Chapter Text
Everything was blurred. Wei Ying couldn’t tell where the attacker was, he could only stay in motion while herding Huaisang away, slicing through the space in front of him. His breath caught, trapped somewhere too deep in his chest to reach the surface. When he felt someone come close, his view was blocked.
A white sleeve cut through the chaos, blocking everything from Wei Ying’s sight. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed into that single figure. Lan Zhan stepped in. Just like that. Without hesitation, without distance.
“Wei Ying must live.” The words were calm and eerie final.
Wei Ying tried to speak, but nothing came out, then Lan Zhan jolted. A sound, too small to be noticed in any other moment, yet everything in Wei Ying shattered around it. He saw it anyway, impossibly clear through the blur: the blade, sinking into Lan Zhan’s side.
Time broke.
“No—”
Nie Huaisang screamed behind him. A voice torn raw, collapsing into panic as he rushed forward. Lan Zhan didn’t fall immediately. He just… stayed upright, as if sheer will alone could keep him there. Wei Ying saw his mouth move again, but no sound reached him anymore.
Hands pressed hard against Wei Ying’s chest, holding him down, holding him back, holding him somewhere he couldn’t escape from. Something white entered his vision.
Is this one of my de—
The world tilted. Darkened. And then there was nothing.
First the light returned. All at once and it was too bright, too loud, too sharp.
Then came the pain. The pain was everywhere, like his body had forgotten how to exist gently. He gasped, but air didn’t obey him. It felt like drowning without water.
Then he heard a woman screaming high, panicked and very close until another voice, even closer joined. “—a healthy boy! No knot visible, the secondary sex is therefore unclear.” Someone said it like it meant something important. Every word was accompanied by steady, rhythmic beeping. Wei Ying didn’t understand any of it.
Then Wei Ying felt even more hands on him, turning him, lifting him. The world was too small and too large at the same time, nothing anchored, nothing stable.
“…A-Ying.” A man’s voice cut through the noice around and inside him. Familiar in a way that made something inside him tighten, before he even understood why.
He was pulled closer, pressed against a chest and then, someone was crying. Broken in a way that couldn’t be held together anymore. “A-Ying… so tiny…” The man’s voice shook. “A-Hua… you did it.”
A tired, exhausted laugh came from the woman, but Wei Ying didn’t understand any of it. Not the names, not the meaning, not the scent in the air.
“A-Ze, give me my wrinkly son.” He was moved again, passed from arms that trembled into arms that were softer, but just as desperate. He was rocked slightly, like the motion meant comfort. The only comfort he felt came from that calming scent enveloping him.
It wasn't long until someone took him away from that comfort, warmth replaced by shifting hands, voices stacking on top of each other in a language that sounded foreign.
“Careful, he’s so small.” “No, I heard she wasn’t supposed to survive that pregnancy.” “That can’t be right.” “They said Baoshan Sanren was looking for her daughter who apparently gave birth.”
Baoshan Sanren?
“If Baoshan Sanren intervened… then the mother of this child must be—” A breath of awe. “…Cangse Sanren.” “Unbelievable.”
A-Niang? How do they know my A-Niang?
Wei Ying didn’t know what the other words meant and just then, the world moved again. Different arms. Different fabric. Different heartbeat rhythms beneath him.
Later, time had no shape right now, he was passed again. Warmth returned, softer this time. Familiar in a way that made something in him quiet down without knowing why.
The smell hit first and it was something like wood, ink and something like clean air after rain.
A voice entered the room. “A-Hua… Changze, congratulations on the birth of your son.”
Changze? A-Die?
A pause. Then he heard the voice from the woman enveloping him, quieter now, worn down. “Thank you, A-Niang. A-Ze, could you please take him? I don't know if I held him wrong. The nurses said everything's fine but why is he so quiet?”
Wei Ying was lifted and he couldn’t see anything. Only shadow and light and the suggestion of a face above him. But the chest he was pressed against felt… familiar, but very different from his husband's.
