang lead the way, hanging back in an attempt to begin gathering the quiet he so desperately craves. He dips his chin to show he's heard the húlí jing's words, but does not reply.

“Aiyah, my poor Hanguang-Jun,” the spirit murmurs. “This one will protect you, don't worry.”

Lan Wangji doesn't need protection - not from the Burial Mounds, or his own brother, or the truth. He's not that fragile.

Still, the sentiment is… nice. In an aching way, like pressing on a bruise to remind yourself it's there.

Húlí's weight slides away so the man can walk properly by his side; Lan Wangji stares ahead, resolute and reserved, until a tug of his forehead ribbon makes him scuff a step, golden eyes widening and snapping toward the spirit. Húlí stares back at him, moonsilver eyes glowing in the evening light and his lips curved into a closed smile against the ribbon held loosely in his palm.

It's Lan Wangji's ribbon, the tail end of it fluttering and dancing in the breeze, brushing against the midnight blue of Húlí's robes. He didn't pull hard enough to undo it entirely, but the sight of the silk against his yin-black skin sends a jittery shiver through Lan Wangji. Makes something ignite in his chest, awful and all-encompassing, memories clashing with regrets and longing until he's clenching his jaw against urges he does not know how to name.

“This one is so glad Lan Zhan came,” Húlí whispers against embroidered silk, his lips brushing over a cloud design, catching slightly against the pale blue thread in a way that leaves heat rumbling from deep within Lan Wangji's chest.

Ahead of them, amber eyes stare determinedly forward, Lan Xichen's grip on Shuòyuè's hilt turning his knuckles white. Meanwhile, Nie Huaisang's own pale hazel eyes glitter, his mouth hidden behind an illustration of cranes in flight.

Lan Wangji doesn't notice either reaction, his gaze fixed on the slide of his forehead ribbon through Húlí's fingers as the spirit slowly lets it go, looking pleased and just a little smug.

“Come, come, it's time for good little Lans to eat dinner and plot,” he coos, hugging one of Lan Wangji's arms and tugging him along with a laugh that reminds Lan Wangji of the wind rustling through the trees of the Cloud Recesses.

Home, he thinks, something aching like wonder that's waiting - hoping - to bloom. And he can do nothing but indulge the húlí jing and follow.

**

“A-Die!”

Jingyi bursts into his room with all the grace of a fledgling storm, bounding across the threshold without a care for the flare of spells that were long ago tuned to his signature. Sizhui follows behind him with far more grace, his gray eyes twinkling as he hides a smile behind his sleeve.

“Bóbo,” he greets Lan Xichen, happily moving to his uncle's side and letting the man fold him into a hug. There is no need for performance or decorum here, not in the quiet safety of Lan Wangji's room; no bows or formalities amongst family. Jingyi is quick to follow suit, throwing himself into the hug with the grace of a boulder rolling down a mountain.

“Bóbo!”

“You've both done well,” Lan Xichen praises warmly, and the boys light up with blinding smiles. Lan Wangji's mouth softens into a smile of its own as he watches them from where he's laying out their dinner on the table. Húlí is lounging on his bed, his human skin shed in favor of returning to his spiritual form. It had alarmed Lan Xichen to watch the shift; to be so boldly challenged with the fact that something inhuman stands in their presence. Nie Huaisang, on the other hand, had made a high-pitched, ecstatic noise that hurt Lan Wangji's ears before scrambling to pull out inks and parchment so that he could paint the spirit.

“Seven tails!” Lan Wangji had heard him whisper, and his awe had sounded genuine, at least. “Oh, what a marvel!”

His room isn't quite large enough for the six of them, but they make it work. He and brother sit at the table to eat while the boys take turns sharing their meals with Húlí, kneeling at the side of Lan Wangji's bed with their bowls in their hands to avoid any unwanted messes while the fox lets his head hang over the edge.

Watching them makes something twist in Lan Wangji's chest, painful and warm and excruciating in its understanding, because to other people it wouldn't mean anything, but for his sons, it means trust. To share something they guard so entirely - Jingyi with aggression and Sizhui with quiet, aching joy - means everything. The boys do not share their food, not freely, not with anyone but each other and their father. To see them so willing to feed Húlí, to bring him into this sacred ritual of a meal, shocks something loose in Lan Wangji's heart.

Lan Xichen has to gently but firmly drag Nie Huaisang away from his painting, and the Nie Sect Leader spends the meal grumbling into the Lans' silence while he picks at his vegetables and darts glances toward Húlí, as though the spirit will disappear if he looks away for too long.

It is certainly one of the strangest mealtimes Lan Wangji has experienced, but it's not… bad. It's good. It's… he feels content, in a way he has struggled for so long to find.

Once the trays are removed and the room appropriately warded with silencing talismans, Lan Wangji gestures to Jingyi, who eagerly pulls out his qiankun pouch of notes.

“Draw the swords to the best of your ability,” he tells the boy, and Jingyi nods, his frenetic energy already channeling itself into the task. He knows how important this is - he does not need Lan Wangji to insult his intelligence by treating him like an inept child. He is a capable one, only just on the cusp of adolescence and already so accomplished. To treat his skills as the whimsical doodlings of an airheaded boy would be to do him the ultimate disservice.

Lan Wangji is not his uncle. He would never do such a thing.

“Húlí,” Lan Xichen calls softly, drawing the spirit's attention away from Sizhui, who has climbed up on the bed beside him to scratch behind his ears and meet the wisping tendrils of his energy with the boy's own.

How can this one be of use to Zewu-Jun? Húlí asks, polite as an autumn breeze. Lan Wangji wonders, watching his brother's expression ripple between shock and budding awe, if that's the same face he'd made, the first time the húlí jing spoke into his mind.

After a moment, Lan Xichen clears his throat and smiles. “You said you could describe the men Wangji spoke of. I would like to make note of their features and attempt sketches to help us determine who they are.”

Yes, of course. Húlí makes no move to leave Lan Wangji's bed, his head once more buried between the pillows. Sizhui has moved on to petting his tails, all seven of them draped over the boy's lap like a living, unruly blanket that delights him to no end.

When you're ready, Zewu-Jun.

“Please,” Brother says, meeting Lan Wangji's eyes across the table. He sees warmth there. Acceptance. An understanding that doesn't quite have a place yet, but is doing its best to put down roots. He sees trying, and looks down to hide the shadow of his smile.

“Call me Xichen.”

**

They work until haishí, and while they've yet to make any breakthroughs, they've still made progress. Jingyi has sketched out three of the swords, and Lan Xichen has descriptions of the eight men so that he and Nie Huaisang can begin their own sketches in the morning. Lan Wangji has spent the time studying the arrays with Sizhui, who joined him once he was finished pseudogrooming Húlí.

He is grateful for their help, but it is still a relief to send everyone off to their own rooms for the night. Especially Lan Xichen, who lingers as if hoping they might speak until Lan Wangji shakes his head.

