SecondChances XiyaoZine Digital

2022
Second Chances:
a XiYao Zine
For Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao
Thank you to everyone who helped

bring this to life.
CONTENTS
COVER ART by Sabina H. . . . . . . 4 Art
by Yasha W. . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Sleight of Hand
by deuxjolras . . . . . . . . . 5 Art
by Vahveroiden K. . . . . . . . . 48
Art
by Aster . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Aurum Per Fumum
by annulareye . . . . . . . . 50
Art
by Ale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Art
by AiND . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
And Never Again Feel Weak
by Lyn . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Art
by Tako . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Growing Together
by geo . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Until I Knew You
by ralf . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Art
by fluozinc . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The Cultivator and the Fox
by Nickytess . . . . . . . . . 66
attached:20220220_Evidence_of_
demonic_activity_please_advise_1.jpg Art
by exoscopy . . . . . . . . . 21 by Lullejah . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Art Wordless and Gray

by Aru . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 by The_Storybooker . . . . . . 69
Art This New Path of Ours, Let’s Carve it

by Ken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Together
by farisaki . . . . . . . . . . 76
Art
by Reb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Soft Sword
How Will The Morning Find Us? by CwythanWind . . . . . . . 80
by mienwhile . . . . . . . . . 30 Art
Changing Tides by Osedaxed . . . . . . . . . . 85
by Sabina H. . . . . . . . . . 36
CREDITS . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
How Things Can Turn GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
by Roquen . . . . . . . . . . 41
SLEIGHT OF HAND
by Deuxjolras
“Zewu-jun,” Meng Yao says in a grave voice, and only just so stops himself from
laying a comforting hand on his forearm. “You’re in extremely bad shape right now. If
you make any moves, you’re at severe risk of depleting your qi. Do you understand?”
Outside, the rain is pouring. It’s drumming on the roof. It’s running down the
window panes. Laden with dust and pollen, it’s undoing all the scrubbing that Meng
Yao did just four days ago, and in the bathroom, it’s collecting in an empty noodle cup
below the ceiling leak.
The lanterns on the kitchen table bathe Lan Xichen’s face in warm light. He nods
with a smile, collected even when facing his grim destiny. Still, there’s a melancholy
hidden in the crinkle of his eyes (and in the way he’s hiding his hands in his cashmere
pullover sleeves), and Meng Yao knows with infallible certainty that this cannot stand.
If dying makes Lan Xichen sad, Meng Yao will simply need to save him.
After all, all that’s needed is a little sacrifice.
Huaisang, bound to whine the loudest if he ends up dead, is out of the question, but
right as Meng Yao figures out how to best manipulate Wei Wuxian’s hero complex—
“I will attempt a qi transfer,” Wangji says.
Since he’s offering, Meng Yao immediately discards any scruples. “Is that your action
for the round?” he asks with a friendly smile.
“Ha!” Wei Wuxian immediately points an accusing finger at Meng Yao and shoves
Wangji with his elbow. “See, you shouldn’t do it. Yao-ge only ever lets us confirm actions
when the outcome is potentially disastrous.”
“I do not—” Meng Yao says irritatedly. Then he notices how Lan Xichen is giving him
a big, soft smile again, and his thoughts get a little bit scrambled.
“Is that so?” Lan Xichen asks. “A-Yao—I mean, Meng Yao—seems to be taking very
good care of his players.”
Meng Yao feels his cheeks heat and ducks behind the master screen. Just for a
second, he lets himself be overwhelmed by the giddiness in his chest before he focuses
again.
He focuses again.
“—asked if I was grabbing the treasure room sword with my bare hands and lost my
disguise as a direct effect?” Wei Wuxian is still rattling off his accusations. “Or when
he tricked me into confirming that yes, the Yiling Patriarch indeed wanted to touch
5
SLEIGHT OF HAND
Hanguang-jun’s forehead ribbon?”

Both he and Wangji turn bright red at the mention of the latter incident. Meng Yao
allows himself a benevolent smile: their characters’ accidental marriage during the last
campaign truly is a gift that keeps on giving. “Wei Wuxian,” he says mildly, “all I hear is
you blaming me for the reckless choices you keep making in this game.”
Wei Wuxian shrugs and grabs a handful of sunflower seeds. A few of them scatter
over the game board, and as he struggles to pick them up without toppling over
their tokens, he conveniently seems to forget about his smear campaign. Meanwhile,
Huaisang starts fanning himself with his character sheet, no doubt remembering all the
instances where he’s had to confirm his actions today. Meng Yao hopes he’s also finally
second-guessing that foreboding gust of wind back from when the Chief Cultivator first
set foot in Yi City.
Then he turns back to the problem at hand.
Common sense says to give up on Lan Xichen’s character, especially since he’s
officially here for one night only. Being lenient with his bad rolls and now nudging his
regulars to sacrifice themselves for him is way more than Meng Yao would normally do
for a guest player. But Lan Xichen was so polite when he asked to listen in, even citing
Meng Yao’s house rules, and so excited when offered the chance to play. His eyes lit up
like stars when he first saw the character sheet, and he came up with a name and spun
a backstory with easy confidence that utterly charmed and disarmed Meng Yao.
“I’m being such an inconvenience,” Lan Xichen says now, looking embarrassed. With
his confidence crushed by a combination of noble acts and abysmal luck with the dice,
what else can Meng Yao do but double down?
“Please don’t say that,” he protests. “Wangji, what’s the verdict? Will Hanguang-jun
attempt the qi transfer?”
Wangji looks determined.
“McFucking don’t,” Wei Wuxian says in English, aggressively stabbing Wangji’s
character sheet with his last sunflower seed. “With an energy level that low, your
chance of dying is at least one out of four!”
Meng Yao gives him a pointed look. “Are you currently using persuasion on
Hanguang-jun as your action for this round? If so, please roll a D20.”
“Oh no, it’s not necessary,” Lan Xichen interjects before Wei Wuxian can respond.
“Wangji—I mean, Hanguang-jun, I can’t accept that. In fact, I don’t want any of you to
risk your own lives trying to save me.”
His voice sounds so very sincere. With the backdrop of the rain and in the low
light, it’s easy to imagine him as the venerated Zewu-jun, propped up against a wall in
the coffin house, crimson blood spattered on his pristine robes, clutching his xiao in
trembling hands.
6
SLEIGHT OF HAND
His long hair (and general attractiveness) is not helping. Nonetheless, it’s alarming
at which speed Meng Yao’s brain can make up scenarios where his own OC heroically
sweeps in to save him—cradling Zewu-jun’s head in his lap as he heals his injuries,
gently pushing his sweaty hair out of his face...
“Ah, haha, Lan-da, you’re too noble,” Huaisang coughs, interjecting Meng Yao’s
thoughts. He sounds relieved; maybe he’d expected someone to suggest the Chief
Cultivator sacrifice himself for Zewu-jun instead.
“Xichen-ge,” Meng Yao says sternly. “I’m saying this because you’re new to the game.
The others might all be low on energy, but your qi is nearly depleted. If you don’t accept
help, Zewu-jun will die in Yi City.”
“Is there any other way to save me?” Lan Xichen asks, solemn eyes looking around
the table and finally meeting Meng Yao’s. When no one has an answer, Lan Xichen’s
gaze turns determined.
“I would like to do my action for this round, then.”
With a sense of foreboding, Meng Yao signals for him to continue.
“I want to roll for persuasion.” Lan Xichen frowns at his character sheet. “What
you just asked Xiao-Wei—I can do that, too, right? I have a—a 14 on my sheet, for this
ability.”
The sense of foreboding intensifies. Trapped in his role as the game master for once,
Meng Yao can only hand him the dice they’ve been sharing.
“With fading breath, I encourage my companions to abandon me and seek their
own safety,” Xichen says, closes his eyes, and rolls.
It’s a fucking tragedy: after all of his disastrous rolls he now lands a 20, leaving
absolutely no wiggle room for Meng Yao. The worst thing is that he’s right and it’s the
best thing to do at this point. Truly too noble, and a waste of talent at this game.
Meng Yao heaves a deep sigh.
“Your companions see the truth in your words,” he says in a heavy voice. “Either
you die here alone, or you all die together at the hands of the spirit whose wrath you’ve
drawn onto you. With heavy hearts, they bid you farewell.”
Xichen smiles wistfully. “I close my eyes and contemplate the joy of having made
new friends along the way.”
“As the others leave, they are moved to tears by how peaceful you seem,” Meng Yao
says around the lump in his throat. “Finally, the misty shrouds hide you from their
sight.”
“Xiongzhang,” Wangji says, his voice sounding unusually thick.
“Rest in peace, Zewu-jun,” Huaisang chimes in.
7
SLEIGHT OF HAND
“It’s been real, my guy,” Wei Wuxian says, awkwardly patting Lan Xichen’s shoulder.
There’s a heavy silence.
“I truly must apologize,” Lan Xichen finally says. He’s wearing a small smile, but from
the way his shoulders hang, Meng Yao can tell he’s crushed. “You went to all this trouble
so I could play with you, and now I’ve made the game so depressing.”
Meng Yao wants to see him excited again. In fact, he wants it so much it’s almost
overwhelming, and it feels right and natural to place his hand on Lan Xichen’s arm in
reassurance. “Please, gege,” he says softly, “it was a pleasure to have you.”
He notes with intrigue that the endearment makes Lan Xichen blush. Meng Yao
lets himself drown in his warm eyes—until he’s distracted by Huaisang tugging at his
sleeve. “I’m sure Yao-ge will let you create a new character,” Huaisang pleads, “won’t
you?”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lan Xichen says, embarrassed.
Confidence, Meng Yao thinks again, and an idea sweeps his somber mood away.
He feels a pleased smile play around his lips. “That won’t be necessary,” he decides,
and dives behind his master screen.
“I don’t like this, I really don’t like this,” Huaisang mumbles. He has folded his
character sheet into a fan and won’t stop fidgeting with it. “Is it just me or is something
off about this whole thing?”
“No,” Wangji says, disquieted. He raises his hand politely. “I would like to use a
perception check on the palace guards, please.”
Meng Yao waves his hand generously. “You check their pulses. All of them are dead.”
The pencil spinning around Wei Wuxian’s fingers comes to a sudden halt. “We’re
being watched—that’s what’s weird. Remember the assassins after Yi City? They went
straight for me, knowing Hanguang-jun wouldn’t risk my safety.”
He and Wangji both become incredibly interested in their tea cups for a few
seconds, and Meng Yao shares a knowing smile with Lan Xichen. In the past few hours,
Lan Xichen has moved closer and closer to Meng Yao’s screen and is now sitting close
enough for their elbows to brush occasionally. It makes pouring him tea an exhilarating
feat: in their back and forth of “thank you” and “you’re welcome”, Meng Yao has had
the opportunity to study every shade of brown in Lan Xichen’s eyes. Seeing how he’s
constantly distracted by fantasies of letting Lan Xichen read the stories in his notebook
and plotting an entire new campaign together with him, Meng Yao has come to accept
that he’s helplessly, irrefutably smitten.
“Point being,” Wei Wuxian soldiers on bravely, “they seemed to know about our
secret, ah, marriage, haha—even when we’ve never mentioned it outside of our group.
8
SLEIGHT OF HAND
And then in Kuizhou—I’m starting to think they removed the corpses from the graves
specifically to prevent me from using my demonic cultivation, which is again something
no one should know about in the first place.”
Huaisang looks back and forth between him and Wangji. “What do you suggest?”
Wangji studies the game board. “We’ve exhausted our options. We’re already in Sect
Leader Evildoer’s lair. Our only remaining choice is to confront the villain directly and
fight.”
Behind his screen, Meng Yao’s hands tremble in anticipation. Lan Xichen gives him
an inquisitive smile.
“I’m so scared,” Huaisang whines, turning to Meng Yao with a pleading face. “If we
all die, you’re gonna let us keep our characters, won’t you, Yao-ge?”
“Shh,” Wangji says.
“I open the door to the main hall with the assassin’s key,” Wei Wuxian declares.
Meng Yao smiles to himself, savoring the moment. With carefully chosen words, he
paints the picture of what lies beyond: a vast room with torches as the only source of
light, tiled with dark wood and eclipsed by a seemingly endless flight of stairs, right on
the bottom of which—
“—lies a lifeless figure,” Meng Yao concludes. Before the group can erupt into chaos,
he holds up a single finger. “If you do a perception check, you’ll find that indeed no life
force is left in the body.”
Underneath the table, Lan Xichen’s knee brushes against his. “What are you
planning?” he whispers, his curious smile playing around his lips and crinkling the
corners of his eyes. Meng Yao smiles back and puts a finger over his lips, lingering a bit
longer than strictly necessary.
“I walk over to the body to inspect it. What do I find? Do I recognize who it is?” Wei
Wuxian demands.
“The body is clad in extravagant red robes and is still clutching a sword engraved
with the motif of a sun. Based on your knowledge of the prominent cultivation families
you conclude—”
“—that it’s Sect Leader Evildoer,” Wei Wuxian curses. “He’s dead? And his goons still
attacked us a minute ago? The fuck!”
Wangji frowns. “Do I sense anyone else in here?”
“You don’t see anybody,” Meng Yao says, “But...”
He waits until he has the group’s undivided attention.
“You hear something. Faintly, as if from very far away, you hear the single, quivering
note... of a xiao.”
9
SLEIGHT OF HAND
Lan Xichen stills beside him.