A hand brushed over him gently. Then a voice, low and unsure in a way that tried to be light: “Why don’t you cry, A-Ying? Your mother worries. Ying-ying, don't make your A-Niang sad.”
On cue, like he understood the words, but in reality only driven by hunger, Wei Ying finally broke. A cry burst out of him, raw and immediate, filling the space between them like it had always belonged there.
Footsteps shifted closer.
“Ah,” a woman’s voice said, amused and tired at the same time. “There we go.”
The woman came closer, the smell changed slightly, but stayed within the same strange circle of familiarity. “The doctors said your son is a miracle,” she continued, laughing softly. “Just like A-Hua apparently. Her father was a Zhongyong too, in case she never told you. Little A-Ying will surely continue the proud Sanren-Qianyuan-lineage.”
“Oh, she did,” Wei Changze replied, warmth threading through his voice. “That’s why we always had hope for a little one.”
A pause. Then, gently, almost casually his father asked, “Would you like to hold him?”
Wei Ying felt himself shift again. Another pair of hands took him, older, steadier, with a kind of careful curiosity that didn’t feel unfamiliar, even though it should have. “Let’s have a look at what you are made of,” the woman murmured.
Something changed, like invisible currents suddenly recognising him. Qi thrummed through his tiny body, like a bell struck once in a silent room. The woman went still. “…Oh.”
For a moment, everything else faded except that single realisation hanging in the air.
And then, softly, almost to herself, “…interesting.”
“What do you mean?” Wei Changze asked, a note of curiosity sharpening his voice.
Then the woman, a little more certain now, “…Your son is going to be a remarkable cultivator.”
A light chuckle followed, as if she was amused by how obvious it suddenly felt. “Just like his mother, apparently.”
Wei Changze let out a soft laugh too, warm, proud, almost disbelieving. “Just like her…”
Wei Ying learned very early that his parents talked too much, especially when they thought he wasn’t listening.
The argument had started before breakfast, which already felt like a violation of some unspoken rule. Voices carried through the small apartment and then she arrived. His grandmother didn’t knock like other people. She entered like the world was hers and had simply forgotten to acknowledge it.
“This is what you call living?” her voice cut through the hallway immediately. “A family cannot raise a child in a cramped place like this.”
Wei Ying, sitting on the floor with a wooden toy in his hands, paused and thought about the words. He looked around.
This room wasn’t that small. Definitely bigger than the hut I woke up in as Mo Xuanyu. It is just… full of things. Books. Papers. Strange little 'prototypes,' which Wei Ying had tried very hard not to put in his mouth anymore after one of them made a suspiciously loud sound.
His mother sighed from the kitchen without turning around. “This is exactly why I left home in the first place, A-Niang. To explore the world.”
His grandmother made a sound of pure disbelief. “Yes, the world! And now you’re stuck in a tiny shoebox, Xiao Yinhua! The apartment I bought for you MONTHS AGO is sitting EMPTY for months!”
That made Wei Ying pause again. Bought? Apartment? Empty? What are these words? His inner monologue, if it could have sighed, absolutely would have. Adults are exhausting.
When he instinctively felt a pull to soothe his mother, he pushed himself up on unsteady legs and walked slowly and carefully.
Both women were still yelling when he toddled into the middle of them like a small, uninvited conclusion to their argument. “Po…” Silence.
His tiny finger went to his lips. “Shh.”
Three adults stared at him.
Wei Changze blinked first. “A-Ying… what was that?”
Wei Ying frowned slightly, as if the answer should be obvious. Then, very seriously, he said, “Loud. A-niang sad.” He turned and toddled straight to his mother, wrapping himself around her leg like the case was closed.
For a moment, nobody moved. Then his mother exhaled, half laugh, half surrender and picked him up immediately, pressing her face briefly against his hair.
His grandmother stared at him like she was recalculating reality. “I will return. Think about it,” she said finally, in a tone that suggested this was not a threat but a scheduling note.
And then she left. The apartment felt quieter, but somehow not calmer.
