Chapter Text
It was a dark and stormy night.
Rain came down in sheets, running in rushing rivulets down the boles of bare trees, pooling at their hoary feet. Thunder crashed above, rounding out the ghoulish chorus of—
“Is this a scary story or a poetry reading?”
“Nobody interrupted you, A-Ling.”
“Yeah, but Sizhui, my story was g—”
THE HERO OF BALING rode through the night, answering the call of the common people. Whispers followed Ouyang Zixian on his trusty steed, Da Longyan—
“Oh, come on,” A-Ling grumbles.
“You know,” Jingyi puts in, “the more you interrupt the longer this is going to take.”
“...fair point.”
“IF YOU WOULD LET ME TELL IT,” Zizhen shouts, “you would understand the dire nature of Ouyang Zixian’s quest.”
His friends fall silent.
He received a missive from a young, widowed mother in a remote village, telling of a dark, malicious presence, and nobody to protect her or her young child. She was all alone. Duty required Ouyang Zixian to ride out with haste. Even in the worst storm Baling had seen in a century.
So he did.
Zizhen looks around at his friends, their faces lit warmly by the fire, and is finally, finally met with silence. The moody deep-Autumn atmosphere closes in around them. He continues his tale.
The little house is surrounded by a black, imposing wood. There are no stars, no moon to light his path, and he hears whispers, eerie voices through the trees, as he approaches.
He calls up a talisman for light. But there is nobody there.
At least, nobody he can see.
The wind picks up, rustling through the trees with perfect timing. Zizhen pauses for full effect.
When at last he reaches the door, his knock is answered immediately. It opens, revealing a cozy cottage warmed by a merry fire, and a small woman with skin pale as cream, and eyes big and innocent as a lamb’s. It’s clear she has been crying.
“Guniang,” he says, and bows chivalrously. “I have come from the Baling Ouyang sect to answer your call for aid. Are you hurt?”
She bows back gracefully, her babe still in her arms, and murmurs, “Thank you, gongzi. I am yet unhurt. Please, come in.”
“Jingyi. Stop smirking,” whispers Sizhui.
Jingyi snorts.
“It isn’t that kind of a story, Jingyi,” Zizhen says. “It’s supposed to be—actually. You know. If—no. Well?”
“Zizhen, we want to hear the scary version, remember?” Sizhui reminds him.
“Oh right. Right. But if—no, right.”
So he follows her inside, closing the door on the torrential downpour, and takes stock. Her home is small and bare, the loom on which she makes her living abandoned in a corner. A crock of milk is shattered on the floor.
“It has become violent,” Zixian observes.
She nods at him, demure and troubled, but brave.
He worries for her. Ordinarily, he would have her leave, have her stay somewhere safe while he deals with the spirit, but in this weather, that’s impossible.
“Stand behind me,” he says. “Stay close, and I will keep you from harm.”
“Gongzi, do you not wish to get warm and dry? The spirit is not going anywhere.”
“That is very kind,” he says.
She lays her child in the cradle, and helps him off with his cloak and hat.
“Oh, come on,” says A-Ling.
“Please,” begs Sizhui, distressed. “Hanguang-jun could be back any minute, you know. He could hear.”
All she does is help him dry off a little! In front of the fire! Ouyang Zixian would never take advantage of a girl on her own. So he’s warm, and he’s dry, and she’s very kind to him. And then she offers him something to eat.
He accepts.
She goes to the back of the house, to the kitchen. The storm continues to rage, and Ouyang Zixian sits patiently, restoring his strength after the ride. But when his eyes begin to droop, he realizes it has been a very long time. Too long.
“Guniang?” he calls.
There is no reply.
There’s a sharp intake of breath from one of Zizhen’s friends. He can’t tell which one, but the adrenaline from it spurs him on. The night itself seems to be growing colder and darker as he spins his tale.
He stands, and makes sure to check on the soundly sleeping baby before going to find the mistress of the house. He bends over the crib, intending to look quickly, and be off, for the mother might be in grave danger.
A tree branch creaks ominously overhead, and Jingyi startles just slightly. Zizhen has to work not to smile.
But the sight that greets him makes him look a second time, recoiling. For in the crib is not a fat, sleeping, living child, but a gray, desiccated thing, long dead. He stares, mute with horror, and almost reaches down to make sure it’s truly what it seems.
