Chapter 111: Wangxian, Twenty-Three

The sky had not yet paled, and along the long street all was still and silent. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walked the road, hearing nothing but the soft clip-clop of the flower donkey's hooves striking the ground.

Wei Wuxian sat astride the little flower donkey and patted its rump. The saddlebags slung over its back were hard and bulging, packed full of apples, no doubt the food the young ones of the Lan family had prepared for it.

Wei Wuxian fished out an apple, brought it to his mouth, and, eyes fixed on the fine clean line of Lan Wangji's profile, took a crisp, ringing bite. Little Apple, seeing its own apples being shamelessly pilfered, flared its nostrils in fury and stamped its hooves. Wei Wuxian had no time to mind it; he gave it a few more pats, shoved the half-eaten apple into its mouth, and said, 'Lan Zhan, did you know? That Sisi, she seems to have been a friend of Jin Guangyao's mother.'

Lan Wangji said, 'I did not.'

Caught between laughter and exasperation, Wei Wuxian said, 'I was only thinking aloud, I wasn't really asking you. I saw it through the Empathy of that woman's resentful spirit in the Guanyin Temple. She'd looked after Jin Guangyao and his mother quite a lot.'

After a moment's silence, Lan Wangji said, 'So that is why Jin Guangyao spared that woman's life.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'That must be it. At the time I was afraid Zewu-jun would soften toward him again, so I didn't explain the whole of it. And I don't think now is the right time to tell him either.'

Lan Wangji said, 'If he asks one day, I will tell him.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'That works too.'

He glanced back over his shoulder, and, in a rare fit of sighing, said, 'I'm done caring about all these tangled messes. Let it be.'

Lan Wangji nodded, gathered in Little Apple's lead a little, and walked on, drawing it along.

Each person's troubles can be untangled only by that person alone. Even for a true brother like Lan Xichen, the Lan Wangji of now could be of no real help. Comfort was powerless; everything was in vain.

After a pause, Lan Wangji said, 'Wei Ying.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'What?'

Lan Wangji said, 'There is something I have never told you.'

Wei Wuxian felt, of all things, his heart skip a beat. 'What thing?'

Lan Wangji halted and looked at him directly, on the verge of speaking, when from behind them came the sound of hurried running. Wei Wuxian said, 'Heavens, someone's caught up to us already?'

Sure enough someone had caught up, though it was not the worst sort. Lan Sizhui ran up breathless and panting, calling, 'Han—Hanguang-jun, Senior Wei!'

Wei Wuxian propped an arm on the donkey's head and said, 'Sizhui my boy, I'm about to elope with your Hanguang-jun. What are you chasing us for? Aren't you afraid your venerable old Lan elder will scold you?'

Lan Sizhui flushed and said, 'Senior Wei, don't be like that. I, I came to ask about something very important!'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Ask what?'

Lan Sizhui said, 'I've remembered a little something, but I can't be sure, so... so I came to ask Hanguang-jun and Senior Wei.'

Lan Wangji looked at him, then glanced toward Wen Ning. Wen Ning gave a small nod. Wei Wuxian said, 'What is it?'

Lan Sizhui squared his chest and drew a deep breath.

He said, 'Claimed to be a master of the craft, yet the things he made stung the eyes and burned the belly.'

Wei Wuxian: 'Eh???'

Lan Sizhui went on, 'Buried me in the radish patch, said that with a little sun and a little water I'd grow tall quickly, and might even sprout a few little ones to keep me company.'

Wei Wuxian: '...'

Lan Sizhui continued, 'Said he'd treat Hanguang-jun to a meal, then in the end ran off without paying, and it was Hanguang-jun who settled the bill.'

Wei Wuxian's eyes went wide; he nearly lost his seat on the donkey's back.

He said, 'You... you...'

Lan Sizhui looked straight at Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji and said, 'Perhaps because I was too small then, there's much I don't remember whole. But this much I'm certain of... once, I was surnamed Wen.'

Wei Wuxian said in a trembling voice, 'You're surnamed Wen? Aren't you surnamed Lan? Lan Sizhui, Lan Yuan...'

He murmured, 'Lan Yuan... Wen Yuan?'

