Honestly, he forgets he's scared of dogs until one of the toothy monsters show up and makes a racket.
Instinctively, like a monkey caught on the ground, Wei Wuxian runs to climb the nearest place to safety. It doesn't matter who, or what—the closest escape is the best escape.
Which explains what Wei Wuxian is doing clinging to heavily embroidered purple silk draped across broad shoulders, as Wei Wuxian scrunches up and shivers, to shove his face into the little gap where the neckline of the crisp white undershirt has fallen away due to Wei Wuxian's desperate grasps, and exposes his savior's skin.
It does not explain why Jiang Cheng is the closest point of safety in this crowded mortal market during the Yunmeng Revival Week Festival.
Wei Wuxian tentatively lifts his face free from the heady sense of warmth and lingering traces of exotic incense caught in the threads. From this vantage is a particularly close look at the cut of Jiang Cheng's jaw and the tip of his perpetual frown.
"Hahaha, Jiang Cheng, what are you doing here?" The situation is surreal, but Wei Wuxian holds on a little tighter to it anyway, squeezing his thighs around a very solid torso, taking advantage of the unwavering stance of his estranged—Jiang Cheng… Well, he's definitely not going anywhere until the barking stops. "Could you make it go away?"
Jiang Cheng just coldly harrumphs and suddenly the wide-eyed spectators and the angry, bitey monster all startle and gasp. Confusion lines everyone's faces and the monster whines before shaking the entirety of its lithe brown body and scampering away. With just a thought, Jiang Cheng has wrapped up Wei Wuxian's presence with his own and made them both disappear to mortal senses. "Do you forget you're a cultivator?" he snaps.
These are the first things they've said to each other since that dreadful chance meeting during a night hunt, which was the first time they'd seen each other since Wei Wuxian left the ruins of Guanyin Temple to follow his red thread of fate. Jiang Cheng had merely greeted with a simple, flat "Young Master Wei" and took Jin Ling away from danger, while Wei Wuxian was far too busy making sure the formations were set, and the Gusu Lan juniors were scolded, and—
Too busy to pay attention. Too busy to even say a cordial, "Sect Leader Jiang."
The present comes smashing back into Wei Wuxian's brain as he remembers. "Of course! Hahah!" And he hastily lets go to drop down to the ground to get back into the flow of mortal life.
Before that can happen, Jiang Cheng curls his arms under Wei Wuxian's thighs and prevents him from falling. "You lost your shoe," he says, like Wei Wuxian is being an idiot. "Tell me where you're staying."
Wei Wuxian rearranges his balance so that he spreads his weight across Jiang Cheng's back, leaning forward again so that he can at least see the side of Jiang Cheng's face—characteristically crinkled in annoyance and weariness—very un-immortal-like except for the luster of his skin. "Little Apple is cooped up in a shed outside of the city that some nice people are lending me. What do you want to take me there for?"
Hefting Wei Wuxian's weight, Jiang Cheng simply starts walking, letting the mortals unknowingly part the way for him. "Unless you have another pair of boots on you?"
He does not, in fact, have another pair of boots. He'd left all the clothes that weren't Mo Xuanyu's back in the Cloud Recesses. Mo Xuanyu, notably, did not have much. "Actually, I was on my way to by a new pair anyway. You can just put me down at the nearest shop." Wei Wuxian scratches the tip of his nose, which always tingles in an itchy way when he gets to quickly thinking.
"You can't afford the nearest shop," Jiang Cheng snipes with utter precision.
It's true that Wei Wuxian is spare on money and doesn't even have a spirit coin to his name at the moment. Travel has been rough without the comfort of sect-funded way-houses and the pleasure of being an honored guest (well, the favored person of an honored guest). But Wei Wuxian has kept clean! Kept fed (for the most part)… His current blackish-gray clothes are neatly mended and he took time to make an herbal sachet to ward bugs and smell vaguely pleasant. He doesn't look poor by any means.
It's just that these shops are all really expensive!