“What?” Huaisang exclaims. “Who’s there?”
Meng Yao stands no chance against the wide grin spreading on his face. He’s probably
looking disheveled and flushed and slightly manic—but it all doesn’t matter because
Lan Xichen is hanging on to his every word, his eyes shining bright with excitement.
“Right after you call out, the music stops. You look around in confusion, until you
finally turn your gaze upwards. From the very top of the stairs, a tall figure clad in white
robes is looking down on you, their face hidden behind a veil of mist. Then, a voice
echoes through the room.”
Meng Yao pauses again. Huaisang, Wangji, and Wei Wuxian hold their breaths—
—and Meng Yao slowly turns to Lan Xichen.
As Meng Yao smiles at him, Lan Xichen’s hesitation melts away. He clears his throat.
“Joining you in human disguise gave me the opportunity to learn all of your
weaknesses,” he says in a gleeful voice. Then he pauses for a second, looking back at
Meng Yao to see if he’s doing it right.
Meng Yao can only stare at him with fond adoration. It doesn’t matter, because it
prompts Lan Xichen to turn back to the group and continue: “Sect Leader Evildoer has
served his purpose. I have returned to a body that is stronger than my previous one. Say
your prayers now, and then prepare to die!”
Huaisang drops his makeshift fan. Wangji drops his teacup. Wei Wuxian sputters
and points at Lan Xichen, at a loss for words. And Lan Xichen—
Lan Xichen is glowing with excitement, and Meng Yao feels his own heart swell at
least twice its size. Then he pulls the character sheet for the discarded Sect Leader
Evildoer from his folder, ceremoniously crosses out the name, and scribbles “Zewu-
jun” on top. As he hands it over to Lan Xichen behind the master screen, their hands
meet, and his heart skips a beat.
They grin at each other.
“Alright,” Meng Yao says cheerfully, “now everyone roll for initiative!”
10
AND NEVER AGAIN FEEL WEAK
by lyn
The first time Jin Ziyao came here — no, the first time Meng Yao came here — he had
not paid much attention to his surroundings, too high-strung and anxious about the
gift-giving ceremony to take in the tranquil beauty of Cloud Recesses.
The walk up from the main gates is much more relaxed this time around, and Jin
Ziyao relishes in the views: the stream cascading down the mountain next to the
tortuous path, the trees all around in their calming shades of green, the hint of a rabbit’s
tail as it hops away from human eyes and into a thicket.
Two years have passed since his first and last visit. Meng Yao did not die during those
two years — there were a few close calls, Sunshot Campaign being as unpredictable
and dangerous as it was — but it’s almost as if he had. Today, he’s walking up to the
main pavilions of Cloud Recesses in colors that he had always wished to adorn, yet
never imagined that he would get to do so, especially under such circumstances.
(The circumstances being: his poor excuse of a father, dead and hopefully haunted
by a thousand resentful spirits; his siblings, reunited and combining their powers for
the greater good and minor mischiefs; his new name, offering him a second lease on
life, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. And ashes there were during Sunshot.)
Jin Ziyao bows courteously to anyone he walks past as he arrives at the surrounding
walls of Cloud Recesses, tall and pristine white, an invitation to peacefulness and calm
shrouded in pompousness. Jin Ziyao takes the peace offering and walks in to the sounds
of “Welcome, Jin-gongzi” echoed by one Lan disciple after the other. There is one voice
that matters more than the rest to Jin Ziyao’s ears, a tone he has not forgotten despite
the time that has passed, a warmth he has kept close to his heart all this while.
“Jin-gongzi, welcome back to Cloud Recesses.”
Jin Ziyao has not spent a lot of time in Cloud Recesses and yet he knows that he is
not imagining the hint of a smile he sees tugging at the edges of Lan Xichen’s mouth.
“If I had known Jin-gongzi was coming, I would have prepared a more appropriate
welcome.”
Lan Xichen keeps the smile on his lips, the slightest hint of a gleaming twinkle in
his eyes, as he bows slightly towards Jin Ziyao. Jin Ziyao springs forward and pulls him
up, the butter yellows of his robes contrasting against Lan Xichen’s powder blues. The
reversal of their roles is not lost on Jin Ziyao as they both rise to their full stature and
face each other. Jin Ziyao schools his features into something he hopes is dignified
enough for his name — it’s not talking to Lan Xichen that makes him feel inadequate,
no, Lan Xichen would never elicit such feelings in him; it’s talking as Jin Ziyao that
13
makes him feel this way. Like he has to learn who he is and how to behave all over again.
New beginnings are, by definition, a series of firsts and discoveries and choices and—
as many options to misfire and be wrong. Meng Yao had many worries in life; Jin Ziyao
seems to have just as many with the double-edged sword of the Jin name dangling over
his head.
The Jin name brings status and presence and legitimacy and security and stability.
Everything he craved, wanted, needed. The Jin name brings eyes on him, scrutiny,
judgement, expectations. Everything he already had and detested.
“No need, Zewu-jun,” Jin Ziyao finally settles on replying. “This humble one does
not dare to ask for a special welcome. I am only here as part of the overall Jin disciples
contingent, wishing to receive the lectures of Gusu Lan like any other coming-of-age
gentry cultivator.”
The change in Lan Xichen’s expression is blink-and-you-miss-it, but not to Jin Ziyao’s
observant mind. Imperceptible, almost, but holding a promise that Jin Ziyao will keep
close to his heart in the following days.
“If you so desire, Jin-gongzi, then I will make no change to the usual unfolding of
things.”
And true to his word, Lan Xichen does not alter the usual state of things, as Jin Ziyao
knew he would upon learning of his wishes. Lectures come and go, the droning of Lan
Qiren’s voice permeating Jin Ziyao’s brain more than it had ever managed to do so for
Huaisang.
Huaisang had come to Cloud Recesses two years in a row yet never succeeded to
reach what Lan Qiren or any of the other Lan elders considered an “acceptable level of
knowledge”. The second year, when Meng Yao had accompanied him, Huaisang had not
even attended the full length of lectures, instead fleeing in a rush a few days only after
Meng Yao’s return to Qinghe with one name on his lips: Wen Ruohan. Wen Ruohan and
his power-hungry plans to take over the cultivation world, no matter how much blood
would need to be shed for it to happen. But Huaisang had had a plan of his own too, one
that Mingjue had been willing to hear after getting over the initial disappointment and
anger about his brother’s renewed academic failure in Gusu.
Huaisang had explained how he’d overheard Wen disciples talking to Jin outer
disciples in a corner of Cloud Recesses as he was skipping a lecture and how it hadn’t
taken long to put two and two together after that. The Wens’ ominous dramatic
entrance, the thinly veiled threats Wen Chao had spit out, the alliance the Wens were
offering to the Jins, syrupy poisonous voices claiming that a great man like Sect Leader
Jin would be a key asset to this campaign. A campaign, they were calling it, not a war, not
a conquest, not a takeover. Jin Guangshan would indeed fit just right in this masquerade
of grandeur and gilded promises.
14
The campaign had a built-in flaw in Huaisang’s eyes: who would be the true ruler,
in the end? Neither Wen Ruohan nor Jin Guangshan would possibly agree to step down
or share the throne at the top of the cultivation world. This was doomed to end badly
for either one of them once the campaign would have succeeded — and it had chances
to succeed, the power of the Wens and the Jins combined would be a force to reckon
with. Huaisang’s idea was simplistic enough: eliminate the two power-hungry snakes
from the get go, before they even got the chance to reach the precarious moment where
they would inevitably want to kill one another to ascend alone to the top. Then, form a
council-like alliance between the main sects, swear to live peacefully with one another
on equal footings of courteous diplomacy and—
“Jin-gongzi, may I—” Jin Ziyao startles, not as big of a rattle to his frame as it might
have been in the past but still enough for him to lose his train of thought and need to
consciously switch his focus to Lan Xichen.
“Zewu-jun, how can I help you?”
Lan Xichen sits himself next to Jin Ziyao, careful to not displace the papers and
inks he was using just before. Copying entire chapters from books remained one of Lan
Qiren’s favored homework to hand out. Jin Ziyao did not mind it; it was peaceful to focus
on the stroke of his brush and improve his calligraphy. It was another of these things he
did not have the luxury to enjoy before, and the novelty and pleasure he derived from
it had not worn off yet.
“You do not need to worry about helping with anything, Jin-gongzi. You are my
guest here, in my home, and as such there is nothing required of you to do. I was simply
wondering if you wanted to take a walk.”
Lan Xichen tilts his head ever so slightly, carefully inquisitive with his invitation. Jin
Ziyao’s silence — fairly too stunned and taken aback to reply, if he is true to himself —
seems to be interpreted as a refusal.
“Or perhaps we could have tea?”
Jin Ziyao rushes to answer this time, desiring to avoid any further misinterpretation
of his feelings.
“No, a walk sounds wonderful. Perhaps a tea later, too.”
Lan Xichen nods and stands back up. Jin Ziyao realizes belatedly that he had no
need to make the effort to sit down next to him; Zewu-jun is not known to do anything
carelessly or without thought and he chose to sit down next to Jin Ziyao instead of
standing intimidatingly in the doorway, bringing proximity and reassuring closeness
between the two of them. Something ignites inside of Jin Ziyao as he realizes that this is
the exact same kind of attention to detail that Meng Yao had also been on the receiving
end of two years ago.
Lan Xichen has always considered him as his equal, no matter what his status in the
15
cultivation world actually was. Lan Xichen recognized his precarious place in the world
back then, acknowledged it silently, even offered Meng Yao to stay in Gusu but— but
Meng Yao possibly couldn’t.
Lan Xichen recognizes his newly acquired title and status now, legitimate second
son to the Jin family and a passable cultivator, in spite of his late-developed golden
core. It had turned out that he shared the exact same birthdate as Jin Zixuan, but by
virtue of him becoming sect leader, Jin Ziyao stood second in line and happily so. Lan
Xichen acknowledges it all, but nothing really changes. Jin Ziyao finds it refreshing
to not have to worry as much as usual about others’ perception of his (new) self. Lan
Xichen’s candor and acceptance, through thick and thin, through being an illegitimate
son to a legitimate heir: Jin Ziyao cherishes it.
As they step outside of the guest pavilion where Jin Ziyao has established his
temporary residence, heading out towards the path that winds around the trees and
leads to the Cold Spring, Lan Xichen speaks up again, his voice disturbing the ever-
present quiet of Cloud Recesses.
“I do not wish to disturb you, as you requested to follow the lectures just as any
other disciple, but I also do not wish to hold onto any regrets once you leave again,
Jin-gongzi.”
Another minuscule frown appears on Lan Xichen’s face, a micro-expression that Jin
Ziyao adds to his personal catalogue with the note attentive, concerned?
“A-Yao, I—” Lan Xichen starts brusquely before stopping right in his tracks. Jin Ziyao
gives him an encouraging nod, as he tucks the way A-Yao sounded in Lan Xichen’s
voice deep into the recesses of his heart. Another moment, another keepsake. Being in
Cloud Recesses seems to be conducive to memory-making. “If the Sunshot Campaign
has taught me anything, it is to not waste time and to cherish every single day. From
morning to nightfall. Delayed gratification is not for me, I am afraid, and as such I must
apologize for being so forward in my words and intentions.”
“That seems very un-Lan-like.” Jin Ziyao keeps his response short. Deferred
gratification is not too much of his thing either: Jin Ziyao feels like he’s endured enough
delays in his life already. Being coy, playing hard to get, leaning too hard into the
respectful young master angle: neither of these options sounds appealing.
“Then I shall accept such a fate,” Lan Xichen replies with a charming finality.
This time, it’s not a micro-expression that blooms on his face but a full-fledged smile,
dazzling and enticing, luring Jin Ziyao in all the way, as if he did not already have one
hand hovering over the final prize.
Jin Ziyao smiles back, easily, carelessly.
“I do believe then that this gift will not come across as untoward.” Lan Xichen pulls
16
something from inside his robes, a small bundle of powder blue fabric embroidered
with clouds that he presses in Jin Ziyao’s palm. “After you return to Lanling, do not feel
as if you are unwelcome here. This is a permanent invitation of sorts. I will always be
happy to welcome A-Yao to Cloud Recesses and spend more time together.”
The jade token lies within the bundle of fabric before Jin Ziyao carefully holds it up
at eye level, admiring the delicate craftsmanship and the shine of it.
Jin Ziyao has not planned a gift for Lan Xichen, but the token is a promise, and so
with a smooth motion Jin Ziyao lifts himself up on his toes and kisses Lan Xichen’s
mouth delicately. A gift, a kiss, both promises of the future ahead of them both.
The once stiffening calm and peace of Gusu spread over Jin Ziyao, bearing sweet
ripening fruits full of hope and languidness.
17
attached:20220220_Evidence_of_demonic_activity_
please_advise_1.jpg
by exoscopy
Breakfast is at Lan Huan’s favourite stall because Lan Huan is paying. While he assures
nervous locals that they will solve the mystery of the livestock killings, Cheng Yin sorts
through the previous day’s evidence. A park ranger never rests.
“It’s getting worse,” Cheng Yin announces. She thrusts her phone at Lan Huan,
giving him an eyeful of extremely mutilated goat. It’s a little incongruous with her cute
one-eyed cat phone case.
“Complete blood removal,” she continues with barely restrained glee. “I read about
vampire bats the other day. What d’you reckon?”
“They have a broad geographical range across most of South America,” Lan Huan
says, setting down their breakfasts. Plain for him, sweet for her. “Would you mind
sending me that?”
“Already did. See what your zoologist friends say,” Cheng Yin says smugly. Lan Huan
smiles, prompting Cheng Yin to exclaim, “Don’t smile! It’s too bright for this time of the
morning.”
Sadly, that’s the most excitement the day has to offer. Morning becomes afternoon
becomes night. Lan Huan falls asleep only to wake up tired again, and even forgets to
post the photos to the chatroom in his haze.
The longer he stays here the more he thinks Shufu might have been right. To his
family’s faces, he’s politely resolute: Yes, I’m fine here. Yes, it’s been valuable. Yes, I plan to
stay here through next winter. But when he’s lying in his bedroom, hearing the crickets
scream, the deep aimlessness reaches out from the place he keeps it buried behind his
heart.
Right after the accident it had felt - correct. There had been a burning need to leave
life in Suzhou behind, just for a while, despite his family’s strenuous objections. Even
Lan Zhan had been opposed but at least he, unlike Shufu, hadn’t insinuated that Lan
Huan had sustained brain injuries in the crash. In the end they’d let him go, after he
promised that he’d visit for all the important festivals. Perhaps Lan Huan had dropped
the gentle reminder that he’d never asked for anything else in his twenty-seven years of
life. Who could’ve said?
But none of that helps him now. The days melt into an endless blur of misty mornings
and starry nights. The strange animal attacks used to bring excitement, but those, too,
are becoming so frequent as to be routine. Wake up, work, ride home, sleep. Wake up,
work, ride home, sleep. Wake up, work, ride home, hit a stranger with his bike-
21
attached:20220220_Evidence_of_demonic_activity_please_advise_1.jpg
Lan Huan is sure he braked before direct impact but he still manages to knock the
poor soul a good few metres. This is definitely not the kind of excitement he was hoping
for, and as he runs over to check on them they groan and sit up and then they scramble
away as though Lan Huan is the bloodsucking monster. He stops dead.
“I’m so sorry,” he says urgently. “Are you alright? I didn’t realize anyone was still
walking here at night with the wild animal attacks - I’m Lan Huan, do you remember
your name?”
The young man he’s knocked over is starting to look less terrified and more
bewildered. He lets out a soft laugh. It’s the nicest laugh Lan Huan has ever heard, mild
and self-deprecating.
“I’m fine. I’m hardier than I look. Your name is - Lan Huan? I’m Meng Yao,” he
says, adjusting his clothes. His accent is definitely not local - odd inflections, a little
antiquated - but Lan Huan likes it. It reminds him of Zhan’er.
“Meng Yao, are you sure you’re fine?” he says. “You shouldn’t be out so late. My home
is nearby, if you want to rest.” Meng Yao blinks.
“I don’t want to impose,” he says.
“Technically, I imposed first. At high speed,” Lan Huan says. Meng Yao laughs again.
Lan Huan finds that he really quite likes the sound. “Please let me make it up to you.”
“If you insist,” Meng Yao relents, with a smile. “But at least let me push your bike.”
The state of Lan Huan’s house would make his Shufu froth at the mouth.
Embarrassingly, Lan Huan leaves Meng Yao alone for five minutes to fetch refreshments
- jujube cakes, local dried fruit, his nicest Biluochun tea from Suzhou - and returns to
find that he’s tidied up the living room.
“I’ve hit you with my bicycle, and now you’ve cleaned my house. I’m amassing a
substantial debt, aren’t I?” Lan Huan says.
“In the big scheme of things, it’s nothing,” Meng Yao says lightly. “Thanks for
welcoming me into your home.”
“It feels like a home with a guest around,” Lan Huan says. “It’s nice to have the
company, truly.” He stops just short of saying ‘you’re good company,’ but he wants to,
badly.
“You live alone?” Meng Yao peers around. “A pleasant, handsome man like you?”
“We’ve just met,” Lan Huan says, smiling. “Who knows what terrible misdeeds I
might’ve committed before our meeting.”
Meng Yao’s answering smile is strange and depthless. Lan Huan feels like he’s gazing
into a great dark pool, liquid thick and gleaming.
“Indeed, who knows?” Meng Yao says. “Please don’t kill me when I’ve got my back
turned, Lan Huan.”
22
[shatteredpeace2 05:03:22] Are you falsifying evidence? There’s no way a demonic entity would
attack so frequently in the same area without injuring a human.
[strayblackcat 05:04:11] ur just mad that xiao yue is getting more monster action than u
[shuoyue1994 05:04:19] I assure you these photos are real.
[whatevrbun 05:05:01] x.x sy bro if you have a real demonic haunting you have to tell us~ you
can’t hoard such exciting discoveries for yourself .･ﾟﾟ･(／ω＼)･ﾟﾟ･.
[shatteredpeace2 is typing…]
[shuoyue1994 05:06:28] haha, I’m not trying to keep anything from anyone.
[shuoyue1994 05:07:12] I’m just looking for advice.
[strayblackcat 05:08:03] on how to **** ur monster?
[whatevrbun 05:08:49] ah~ youre in the right place (⌒▽⌒)♡ no one knows more than me!!
[shuoyue1994 05:09:21] I’m keeping my options open.
[whatevrbun 05:11:26] there are certain rituals youc an do to enhance your yang energy
[whatevrbun 05:13:49] i highly recommnd them because if you awnatto draw a
talismant thas effective against a yin creature you run the risk fs severely upsetting your own
yang energy and that can elad to a qi deviation
[strayblackcat 05:15:03] are you having a ****ing qi deviation right now
[whatevrbun 05:15:34] hjeres a document ive complied about llhe things youll nede and the
prepartion you have to dooooooo before you bind the mosnter [link]
[whatevrbun 05:16:18] i haven’t slept in 28 hours!! its ok though (ノ*°▽°*)
[strayblackcat 05:18:14] lmao im at 23
[strayblackcat 05:21:43] modified it to improve consistency of the binding [link]
[whatevrbun 05:22:01] hm!! yes!! i have to do more testing
messages him ANOTHER ONE LAST NIGHT 😍👻🦇

