His brother had promised this would be a simple gathering. Coaxing him to Lanling Jin with promises of a relaxing time and celebration at the announcement of Qin Su’s pregnancy.
Lan Wangji had not wanted to come at all.
To wander the Jin’s overly opulent chambers, a guilded disguise for the corruption within, and play at being happy for his brother’s sworn brother - the very man who’d stood at Jin Guangshan’s side to kill Wei Ying. There was no entertainment or promise that could tempt him to want to join any of the Jins in celebration.
He’d come for Lan Xichen. The soft furrow in his brow and the quiet, “Please, for me?” that followed when it was clear none of his words were reaching him.
Lan Wangji loved his brother. He was quietly angry with him for leading Gusu Lan in the siege at Burial Mounds days after he’d ushered Wei Ying into the safety he’d thought they would bring. But no anger could dampen that love he’d had since the day he’d been born. No anger could make him want to see his brother upset and sad.
The rooms had been as crusted in gold, the food as nauseatingly rich and the dancing girls as un-entertaining as ever. Lan Wangji had been in the middle of devising a way to leave early that would not cause disappointment or distress to Lan Xichen when the doors of the hall burst open and a group of men dragged in a bloodied and beaten man, bound with rope and staring around with an expression like a cornered animal.
“Sect Leader Jin!” one of them called to Jin Guangshan, chin raising in triumph and anticipation. “We have caught a demonic cultivator!” Gasps echoed around the room. “He dared to practice his foul cultivation within our own sect. In honor of the little one, we request your leave to execute him to give the child a better world to greet him!”
A chorus of enthusiastic agreement went through the assembled party-goers. Lan Wangji watched in disgust and wondered how they didn’t see Jin Guangshan’s sly smile and the cadence of an actor in the cultivator’s voice. This display was well construed, but not so much that sect leaders and senior cultivators should be fooled. Jiang Wanyin especially shouldn’t. Lan Wangji’s disgust deepened at the hateful look the man shot the bound man.
The cultivator’s who’d dragged the man in each offered testimony of the demonic cultivation they’d seen him do and the harm he’d caused to innocent civilians and cultivators alike.
The trial was swift and decisive.
“Execute him at once!” Jin Guangshan announced in a voice he probably took for lordly.
This was too much for the bound man. He threw himself forward. “Mercy, please I beg you mercy!”
“Mercy for demonic cultivators? Who would give mercy to someone as shameless and evil as you?”
“Incense!” the man cried out, shaking and clearly blurting the first thing to come to mind.
Jin Guangshan chuckled, Jin Guangyao scoffing a heartbeat behind him. “Incense? And what would the likes of you want that for, in this moment?”
Weither his crimes were true or not, the spark of bravery in the face of death was genuine. Tears crawling down his face and lip trembling, he kept his head up and requested again. “Please, incense for prayer.”
Before Jin Guangshan could speak again, Lan Wangji pitched his voice to carry. “It should be allowed.”
“Wangji.” Lan Xichen’s face tensed. Lan Wangji sighed through his nose at the anxious upset in his brother’s eyes, the instant wondering which side Lan Wangji would take. The distrust did not hurt him. He had earned it, he would earn it back if he were worthy. He still did not want Lan Xichen to worry.
“Second Master Lan, you have something to say on this?” Jin Guangyao turned to him politely.
“Mn.” Lan Wangji kept his eyes pinned on the bound man, the desperate hope in the gaze he shot him familiar from many night hunts in places so remote no other cultivators bothered to journey to. “To allow one to offer prayer before death is righteous.”
Jin Guangshan’s face contorted. Trying to maintain a smile over the displeasure and dislike. Lan Wangji did not mind the dislike. It was more than mutual.
“Well,” his voice was almost as tight as the smile stretched over his face. “Who would know more about righteousness than Hanguang-Jun. Incense for the executed!”
A sand-filled censer and three sticks of incense were brought. With a quick shuffle of knots the man’s hands were free enough to light them and plant them into the sand. He offered quick, deep bows, then sat straight with his hands held in supplication.
Throwing his head back, he shouted. “I give prayer and beg the protection of Yiling Patriarch, Wei WuXian!”
Lan Wangji jolted with the crowd.
“You dare!” Jiang Wanyin shouted, rising from his seat with a crackle of purple lightning.