"Yunmeng really has found some good fortune lately." He's noted it when he first arrived, how there's just so many people looking well off and speaking more eloquently than he remembered. Yunmeng has always been quaint, a synthesis of the Jiangling area, where people were honest and hard working. But now it's…
It doesn't feel wrong but it also just doesn't feel like he remembers…
Jiang Cheng sighs, but makes his way past open-air stalls of festival goods and snacks, and cuts a corner or three as he winds his way through the maze-like streets carved through by canals and bounded by boardwalks. Every step he takes covers ground that contracts to his will, and it's the kind of display of cultivation skill that few would be able to achieve in such tight and unpredictable city spaces.
Before he realizes that they've stopped, Jiang Cheng lets him go, and Wei Wuxian awkwardly stands for himself on one foot at the open plank entry of what is obviously a secondhand shop. "Thanks!" Wei Wuxian says with a fish bone stuck in his throat.
Jiang Cheng finally faces him while he straightens his gold-threaded robes. He's dressed in the kind of outfit for parade or ritual, and now they have wrinkles in them. When he finally looks at Wei Wuxian though, it's with eyes brightened silver by his refined qi. They are fierce still, but there's a lack of tension there, and there's a shade of red that darkens his cheeks that lessens the ferocity, almost indiscernible in the shadow of the shop. "Since you dare—"
The sentence abruptly cutting off makes Wei Wuxian's spine stiffen. "I always dare," he confirms, though he's not sure which dare he's taking the credit for this time.
With effort, Jiang Cheng grits out something preposterous. "Then. Welcome." He sighs with a gust, and the look of frustration passes in a flash before Jiang Cheng gets a handle on what he meant. "Welcome back."
Wei Wuxian waits for the rest of it; the caveat, the conditions, the denial. Instead, there's just a heavy silence before Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes and leaves.
This is not how Wei Wuxian ever thought they would meet again. Or talk again. It seems like fate.
"Jiang Cheng!" Wei Wuxian turns skillfully on one foot as he calls out, daring in his choice of address.
"What?!" said person turns back as well, all lit up by the spring sun and less than perfect.
"You never said what you were doing in the market."
Jiang Cheng goes ghostly pale which is a terrible look for him and his grimace only makes it worse. There's a tension that builds that ignores space and stretches time, causing hearts to squeeze and eternities to abound. Finally, Jiang Cheng just shakes his head, "You should value your life more, now that you have a new one… Wei Wuxian." And then the air shimmers, hiding Jiang Cheng from Wei Wuxian's sight like he's a mere mortal unable to see the truth of what's in front of him.
⚡💜🪽
Only ten paces away from the spot where Wei Wuxian still stares at, Jiang Cheng resumes his impromptu guard duty, since the Yiling Laozu just decided to breeze through Yunmeng like he has a clear name and no regrets. It's not like Jiang Cheng is expected to host celebrations or command spiritual rituals commiserate with the revival of his whole sect.
He has plenty of time to be watching Wei Wuxian's back, since Wei Wuxian refuses to do it.
A gentle nudge to his divine senses tells Jiang Cheng that Zidian has finished devouring the assailants that had sent the dog after Wei Wuxian. Only signature traces will be left behind letting anyone that comes looking know that it is Sandu Shengshou they should blame for their losses.
As long as Wei Wuxian dares to be in Yunmeng at least, Jiang Cheng can offer this much without fear.
"Truly, this is the best news I've heard since the return of the Yiling Laozu. That monster surely had us all suppressed when we went to the Burial Mounds, with Hanguang-jun under his thrall. How did the Second Jade finally recover?"
"Who said anything about recovery? If anything, it cost him dearly, as he's still in seclusion with bitter injury to his foundation. He took a blow for that despicable Wei Ying, and finally snapped out of it!"
"And I heard Wei Ying fled Cloud Recesses before the elders there could crush him to ashes!"
"Chased that devil right into the fangs of Sandu Shengshou!"
"You don't say! Well, that devil is done for, surely. That little sect leader isn't little anymore, and Sandu Shengshou killed the Yiling Laozu once already."
