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Chapter Text

Lotus Pier disappeared on a Monday.

The jewel of Yunmeng was a sprawling, mostly wooden complex that stretched for miles into the ocean, far bigger than the land it had been built on. The island it started from was a small, flat island just half a mile from the mouth of the mainland’s widest river, and half a mile from the mountain-island of Yiling. Its docks surrounded the city, harboring merchant ships from the port cities of the mainland. 

Lotus Pier disappeared on a Monday, but no one found out until Tuesday. The daily merchant ships left Monday afternoon, and they came in Tuesday morning to find that Lotus Pier had completely disappeared overnight. Only the lotus stalks remained, blanketing the waters near the Yiling mountain. Lotus Pier disappeared, and along with it disappeared all the people, all the items and objects of the city. There were no corpses washing up on the shore, there were no broken wood planks, no water-logged robes drifting along, no woven baskets bobbing up and down on the waves. 

Lotus Pier disappeared on a Monday, and on Tuesday people began to panic. The confusion of the initial merchants who arrived quickly turned into fear, and as the news spread to the other regions of their world, terror began to set in. How could an entire city just disappear without a trace? Was it a natural disaster? Was it a sign from the gods? People began to whisper of an ancient monster, rising from the depths to swallow the city whole and drag it down to the bottom of the ocean. But really, no one knew how it disappeared, which meant it could happen again, and no one knew how to stop it.

Lotus Pier disappeared on a Monday, and on Wednesday the loss began to set in. Lotus Pier was home to tens of thousands of people, and all of them were gone. Lord Jiang and Madame Yu were gone, along with their three children. The navy was gone, the traders were gone, the children were gone; the Jiangs were gone. Anyone who had a Jiang in their family began to realize that their family members had simply disappeared without a trace, and no one knew whether they’d ever return. 

Lan Wangji, like most people, learned about the disappearance on Wednesday, when the merchants arrived upriver in Caiyi, babbling tales of monsters and gods and lost cities. Lan Xichen listened patiently and pieced together the most coherent narrative, which was that somehow, on Monday night, the city vanished without a sound. 

Wei Ying, he thought, when his ship arrived, as so many others did in the weeks that followed, to the space where Lotus Pier should be. I never told Wei Ying that I love him. 

Lan Wangji was a logical man. He was not yet ready to mourn Wei Ying when so much was still unknown, when it was by no means certain that Wei Ying was truly gone. He didn’t believe that Lotus Pier had been wiped off the face of the earth by an angry god, or monster, or swallowed in a freak giant whirlpool. That said, he had no way of explaining the mysterious disappearance of Lotus Pier. The port city and all its inhabitants were simply, inexplicably gone. 

Wei Wuxian disappeared on a Monday.

When Lan Zhan was five years old, his mother refused to tell him a secret.

Lan Zhan and Lan Huan got to visit their mother everyday, but their mother was never allowed to leave her house. Everyday, their uncle took them to their mother’s little cottage, high up in the Gusu mountains, and everyday Lan Huan would tell her stories from school while Lan Zhan sat in her lap and let her comb his hair. Then every night, their uncle would come to collect them from their mother’s house, and asked them what they had talked about. It had not occurred to Lan Zhan yet to ask why–why their mother wasn’t allowed to leave, why Uncle wanted them to recall their conversations–but it occurred to Lan Huan, who was eight years old at the time.

“Mama?” Lan Huan asked one day. “Why does Uncle keep asking us what we talk about?”

Mama’s hands stilled in Lan Zhan’s hair. “Because…there’s something very important that I’m not supposed to tell you.”

“Oh.” Lan Huan thought for a second. “What is it?”

Mama sighed. “It’s a secret, A-Huan. I can’t tell you.”

“But I wanna know,” Lan Zhan said. 

He twisted to look up at her, making the comb tangle in his hair. Mama was sitting on the edge of the bed, combing Lan Zhan’s hair while he played with a dragon toy. She was dressed in light blue Lan robes, but she didn’t have a Lan ribbon like Lan Zhan and Lan Huan and every other Lan that they knew. Lan Zhan wasn’t wearing his right now, because Mama took it off to comb his hair, because only she and Father were allowed to.  

Lan Zhan wondered for the first time why Mama didn’t have a forehead ribbon.

“Yeah! I wanna know too!” Lan Huan sat up on the bed. He’d been practicing his writing lately, but today he seemed distracted, and Mama never yelled at them when they broke rules or did things they weren’t supposed to, so he just didn’t practice his writing. She never even seemed to notice.

“I can’t,” Mama repeated, tugging Lan Zhan around so she could continue combing his hair. “If I tell you, you won’t be able to see me anym–everyday, do you want that?”

“No,” Lan Huan said, lip wobbling at the thought.

“But I wanna know,” Lan Zhan said stubbornly. He thought for a second on what would get Mama to tell the secret. “Is it about us?”

Mama sighed again. “Yes.”

“Then you have to tell us!” Lan Huan immediately picked up on Lan Zhan’s plan. “Lying by omission is still lying.”

“Lying is against the rules,” Lan Zhan added, a little smugly.

Mama blinked, and then threw back her head and laughed. Lan Zhan thought he liked Mama’s laughs, but he didn’t like this one. “Oh, is it? I would have never guessed!” She stopped laughing, but her eyes were wet. “Ask your uncle,” she said. “He can tell you, if he wants.”

“But I wanna know from you, Mama,” Lan Zhan complained. Mama never got upset when he whined or complained, or anything else, really.

But Mama looked upset. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “Come here.” She pulled Lan Huan to sit on her other knee and wrapped an arm around both of them. “Come here. Ah, my precious little boys. You are so cute, my little buns.” 

Lan Huan giggled when Mama nuzzled his head, but Mama still wasn’t happy.

“You deserve to know. You do,” Mama said softly. “I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t until years later that Lan Wangji would realize that his mother was never, in all the time he’d known her, really, truly happy.

Lan Wangji realized he was in love on a Tuesday.

The students at the Cloud Recesses often went down to Caiyi lake for the afternoon, where they went swimming and dove off the docks, and ate mango with crushed ice underneath the blazing sun. Lan Wangji didn’t often join his fellow students, but on one particularly sunny afternoon he found himself trailing behind Wei Ying like an overgrown white moth. 

“These aren’t as good as Yanli’s,” Wei Ying said, cheeks stuffed with mango while he gestured at his bowl. “In Lotus Pier she makes them all the time, and they’re much better than this. Everything she does is better,” he said, with the confident air of one who does not need to specify how Jiang Yanli is “better.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said, distantly wondering how he could convince Jiang Yanli to teach him how to make crushed ice mango bowls. 

Jiang Yanli was sitting near ten paces from the edge of the lake, surrounded by her friends. The Jiangs in general did not venture out onto the dock. It was well-known that Jiangs did not swim in the company of strangers. The only Jiangs on the dock were Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, as they had decided to try and convince Nie Huaisang to try swimming. 

“Yours is no better,” Wei Ying continued, sampling from Lan Wangji’s bowl. He’d bought it for Lan Wangji on the premise that Lan Wangji simply had to try mango with crushed ice, and then proceeded to criticize it. 

“You should come to Lotus Pier sometime and try for yourself!” Wei Ying suggested, oblivious to Lan Wangji’s thumping heart. Was Wei Ying suggesting a date? Did Wei Ying consider that a date, or was it simply an invitation from a friend for a friend to visit sometime? 

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said again, because that seemed to be the safer option, rather than trying to express all of his hopes and fears. He was not about to unload all of them on Wei Ying. 

“Ha! You agreed!” Wei Ying bestowed a victorious grin upon him. “I’m going to hold you to–” He dropped the bowl.

Lan Wangji found himself pushed out of the way as Wei Ying sprinted to the end of the dock, barreling to the side without pause. Jin Zixun stood at the edge, having just successfully shoved Jiang Cheng off the side. Wei Ying’s fingers twisted around the back of Jiang Cheng’s robes, and his arm shoved him backwards, catapulting himself over the side in the process. 

Wei Ying hit the water a second later, having successfully saved his younger brother from falling in at his own expense. Lan Wangji found himself taking two steps forward, though he couldn’t imagine why Wei Ying wouldn’t be alright.

Jiang Cheng stumbled back upright, looking shocked at his near fall. “What the fuck,” he snarled at Jin Zixun.

“You know it’s forbidden for the Jiangs!” Nie Huaisang cried, nervously defending his friend.

“Sounds like bullshit,” Jin Zixun said defensively, crossing his arms. “Everyone says the Jiangs are the best swimmers, but no one’s ever seen you swim. Sounds like bullshit to me!”

“Yeah?” Jiang Cheng snarled. His hand curled into a fist, and he sucker punched the larger boy hard in the stomach. Then he kicked Jin Zixun over the side for good measure. “Let’s see how–”

“How about a race?” Wei Ying said from the water. He took off his outer robes and bundled them into a small wet wad of cloth, which he tossed onto the dock. 

Jin Zixun surfaced in time to hear Wei Ying’s proposal. “You–!” Jin Zixun spluttered, coughing up water, though whether at Wei Ying or Jiang Wanyin, it was unclear.

“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng snapped, his face red. “Get out of the water!”

Wei Ying half-shrugged. “Well, I’m already in, I might as well make the most of it. So?” Wei Ying challenged Jin Zixun, then turned to the small crowd that had gathered at the dock. “I’ll race anyone here who thinks they can beat me in a contest,” Wei Ying said, treading water in place. He pointed to a raft near the middle of the lake, where a pair of Jins were lazing about. “To that raft and back. How about it?”

“Fine,” Jin Zixun said, unwilling to back down in front of such a large audience. “You’re on.”

