Continuation of the "Wei Ying doesn't go to Nightless city, running away with granny Wen and A-Yuan" AU.
Part 1 y 2 | Part 3
He asks around and disguises as the cultivator that has been called to help the manor with some evil spirit that has been tormenting the family, and as he does his job, he feels something off in one of the storages at the very end of the manor.
He goes in there after no receiving any answers from inside, abusing of his free pass, and finds a very pale Mo XuanYu at the edge of life and death. He saves him with great difficulty (Bless Wen Qing, for real.) and all the boy can say is "help me... Wei WuXian..." before fainting.
He finds himself surrounded by a very gruesome scenery inside the storage, walls covered in blood in some incomplete incantation circle, very little personal things of the boy, and broken things scattered around.
That much, Wei WuXian knows... he's seen this one incantation circle before in a very dark book of demonic cultivation... done by himself. Why would this boy have this? He doesn't know. But he will find out.
There is also a letter besides the boy, some of its lines are lost because of stains of blood, but the boy is telling his story, and offers his life as a payment for revenge. He tells everything he needs for said revenge, and promises that once the action is taken, he will rest in peace.
Of course, he's still high in deadline, so Wei WuXian takes him to an inn and seals the doors to keep him as safe and secure as he can, and goes back to the Mo manor to further investigations, glad that no one seems to notice the absence of the boy until later that night.
What a surprise when he finds himself inside the manor, along with many little Lan disciples!! A-yuan is not with them, nor Lan JingYi. So he does what he can do, he waits patiently until the night after leaving mo XuanYu resting in a inn. When he comes back, part of the Mo family already dead, and he can't do much to prevent the death for the rest of them, because there's an arm. A chopped arm. It is grabbing everything it can, and in a sudden move, it breaks Madam Mo's neck with ease, as it seems to have done with the rest, too. He suppresses the arm with chenqing after freezing all the disciples with talismans and puts it away in a qianku pouch. And showing respect, he puts the souls at proper rest before going back to the inn. His talismans will work for some hours, but it won't do any harm to the boys. He guesses that at least, Mo XuanYu's revenge has been taken. Most of it, at least.
He nurses Mo XuanYu, who didn't woke up in days, but it's still very alive, just with a lot of fever and in need of proper treatment and care. If he doesn't improve, then that's going to be a shame, and he cannot allow such a destiny for a boy barely some years older than his own son.
Whoever planted the arm, must have wanted Mo XuanYu very dead, Wei WuXian thinks. But then again, whoever who planted the arm, also wanted him there... taking mo XuanYu's body as a sacrifice, and had the resources to find some of his old manuals after so many years. Wei WuXian isn't dumb, he just knows that there must be a connection somewhere in all he's seen, but he's missing pieces here and there, and can't quite place them. He hopes that if he follows the arm's lead, he will find those missing pieces of the puzzle.
A couple of days later, there are more Lan cultivators arriving, and smudged into so many white clothes, Wei WuXian spots Lan WangJi. He decides to run away in the night, just in case he will be recognized, but oh boy, he wishes he was back at Cloud recesses when they were younger, he can only imagine how Lan WangJi would react to his teasing. It's been so long since then, and now he can't let people know that he's alive and well, because they would instantly blame him for all that, the comeback of the Yiling patriarch, and they most likely would leave the case unsolved. He can't allow that to happen.
Taking Mo XuanYu with him, knowing well that in this circumstances he cannot trust anyone with the kid's life, he takes a path in the forest to prevent further encounters with cultivators.
He goes back to the cave after a three week travel by donkey, knowing deeply that he would have arrived much later if it weren't for this. He just wishes Mo XuanYu was better... But he isn't. He's still very weak, and his golden core barely sustains him for half a day of walk.
After he had been three days away from the Mo village, in the border of Yiling, Mo XuanYu woke up, in more confusion than he had ever felt.
"Who... who are you?" He asked, pushing his weak self against a big rock besides a path where they were resting. Wei WuXian stared at him tiredly, but understood that the boy had tried to do a summoning of a particular evil spirit, yet he didn't have proof of which one, he suspected.
"Mhh... who do you think I am?" He asked in return, raising an eyebrow. Mo XuanYu trembled, and tried to take his surroundings properly. Where the fuck was this place, anyways.
"I--" He paused, analyzing the man. He wore pure black, and held no sword. He looked smugly and with a short temper... it... it couldn't be that the summoning had worked... but in a way that he didn't knew?? "The... you're... him??"
Wei WuXian gave him a confused look, "Him, who?"
"... The Yiling patriarch." Mo XuanYu finished his first sentence since he woke up in a barely audible whisper.
"It was him who you were trying to summon with that uhm... ritual?" Wei WuXian asked without answering the direct accusation, which was very accurate.
Mo XuanYu nodded, still in awe.
Wei WuXian looks at him with mixed feelings, what is he supposed to say to this little man now? He's been supposedly summoned to take revenge for him, but that is not what has happened, and besides, he is not any evil spirit, he's very much alive, thank you. Should he be offended? He doesn't know, but he only attempts to offer the guy a tight stare and some water.
"I see. Anyways, you should drink this, I found you holding on for dear life, and you haven't eaten properly in a while, I can tell that." He says, somehow forcing Mo XuanYu to drink. The boy takes it in, and eats too, and also complains when he's told that he should start eating little by little until his stomach grew bigger.
XuanYu, Wei WuXian finds, it's very much sane in the head, and he is a cutsleeve, but those are details with his background. Wei WuXian doesn't want to pry on the traumas that this young man has, so he tries to connect all the dots that he can from the littlest things that Mo XuanYu tells him from time to time.