"We're finally free of that evil as well, now that he won't be claiming graveyards as his territory, leaving dug up corpses to scare the good people. Truly this a momentous occasion! Let's celebrate!"
"Here, here!"
"…but I heard that Wei Ying was still alive? And that the Lan of Gusu have ceased cooperation with Sandu Shengshou's sect."
"Now that you mention it, I thought it unusual that the guided lectures Grand Master Lan Qiren does every ten years haven't been announced this year."
"The gates of Cloud Recesses are shut and ensorcelled mists cling to the steps that lead to it. It's like they've locked down."
"So you've seen it? The entire sect must be in seclusion. Like I said before, the time of these great clans has truly passed. Along with Qinghe Nie being basically fallen, and the Jin of Lanling run by a know-nothing child, the only sect still minding their territory is that one out of Yunmeng. Though you can't call it a clan."
"In that case, you're right, there's no great clans to bow our heads to anymore."
"Aiya, but if Hanguang-jun also can't leave Cloud Recesses, and only the Jiangling area is secured by Sandu Shengshou, we'll surely see some trying times ahead as well."
"Better hope that Wei Ying really is dead or captured within one of Sandu Shengshou's dungeons."
"Lotus Pier can't possibly have a dungeon."
"Cultivators of that caliber can make anything happen, you know."
Wen Ning carefully extracts himself from the shadows at the corner of the roadside tea house where many rogue cultivators always gather to exchange gossip. His dark gray robes softly clatter from the hidden wooden plaques carved in suppression seal that hide his unclean aura and cause mortal eyes to skitter away when trying to perceive him directly. He tilts his wide bamboo hat down to better shield his pale eyes and grayish skin, his hands wrapped in scaled gauntlets to hide and protect what remains of them—now more like ghoulish claws.
The time he spent in the blood pool of the Burial Mounds to repair himself had been long enough that so much has changed. How could Hanguang-jun let Wen Ning's young master out of his sight? To be captured as well?
He does not really note the passage of time, but once he begins to pay attention again, he sees he's made it to Yunmeng all the way from Yiling. The last time he was here, he'd had to fight his way into Lotus Pier to retrieve his young master from a terrible fate.
He came here because he thought he would need to do so again.
Yet…
He can sense that his young master is indeed still alive, folded in and hidden under the many layers of arrays and spiritual mists. That beacon will always be there, connecting them along the seven emotions—allowing Wen Ning to know his young master's joy and anger, those sorrows and fears, the boundless affection for life, but also what he loves and what he hates.
All of those emotions are riotous within Wen Ning. The closer he gets to Lotus Pier the more alive he feels. The more color he sees.
And it's confusing.
Lotus Pier is a terrible place, cursed to despair and rot. From the first time his uncle, Wen Ruohan, had declared the muddy lakes to be cleansed and its struggling sect to be enlightened by the truth of the Qishan Wen dao, Wen Ning has only ever known this place as one of death and hatred. Even during its so-called revival after the war, Sect Leader Jiang could not even spare the face to acknowledge the help he received from Wen Ning's dear sister who sacrificed so much.
Matters of justice aside, Sect Leader Jiang was not the kind to remember favors. To honor them.
So what were these feelings from Wen Ning's young master?
Over some days, he lurks in the shadows and foliage surrounding Lotus Pier, Wen Ning feels bursts of anger, stirrings of resentment, and clear notes of sadness and frustration, and they are strong feelings—but nothing that specifically makes demands of Wen Ning.
Instead, what burrows into Wen Ning's cold flesh are seeds of affection, tangling their roots into his dead veins and filling his head with flashes of a life Wen Ning isn't a part of. Joy shoots up like a living thing through his chest, blooming and beautiful.
And all of it floats upon an vast inner sea of something that twists between love and hate, a behemoth of weight that's stupefying.
Meanwhile, Wen Ning remains unmoving, unblinking, and only feeling and waiting. Waiting for his young master to call to him.
His young master must sense Wen Ning.