And that was how Jin Zixun found himself red-faced and humiliated, pulling himself out of the water while Wei Ying treaded water by the dock, looking not even slightly out of breath. 

“Anyone else want to race?” Wei Ying asked. There was a bit of glee in his expression, hidden behind the anger he cast at the observers.

No one said anything.

“If you all think us Jiangs are so slow, why don’t you race him?” Jiang Cheng insisted. 

He’d declined to cheer for Wei Ying, instead scoffing and saying that if Wei Ying lost he wouldn’t deserve to be called a Jiang. Lan Wangji had wanted to cheer for Wei Ying, but he’d been avoiding another student by the name of Su She who seemed to have popped up the moment Wei Ying went into the water. He didn’t understand what grudge Su She had against him, given that Lan Wangji was not certain he’d ever met him before.

“Lan Zhan? Wanna race?” Wei Ying grinned up at him from the water. 

Lan Wangji struggled to act like the image of Wei Ying, wet hair shining under the bright sun and eyes sparkling, wasn’t the cutest thing he’d ever seen. “I am sure Wei Ying is faster,” he answered.

“I’ll race you,” Su She burst out. He strode to the edge of the dock, left his outer robes by the side, and jumped in. 

Wei Ying glanced at Su She disinterestedly, but agreed anyway. “Fine,” he sighed. “But you better race me next time, Lan Zhan!” Then he turned, seemingly not worried about the fact that Su She had started swimming from the moment he said fine. 

But of course Wei Ying needn’t have worried. He tore after Su She, once again upsetting the poor Jins who were just trying to nap in the sun, pushed off their raft, and began swimming back. When he arrived back at the dock, he still didn’t look out of breath, and he didn’t look behind him, to see where Su She was. 

(Su She had veered off course, and by the time he stopped and looked around to see where he was, the race was long over).

“Okay, Lan Zhan, now you have to race me,” Wei Ying said brightly. 

Lan Wangji didn’t even hesitate. “Mn.” 

He methodically removed his outer layers and folded them into a neat pile, which he placed on the dock’s wet wood. Then he took off his shoes, and placed them on top of his pile.

Lan Wangji wasn’t used to the feeling of wanting to prove himself, but a large part of him very much wanted to see if he could keep up with Wei Ying. 

“Yes!” Wei Ying’s fist punched the air, and then he made grabby hands until Jiang Cheng hauled him out of the water. He kneeled next to Lan Wangji on the edge of the dock. “Ready, Lan Zhan?”

“Yes.”

They dove.

The freezing cold water of the lake was always a shock, one that Lan Wangji ignored as he kicked to the surface, arms streamlined in front of him. He turned his face to the right the moment he did, right arm going down and around. He set a furious pace, and heard, rather than saw Wei Ying doing the same next to him. Lan Wangji was far from competitive by nature, but he really, really wanted to beat Wei Ying. 

It wasn’t that he wanted to hold his victory over Wei Ying, or that he wanted to prove himself superior to Wei Ying in some way. Lan Wangji knew himself to be, if not average, rather plain. He wasn’t really memorable. He had a bit of a reputation, but he knew that Wei Ying didn’t care about that. So he wanted something for Wei Ying to remember him by, and he was never going to get a better opportunity than a swim race, the home turf of the Jiangs. Of course he would never create the opportunity himself, but Wei Ying hadn’t hesitated to save his brother from dishonor by falling into the water himself. How could Lan Wangji pass up the chance? 

So Lan Wangji ignored the burn in his chest and kept on swimming. 

The world descended into a flurry of strokes and well-timed breaths. Lan Wangji kept his eyes squeezed shut, and trusted that his sense of direction was taking him in the correct path. He knew that watching the others swim to the raft should feel a lot shorter than actually swimming there himself, but he began to doubt whether he was swimming in the correct direction at all. Surely by now he should’ve bumped into the raft.

Then he missed a breath when he passed over a strong water current, and swallowed water on his next attempt. The section of the lake he was passing over was no longer still, like the rest of Caiyi lake, but churning and frothing the water’s surface. 

Lan Wangji broke his pattern and surfaced with a gasp, struggling against the force of the water current. He blinked water droplets out of his eyes and glanced around briefly. He was past the middle of the lake. The dock he dove from was about an inch wide from his perspective. The raft was nowhere in sight, and Lan Wangji had found himself on top of a whirlpool.

The force dragged him under, and Lan Wangji’s priorities rearranged from winning the race to escaping the whirlpool. 

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying cried. 

He’d also stopped swimming, but he somehow had swum around the whirlpool. He reached for Lan Wangji, but he was too far away to help when the current pulled him underneath the water’s surface once more, with barely time for one deep breath. 

Frantically, Lan Wangji kicked for the surface, but the whirlpool acted like a sinking hole. He couldn’t quite gather the force to escape its reach. He couldn’t open his eyes, but he felt himself sinking away from the surface. The pressure grew, and with it grew the force of the whirlpool. Lan Wangji tried desperately to swim away, but the whirlpool pulled him back in between every stroke. He struggled not to accidentally release his breath, but his lungs cried for air and his ears popped. 

The water grew colder and colder, even as Lan Wangji’s attempts grew more and more heated. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, could only feel his hair floating above his head as the whirlpool sucked him further and further down. The pressure mounted as more and more tons of water pressed down on him, weakening his movements and muting his ability to hear even himself.

He felt the brief sensation of a hand grabbing his wrist, just as he began to lose focus.

Lan Wangji surfaced in darkness. His brain automatically demanded oxygen and his body instantly complied, gasping for air with the demeanor of a beached whale. The sounds of thundering water filled his ears, while splashes echoed faintly around him in the darkness. He kept on treading water, even as he struggled to comprehend the disorienting situation.

“Lan Zhan?” 

Lan Wangji turned instinctively towards the source of the voice. “Wei Ying?” He paddled frantically forwards, reaching blindly through the darkness for his friend.

“Hey, hey, Lan Zhan, don’t panic.” Two hands grabbed his outstretched arms by the forearms, tethering him to reality while he continued struggling to stay afloat in the nothingness. 

“We’re in an underground cave,” Wei Ying explained. “There was a cave-in, at the bottom of the lake. I couldn’t get to you in time to pull you up. You were…falling asleep.”

Wei Ying’s voice was so close to Lan Wangji. His breath was warm in Lan Wangji’s face. He forced himself to concentrate on that, on Wei Ying, and not on anything else. 

“Come over here, there’s a ledge,” Wei Ying said. 

He pulled Lan Wangji by his arms and Lan Wangji followed obediently, trusting Wei Ying without hesitation. The ledge wasn’t very far from where he’d been treading water. The moment Lan Wangji felt smooth rock under his hands, he pulled himself up, careful not to lose his grip on the slippery surface. He turned himself around and sat down, chest heaving, running his hands over his face.

Wei Ying sat down next to him, and Lan Wangji found that his biggest struggle was resisting the urge to lean onto him. In the end he gave in, a little, and reached for Wei Ying’s arm.  

“How do we get out?” Lan Wangji asked.  

Wei Ying was silent for a moment, and Lan Wangji wished he could see his face. “I blocked the entrance to the cave with a rock,” he said. “I have to roll it out of the way, and then we have to swim up the way we came.”

Lan Wangji frowned into the darkness. He hadn’t managed to swim up at any point while he was getting sucked down by the whirlpool. He didn’t know how Wei Ying was sure they could swim up now, despite the water that would come rushing into their little cave. 

“Surely there is another way,” Lan Wangji said. 

He moved to slide off the ledge, in order to explore the rest of the cave, but Wei Ying put a hand on his thigh and he instantly stopped moving.

“I explored the rest of the cave already,” Wei Ying said. “There’s no other way out. Please, Lan Zhan, just trust me. I can get us out. I just need a moment to move the rock.”

Lan Wangji wavered, his doubt in his own abilities warring with his confidence in Wei Ying’s. He sensed that there was something Wei Ying wasn’t telling him, something in his shortened narrative that he was deliberately omitting, but he couldn’t imagine what or why. 

Wei Ying began to slide off the rock, taking his silence for agreement, and Lan Wangji instantly grabbed his wrist with one hand. 

“Don’t leave,” Lan Wangji blurted. 

“I’ll only be on the other side of the cave,” Wei Ying assured him, but Lan Wangji couldn’t listen to reason. 

He couldn’t see a thing, and the echoing sounds of water slapping against the stone walls threatened to drown out Wei Ying in seconds. He’d nearly actually drowned, and was currently stuck in an underground cave, one rock away from being flooded by the lake. Lan Wangji wasn’t sure if he was shivering more from fear or cold. 

“Here.” Wei Ying slipped his arm out of Lan Wangji’s grip and turned his palm up. He placed something into Lan Wangji’s hand, a little round metal object. “Hold this. It’s my Jiang bell.”

Lan Wangji ran his fingers over the surface, noting the designs carved into the metal. He knew all the Jiangs carried little silver bells on their belts, but not why. 

“If I disappear, you can find me with it, okay?”

Lan Wangji curled his fingers into a fist around Wei Ying’s bell, unsure as to why this simple sphere was giving him such comfort. The bells didn’t even make a sound, they just swung there, silently. 

“Just say my name and you can find me,” Wei Ying promised. “But I promise I’m not going far. I’ll be right here, okay Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji trusted Wei Ying, perhaps more than he should. Lan Wangji nodded, then realized Wei Ying couldn’t see him. “Okay,” he said.

Wei Ying let go of his hands and slipped back into the water. Lan Wangji was left straining for the sounds of Wei Ying’s splashes, which were faint against the backdrop of the lake water roaring past them. 

