Reading Time: 91 Minutes

Title: A Gift of Time
Author: MeyariMcFarland
Fandom: The Untamed
Genre: Established Relationship, Family, Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, Paranormal/Supernatural, Pre-Relationship, Time Travel
Relationship(s): Lan Zhan / Wei Ying, canon background pairings
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Violence-Domestic, Violence-Against Children/Child Abuse. Time travel, canon typical violence and abuse, name change
Author Note: previous generation focus, relationship weirdness due to reincarnation / immortality
Word Count: 96811
Summary: After achieving immortality three long, lonely years after Wei Ying died, Lan Zhan walked out of the Cloud Recesses for what he expected to be the last time. The Burial Mounds had only become more depressing than the last time he saw Wei Ying. He thought, perhaps, that he could speak to Wei Ying when he played Inquiry. He didn’t. Instead, a completely different soul answered, breaking his heart all over again and sending him on a quest to change absolutely everything.
Artist: Silver Dragonfly
Artist Appreciation: Thank you so much for the gorgeous art–it’s like you saw into my brain! 😀

---

---

1. Shining Star

Lan Zhan worked to breathe evenly as he slowly walked through the shattered remnants of the encampment at the Burial Mounds. The rough huts that had been made marginally home-like with bits of ancient fabric pieced together into straw-stuffed cushions had burned to the ground. Where once A-Yuan had been buried with the radishes, so that he would grow up big and tall, there were only scraggly weeds.

Even the remnants of Xue Chonghai’s palace walls had been battered until they were little more than heaps of rubble. There might have been something like a village here three years ago. Now there was little to show that once it was a tiny home.

Around Lan Zhan, resentful spirits wailed in the desiccated black branches of the few trees that still stood. The dead lurked beyond the rough edges of Wei Ying’s wooden boundary “stones”. Their weathered wood was slowly decaying, dry rot consuming them as the Burial Mounds didn’t get enough rain for proper wet rot. Soon, the boundary would fail entirely, and the dead would be free to reclaim Wei Ying’s home.

His back ached.

Three years after he was beaten nearly to death. Three years after Wei Ying and all the Wen died. Three years since the Lan Elders decreed that he would be purified in bloody punishment and still his back hurt.

He’d spent the time imprisoned in the Jingshi cultivating furiously. Xiongzhang and Uncle Qiren had assumed it was to repair the damage done. Why else would Lan Zhan work so hard to rebuild his strength?

As if that mattered.

Wei Ying was dead. His soul had moved on from this life, drunk the waters of forgetfulness, and would be reborn. That was the only reason that Lan Zhan had cultivated so hard.

He had to survive so that he could be reunited with Wei Ying.

Achieving immortality had taken two years, nine months, seventeen days from the time Wei Ying died. In a decade or so, perhaps fifteen years, Wei Ying would once again be that brash young teenager. His body would be different. He would wear a different face, perhaps a different gender, but he would still be Wei Ying.

No matter what body Wei Ying wore, he would always be Lan Zhan’s zhiji. All Lan Zhan had to do was find him and now he had the gift of time. No matter how many incarnations it took, Lan Zhan would someday find his Wei Ying again.

They would be reunited.

The Lan had fought to keep him in the Cloud Recesses, especially after he achieved immortality on completely average morning in that grey period between the darkest time of night and the sun’s rays turning the mountain peaks gold. Lan Zhan had stepped from mortality to immortality between breaths, kneeling in his Jingshi and staring at one of Wei Ying’s silly sketches of bunnies.

Everyone in the Lan had felt it. Many in Caiyi Town had, as well. There were messages from all the Great Sects within the next two days. The news had flown through the entire cultivation world within ten days.

Lan Zhan had announced that he would travel. Freely. Without an escort. Wherever and whenever he wanted.

The Elders had, as Wei Ying might have said it, looked as if they’d sucked on a rotten egg, but they hadn’t done more than complain about it. No one could match Lan Zhan anymore. Even Xiongzhang was leagues away from stopping him, which had been one of the main reasons that Lan Zhan had worked so hard.

Uncle Qiren, in particular, had argued vociferously about Lan Zhan’s insistence on wearing mourning white when he left.

“If you wish to walk among the people,” Uncle Qiren had said just that morning, lips pinched and eyes troubled, “you must present the proper face. This… mourning… is not appropriate, A-Zhan. We have tolerated it until now but—”

He’d snapped his mouth shut on the coming threats when Lan Zhan lifted his eyes and glared.

Uncle Qiren’s cultivation had never recovered from the damage the Wen did to him. Xiongzhang focused so hard on ruling the Lan that he barely had time to maintain his own cultivation. And Lan Zhan?

Well, one didn’t offer threats to the newest immortal, especially not when he glared like that.

Lan Zhan had taken to Bichen and flown out of the Cloud Recesses, hopefully for the last time, dressed in his mourning white. There was nowhere else that he could go now that he was free besides here, Wei Ying’s home.

The dust of the Burial Mounds seemed reluctant to settle on his robes. Lan Zhan wouldn’t have cared if the Burial Mounds buried him, swallowed him whole. Everything that mattered to him was gone. The so-called honor of the Lan was a sham, a façade maintained by the viciousness of the Elders. The great sects were no more than squabbling children determined to have the most and shiniest toys. The common folk were nothing more than cattle to the sects, no matter what they claimed.

And Wei Ying was dead.

A child’s voice wailed through the tree closest to Lan Zhan.

A familiar child’s voice.

“A-Yuan?” Lan Zhan breathed.

His heart lurched as he summoned Wangji. It hovered in front of him, strings already humming Inquiry. The whole of the Burial Mounds seemed to hold its breath as Lan Zhan played.

“Rich-gege? Where’s Xian-gege? Where are Auntie Qing and Uncle Ning?”

The plaintive little questions warbled out of Wangji like a stab to Lan Zhan’s heart. No. It couldn’t be. A-Yuan had been hidden here? He must have… He must have died waiting for someone to come back for him.

Three years he’s been waiting with only angry ghosts and the resentful dead lurching about around him.

“They’ve gone away,” Lan Zhan played to A-Yuan, stomach churning and heart aching with renewed grief. “Would you like to join them, A-Yuan?”

“Mm. It’s scary here. Want Xian-gege.”

A guqin should not be able to carry that much… personality. Lan Zhan could hear the shy smile, see the brave lift of A-Yuan’s chin and the way he bit his lip nervously before beaming at Lan Zhan. There was even a little shuffling sound like A-Yuan bounced on his toes hopefully.

“I will show you the way, then,” Lan Zhan said via Wangji. “Listen. Follow the music. Xian-gege is waiting for you with the rest of your family.”

And so, heart breaking, Lan Zhan played Rest to soothe A-Yuan’s soul. He could feel the moment where it worked, where A-Yuan let go of this world and stepped towards the next. There was a lightening of the resentment in the Burial Mounds as if all the souls were listening and following A-Yuan along the path to reincarnation.

But then A-Yuan paused.

“Rich-gege,” A-Yuan said with a distinct pout and a thunderous frown that came across as a drumming sound on the body of Wangji, “you lied. Xian-gege isn’t there. Auntie Qing says his soul is, is… trapped? Can’t ever be free. Why can’t Xian-gege be free? The between place looks nice. Want Xian-gege there with us.”

Lan Zhan’s knees gave out. He collapsed to the ashy soil in a puff of dust that stained his mourning clothes grey all along the hems of his sleeves and up to his thighs.

“A-Yuan,” Lan Zhan played with trembling fingers, “is your Auntie Qing able to hear me?”

“Mm! She’s here. She’s angry.”

“I don’t blame her,” Lan Zhan played. “Go on, A-Yuan. I swear that I will find and free your Xiang-gege.”

“Promise?” A-Yuan asked so warily that Lan Zhan huffed a laugh.

“I promise,” Lan Zhan played.

Rarely had he played anything with more sincerity than that. It seemed sufficient because the air around Lan Zhan shifted. A-Yuan’s light presence disappeared, replaced by a pounding fury that scorched Lan Zhan’s face. Wangji wailed as Wen Qing screamed at him.

“Don’t you promise things you can’t deliver!” Wen Qing bellowed through Wangji’s lowest tones. “You can’t free him. No one can. That fucking Seal tore his soul apart and then fused it with the very rocks he died on. He’ll be fused to them until the rock is worn to dust and then to the dust after that. There is no freedom, no rebirth, nothing but suffering for Wei Wuxian!”

Lan Zhan put his hands on Wangji’s strings as a wounded sound erupted out of his mouth.

“No,” Lan Zhan whispered.

“Yes.”

Even muffled by his hands, Wen Qing’s response was clear. He lifted his hands and Wangji vibrated with her fury. She didn’t say anything. Lan Zhan could feel her glare, hear her huff, taste the sour misery choking her throat even this long after she ceased to have a body.

“Nothing can liberate him?” Lan Zhan asked carefully. Hopefully even though his stomach had already fallen down to his ankles in dread.

No ghost could lie through Inquiry. It wasn’t possible. Wen Qing snorted, a sharp snap of the highest string, and then sighed a glissando across all of Wangji’s strings.

“Nothing,” Wen Qing replied. “His core was gone, cut out and given to Jiang Wanyin. If he’d had a core, maybe. Not likely, but it could have been done if you’d been here sooner. Full of resentful energy? This long after the fact? Not a chance. You’d have to go back in time to stop it all to save him.”

Lan Zhan blinked. Then blinked again. And then blew out a breath while carefully formulating his next question.

“Could I travel in time?” Lan Zhan asked. “My soul? Send my soul back in time to my younger self with the knowledge to save—”

“Never,” Wen Qing snapped at him. She all but slapped his hands away from Wangji. “You’d drive your younger self mad. You’re an immortal, you idiot. His body and soul can’t handle what you are now. No, you’d have to send your body back in time.”

Lan Zhan grimaced, shaking his fingertips out, and then continued. “Can I send my body back?”

“With enough power, yes,” Wen Qing said more warily this time. “I think a Lan did it before. Lan An? Lan Yi? Don’t remember anymore, if I ever knew. One of them. Go look at your own records.”

Then she was gone, and the Burial Mounds fell silent around Lan Zhan.

He knelt in the ashy soil, breathing so rough that Lan Zhan felt like a boy sitting down for his first round of meditation, so nervous and uncertain that he could nearly claw his way out of his own skin.

Twenty breaths later, Lan Zhan stood. He sheathed Wangji. Brushed his robes off before drawing Bichen.

A Lan had done it before.

A Lan was going to do it again, no matter what the price might be. Wei Ying would be saved.

2. Darkened Path

Indigo-dyed cotton felt odd against Lan Zhan’s skin. He would have thought that he would get used to it in the last several years, but he hadn’t. Cotton was fine. It was warm and soft, especially in winter. It was the blue that threw him off every time he caught a glimpse of his sleeves or the short robes that ended just above his knees.

Five years since A-Yuan moved on to the next life. Five years since Lan Zhan had discovered that everything he thought he’d known was wrong. Five years of research and effort, all for this day.

Hopefully the indigo robes and his dozens of qiankun bags full of goods and money would survive what he intended to do. Yiling was still dark and vaguely disreputable. Lan Zhan had put a good bit of effort into convincing all the sects that they needed to purify the Burial Mounds.

They’d done a good job of pushing the resentful energy inwards towards Wei Ying’s old village. Yiling itself had fewer hauntings, less of an air of grim despair and grinding poverty. But it was still not quite right despite the protective wards that the Lan had put up around the town.

Nothing made up for the weight of the Burial Mounds looming down at the town.

Of course, that was to be expected. All the resentful energy, the ghosts, the dead were still there. No one had been able to banish them. Lan Zhan had very carefully not suggested a single technique that would reduce the power of their resentment. All that the sects’ work had done was to concentrate the Burial Mounds’ energy into a smaller and smaller location.

A very small location.

Just the cave and a few hundred paces worth of ground outside of it.

At night, the Burial Mounds pulsed red, so brightly that stars could not be seen in Yiling. During the day, Yiling smelled of scorched earth and the faintest edges of rot. When it rained, the clouds broke apart, flowing around the Burial Mounds rather than going over them. It was a problem that Lan Zhan had promised, quite sincerely, to fix before he left the Cloud Recesses for what would be the last time in this era.

Lan Zhan pulled his hair up into a tight topknot, then covered it with a bit of indigo blue cotton. The one indulgence he gave himself was to tie it in place with a red silk ribbon. One of Wei Ying’s ribbons.

That done, Lan Zhan left the inn and walked slowly through Yiling, heading for the border to the Burial Mounds with a sort of anticipation brightening under his breastbone.

It was… possible… that Lan Zhan has been dissociated since Wei Ying’s death. The last year’s worth of preparations had suggested strongly that he was not responding as one should. Not even as an immortal should. Lan Zhan’s emotional flatness had been the subject of a great many private conversations, as well as a couple of public ones that were painfully circumspect.

“I do… wonder…” Xiongzhang had murmured as he escorted Lan Zhan to the gates of the Cloud Recesses yesterday.

“Mm?”

Xiongzhang sighed and rested two delicately careful fingers against Lan Zhan’s wrist. His expression was as calmly smiling as always, other than his troubled eyes. He looked…old. Vastly older than he had before the Sunshot Campaign. It was, possibly, related to Chifeng-Jun’s increasing qi deviations. No matter what Xiongzhang and Lianfang-Jun did, the deviations worsened. It wouldn’t be long before Chifeng-Jun was dead.

Like Wei Ying.

“You.” Xiongzhang paused. Looked away. Looked back and met Lan Zhan’s eyes with a grim sort of determination despite the sickly cast to his skin. “You seemed to die inside. You’ve never been the same. Even, even reaching immortality…”

“Ah,” Lan Zhan sighed and looked away. “My heart did die, Xiongzhang. Now I am simply waiting for Wei Ying to be reborn. It is… difficult. Especially as time is different when you achieve immortality. I do not. Notice? Sometimes. Time passes without my noting it.”

It is perhaps the most blatant and ridiculous lie he had ever attempted. If anything, Lan Zhan was more intensely aware of time since his achievement. Every single moment stretched to infinity now that he had a plan to achieve Wei Ying’s liberation.