But doesn't call for him, even unconsciously. His young master no longer seems to reach for the power Wen Ning keeps refined in black blood and suppressed by etchings strung to his clothes like wooden toggles.
A healthy black crow lands on Wen Ning's knee and pecks at the leaves that have fallen over him, its sharp beak catching on the hemp weave.
Time passes—he doesn't pay attention to how long—and when his consciousness surfaces again it's to a murder of crows that fly away suddenly when someone finds Wen Ning, under a willow tree surrounded by tall marsh grasses and catkin.
His voice is slow to come. "Sizhui."
"Ning-shushu, I found you." Wen Yuan automatically begins to use his long white sleeves with blue clouds to dust off the worst of the leaves and the strange little gifts the crows had piled up. "Wei-qianbei had to let me know where you were. You promised to come hunt with me when you got back from Yiling."
Wen Ning takes his time to muddle through the confusion. "Wei-gongzi… is alright?" Surely, if his young master really was trapped in Lotus Pier, then no communication with the outside, let alone with Wen Yuan of the Gusu Lan would be allowed?
The youth squats down next to him, bunching up the hems of his robes so they don't drag in the dirt. "That's what he says every time I ask. He's going to be in Lotus Pier a long time, and he says you should—" here, Wen Yuan pauses with a faint smile. "Go live your life."
Wen Ning hasn't been able to fathom what that means every time his young master has said it. It used to be just making sure Wen Yuan learned a few things from the clan he hardly remembers, and keeping him safe. Maybe that's all it needs to mean, if his young master really doesn't need him anymore… "You… saw him?"
Here, it's notable that Wen Yuan frowns. "Only the once, when I demanded to see him. The rest of the time we talk by transmissions and messages." Confusion causes a scrunch of lines between his brows, just like the father Wen Yuan doesn't remember. "I thought he was happy before, but he says he's home now."
Wen Ning recalls his connection back then, in that time his young master resided in the Cloud Recesses. Affection, sadness… and all of the other emotions as well, but mostly good ones.
But not as bright.
Not as clear or as overwhelming.
Wen Ning simply cannot feel for himself because of it.
If he must go live a life of his own, first he needs his sense of self back. "I promised you a hunt. Where do you want to go?"
Bright like the gentle sun that warms a shaded palatial courtyard, Wen Yuan rises quickly, tugging Wen Ning along with him. "They say there's a qilin spotted near Xi'an. Let's see if the rumors are true."
Flesh where a thing like a heart exists in his chest, flutters with the first real sign of his own will at the mention of the great city his clan once had divine ties to. He can understand that need to go home, at least. "Then… let's return. You can tell me more… along the way."
Wei Wuxian leaves to go “prepare some things” before he’ll take Jiang Cheng to Baoshan Sanren’s mountain hermitage.
He leaves Jiang Cheng alone for three days.
In those three days, Jiang Cheng feels his meridians that are already scorched, then being to wither, starting from his lower dantian and spreading out. It becomes harder to move, more tiring. He’s not sure how he is even going to make it up the mountain when the time comes. The harsh training he had inflicted on his muscle and bones all throughout his younger years now come back to haunt him, pains that have no scars ache along with the very real evidence of Wen Chao’s intrepid cruelty with the discipline whip across his chest—inflamed and beginning to reopen.
Whatever healing he’d undergone while made to sleep, it’s starting to fade. Without the internal power of a golden core, there’s little to hold supernatural mending in place.
Wei Wuxian left food, but Jiang Cheng only ever has the stomach for a few bites, his jaw too tense to chew, his mind too distracted with the growing agony of, “What if he gets caught?” Wei Wuxian is out there alone and still being hunted.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t have any way he can help.
Not anymore.
He wouldn’t even be worth capturing this time.
His nails are ragged from how he’s torn them from scratching the dirt in the floor, trying to feel the qi of the earth and finding nothing.
His lips are chapped because he wants to feel the sweetness of heavenly qi in the sunlight, but even that only comes to him in wisps, pulled into his lungs only to be cast back out on his next breath because it can’t be refined in his spiritual system.
