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For every wild dog that existed was a domesticated one willing to lick its wounds. For every fragment of soul were the remnants of the aching whole. And for every dead man was another willing to capsize the heavens and uproot hell even just for the memories of him.
There was nothing irreparable in this universe.
So for every flower grown from Hua Binan’s own blood, carved from his soul, there existed too a lesser known counterpart. One far too arid to be remembered by anything other than stories told before twilight. It was a story first shared by his mother, as they lay sprawled across the sun-soaked floorboards of his room in Tianyin Pavilion, with his clumsy hands pressed between his mother’s long, delicate fingers. She had tapped gently on his chest, a hollow space above his belly button, as he giggled from the ticklish touch. Flowers could grow here, the pretty kind.
The first of these flowers was grown by one of their kin, many centuries ago, from between his own ribs. Stuck in muscle filament and lung tissue, he had died without ever understanding this particular affliction, knowing only that it had been the flowers that had accompanied him to the grave. He owned little, but amongst what belongings he left behind were a broken brush and an unfinished letter. Even if you love him in every lifetime that follows, I will still choose to die at your feet. I will gladly play the fool for an eternity.
Stubborn as he was, his body had continued to grow flowers even in death until eventually a small wisteria tree had blossomed above his gravesite. In the years that followed, there were scattered accounts of some handful of Butterfly-Boned all driven to the grave with a ruptured chest made of flowers. Heartache, seemed to be the only thing they shared.
To quell these flowers was tantamount to capturing moving stars, an aching heart could not be so easily calmed. The only way to dispel of it was to excise it, an arduously painful process that required the host to dig into his own chest and untangle the roots that had taken hold in his flesh. Because of how close these blossoms flowered, it was inevitable that the procedure would weaken one’s spiritual core, leaving them indisposed for a lifetime. Once removed, though, these flowers became the perfect parallel to the flower of eightfold sorrows, one that sowed a fervent affection in whoever afflicted.
When Hua Binan first began growing the flower of eightfold sorrow, he was well aware of the one growing steadily in his own heart. Chu Wanning, that man made of impenetrable ice, sewn from silk, had unknowingly planted a seedling into his chest. It had blinded him, softening his resolve until he had become pliant in that man’s hands. Maybe it had been the earthworms, or the words so readily offered from Chu Wanning’s mouth as if he hadn’t longed to hear them his entire life, but the flowers grew at an alarming rate, ever encouraged by the shadow of a man that had once held an umbrella above his head.
At Chu Wanning’s gentle hand that never seemed to waver even in face of such an admonishable creature like him, he found himself utterly unescaped from that man made of ice so frozen, so clear, that he couldn’t do anything besides watch him from afar and hope that his own, unsteady hands could be worthy enough to thaw the cold man before him.
But by the time he had prostrated himself before the man and called him shizun for the first time, all that remained of this ardent longing were the scars above his chest that hadn’t yet healed and the lasting sensation of his fingers prodding through his own flesh. There remained one last limitation of this flower, though—to remove it would be to forsake this human notion of love for as long as one roamed the earth. From then, until the grave, there could not exist something as silly, as naive and pure, as love in Hua Binan’s heart again.
And the flower, once blossoming in Hua Binan’s chest, wrapped around his own flesh and bone, withered where he held it above Taxian-jun’s motionless figure.
~
He was nothing but a corpse preserved on the precipice of rot, pulled from the threshold of Hell and abandoned in this empty carcass of his that was devoid of all sensibilities. A burning fire didn’t hurt when anymore he stuck his hand in between the flames, the cold did not bite at the tip of his nose, even the memory of Shi Mei did not ache as it should. And yet, in his empty chest, that housed only an unbeating heart, was an agony he hadn’t even felt when Shi Mei had died, a tightness that somehow managed to disarm his every sense at the thought of the man he had once lost.
Chu Wanning was alive, breath still hot against his lips, but the thought of him was faraway, as if a mirage that could be easily scattered if he touched too forcefully. How many years had it been, from the moment Chu Wanning had stood above him with Jiuge’s strings between his fingers until he had reawakened in that cold grave at the foot of Wushan Palace. How long had his heart been made entirely of stone just for this living, breathing person to return to his embrace, allowing him to finally let go of the breath he had held for so long.
