Chapter Text
Early morning sun peeks through a barred window, and Wei Wuxian winces, the bright light stinging his eyes even in sleep. There's a bird outside the window, too, and its chirping is obnoxiously loud. How can anyone sleep through that?
Groaning, he sits up, rubbing his eyes and then pausing.
Since when did he have hands or eyes to do this, or any sense of the world around him? He's always been a very peaceful ghost, unconcerned with the affairs of the living, never caring to manifest or answer any calls. And he'd certainly never go forcibly possessing someone!
He squints his eyes, looking down at the hand before him. It looks familiar, actually; the length of the fingers, the size...the old scar from a dog bite, another scar from when he'd injured himself while building houses...
Spying a bronze mirror discarded nearby, he picks it up, and then stares in disbelief at his own face.
"That's not possible," he mutters, raising a hand and poking at his own cheek. "I know I died, so I have to be possessing someone, right?"
Unless somewhere in the world there just happens to be someone who looks exactly like Wei Wuxian, and even if such a person exists, the likelihood of them also being the person he possesses...
Not that he'd set out to possess anyone in the first place!
Looking down, he sees the solution immediately: an array. The symbols are madly drawn, slightly haphazard, but still correct. And drawn in human blood as they are, he knows they're for a dark ritual immediately, even before his still-waking mind puts together just what he's seeing. It's a sacrificial summons, a ritual for calling a malevolent spirit into your body so that they will enact revenge for you.
"How insulting," he mutters, feeling rather put-out. "I know my reputation was bad when I died, but I was an extremely well-behaved ghost and never hurt anyone."
That doesn't explain his appearance, but a closer examination of the symbols in the array does. He'd read about this ritual and recorded it in his manuscripts, and while trying to figure out how to restore Wen Ning's consciousness, he'd thrown around a few ideas for simply...giving him a new living body, instead. It had been a ridiculous idea, of course; Wen Ning would never want another to die for him to live again, no matter how despicable a person they might have chosen for the sacrifice, and Wen Qing would have boxed his ears for even suggesting it.
But over a sleepless night during those early days in the Burial Mounds, Wei Wuxian had drafted out some ideas. He hadn't been able to get around other problems, like the price for the summoner or the need for consent (which was his feverish mind's first hint that this was a terrible idea, and should never extend beyond an intellectual exercise). But he had thrown around a few possibilities for a way to make it as if the deceased truly returned to life: by making the body shift to take on their original appearance, or at least their self image.
Those alterations are all here in the array in which he sits now.
"Did you have to?" he complains to his anonymous donor. "Given how many people know and hate this face, I'm not sure you were really doing me a favour! You should have just used the original ritual...or better yet, not done this at all!"
But moping won't get him anywhere, so he drags himself up on shaky legs and looks further around the house he finds himself in. It's more of a dilapidated ruin than anything else, although it is fairly sizeable. Was this the only place his anonymous donor could find to perform a dark ritual like this? No, he realises as he looks around. It's clearly lived-in. There's a chamber pot off in the corner, a bed with stale bedding, and a bamboo basket containing scores of crumpled pieces of paper.
"My cave was nicer than this," he comments to the air. "At least I did laundry and bathed regularly."
The papers have been written on, so he upends the basket and looks through them, hoping for some clues. Which he finds, once he manages to decipher the disordered pieces and the slightly unhinged tone in which they were written.
It seems like at some point his donor, a Mo Xuanyu, had decided to write him a letter explaining things, but had grown distracted in the process multiple times. What unfolds, though, is a pretty miserable tale, of a second daughter treated as lesser for being borne from a concubine, and her own illegitimate son who grew in resentment over the years as misfortune befell him again and again. While he's sure there are other candidates, Mo Xuanyu's story leads him to suspect that the father in question might be Jin Guangshan. He always was the most brazen and shameless of philanderers, a fact which had caused Wei Wuxian a great deal of concern, given...
