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Mo Ran turned to watch the departing back of Xue Zhengyong as he left him with Chu Wanning’s corpse.
To be honest, Mo Ran isn’t convinced this is really Chu Wanning. By all accounts it should be. He remembered Xue Meng’s explosive outburst from earlier in the day. He remembered the sobbing declaration that they no longer had a shizun anymore. He recalled how supposedly he had been carried up the steps to the sect, slung over his shizun’s shoulder, an omnipresent weight as Chu Wanning scrabbled up the stones slick with his own blood. There was a procession to carry the corpse of someone who looked a lot like Chu Wanning to its final resting place; he wasn’t able to get a good enough look at its gaunt features to confirm its identity. He should probably be feeling a lot of emotions right now. He would most assuredly be expected to be feeling something. When a shizun dies, the expectation is that their disciples will be utterly beside themselves in grief. Xue Meng certainly was. Shi Mei looked like he was fighting tears. Mo Ran hadn’t so much as accepted that he was actually gone.
It wasn’t out of some saccharine affection for the man. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to accept it. It was because he had spent a lifetime hating Chu Wanning for his invulnerability, his strength, his iron will and heart so completely closed off from the world. Chu Wanning was never supposed to be killed. Not while doing something as nonsensical as saving a disciple he had devoted his life to hating.
Alone, he turned to the corpse below him. This was his chance to find out the truth for himself and lay this whole ordeal to rest. If it wasn’t Chu Wanning, he would walk away with a smug satisfaction that he was right. If it was… he had a few funeral rites of his own to perform.
He begins the examination. The clothes are wrong; Chu Wanning was very particular about his robes and their material, and the garments he’s been laid to rest in are not made of the right kind. The planes of Chu Wanning’s cheeks have begun to hollow in the early stages of decomposition. Mo Ran sinks his fingers into the deposits in Chu Wanning’s skin, feels the hard points of his teeth and experiences a flash of anger that every part of him is perfect down to the bone structure. He doesn’t realize he has shifted on top of the body, straddling it now, and is hit with the impulse to confirm—though he’s not certain what all he needs to confirm. Maybe not only that Chu Wanning really is dead, but also that everything about him was truly as perfect as it seemed? Mo Ran pries apart Chu Wanning’s lips with difficulty, fighting the stiffness, and kisses him. It’s awkward, clumsy, and angry. What an odd feeling; this should be one of the warmest parts of his body, yet it’s cold. There’s no frenzied breathing or aborted sounds slipping from Chu Wanning’s lips, begging him to stop as he was so accustomed to doing before.
But it’s so very like him—dead, and still not giving Mo Ran what he wants.
Of course, something so intimate brings back more memories. This is just like how it used to be. Mo Ran on top of Chu Wanning, hands gripping him by the chin, their bodies slotted together in this way. Mo Ran realizes that throughout his lives, this moment has been one of the most consistent: Chu Wanning lying beneath him, completely pliant after being forced to submit. And isn’t it the same now? Chu Wanning is covered in poorly tended wounds, more emphasis placed on concealing the damage than on mending it. Even that is familiar. As much as Mo Ran enjoyed putting Chu Wanning in his place, he had always had an absurd aversion to seeing permanent marks—scars or deformities from broken bones.
That had been a great source of agony for him throughout his years as Taxian-Jun. He couldn’t begin to count how many times he had dreamed of permanently marring his perfect, infallible shizun. His phoenix eyes were one of the most striking qualities about Chu Wanning. They were the same blazing gold as Tianwen, and the depths of his gaze commanded nothing less than solemn reverence. He had spent years begging for them to soften even a little as they turned his way, but they remained as frigid as the rest of him. Every glance, every narrowing and twitch of those eyes, reinforced what Mo Ran already knew— he was an inferior to his shizun, an incorrigible mark on his reputation. How he had fantasized about ripping those eyes out from Chu Wanning’s skull. He had conjured such a vivid scene in his imagination; his shizun’s blood would splatter across Mo Ran’s face in a spray, streaking across his own features like a victory banner. The blood would be warm and his face would alight with pleasant tingles everywhere it touched his skin. It would be a reminder that this horrible man, the one who had fooled everyone into thinking he was god, was nothing more than a human who wept and bled like everyone that worshiped him. He would never be able to look at Mo Ran in any way again, forced to fumble his way through darkness like some sort of wretched beast of the earth.