It had been too long. So long that Taxian-jun could no longer recognise the man Chu Wanning called for in his sleep. He was Mo Weiyu in likeness alone, he did not have his memories, not of the gentleness with which Chu Wanning would say his name, or the moments between them borne not from coercion but rather the faint flush that touched only the tips of the man’s ears. He was not given Chu Wanning’s softness, and yet he craved it all the same.
Somehow within the emptiness his heart occupied was this ever-consuming need, not to tear his teeth into the man beneath him, but rather collapse into his arms. He wanted, desperately, to be held. To have his name sound sweet against Chu Wanning’s lips and not as the final dying breath he had remembered it to be for all those years that followed. He wanted Mo Weiyu’s entire life.
The first flower came as the first leaf settled on the grounds of the Red Lotus Pavilion. Winter drew near, and yet it did little to cool that torrid longing in his chest.
Chu Wanning did not call his name anymore, did not reach towards his face with those trembling hands of his. In those sharp eyes he had learnt to despise for their coldness he found only a lukewarm pity, as if the emperor he had become, this powerful man who did not fear neither Heaven nor Hell, was nothing more than a craven dog curled up at his feet. He did not understand, why did Chu Wanning look at him as if he were still dead?
He had Mo Weiyu’s spiritual core, he had his face, his body, his voice—he had Mo Weiyu’s souls. So then, why did Chu Wanning not hold him as if he were equally as real? Was he not just as breakable, rendered so soft on his knees before this man so untouchable that the feeling of him alone could not be proof of existence. What was it beneath his skin if not for the remnants of Mo Weiyu’s foolish longing for this silent man before him?
He was real, he must’ve been, because he could taste it in Chu Wanning’s clumsily made congee, he could feel it beneath his own fingertips that twitched whenever they so much as grazed the sharp curve of his throat, he knew it from the way his heart thrashed violently in its cage made of flesh and bones whenever he came up for breath from between those fragile thighs. He was starved, craving for proof that he was real, that he would not disappear when morning came, and yet Chu Wanning gave him none at all. Only his vacant phoenix eyes that seemed to search for traces of a man that no longer existed in either of their worlds.
So he allowed only a brief pain in place of surprise when he coughed up the first flower. He was a dead man, after all, it should not have hurt at all. And yet, it was both exceedingly numb and far more painful than anything he’d ever endured. It was both nothing at all and a violent disembowelment of what remained of him, whether it was Taxian-jun or Mo Weiyu’s souls that continued to soften him for the man who did not want this version of him.
“I see you have received my gift.” He turned from where he sat crumpled over Red Lotus Pavilion’s pond, the one that had once held the body of all he despised of the world and all that he coveted of time. Instead of Chu Wanning’s body, though, there was only a bloody flower that floated amongst those red lotuses. Hua Binan’s voice trespassed those calm waters and Taxian-jun almost forgot that many years ago it was only those who belonged to his shizun that could step into Chu Wanning’s residence. Now, it seemed that even outsiders were permitted to sully these clear waters.
“Hua Binan,” he spat, voice hoarse. Blood dribbled from a corner of his mouth, falling into the pond where it diffused into the water surrounding it. The red curled, for a moment as if not wanting to disperse, before it was swallowed by the mist. “What have you done to this venerable one?”
“You should be thanking me. I am only reminding you of that shixiong of yours. How sad he must be if he knew you had softened for the man that killed him.” But the mention of Shi Mei did not rouse him as it he expected it to, his heart did not twist at the thought of the man he had long since buried beneath the decades that followed. It was the mention of Chu Wanning, though, that sent a dry ache through his lungs until it threatened to escape in the form of bloodstained flowers.
Did he truly hate the man? Or was he simply incensed by his own inadequacy to save any of the people he cared about, only ever the begging form in the snow that clung to the coattails of others. He did not understand where this clarity came from, whether it was Chu Wanning’s sudden reappearance or the fact that he was duly aware, but wholly unwilling to acknowledge, for whom these flowers had taken root, but he could no longer use this idle excuse of a past grievance to disguise this perfervid heat that accompanied these flowers.