He doesn't have it in him for another deep conversation tonight. Not after all of the emotions they've already spilled between them today like blood on a battlefield. His wounds aren't that quick to heal, not after so long being pressed and prodded before they were finally lanced and allowed to drain.

Húlí watches him go about his evening rituals, pale eyes lidded and giving nothing away as Lan Wangji unbinds his hair and frees it from the guan. The weight of his attention drapes over Lan Wangji's shoulders in lieu of his robes, which he begins to fold out of habit before pausing. If Húlí plans to nest in them for the night again, why go through the effort?

His uncle would be apoplectic if he could see Lan Wangji right now, spreading his robes on the floor of an inn, but it isn't Lan Qiren here watching him do just that, it's Húlí. The spirit sits up to watch, ears perked and whiskers quivering as Lan Wangji arranges the inner and outer robes beside his bed. He feels the brush of a tail or two across his back, his skin twitching from the inevitable crackle of energy as it meets his own.

Such a thoughtful, handsome man this Húlí has found, the spirit coos as he slides off the side of the bed to nose and paw at the robes, teeth carefully tugging and rearranging them into a satisfying nest. Ah, what would I do without my Hanguang-Jun?

It settles something in Lan Wangji, watching Húlí curl up on his robes once he's satisfied. He cannot help but reach out to rub behind the húlí jing's ears, stroking through his energy and feeling the way it curls into his palm like its own caress.

“Where did you stay,” he murmurs, sitting on the edge of the bed so he can better reach his companion. “In the Burial Mounds. Where did you stay?”

Húlí doesn't answer immediately, and so Lan Wangji waits, his fingers sinking into amber and shadows like they would if he was petting a living fox. The silence brings its own comfort, allowing him to unwind from the day's tensions and let go of everything he doesn't need to carry. The heavy emotions of his argument with Lan Xichen; his frustrations over Nie Huaisang and his games; his worries over his sons, and if this thing they have found will be too big for boys who are still so young.

I woke up in a cave, Húlí says quietly. Lan Wangji's fingers spasm in his shadows, but he says nothing. There was… writing, on the walls and floor. Arrays, runes, sigils. I couldn't tell what they meant. I remember talisman paper hanging from the ceiling and burned into the floor. I was on a raised stone slab, beneath some strange straw netting covered in more talisman papers.

Lan Wangji's breath hitches quietly, and Húlí's ears twitch. Moonsilver eyes open to look up at him, and whatever expression is twisting across his face has the spirit sitting up to lay his head on Lan Wangji's lap, offering the comfort of that small weight while his tails curl around them both.

You know the cave?

Clenching his jaw, Lan Wangji nods. “I have been there,” he says softly. “There used to be… homes. A hall, carved into the mountain. The last time I was there, the homes had been burned down.”

People lived there? In the Burial Mounds? A black tongue drags over the inside of his wrist; Húlí's nose tucks under the cuff of his sleep shirt, dry and warm where it presses into the dampened skin. People you knew?

“A person I knew.” It’s not entirely accurate, not entirely a lie. “A man. A boy. Siblings. Others. But I knew him best. The others were… refugees. Old, weak, sick. The man, he kept them safe. Gave them a home, at great cost.”

People came for them, Húlí surmises, his ears drooping back. Something happened.

“Yes.” Lan Wangji strokes between Húlí's ears. Ten years, and it still feels like he's been carved open, all of him spilling out in a torrent of agony and betrayal and devastation. “I was too late. Couldn't save him. Couldn't save them. Only the child. Was almost too late, but I found him. He doesn't remember.”

The kit's name? The húlí jing's voice is petal-soft, a whisper of a breeze over trembling shoots.

“A-Yuan. Now Sizhui. My son.”

What a fine, honorable kit you have raised, Hanguang-Jun. Húlí sits up, crawling halfway into Lan Wangji's lap and sprawling there, content and clearly unafraid of falling; unshakable in his faith that Lan Wangji will not let him tumble to the ground. That slender muzzle curls over his hip, the húlí jing's tails swaying slowly and bumping against the side of the bed.

What happened to the man? Your friend?

Lan Wangji takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Ten years, and it still bites as deeply as the lash of the whip - deeper than that, even. The whip only carved him open bone-deep. Wei Ying's death tore his very soul in half.

“Killed, by greedy men and apathy. For daring to be different. For being powerful in a way they could not control. For protecting those they believed deserved only death.”

His voice does not crack, does not shake, but his fingers do. Húlí says nothing about the way they tremble against the spirit's shoulder blades, spread wide over his back to keep him settled.

“I could not save him.” I tried. It was the hardest thing I have ever tried to do, to save a man who believed he did not deserve to be saved. It still haunts me, that he begged me to be the one to do it, and when everything fell apart, it was someone else. That I could not protect him even then.

What was his name?

Of all the words spoken between them in the quiet of the night, this name falls the easiest from Lan Wangji's lips, filled with everything he was never able to say to the one person who deserved to hear every inch of his heart.

“Wei Ying.”

**

Maoshí finds him with Húlí sprawled across him, the húlí jing sleeping deeply and peacefully with his head on Lan Wangji's chest. The spirit had insisted on it, had folded his robes with meticulous care and announced that the bed was more than large enough to fit them both, if he slept on top of Lan Wangji.

It's… pleasant, to wake with the weight of someone else spread over him. The warmth of another body pressed in close, the air stirred by their quiet breaths. Húlí has somehow managed to wriggle his muzzle under the lapel of Lan Wangji's shirt to find bare skin, half of his face and one ear hidden under thin white silk. The spirit snuffles in his sleep, the gust of his breath sighing across Lan Wangji's nipple. It's an odd, somewhat ticklish sensation, and he blinks slowly at the ceiling, resting a hand against the back of the spirit fox's head while he recounts everything they spoke of last night.

Húlí woke up in the cave Wei Ying lived in. Someone was in there after everything happened. They did something, some kind of ritual. A summoning, if what his instincts are screaming is to be believed. It wouldn't have been the only time any of the Sects had tried to summon the fearsome Yiling Laozu after his death. Greedy, pompous men like Jin Guangshan, who coveted Wei Ying's power and wanted it for himself. Men like Sect Leader Yao, who will fall in with anyone powerful enough and sing their praises for scraps of recognition and compensation.

Is it possible that someone tried to summon Wei Ying back, and Húlí was the result? But he woke up alone, and no one has come for him in all these years.

Or is that why the Burial Mounds are being drained of resentful energy? Whoever it is, they wanted Wei Ying for his mastery over it, and when that failed, they had to come up with a different plan? Did they assume their summoning ritual had failed completely? Are they even aware of Húlí, of what he is?

Lan Wangji despises questions with no easy answer and too many possibilities.