He shakes his head, and then winces as it pounds and spots appear before his eyes. The dizziness takes a moment to fade, and he takes a few deep breaths. Mo Xuanyu was clearly not in great shape, and while Wei Wuxian might look like himself, this is still Mo Xuanyu's body underneath that. Not that Wei Wuxian was in great shape himself when he died, come to that.
It makes sense; as a guest cultivator at Lanling Jin, Mo Xuanyu might well have had access to forbidden materials- including whatever they stole from the Burial Mounds after killing everyone there.
It's a very sordid tale, all told, but Wei Wuxian thinks that if Mo Xuanyu was, under the madness, intelligent enough to remember this ritual and put it together...surely he could have just taken his own revenge? Unless he truly hadn't wanted to live afterwards. The state of his disjointed scribblings show that he really had nothing going for him. Entirely alone in the world, surrounded by family who hated him, a cutsleeve with a reputation for harassing his peers...
"You could have summoned someone else," Wei Wuxian still moans.
But there's nothing for it. Even if he didn't ask for it, it seems that he's alive again...and if he doesn't want his soul to be destroyed, then he'll have to see about fulfilling Mo Xuanyu's request.
It turns out that Mo Xuanyu's home was barred from the outside, and Wei Wuxian is obliged to kick the door out to escape his little prison. As Mo Xuanyu's notes had indicated, he's from a well-off family on a prosperous estate; but they had locked him away in an old, dilapidated building which really should have been torn down and replaced.
Since he doesn't have the advantage of a disguise, he also has to sneak about the estate, doing his best to avoid anyone who might notice a stranger wandering about and sound the alarm. Fortunately, he has plenty of experience in that, and is only stymied a bit by how exhausted and starving his new body feels.
He's able to steal some food, at least, when a servant leaves a tray unattended in order to go take care of some minor emergency which popped up, and eats it while hidden behind some foliage in one of the courtyards.
For a while he just relaxes, getting used to being in a body again and listening to the servants as they bustle about their day. It seems like some of them are a bit lazy, and he wonders how tight a ship the Mo family really run, when the servants stop and gossip so frequently. Not that he begrudges them that, but Mo Xuanyu's notes had made him think that Mo-furen was far more harsh a mistress than this.
Mo Village, he learns, has been plagued recently by walking corpses, leaving everyone too afraid to go out at night. Not a real danger to cultivators, and even civilians can get away from them easily enough, given how slow and sluggish they usually are. But if he finds himself in danger, at least he has some help to call upon!
"...don't worry, A-Ding, if you want to go out, then I'll escort you and make sure you're safe!"
"You protect me?" the servant girl A-Ding says incredulously. "I bet you'd just run away if you came across one of those corpses!"
Probably. Wei Wuxian has known plenty of cultivators just like this A-Tong; they like to brag a lot, but the moment they're faced with a real threat, they fold like wet paper.
They move on, and he frowns, peeking out at the courtyard from his hiding spot. Mo Xuanyu really hadn't specified what exactly he wanted Wei Wuxian to do in exchange for the summoning. He could hope that something more reasonable, like humiliating this proud and grasping family, would suffice, but...
Ah, who is he kidding? No one summons an 'evil spirit' just for that.
But right now he isn't in much shape for doing anything. So he settles down to meditate, and wiles most of the day away like that. When he stirs in the evening, he has cause to regret that, though; new gossip is that some prominent cultivators have arrived in Mo Village to take care of the walking corpses.
Fuck. If that's the case, then he's better off leaving, and worrying about the curse marks on his arm later. To come back and be recognised immediately...
That would be just his luck, wouldn't it?
But it's just a case of walking corpses; they'd probably just send some juniors to deal with that. If the Mo family weren't so wealthy, he bets no one would have bothered to come out here at all for such a dull case, and he still can't imagine anyone old enough to have known him lowering themselves to take this night hunt.