He’d rather die.
“No need to doubt it. You heard me right. I said ‘get your golden core back.’”
That energy that had filled him with those words has since ground to nothing, and doubt washes the shores of Jiang Cheng’s sea of emotions. He recognizes his willpower dying like the last embers of the only source of light in an endless barren, cinnabar wasteland.
When Wei Wuxian is here with him, he can leech some hope, some light, some way to hold back the darkness that reminds him that he’s nothing now. Useless. Spent. There will be no vengeance for his clan. No clan to revive. No way forward.
Why save him? Why heal him? Just to hear him scream?
A faceless Wen with delicate hands, pours tonics down his throat and makes him choke on it until he swallows. The blood pools around him, but Wen Chao orders it washed away and Jiang Cheng is splashed with buckets of artificially cold water until his teeth chatter and his muscles are rigid.
Wen Zhuliu begins first. He does not destroy Jiang Cheng all at once, but in quarters, melting the golden core part way so that the fiery backlash sears his very being, forcing the air from his chest and the plea for death from his throat.
Jiang Cheng blinks and watches motes of dust from the unpapered window of this small woodland hovel.
None of this is worth it if Wei Wuxian doesn’t come back.
This was all for him, this was all for Wei Wuxian. For his sister’s love, his father’s hopes, and his mother’s fury.
What will he do if Wei Wuxian doesn’t come back? He can’t do anything. He must, but he can’t. He must—
Why would Wei Wuxian…?
It’s a waste.
⟫————————⟪
Wei Wuxian finds Jiang Cheng in the corner of the woodsman’s house, alike to stone. Cold and motionless.
In a fit of something too much like violence, he falls to his knees, puffs of dirt layering on his filthy disciple’s black, and grabs Jiang Cheng’s wrists and pushes healing qi into a body that cannot seem to take it. It damages as much as it helps, swelling dried ravines and spilling over, uselessly directionless. “Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng you have to try.” He holds on tighter than necessary, the pressure to feel some sort of pulse barely discernible. “Jiang Cheng!” How dare he? Didn’t he say to eat and rest? Didn’t he say he had the solution?! What’s the point of wasting away now?!
Jiang Cheng shudders, his eyes squeezing more tightly shut as a gasp of pain breaks the barrier of his lips. “Too much—” He moans, thready like the dead newly awakened.
“It’s not too much. Stop complaining.” Wei Wuxian grimaces as he does the work, fixing this.
It’s just temporary.
He’ll make it better. Permanently.
Make it so Jiang Cheng can’t fall apart again.
It feels like hours on his knees, circulating his red qi into Jiang Cheng and directing it, the way Wen Qing said will need to be done until they meet for the transfer. To get Jiang Cheng’s body used to what kind of power Wei Wuxian will give it. Make Wei Wuxian acceptable.
He’s kneeled in the Yunmeng Jiang ancestral hall for longer than this. He knows Jiang Cheng’s spirit like his own. This effort is nothing.
As long as Jiang Cheng doesn’t waste it. “Jiang Cheng, wake up!”
A new flush of life blooms on Jiang Cheng’s face and his eyes open blearily, with a cloudiness to them that’s unnerving. His cracked lips open without a sound.
Wei Wuxian thumbs at Jiang Cheng’s palms, massaging more life into him. “That’s right, wake up. We need to get you to Baoshan Sanren.”
“You go,” Jiang Cheng says in a whisper as his head lulls to the side and he squints again like he’s trying to concentrate. “I’ll distract them.”
They’re no longer in Yiling, no longer under threat. There’s nothing that needs distracting; Jiang Cheng is obviously delirious. Wei Wuxian sighs. “You can’t do anything like this.”
“You go,” he says again, words broken and trembling.
“I’m not going anywhere.” His own hands shake as he tells him so. “I’m here, alright? I’m always going to be with you.” A golden light carried forward.
