Jining's sun was setting with great spectacle.
The region's valleys were glowing, the surrounding hills boasted poplars, elms and pagoda trees in whose crowns bright flaming oranges had lost their way, while the sky kept pace with billowing clouds of red, pink and purple. This veritable riot of color was a farewell celebrated on a high note, a best performance saved for last, as if the day itself were a banquet director intent to score a lasting final impression with a discerning audience.
No matter, it seemed, that this audience was just a single person.
A youth was viewing the show from a hill, leaning casually against a tree. Dressed entirely in black save for the red ribbon fluttering in his barely tied-up hair, he didn't quite fit in with his sun-drenched surroundings, though the last rays of the sun were doing their best to paint his strikingly handsome features golden. A silver mask dangled from this young man's belt, all but discarded by its owner while a dark dizi was being twirled round and round in a nimble hand.
Belying this relaxed posture and nonchalant activity, the young man's expression was so apathetic he had to be either extremely bored or exhausted to the bone.
Barely blinking, his dark eyes were fixed on the foot of the hill, where a military encampment of impressive size had been set up.
By the number of pitched tents it was possible to approximate a headcount of about two thousand soldiers, something corroborated by a general clamor which was ringing out from behind reinforced walls and watchtowers and making for an intimidating backdrop. As far as the eye could see fluttering flags stretched up towards the sky as though to let their scarlet suns flirt with the sunset, here and there accompanied by rings of red peonies.
Before long a dozen riders in sun-hemmed robes arrived, a glamorous horse-drawn carriage in their midst. Momentarily hidden among rows of tents, the group eventually emerged on a central square of sorts, which, bisected by two rows of stone lanterns, led to the largest tent of all. Almost entirely hidden in its shadow, a cage contained the slumped shape of a prisoner.
Up on the hill, the youth stopped twirling his flute for an instant as the carriage relinquished two figures; one in white and scarlet, the second, dark and trailing behind, appearing like the shadow of the first. All surrounding soldiers, nothing more than ants in the eyes of their secret beholder, stopped to pay their respect while the two contrasting figures crossed the square and disappeared inside the grand tent.
The sun at last touched the mountains, sparking a line of fire on their summits. Before it could properly begin to sink, it was swallowed up by fast moving bands of dark clouds, an end rather more sudden and unceremonious than its spectacular closing act might have led one to expect.
The world was thrown into darkness, the stage cleared for a waning moon. Unlike the preceding celestial performer, this pale crescent seemed disinclined to court admiration, diving behind clouds again and again. And instead of light of any use, it brought a frigid night wind that ruffled hair, pebbled skin and chased the encampment's inhabitants inside their tents.
The first half of the night passed by in this cold tranquility.
Just after midnight, a pair of dark eyes flashed crimson somewhere in the pitch-black abyss that the hills had turned into. Playful yet sinister, a dizi's shrill cry shattered the quiet.
The night guard who had been fighting their heavy eyelids jerked to attention. They raised torches over their watchtower platforms, as though that could shed light into the unforgiving darkness beyond. It was, naturally, futile; the musician was one with the night, black in black, impossible to spot even with the sharpened eyes of cultivators, while his unsettling melody reverberated off the slopes of the valleys and so hardly marked his location with more certainty.
Such a situation was very troublesome for the guards. Their second young master had returned from his latest sojourn in Jining City's pleasure district to spend the night at camp, and, while Wen Chao wasn't someone for whose disturbed sleep one wanted to have to answer for at the best of times, lately his fuse had been especially short.
The reason for it was thus; a year ago, Wen Xu's retreat at the Cloud Recesses had planted a certain ambitious idea in Wen Chao's mind. His own success at Lotus Pier had cemented it into a conviction. Now that he had burned Jiang Fengmian's pathetic sect to the ground, his father's favor was no longer an unattainable prize! Surely, it was no more out of reach than could be got by handing over another great sect leader's head!
Nie Mingjue's head, specifically!
A Wen Chao who had conquered two great sects—just how superior would he look in Wen Ruohan's eyes next to a Wen Xu who had conquered zero? Even supplanting his older brother as chosen heir might be possible!