Húlí is showing no signs of waking, not even when he shifts the spirit over so that he can rise and begin his day. He tucks the húlí jing in, stroking a hand down his blanket-covered side before leaving him to sleep. He lets everything he's learned over the last several days ruminate in his mind while he washes his face and unbraids his hair to comb oils through it. Once he's dressed, he gathers his hair into its customary top knot and secures his guan. The forehead ribbon is last, smoothed out to ensure it's wrinkle-free before he ties it in place.

When he turns around, Húlí is human again, watching him with sleep-heavy eyes. He's still curled up beneath the blanket, one naked shoulder visible where it's slipped down with his shift. He looks sleep-rumpled and warm, and Lan Wangji is struck by the overwhelming urge to press his lips to that bare shoulder; to follow the slope of it up to the spirit's graceful neck and set his teeth against the throb of Húlí's pulse until the man shudders.

“Go back to sleep,” he says quietly, and those pale, chapped lips curl into a sleep-soft smile for him. A noise rumbles in Húlí's throat, something that sounds like a purr. Once he's closed his eyes again, Lan Wangji tugs the blanket up to keep him from getting cold and leaves before he's distracted by the bared skin of Húlí's nape where his hair has fallen away in his sleep.

He opens the door and comes face to face with Lan Xichen, whose fist is still raised to knock. They stare at one another silently before Lan Wangji steps out of the room and closes the door behind him.

“Brother,” he greets. Lan Xichen smiles at him, his pale blue robes making him look ethereal and untouchable in the growing morning light.

“Wangji,” he answers, fingers brushing his sleeve affectionately. “I've had the kitchen prepare us breakfast,” he continues, his voice a low murmur out of courtesy to the other guests. “The disciples are already downstairs. Come.”

“Sect Leader Nie?” Lan Wangji asks as he follows his brother toward the stairs. Somehow he greatly doubts Nie Huaisang is willing to rise this early.

Lan Xichen confirms as much with a rueful chuckle. “Huaisang will likely sleep for another shichen or so. I will have them make something then for when he does wake.”

“Perfectly capable of paying for his own meal,” Lan Wangji points out shortly. Lan Xichen just gives him an amused huff. It's not an argument worth having, so Lan Wangji separates from him at the bottom of the stairs and finds the table his sons are sharing with a few other juniors, all of them sitting properly and waiting for the arrival of their Sect Leader.

When Lan Xichen gestures, they begin their meal. Jingyi eats as quickly as ever, even distracted as he is by the sword sketches he drew last night - as though he can figure out which cultivator they belong to if he only stares hard enough. Sizhui is surreptitiously looking at them over Jingyi's shoulder, curious but respectful of his brother's need for space during meals.

The other juniors focus on their food, eating at a moderate pace as befitting the Lan, though Lan Wangji can see the way they're sneaking looks at Jingyi's drawings with curiosity.

He does not call them out on it.

Once the bowls are cleared away, Lan Xichen joins them at their table and leans in for a good look. Jingyi quietly spreads the sketches out across so they can all be seen clearly, one of his fingers distractedly tapping against the edge of the table while he frowns at the sketch closest to him.

“I recognize this one,” he mutters, jabbing a finger at it. “But I don't remember where I saw it.”

“The last Discussion Conference was in Lanling,” Sizhui murmurs, pulling the sketch closer and tilting his head curiously. “It was the first one we attended. Perhaps we saw it there?”

“Hanguang-Jun?” One of the juniors - a female disciple he recognizes from the day before, Lan Jīngxiù - is looking at him with a faint frown. He blinks at her, distracted from his thoughts.

“You have a question?”

“Will we be going back to the Burial Mounds today?”

He shares a glance with Lan Xichen, who dips his chin slightly before his gaze wanders to the sketch Sizhui is holding. His amber eyes sharpen with recognition.

“Some of us likely will,” Lan Wangji answers, watching his brother take the sketch from Sizhui and stare down at it. “You recognize it,” he says, golden eyes unblinking. It's not a question, and when Brother meets his intent stare, he sees confusion and disbelief.

“This can't be right,” Lan Xichen says softly, shaking his head. He lays the sketch down for all of them to see it, and Lan Wangji recognizes it immediately from the initial description Húlí had given - the sword he'd thought sounded familiar, the one he couldn't place. He recognizes it now, brought to life in Jingyi's broad, sharp strokes of ink.

“It is the sword Húlí saw.” When Lan Xichen shakes his head in denial, Lan Wangji rumbles low in his throat. “Húlí does not lie. If he described this sword, then that is who he saw.”

“Who does the sword belong to, Hanguang-Jun?” Lan Jīngxiù asks, her eyes darting between him and Lan Xichen with growing anxiety.

“The Sect Leader of the Moling Su Sect,” Lan Wangji replies, staring down Lan Xichen from across the table. You cannot hide from this, he warns. Brother closes his eyes, looking pained, looking torn. It doesn't matter.

“Who's that?” Jingyi mutters, looking like he's trying to remember where he's heard of the Moling Su Sect before.

“One of Jin Guangyao's most avid supporters,” Lan Wangji says, his voice brewing like a storm despite his expression giving nothing away. “A man who was once an outer disciple of the Cloud Recesses, before his treachery led to the deaths of many of our cultivators and he was exiled from the Sect.”

“Su She.” Lan Xichen says the name with an uncharacteristic bitterness. He isn't upset because it's Su She's sword; Lan Wangji understands that. No, his brother's distress comes from something else - because of someone else.

Because if Su She is involved with what's happening to the Burial Mounds, then that means Jin Guangyao might be as well. And if Jin Guangyao knows what's being done, if he's involved, then that makes this infinitely more dangerous. For all of them, but especially for Lan Xichen, his sworn brother and one of his closest confidants.

“Oh,” Jingyi says, his brown eyes wide as the implications dawn on him. “Oh, shit.”

Lan Wangji doesn't reprimand him for the swear. “We will confirm it the best way we know how,” he says firmly, and when Lan Xichen looks at him, trying his best to mask his helpless anxiety, he gives his brother a short, sharp nod.

“When the men come to Yiling again, we will be ready. We will not let them escape. Then, we will get our answer.”

Lan Xichen takes a steadying breath and nods back. “Yes,” he agrees, quiet but resolute. “We will.”

Chapter Text

It's dark when they appear, the moon hidden by thick clouds. They slink along the boundary of the Burial Mounds, heading for the South point array; slipping through the shadows like they belong there, silent and believing themselves untouchable. The cloth masks hiding their faces flutter with each breath; their bespelled swords clink quietly in their scabbards.

The leader pauses, as if sensing a change in the wind. He raises a hand and the rest of them freeze, hands dropping to hover over hilts as they peer through the darkness. Cultivators of their caliber enjoy the benefit of enhanced senses - even in the pitch black of the moonless night, their world is closer to shades of dawn-gray. It gives them the advantage, makes it harder for them to be ambushed. Even so, they key into their surroundings, wary and tense until their leader's hand drops and they continue forward.