The days after that carried a different kind of tension. Not loud arguments this time, but discussions that stopped when Wei Ying entered a room, and resumed the moment he was safely distracted with toys or held by someone else.
He didn’t understand most of it, but he understood tone and he understood his name being said too often in sentences that didn’t end with affection.
One afternoon, he heard it clearly through the thin wall between rooms. “Wei Changze, we wanted to stand on our own feet!” his mother’s voice snapped, controlled but strained. “If we give in, my mother will find a way to pull us into her entire corporation. It’s not as if we’re as poor as she thinks! We can afford food, this apartment, and the development of prototypes. And even if we were poor, that wouldn't turn us into bad people!”
A pause.
Then his father, quieter, “I know. I know. I just think… maybe it would be best for A-Ying.”
Silence followed and both of them stopped arguing.
One afternoon weeks later, the house was too quiet in a way that only a well-fed, well-rested almost-one-year-old could find unacceptable. Wei Ying had already napped. Already eaten. Already been rotated through every toy within reach twice. And yet, there was still too much time.
So he did what any deeply bored infant with questionable judgment and developing curiosity would do: he stomped to the paper waste basket. It was not meant to be interesting, which, naturally, made it irresistible to Wei Ying.
Inside were crumpled drafts, half-burned edges of ideas, discarded sketches, ink smudges that looked like accidents but weren’t. Wei Ying pulled them out one by one, sitting back on his heels like a tiny scholar discovering forbidden knowledge.
He tilted his head. Then another page, then another. Lines, patterns, diagrams, some layered over anatomical sketches that made no sense to his infant understanding at first, until something in his perception quietly clicked.
He pointed at one drawing and made a small sound of realisation. “…ah.”
Medical talismans.
Not in the way he understood hospitals or herbs like Qing-jie did, but in the way his instincts recognised structure, flow, correction and stabilisation. Qi pathways, but mapped like circulation. Talisman drafts meant to support, not destroy.
He spread them out across the floor with increasing seriousness, little hands flattening paper corners, organising them into something that looked suspiciously like categories.
One pile for calming meridians. One for stabilising circulation of qi. One… he hesitated, squinting… Ah. Detecting something.
He nodded to himself as if this made perfect sense, then he reached for the nearest tool available: a set of wax crayons.
Wei Changze found him first and paused in the doorway. “…A-Ying?”
The room was… suspiciously quiet, which usually meant disaster. And indeed, Wei Ying was sitting in the center of a circle of talisman drafts, completely focused, surrounded by crumpled edges like a tiny talisman master. And all over the original designs, he was scribbling. Chaotic, colorful, deeply confident scribbling.
“W…what is he doing?” Wei Changze murmured.
Xiao Yinhua appeared behind him, took one look, and went very still. “…Those were my medical stabilisation drafts. They were all flawed, so I put them in the bin.”
Wei Ying, without looking up, drew a bold line across a meridian diagram and nodded firmly. Correct.
Wei Changze stepped forward slowly. “A-Ying, no, those are dangerou—”
He reached down carefully to pick up a sheet, but Wei Ying immediately slapped his tiny hand onto it. “NO!”
Both adults froze while Wei Ying looked up at them with absolute conviction. “Wrong!”
Silence.
Xiao Yinhua blinked. “Wrong?”
Wei Ying pointed at a section of ink correction he had added, an enthusiastic spiral of wax crayon over what was originally a carefully controlled qi distribution seal, then he pointed at another page. “Here. Better.” He made a vague circling motion, like obviously this fixes everything.
Wei Changze slowly crouched down. “A-Ying… are you… correcting our talismans?”
Wei Ying nodded once, very serious, then went back to scribbling. For a moment, neither parent spoke.
Then Xiao Yinhua exhaled a laugh she clearly wasn’t planning to have. “…He’s critiquing my work. A one year old.”
Wei Changze stared at his son. “This is a medical stabilizing array draft.”
Wei Ying made a small sound of agreement. “Yes.”
Wei Changze blinked again. “…He agreed.”