He could not abhor this man that had once pleaded not for himself but for Taxian-jun, the cruel creature ever undeserving of repentance. And yet, even as he lay dying, had Chu Wanning not given his last breath to him? Was this truly a man deserving of his hatred, bedded by his desires to humiliate?
“Do not bring him into this,” he said drily as he watched Hua Binan circle the pond. He didn’t even know if he was talking about Shi Mei or Chu Wanning. “This venerable one does not like to reminisce.”
Hua Binan hummed, stopping at the edge of the pond before reaching down and picking out a particularly bright red lotus. Taxian-jun watched as he played with it between his hands, petting the petals with the tips of his fingers with an impossibly gentle touch, as if to leave each petal undisturbed and for a moment, he had an almost tender look in those snake eyes of his. “I do, though. Mo Ran, do you know why?”
His eyes turned sharp, hands pinching the corner of a petal until it withered beneath the force of his fingers before he snapped the stem and tossed the flower carelessly back into the pond. “Because only our memories will remind us of where we stand.”
He scoffed, standing. “This venerable one does not need the past to remind me of my purpose, not everyone is so weak-willed.”
“But haven’t you already forgotten about your shixiong? Don’t you still remember how he died? The man that killed him, isn’t he in your bed right now?” Hua Binan’s voice sounded uncharacteristically brittle, on the verge of splintering. Such a sound was entirely foreign to Taxian-jun who had only ever known Hua Binan to be a particularly callous and haughty man.
He spun around. “I have already told you that I do not appreciate your reminiscing. Do not make this venerable one repeat himself—!”
“Tell me, Mo Ran, do you even remember what your shixiong looks like?”
Hua Binan’s question forced a silence in place of the words that he had yet to speak. What did Shi Mei look like?
After all these years, two decades of aimlessness, had he truly been chasing after a man he could no longer remember? Was Shi Mei not just another face buried beneath the snow-capped tips of Sisheng Peak? In the last decade it was, after all, only Chu Wanning’s face that he could remember, one that would refuse to fade even in the strongest of his liquored hazes. At first, he had convinced himself it was only a product of the contempt he placed within those cold eyes that had once only stared down at him, but he could no longer convince himself that he did not crave for those eyes to warm at the sight of him.
Still, how self-abasing would he look if he were to admit that he was willing to play the fool for a man that saw him only as the most reprehensible of creatures. “Hua Binan, I warn you, do not cross this venerable one. I am not in the mood to indulge your tantrums.”
“So you’ve forgotten then,” Hua Binan laughed bitterly, walking back towards Mo Ran and it must have been the steam from the pond but there seemed to be something unlike his usual composure in his eyes. “Did you also forget that you liked his wontons the best? Or that he was the one who would stay by your side after Shizun punished you?”
Taxian-jun frowned, he did not miss the way Hua Binan had addressed Chu Wanning as shizun instead of your shizun. And despite it all, he was still so terribly possessive over this man, so deferential at his feet, and only three people in this world were permitted to call Chu Wanning by that title, who did Hua Binan think he was? “Be careful of what you say, he is my shizun—”
A hand curled into his collar and he was met with Hua Binan’s eyes set ablaze. “He was my shizun too! But for you, he would crawl up three thousand steps to bring you home, Mo Weiyu, and for me? He did not even stay long enough to watch me die!”
He could not understand what Hua Binan was saying, nor see past the endless flames in his eyes. When had Chu Wanning, that ever exalted man, crawled for his sake, how could someone like him ever humble himself to such a debased position for someone like him? Yet before he could ask, he was confronted, belatedly, by Hua Binan’s last words, of a particular moment he could never escape from. “Shi Mei?”
Hua Binan let out a laugh, far more bitter than the previous one. “So you do remember me after all, A-Ran.”
He flinched at the name, one he had not heard since that night Song Qiutong had sprawled at his feet, begging him with Shi Mei’s likeness. In Hua Binan’s mouth, though, it sounded of a long lost memory, buried beneath the years that he was utterly unable to stop from slipping past him. “Shi Mei.”
“That’s right, it’s me A-Ran,” Hua Binan said, stepping closer until he was right in front of this crumpled emperor who could not dispel the upheaval of his senses. Perhaps he had sensed that this version of Taxian-jun, with his startled eyes and memories made of reconstructed ash, could be far easier to tame than the one who grew flowers for another man, so he pulled that empty corpse into a shallow embrace. “Shixiong’s back, aren’t you happy to see me?”