“Oh,” Xiongzhang had breathed, eyes wide as his fingers fell away from Lan Zhan’s sleeve. “I didn’t…”

“I didn’t realize it either,” Lan Zhan had replied. “That may be why most immortals do not… engage… with the world.”

There would come a time when Lan Zhan would want to retreat from everything. That time would be after Wei Ying had grown up, after Lan Zhan had seduced and married him, and then after Wei Ying had also cultivated to immortality. He would not lose Wei Ying a second time.

Lie or not, Xiongzhang had accepted it. They had parted at the gates with very proper bows and a very improper hug that Xiongzhang leaned into gladly. Lan Zhan did not know if this timeline would be destroyed once he returned to the past. The work he had done suggested that it would be. If not, well.

At least he parted from Xiongzhang on good terms.

The barrier around the shrunken Burial Mounds throbbed with energy. Every talisman and array crackled as if they were on the verge of collapse. Which they were. Lan Zhan stared at the barrier for a long while, then he followed the outer edge to the former fire pit where Wei Ying used to drink raw fruit wine with Uncle Fourth.

Nie Mingjue stood glowering in the midst of the scattered remnants of the fire pit.

“It’s not going to hold,” Nie Mingjue said in lieu of a greeting, arms crossed like oak tree trunks over his chest.

“Mm,” Lan Zhan agreed.

This close, he could feel the way Nie Mingjue’s qi deviated from the proper path as it flowed through his body. It wouldn’t be long before he died. His heart weakened with every beat, as did the blood vessels leading to his brain.

No other people were there. Nie Mingjue must have stormed out of the inn a while back, leaving his people behind. The Lan’s turn to deal with suppressing the Burial Mounds wasn’t due to start until tomorrow. It was why Lan Zhan was here today.

Nie Mingjue frowned. “Are you all right? What’s with the clothes?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan replied. “There… is a way to fix this.”

“What?” Nie Mingjue demanded only to pause and stare at Lan Zhan. He took in the simple clothes, the peasant-styled bun cover over Lan Zhan’s hair. Then his shoulders went down, and his mouth pinched tight. “A sacrifice?”

“Of a sort,” Lan Zhan said. “I have not… told my brother. I have all the time needed, you see. No one else does. An immortal can… take the power of the Burial Mounds and use it.”

“What for?” Nie Mingjue asked with justified wariness.

Lan Zhan allowed his lips to quirk in a quick smile. “Time.”

“Time?” Nie Mingjue said. “Time for what? No. No, wait. Time travel? Are you serious?”

Lan Zhan nodded. “I would travel back in time to the moment of my birth. It is. Physical. I will be there, in that time in this body, and not here. The energy of the Burial Mounds will come with me, will be burned by the array. I would be separate from my younger self.”

“But what does that do for the Burial Mounds?” Nie Mingjue asked. His hands curled as if he wanted to grab Lan Zhan and hug him until he couldn’t breathe.

“I will arrive in the heart of the Burial Mounds,” Lan Zhan said with another quick smile. “With all the spiritual power of an immortal. I can… dedicate myself to liberating and purifying the Burial Mounds as no one else could.”

That set Nie Mingjue to urgent, jerky paces along the edge of the barrier. His lips moved as he walked, though his murmurs were subvocal, far too quiet for even Lan Zhan to hear. It didn’t really matter, of course. If Nie Mingjue did decide to fight him, to prevent him from making this sacrifice, Lan Zhan would knock him out and do it anyway.

If Lan Zhan wanted Wei Ying back, he needed to let the majority of Wei Ying’s life pass as it had. Staying in the heart of the Burial Mounds and creating a safe place for Wei Ying and the Wen… appealed.

At least, that was what he would tell Nie Mingjue if asked. Better not to have to fight. A battle might damage something in his qiankun pouches.

“You wouldn’t help fight the Wen?” Nie Mingjue asked finally.

“I would assist once the Sunshot Campaign began,” Lan Zhan said. “But I…”

Nie Mingjue nodded as he sighed and rubbed one broad hand over his face. “Wei Wuxian.”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan agreed. “He will. The other me will. I cannot have him back, I know, but I must. Wei Ying must live. He must be safe.”

And Wei Ying would be safe. He would be safe by Lan Zhan’s side. If his younger self survived his arrival, which was not certain from the math and testing that Lan Zhan had done, Lan Zhan would have to make sure that he did not become obsessed with Wei Ying.

Wei Ying was Lan Zhan’s.

“I get that,” Nie Mingjue said.

He turned and stared at the throbbing remnants of the Burial Mounds. Wei Ying’s cave glowed like staring into the heart of a furnace, radiating resentful energy at them. It felt familiar to Lan Zhan. Not quite like Wei Ying but flavored of him.

Lan Zhan had spent quite a bit of time over the last few years gathering up every rock, tree and patch of sand with bits of Wei Ying’s soul fused to them. All of the bits of Wei Ying that remained were deep inside of his cave, next to the blood pool. It hadn’t been an easy task to accomplish, but Lan Zhan couldn’t travel to the past and leave his Wei Ying behind.

“This will, what?” Nie Mingjue asked without looking at Lan Zhan. “Blink out? Collapse inwards?”

“Implosion, actually,” Lan Zhan said. He could hear Uncle Qiren’s lecturing tone in his voice and mentally shrugged when Nie Mingjue straightened up and faced him properly, as if he was Uncle Qiren himself. “The force of the implosion will suck most everything in the area towards the cave. Then it will blast back out. I would recommend returning to Yiling. The wards the Lan put up around Yiling should protect you.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell your brother,” Nie Mingjue complained under his breath.

“That I will still be here,” Lan Zhan said. He smiled wryly for just one moment and was gratified to see Nie Mingjue’s eyes wrinkle with amusement. “It will just take… time for us to speak face to face. If this goes properly, I believe that only I will experience that duration. He will arrive here tomorrow, and I will be here as well, just arriving from… another direction.”

Nie Mingjue shook his head. “This makes my head hurt. You’re sure this will work?”

“Yes.”

“Come out when you can,” Nie Mingjue said, clapping one hand on Lan Zhan’s shoulder. “Don’t hide in here forever. Even immortals need to interact with people.”

Lan Zhan bowed slightly to him, then watched as Nie Mingjue marched back down out of the Burial Mounds. Extending his senses allowed Lan Zhan to feel the moment when Nie Mingjue passed through the wards around Yiling.

He did hate to lie to everyone, but it was necessary. None of them would have accepted it if he’d told them the truth.

Lan Zhan would absolutely survive this. He would live back to this day, existing in parallel with his younger self, if his younger self survived. The other Lan Zhan would not be allowed to fall in love with Wei Ying. But this timeline and the timeline that Lan Zhan would create could not exist together. This world would be wiped out.

Probably.

If not, well, Lan Zhan would not be in it and Nie Mingjue would be able to swear that Lan Zhan must have lied to him.

Lan Zhan slipped through the barrier and strode towards Wei Ying’s cave. The resentful energy couldn’t tear at him, try as it might. An immortal was too strong. His core regenerated faster than the resentful energy could attack. Liberating the Burial Mounds in the past wouldn’t be easy, but Lan Zhan knew that he could do it.

“La…nn…Zha…nnn”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, smiling. “It is time. You will be free.”

The fragments of Wei Ying did not answer. They rarely did. Instead their energy flittered around Lan Zhan as he completed the array that he had built inside of the cave before they began the final push to condense the Burial Mounds as tightly as possible.

It was perfect still. Not many things would survive inside an environment like this, but making clay from the ash and mud of the Burial Mounds and then shaping it to what he needed had worked quite well.

Lan Zhan sat in the middle of his array and breathed.

His qiankun pouches were ready. His clothes were nondescript. Even Bichen had been given a new sheathe that was so ordinary that no one would look twice at it.

It was time.

Lan Zhan poured his energy into the array, dragging all the energy of the Burial Mounds with it. Wei Ying’s energies converged into something like a whirlwind of glowing embers. He could almost see Wei Ying’s face in the whirlwind.

Smiling so brightly. So hopefully.

Then Wei Ying plunged down into Lan Zhan’s array and everything shifted inwards.

And out, out, out, out…

 

3. Quiet Wings

A crow croaked next to Lan Zhan’s head.

He frowned and slowly curled his hands up. Pushed his eyes open to stare into the crow’s beady black eye. It trilled resentfully at him as if disappointed that he wasn’t dead. When Lan Zhan pushed himself up into lotus position, the crow hopped a few steps away.

Then it walked back over to tug at his sleeve sharply.

“No, I am not dead,” Lan Zhan told the crow. “My apologies.”

The crow cackled at him, clapping up into the sky in a furious battering of wings. Pity. Lan Zhan had almost thought that it might have been influenced by Wei Ying’s soul. Or perhaps Wei Ying simply had the sort of personality that fit well with crows. They had followed Wei Ying in huge flocks during the Sunshot Campaign, inky wings blocking the sun when Wei Ying played.

Whether Wei Ying was a human-shaped crow or if the crows simply followed him for the excellent meals, Lan Zhan’s array had worked.

The Burial Mounds loomed around him. It was mid-winter, clearly, as snow lay in drifts all around the opening of Wei Ying’s cave. The dead, black trees outside of the palace looked almost life-like. Snow draped over the branches made for a highly effective shroud to hide the broken ends and lack of buds for the spring.

Wei Ying’s cave was, in this time, nothing more than a cave. The snow had drifted into the opening a bit, not quite far enough to cover Lan Zhan as he lay unconscious. All the improvements that Wei Ying had made were gone.

No shelf of rock carved into a makeshift and miserable bed. No shelves worked into the walls of the cave. Even the blood pool was nothing more than an ice-covered puddle. Oddly, it had no look or smell of blood.

Perhaps that was something that happened later.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan called, heart thumping too hard in his chest.

He couldn’t decide if it would be good or bad if Wei Ying’s scattered consciousness had survived the transition to the past. It would be… pleasant… to have Wei Ying by his side until he was born in two years. It might be better if Wei Ying wasn’t influenced by the scattered bits of his previous incarnation. Perhaps.

Lan Zhan truly couldn’t decide.

“Lannn Zha..ann”

“Ah,” Lan Zhan breathed as the cave filled with glowing ruby embers of Wei Ying’s soul. “You did make it.”

Wei Ying laughed and swirled into a dance around Lan Zhan. There was a hint of arm flung out as Wei Ying twirled, then a flash of a grin. He even saw a faint tracery of red ribbon swirling through the air where Wei Ying’s ponytail would have been.

“Welcome back,” Lan Zhan said. “You will born in two years. We should have… time… to improve things here.”

Wei Ying’s soul fragments stilled, then condensed into a glowing red ball that throbbed in time with the pulse of the Burial Mounds. He sucked in resentful energy so sharply that Lan Zhan gasped and held a hand out as if that would stop Wei Ying.

“Pr…romise… me,” Wei Ying said once he gained enough power to reshape himself into a muddled mass that looked almost human-like, if a human could have arms in the wrong places and a neck three times longer than it should. “No… Lo…tus Pier.”

The words made no sense. At all. Lan Zhan stared at Wei Ying, but his not-quite-ghost only stared solemnly back at Lan Zhan. Even the Burial Mounds seemed to hold their breath in anticipation of Lan Zhan’s reply.

“…You do not want to go to Lotus Pier?” Lan Zhan asked.

“No… please.”

Lan Zhan blinked once more, then bowed formally to Wei Ying. “I promise that I will ensure that you do not end up at Lotus Pier. Or on the streets, if at all possible. I… do not want you to suffer that. Ever.”

Wei Ying’s gathered resentful energy blew away as if he’d been hit by a sudden gust of wind. It was laughter, not wind, delighted and so joyful that Lan Zhan found himself smiling.

The sound of Wei Ying’s laughter carried Lan Zhan through sweeping the cave out. He’d brought a good sturdy broom in his qiankun pouches, anticipating that he would be snowed in when he arrived. It faded into quiet hums and occasional wordless exclamations as Lan Zhan removed the raw materials for a bedframe, a good comfortable mattress and a thick set of sheets and blankets for his newly constructed bed.

When Lan Zhan pulled a door carefully crafted to fit in the opening of the cave, Wei Ying swirled into visibility so that he could throw his ghostly hands up in dismay.

“For this winter,” Lan Zhan explained. “Once the snow melts, I will work to rebuild the palace, bit by bit. And to purify the ground so that I can grow crops. I swore to purify the Burial Mounds. This is the start of it.”

Wei Ying shifted as if he had cocked his head curiously.

“How?”

“A shift of philosophy and sufficient time,” Lan Zhan explained. “Lan Aining traveled in time as I have. He left writings of how he did it and why. There was a… place… like the Burial Mounds which he purified by cultivating with Buddhist philosophy rather than Daoist. It was. Effective.”

Wei Ying hung in the air like an array of glowing fireflies. Then he exploded outwards, filling the cave with excitement. His words, whatever they were, weren’t audible, but Lan Zhan could feel his delight at the new techniques to learn.

The “place” had been the heart of the Cloud Recesses, with the cold spring the same sort of heart as Wei Wuxian’s cave was for the Burial Mounds. Lan Aining’s records and manuals had been hidden deep within the forbidden section of the library, tucked away inside of a cover for a completely different book. Lan Zhan had copied the book and then carefully recovered it in the cover of one of the worst examples of terrible poetry published alongside awful pornographic images that the forbidden section had.

Everyone who ever got access to the forbidden section was told about that particular volume. All of them were warned that it was there specifically because it was trash written by one of the earliest sect leaders. If Lan Zhan had been wrong about wiping out the future he’d come from, that should keep anyone from finding the book again.

Lan Zhan set up a talisman-fueled stove with Wei Ying’s curious hums over it. Hunger wasn’t a problem most of the time. Since he achieved immortality, Lan Zhan had not needed to sleep or eat very much. He could have worked onwards without issue, however Lan Aining had emphasized throughout his writing that success at the purification methods required a strong connection to the world.