“Once we’re out we’ll have to swim back to shore.” Wei Ying’s voice echoed around their sealed cave, but Lan Wangji could still tell that the distance between them was growing. “Do you still want to race? Ah, but we have to watch out for whirlpools now, eh Lan Zhan?”

“No,” Lan Wangji answered. 

He hadn’t really wanted to race Wei Ying in the first place, he’d just been quietly thrilled at the prospect of challenging Wei Ying in his domain. Turned out he’d needed Wei Ying to save him instead.    

But Lan Wangji forced himself to focus on the present. They were going to get out of here. He tried not to think of the seemingly endless fall through the lake, and how much harder that path would be if he was swimming up. If Wei Ying thought he could do it, he could do it. Soon they will be back in the bright sunlight, and Lan Wangji will buy Wei Ying another bowl of crushed ice mango to replace the one he dropped. He will have a story to tell his brother later this evening, when Lan Xichen asks how his excursion with Wei Wuxian went with that knowing, big-brother look of his.

Lan Wangji couldn’t hear Wei Ying. He turned the bell over in his hands, and reminded himself that Wei Ying will come back for his bell. He must. “Wei Ying.” 

The bell chimed softly against Lan Wangji’s palm. 

“Yeah?” 

Wei Ying didn’t sound like he was trying to move a heavy rock. Lan Wangji considered asking what he was doing, or more specifically, what it was that he wasn’t telling Lan Wangji. He didn’t appreciate being left in the dark, literally or metaphorically. He considered asking if all Jiangs had magic bells, or if Wei Ying was merely humoring his fears. 

“Can you sail?”

A pause. “Can I sail?” Wei Ying sounded vaguely amused. “Lan Zhan, I am a Jiang. What sort of Jiang would I be if I couldn’t sail?”

Lan Wangji had no reply to that. “Hm,” he offered vaguely. He wondered if he should learn how to sail, so he could have something in common with Wei Ying besides knowing how to swim. 

“Alright, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, sounding more alert, “I’ve got it. Come on.”

Lan Wangji traced the thread of Wei Ying’s bell with one finger, and silently fastened it tightly to his own belt. He reluctantly slipped off the ledge, disliking the brief moment in which he was submerged once more. His clothes became baggy in the water, and his hair floated around him like dense seaweed. Lan Wangji broke the surface and paddled over to the right, where the sound of Wei Ying’s voice had been coming from. 

Wei Ying’s hand emerged from the dark and guided Lan Wangji to the cave wall. “I’m gonna push it on three,” he said. 

Lan Wangji continued treading water calmly by the cave wall, but his heart began to beat harder. “Wei Ying,” he said. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Wei Ying said firmly. “I can get you out of here.” But he hesitated, and just a hint of fear crept into his voice. “Just hold onto me, and–and–just trust me, okay?”

Lan Wangji was a logical man. He knew that there was something about Wei Ying’s explanation for how they ended up in this cave that just didn’t make sense. Either they get impossibly lucky, or Wei Ying did something nobody should be able to do.

“Okay,” Lan Wangji said.

“Okay!” Wei Ying’s relief was palpable. “So on three, okay? One.” He pulled Lan Wangji behind him with one arm. “Two.” He did something in the dark that Lan Wangji couldn’t see. “Three.”

Lan Wangji took the deepest breath he could, and the water came flooding in.

Immediately, the water hit him like an angry horde, so fast he almost lost his connection to Wei Ying, who tightened his grip on Lan Wangji’s wrist to the point of pain. His head went underwater within seconds, as the water level rose almost instantly. The dulled rumbling of the water rose to a roar that overwhelmed Lan Wangji’s eardrums. 

I’ve been misled, he realized, and began to panic. They were literally right under the lake. It was the entirety of the lake now rushing into their little cave. There was absolutely no way that Lan Wangji would be able to find the force, not while his shivering limbs were slowly numbing, to swim his way out of the cave, much less swim up to the surface. 

But Lan Wangji felt a force in the darkness, pulling him against the current. Wei Ying refused to let go of his hand, and somehow managed to pull both of them out and up. Lan Wangji kicked as hard as he could, but he felt like a pebble trying to hold back the sea. It was Wei Ying, who despite the unending power of the sea pushing them both back down, somehow continued swimming up.

Lan Wangji thought his head might burst under the pressure, and his lungs weren’t doing much better. But if Wei Ying somehow found it within him to pull both of them up against the sea, then Lan Wangji could continue kicking. The pressure began to lighten, and the water around him began to feel slightly warmer. The roar died away, and Lan Wangji found himself zooming up, like Wei Ying was his own current, shooting for the sky. 

Just as Lan Wangji was thinking that they weren’t going to make it, he broke through the surface of the water. He immediately opened his eyes. The sun shone far too brightly for his light-deprived eyes, but he caught a glimpse of something dark red before he was blinking spots and water droplets out of his eyes. 

“Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying, unlike Lan Wangji, wasn’t gasping for breath. “Lan Zhan? Are you okay?”

Lan Wangji was struggling to force his breathing back into a regular pattern. “Yes,” he managed. 

He continued treading water, but raised shaking arms to wipe the water off his face and dripping from his hair. Lan Wangji opened his eyes again, and the sun was still blinding, but Lan Wangji could hardly even see it when Wei Ying was right in front of him.

His breath caught, and not from the water.

Wei Ying looked back at him, twice as radiant as the midday sun. “You’re not fine, you’re shivering,” he said. He was worried about Lan Wangji, and a small part of Lan Wangji wondered if this had been worth it, just for Wei Ying’s attention to be solely on him like this. “Lan Zhan, if you stay cold for too long you’ll catch a cold, you have to get warm.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji agreed. “You have to get warm, too.”

Wei Ying smiled at him. His eyes were so kind. “Aw, Lan Zhan,” he teased. “Worried about me?”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said immediately.

Wei Ying threw back his head and laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound Lan Wangji had heard all day. He wanted to take Wei Ying’s hands in his and tell him how much his presence in the cave had meant to him. No, he wanted to run his hands over Wei Ying’s face, hold his smile in his hands. No, he wanted to hold Wei Ying in his arms, run his fingers through Wei Ying’s soft, wet black hair, lean in and–and–and kiss him. He wanted to kiss Wei Ying.

It was Tuesday, and Lan Wangji was in love. 

Wei Wuxian returned on a Wednesday, three months after he disappeared, and three months before the night that no one slept.

Later Lan Wangji would say that Wei Wuxian reappeared on a Wednesday, for in a sense he’d never left to begin with. For three months, the world had struggled to deal with the disappearance of Lotus Pier and its consequences, while everyone searched for any trace of the Jiangs. 

Lan Wangji in particular spent all three months searching for Wei Ying without pause, even when his brother begged him to rest. For three months, every flash of a red ribbon had Lan Wangji turning his head. Every time he smelled spices in the air he paused and looked around, and each trip to the former location of Lotus Pier saw him diving deeper and deeper, unable to stop himself from thinking of a cave-in at the bottom of a small lake that once took him to an underground cave. But Lan Wangji could no more reach the bottom of the ocean than he could have made it to the bottom of Caiyi lake alive without Wei Ying. 

Two months into his search, stories began to crop up of a pirate who kept raiding port cities on the Qishan archipelago, with each raid getting bolder and bolder. 

“Wangji, you are the admiral of the navy,” Lan Xichen said one day, when yet another report came in of this mysterious pirate, now called the Yiling Patriarch, after his first known appearance. “You cannot simply ignore everything else, the crown will appoint a different admiral. Perhaps Wen Chao?”

Lan Wangji clenched the report in his fists. His brother knew exactly what the worst-case scenario for him was. “The disappearance of Lotus Pier remains unexplained,” he said stonily.

“And we’re all rightly concerned,” Xichen said. “But it’s not necessarily your jurisdiction, Wangji.”

Lan Wangji stared at his brother. “Who else is searching?” He asked flatly.

Lan Xichen sighed and gently tugged the report out of Lan Wangji’s grip. He set it on the table, and smoothed it out. A large gray heron, the Lan brothers’ messenger bird, waited patiently on the table for Lord Lan’s reply. 

“Won’t you tell the crown you are looking into it?” Xichen said, instead of answering. He penned his own reply as he spoke, just a handful of phrases that probably amounted to a polite version of my brother is a stubborn idiot. Mulia, the heron, flew off as soon as Xichen secured his response to one of Mulia’s long orange legs. 

Xichen had once more managed to convince Lan Wangji to take a day-long break, and neither of them wanted to spend it arguing. 

The truth was that Lan Wangji was now the only person with real influence still searching for Lotus Pier. During the first couple of weeks, all of the other lords were in the area. Lord Nie’s younger brother, Nie Huaisang, stayed for a few weeks and left seemingly unconcerned with the fate of his two friends. Lan Wangji suspected that he knew something that he wasn’t telling anyone, but did not have enough proof to ask. It was also undeniable that Nie Huaisang had simply given up. Similarly, Lord Jin and his son had arrived at the same time as Lan Wangji, but left after only two weeks. Frankly, Lan Wangji, who had unwillingly witnessed the entirety of Lord Jin’s courtship of his wife, was disgusted to see so little dedication from the man who had semi-willingly humiliated himself for the woman he supposedly loved. 

“Jin Zixuan is no longer searching,” Lan Wangji pressed. “The Nies are no longer searching. The Wens are preoccupied with this pirate. I am the only one searching.”

“But what are you searching for, Wangji?” Lan Xichen asked gently. “Don’t you think if the Jiangs were…around, somewhere, they would have come forward and said so?”

“Wei Ying cannot be gone,” Lan Wangji insisted. There had to be more than that, there had to be a secret underground cave, there had to be some reason why the city had simply vanished overnight. Wei Ying could not be dead until Lan Wangji was shown irrefutable proof.