But lately this great plan had been put in a near state of jeopardy. To ensure his next siege would be a success—a recent embarrassment at the Yao sect could not be forgotten as quickly as might be wished—Wen Chao had requested considerable reinforcements; soldiers from Jin Guangshan's army and ones from the Nightless City.
The Jin forces had arrived as ordered, if counting fewer numbers than Wen Chao thought should have been his due.
The Wen forces had not arrived at all.
Three days had passed since their promised date of arrival and still no search party had been able to procure a sign of them, not so much as a single hair.
Logically, a few hundred soldiers couldn't just disappear—but so it was.
At this point everyone in the encampment knew to step carefully around their commander. Certainly, none among the watchtower guard wanted to find out if one sleepless night was what it took for Wen Chao's patience to run out completely. A group of men accordingly flew off to find and silence the flutist. Others hastened to second young master Wen's tent, placating assurances at the ready. The rest remained, content to wait for the music to cut off.
Only, it did not cut off.
No, it seemed to be coming closer.
And before long there was something else; the rustling of flapping wings and the unmistakable cawing of birds. Too numerous to count, crows had started circling the black forest noisily, more heard than seen in the evasive moonlight.
The watchtower guard were at a complete loss.
"With this racket er-gongzi will really be angry!"
"Crows aren't even nocturnal! What's drawing so many here during the dead of night?"
"Look! Look there!" a young guard shouted, pointing into the darkness.
A person had appeared on the path to camp. An imposing figure, clad entirely in fluttering white, tall and particularly broad-shouldered. A man, it looked like. While such an appearance brought Gusu Lan to mind his robes didn't actually resemble that sect's uniform in style, and there was no sword at his hip. But his warrior's physique was enough reason for alarm by itself.
"No step further!" the chief guard shouted. With a hasty gesture he made his people ready their bows. "You have trespassed on the territory of the great Qishan Wen sect! Identify yourself, stranger!"
The man gave no answer. He didn't even appear to have heard.
"Speak, or I'll order my men to shoot!"
When there was still no reaction, the first arrow was loosened.
It flew directly at the man—yet, somehow, there was no sign of impact. The stranger continued motionless, after a few moments merely looking up and thereby revealing an expression of scalding disdain.
"Is he deaf?! Shoot again! And don't miss this time!"
But neither a second, third nor fourth arrow hit the stranger, no matter how spot-on their trajectories.
The young guard gasped, "Look at his eyes! Is he...?!"
"G-ghost! It's a ghost!!!"
"Calm down!" the chief guard snapped, even though he, too, was secretly disconcerted. "Are you cultivators or not?! I—I will handle it!"
And, determined to do so, he drew his sword. However, in that moment something made him freeze and raise his eyes to the black hills. His men behind him were the same; collectively alerted by something, each one of them had turned towards the darkness.
After a few beats it was unmistakable. Shrill laughter was resounding somewhere in that direction, every moment more audible. And then screaming, moaning, howling—hundreds of interminable voices in no need of breath.
"By Wen Mao... what is happening?" someone whispered.
No one had an answer.
"The ghost!" the young guard yelped. "The ghost is gone!"
It was indeed. Lost with their attention, the white-robed specter had vanished without a trace.
Now the earth started to rumble and wood audibly splintered in the hills. Heavy things hit the ground successively; trees dropping, felled by something very, very large coming closer with rapid speed, trampling everything in its path without a care.
The guards all stood petrified, unable to accept what their ears were telling them. They had been fighting nothing but the living for more than twelve months now and it was the living against whom they had prepared their maneuvers, the living they planned to subdue—the living they would have pictured had they known this night would bring an attack.
By the time the chief guard unfroze and grappled for a gong mallet to frantically strike the alarm, it was too late.
Bringing the sulfurous smell of resentful energy, spirits came shooting out of the sky, before that moment camouflaged among the crows—a dozen, no, fifty, no, a hundred—all screeching with excitement as they pelted onto tents like black smoke bombs with bloodthirsty visages.
Screams rose as people got slashed open by spectral claws or suddenly saw their comrades drained of life in neighboring cots.
Just like that the entire encampment was awake.
