Chapter Text
Chapter Text
Wen RuoHan felt it. The change in the air. The change in the focus of the three floating shards of yin iron he was manipulating. Suddenly he no longer had control. Someone else was moving them, weakening them.
Impossible!
The golden core energy inside him surged. The sun in his chest burned through any resentment energy remaining in his meridians. Any lesser man would have screamed in pain. But not Wen RuoHan. Pain was nothing to him.
He was so powerful now he could move with the speed of sound effortlessly. Yet even that power was barely enough to bend the yin shards to his will. Someone else was now controlling them.
That could only mean… another powerful cultivator. He had not known that there was anyone else who could match him. Or had they recruited the help of an immortal? He fished out a transport talisman from his sleeve and stuffed it under his outer robe, over his heart. That way, if he was bested or captured in some way by this cultivator, he could just touch his chest and focus his qi through the thick fabric without arousing suspicion and be away before anyone would realise it. It was a cowardly way of escape, but he would be alive and that was all that mattered.
RuoHan waved in the direction of the yin shards making them seemingly to disappear into thin air. The gloom in the throne room dissipated, allowing the glow and the warmth of the torches to expand in the space. Then he strode out through the double door with Meng Yao trying to keep up after him but failing miserably. He flashed through the empty hallway and out onto the front terrace. A battle was still raging in the courtyard outside, but it was one where his fierce corpses were turned on each other. The invading cultivators were staring in shock, all as surprised as him.
He sensed a power pulling him and he turned. His eyes were immediately drawn to a man, no a boy in black robes. A boy! Standing on top of a sun totem. And floating in front of the boy was a cloud of resentful energy which seemed to be circling a piece of yin iron. Was this the final missing shard? But how could it be more powerful than the three he had? What magic was this boy using? RuoHan could sense that he was no immortal. He was too human, too broken. He did not even have a golden core. But the power oozing out of him was unmistakable.
A strum of the zither made him snapped his gaze down to the steps. The sound was instantly followed by a bright blue beam of light that smashed into his chest. It smarted. RuoHan had not felt this level of pain in many years. He looked up from his chest and saw… another child! The Lan boy! He was now standing on the top step and glaring with hate and disgust. RuoHan was shocked. Had his cultivation been so weakened by trying to control the yin shards that he could now be bested by children? Neither of them looked older than Wen Chao, his youngest son.
He raised his arm up, flaring his fingers like pouncing claws, willing the boy in the black robes to come to him. He was right! The boy was weak. He could not resist the pull of RuoHan’s yang energy. Yet this one had overpowered his yin shards. The moment the boy was brought in front of him, he grabbed him by the neck. With a start he realised that he knew this face. This was the boy who had won the archery competition at the last discussion conference held in Qishan. The same one who killed the XuanWu of Slaughter together with the Lan boy. Now he remembered their names: Wei WuXian of YunMengJiang and Lan WangJi of GusuLan.
“Wei Ying!” the Lan boy called, the icy hate in his eyes morphing into anxiety.
Ah yes. This one was Cangse Sanren’s boy. She was ingenious too. He tried to woo her because her powerful golden core would have given him the perfect heir. But she rejected him and gave him the most brutal beating when he tried to force himself on her. This boy could have been his. RuoHan laughed. But Wei WuXian was not his to claim, so he would crush him then raise his dead body to fight the other one. The resentment energy around Cangse’s boy began to coil around RuoHan as though trying to squeeze him to death before he could harm its master. The Lan boy hit him with another blast of blue light, making him grimace in pain. The combined power of boys’ yin and yang energy cut through every cell of his body, making him roar with pain. Then RuoHan felt a sharp numbness going through his heart. He looked down and saw the tip of a blade jutting out of his chest.
Hensheng. Meng Yao’s sword. The traitor! RuoHan laughed but outwardly choked instead. A traitor twice over!
Time slowed for RuoHan. His fingers unclenched around WuXian’s throat and the boy dropped into WangJi’s out-reaching arm. RuoHan watched them for a moment. He saw how WangJi wrapped one arm protectively around WuXian’s waist and how he pulled him close towards his chest with the other hand. Most of all he noticed how WuXian relaxed into the embrace. How else would he call it but an embrace? No soldier would hold his wounded comrade in such a shameless manner. They looked right together.
They should be his.
RuoHan touched his chest and focused all of his remaining energy into the bloody talisman. Everything went dark.
-----
They should be his.