Deciding to take a risk, he sneaks over to the east hall and peeks in the window. As suspected, the cultivators in question are just juniors; probably seventeen at the very most, maybe younger. He is, though, rather shocked to see that they are in fact from a prominent clan: Gusu Lan. Both of them wear the flowing cloud-patterned forehead ribbons which mark them as members of the main clan, too.
Both of the boys are clearly unused to dealing with a family like this; one of them has his lips pursed, looking exceedingly annoyed at the way Mo-furen brags over their family's connection to a cultivation clan, and the other nods and hums politely, also looking near the end of his rope.
'Your connection to a cultivation sect just killed himself because of how you mistreated him,' Wei Wuxian thinks at her.
Come to think of it...how did Mo Xuanyu's mother die? His notes were pretty vague on that matter, but maybe she, too, had been driven to suicide. If she lived in conditions anything like Mo Xuanyu had, he's not so surprised.
'Why didn't you just kill them yourself?' Wei Wuxian wonders again. 'If you could handle a ritual summons like this, surely you could handle killing a few civilians!'
Finally, he hears the bragging winding down, in part due to the one boy speaking calmly over Mo-furen. "...since it's getting close to nighttime, we need to get started, Mo-furen. We'll borrow the West Courtyard. Please make sure everyone knows not to go there, and to keep all of their windows closed and stay inside."
Mo-furen says something sharp to a servant, but Wei Wuxian doesn't hear it all. He sneaks away, determined to find a new hiding spot and wait things out.
It's a bit of a shame that the juniors will be taking care of the walking corpses; they would have been useful, assuming that he does indeed need to kill the Mo family. He really doesn't care to, even if they are rather objectionable people, but...
Well, it's their one lifetime against his soul's survival. Wei Wuxian isn't that self-sacrificing.
When Wei Wuxian decides to brave the West Courtyard and spy on the Lan juniors, he receives a huge shock: the sight of his own Spirit Lure Flags flying from the roofs and walls. Given that his talisman had been widely known during the Sunshot Campaign, it's not a surprise to see a sect using it, but Gusu Lan, really? They were always particularly opposed to his 'wicked tricks', out of a genuine hatred for heretic cultivation, in contrast to other sects who praised him in the war and then turned around and decried him for being a servant who'd cultivated too much power for their liking.
It's a good plan the boys have, though, and a technique he'd had the chance to use only a few times on night hunts before his defection: luring all the walking corpses to this courtyard and taking them all in one fell swoop.
The flag formation is very well-organised, but he can't inspect how well they're drawn without drawing the attention of the boys. He's left hoping that they haven't made a mistake; with this talisman, a mistake can spell disaster rather than simple failure.
But the formation works as intended, and he watches idly as the boys subdue the walking corpses. They're still pretty green, but they have potential, those juniors, and he wonders again at them being from Gusu Lan. In his experience, Gusu Lan focuses on etiquette and nonsense like that almost to the exclusion of all else, unless the cultivator in question is...
Shaking his head, he decides to take his leave. The boys are handling this just fine on their own, and he doesn't need to run the risk of being seen now. He heads back to the courtyard where Mo Xuanyu's dilapidated house is, figuring he can lay low there and try to decide on his next move.
But he pauses as he spies a fallen body in one of the hallways.
"Hello, what's this..."
Making sure no one is there to see him, Wei Wuxian darts over and kneels down in front of the body to examine it. Did some idiot decide to disobey orders to remain inside? Even so, a walking corpse should be possible for just about anyone to run away from...
No, this isn't the work of a walking corpse. The body is hollowed out and sunken in, looking almost dessicated. Something sucked all the life and blood out of it, and in such a short time, too? It's the work of a very dark being, and it looks like it took a souvenir, too; the body's left arm is missing, severed right under the shoulder.
Frowning, Wei Wuxian examines the body further, and finds the other culprit quickly: a Spirit Lure Flag. Looks like the idiot stole one and turned himself into a very tasty target.