Encouraged by Taxian-jun’s silence, he continued. “It’s been so long, I have so much to tell you about. But the way back home is almost done, A-Ran. Don’t you want to see your shixiong go back home?”
Perhaps it was those very last words that ruptured that delicate thread they stood on. But their entire circumstance, what waning warmth he still had left for the man before him, was it not all only because they had no home to return to? No true hearth from which they belonged besides what little comfort he once thought they shared between them. He tore away from those arms. “The Shi Mei I know does not have a home, nor does this venerable one. Or perhaps you have forgotten.”
Hua Binan’s smile wavered. “A-Ran—”
“Do not bother this venerable one anymore,” he cut off, smoothing his robes before casting a sharp glare towards Hua Binan. “You may have control over me, but you made the mistake of giving me a core. And Mo Weiyu made the mistake of giving me his souls.”
He did not bother to listen to Hua Binan’s words that sputtered out like a dying flame, focused solely on making his way back to Wushan Palace where, in his bed, waited for him a man that would be his last attempts at douting this flame of unknown cause in his chest. There, in Chu Wanning’s lap, somehow, he would abandon shame, would not stutter out of worry that he would be unwanted. Because, at the very least, he was still the illusion of Mo Weiyu, and Chu Wanning was still the warmth he had coveted since that first meeting beneath haitang blossoms. They could play the fools for each other for an eternity, he could be satisfied with that.
For a moment, he returned to the street from all those years ago, in which he had first learnt what it meant to debase himself entirely and indelibly so that he remained as nothing more than a dog who knew to wag his tail for a few treats. With his hands covered in blood, bent knives at his feet, and that crowd of unfamiliar faces all too eager to finally be stripped of temporary monotony, he had first played the fool to save his mother. And now, with that untouchable man cornered between his arms, he was willing to do far worse—to play the part again so long as he could receive even flickers of softness for every bite he took of his own flesh.
The door to his room stuttered open, his own trembling hands gripping at the frame. He did not understand his own nervousness, why all of a sudden he felt not a steady desire to immolate Chu Wanning in a flame of their combined creation but rather to prostrate himself at his feet as he once had on a rainy day outside Red Lotus Pavilion. If picking Chu Wanning as his shizun was his most abject mistake, then perhaps chasing after his shadow for two decades was the only thing he ever did right.
If he could return to the split in the roads where their paths first diverged, he would hate him more, regret him more fervently—he would hold him longer, steal more breath from between his lips.
“Wanning.” His voice was hoarse when he spoke, severed ends frayed by that wildering heat caught in his throat. “Did you miss this venerable one?”
The man in his bed did not answer him, did not even turn at the sound of his entrance. He sat facing the window, hands tucked in his lap, his entire person, from his simple jade hairpin to his disheveled robes, sacrosanct. Ever more hallowed than he had been when Taxian-jun had first seen him from afar and decided that he was someone akin to flowers.
“Wanning,” he repeated, stalking closer. “Did you not hear this venerable one?”
The man before him sighed. “Mo Weiyu, what are your intentions?”
He frowned. “Do not call me that—”
“If it is to bring the Butterfly-Boned home, then stop now. There are other ways to help them.”
“Home?” He repeated, circling around the bed to stand in front of Chu Wanning. Once, he thought home was in his mother’s arms that did not wane in warmth. Despite what acrid winters brought, he could endure so long as he had her to return to. Then, he thought it was Shi Mei’s hands, ones that had softened the jagged edges of scar tissue. Or even Xue Meng, who had once given a stick of tanghulu to him, imposed in a position that belonged to someone else.
“Tell me then, Wanning, where is this venerable one’s home?” Now, it must be this spot at Chu Wanning’s feet, where he could bare his own neck and hope that this man would bite it without him asking. Home could be this austere person’s unlikely warmth, one that he could not bring himself to ask for.
Chu Wanning’s eyes were pools of clear water, frozen over until impenetrable. Even if he could see what lay beneath that layer of ice, whether grief or contentment, he could not reach close enough to cradle it in his arms. “Let me go.”