But just then, a sinister whisper curls through the air. He looks around, trying to find the source.
It almost seems as if there are whispers coming from the trees. The three other boys are watching him, rapt, eyes wide.
There’s nothing there. At least...nothing he can see.
A cold tendril of evil slides like a fingertip up the back of his neck.
A-Ling shivers, and looks around.
Ouyang Zixian whirls, and before him, hulking, huge, blocking out all light and warmth from the fire, is a creature of pure resentment, black smoke and shadow swirling like a—
There’s a sudden gust of wind from the woods, and the boys all jump, turn, and scream at the sight of the shadow-monster rushing toward them. A-Ling slips off of the stump he’s claimed as his throne, crashing onto Zizhen. They cling to each other, insensible in the face of such a vast and evil beast.
Laughter rings out across the clearing, and for a brief moment in which death seems imminent, Zizhen considers doing something very ill-advised and un-take-backable to the boy currently sitting in his lap. Thankfully, before he does, the shadows retreat, and the laughter turns to something recognizable.
“Wei-qianbei!” Sizhui says, somehow excited and disapproving at once.
A-Ling scrambles to stand, pointing. “You!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Wei-qianbei says, bowing as well as he can while he’s still laughing so hard. “Forgive this one for his crimes. But you should have seen your faces! Ahh...Wen Ning, wasn’t it perfect?”
Wen-qianbei emerges from the trees, Little Apple beside him, and Hanguang-jun on her other side. Yiling Laozu’s two greatest friends and allies: the Ghost General and the Peerless Second Jade. Always flanking Wei Wuxian, the metaphorical donkey between.
Zizhen misses Wen-qianbei’s answer as he rifles through his pouch. His brush may still be wet from earlier; if he can find it, he may be able to jot some of this down.
“Frankly I should be disappointed,” Wei-qianbei goes on, shaking a finger at them. Zizhen’s heart sinks, brush forgotten. “Sizhui’s the only one of you to so much as get a hand on his sword.”
“He knew it was you,” Hanguang-jun tells him, before Zizhen can even truly begin to wallow in this failure.
He whips around to look at Sizhui, who seems a bit flushed.
“Eh?” Wei-qianbei says, looking confused for a moment, before his face settles into amusement. “Trying to impress us, Sizhui?”
Sizhui stares determinedly at the ground. Wei-qianbei laughs again.
“I swear I’m going to invent that talisman for taking quick sketches of things,” he says to himself. “Such faces, such faces. Are people in Baling really still telling that one, by the way?”
It’s a moment before Zizhen realizes he’s being spoken to. He blinks up at Wei-qianbei, who’s settled on what was A-Ling’s stump. He’s watching Zizhen with interest, his arms crossed, one foot propped on a log of firewood.
“Uh…” Zizhen says. He clears his throat. “Yes. It...yes. It’s—which part did you hear?”
“The lady, and the baby, and the monster,” says Wei-qianbei, ignoring A-Ling’s attempts to get his attention and his stump back. “All that stuff. Though I’ve never heard of this ‘Ouyang Zixian’ before.” He cocks an eyebrow, then turns to look behind himself. “Lan Zhan, have you heard these tales they still spread about me? Shameless. Lying is forbidden, isn’t it?”
“About—about you?” Zizhen splutters.
Wei-qianbei waves a dismissive hand. “For some reason it was popular to frame me as going around in disguises, ensnaring noble cultivators. Can’t imagine why, but then, they also said I would kill them and eat the babies, so why complain about the ensaring part?”
A-Ling snorts, and sits down on the ground in a huff. Zizhen glances at the noble Hanguang-jun dutifully standing guard behind Wei-qianbei, and says nothing about anybody’s need, or lack thereof, for a disguise. When it comes to ensnaring noble cultivators, at least.
“You go around playing evil pranks on people and wonder why there are mean stories about you,” Jingyi mutters. “Like Hanguang-jun can control every single person’s mouth. Do you even have any—”
“Wei-qianbei, to what do we owe the honor of your help on our hunt?” Sizhui asks.
Zizhen straightens. They’ve all been terribly rude.
“Oh! Yes, what brings you out here? Hanguang-jun only said he was leaving to bring back a surprise. We thought it might be osmanthus cakes, not you three!”