He leaves the flag where it is, to serve as evidence of how the idiot died, and finds a new hiding spot. If something dangerous enough to kill a man and drain his essence so quickly has been attracted here, then those Lan juniors may well be in more trouble than they can handle.
So he watches as the boys discover the corpse and the reason for the unfortunate fool's death, and then alert the estate. Mo-furen comes and sobs over his body, revealing that the dead man is not an elder at all but her son, the cousin Mo Xuanyu raged over in his disjointed notes.
Wei Wuxian checks his wrist, and sees that one of the cuts has healed already. So it seems that Mo Xuanyu did indeed wish for their deaths, and Wei Wuxian's invention being the culprit seems to be enough for the contract to consider the death his doing.
With some humour, he wonders if he can just stand back and let all of them die to fulfil the terms of the contract.
The drama goes on for a while longer, with the little Lans clearly not knowing how to handle being berated by someone so outrageously like this. The Mo son's death is clearly his own fault, but Mo-furen is determined to blame anyone but her precious child. Her husband, meanwhile, is distraught, and has to be led away by a servant.
The whole estate is in chaos by now, but of course it can get worse; a scream comes from the East Courtyard, and the Lans, along with Mo-furen and a few servants, go running to see what it is.
Wei Wuxian follows more discreetly, and sees that Mo-furen's husband is already dead, his arm missing, too, and the servant who was escorting him now lies writhing on the ground.
As Mo-furen faints and has to be caught by one of the Lan boys, Wei Wuxian checks; another cut is gone from his wrist. How convenient. It seems that since his invention lured the killer here in the first place, now all subsequent deaths that occur tonight will be blamed on him!
"Did you see what did this?" one of the Lan boys asks the servant, A-Tong.
But A-Tong is insensate, just shaking his head mutely and trembling.
He's a level-headed boy, taking over and instructing the servants to escort both A-Tong and Mo-furen inside, and he turns to his companion to confer on what to do.
"Jingyi, have you sent the signal?"
The other boy, Jingyi, nods. "Yeah, but I don't know if any of our seniors are in the area. It would be, what, at least half a shichen for them to get here from elsewhere? What are we going to do until then? Sizhui, we don't even know what it is doing this!"
Sizhui nods slowly. "We'll have to wait for reinforcements and try to keep everyone here safe until our seniors arrive."
Very admirable of him, but it puts Wei Wuxian in a tough situation. He really can't afford to be here when a senior cultivator from Gusu Lan arrives; the chances of being recognised are far too high. But he can't just leave the kids and all the civilians here, either. This thing has killed two people so quickly; it must be extremely powerful. Even half a shichen is too long. How many people, perhaps including these little Lans, will be dead by then?
The boys lead everyone into the East Hall, and Wei Wuxian is able to come out from his hiding spot again. Experimentally, he whistles, trying to get a response from whatever is here, and is met with a wall of resentment and rage. Whatever dead thing he's dealing with, it is indeed extremely powerful, and not particularly interested in obeying even his call.
Maybe it would be better to wait it out; as long as nothing else goes wrong before the senior Lan arrives, he can just run in the chaos then.
But of course that's not his luck. Shortly after, an ominous wind blows through, and all the lights in the estate go out. The East Hall is filled with screams, and, cursing, Wei Wuxian decides that he can't just hide any more. If he takes care of it quickly, he can just leave before anyone who might recognise him shows up.
The one boy- Jingyi?- can be heard yelling orders. "Stay where you are, don't run away!"
Of course they don't listen, and the hall empties out of servants quickly. Wei Wuxian elbows past the crowd, just in time for a flame talisman to be lit. The boy called Lan Sizhui is holding it, and he pauses, looking at Wei Wuxian with wide eyes and a pale face.
Lan Jingyi, though, glares at him suspiciously. "Hey, who are you? I haven't seen you around the estate; where did you come from?"
Wei Wuxian holds up his hands, trying to appear non-threatening. "I saw your signal flare, that's all!"
Pursing his lips, Lan Jingyi asks, "Are you a rogue cultivator? You don't look like one."