“This venerable one has finally gotten his shizun back after so many years.” He surprised himself with how tender his voice sounded, stripped bare of its typical bluster. Like this, he could almost be convinced that he and Chu Wanning were from two decades ago, when all that existed between them was his own perennial devotion, his unabating need to take this man as his master. He could delude himself of the past, as if he had not already driven a wedge between sun and moon the size of the sky. “How could I bear to let you go?”
“This is not the time to joke around.” Red lined those clear water pools, spider lilies planted around the edges of Chu Wanning’s eyes. He must have thought that Taxian-jun was lying, incapable of such tender words, especially for him. But he had not seen inside Taxian-jun’s body, carved open his chest and everted his lungs to see the flowers that had taken root. To Chu Wanning, in this lifetime, there should have existed nothing between them besides a once frail affection of a disciple that had now fractured irreparably into the bodies lining the final path to Hell.
Perhaps then, he should convince him of his sincerity. For the man before him, he could find a way to purge twenty years of wrongdoing, even if he must expunge all that is left of him in this body. “Wanning, why would I joke with you about such matters? This venerable one has truly missed you.”
Where Chu Wanning sat on the bed, beneath his hands twisted into silk, a winter breeze passed through, swallowing any noise that preceded it as it sent a quiver through his shoulders. Taxian-jun could see it, briefly passed through, and for a moment he thought he had angered the man who refused to look directly at him, nor into his eyes that held only empty memories of another lifetime. He grabbed his chin, tilting it, and it was with blatant clarity that Chu Wanning, a man he had seldom seen with anything other than a cold visage made of pure white snow, was crying.
He had rarely seen Chu Wanning cry, not even when he lay dying in his arms. That cold body that had been untended to for an entire lifetime, left in the winter only for a wild dog to come and ravage what remained of withered skin. And yet, even in those moments, there was no selfishness that remained, nor that ever existed, only a foolish worry for the man that had driven him to his death. This man before him, who had sacrificed his entire life, for two lifetimes, across time and space, cried only for the very person that forced him to forsake himself.
“I cannot bear to see you like this,” he whispered, teardrops falling like dew on his skin. “You are already dead, Mo Weiyu—so why do you keep tormenting me like this?”
“Dead?” What did Chu Wanning mean by that? There was no way he could be dead, not when there were flowers in his chest that thrashed wildly at the aching person he held tightly in his hands, as if afraid he would escape like sand. He could not be dead when the thought of Chu Wanning alone could break through the waves to let him finally breathe again. “Wanning, what do you mean?”
Chu Wanning made a pained expression. “Do not make me say it.”
He grabbed Chu Wanning’s hand, pressing it firm against his own chest. There would not be a heartbeat, but perhaps he could be allowed to believe that Chu Wanning would find a familiar warmth there nonetheless. “This spiritual core, is it not familiar? Does it not feel alive to you? Wanning, your skin, your lips, your breath, I can taste them all. So tell me, how could I not be alive?”
Refusing to touch, Chu Wanning tore his hand away. “Mo Weiyu, our past grievances, all of them, are my fault, so why—”
“Do not bring up the past—”
“—are you still punishing yourself for it?” Chu Wanning’s hand came back, ever softer as he touched the crest of Taxian-jun’s eyebrows, index finger tapping at the space between them. His beaded crown clattered as Chu Wanning’s hand brushed past the tassels. “Isn’t it lonely?”
It took a moment for Taxian-jun to understand what he had asked, breath dissipating as he traced over Chu Wanning’s last question. He had lived for three decades, tyrannized both the cultivation and mortal realms, in this lifetime, there was little he had left untouched. Here, in the arid half existence this world had become, he was no longer in anyone’s shadows, never again the foolish boy who would beg for his shizun’s attention. There was no longer any shade cast from the heavens, both mortal and immortal worlds coalesced into insignificance at his feet.
At times, along this winding trail he had walked for years, there were people who attempted to follow him, and so he had walked this path of fabled beliefs with them until their limbs began to tire. Loyal as a dog, he had kept his company close, willing to go so much as to bare his neck in order to rid them of their weariness. But who, when exhausted of their convictions, would refuse the very flesh that offered? So he learnt to bite first. And in his wake, he had left a trail of chess pieces, never knowing if he hadn’t bitten, if they would’ve offered him the gentle hand he had longed for across three decades.