“You thought it might be osmanthus cakes,” scoffs A-Ling. “He’s Hanguang-jun. He’s making us stay out in the middle of nowhere to better our constitutions, and you thought he would bring us osmanthus cakes.”
“It is essential to practice keeping warm using our cores in case of emergency,” Sizhui says.
“The young mistress over there probably doesn’t think he’ll ever have an emergency,” Jingyi grumbles.
“DON’T—”
“A-Ling, don’t let him bait you,” Zizhen says, a little tired and a little desperate. His heart is still beating hard—definitely from the scare—and his friends fighting is the last thing he needs.
“Qi disturbance after upheaval is natural,” Hanguang-jun says, even and soft but instantly commanding. “Calming disturbances mindfully is essential.”
All four of them go quiet, chastened. Zizhen takes several deep breaths, until his heartbeat slows and his core settles.
Wei-qianbei clears his throat in the silence.
“I, ah...well, I was in the area," he says, glancing back at Hanguang-jun, and then at Wen-qianbei where he sits just outside the ring of firelight. “So I thought I’d come nighthunt with you all, and beg a meal or two from your generous Hanguang-jun.”
They all stare at him. He scratches his head.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course we don’t mind!” Zizhen cries, as A-Ling spits, “Don’t be stupid,” and Jingyi mutters, “In the area, huh? Lucky."
But Wei-qianbei is grinning, and he claps his hands together.
“Alright, alright, forget it, where were we? Scary stories? Who had the best one?”
“Well,” Sizhui starts, schooling his smile to something more diplomatic. But before he can say that of course it was Zizhen, A-Ling interrupts.
“Why do you even care, if they’re all lies about you?” he sneers.
Wei-qianbei raises an eyebrow at him. “Because I like hearing about myself, obviously. If people were telling exaggerated tales about you all across the land, you’d want to hear them too.”
A-Ling frowns harder. “I’m not doing evil, you—”
“Perhaps we can tell not-scary stories,” Zizhen interrupts, in an attempt to diffuse the tension. “We can tell…heroic tales. Or…romantic ones?”
Everyone stares at him.
“You’ve just been waiting for this moment, haven’t you,” Jingyi says. “When have you ever heard of telling love stories around a campfire? Hmm? When has that been a thing? You already tried to make your scary story into a—”
“I did not, you were the one who kept implying—”
“Implying? Implying? I was inferring, from your actual story—”
“Kids. Kids! Boys,” Wei-qianbei shouts over them. He’s pressing his finger and thumb to his forehead. He looks at Hanguang-jun sidelong. “Are they always like this?”
Hanguang-jun stares at all of them impassively. “Not always,” he says.
Zizhen looks down at his hands, chastised by Hanguang-jun’s magnanimity.
“Why don’t you tell us a story, hm Lan Zhan?”
Zizhen’s head jerks up to look at the two of them. Wei-qianbei is grinning up at Hanguang-jun, the firelight burnishing them both in bronze. Hanguang-jun turns deliberately, to look back down at Wei-qianbei with a soft intensity that makes Zizhen’s insides wiggle madly.
“I would not tell it as well as you,” says Hanguang-jun.
Wei-qianbei huffs. “Always so modest. I know you’ve got plenty of epic poems memorized perfectly in that head of yours. Why do you never give readings?”
“As a rule I do not wish to bore my guests.”
This startles a full, throaty laugh out of Wei-qianbei. “Ah, Lan Zhan! You can’t be so funny without warning me, I’ll burst something.”
“Funny?” Jingyi whispers.
Zizhen glances at him just long enough to register the bemusement on his face and shush him for it, then returns his attention to the tableau across the flames.
“Come on Lan Zhan, it’s my—well. If I promise not to get bored, will you tell us a tale?” Wei-qianbei wheedles.
“Wei Ying,” Hanguang-jun admonishes without heat, the weight of years of shared memories behind his gaze.
Wei-qianbei laughs again, as if Hanguang-jun has told another joke. “Isn’t sarcasm against the rules? You wound me! What sort of example are you setting for these young impressionable cultivators? Did you all see that? He practically rolled his eyes!”
Zizhen exchanges blank glances with his friends. He’s comforted to know none of them have any idea what he’s talking about either.