Which meant eating. Sleeping. Interacting with people. That one was the one that worried Lan Zhan. He had never been good at talking to people.

The Elders had punished him for anything that they deemed to be even vaguely defiant. In practice, he was punished for expressing any opinions at all. After his mother died, he’d gone through a period of mutism that the Elders had strongly approved of, much to Uncle Qiren’s fury. He’d never gotten back the knack of speaking freely.

“I… need to practice,” Lan Zhan admitted to Wei Ying once he’d made rice and a simple fried tofu and green bean meal.

“Real…ly? Prac… tice… what?” Wei Ying asked.

His cloud of soul fragments floated into a globe that gave the impression of his face staring at Lan Zhan curiously.

“Talking,” Lan Zhan said. He sighed as Wei Ying exploded into laughter, his soul fragments filling the cave entirely. “It is. Difficult. I. When my mother died. I was. Mute. Talking. It was impossible. I never.”

Wei Ying wrapped his many soul fragments around Lan Zhan in the strangest hug that Lan Zhan had ever received.

“Talk… to me,” Wei Ying suggested brightly. “It… helps… me stay… to… gether.”

Stay together.

Interacting with Lan Zhan helped Wei Ying’s soul. Perhaps. With time?

“We have two years before you’re born again,” Lan Zhan said, determination filling him. “Perhaps my effort to learn to speak again can help you reform your soul.”

Wei Ying danced happily as Lan Zhan ate his simple dinner. Finding things to talk about took effort, but Wei Ying helped. He poked at the green beans, which led to Lan Zhan explaining the food that he’d brought back in his qiankun pouches. Which led to a discussion of the sheer number of pouches and all of his plans for building an oasis at the center of the Burial Mounds.

“Lan Zhan… TALK TO ME!”

Lan Zhan started.

He hadn’t realized that he’d stopped talking. Lan Zhan frowned at the plans in his hands. Then at Wei Ying’s vibrating fragments. Sunlight shown through the gap at the bottom of his new door.

“Ah,” Lan Zhan said, licking his lips. “Thank you, Wei Ying. I. I didn’t realize that I’d lost track of time. I’m. I’m not. I’m afraid that I am not what I should be.”

The worried aura coming off Wei Ying shifted into a sad sort of sympathy. This was. Well. Likely this was going to be more difficult than Lan Zhan had expected.

“I believe that I will work on getting our cave set up, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said.

Talking his way through gathering snow and melting it with a talisman was odd. His throat was not used to speaking so much. But Wei Ying laughed at Lan Zhan’s efforts to shovel snow. He danced when Lan Zhan managed to get the snow to melt. And then Wei Ying strongly encouraged Lan Zhan to boil the water so that it would be properly purified.

He had talismans for purification of the water. Boiling it worked as well as the talisman, for more water than even six talismans could handle at once.

“Thank you, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said as he poured his clean water into the waist-high cistern he’d brought back with him. “That was a much more effective way to get fresh water.”

The cistern itself held perhaps two days’ worth of water. Adding a very deep and very powerful qiankun pouch to its interior, however, meant that Lan Zhan would be able to fill it with a small lake’s worth of water, all easily accessible. His small bucket fit perfectly in the opening of the cistern, too, which was pure happenstance. All his plans hadn’t included simple things like fresh, potable water.

Short-sighted of him.

Lan Zhan sighed and rubbed his throat. “I think I shall have some tea, Wei Ying. Talking so much is… taxing.”

Wei Ying laughed; his smile affectionate in the glimpses of his face that his shattered bits of soul allowed. As Lan Zhan made tea, verbally narrating that he’d brought back his own favorite tea, a peach and strawberry herbal tea that had been Xiongzhang’s secret addiction on the worst days of their youth, and several large, old, rock-hard blocks of pu’erh tea that should last him, oh, three or four decades before he ran out.

“My tea will not last long,” Lan Zhan said as he poured the first flush of water off and then refilled his gawain. “White teas are very delicate. They go stale incredibly quickly, even in a qiankun pouch. It’s unfortunate, but inevitable. I think that is part of why I like them. Time does not pause for white tea. It is always a race against time to appreciate every cup of it.”

Wei Ying hummed as his soul embers swirled in the steam that came off his cup once he filled it. Lan Zhan smiled and drank, savoring the delicate flavors, the hints of blackberry and the faint touch of grassiness on the final few drops in his cup.

“Someday we will drink tea together,” Lan Zhan promised Wei Ying as he filled his gawain a second time. “I look forward to it.”

When Wei Ying smiled this time, his soul embers blazed brightly as he danced through the cave, always orbiting around Lan Zhan.

It would happen. Lan Zhan would see that it did. Anything that made his Wei Ying happy was something that had to be accomplished, no matter what it took.

 

4. Spring Thaw

Cho Dalong stared up at the Burial Mounds. The spring storms that always swept down out of the Burial Mounds had been… weird… this year. Normally they got hailstones the size of fists with dirty black ice that poisoned the earth if you didn’t gather them up and let them melt somewhere like the middens heap.

If it wasn’t hail, it was thunderstorms with lightning that shattered trees or soaking rains that flooded the town and washed whole hillsides away.

Not this year, though. This year they’d gotten hail, sure, but it was little bitty hailstones the size of a child’s pinkie fingernail. The thunderstorms hadn’t spawned lightning flurries. In fact, the rain that came out of the Burial Mounds this year was, well, moderately normal.

Cho Dalong scowled at the Mounds. Whatever was going on in there, he didn’t like it. They were always dark and dangerous. Every couple of years, a handful of the resentful dead would escape to attack anyone near the Mounds. The last time had ended up in Cho Dalong’s mother’s sister’s cousin getting eaten.

Probably. She might have run off with the Lan boy she claimed was in love with her, but that was so unlikely.

“Dalong!” Mother shouted from their well. “Quit staring and get back to work on the field.”

“Yes, Mother,” Dalong called back.

Dalong winced, trying to hide his flinch from Mother. The farthest field had always been the worst one. It was closest to the Burial Mounds, which meant that nothing grew properly in it. The hillside beyond kept sliding down on top of it, burying half what they planted, but their little farm didn’t produce enough for them to dare to leave the stupid field untilled.

He grumbled under his breath as he worked to loosen the earth with his hoe. This field had gotten buried under a small mudslide just after mid-winter, back when the blast of white light swept over the entirety of Yiling. His younger brothers were supposed to help him clear the mud and rock off, but they’d run off to town before dawn.

The mud was going to be an issue. He could deal with the rocks. They’d make a good start to the repairs on the old stone shed that had been great-grandfather’s first home on their land. It was losing its mortar and needed some new stones to repair the damage around the door.

That mud, though…

Dalong straightened up and shook his head. It had to go on the rice paddy which meant he needed the backpack and a lot more time that Mother was going to accept.

“Good morning.”

White light surrounded the very handsome man who’d appeared at the edge of the field.

Just for a moment. In the blink of Dalong’s eye, the man went from a shining vision of immortal perfection with a chiseled face and bearing that would make most cultivators from the Great Sects look like slouching, drooling drunks to a comely if humble man with worn indigo-dyed clothes and one very red ribbon.

“Ah, good morning?” Dalong said, looking around. “I didn’t see you approaching.”

“My apologies,” the man said with a wry little smile that barely touched his golden eyes. “You were working very hard. Mud slide?”

Dalong groaned and nodded, planting the head of his hoe on the mud-covered field. “Mid-winter. You know, when that flash went up.”

“Ah,” the man said, sucking a breath between his teeth. “That. Yes, that’s unfortunate. I hope you do not have to clear the field alone?”

“You wouldn’t think so,” Dalong said. He snorted and jerked his chin towards Yiling proper, the roofs of which were just visible between the bamboo stalks and pine trees to the east. “But my brothers ran off to town this morning instead of staying to finish the work.”

The man sighed and shook his head in very appropriate dismay. “The youth of today.”

“Yes,” Dalong agreed. He frowned. “You’re… a traveler?”

“I was,” the man said, bowing quite properly, though shallowly so that the early spring mushrooms in his bamboo basket backpack didn’t tumble out. “I was trapped by the snows of winter and made a sort of a home for myself in the hills. Fortunately, I had enough food to survive.”

“You’re lucky,” Dalong said, more than a bit horrified. “You’ll want to be very careful not to make a mistake when you head back. The Burial Mounds are very dangerous.”

“Mm. I am aware of that,” the man said with enough amusement that Dalong had to assume that he’d had encounters of his own that he didn’t want to discuss. Who would, after all?

“Mushrooms for market?” Dalong asked when the silence stretched just a bit too long.

“I need new boots,” the man said. He studied his feet openly, so Dalong had no shame about doing the same.

And yes, he definitely needed new boots. The toes of his boots had torn free from the soles. It looked as though he’d sewn them back together multiple times only to have them tear loose again. The upper parts were worn to the point of translucency and the only reason they stayed on his feet was that he’d wrapped rags around his feet to keep the boots in place.

“Ah, yes,” Dalong said, trying not to laugh out of sheer horror at the thought of fleeing from resentful dead in boots like that. “You certainly do. I need my brothers to make this work go fast enough. Perhaps we can go to town together…?”

The man blinked and then his ears went red in a blush that didn’t quite spread to his cheeks. “My apologies. I forgot to introduce myself. It’s been… some time since I had anyone to talk to. I am Wei Zhan.”

His bow was just a hair deeper this time, aborted quickly as the topmost cluster of oyster mushrooms threatened to tumble right over his head.

“Cho Dalong,” Dalong replied with a proper bow of his own. “Let me tell my mother that I’m heading in town, and we’ll be on our way.”

Telling Mother turned into Mother insisting that they had to give Wei Zhan tea while he waited, which turned into Wei Zhan gifting her one of his oyster mushroom clusters. A nice big one the size of Mother’s head. She exclaimed over it in delight, extracting a promise that Wei Zhan would come to dinner sometime soon so that she could introduce him to everyone in the family.

Tea with some dried fruit and a small bit of jerky each made for a nice break after fighting with the muddy field, so Dalong certainly didn’t complain. Oddly, Wei Zhan seemed perfectly content to sit and listen to all of Mother’s tales of her children’s accomplishments, the weather recently, and the troubles with the Jiang Sect deciding to claim Yiling.

“That is a problem?” Wei Zhan asked, blinking his odd golden eyes solemnly at Mother.

Who blushed like a silly teenage girl faced with her first cultivator on a night hunt! Dalong huffed at her only to get swatted on his elbow. Amusement crept into Wei Zhan’s eyes as Dalong sulked.

“They insisted we have to pay a tax,” Mother grumbled. “Lot of good that tax is going to do for us. Not one of them has come out here, not even when that white light erupted from the Burial Mounds. And the weather has gone strange, too. You’re new. You wouldn’t know. We’ve hardly had any hailstorms. The lightning strikes are way down, too. The heavens alone know what we’ll do if the rains don’t come properly. We certainly can’t drink the water of the river.”

“No?” Wei Zhan asked, frowning at them while holding his teacup frozen halfway to his mouth.

“No!” Dalong squawked. “Don’t ever drink from the river!”

“It’s not safe to drink that water,” Mother said, patting Dalong’s elbow comfortingly this time. “It comes out of the Burial Mounds and it’s full of nasty toxins. Makes people sicker than anything. We don’t dare water the crops with it, or it’ll make them toxic, too. We rely on our wells, but even so, we all have to be careful and pay any passing cultivators for purification talismans to make sure that they don’t get contaminated.”

Wei Zhan drank down his tea, setting it down in a firm little click on the porch. “I know an old Buddhist purification array that might last longer than a standard talisman. If you would like, I could apply it to your well?”

“You’re… you’re a Buddhist priest?” Dalong asked. Maybe that was why he’d glowed?

“Not a priest, no,” Wei Zhan said with that wry little smile. “A devoted lay person, certainly, but I’ve taken no vows.”

He ran his hand over his hair which was properly pulled back into a covered topknot instead of shaven, so yeah, obviously not. Still. A better purification array for the well would be good. Possibly life-saving once the heat of summer hit.

“We couldn’t pay you much,” Mother said slowly.

“I don’t need pay,” Wei Zhan said. “My cave up in the hills is dry and secure. I have water and the mushrooms grow very well. But it’s lonely. Friends would be… nice. And the array is one that came from one of my ancestors. He recorded it so that it could be shared freely wherever and whenever it was needed. He was a Buddhist priest, a very good one. So it would be my honor to give it to you, if you’ll have it.”

Mother looked at Wei Zhan’s earnest face. Then at his shredded boots. She clapped her hands on her thighs, nodding approval with that determined look in her eyes that meant she was going to come up with a way to pay Wei Zhan back no matter what he said.

“Do it,” Mother said. “My husband would have been delighted to meet you. He took vows as a Buddhist priest for a few years when he was young, before we met. Let me go look through his things. Maybe there’ll be something in there that I can pass on to you, young Wei Zhan.”

Wei Zhan laughed softly and bowed from the waist. “Thank you. It is not necessary, but I appreciate the thought.”

Their well was a good deep one with nice solid stone walls and a crank to help draw water up. Dalong had built that crank with his father’s help, back before he caught a fever and died in the middle of winter two years ago. Wei Zhan looked at the well and patted the crank with a nod of approval that made Dalong puff his chest out a little bit in pride.

“Do you need anything to paint with?” Dalong asked as Wei Zhan knelt next to the biggest stone in the well’s wall.

“No, it’s… the prayer carves the array,” Wei Zhan admitted. His ears went red as he gave the house a shifty look. “It’s a bit dramatic, actually. I would prefer you didn’t tell people about it.”

Dalong stared at him for a long moment, long enough for the blush to creep across Wei Zhan’s entire face. Eventually, Dalong chuckled and nodded.

“If you prefer,” Dalong said. “But if it works on our well, everyone will want one, too.”

Wei Zhan nodded. “I understand. But. Well. I have some vague ideas of how to purify the river, too, and I would prefer to consider them without people pestering me first.”

“We’d sing your praises and dance for you if you could do that,” Dalong said.

He cackled as Wei Zhan’s blush consumed his entire face as if he’d been dipped in red dye.