There were those too that were compelled to walk to the ends alongside him, whether out of fear or loyalty, but they remained on the periphery, only ever obedient. Across vast oceans and lands, in the burnt remnants of the sects he laid waste to, they had been the nearest thing to closeness he could attain. From them, though, he could expect only a cold deference.
And at the very end, there had been the ones who had once warned him, deriding him from the start for choosing to follow such an erring road. Whether it was only contempt that was left, that fiery hatred was the only replicate of warmth he had left, and to him, it was better than nothing at all. Does it hurt, Mo Weiyu?! Xue Meng had asked him, Longcheng impaled into his spasming chest, and yet in those eight years of his reign, besides Chu Wanning, it had been the first traces of familiarity he had felt.
Once, he thought Chu Wanning had belonged to this kind, ones that held only antipathy towards him. Ones that would ask him if it hurt, only hoping that he would curl around the pain as proof of long due tribulation. But instead, this man he had once thought to be crueler than the winter he had endured alone so long ago had only asked him if the journey had been a lonely one.
For a moment, stunned, he had the instinct to laugh, to bury Chu Wanning in between bedsheets and ignominy for daring to ask such a vapid question, but he refrained. Had these years not been lonesome? Perhaps it was his deathly hubris or the fact that he did not want to appear so deconstructed in front of the man before him, but he could not bring himself to admit to it. He wanted to extirpate Chu Wanning completely until he was nothing but empty shell—he wanted to fall onto his knees and offer his entirety so long as he could remain at Chu Wanning’s feet.
For someone he liked, he would give them his loyalty, for someone he loved, he would give them his life. But for Chu Wanning, he would willingly lay down his memories, his past, all of what constituted his existence, if that man did not want this version of him. For Chu Wanning, he would give up himself.
It was with the realisation that he could no longer pretend to be unaffected by this man that he felt a familiar ache in his chest, one that felt both like everything and nothing at all. A gasp wrestled its way from his mouth, curled around his knees until he dipped forward, spilling over Chu Wanning’s worried stare and pulling them both sprawled across the bed. He coughed in an attempt to breathe, struggling agaisnt the petals that had scratched his throat raw.
At the sight of blood staining his teeth, Chu Wanning startled. “Mo Ran! What’s wrong?!”
And how relieving was it to hear the concern in his voice, tender beyond reasonable measure for a man like him, and yet all of Chu Wanning’s weakest moments, when he appeared most human, had all been for him. Despite circumstance, he found it difficult to fight the faint smile that threatened to rupture.
“It’s okay, Wanning—” he brushed a hand through Chu Wanning’s untied hair, following the trails of ink until they disappeared into the bedsheets, eyes never leaving the clear water pools before him. Even as the pressure in his chest welled, he found it irresistible to not touch the man beneath him, to caress the back of his head with his rough fingertips, “—it is only one of Hua Binan’s tricks, this venerable one will be fine.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth did he jerk forwards, collapsing over Chu Wanning’s body with his hands fisted in the bedsheet beneath him. He did not want to startle the man and so he endured the tearing in his throat, biting into his own lips until they bled, so that he could abide in silence. For a moment, he wanted to run, away from these unpolluted eyes and back into that spot beneath the crown he had known for a decade. But, ever underestimating Chu Wanning’s disposition towards gentleness, he did not expect for the man to gather him into his arms instead.
His crown was knocked to the ground, jade beads clattering as it fell, but he could not bring himself to care. In all these years, Chu Wanning had never held him like this, only in those fevered moments between bare skin had he ever been the one to touch first. There was no sweat this time though, no naked bodies pressed against each other to wash them of their past, only a warm hand at the nape of his neck, trembling as if he were truly just breaths away from collapse. “It’s okay, everything will—it’ll be okay. Shizun is here.”