Torches and braziers were fired up only to immediately flash pale green, while orders were shouted, commanding generals springing into action to control the panic caused by the ambush. To their credit a counterattack was organized quickly. Ghost fire reflected in swords everywhere as cultivators streamed forth to engage the spirits in combat, the strongest of them making sure to run and safeguard their second young master's tent.
Courage started to bolster people's hearts—fighting shoulder to shoulder, the cultivators remembered their training and found their footing, especially once they realized that the spirits were outnumbered.
Talismans got thrown here and there.
Not many—gathered, as they were, to besiege a great sect, very few of the two thousand soldiers carried nighthunting equipment on their persons.
In the distance, the flute embarked on a shrill crescendo.
"There! There!!!" the young guard screamed where he had remained alone atop the watchtower. Whatever was there wasn't clear—the boy was cut off as a ghost ripped out his throat—however, a gag-inducing stench announced things well enough on its own. Like materializing shadows, hundreds of figures were racing out of the forest, all bulging eyes, bared teeth and flailing limbs; an army of corpses moving with single-minded purpose.
Overhead, the crows grew frenzied, swooping low to gain on the plethora of meat now that it had finally left the cover of the trees.
Indifferent to their sharp beaks, the dead crashed against the reinforced encampment wall and immediately used one another's heads and shoulders as footholds to climb up and over, spilling into the cultivators' stronghold with alarmingly little difficulty.
There were white and red uniforms among this advancing flood; familiar, dear faces, frozen in a rictus of early decay. They were the reinforcements second young master Wen had been impatiently awaiting. Instead of warm and amicable their arrival at camp was just mindless appetite and a thirst for violence.
Soldiers stood rooted to the spot, watching in horror how their comrades fell to their own sect brothers and sisters, ripped to shreds between rancid teeth and feasted on with a voracity that surpassed the vigor of life.
A stupefied mind proved an easy prey and so these frozen onlookers quickly got their bodies snatched by opportunistic ghosts or were ensnared in the resentment which had rolled in with the dead. Their deepest fears emerged to greet them within this wicked fog, stolen from the darkest recesses of their own minds and given form by malice.
Quite a few collapsed on the spot, blood gushing out of their eyes and ears.
Some dropped their swords to strangle themselves until bloody foam coated their lips, all the while screaming for help, mercy or forgiveness with as much energy as their choked voices would allow, not seeming to realize they alone were hampering their pleas and extinguishing the spark of life in their eyes.
Not even the fallen were spared from insanity. While the moon hid completely behind dark clouds, death itself no longer offered any salvation.
The flute music swelled to a fever pitch and blank eyes opened to roll in their sockets, silenced throats rumbled, broken spines and broken necks snapped back into place with chilling cracks, while severed hands crawled across the blood-soaked earth in confused agitation, tripping those still desperately fighting.
In this manner, corpses got to their feet everywhere, as eager as if there were a reward to be won by standing first, a master to please by way of obedience.
And there was.
The very last to leave the forest, their master appeared, his figure lean and dark, his step certain, his flute frenzied to match the mad glow of crimson shining in his eyes.
-------
Wei Wuxian set foot into the Coalition encampment at a time when the dead already far outnumbered the living.
Corpses were shambling about between ruined tents everywhere without anyone left to fight, seeming simultaneously eager to get close to him and wary of getting in his way. The ghosts were more courageous, whispering and giggling in his ear, playing tricks or squabbling over bloody human remains. In many ways they mirrored the crows come to avail themselves of the abundance of carrion. The mischievous birds had with every passing day grown in number, impossible to get rid of.
All of Wei Wuxian's focus was required just to walk steadily forward and play his flute, at this point not to egg on, but to make everyone quiet down again. It was a lot more difficult to play here than it had been in the forest. At least half the tents stood ablaze, green fire devouring tent poles, embroidered suns and peonies as well as the corpses strewn about in between. It all made the air nearly unbreathable, but Chenqing required breath, so he breathed.
At least he felt none of the heat. Though maybe that wasn't really an advantage either. Amidst the crackling and groaning of the flames, Wei Wuxian was moving as though through ice water, the deluge of resentment gallivanting through his meridians a barrier which no warmth could penetrate.