Wei Zhan huffed and shut his eyes. For a moment, nothing happened. Then his hand began to glow with that same soft white glow that Dalong had seen before. Whispering the prayer under his breath, Wei Zhan drew the array on the stone with his lean, strong fingertip.

The stone sizzled. Like fatty pork thrown into the wok, it sizzled and seared away under Wei Zhan’s fingertip. It was a simple array. Just a few characters that Dalong couldn’t read surrounded by a wavy line, but when Wei Zhan closed the wavy line into a completed circle, the white light swept around the well.

All the stones sizzled for a moment. The light surged down into the well which bubbled for several breaths. Then the light blazed up towards the sky in a beam that lasted less than the blink of an eye. Dalong found himself sitting on his butt, staring at the well and panting, unsure of how he’d gotten there.

“It should be pure for years now,” Wei Zhan said, unfolding himself from his kneel by the well. He brushed off his muddy knees and then offered a hand to Dalong. “My apologies. I did say it was dramatic.”

Dalong laughed as he let Wei Zhan pull him upright. “You weren’t teasing! That was. That was something. You sure I can’t tell the guys in town?”

“Not yet, please,” Wei Zhan said, ears going bright red once more.

He drew up a bucket full of water and drank from it, nodding to Dalong to check for himself that the water was pure and clean.

It was. Their well water had never been this clear before. The lingering taste of mud and faint mustiness that even the strongest purification talismans didn’t eliminate was gone. Once, when Dalong was a little boy, he and his father had gone to Lotus Pier for the mid-summer festival to sell their radishes. He’d had water there that was this clear, this cold and clean tasting.

“This is… amazing,” Dalong whispered. He laughed and then bit his lip. “Thank you, Wei Zhan.”

“Thank you,” Wei Zhan said, bowing as if he was trying to hide the blush sweeping across his face.

He did that about twenty more times before they headed into town side by side. To Mother when she gifted him with a pair of Father’s old boots that didn’t fit anyone else’s feet. Then again when Mother tried the water and exploded in delighted glee. Then a bunch more times as he refused everything from marrying Dalong’s second youngest sister, who honestly was only twelve and shouldn’t be marrying anyone, to marrying Mother, who was much too old for flirting with a man Dalong’s age!

“Sorry about Mother,” Dalong said once they were on the road. “I think she misses Father, sometimes, but then she goes and does things like that.”

Wei Zhan laughed softly even though his blush hadn’t eased up at all. “My… my husband was like that, too. He flirted with everyone. I don’t think he considered it flirting at all. For him, it was just being nice.”

Huh. Dalong noted that away in the back of his head along with the sorrow in Wei Zhan’s eyes. That explained why he’d gotten caught in the winter snows and ended up living in a cave. If Dalong loved someone as much as Wei Zhan had clearly loved his husband, he wouldn’t have wanted to stay there, either.

“Oh, trust me,” Dalong said instead of asking questions about Wei Zhan’s lost husband. “She meant it. She’s always saying that she’s old, not dead.”

Wei Zhan nodded a couple times before he tripped on nothing, horror on his face that set Dalong to snickering. Somehow, Dalong suspected that Mother was going to have a much harder time getting Wei Zhan into the house in the future. Which was fine. The last thing Dalong needed was to watch his mother flirting with a man half her age. Really now.

At least Wei Zhan seemed like a good, solid person.

Underneath the Buddhist prayers and white light coming from his fingertips. Dalong wasn’t going to ask, not yet. Maybe not ever. One didn’t turn ones’ nose up at blessings and pure, clear water was a blessing to be sure.

Maybe if Wei Zhan settled in the neighborhood, he would remember some old prayers his ancestor knew that could subdue the resentful dead and disperse the malevolent aura of the Burial Mounds.

Everyone in Yiling would welcome him for that, silently if he wanted.

It would already be more than any of the Great or lesser sects had ever done for Yiling.

5. Sacred Doors

Lan Zhan hummed as he stood at the boundary to the Burial Mounds. Dirty snowbanks lurked like logs across the path he would follow through the bleak black trees. Spring had arrived outside of the mounds with tiny green leaves and a sprinkling of early wildflowers. Inside, there was nothing but black, grey and tarnished white, just as there had been all winter, especially here so close to the borders.

His trip into town had been… enlightening. The politics of his childhood had been so long ago that Lan Zhan had forgotten most of the salient points. Odd to think of the Jiang as an expansionary sect, but at this time they were moving to claim more territory much like the Wen had later on.

Though Lan Zhan suspected that the Jiang’s claiming of the Yiling area had been more because of Wen Ruohan’s more aggressive movements off in Qishan than anything related to the Nie who had previously established a light claim over the area.

A very light claim. As far as Lan Zhan could tell, every sect in the general area had at one time or another attempted to claim Yiling only to slowly drift away when it became clear that the Burial Mounds respected no one and submitted to nothing.

Not even Lan Zhan. Or Wei Ying, for that matter.

It was more accurate to say that they rejected most outright and grudgingly claimed a handful of people with just the right qualities. A certain level of suicidal stubbornness was required. So was a sense of humor off-kilter from everyone else’s. Ruthlessness. Honor. Driving determination to reach one’s goals.

If those goals included things that all upright society regarded as abhorrent, well, the Burial Mounds almost purred for you.

He looked around, using all his senses to see if anyone had followed him here.

No one in sight, either living or dead. He could hear Cho Dalong scolding his younger brothers, a pair of spirited twins who earnestly did not want to spend their time digging up their farthest-out field. Their whining set Lan Zhan’s lips to twitching with amusement. Apparently juniors complaining under their breath about the tasks their elders set them was universal through time, space and all classes of society.

Good. He was clear to go home to Wei Ying.

Lan Zhan breathed deep before he began to whisper Lan Aining’s mantras for focusing the mind and soul, hands sliding through the proper set of mudras that matched each mantra.

The mudras, sacred hand postures brought from far past the high mountains of Tubo, coupled with the ancient mantras helped focus his energies until his core spun like a top, generating a huge amount of energy that Lan Zhan could push outwards into spell-prayers to change the Burial Mounds. To liberate them.

A short incense stick’s worth of mantras and mudras, and Lan Zhan reached the final set; right hand raised with his palm facing outwards while his left hand at waist level with his second finger firmly pressed to the tip of his thumb.

Setting boundaries while being open with fierce compassion balanced against the act of opening in meditation to the energies of life, death and rebirth; It had taken some time to master once he arrived, but the mudra/mantra combination had turned out to be hugely helpful.

White light surrounded Lan Zhan, blooming outwards like a giant, glowing lotus under his feet. Every petal gleamed in the later afternoon light, silvery with a faint tracery of lavender along the edge of the petals as if they’d been lit by the last light of the sunset that had not yet happened.

Peace swept over Lan Zhan, deeper than anything he had ever known. He blinked slowly. As his eyes opened again, the bleak landscape of the Burial Mounds transformed into a wonder.

Thousands of tiny lotuses bloomed over the ground. Globes of softly shimmering light floated above each lotus. Some globes drifted freely over the ground. Some stayed with their lotus, marking the place where one of the resentful dead lay hidden under the surface. Overhead, shimmering silver and lavender light traced along the branches of the black trees like beads of dew along the threads of a spiderweb.

Globes of soul-light rested in the branches, perched among Wei Wuxian’s favorite crows. Small herds of the globes bumbled along between snowdrifts like Lan Zhan’s favorite rabbits. Like this, with these prayers, the Burial Mound came alive. Even its resentful energy became just a color and texture to the landscape, rather than a weight on the lungs and the mind.

Lan Zhan took one step forward, carefully placing his foot and feeling as intensely as possible the way his toes settled onto the ground, how his heel contacted, and his weight shifted forward. The large lotus underneath him moved forwards as Lan Zhan did, keeping pace with each of his slow, deliberate steps.

Carrying his prayers for the liberation of everyone and everything in the Burial Mounds with him.

He kept praying as he slowly walked forwards into the Burial Mounds. The corpses who were still mobile in this area had been subdued, purified and released to reincarnation when he went to town. No new ones had drifted into this area while he was gone.

The same couldn’t be said for the ghosts and other resentful entities without bodies. They had refilled the corridor Lan Zhan had cut so now there were hundreds, thousands, of soul-lights between him and his home.

Those soul-lights drifted towards Lan Zhan’s pure white light. When the lights met, the soul-lights either flared brightly as they were purified and went on to their next life, or they skittered away, blinking and shuddering as they fought off his influence. In time, those souls would find their way to acceptance. Lan Aining had been clear about that in his writing. It took time for many of the resentful dead, either with a body or without, to let go of their current existence.

Once they did, they were released to the cycle of rebirth. Or, if they soaked deeply in the energies Lan Zhan and, before him, Lan Aining put out, slipped away from karma entirely and found nirvana.

The walk to his cave took about half a shichen which wasn’t bad given how slowly he paced up the mountain. Lan Zhan didn’t keep track of how many souls moved on, how many ran away. He had time. They would all be freed, sometime over the next few decades, so Lan Zhan could afford to be patient.

Returning home was a joy.

Wei Ying hovered over his little rice paddy, ghostly shape visible even in the later afternoon light. They’d worked together over the winter to free his soul fragments from the rubble he’d been fused to. Once free, he’d naturally started pulling together again. Lan Zhan had cried openly the day that Wei Ying’s face was restored, smiling brightly at Lan Zhan.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, “I’m home.”

“Lan Zhan! Wel…come… home! The rice is… growing so well now. You… were right… about the… talisman.”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan agreed. “Your talisman didn’t work to purify the soil, but it did do a lovely job causing the fungus in the soil to grow. And that worked wonders to improve soil quality.”

Wei Ying beamed, clapping his hands silently. “Did they… buy… your mush… rooms?”

“All of them,” Lan Zhan said with a happy hum. “I also got new boots. Our closest neighbors were kind enough to give me some after I purified their well. We need to create a method to purify the river, though. It’s toxic now and dangerous to them.”

Wei Ying frowned, waving for Lan Zhan to explain the problem. While Wei Ying couldn’t do any of his old methods of cultivation, either righteous or demonic, he was still a genius. Lan Zhan explained the contamination from the Burial Mounds and how Yiling dealt with it as he put his fresh supplies away in the cave.

“That’s… not… good.”

“No, it certainly is not,” Lan Zhan agreed. “I checked the river while I was in Yiling. The contamination is quite strong. It lingers in the silt at the bottom of the river. The seagrass is nearly black from it. Most of the plants, animals, and people in Yiling are tainted by it.”

Wei Ying frowned, perched mid-air with one leg tucked under the other knee. He leaned forward, staring at nothing. Or, perhaps, at something that only a ghost could see. As powerful as Lan Zhan was in his immortality, there were still things he couldn’t see or do.

“More seals?” Lan Zhan asked when Wei Ying didn’t offer any suggestions.

Wei Ying shook his head no, frowning even harder. “I… never realized… that… was happen…ing.”

“There is no reason for you to realize it was going on,” Lan Zhan said reasonably. “You grew up in Yiling. You were as affected as everyone else. Perhaps more given that you were homeless and alone.”

Wei Ying grimaced as he reluctantly nodded. His beautiful face looked too troubled to think about the problem tonight, so Lan Zhan set it aside. There were prayers for the dead to offer, soil conditioning arrays to charge and set loose, and he truly should spend some time on the new buildings he was cobbling together.

Lan Zhan narrated his thought processes, almost comfortable with the process after a winter spent with only Wei Ying by his side. Amusingly, Wei Ying spoke less and less as time had gone on. He mostly grinned, frowned, gestured or danced as a response.

“Do you not wish to speak to me anymore, Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan asked as he carved six new soil-conditioning arrays into stones.

Wei Ying started. A ghost couldn’t blush, not like a human could, but resentful energy flooded into his cheeks just like a blush. Lan Zhan pursed his lips in amusement. His Wei Ying was always so adorable when he was flustered.

“I… sound… wrong.”

“You do not sound wrong,” Lan Zhan replied with as stern a frown as he could level on Wei Ying. Given how Wei Ying grinned at him, it was perhaps as stern as the fluffiest baby rabbits back in the Cloud Recesses. “Wei Ying is Wei Ying. I welcome your voice, no matter how it sounds, but you do not have to speak if you do not want to. I can speak enough for both of us. With time. And practice.”

As expected, Wei Ying burst into delighted laughter. It was mostly silent, but the resentful energy of the Burial Mounds roiled up around him in response to it. Which was perfect. Once Lan Zhan set the new stones into the honeycomb array of stones previously placed and activated, Lan Zhan stood in the center of the newest block.

Three things were needed to bring life back to the Burial Mounds: Wei Ying’s brilliant array, old straw mixed with transplanted dirt from outside of the Burial Mounds, and resentful energy.

Well, four things. The array had to be activated, as well, and that took Lan Aining’s odd Buddhist take on demonic cultivation.

Lan Zhan focused and then pulled all the resentful energy he could away from Wei Ying. It flowed through his body and down into the ground underneath Lan Zhan. As soon as his spiritual energies combined with the resentful energies met the arrays, the arrays sprang to life.

They glowed. The ground between their stone anchors began to glow too. Then the soil roiled and bubbled as fungus in the old, moldy straw and transplanted dirt surged into violent growth. Mushrooms, slime molds, moss and every sort of fungus grew before Lan Zhan’s eyes. Their root-like tendrils reached deep into the earth, eating up the pollution and corruption of the dead. Bones left behind by the dead crumbled into minerals that enriched the soil.

As he stood and prayed, the new hexagon of soil weathered, aged, grew a thousand years’ worth of mushrooms that decayed back into the soil.

A long incense stick later, Lan Zhan stood on healthy brown soil. It wasn’t very fruitful. That would take several more rounds of treatments, plus a large dose of manure that Lan Zhan still wasn’t sure how to acquire. But it wasn’t tainted anymore.

And it was stripped of all the resentful energy that had made the Burial Mounds so deadly to Wei Ying in the lost timeline.