All the information that he held together now were that, he had found this summoning ritual in a book from a prohibited room at his father's home, but then, he found more things... things that he wasn't ready to speak about and he had been found out because he searched for aid on the wrong people, and so, they had made an public scene and that shame had made that his little rights as a son were disposed, and they had kicked him out like a rat.
He still didn't knew which one was the father's family, but they seemed to have a stick up in their asses, from the things that Mo XuanYu complained about. And there was also a dangerous person, Mo XuanYu said.
He had been taken as a disciple, and worked very, very hard. Seeing that the boy still had a weak golden core after trying and training so hard wasn't sitting well with him, so he promised to help him with it. When he did so, Mo XuanYu beamed and cried from happiness, the adorable kid.
They became closer as they traveled, but Wei WuXian still didn't know if he should trust all he knew to Mo XuanYu, just in case... There were many things that were in the dark, and those prevented him from making decisions on the matter.
When they arrived to the cave, Wei WuXian dedicated himself to help Mo XuanYu heal, and trust him enough to get the very much needed information he was withholding.
But as Mo XuanYu got better, Wei WuXian grew restless on the many things that he didn't know, and the increasing amount of resentment that he felt moving around, so he decided to sneak into Cloud recesses again, to the library this time. If there was somewhere that could provide him with a little bit of knowledge that he lacked, it surely was inside that library.
He told Mo XuanYu that he would be hunting, and that he should stay hidden just in case that the Mo village had been attacked by someone who wanted him dead. He assured that he would be safer inside that cave than in any other place in the world, and Mo XuanYu knew he was right, after all the things that he had done for him, he didn't wanted to deceive his new friend, and so, he stayed.
Wei WuXian arrived to his destination in just two hours, hurrying up the stairs, and he entered the barrier without activating anything with a talisman. He has done this so many times in the past that he smiled from the familiarity while doing it.
He stood silently in the dark of the stairs for long minutes before going further. He knew how the guards were distributed inside Cloud recesses after sneaking inside last time, but he had to be careful nonetheless.
Once he sneaked inside the library, he dedicated himself to find what he was looking for, and he didn't found it immediately. But after half an hour, he did.
He had heard of the prohibited section at the Lan's library, and he found proof of it in the floor, in front of a shelf. There were lines that indicated that something heavy had moved, making scratches into the wood. But as he was about to open it, someone opened the door of the library in a very sneaky way, so he jumped back and hid away behind another shelf, looking at the intrusive shadow moving. It was someone dressed in black, someone who knew the structure of the library but didn't knew where something was. And they were searching said something.
Wei WuXian knew they were up to no good instantly, and couldn't help but wanting to protect the cloud recesses and everyone there. This knowledge was not to be taken by whoever wanted it!! He wouldn't allow that!!
The person in black approached the shelf that worked as a door for the prohibited section and Wei Ying spoke.
"Curtfew is at 9." He said, getting his talismans ready. The shadow stumbled backwards, surprised, and reached for their swords. Unlucky for them, because Wei WuXian threw a talisman at them, catching fire on their arm, something that would definitely scar. The shadow man tried to put the fire out but ran away at the same time, so Wei Ying threw another talisman behind them, but not aimed at them, but to the wards.
He hid in the darkness of the pavilions again and waited less than a minute until screams were heard, "Someone sneaked inside Cloud recesses!!".
In the end, they couldn't catch the man, but everyone now knew what the man had been doing. Because they assumed the library was their most precious treasure, a commission of elders appeared there some minutes later, Wei WuXian pressed further against the walls until he was out in the back of the library, and then he too, ran until stopping right at his son's door, he doubted it would be his best option, but right now he didn't have many of those. He got inside, and walked soundlessly towards his son's bed, waking him up carefully.
"Dad? What are you... " he started, but concealed his voice as he heard screams from outside.
"I'm sorry, little radish, dad had to scare someone away from the library," He lamented, patting his son's head. A-Yuan had the audacity to laugh at him, and received a pinch in the cheek for it.
"Well, I should probably show my face a little, that way, they won't be suspicious that the real intruder is in my room." He said putting on a robe, and walking towards the door, under a very warm smile from his father.
"Aiya... don't be like that, I'm a good kind of intruder!" Wei WuXian complained as his baby walked out with a perfect acting, he heard.
After everyone grow suspicious that the intruder had already fled and hadn't been able to take anything with them, the disciples went back to their rooms under very strict supervision of Lan Qiren. Wei Yuan entered his room with caution, holding his act until he was sure that no one could enter behind him. He walked towards his dad and hugged him hard.
"That was dangerous, dad..."
"I know."
"... you're not apologizing?"
"Not really, it was necessary."
A-Yuan didn't need to know the details, he didn't need to be splattered by his decisions or anything that was currently going on outside Cloud recesses, it was, he decided, way too dangerous.
"Be... be careful, okay? If I can do anything to help--"
"Oh, no. Don't you dare. You're bound to four thousand rules or something because of your stay here, and you're breaking many of them in one go just by having me here, A-Yuan." He stopped him with a caressing in his loose hair. A-Yuan held his breath inside for a second, but he wouldn't disobey his father. "I want you to stay still and enjoy this year to the fullest, mh? Besides, it that old man qiren dares to do something to you besides copying the rules, I'll make sure to remind him that I'm the worst student he ever had!"
"Okay. But be careful." He pledged, holding his father's clothes with both hands. Somehow, he felt fear. He didn't want to let go. But he concealed that and laughed at his father's antics, "you still don't know Lan JingYi... I'm sure he stole your title as his worst student, dad."
Both laugh silly at that, and Wei WuXian kisses his son's forehead.
"And now, I have to leave, but I will visit properly again." He offers, holding his son's hands into his, smiling.
He goes back to the cave that night after everything has settled down a bit, and A-Yuan is left alone with his thoughts and a ghost of his father's hug.