Lan Huan has been awake for fifteen minutes when two things happen: Cheng Yin
, and Meng Yao attempts to sneak
out of the house. Lan Huan sits up right before Meng Yao can open the front door.
“Meng Yao?” he calls. Meng Yao jumps so high he nearly hits the lintel.
“Lan Huan, this is the second time in as many hours you’ve nearly killed me,” Meng
Yao sighs, coming over to the spare mattress. Last night Lan Huan emerged victorious
in the battle to get Meng Yao to take the bed, and now he’s grateful that he did, because
he wouldn’t have caught him sneaking out otherwise.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Lan Huan says. “I’ll have to make you breakfast as an apology.”
23
Meng Yao puts his chin in one hand and smiles. His face reminds Lan Huan of
statues of the Bodhisattva; there’s just something about him that makes Lan Huan feel
at ease. Maybe it’s the way he looks at Lan Huan. His friendliness feels like more than
mere politeness, like he’s genuinely fond of a man who nearly committed vehicular
manslaughter a few hours ago. Lan Huan’s not going to question his luck. In a town
where everyone knows each other, there’s comfort in shared strangerhood.
“How about this? I’ll make you breakfast as an apology for waking you up.”
“That doesn’t seem like a fair exchange. Let me make breakfast, and you can repay
me with your company.”
They haggle through the making of breakfast, right until they’re seated at the table
opposite each other, and they lock eyes, and both of them start laughing.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who fights so hard to take care of someone who’s
trying to take care of them,” Lan Huan says dryly.
“I’ve met one,” Meng Yao says. “I’ll win next time, for sure.”
“I’ve had experience with my didi,” Lan Huan says. “So I wouldn’t count on it. He’ll
visit soon, so I’ll have even more practice.”
“Are you two close?”
“I’ve tried to take care of him since our parents died. He’s old beyond his years,
though. All that grief so young - it’s turned him into such a serious adult,” Lan Huan
says, shaking his head. “Do you have siblings?”
“By heaven’s grace, I’m an only child,” Meng Yao says. He puts another yam cake on
Lan Huan’s plate, and that’s when Lan Huan notices the sparseness of Meng Yao’s own.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“I’m not that hungry,” Meng Yao says. “Please have as much as you’d like.”
It’s with great reluctance that he leaves Meng Yao to go to work. They say fond
goodbyes, and Meng Yao promises they’ll see each other again, but it rings slightly
hollow when he gently refuses to give Lan Huan his number. He cycles to Lao Qian’s
farm in a haze. Meng Yao was here, and the world felt bright and clear for the first time
in years; and now, more than likely, Meng Yao is gone.
When he arrives at Lao Qian’s farm Cheng Yin flips her cigarette butt into the dirt
and greets him with, “You look like shit.”
“You shouldn’t litter,” Lan Huan says. The ritual completed, Cheng Yin slaps him on
the back and leads him over to the crime scene.
When Lan Huan prods the goat’s skin it’s as dry and thin as paper. He lifts up one
leg to take a better look and it crumbles to dust and bones, bleached and brittle like it’s
been drying in the sun for months instead of a mere two hours.
24
“Lao Qian wants someone to keep watch overnight. Specifically she wants you,
because you’re everybody’s precious A-Huan.”
“It can’t hurt,” Lan Huan says, eyeing the surviving goats. One snorts disdainfully,
but not as disdainfully as Cheng Yin.
“Boring, but you’re in luck. I’ll be there.”
“Are you sure? You don’t-”
“Hey, Lan Huan, tell you a secret,” Cheng Yin says. “If I missed out on seeing this
thing for sleep, I’m going to kill you and then myself.” She laughs maniacally.
When he returns to Lao Qian’s farm Cheng Yin’s already there, scrolling through her
phone at a speed that hurts Lan Huan’s eyes, navigating the giant cracks in the screen
with deft familiarity.
“Did you sleep?” Lan Huan asks, half-polite, half-rhetorical.
“Waste of time,” Cheng Yin says.
“Cheng Yin, you don’t have to help me out of the goodness of your heart,” he says just
for the reaction, which is as satisfying as he expects. Cheng Yin chokes and then howls
with laughter. It’s so loud that Lan Huan glances apologetically at the goats.
Neither goat pays Cheng Yin any mind. They are both staring transfixed past the
buzzing halo of the kerosene lantern, out into the forest. The air has taken on a smell
like dust, and - incense?
Cheng Yin has stopped laughing but doesn’t look any less delighted. She draws her
ranger knife.
“Hope you’re ready for this, A-Huan,” she says.
“Ready for what?” Lan Huan nearly asks.
A formless black, writhing blur shoots out of the forest.
First it winds around Cheng Yin with dizzying speed. Then it smashes through the
goat pen with an explosive crack. Both goats are screaming so loudly that it sets Lan
Huan’s teeth on edge. A moment later only one of them is still screaming, and that one
goes suddenly silent, backing away with eyes wide.
The entity rises from the body of the other goat. Its limbs drip with ribbons of slippery
flesh. Its teeth are as long as his palm. Goat blood oozes down its hollow ribcage. It
holds Cheng Yin’s knife in one hand. Lan Huan spins around, stomach dropping, but
Cheng Yin looks fine - jubilant, even. Her teeth are bared in an expression halfway
between glee and rage. Lan Huan turns back to the creature. Its eyes are huge. Even in
the blackness of the rural night, they shine gold. It crouches over the desiccated corpse
and stares back at him.
25
Lan Huan is gripped by some irrational instinct. He could reach for his ranger’s axe.
Instead he holds one empty hand out, and he says, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave
that other goat alone, please.”
The creature bows.
It’s an eerie rippling motion, like the undulation of a fish’s bony dorsal fin. It turns
so fast that its long - hair? Fur? - whips behind it in a wide arc. It slides liquid-like into
the shadows between the trees, into a gap that would barely fit a mouse, leaving them
behind in the dark.
Lan Huan goes to help Cheng Yin up. She waves his hand away, scoffing.
“Look at the golden boy,” she sneers. “Even monsters listen to you.”
“Are you alright?”
“What, you think an oversized vampire bat’s going to get the better of me? No way.”
“Did you get a picture?” he says.
“You know I did - shit, I dropped my phone. Help me look. I’m not coming back to
look after Lao Qian’s lost another goat, she’ll boil me alive.”
They do not find her phone. Lan Huan’s oddly relieved. This moment isn’t for the
chatroom. This is a secret shared only with a monster.
It’s a little strange to wake up and not be greeted by Cheng Yin’s barrage of nighttime
messages, but the moment Lan Huan leaves the house he stops thinking about it,
because Meng Yao is sitting on his front porch with a bag of snacks.
“You’re up early,” is the greeting. Lan Huan laughs.
“I always get up this early. Duty never sleeps. But it does take days off, which seems
to be good timing. I was worried I’d never see you again,” he admits.
“I didn’t refuse your contact because I didn’t want it. I lost my phone and I was
embarrassed,” Meng Yao says gently. “But I have a new one.” He flourishes it.
There is a very familiar crack across the phone screen; a very familiar cat-shaped
case. Lan Huan looks at it for slightly too long, then at Meng Yao, who is still smiling
that perfect nothing smile.
“That’s wonderful to hear,” Lan Huan says. “Can I give you my number now?”
Meng Yao’s eyes crinkle. He grins; the most beautiful, sincere grin Lan Huan has ever
seen on anyone’s face, human or monster.
“I’d like nothing better,” says Meng Yao.
26
@fishfearer
HOW WILL THE MORNING FIND US?
by mienwhile
It is over almost as soon as it begins, the body that had crashed so recklessly into Lan
Xichen’s space falling to the ground with a heavy thud. Behind him, there is silence
as well, and Lan Xichen turns, secure in his expectation that Jin Guangyao must have
dealt just as summarily with his side of this clumsy attempt.
The scene is as it should be, Jin Guangyao standing there and smiling, his assailant
dead at his feet, but he is standing a little too still and his smile is a little too stiff,
and the dead man’s right hand lies separate from its body, something small and sharp
glittering between its fingers.
And now Lan Xichen recalls with awful clarity that when his own attacker had
practically hurled himself onto Shuoyue, there had been something else, the barest
whisper of movement passing him by as the man had died on his blade.
Lan Xichen’s horror must be showing on his face, because Jin Guangyao moves as if
to reassure him, but when he opens his mouth, there is only blood, and when he tries
to walk, he crumples to the ground.
In a flash, Lan Xichen is at his side, but when he sets his fingers to Jin Guangyao’s
wrist, his hand is violently knocked away.
“Er-ge,” Jin Guangyao grits out, through bloodied teeth, “I know this poison. You
cannot… external energy will…”
As he trails off, his breaths coming in rasping pants, Lan Xichen understands, and
freezes, staring helplessly at him.
“I know this poison,” Jin Guangyao repeats, and smiles, the effort of it smudging the
blood around his mouth, “It is not so bad as it looks, and I have taken precautions.”
He is growing paler by the moment and the sweat stands out against his skin.
“This one must beg your indulgence-” Jin Guangyao begins, then chokes, before
forcing his next words out, “The inn we passed. Take me there. I-”
He breaks into a cough, more blood streaming down his chin, and hooks his fingers
into Lan Xichen’s sleeve.
“Please,” he says, with another harsh breath. “No one must know.”
Lan Xichen’s mind is racing in many directions at once, but again, he understands.
Even, perhaps especially, in his company, for Jin Guangyao to be seen in this state so far
from his seat of power would be disastrous, and they are too distant from Gusu for Lan
Xichen to insist they retreat there.
30
As though Jin Guangyao has read his thoughts and seeks to answer them, his eyes
refocus on Lan Xichen’s face, and he reaches out as if to say more, but then a sudden
spasm takes him and he lurches forward, falling unconscious to the ground.
The journey to the inn is swift and strange. As he’d been directed, Lan Xichen goes to
the back gate, and when he knocks, he is admitted by the most unremarkable looking
woman he’s ever seen, whose eyes take in the sight that greets her with only the barest
flicker of surprise, before they’re led upstairs to a small, neat room.
Jin Guangyao had been in and out of consciousness on their journey and, beyond
some further instructions, had been mostly incomprehensible before going entirely
quiet, but when Lan Xichen sets him down on the bed his eyes flutter open, and Lan
Xichen can see him trying desperately to focus. He gestures as if to write, but there is
nothing readily available, and his hands are shaking so badly, it is clear he would not be
able to hold a brush.
Teeth gritted, he manages to sit up enough to fix Lan Xichen with a coherent look,
and then struggles through a list of medicines.
Lan Xichen recites the prescription back faithfully, and when he has pinned the last
to his memory, he looks down to see Jin Guangyao slumped on the bed, once more
unconscious, and breathing shallowly.
Jin Guangyao’s outer robe has already been discarded over a chair, and Lan Xichen
does not dare to do more. There is no wound to tend to - it had been slight to begin
with, and, as Jin Guangyao had explained to him in one of his lucid moments, the rapid
healing was how this poison worked to quickly seal itself in. He’d given a brittle laugh
then, and said perhaps he should be thankful for this weak core of his.
Lan Xichen had meant to ask about this, to keep him talking, even if Jin Guangyao’s
observations were becoming ever more disjointed, but the next moment his head
had fallen against Lan Xichen’s chest, and he’d remained there, unmoving, until they’d
gotten him into the room.
To leave is an almost physical wrench, but delay might be fatal, and so Lan Xichen
allows himself only one more look before he turns towards the door.
Just outside the city limits, Lan Xichen steps off his sword and stows it away. He
strips off his outer robe and carefully removes his ribbon and then, as he has not done
for many years, puts all his hair up.
The sky is beginning to lighten as he makes his way through the city gates, moving
swiftly and silently through the waking streets, and hoping he will pass unnoticed. But
his concerns appear unfounded, as those out and about at this hour pay him scant
mind, setting up their stalls or fetching water or doing one of a hundred little tasks Lan
31
Xichen can only guess at.