Lan Zhan nodded approvingly. “I’ll have to ask Cho Dalong if there’s any way I can get manure. And a cart for carrying it. I certainly can’t manure all the blocks I’ve done so far with just a backpack. That would take forever.”

Wei Ying’s delighted laughed brightened Lan Zhan’s heart. Only a year and a half and Wei Ying would have his body once more. He would have to spend some time pondering how to make sure that he kept his promise to keep Wei Ying from growing up on Lotus Pier amidst the toxic resentment and hate of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan’s horrible marriage.

Later.

For now he would have dinner with Wei Ying, meditate, and plot with Wei Ying how to purify the Yiling River safely and without it becoming known across the Jianghu.

 

6. Hidden Immortal

How anyone could look at Wei Zhan and believe that he was an ordinary man, Cho Lianmin would never know. A face that perfect, teeth so straight and golden eyes so clear, they didn’t belong on a mortal man. Not to mention the beautiful, powerful arrays that Wei Zhan gave away with so little care. Even cultivators weren’t that relaxed about giving away their arrays.

None of the ones who came through Yiling ever used their cultivation for mundane things like water purification, heating soup or shoveling manure. Only Wei Zhan did that.

She shook her head before marching over to Wei Zhan who’d filled all four rough bamboo baskets he’d crafted with manure from their barn. He glanced up from his careful positioning of the baskets on either side of his handcart’s single center wheel. At least he’d securely lashed the baskets to the central frame that cover the wheel’s upper half. The baskets wouldn’t fall off and cover him in well-matured and highly stinky manure at the first bump.

“Miss Lianmin,” Wei Zhan said, bobbing his head. “Is there a problem?”

“Just a question,” Lianmin said. She eyed him and then mentally threw up her hands when Wei Zhan just stared back at her with a bland, perfect face. “Are you an immortal or a god come to earth?”

Wei Zhan’s eyes went wide. “…I’m not sure why you ask that?”

“My ridiculous cousin, of course,” Lianmin said, rolling her eyes. “Xinshi has decided that she’s going to seduce and marry you. I’ve already told her that you’re not interested in women, that you’re mourning your husband, and that there is no world in which she could ever be of interest to someone like you. She’s not listening.”

“So you need better weaponry to discourage her?” Wei Zhan asked, eyes sparkling with amusement now.

“Please,” Lianmin said. She huffed over her shoulder towards Xinshi’s parent’s house.

It was only across the rice paddies so Lianmin could see Xinshi out on the porch spinning flax into thread while gazing at Wei Zhan with cow eyes. She didn’t have to be close to know that Xinshi was making a little fool of herself. Xinshi did it at the drop of a leaf in autumn, flinging her honor over her shoulder with abandon every time a handsome man happened to walk by.

Wei Zhan laughed softly while shaking his head. “I am immortal, actually, though I would prefer that the news of that not spread beyond Yiling. I do not wish to deal with the sects coming to pester me in the middle of my project.”

Lianmin frowned. “Project? Manuring fields? They’re cultivators. They can deal with some smell, I’m sure.”

“Ah,” Wei Zhan’s smile went distant and so formal that a chill ran up Lianmin’s spine. He shook his head and then shrugged so elegantly that he looked like a god come to earth. “No, I’ve… chosen… to liberate the Burial Mounds.”

“What.” Lianmin stared at him as she tried to shake his words into a sentence that made sense. “What? I don’t. That’s not possible!”

“Mm, not in a human lifespan,” Wei Zhan agreed readily. His smile was still distant, alien and yet gently welcoming. “I have as much time as I need. This is the project I’ve chosen to dedicate myself to. Every immortal picks one. This is mine.”

Oh.

Lianmin blew out a breath, turning to stare at Xinshi who was still spinning and still making cow eyes as if the world hadn’t just been turned upside down and inside out. Liberate the Burial Mounds.

No poisons in the water? No tainted soil? No storms raining death and corruption on them all. Would there be an end to the resentful dead wandering randomly into town and savaging people?

But. Wait. There hadn’t been any walking dead since last fall. Or, maybe, sometime mid-winter. That was when Dalong had seen the white light from the Burial Mounds. Which had to have been Wei Zhan doing… something.

“You picked yourself a monster-sized problem,” Lianmin finally said.

Wei Zhan laughed and abruptly he was just a very handsome man with drab ordinary clothes and one lovely red silk ribbon. “I know. I would appreciate you not sharing that widely.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Xinshi,” Lianmin replied. “That girl couldn’t keep her mouth shut if her life depended on it. You should tell the Elders, though. They’d be the ones that outsiders would come to. If they know and protect you, you’ll have a lot less problems.”

Most of them were reliable enough. Lianmin wasn’t sure about Elder Sixth. He’d gotten on enough in years that he didn’t quite remember what year it was or whether he was talking to his grandson or his long-dead brother. It shouldn’t matter though. Elder Sixth loathed outsiders with such ferocity that he wouldn’t tell them anything even if he did start blabbing.

“A good point,” Wei Zhan agreed. “When I come back to town, I’ll do that. For now, I’d best get back home. The manure won’t spread itself.”

Lianmin snickered. “Now that’s a spell-thingie for you to research. It’d make life easier for everyone if you came up with a way to do the manuring by magic.”

“Cultivation, not magic,” Wei Zhan corrected with a thoughtful expression that sent another shiver up Lianmin’s spine. “Good day, Miss Cho.”

He wasn’t actually thinking of doing it, was he? As Wei Zhan marched off, pushing his battered old hand cart full of manure, Lianmin shuddered. He was. Sometime in the next few months to years, Wei Zhan was going to show up with a magic spell, because that’s what cultivation really was no matter what cultivators claimed, that would spread the manure for them.

Who knew? Maybe he’d come back with spells to help crops grow faster and magic walls to keep them safe from the monsters that stalked the night. Wei Zhan had already purified their water and only asked for privacy, newer boots and manure, of all things.

“Huh.” Lianmin narrowed her eyes as Wei Zhan disappeared around the bend in the road, going off towards his secretive cave.

Had to be in the middle of the Burial Mounds. The mountains around the area were rife with caves, but they were horribly unstable. Definitely not suitable for anyone to live in, even an immortal.

Simple things. That’s all Wei Zhan wanted. Simple things and for people to keep him from the cultivation sects.

Right.

The next day, Lianmin headed into town with Xinshi at her side chattering brightly about how handsome Wei Zhan was and how beautiful their babies would be. Lianmin ignored her. Seriously, she would just have to deal with the shock when Wei Zhan flatly turned her down in that distant, barely in touch with the real world way of his.

“Are you listening to me?” Xinshi demanded as the two of the walked into Yiling’s pitifully small market side by side.

“Of course not,” Lianmin retorted. She raised one eyebrow as Xinshi gasped and stared at her in betrayal. “Oh, stop that. You’ll catch flies with your mouth. I never listen to the nonsense you spout.”

“It’s not nonsense and I don’t look like a toad,” Xinshi said, cheeks going blotchily red.

“You do when you gape your mouth that way,” Lianmin said. She wasn’t even lying. Xinshi wasn’t exactly toad-like, but her round face, flattest of flat noses and profoundly orb-shaped body weren’t far off of a particularly lively frog. “He’s a cutsleeve who’s mourning the love of his life. It’s utter nonsense.”

Xinshi huffed and stomped off to bargain for carrots and bamboo shoots, though she kept glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Lianmin was appropriately aware of the fact that she was being snubbed.

As if Lianmin cared.

Not when there was a pair of cultivators, a man in Jiang purple silks and a guan that would’ve fed the entire village for at least a decade with a second man in black and purple right behind him. They could’ve been twins.

“Why are we here, Changze?” the Jiang asked with just enough of a whine that Lianmin decided she disliked him. Utterly. What a brat. As if their town wasn’t good enough for cultivators?

“Because Yiling is Jiang territory and we’re sworn to protect and help them, Fengmian,” Changze said with calm confidence.

He looked to be a year or so older than Fengmian at about twenty? Maybe twenty-one, definitely not more than twenty-five, though. Possibly lower rank? Hard to tell. Changze had a very commanding presence while Fengmian looked like a spoiled younger son, not a leader of any kind.

Everyone in the market covertly watched the two of them strolling along as if they belonged in Yiling. No one engaged. Neither did Lianmin. She wasn’t an idiot—

–Like Xinshi who was openly staring at both of them with stars in her fool eyes.

“Miss,” Changze said, bobbing his head at Xinshi.

Fengmian curled his lip as if Xinshi’s cow eyes were repulsive. Which, well, fair. They really were. Xinshi truly had no shame.

“Sect Heir Jiang Fengmian,” Xinshi breathed, bowing far too deeply. “Welcome to Yiling.”

Sect heir? Oh, damn it all. Lianmin strode over and hauled Xinshi back upright by her arm, gripping her bicep tightly enough that Xinshi yelped.

“Ignore her, honored cultivators,” Lianmin said. “She’s an idiot. I’m sorry she bothered you.”

“No, no, it’s no bother,” Changze said, eyes sparkling with amusement at the way Fengmian shuddered and edged behind him like it would hide him from Xinshi’s gaze. “We’re just here because we heard about someone passing out unknown purification talismans.”

“Oh, you mean Priest Wei?” Lianmin asked. She squeezed Xinshi’s arm hard enough that Xinshi didn’t immediately open her mouth and start yapping questions about why Lianmin was claiming that Wei Zhan was a priest. “Yes, he showed up during the middle of winter. Buddhist priest. He’s living in a cave up in the hills as he prays to purify the Burial Mounds. The spells are very good for water. Who knows? He might actually dent the Burial Mounds in, oh, a generation or so.”

A good half the town was staring at Lianmin by that point, but it wasn’t like she’d lied about anything. They said that cultivators could tell when you lied. Hopefully twisting the truth a little bit wouldn’t count as a lie.

“Can you point us to his cave?” Fengmian asked, frowning at Lianmin from behind Changze’s shoulders.

“None of us know where his cave is,” Lianmin said with a shrug. “He only comes to town every month or so.”

“He was here yesterday,” Xinshi agreed while trying to tug her arm free from Lianmin’s grip.

Fengmian huffed and pouted at Changze who rolled his eyes. Yeah, definitely the spoiled brat younger son. Lianmin didn’t remember who was in charge at Lotus Pier or how the lines of descent went, but she would swear that it was supposed to be Changze as the heir and then Fengmian who definitely wasn’t suited for leadership. Not until he grew up a whole lot.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Changze said politely even though he glared at Fengmian’s intensifying pout. “I’m afraid we can’t spare that much time. We’ll arrange to come back in a month or so.”

Changze pushed Fengmian out of the market as firmly as Lianmin had ever managed Xinshi at her silliest. They took off flying on their swords like magic. Only once they were gone, completely out of sight, did Lianmin let Xinshi go.

“Why did you call Wei Zhan a priest?” Xinshi asked. She rubbed her arm and pouted as ferociously as Fengmian had.

“And why claim he wants to purify the Burial Mounds?” Dalong demanded.

“Because he’s an immortal who’s working to purify the Burial Mounds,” Lianmin said reasonably. “He doesn’t want to deal with the sects, so I said he was a priest. Solitary priests do that, especially Buddhist ones. They’ll think it was some ascetic thing and come back maybe once, no more than twice. He’ll be forgotten, which is just what he wants. And given that he’s given us fresh water and might actually succeed in purifying the Burial Mounds by the time our grandchildren have grandchildren, I think we can protect him.”

She glared around at everyone, raising her chin until she got agreeing murmurs and nods from everyone there. Even Xinshi who looked utterly crestfallen that her perfect Wei Zhan well and truly wouldn’t fall head over heels in love with her.

Seriously, that girl. Someday. Someday Lianmin was going to slap her face off and then she’d feel like the worst scum ever to crust over the river. At least Wei Zhan had a cover story now. Hopefully it would be good enough.

7. Blooming Garden

Between spring’s arrival, the excellent manure, and the many, many soil-conditioning arrays that Lan Zhan had created, his three new fields were a thing of wonder. Each was a patchwork of tiny hexagons just barely big enough to Lan Zhan to stand in with his arms outstretched.

The fields themselves meandered around his cave in terraced rows sloping down the mountain towards Yiling. He’d already cut in the terraces for another seven levels, though they were far from the traditional terraces that stepped up the mountainsides in Gusu.

Putting terraces in backwards, starting from the top and working your way to the bottom was… not ideal. Possible with a great deal of work and allowing for much wider terraces than was normal, but definitely not recommended. It was working, at least, though he had a great deal of work to do to stabilize the soil, condition it, and then start growing things.

He’d taken the time to go out into the Burial Mounds and mark out where he would put the next twenty layers of terraces, setting stakes and marking the undulating curves of the barren earth, so that he could plan ahead and make better terraces in the future.

In time. He would get there eventually. Probably not this year, honestly, but next year those fields would live, too. And he could cut more further down-slope, going from the outside in instead of his backwards, awkward, not-really-effective inside-out initial stages.

Every single hexagon of earth that he’d managed to carve out of the bleak desolation of the Burial Mounds teemed with life. Bright new rice shoots waiting to be transplanted to the rice paddy he’d recreated grew next to dark-leafed radishes and short fat-rooted carrots as purple as the Jiang robes.

He’d managed to fill three hexagons up the slope from his cave with accelerated-grown fruit trees: pears, green plums and, for Wei Ying, lychees. They had few blossoms this year but promised to bear heavily next year and into the future. Lan Zhan had vague plans of expanding his hexagons of conditioned soil up-slope far enough that he could have orchards full of trees. Eventually.

Better, Wei Ying had suggested growing shrubs and low-lying plants around the trees. That way each hexagon would bear far more food. And would be producing most of the year.

Though that wasn’t his project for today.

“What are you up to… Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asked as he floated through the sky over Lan Zhan as if he was lazily swimming across a lake.

“You mentioned that there are arrays that will keep things from freezing,” Lan Zhan explained as he set the first foundation stone, easily as big as his torso but simple enough to lift and move around with his cultivation, into place. “I know of several that will create light which is a nearly perfect duplication of summer sunshine. We need it during winters in the Cloud Recesses, especially for the children and pregnant people.”