Lan Sizhui nodded hard, his voice shaking too: 'Senior Wei, I... I am, A-Yuan...'

Wei Wuxian had not yet caught up to it; dazed, he said, 'A-Yuan... but didn't A-Yuan die? Back then he was left all alone at the Burial Mounds...'

The words were scarcely out before Lan Xichen's words echoed again in his ears: 'Those years it was called secluded penance, but in truth he was so gravely wounded he could barely move. Even so, on learning of your death he forced his ruined body onward, set on reaching the Burial Mounds no matter what, just to look once...'

He turned sharply to Lan Wangji and said, 'Lan Zhan, was it you?!'

Lan Wangji said, 'It was.'

He gazed at Wei Wuxian and said, 'This is the thing I have never told you.'

For a long, long while, Wei Wuxian could not speak.

At last Lan Sizhui could hold back no longer; with a loud cry he sprang up, one arm around Wei Wuxian and the other around Lan Wangji, gathering the three of them tight into one. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, pulled into each other by his grip, both went still.

Lan Sizhui buried his head against their two shoulders and said, 'Hanguang-jun, Senior Wei, I... I...'

Hearing the muffled thickness in his voice, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, a hair's breadth apart, glanced at each other, and in the other's eyes each saw something very soft.

Wei Wuxian steadied himself, laid a hand on Lan Sizhui's back, and patted it. 'There now, what's there to cry about.'

Lan Sizhui said, 'I'm not crying... it's just... all of a sudden I feel so awful, but, also so happy... I don't even know how to say it...'

After a moment's silence, Lan Wangji also laid a hand on his back and patted it.

Lan Wangji said, 'Then don't say it.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Just so.'

Lan Sizhui said nothing, and only held the two of them tighter.

Before long Wei Wuxian said, 'Ai, ai, ai, child, how did you get such a grip? No wonder, raised by Hanguang-jun himself...'

Lan Wangji glanced at him and said, 'You raised him too.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'No wonder he's turned out so well, then.'

But Lan Sizhui said, 'Senior Wei never taught me anything.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Who says I didn't? You were just too small. Everything I taught you, you've forgotten.'

Lan Sizhui said, 'I haven't forgotten. I've remembered now. It does seem you taught me.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'See?'

Lan Sizhui said earnestly, 'You taught me how to disguise spring-palace pictures as ordinary books.'

Wei Wuxian: '...'

Lan Wangji shot Wei Wuxian a glance.

Lan Sizhui went on, 'And you instructed me that whenever a pretty girl walked by...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Utter nonsense. Child, how is it you remember nothing but this sort of thing? You're dreaming. As if I'd ever teach a little one such things.'

Lan Sizhui tipped his head up and said, 'Uncle Ning can bear witness. He should have been there when you taught me these things.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Witness to what? There's no such thing.'

Wen Ning said, 'I... I don't remember anything...'

Lan Sizhui swore, 'Hanguang-jun, every word I've said is true.'

Lan Wangji nodded and said, 'I know.'

Wei Wuxian was ready to throw a tantrum and roll off the donkey's back: 'Lan Zhan!'

A thought struck him, and he said, 'Come to think of it, Sizhui, how did you remember?'

Lan Sizhui said, 'I'm not sure either. It's just that when I saw Chenqing, it felt terribly familiar.'

Of course. It was Chenqing. Wei Wuxian said, 'Oh, well naturally it's familiar. You used to love mouthing Chenqing most of all, always drooling all over it so I couldn't play.'

Lan Sizhui's face went red at once. 'I—is that so...'

Wei Wuxian said, smiling with narrowed eyes, 'It is. Otherwise how would one look bring it all back? Want to hear more about your childhood?'

He shaped two butterflies with his hands and said, 'Hanguang-jun, do you remember? That time I treated you to a meal, he stood there with a pair of butterflies, whispering, “I like you,” “I like you too”...'

Lan Sizhui's face grew redder and redder, and Wei Wuxian went on, 'Oh, and that time you called Hanguang-jun your father in front of everyone. Poor Hanguang-jun, a young man in the very flower of his years, pure as ice and clean as jade, made somebody's father out of nowhere...'