He would become so engrossed in these fantasies that sometimes he would forget to breathe. When he came back to reality and caught his breath, he would be horrified to realize what the cause of this suffocation was— a deep, broiling rage in the hearth of his chest. He tried so hard to categorize it as anger towards his shizun, but he knew that wasn’t true. It was anger towards some unknown truth buried in the furthest recesses of his mind. Whenever he tried to reach for it, to cure himself of this maddening discomfort, it only escaped him more.
It had been a lifetime since he had last felt this feeling. Ever since he had been sent back into his younger and weaker self, that anger had persisted. The feeling of being slighted had kept its hands wrapped around his throat. But these pipe dreams of violence, the ones that kept him up at night, had died with the first emperor of the cultivation realm.The void he had filled with these fantasies left him gaping and bleeding, and he was desperate to feel whole again.
The object of his desire was under him, dead and still. He would never move again. He would never be able to reject his advances again. And with those eyes closed, the ones that saw and admonished everything, he could almost imagine that his shizun loved him the way he had pleaded for, for all the many years they spent together.
He starts grinding his hips against Chu Wanning’s leg. The resulting friction is more teasing than anything else, not nearly enough to sate the itch that’s been mounting inside of him since Xue Zhengyong left him alone with the body. Of course it wouldn’t be enough. He had done unspeakable things to Chu Wanning, torn him apart and come to know him from the most intimate reaches of his insides— this mere humping would get nothing done anytime soon. Yet he enjoyed being able to stare down at his shizun’s death mask like this, tracing the planes of his facial features and studying the adorable cracks in his lips from not caring for them properly. There were marks from his own teeth too from the earlier kissing. With luck, these indentations would last forever.
The dog inside of him felt a thrill of predatory pleasure from the idea. Years and years from now, Chu Wanning’s decay slowed severely from the cold and his remaining cultivation, there would still be evidence of their tryst for all to see. His anonymous love and hatred would be immortalized on his shizun’s own flesh.
Mo Ran began to shuck off his outer layer of robes, his arousal and the intensity of his emotions helping to keep him warm against the cold. He was already hard, cock straining angrily against the fabric of his clothes. He had gone through these motions so many times that it was almost as though he were operating off of muscle memory than conscious thought. The only difference was that he had less clothing to remove; there was no heavy omnipresent weight of a fur cape, nor the laborious insistence of golden jewelry and ornamental armor. Just thin and functional layers of Sisheng Peak’s blue.
Operating off that same routine as before, there was always foreplay. Not because Taxian-Jun had particularly cared if Chu Wanning enjoyed their sex or not, but because it was another layer of insult. Mo Ran leaned down and peppered kisses along the curve of his shizun’s throat. He sucked on his Adam’s apple, mouthed along his collarbone, raked his nails down his sides and grinned at the impassioned red lines he left behind. His shizun had always been so painfully shy about everything back then. He loved attempting to hide his face behind the sweep of his gorgeous black hair, looking anywhere but his eyes. He would gasp and shiver when Taxian-Jun would lick hot stripes down the inside of his thigh, bite his lip to keep from whining when he would circle a finger around the furl of his entrance. It was all to be expected of him. Chu Wanning, austere and unemotional, would obviously be a prude.
That was all the better for Mo Ran. It had become a personal challenge of his to see how quickly he could bully tears from those eyes he loathed more than anything. He would grip the edges of Chu Wanning’s chin so hard it ruptured the skin and force him to look into a mirror while he fucked him, chiding in his ear that he should be ashamed for spreading his legs so easily. He would expect this behavior from the whores gifted to him as offerings from clans seeking asylum, but not from the Yuheng Elder, Beidou Immortal. What had happened to that stellar reputation? That wooden heart, so hardened against the rest of the world? Chu Wanning would always take some unfathomable exception to that, letting out half-aborted sobs, and would try his best to wrench his face away from Taxian-Jun’s grasp. That would only earn him a harsher grip and a view of the grin slicing across his captor’s face as his blood dribbled down his throat to join the fluids on the floor. Their room always smelled of viscera and sex. It was an added veneer of torture, an omnipresent reminder of the night before.
Mo Ran messily removed clothing in the wake of his kisses. These robes weren’t as hard to take off as the ones his shizun preferred to wear in day-to-day life. As the pecks of his lips descended to his chest, the front of his burial robe was wrenched open. As he mouthed at a nipple, Mo Ran fumbled with one hand to remove the next layer of his own clothing. Chu Wanning had a delightfully sensitive chest. The utter lack of reaction was more confirmation that the man was gone.