The South point array is fully disabled when they arrive, deep gouges cut through the lines as though an enraged beast has torn its way across the boundary and up into the mountain. Theoretically, such a thing shouldn't be possible. The point of the array is to lure, contain, and drain - and yet there's no body. The resentful energy pools in thick, churning clouds around the array, disrupted and agitated in its newfound freedom. It lashes toward them as they spread out to begin the repairs - two of them flank the rest to keep it at bay while the other six immediately begin working to fix the landscape so the array can be redrawn.

They're prepared for yao. For fierce corpses or whatever animals have been corrupted by the mountain, twisted into monstrous beasts spilling resentful energy in every direction, their bodies cracking and creaking from the strain of trying to contain something so overwhelming.

They are not prepared for what actually comes for them.

No one notices when the first sentry goes down, his throat clogged by thick tendrils of yin energy that cut off his air and keep him from shouting an alarm. He's dragged into the surrounding darkness, the air ripening with the scent of blood as black fangs tear into his jugular and spill his life across the crumbling dirt and dead grass. The soil soaks up its offering greedily, the churn of the man's weakening struggles turning the ground around him into mud. Wisps of resentment are already rising, crawling toward him with an eagerness to consume while their benefactor watches with glowing eyes.

His partner realizes too late, his shout cut off by the muted gleam of a blade that flashes across his throat. The body drops, the splatter of red blood looking like oil in the night, flecking across the hem of otherwise pristine white robes.

That garbled cry was enough, but even then, it's too late - the other six rear back, hands going for their weapons, only to hesitate beneath the press of multiple blades against each of their throats. The disciples of Gusu appear like specters, as though they themselves are ghosts summoned to haunt these men, banishing the black of the night with every pulse of their swords now that there's no need to hide.

The leader grits his teeth, twisting his wrist in a subtle roll to shake loose a transportation talisman from his sleeve; he's forced into stillness when sharp teeth close around his forearm and press down just shy of piercing. He looks down, meeting the narrowed moonsilver eyes staring up at him, and spits out a curse under his breath.

“Silence,” Lan Wangji rumbles, shifting Bichen just enough to draw a thin line of blood from where she's laying across the man's jugular.

“We can do this peacefully,” Lan Xichen says as he approaches, his smile genial despite the hard frost of his gaze. “There need not be anymore bloodshed tonight, so long as you understand the point we have sought to make.”

“How noble of Gusu Lan,” the masked man sneers, drawing himself up as though he has nothing to fear. “Attacking eight men with twenty. Are your cultivators so underwhelming that they cannot hope to subdue innocent men without gathering in such large numbers? What would the world think, to learn of such weakness from a supposedly Great Sect?”

Lan Wangji grits his teeth, the brush of a tail down the back of his robes the only thing quelling his rage enough to keep from cutting such arrogance from the world. They would certainly all be better off for it.

“And yet, we are not the ones taking such great pains to hide our identities,” Lan Xichen points out. His voice would be friendly if not for the steel backboning his words. Shuòyuè rises in a glowing arc, the tip of him nudging just under the edge of the leader's mask.

A warning, and a promise.

“We can always settle this without further violence.” Lan Xichen's voice is lilting, his experience as a Sect Leader navigating the battlefields of Sect politics unavoidable. Placate, soothe, find a non-violent resolution in the aftermath of bloodshed.

Lan Wangji has no patience for any of it. It is not in his nature to weave pretty platitudes and settle bruised egos. He would much rather be the one breaking their teeth on their own poisonous words.

“And what would your esteemed Chief Cultivator think of the Lan overstepping their borders?” the man challenges. Húlí still hasn't let go of his arm, and the threat of losing it keeps him compliant for the moment, even if his mouth is anything but. “Attacking others so boldly on lands that do not belong to you, without permission from any other Sect? Truly, the Lan are the arrogant ones here!”

Lan Xichen's smile does not waver, though one of his eyebrows ticks up in interest. “Ah, but it is known far and wide that Yiling is the No Man's Land of our great country,” he answers in a voice that ripples like silk. “Deeds carried out here need only be mentioned after the fact; a report, rather than a plea for leniency. The Burial Mounds are even more ungovernable. No one has claimed the mountain since Wei Wuxian called it home; why do you think that is?”

The man sputters his fury. “You-!”

“Furthermore,” Lan Xichen continues on, as if he hadn't spoken at all. Shuòyuè creeps higher, and the man hisses in pain. “What would you know of the Chief Cultivator's involvement in any of this? Who is to say Jin Guangyao has not sanctioned our presence here to investigate the matter of these energy-draining arrays? I am his closest confidant, after all. Why would he not ask his sworn brother to look into such a volatile matter?”

Pale brown eyes widen, realizing the misstep, but Lan Xichen clearly isn't finished yet.

“Meddling with resentful energy is a dangerous venture; none but the Yiling Laozu were ever so bold, or brave enough, to attempt it. And yet here you are, draining it away. Such a thing would certainly warrant an emergency conference, to try you all before the cultivation world for the heretical dangers you bring right to our doorstep.”

“No more talking,” Lan Wangji growls. Húlí trills around his mouthful of flesh and fabric, and the disciples are beginning to shift, aware of the rising tension and trying to figure out their part in it. Only Jingyi and Sizhui remain still, their blades crossing over the throat of their captive. Jingyi's eyes burn with righteous anger; Sizhui remains calmer, but the furrow of his brow speaks louder than words ever could.

“Always so lofty, Hanguang-Jun,” the man hisses, turning his glare on Lan Wangji with a vitriol that seems almost too potent for the setting; as though his hatred burns so deep it has become a permanent fixture. “So esteemed, so ethereally noble. No one would dare peek past the curtain of your righteousness to see how bitter and corrupt you truly are. How unfair it is to those who deserve recognition, to forever be trapped in your shadow.”

“If they cannot climb out of the shadow of a stranger,” Lan Wangji returns, almost careless in his unrepentant cruelty, “then they deserve no recognition.”

His words strike as intended - the man sputters his fury, free wrist twisting to grab his sword right as Shuòyuè completes his arc and cuts through the ties of his mask. Just as quickly, Lan Xichen twists his own wrist and brings his sword down, trapping the man's hand against the hilt of his sword. Shuòyuè's edge digs into the back of his hand, blood rolling over scarred knuckles and dripping along the clenched grooves of his fingers.

“Su Minshan,” Lan Xichen says quietly. No winter has ever been colder than his voice currently is, ice dripping from his lips as they twist with a fury uncharacteristic of the Lan Clan leader's well-known nature.

Su She startles, pale eyes wide with shock and disbelief. “No,” he denies, voice sharp and cracking. Struggling to drag that sneering bravado back into place beneath the combined darkness of the Twin Jades. Lan Xichen's anger has never been as molten as Lan Wangji's; has always been a hypothermic freeze compared to the magma of Lan Wangji's rage.