When he’d left the inn, he’d asked the woman, who must be the innkeeper and yet
had not seemed like one, where he might find the nearest pharmacy, and in response
had received a considering look and a suggestion.
The directions he’d been given were exact, but when he arrives he feels he might
have been able to find the place regardless, as there’s something compelling about it
he can’t quite identify. He has no leisure for such thoughts, however, and so he pushes
them to the side, advancing into the courtyard where a lone figure is sweeping the
stones.
Some time later, Lan Xichen is once more by Jin Guangyao’s bedside.
His knowledge of medicine is basic, but he has received enough instruction to
manage his current task, and, as he works, he glances time and time again at Jin
Guangyao, at his sleeping face and the uneven rise and fall of his chest.
When Jin Guangyao periodically awakens, though he appears not quite aware of
Lan Xichen, he drinks the medicine he’s offered, and Lan Xichen’s breathing steadies
along with his.
As Lan Xichen again encourages Jin Guangyao to sit up and drink, he cannot help
but remember the time when it had been him on the bed, and though he is glad to be
of even this much help, it pains him that there is need for it at all.
Between brewing more medicine, and watching Jin Guangyao for signs of
consciousness so he can drink it, the day passes quickly, so it is nearly dark before Lan
Xichen realizes and rises from the bedside to light the candles.
With his outer robe abandoned and the sleeves of his second robe tied back, Lan
Xichen barely recognizes his own shadow, stretched and distorted across the opposite
wall by the flickering light, as he stands up again to see if Jin Guangyao can be induced
to take a little more water, now that he seems once more on the verge of waking.
Lan Xichen has only just removed the cover on the water and lifted the ladle, when
he is startled by a noise from the other side of the room. He turns, ladle in hand, to see
Jin Guangyao shrinking back into the corner, his eyes fixed on the wall, and wide with
a terror Lan Xichen has rarely seen, and never in his friend.
As he stares, Jin Guangyao continues to scramble backwards, but his weakened
limbs are clumsy and his hand slips on the edge of the bed, nearly sending him to the
floor, before Lan Xichen recollects himself and darts across the room to catch him. He
tries to set A-Yao back on the bed, but he is flailing, clutching at Lan Xichen’s sleeve like
a drowning man.
32
And then, as he has not done all day, Jin Guangyao begins to speak.
His words are as disjointed as they’d been earlier, but there is a heavy thread that
hangs them all together, and Lan Xichen does not want to hear, yet cannot move away.
“I had no choice, I-”
Jin Guangyao’s voice is broken, rough, so different from its normal timbre, and his
hands are like claws in Lan Xichen’s robes, clinging tight even as he holds him at arm’s
length. His face is upturned, his eyes desperately searching out Lan Xichen’s, but he
cannot seem to find them; it is as though Lan Xichen is playing the role of himself in
A-Yao’s nightmare, that A-Yao is speaking to something enveloping Lan Xichen rather
than Lan Xichen himself.
At last, however, he seems to realize his er-ge is still beside him, and he tries to
speak again, but once more there is only blood, which spatters against Lan Xichen as
Jin Guangyao’s hold slackens and he falls back, motionless, on the bed.
In the dead silence, what Lan Xichen has heard begins to knot and twist itself into
a shape inside his mind, but these gathering apprehensions cannot yet find purchase,
not with Jin Guangyao barely breathing before him, his blood soaking into the shoulder
of Lan Xichen’s robe.
The next day passes in a haze. Lan Xichen is dimly aware of the changes of the light
filtering in through the window, but little else beyond his rounds between the water
bucket and the bed. After the previous night, he takes care with his movement, drawing
up the water slowly, and blocking the view with his body. He has even taken down his
sleeves again. But Jin Guangyao does not stir.
Lan Xichen has never seen Jin Guangyao look so still. Long ago, he had, once or
twice, seen his traveling companion at rest, but even then he’d been a light sleeper, brow
furrowed into concentration as if something in his dream required the same careful
attention he gave to everything in his waking life. Now, however, any and all animation
has gone out of his friend’s face, and his breaths are so shallow that Lan Xichen is afraid
they will cease altogether if he stops observing for even a moment.
He cannot be said to have experience in this, for all the time he’s worried at another
brother’s bedside. But there, he’d had something more to do, and had been able to
occupy himself with tending to the wounds on Wangji’s back. Here, however, he can
only keep offering the water and medicine Jin Guangyao cannot drink, and expend
his otherwise-useless spiritual power in cooling cloths to lay across Jin Guangyao’s
forehead.
There is nothing left for him to do, then, but to think of Jin Guangyao’s fractured
words, the things he’d heard, or thought he’d heard, the night before. He had not meant
to listen, and he had not wanted to know, but as he sits and stares and stares at Jin
33
Guangyao struggling for breath, fighting unseen fires beneath his skin, the words wear
themselves into a track inside Lan Xichen’s head, broken only by his recollection of the
desperate terror in Jin Guangyao’s eyes.
As day bleeds once more into night, and Jin Guangyao still does not move, Lan
Xichen’s fear grows with the darkness, alongside his exhaustion.
He has not been awake for so much time together since before the war, since he had
fled the burning at his back and stumbled somehow into the safety A-Yao had made for
him.
Lan Xichen is uninjured this time, and stronger than he had been then, but three
days of sleeplessness and worry and no food have begun to take their toll, and his
eyes feel rubbed with sand, the edges of his vision beginning to take on a sort of blurry
unreality.
It is then that Jin Guangyao stirs, an abrupt movement, but not a violent one, as he
shifts, then struggles to raise himself to his elbows. He seems unaware of Lan Xichen’s
presence and all his attention is focused on the air in front of him, his eyes clouded, but
intent.
“... A-Niang?”
Jin Guangyao’s voice is tremulous in the stillness, and the hope and heartbreak
contained in it cut through Lan Xichen’s chest, as Jin Guangyao once more begins to
speak.
His words this time are so quiet that Lan Xichen can barely hear him, but they are
clear, coherent, though incomplete, half of a conversation that Lan Xichen cannot
quite grasp, and feels he should not try to. He feels like an intruder, but again, he cannot
leave, for although Jin Guangyao is not looking at him, and still seems oblivious to his
being there, one hand is clenched tight in the fabric of Lan Xichen’s sleeve, and Lan
Xichen does not dare move.
At last, Jin Guangyao reaches out towards nothing, stops himself, and then seems
to listen, before bowing his head, and collapsing so suddenly that Lan Xichen rises in
alarm to bend over him.
For a moment, Jin Guangyao does not move at all, but then he takes a great ragged
gasp, his eyelids flutter, and his breath returns, faint, but there.
During these past days, Lan Xichen has been sitting by the bed, but now he kneels,
taking the hand that had been clutching at his robes between his own. And as he kneels,
he recalls the temple where he’d been sent for medicine, and the face of the statue he’d
briefly glimpsed there seems to blur with the one before him.
34
Lan Xichen wakes with a start at his usual hour, and when he lifts his head, he
discovers A-Yao watching him, his eyes apprehensive, but clear.
They look at each other for a long moment, Jin Guangyao’s hand still held tight in
his, before he feels it cramp, and presses it once more before letting go.
In the quiet, they continue to look, their silent language yet there, though now
tentative and muddled, the conversation that must follow still taking shape between
them, and Lan Xichen dips his head in acknowledgement before he speaks.
“I have heard things I cannot make sense of,” he begins, handing Jin Guangyao the
cup of water that has lain undisturbed on the table, “and it would be wrong of me to
pretend I can forget when I cannot.”
“And what has Er-ge heard?” Jin Guangyao’s expression is utterly blank as he raises
the water to his lips. His voice is raw, and Lan Xichen can see the effort he expends to
make himself drink slowly.
In response, Lan Xichen rises, retrieving Jin Guangyao’s outer robe and laying
it across the bed, and then sits back to wait, while Jin Guangyao shakily removes a
talisman from its sleeve.
Together, they watch the golden messenger butterfly climb into the sky, and vanish
in the growing light.
When he turns back, enough of the sun has crept into the room to fully illuminate
Jin Guangyao’s face, lending it some colour and gilding the outline of his unkempt hair
as he tilts his head up and gazes steadily at Lan Xichen.
“Ask me what you would know,” Jin Guangyao says, “and I will answer.”
35
36
37
HOW THINGS CAN TURN
by Roquen
They have been at Lotus Pier for three days, and for three days it has rained.
Jin Ling was a trial the first day, and an ordeal the second. It is the afternoon of
the third day, and Jin Guangyao is promising a gift of arrows with water-resistant
fletching when Jiang Wanyin grabs the heir to the Lanling Jin by his golden scruff and
throws him off the pavilion into the water.
“Now you can complain about getting wet!”
Lan Xichen takes an unobtrusive sip of tea as Jin Ling makes his outrage clear to
his jiujiu while his shushu helps him back onto the pavilion and sets a hand to his
forehead to check his temperature. A short discussion ensues, in which it is ultimately
agreed that A-Ling will not be put to bed with ginger broth to fend off any potential
cold but will instead join Jiang Wanyin on a night hunt for the evening.
Jiang Wanyin and Jin Ling depart in mutual high dudgeon, and in the ensuing
quiet Lan Xichen sets down his cup and says:
“Neatly done.”
Jin Guangyao’s smile deepens just a little on one side.
“I’m afraid it will be a dull evening, Er-ge.”
“No evening is ever dull in A-Yao’s company.” Lan Xichen smiles back, aware his
cheeks are flushed. He appreciates the naïve beauty of Lotus Pier, but there is no
denying the atmosphere is like soup.
The rain continues to fall, enclosing the pavilion in a private cocoon of humid air
and quiet conversation, A number of servants and disciples are braving the weather
to rush past on various errands, but Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao pay no heed. Even
when two disciples stop near the pavilion’s edge and choose to converse at the tops
of their voices, Lan Xichen politely ignores them. Jin Guangyao does the same, idly
plucking nonsense on Lan Xichen’s second guqin and listening with his head tilted
fetchingly to one side.
Then he stiffens.
“Yunping?” he says, driving the word into the disciples’ conversation like a knife.
The disciples both startle, then bow.
“Lianfang-zun. Yes, we received a message from Yunping.”
“You mentioned a disturbance at the temple.” Perhaps no one other than Lan
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HOW THINGS CAN TURN
Xichen would be able to tell, but Jin Guangyao’s smile is strained. “Might I inquire as
to the nature of the disruption?”
“Nothing significant. The abbot at the Guanyin Temple received word that tonight
someone will make an attempt to steal one of their valuable artefacts, and he requests
that we send someone to assist in apprehending the thieves. The monks of the temple
are given more to healing than to fighting.”
Jin Guangyao’s face is yellow as old ivory.
“There is no need for you to go,” he says. “I will go myself.”
Lan Xichen will not question Jin Guangyao in the presence of the disciples, but he
cannot disguise his worried stare as Jin Guangyao rises to his feet.
“A-Yao?”
Jin Guangyao stops like he’s been seized in a strong grip. He looks back down at
Lan Xichen and grimaces a smile.
“Er-ge.” A pause. “How thoughtless of me. I promise I will return as soon as I may.”
“Perhaps I should come with you and assist.” Lan Xichen does not like to press,
especially when Jin Guangyao clearly does not want him to, but he owes it to both of
them to offer. And to his surprise, Jin Guangyao hesitates.
“If you would.” His fingers are digging into his palms. “I fear this is—significant.”
“I will help any way I can,” says Lan Xichen. Jin Guangyao does not relax, but he
grimaces again in acceptance. And then he is gone from the pavilion, striding down
the steps, stepping onto Hensheng’s slender blade and rising through the softening
rain like a well-fletched arrow.
Lan Xichen follows.
Jin Guangyao has never been the fastest flier, and this is the first time Lan Xichen
has ever needed to exert himself to keep pace. Neither of them speak a word all the
long flight to Yunping; the lakes unscroll beneath them and the sun sinks below the
horizon and turns the waters red as blood. Jin Guangyao’s eyes glitter as he stares
ahead, always seeking the horizon.
Yunping is not a large city, and the temple is visible from a distance. If possible Jin
Guangyao flies even faster, until Lan Xichen is not merely having to exert himself to
keep up but is feeling a touch of strain.
When they alight there is no one present; even the street is hushed and dark. Lan
Xichen removes the warding and silencing talismans on the temple doors without
raising the alarm.
They have hunted together many times, but not like this. Jin Guangyao strides into
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HOW THINGS CAN TURN
the temple without caution, Lan Xichen at his back, and when they are greeted with
the sight of ropes and spades and upturned earth he is silent but it is a silence with a
scream inside it. A golden string flies from his hand.
A powerful cultivator trained in the techniques of the Lan could wrap someone in
a hundred strings and reduce them to crimson tatters, but a single cut is enough if it
is made in the right place. The cultivator falls, one hand to his open throat.
In the same moment Lan Xichen makes an assessment of the field. The remaining
cultivators are strangers, disguised in peasant garb, so he does not know to which
clan they belong—but that does not matter when he knows to follow Jin Guangyao’s
lead.
He strikes down one and then another. Jin Guangyao is fighting in a way that is
most unlike him, driving forwards with all force, heedless of his own safety.
Lan Xichen has seen him like this only once before, in the wake of Jin Rusong’s
death.
More cultivators fall. There is blood on the stones and the dirt. Lan Xichen does
not intervene as Jin Guangyao garrottes another opponent, but he leaves Shuoyue
waiting ready in the air and brings forth Liebing from his belt as he turns to face the
last remaining cultivator. This final adversary is also clad in peasant garb, but he
fights with a brutal technique and wields a heavy blade that struggles fiercely as the
melody draws it from its master’s grip.
Lan Xichen would know the righteous fury of a Nie sabre anywhere. He does not
baulk—not quite—but the final note of Liebing is thin and strained.
It is a matter of moments to bind the cultivator in gold and silver strings, but
the pleasure Lan Xichen usually takes in their dual techniques is wholly absent.
The golden strings dig more deeply than the silver: fraying silk, parting flesh. The
cultivator stands very still.
Jin Guangyao brushes past and flings himself into the excavation pit.
“A-Yao!”
Jin Guangyao does not listen. He is at the bottom of the pit, amongst the filth and
the ropes, and he is scrabbling at the surface of the stone coffin lying there. No—not
scrabbling—he is using his hands and his cream-and-gold sleeves to clear away the
debris. His fingers seek out the edge of the lid, running along the join in panicked
desperation.
“A-Yao,” says Lan Xichen again, quietly this time. “It has not been opened.”
Jin Guangyao stops. His face is lowered and all that can be seen is his hat, the sleek
fall of his hair, and his grimed hands still splayed against the coffin’s lid. His shoulders
shake.
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HOW THINGS CAN TURN
Then he raises his head and looks up at Lan Xichen with an opaque smile.
“Thank you for your assistance, Er-ge.” He moves lightly up from the pit with the
barest touch of cultivation, and brushes the worst of the dirt from his hands. “What
formidable opponents we have faced.” His gaze passes over the scattered bodies
and the lone survivor enmeshed in strings, his eyes widening as though he is truly
impressed. “One does not usually encounter such skill and power in common thieves.
Surely these cultivators came here for a higher purpose.”
The lone cultivator left alive is not able to answer because Lan Xichen has taken
the precautionary step of silencing him. Lan Xichen judges it best if he, too, remains
silent for the time being, and watches Jin Guangyao reach out and touch the hilt of
the sabre. The weapon shivers.
“The Nie have never tolerated defectors,” Jin Guangyao muses. He regards the
straight-backed and glaring sabre’s owner with a forbearing smile. “And you look to
me like a loyal man.”
There is no need to lift the silencing spell. The answer is there in the man’s face.
“Nie Huaisang,” says Jin Guangyao.
“But why?” says Lan Xichen.
“I don’t know.”
It is not the first time Jin Guangyao has lied when they both know he is lying, but
it is the first time Lan Xichen has not inclined his head in acknowledgement and
changed the subject.
“You have guessed.”
Jin Guangyao’s smile is faint, and after a moment Lan Xichen relents and releases
the silencing spell. The man spits a curse in thick dialect.
“You’re very brave,” says Jin Guangyao. “But I expect nothing less of a disciple of the
Qinghe Nie.”
“Was it Nie-zongzhu who sent you?” asks Lan Xichen. In answer he receives
nothing but a black stare and the oppressive humming fury of the sabre still in its
bonds.
“How disappointing.” Jin Guangyao’s mouth is still smiling. “Zewu-jun and I are
merely concerned as to what Nie-zongzhu may have inadvertently become mixed up
in. Of course I won’t ask this loyal disciple to betray his master.” He glances at Lan
Xichen. “Still, I can’t allow you to return to him either. Er-ge?”
“A-Yao. It is proper that justice be meted out by his clan leader.”
“I am Xiandu,” says Jin Guangyao.
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HOW THINGS CAN TURN
“You are acting in haste.”