Wen RuoHan took a deep gasping breath. There was no pain in his chest. He was covered by the warmth of a blanket and supported by the softness of a mattress. His heart was light, or rather unburdened. It felt strange because he had just lost a war. He should be dead. But he was back in his bedroom, exactly where he had spelled the talisman to take him.
He rubbed his face with one hand. Then he lifted the same hand and stared at it with surprise. The hand was fleshy and pink. He sat up with his eyes fixedly studying the two hands he now lifted in front of his face. They were not gaunt and disfigured with jutting discoloured veins. They looked pampered but strong and callused.
He looked about him. The drapes were still drawn over the open windows, but he could smell the fresh morning air and see strips of light waxing and waning on the floor as the drapes moved. He listened and heard songbirds.
What was happening?
He got out of bed and went towards the mirror, then stared at the image reflected on the shiny copper surface. The last time he had looked like this was before Wen Chao brought back the yin shard from Tanzhou, before he started trying to force the yin shards to obey his will.
RuoHan realised that he was back in his old body, to a time before the other four great sects had declared war on him. Time travel? Could he have done the most elusive magic known to the cultivation world? But he had no idea how he did it. He laughed out loud.
Moments later, a light knock fell on the door and it was soon opened by a servant who widened the door to let in five other servants who came in with buckets of hot water. The drapes were tied to the side and sunlight filled the room.
While they filled his large bath, RuoHan said to the servant who was opening the drapes, “I will have my breakfast here.” Meaning, I do not want to be disturb today.
The servant bowed and then they all left, the door shutting silently behind them.
RuoHan looked thoughtfully down at his hands. Then he turned to the bath and took off his night robe. He was glad to be returned to this time because this was when he was physically strongest. He stepped into the water with a contented sigh. He had not felt this balanced in a long time.
He closed his eyes and leaned back, enjoying the heat, enjoying how his tense muscles began to relax in the water. Was it worth it to lose everything for a power he could not control? But Cangse’s boy clearly showed him that there was a way to control that power. WuXian even managed to do it from outside the palace, while RuoHan could barely control the shards when they were right in front of him. Then he recalled the blast of qi coming from the Lan boy, how powerful it was and how stable that power was too.
The resentment energy from WuXian and the spiritual energy from WangJi had cut into him, raced through his meridians. He had the talisman over his chest. Then his heart was pierce, and the talisman paper on his chest must have soaked in his blood. What happened next; RuoHan tried to remember. He had added his qi onto the talisman. He abruptly sat up in the bath, sploshing water onto the floor. His mind began racing over all the information he knew about spiritual dual cultivating. His body must had been inadvertently turned into a cauldron that allowed all three energies to mix. He died but his soul was sent back to the past. After mulling over the problem for some more time, RuoHan came to the conclusion that his blood had activated the talisman, but it was the combined energies of the three of them that had made this magic possible.
The boys were meant to be his.
RuoHan scooped some water and scrubbed his face with his hands. He needed to think and plan but his brain still had some residual fog from the resentment energy of his future self. He had been paranoid then, maybe even insane, he thought when he recalled his actions and temper from that time. But he was once again the respected Chief Cultivator. With the knowledge of future events, he realised that if he played his cards right, he would become more powerful. With the boys by his side, he might even become god-like.
He would make them his.
RuoHan smiled. No one could stop him if he demanded for both Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian outright but then there would be the prickling problem of making them accept him. Cultivating together required the full cooperation of all parties. It would be to his advantage if they were fully willing rather than half-hearted and resentful.
His roaming mind paused on his memories of Meng Yao. He remembered how that other man had wormed his way into his trust and, before that, of how he had wormed his way into the hearts of other sect leaders. Ruohan did not know what happened to the grovelling man after his death, but he could imagine just how Meng Yao would twist that cowardly act of stabbing his master in the back as an act of heroism. He chuckled. He had underestimated Meng Yao because of his weak core. He would not make that mistake again. Maybe he should try using that small shy smile himself sometimes. Maybe if he had done that in the past, Cangse Sanren might have agreed to be his. Then again, maybe not.
But her son was here.
RuoHan promised himself that he would be patient this time. That he would take his time to understand events without forcing people to his will. That he would be more charming and gentler. He was so powerful now the force of his presence alone was irresistible.
-----
The throne room was quiet as RuoHan walked up the steps to his seat. When he had walked in through the double door initially, his sons or rather Wen Chao, had been bragging to his brother again about another female conquest. RuoHan had stopped and glared at the impudent boy. He shut up instantly when Wen Xu nudged him then bowed to their father. Wen Chou quickly followed but RuoHan had turned away without acknowledging his greeting.