People throughout his life have told him that he was made of ice, but Wei Ying had always known the truth - had instantly seen beneath the hardened surface to the red-hot core of him, and had always delighted in poking holes and working at the cracks in his armor until the pressure splintered it wide open and the lava bubbled free.

“Su She,” he growls, the crawl of anger hot in his throat, like dragon fire searing him from within. The rest of the masked men are shifting anxiously, the air soured by their growing fear.

“You have the wrong man,” Su She spits, drawing himself up like his height could ever lord him over someone so high above his station. He and Lan Xichen might both be Sect Leaders, but the gap in their prestige is akin to a mouse staring down a tiger.

Or a man staring down a dragon.

“I don't,” Lan Xichen says lightly, the curve of his smile as mean as it is sympathetic. “Your masking magic, while impressive, cannot hide you from everything. And now, it cannot hide you from judgement.”

“Yiling law,” Lan Wangji says sharply, reminding his brother of what they've already discussed. What they spent the last day arguing over, drawings of swords and recognizable men spread messily over the table between them as they stared each other down. As they fought over morals and responsibilities, as if Lan Wangji will ever give even half a fuck about what any of the Sects have to say. Not when he's spent a decade ignoring everything about their self-proclaimed grandiose when it was no better than a facade.

If he truly is A-Yao's man, Lan Xichen had argued - weakly, as if already knowing he could not hope to budge Lan Wangji from the side of battle he's rooted himself on, then this is bigger than just us, Wangji. There needs to be a trial!

Then let them face justice at Yiling's hands, Lan Wangji had hissed back. They are the ones who have lost the most to Jin Guangyao's men. If any deserve reparations, it is them, and they should take them as they see fit.

If anything is left after that, you can deliver it to your Chief Cultivator's desk yourself.

“This isn't possible,” Su She rasps, his shoulders tense. “This is ancient magic. No normal cultivator can break it.”

“You seem to misunderstand our station,” Lan Xichen says lightly, as though they're discussing the discrepancies of a report. “The Lan Clan of Gusu have long hoarded knowledge lost to many others. You think we would not recognize a spell from our own forbidden archives? Or how to combat it?”

Su She is beginning to struggle, the scent of his blood thickening the air as he wrenches the wrist caught by Húlí's teeth - as though he thinks he can rip free suddenly after so long standing placid. It only leads to Húlí biting down harder, tendrils of yin energy lashing out to wrap around Su She and trap him more effectively than any immortal-binding rope could.

I am tired of your meaningless chatter, the húlí jing says, dragging his prey to the ground and pinning him beneath the fox's weight. You steal what does not belong to you. Why?

Head thrown back against the bloodstained dirt, Su She bares his teeth and glares at the spirit above him. “Heretic,” he spits. “Blight on mankind. Devil.”

Your words wound this devil deeply, Húlí retorts, his voice as dry and grating as sand in the eyes. What use could a cub as weak as you have for so much corrupted energy, hm? You play in a game you know none of the rules to, and with such overinflated self-importance. Tsk, tsk, little tiger; you are out of your element.

“Says the demon who's never been strong enough to stop us!” Su She yowls. His expression is twisted into disgust, but something flickers in his eyes when Húlí tilts his head in amusement and laughs, sharp and shrieking.

Not strong enough to stop you? The spirit cackles again, mouth open and tongue curling around the wisps of yin energy that seep through his teeth. It seems you are the one with memory loss, he mocks. Tell me how many people you have stolen away with since your arrogance called this one from his mountain. Hm? How weakened have you left the Burial Mounds since you began attempting to steal Her lifeforce? 

Where is your army of fierce corpses, controlled by all the resentful energy you have bled away from this place? So easy to take, to drain little by little, to cage as you see fit. But what has your master accomplished with it in three years, foolish cub?

Lan Wangji glances at his brother, who is watching the interaction with a thoughtful tilt of his head, amber eyes serene and glowing faintly in the darkness. Beneath the pressure of the disciples’ blades, Su She's subordinates are beginning to sweat in earnest.

“Please, Zewu-Jun, Hanguang-Jun,” one of them gasps - a man from the Yao Sect whose name Lan Wangji hasn't cared enough to remember; recognizing his sword is enough. “Sect Leader She is the one behind this. We needed the money, after the war; he bribed us into this!”

“Liar,” Lan Wangji growls, Bichen thrumming in his grip loud enough for the men closest to him to hear, their wide-eyed fear making them creep away despite the threats of more blades at their throats. “Came for the glory. Made your choice.”

“Sniveling cowards!” Su She snarls, and Húlí's paw cracks across his face, sharp claws cutting lines over his cheek and the bridge of his nose that pour blood into his howling mouth.

Where is the resentful energy being sent?

It's the one question none of them could truly answer, even after a day of digging through texts and reports Nie Huaisang's spy network has intercepted and copied over the last five years. That many of those documents traveled to and from Lanling was unsurprising to Lan Wangji, though Lan Xichen had not taken it as well.

Such a large amount of resentful energy has to go somewhere. It cannot be going to any of the Great Sects - they'd never be able to hide such an influx of corruption, no matter how many arrays they set up.

Su She spits a mouthful of blood into Húlí's face. “You're far too late to stop what's coming,” he hisses, his triumph a wild, tainted thing. “Trapped little guardian, stuck protecting worthless lives. The second you leave Yiling, you forfeit them. What can something like you do against such power? Vile, filthy little mongrel.”

Ow, you sure know how to hit this one where it hurts, Húlí drawls scathingly, crouching on Su She's chest and leaning in until their cheeks are just shy of brushing. Lan Wangji watches, something furious and possessive sitting heavy in his chest at how close they are. At the thought of someone as wholly unworthy as Su She ever getting close enough to breathe in the spirit's uniquely captivating scent.

“Please do not kill him, Húlí,” Lan Xichen says, calling the fox's attention to him. Those glowing silver eyes leave Su She's face for a blink before fixating back on his prey.

I will not, Zewu-Jun, Húlí promises, a lilting chatter bursting from his throat. He is too stupid to give you what you want to know, though, he adds, head cocking to the side and ears perked. Su She sputters furiously, struggling against the yin energy keeping him bound. What? Húlí asks, his feigned innocence making Lan Wangji's lips twitch. Do you have any way to prove otherwise? You simply need to say you are not trusted enough to know your master's ultimate plan. Poor, poor little tiger. Wants so desperately to please, but will never be fully accepted. Ah, the trials of traitors.

“You-!” Su She howls, his spiritual energy rippling to life around him in a ring of pale green fire. In response, Húlí brings down one of his tails in a heavy blow that snuffs it out immediately, with laughable ease.

So impatient, he chides, like an elder scolding a kit. Learn when you are bested.