He was so cold his fingers were shaking as they played. Whatever doubtlessly ugly melody they were producing to pacify the dead—not that Wei Wuxian could hear his own flute over the clamor of voices screaming in his mind—was thus further butchered.
...Well, maybe fatigue also had something to do with Wei Wuxian's shaking, but the cold definitely wasn't helping.
Since his and Jin Zixuan's escape from the Jin prison three days had passed.
They had been three days of corralling hundreds of dead beings without intermission, an activity which had turned out to not pair well with having human needs. Wei Wuxian honestly couldn't remember when he had last eaten or slept or done anything but monitor the temper of his dead followers—followers who he was reasonably sure would turn on him at the slightest provocation—and since resealing his golden core had by necessity become second nature, he couldn't even offset his exhaustion with spiritual energy or practice inedia.
Things had only gotten more intense after he'd run into and added a hundred men strong group of Wen reinforcements to his ranks one day into the journey.
It was really a good thing then that it didn't matter if his music was a botched-up mess.
Minor discomforts like physical deprivation aside, the last few days had been a very educational period of trial and error. Among other things, they'd confirmed what Wei Wuxian had long suspected about this new cultivation path he'd come to develop; so long as his resolve was firm, his composure unshaken and his offer of guidance persuasive, the dead would obey him. The result didn't change if he played them Yunmeng's raunchiest wine house ditty, the same note ad infinitum or just an improvised, discordant melody.
The dead yearned for his flute but cared not for its sound. It was guidance they wanted; to be serenaded from despair and confusion into clarity and purpose. This was especially true for the corpses. Perhaps because their loss of self was generally very extreme, their desire for direction was wild, like a hook at the core of their very beings that Wei Wuxian only needed to gently tug at to override even remnant loyalty they possessed for the people he asked them to kill.
Not even during his most arrogant moments of speculation had he expected such easy obedience from the bodies of his enemies—or, for that matter, such ease at dominating his living ones.
Ever since Wei Wuxian had realized he could actually win he had needed to suppress a persistent itch to break out into bewildered laughter. His over-tiredness probably wasn't improving his sense of humor, but it was laughable how much these cultivators were struggling, how few talismans they'd had to throw around. How extremely unprepared they were for anything a nighthunt might demand of them, when the business of nighthunting was one of the main reasons cultivation sects existed in the first place!
Who knew that all the Sunshot Campaign had to do to get a leg up on Wen Ruohan's overpowered army was to confront them with the duty they had abandoned for a petty human war?
Wei Wuxian couldn't imagine a more perfect irony.
Currently, the few soldiers still living were entirely engaged on the side of the encampment opposite to him—the one where Yanling Daoren was.
Wei Wuxian's martial uncle had initially, if very begrudgingly, waited to join the fight. It had been an extreme sacrifice, since Yanling Daoren was as eager to kill sect cultivators as a resentful spirit very well could be. And in the same vein, he had not been very inclined to share Wei Wuxian's views on why there was one sect cultivator—Ling Yuxuan—who should not become a casualty.
Still, Wei Wuxian had asked the favor, and Yanling Daoren had obliged him. He'd abstained from shedding blood long enough to steal an unconscious, coreless, tortured-almost-beyond-recognition Ling Yuxuan from his cage and delivered him to Wei Wuxian's feet.
But then Yanling Daoren had wasted no more time.
He had descended on the encampment like a falling star, crashing into the chaos as a maelstrom of black smoke, whipping hair, inhumanly round eyes and a too-wide, grinning mouth to finally claim victims of his own. The dignified cultivation master act he'd been putting on since escaping his tomb had been shrugged off like a bothersome cloak, giving way to every bit of the monstrosity Wei Wuxian had always known was lurking beneath.
A resentful spirit was, at the end of the day, a resentful spirit—and Yanling Daoren was a far more resentful spirit than most.
Even now he was an epicenter of manic laughter and violence, flinging people about seemingly for the sheer sadistic pleasure of seeing them sail through the air and splatter against the ground, or punishing whoever tried to escape this fate by relieving them of their legs.
Wei Wuxian didn't care for such unfettered cruelty but knew better than to interfere with his martial uncle's fun. Eventually, the Coalition soldiers would die—that had to be enough. He had other things on his mind anyway.