'Aaaaaaah!'

Lan Sizhui, face crimson, cried out, 'Hanguang-jun, I'm sorry!'

Lan Wangji looked at Wei Wuxian, grinning away, and shook his head, his expression nothing but gentle.

Wei Wuxian said again, 'That reminds me, Wen Ning, you've known about this all along?'

Wen Ning nodded, and Wei Wuxian said, astonished, 'Then why didn't you tell me?'

Wen Ning glanced at Lan Wangji and said, ever so carefully, 'Young Master Lan didn't say to tell you, so...'

Wei Wuxian was exasperated on his behalf: 'How can you be so obedient to him? You're the Ghost General, after all. Why should the Ghost General fear Hanguang-jun? Isn't that a disgrace to me???'

Lan Sizhui was still crying out, 'Hanguang-jun, I'm sorry!'

...

The four parted ways in a wood at the edge of Yunping City.

Wen Ning said, 'Young Master, we'll be going this way.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Which way?'

Wen Ning said, 'Didn't you ask me before what I meant to do once this was all settled? A-Yuan and I have talked it over. We'll go to Qishan together first and lay the ashes of my kin to rest there. We'd also like to search there and see if we can find anything of my sister's from when she lived, so we can raise a robe-and-cap tomb for her.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'A robe-and-cap tomb. I once raised one for you and her at the Burial Mounds, but it was burned. We'll make the trip to Qishan as well.'

He turned to ask Lan Wangji, but Wen Ning said, 'There's no need.'

Wei Wuxian started and said, 'You're not coming with us?'

Lan Sizhui said, 'Senior Wei, you should go with Hanguang-jun.'

Wei Wuxian was about to speak again, but Wen Ning said, 'Truly, there's no need, Young Master Wei. You've done enough.'

After a brief stillness, Wei Wuxian said, 'And after you've done all that?'

Wen Ning said, 'I'll see A-Yuan back to the Cloud Recesses, and what to do after that I can think over slowly. From here on, let me walk my own road.'

Wei Wuxian nodded slowly and said, '...that works too.'

For the first time in all these years, Wen Ning was not walking his road, and had made a decision of his own. Wei Wuxian guessed he had probably found something he wanted to do.

And that was exactly what Wei Wuxian had always hoped for. Each to his own road.

Yet now that the day had truly come, watching the backs of Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui grow smaller and smaller until they vanished left him a little melancholy all the same.

The only one beside him now was Lan Wangji, and no one else.

How fortunate, he thought, that the one he wanted at his side was likewise no one but Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian said, 'Lan Zhan.'

Lan Wangji said, 'Mm.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'You raised him well.'

Lan Wangji said, 'There will be many chances to meet again.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'I know.'

Lan Wangji said, 'After Wen Ning sees Sizhui back to the Cloud Recesses, he can settle nearby and see him often.'

Wei Wuxian looked at him and said, 'Lan Zhan, are you very afraid I'll say thank you to you?'

'It just came to me, in our past life there were several times, before we parted ways, that I said thank you to you. And every time we parted, by the next meeting I'd have become worse.'

The post-station where Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu were killed; the toss of a flower and the meeting at Yunmeng Pavilion; the parting at the Yiling Burial Mounds.

Each time, with that one word he had drawn a clear gulf between himself and Lan Wangji, pulling the distance wider still.

After a silence, Lan Wangji said, 'Between you and me, there is no need to say “thank you” or “I'm sorry.”'

Wei Wuxian laughed and said, 'Fine. Then let's say more of other things. For instance...'

His voice dropped low; he made a small gesture for Lan Wangji to lean in, as if to whisper. And lean in Lan Wangji duly did. Who would have guessed: Wei Wuxian reached out his right hand, lifted his chin, and bent to press his own lips to it.

It was a long while before Wei Wuxian drew back, only the smallest bit, lashes brushing lashes, and murmured, 'Well? How was that?'

Lan Wangji: '...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Hanguang-jun, give me something to work with.'

Lan Wangji: '...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'You're so cold. This is the moment you're supposed to fiercely...'