Wei Ying reached for another page, pulled it closer and added what could only be described as a very determined improvement line across a fever suppression sigil.
Then he looked up again, expectant, as if waiting for praise or peer review.
Xiao Yinhua slowly lowered herself to sit on the floor beside him, picking up one of the altered drafts. “…It actually… kind of works,” she murmured after a moment.
Wei Changze stared. “You’re indulging him.”
“I’m observing. I'm serious, A-Ze, think about the strokes here.”
Wei Ying, satisfied that at least one adult took him seriously, resumed his work, pointing at symbols and making small decisive noises like, “Wrong. Better. Here. Fix.”
And for the next hour, his parents, two highly educated cultivators with reputations, research goals, and intellectual pride, sat on the floor and listened to a one-year-old explain talisman theory with wax crayons.
The months after that changed the way Wei Ying approached paper. Crayons had started as play, then became communication. He couldn’t speak the way adults did, not really. Words still slipped through him like water through fingers. But symbols? Symbols stayed. Symbols could be arranged. Repeated. Refined.
So he drew. On scraps of paper, on margins of discarded drafts, actually on anything that wasn’t immediately taken away from him. Little spirals of qi flow. Heat regulation arrays. Stabilisation seals that were technically too advanced for a child who still occasionally fell over his own feet.
To him, it was simple, if I draw it well enough, they will understand me.
It was Wei Changze who first stopped in the doorway one evening and went very still. “…Yinhua.”
His wife looked up from her notes. “What?” He held something between his fingers: a talisman. Not crayon this time but fine lines of controlled ink. Uneven in a way that was unmistakably childlike, but structured enough that it shouldn’t have been.
“I think…” Wei Changze said slowly, “he made this.” His wife blinked once, then twice, then stood so fast her chair scraped the floor.
The talisman ended up on the table between them like an accusation.
“It looks like something I’ve seen in a book before,” she murmured. That was never a good sentence.
Wei Ying was sitting nearby, legs folded awkwardly beneath him, watching them with the quiet intensity of someone who had been waiting a very long time to be taken seriously.
His mother didn’t hesitate. She turned, walked straight to the overfilled bookshelf, papers spilling, scrolls stacked in unstable towers and began pulling volumes out with increasing urgency.
“Aha!” She dropped down next to Wei Ying on the floor, flipping pages so quickly they blurred and Wei Changze leaned over her shoulder. Wei Ying leaned in too, though he didn’t really recognise the characters. They swam in his vision like shapes that almost meant something, but not quite but still familiar.
Then—“There.” Xiao Yinhua pressed a finger to the page. “Wei-gege, look. This.” She placed the talisman beside a diagram in the book and the resemblance was undeniable.
Wei Changze went quiet. “…A banned talisman,” he said at last. The words landed heavier than anything else in the room as he looked down at his son. “A-Ying… did you copy that?”
Wei Ying shook his head immediately without hesitation, then tapped his finger against his temple. “I remember.”
Silence snapped into place.
Wei Changze stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘you remember’?”
Wei Ying frowned, frustrated that they still weren’t understanding. His body felt too small for what he needed to explain, so he tried anyway. “I draw,” he said carefully, words broken but deliberate. “Not dangerous.”
It wasn’t convincing in the way he intended it to be, not because he was lying, but because he sounded like a child saying something that should have been impossible.
Xiao Yinhua slowly turned a few more pages in the book, voice tightening as she read. “…‘For showing memories’…”
Her eyes flicked down the list. “Risks: temporary confusion, dizziness, memory loss, temporary depressive mood, temporary memory-related shirophrenia, seizures, de—” She stopped abruptly, exhaled and closed the book halfway. “I think I’ll stop reading. No dying in this house.”
Neither of them laughed and both them were staring at Wei Ying again, but now it was like seeing him for the first time again.
Wei Changze knelt in front of him. “What do you mean by ‘I remember’?”
Wei Ying hesitated, then, as if this part was obvious: “I remember. I fix. Here.” He reached behind him, grabbed another scrap of paper and a crayon. With quick, practiced movements, he drew a simplified talisman; cleaner than before, reduced to its core function. A heating seal.