The kisses fell lower still until his mouth hovered just above his groin. This was the real point of no return. Mo Ran wasn’t sure why he was having this thought. He had done any number of truly despicable things during his time as emperor, after all. He had tortured and killed entire bloodlines simply for looking at him strangely. He had torn out some of his attendants’ tongues for not responding to him in satisfactory ways. He had raped Chu Wanning into a near husk of a man, nursed him back to health, and cut him back down again when he had begun to look even a little like that Yuheng Elder he despised more than anyone in the world. Maybe it was because this was a new frontier; he had never fucked a corpse before, especially not one that had been dead long enough for the chill of death to permeate throughout the body. There would be no mind-melting warmth, just a tightness when he would slide in. That was okay, he supposed… this was more about laying a final claim on what had been his for so long.
Mo Ran had always felt that urgency to claim. It was a hangover from his troubled childhood where nothing was his for very long. Not food, not safety, not even the love of a parent. He was forced to fight tooth and nail for everything he wanted like a dog— and much like one, he had become awfully territorial. It wasn’t enough to take and own. He wouldn’t be satisfied until all of his peers knew what was his and understood the consequences of trying to encroach on what belonged to him. Never again would he allow himself to be a beaten street mutt when he had tasted the power of being a wolf.
Mo Ran spread Chu Wanning’s legs and moved down to settle into the gap in between them. This too was such a practiced movement that he didn’t feel any of the elation that used to precede their coupling. Before, he used to get such a sick thrill before he slid into his shizun like this. His hands would become clammy where they dug into the plush padding of Chu Wanning’s thighs, nails drawing blood. His heart rate would increase to a demanding hammer inside his rib cage. Every microexpression, every flailing of Chu Wanning’s hands in an attempt to push him off or halt his advances… they had all excited him like nothing else could. But now, staring down at the lifeless face of his shizun, he was oddly detached from it all. This wasn’t an endeavor of pleasure. He wasn’t doing this for any personal gain. It was an obligation, something he had to do before the corpse was sealed away.
He had to own him, one last time.
He slid in with some difficulty. The coldness of Chu Wanning's body was a strange sensation— yet another juxtaposition to their usual sex. Just like the absence of his shizun's struggling, the hole that was usually so warm and inviting was uncomfortable at best. The odd feeling was exacerbated by how every thrust was impeded by the tightness of his muscles that were hardening in death. Mo Ran grunted with every laborious thrust and rub against Chu Wanning's walls, desperately chasing the building of the burn in his lower stomach.
It was almost disturbing how quiet it was around them. The only sounds were Mo Ran's panting from exertion, the crunch of the snow beneath his fingers, and the howling of the wind that encased the grotesque act. There were no sharp breaths from Chu Wanning, no words dripping with animosity reverently whispered between them, no begging or crying or phoenix eyes drawn tightly in a glare. Shizun's hole had become a little more relaxed now. With this new leverage, he thrust in more sharply than before, pressing himself up taut against Chu Wanning's pelvis. Mo Ran was so deep inside that under normal circumstances his shizun would've torn by now, slicking his movements with blood, but now with livor mortis settled in none dribbled forth. He couldn't deny that there was some provocative allure there… leaving marks and evidence of his presence in a place no one would be able to see them. Imparting a perverted secret to be kept only between the two of them.
If Chu Wanning were alive, he would be shivering. Partly from the cold that he detested so much, partly from the sensations he would be forced to endure, and partly from the futile effort to keep what little scraps of dignity he had left tightly within his grasp. If he were alive, he'd be struggling to pull himself away from the painful intrusion of Mo Ran's cock, only to be forcefully dragged back and for Mo Ran to sheathe himself deeper inside him. He would gasp as wetness collected along his waterlines and dampened his eyelashes, causing them to clump together, as that spot inside him was violated so thoroughly. At some point he would call out a name. Mo Weiyu. When he was Taxian-Jun, he hated nothing more than being called this name. It was a reminder of the person he had cannibalized to become stronger. He would shove his fingers in Chu Wanning's mouth then, pushing so deep that he would gasp and choke around his digits as they struck the back of his throat, just to get him to be quiet. His moans and cries were much less offensive to the ear.
None of that happened now.