A cultivator war is one that happens like the passing of a storm, loud and terrifying, destroying the landscape and leaving devastation in its wake. The sky fills with terrible light, the clouds gather as nature is disturbed by forces beyond mortal knowing, and then peace only comes after days and days of thunder.
The people are often displaced. The imperial offices can do little because the evidence of who to blame exactly is never left behind. The heavens themselves rarely intervene because it's best if those that seek immortality end their journey in blood.
Wei Wuxian thinks that his own journey is carried forward by the blood that flows from the Sunshot Campaign.
He aches to wear the vivid purples of Yunmeng Jiang again—bolts of the rare silk savagely reclaimed from the mounds of stolen treasures taken by the Qishan Wen from Lotus Pier. Shijie had made him a set, spent too much time and energy doing so when they had to manage resources tightly to maintain their hold on the Jiangling Front.
That set remains untouched in Wei Wuxian's qiankun pouch, and instead he wears whatever dark clothes he can scavenge from his victims—dying them black again and again to even out the blood stains that create red waves on his sleeves and hems. Grave dirt never quite leaves the beds of his ragged fingernails, torn from digging around bones and rot so as to not damage anything with a shovel. His hair he stopped putting up into that messy ponytail or messier bun because he's too tired. His joints ache too much for excessive movement. The skin on the back of his neck is cold like the demons of the Burial Mounds are right there, still breathing on him.
He can't wear Yunmeng Jiang purple even when Shijie insists. Even when Jiang Cheng tells him to, for her sake, even if he won't listen otherwise. That the disciples want to call him shibo, but they don't know if they should because nothing about Wei Wuxian says Yunmeng Jiang.
Jiang Cheng finds him out at the edge of camp, far beyond firelight, keeping the company of some swaying corpses whose dark qi remains suppressed by Wei Wuxian's strength of spirit—his resolve to see this through.
To find the end of it.
Wei Wuxian slowly blinks at the puff of warm air that envelops him as a soft cloak with a fur collar drops onto his shoulders. It feels like it had just been recently worn. It smells like amber and lilies.
Even in the moonlight, the color is a vibrant purple.
Jiang Cheng looks down at Wei Wuxian, eyes tense and his perpetual frown twisted by the stormy thoughts that probably put him in yet another bad mood.
Wei Wuxian smiles. "Do you think I need this?" He holds up the edge of the cloak, swishes it around playfully.
"I don't care if you need it. Just wear it." Jiang Cheng looks away sharply, crossing his arms over his chest and tucking his right hand away—effectively hiding the violet sparking of Zidian. "Tch, stop worrying a-Jie so much."
"Tell her to stop worrying about me so much."
"You tell her yourself!" Jiang Cheng snaps and then he turns completely away, but doesn't leave.
Wei Wuxian watches Jiang Cheng, notes how much he's growing. Gratified yet again to see the inner glow that comes from a cultivator's spiritual health.
Without really wanting to think more about it, Wei Wuxian tucks the cloak around himself. He never used to be this cold. Not ever. Not even on the streets when he would circulate his qi to keep warm—like he remembers being taught...by his parents...vaguely.
Jiang Cheng sighs and the grumbles something before sighing again and then his shoulders sag. He doesn't look back, and states, "You're using all your strength to control their resentment, so you don't have enough for yourself, right?"
Sounds like something Wei Wuxian has said. Sounds like an easy out. "That's right."
Jiang Cheng picks up Suibian―the poor discarded sword that Wei Wuxian never carries anymore. He holds it in his hands and wonders what happened to the boy who loved to show off, to fly around, to blaze through his martial forms with blinding talent and dramatic flare.
What did those Wen-dogs do to Wei Wuxian? He came back wrong, and it's harder and harder to believe that it's fine as long as Wei Wuxian is back.
He's away so often now, is he even back at all?
Did he ever really come back?
Jiang Cheng feels a warmth through the scabbard, the spirit within the blade is familiar, he's fought against it plenty of times before. Right now though, it almost feels like he can sense its loneliness.