The words were not yet finished when Lan Wangji suddenly hooked an arm back around his neck and, roughly, pressed Wei Wuxian's head down.

Little Apple was startled, its very chewing of the apple freezing mid-bite, dumb as a wooden donkey. Then it began pretending it had seen nothing, casting about for fresh foraging ground.

Before long Little Apple could no longer bear Wei Wuxian's weight and fled for its life. Lan Wangji's left arm cradled Wei Wuxian's back, his right hand scooped beneath the crook of his knees, and in one motion he lifted Wei Wuxian down off the little flower donkey.

Wei Wuxian, pressed to the ground by Lan Wangji exactly as he'd wished, suddenly said, 'Wait, wait!'

Lan Wangji said, 'What?'

Wei Wuxian narrowed his eyes and said, 'I've suddenly got a feeling...'

The wood, the underbrush, the wild grass... somehow it all felt as if he'd seen it somewhere before.

He thought it over, and the more he thought the more inexplicably familiar it seemed, until he felt there was a thing he simply had to ask, and so, testing the water, he said, 'The Baifeng Mountain Hunt, that time I was blindfolded, Lan Zhan, were you...?'

He left it unfinished, and Lan Wangji did not answer, but his fingers curled the faintest bit. Catching the strangeness in his expression, Wei Wuxian at once propped himself up on an elbow and laid his ear to Lan Wangji's chest. Sure enough, he heard a violent pounding, thudding wildly without cease.

'.................' Wei Wuxian said in shock, 'Oh, so it really was you?!'

Lan Wangji's throat moved, and he said, 'I...'

Wei Wuxian said in disbelief, 'Lan Zhan, who'd have thought it? You're capable of a thing like that?'

Lan Wangji: '...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'You know… all this time I thought it was some bashful Fairy, secretly pining after me and too shy to say so, who'd gone and done it.'

Lan Wangji: '...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'You'd been harboring improper designs on me since back then???'

'...'

Lan Wangji said in a muffled voice, 'I, then, knew it was wrong. Very wrong.'

Wei Wuxian recalled how, when he later found him, Lan Wangji had been alone in the mountain wood smashing trees, and said, 'So that's why you were so furious?'

Wei Wuxian had assumed he was angry at someone else, never knowing he was angry at himself. Angry at his own impulse, angry at losing his grip, angry at taking advantage of a moment of weakness, conduct unworthy of a gentleman and, worse, against the family precepts.

Seeing Lan Wangji's head bowed very low, as if he had begun examining himself again, Wei Wuxian scratched at his chin and said, 'Now, now, don't tie yourself in knots over it. You kissed me that early, and I'm thrilled to bits. That was my first kiss, you know. Congratulations, Hanguang-jun.'

Lan Wangji suddenly looked at him and said, 'First kiss?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'It was. What did you think?'

Lan Wangji gazed at him steadily, a strange dark current flickering in his eyes. He said, 'Then...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Then what? Trailing off like that isn't your style, Lan Zhan.'

Lan Wangji said, 'Then, you, at the time, why... why...'

Wei Wuxian said, puzzled, 'Why what?'

Lan Wangji's lips moved, and he said, '...why did you not resist.'

Wei Wuxian went still.

Lan Wangji went on, muffled, 'You... clearly had no idea who it was, so why did you not resist. And, why did you afterward say to me...'

Say what?

At last Wei Wuxian remembered.

Back then, after he had “happened upon” Lan Wangji, he had smugly run his mouth at him for a good while, boasting how he'd been through a hundred battles, saying no one would dare kiss Lan Wangji and that Lan Wangji surely would never go kissing anyone else, and even saying he reckoned Lan Wangji's first kiss would never be given away in this whole lifetime...

All at once he clutched his belly and broke into a fit of earth-shaking, heaven-rending laughter.

Wei Wuxian pounded the ground. 'Hahahahahahaha...'

Lan Wangji: '...'

Roaring with laughter, Wei Wuxian threw his arms around him and said, 'So that's what it was all about. What really had you angriest back then was thinking somebody had actually kissed me, wasn't it? Lan Zhan, are you a fool! You actually believed my damn nonsense! Only a little stickler like you would buy it, hahahahahahaha...'