Wei Ying could not be gone. 

Three months into his search, Lan Wangji realized that Wei Ying had been closer than he could’ve ever guessed. He was standing on the deck of his ship, the Bichen, when the letter arrived. Mulia swooped along the surface of the water, her white, meter-long wings flapping slowly. She landed on the deck with a thump, and Lan Wangji moved to take the letter from the tube tied to her leg.

They saw Wei Wuxian, Xichen wrote. But you’re not going to like it.

On the Wednesday exactly three months, one week and two days after the disappearance of Lotus Pier, the Yiling Patriarch sailed downriver in his ghost ship, broke into the royal palace, and stole some of the most prized possessions of the crown. Priceless jewels were taken from the treasury, as was the irreplaceable pelt of the last known mermaid ever found. Over a decade ago when the mermaid had been killed, the body was descaled and the skin put in the treasury, where it was occasionally taken out and put on display for high-class visitors. Lan Wangji had seen the scales exactly once before. They were a beautiful, shimmering gradient from red to black, unlike the scales of any other creature in the world. 

But Lan Wangji would not have stopped his search for Wei Ying just because the crown lost some expensive items to a pirate. Lan Wangji stopped his search because this time they saw the pirate’s face, and recognized him, because it was the royal palace that was robbed. Earlier raids had spoken of a mysterious man in black, who wielded his saber like a demon, who came in the dead of night on his ghostly ship and disappeared before daybreak. 

It was Wei Wuxian, Xichen penned. There’s no doubt about it. Everyone who saw him in the palace all agreed. Wei Wuxian is the Yiling Patriarch. 

This changed Lan Wangji’s search in several drastic ways, and none of them were good. Firstly, while Lan Wangji did know in theory how to find Wei Ying now, actually catching up to him was a much harder task. Secondly, it explained nothing of what happened to the Jiangs, and instead raised more questions. Who was on Wei Ying’s crew? Where had he been the two months before he started pirateering? What happened to the Jiangs? Why was he raiding cities in the first place? And thirdly, there was what the public was now saying about the Yiling Patriarch, now that they knew his true identity. 

Wangji, I’m sorry, but we still don’t know how Lotus Pier disappeared. You know what people are thinking, now that we know what Wei Wuxian has been doing.

People thought that Wei Ying was responsible for the disappearance of Lotus Pier. 

From a certain perspective, it made sense. The Yiling Patriarch had formed a mythos around himself. By the time Lan Wangji received the letter, there were already tales told of the Yiling Patriarch. They spoke of the flute-like shrieking of the wind as his ghostly ship appeared in harbors, or the way the Yiling Patriarch descended like a demon of the night upon keeps and forts, aided on either side by an assassin and a berserker. They spoke of how his ship disappeared out to sea, vanishing in a way that no ship should be able to do. 

With all these legends surrounding the Yiling Patriarch, and the lack of knowledge surrounding Lotus Pier’s disappearance, it was no wonder people took the two things they didn’t understand and put them together. Overnight, all the stories of gods and monsters and metropolis-eating storms that hovered around Lotus Pier’s disappearance all coalesced around the Yiling Patriarch. 

Wei Wuxian was the adopted son of Lord Jiang. He was second in line for the position, should anything happen to Jiang Wanyin. He was in Lotus Pier, the night it disappeared. By all rights, he should’ve disappeared with the Jiangs. But if he didn’t, and instead returned to loot the law-fearing cities on the coast, then clearly, he must have something to do with the disappearance. Wei Wuxian became a sorcerer overnight, a being of indescribable evil and unutterable powers, powers such as destroying a city. People gathered in taverns to call him a mass murderer, a traitor, a madman and a monster. 

It was, of course, all nonsense. It’s not Wei Ying, Lan Wangji wanted to say. Wei Ying would never, ever, harm his family, much less deliberately destroy his own home. There had to be something else going on, something Lan Wangji still didn’t know. It could be an imposter wearing Wei Ying’s face, but it couldn’t be the real Wei Ying, his Wei Ying.

Lan Wangji wouldn’t know until he tracked down the Yiling Patriarch. So the admiral of the fleet brought his ship into harbor, found himself a crew, and gave himself a job. As far as the world was concerned, Wei Wuxian was responsible for the disappearance of Lotus Pier, and the only thing left to do was get revenge on behalf of all the Jiangs who died that night. But Lan Wangji wasn’t willing to accept that yet. 

Wei Wuxian reappeared on a Wednesday, and Lan Wangji was going to be the one to find him first.

Lan Zhan was six when he decided he hated secrets.

His mother had been on and off sick for the past several months, which was a travesty to six-year-old Lan Zhan, to whom one day felt like an eternity. So one day, after he failed to go to sleep for what felt like hours, he got up and made his way through the paths to his mother’s cottage.

It was harder to see in the darkness, but Lan Zhan could still make out the square, wooden walls, and the rows and rows of gentians lining the outside of it. Mama loved her gentians, so Lan Zhan decided that he loved them too. It was the blue, he decided. He liked the blue–deep, unfathomable blue, like the ocean. 

It only occurred to Lan Wangji years later that at six, he’d never seen the ocean.

So Lan Zhan walked through the grass to the front door, but froze when he heard Uncle’s voice. Uncle would be so upset if he learned that Lan Zhan was out of bed past 9 pm.

“…said you had to see them everyday,” Uncle was saying. He sounded stern. “Now you are saying this is not enough?”

“It has only prolonged the inevitable,” Mama insisted, defeated. “I am dying.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes widened. He knew the definition of dying, but not really what it meant. Still, he inched forward, along the edge of the gentian flowers. He peered over the side of the wall. Uncle was standing a foot from the doorway, arms clasped behind his back. Mama was on her knees in the doorway, still drenched in Lan light blue robes. Lan Zhan had the random thought that his mother would prefer dark blue, the blue of her gentians. 

 “Please, Lan Qiren,” Mama begged. “Give me back to the water.”

“It is only an illness,” Uncle said stiffly. “It will pass.”

“It will not,” Mama snapped. “This is–this is our way. Without it, eventually, we all fade.”

“Then why did you claim you had to see your sons everyday?” Uncle demanded. “For what connection?”

“Because they are my sons!” Mama cried. “Would you–no, of course you would.”

“I cannot,” Uncle said impassively. “I am sorry. I know what my brother is doing is–wrong.”

“Wrong,” Mama echoed. She stood, swaying like a willow. “Wrong,” she said again. 

Suddenly she started running, pushing past Uncle, hiking up her long, sky blue robes. Lan Zhan stifled a gasp and pulled behind the wall, heart pounding. Uncle ran after her, and he was much faster. He caught up to her and grabbed her arm, dragged her back to the cottage.

“I’m sorry,” Uncle repeated, unhappily. “I cannot.”

“No,” Mama moaned, face chalk-white. She fought him every step of the way. “Please, please, I have to return to the water.”

“Keep your voice down,” Uncle hissed.

“You are no better than him!” Mama shrieked. She was pushed through the doorway, but despite the closed door Lan Zhan could hear every word. “I had family in the outside world! There are still those that remember the name Zhang Jue!”

“I am endeavoring to keep him away,” Uncle said, almost pleading. “Please calm down–think of your sons!”

“My sons!” Mama sounded incensed. “A-Huan and A-Zhan will have to know what they are eventually,” she said furiously. “You cannot keep the truth from them forever.”

“I must try,” Uncle said, wearily. He closed the door in her face and turned to where Lan Zhan was hiding.

Lan Zhan finally found his feet and took off, breaking yet another rule as he tore down the paths back to the room he shared with his brother. He slipped back into bed, trembling, and almost didn’t manage to fall asleep that night. Uncle was none the wiser in the morning, when Lan Zhan woke at 5 am as always. 

Years later, faced with a mountain of secrets from Wei Ying, Lan Wangji would be reminded of how he’d felt, listening to his mother and his uncle argue in the dead of night. The sheer weight of what he didn’t understand–what happened to Lotus Pier, what happened to Wei Ying?–nearly crushed him, until he was a trembling, terrified six-year-old again, hiding amongst his mother’s flowers.

When Lan Zhan did fall asleep, he fell asleep not understanding in the slightest what they were talking about, or what this secret was that his mother could not tell them. He wouldn’t understand for years, long after he fell in love with Wei Ying, and after Lotus Pier disappeared. But he fell asleep knowing that he hated secrets, hated it more than he hated anything else. He fell asleep with the deep, burning, desperate desire to know.   

Luo Qingyang was a no-nonsense, straight-forward person, and Lan Wangji appreciated that immensely. She transferred from the Jin fleet as soon as Lan Wangji announced that he was going to personally hunt down the Yiling Patriarch.

“You should know I didn’t apply for this job because I think Wei Wuxian is responsible,” she said bluntly, the day they met. “I want this job because I think I can prove that he’s not.”

Lan Wangji only nodded at her, because it was identical to his reasoning. 

Luo Qingyang–or Mianmian, as she insisted he call her–was a competent sailor, and a skilled swordswoman, both of which Lan Wangji needed if he was to stand any chance of catching Wei Ying. And most importantly, she was on his side. He couldn’t ask for a better first mate. 

Lan Wangji’s quartermaster was Mianmian’s friend, Qin Su. Qin Su had first been introduced to the Jin fleet as Jin Guangyao’s girlfriend, but after that truly disastrous disaster, which Lan Wangji preferred not to think about, she obviously wasn’t anymore. Somehow Qin Su stuck around, and was now hopelessly infatuated with Mianmian, to the point of following her onto a navy crew tracking down the most feared pirate the world had ever seen. Mercifully, Qin Su never asked why he was so sure of Wei Ying’s innocence, but Lan Wangji knew she suspected at the very least. It took one to know one, after all.