It's not exactly proper to handle another cultivator's spiritual weapon, but Jiang Cheng can sympathize with the loyal blade. He's starting to feel cast aside himself―unneeded. His sister wants to marry the man she loves. Wei Wuxian wants to be anywhere but home. The disciples that call Jiang Cheng their leader are good people but largely independent, being a band of rogues and cast off cultivators used to survival.
On the dais in the Sword Test Hall is the lotus seat where his father once sat. He sits there now and takes a fine cotton cloth out... unsheathes the blade his father gave the favored child. Such a gift should be cared for.
Suibian gleams like fresh fallen snow. Jiang Cheng sets the blade against his knee and methodically wipes it down.
It only takes a few strokes before he realizes the impossible.
The caring and usage of spiritual weapons is what cultivates them. To clean and hold and even sympathize with the spirit within is to develop a symbiosis. It's personal.
Suibian sings to him clearly, as if the sword had been waiting for Jiang Cheng all this time. It's content. Satisfied.
It shouldn't be this responsive to him with the sword qi prickling pleasantly against his skin. Suibian is a loyal blade. Even more prepossessed than his own Sandu. If Wei Wuxian tried this, Sandu would definitely bite him.
Is it even more impossible...? Would Suibian listen to him?
There's no one in the hall, no one to see him do something so strange. Jiang Cheng lifts his hand, fingertips aligned as he makes a simple gesture, his intent more of a suggestion...
Suibian lifts from his lap and darts around the room in the turtle array pattern that only Jiang Cheng uses because it's practical, not something Wei Wuxian ever cared to use for Suibian.
Yet Suibian goes through the unfamiliar motions cleanly, sharply humming.
He's still putting Suibian through the paces of more typical forms when the hall doors burst open.
Wei Wuxian stares at Jiang Cheng, his eyes flicking to Suibian hovering in the air between them, for once rendered speechless. There's something else about his face that's unreadable. There's something about the way he doesn't seem to breathe that makes Jiang Cheng boyishly nervous.
He clears his throat. "You forgot your sword again."
Wei Wuxian shudders into motion, a specter in black with the worst bruises under his eyes. "I didn't forget, I just don't need it." He sways slowly forward until he's closer to the hovering sword than Jiang Cheng is... he reaches out for the handle.
...Plucks it from the air without resistance...
But the gleam fades and Suibian goes dormant.
Jiang Cheng can feel it, like some connection abruptly cut off.
Post-Canon, Modern Era, Reincarnation, Temporary Amnesia, Conspiracy Theories, Action, Mystery & Suspense Lite, Supernatural Elements, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian in Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian's Body, Older Sibling Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin, Getting Together, BAMF Yu Ziyuan, Modao Zushi Ensemble - Freeform, So Many Questions and Not Enough Answers
Summary:
It’s fine. Jiang Cheng can’t really expect reciprocation from a man he found quasi dead on the riverbank.
What kind of person brings home trouble and lets it live with them for months, even knowing that some unknown group is after them? Jiang Cheng is that kind, unfortunately.
His little sister is right; he needs some sort of psychoanalysis done.
Jiang Cheng is more wrapped up in the mystery of Wei Wuxian than he first thought, but at least the way they're tangled together means the choices they made were always about each other.
rules: share the first line of your last ten published works or as many as you are able and see if there are any patterns!
🥰 I am so happy to have these tag games with you Danny (@yeliuxi)
I like the layout you did too, so yoink!
To Endeavor is to Endure [mdzs]
Rated T, Jiang Cheng/Wei Wuxian, F/F
Ā-Niáng leaves dinner like a blustering westerly wind, but a few jokes from Wèi Wúxiàn break up the charged atmosphere, and then they all finish eating with somewhat lightened humor.
The Turning Point [mdzs]
Rated T, Jiang Cheng & Jiang Yanli & Wei Wuxian, Part2 Meishan Yu CanonDiv
The snow had just begun when they finally got news from home.