“Why are you still standing?” Wei-qianbei says suddenly. “We’re all comfortable, why don’t—”
He stops, and laughs weakly. He moves to sit on the ground, brushing off the stump as he goes. Hanguang-jun stops him with a hand on his arm, pulling him back onto it, then folds elegantly down to the ground beside it.
It is only because Zizhen is watching them so closely that he sees Wei-qianbei’s hand stray toward Hanguang-jun’s shoulder before stopping, and curling into the fabric of his own robes.
His heart throbs. He restarts the hunt for his brush. He needs desperately to write this down before he forgets.
“Anyway,” Wei-qianbei says into the deafening silence, “don’t we all want to hear one of Hanguang-jun’s stories?”
Zizhen feels them all take a collective breath to agree, when Hanguang-jun cuts them off.
“Wei Ying,” he says again, “why do you not tell them something true? Such as the tale of our encounter with the Xuanwu.”
Wei-qianbei blinks down at him. “The…me? You don’t want to hear that.”
Hanguang-jun looks up at him, and Zizhen’s stomach goes tight again at the expression on his face.
“I do. And I am sure the junior disciples would benefit from hearing it as well.”
They stare at each other, and the moment stretches until Zizhen realizes it’s been too long since he’s taken a breath.
Finally, Hanguang-jun looks away, and the tension snaps.
“If you remember it,” he adds quietly.
Wei-qianbei laughs softly, shaking his head. “You’ll correct me then, if I get anything wrong.”
“I will not.”
“Lan Zhan!” Wei-qianbei laughs harder.
But Zizhen misses what he says next as a strange, distant sound reaches their ears.
It sounds like water. Or like giggling. Or like disconsolate sobs.
They all look around, trying to locate the direction of the source.
Jingyi groans. “Wei-qianbeeiii…”
But Wei-qianbei is watching them and listening, stock-still. “It isn’t me,” he says. He looks at Hanguang-jun again. “You weren’t planning on hunting in these woods, were you?”
Hanguang-jun nods. “There have been recent complaints at the next village.”
“But we came through just fine…”
The sound comes again, and Zizhen realizes he’s standing. He has to get to the poor person crying, all alone, and he has to get there now. Persons? Oh…oh, he has to go to them. A-Ling is already halfway to the trees, and he tries to catch up.
A strong hand catches him by the back of the collar, and he yelps, looking around. Wen-qianbei is behind him, holding on, impassive and hard as stone. Zizhen struggles.
“We have to—we have to help!”
“Ah, Lan Zhan, do you have more—yes, perfect,” Wei-qianbei is saying from where he has an arm around A-Ling. He catches a coil of rope in his free hand, and begins hauling him back toward the fire, kicking and screaming.
Zizhen looks around for help. “Please,” he says. “We have to help them! They’re all alone—and—and—”
“I know, I know,” Wei-qianbei says. He’s wrapping his rope around A-Ling as he walks. “It’s terribly convincing, but you see, if we let you go, you’ll surely be eaten. Just like in your story! Only it’s not me waiting out there, it’s a real monster. Or. A monster who wouldn’t think twice about eating all four of you.”
He shoves A-Ling, still cursing, against Little Apple, and starts tying knots. Wen-qianbei picks Zizhen up with one hand and deposits him beside them.
“How can you say that?” Jingyi is saying. Hanguang-jun is towing him over to the donkey, and there are tears in his eyes. “There’s no monster here, you have to let me go. Let me g—”
His words are cut off by the jostling of Sizhui struggling viciously. He’s not begging, or scowling, or pleading like the rest of them. He’s using all his strength to get away. But Hanguang-jun’s careful hold on him is firm.
“It will pass,” he says to all of them. “It is not real. Do not listen. Look inward for the truth; reject resentful interference.”
Zizhen doesn’t understand. “Please,” he begs. “Please, just let me go, I need to—”
“Wen Ning, get them to town, and keep eyes on them,” Wei-qianbei says when they’re all fixed securely to Little Apple. “If you can, ask around for information.”
Zizhen tries to face him properly. “Wei-qianbei, please.”
Wei-qianbei pats his shoulder reassuringly, and then nods at Wen-qianbei, who pulls Little Apple forward.
Zizhen wails. He shouts for help all through the trees, and onto the road, and into the night. Eventually, he goes hoarse. Eventually, all four of them go quiet. The voices in his mind go quiet, too. And in the silence of the early morning, Wen-qianbei begins to hum.