“That's rich, coming from the mongrel who didn't dare attack us until you had back-up,” Su She grits past his clenched teeth. “How mighty you are with twenty men at your beck and call! Did you seduce them as well, you shameless witch? Spread your legs and beg the way your ancestors were bred to-”

This time, it is Lan Wangji who silences the man's filth - with a strike across his throat that would crush the trachea of a less powerful cultivator. As it stands, Su She chokes and writhes within his bindings, his eyes bulging and bloodshot as pink-tinged foam flecks the corners of his mouth. His chest heaves for breaths he cannot fully draw, and a second strike knocks him out and shuts him up, before the next filthy slur to pass his lips drives Lan Wangji to kill him.

The sudden silence is broken by the wheeze of Su She's breaths as his golden core works to fix the damage Lan Wangji has caused. “Take them to Yiling,” he says, gesturing to the remaining men who watch on in mounting fear. “Restrain them properly; do not slack. We will interrogate them one by one to see what they know.”

“Yes, Hanguang-Jun!” the disciples chirp. They're quick to block the meridians of the men in custody, cutting off their access to their spiritual energy before binding their wrists and ankles with suppression ropes. As they lead their captives back toward Yiling, Lan Xichen comes to stand by his side and looks down at Su She.

“Do not allow anger to best you,” he scolds softly. Lan Wangji deliberately turns his head away, refusing to apologize for actions that were more than deserved. “Wangji,” Brother sighs, hopelessly fond and exasperated. “Please. Yiling is neutral land, but we cannot be hasty. There is too much at stake.”

“Deserved,” Lan Wangji rumbles, turning his head enough to give Lan Xichen a baleful glare. His next words are just as icy, a pointed reminder that still sits sorely between them.

“Jin Guangyao will come for him.”

Lan Xichen closes his eyes and takes a deep, slow breath. “I suppose, if he does, that will give us our answer,” he replies quietly. He's trying to mask the pain, hide the hurt beneath cultivated serenity, but no one reads them better than they have long-since learned how to read each other. Lan Wangji knows that the truth will hurt his brother deeply, if indeed Jin Guangyao is the one behind this madness. It will be a harsh lesson, that trust can be so easily misplaced.

It's a lesson Lan Xichen once tried to force him to learn, after Wei Ying's death; one of the very few times his brother's teachings slipped off of him like oil across water, because Wei Ying's loyalty was never something in question. Wei Ying did not manipulate the feelings of others, no matter what men like Jin Guangshan tried to claim. He was never some evil, murderous mastermind - simply a man desperate to keep those he cared about safe.

Jin Guangyao can never compare to someone so wholly, selflessly righteous.

“Ah, Xichen-ge,” Nie Huaisang's voice pipes up nervously, and the brothers turn as one to blink at him. They'd left him at the inn to prepare himself to depart back to Qinghe once the sun rose; he has neglected his duties as Sect Leader of the Nie for long enough already, regardless of how competent Nie Zhonghui is as his second in command.

“Huaisang,” Lan Xichen greets, moving to join him before he can accidentally drag his robes through the still-drying blood on the ground. “What's wrong? Has something happened?”

“Ah, I don't know, it's just-” Nie Huaisang breaks off with a squeak when he looks past Lan Xichen and sees Húlí and Lan Wangji standing guard over Su She's unconscious body. “Oh, oh dear, is that-? Is he-?”

“A-Sang.” Lan Wangji watches his brother place a firm, calming hand on the Nie Sect Leader's shoulder, turning him away from the sight to calm him. “He is not dead, do not fret. What has brought you out here? I told you to stay in your room, that it was dangerous.”

“I know, I know!” Nie Huaisang cries. He's clutching papers in one hand, hugging them against his chest like he's afraid they'll be taken away. “It's just, I was looking over the array sketches again, and I think there's been a mistake?”

At that, Lan Wangji's focus sharpens and Húlí lifts his head with a quiet, curious chirp. “No mistake,” Lan Wangji growls, insulted that the man would ever dare accuse Lan disciples of such a thing.

Nie Huaisang shakes his head frantically. “No, yes, I'm sorry, that wasn't the right word!” he sputters. “Sorry, Wangji-xiong, I wasn't trying to say-”

“Huaisang,” Lan Xichen interrupts gently. “We spent the better part of a day and a half studying the array drawings. No mistakes were made.”

“No, no, you're right,” the man agrees hastily. Lan Wangji is steadily growing more disgusted with this act. His fingers twitch with the urge to haul Nie Huaisang up by his scruff and shake him until the wide-eyed innocence he plays into so entirely rattles out of his bones and leaves only the cunning wit behind.

“It's just, I noticed a difference. Between the cardinal and intercardinal arrays. In the, the transportation sigils? They're different!”

At that, Húlí slips from his perch and shifts mid-bound, robes of shadowy yin energy draping around his slender human form to protect his modesty as he hurries to Nie Huaisang's side. “Different?” he parrots curiously, his pale silver eyes wide and intent. “Different how? Show me.”

In answer, Nie Huaisang hands over the sketches he's brought with him. Lan Wangji moves to stand behind Húlí, studying the arrays over his shoulder with a frown. The Nie Sect Leader has brought the North point array and the Southwest intercardinal array sketches, and he's quick to point at the centermost spell for each of them, his slender hand trembling.

“Look, see? The changed sigil corresponds with the direction of each point, so it's not in the same spot. That's why no one noticed right away. But it's the sigil for the destination; the one we couldn't figure out. It's different between the cardinal and intercardinal arrays.”

Indeed it is. Lan Wangji's frown deepens into a scowl, his eyes flicking back and forth between the sketches. It's not a vastly noticeable difference, but it is different.

“The cardinal arrays channel the energy to one place,” he murmurs. Húlí grumbles low in his throat, the vibrations of his displeasure reverberating through Lan Wangji where his chest has pressed against the fox spirit's back.

“And the intercardinal arrays send it somewhere else,” the húli jing finishes. “They're sending the resentful energy to two locations? For what purpose? Split it up so it's not as easily detected? That's still a vast amount of energy, and it requires double the effort now to keep it undetectable!”

“Let's head back to the inn,” Lan Xichen says wearily, rubbing his temples in a rare display of fatigue. “We should write Uncle and consult him on this. The situation is becoming more complicated, and we simply do not have the resources available here without sending disciples to search the library and archives for similar cases.”

“Should we write to any of the other Sects?” Nie Huaisang wonders, hiding behind his fan and fluttering it nervously beneath Lan Wangji's glare.

“No,” he growls. The last thing they need is any Jin catching wind of this kind of skill in the slim chance that Jin Guangyao isn't involved, and if Jiang Wanyin hears of even a whisper of demonic cultivation at play, he will descend in a fury, and then Lan Wangji truly will cause an inter-Sect dispute when he pins the man to a tree with Bichen through his chest. He doesn't want that man anywhere near the Burial Mounds, let alone Húlí.