“Haste is needed.” Jin Guangyao’s smile is unchanged; his breath is still not quite
even. “I cannot take him with me and I have nowhere in this city where I can safely
hold him and be assured he cannot escape or send word.”
“The monks.”
“I can’t trust them.” The words are almost a cry. Jin Guangyao’s hand is on
Hensheng’s hilt again. “You know what he came here for. His life is mine.”
Perhaps there are alternatives. But there is no time to consider them, and
Lan Xichen has always known what kind of man Jin Guangyao is. He has always
recognised what Jin Guangyao is entitled to.
A man dies. Jin Guangyao secretes the sabre in the qiankun bag at his waist.
“We must talk to Huaisang,” says Lan Xichen. Jin Guangyao blinks, and his eyes are
no longer shuttered but fever-bright.
“Er-ge,” he says again. “I still don’t wish to trouble you. Will you allow me to resolve
this matter with Huaisang? He is very delicate after all, and I hate to think of how he
might react if we both descend upon him. Leave it to me and I will see it dealt with.”
Lan Xichen wants to agree. Jin Guangyao hardly ever asks for anything, and he
deserves the benefit of the doubt.
But the stench of blood is in the air, and Lan Xichen knows who is lying in that
coffin and he cannot set all the disparate pieces of this scene in any order that makes
sense. He has never been one to rattle the handles of locked doors, but when the door
is hanging off its hinges that is a different matter.
“Why would Huaisang do this?”
“Malicious gossip and manipulation,” says Jin Guangyao. “I still have many
enemies.”
“Enemies who could discover information like this are dangerous indeed.” And
Lan Xichen cannot imagine who it could be. Jin Guangyao guards his secrets closely;
he has always led Lan Xichen to believe that his mother lies in some unknown,
unmarked grave. Perhaps that was once true, and it is no surprise that he would not
disclose her re-interment. “But you believe Huaisang is acting under his own power.”
There is a brief change in Jin Guangyao’s expression, a flare of rage and fear that
Lan Xichen has not seen for many years. It is damped immediately beneath another
smile.
“It’s a misunderstanding. All I need is to speak with him.”
“You wish to depart for Qinghe now?”
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HOW THINGS CAN TURN
“No,” says Jin Guangyao. “Nothing so reckless. But I need Huaisang in my hands,
and he will be suspicious of any sudden invitation from either of us when he has
always come and gone as he pleases. Perhaps ... yes.” He falls silent again, lost in
his plans. Even now Lan Xichen cannot help but admire the swift working of that
intricate mind in the most urgent of circumstances. And he can see the wisdom in not
taking too direct an approach.
“A-Yao,” he says softly, and sets his hand on Jin Guangyao’s shoulder. “I too have no
desire to alarm Huaisang and worsen whatever misunderstanding you believe has
occurred, but I do not think you should bear this alone. How can I help you?”
Jin Guangyao looks up at him. They are surrounded by dirt and rubble and bodies,
and above them the Guanyin statue smiles with unchanging benevolence. It strikes
Lan Xichen that her smile is familiar; that her face is not unlike that of the man
standing now at his side. His heart aches.
“Will you protect her for me?” asks Jin Guangyao. “No matter what happens. Will
you keep her safe?”
“I promise. You don’t need to ask.”
“There will be no second chance for me if I fail.” Jin Guangyao’s voice is so low it is
almost inaudible. “But I wanted her to have one.”
“She will.” Lan Xichen dares to stroke his thumb against Jin Guangyao’s shoulder.
“If you wish it, the Cloud Recesses are open to your mother just as they are to you. She
will have her own shrine and I will be honoured to pray there.”
Jin Guangyao closes his eyes, and a tear escapes his lashes to roll down his cheek.
He does not lean in to Lan Xichen’s touch but nor does he pull away.
“No matter what happens,” he says again.
“I swear it.” The promise is easily made. It does not matter what dark suspicions
are gathering in Lan Xichen’s heart. Meng Shi deserves security and peace in death
that she was never afforded in life, and that is for her own sake.
In a moment of recklessness he takes his hand from Jin Guangyao’s shoulder to
brush the tear from his cheek. Jin Guangyao draws a sharp breath and they both go
still. Lan Xichen’s heart is hammering and Jin Guangyao’s cheek is warm against the
backs of his fingers.
“We won’t fail,” he says. “One chance is all we need.”
46
49
AURUM PER FUMUM
(gold through smoke)
by annulareye
Meng Yao sits backstage ringed in ruined satin and lace, sweating in the echoes of
his treasure.
Ordinarily it gives him strength. Now he’s waiting.
Not only are there people, there are strangers out there in the darkened rows. He
needs space to practice. His body can’t think unless it’s alone. His nightmares are back
and he is tired of being watched and he is tired.
So it’ll be improv. Grand Guignol, even. Blood packs, his new trick knives, it’s art,
they’ll get what they get. He’s the only one that will actually show up for burlesque once
a week, sober, before the bands.
He’s earned it.
His opera gloves have been cooking him alive; he won’t work without them, even in
rehearsal, but he pays, every old injury a renewed reminder. He rips off his rings, skins
the wet satin down, and everything hidden beneath expands red and angry into the air.
Blood rushes in and the whole ugly secret of him aches, his scarred knuckles, wrists,
his tight shoulders, ribs, hips, the beaten-hard knot of his sacrum, unyieldingly there.
There’d been no grace, no trust today, he’d thrown too much weight, could find no space
in the song. Only bruises.
Today he hasn’t actually earned shit.
Meng Yao suspects no one can tell the difference.
But his walls teem with gowns and furs and swords; his ring-dish is jade, with
peonies all around, one fat ostentatious bloom in the middle. It glows, full of gold. Most
of it is plastic, and none of it is real. All of it will be true if he shows his teeth enough
about it.
No one touches his things; they know to keep from the second dressing room,
wouldn’t dare. It had been for trash before he’d fixed it. They’d said it had a bad feeling,
but it only had a sad little draft. He’d patched it up and filled it with his hoard. It’s nice,
when people think broken things are cursed. It’s helpful. The peony even glows in the
dark.
When he walks out with his bag packed, he makes sure to be wearing his brightest
smile.
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AURUM PER FUMUM
On his way out there are even more figures than before in the dark around the booth,
more equipment. Maybe his ex-boyfriend has a new boyfriend. Maybe he can get out
without--
Oh Mingjue, no, it’s no problem.
Oh, I’m so glad your friends are here! Early. What a surprise! Oh, musician! Lovely.
Lovely,
Live music?
Meng Yao loathes it. Meng Yao is so tired. Meng Yao loathes the song he’d brought
just as much now, can it matter?
Here for the orchestra–wants to do something fun? is this fun?--why does Mingjue
have to sound so proud about it--
Wonderful! Fine! Yes!
Of course!
Of course Meng Yao will do it.
In a city, a place of plenty, you work with whomever you want. In a college town,
there is one gay bar, one rickety club, one theater, one tiny clutch of your people, and
you work with your ex, and you learn to like or at least stand it.
Most of the time.
Does he have a choice?
And at home, there’s the nightmare, grown inescapable and intent.

It’s not sharp or humiliating, not an orphanage or a foster dream, not the blur
behind. Maybe not even quite a nightmare; but how would it have clung for so many
years on the back of his neck, heavy eyes crowding him, giving him no space? Heavy
eyes come with heavy hands.
Meng Yao can feel a man from across the most densely populated room.
Meng Yao is protective of his back, and somehow this thing can find it in the dark.
A figure behind him, intent, approaching, huge; no face, just the surety of eyes.
Wherever he goes, they follow–recently, through dream-world after world where he’s
done everything wrong, over and over again, resolution always out of reach. He wakes
without details; all he keeps is the feel. It’s nauseating. If he could remember, any of it at
all, he could fix it, or at least sort the fear from the shame.
Orphanage discipline isn’t real discipline, but it sticks. The stick reminds you;
whatever you do, it’s wrong.
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AURUM PER FUMUM
Meng Yao’s body is made up entirely of reminders.

His mind is the one with the holes.
He’s not comfortable at the temple in town, doesn’t know enough, none of his foster
families knew or taught him a thing, but he sits, with incense, when he can’t sleep. His
favorite kind, a blue box, buildings winding up a mountain. It looks so old-fashioned,
and it’s good, and it’s cheap. No one else buys it at the shop. Plain sandalwood, hand-
ground and stuck together, a wall of scent, opaque, but familiar somehow.
He tries to listen.
He’s not alone; the statue he sits with had called out to him the day he bought it.
She’d insisted. She had an arm for each kind of problem, and the kindest face he’d ever
seen; her jewels painted gold, the base inscribed with a blurred date, the whole of it
someone else’s prayer long ago, he keeps the little table she stands on as close to his bed
as he can. The shape in his nightmares is tall, but the Lady is taller; he could curl up at
her feet and sleep forever. Big as a house, a shelter, a great and ancient safety.
So many tools, in so many hands. Surely she could bat it away, if he listens, and
makes enough smoke.
She must be even older than nightmares.
Something must be. Something had to come first.
It had to.
For three days, when he’s home, the ash piles beneath clouds. Three whole blue
boxes.
The smell’s noticed at work. It draws creeps.
He walks home looking over his shoulder, not even trying to hide it. He keeps his
hand in his pocket. Has scissors.
He puts together a new dress for stage, and sits with the statue when his hands cry.
He scrubs hard when he cleans. He occasionally achieves sleep.
He sits.
He tries not to dream.
The knotted strips cling like wedding lace. Black satin, heavy, cold, a dumpster
blessing torn into precious skeins and saved. It’s sleeveless, netted simply down, but an
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AURUM PER FUMUM
openwork peony gleams in naked skin on his back and his chest, and there’s a fringe of
ragged ribbons from his hips down to the floor. His fingers bled; it was worth it.
Carefully, strategically, he’s worked in tearaway points. He’s near bare beneath, and
barefoot, and can stomp without stressing on heel-catch. Can expose as few or as many
parts as he likes, depending on how angry the music makes him.
That will be his inspiration. He’s too tired to care, doesn’t plan on looking at the guy
at all.
The gloves, though, left behind, he sees now how they drag the pattern down, dull
the skin shining through.
But his hands--the scars–
A can of paint at the base of a set. Five minutes until showtime.
He pries it open, and finds gold for his troubles.
The dress was only for one night, and it’s all he’s got. Nothing else to be harmed.
Meng Yao only matters as a canvas. He plunges one arm in, then the other. It rolls down.
He shudders.
There’s no more time.
One long note parts the silence. A violin.