Qin Su wasn’t the swordswoman Lan Wangji had hoped to have on his crew, knowing he would be going up against Wei Ying, but she was competent, and she was a ruthlessly efficient quartermaster.

Lan Wangji’s sailing master was Wen Yuan, a polite boy and a fine swordsman. Lan Wangji did not have a high opinion of Wens in general, but Wen Yuan was an exception, because he just wasn’t like the other Wens. He was also an excellent navigator, and also had a knack for getting Lan Wangji’s boatswains not to kill each other, which they had been trying to do since the very first day they got onboard.

It started from the very first question.

“Why do you want to join the crew?” Lan Wangji asked, blank-faced as always.

“My father thinks I should get work experience,” Jin Rulan said, grimacing.

“Hm,” Lan Wangji said. On the one hand, Jin Rulan had been trained by the finest the Jins had to offer. He was a skilled swordsman, and he certainly brought quite a bit of resources with him. On the other hand…

“Wait, but your father is Lord Jin,” said Ouyang Zizhen, whose job it was to man the jib sheets. “Doesn’t that mean your mother is Jiang Y–”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jin Rulan said. He scowled ferociously, reminding Lan Wangji of the boy’s uncle, who was, along with the boy’s mother, among the missing Jiangs. Speaking of uncles:

“Wait, wait,” said Lan Jingyi, Lan Wangji’s other boatswain. “That means the Yiling Patriarch is your unc–”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!” Jin Rulan shouted. He darted a glance at Wen Yuan, daring the other sailor to add his own comment.

“If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t have to talk about it,” Wen Yuan offered. 

“Damn right!” Jin Rulan was still shouting. “Also, it’s Jin Ling. I’m not some stupid Lan!” And he stomped off.

The other sailors winced.

“It’s not the same character as the Gusu Lans…” Ouyang Zizhen muttered.

“I am sure he did not mean it that way, Captain Lan,” Wen Yuan offered.

Lan Jingyi snorted. “I think he did.”

“Jingyi!” Wen Yuan hissed, mortified.

“It is of no matter,” Lan Wangji interrupted, and strode away.

Sometimes, he did very much want to ask Jin Ling about his family. He knew that Wei Ying loved his nephew very much–another reason these accusations against him were a farce–and in the absence of their own children, both Wei Ying and Jiang Wanyin had doted upon their nephew, in different ways. In other words, Wei Ying had been close with Jin Ling, before he disappeared. How could Jin Ling believe his uncle to be responsible for the disappearance of Lotus Pier? Did he believe Wei Ying was responsible? If he didn’t, what did he think of the fact that his uncle was now the feared Yiling Patriarch?

Additionally, Jin Ling was the only other person he knew with a close connection to the Jiangs. He didn’t count Nie Huaisang or Jin Zixuan, both because they had given up searching for Lotus Pier, and because Lan Wangji didn’t know them personally. He also didn’t count Mianmian, because she’d only spoken to Wei Ying once, although admittedly that one time had caused Lan Wangji an unreasonable amount of jealousy. But putting his father’s despicable disloyalty aside, Jin Ling’s mother was the famed Jiang Yanli. Lan Wangji knew that Jin Zixuan had an (unreasonable) number of half-siblings, but half of Jin Ling’s family had lived in Lotus Pier. He’d lost a mother, two uncles, and two of his three grandparents the night it disappeared. He’d probably had friends among the Jiangs. He’d probably seen it as his second home.

Probably, because Lan Wangji didn’t know. He wanted to ask Jin Ling what he thought of all of this, but Jin Ling had made it very clear that he didn’t want to talk about it. Lan Wangji would respect that. 

But sometimes, when Lan Wangji saw the Jiang bell hanging from Jin Ling’s belt, or the red ribbon Jin Ling sometimes used to tie his hair back, or when he recognized some of Jin Ling’s sword forms as ones that Wei Ying had invented, he couldn’t help but feel that he had at least a part of Wei Ying on board his ship.

“I think I figured out that pattern,” Mianmian said.

Almost every night, Lan Wangji, Mianmian, and Qin Su gathered in the captain’s quarters to pore over maps, charts, and lists, trying to figure out what the Yiling Patriarch’s next target was. They had yet to make an accurate prediction, and more than a dozen raids had happened since the raid on the royal palace. Tonight, however, four nights before the night that no one slept, they made a breakthrough.

“He’s not working up from less to more fortified cities,” Mianmian continued. “It only looks that way, because of the way the port cities are situated on the Qishan archipelago. He’s going from the closest to Lotus Pier to furthest–except for the raid on the royal palace, but that’s been an outlier in all of our predictions.”

When they had imagined Wei Wuxian going from city to city, they had failed to consider where Wei Ying was going in between his raids. It was Qin Su, the Bichen’s quartermaster, who brought up the issue of where Wei Ying restocked his supplies, and it was Mianmian who sat down and noticed the distance between Wei Ying’s raids and Lotus Pier.

“But how can he be using Lotus Pier as his base, if it’s gone?” Qin Su pointed out reasonably.

Mianmian shrugged. “I don’t know. But we don’t know how it disappeared, either. Really, we just have to ask Wei Wuxian.”

Lan Wangji frowned. “And what of the royal palace?” 

Wei Ying had only been raiding cities on the Qishan archipelago before and after the raid on the royal palace, which was even further downriver than Caiyi and the most unlikely of targets for a pirate. Lan Wangji didn’t understand why Wei Ying was only attacking the Wens, though of course the obvious theory was that the Wens had something to do with the Jiangs’ disappearance. But that didn’t explain why Wei Ying had not come out and said so, and instead resorted to raiding Qishan. 

He also didn’t understand why Wei Ying had decided to rob the royal palace. Wei Ying had no interest in money or ill-won prizes; what did he care about some shiny objects? But then, nothing about this made sense. 

“I don’t know,” Mianmian said again. “It’s also the only time he killed civilians.”

Lan Wangji could feel his fists clenched within his robes. Wei Ying would never hurt civilians, much less go out of his way to kill them. Yet every shred of evidence indicated that Wei Ying had tracked, hunted, and slaughtered two elderly civilians.

“There must be an explanation,” Lan Wangji insisted.

Mianmian sighed. “I know. It’s so… unlike him. He always went out of his way to help people. But can we try this, at least? It places his next raid at Huyu. It’s the best lead we’ve got.”

Lan Wangji bowed his head in thought. “Very well,” he said finally. “I will inform the rest of the crew.”

Lan Jingyi and Jin Ling were getting along no better now. 

“I can’t believe you snuck a dog onto the ship!” Lan Jingyi hissed. 

“The captain has a dog!” Jin Ling hissed back, struggling to hold Fairy back from attacking Lan Wangji’s dog, Paws, again. “What’s one more!”

“Two!”

Paws barked loudly, but this time because she sensed Lan Wangji arriving. The Kunming wolfdog was supposed to be an asset to the Bichen, but mostly she seemed to enjoy trying to bowl Lan Wangji over whenever she saw him, and tripping over her own paws. 

“Captain!” Jin Ling startled guiltily. He stood in front of Fairy like he was hiding her from view, which was ridiculous considering that Fairy was about half his height and still barking. “Uh.”

“We are setting course for Huyu island,” Lan Wangji said, without so much as glancing at Fairy, or acknowledging the overly clumsy dog pawing at his legs. 

Lan Jingyi and Jin Ling glanced at each other.

“Uh, right, of course, Captain,” Lan Jingyi said hastily. “I’ll, uh, inform the sailing master. Right away.”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji whirled around and strode away, but not before discreetly patting Paws on the head. Paws was a good girl. She deserved head pats. 

“Did he…? Okay, he definitely saw Fairy, right?” Jin Ling asked in what he probably thought was a low voice.

“I can’t believe he just…hey, hey! Paws! Come here girl! Look, I’ve got treats!”

Really, Lan Wangji had no idea how Paws felt entitled to act so spoiled. She was supposed to be a ship’s dog. She had a job on board the Bichen just like everyone else. 

Lan Wangji left his boatswains arguing on the deck over who had to go tell Wen Yuan what their new course was, relieved that he’d gotten that headache over with. 

He still had to send Mulia with a letter to Xichen, informing Xichen of his newest course. Sailing was far from a risk-free activity, and tracking down a pirate ship even less so. 

Truthfully, Lan Wangji had no idea what he expected when he did finally catch up to Wei Ying. He couldn’t imagine needing to protect himself or his crew from Wei Ying. It was Wei Ying, after all, who had won Mianmian’s eternal loyalty by going out of his way to protect her from Wang Lingjiao, for no other reason than he could. It was Wei Ying who had swum to the bottom of a lake after him, who had held his hand in a pitch-black cave and promised that he would protect him. How could Lan Wangji fear that Wei Ying?

How could that Wei Ying kill civilians?

So Lan Wangji kept his brother informed on his whereabouts, just in case. Who knew what could happen. Lan Wangji certainly felt like he didn’t know anything about anything anymore. 

In any case: one headache to go.

“Hey! Captain!”

Speaking of headaches.

Lan Wangji halted, but very distinctly did not look up.

“I think A-Su is finally making her move on Mianmian!”

Lan Wangji considered, for a moment, saying something like the position of lookout does not give one the permission to spy on the personal lives of one’s crewmates, or alternatively, get down from the fucking crow’s nest, A-Qing.

Then he considered whether his words would have any impact.

Lan Wangji had a great deal of respect for Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan, he really did. Often when he looked at them he imagined himself and Wei Ying in their place. Of course that would have required him telling Wei Ying about his feelings before the Disappearance of Lotus Pier, an action he now deeply regretted never doing. Which was why he could not understand how their adopted daughter, Xiao Qing, turned out like this.