What a disappointment his sons were to him. He had told them, instructed them that they should not waste their essence on loose women. No wonder they were so weak! They both died in the future which felt like a relief even though it should not be.
“Report!” he called out the moment he sat down.
An Elder stepped forward. “Preparations to move the waterborne abyss is complete.”
Ah. No wonder he felt so light. He only had the yin shard from Dafan village at this time. And it was in Daoshi’s keeping. “Are your people in place?”
“Yes, they have rented a house at the shore of Biling Lake.”
“Excellent.” RuoHan leaned forward in his seat. “Are Wen Qing and Wen Ning here yet?”
Wen Chao replied, “Yes, Father. They arrived last night.”
A servant was sent to fetch them. RuoHan discussed about other sect matters until two youngsters, a young girl of sixteen and her fourteen-year-old brother came forward. They bowed and offered their greeting.
RuoHan smiled benevolently. “A-Qing? A-Ning?” he said with a voice filled with pleasant surprise. “You have both grown well. Are you excited to be going to GusuLan?”
Wen Qing frowned. “I hear that we need an invitation to be accepted for classes. Uncle, we do not have one.”
Wen Chao said loudly, “We are Wens. Nobody has any right to reject us.”
RuoHan held back his sigh. He must remind his son that proud Sects were not like prostitutes. GusuLan was known to reject people out of principle.
Then he recalled that in his previous life, Wen Ning had talked about meeting Wei WuXian when he was in studying in Cloud Recesses. He was in a more junior class but they had bonded over archery. That meant that…
They would be his.
“Don’t worry, A-Qing,” RuoHan said in his most fatherly voice. He forced down the tingling excitement in his meridians. “I will go with you. It will be alright. We have not sent any Wen to study there for years now. It is only natural for them to assume that we might not be interested too this year. I will just explain the situation to the acting Sect Leader.”
“Father!” Wen Chao hollered. “You are the Chief Cultivator. You do not have to explain anything! Anyway, why must you go? They could just go on their own.”
RuoHan almost rolled his eyes back. Wen Xu might be stupid too but at least he was quiet. This one barked at every opportunity.
Instead of smiting his son down with the qi energy that was suddenly tensing inside his chest, RuoHan stretched and let out a loud sigh. Then he said, “I am bored. I would like to travel for a bit. I hear that Gusu is very pretty in the spring.”
“There is nowhere more beautiful than…” Wen Chao started to say but stopped the moment he noticed the glare his father gave him.
“You declared that no one needed an explanation from me for anything, yet you are now demanding for an explanation from me!”
“You misunderstood, Father. I am not,” said a cowed Wen Chao.
RuoHan turned his withering gaze away then smiled at his niece, the same smile that Meng Yao used to give him. “A-Qing, I would also like to discuss the specifics of what I would like you to study while you are at Cloud Recesses. I will try to get the Sect to give you permission to read some of their secret text too.”
He waited a beat. Good. Wen Chao had learned his lesson.
Then he continued, “I know that you have been working on some theories on the golden core. Wen ZhuLiu told me they are quite impressive.”
Wen Qing blushed. “It is only a theory, Uncle.”
“Wen ZhuLiu seems to think that they are workable though.” Then he turned his attention to Wen Ning. “And what about you, A-Ning? Are you going to study medicine too?”
“I…I.. will..s.study, Uncle.”
Wen Chao scoffed loudly. But he said nothing.
RuoHan let his lips turned down with annoyance for a moment, then his face was kind again. “That is good. You must also try to make friends. Good inter-sect relationship is very important.”
“I…I will do as ..as you say, Uncle.”
“Very good.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together gleefully, like a youngster about to do mischief. “You can both go back to your quarters and make a list of the things you need. I will write to Sect Leader Lan after this, to inform him that I will be sending two young students to Cloud Recesses.”
He chuckled. “I hope this request does not fluster them too much. Lans like to prepare at least a year ahead.” Then he gave them a mischievous wink.
It prompted a smile from the two siblings. Then they bowed and left the throne room.
RuoHan smiled after them, please with himself. He hoped he had given them a good enough performance to make them believe that he was a kind and generous uncle. Children do gossip among friends, and since these two would be the first Wens of this new generation to go to the Cloud Recesses, many people would be interested to hear what they say about him. It would not hurt to get into the good opinions of Lan WangJi and Wei Wuxian at this stage.
After all, praise spoken by others was always more believable than praise expounded by oneself.