“Wangji is right,” Lan Xichen agrees, and he looks even more exhausted with that agreement. “There's too many unknown factors at play to trust bringing in anyone else just yet. First we need to interrogate Su She's men and figure out everything they know. Once we have a better understanding of their parts in all of this, we can go from there. Wangji, if you would…?”

Lan Wangji mn's in understanding and drags Su She up by the back of his robes, throwing the man's limp form over his shoulder and nodding shortly to show he's ready to return.

The walk back to the inn is silent, and despite everything they've learned thus far, it somehow still manages to feel like a hollow victory.

**

“Húli! Húli!”

Jingyi is on them as soon as they're through the door, tugging the spirit's arm with impatient eagerness.

“Come eat with us!” he demands, dragging the húlí jing across the room toward the table where Sizhui and a few of the other disciples are sitting. Lan Wangji shares a look with Lan Xichen, who is trying and utterly failing to hide his smile behind his sleeve as Jingyi's excited voice carries back to them, all thoughts of propriety and respect for other patrons lost in his enthusiasm.

“Zewu-Jun, Hanguang-Jun,” the innkeeper greets warmly, offering them both a bow before gesturing toward where Lan Wangji is still carrying Su She. “Allow us to watch these men for you while you and your disciples eat breakfast,” he says, already coming forward. “It is the least we of Yiling can do after everything you have done for us over the last few days.”

Lan Wangji bows his head in grateful acceptance, giving his brother a quick look before following the innkeeper toward the cellar where the rest of Su She's men are sitting in the center of a containment array. They're still cut off from their spiritual energy, and still bound by the suppression ropes. On top of that, a handful of young, strong-looking men are sitting around the room on crates and barrels, their hands empty but various farming tools tucked into their belts as a warning. They're quick to scramble to their feet and bow as he enters, and Lan Wangji lifts a hand to stop them.

“No need,” he murmurs, shoving Su She into the array with little care and letting his men struggle to break his fall so it won't need to be dismantled and redrawn. “Yiling has given me much, over the years. There is no need for thank yous between us.”

“We are grateful for everything you have done, as we are grateful for every protection Húlí has gifted us,” the innkeeper says earnestly. The men are quick to nod and voice their agreement, their smiles wide and more at ease. They have had little to fear from Su She and his men since Húlí's arrival and his creation of Yiling's barrier, but Lan Wangji knows that it has not always been so. They have all lost people to Su She and his benefactor - friends, family, partners. No wonder they're so eager to lend their help, now that the men responsible are in their grasp. If the people of Yiling slaughtered every single one of Su She's men, Lan Wangji would not blame them.

When you have suffered such loss, sometimes bloodshed feels like the only acceptable course of revenge. How else can you look yourself in the eye afterward?

“We will begin questioning after breakfast,” he rumbles, eyeing the captive men one last time before turning back toward the stairs. “Guard them well,” he says over his shoulder. “The Lan Clan of Gusu will compensate you well for your help in this matter.”

“No need, no need!” they chorus at his back, and Lan Wangji says nothing more as he returns to the ground floor with the innkeeper. The rest of the disciples have gathered at the tables for their meal; Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang have taken the table beside Jingyi and Sizhui's; his brother is watching their animated conversation with interest as Lan Wangji approaches.

“Húlí,” Jingyi chirps as he takes his seat, the boy leaning across the table so far his chest is nearly pressed to the surface of it. “Why did you call that man ‘little tiger'? Is he a spirit like you?”

“Ah,” the húlí jing chuckles, catching Lan Wangji's heavy gaze and winking before returning his attention to the juniors, who are all clustered close and watching him with reverence. A glance at the other tables tells Lan Wangji that they are not the only ones; all of the junior disciples are paying attention, their expressions ranging from naked curiosity to subdued interest.

“This one told your venerable Hanguang-Jun already, but he did not believe me,” Húlí laments, placing a hand to his chest with a dramatic and woeful sigh. It is nothing but an act, and Lan Wangji does not rise to the bait, merely watches until Húlí's sulking morphs into his typical playful mischievousness. “Did you know,” he stage-whispers, his voice reaching every ear despite his dramatic whispering, “that the Sects are all descendants of great mythical beasts?”

“You're lying!” Jingyi yelps. “There's no records of that at all in the Lan library! I would know, Grandmaster Lan always punishes me with copying the ancient scrolls so the knowledge is not lost!”

“I am not!” Húlí barks back, affronted but still grinning as giggles erupt from the other juniors at Jingyi's expense. Even Sizhui is trying to hide his laughter behind his cup of tea, his gray eyes dancing with mirth. “What, you think just because knowledge is lost or never recorded that it does not exist? Explain me, then!”

“There is written records of húlí jing,” Sizhui admits thoughtfully, “but they were recorded more as legends. Another stroke of mythology. It was said that, if they were real, the last of them were… were hunted to extinction centuries ago.”

His voice dips, a somber air beginning to settle over the rest of the table until Húlí waves it away with a carefree laugh.

“Aiyah, no sulking in my presence, kits!” he coos, pinching Jingyi's cheek until he yelps and swats at the spirit's hand. “Creatures of legend will always find a way, much as the gods learn to stay relevant with the changing of eras,” he explains. Their food is being brought out now, the disciples falling into silence for their meals as is custom, though Húlí is not bound by their laws, and so he continues to talk while they eat and listen with wide-eyed attentiveness.

“Long ago, the ancient celestial guardians understood that their relevance was something that could not last forever. Once worshipped above all, they were slowly being forgotten about as times changed and new gods were born. They could not allow themselves to fade wholly into obscurity though; their power was too integral to the balance of the world. They were needed, whether or not their followers understood just how much. And so they began their search for companions. Humans who carried high sensitivity to spiritual energy, who could pass that onto their offspring in turn. Powerful men and women in their own rights, who simply lacked the knowledge of how to harness that power.

“The great guardians took them as mates, as husbands and wives, and taught them everything they needed to know. Legends say that those were the first golden cores formed; that their heightened spirituality made it possible for their coupling to bear offspring that carried the blood of their celestial parents. Over the decades, those families grew. They married out, while others married in, and the bloodlines diluted, but the power of their ancestors remained.

“Even today, after countless millennia, the blood of those celestial creatures still runs through the Great Sects. Even the lesser Sects carry traces of it, though the power of a bloodline is undeniable. It is how Clans like the Nie, the Lan, even the Jiang, flourish in their own unique ways.”

“So Su She carries the blood of the tiger celestial in him?” Jingyi asks, his bowl half-empty but his curiosity clearly burning far too strongly for him to wait another second. “How can you tell?”

“Ah, it's easy,” Húlí chirps, tapping his nose with a wink. “The blood always knows. The Su Clan must be a very distant relative to the Nie. They are the Sect that grew from those blessed and beloved by the white tiger. Though some married out, the blood remained, weakened though it is after branching away from the main family."