"What, just because I don't have a sword? Not everyone cultivates the path of the sword, Xiao-gongzi!"
"So what path do you cultivate?" Lan Jingyi asks, putting a hand on his sword's hilt.
Wei Wuxian pauses, though, as he sees that his upheld wrists are now bare. The Mo cousin was the first, then the husband, but what about the other two? Can they really have died so quickly? He's not sure who the third is, but the fourth must be Mo-furen, so...
He looks over for her body, and sees only a few female servants still remaining, but no Mo-furen. The boys have plastered the hall in spirit repelling talismans, so it can't be a ghost, meaning-
The hall is still shadowed, with only Lan Sizhui's talisman to light it, and so the lunge seems to come out of nowhere. An arm, twisting impossibly for any living being, strikes out at Lan Sizhui. The boy is still staring at him blankly, completely unaware.
Wei Wuxian immediately lets out a sharp whistle, and the arm pauses just a hair's breadth away from grabbing Lan Sizhui by the throat.
Lan Jingyi twists around and draws his sword, rushing forward. "Sizhui, get away from that-"
Again Wei Wuxian whistles, but the arm, attached to Mo-furen, has been distracted by fresh prey. Lan Jingyi strikes out at it with his sword, and his blade is caught easily, no threat at all to this ghost hand. Lan Jingyi is thrown back, his blade clattering uselessly away into the darkness, and the hand grabs for Lan Sizhui again.
Swearing, Wei Wuxian rushes forward; the boy is still standing there in a daze, completely useless, so much for being the sensible one-
He rams into the boy, managing to at least move him enough that the arm misses his neck. Instead it grabs his shoulder, and ignites in green flames as it hits the protective incantations stitched into the Lan uniforms. Against something so strong, it's only good for one hit, though, and Lan Sizhui's uniform smoulders, while Mo-furen's corpse falls to the ground.
Unfortunately, Lan Sizhui has hit his head on the fall, and lies there unconscious. Wei Wuxian checks him quickly, but then has to turn back to the corpse.
Lan Jingyi darts over, glaring at him and shouting, "What did you do that for?!"
"I don't have a weapon, do I?" Wei Wuxian asks wryly. "And it looks like you just lost yours..."
Scowling, Lan Jingyi makes a hand seal and calls his sword back to him, then points it in Wei Wuxian's direction. "Seriously, who are you? Get away from Sizhui, I'm warning you!"
Wei Wuxian points to the corpse. "You should be more concerned with that."
Warily, Lan Jingyi turns and looks at it. "What is it?"
"A dismembered corpse," Wei Wuxian observes with interest. "I've seen a lot, but never one this resentful. It's gone through four hosts in just one night!"
Lan Jingyi pales, probably guessing that he is indeed out of his league here. "A ferocious ghost only kills once a week..." he mutters.
Wei Wuxian hums. "Categorisation systems like that can be useful, but there are always outliers." What is he to do? He's certainly capable of suppressing something like this, but with no cultivation tools to hand, he's limited in his scope. "Put your uniform on it," he snaps, seeing that the arm is rousing again.
"What?!" Lan Jingyi sputters. "Why should I- Oh." Flushing, he pulls off his outer robe and throws it on the hand, which quiets, at least for now. "What next? That's not going to hold it until a senior gets here, right?"
"No, it's not." Wei Wuxian kneels down to check on the collapsed Lan Sizhui, though he keeps a careful eye on the ghost hand. "Come on, your head wasn't hit that badly, was it?" he coaxes, starting to get a little worried. Head wounds are unpredictable, he knows. An uncle had accidentally knocked a beam of wood into his head once while they were building houses, and Wen Qing had worried over that more than his gut wound, he swears-
"Xian-gege?"
Wei Wuxian freezes, staring blankly at the boy who blinks up at him with unfocused eyes. "...What did you..."
The boy winces, putting a hand to his head and breathing in sharply. "Where...where'd everyone go?"