He held it up proudly. “I know, I show.”
Xiao Yinhua’s breath caught. “…A-Ying…” Her voice was smaller now. “What is happening with our son, A-Ze?”
Wei Ying tilted his head, as if the answer should be obvious from the diagram he drew earlier alone. “A-Ying dead. A-Ying wake up and remember.”
Both parents went still, not because they didn’t understand the word, but because they suddenly understood exactly how much a child like him could understand. And the room stayed quiet for a long moment after that. Not the comfortable kind of quiet, not even the thoughtful kind but more like the air itself had forgotten how to move.
Wei Changze was the first to break it, though his voice came out slower than usual. “…Who are you?”
Wei Ying didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were on his parents when finally, he spoke. “Wei Ying. Wuxian.” His mouth twitched before he added, “Lan-er-furen…”
Wei Changze blinked. “That’s not a real title for a boy, is it?”
Wei Ying perked up immediately at that. “Yes!” he said, as if relieved someone finally agreed with him. “Lan Zhan. Husband. Hanguang-Jun.”
He giggled light, almost proud, like he was sharing something obvious while both parents turned slowly to look at each other again.
“…Hanguang-Jun,” Xiao Yinhua repeated and her expression changed into recognition, then concern. “…That’s a character from an old cultivation cautionary tale,” she said carefully. “A story used to warn children away from demonic cultivation. The bad guy, the Yiling Laozu killed him.”
The silence after that was different.
Wei Changze’s brow furrowed. “That’s not al—”
But Wei Ying had already stopped listening. His small hands curled, his breathing changed. “No.” His voice cracked. “No, no story. WRONG!” He shook his head hard, as if that could physically dislodge what she had just said. “I didn’t kill Lan Zhan.” His eyes filled too quickly for him to understand how it happened. “He protected me and Sang-ge.” His voice rose, breaking apart under the pressure of something far too big for his body. “I DID NOT KILL HIM!”
The words came out like a rupture, loud and desperate. Then he ran. A small body fleeing toward the only place that still felt like it could contain him: the bed. He scrambled up, buried himself under the covers, curling into the smallest shape he could manage like he could fold himself out of existence.
Outside the room, everything had gone quiet again.
The bedroom was dim by the time his parents finally came to him. Wei Ying had buried himself so thoroughly beneath the blankets that he could barely hear them approach. His eyes still hurt from crying. His chest hurt too, though he suspected that wasn't something medicine could fix.
The mattress shifted once then again and for a while, neither of them spoke.
A warm hand settled against his back, slowly moving. Comforting and waiting.
"A-Ying." His mother's voice was soft, careful. "We believe that something happened to you." His breath caught.
Beside her, his father agreed. "But we don't know what."
"And we don't know how," Xiao Yinhua added. "But we believe that you believe it."
The knot in Wei Ying's chest loosened slightly.
Then his father lifted the blankets to look at his son and showed the talisman he brought with him, the one Wei Ying had drawn. The one nobody should have been able to draw from memory.
"I still don't think activating an unknown talisman is wise, right, A-Ying?" Wei Ying immediately nodded.
Correct. Very correct.
His father looked at him, then at the talisman, then back at him. "I'll do it anyway."
"A-ZE!" Xiao Yinhua spun toward him so quickly her sleeve nearly knocked over a stack of books. "You could die!"
Wei Changze smiled faintly, not because it was funny, but because he already knew she was right.
Then he looked toward the small shape between them, to the child who had spent months trying to communicate something impossible. "No coincidence explains this." His voice was steady. "He knows things he shouldn't and he draws talismans older than our records."
His gaze softened. "And whatever happened to him…" His throat tightened. "…he's terrified. Just look at him."
Xiao Yinhua looked to their son, the tear-stained face peeking from beneath the blankets and for a moment, she looked ready to argue. Then she closed her eyes and nodded once. “There is more Yunmeng in you than I thought. Who would believe Dr. Wei Changze would be more adventurous regarding unknown talismans than the feared Cangse Sanren?”