Meng Yao comes out on his toes, open hands dripping gold for whatever comes.
He stops.
He waits.
Slowly, little ripples trickle down over him, like water through the sticky paint. Meng
Yao looks through his lashes at the floor and listens. The arpeggios are gentle, clean; an
unexpected consideration. This violinist, a hulking shape in the shadows, is waiting for
him to move.
And he’s not bad. He’s good--fuck you, Mingjue--Meng Yao can work with this.
He just may be able to float.
And it is good. He droops, drifting loose, lets it wash him to and fro. He spirals
around the stage and drops like a handkerchief into the center, and it holds him. It
stops. It’s listening. It’s waiting for him to breathe.
He lets go as much as he can.
Swelling, gently, the sound comes over and in and fills his chest. He pushes out
against it, then pulls back, contracting, undulating at an angle, giving them a long line
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AURUM PER FUMUM
to his toes: a snake, a mermaid, a body bound. He can feel himself press against the
knots. The sides of the dress are more open than the rest of it; he can feel the air on his
bare skin.
He can feel the eyes in the air.
All of them. Who’s there?
Who’s there?
Something cracks in the dark. He freezes.
Nightmare. It looms. Begins to leak while he holds the pose. Like water, pictures
come. The huge shadow gone bright. White silk and blue sky. A mountain alive with
streams and springs. A flute. Real jade–
The mask of Meng Yao stares out blankly as the violin spills, overwhelms the room,
suddenly cacophonous around his stillness.
He’s the building being flooded; he’s the wreck as it drowns. He is armor, and its
damage. He’s the house as it haunts, a temple full of blood. If he doesn’t move, he’ll be
safe; he stays rigid, breathless;
the wave melts into a lake;
the music changes;
his angle lurches into vertigo;
and somehow, this shadow, this flickering mountain in the dark, this strange and
faceless man bows his violin into something ancient and wild, changes it into another
instrument entirely; an erhu, something older, can? be able to--go into--
it is going into--
it is going in--
A sound so old it could have been a bone and the bowl of a skull, lashed and strung
with its own gut. Made to sing when the mouth could no longer.
The living bones of Meng Yao crack open.
This mourning cry taking the fading violin splits him with the fury of a ghost. Time
compresses and all the years of dreaming are here. Somehow now that figure in the
dark is right beside, strobing pale color behind him now, pushing the sounds inside
him.
It was all right because it had to be.
Meng Yao would have to ride.
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AURUM PER FUMUM
He falls. Rolls across the stage, retracting, smearing the whole floor with his flight.
Behind him a body bigger than a horse, a house. Something that could crush him
without noticing, that set wires humming when it drew too near. You’d have to be so
careful–it would take years to get used to--
Wake up! Meng Yao wrenches upright, slaps a gold handprint onto his face.
A smile too big to be easy--surely–
A curse?
Even when it rested in and on you, even when it smiled, then, oh mother that was
worse–
Draws his other hand down, snaps a knot, breaks the pattern open; the paint drips a
warm line onto his chest over his scars. His fingerprint slides over the texture of it, the
sticky splash, and he shudders. No peony, now, just a hole. Marked he falls, the dress
flipping over his face, his legs kicking wide brushstrokes through the air. The unknown
instrument twists him like a hidden set of bones, and images continue. Stone, flame.
A whole house, and a broken one. Gold, real, so much of it. Spills of riches before a
starving gut. How could a body hold so much want?
--a curse and--
an embrace? Caught. Held. Cold water shivers. He’s seeing double.
He’s in it, and it inside him. Yes; no?
He stands with his back to the audience, crosses his arms over his chest, and claws
the back of the dress open, leaving stripes across the pain points in his shoulders. The
caress-places, hungering in all bodies,
even those that never know;
can he let go?
(all a body ever wanted was home)
(...yes?)
and he goes hollow inside. He wraps himself around the whole of it, and drops to his
knees, pillbugging hard to the floor. One hand out–
Not alone. No.
The sounds become snakes; they twine his hips into the air. He bounces. Reaching
back, he lifts further, then drops. Pulls himself up and open again. Teasing. Not tearing,
the dress still together but threatening, golden shaking shining to the music. He hangs
forward, away from the crowd, letting them hold the emptiness with him, an invitation.
Open.
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AURUM PER FUMUM
There’s so much space.

The jade peony appears before his closed eyes, glowing. His heat has made the satin
bloom a hot cloud of sandalwood; he knows it’s in the audience too–does it reach the
musician, the mountain?
Does he know?
Casting out long stripes of black, Meng Yao twists and spirals up, spotting, showing
his startled face, unlocked. Heart, eye, corolla. At the center of every flower is a door. He
lets his arms float up like leaves as his hips swing and circle his core. All of him willow
in a springtime storm.
He lets them in.
The instrument peaks to the loudest cry he’s ever heard, someone coming, a birth,
it hurts, and it feels like a shout from his own mouth. Everyone breathing the heat
steaming out, all stuck in this cloud of incense and sweat. There’s nowhere to go.
Just a press of hot bodies, together in the dark.
He rips open the last of the ragged gown and it falls away. His knuckles drag hard
over his face, his neck, down his chest to his hips, gliding bright over the scars and
down his thighs; he falls to his knees, legs sliding wide, and throws himself back, arms
out. He slaps all of his weight onto the boards with all the force of his breaking, and
leaves a full imprint in gold.
The shock of it stops the river of sound, makes a sudden silence hang. The breath of
the room holds--for one, two, three.
Meng Yao feels like he’s never seen the ceiling before.
The instrument slides into velvet--they can hear it--and the musician’s big hands
begin to clap. The audience unfreezes, and follows suit.
It’s over.
Meng Yao sits up, unsticking himself, and leans forward with his hands on the stage.
His eyes fill with black. He listens. Smiles.
Stays still, like a child, reading the dark.
The kindest face he’d ever seen. He thinks he sees peonies. He can’t get up. Mingjue
draws the curtain closed.
When he reaches his dressing-table, next to his jade dish is a box of sweets, an
envelope, and a long bunch of white flowers. Meng Yao is ravenous. He has no gloves to
remove. His hands have danced themselves bare.
He’s a fresh canvas for a moment. He’s allowed to make a mess.
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AURUM PER FUMUM
He digs in.
When he looks up for his robe, there’s a man emerging from the shadows, filling the
door. For a moment, Meng Yao’s statue, the Lady, is there; the faces blur. A soft smile,
coming forward. A long hand reaching out; then withdrawing, and the figure suddenly
lands on its knees in a great white pile of silk in front of Meng Yao and offers its hand
again. Meng Yao blinks. He’s enveloped in a warm cloud of sandalwood.
“I’m sorry we could not meet, before–” the man said. “I was late. This was an honor.
My name is Lan Xichen.”
Somewhere behind Meng Yao now, protectively, somehow contentedly, he feels the
Lady smile.
57
UNTIL I KNEW YOU
by ralf
Meng Yao is having a pretty terrible day.

He was torn from sleep this morning from the noise of the construction site across
the street before his alarm even went off, as if he doesn’t have to get up early enough
as it is. Rain started pouring down right after he was out the door of his apartment
building. He had an umbrella but the strong wind disagreed with him using it and
snapped its spokes. When he reached the office, hair and coat dripping wet, there were
piles of paperwork waiting for him that he’s very sure aren’t actually his responsibility.
Nonetheless he got to the task only to be interrupted by the company intranet crashing,
something that took out the entire floor and that his superior (who is unfortunately
also his cousin, not that he’d ever bother to acknowledge their blood relation) saw fit
to blame on him, for reasons unknown. Meng Yao isn’t even vaguely affiliated with the
IT department. He still managed to assist a little in solving the issue because he’s not
completely clueless when it comes to tech things but naturally this didn’t matter to
his cousin at all. How someone with so little qualification or leadership skills is able to
keep such a position is a constant source of astonishment to Meng Yao but then, other
blood relations don’t go unacknowledged in this company. He tries not to dwell on it
too much.
After the work day was finally over – needless to say his dear cousin made the entire
floor stay an hour longer to make up for the time lost – Meng Yao couldn’t wait to make
it back home as quickly as possible and just stare at the wall for a while but the train
had other plans. Thanks to a malfunction of the contact wire his route was canceled
for the time being which left him with a detour that would take at least forty minutes
longer. And that’s how he finds himself in a crowded train with all the people who had
the same idea, breathing a sigh of relief when the next announced stop is the one he
can get off at and change to the train that will hopefully take him home without further
incidents.
On the platform he politely but firmly navigates through the throng, because the
transfer time can hardly be called ample, when all of a sudden someone shoves against
his back and sends him tripping. Meng Yao already sees himself hitting the floor and,
worse, missing his train.
He doesn’t fall. Gentle hands catch him under the elbows and steady his stumble.
Meng Yao grabs a fistful of fabric on reflex and looks up to see who saved him from a
graceless sprawl on the hard tiles.
His Thank You gets lost somewhere in his throat.
Strong jawline, soft mouth, kind eyes, but above all that the stranger looks familiar
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in a way Meng Yao can’t place.

It makes no sense. Meng Yao has a perfect memory. He never forgets a face, or a
name, or a detail. He knows beyond any doubt that he has never seen this man and yet
he is absolutely certain that they have met before. The dissonance of these impressions
is deeply unsettling.
The stranger’s lips part in what Meng Yao believes to be wonder. He’s still cradling
Meng Yao’s arms and something about the careful way he holds him feels reverent. His
gaze is very warm, tender almost. There’s a birthmark just under his left brow. Would
Meng Yao reach to press a kiss to it if he got on his tiptoes?
The impulsive thought startles him back to himself. His heart thuds in his chest and
although he was saved from a tumble he still feels like he’s falling, no solid ground under
his feet and no breath left in his lungs. He should say something or remove his grip from
the stranger’s sweater or do virtually anything other than keep staring but he can’t find
any words, can’t even look away. Something about the man has him entranced, is wiping
his mind and rewriting it with nothing but longing to know everything about him, to
discover (or relearn?) all of his expressions, his thoughts, his secrets. It’s overwhelming
and daunting and--
“You feel it too,” the stranger says in what is too much a realization to be a question.
His voice is deep, soothing, like a whisper under bedsheets that Meng Yao could fall
asleep to.
Meng Yao’s throat closes up. Somehow the notion that he is not alone in feeling
whatever this is only makes it scarier. It makes it real.
His fingers release the man’s sweater at last. The stranger’s hands brush along his
arms with the movement and Meng Yao is sure he’s felt this exact sensation countless
times before and it’s all too much. He takes a step back.
“Wait,” the stranger calls but Meng Yao lets the crowd sweep him away and doesn’t
look back.
He tries not to think about it. He keeps himself busy with work and very carefully
doesn’t let his mind wander.
Unfortunately his subconscious isn’t as dedicated to the cause.
His dreams recreate the moments at the station in excruciating detail, develop
alternate scenarios, conjure new ones. He sees the man’s face with a smile on his lips. A
shadow of concern marring his brow. Tears in his eyes.
When he wakes he stares into the dark and pretends that there’s no void clawing
his chest open. He shouldn’t miss someone he doesn’t know. He shouldn’t yearn for
something he doesn’t understand. He shouldn’t be haunted by never learning a
stranger’s name.
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In the sleepless hours of predawn he contemplates going back. He remembers the

time and place of their meeting. He might be able to find the man again, if the station
is part of his routine. And if it isn’t...
Unbidden a scene unfolds in Meng Yao’s mind, of the stranger returning to the
station too, lingering on the platform, searching for him as well. How it would feel if
their eyes met again.
He stomps down viciously on these self-indulgent daydreams. Real life is rarely so
gracious. He learned that the hard way.
The truth is that the odds of encountering the man again are slim to none. Suzhou is
a big city after all. He needs to accept that and get over it. It’s for the best.
It’s been almost three weeks since the chance meeti horrible day and Meng Yao
has gotten very good at convincing himself that he is scanning any crowd he enters a
perfectly normal amount, as exerting some level of caution in public spaces is entirely
reasonable.
It’s early Saturday, the weather unexpectedly mild for this time of year and Meng
Yao took advantage of that for a leisurely stroll through a nearby garden. He’s on his way
back when he passes the homey cafe tucked away on a street corner. It’s been a while
since he last dropped by so, on a whim, he decides to treat himself a little.
He steps inside, scanning for a free spot when his heart abruptly drops into his
stomach because there he is. The man from the station. He’s sitting in a nook by the
window, a book in hand, a cup beside him. His sweater is pale blue this time but looks
no less soft. The light of the midmorning sun plays across his features tenderly like the
strokes of a brush over a painting. He’s even more beautiful than Meng Yao remembers.
He stands, frozen in place. What is he supposed to do now?
He wants to go over. He wants to turn around and run.
Before anything can come of the turmoil inside him the stranger looks up from his
book and their eyes meet. At first, shock blooms on his face but even from across the
room Meng Yao can see how it melts into something else, something that Meng Yao
might almost dare call joy.
His stomach squirms. During the past weeks he started believing that he must have
overreacted because nothing this visceral could possibly be real. But it is. He can feel
this unfathomable, breathless thing between them drawing him in, relentlessly.
He falls back on instinct. His feet carry him to the counter as if he’d just entered the
cafe and nothing else had happened. His mind is filled with static. He stares at the card
displayed on the wall without seeing anything. It’s fortunate that there’s a woman in
line before him because he’s not sure he’d be able to string together an order.
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What is he supposed to do now? He’s barely bought himself any time. What if the
stranger decides to corner him right here?
What if he takes the chance while Meng Yao’s back is turned and leaves?
The thought is unbearable and he’s glanced over his shoulder before he can stop
himself only to find the man half-turned in his seat as well, looking at him with wide
eyes and an urgency as if he really might come over and--
What is he doing? He didn’t get this far in life by turning tail at the first sign of an
unexpected complication. He’ll settle whatever this is once and for all, right now.
As he makes his way staunchly towards the table he can see the stranger’s expression
shift through surprise to a calmer relief laced with anticipation.
Meng Yao pulls out the chair and sits across from him. The man doesn’t seem to
mind his brashness, if anything he seems pleased. His eyes, already warm before, are
downright fond now and the longer Meng Yao looks at him the more his smile grows
until it’s become a full grin. It’s disarmingly handsome.
Meng Yao refuses to be fazed by it. “What?”
The man shrugs, still smiling. “I’m glad to see you again,” he says in a way Meng Yao
can’t pin down. He sounds completely sincere but simple pleasantries shouldn’t hold
this much weight.
“Who are you,” he asks, a little too warily to pass for polite, yet the man’s reply is
accompanied by that same smile.
“I’m Lan Xichen.”
Lan Xichen. He barely resists the temptation to repeat the name, just to try it out,
feel its shape. It remains on his tongue instead, burning and unspoken.
He thought knowing his name would finally ease the longing inside him but it
doesn’t. It only makes it worse because it doesn’t answer why he recognized this
stranger, doesn’t explain the connection they share. It is not enough, not even close
and Meng Yao drops his gaze as he tries to rein himself in.
There’s a bookmark peeking out between the book’s pages. It looks self-made, a
pressed blue flower carefully arranged on a faded piece of paper. Was it a gift? Does
it hold any sentimental value? The book cover shows a cloudy sky and the tip of
a magnolia branch in full bloom. Song of Clarity, Meng Yao reads and knows that if
nothing else he’ll be looking this up before the day is out. Anything to alleviate this
feeling of distance between them, created by the vast multitudes of things he doesn’t
know about Lan Xichen.
He meets Lan Xichen’s eyes again and is both taken aback and not surprised at all by
the gentle patience he finds there. Everything about him is so gentle. Meng Yao wants
to sink into it and never resurface.
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“How do you know me?” he tries again.