"Hey, that thing is waking up again!" Lan Jingyi yells, and Wei Wuxian jumps, turning his attention back to it.
So far the arm has resisted his attempts to control it with mere whistles, and he lacks an instrument or any cultivation tools, so at this point...looks like he doesn't have any choice.
"Take care of your friend," he tells Lan Jingyi, and hands the boy off to him before striding over to the abandoned corpses of the Mo family. He kneels down by them, finding their resentful energy to be fairly impressive, and nods. "Wake up."
Immediately, the whites of their eyes turn up, and they shriek loudly. Not bad.
"See that arm that killed you?" he asks, and watches as they turn around to stare at it. He smiles. "Tear it apart."
They fly off, with Mo-furen taking the lead, charging at the ghost hand with the greatest rage of all. Female corpses and ghosts are often like that; after spending so much of their lives suppressing their resentment, it all comes out in death, once there's no one any more to force them into compliance.
Lan Jingyi watches with wide eyes, grabbing his friend and scrambling away from the field of battle in the middle of the hall. Lan Sizhui, meanwhile, is clearly dizzy, only able to walk with heavy support from his friend, and he slides back down to the floor as soon as they're out of the way.
As Wei Wuxian approaches, Lan Jingyi glares at him. "Who are you?"
Though he bristles, Lan Jingyi doesn't stop Wei Wuxian from reaching out and feeling Lan Sizhui's forehead. It's a little warm, and the boy looks up at him through dazed eyes. He looks vaguely familiar, maybe, but...
It's impossible.
Lan Sizhui's eyes start falling shut again, and Wei Wuxian tugs on his ear. "Stay awake! You shouldn't fall asleep after you've hit your head, I was always scolded for it so I don't see why you should-"
"...hurts..."
There's definitely something familiar about his face when he looks so despondent, like...
Wen Ning, when they'd first met as boys at the archery competition. Or when he'd come to Lotus Pier to try to help him, and convinced his sister to shelter them in Yiling. In Wei Wuxian's memories, Wen Ning as he became, a fierce corpse with a gentle face, is far more familiar. But hadn't he looked a bit like this, when he was a boy this age?
Is he just seeing things? It's wishful thinking, he must have misheard, but...
No one else had ever called him that.
"Hey, what's your friend's name?" he asks Lan Jingyi, and tugs again on Lan Sizhui's ear to keep him from nodding off.
"Uh... Sizhui."
"Not his courtesy name," Wei Wuxian snaps, then pauses, biting his tongue and trying to compose himself. "What's his birth name?"
"Er, Lan Yuan."
It's a common name, right, just like his, that doesn't mean anything... "Lan Yuan...A-Yuan?"
"Yeah! That's what Hanguang-jun always called him when he was little, how did you-"
The corpses scream, and he looks over to see that the Mo son has just gotten himself gutted by the ghost hand, and Mo-furen is most enraged by the harm to her son. But they're still not a match for it.
"We should get out of here," Lan Jingyi says, sounding nervous. "Come on, Sizhui, I'm sure I can carry you-"
"You said Hanguang-jun?" Wei Wuxian asks insistently, even as he helps support Lan Sizhui's other side so they can drag him out of the hall and into the courtyard. He pauses as they go, letting out a sharp whistle, and hears the fierce corpses scream in a greater froth of resentment. There, that should buy them more time, though who knows if they'll be strong enough to take this thing out.
"Yes! Sizhui here is Hanguang-jun's ward, so don't try anything funny with him or you'll be in a lot of trouble, you hear me-" He stops short, seeing that Wei Wuxian has stopped as well, and he can't walk on without jostling Lan Sizhui. "Oh, Hanguang-jun, thank goodness you're here! Sizhui's hurt, and this weird person here was controlling the corpses but he was trying to help, I think... Hanguang-jun? Is something wrong?"
Lan Wangji stares straight at Wei Wuxian, his eyes wide, and face just as pale as 'Lan Sizhui's' was earlier.