He had led his entire life with the belief that Chu Wanning was nothing more than a pitiless man, one who would spare little to uphold his guise of morality, once, even the life of his own disciple. And so followed the years with this man beneath him, he had bedded his master and disparaged the only man that could ever regard him without scorn. So when Mo Ran had first come to him in that dream, at the borders of Hell, he had refused memory, even as he felt both earth and human soul settled in his stomach, because he could not accept what he had done. Not out of pride, but because he could no longer look at Chu Wanning and see a man he had not befouled, he could no longer pretend like he was worthy of even breathing so long as he took from the same air.
How could he have ever thought of that man as cold, when, in his arms, he felt only a warmth he was both exceedingly and wholly undeserving of? “Wanning…it hurts so much.”
His admission was accompanied by a flower, light pink petals stained red with a layer of blood and spit, his own devotions now completely uprooted. In the silence that followed, encroached upon by twilight outside the window, he could not bring himself to look at Chu Wanning, fearing he may shatter completely if were to see all that he ever wanted, separated by a lifetime. Nor did he want Chu Wanning’s pity, those sharp eyes softening for the forlorn wild dog buried in an embrace that did not belong to it.
As a man of his intellect, it was inevitable that Chu Wanning would know what that flower meant, how intrusively it had grown from the depths of his furtive affections. He would know how devout Taxian-jun had become for him. And yet when he managed to assemble enough of his scattered poise to look back at him, he saw only a pained expression he had seen far too many times, twisted eyebrows and an empty drought made of clear water pools.
For a moment, he almost forgot that, in this lifetime, there had not existed such gentleness nor intemperate devotion from him. To Chu Wanning, who could not see how he was carved indelibly into the tissue of his heart, these flowers were not his.
“Shi Mingjing—I could not save him in your lifetime.” Chu Wanning’s voice was more vacant than his eyes, scattered across a shallow attempt at composure, and Taxian-jun did not understand, what did Shi Mei matter? “You must…you must miss him.”
Realisation dawned on him belatedly, stretched across a bitterness in Chu Wanning’s features he attempted to hide. Both as Taxian-jun and Mo Ran, alive and dead, for two lifetimes, he had chased after Shi Mei, enraptured by an illusion so frail he could have noticed had he had not been so set on chasing after it. Mo Ran had noticed though, and for him it was permissible to touch the man beneath him, he had been allowed to hold what Taxian-jun had once treated as empty flesh to be marauded. In this lifetime and the other, he was the only one that remained, prohibited to draw close.
Still, even if all that remained was the version of him that Chu Wanning did not recognise, he would still readily bare his heart and hope it could be acceptable in Mo Ran’s stead. So he took the flower, from where it spilled onto Chu Wanning’s chest, with his mouth, lips lingered on the patch of skin barely exposed beneath his inner robe. He bit down, letting a sweet honeyed taste pervade his senses before being followed by the tart taste of his own blood. And then, hovering over Chu Wanning’s lips, he let the taste drip into the man’s mouth.
At the first drop of light pink, blood diluted by his saliva, falling onto slightly parted lips, Chu Wanning startled, reaching up to wipe at his lips instinctively, but Taxian-jun did not let him. Instead, he gripped those delicate hands in his own and fed the rest of the flower to Chu Wanning by pressing their lips, almost selfishly bruising, together. And he knew that it was only ever here, in between these lips, that he could find breath. “They are not for him.”
How could they belong to anyone else? From taste alone, as if spilled directly from Chu Wanning’s lips, that flower would taste of him and no other. “It’s—”
“A haitang blossom.” He said it before Chu Wanning could, afraid that if he were the one to reveal such a sordid devotion Taxian-jun held for a man he had once humiliated in the most carnal of ways, then he would not be able to withstand Chu Wanning’s derision. So long as he stayed silent, he had once prostrated himself at this man’s feet, and so he could, once again, abase himself. “Everything that I am, even the parts that Shizun does not want, are all yours.”
Chu Wanning’s mouth parted, traces of flower petals still glistening on his lips. “Mine…?”
“You are not the only one who has his pride, Wanning. Do not make this venerable one repeat himself.” It had been so long since the last time he had lowered himself to that spot of deference, to be the one looking up at the very person who held his entire life in his hands. "..please."
During his reign, people knew very well the space at his feet, so often crawling, grasping at the train of his robes, begging for his forbearance, and what had he done to those people besides use them to pave a path home that did not belong to him. He thought he had taken that role for the last time as Chu Wanning lay dying in his arms, and yet here he was once again beneath a hand he could only hope would land gently. He could not be made to say it again, and yet for Chu Wanning, he was willing.