He jeered too loudly, too far, and at last Lan Wangji, past all enduring, pressed him flat with one hand.

The sudden rain had just let up, and the dew in the grass soaked through Lan Wangji's white robes.

Wei Wuxian was all the fresh green scent of grass. Lan Wangji was the cool reserve of sandalwood.

Lan Wangji was careful, his movements a touch clumsy. Through a blur Wei Wuxian glimpsed the brand below Lan Wangji's collarbone.

He laid his hand over it, covering the scar, his smile fading much, and said, 'Lan Zhan, tell me, is this one to do with me too?'

After a moment's silence, Lan Wangji said, 'It is nothing. I had drunk too much then.'

After the Wei Wuxian of the Bloodbath of Nightless City had been sent back to the Burial Mounds, what awaited him was three years of seclusion. And during that seclusion came the news, that the way of heaven turns justly, that good and evil are repaid in the end, that the Yiling Patriarch had at last died, body destroyed and soul scattered.

The seclusion not yet ended, he dragged his still-unhealed wounds and forced his way out of the Cloud Recesses, racing to Yiling, where he searched the whole mountain far and wide for days on end and found nothing, save a fever-stricken, unconscious Wen Yuan fished out of a fire-scorched, half-burned hollow tree. Not even a bone, not a scrap of flesh, not a thread of a faint Remnant Soul.

On the way back to the Gusu Lan Clan, Lan Wangji bought a jar of Emperor's Smile in Caiyi Town.

The wine was fragrant, mellow, clearly not the harsh and choking sort, yet once poured down it scorched the whole throat, burning all the way up to the eyes and into the chambers of the heart.

He did not like the taste, but he could just about understand why that one would have loved it.

That night was the first time in Lan Wangji's life that he drank, and the first time he was drunk. What exactly he did once drunk he had no memory of; for a long while afterward every Lan, disciple and student alike, looked at him with disbelief in their eyes. Some said that night he had broken open the ancient room of the Cloud Recesses and rummaged through chest and cupboard for who knew what; when Lan Xichen asked him, he had, with a dazed look, demanded a flute of Lan Xichen.

Lan Xichen fetched him the finest white-jade flute, but he flung it away in anger, saying it was not what he wanted. Search as he might he could not find it, until all at once he caught sight of those sealed iron brands confiscated from the Qishan Wen Clan.

When the wine had worn off, there was upon his chest one more scar, the very twin of the brand Wei Wuxian had left at the Tortoise of Slaughter Cave Depths in that year long past.

Lan Qiren looked very grieved, and very angry, but in the end he did not scold him again.

Scolding or punishment, there had already been enough of both.

With a sigh, he no longer opposed Lan Wangji's decision to keep Wen Yuan. Lan Wangji bowed to him, took the penalty upon himself of his own accord, and went silently to kneel in the Cloud Recesses for a day and a night.

Drinking the wine he had drunk, taking the wound he had taken.

By now that wound had been scarred over for thirteen years.

............

............

............

Having at last tasted the bitter fruit of his own planting, Wei Wuxian, half-cajoling and wholly without dignity, said, 'Er-gege, have a heart, our days are long yet, all right? Spare me today. Hanguang-jun is mighty, the Yiling Patriarch has lost, lost, defeated utterly, we'll fight again another day!'

A faint blue vein stood out on Lan Wangji's brow, and word by word, with the utmost difficulty, he said, '...you... shut your mouth and stop talking...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'But I've got a mouth and I'm going to use it to talk! Lan Zhan, those things I said to you before, can't we work out some arrangement? We're hardly strangers, you and I, don't be so rigid about it!'

Lan Wangji said, 'No.'

Wei Wuxian, in disbelief and heartbroken, said, 'Hanguang-jun, how can you be like this? You've never refused me anything before.'

Lan Wangji gave the faintest smile and said, 'No.'

At the sight of that smile, clear as light on snow, Wei Wuxian's eyes lit up again in an instant, and a wave of giddy bliss carried him off, until he no longer knew where he was.

At the last, Lan Wangji delivered his verdict, ringing and resolute, every word landing with weight: 'Every day means every day.'