Strictly speaking, not every survivor had been claimed by Yanling Daoren. Wei Wuxian knew that Wen Chao yet lived, that he was somewhere by his commander's tent, and that he was heavily injured. It had been Wei Wuxian's particular wish that this should be so; after all, as long as Wen Chao was alive, but too injured to be easily carried to safety, his appointed bodyguard would remain with him in danger—and thereby not slip through Wei Wuxian's fingers.
The female ghost from Lanling Jin's prison had set herself to fulfilling this wish with much enthusiasm. Though generally focused on the Jin sect, her grudge happened to additionally take a turn towards arrogant men in general; a happy coincidence which had made it easy for Wei Wuxian to present Wen Chao's inner circle as a particularly satisfactory target.
Evidenced by the many corpses in high-ranking Wen uniforms littering the ground around the commander's tent, she had already been busy. The only person left standing was Wen Zhuliu.
There weren't many other undead around; a handful of ghosts were lurking in the shadows, too frightened by the female ghost's superior power to try to steal her kill, and there was one animated corpse shambling about fretfully, its presence the result of accident rather than design in that it had clearly lost its way between the walls of fire.
A pitiful assortment of random nighthunting equipment lay scattered across the square, currently getting crushed beneath Wen Zhuliu's feet as the man ran around defending himself against the ghost's claws. Whatever supplies Wen Chao's people had been able to scrounge up, must have all gone towards an attempt at saving their young master.
While his bodyguard was busy fending off ferocious attacks, Wen Chao himself was sitting on the sidelines. No, sitting was too generous a description; the only thing keeping him from collapsing was the stone lantern he was clinging to. Wei Wuxian found he looked much like a child hugging the leg of a parent, a frightened, overwhelmed expression and snot and tears to match.
He was bleeding from his side, and his right leg was a mangled mess of broken bone and bloody flesh that someone had tried to apply a tourniquet to. He was conscious, though, which was more than could be said about Ling Yuxuan.
Wei Wuxian was shocked by none of this.
What he was shocked by, was Wen Zhuliu's state.
The infamous Core-Melting Hand was holding his own against the ghost, but though his movements showed remnants of the confident skill Wei Wuxian remembered from Lotus Pier's ancestral hall, there was none of its effortlessness.
The guy was panting and sweating, several bloody rips marred his black clothes and actual panic glinted in the same eyes which had frequented Wei Wuxian's nightmares since he'd been hunted around Yunmeng Jiang's ancestral tablets, since Lan Qiren's cultivation had been stolen—eyes which he before this moment wouldn't have been able to picture otherwise but void of all emotion.
Wen Zhuliu had the look of a man who was not only rapidly approaching his limit but also viscerally aware that it was so.
Despite all the absurdities of the night, this was what finally broke Wei Wuxian. Chenqing dropped from his lips as he was gripped by a violent fit of laughter. He could barely breathe—he certainly couldn't stop, only interrupting himself for the occasional hacking cough as the smoke in his lungs finally demanded attention.
The man who had everyone shitting bricks at the mere mention of his name—the man because of whom Wei Wuxian had spent countless sleepless nights, been filled with hatred, desperation and helplessness in equal measure—how could he look so ragged?! He looked like he was fucking scared of death!!!
"Wen Zhuliu, Wen Zhuliu!" Wen Chao screeched. "There! There!!! It's—it's Wei Wuxian!!!"
Though Wen Zhuliu must have noticed Chenqing's tune coming closer and finally cutting off, it was only now that he seemed to think he could spare any attention. Or maybe whirling around was more a shocked impulse than an active decision—with a frenetic air, Wen Zhuliu located Wei Wuxian at the end of the lantern walkway, turned chalk white and actually stumbled.
Moments later the female ghost was upon him. With a single gleeful slash of her hand, she opened up his back, from tailbone to shoulders, a crimson arch of blood following in the wake of her claws.
Wen Zhuliu fell to his knees.
"Is it him?! It's him, it is! Why?!" Wen Chao screeched, clinging more tightly to his stone support. "Why's he haunting me?! He should go after the rabid bitch who killed him! Wen Zhuliu—Wen Zhuliu, you useless bastard, don't sit!!! Stand up! Get rid of him!!!"