“Chu Wanning, this venerable one abhors you. For you, in this heart, there is only twenty years of hatred. This venerable one hates you the way the sun hates the moon—wishing you would disappear from the skies,” he said between breaths, shallowly aware of his own dampened eyes. He thought of the last few years, how dare Chu Wanning die? After a lifetime of torment, of hunger, of impermanence, how could Chu Wanning take the last thing that ever belonged to him? And yet, he could not mean a single word he said. “Wanning, I love you. I love you the way the sun loves the moon—from afar, at opposite ends of the world, wishing you would stay just a little bit longer past sunrise so that I could touch your shadow even for just a moment.”
This, surely, would be the farthest points to which he would humiliate himself. Laid bare, chest carved open with two decades of rotted flowers spilled between them, surely there was no farther he could fall. Yet, upon Chu Wanning’s silence, he found only a small voice falling, unconstrained, from somewhere he could not even reach. “Does the idea…does it repulse you that much, Wanning?”
As Hua Binan had once believed, there was nothing truly irreparable in this world, even their past could be corrected, except he was clumsy with words and he could not find what to say nor do to erase a lifetime of wrongdoing. He could not return to Sisheng Peak and stand beneath his shizun’s umbrella again.
He took out a knife from his waistband, placing it in Chu Wanning’s hand before guiding the tip to his chest where his robes were already scattered, revealing that pallid skin beneath them so absent of warmth. “Then take them out yourself, for two lifetimes, I was only ever yours to begin with.”
Wrapped around the handle, tangled between and beneath Taxian-jun’s strong hands, Chu Wanning’s fingers trembled, knife tapping against his skin with every nervous tremor. This expression, he would memorise it, take it with him to the grave, because Chu Wanning looked both entirely destroyed and the most stunning he had ever seen him. “So it is not…Shi Mingjing?”
Perhaps he could dare to wish that those eyes, overflowing with clearwater, were for him. And so with a hoarse voice, and a gentle hand reaching down to brush the strands of hair from Chu Wanning’s face, he hoped he would not be turned away. “Wanning, he was not the one I bowed to the heavens and earth with.”
“Mo Ran, that was not me—”
“At Butterfly Town.” He tapped Chu Wanning’s chest. “Our hair, it’s still here isn’t it?”
Chu Wanning frowned. “How do you know that?”
He knew that Chu Wanning was unaware of the souls in his body, believing that he held no knowledge of the other life. Selfishly, he had hoped it would not come to this, that he did not have to hear Chu Wanning pick a dead man over him but he would rather have him in any form than none at all. “Shizun, his memories are here. He…is still here, if you do not want me anymore.”
He tore his eyes away, unable to look as he continued. “For you, I can give up this body. But I have one request.”
“What are you talking about?”
He knew he was in no position to ask for things, already owing Chu Wanning two lifetimes, and still, he could not help himself. “In this lifetime, Shizun did not smile for me the way you did for him. Can I ask…could I ask that you smile for me? Just this once, so that the path to Hell is not so lonely.”
Even after asking, though, he did not return his gaze to Chu Wanning’s face, still so desperate to remain. Eventually, he would look, and he would see a pained smile split across his face, and he would have no choice but to leave the body he had intruded upon. But for now, he would take selfishly from Chu Wanning one more moment in between his arms. It wasn’t until he felt the sharp pressure against his chest disappear and heard the clatter of a steel blade hitting the ground, did he tear his head up.
Chu Wanning did not smile, instead, red ash lined his eyes, silent tears spilling from the edges before dampening the bed beneath them. His voice trembled when he spoke. “Mo Ran, I’ll ask you this again. Why are you still punishing yourself?”
He hesitated. “Shizun, I don’t understand…”
Chu Wanning pressed a hand against his chest, trailing upwards until it rested against the back of his neck before pulling him down so that their foreheads touched, lips barely a breath apart. “Mo Ran, how could I bear to see you die again? In this lifetime, I could not save you, and in mine I did not have enough time to love you, but in both, it was me that was only ever yours to begin with.”