“Keep your voice down,” Lan Wangji said finally, which of course translated into keep me informed. Lan Wangji certainly did not engage in gossip, but he had a natural interest in the happiness of his friends.

“Got it, Captain!” A-Qing shouted cheerfully.

Lan Wangji sighed, and continued walking.

On Thursday, three nights before the night that no one slept, the Bichen sailed into Huyu bay. The Chenqing was sailing away. The hour was past midnight, and the only reason they saw the Chenqing at all was because A-Qing was on the night shift, and her suspiciously freaky eyesight somehow managed to pick out the dark silhouette against the black waters, black sky, and gray clouds. 

The door to the captain’s room burst open, and Qin Su rushed in. She grabbed Lan Wangji’s shoulder and shook it, ignoring all standards of decency in favor of waking him up.

“Lan Wangji!” Qin Su hissed. “Wake up! A-Qing spotted the Chenqing!”

Lan Wangji was awake instantly. “Where?”

“Leaving the harbor,” Qin Su said. “If we act now we can catch it.”

Lan Wangji made it to the deck in under a minute. 

Everyone was on deck for the first time in their months-long voyage. All seven of his crew looked wide awake, rushing to their stations with a frantic energy, unsure as to what was about to happen. 

“The wind’s blowing north-northeast,” Wen Yuan reported. “We’re downwind right now.”

Lan Wangji stared at the tiny, fuzzy outline of the Chenqing for a moment, just barely visible across the dark waters of the ocean. Distantly, he heard shouting from Huyu, likely the aftermath of the raid that Wei Ying had just conducted. Wei Ying. Wei Ying was on the Chenqing. Wei Ying was half a mile from him.

“Tack upwind,” Lan Wangji ordered.

His sailors sprang into motion; Ouyang Zizhen ran for the jib sheets, unfurling the jib sail for the first time in their voyage and pulling the sheets into a close haul. Jin Ling and Lan Jingyi did the same with the main sheets, though Jin Ling looked oddly nervous, for the first time in all the time Lan Wangji had known him. 

“They’re tacking starboard!” Xiao Qing called from the crow’s nest. 

“Tack,” Lan Wangji ordered again. He strode to the bow of the Bichen, and stood next to Mianmian at the wheel. 

“I can’t see it,” Mianmian admitted. 

The sea rolled beneath them, and the midnight air stung his face. Sea spray sloshed the sides of the Bichen, but in between every spray, Lan Wangji could see the vast, night darkness that stretched out in front of them. The smudge that was the Chenqing was fading into the darkness, stolen by the cover of the sea and night. 

“I’m losing them!” A-Qing shouted frantically. “There’s going to be cloud cover in a minute, I’m going to lose them!”

Lan Wangji had finally seen the Chenqing, finally had a chance of seeing Wei Ying for the first time in almost half a year, and he was about to lose it. Wei Ying was about to disappear again. 

“Are you going to take the wheel?” Mianmian asked.

“No,” Lan Wangji said. He reached into his belt and pulled out a small silver bell, one that by all rights was not his, but one that he’d never given back.

“I’ve lost them!” A-Qing shouted. “They’re behind the cloud cover!”

Lan Wangji turned Wei Ying’s Jiang bell over in his hand. He held the thread delicately but firmly between his thumb and pointer finger, and let it dangle in front of him. “Wei Ying,” he said softly.

The bell chimed, just as softly, the gentle sound of water trickling through caves and sea winds whistling through island crags. The sound of the sea. The sound of Wei Ying. 

Lan Wangji held his arm a little to the right. “Wei Ying,” he said again, just as soft as before.

Wei Ying’s bell chimed again, slightly louder than before. 

“Port tack,” Lan Wangji ordered, letting his voice carry over the wind. “Close reach.”

“Yessir!” Lan Jingyi shouted, and the rest of the crew sprang into motion once more. 

Mianmian watched curiously, but didn’t say anything. 

“Qin Su,” Lan Wangji said calmly, “please wake up Mulia and send a letter to my brother. Tell him that we have found Wei Ying.”

“On it,” Qin Su said, rushing below deck.

Lan Wangji had once decided to learn how to sail because of Wei Ying, similar to how he had once decided to race Wei Ying to see if he could keep up. But now he needed to not just keep up, but outmaneuver Wei Ying in his own domain. It was not a game anymore, but a matter of life or death. If someone caught up to Wei Ying before Lan Wangji did, someone who was equally prepared but willing to kill without hesitation, Wei Ying would be killed.

Put like that, Lan Wangji really only had one choice. 

“Where do you think he’s headed?” Mianmian asked quietly. 

Lan Wangji narrowed his eyes, squinting at the bleak night. “Lotus Pier,” he said. “Wherever that may be.” He gently shook Wei Ying’s bell again. “Wei Ying.”

The bell chimed loudest to Lan Wangji’s left. 

“He’s tacked again,” Mianmian said, beginning to understand how the bell worked, though Lan Wangji was still trying to understand it himself. 

“Hm,” Lan Wangji agreed, then raised his voice. “Starboard tack,” he called, and estimated the angle. “Close reach.”

The Bichen tacked upwind again as the sailors changed the sheets, swinging the boat across the wind as swiftly as possible.

“Is that how you were planning on outmaneuvering him?” Mianmian asked, nodding at the bell.

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said. He didn’t know if Wei Ying remembered giving him his Jiang bell, or telling him what the bell could do. Lan Wangji had no way of knowing whether Wei Ying had been making it up, but he’d discovered long ago that the bell only chimed whenever Lan Wangji said Wei Ying’s name. 

If I ever disappear, you can find me with it, Wei Ying had said, but Lan Wangji had never known how literal Wei Ying was being until now. 

There was much Lan Wangji didn't understand about Wei Ying. He still didn’t understand how Wei Ying had gotten them out of that cave, only that he had. 

“They’re tacking again!” A-Qing called.

“A feint,” Lan Wangji said calmly, but his heart beat rabbit-quick.

He could only trust that he knew Wei Ying enough to catch up to him.

The Bichen continued sailing on a starboard tack for half a minute in tense silence, waiting for the verdict. 

“It was a feint!” A-Qing called. 

The Chenqing had only pretended to tack, on the premise that the Bichen would follow suit, but didn’t actually cleat the mainsheet before changing the sheets back to a starboard tack. The diversion cost the Chenqing vital time, as it lost speed while the Bichen continued gaining on it.

“That means he’s seen us,” Mianmian realized.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji agreed. “Qin Su,” he said, as the quartermaster emerged from below deck. “The lights.”

She nodded once and left again, rushing to light the lanterns around the boat, and bring one up to the masthead for A-Qing. Now that they knew Wei Ying had seen their ship, there was no point in trying to hide.

The sea wind whistled past them, and the Bichen drew ever-closer to the Chenqing. 

“He’s tacking!” A-Qing called again.

“Port tack,” Lan Wangji ordered this time, and once more the Bichen swung through the wind. “Close reach.”

“The wind’s shifting!” Wen Yuan called from his position, starboard of the mast. “North-east!”

“He’s still on close reach,” A-Qing reported from above them. “He’s…what is he doing?”

The outline of the Chenqing was now a full outline of a ship, from tack to tiller. They’d gotten the drop on the Chenqing and closed additional distance on the ghost ship after its failed fakeout tack, but Lan Wangji was under no illusions that Wei Ying had no tricks left to play. 

“He’s sailing directly at us!” A-Qing cried. 

The Chenqing’s bow now pointed just slightly away from the Bichen’s, its sails swinging out almost perpendicular to the ship, into a broad reach. 

Lan Wangji had no doubt that the prospect of the Yiling Patriarch smashing into their ship and boarding it terrified his crew. He also had no doubt that Wei Ying was aware of his reputation. 

“He’s downwind,” Mianmian said. “He’s going much faster than us.”

“Is he trying to attack us?” Ouyang Zizhen asked fearfully. 

Lan Wangji wasn’t sure. He knew nothing about the size and skill of Wei Ying’s crew, aside from scattered rumors that were impossible to trust. He knew nothing about how Wei Ying would act as a pirate, because it was nothing like what Wei Ying acted like as a person.

“Thirty meters away!” A-Qing called, an edge of panic in her voice.

Lan Wangji didn’t know, but he had to make a decision. 

“Starboard tack,” he ordered. “Beam reach.”

Mianmian’s eyes widened, even as she and the rest of the crew obeyed. “He’ll ram us!”

“He will not,” Lan Wangji said, with a certainty he didn’t quite feel. 

The lanterns flickered as the wind rushed past them, and the Chenqing continued barreling down the Bichen, getting faster and faster as the wind picked up speed. Wei Ying was sailing north, and twenty meters to the right, Lan Wangji was sailing east. 

“Captain! We’re gonna cross!” A-Qing shouted, having realized what Mianmian had. “Ten meters!”

The Chenqing had gotten close enough that Lan Wangji could see the individual people on board, and it suddenly occurred to Lan Wangji that these were the people that Wei Ying had been sailing with for the past several months. These were the people who had known whether he was eating or sleeping, whether he was injured after his raids. Briefly, Lan Wangji wondered whether these people had some sort of leverage over Wei Ying, whether they were possibly holding the Jiangs hostage to enforce his loyalty. He dismissed the theory as ridiculous moments later, and forced himself to focus on the present.

“Lan Wangji please, he’s going to ram us,” Mianmian said urgently.

“Let him,” Lan Wangji snapped, in a moment of visible, uncharacteristic anger, as Mianmian’s trust in Wei Ying failed.