Wei Changze moved closer to his son. "A-Ying." Wei Ying looked up and saw his father smiling, the kind parents gave when they wanted to be brave for their children.
Did I look at A-Yuan like that?
"I'm going to trust you." Then he placed the talisman against Wei Ying's forehead and activated it.
At first, there was only sensation: cold, hunger, fear. Then images came and Wei Changze found himself looking through his son's eyes. Seeing people who look eery similar to his wife and himself just very… historically accurately dressed. Next, he looked at muddy streets. Then came the dogs and he felt every bite, every terrified heartbeat, every desperate attempt to survive. The agony struck him so sharply he nearly broke the connection immediately, but then he remembered their little boy sleeping next to him.
Then a man appeared. Jiang Fengmian. He recognised him at once and yet, that wasn't the Jiang Fengmian Wei Changze had known for all his life. The man standing before him wore flowing purple robes that seemed to catch every breeze dramatically. His dark hair reached nearly to his hips, tied with intricate ornaments that belonged in a period drama rather than reality. Even his posture looked impossibly elegant. Wei Changze stared.
Then Madam Yu appeared and somehow it got worse. Because that was unquestionably Yu Ziyuan. He recognised the expression immediately, the sharp eyes, the way she carried herself, the, for others, intimidating presence. Everything was familiar, except the long black hair and the rich purple robes.
She looks less like a rabid dog with long hair, he thought looking at the Madam of Lotus Pier.
"What in the world…" Wei Changze muttered.
Then came their children and while he didn't understand a word they said, he caught the name of their children Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli.
Just like in our world.
He watched his son grow, felt him smile, felt him seek approval, felt him endure. At every insult, every dismissal, every punishment. The loneliness hurt more than the physical pain. Because the child never stopped loving the people hurting him.
Then came Cloud Recesses and Cloud Recesses was strange. Wei Changze knew the Lan Clan, or at least the modern Lan Clan. But the people appearing in Wei Ying's memories looked as though they had stepped directly out of an ancient legend with their white robes, long hair, forehead ribbons and their impossibly graceful movements.
Lan Qiren is a stick in the mud in every universe it seems…
Everyone looked beautiful enough to star in a historical romance, especially a boy dressed in white who his son met on his first evening. Lan Wangji. The moment he appeared, Wei Changze understood, not because anyone explained it or he understood what they talked about, but because he felt it happen. Felt his son's attention snag, felt fascination become curiosity.
Curiosity became trust and trust become something larger. Something that frightened Wei Ying because he couldn't name it.
On the other side, he saw the way Lan Wangji looked at Wei Ying. Even as a teenager, even when he was pretending not to. Every glance lingered, every moment of concern, every act of protection.
Wei Changze felt his son's confusion through the memories.
And for one absurd moment, while standing inside the vision of his son's past life, Wei Changze found himself thinking, Oh, that's my future son-in-law.
A beat passed. My future son-in-law who looks like he was cast as the male lead in the most expensive xianxia drama ever produced. The thought nearly made him laugh.
The memories continued to a cave with a giant turtle beast and Lan Wangji reaching for Wei Ying again and again.
Then Lotus Pier burned and Wei Changze forgot to breathe. The destruction was absolute and the grief was unbearable. He felt his son's world shatter, only to get choked after by the Jiang boy.
Then came the golden core, the memory nearly stopped his heart. He watched and felt horrified but unable to intervene, unable to scream, as his son willingly surrendered everything. His future, his cultivation, his dreams, for someone he loved. And told nobody, not even the recipient. The sheer selflessness of it left Wei Changze shaking.
The Burial Mounds that followed were a place of darkness, isolation and survival. His son dragged himself through hell and somehow emerged carrying other people with him.
Then came the years of blame after A-Ying won a war for them. The accusations, the fear, the hatred, the hypocrisy. The world deciding who Wei Ying was without ever asking him. The crushing loneliness of being misunderstood. Again and again and again.