But Wen Zhuliu just kept bleeding in the dirt. He wasn't even trying to obey the order, seeming entirely too stunned.
What is this? Wei Wuxian thought, chuckling deliriously. Don't tell me they're both taking me for a fucking ghost?
"Don't haunt me—" Wen Chao continued, crying so inconsolably snot was running down his chin, "—I didn't do anything—I didn't do anything!" And, in a sudden eruption of courage, he sent his sword towards Wei Wuxian, a gaudy, bejeweled thing.
Summoning a wave of resentment, Wei Wuxian sent it back without even having to think about it. The blade uselessly clattered across the ground towards Wen Chao, making its owner shriek. Wen Zhuliu called out his charge's name, but didn't dare to look away from Wei Wuxian.
Maybe it wasn't so surprising. The red glow that usurped Wei Wuxian's eyes whenever he channeled resentment indeed resembled a ghost's mad glare and as far as anybody from the Wen sect knew, Yu Ziyuan had murdered him in Lotus Pier.
What else could he be but a vengeful spirit?
With Chenqing fallen silent, the entire world seemed to be holding its breath waiting for him to act. There was only the crackling of fire, Wen Chao's sniveling and the occasional crow cawing somewhere. Yanling Daoren must have finished slaughtering the rest of the soldiers.
"Who says I'm haunting you?" Wei Wuxian chose as his answer, supposing he might as well play into the misconception. "Aren't you thinking too highly of yourself, Wen Chao?"
The implication of his words didn't fail to reach the person it was meant for. While Wen Chao had the gall to look offended, Wen Zhuliu's expression turned grim with acceptance. He finally moved to stand back up, gasping and shuddering and barely managing it as blood streamed down his back, coloring the ground red.
Where was the man who didn't feel pain? Who had ripped Suibian out of his shoulder like the sword was a trifling splinter?!
"Your grudge lies with me," Wen Zhuliu deduced correctly. He summoned his sword into his hand, still breathing heavily. "Then do not involve others in your revenge."
Wei Wuxian burst out laughing. "A fine statement!" he exclaimed, pointing Chenqing at the man like he was making a concession. "A true paradigm of moralism! I agree with it completely. Or I would have—if those others weren't the literal scum of the earth!"
He let out a sharp whistle. The female ghost shot forward at once, howling merrily.
Wen Zhuliu gritted his teeth and assumed a serviceable sword stance, probably serviceable enough he would have been able to defend himself had the ghost attacked him.
As it was, she was headed for someone else.
Realization flashed in Wen Zhuliu's eyes like a bright flame of terror. Moving faster than should have been possible given his earlier struggle—certainly faster than Wei Wuxian had expected—he leapt in front of Wen Chao.
With a sickening lurch, the ghost's elongated fingernails slid into his torso; five separate stabs, at least three reentering through the wounds the man had only just sustained.
He didn't even make a sound.
He simply collapsed as the ghost ripped her hand backwards, landing gracelessly next to a screeching Wen Chao.
Wei Wuxian was stumbling towards him almost immediately. The female ghost let out an annoyed hiss but still backed away from her prey, making room for him. Wen Chao had gone quiet; fainted from shock, or the pain of his wounds being disturbed, Wei Wuxian didn't care enough to check.
He crashed to the ground, grabbed Wen Zhuliu's shoulder and roughly turned him over by it. The man rolled onto his back easily, not resisting one bit.
His eyes were closed.
"You're not supposed to be dead yet!" Wei Wuxian shouted. "I have questions—fuck, wake the fuck up!!!"
There was no response.
He slapped Wen Zhuliu in the face. A second time, a third time. Nothing.
Panic slithered up Wei Wuxian's throat like a serpent trying to choke him out. He threw himself onto the man's chest and shook him. "I need answers! You owe me answers!!!" It was the real reason Wei Wuxian was here at all; the reason he had been willing to commit to this reckless solo stunt.
Sudden pain cut through his desperation. A look to the side revealed the face of a man right next to his own, white and sunken, foul teeth buried in the crook of his neck. It was the animated corpse, slipped past his control with his loss of composure.