Lan Xichen’s mouth opens but he pauses and ultimately doesn’t speak, just huffs a
little laugh that has no right to send Meng Yao’s heart tripping over itself. He frowns in
question.
“I was going to say I don’t but that doesn’t feel quite true, does it?” Lan Xichen’s eyes
are very dark and impossible to look away from.
“This is absurd,” Meng Yao feels compelled to point out.
“And does it feel absurd to you?”
It doesn’t. It feels existential, like breathing, like the pulse in his throat. Intimate.
Close. Meng Yao swallows.
Lan Xichen leans in. Theirs is a small table and Meng Yao thinks he could reach out
and touch him, like this. He wouldn’t even have to reach out very far. “What are you
afraid of ?” Lan Xichen whispers.
What isn’t he afraid of ? Attachment, disappointments. Discovery. Rejection. Too
many things go wrong in uncharted territory.
Warm fingers curl around his. Meng Yao watches, entranced, as Lan Xichen cups his
hand in his own, his touch feather soft. He has slender fingers. A musician’s hands. Meng
Yao wonders if he plays an instrument. Would he trace the strings with the same care
he does the back of Meng Yao’s hand? How can something so foreign feel so soothing?
“How does it not unsettle you?” he deflects.
Lan Xichen squeezes his fingers and before Meng Yao knows what he’s doing he’s
squeezing back, as if they’ve done this a million times before.
“Because you feel familiar,” Lan Xichen replies, then shakes his head slightly. “More
than that... you feel safe. I trust you.”
Trust. The word lodges itself somewhere inside Meng Yao’s chest.
The hint of a smile curves Lan Xichen’s lips. “But then, I suppose I’m not a naturally
distrustful person.”
It takes a moment until Meng Yao realizes he’s being teased. There’s no denying that
he is a naturally distrustful person. He’s usually better at hiding it but looking back
he has to concede that so far he’s been lacking poise around Lan Xichen. It’s a little
embarrassing. He’s not sure he’s ever been affectionately teased before, certainly not by
someone he has only just met. He’s not sure how to feel about it. He might not dislike it,
and he’s not sure how to feel about that either.
Lan Xichen is still tenderly holding his hand.
To think that he’s already slipped up enough for Lan Xichen to so easily get a read on
him... it leaves him wrong-footed and yet the prospect of letting Lan Xichen see isn’t as
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intimidating as it should be. Meng Yao has never been one for incalculable risks but he
thinks he might give it a try, just this once.
“And where do we go from here?” Asking is a show of vulnerability he wouldn’t
normally allow.
Lan Xichen meets this concession with a smile full of delight. “I could order us more
tea.” His thumb caresses Meng Yao’s knuckle. “And you could start by telling me your
name.”
Startled Meng Yao rewinds their conversation and finds that, yes, he really had
failed to introduce himself. Another lapse, one Lan Xichen had taken in perfect stride.
Meng Yao feels warm.
“I’m Meng Yao,” he says and doesn’t stop his shy smile from showing.
Lan Xichen’s answering grin is the softest thing he’s ever seen. “A-Yao.”
It’s too presumptuous; it should probably rub Meng Yao the wrong way. It doesn’t.
All it does is fill him with tingling contentment, like something that hasn’t been quite
right has finally shifted back into place.
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WORDLESS AND GRAY
(a pallas cat’s coda to tale of the bamboo cutter)
by The_Storybooker
“I suppose I have my answer,” murmurs Gege one night, his fingers slowing and coming
to a rest against the winter coat he’s mending.
A-Yao’s feline ears perk up and his drooping eyelids shoot open. His body is
frozen, staring at the man he has failed so many times. Gege’s face is drooping with a
resignation that A-Yao has never seen there before. Gege’s face usually exudes peaceful
concentration when alone with A-Yao, the friendly smile he wears around other humans
shut away until it’s needed.
“You’re the only one who stays.” Gege’s smile feels suddenly far away.
A-Yao holds his breath for elaboration until his lungs burn.
But the moment passes and Gege’s hands move only to complete his task. He cleans
up just as the last flame flickers out. He pokes at the embers and breaks them up,
mixing them into the ash.
He heads to bed and crawls beneath the covers, and finally, finally turns to look
through the dark at A-Yao, who still has not moved, even though clearly no explanation
is forthcoming.
Gege quirks an eyebrow and cocks a half-smile, raw and tired.
Only the shadows in those eyes tell of the light they once held; they don’t look at
A-Yao now the way they did in his last life. But he’s still Gege, and the warmth that
floods A-Yao’s tense muscles with a touch of his gaze is unchanged; the twist in A-Yao’s
stomach at his smile, too.
A-Yao moves at last, to pad silently across the room and curl up beside Gege.
A-Yao’s nocturnal instincts keep him up every night. Tonight, Gege’s voice echoes in
his memory: the only one who stays.
There are so many things that could mean, and A-Yao’s mind cycles through one
after another. Loneliness, abandonment—he has to struggle past his cat instincts to
remember that these are painful for humans—and for immortals.
A-Yao knows he made a mistake, last life. He knows he hurt Gege. But hurt can mean
so many things, and A-Yao had never taken the time to figure out which type of hurt
he was causing when he’d had the chance. Or maybe he had, and he can’t remember
through the fog of his cat brain.
He remembers waking in a bamboo shoot, the start of a heavenly ordeal to please
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his father. He remembers the green-clad guardian he called Da-ge and his energetic
little brother. He remembers Da-ge introducing him to Gege. A-Yao can only remember
loving Gege, from the very first moment. He remembers leaving him anyway, and dying
as the ordeal dictated he should.
He remembers his sister in the heavens making him look through her mirror to
Gege’s broken fate. He remembers exchanging his hard-won position in his father’s
palace for one more life on earth.
But this is not the Lan Xichen A-Yao grew up with in his other life.
A-Yao is the one reborn, the one whose body and memories have been reshaped into
a Pallas cat. But Gege is utterly changed from the man in A-Yao’s foggy memories. That
Gege was a natural leader, all smiles and joy and easy conversation. This Gege avoids
company, and the smiles and conversation he offers when unavoidable is a shadow of
what it once was.
Yet A-Yao’s love is surely unchanged. His heart burned so brightly for Gege that
even through the film holding his divine memories at bay, it only took a glance at the
bamboo cutter to know, He’s mine.
Three seasons with Gege, and the memories are unearthed, as much as his mortal
feline brain will allow.
It’s more than he can bear.
How can he fix this?
Maybe if he were in human form, he would try words. Maybe he would try gestures.
But there are no words he can say that Gege would understand. The gestures he
can make—gifts of rats and birds and on one memorable occasion a raccoon—are all
politely rebuffed.
He tries to remember written words as he knew them in his last life—symbols with
depth and layers and so many meanings. He tries to remember what he would have
said, if he could. Maybe if he could remember the right words, he could figure out the
symbols; maybe he could convey them.
Sometimes, the clouds floating through the blue of the sky catch his eye; sometimes,
he looks up at the clitter-clatter of the bamboo leaves striking the bamboo trunks in
the wind, and sees the light green of the trunk against the dark green of the leaves and
feels… something. He thinks of these moments now, and knows that there are words
there.
Though he digs and digs through his memory, clinging to this moment of certainty,
the grip of his mind is fragile.
The moment drains away, flimsier than a dream, and A-Yao is left feeling hollow,
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with only the memory that he knew something a moment ago that he cannot recall.
He curls into Gege’s warmth. A large, warm hand lands on his back and strokes
him—easily, gently, sucking all the tension away.
A-Yao falls asleep as purrs rumble in his chest.
“I suppose you think I’m just some lonely, curmudgeonly bamboo cutter,” Gege
mutters in early spring, nearly a year after A-Yao had found him again. It’s morning this
time, and Gege is stepping outside into the dim blue light before the dawn, A-Yao at his
heels.
A-Yao scarcely has the time to hold his breath before Gege says, “Little do you
know—I’m also a bamboo shoot digger.”
And then he grins down at A-Yao, a silly grin that covers his whole face and makes
him look forty years younger—like the child that A-Yao once knew and loved, that he
should have treasured—and walks into the forest. There is a bounce in his step and an
easy certainty that his cat friend will follow.
In his last life, A-Yao stopped himself and rationalized. What was the point of
following a man, just because he made A-Yao’s heart beat, just because his smile filled
him with warmth? These were passing fancies; there were more important things in life.
In this life, A-Yao doesn’t hesitate. He bounds after Gege as he has every day, whether
Gege expects him to or not.
He looks up and sees the sunlight reflect upon a particularly shiny leaf, piercing his
eyes. A-Yao shuts his eyes and looks away, shaking away the momentary jolt.
It catches at something at the back of his mind, but he’s not sure what. Another
moment, and the catch is gone, too.
“Did you know that the sky is blue?” Gege says one day that summer, gazing up at
the sky through the leaves. A-Yao blinks up at him, and the leaves and sky and clouds
he can see beyond him.
“The sky is pale blue, and the clouds are greyish white, and the grass and leaves are
so many shades of green. There are colors that seem similar at a glance, but the closer
you look, the more differences you see. It’s in the vein patterns on the leaves, or the way
the sunlight and shadow fall. They can all be beautiful or ugly, similar or different, but
that’s all in the perception. The very same view reflects differently on every mind. What
do you see when you look at the sky, the clouds, the leaves?”
A-Yao’s mind is screaming with something like recognition—a memory, just out of
reach.
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A moment, and another, and the feeling is gone.

The sky is beautiful, A-Yao knows. It is vast and unfathomable, whether blue or grey
or orange.
Leaves are unique and informative. They’re beautiful, each in their own way.
As for the clouds that fill the sky—A-Yao thinks these are beautiful too, no less than
the sky.
A-Yao rubs his side against Gege’s leg in claim.
Gege does not bend down to pet him—he never does when they’re outside. But he
doesn’t move away, either. This is enough, A-Yao tells himself.
“You are sky blue, did you know?” said Meng Yao, once upon a time. “And Mingjue-ge
is green. I’m just… gray. We aren’t the same. I need… I need color, do you understand?”
“I don’t,” Lan Xichen said, his hands clasping Meng Yao’s, holding him, refusing to let
go. “You’re every color, you’re… you’re the world.”
“Xichen-ge,” Meng Yao said, concealing his heartbreak behind a polite mask they
both knew could not fool Lan Xichen. It wasn’t about making Lan Xichen believe
anything in particular—it was about protecting Meng Yao from breaking them both.
Of course he wanted a life with Lan Xichen. Of course that seemed ideal in this
moment. It was a temptation. This was how heavenly trials worked.
Lan Xichen was only one of millions of mortals—what were a few decades with him,
compared to the eternity Meng Yao could have in heaven as a member of the Jin palace,
if he passed this trial?
“I’m not,” he said gently. “You’ll find your world someday—it’s not me.”
A few decades with a mortal would go by so fast anyway. Better to save it for dreams
that could last forever, he thought. Lan Xichen would move on, and find another
color—another world.
(He learned too late that dreams made of wishes were hollow. That Lan Xichen
would shut himself away, and never move on. That he had torn a happy fate to shreds.
That a cold eternity behind a mask of propriety has nothing on decades of loving truly,
and being wholly loved in return.)
“He was born from a bamboo, you know,” says Gege one day, in the seventh summer
A-Yao has spent with him. “He was born from a bamboo, and grew up in a season. He
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wasn’t of this world, and I always hope…”

Gege cuts down another bamboo. He smiles wryly at the hollow space. There are no
tears in his eyes, but A-Yao can see the tear streaks across his soul.
I’m here, A-Yao thinks with perfect clarity, but the words slip away before he can
remember how to convey them. I’m right here.
He nuzzles his head against Gege’s ankle.
“Yes,” says Gege, and reaches down to pet A-Yao with ease he lacked in the first few
years. “I have you now.”
There is something broken about those words that cracks something open in A-Yao’s
chest. Last life, A-Yao thinks, but he isn’t quite sure what that means anymore.
He nuzzles Gege again and again and again.
Memories are fleeting and words are ever elusive, but Gege is A-Yao’s home, and that
is enough.
A-Yao spends eight years with Gege, until his body gives out.
He returns to the heavenly realm, all his mortal memories intact.
A few decades is nothing, he had once foolishly thought. A few decades sharing love
with a mortal still sounds trite, in mere words. But eight years with Lan Xichen, even
bound to a form where memories were fuzzy and words impossible, have proved how
deeply his imagination failed him then.
Eight years with Lan Xichen, stripped of words and human form, in exchange for the
position in the Jin palace he had worked so hard to attain.
He would make the same choice again, and again, and again.
He would go back and stay with Lan Xichen from the beginning, if he could.
Meng Yao curls into himself in the cold, lonely heavenly realm, and cries.
He senses his sister’s presence beside him, but she does not reach out to touch him.
He is grateful for her company, and her distance.
He cries until his tears are dry.
Then he rises and departs Qin Su’s palace into the heavenly court. He will carve out
his own place to belong.
Meng Yao is sorting through the record scrolls—a role that he has taken to with
such aptitude that not even the Jin palace can dispute his promotion—when a voice
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from the direction of the door behind him breaks his concentration.
“A-Yao.”
The voice is deep.
Familiar.
Impossible.
Meng Yao drops the scroll. Does not turn around.
“A-Yao,” says the voice again, closer this time. Softer.
Meng Yao turns.
He cannot say his name. This moment is too fragile. Wishes like his don’t come true.
Lessons learned don’t come with second chances.
And yet there stands Lan Xichen, long hair flowing down his back, tall and perfect
and smiling, the same soft way he did in Meng Yao’s first mortal life. There is light in his
eyes, light that Meng Yao has missed for so long, and he knows better than to believe.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to find you,” says Lan Xichen. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize
you, when I was mortal. Of course, the moment I came back, I realized—you had the
same eyes, the same way of tilting your head to the right when you were happy, and…”
“You’re sorry,” repeats Meng Yao, and his voice sounds loud. “You’re sorry, after I left
you, abandoned you for…” He swallows, the bile rising in his throat. He still cannot bear
to remember how blind he’d been. The so-called family he thought mattered more than
Lan Xichen.
“It was a trial,” says Lan Xichen, and his eyes are even warmer now.
“The trial shouldn’t have mattered,” says Meng Yao. “I should have seen what was
important. I should have known, before it was too late.”
Lan Xichen steps forward, his hands outstretched. Meng Yao places his hands in his,
drawn in like the tide to the moon.
Warm fingers close around his hands, and Meng Yao grips back, holding on to this
beautiful illusion.
“My trial,” says Lan Xichen, his voice low. “As well as yours. You had to go.”
Meng Yao shakes his head even as events rearrange themselves in his memory.
Not a mortal after all—another member of the heavenly realm undergoing a trial.
It’s something he hasn’t even dared to imagine.
And that means…
“But I came back to you,” Meng Yao whispers, hardly daring to blink, lest Lan Xichen
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vanish between one blink and the next. “Did I ruin it?”
“No,” says Lan Xichen. “Never, A-Yao, you were perfect, you did what you had to, but
you also found a way to be with me, and I hoped… of course I know you might not want
to hold on to something from a trial in the mortal realm, but I wanted to ask—”
“You called me your world,” says Meng Yao, and his voice cracks. “But you were
mine.”
Lan Xichen pulls him close, then, and leans down, his eyes searching. Meng Yao
pulls his hands free, throws his arms around Lan Xichen’s neck, and pulls him the rest
of the way down into a kiss decades overdue.
Every color of every realm is beautiful.
75
SOFT SWORD
by CwythanWind
At first Xichen knows the difference between waking and sleeping.