Mianmian’s hands were white on the steering wheel. “Lan Wangji–”

“Wei Ying will not,” Lan Wangji interrupted, and the bell chimed even louder than before. Though what Wei Ying would not do, he did not know.

The Bichen crashed through the waves while the Chenqing crested on them, its bow still aimed to ram the side of the Bichen, should their current courses continue. 

Qin Su returned to Mianmian’s side, and drew her saber. “If you’re sure you’re calling his bluff,” is all she said. 

“Yes.” Lan Wangji left the bow and strode quickly to the mast of the Bichen. “Everyone,” he said calmly, “prepare for attack.”

Ouyang Zizhen drew his saber and left the jibsheets, while A-Qing readied her bow from her position above the crew. Mianmian kept a hand on the wheel but Qin Su stood next to her, saber drawn. Lan Jingyi, Jin Ling, and Wen Yuan all drew their sabers, joining Ouyang Zizhen on the starboard side of the mast. Lan Wangji saw Wen Yuan and Jin Ling exchange a nervous glance, and prayed that they wouldn’t need to fight. 

The Chenqing grew close enough for Lan Wangji to hear the slapping of the sea waves against its hull. The two ships raced along the waves, speeding into a fatal collision course. Finally, the crew of the ghost ship gathered at its bow, and Lan Wangji saw them for the first time. He could see two unfamiliar men, both dressed in dark clothing, both wielding sabers, though one rested the blade over his shoulder like it was a toy and not a weapon. Behind them stood a woman with the purple robes of the Jiangs. But the only person Lan Wangji had eyes for was the person at the front of the bow.

Lan Wangji narrowed his eyes as the dreaded Yiling Patriarch strode to the stern of his ghost ship, watching as the Bichen drew nearer and nearer. His black hair whipped wildly in the sea winds. He raised his saber in a mockery of a friendly gesture, and the blade flashed briefly under the midnight moon.

“Lan Zhan,” he called. “Long time no see.”

It was Wei Ying.

Lan Wangji held his gaze and refused to look away, making sure Wei Ying knew that Lan Wangji had no intention of changing his course. Wei Ying met his gaze squarely, face harder than diamonds. 

“Lan Wangji, please,” Qin Su hissed. 

Lan Wangji didn’t answer. “Wei Ying,” he said instead, daring Wei Ying to look away. He tied the bell back to his belt, the bright chime going unheard under the sounds of the sea. 

Time ran out.

Abruptly, Wei Ying spun away from the bow. “Do it!” Wei Ying bellowed, and several things happened at once.

First, the Chenqing tacked to starboard, drawing parallel to the Bichen just three meters away, but pointed in the opposite direction. It cost them quite a lot of speed, speed that Lan Wangji would also have to spend if he wanted to follow the Chenqing. 

But at the same time as the Chenqing began tacking, Wei Ying leapt from the bow to the pulpit of the ship and then jumped, hurtling through the air with the practiced air of one who has spent too much time jumping from places not meant to be jumped from. He landed lightly, but barely, on the edge of the port side of the Bichen, his left hand wrapping around the forestay while his saber flashed up in his right to cut the rope. 

“It’s a diversion,” Mianmian yelled immediately, as the Chenqing continued on its port beam reach, with no sign of turning around or helping its captain. 

“I know,” Lan Wangji said, with a tone that heavily implied he did not care. 

Before Wei Ying could even finish cutting the forestay rope, Lan Wangji was running across the deck, as was the rest of the Bichen’s crew. 

But before any of them could reach him, Wei Ying had shoved his saber into his belt and jumped, grabbing the now-loose forestay rope with both hands. He pulled his legs up, and the forestay, no longer tied down to the port side of the ship, swung Wei Ying right into the mast, where he instantly let go of the forestay and grabbed the rope ladder instead. He twisted his feet into the rope ladder and let go with one hand in order to draw his saber once more. 

The Bichen’s crew gathered around the bottom of the mast, everyone but Xiao Qing, who strung her bow loosely and pointed it down at Wei Ying’s head.

“You’re surrounded, Yiling Patriarch!” Ouyang Zizhen yelled bravely, in a voice that was only half a squeak. “G-give up! You’re outnumbered!”

“So it seems,” Wei Ying said, with dark humor. “What are you going to do about it?”

Lan Wangji stood two paces from the mast, and looked up. He didn’t draw his saber. “Wei Ying,” he said quietly and stopped. His plans had all stopped here. Lan Wangji was never the bad guy in any of his scenarios, he was the one saving Wei Ying, even if he had to save Wei Ying from himself.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying mimicked. 

He looked at Lan Wangji like he didn’t recognize him, like Lan Wangji meant nothing to him, but Lan Wangji refused to believe it. Two minutes ago Wei Ying had turned his ship away from ramming the Bichen and used himself as a diversionary tactic to protect the Chenqing’s crew. 

When Lan Wangji didn’t know what to do, he reverted to protocol. “Wei Ying,” he said. “You are under arrest, on order of the crown.”

Something flickered in Wei Ying’s eyes, but it was too fast, and the night was too dark for Lan Wangji to properly see. “Of course,” Wei Ying said. There was a cruel twist to his mouth. “The admiral can’t very well let a criminal run free under his watch, now can he?”

It seemed moot at this point to say that the crown had wanted to appoint Wei Ying the admiral of the fleet, if it wasn’t for Wei Ying himself turning down the position, citing his relationship with authority. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said helplessly. He could feel the eyes of his crew on him, watching his interaction with the Yiling Patriarch. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He didn’t know how it was supposed to go, but not this.

Wei Ying said nothing. 

Lan Wangji pulled himself together. “You may stay up there during the trip back, if you prefer,” he said neutrally. 

Finally, a hint of a smile from Wei Ying. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “And where is this voyage headed, Admiral Lan?” 

Don’t call me that, Lan Wangji thought. “Yiling.” Although the mountain-island of Yiling was only used as a prison, Lan Wangji meant the area near Yiling, the former location of Lotus Pier.

“I see,” Wei Ying said, almost politely. It sounded cold, coming from him. Lan Wangji couldn’t help but feel that he’d said something wrong. 

Wei Ying’s eyes darted around at the group surrounding him. Mianmian stood to Lan Wangji’s right, and Qin Su stood to her right. Both women had their sabers drawn, and they looked up warily at Wei Ying. On the other side of the mast, Jin Ling and Wen Yuan shifted uncomfortably, but they remained ready with their hands on their sabers. Lan Jingyi and Ouyang Zizhen stood on either side of them, apprehensive and ready for a fight. A-Qing remained directly above Wei Ying, blessedly silent for once. Her bow was shaking, just slightly. Lan Wangji didn’t think she had it in her to shoot a man at point-blank range, something he was very much grateful for. 

If it came down to a fight, Lan Wangji would win. Even accounting for nerves and first-fight mistakes from his younger crew members, they still outnumbered Wei Ying eight to one. Without Lan Wangji, and without Xiao Qing in the crow’s nest, the result was uncertain. Wei Ying was a master swordsman, and everyone here knew it. But so was Lan Wangji, and if it came down to it, he was willing to fight Wei Ying.

Lan Wangji had a few ideas on how to get Wei Ying down from the mast, but none of them were good ideas. Some of them were downright horrible, like letting Paws and Fairy out from below deck and using the presence of dogs to threaten Wei Ying down, or using Xiao Qing and her bow to threaten Wei Ying down. Some were less dubious, like sending the Bichen through a series of complicated maneuvers until Wei Ying lost his grip and fell, or waiting for Wei Ying to doze off. 

If it meant they wouldn’t fight, Lan Wangji was willing to let Wei Ying stay halfway up the mast until they arrived back at Lotus Pier. But Lan Wangji had to at least try to have a conversation before then, and that meant fighting Wei Ying down.

Lan Wangji drew his saber. 

“There’s no need,” Wei Ying said scornfully. 

He held his saber out in front of him and dropped it dramatically. The sword hit the ground with an anticlimactic thud. Wei Ying then dropped himself, landing in a crouch that he quickly straightened from. He bestowed a bright, sardonic smile on Lan Wangji, and presented his wrists with a flourish. It was just as dramatic as Wei Ying had always been, but this time it wasn’t…right.

No one moved. Admiral Lan and Yiling Patriarch stood face to face, eye to eye, and still Lan Wangji couldn’t see his Wei Ying. 

Still, Lan Wangji tried to judge Wei Ying’s sincerity. He used to constantly question himself, when they were younger, on whether Wei Ying was joking or being sincere. He thought he figured Wei Ying out eventually, but now everything was flipped on its head, and Lan Wangji didn’t know up from down, or truth from fiction.

“Wei Ying,” he said helplessly, again.

“Well, what are you waiting for, Lan Zh–Admiral Lan?” Wei Ying didn’t lower his arms, merely narrowed his eyes and let poison spill from lips that Lan Wangji had wanted to kiss for years. “You’ve got the Yiling Patriarch as your prisoner. What are you waiting for?”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, yet again. He took one step forward. Wei Ying took one step back, lowering his arms slightly and letting his back hit the mast. 

Lan Wangji stopped moving. Tried to find the right words, and failed. “Mianmian, Qin Su,” he said finally. “Please take him to the hold.”

Mianmian and Qin Su both hesitated for a moment, but stepped forward in unison, sabers still drawn. Qin Su kicked Wei Ying’s saber away without looking down, and Lan Wangji wondered how long it would take Wei Ying to steal one of their sabers from them. Likely within a few seconds, if he wanted to.

But Wei Ying didn’t try to steal a sword, or start a fight. Instead, he walked in between Mianmian and Qin Su as they led him away from the mast and to the stairs in the deck leading down to the hold. Lan Wangji’s gaze followed him the whole way, but Wei Ying didn’t look back once.