A-Yuan… what a cute kid.
He heard his son talking to himself, "Can somebody please tell me what to do?"
Then death. A horrible one, pain beyond language. He felt his son's body torn apart. The memory hit with such force that Wei Changze almost lost consciousness inside the talisman.
Then an awakening followed. He felt confusion and hope. Lan juniors who reminded him strangely of university students trying very hard to look serious.
Truth was resurfacing and old crimes exposed. Masks were falling and the real villain was revealed.
The Nie Clan cultivated with beast cores in their world? Maybe that's why they die so young in our world as well…
And then peace. The kind his son had never been allowed before, with Lan Wangji beside him. Always beside him.
A wedding followed, with red robes and the ridiculous title. Lan-er-furen.
Wei Changze actually felt his son's mortification. And beneath it, the happiness. Pure happiness and the realisation that he was loved, chosen and definitely wanted.
Then came the final memory, the one that explained almost everything. The attack and someone Wei Changze recognised as Nie Huaisang. His son was terrified when Lan Wangji stepped forward, shielding Wei Ying from a blade. Those calm eyes, that impossible certainty of a dying man.
Thank you, Wangji. Thank you for loving our son when we couldn't be there.
The memory shattered.
Wei Changze returned to himself with a gasp. The room spun, his hands shook, his vision blurred. Someone was calling his name, it took a moment until he recognised his wife, but he could barely hear her.
He finally understood every tear his son shed, every nightmare he had in their bed and every desperate attempt to be believed.
When his vision cleared, he looked down and saw his son crying. The sight broke something inside him. Immediately, Wei Changze gathered him into his arms and held him tightly. As tightly as he dared.
"It's okay." Wei Ying buried his face against his father's shoulder. "It's okay, A-Ying." His voice trembled. "You're safe."
A tiny sob escaped the child.
"You're safe." Wei Changze pressed a kiss against his hair. "We're here." Another trembling breath. "A-Niang and Baba are here." His arms tightened. "And we are never leaving you alone again." Not in this life, not ever. "We'll never leave you behind again."
Slowly, painfully slowly, Wei Ying relaxed. His small fingers clutched at his father's shirt as if afraid he might disappear. Wei Changze simply held him, rocking him gently. The way he should have been held all along, until eventually exhaustion won and Wei Ying fell asleep in his arms.
Hours later, after carefully tucking their son into bed, Wei Changze sat across from his wife.
The apartment was silent, only the ticking of a clock remained.
Xiao Yinhua looked terrified, because she knew the answer before he spoke.
She just needed confirmation, so Wei Changze told her everything.
About the streets, the dogs, Lotus Pier and the abuse, the golden core, the Burial Mounds, the exile, the death, the resurrection, the wedding, Lan Wangji and his sacrifice, the final battle. Everything and by the end, both of them were crying. Not because the story was tragic, though it was, but because every terrible moment had happened to their son in another timeline.
The little boy sleeping in their bed, the one who still needed help reaching high shelves, the one who still climbed onto one of them after nightmares. The one who had somehow carried an entire lifetime of grief alone until now.
Finally, Xiao Yinhua wiped her eyes. "He's ours, then and now."
Wei Changze nodded immediately. "He's ours."
She looked toward the hallway and her voice softened. "Then this time..."
Wei Changze reached for her hand and finished the sentence for her. "This time, A-Ying won't be lonely."
The next morning felt strangely normal, which, after everything that had happened, was almost unsettling. Wei Ying sat at the kitchen table, swinging his tiny legs while his parents exchanged looks over their tea.
Eventually, Wei Changze cleared his throat. "So." Wei Ying looked up and his father smiling warmly at him. "What do you want to do first?"
Wei Ying blinked. "What?"
"You showed me your previous life," Wei Changze said. "I know who exists in this world." He shrugged. "Do you want to find the Nie family? The Lan family? Someone else?"
The question silenced the room, because, if he was honest, Wei Ying had been thinking about little else for months.