“Your winters… would… make that necessary,” Wei Ying agreed. He stopped swimming and drifted down to stand a hand’s width off the ground next to Lan Zhan.

“Our winters are very cold and very dark,” Lan Zhan said, smiling at Wei Ying. “The winters here are equally bleak. And the sunshine is… less than optimal.”

Wei Ying cackled at that, startling the crows hopping around the edges of Lan Zhan’s field into flying up into the sky. They cackled along with him, more out of alarm than Wei Ying’s amusement. Lan Zhan waited until they quieted, most of them landing in the dead black trees out in the unhealed zone.

“I had a thought to create a hut where I could set up arrays to keep the soil warm,” Lan Zhan explained. “If I put arrays to keep the snow out, add arrays to generate summer sunshine, I should be able to grow crops all year long. There will be fresh food even in the depths of winter.”

Wei Ying’s eyes went wide as his mouth dropped open in surprise. He stared at the ground for a long moment, then at the grey, overcast sky, which was covered with resentful energy instead of clouds, and then right at Lan Zhan with awed delight.

“You mentioned that you were thinking of such a thing when I met A-Yuan,” Lan Zhan said.

Softly. Sadly. Heart hurting for the little boy who died alone and frightened. Who had not been born and would not be born for oh, at least eighteen years.

Wei Ying wrapped his ghostly arms around Lan Zhan’s shoulders. His lips brushed against Lan Zhan’s cheek, cold compared to the heat that Lan Zhan automatically generated now. They shared a sigh.

Then Lan Zhan went back to work on his newest idea. What else could be said? A-Yuan would be born, or he would not. It was so far in the future that there was little point to fussing over it, no matter how A-Yuan’s death continued to haunt Lan Zhan’s nightmares.

It took fifteen days to put the test hut together. Lan Zhan had thought to leave the roof open so that rain could get in. That turned out to be impossible. The light and heat spells both had to be directed downwards to be effective. Thus his test hut had woven grass walls and a lightly thatched roof that just barely was thick enough to serve its purpose.

“I’ll need a consistent water supply,” Lan Zhan commented once the light spell and heat spell were working.

Wei Ying nodded, frowning. After a moment, he soundlessly snapped his fingers and then waved for Lan Zhan to follow him.

Past the cave, along the mountainside and then up a long, narrow valley to a spring that burbled delightfully. It was still within the Burial Mounds. The water was as tainted as anything else here, but it flowed freely into a little brook that babbled its way to the main stream that fed into Yiling’s river.

Lan Zhan blinked. “Wei Ying, if we purify this, the path it takes, that should help Yiling.”

Wei Ying nodded, grinning as he held up one finger. He mimed digging a channel and the propping stones overtop of that channel. Lan Zhan frowned.

“You can speak, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said. “But yes, an aqueduct would be a very good idea. Much better than hauling buckets. I think I may want to create ponds along the way. If they’re purified, I might be able to grow fish. And lotuses, too.”

“Lotuses?” Wei Ying asked, eyes wide. “But they’ll turn black, Lan Zhan!”

“Black lotuses would be beautiful,” Lan Zhan replied with his brightest smile. “I miss your voice when you don’t talk, Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying blushed and scoffed, but his smile went shy and pleased just as Lan Zhan wanted. Someday he would hear Wei Ying’s mortal voice again. And, if things went well, someday Wei Ying would be as immortal as Lan Zhan. Then he would be able to hear Wei Ying chattering forever and that would be better than anything.

Still, it was a brilliant idea that would solve a great many problems with Lan Zhan’s slowly growing garden. The heart of the Burial Mounds truly was far too dry for intensive gardening. Lan Zhan wasn’t sure if it had ever been a good place to grow crops. The records he’d been able to find of Xue Chonghai and the Xiling Xue sect hadn’t included any information on their agricultural base or the things they’d traded before Xue Chonghai went mad.

By the time Lan Zhan had cut the channel, purified it, lined it with carefully crafted and fired interlinking clay tablets, each of which had purification and preservation arrays on them, a full month had passed. He’d ended up creating his own kiln rather than firing the tablets with pure qi. While Lan Zhan had the qi to spare, it took three times as long to do it with qi as it did to just fire up a simple kiln.

But once the last of the tablets was in place he had fresh pure water. Better still, the little brook leading down into the Yiling River was almost entirely purified as well. It would take several years for all the tainted sediment to wash away, but it would happen eventually.

“Perhaps I should dredge the river,” Lan Zhan mused as he gathered up his baskets and his hand cart for another trip into Yiling. “Not this year but next year. The year after?”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying laughed. “Let them take care of their own river! It’s the… Jiang’s… responsi… bility… not yours.”

Lan Zhan narrowed his eyes at Wei Ying who was ever more solid every day. The few cracks in his soul had eased shut during the last month’s work. He looked as intact as if he was still alive, just translucent. The period where he looked like a porcelain teacup that had been shattered and then glued back together with gold had been… distressing.

“The Jiang never did dredge the river,” Lan Zhan said disapprovingly. He sighed when Wei Ying rolled his eyes and threw his hands out at the elaborate purification arrays that Lan Zhan had created. “Fine. They would have had no reason to do it with the water always being polluted. I still do not approve of their lack of effort.”

Tellingly, Wei Ying didn’t object. He just shrugged as if it was to be expected that the Jiang would claim an area and then do nothing to help the people there. Which…

…Honestly, he had a point.

Even the Lan had always done the bare minimum for their territories. They could have been out helping the civilians with their troubles. They should have aided with far more than just night hunts. The Lan had so much knowledge of healing and engineering. They could have and should have made that available to the people under their protection.

Lan Zhan frowned. “Do you… think I should teach the people of Yiling how to create aqueducts like this? Purified ones?”

Wei Ying’s eyebrows went up as he considered it. “Why?”

“It would help them,” Lan Zhan explained. “It would strengthen them. They would be healthier if their plants had purified water. Their animals, too. I don’t think it would cause… too much comment if I taught them how to do it. At least a couple of people in town have developed small cores. They could charge the arrays when needed.”

“Could work,” Wei Ying said with a couple of slow, thoughtful nods. “But you should ask them what they’d like done first.”

The seriousness in Wei Ying’s voice and the deep echoes of his voice caught Lan Zhan’s breath. That was… a very good point. Things would have gone so differently if anyone, at any point, had asked the Wen or Wei Ying want they wanted instead of assuming they knew what was needed. Or what had happened.

“I will ask,” Lan Zhan said. “Thank you, Wei Ying. I appreciate you always keeping me grounded.”

Wei Ying grinned and flew up into the air where he flipped upside. He batted his eyes at Lan Zhan. When Lan Zhan laughed, Wei Ying’s delight was a song in Lan Zhan’s heart.

Heading down the mountain towards Yiling was easier with laughter filling Lan Zhan’s ears.

The soul lights drifted around Lan Zhan as he made his slow way down the mountain, sprouting up out of the tiny glowing lotus grave markers. He’d found a way to use just one hand, which made pushing his cart possible, if not easy. Wei Ying, always, stayed well up in the air and away from Lan Zhan’s light.

They couldn’t afford for Wei Ying to be sent onwards when he was so close to being born again. Who knew what that would do to his not-yet-conceived body?

Of course, Wei Ying also couldn’t leave the Burial Mounds. There was too much of a risk of a wandering cultivator deciding to liberate, suppress or, worse, obliterate Wei Ying. Fortunately, Wei Ying completely agreed with that, though he always pouted as Lan Zhan left the boundaries of the Burial Mounds.

Lan Zhan sighed as he let his mantra fade, shaking his hand out after holding the mudra so carefully. “I really must make markers for a proper path. And perhaps seals or talismans so that I don’t have to hold the path each time.”

Wei Ying nodded firmly, floating up above the trees with the crows flitting about. He flapped his hands to shoo Lan Zhan onwards before flying back into the heart of the Burial Mounds. It was… ridiculous… to stand there watching until Wei Ying was out of sight, but Lan Zhan still did it.

Ah, well. Another year or so and Wei Ying would be born. Then it would only be a matter of time before they could be reunited. Lan Zhan could be more forceful in his efforts to prevent the future once Wei Ying lived again. Until then, he would live his quiet little life and ensure that he didn’t do something to keep his beloved from being conceived and born.

In the meantime, though, Lan Zhan would ask the Yiling elders just what they would like him to do about the river. Or in general. And perhaps, while he was in town, he would inquire about getting some properly fired and glazed pots. It would be lovely to pickle some of his vegetables…

8. Wandering Priest

A/N: The ancient Chinese name for India was apparently Tianzhu or the Five Indias. Tibet was called Tubo, just so you know. Given the lack of a clear timeframe for MDZS / The Untamed, I’m punting with what Google told me. Feel free to inform me if I’m drastically wrong (especially with links in English so I can read up more on it because that’s just pure fun there. :D) Also, one chi is approximately one foot, FYI.

Fengmian firmly shut his mouth as their boat slid up to the dock in Yiling. The water here always stank. Every single time Father had sent them out, the place smelled like he’d sailed into a cess pit. Rot and corruption hung in the air. The sea grass had a drastically unhealthy blackish tint to it. The water itself was ash-grey instead of a nice healthy muddy brown as it should be at this time of year.

“Well,” Changze said softly once he’d tied the boat off. “Here we go again.”

“I really hate this,” Fengmian complained quietly enough that only Changze should hear it.

“The Elders have their reasons,” Changze said.

Just like he said about everything else, including Changze getting passed over for Fengmian when he was the perfect sect heir. He’d been trained since birth to be Jiang Sect Leader. It was ridiculous to put him aside when Changze was bright, personable, and so very good at all the political nonsense that drove Fengmian crazy.

Just look at his no-longer-new bride. Changze was able to talk to Yu Ziyuan and she would smile, stiffly, but it was a smile. When Fengmian tried to so much as be in the same room with her, she stomped out to go train. She still hadn’t forgiven Fengmian for siring a daughter who was born with… such difficulties.

Not that A-Li wasn’t sweet and kind and gentle and adorable. She was. Apparently Ziyuan wanted a daughter who was strong, vicious and deadly even when she was only three years old. That A-Li was also too stiff and unable to walk properly because her arms and legs were tight as iron bands, was yet another way that Fengmian was a failure in Ziyuan’s mind.

In everyone’s mind, actually.

There was no good reason to skip over Changze and put Fengmian in line for the lotus throne.

No good reason.

Fengmian scowled as his pulse sped up. The whole situation was a disaster waiting to happen and Fengmian was going to be the one who had to deal with it. Without a wife who supported him. Damn it all.

“Stop glowering over it, didi,” Changze said with a grin. He tapped one broad fingertip between Fengmian’s eyebrows. “You’ll do fine.”

“I will not,” Fengmian complained. “All I ever wanted was to be the sect librarian. This whole thing is stupid.”

Changze just patted Fengmian’s shoulder before striding off into Yiling.

So confident. Fengmian found himself scurrying along at Changze’s heels, desperately trying to figure out what he could say or do that would convince Changze to stay home. All his mad plans for leaving the Jiang once Fengmian was trained “enough”, as if anyone could ever be trained enough for taking over a sect, made Fengmian’s heart hurt.

His brother should be there. At Lotus Pier. With Fengmian.

In charge, preferably, but there at the very minimum. At least there was time before Father passed over the lotus throne. Hopefully decades worth of time. Maybe if Fengmian sired enough children, he could be passed over in favor of one of them, too.

Or one of Changze’s kids. That would be ideal. Plop Changze’s son on the lotus throne and Fengmian could retreat back to his library without guilt. Ziyuan could keep training the disciples, defending the sect. Changze’s child would rule, and everything would be right in the world.

“Huh,” Changze grunted, startling Fengmian out of his wild castles-in-the-sky plans for the future. “Where are the elders?”

They weren’t at the teahouse, which was odd indeed. Every single time they’d visited before, the elders had been talking and drinking while the younger people worked, harvested, argued, whatever it was they did in this stinking, horrible town.

Fengmian craned his neck to peer down a side street that led towards the Burial Mounds. “There’s a clump of people that way.”

“Let’s go check it out,” Changze said with his going-on-an-adventure grin that had gotten them in so much trouble over the years.

The closer they got to the Burial Mounds, the worse the stink got. It took Fengmian a moment to realize that it wasn’t just the resentful energy radiating up off the river. There was a rickety old handcart, the kind with a framework over one central wheel that got stuck in every muddy pothole back home, with four baskets of very, very ripe manure.

Sitting in the middle of the street.

With people just standing next to it.

Fengmian curled his lip as he dragged his feet. Why? Just why would anyone do that? Maybe the elders were scolding the culprit for stinking up the town.

Except, no. Elder Entai was there. She leaned on her cane, standing as always doubled over from pure age, while beaming up at a stranger in indigo peasant clothes. Rough, cheap peasant clothes, other than the very fine red silk ribbon holding his topknot cover in place. Elder Kangren stood next to her, stroking his long, white beard with one hand. The other held the bamboo hat that he’d always worn every single time Fengmian saw him before.

He was very bald. Fengmian hadn’t noticed that before what with the hat.

“No,” the stranger said, smiling a creepily gentle and calm smile, “I do think the river will cleanse itself over time. It will just take a very, very long time for it to happen. Making purification sculptures and putting them along the riverbanks would speed the process along.”

“Sculptures?” Changze asked, startling Fengmian and everyone else, too.

Other than the stranger who just nodded at Changze.

His eyes were golden, very bright and very intent as he stared at Changze. They barely flicked over to take in Fengmian. It wasn’t an insult. Fengmian knew very well that Changze was always going to monopolize people’s attention. It was just who he was.

So no, it wasn’t insult that made Fengmian straighten up and glare at the stranger. Not at all. It was just, you know, that a strange person was trying to convince their people to do something instead of bringing it to Jiang as was proper.

That was all.

“Yes,” the stranger said. “My ancestor was a Buddhist priest, you see. He had some… very different methods of purification. I’ve figured out a way to purify the stream that comes from the Burial Mounds and thought that it might be a good thing to extend the arrays further down.”