"Piss off!!!" Wei Wuxian snarled.
The dead man flinched back as though struck. His teeth hurt more going out than they had going in.
Hissing angrily, Wei Wuxian pressed a hand to the wound and glared until the corpse penitently scampered off. Blood was quickly rising to meet his palm, warm and wet, already drenching the fabric where his robes had been torn. His entire shoulder was burning like hell; a pulsing pain like hot poison spreading even into his freezing limbs.
That wasn't good.
A voice rose to lecture in the back of Wei Wuxian's addled mind, sounding way too much like the Jiang Fengmian of his childhood; the kind, indulgent uncle he had looked up to. When a person is infected with necrotic blood, we call that corpse poisoning. A-Cheng, A-Xian, it is a very serious illness, that must be treated immediately.
A groan rang out below Wei Wuxian, making him jump. For a moment he had forgotten where he was, forgotten Wen Zhuliu's prone form, nothing existing but hot pain and the flashes of green fire and destruction blurring together to the beat of his headache.
Wen Zhuliu's eyes were open. They were staring directly at Wei Wuxian's blood-covered palm. And then the man's right hand started to glow red and move up towards Wei Wuxian's middle.
Wei Wuxian wasted no time to slap it down. "Took your sweet time waking up! Now tell me—how do I reverse your core melting technique?"
Confusion visibly flitted through Wen Zhuliu's pain-clouded eyes. The red pool beneath him was steadily growing; it likely wouldn't be long before blood loss claimed his life.
"Tell me how!" Wei Wuxian shouted.
But the Core-Melting Hand paid no attention to his words. He was still focused on trying to touch his stomach.
With a snarl Wei Wuxian stood and kicked the offending hand down, then, burning with rage, raised his foot and slammed his heel into Wen Zhuliu's wrist, as hard as he could.
The crunch of shattering bone was incredibly satisfying.
But Wei Wuxian wasn't done—while Wen Zhuliu whimpered and shuddered like a wounded animal, he drew Suibian from his qiankun pouch, ignored the agonizing burn of her sword spirit trying to connect with his sealed golden core, and swiftly thrust her blade through the man's palm, pinning the dangerous hand to the ground.
For a moment Wen Zhuliu seemed lost to unconsciousness again, but as Wei Wuxian kneeled on his chest and gripped him by the jaw his eyes fluttered open.
"Where did you put all the energy you stole? The golden cores of Lan Qiren and Jin Zixuan, of all the cultivators fighting for their lives against your precious Wen-zongzhu—where did all their energy go?!"
Wen Zhuliu sighed.
Wei Wuxian dug his fingernails into the man's face and shoved his knee harder into his sternum.
It just elicited a silent, pained groan.
"Tell me how to reverse your technique!!!"
Now a faint smile, red with blood-smeared teeth. "...Impossible..."
"Shut up! It's not! It can't—then tell me how the technique works! I will figure out the rest myself. How did you get this power? How does it work?!"
Wen Zhuliu let his head roll sideways and closed his eyes, refusing to answer.
"You—" What, what could Wei Wuxian actually do? "I'll kill you! Once you're dead I'll take control of your spirit and just make you tell me your secrets!"
This finally got a proper reaction. Wen Zhuliu's eyes flew open, his breath hitched, and his left hand flailed helplessly over the ground, every bit of it signaling abrupt panic.
"—No! You mustn't!"
"You've seen what I can do," Wei Wuxian insisted, urgent with hope. "Not even death can save you from me—I can force Empathy on your pathetic spirit, witness your entire sorry life from beginning to end!"
It happened in an instant—one moment Wei Wuxian was shouting any threat he could come up with in Wen Zhuliu's face, the next the man was moving with a sudden burst of power.
Wei Wuxian wasn't fast enough to stop him, barely comprehended what was happening in the first place.
Somehow, during his helpless squirming, Wen Zhuliu had managed to reach Wen Chao's sword.
Now it was sticking out of his throat.
Blood hit Wei Wuxian's hand in spurts, a hot, sticky mess, as Wen Zhuliu's torso spasmed beneath his knee so violently he was almost thrown off. A gurgling moan left the man's mouth, sounding like there was liquid rising up his throat, and then actual bloody bubbles burst on his lips and dark red blood flowed down his chin.