Beside Lan Wangji, Nie Huaisang flinches, the grip on his fan tightening until his knuckles turn white and the wooden framing creaks beneath the strength of his grip. When Lan Wangji glances at him with a raised brow, he's quick to relax and wave his hands.

“I don't know anything about this,” he sputters, doing his best to look shell-shocked. “Our ancient scrolls have never mentioned anything about the white tiger!”

“What about the Jin Clan?” one of the other disciples pipes up. He's sitting at the table across from Húlí's, his own meal forgotten in his curiosity. “Who are they descended from?”

“The black tortoise,” Húlí answers promptly, his grin showing his sharp canines as he props his chin on his fist and settles in for the bombardment of questions that are obviously coming.

“What about the Jiang!” someone else calls. Lan Xichen does not chastise them for their impropriety, though it certainly is against the precepts to raise one's voice in such a manner.

“Ah, a blend, actually!” the húlí jing calls back with a widening grin. “While their ancestors were originally of the black tortoise, centuries ago the blood and powers of the jiaoren were mixed in and carried down through their descendants. That is why the Jiang of today are so adept on the water, though they have long since lost their ability to cry pearls!”

“They could cry pearls?!” Jingyi shrieks, and Húlí laughs at his astonishment.

“Once upon a time, yes!”

“And the… the Wen Clan?” Sizhui asks softly, tentatively. Lan Wangji does not show any outward reaction to his son's careful question, but his eyes sharpen and something in his chest tightens. Pale silver eyes flick toward him, Húlí's amusement softening as they stare at one another, and he realizes with a sudden jolt that the spirit knows. He knows where Sizhui comes from, whose blood runs through his veins.

“The Wen were the descendants of the vermillion bird,” the húlí jing says quietly, turning his smiling eyes back to Sizhui. “They were once a proud and noble bloodline. Many of them still were, in the end, no matter what your teachers and tomes will tell you. Corruption of some does not mean corruption of all. Plenty of the vermillion bird's descendants lived honest, peaceful lives. It is unfortunate that those who chose the dangerous path caused so much destruction for all of their people.”

“Wait, hold on,” Jingyi says, frowning in confusion. “You said they passed on their powers to help keep the balance in the world. But all the Wen are gone now, aren't they? Any that married out would have diluted the blood further. So if the Wen are all gone, then how has the world not succumbed to whatever chaos would come from the loss of one of the celestial guardians?”

“Who is to say it hasn't?” Húlí challenges him calmly, which makes all of the disciples pause in thought. “The corruption of the vermillion bird's blood brought about its own tragedy, did it not? And what has become of the world since then? Even so…” He stops and tilts his head with a chittering hum. “There's always a chance that some of the Wen escaped the genocide. That someone out there understood that relation does not equal guilt. If even one person alive today carries that blood in their veins, then the vermillion bird lives on through them.”

Lan Xichen's gaze snaps toward him, and Lan Wangji ignores the way his brother's eyes bore into the side of his head. No one outside of him or Uncle knows of Sizhui's origins; the rest of the Sect assumes he's another orphan their illustrious Second Jade found and adopted alongside Jingyi, and there has been no reason to correct them.

“I would have thought the Nie Sect would be descended from some kind of bull-like celestial, given their crest,” one of the juniors mumbles into her rice. Húlí laughs at that, rich and fond. The sound settles the tension in Lan Wangji's chest; leaves something behind that sizzles and sparks in his blood.

“That'd be a little too on the nose, don't you think?” the spirit chuckles with another playful wink. “Besides, it's as young master Jingyi has already said; how were they to know, when any books or scrolls have long since been lost, if they ever existed to begin with?”

“Why wouldn't they want to pass such knowledge down through the generations?” Sizhui wonders, frowning into his bowl like it's a puzzle he isn't quite sure how to solve.

Húlí taps the table with a claw, and the juniors are quick to give him their attention again. “How many of them would have been hunted in turn, if they had made it known?” he asks, blunt but not unkind. “If it was known that the Jiang were the descendants of jiaoren, how many others would have tried to capture them for their tears, before such an ability was too diluted to pass down? Or those descended from the vermillion bird? What about the descendants of the azure dragon? How many would have attempted to bleed them dry, for the power of the dragon's blood?”

“The azure dragon?” Jingyi is wide-eyed with excitement again, food once more forgotten in the face of Húlí's storytelling. “Are you saying one of the Sects is descended from dragons? Which one?!”

Lan Wangji shakes his head, fondly amused by his son's buzzing exuberance. “Ridiculous,” he mutters, his voice heavy with affection, and Lan Xichen shakes his own head with resigned fondness. Between them, Nie Huaisang is surprisingly quiet, his light eyes fixated on Húlí with an unusual intensity for someone frequently lauded as the Head-Shaker.

“Silly kit,” Húlí teases, his eyes twinkling as he wags a finger at Jingyi. “Who do you think, when we have already discussed the other Great Sects? Who amongst the Clans hoards knowledge above all? Who resides above the world, at home in the clouds? What other Clan produces cultivators of such unique and unimaginable strength and skill, if not your very own Lan Clan of Gusu?”

A ringing silence follows his words, and Lan Wangji finds himself counting down from five with an amused twitch of his lips. Sure enough, once he hits zero, the juniors erupt in startled cries and shouted questions, much to the combined amusement and startlement of the other patrons. Lan Xichen is swift to restore order after that, reminding them of the precepts with a gentle warning, and breakfast resumes in silence after that.

Húlí catches Lan Wangji's eye again and gives him a lazy grin, his pale silver eyes still twinkling with delight. Sorry, Lan Zhan, he mouths, not looking sorry at all. Lan Wangji shakes his head with a silent, indulgent huff and returns to his congee.

“If such knowledge has been lost for centuries,” Nie Huaisang murmurs, drawing the húlí jing's curious gaze, “then how did you come to know of it, Húlí-xiong?”

The spirit blinks at that, tilting his head in thought. “It was just… there when I awoke, in the cave,” he says with a helpless shrug. One claw lifts to tap against his temple. “All of it, right here. Whether real or fabricated is for you to decide, but if I speak dishonestly, then I cannot explain my own self. If I am here, and clearly exist, then tell me… why not them?”

“Why not indeed,” the Nie Sect Leader mutters, looking down at his fan. “I think I might like to see this cave you speak of,” he muses. Something in his voice makes Lan Wangji's nape prickle, and he eyes the man with suspicion. He's scheming something. What it is, Lan Wangji cannot tell yet, but he will figure it out, one way or another.

The fact that he, too, is very interested in returning to the Demon-Quelling Cave has nothing to do with it, but that is neither here nor there. If he is to learn anything about Húlí - and whatever connection to Wei Ying the spirit might have - then that cave is his best bet. He cannot shake the feeling that it is connected to the arrays, to the resentful energy being stolen from the Burial Mounds. 

What he cannot yet pinpoint is why. There are still too many questions, and now, it is time to return to the place where it all began and find his answers.