The stairs in the deck led to a long, narrow hallway, with small rooms on either side. The biggest room was the captain’s quarters; the bedroom and office, at the furthest end of the hallway. The rooms of the crewmembers lined the rest of the hallway in order of seniority, with the room size increasing as well. 

A narrow staircase at the end of that hallway led to the hold of the Bichen; the storage, the mess hall, and at the very end of the ship, the room Wei Ying was in. 

The ship had come outfitted with a prison cell: a large wooden box lined with metal bars, and a lock in front. But Lan Wangji had known that Wei Ying could one day inhabit that box from the very beginning, so at this point it resembled an actual room more than it did the original prison cell. 

The first thing Lan Wangji had done was move a large mattress inside, complete with sheets and maybe one too many blankets. Then he found pillows and a change of robes in Wei Ying’s measurements. After that, it seemed Lan Wangji found an item that he thought Wei Ying would like at every port they stopped at, and slowly this cache of items began to collect in the cage that was now Wei Ying’s room. 

When Lan Wangji arrived, Wei Ying was lying on the bed, idly tossing a stone at the ceiling. It hit the same bar every time, fell back down, only for Wei Ying to catch it and throw it again. He didn’t look away when Lan Wangji’s footsteps echoed across the hold, or when he sat down in front of the door. 

Lan Wangji set the bowl he was carrying down right in front of him, close enough that Wei Ying could easily reach through the bars and feed himself. 

“I brought food,” Lan Wangji said quietly, unnecessarily. Wei Ying no doubt heard the clunk of the bowl being set down. “A bowl of mango with crushed ice,” he added.

Wei Ying sat up. He looked at Lan Wangji with an unreadable expression for a moment too long, and then pulled a mask of his former cheerfulness over his unreadable look. He rolled out of the bed without letting go of his stone. 

“Aw, Lan Zhan,” he teased, and for a beautiful moment everything was normal. “Bringing snacks for the prisoner?” Wei Ying continued, oblivious to how ugly those words sounded to Lan Wangji. “You’re too kind,” Wei Ying finished, smiling as he scooted right up to the bars and reached for the bowl. 

Wei Ying continued smiling right until the moment when he registered what he was putting in his mouth. His face froze, and he slowly lowered the spoon.

“It is Yunmeng style,” Lan Wangji said. He’d learned, long after Wei Ying had first criticized Caiyi’s crushed ice mango, that Jiang Yanli had a tendency to add a bit of cinnamon to her bowls, as she had both access to spices and a taste that constantly asked for spices.

“Ah.” Wei Ying very carefully did not look at Lan Wangji. “Who…who made it?”

“Jin Ling.”

“Ah,” Wei Ying said again. Slowly, he reached for more. “I…forgot Yanli taught him how. How silly of me, I know. Truly, my memory is not improving.”

“Hm.” Lan Wangji sat in silence and watched Wei Ying eat for a minute. “Wei Ying,” he began carefully, once Wei Ying had finished the bowl. “You have been accused of…many crimes.”

“Yeah?” Wei Ying dropped the spoon into the bowl and leaned back. He offered Lan Wangji a poisonous smile. “I can assure you only half of them are true.”

Lan Wangji was rather hoping that none of them were true. “There are forty-seven deaths attributed to your name.”

“They deserved it,” Wei Ying said succinctly. He began tossing his stone up and down idly, as if Lan Wangji’s conversation wasn’t enough to keep him entertained.

“What of the two civilians in the royal palace?” Lan Wangji asked. Given that all the other attacks had been on Wen cities, and all the other deaths had been Wen soldiers, he’d assumed the Wens were somehow responsible for the Jiangs. 

Instead of the denial he’d expected, Wei Ying suddenly looked downright vicious. He clenched his stone in a fist and leaned forwards. “They deserved it,” Wei Ying repeated, and then laughed in Lan Wangji’s face, at whatever expression he saw on Lan Wangji’s face. “Did you expect a denial?” Wei Ying said, almost pityingly. “I killed them. I made them cry and scream and beg for mercy and then I killed them, Lan Zhan. How’s that for innocent?”

Lan Wangji wanted to cry. “Why?” 

He tried to keep his voice even, but whatever tone Wei Ying heard made him flinch. “For being terrible people.” Wei Ying said, subdued, and clenched his jaw stubbornly. 

“What crime did they commit?” Lan Wangji pressed. He knew one of the civilians was a retired palace guard, but the other had been an old washerwoman, who’d done nothing but wash clothes at the palace. 

A hint of viciousness returned to Wei Ying’s eyes, but he avoided looking at Lan Wangji, like he couldn’t stand the weight of Lan Wangji’s disapproval. “None, in the eyes of the law,” Wei Ying said bitterly. “They were innocent, heroes even, and I murdered them.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said severely. “Do not avoid the question.”

“I can’t–” Wei Ying darted a look at his face and looked away again. “I don’t–it’s none of your business, Lan Wangji!” Wei Ying said finally.

It very clearly was, or Lan Wangji wasn’t the admiral. Still, he recognized Wei Ying’s deflection for what it was–a frantic deflection–even though he did not understand why Wei Ying felt he could not tell Lan Wangji what grievous crime they had committed.  

“Wei Ying,” he said instead. “It is said that you are responsible for the disappearance of Lotus Pier.”

“Is that so?” Wei Ying’s face was blank, as if he were unconcerned with the accusation and Lan Wangji’s opinion. “And what does Lan Zhan think?”

That was an easy one. “It is ridiculous,” Lan Wangji said promptly. “To think one person could be capable of making an entire city vanish in one night.”

“I see.” 

Lan Wangji did not think that Wei Ying, in fact, did see. He once more got the impression that he’d said something wrong, but he couldn't imagine what.

Wei Ying smiled humorlessly. “It is nice to know that Admiral Lan has such a low opinion of my abilities.”

That was most certainly not the response Lan Wangji had expected. “Are you…claiming that you can?” Lan Wangji asked, uncertainly. Jin Zixun was the sort of person who’d get offended if told they were not capable of destroying a city overnight, not Wei Ying. Wei Ying hated that sort of idiotic bragging.

“Clearly it happened,” Wei Ying snapped. He looked away. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Lan Zhan.”

“I do not,” Lan Wangji readily admitted. “But I wish to understand.” He hesitated briefly, but Lan Wangji was a straightforward person by nature, and he saw no point in dancing around the question. “Wei Ying. Will you not tell me what happened to Lotus Pier?”

Wei Ying’s hands tightened into fists in his lap. “Maybe it was me,” he said tightly. “Maybe you underestimate what powers I have.”

“I know it was not you,” Lan Wangji said, soothingly. 

He had failed to consider that Wei Ying had been hearing the same horrible stories and rumors about himself, for months now. Wei Ying was probably scared that Lan Wangji believed them too, and now acted guilty rather than pleading his innocence and being accused of lying. It was the sort of thing that Wei Ying would do. All Lan Wangji could do was reassure him that he didn’t believe the stories–some people said that Wei Ying had eaten his family, of all things–and hope that Wei Ying could trust him.

“You would never harm your family,” Lan Wangji continued. “Wei Ying, you do not have to hide from me.”

Wei Ying finally looked at him. His silver eyes were wild. “Don’t I?” Wei Ying said hollowly. His fists were trembling. “Haven’t I always?” 

Wei Ying stood up. Lan Wangji followed suit, but Wei Ying wasn’t done yet. “When have I not been hiding from you, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying spat. “Did you think you ever really knew me?” His subsequent smile was cruel, to the point of self-deprecation. “Don’t make me laugh!”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji almost begged, pained.  

Wei Ying opened his mouth to say something, but Lan Wangji beat him to it. “Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said again, and held up the Jiang bell to Wei Ying’s face.

The little bell’s bright chord was almost embarrassingly loud.

Wei Ying blinked. “That’s…my bell.” 

His left hand shot out through the bars lightning-fast, but Lan Wangji, anticipating the attempt, held it out of reach. Wei Ying made another swipe for it, and Lan Wangji took a step back.

“Give it back,” Wei Ying hissed. He pressed himself flat against the cage’s bars. “It’s mine.”

“You once gave it to me,” Lan Wangji said quietly, “so that I could find you, should you ever disappear.”

“I suppose that’s how you tracked me from Huyu bay,” Wei Ying muttered under his breath. “That’s funny,” he said louder, and verging on the cruel side of mean. “Because right now I would very much like to disappear on you.” 

Lan Wangji, now firmly out of range, tied the bell to his belt again. “Then it is good that you cannot,” he said simply. He took two more steps backward.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying fumed. “Give it back. Let me out. Don’t you walk away from me–Lan Wangji!” Wei Ying’s right arm drew back and hurled his stone through the bars. 

Lan Wangji’s right hand shot up and caught it, right in front of his forehead. “You do not have to hide from me, Wei Ying,” he promised, but Wei Ying was no longer listening.

“Lan Wangji!” Wei Ying roared. There was something almost demonic in his eyes, in the way he thrashed furiously and uselessly against the bars. 

Lan Wangji kept the stone and turned around, heart heavy from his failure. He had not asked about the Chenqing’s crew, or the stolen jewels, or why his first target had been the Yiling prison. He doubted he would get straightforward answers, if he got answers at all.

“I am responsible for the disappearance of Lotus Pier!” Wei Ying shouted after him. “Do you hear me? I am! I did it! I’m the reason Jin Ling doesn’t have a mother! I am the Yiling Patriarch, you can’t keep me here–”

Wei Ying continued shouting and raging until Lan Wangji was firmly out of sight. It was the night three nights before the night that no one slept, and it was only then, only when Lan Wangji was alone, that he allowed himself to press his sleeves to the corner of his eyes and cry.