The waking world is a delicate shell too easy to break. It shatters at sudden memories,
sharp thoughts, at any slight whisper of self-recrimination. The broken shards of that
shell are crisp and cutting. And so he knows he is awake because he must move too
carefully, hold himself distant, untouched and untouching.
Sleeping is a gray weariness. No true escape. In his dreams the world is itself, but
dreary. The lines of trees and trickling streams blur like a runny painting. Even the lines
of his body, flesh and bones, melt and disintegrate into nothing.
Somehow, Xichen does not have nightmares.
He sits on the porch in only one layer. It is too cold for that, but the cold soothes
him. There is nothing to hear except the whisper of wind through the thin needles of
mountain trees and elegant bamboo leaves, and if he sinks deep enough into himself,
the quiet beat of his heart.
A flash of yellow in the bamboo draws his gaze. Too bright to be real. There it is
again: feathers that might be carved of thin topaz and polished copper.
Xichen peers into the pale green shade. He is as focused as he’s been in weeks. The
bird does not return, and the bamboo shade begins to blur like in one of his dreams. He
wants to see the bird again, that dot of watercolor bleeding through lines of gray ink.
Vivid, alive. Fleeting.
His lips part to say a name, but he stops and it is only a quiet puff of air. Barely a
breath.
Nothing breaks. Xichen remains seated on the cold porch as twilight melts colorlessly
toward him.
He wonders if he is awake or asleep.
In the morning he takes his sword into the small yard and strips away his robes until
he wears only his trousers. His toes slip on half-frozen earth. But he works the forms
until steam rises off his chest and shoulders. It is unsatisfying. Not Shuoyue’s fault.
His arm trembles as he holds her out. None of it is her fault. But he cannot forget
the weight of A-Yao’s body hanging off the blade. The fine trembling that traveled up her
length into his palm. The squelch as A-Yao pulled him closer.
80
SOFT SWORD
Xichen drops Shuoyue onto the frosted grass. His hand shakes, and he spreads his
fingers wide.
Years ago A-Yao disarmed him while they sparred. Xichen had been laughing—he
laughed so much when they were alone. A-Yao used a trick to distract him, then put
his body in the way; Xichen either had to cut A-Yao or let go of his sword. It wouldn’t
have worked with an enemy, but A-Yao never hesitated to press any advantage. Even an
advantage born of caring. Especially, Xichen knows now.
But that day years ago, Shuoyue had fallen. Xichen had grinned, ready to congratulate
his friend, only to see A-Yao’s panicked wide eyes as he dropped his own sword to collect
Shuoyue and offer it back with a bow.
Xichen had lifted him out of that bow and kissed him.
Now, inside the little house, wrapped in a plain cloth sheath, Hensheng waits.
Xichen leaves Shuoyue and goes to get Hensheng. Unwrapping it carefully, Xichen
grasps the hilt. It is barely large enough for his hand. The white wood of the grip is cold.
Colder than the air around him. So cold it nearly burns his palm. But he falls into a first
position, sword extended.
The blade wavers gently. The edges glint. He knows how sharp it is, how it can slice
nearly anything to ribbons with the right application of spiritual power.
Xichen holds himself exactingly still. Barely breathing. He does not blink. He does
not tremble.
But Hensheng refuses to stop its very tender motion. It is a beautiful line of wavering
light.
Lan Xichen falls to his knees.
After that Xichen puts Shuoyue away, set respectfully on one of the few bare shelves
inside. He keeps Hensheng with him. A spiral of cold light around his forearm. A belt of
clear water at his waist.
Lan forms are not much use with the soft sword. Some of them can be adapted—he
saw A-Yao do as much. But Xichen is long and lanky and strong. Hensheng is coiled and
sharp and savage.
It expects something of Xichen. It is waiting.
Xichen prefers to care for Hensheng under the sun. He sits on the shallow stairs or on
the small flat rock at the edge of the winter-dormant meadow and polishes the blade.
Uses fine linen and silk to clean the delicate carvings at the grip.
He raises the sword, one hand under the hilt, the other carefully balancing the edge
of the blade on two extended fingers, and touches his lips to the characters pressed
81
SOFT SWORD
into the steel. He wishes he could tell A-Yao that while there is so much he does not
understand, there is nothing he does not love.
Something touches his cheek. On the left, near his eye. It feels like a kiss.
Xichen’s breath appears like mist on the steel of Hensheng. He cannot move.
He felt it. Lips on his skin.
He must be imagining it.
A-Huan.
Xichen opens his eyes into the dark violet night.
The echo of his oldest name hangs in the air.
It is the right name for this place. Here he was his mother’s A-Huan. His brother’s
Huan-ge. Before death and rules put those names in the ground. Before that morning
in Yunping when A-Yao had finally said it, finally. Then it was only his.
A-Huan.
“A-Yao?” Xichen sits up. His hand glides against Hensheng where it rests on the
blanket beside him. His smallest finger catches on the edge and he feels the sting. The
tiniest streak of blood mars Hensheng’s edge.
Xichen raises his hand and puts his finger to his lip. The flavor overwhelms him,
though it is so little. There is no blood here, no spice or heat, nothing bold in this house.
His own blood is the strongest thing he’s smelled in weeks.
A-Huan, the whisper comes again, and this time he knows he heard it. The darkness
inside the house is full.
When he wakes at dawn he remains in bed and talks to A-Yao. Slowly, and not very
much at first, but he describes the soft, blurred lines of his dreams. He tells A-Yao about
the topaz bird. And he apologizes.
Then he wraps Hensheng around his forearm to go haul water.
Spring comes with tiny shoots of green in the meadow. They push, one here, another
there, and suddenly hundreds. Icy rain does not affect them, nor the layer of frost
every morning for weeks. When the sun appears, it remains. It is cold, but sunlight
nevertheless.
Other birds flit amongst the swaying bamboo. Downy gray, soft blue. They chirp
and squeak at each other, and Xichen watches them for hours. Watches the bloom of
life in fits and starts. He lifts his face to the sun he cannot feel and tells A-Yao about the
82
SOFT SWORD
flirtatious birds, the emergence of beetles.

Sometimes with Hensheng flat against his skin, he hears an answer.
Hensheng is always cold against his skin.
His brother comes, with baskets of food and clothes. There is news behind his still
face, but Xichen invites none of it, and so his brother does not speak. Wangji is wearing
a little bit of blue. Xichen does not think about his brother’s happiness or his brother’s
responsibilities, he knows Wangji can bear it all. The only thing Xichen owes Wangji is
to continue opening this door.
That night, Xichen curls Hensheng around his neck and tells A-Yao everything the
brothers did not say to one another, knowing the sword feels the words as much as
hears them, through Xichen’s neck. He wishes the blade would tighten, just a little bit.
And he thinks about the blue Wangji wore. He thinks of years alone and mourning
and cultivation and resurrection.
The next morning, the gentians bloom.
Lan Xichen makes tea for two, kneeling at the table. He raises his cup, sips, and
there is a shiver trailing through the other cup’s thin steam. A ripple. He smiles. He
takes Hensheng outside to the gentians, into the sun, and works through the forms
again, these not-quite-Lan forms, more flexible and savage, a coiled spring, aching and
trembling to act but patient, patient, patient until the exact moment.
Sweat trickles down his spine and does not turn to frost. Nor to steam. As he holds
the sword out, he does not tremble, and slowly slowly slowly the blade stills itself, too.
He imagines stepping past the meadow, Hensheng around his waist. Hidden. His
own. A secret. A sorrowful dream he carries with him. It is appealing, but not what he
wants. For years he believed he and A-Yao were each other’s best secret, and he is weary
of that. More secrets is not what he wants.
Every night now the darkness is full. A weight against his skin. Warm.
It is the brush of lips. A huff of laughter. A whine. Words coming together into a
memory, a moment they did not share. Frustration. Grief. Steel that bends, that wavers,
that moves—but is no less steel. This weight is flexible. Soft. It is ideation. Concepts
plucked from potential, this theory, that radical, a new combination. A new array.
Xichen holds his breath, keeps himself quiet. Allows the fullness to hold him down.
Wants.
83
SOFT SWORD
A-Huan, A-Yao whispers, a ripple on the surface of clear white tea. A-Huan, against
Xichen’s cheek, folding into the curve of his ear. Xichen shivers. He wants. He reaches
out. There is nothing but shadows and cold sunlight, and Hensheng. He traces the
character pressed to the steel. Birth.
He thinks about that little bit of blue Wangji wore.
Wandering through the meadow Xichen plucks perfect gentians blossoms, even
and balanced in their form, graceful and small. He has always liked graceful and small
things. Xichen takes them inside and puts them in a bowl of cold water. Soon, he walks
into the bamboo and strips away a few of the long leaves, the young and fresh leaves
from narrow bamboo, thin as a wrist. Xichen tugs one out of the ground.
The roots are longer than he expected.
The array is simple. What he wants is simple.

Hensheng is made of wood and steel. Xichen, because he is an artist, thinks tears
will do for water, and blood will be necessary. He builds the bones from bamboo, the
muscles from threaded bamboo roots. What else does a body need?
The eyes are perfectly matched gentian blossoms. The lips a curve of jade broken
from a teacup. Xichen doesn’t know if this will work, but he needs something to touch
that is not a sword. The sword.
The sword.
The sword he coils into a tight knot, cupped between his large hands. He holds it in
place with his spiritual power. It shivers. It glints. It tries to loosen and he forces it tight
again. Loosen
—tight. Loosen
—tight. Loosen
—tight.
It is uneven, but it is a pulse.
Lan Xichen sets it into the construct.
He activates the array with blood and spirit. It rushes through him, cool and pure,
and the array flares brighter than the sun.
Lashes flutter like petals in a twilight breeze.

The eyes open, gentian blue.
84
CREDITS
Artists
AiND Ale
AiND_art MLtoFangirl
mostlikelytofangirl
aru Aster
AruParu_ aumaranthos
farisaki fluozinc
farisaki fluozinc
geo Ken
hydrangeo kiriiharas
Lullejah nickytess
lullejah nicky_tesss
osedaxed Reb
osedaxed fishfearer
Sabina Hasegawa Tako

sabigawa takonxmz
Vahveroiden kasvatti Yasha Wang

vahveroiden-kasvatti yashawang
86
CREDITS
Writers
annulareye CwythanWind
annular_eye CwythanWind
deuxjolras exoscopy
deuxjolras exoscopy
lyn mienwhile
coffeeshuttle welcome_equivocator
ralf roquen
ralf roquen
ralfstrashcan fincalinde
The_Storybooker
The_Storybooker
Organizers
Amias Bridges Shiome Tangmo Elise
cult_ivation zlbridgez robotrabbits artoftangmo elisecillustr8
Thank you to Hawberries for the initial cover sketches
87
GLOSSARY
With special thanks to @pengiesama
A– Shufu
Prefix to signify familiarity. The father’s younger brother. Uncle. More
formal usage.
–da
Suffix to signify seniority/older in age to Shushu
the speaker or in general, a term of respect The father’s younger brother, uncle, but
and familiarity. with broader, more casual usage. Also
used with unrelated men close to your
Didi –di parents’ age.
Younger brother.
Xiandu
–er Chief Cultivator
Suffix to signify familiarity, sometimes Xiao–
someone younger. Prefix to signify the person is younger
than the speaker, a term of endearment.
Gege –ge
Older brother. Xiao
A wind instrument. Vertical flute.
Gongzi –gongzi
Young master. Son of nobility, a term of Zongzhu
respect. Sect leader.
Jiejie –jie
Older Sister.
Jiujiu
The mother’s brother. Uncle.
Meimei –mei
Younger Sister.
Niang
Ancient traditional term for mother. Also
used for respected and married older
women.
qi
Circulating life source, vital energy, breath.
88

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2022

Thank you to everyone who helped

Art Wordless and Gray

Art This New Path of Ours, Let’s Carve it

Hanguang-jun’s forehead ribbon?”

Lan Xichen stills beside him.

messages him ANOTHER ONE LAST NIGHT 😍👻🦇

A formless black, writhing blur shoots out of the forest.

The creature bows.

Xichen can only guess at.

“You are acting in haste.”

And at home, there’s the nightmare, grown inescapable and intent.

Meng Yao’s body is made up entirely of reminders.

One long note parts the silence. A violin.

There’s so much space.

Meng Yao is having a pretty terrible day.

in a way Meng Yao can’t place.

In the sleepless hours of predawn he contemplates going back. He remembers the

“How do you know me?” he tries again.

A moment, and another, and the feeling is gone.

wasn’t of this world, and I always hope…”

At first Xichen knows the difference between waking and sleeping.

flirtatious birds, the emergence of beetles.

Hensheng is always cold against his skin.

The array is simple. What he wants is simple.

Lashes flutter like petals in a twilight breeze.

Sabina Hasegawa Tako

Vahveroiden kasvatti Yasha Wang

Thank you to Hawberries for the initial cover sketches

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