Lan Zhan. A-Sang. Everyone. The possibility that they were out there, that they existed, that he could see them.
His heart immediately wanted to him to scream for Lan Zhan right now, preferably yesterday.
But then he looked at his parents, really looked at them. At his mother, who had probably cried herself to sleep after hearing his story. At his father, who had willingly activated a talisman that could have killed him. At the two people who had spent the last day quietly reassuring him that they weren't going anywhere and suddenly the answer became very simple.
"...I want to stay with Baba and A-Niang."
The silence that followed was warm. His mother's eyes immediately softened and his father's smile turned almost painfully fond as Wei Ying suddenly felt very embarrassed.
Fortunately, Wei Changze rescued him by shifting back into business mode. Unfortunately, that meant he started talking like an adult. "If events really are unfolding analogously to your previous world..." Wei Ying immediately regretted his choice. "...which I increasingly suspect they are," Wei Changze continued, "then we have a problem."
Xiao Yinhua groaned, already knowing where this was going.
Wei Changze pointed at their son. "In your previous life, you were vulnerable because you had no agency."
Wei Ying froze, his father wasn't wrong. A child couldn't choose where he lived, couldn't choose who raised him, couldn't choose who controlled his future. And by the time he'd gained enough influence to matter, half the cultivation world had already decided who he was.
Wei Changze folded his hands. "So this time, we need standing."
"Oh no." His mother covered her face.
"A-Hua—"
"Oh no."
"Yinhua—"
"Oh, absolutely not."
Wei Ying watched in fascination as his mother stood up and stared at the ceiling like she was preparing to negotiate with a particularly vindictive deity.
Then she sighed deeply and tragically, like a woman about to sacrifice herself for the greater good.
"I'll call my mother."
Wei Ying blinked when his father winced at that. Actually winced.
His mother pointed dramatically at him. "A-Ying."
"...yes?"
"I hope you're ready for what will be hell on earth." Wei Ying suddenly wasn't sure he was.
His mother took a breath. "Also known as SEA." A beat. "Sanren Entertainment Agency." Another beat. "China's largest entertainment conglomerate."
Wei Ying blinked. "...what is that?"
His mother looked haunted. "Film production." A finger. "Television." Another finger. "Streaming." Another. "Music." Another. "Hotels." Another. "My biggest nightmare: Casinos."
Wei Ying stared and his father stared at his mother, while she stared into the distance. "My mother built an empire."
Five days later, they were picked up and moved into a mansion. Wei Ying was still processing that sentence literally.
What is a mansion?
The gates alone were larger than their entire apartment building, the driveway felt endless and the gardens looked professionally maintained by people whose sole purpose in life was apparently to make flowers look expensive.
Wei Ying sat in the back seat of the car and watched the estate appear through the window. "...this is a house?"
His mother laughed. "No." A pause. "This is my mother's way of saying 'I told you so.'"
The mansion rose ahead of them like something out of a fantasy drama. Enough space to fit several dozen families comfortably.
Wei Ying was beginning to understand why his grandmother had referred to their apartment as a shoebox.
The front doors opened before they even reached them and staff appeared. More staff than Wei Ying was comfortable counting.
There are more servants than at Lotus Pier.
Then his grandmother emerged with the expression of a woman who had won an argument six months ago and had finally received official confirmation. "You took your time."
Xiao Yinhua groaned immediately. "I was gone for seven years."
"And?"
"A-Niang."
"Xiao Yinhua."
Wei Ying watched them for a moment, then looked up at his father. "...are they always like this?"
Wei Changze nodded immediately. "Yes."
"Ah."
That explained a lot.
His grandmother's gaze shifted toward him, the severe expression vanished instantly. "A-Ying."
Wei Ying barely had time to react before he was picked up by his grandmother who proceeded to carry him inside as though she had every right in the world. Which, judging from the size of the mansion, she probably did.
As the doors closed behind them, Wei Ying looked back one last time. At the door, at his parents, at the future waiting for them. And, for the first time since waking up in this strange new life, he had the faint feeling that maybe things would be different this time.