Suddenly, he was completely still.
Wei Wuxian stared at the lifeless body he was kneeling on, one trembling hand still clutching its now blood-slick jaw.
But Wen Zhuliu's eyes were dull—truly void of all emotion now, glazed over with the complete indifference only the dead could wear.
He had killed himself.
"No. No!"
Springing to his feet too quickly, Wei Wuxian swayed for a moment. As soon as he had stopped seeing black spots, he was playing Chenqing frantically, calling for a recently released spirit, trying to find it among the clamor in his head.
There was a moment of panic during which he was unable to find him, then—a splinter and another and another; fragments of a shattered soul.
Letting out a string of colorful curses, Wei Wuxian started to stumble about, eyes wildly scouring the nighthunting equipment on the ground. Why did the prevailing assumption that suicide ghosts were rare have to hold true in this instance?! Why couldn't Wen Zhuliu have stuck around after stabbing himself in the throat like the temple keeper from Lingshan?!
There—next to a bunch of scattered spirit repelling talismans a small spirit trapping pouch lay abandoned in the dirt. Wei Wuxian snatched it up and ripped it open, hastily gathering the weak whisps of Wen Zhuliu's shattered soul before they could be swept off by the wind.
"I'll get you... as soon as your spirit has recovered," he threatened, wavering on his feet. "I'll get you yet..."
Only, there was no guarantee that Wen Zhuliu would recover. As far as Wei Wuxian knew, there were few records documenting the use of spirit trapping pouches on fragmented spirits—and none at all proving shattered spirits could be mended.
The female ghost cackled on top of Ling Yuxuan's empty cage, kicking her feet and pointing at Wen Zhuliu's corpse. 'Dead, dead, dead!!!' she screamed.
They were the first comprehensible words she had spoken since leaving the prison. Wei Wuxian stared at her manic grin. Then he sank to his knees, barely feeling the pain fanning out from his shoulder.
He had failed. Wen Zhuliu had died and taken his best chance to learn how to restore Lan Qiren's golden core with him. None of Wei Wuxian's determination had mattered. He couldn't repay his debt, could never deserve the old man's sacrifice.
'Foolish,' a deep voice spoke directly behind him.
Wei Wuxian roused himself enough to turn. Yanling Daoren once more looked deceptively human, his spotless robes and haughty face showing no trace of the brutality he had enacted.
'How could you let your veins become inundated with the poison of death?' the ghost asked critically.
Wei Wuxian slumped, shakily touching his bleeding shoulder.
With a disapproving huff, Yanling Daoren averted his red eyes. 'More are coming,' he observed cooly. 'More of your... so-called allies.'
"...What?" Wei Wuxian tried to follow his martial uncle's gaze, looking into the blurry distance behind the ruined encampment. He was surprised to find the hills on the horizon already dusted a faint lilac with coming dawn.
And then he saw it.
There was a swarm of white in the sky, a flock of doves. No. A host of Lan cultivators, racing towards the bloody carnage that was left of Jining Tripoint's Wen encampment.
No sooner had Wei Wuxian comprehended this, than qin and flute music could be heard, and the Song of Eradication rose to fill the air.
The resentful hoard—gone quiet under Chenqing's last orders and the waning night, began screaming again, this time in agony. On top of the cage, the female ghost shrieked as she was hit by a wave of icy blue spiritual energy. Ribbons of black resentment were torn off her form before she darted away with a furious wail. The soldier who had bitten Wei Wuxian wasn't as fortunate—he stumbled about, wailing and pressing his hands over his ears, before suddenly dropping to the ground, inert.
And then the cultivators were close—close enough it was almost possible to make out faces.
Leading them was one whose technique clearly outshone the rest, whose music rang truer and deadlier, who was finishing off scores of undead with frightening competence.
How could Wei Wuxian not recognize that perfect technique?
That lovely figure, elegant even when fighting atop a flying sword?
That silky hair, whipping in the wind, those pristine white robes?
How could he mistake the ache in his heart?
Peerless, breathtaking, qin in hand and eyes hard and clear as chrysoberyl stone—it could only be him.
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