In a way, this felt like another rejection. This was the last time that Mo Ran and his shizun would be together like this, and the man was as cold and stone-faced as ever. As much as he hated the man below him, he so desperately wanted just a few more minutes with him. He wanted to look into his eyes. He wanted to interlace their fingers. He wanted to hear in Chu Wanning's own words why he would make such a sacrifice for a disciple so beloathed as him. There must be some grand explanation behind this unwanted act, some nefarious hidden purpose… and in it, an excuse to keep hating him. Mo Ran was afraid of what would happen when he left this mountain. He would go back down to the sect, walk past the Red Lotus Pavilion, lay down on his bed and be forced to pretend like anything would ever be okay again. And wasn’t that strange in itself? Shouldn’t he be happy that the person he hated most in the world was dead and that this timeline had turned out differently? That tomorrow he would be able to see Shi Mei’s beautiful and gentle face smiling at him from across a meal, instead of seeing it as he was kneeling at his grave?
Mo Ran picked up the pace of his thrusts.
The slide against Chu Wanning’s walls was more painful than pleasurable. There hadn’t been an adequate amount of prep or lube before this, discarded in Mo Ran’s frenzy to finish what he came here for before his absence became suspicious. The constant abrasion on his cock was honestly beginning to make him nauseous as he thrust in faster, harder; despite this, there was a dizzying juxtaposition spreading throughout his body. The lightheadedness from such exertion was making his limbs floaty and the burn caused from fucking into his shizun had spread past his dick and seeped into the rest of his body. It was an assault of sensuality that Mo Ran was frankly unprepared for, and as the pain reached an agonizing crescendo and the edges of his vision began to darken he came with a gasp inside his shizun. He didn’t realize he had been biting down on his lip until he subconsciously relaxed his jaw, and when he did, he could taste the tang of his blood as it exploded in his mouth.
He stayed stock still for a moment as he fought to catch his breath. As his muscles twitched from the afterglow, drops of blood from his split lip dribbled down to his chin and fell onto Chu Wanning’s corpse. The splattering of the droplets seeped into his shizun’s burial robes until the red dulled into a delicate pink in the fabric. What a morbid display. Mo Ran couldn’t find it in him to be repulsed. Instead, a vulnerable part of him instantly likened the pink pinpricks to petals of the haitang flower he had picked for Chu Wanning all those years ago as a fledgling disciple. He remembered how back then he was convinced that no one in the world was more beautiful than his shizun, more graceful, more intelligent and kind. He remembered the sting of the lashes across his back as his shizun took his gift and slashed his displeasure into his skin with Tianwen. A simple gesture, a meek declaration of love and devotion, and somehow it wasn’t good enough.
He was never good enough.
He then very belatedly realized he was crying.
The cold made his tears burn against his skin as they fell from his eyes. He was making a patchwork of colors on Chu Wanning’s robes now— the pink of his blood, the mottling of his tears. He was shaking so badly now that he let his elbows collapse and he fell forward onto his shizun’s chest, resting his ear where his heart lay dormant in the cage of bone below.
It wasn’t beating. Hadn’t that always been the case? Chu Wanning’s heart beat for no one. Not for him, not for Shi Mei. It was like that in life and it would be so in death. Even though it enraged him, Mo Ran lay there for a while. This reminded him of nights at the palace where he tentatively held Chu Wanning in his arms at night after hours of abuse. He had always liked to play at love with his shizun. If he would never be able to experience it genuinely, he would settle for this mind game on course to destroy them both. Chu Wanning, bruised and humiliated and defiled, would accept the arms around his body and fall asleep from the exhaustion. There would be no fighting, no sharp words… just the unlabored breathing of sleep. Taxian-Jun would stare down at his face as it slowly relaxed into dormancy. As much as he hated his shizun, and as much as his shizun detested him, they were all they had. These truces they shared were almost enough to make him believe that Chu Wanning had a heart to him after all.
This moment was a final mimicry of that farce. They would never lay in each other’s arms again. There would be no more moments shared between them ever again. Soon, Mo Ran would rise from this corpse and go away from this peak, leaving his shizun’s body to harden against the elements forever, alone. Maybe with time Mo Ran would slowly begin to forget what Chu Wanning even looked like. He would forget the rich cadence of his voice that spoke more admonishments than it did praise. Maybe one day the memories of their past lives would fade too, leaving him in peace forever.
Chu Wanning’s corpse began to wither under the weight of Mo Ran’s regret.