The Unwoven Youth and the Lonely Beast [mdzs]
Rated E, Jiang Cheng/Wei Wuxian, fairytale remix fusion amnesia fic
While everyone celebrates victory over the defeat of Wēn Ruòhán, Wèi Wúxiàn searches for the Wēn survivors currently being rounded up from the many palaces.
Reprieve and a New Start [mdzs]
Rated T, Jiang Cheng & Jiang Yanli & Wei Wuxian, Part1 Meishan Yu CanonDiv
As far as anyone else was concerned, the children of the Yúnmèng Jiāng Clan Leader Jiāng Fēngmián and Violet Spider Yú Zǐyuān were still in Liánhuā Wù watching over their bed-ridden hellion of a First Disciple, who was still recuperating in seclusion after the failed Qíshān Wēn Indoctrination.
Attachment [mdzs]
Rated E, Jiang Yanli/Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng/Wei Wuxian, Jiang Sibs Dark au
How can she believe such grand aspirations 'to illuminate the cultivation world with vermilion light' when Lánlíng Jīn is truly caught under the heel of Qíshān Wēn like everyone else?
A Desperate Need for the Impossible [mdzs]
Rated E, Jiang Cheng/Wei Wuxian, naga!JC
Wèi Wúxiàn rubs his face, carefully in one direction, against the silky cool scales beneath his cheek.
This River Runs Beyond Heaven and Earth [江流天地外] [mdzs]
Rated E, Jiang Cheng & Yunmeng Jiang Disciples, Jiang Cheng & Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng & Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng & Original Character(s), Jiang Cheng/Original Character(s), Post-canon JC-centric maxi
Suíbiàn’s blade gleams snowy white in the early spring morning and Zǐdiàn glows a faint violet, the silver-white thong is a coiled viper, ready to strike.
A Warrior’s Spirit Seeks Home [mdzs]
Rated E, Jiang Cheng/Wei Wuxian, Zoids New Century AU
Wèi Wúxiàn basically grew up on this battleground planet of Zi and with his father having been a competition Zoid pilot, there were some expectations that he’d take it up too.
I Long For You (相思) [mdzs]
Rated E, Jiang Cheng/Wei Wuxian, CrowXian/WolfCheng AU
A sect leader is well above the need for matchmakers, and even beyond the fortunes of the stars as well with enough bribes and rites.
Damn your love, damn your lies [mdzs]
Rated M, Jiang Cheng & Jiang Yanli & Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng & Mo Xuanyu, Modern w/Cultivation Divorce & Recovery AU
Jiāng Chéng checks his phone for two notifications at the same time.
So nothing groundbreaking, I either open with an action or something that sets the scene. The only other 1st line option is to open with dialogue which I don't do for whatever reason, probably because i don't consider dialogue my forte.
I think this game would be a better to do opening paragraphs instead. 😅
Tagging some writer friends if you're interested~ 😘
Danny, you spoil me! 14.2 bebi time is a continuation of Source of the River which is my genderqueer f!wwx super soft chengxian fic with a huge dose of WWX & YZY.
Obviously in Part 2 the baby is born and there's some additional fallout as WWX experiences postpartum in a way he refuses to acknowledge. I read some articles about how childbirth traditionally went and the roles of doctors in the process, etc so the opening part is very birthing room gritty.
But here's a fluffy bit:
Wèi Wúxiàn tucks his face into the curve of Jiāng Chéng’s neck and huffs. “I don’t like this part about being a mother.”
He slowly jiggles Wèi Wúxiàn’s arm still holding the baby, eliciting more teeny baby noises. He responds in a near hush, “Has there been any part you do like?” There’s a tinge of sarcasm to it.
Wèi Wúxiàn takes his answer seriously though. “Well, we did make quite a cute kid. Everyone who's seen him says so.”
“It's always about how beautiful or handsome someone is. He looks just like every other newborn.”
“Untrue. He already has your eyebrows, they’re very straight, you see.”
[I reread a lot of what I already have and yeesh, don't let me read academic articles on childbirth again. Honestly not sure how much should stay in, I feel like most people would be hella squicked...]