“You think a dead man will give you aid? Wei WuXian was ripped to shreds, body and soul!”
Lan Wangji flinched at the shout, then froze.
The air in the room chilled, the incense smoke curled, not toward the ceiling, but inward toward itself. Slow at first, then quickly. Thicker and darker, then with a grinding, squeaking noise like sand being crushed under a pestle and some deeper, empty note like the aftermath of a scream of horror, it took form.
Robes black as night and decorated with blood red embroidery in shapes that made his eyes ache to behold and dart away. His hair was held back in twists and braids by jewelry made of human bone; the top part of a skull pinned to the back of his head, the straight lines of a forearm bone, the curve of a rib, and a thousand tiny fingerbones and teeth were beads and jewels would be.
His face was white as snow, but radiant as the full moon, the glow extending out into a heavenly aura.
A young martial god descended from heaven.
Lan Wangji found himself around the table and halfway across the open space before his brother’s arm stopped him. One sharp motion freed him and he took another step. Wei WuXian’s chest rose and fell in a steady, deep breath. Asleep. Of course, Lan Wangji thought. He is a newly born martial god. Still gathering his strength.
“Wei-Wei WuXian!” the bound man stuttered, getting over the shock of his success, face slackening in awe. “Martial god Wei WuXian, I beg you, help me!”
Wei WuXian’s eyes opened. Not silver or black or glowing red, the eyes were inhuman. Wet and glittering, two spheres of blood held still by some power Lan Wangji did not dare guess. As he watched blood began to trail down his cheeks like tears. His mouth opened and instead of white teeth and pink tongue, a viscous, ink black ichor dripped out.
“Help you?” the liquid did not affect his voice, clear and bell-like, Lan Wangji felt that voice in his heart more than he heard it.
“Yes! These people mean to kill me for being a demonic cultivator, like you! They mean to execute me, like you! Please help me, Yiling Pariarch, Wei WuXian.”
“Like…me?” Wei WuXian’s head cocked, slow and ponderous and Lan Wangji realized he was not a newborn god, but one still forming. Vulnerable, but also very dangerous. He could not yet be fully conscious of his actions.
“Yes, help me, because I am like you and your servant!”
“Stop.” Lan Wangji ordered him urgently. Any good cultivator knew the danger of calling on an unconscious god.
In an instant Wei WuXian had passed forward, too fast to see. The cultivators that had dragged the man into the room scattered with frightened screams as the room lit up with the glow of a golden core, pinched between Wei WuXian’s forefinger and thumb. One ruthless motion turned it into a thousand whisping shards that vanished before they could hit the ground.
Wei WuXian’s movement became slow again. Turning back, a smile stretched over his face that was somehow beautiful even with the black fluid pouring from his lips and dripping to the floor where it hit with a sizzle and hiss and began to chew a hole in the floor.
“There.” he said once he finished turning around. “Now you are like me.”
The man collapsed with a scream and fell unconscious. Wei WuXian turned his head to take in the room in the sleepy, idle manner of someone waking from a drugged sleep.
Terror filled the room, those that did not break for the door cowered onto the floor in fear. Lan Wangji stepped forward. Wei WuXian’s face turned to him, some indescribable expression passed over his face.
“I know you.” he repeated more firmly. One laborious step at a time, he walked toward Lan Wangji. Like the voice of the mountain echoing his guqin, Wei WuXian began to hum the notes of Inquiry.
A metallic clang halted him in his steps. Lan Wangji’s gaze snapped to where Jin Guangyao was kicking through the sand and stomping the incense out. Like the shadow of a cloud breaking as it passed the sun, Wei WuXian vanished from the hall.
Lan Wangji walked above and beyond the chaos of the hall.
He’d been trying to reach him the wrong way. He wasn’t a ghost.
Wei WuXian had ascended to heaven and become an martial god. Grief and relief and a desperate need to reach him shook him to the core. Without a word, Lan Wangji took to his sword and headed toward Gusu. He would cultivate until he could join Wei Ying.
Wei Ying had heard his inquiry.
Lan Wangji clutched his hope and his heart and raced toward Wei WuXian.
Gods!AU. Lan Wangji becomes Wei WuXian’s primary adherent and protects him from those who would call on him to harm him, cultivates to ascension and lives in duality as a matched set of martial gods in heaven with Wei WuXian forever.
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