“Interesting,” Changze said with every sign of really meaning it. “I’ve not heard of such things. I didn’t think that Buddhists did cultivation.”

The stranger laughed softly, ducking his head in a minimal bow. “The techniques come from Tainzhu. I never learned which of the five Indias it came from, but that is the original source. It was apparently heavily modified in Tubo as priests brought it through, but that’s to be expected.”

Fengmian perked up at that. Really? Techniques from so far away? Possibly from the home of Buddhism? Not to mention the possibility of learning more about how cultivation shifted and changed as it passed through the monasteries of Tubo. Their esoteric practices were far beyond anything practiced in the Jianghu.

When Fengmian opened his mouth to ask if the stranger had any of the texts that he could borrow and copy, just, you know, for reference purposes, Changze put his hand on Fengmian’s shoulder.

Fengmian snapped his mouth shut again.

It wasn’t until the stranger’s smile went strained that Fengmian realized that the Elders and the other villagers were glowering at both Fengmian and Changze. One of the younger women looked like she wanted to stab them in the heart with any available sharp object. Her fingers kept clenching as if she was aching for a sword, a knife, a pitchfork.

“This is my brother, Jiang Fengmian, heir to the Jiang Sect,” Changze said with his talking-to-Wen-Ruohan smile on. “I’m Wei Changze. As the Jiang Sect has claimed Yiling, we’d be delighted to help with the purification of the river. It’s one of the things that our father wants to do. He’s not found anyone with ideas of how to accomplish it.”

“Plenty of people who will spend lots of money trying,” Fengmian grumbled not quite under his breath.

To his surprise, the stranger grinned. A brilliant grin that was almost like being punched in the chest it was such a departure from his distant, politely blank face.

“I am Wei Zhan,” the stranger said, bowing to Changze when his eyes went wide. “No relation that I’m aware of, though my husband might have been related to you. Distantly, I’d imagine.”

“He’s…?”

“Dead, I’m afraid,” Wei Zhan said. “For many years.”

The sudden lack of a smile and the minute slump of his broad shoulders hurt. Fengmian frowned. “Many” years implied that he should be over his mourning, but to Fengmian, it looked as though Wei Zhan was still in deep mourning. Perhaps he was one of those strange people for whom personal relationships became significant? It did seem to be a Wei thing. Changze was much the same way.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Changze said. “You took up the priesthood after that?”

“Mm,” Wei Zhan agreed, golden eyes mostly shut.

He looked like the blankly smiling sculptures of Guanyin. Honestly, Fengmian could believe that he was a Guanyin given flesh when he looked that way. There was something otherworldly about Wei Zhan, as if he wasn’t quite a part of the real world. As if he didn’t eat or sleep or sweat like everyone else.

“I could not stay at home,” Wei Zhan said with a little sigh. “So I chose to follow in my ancestor’s footsteps and to travel. I settled here because I believe that my ancestor’s techniques might, over several generations, make a difference in the Burial Mounds. There’s no guarantee, of course, but I thought I would try.”

“The Jiang can cover the cost of your efforts,” Fengmian offered. “We should, anyway. It’s our responsibility to pay for any attempts to fix Yiling.”

Wei Zhan’s golden eyes lit with amusement again. “I’ve already received my pay. I truly don’t need much. Living a simple life is part of Buddhist doctrine, you see.”

“Your pay?” Changze asked with as much puzzlement as Fengmian felt.

“Of course,” Wei Zhan said, nodding to the handcart with its stinking load of manure. “My fields need enrichment. This plus the straw that Cho Dalong has gathered for me is more than payment enough.”

“So, those sculptures,” Elder Entai said, firmly cutting off any other questions or comments that Changze or Fengmian might have, “how many? What do they need to be made of? We’re not exactly made of money, but we can do something.”

“Especially if it’ll purify the river,” Elder Kangren agreed. He planted his hat firmly back on his head, glancing over at Fengmian as if daring Fengmian to comment on the lack of hair.

“Approximately one chi,” Wei Zhan said, holding his hands out and gesturing as if encompassing a blob about this size of his head. “My thought was that they could be cast in clay and fired. The array can go on the back, perhaps? I’ll make a rough version and bring it to Cousin Third.”

“If it’s casting,” Elder Kangren said slowly, warily, “we’re talking lots, yes?”

“Mm,” Wei Zhan agreed. “Possibly one every ten paces or so. I’m not sure, yet. We’ll need to see how many are needed to get the proper effect. The Yiling River is much wider than the little stream that comes out of the Burial Mounds. The quantity of water and sediment to be purified has an effect on how many of the arrays will be needed.”

He looked at Fengmian directly, giving Fengmian a very proper bow that most people only ever gave to Changze.

“If the Jiang Sect could dredge the river,” Wei Zhan said, “that would speed the process of purification greatly. The sediment would need purification, as well, but that could be done in the old abandoned quarry on the other side of town. It would be a very large project, of course. Perhaps Heir Jiang can discuss it with the Jiang sect leader?”

Fengmian’s heart just about stopped at being addressed as the Jiang heir. He spluttered something completely incoherent while nodding that of course they could do that. It was something that Father wanted to do anyway. The whole Yiling River was terribly backed up with sediment, making shipping treacherous through this area.

“We’ll discuss it with our father,” Changze promised. “Thank you for your… kind assistance with the problem.”

Wei Zhan’s eyes went far too sad again. “Work is sometimes the best remedy for one’s ills.”

He bowed to them and then strode off pushing his handcart as if it weighed nothing. Fengmian watched him go as the crowd dispersed. The Elders promptly captured Changze, dragging him back to the teahouse to pepper him with complaints and questions and demands for who even knew what.

Fengmian watched them go. Then he watched the town go back to normal.

And then, once everyone had gone back to ignoring his existence, Fengmian followed Wei Zhan’s path. The track of his handcart dug in at Cho Dalong’s farm on the very edge of town. Bits of straw showed where Wei Zhan had gone after that. The little track that Wei Zhan had followed was rocky, dry and miserably bleak, so there was no wheel-track to follow.

The straw led Fengmian to the edges of the Burial Mounds.

Odd glowing lights floated across the blackened earth of the Mounds, which bloomed with ghostly lavender lotuses the size of A-Li’s fist. Fengmian didn’t dare move forward to see what they were. He could see several walking corpses not too far off. Though they weren’t walking.

Instead they lay on their backs, dead eyes staring at the sky. Still and calm and unmoving. Fengmian frowned, sharpening his eyesight.

“Those are mushrooms,” Fengmian breathed. “Those aren’t eyes. There are mushrooms growing from their eye sockets.”

Which meant that the corpses had been properly pacified, if not buried or burned. That was… strange. The whole thing was strange. Especially the trail of fragments of straw that wended its way up into the Burial Mounds as if Wei Zhan’s home was right in the middle of them.

“Huh,” Changze murmured, startling Fengmian half out of his skin. “I wondered. Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. No wonder he doesn’t want to interact with the Great Sects. Wen Ruohan would try and steal him on the spot.”

“Try?” Fengmian asked, patting his chest as if that would slow his pounding heart.

Changze didn’t explain. He just stared into the Burial Mounds at the slowly fading globes of light before waving for Fengmian to follow him back to Yiling. Fengmian bit his lip before following. Hopefully Changze would explain once they were back on the river heading home.

Something was very not right about Wei Zhan, but Fengmian had no idea what it might be. Yet.

9. New Path

“Lan Zhan, I can’t get near those.”

Lan Zhan winced. “I am sorry, Wei Ying. I know that you can’t touch them without being dispelled, but they are necessary for my entry gate and road.”

The pout on Wei Ying’s face was nearly enough to make Lan Zhan abandon his newest project. He’d made the prototype purification statue already. It was dry and ready to be fired. These markers were strictly for within the Burial Mounds. Chunky square blocks with the array version of his mantra for entering the Burial Mounds, they were basically bricks that Lan Zhan could cast and make in bulk.

Wei Ying sighed soundlessly from his spot floating above the branches of the highest trees next to Lan Zhan’s cave. He waved one hand for Lan Zhan to go ahead and make more, but he very clearly didn’t mean it.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said.

Just that. Just Wei Ying’s name, spoken with all of his love and all of his worry. As Wei Ying’s conception got closer, Wei Ying’s emotions had become… disordered. Sometimes he was angry at nothing. Sometimes jubilant for the littlest things. And sometimes, like now, Wei Ying retreated and would not communicate at all.

“I’ll be fine, Lan Zhan. You should keep working.”

“You will not be fine,” Lan Zhan countered. “And I do not wish to work when my zhiji is unhappy. Please, Wei Ying. Talk to me. I cannot fix the problem if you will not tell me what it is.”

Wei Ying disappeared instead.

There was a brief glimpse of deeply red resentful energy in a cloud of black ashy smoke, then Wei Ying was gone. Lan Zhan abandoned his project, following the hints of smoke trailing behind Wei Ying’s flight.

They led down the slope through Lan Zhan’s terraces, all growing nicely. Past the newer terraces that would need to be reinforced before the fall rains and winter snows came. And then down the path that Lan Zhan always took towards down.

He could see a track forming already, ruts in the dry, dead earth where his handcart’s wheel dug into the soil. There were places already where his feet had hit repeatedly enough to make rudimentary steps. Hm. He should probably put down logs or rocks to make runoff channels, otherwise the rain would carry more corrupted soil towards Yiling.

The mantra was second-nature by now. Lan Zhan still needed to hold one hand in the proper position, this the need for the array-bricks, but he barely needed to focus to trigger the purification and the many, many floating sole-lights.

Wei Ying hovered over one of the old boundary markers put in place by the Nie generations ago.

The large granite block had toppled sideways. Sickly yellow moss grew over the array which had worn down dramatically over the decades. Even the Burial Mounds had sufficient weather to slowly blunt it’s power.

“Oh,” Lan Zhan breathed. He stared at the toppled stone. “Are all of them like this?”

Wei Ying wobbled one hand while grimacing. “About a third.”

“A third is far too much.” Lan Zhan huffed. “I’ll have to right them all, reinforce the arrays on them so that the boundary is stronger. I should have thought of this immediately. Thank you, Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying ducked his head and smiled shyly, bouncing above the stone. “Should’ve said something sooner.”

“But fixing the boundary is not as interesting as healing the heart of the Burial Mounds,” Lan Zhan countered. “This is just brute labor. That is fascinating.”

Wei Ying beamed at him, finally calm and happy again. He stayed that way as Lan Zhan fixed that stone and then walked the perimeter of the Burial Mounds, righting, re-engraving and then charging back up the boundary stones. It took three very grubby days to get the work done, but it was worth it, especially with Wei Ying by his side.

“Actually,” Lan Zhan said once he’d washed himself and his clothes, “I wonder if I’m making a mistake with the path.”

Sitting across from Lan Zhan with a cup of tea that was there purely for Wei Ying to smell, Wei Ying blinked. “How so?”

“The path need not actively purify all the time,” Lan Zhan explained as he pulled over a scrap of paper from one of his qiankun pouches. A bit of charcoal made for a good-enough brush for the moment. “If I create boundary markers along the sides of the path, then they will keep the path clear. I can purify it once, then slowly move the boundary stones outwards. It will slowly sweep through the Burial Mounds.”

Wei Ying’s eyebrows went up. “No, no, make an inner boundary line around the settlement here.”

“Ah, and then push that boundary line closer and closer to town,” Lan Zhan said, nodding. “Then the Burial Mounds will work as a barrier to keep anyone living here safe. I can make entry talismans that activate the path, allowing any spirits that wish to be liberated to move on. It should work.”

“Yeah! That’ll be perfect, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying beamed.

Creating the inner boundary “stones” was a simple repurposing of his proposed purification clay blocks. A different design stamped into them, and then proper firing let Lan Zhan create first twenty, then a hundred, and finally close to five hundred in short order.

Relatively short order. It did take about ten days, but Lan Zhan hardly minded that once they had been set in place and charged up. His path had its own line of boundary markers with arrays on either side of the blocks.

The first time he activated them, clouds bloomed over the heart of the Burial Mounds. They roiled and thundered, crackling with lightning that didn’t strike. Lan Zhan held his power on the boundary line, firmly encouraging the resentful dead to move into their safe zone on the other side of the boundary line.

Once they moved, grumbling and angry, the sky overhead cleared to the most beautiful blue that Lan Zhan had seen. Even the sky over the Cloud Recesses wasn’t this clear, this bright and warm and lovely.

Only Wei Ying remained inside with Lan Zhan, though he was quite translucent. Alarmingly so. Wei Ying still beamed at Lan Zhan’s accomplishment.

“Perfect,” Wei Ying said happily.

“Is it?” Lan Zhan asked, reaching out towards Wei Ying even though they couldn’t properly touch.

Wei Ying laughed, one sharp bark of a laugh, before he shifted and solidified until his glowing red eyes were set in a nearly solid face. His nails were alarmingly long and quite sharp, but his smile was still Wei Ying’s smile and his joy warmed Lan Zhan right to his core.

“It is,” Wei Ying emphasized in a voice that sounded human for the first time since their return to the past. He laughed and wagged his eyebrows as he faded back to his normal level of transparency. “Can’t do that for long, but yeah, way better, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan made himself breathe normally even though his heart wanted to leap out his throat. To hear Wei Ying properly again after so long…

But no. It was too soon. Another six months, nine months perhaps, and Wei Ying would be conceived. His soul would be pulled away and Lan Zhan would have to wait for him to return in the flesh. Better not to get too flustered now. After all, Wei Changze must have met and begun to court Cangse Sanren by now. His Wei Ying would be born soon enough that Lan Zhan would be suffering his absence in the very near future.

“Good,” Lan Zhan said. “Then I’ll work on creating a proper entry talisman. Something simple so that I can make more as needed. I do expect others will join me here while I wait for you to return.”

Wei Ying nodded.

The talisman that they ended up with was a small flat clay bead, as black as the bamboo that grew just up the slope from Lan Zhan’s cave. It came by the tint naturally as the only clay deposit with fine enough clay fired to a glossy black naturally. Lan Zhan stamped it with three bamboo leaves on one side and a Guanyin figure on the other side and then imbued it with the mantra as it and forty duplicates fired inside of his kiln.

“Ah, that worked perfectly,” Lan Zhan said once he pulled them from the kiln. “The bamboo twigs survived just long enough for the hole to stabilize. I should be able to thread them on a cord easily.”

The time needed to fire the beads was short, barely one hundred and eight rounds of the mantra, but that was good. Sixteen shattered or fractured during the firing, most of them at the edges of the kiln, but he still ended up with twenty-four. A good start.

Better still, the bead worked perfectly. All Lan Zhan had to do was hold it in his hand and channel his energy through it. Once active, it stayed active. When he was inside of the boundary, working on his fields or talking to Wei Ying, nothing happened.

Only once he set foot on the path did the bead activate the purification array that opened his path down to Yiling. Lan Zhan laughed as the soul lights and their tiny lotuses sprang into visibility. Three walking corpses lumbered over to dispel themselves against the path’s purification boundary.

“It works,” Lan Zhan said.

Wei Ying’s grin was reward enough for Lan Zhan. The way Wei Ying danced in the sky, victory in his every movement, set Lan Zhan’s heart to pounding. It was so good to see Wei Ying happy. That was always the very best thing in any day.

“I should go into town,” Lan Zhan said. “Cousin Third will want to see them.”

He had done six different versions of the river’s purification sculpture, only two of which he felt were worth casting. One was a simple stella that would suit the basic needs. The other was a sculpture of Wei Ying as the Buddha, hands held in the proper mudras with a serene close-eyed smile on his face. That was the one that Lan Zhan preferred. It would further his story, keep people from looking too closely at him until Wei Ying was born.

“Take the Buddha, Lan Zhan.” Wei Ying declared. “It’s better.”

“It is better,” Lan Zhan agreed. “Well, if Cousin Third decides that it’s too complicated, I can always bring the stella. Until he objects, it’s the Buddha.”

Wei Ying waved goodbye when Lan Zhan headed down the path towards Yiling. This time, Wei Ying stayed at their cave. Lan Zhan couldn’t blame him for that. There was far less reason for Wei Ying to come along this time.

The boundary stones and their purification arrays kept the dead, either ghostly or physical, from attacking Lan Zhan. He was as safe as he could possibly be, short of wearing Bichen at his side. Or having Wei Ying at his back.

It would be fine.

Hopefully the Buddha sculpture wouldn’t be too complicated for Cousin Third to cast. Lan Zhan did rather like it. Lining both banks of the Yiling River with them would be esthetically pleasing. Who knew? Perhaps it could become a new thing for Yiling, a way for them to bring pilgrims in to support the town.

He would discuss it with Wei Ying once he got back home. Wei Ying always had the best ideas.

 

10. River Dredge

Changze waved for the juniors to haul the dredge another boat-length down the Yiling. The juniors grinned and hauled at the ropes, straining on their floating swords as the wide-bottomed scoop that they’d brought from Lotus Pier. On the shore, Fengmian shouted orders to the seniors who were responsible for conveying the dredged-up silt to the quarry outside of town.

The scoop slowly emerged from the Yiling River, water streaming off its sides. Where the silt would be thick brown mud back home, here it was sticky black muck that stank to the heavens. The juniors on the ropes groaned and made faces as they carefully flew the over-full scoop to the latest empty cart.

Fengmian choked, but he still had the next batch of seniors charge right into scrape the disgusting muck out of the scoop. Once they had the worst of it, Changze flew over and hit the scoop with as strong of a purification as he could.

Most of the muck evaporated away, leaving ashy black silt that Fengmian easily got out of the scoop. Not all. Just most.

“We’re going to need the fourth scoop after this next round of dredging,” Changze shouted to Fengmian.

“I’ve got it lined up and waiting,” Fengmian shouted back. “We’re still trying to clean the others up enough for them to be useful.”

As the juniors went back for another load of silt dredged off the bed of the Yiling River, Changze blew out a breath and scrubbed his hand under his nose. The stink of it all was going to turn his stomach for days.

But Wei Zhan had been right that it needed to be done. The muck was poisoning the waters so drastically that he was astonished that anyone survived in town. The threat of the Burial Mounds was… overwhelming.

“Wait!” Cangse Sanren yelled as she zoomed in from the quarry where she’d been cutting unique, unbelievably powerful purification arrays into the stone walls. “Wait! I got a thing to try!”

The juniors waited for her to fly over and draw… something… on the bottom of the scoop with her finger.

She leaned back, crouched irreverently on her sword, and grinned as the muck sticking to the scoop abruptly bubbled up as if it was a pot boiling over. In a matter of a few blinks of the eye, the scoop was as clean and pure as it had been when they first put it into the river.

“Ha!” Cangse Sanren laughed. “Worked! He was right.”

“He?” Changze asked as she drifted over to his side, eyes on the scoop going into the water.

“Your cousin, of course,” Cangse Sanren said. She wagged her eyebrows. “He’s back in town, off at the potter’s place. Came by and suggested adding the array to the scoops so that they wouldn’t get all weighed down and useless. Worked just like he said it would.”

Changze but his lip against the urge to snap out that Wei Zhan was a priest who had, presumably, sworn oaths of celibacy. Or to say that he could’ve come up with it. Or just to act as much like an idiot around her as Wen Ruohan, Jin Guangshan and the ever-so-confident of himself Lan Qiang who’d apparently decided that if there was a woman around, she had to pay attention to him, alone.

“We don’t think we’re actually cousins,” Changze said instead of anything else beating against his teeth to escape. “Possibly his dead husband, but that’s it.”

“Huh, should ask the husband sometime,” Cangse Sanren said with a completely serious expression.

They’d drifted high enough over the river that Changze could see the entire area they were working on. Plus the rest of the town, too, not that there was much to it. Fengmian had his get-back-to-work scowl on, but he was doing a lovely job keeping the seniors and juniors working on the dredging. The Elders stood on the bank of the river, visibly comparing this effort to other efforts to dredge the Yiling that they’d lived through.

And off at the edge of town, near the quarry where stinking piles of river muck had already been delivered, Wei Zhan carved arrays into the rock walls of the quarry with his finger.

“How?” Changze asked.

“Immortals can do that,” Cangse Sanren said. She started when Changze turned to stare at her. “What? It’s obvious, written all over his aura.”

“He’s…” Changze stopped, considering the issue.

That.

Huh. That wasn’t as unlikely as his first instinct wanted to claim. From every record they had on Lotus Pier, every story he’d ever heard of Baoshan Sanren, immortals tended to claim places that no one went. That no one wanted.

What place was more unwanted than Yiling and its Burial Mounds?

“Does your Shizun interact with the people around her mountain?” Changze asked.

Cangse Sanren immediately looked off towards the hills with a blank, politely disinterested expression. “Of course not. Immortals don’t interact with the world. Everyone knows that.”

“…Of course,” Changze drawled at her.

He grinned when she glowered at him and then laughed when she smacked his arm and flew away again.

The dredging process went much faster once all the scoops had Wei Zhan’s array on them. Instead of the scoop clinging to the bottom of the river like it’d been glued down there, the muck came up easily. Already boiling away which made the whole process much easier.

Instead of the three to four weeks that Fengmian had predicted, their dredging took six days.

Instead of years to purify the muck in the quarry, it took just seven days total.

All because of Wei Zhan’s Buddhist purification arrays.

After ten days, the Yiling’s waters flowed, muddy-brown and nearly stink-free, past the first matched sets of twenty of Wei Zhan’s Buddha sculptures. Changze kept his mouth shut and his arms crossed over his chest as Fengmian helped Wei Zhan place the last of the twenty on this side of the river. Another twenty were already in place on the far side, put there by Cangse Sanren and Wei Zhan yesterday. Every section of the river that passed between the paired Buddha sculptures was healthier.

Clearer. Less resentment. Less muck and slime. The seagrass was already fading from sickly black to a brighter, healthy green. When Changze breathed in, the air smelled different. Even the feeling of the ground under his feet was less parched, less lifeless, than before.

“This is so fascinating,” Fengmian babbled as he ran his fingers over the array on the back of the Buddha figure. “I wouldn’t have thought that a clay pot, functionally, could hold an array this strong. It’s just. Did you need special clay for it? A different glaze! Or was it something in the firing?”

“Careful,” Wei Zhan said, catching Fengmian’s arm so that he wouldn’t topple head-first into the river.

“He’s not going to hurt your brother,” Cangse Sanren murmured right into Changze’s ear. She grinned when he started and nearly elbowed her right in the face. “Yeah, right. Like you’d be able to. But seriously, he won’t. That’s not who he is.”

“I know,” Changze said. “I just.”

Cangse Sanren peered at him, bright grey eyes considering and far too intelligent. She’d already declared that she absolutely would not be spending much more time at Lotus Pier. Not so much because she didn’t like it there. She’d claimed that it was her favorite place of all.

No, she didn’t much like Fengmian’s wife, though she adored A-Li. She loathed the Elders, which Changze was in complete agreement on. And she’d said all along that what she wanted to do was see the world, fight evil, and help people. Sitting on her butt in Lotus Pier wasn’t doing that.

“Ah,” Cangse Sanren breathed as she bumped her shoulder against his. “You could come with me. The kid’s got to learn to lead on his own. As long as you’re around, he’s not going to do it. A few trips out with me should get his legs under him.”

“Father suggested the same thing,” Changze agreed.

He sighed, then bit his lip against the stream of curse words that wanted to escape. Not for the first time, Changze considered asking Cangse Sanren to help him murder every single one of the Jiang Elders. They’d deliberately put Changze aside and picked the weaker, more easily controlled of the two shu-sons as the Jiang heir.

Not to mention all the miscarriages A-Niang Renzi, Father’s di wife, had suffered through. Changze was absolutely certain that all of them were deliberate. Murders, not miscarriages.

“I can’t live at Lotus Pier,” Changze admitted. “If I dared to marry, my wife or husband would be attacked immediately.”

“Yeah, they totally would,” Cangse Sanren agreed far too brightly. “I mean, when they attack me, I’ll put them all down, but that doesn’t stop all the stupid bullshit they keep pulling. I do think that Fengmian’s Yu wife is going to be a shock to their systems pretty soon. Hopefully a lethal one.”

Changze nodded, deeply amused by that. Yu Ziyuan was as gentle as a hunting eagle and as dangerous as a bull shark in the lotuses. None of the Elders were in any single way prepared for her now that A-Li was getting old enough to not need constant care.

He let himself daydream for a bit about that, watching Fengmian down on the river shore with their sect members. Really, Fengmian would be fine as sect leader. He wasn’t the same as Father or Changze, but that was probably a good thing. The Jiang needed a leader who wasn’t a hot-head after three generations with people who punched first and asked questions later. If at all.

As he mused, Cangse Sanren watched his face, lips twitching as if she was fighting the biggest grin in the world. What did she do? He ran back over what she’d said only to all but fall off his sword in shock.

“Wait, did you just propose to me?” Changze squeaked.

Cangse Sanren cackled and nodded, one hand over her mouth as she laughed until there were tears in her eyes. She wheezed as she sucked in a breath to say something, only to laugh twice as hard.

All without her sword dipping or listing at all. Changze should not find that sort of focus and control attractive. Except that of course he did. He huffed, lightly swatting her elbow just to see her grin at him.

“There are better ways to propose than promising to kill the Jiang Elders, you know,” Changze said.

“Heeeee~! If you say so,” Cangse Sanren replied, still snorting and laughing and wiping away her tears. “Oh, that was perfect. Your face!”

She went back to snickering. Changze let her have the joke. He was…

…uncomfortably giddy at the thought of escaping the Jiang and getting to live his life as he wished. As many times as he’d claimed he would do that back home, no one had believed him. Especially Fengmian who peered up at Changze as if asking when, exactly, he was going to get back to work.

Fair, that.

“Back to work for me,” Changze announced. “Come find me after dinner, will you?”

“After?” Cangse Sanren asked, wagging her eyebrows at him. “I’ll be eating my dinner from your lap if I have my way.”

Changze cleared his throat as his face flamed hotter than the sun at midsummer. “Well, if you really want to, I won’t say no. Though I would suggest a private room for that. Maybe after we… drink some wine and exchange some bows?”

To his surprised delight, Cangse Sanren blushed so hard that it turned her ears flaming and went right down under the collar of her robes. She clapped a hand over her mouth while making awkward squeaking noises. Then she nodded and flew off faster than anyone else Changze had ever seen.

He drifted down to the ground again, joy bubbling under his chest.

“What was that about?” Fengmian asked in such a cranky tone that Changze automatically patted his shoulder. “I can’t wait for her to leave. I mean, I know you like her, and I do, too, but she’s so rude. Just dashing around making trouble for everyone.”

Changze’s breath caught as he stared at his little brother’s frown.

No, his sect leader’s frown. His future sect leader who could and would throw Cangse Sanren out before Changze had even had a chance to kiss her into revealing what her actual name was. The blood in his veins seemed to freeze solid, as did his heart.

He couldn’t exchange his bows at home. In truth, he couldn’t even let anyone back home know about the proposal. Father wouldn’t object but the Elders really would try to kill her. And with A-Niang Renzi so sick, her latest baby weighing so heavily on her…

“Just teasing,” Changze said before Fengmian could get suspicious. “I managed to make her blush. That’s, what? Two for me and about sixty-thousand for her?”

Fengmian ducked his head to hid his sudden grin. “At least. Maybe twice that. Anyway, we’ve almost finished the dredging. That Wei priest is pretty sure that this should make a big difference for Yiling. I’m glad. I really want to go home.”

“Me, too,” Changze said even though suddenly it was the last thing he wanted. “Me, too. I’ll get back out on the water to make sure we didn’t miss any spots. Keep up the good work.”

He flew off before Fengmian could notice that Changze couldn’t meet his eyes. Before he could see what Changze was more than half-thinking of doing. It had to come as a surprise for everyone, or they would stop the elopement and the whole family would be in danger.

Now he just had to find a priest to officiate their wedding and he knew just who to ask.

 

---